The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (26 page)

After what seemed like much too long, Javien came back into view and the near corner of the barn. He was ready. Tejohn watched the grunt disappear around the corner of the house again as it made its endless, tedious circuits, then took a pair of pebbles from the inner pocket of his robe.
 

Sliding up onto his knees, he counted to sixty-five, then threw them with all of his might. He’d been nearly blind his entire life, and chucking stones was not something he had a lot of practice with. Still, it was an open barn door, and Song knew he would get what he deserved if he missed.
 

He didn’t. One of the pebbles struck a wooden shelf and skipped upward to rebound off a wall. The other hit the wall directly and bounced several times in the bay against wood and iron. A clay pot shattered.
 

Javien had already begun the hand motions for his spell when the grunts’ roars began. Tejohn threw another stone, then dropped flat to the dirt. He could hear the grunts splashing toward the barn as his third stone struck something metal.
 

Both grunts charged inside with the speed of an arrow in flight. Tejohn scrambled to his knees, then his feet, feeling as plodding as an invalid. A terrible furious pounding echoed from within the building as the creatures threw themselves against the small back door. Tejohn sprinted across the yard, his shield and spear in hand.

This was the most dangerous part of the plan. Javien’s orders were to stay out of sight until the beasts were well trapped. If they escaped, he was to slip away while they tore Tejohn to pieces.

They had to be quick. Tejohn sprinted, leaning so far forward, he nearly stumbled. He’d hoped the rain would hide the sound of his charge, but the two beasts pounded on the back door as if they were trying to tear the whole building down. They were making so much noise, he could have driven a herd of okshim at them and caught them by surprise.
 

Tejohn crossed the open doorway to the other side of the barn. The interior was so dark, he couldn’t see anything inside, and his skin tingled at the idea that one of the grunts might leap upon him while his shield was out of position.
 

It didn’t happen. They were clearly still furiously intent on battering the back door open. Tejohn laid his shield and shoulder against the door and--feeling it tremble as the grunts pounded the other end of the building--began to swing it closed. The hinge creaked. His boots squelched in the mud. His stomach fluttered in stark terror. The grunts did not notice until he had blocked off almost all of their light.
 

Just as he wondered where the priest had gone--and if he’d fled in terror--the young man was there, hands in motion. Tejohn jammed his spear point into the mud at the base of the door as the first of the grunts threw itself against it. The whole door buckled and the spear point bent so far that the shaft bulged outward and touched Tejohn’s collarbone.
 

He threw himself against the bottom of the door, adding his weight to the spear. A moment later, a broad pink block of stone appeared beside him, dropping into the mud so close by that the edge of his gray robe was trapped beneath it.
 

The grunts’ assault on the door was deafening. Their claws slipped through the gaps in the wood and the stink of their breath blew across his face. Fire and Fury, they were close.
 

The stone was big, but Tejohn wanted bigger. It was two hand-widths high, three times wider than that and maybe ten times longer: enough to block the door, but there was so much wobble, he thought the wood would split. “Another.”
 

Javien shut his eyes and began the spell again. His hands were visibly trembling, and while he managed to cast it, the second stone was even smaller than the first. It fell atop the first one, the same dimensions of length and width but not nearly as tall.
 

Tejohn tore his robe standing out of the mud, then stepped back. The assault against the door didn’t let up, but the door wobbled slightly less. Slightly. It wouldn’t hold for long.
 

Javien’s eyes were wide and terrified. His courage was close to breaking, and if Tejohn asked for another stone block from him, he might not get anything else. “Now.”
 

He started a different spell this time, and his hands trembled so terribly that he had to stop in the middle and start again. Tejohn stepped toward him and laid a hand on his shoulder. Whether that reassured him or not, the second attempt succeeded, and a gout of flame appeared from between his hands.

The priest bent low and held the fire against the corner of the barn where the wood met the stone foundation. It caught immediately, and he began to walk along the side of the building, playing the flame on the wood and the narrow gaps between the slats. They’d agreed to light this side first, since the direction of the wind should have left it driest, but nothing about it looked dry to Tejohn. The rain that had masked their approach worked against them now.
 

Still, the magic fire was hot; it steamed away the water and sent tongues of flame up the side of the wall. The grunts continued to pound on the door in the same frantic way, but their roars had a note of fear in them now.

Tejohn rolled the hay cart to the door and upended it to brace the top part of the door. Then he fetched an armload of kindling from the woodpile for the back door. It had already been blocked by another piece of granite--that had been the priest’s first task, the one he’d had to complete before signaling. He piled them against the wood, wondering what good it would do when Javien brought his flame to this part of the building.
 

Oil. He needed oil, but there was so little in the property next door that he hadn’t bothered to bring it. The wheat stalks were wet enough that they might smother the fire instead of feed it, and--

A sudden flare from inside the barn made Javien stumble backward and fall into the mud. The flames roared from inside the building, veils of firelight shining through the gaps in the wood onto the misting rain.
 

The grunts became hysterical with fear, and the pounding against the wood stopped. Tejohn saw flame growing on the wall opposite the one the priest had lit. Something inside--oil, tar, something--had burst and spread the fire throughout the building.
 

As Tejohn helped Javien out of the mud, the grunts began to scream in pain and terror. They were terrible sounds, and no matter how much he hated those creatures and their Blessing, the cries they made as they burned to death made him sick.
 

