The Way Into Chaos: Book One of the Great Way

by Harry Connolly

  They smiled at each other, and Cazia’s heart felt full. In fact, she felt near to crying, which was silly. All this sorrow was making her much too sensitive.

  As they hiked, the road passed beneath two cliffs that came so close, she could have thrown a stone from the base of one to the other. The winds whipped and swirled around the rugged outcroppings, and just beyond it, the path widened, the way a river widens as it nears the ocean. It became steep as well.

  Cazia looked out into the valley ahead of her, marveling at the expanse of it. The Northern Barrier was vivid in the afternoon light, and she knew it wasn’t as close as it appeared, even though it seemed only a few days’ journey. Below that was a long narrow lake tucked against the base of the cliff, and closer still was a deep green slope of tall grasses, all bending toward the east under the constant pressure of that famous, unceasing wind. The plants were much less yellow than the grasses around Peradain, and more beautiful because of it.

  She could see streams, too, dozens of them, that flowed away from her. At the edge of the grasslands below, the low, fading sun illuminated little splashes of red and white--clusters of tiny flowers growing from the rocks.

  So beautiful. It looked like a place where you could run for hours and never see another human being. Pagesh should have seen this. She loved the outdoors, loved cataloging and sketching plants, then finding out their names. Pagesh should have lived long enough to see this.

  Vilavivianna...Ivy started down the eastern edge of the slope. Good. Fort Piskatook was the sensible destination. They would head eastward along the Southern Barrier, then turn into the next pass. Cazia would first find a way to make herself useful to the commander there. Yes, she was just a girl, but she was a scholar, too. From there, she could arrange for Ivy to go home. Piskatook stood on the Peradaini side of the Straim, and it would be only logical for the local commander to see her safely across to her own people. Better that than start yet another war.

  Ivy was moving at a fast clip now, practically hopping down the stony road. Cazia almost called to her to pace herself--they had many more days of travel left--but she didn’t. Something about the way the girl hurried made her anxious.

  She glanced to the left, looking westward now that they were nearly beyond the edge of the Southern Barrier. Somewhere out there in the shadowed peaks far beyond the grass and marshes of the west was Tempest Pass, where Ghoron Italga studied magic in exile.

  Lar must have already transformed. She glanced westward. Somewhere far out there was Tempest Pass. Could Lar be there right now, without having transformed? He had spent hours on a sleepstone after he’d been bitten. Was it possible the scholar’s magic cured him? Questions. Always questions.

  What she needed was a flying cart. If Lar’s quest failed, who would continue it—whatever it was—if not her?

  She followed Ivy down the slope toward the broken-off edge of the rock--in some places, it really did look as though the valley had been carved out of the mountains. Cazia wasn’t spry enough to keep up, but she tried. The princess came to the edge of a high rock spur, then stopped, as though she had come to a precipice.

  Then she cried out in sorrow and sprinted forward, out of sight. Cazia rushed after her.

  Ivy was running toward a large encampment spread across the grasslands below. Cazia’s thoughts rushed ahead of her body: How many people could live in such a sprawl of tents? Five hundred? More?

  But it was clear there was no one living there now. Many of the white tents had collapsed, the cook fires had gone out, and supply carts set up in the center of the camp had been crushed by gigantic tree trunks.

  Cazia looked at the mountainside next to the camp but could see no sign of an avalanche, or of any other trees that might have fallen from above. Besides, wouldn’t a falling tree have smashed the tents between the carts and the mountainside, not shred them apart?

  Ivy was still running forward, shrugging off her pack. Cazia raced after her; she would have called her back, but what if Durdric raiders had done this and were still down there, picking through the loot? Cazia’s spear wasn’t going to be much use. She had to grab hold of the girl and pull her away before she was noticed.

  A fallen banner lay broken against the rocks. Cazia didn’t recognize it: there were no rivers, mountains, waves...none of the usual symbols. It was just a tall, narrow, fringed white cloth the same color as the tents.

