Instead of entering through the tower entrance, Kinz insisted they walk around the structure to the stone block building at the back. From the outside, the deep pool and the arch looked like a place to empty chamber pots. The ground was made of gray, sandy mud, and the hopping flies that were so awful inside the building were twice as thick out here. The pit made it impossible to enter through the arch, so they threw the wood inside piece by piece.
Once inside, while Ivy operated the stone handle, Kinz used several of the longer pieces to build a rack. Cazia organized the firewood and quietly, slowly, tried to access her magic.
The Third Gift was complicated. She knew how to shape that spell in any number of ways, sending streams of flame or bolts of intense heat from her hands. In fact, there were almost as many ways of altering this Gift as there was for shaping a stone block or creating water, and she now understood those alterations instinctively.
Unfortunately, the Tilkilit stone had made her own power remote from her. She could make the hand motions and bring out the mental state necessary to summon her magic, but it was as if the magic that fueled the spell had been struck numb.
It had been a little more than a day since she’d last touched one of the stones. All she needed was a little tongue of flame, no bigger than the light of a lantern. Surely she could manage that.
And she did. It exhausted her, but she did it.
Ivy used the lever to summon up two dozen fish and a pair of eels. Kinz split the fish open and hung them to dry over the fire. The eels she roasted right away. By the time night fell, they had let the fire die out, but the delicious smoke still lingered. And the buzzing flies had fled. In the darkness, terrible blows fell on the towers, but the building held.
Magic. Now that she thought about it, Cazia could sense extremely faint traces of magic inside the walls and floors all around them. She had no idea who could have built this, but the fabled sorcerer-kings of ancient times seemed like the most likely candidate. Hiding here was like being inside Monument itself.
The thought gave her chills. Could this have been created by the sorcerer-kings? If so, where had they gone? Maybe there was another Door in the Mountain somewhere, or maybe they went into the sea. But Cazia had never heard of a building like this anywhere in Kal-Maddum; who ever cast the spell that created it had to be long gone, but where?
What’s more, what was the connection between the sorcerer-kings and the Tilkilit?
Eventually, the moon rose and drove the creatures below the waves. This time, Kinz and Ivy held tight to Cazia’s arms, refusing to let her peek out the windows.
In the morning, they wrapped the dried fish in one of the round cloths and prepared to leave. The tower might have been proof against the beasts of the ocean, but they could never defend it against the Tilkilit, and Cazia did not doubt they were still looking for her. While Cazia sat in the top of the tower, trying to decide if she could chance a stone-breaking spell to free the enchanted cube from its lever without ruining the spell, she saw Kinz wrap her heavy iron crown in one of the circular cloths and start down the stairs.
After a few moments, Cazia trailed behind. Before she reached the bottom step, she heard a loud ringing of metal on stone. She hurried forward and came to the entrance to the corridor.
From her spot at the side of the tunnel, she saw Kinz standing beside the lever. She had the cloth in hand, wrapped around the crown. As Cazia watched, she swung the weight a second, then a third time.
That was all it took. The stone lever shattered and tumbled out through the arch. The enchanted cube--containing a spell that Cazia had never even thought possible--fell into the pool and sank out of sight.
While Kinz stood beneath the arch watching the moving water, Cazia darted up the stairs. That spell, if she’d learned how it could work, would have been a powerful weapon against the grunts. She might have commanded them to run into the ocean. She might have commanded them to attack each other. She might have...
It didn’t matter. It was gone now, and there was no doubt why Kinz had destroyed it: to keep it out of Cazia’s hands.
Kinz returned with a long, black fish she had cut open with her flint. Cazia kept stoic as she piled the odd wooden tools from the cubby and lit them with the Third Gift. Ivy and Kinz chatted amiably as they ate.
That finished, they slipped out into the growing fog. Their boots crunched on the stony beach, and while they could not see which direction led to the ocean, they could walk uphill.
