The Way Into Chaos (6 page)

Two other young women sat at desks beside her, styluses in hand. They looked utterly stunned. Cazia knew their names--Ciriam Eelhook, Barla Shook--but she had never spoken to them. They were Enemies, and right now, they were terrified.

Lar looked at Cazia blankly. Great Way, he’d just seen his parents die.
 

“The Evening People did not come through the portal,” Treygar said. “We’ve been invaded by some kind of monster. The king and queen were lost within moments. The palace is overrun and the prince must be flown out of the city at once!”

Doctor Warpoole spun on her heel and yanked on a braided cord beside her desk. “That will summon the cart. What else can I do?”

“Can you shut the portal?” Cazia blurted out.

“Alas, child, I don’t think I can.”

Cazia yanked a quiver of iron darts off the wall and tossed it to the prince. He caught it and, as if shocked out of a trance, slung it over his shoulder. Cazia took down a second quiver, then a third.
 

“Those are relics,” Barla said, “Tyr Cimfulin Italga used them in the Clearing of Shadow Hall.”

Cazia had heard that story, hadn’t she? Something about a scholar soldier and a swarm of giant spiders. “Lar and I are his descendants,” she said. It occurred to her that she had campaigned for one of these clerk positions last fall, but Shook had been chosen instead. “Let’s say we inherited them.” She slung the quivers over her shoulder.

Treygar started pushing Lar toward the stairs. “Uncover your mirror, doctor. Tell the commanders stationed outside the city to arm themselves. Then—”

There was a loud boom from the bottom of the tower. The creatures were trying to batter their way in.
 

“Go!’ the administrator yelled. “Barla, send an alert to Beddalin Hole and have them spread the word. Ciriam, you’re with me.”
 

Treygar had already herded the prince up the stairs, with Colchua shoving Timush and Bittler after. Cazia had been left in charge of the little girl again.

Barla and Ciriam exchanged looks. One had been ordered to flee with the prince and one had been ordered to stay behind, but the shocked expressions on their faces were identical.

Cazia pushed Jagia up the stairs; Ciriam and Doctor Warpoole followed. Cazia heard the cloth being yanked off the mirror behind her, but she did not look back. She did not want to see Doctor Shook’s expression again.

Cazia and Jagia ran upward, passing one empty floor after another, not daring to pause long enough to do more than glance through the narrow tower windows at the chaos below. The rest of the tower seemed empty; everyone had gone down for the Festival.

There was a sound of shattering wood from below, followed by roars of flame and screams. Ciriam shrieked, “Hurry! Hurry!”
 

The muscles in Cazia’s legs burned, but the thunder of heavy footsteps below urged her onward. Jagia started to flag as they came near the practice room; Cazia was tempted to scoop the girl up, but she knew that would be slower still.

There was another scream from below, a woman’s this time, and much nearer. Doctor Warpoole, who was bringing up the rear, barked, “Don’t look back!” and Cazia knew she wasn’t talking to her.
 

The last few flights of stairs were made of wood and the noise of their stamping was oppressive and alarming. They might as well have goaded the bear-things to chase them.
 
“Almost there,” Cazia said to Jagia. “Keep going.” For some reason, offering encouragement to the little girl made her feel stronger. It gave her hope.
 

She heard Treygar shout from the effort of throwing open the heavy trap door. It slammed against the roof with a boom that echoed through the entire tower. The grunts and roars and heavy treads on the stairs below grew louder and louder. Treygar ran out of the top of the stairs into the gray daylight, and the Prince stumbled out behind him, wheezing and clutching his sides. Col, Timush, Bittler, then Jagia and Cazia and the two scholars all spilled onto the slab roof. Bitt fell to his knees, wheezing and pale. Cazia and Col raced around to the far end of the trap door and lifted it.
 