  Beside the nearest tent, she found deep gouges in the dirt. She heard buzzing flies. A trunk had been smashed open, spilling a pair of bronze hatchets and a pile of white clothes onto the ground.

  She’d seen uniforms like those at Ivy’s home in Peradain. This was an Alliance outpost, deep into the Peradaini part of the Sweeps.

  This was an invasion.

  “Hohwahl!” the princess called. Cazia could hear her running between the tents, looking for survivors. So much for pulling her away unnoticed.

  “Don’t shout!” Cazia yelled to her, as she ran between the tents, dodging around a large rock. “There could be—”

  The words stuck in Cazia’s throat. She came around the rock and found herself a hand width away from the head of a huge serpent.

  She shrieked and leaped away, but of course it was already dead. The rock had fallen on it, killing it instantly, she was sure. She leaned a little closer. The black-and-brown head was bigger than she expected, even larger than her own. The fangs were as long as her middle finger but more slender, and there was a red frill at the back of the skull.

  Shudders ran the length of her body. Don’t step on one of those fangs. She moved to the next tent, then the next one.

  The cloth had been shredded as if by swords, and there were deep gouges in the earth all around them. Cazia expected to find bodies in the mud or in the tents, but in truth, she found very few.

  In the tattered, windblown remains of a tent, she found the princess crouching among dolls, leather balls, and long sticks carved into a bowl at one end.

  “This was the children’s tent,” she said. “Children slept, ate, and played together. What kind of soldiers would do this?”

  She gestured toward a broken chest. It was awash in red. Cazia felt woozy for a moment. Did that come from one person? A child? Bitt was right; the amount of blood in a body was shocking.

  Vilavivianna sobbed. “I did not think even the Peradaini would stoop so low.”

  Cazia went to a row of trunks along one side of the tent. Folded cots lay behind them; no one had opened or searched them.

  “No soldiers did this.” Cazia met the girl’s accusatory gaze with stubborn stoicism. “Where are the bodies? Where did the trees come from? The rocks? Do you think someone like Zollik could heft a tree trunk over his head and hurl it across a camp?”

  The princess stood and looked around again. “Where are the bodies?”

  Cazia opened the nearest trunk. It was full of white clothes. Jackets. The next held pants. The next held boots in every style. “Here you go,” she said, her voice sounding flat. “Now your feet won’t have to sweat next winter.”

  The little girl didn’t say anything as Cazia left the tattered tent. She wandered through the wreckage. There was a great deal of blood, but she could only find a few bodies. Most had been crushed beneath something--four women had been sheltering beneath the carts when the tree landed on them--but one man had been slashed straight down his belly and shoulder blades, then had fallen amid some tattered cloth. Whoever had struck him down must have lost track of him there.

  Cazia knelt beside him. The cut appeared to have been made by a very dull sword. The crumpled bronze point of the man’s spear had dried blood on it. She couldn’t look at his face, but his hair was the same pale yellow as Ivy’s.

  There were flies buzzing around him, of course. Peraday had been right; wild animals did not leave the dead in peace. Cazia began to walk through the compound methodically, counting the swarms.

  Vilavivianna approached. Her expression was apologetic but her words were not. �
��I would like to take the time to bury them, if you please.”

  “What does that matter to me?” Cazia snapped. “What were you planning, princess? Why did you even bother to ask me where I wanted to go when you obviously knew they were here all along? Was I supposed to be fooled into thinking I would get to decide for myself, right up until the moment you took me hostage?” Cazia’s voice broke, as though she was going to start crying, and that made her even more furious.

  “Hostage?” Vilavivianna looked shocked. “How could you say that?”

  “Because you lied to me! You know I’m a scholar and I’m forbidden to go beyond the borders of the empire! It would cost me my life!”

  “No one here would have harmed you!” Vilavivianna shouted, sounding close to tears.

  “Of course you wouldn’t hurt your captive scholar. Not when you had so much to learn from her! I can’t believe you pretended—” And that was all she could say. She couldn’t finish that sentence. “You spoiled, stuck-up little...” She didn’t want to finish that sentence, either.

