The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (15 page)

Eventually, he became restless; he had a mission to complete, which had already been delayed for too long by his imprisonment and recuperation. He stood and noticed Javien sitting behind him.
 

Tejohn’s first instinct was to begin issuing orders, but he quashed that. He wasn’t a commander anymore, and Javien certainly wasn’t a servant. Tejohn would never take another servant again if he could help it.
 

Servant or not, Javien nodded and immediately began gathering the supplies Tejohn would need for his journey. Food was scarce within the city, as Tejohn guessed, but water was never hard to come by. They would have to find most of their supplies in the lands outside the city.
 

Worst of all, they would be traveling without spear, shield, or armor. Only red priest’s robes would allow them to pass unhindered out of the city. Any weapons or armor they would need would also have to be scavenged or traded for. At Tejohn’s insistence, they packed gray robes so they could change once they were out of sight of the city walls. They would not be sneaking through the Southern Barrier wearing red if he could help it.
 

It was midday when everything was ready. Too late to start, but too early to sleep. He spent the afternoon working in the temple, splitting firewood in a basement room beside a furnace. It was vigorous work and he enjoyed it, but he was anxious to be on his way.
 

That evening, he had the real surprise. He could not wear red robes with his beard. It would have to be shaved off.
 

Fire and Fury, but he felt strange afterward. Looking at his reflection in a bucket of water, he thought he looked almost like an incredibly ugly woman. Laoni would have barred the door against him if she’d seen him like this. He rubbed his chin vigorously. “Fire and Fury.”
 

Javien, standing beside him with the razor, said, “The Little Spinner never slows.”
 

True. It would grow back. But Fire take the world if he was going to die beardless.
 

They gave him a priest’s cot in a private stone chamber for the night. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was a king’s feather mattress compared to the boards he slept on in the servant’s quarters. His face chilled by the cool night air, he slept heavily and did not dream.
 

He woke in the darkness. Glancing eastward, he saw once again the faintest glow of the beginning of the day.
 

He shook Javien, who did not exactly spring awake happily. They ate a large bowl of watery rice beside the kitchen fires, gathered their packs by candlelight, and headed to the door without anyone to bid them well. Tejohn felt like an escaping prisoner again.
 

The streets of Ussmajil were not as crowded as Tejohn had expected. When he’d been there twenty-three years before, he’d seen refugees sleeping in the gutters and alleys. He’d expected to see worse today, but of course the refugees had been treated just as he had: they’d been turned into servants.

Just the thought made Tejohn reconsider Veliender’s assassination mission, but only for a moment. Laoni, Insel, Alina, and Teberr--his wife and three children--were on the far side of the Straim, the widest, deepest river in Kal-Maddum. At least, they were supposed to be. Grunts couldn’t swim, but that wouldn’t keep them out forever. He needed to turn this conflict with the grunts around before they were lost.
 

I can not bear to lose another family--

No, those thoughts would only drive him mad. He had to focus on something else.

“Javien,” Tejohn said. “Have the grunts crossed the Shelsiccan River?” The priest’s answer surprised him.

“Yes, my tyr, but not in force.”

“Then Fort Caarilit did not hold?”

“They have. However, while the grunts have not crossed the water, men and women who have been bitten have. We don’t have enough soldiers to patrol the entire riverbank, and some have slipped through. While there are none of the original grunts in Finstel lands, transformed humans have begun to run amok.”

The answer made him feel a bit sick inside. Humans who had already been bitten but hadn’t turned might cross the Straim easily under the cover of a moonless night.
 

Anxiety flooded through him. His children, murdered again, but this time, he would be on the other side of the continent. Memories of that first tragedy flooded back, and the pain made him stumble slightly.
 

“My tyr, are you well?”
 

“Don’t call me that any more,” Tejohn snapped, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at Javien. His head was bowed but he could not see the muddy cobblestone street. All he could see was the body of his first child, distorted horribly by the spear thrust that had cut him open. It had been the first time Tejohn had ever seen a human being killed by a weapon of war, but it had not been his last. Not at all.