“Not yet!” Doctor Warpoole yelled. She started a spell Cazia had never seen before: her gestures were elaborate and unusually constrained. What was she doing? Then she pushed her palms outward as she exhaled, and a plume of green mist billowed down through the trap.
 

The wooden stairs dissolved like snow thrown into a boiling pot. One of the beasts leaped upward into the daylight, fanged jaws gaping. The moment it entered the mist, the fur and flesh of its face boiled off its skull. Its bloody bones fell into the gap made by the missing stairs and it disappeared down into the tower.
 

Doctor Warpoole nodded at Cazia and Col, but her brother was the only one to shoulder the heavy door into place. Cazia could only stare in shock.
 

That was not one of the Thirteen Gifts.
Doctor Warpoole, the scholar administrator for the entire Peradaini empire, had just cast a wizard’s spell.

The trap slammed into place and Timush threw the bolt home. Then he grabbed Cazia’s elbow. His black hair was matted with sweat. “Where’s Pagesh?”

There was a floating cart fifteen feet from the edge of the tower. It wasn’t large--a six-person design, at best, but the single black disk above it was huge. It would be fast, and it would fly high.

However, the driver looked at them with blank, terrified eyes. Tyr Treygar shouted orders for the man to pull into the dock to let them aboard, but he didn’t respond. The driver seemed to be frozen in shock.

Timush’s huge, dark eyes were just as wild and sad as Pagesh’s had been before she ran out of the tower. “Out there. She—”

“WHAT?” He yanked her arm painfully, spinning her around. “You left her behind? How could you leave her behind!” His face was right beside hers as he screamed, and she could see the patch of pimples on his forehead.
 

“Pagesh abandoned us!” Jagia shouted. “She left us all alone!”

She left to save Zilly,
Cazia almost said.
She chose to risk everything to save her rather than flee to safety with you.
But she couldn’t say that to Timu. Everything was already too awful. Cazia yanked her arm out of his grip. “Jagia loved Pagesh as much as you did. Maybe you two should look after each other.”

“Oh, this will not do,” Doctor Warpoole said. She stepped up to Cazia and lifted both quivers over her head as though taking a sharp knife from a child. She gave one to Ciriam and, as she slung the other over her shoulder, drew out a long, nasty-looking spike.

The driver may have been terrified out of his wits, but he knew better than to defy a scholar with a quiver full of darts. He angled the cart so that it floated toward the tower deck.
 

Cazia ran around the perimeter of the tower, looking down the sides. Three beasts were climbing the pink stone wall. “Clerk!”

After receiving a nod from Doctor Warpoole, Ciriam ran to Cazia’s spot on the western end of the tower. “Ciriam, right?” Cazia asked, immediately remembering that she should call her
Doctor Eelhook
. Too late now. “That one is highest. Start with it.”

The clerk looked dumbfounded. Cazia slapped the outside of the quiver the scholar had just taken from her, and the woman jolted into action. She drew a dart and, leaning queasily over the crenellation, shot it down the side of the tower.

It went wide, skipping off the pale pink stone. Ciriam drew another, did the spell again--more shakily this time--and shot a spike over the beast’s shoulder.

Cazia plucked a dart from the quiver at the girl’s hip and shot it down the side of the wall, letting her frustration and anger lurk behind the carefully built mental state required for the spell. It struck the beast’s shoulder, sinking into its torso so deeply that it vanished.

The creature roared, and for a moment, she thought it wouldn’t fall. When it did, Cazia turned to the clerk and held out her hand.
 

Ciriam was about Pagesh’s age and height, but where Pagesh was tanned and strong from endless days spent outside in fields, the clerk was pale and squint-eyed, with weak, bony hands. She didn’t even know how to aim a dart spell properly.

But she wasn’t about to give up that quiver.
 

“Let’s go!” Treygar called. He ushered the prince onto the cart first, of course, then let Bittler, Timush, Jagia, and Col climb on. Doctor Warpoole waved at Ciriam and Cazia, and they sprinted toward the cart.
 

