The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (8 page)

Finally, they came to a broad corridor with a heavy wooden door in the center. This door fit snugly. There would be no peeking here. “This is it,” Bluepetal said. Like Redegg, he lingered near the turning of the hall, beside the gallery.
 

“What if he’s there?” one of the soldiers asked.

Tejohn scowled at him, but before he could answer, Lowtower spoke. “We fan out and come at him from every direction. Points low.”
 

“Commander, I need a moment of your time.” Tejohn pulled Lowtower aside. The two merchants weren’t invited into the conversation, but they moved close enough to hear anyway. “We don’t fan out. Wizards--that’s what a hollow scholar is--use the Gifts differently. We have to rush him at full speed in a single column, shields high.”
 

“What about the men at the front of the column?”

“What do you think? You need to understand something: we must kill this man. I have a job to do in Tempest Pass, but I can’t return if this hollowed-out scholar takes command of the Twofin lands and Salt Pass. We need to face him here and now. If none of us survive, someone else has to go to Ghoron Italga in his tower and retrieve that skull-destroying spell.”

“Hm.” Redegg said. “Not exactly an auspicious name for a spell that will supposedly save us all.”
 

“As far as I can tell,” Tejohn said, “it doesn’t have a name. It’s a variation of the Fifth Gift; it turns a person’s insides into clean water.

“Monument sustain me,” Lowtower muttered.
 

Tejohn couldn’t blame him. “I know. But we don’t have another truly effective weapon to use against The Blessing. Now line your men up.”
 

The commander formed the men into a long column. “You push forward,” he snapped at them. “You keep your shield high.”
 

Tejohn looked over the soldiers. They were all men, and they were a sorry bunch. Not as useless as the old tyr’s “guards,” perhaps, but they muttered and shuffled their feet as they formed up. Tejohn wanted to slap each of them on the helmet, and Commander Lowtower deserved three, at least, for letting them get into this state.

“How many of you have lost family to the Twofins?” Lowtower said. “How many more if we do not stop these madmen here? Shields high, do you hear?”
 

Tejohn wanted to be at the front of that line, but he had no shield or spear of his own, and no confidence that the soldiers wouldn’t knife him in the back on general principle. Instead, he lingered near the door.
 

“When I open, Pik, you charge forward. Hard.” Commander Lowtower lifted the latch and threw his shoulder against it. It moved a hand’s width before banging to a stop. He pushed again and again but came up against the same barrier each time.

“Is it barred?” Redegg called from the end of the hall.

“No.” Lowtower pushed against it with all his strength, but the door wouldn’t budge.
 

Tejohn stepped forward and looked through the narrow gap between the open door and the jamb. He could see pink granite from top to bottom.
 

“He’s blocked it,” Tejohn said. He paced back and forth. “Bluepetal, was this blocked when you made a delivery here?”

“No,” the merchant called, “but I have not been here for some eleven days.”
 

Tejohn paced walked up and down the hall. Twofin could be right inside this room. The question was: had Doctor Twofin fled here after his brother’s death and blocked the door from the inside, or did he block the door every time he left the room unattended, knowing he could shatter those stones easily when he returned?
 

In other words, was the man behind this door right now?
 

Tejohn was suddenly certain that the three sisters had lied to him—how could he have been so thick not to have seen it immediately? Tejohn should have forced them to come along and call to Doctor Twofin through the door. It probably wouldn’t work on a hollowed-out scholar, but it was better than standing here watching soldiers strain at a door.
 

Fire and Fury, he was supposed to slip quietly through the pass with Javien, and thanks to a moment of bad luck, he’d lost everything: his companion, his anonymity, and his escort into the Sweeps. Now he was stuck in Twofin’s holdfast, searching for an old colleague in hopes he could kill the man quickly.
 

But there was too much he didn’t know. How extensive were these tunnels? How many troops were down here, and how many on the surface? Was there a back door into Doctor Twofin’s room?
 

Doctor Rexler killed more than a hundred men and women before he could be stopped.
 

Tejohn moved westward along the hall. The far end was completely open, although here the wall extended several feet beyond the spot where the floor ended. Was there another gallery on the other side of this wall? Tejohn wanted to climb out and see for himself, but the stone was slick and the drop terrifying. They’d already descended several levels, but from here it looked like the same dizzying height.
 

“My tyr!” Lowtower called to him. Tejohn spun and hurried toward him, through the parted column of spears. “Part of the wall must have collapsed here.”
 

There was indeed a hole in the stone wall just at shoulder height. It was vaguely rectangular, as though a stone mason had come along and cleaned up the edges. Inside the hole was a beautifully built wooden shutter, exactly the right size to be wedged in place.
 

Tejohn pressed his hand against it; it didn’t wobble or bulge, and of course, there was no way to know if there was more granite behind it. He glanced at the spears nearby and knew instantly that he was not going to call for an axe. They had no one to send for it but these soldiers, and all of them looked like they would acknowledge the order, march down the hall, and never return.
 

They had fear in their eyes. They were poorly trained, and not a one of them measured up to the spears who died at Pinch Hall. Worse yet, before he went hollow, Doctor Twofin was twice the scholar that jumped-up house servant Rexler could ever be.
 

There was nothing to be done about it now. Tejohn’s urge for killing was on him, driving him forward. He stood close to the wall and slammed his short sword against a plank in the middle of the shutter. The wood cracked a bit but did not break completely. He bashed it again and again, the noise mimicking the anger in his guts. The edge dulled but did not shatter. Good steel. Anyway, with a sword, it was the point that mattered.