The fog became so thick, they could not see more than ten feet ahead. The girls held hands and kept silent, with Cazia in the lead and Ivy just behind her. Cazia kept the sound of the waves on her left, trusting that to be compass enough to direct her southward. Kinz carried the bundle of dried fish and the Tilkilit stones, while Cazia held the pointed stick.
They moved through trees, stumbling over roots and ducking below low branches. In the wet air, every twig that snapped beneath their feet seemed as loud as a slamming door. It took very little time for Cazia to convince herself that the Tilkilit were just ahead, tracking them.
Finally, a change in the wind blew most of the fog out to sea, and the sun burned off the rest. The three girls found themselves facing a cliff of black rock.
Any momentary delight that they had already reached the Northern Barrier was quickly squelched once they realized they were facing the ridge of black rock that they’d seen by the ocean. Cazia had been leading them directly south rather than southwest, but no one seemed to mind. They turned due west to go around the spur.
Moving away from the ocean lightened Cazia’s spirits quite a bit, and the other two seemed to feel the same. They smiled more and dared to whisper once the sun was shining again. The only tension that didn’t ease was between Kinz and Cazia. Cazia resented the older girl because of that enchanted cube and because she felt she’d been maneuvered into denouncing the Italgas. Kinz kept her distance for her own reasons.
When the sun was near the western peaks, the giant eagles appeared overhead, gliding in slow circles as they searched for prey. Cazia couldn’t believe they were still hunting inside the Qorr Valley when they had the whole continent laid out for them. Let the birds take a few of The Blessing out of the world, she thought, and immediately flinched at the memory of her brother’s death. Her voice was sharper than she intended when she suggested they find a hiding spot among the rocks.
After they’d eaten their modest portion of dried fish, Kinz slipped away to dispose of the bones far from their camp. Cazia had expected to hate the food, but she didn’t, and she could not bring herself to say so aloud.
“You and Kinz had words,” Ivy said.
There was no avoiding this conversation. “Apparently, she thinks I’m the king of Peradain, and that every command Peradaini soldiers follow comes from me.”
“Big sister, that is not fair.”
“What about what’s fair to me? Why is she blaming me for things I have no control over? I never ordered anyone to kill herders or collect taxes from them.”
She half expected Ivy to say those taxes were really tributes, but she didn’t join the argument that Cazia would have preferred. Instead, she said, “And yet you wear the clothes, and carried iron weapons, and eat cakes and compote, and you have learned magic. All of these things are either forbidden or impossible for her.”
“And you.”
“Yes. And me, too. You have never handed a spear to a soldier in your life, but you have enjoyed the wealth and comfort those spears have brought.”
“What should I have done instead? Go naked through the wilderness, eating skewers of okshim?”
“Cazia Freewell,” the girl said huffily, her fists on her hips like a disapproving schoolmaster. “You should know better than to try that sort of argument with me.”
Freewell. Even her family name was Peradaini. She had no idea how it would have been pronounced in the original Surgish. Even when she was trying to learn her people’s tongue, she had never had the nerve
to ask. “So, where does that leave us? She has decided that we are enemies, so we are. I will work with her to get you safely back to your people. After that, we can go our own ways. Or fight to the death, I guess, if she’s going to insist on it.”
“Go our own ways will be good enough for me,” Kinz said, slipping back into their hiding spot in the rocks. “I might make to change my mind if you keep talking about making the servant of me.”
From far above, they heard an eagle’s cry in the growing darkness. Cazia leaned out from under their protective outcropping to look at it, but the princess’s tiny hand pulled her back. Fine. They slept like the dead all through the night.
The next day they started southward again. On this side of the spur, the fog was thinner. That let them navigate toward the mountain range looming ahead of them more easily, but it also left them exposed to the eagles. Cazia wished she had managed to get hold of her iron darts before she escaped. The others had already warned her not to cast a fire spell at the eagles because it would reveal their location to every living thing in Qorr Valley, and without darts, she would be reduced to casting rocks at their enemies, like a naughty child.
