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.
The man behind the counter had thinning hair and gray pouches under his eyes. His skin sagged as though he’d once been quite fat but had been starved since. Working behind him was a tall girl with frizzy hair bristling off her narrow skull. She was covered with flour and jam stains, and her work at a bench that was too low for her left her with a permanent stoop.
“Beacons!” he called with the delight of a man who sees too few customers. “How may I serve you today?”
“You’re old enough,” Tejohn said to him. He turned to the old woman and waved her off, driving her out of the shop. She took it as an insult, but she went. To the baker, Tejohn said, “You’re old enough to remember the last time these lands were at war.”
“I am,” he said, wiping his hands on a dirty cloth. The stooped-over young woman edged toward the counter.
Tejohn looked sharply at her. “I don’t like to be stared at.”
The baker shooed her back toward her bench. “Don’t mind my daughter, sir. She’s an honest girl.”
Daughter. Perfect. Tejohn began to haggle.
Chapter 10
Javien was furious, of course. He was of the opinion that a beacon’s robes were sacred, and that Tejohn had blasphemed by trading his away for mundane things like loaves of meatbread and other supplies. Tejohn let him rant for a long while about trusting in The Great Way and the special significance of red and the duty every Peradaini had to lead others along the right path and priests especially so and blah blah blah. It was insufferable, really.
Still, Tejohn let him exhaust himself all through the long walk to the end of the market, where the king’s spears gave them a quick glance and dismissed them. If they were still looking for Tyr Tejohn Treygar, they were not much interested in a beardless man with a long, morose face being hectored by a shrill priest twenty years his junior.
However, the guards were very interested in a farming family heading toward the city in a hay cart. Every one of them, old woman to young child, stood in a circle of spearpoints, stripping down to their skins.
When they were well past the guard post and out into the farmlands, Tejohn laid his hand heavily on the young priest’s shoulder. “That’s enough.”
“No, it is not enough! You don’t seem to realize--”
“Be quiet or I’m going to cut off your ear.” That caught his attention. “Beacon Javien, what role do you think you have on this mission?”
The young man seemed a little uncertain. “Beacon Veliender put me in charge.”
“That’s not correct. Young man, you are a convenient basket. I’m going on a long trip to retrieve something of value, and you are a convenient means for me to carry it back to civilization. If you become inconvenient, I will discard you and find some other means. Your whining and hectoring were invaluable in getting us past the guards, but I’ve had enough.”
Javien wasn’t satisfied. “Beacon Veliender ordered me to bring this spell of yours back to the temple so we can save the people of Ussmajil. And how will we bring it into the city without robes? Do you see how this hurts us? It’s a simple task, but… She gave you your sight!”
“And it’s a glorious gift,” Tejohn said. “I plan to make good use of it while I try to save all our lives, but this mission came from Lar Italga, the last king of Peradain. That might not mean much out here in these splintered lands, but should mean quite a lot to his uncle, the scholar hermit we’re traveling to see.”
“But to trade away that robe!”
Apparently, Javien had already forgotten Tejohn’s threat, or perhaps he thought it was a bluff. Tejohn considered cutting off one of his lobes--just a little bit--to make his point. But no. It would feel good, but no.
“That robe might save that girl’s life. That’s why the merchant bargained so dearly for it. His daughter--his only child--had been barred from even the dubious safety of Ussmajil, with war coming. I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten how it felt the last time. Do you think I care about some red cloth? Do you think he cared about blasphemy? He wanted to protect his daughter, his only child, and I helped him do that. But what are you worried about? Clothes. Propriety.”
That silenced him for a time. Tejohn took advantage of the quiet to become accustomed to his new vision. The road was lined with trees that, in the growing heat of the summer morning, bristled with leaves. What had once seemed to be clouds of color was now an intricate arrangement of discrete leaves and branches. He knew all these trees had names and he resolved to learn them soon so he could understand better what he was seeing.
What’s more, it seemed as though he could hear better as well. When the wind rustled leaves, he could look up and see it happening. A different rustle came from a branch being shaken by a climbing squirrel. His senses were tied together now in a way he hadn’t appreciated before.
It astonished him. Everything did.
The road had been built well; flat stones were joined close with pulverized rock and dried mud. The ditches on either side were deep, and beyond them, the farms sloped upward gently. To the north was the Southern Barrier, as misty and beautiful as Queen Amlian had described them so many months before. To the south, the land was uneven, but he knew it would
eventually slope downward to Deep Stone Lake and the Waterlands to the southeast.
This was wheat country, and judging by the height of the stalks midsummer had not come quite yet. The smell of dung was quite strong at some fence lines, where the farmers had let too much fertilizer run down into the roadside ditches.
It wasn’t an unpleasant smell for Tejohn--it reminded him of hours spent working with his father, not very far from here. It also brought back darker, less happy memories.
Midday came and went before they saw people. At a bend in the road, two old men with leathery skin stood at the bottom of the fence line, talking in low voices. Tejohn was startled to see that they looked like servants in better clothes. Was that how he and his father looked in their day?
“Good day, Beacon,” the skinnier old man called. The hefty one turned and waved reluctantly at Tejohn and Javien.
“Good day to you both,” Javien answered. “What news?”
“No news,” the skinny one said. “But we have plenty of rumor. If we could collect rumors by the bushel, we could buy the whole northern side of the valley. What news from the east?”
“The city is still closed,” the priest answered. “Have you seen refugees heading west?”
“A few, a few,” the farmer said. “But they weren’t Finshto. Our folk don’t get a warm welcome in Bendertuk lands, even still. Lots of folks seem to have fled in the night.” The old fellow cleared his throat, glanced at his companion, then glanced nervously into the hills. “Any word of...them?”
Javien turned his empty hands toward them. “Rumors. My pockets are full of them.”
“And little else, I’ll wager,” the heavier farmer said.
“You’d win that one,” Javien said kindly, “but the only prize would be another tall tale. Still, the walls of Ussmajil stand, and king’s spears guard the roads.”
“Aye,” said the skinny farmer.
“That’s a blessing,” said the heavier one.
The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way Page 11