He let Javien lead him through the streets, barely aware of the people they passed, the decaying wooden buildings, or the smells of morning fires. Instead, he suffered an internal pageant of blood, grief, and terror of the sort he had not experienced in many years, knowing it could happen to him again.
 

At the little gate, Javien answered the guards’ questions. Tejohn came back to himself after they’d received permission to leave the city and started across the westernmost bridge over the White Cap River.
This bridge should be destroyed,
he thought, momentarily confusing the bridge from East Ford that crossed the Straim with the one he was standing on, and then he snapped out of his trance.

“Are you well?” Javien asked. His expression and tone made it clear he was rethinking their expedition.
 

“I am,” Tejohn answered. “I have not been haunted by my memories in that way for many years, but it has passed.”

Javien glanced back at the gate as though about to return through it, but he didn’t.
 

“Javien,” Tejohn asked. “Did the temple spare you any coins to purchase food for our trip?”
 

“Not a speck,” he answered. “There’s no meatbread to be had, either, not for the prices we would have to pay. Supplies are scarce with so many refugees. We will have to work for our meals.”
 

Or steal them
, Tejohn thought. Their mission might stop human extinction; surely they were obligated to complete it without unnecessary delays. It was an unsavory thought--he was sure the priest would mutiny if he heard it--but Tejohn had done worse. “I’m sure the White Cap River isn’t called that any more. What’s the Finshto name?”
 

“Uls, my...” Javien stopped himself. “I’ll have to be careful not to do that again.”
 

“Say
friend
if you have to, but it’s better if you don’t have to. Priests don’t call each other ‘friend,’ do they?”
 

They reached the other side of the bridge and started down the broad main square. The shops on either side of the street looked very like the shops inside the wall, but the early risers setting up for a day’s custom were armed with knives and bludgeons. The looks they gave Tejohn and Javien were not particularly welcoming. “Not as a habit.”
 

“So, that’s settled. Have you chosen a route through the Southern Barrier?”

“I have. We’ll be keeping to the main road through Finstel lands. This is the Sunset Way we’re walking on now; it will be heavily patrolled by the king’s spears, so we’re unlikely to be waylaid. In the middle of the third day, we should come to a northwestern caravan track that will take us to the Salt Pass. The fort there is held by friends to the Finstel people, unless the Bendertuk have done what the Bendertuk like to do.”

“And from there into the Sweeps,” Tejohn said.

“Yes.” He stopped himself from saying
my tyr.
Good. “I don’t know those lands at all. No roads, I’m told.”

“No, but we’ll manage.”

Javien wrung his hands. “There are bandits, I’m told, once you get off the Sunset Way.”

Tejohn noted a group of young men gathered at the mouth of an alley. Crowds moved along the road, carrying baskets and sacks for the day’s shopping, but those boys stared at Tejohn and Javien with an unwavering intensity.

“We will treat everyone as a bandit,” he said, “including soldiers.” Javien was about to protest, but Tejohn cut him off. “What do we have that would be valuable to thieves?”
 

“Our knives.”
 

“Everyone has knives. Don’t play games with me, priest.”

Javien looked uncertainly around him. He didn’t notice the crowd of young men that had stepped from the alley and now trailed the pair down the street, but he did notice the lingering looks people gave them. “Our robes. The gates of Ussmajil are closed to everyone but the tyr’s inner circle, the king’s soldiers, the wealthy, and priests.”

“Fire and Fury,” Tejohn spat. “You could have told me this before. We shouldn’t be walking around--”

“I’m a priest of the temple,” Javien insisted, his voice sounding thin. “I am not ashamed of my calling.”
 

“You should be ashamed of your stupidity.”
 

Tejohn whirled around. The group of young men--Great Way, they looked so young--had come close. Tejohn glanced at the tallest of them, thinking he might be the leader, but no, there was fear in his eyes. It was the shortest of them, built like a tree stump, with the authority.

“Which of you would like to donate your weapons to the holy temple?” Tejohn asked.
 

