The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (22 page)

Mother stared down at her without moving. Cazia had no idea what that look meant, but she stared right back up at her. It occurred to her that Mother was so alien that it was impossible to recognize her intent from her body language. The taloned foot moved away from the gem, but Cazia pointed at it, and Mother touched it again.

“I didn’t know,” Cazia said. “That was before we realized that the bite of a grunt would curse us. I didn’t know it was my brother. I just thought it was another enemy.”
 

Cazia’s next words would have sounded like an apology or making excuses, so she shut her mouth. When Mother removed her foot from the gem, Cazia put her hand on it. “To kill one who came from the same nest,” she said, “is a terrible crime among my people.”

Cazia lifted her hand and Mother laid her foot down. “Among mine, too,” Cazia told her. “Be sure your people know they mustn’t let the grunts bite them, or they might find themselves in the same situation.”

Mother fluttered her wings again. She shrieked to Auntie, but the other bird didn’t respond. Finally, she lifted her huge foot. Cazia touched the gem. “Curse it,” the bird said. “We have been tricked. We should never have let the gods convince us to try to take this continent.”

Chapter 14

Cazia felt a chill run through her. The “gods” convinced Mother and her people to come here? Had they sent The Blessing as well?

She tried to imagine what the people of Peradain could have done to displease the gods so much. There were temples in every city and holdfast in the empire, and new ones were being built in every newly conquered territory. Priests wore fine robes of many colors. The faithful kept sacred spaces sacred. As far as Cazia knew, they had been doing everything right.
 

So, why would the gods open portals into Kal-Maddum to let strange creatures invade them?
 

Cazia didn’t turn around, but she could feel Kinz standing somewhere behind her, and Ivy, too. Both of their peoples had faced the spears and arrows of the Peradaini troops. Perhaps the gods had become angry because of the blood imperial troops spilled.
 

Except that was the way it had always been. For generations, clan fought clan. One people conquered another. Why would the gods punish the Peradaini now?
 

Not that the Peradaini alone had been targeted. Perhaps it wasn’t the Peradaini empire that the gods wished to end. Perhaps it was the whole of the human race.
 

“You quaver,” Mother said, “like prey. Why?”

Switch. “What gods set you against us?”
 

Switch. “The gods of our land. The Storm. The Bounty In The Grass. The Wave. The Shadow That Passes Above.”
 

Relief flooded through Cazia. Mother was talking about the same kind of nature spirits that Ivy’s and Kinz’s people worshipped, which were as like the true gods of the universe as an unkind look was to genocidal war. Actually, no, because an unkind look could be a real thing, but nature spirits were a figment of ritual and imagination. Cazia had let herself get carried away. Of course the gods—the real gods—were not trying to destroy humanity.

Still, whatever the truth about their religion, it was not impossible that they had been tricked into an invasion. The only question was, if it was not their make-believe gods, who had fooled them?

Switch. “How did they trick you?” Cazia asked. “What happened?”

Switch. “Voices from nothing,” Mother said. “Voices from the deep above and below. Does it matter? The gods play their games. We are the stones they drop and the targets they aim for.” Mother changed the subject. “My people will be fascinated by you when I tell them. They will want to know about your world-breaking.” Cazia lifted her face to the sky. “Are you refusing to answer?”
 

Cazia lifted her hand and let Mother touch the gem. “Sometimes the gem will translate words literally and I can only understand their meaning by the way you say them. When you say ‘touch the ground’ you mean ‘die,’ don’t you? Well, you won’t be surprised to hear that my people don’t talk about death as touching the ground. So, I have to ask you what you mean by ‘world-breaking.’ We don’t use that term.”
 

Switch. “You can make fire come from your hands. You created this gem. You make magic. That is what we mean by ‘breaking the world.’ Magic comes from outside, and you must break through boundaries to bring it here. We long believed that the only creatures capable of world-breaking were lower beasts, like sand diggers and belly crawlers. Magic, we assumed, took the place of intellect.”

Cazia’s hand jolted back from the gem. Mother fluttered her wings, then touched the stone. “Magic is controlled by intellect, by abstract thought and visualization. We don’t need to be able to fly to do that.”

Switch. “There is much we need to learn. What can I offer you in trade for the translation gem? I will need it to speak to and control the bugs. If they also have language as you say, there are arrangements to be made.”
 

Cazia felt a little chill at that. Switch. “The gem is not for barter. However, in exchange for the information I have already given you, plus the general location of the Tilkilit queen’s burrow, there’s something I want from you.” Mother bowed her head. Cazia assumed that meant she was open to a bargain, rather than agreeing to perform an unspecified service. “I want you to provide us transport down from the cliff to the outside of a human structure that I designate.”

“What?” Ivy gaped at her. “Cazia, you--”
 

Kinz laid her hand on the princess’s elbow. “No, Ivy. No, it is all right. I knew she was making to this and I think she is correct. What is more, if I can bear it, you can. Assuming the bird is willing and can keep her promises.”
 