It was embarrassing.
For three days, they skulked and sneaked across the valley floor, keeping to the trees as much as possible and not moving at all during sunrise and sunset, when the eagles were most active.
When they finally reached the base of the Northern Barrier, they saw a twining shaft of that same noxious climbing weed they’d used to enter the valley. Kinz exclaimed quietly and lunged forward, but Cazia caught her arm.
They crouched together at the base of a twisted tree while Cazia peered into the distance.
“There,” she said, pointing to a space below an overhang of rock. “A Tilkilit soldier, standing guard.”
Chapter 8
Ivy was sure there was no way around the sentry. She wanted to retreat into the valley and create weapons for each of them. Stone weapons, of course, since knapping flint was the best they could manage.
Cazia hated the idea. The Tilkilit’s spear points might have been made of copper--which wasn’t even as good as the bronze weapons the Indregai used--but they were metal. She did not want to face a trained Tilkilit warrior with a piece of stone in her hand.
“Stone can kill people,” Kinz said, as though she was tempted to prove it on Cazia.
“So can diarrhea,” Cazia snapped. “But I don’t want to rely on it in a fight. Why not go around him?”
Ivy peered through the trees at the cliff face. The climbing weed formed a sort of twining tower among the rocks. They were certainly faster and more convenient than using magic to tunnel. “That is the only vine for as far as I can see in either direction. There might be more, but the longer we look...”
“The more likely we are to run into a full patrol.”
Kinz sniffed. “I would rather make the risk with the one guard. There are three of us and we have faced them before. I am not afraid.”
“We were armed before,” Cazia pointed out. “And I don’t mean with flint axe heads and sharp sticks. Have you forgotten how strong they are?”
Kinz flinched and touched the shoulder the Tilkilit had broken. “Even so--”
“Even so, we can try to sneak by them and fight if we have to. All we have to do is wait for nightfall and sneak over to the side of the mountain. We can tunnel up to the ridge the same way we did on the other side of the mountain.”
Ivy and Kinz shared a look that suggested they knew this was coming and they feared it. “We remember that well enough,” Ivy said gently. “And we remember what it did to you. How it changed you.”
This conversation was unavoidable. “It hollowed me out,” she said. “It turned me into...into a wizard.” Not that they would understand what that meant.
“It made you mad,” Kinz said flatly. “You cared for nothing and no one, not even this girl you call little sister.”
“It hollowed me out,” Cazia said again. What did they think she was talking about? “But now we have the Tilkilit stones. If things begin to get bad for me again, you can touch one to me and return me to normal. You can lay the stone on me every three days.”
“Every day,” Kinz said. “You make the magic and, at the end, we cure you of it.”
“I’d need a full day off to get my magic back. We don’t have enough supplies for that. I did three days climbing the first time, so it should be enough.”
Kinz was adamant. “Every day.”
“Every two days,” Ivy said. “Cazia is right about our supplies, Kinz. Also, Cazia, you tried to be careful on the way up the mountain, did you not? Knowing there is a cure nearby would make anyone reckless.”
“Fine. Two days.” Cazia half expected Kinz to argue but she didn’t. “Maybe I ought to call you little diplomat. But going hollow isn’t the only problem we face. The other side of the Northern Barrier is straight vertical—just about—and covered with fused rock. I knew what I was digging through as I went. On this side of the mountains, it’s rock mixed with dirt, and you can’t tell when you’ll come out into a ledge or rift. What’s more, we’ll have to leave the bottom of the tunnel open to circulate air. I can partially block it, but if the Tilkilit find it--”
“They will have found us,” Ivy said.
“Probably. The thing is, the stone I create to block the tunnel will be pink granite; it won’t match the rock around it. I don’t know how long it would take them to dig through—I’m sure they could, eventually—but they would have a hidden path to the top of the ridge. They wouldn’t be able to get their worms out of the valley, but they could get troops out and, I don’t know, capture a scholar from somewhere to dig their big tunnel.”