The sound of his hammering echoed within the rock tunnel. Everyone within a thousand feet could hear it, but Tejohn didn’t care. This hole was too small for him—or anyone with him—to crawl through, but he would be able to see if the wizard was there, at least.
 

The wood splintered, showing the dim light of the fading day. This room was open to the sky and the wind, too.
 

He kept swinging, ignoring the faint scent of blood and rotting meat. No one tried to help. Tejohn did not look at the other soldiers; he didn’t want to see their expressions again.

Finally, the whole shutter snapped in half, flew into the room, and clattered on the floor. Lowtower moved toward him, but the commander was not quite tall enough to see through the gap.

Tejohn leaned forward, slowly edging closer to the newly-made window. Fire and Fury, the smell was awful. He half expected to take an iron dart in his eye at any moment, but someone had to look.

Something small and dark leaped onto the stone ledge. It was dark brown and not even as long as a man’s forearm. Then it spread its wings and opened its tiny fanged mouth to shriek. The men at the end of the hall cried out in surprise and fear.
 

Reeling back, Tejohn thrust his sword at it even as it launched itself into the air. It was so fast, he couldn’t catch more than that fleeting glimpse, but even so he could tell there was something terribly
wrong
about it.
 

It wriggled left, avoiding the tip of Tejohn’s short sword, but he lunged after it and swung downward, swatting it to the floor. It struck with a wet smack, and Commander Lowtower pierced it with his spear, killing it instantly with a fine, accurate jab.
 

The soldiers cried out in terror once again; through the open gallery at the western end of the corridor, they could see more of the little beasts fly out over the lake, escaping through the open gallery into the wilderness.
 

Lowtower withdrew the point of his spear. He and Tejohn both bent low to examine the creature. “Kelvijinian guide us,” the commander said.
 

It was as Tejohn had feared. When scholars went hollow, their magic didn’t simply become more powerful; they also began to do new and terrifying things with it. And Doctor Oskol Twofin had been a medical scholar, well versed in the functions of living beings.
 

The creature had been a rat once. It was large for its size, with dark brown fur and the usual pale hairless tail. Twofin had added wings to its back. The place where the joint of the wing and the backbone met was utterly unmarked with scar or stitch, as though the beast had been born that way.
 

And, at the end of its forelegs, looking brown from the sun and faintly shriveled, was a pair of tiny human hands. Given his freedom for barely a cycle of the moon, and Doctor Twofin had already murdered small children for their parts.

Chapter 5

“Commander,” Tejohn said in a low voice, “get to the cells, wherever they are, and find your children.”
 

Lowtower looked up at Tejohn in shock. “You think...”

“No. Probably not. The most likely thing is that these hands were taken from debt children. The old tyr wouldn’t want to lose valuable hostages, yes? So the scholar’s victims are probably servants. If the tyr knew what his brother was up to.”
 

“And if he didn’t?”
 

Doctor Twofin will lose more than his fingers.
“Soldier, look to your children.”
 

Lowtower’s hands were visibly shaking when he began to give orders, giving one of his men provisional command and ordering him to support Tejohn’s efforts.
 

The destruction of part of the shutter was loud enough to draw curious onlookers. Most wore the short, ragged tunics of servants, and it made Tejohn nauseous to see them so starved and miserable. The child who had lost her hands to the creature at his feet might have been one of their sons or daughters.
 

Great Way, he could not bear to think of his little Teberr or the twins at the mercy of a hollowed-out medical scholar. The very thought brought on a surge of blood-red rage. At least he’d had the chance to take up a spear in the depths of his own grief; what remedy could a servant seek?

“Find a mining scholar and bring him here,” he said. The servants stared at him without moving.
 

“Are you all deaf?” Lowtower roared. “The tyr called for a scholar! You two! Find one and bring him! Torches, too! The rest of you, find some duties to occupy yourselves or I will think of something for you!”

That made them rush back into the interior corridor like leaves in a flooding stream. When Tejohn turned back toward the others, he found that both merchants had found the courage to approach the dead creature on the floor. They stared in horrified fascination.

“I should make bold enough to suggest,” Redegg said quietly, “that Doctor Twofin knows we are out here.”
 

If that was meant to be a joke, it did not make anyone laugh. “You must understand,” Bluepetal said, “we had no idea. He asked me to deliver living rats. I… Maybe we should have suspected, but we didn’t. Song knows--”
 

“Never mind,” Tejohn said. “You know now. There’s no real reason for you to linger here in this hall. Doctor Twofin is not likely to be inside. Do you two know where the old tyr’s prison cells are?” Bluepetal nodded. “Go with the commander and help him find his family, then start the process of sorting out the prisoners who are political hostages and the ones who are there for murder, thieving, or rape.”
 

“That should be simple enough,” Redegg muttered without looking up, “since the political hostages are the only ones still alive.”
 

“We will send them home,” Lowtower promised.
 

“What about this?” Redegg gestured toward the rat creature on the stone floor.
 

Tejohn’s first instinct was to sweep it off the gallery into the lake below. His desire to be rid of it was powerful. “Few will believe what happened here if we do not preserve it. Tyr Twofin would not have held on to power without some allies; if we show this to them, it might forestall civil war. Go quickly.”
 

As they hurried away, the two servants returned with torches and a crooked old woman who must have been the scholar. The square-bodied young man that Lowtower had left in charge passed the torches to two of the men, then gently led the old woman to the door.