He and Javien had been lucky. Every plan depended on good fortune to some degree, but Fury and The Great Way had favored them.
 

“Grateful am I,” he said, “to be permitted to travel The Way.” Javien repeated the prayer just as the grunts fell quiet.

The barn burned bright and hot in the light rain. In normal times, every soldier and farmer in the valley ought to be able to see that and come running. Tejohn wondered if anyone would come today.
 

He and Javien turned to the farmhouse. The shutters had been thrown open and the windows filled with faces. The soldier who’d tried to fall on her sword was there, her expression blank. The others looked much the same.
 

Tejohn laid his hand on his sword and hefted his shield. “Is there a third creature inside?” None of them answered. “Is there a third grunt inside the house with you? Come out!”

The soldiers looked at each other as though he was speaking a foreign language.
 

Javien turned toward him. “My tyr, if another of The Blessing was inside the house, wouldn’t it have charged us by now? Or tried to free its brothers?”

“I would think so. So, why are they refusing to come out?”

Tejohn started for the doorway, his shield high and his short sword low and point-forward. The older couple crowding the doorway retreated from him, pulling the little children with them.
 

There was no grunt inside. Tejohn had to stop himself from sighing in relief.
 

Inside were the five soldiers, including the one who had been struck senseless--he appeared to have managed a miraculous recovery once the curse was upon him. There was also an older couple with the gray hair, sun-wrinkled skin, and ropey muscles that come from a lifetime of farm labor. Behind them was a stout young woman of about thirty. She had charge of three children: a boy and girl too young to be out of dresses, and the six-year-old girl Tejohn had already seen.
 

The farmhouse was one large room, with a pit of sand in the center where the owners cooked their meals. There were leather balls in one corner and a pair of cloth dolls in a crude wooden raft. Children’s toys. An ancient trident hung above a workbench, which Tejohn assumed to be a spoil of war. Tridents came from Espileth, in the Simblin lands, and no Simblin would have been permitted to settle in Finstel lands.
 

Tejohn tried to figure if the old couple were the owners of the house or if it might have been the stout woman. Not that it mattered now.
 

“You’ll have to do it,” the female soldier said. “We five swore an oath to each other that we would not let the creature’s curse take us, but now that we are here, we can do nothing. The curse stays our hand; we can’t harm ourselves or each other.”
 

“I’ll make it clean and quick,” Tejohn assured them, “if you’ll let me.”

“Thank you,” she said. The other soldiers thanked him, then the older couple. The stout woman said, “Blessing,” then clenched her fist in frustration. The curse was growing strong inside her, saying its name.
 

“We’ll have to take the little ones away first,” Javien said, “before you transform and hurt them.”

That startled them. “We couldn’t hurt them,” a soldier said. Was this the skilled fighter? Tejohn couldn’t recognize him. “We couldn’t hurt them any more than we could hurt each other.”

No.
 

Javien didn’t understand. “Not now, no, but if you change suddenly, you’ll be mad with starvation. That’s how it works, yes? Once you stop being human, you won’t be able to help yourself. We need to get them away from you before that happens.”
 

“You don’t understand,” the old man said.
 

The stout woman bent to the little boy sitting listless by her feet. “They have been blessed just like blessing.” She lifted the hem of his dress.
 

There was a nasty red puncture mark on his thigh. He--and all the children--had been bitten, too.
 

“This doesn’t make sense,” Tejohn blurted out. “They’re so small! What sort of grunt could they get from a tiny child?”
 

“A full-grown one,” the old farmer said. “They’re all full-sized. The first to be bitten on our property was a debt child who worked in our farm. No more than nine, she was, the lazy little thing. She was all
bless bless bless
at the end, and when she changed she just split apart. A full-sized monster burst out of her.”
 

Tejohn suddenly felt terribly cold. “What happened to her? To this grunt?”
 

The old man nodded toward the fire still burning outside. “You just put her out of her misery.”
 

I killed a child,
Tejohn thought.
I killed a child. A grunt. A child. I knew the things had been human once, but a child?
 

His legs felt weak and his head swam for a moment. He, of all people, had just murdered someone’s child.
 

And he was going to have to do it again.

Chapter 18

The pain was sharp and sudden. Cazia cried out, her voice echoing through the chill night air. Harsh laughter sounded from the walls.
 

Ivy caught hold of Cazia’s wrist, bumping the point of the arrow and levering two knuckles apart. Cazia cried out again, which brought more laughter from the darkness to the south. They sounded like wild dogs, and Cazia was suddenly aware that her cries of pain would be like a beacon to the predatory beasts of the wilderness.
 

“What is it?” Kinz asked, sounding very annoyed.
 

“An arrow!” Ivy exclaimed. “They shot an arrow at us. Cazia saved my life.”
 

A second buzzing noise came toward them; the girls ducked low and scrambled away from the wall. They heard impacts against the ground around them; the guards were shooting more arrows.
 

They scrambled through the muddy, uneven terrain. Ivy wouldn’t let go of Cazia’s arm, and it was difficult for her to keep her balance in the darkness.

“What are they making to do?” Kinz demanded. “I understand Toal. You told them who you are. Are the Ergoll at war with the Toal?”
 

“No!” Ivy said, sounding almost desperate. “No, they can not be. The Alliance has ways of dealing with disagreements that come well short of war, and Kelvijinian would never allow us to waste our strength that way, not when we have so many enemies pressing in on us.”