Mother withdrew her foot and Cazia touched the stone. “The bird would never break a promise, no matter how much weight it carried. I would not be leader of my people if I broke my word. What’s more, I suspect I am not speaking to the leader of
your
group, correct? Your companions openly question your decisions. Worse, what use is the location of the leader of the bugs if I do not have the stone that would let us parley?”

Switch. “That’s a lot of questions,” Cazia said. “First, the queen has a way of speaking without words or language. When you’re close enough, you will understand. Second, our group has no leader; each of us comes from a different nation... Do you understand
nation
?” Mother fluttered her wings. “A nation is a very large group of people, usually made up of hundreds or thousands of different families.”
 

Switch. “And you represent these different nations?” There was something careful in the way Mother said that.
 

Switch. “Three of the nearest,” Cazia said.
 

Mother did not take her foot off the stone while she exchanged calls with Auntie, who was still hovering on the updrafts just beyond the edge of the cliff. It was so strange to hear those screeches and shrieks and know there was complex meaning there. Finally, they switched. “I will fly you out into the valley to the location of the bug queen, then my sister and I will carry you down into your own lands.”
 

Cazia didn’t like that idea very much; she tried to introduce the idea of a map to Mother, but the concept of a pictorial representation of the landscape was utterly alien to her and she seemed to actively resist any explanation of the idea. It was only when Kinz stepped forward to explain the drawings were another kind of language that it began to make sense. Even Auntie flew closer and settled on a rock to watch the herder draw a map of the landscape of the Sweeps directly in front of them.
 

Mother did understand the concept at last, although she seemed to think it was poor coin to offer in trade. Cazia thought Auntie was more enthusiastic about it, although it was hard to judge tone from the way the birds squawked. Still, Kinz drew the river that they had floated down to escape, the fallen tree, and a few other landmarks that Cazia hadn’t noticed, finishing with the meadow where they’d spent so many idle days. Kinz was certain the hole to the queen’s chamber was just beyond the northern edge.
 

After that, Cazia explained where she wanted to be taken.

Night had fallen. “We should stop using the gem soon,” Cazia interrupted to say. “The magic is dangerous if we overuse it.”
 

“It is time,” Mother said once they’d switched. “We can drop you close to your destination in the darkness where we will be safe from the tiny darts your people shoot at us, and you will be well outside the hunting range of the belly crawlers. At the sunrise gathering, I will forbid the hunting of your kind. I suspect the discussion will be...complicated. But no matter. Someday, we will have to parley again. I suspect there is much we could learn from each other.”

Switch. “I would like that, too. Thank you.” Cazia pocketed the jewel.
 

Mother carried Kinz and Ivy while Cazia had to fly alone with Auntie. At first, the huge eagles wanted to grab the girls in their talons, but they would have none of it. Kinz thought it would be better to ride on their backs the way her people rode okshim, but Ivy absolutely refused to ride clinging to their slippery feathers.
 

In the end, the girls wrapped their arms and legs around the birds’ ankles and sat on their curled feet. It was uncomfortable for everyone, but the birds did not complain aloud and Cazia managed, somehow, not to scream in terror when Auntie plunged off the side of the cliff and spread her wings wide.

Chapter 15

They plummeted a terrifying distance. Wrapping her arms tightly around Auntie’s lower leg, Cazia shut her eyes and prayed to Monument to help her endure the terror of knowing that they had been betrayed and that these two huge creatures were about to shake them loose and smash their bodies into the mud.
 

Then Auntie began to level out. It was a strain, but Cazia managed to hold on to the bird’s leg, and soon they were gliding out over the Sweeps, the dark lands below flitting by so fast that she couldn’t make out any details.
 

All they had to go by was bare starlight—the moon had not risen yet—but the gnarled tree branches swept below her like giants reaching up to snatch her out of the sky. She knew that, if she fell, not even soft mud or water would be cushion enough to give her safe landing.
 

Fire and Fury, it was the most exhilarating thing she’d ever done.

Mother, Ivy, and Kinz were ahead of them, barely more than a dark shape moving against the starlit landscape. Cazia tried to see if the girls were still holding on, but it was impossible to tell. She tried to convince herself that she should assume the best.
 

Grateful am I to be permitted to travel The Way.
 

They flew, on and on. Cazia’s terror faded quickly but so did her strength. Her arms began to ache, her butt became sore, and her leg muscles started to cramp. She was tempted to shout for the birds to land right away, but they had made a bargain and she thought they might take it as an insult if she changed their terms.
 

Besides, there was something about the birds that did not invite talk. They were utterly silent as they glided over the Sweeps. It was a marked difference from the back-and-forth squawking and cooing they had made on the cliff top. Was this their hunting behavior? It seemed so.
 

On and on it went. Cazia felt a slight tingle in her hands and legs and it only took a moment to realize that she was sensing magic. Auntie had magic inside of her, somehow. For all their talk about “world-breaking,” Mother and her people were creatures of magic themselves, even if they didn’t know it.
 

Cazia’s eyes quickly adjusted to the dark, but she still wished they could have made this trip during the day. What sights she could have seen! It couldn’t have been easy for Auntie to carry a weight on only one leg, and Mother didn’t exactly have a balanced load, either, but they didn’t slow until they came within sight of the torchlight above the Alliance watchtowers.