  “I would have protected you!” the princess said. “That is why I told you to put your quiver in your pack! I was never going to tell anyone what you could do, even though it would have--a lot of Alliance lives would be saved if we knew magic, too. But I would not ever! You saved my life!”

  “Well why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “Because you would not have come!”

  “OF COURSE NOT!”

  Tears began to run down the princess’s face. “You would have insisted we leave by the southern gate, even with all the fighting there. We would have been captured or killed--maybe even bitten. I’m sorry I did not tell you everything, but I can not believe you think I would betray you.”

  “Maybe you wanted what was best for us. Maybe you did. But if you trick me into doing what you want, I’m not going to trust you. You understand that, don’t you? Why would you even ask me where I wanted to go if you were going to take me here anyway?”

  “So I could arrange an armed escort to take you there.”

  They stared at each other for a few moments, letting the wind whip their hair in their faces. Vilavivianna was clearly ready to cry, but her lower lip was stuck out defiantly, and her thin brows were wrinkled over her nose. She looked adorable, despite everything, and Cazia felt a flush of shame that she’d ever slapped that pale cheek. Part of her even wanted to give the girl a hug and apologize.

  She couldn’t. That would have been giving in, and the world was too dangerous to let this little princess play tricks on her. Worse, what she said made a sort of sense, and that made it even more important to stand firm. If she gave in now, she’d never stop.

  “Elah!”

  It was a man’s voice, and he was shouting loud enough to be heard over the wind. Cazia’s first instinct was to flee to the back of the camp, maybe try to find a hiding place or a way to sneak across the open ground between the tents and the pass, but the princess turned and ran toward the voice.

  “Elah!” Ivy shouted, her voice high and thin.

  Cazia ran after her, holding on to her iron-lined hat with one hand. They stopped at the edge of the camp and saw three men and four women crossing the grassy meadow toward them. The men had long hair and beards, and they carried the longest spears Cazia had ever seen, while the women stood well back, bows in hand. How accurate could those bows be in this wind? Cazia didn’t want to find out.

  She slipped her hand into her pocket and touched the smooth blue stone. When the man spoke next, she heard him say, “Greetings, half-grown devil. Are your parents free for parlay?”

  Ivy replied, in the man’s language, “By the right of discovery, we claim this treasure for our clans and ourselves.”

  The man was startled, then he sighed and looked toward the skies. The two men with him laughed as though he’d been played for a fool. The women lowered their bows and scowled. They looked like they’d been cheated out of a meal.

  “Devils!” the man shouted. He held his spear in both hands and advanced on them. “Throw aside your spears or be declared enemies!”

  Ivy turned to Cazia. “Do as I do.” She let her spear fall to the ground. Cazia did the same.

  To the east, Cazia saw a long, broad, dark form move through the grasses. It was an okshim herd bound for the west, and these people were part of a herding clan. “Will they kill us?”

  Ivy’s lips were a think bloodless line. “They are not supposed to.”

  Chapter 15

  “Are there no guards?” Tejohn asked.

  Arla slipped off her steel cap and looked over the crest of the hill. “Not that I can see, my tyr, but if their numbers were few they could watch from inside that low tower.”

  “I must make a confession to you, guide: I am not exaggerating when I say I can not see a tower. I can barely make out the line of pink that marks the wall of the camp.”

  “Ah.” She slid down the hill and began to draw in the dirt with the pommel of her knife. “This is the wall. Here is the gate. Both are about a man and a half tall. This looks to be where they warehouse their ores. Beside it is the low tower, which is only a bit higher than the wall but looks very modern--there are narrow slits for arrows and the top is crenellated. Another low building on the near side is probably the barracks. In a medium-sized camp like this, the servants, guards, and scholars--I assume they have one if not more—will probably have separate rooms in one building. This is the location of the cart I mentioned. And over here is the mine entrance.”

