The Way Into Chaos by Harry Connolly Read Free Book Online Page A

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