They laughed at him. The little boss let his cudgel rest on his shoulder and said, “We have had our fill of donating to you priests. Come into the alley with us. It’s time for you to donate to our temple.”
 

Javien tried to step around Tejohn. “Blasphemy!”
 

If the young priest expected them to be cowed, he was disappointed. One of the young men put his knife between his teeth and made a rude gesture. Two others with cudgels mimicked their leader’s body language. Without turning his head, Tejohn placed his hand on Javien’s chest and pushed him back. It was one thing to have another soldier at his shoulder, but this priest would only get in his way.
 

The cudgels didn’t frighten him; in unskilled hands, a club was good for intimidation and killing enemies who have already surrendered. But those two knives--

“Boys! Boys!” The call was loud, shrill, and cut through the noise of the crowd like a knife through apricot pulp. “What are you doing to those priests?” The crowd of shoppers parted to let an old woman push through.
 

The young leader rolled his eyes and let his cudgel drop to his side. “Nothing, auntie. We were just talking.”
 

The old woman charged up to the leader and jabbed her finger in his face. Her gray hair was a tangle of dreads, and her face was tanned so dark she could have been Cazia Freewell’s Surgish grandmother. But no, her accent was pure Finshto. “Don’t you lie to me, young man! Don’t you ever! If your father could see what you’ve grown into, he would brain you where you stand! Trying to rob a priest right in the middle of the street, yet!”

Javien tried to push by Tejohn again. “And they blas--”

Tejohn elbowed him in the gut and he fell silent. “Grandmother, we were only talking. There’s no need to be angry with them.”
 

The old woman turned on Tejohn as though about to scold him, then she looked him over, appraising him as though he was a suspect piece of fish. “You’re no priest. That one is, maybe, but not you.”
 

“We’re all taking roles we never expected to take, grandmother. Let me ask you, do you know the danger that is coming?”

She glanced around warily. “I’ve heard rumors.” Her nephew edged closer.
 

Tejohn shook his head. “It’s going to be terrible, worse than a generation ago. It will be like facing a raiding army of grass lions.”

“You’ve seen them?” she said, squinting harder.
 

“From a distance. I’ve also seen brother turning against brother, wounded men executed, and general panic. The berms and walls of Ussmajil won’t protect you. These boys need to be preparing for the fight that’s heading toward you. Don’t you have someone to teach them to handle a spear? Those sticks and kitchen knives will do them no good, and they’ve told me they’re anxious to learn.”

“I know someone, but the king’s spears have forbidden it.”

Tejohn’s scowl demonstrated how he felt about that. “Song knows who will fight for their family and their lands, and who will not. Let the king’s spears collect their tributes from the common folk. You have to look after yourselves.”

“These boys,” the old woman said carefully, “were going to rob you--don’t bother to deny it; I know who they are. And they blaspheme, too, when they think I can’t hear. Why are you lying for them?”

“Because a time is coming”--Tejohn glanced over at the leader, who stared defiantly at him—“when they will have to fight harder than they’ve ever fought in their lives. A time of terrible danger and great deeds. And you will need them. If they linger in alleys, they won’t be ready. They’ll be torn apart in front of your eyes, or flee in terror through the wilderness. But if they learn to fight, they--and the others who stand with them--will slay their enemies the way the Finshto always have.”
 

The group of young men--Tejohn couldn’t bring himself to think of them as boys, as the old woman had said, not when he’d seen younger men killed in squares--shifted uneasily. The old woman glanced back at them. “It hardly seems likely.”
 

Tejohn bowed his head to her out of respect. “Grandmother, can you recommend a shop where we can purchase supplies? We have a long journey ahead of us.”

She got a little gleam in her eye, then ordered the young men to wait for her in her courtyard. They shuffled through the crowd, looking from one to the other as though they’d been given a gift they didn’t want, while her sharp words followed them. Then she took Tejohn by the elbow and dragged him off the Sunset Way down a narrow sidestreet into an empty bakery.