  “And we are here?” Tejohn added a dot outside of her circle.

  Arla erased it and moved it farther away. “I would say here, my tyr. The ground is relatively flat to the north and west. This hill right here is as close as we could get to them without a day’s detour.”

  “Unless we tried to come at them from the south, where the mountain is.”

  “I would not recommend engaging Durdric fighters on a steep, uneven mountainside, my tyr. Not unless we outnumbered them sufficiently to make them retreat.”

  “But you believe there will be a sleepstone in one of those buildings?”

  “Tyr Finstel sacrificed much when he diverted the Witt, Bendertuk, and Simblin troops. His lands, towns—”

  “Arla, my sight may be short but my memory is long.”

  “Yes, my tyr. My apologies, my tyr. My point is that his mines are productive and well stocked. One that has grown to this size will be busy, and busy mines have accidents.”

  It made sense. It would take a long time to replace injured workers, but with a sleepstone, they could be healed in a few days, if not hours.

  “My tyr, may I ask a question?”

  Her brow was furrowed and the crinkle lines around her eyes were deep. She had to work up some courage for the question she wanted to ask, and Tejohn couldn’t deny her. “If it’s quick.”

  “Just how short is your vision?”

  She wanted to know if he was a liability. No surprise. “So short that I have only held a bow once, and it was taken from me before I could loose a single arrow. So short that I was turned away by Splashtown First when I was a boy. So short that people mistake my inability to see the strength of my enemies for bravery.”

  It was the only jest Tejohn told, and he used to tell it to make friends with other spears. It worked here, too; Arla laughed.

  “Yes, my tyr. How do you want to proceed?”

  “Under cover of darkness,” he answered. “Keep watch. If you see the gates open, alert me. I’ll have provisions brought to you. We will need your input on the strategy we come up with.”

  “Yes, my tyr,” she said as Tejohn slipped back toward the rest of the group.

  It took very little time to explain the situation to the others, who had settled themselves down to their mid day meal. Lar devoured his meatbread like a starving man, but spit out the bits of apricot and onion. He seemed to be paying little attention to Tejohn’s description of the camp.

  Reglis and Wimne
l listened with great intent. “I can command men,” Reglis said, frowning. “But I have never been trained in strategy.”

  “Neither have the imperial generals,” Tejohn said. “They just copy each other. Put that aside for now. We must wait for nightfall, then try to take possession of their sleepstone for the king.”

  Wimnel absent-mindedly touched his broken arm. “How can I help?”

  “Even if you were healthy, I’d tell you to stay well back with the king. You haven’t been trained for this.”

  “Soon,” the king said. He sat hunched over and tense, as though expecting a whipping. He began moving his hands in front of his knees, and a trickle of clear water appeared just beyond his fingers. “Soon.”

  “I’m sorry, my king. We will do our best.”

  “What if nightfall takes too long to come?” Reglis said. “I am willing to risk a charge during daylight, if the king requires it.”

  “With so few?” Wimnel said weakly.

  “Yes,” Reglis said. His scowl had deepened and his big, scarred knuckles whitened on the shaft of his spear as though he intended to throttle it. “As a diversion, if need be.”

  Tejohn spoke in a low, calm voice, willing the young soldier to settle down. “I’ll keep that in mind if it’s necessary.”

  Reglis took a deep breath but it wasn’t enough to ease his mind. “What if we can not take the camp? Or there is no sleepstone within?”

  “Kill. Me.” Lar’s voice was low and harsh. “Bless the bl-- Blessings—” The king ground his teeth, unable to speak further without saying nonsense.

  Wimnel laid his good hand on Lar’s shoulder. “It won’t come to that.” He offered the rest of his ration to the king, who tore into it.

  Tejohn did his best to keep his face impassive. “No man will ever call me kingkiller. We will do what we must to serve the throne, and we will succeed. Reglis, how are your eyes?”

  “Strong, my tyr.”

  “Take off your cap and join Arla. I want your best estimate of the enemy’s strength.”