“I would rather you made to collapse the tunnel behind us,” Kinz said.
“I would rather breathe,” Cazia said sharply. “On the other side of the mountain we had the Sweeps winds to stir the air in the tunnel. For this trip, we’ll have to break through the wall more often.”
Ivy glanced upward. Three of the giant eagles circled overhead. “But just small breaks, yes?”
“As small as we can get away with.”
The Tilkilit sentry was about two hundred feet above the valley floor, wedged into a space below a broad overhang. The dark red of its shell was nearly perfect camouflage in the mountain of the rocky overhang, but its white sash had given it away. The spiral vines grew just below it; the warrior had a commanding view of the area. Worse, the ground was largely made of loose stone with few trees. The girls would have no cover and no way to move quickly or quietly across it.
There was nothing to do but wait for whatever protection darkness might provide.
Kinz spent an hour of the fading daylight searching for a second stick that they might sharpen. There was little flint available on the bed of the forest, but a long branch with a sharpened point would be better than nothing. While she searched, Cazia found a handful of slender sticks about the width and length of arrows. The Tilkilit had taken her iron darts, and she wondered if she could fashion wooden ones as a substitute.
They were not all completely straight, of course, and she had never studied arrow-making. Still, she sharpened one end and straightened them as best she could.
When they seemed as ready as she could make them, she slipped away from the others to try them out. The spell that shot darts was her favorite and had been since she and Lar made a game of it in the practice room; as absurd as it sounded, she missed it.
However, her wooden darts were a complete failure. They had no ribbon at their tail and no fletching, so they couldn’t be made to fly true. She tried breaking them down to much smaller sizes, from the length of her hand to the length of her middle finger, but it was no use. No matter how she cast, the spell made the darts tumble after they left her hand.
Ivy might have had useful advice for her, but Cazia didn’t ask.
She could still cast stones, of course. The Tilkilit themselves, having a shell wher
e humans had soft skin, carried a small mace instead of daggers. Maybe a blunt stone would be a better choice than a sharp spike.
She also had her fire spells. Since going hollow, she could attack farther and hotter, either as streams or bolts. Before the Tilkilit had captured her, she’d killed one of those monstrous eagles with a single spell.
Still, she wasn’t powerful enough to take on a whole army, and the others were right: a fire spell would burn like a beacon. Here is the scholar you were hunting. Every Tilkilit in the Qorr would converge on them. Cazia could fight--especially now that she’d gone hollow and then been cured—but spells were complex and slow to cast. Scholars were like archers: easily overwhelmed in close quarters.
There are three of us and we have faced them before. I am not afraid. Kinz had said. For all her bravado, Cazia was acutely aware that Kinz herself, the largest and strongest of the three of them, had not killed a single Tilkilit warrior. At least, not that she’d noticed. Little Ivy had shot at least two. The rest had fallen to Cazia’s Gifts.
It was odd that her memory of the fights in the Qorr Valley were so vague while the escape from Peradain and the shot that killed her brother were so vivid. She shut her eyes—just for a moment—while the familiar flush of nervous anger--
Tap tap tap.
That was the Tilkilit click language, and it was coming from somewhere to the west. Cazia retreated to the little copse where she’d left the other girls. They stood in the gathering darkness, holding their pointed sticks like warriors readying for battle.
“Where were you?” Ivy whispered. “They’re coming.”
“Up,” Cazia said. “There are too many to fight.”
She boosted Cazia up into the lowest branches of an old--actually, she had no idea what kind of tree this was. Its bark was as yellow as a daisy and as smooth as ice. The bare branches were so thick, they didn’t even rustle as she climbed, and the trunk bulged in places as though it was full of tumors. Once again, she was reminded that it wasn’t only the creatures that were strange and alien inside the Qorr.
The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way Page 9