Cazia took the opportunity to pluck three more darts from Ciriam’s quiver.
 

As they climbed into the cart, the driver screwed up his concentration and forced it upward. They swung up and out, all of them packed in elbow to knee. Timush crouched in the front corner with Jagia in his lap, both gripping the rails with white knuckles. Bittler and Col were jammed into the back, almost falling onto the driver. The doctor shrugged, squeezing Cazia into the corner; apparently, she didn’t like to be crowded. Old Stoneface gave Doctor Warpoole a dark look as she settled in; clearly, he would have preferred to have someone else in her place.

The wheels of the cart passed over the crenellation just as the first of the beasts reached the top of the tower. Doctor Warpoole drew a dart from her quiver and began her spell, her hands moving faster than any spellcaster Cazia had ever seen. Ciriam followed her example, but Cazia was behind them and couldn’t help.

The beast bounded to the edge of the tower, then leaped at them. Doctor Warpoole’s spike struck the beast on the crown of its head, gouging its scalp but otherwise bouncing off. The clerk didn’t lead the beast enough and her shot passed uselessly behind it.

The monster seemed almost is if it could fly, clawed hands reaching out, fanged jaws gaping. Cazia thought the whole world fell silent, although she knew the beast must have been roaring, and the people around her must have been screaming. She had no time to cast a spell of her own and no space to make the gestures.
 

The beast—with its bristling fur, impossible size, and nearly human face—was going to make it into the cart with them.
 

Stoneface shoved the prince aside and swept his arm backhanded at the beast’s outstretched claws. He managed to batter its hands aside, preventing the monster from getting a grip on the rail, but it caught hold of his forearm instead.
 

The beast slammed against the side of the cart with a crash so loud, Cazia was sure the planks would shatter, then the whole thing tipped to the side.
 

There were screams and cries of anguish all around her--Cazia might have screamed herself, she wasn’t sure. Everyone fell toward the lowered rail of the wagon, and it was only Timush’s quick hands that kept Jagia in the cart.
 

Doctor Warpoole knelt low, keeping her center of balance below the rail. She held Ciriam down with her, but Cazia’s weight nearly sent them both over the edge.
 

Treygar fell flat on his stomach on the edge of the railing, clearly being dragged down by the tremendous weight of the beast. The only one still standing was the driver, and that was because he had been tied into place. His face was twisted in concentration as he tried to right the cart and gain altitude.

Cazia couldn’t see the beast below the level of the cart, but she heard it roar. She pulled her dart from her sleeve. She didn’t think she had time to cast a full spell before the creature climbed over the rail, but she knew what to do with the sharp end of a spike.
 

Lar and Col reached for Stoneface to drag him back into the cart, but the old man lunged upward to throw himself over the rail.

Chapter 5

The weight of the creature astonished him. It slammed against the side to the cart with a sound Tejohn was sure signaled the death of them all, but the wood held.
 

Tejohn’s shoulder, however, did not. Great Way, the whole city must have heard it pop. The creature’s momentum dragged him down until the rail gouged deep into his dislocated armpit and the whole cart dipped like a rowboat about to capsize.
 

The driver must have anticipated that, because the cart didn’t turn over. Tejohn felt the others fall heavily onto his back, pinning him to the rail for a moment, until the cart rocked back the other way and they fell away from him. The pain was intense. Manageable, but intense.

The beast had hold of his bracer with its right hand, then reached for a higher grip with its left, hooking its claws into his flesh below the elbow. It was climbing his arm toward the prince, its jaws gaping.
 

Tejohn didn’t think, didn’t pretend he had time to strategize, didn’t waste his time on regret or resentment. He did his duty. He straightened his legs, sliding his torso over the rail. It wouldn’t take much. They were already overbalanced and the monster’s terrible weight would easily pull him over the edge. Fire and Fury, but his arm felt like it might tear right off. At least hitting the paving stones would be a quick death.