Shoreseeker

by Brandon M. Lindsay

  Nearly a year she had sat there, watching. Waiting. She was used to collecting information bit by bit and piecing it all together, but while she was struggling to find sense in the shredded remains of Patterns that survived the Restless Sea, the revelation finally came crashing over her like a tidal wave.

  Head east, to find rotten lands. Look within.

  It was a Pattern so clear she knew she could not mistake its meaning … but one that had also alarmed her. Patterns so earth-shatteringly clear simply did not come from nature. She initially suspected that she was being thrown off the trail by another Patterner, someone who worked them rather than read them. But no one in the Accord had the power to create what she had seen, not even that twisted bastard Tirfaun or the crazed Lora Bale from Falconkeep. The Pattern must have come from beyond Andrin's Wall. What that meant, she was not yet sure.

  Yet it was a lead to something great; this much she knew. She doubted, though, that it was merely some new creature. That was just another piece of the puzzle.

  With a grace that belied her size, she swung back up into the saddle. Stem didn't bother to hide his grimace; he had doubtless been hoping they would rest more. Penellia paid him no mind. Instead, she cast her attention to Andrin's Wall, felt it pulsing through every twitch of the Pattern. No, it had not been breached, this much she knew. The Wall's magic could not suffer a breach and remain intact. If anything ever damaged Andrin's Wall and its attendant magic, the whole thing would come down in a pile of rubble.

  She wondered about the Restless Ocean—could someone, against all odds, have crossed it? She frowned as she thought, her horse picking its way through the trees. No, she decided. Even Patterns were shredded to bits by its wild waves. It was so violent that even fish larger than a sea trout died in the passage. Nothing as large as whatever made that footprint could have crossed the Ocean.

  She was looking in the wrong places. The problem with Pattern reading, however, was that to find the truth, one couldn't simply go with a gut instinct. One had to consider all the possibilities and rank them according to probability. There were no instincts when it came to true understanding, only diligent study.

  Perhaps there was something in the Pattern she had read in the waves, something more she had missed.

  Head east, to find rotten lands. Look within.

  Lost in thought, Penellia nearly jarred her teeth when her mount unexpectedly leapt over a fallen log. She cursed the beast loudly, but its only response was a flick of its ears. She glanced back to see if Stem was making a mess of himself trying to do the same, but he rode over it with little ill effect. As she caught sight of him, her attention was drawn to the end of the fallen log, a couple paces from the trunk it had come from. It was ragged, looking like it had been chewed. Penellia knew that hadn't happened, of course. The tree had likely just died, fallen, and had been partially consumed by the elements, like any other fallen tree.

  She halted her horse and looked closer. Insects, ants and beetles and others she didn't have names for, swarmed out the of the end of the log, from tiny holes where they burrowed. Burrowed, into the rotted flesh of the dead tree.

  Look within.

  The pieces of the puzzle all snapped together in her mind in a single instant, filling her with dark dread. An image of vermin swarming out of holes, reeking of rot, consuming the land. Killing, slaughtering, destroying everything within their reach.

  "Astral Sea," she muttered. "The sheggam. They're already here."

  Ignoring a bewildered Stem, Penellia turned her horse and galloped east, knowing she had to put a stop to it but not knowing how.

  Chapter 30: The Shadow Box

  Nina crouched in the corner of a cold stone hallway, brush in hand, scrubbing as hard as she could. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been scrubbing this particular spot. She wondered how much longer until the stone wore away beneath her brush. But she wasn’t about to move from that spot, not until the tall blond girl wearing Falconkeep blue and gray standing behind her told her to move.

  The sound of her own scrubbing wasn’t all that she heard. Other children were doing the same thing down the hall from her, but Nina couldn’t see them—not that she would look up from her task to do so. There wasn’t a speck of mold or filth to be found in this hallway, but it had been made clear to Nina that not even the opportunity for mold to grow would be allowed. This was a special hallway, they said, though they never told her what was special about it. It looked like any other hallway in Falconkeep.

  But to Nina, it was special in that it was the only place she ever saw now. She began her work before dawn and ended after sundown, and never did they light torches here. Nor was light allowed in her sleeping quarters. She was taken from there in darkness and guided back there in darkness. Even her meals, which Nina was forced to down quickly or risk going hungry, were given to her in this hallway. This bland stretch of gray stone was all she knew now.

  A hard swat to the side of her head knocked Nina off her feet. “Good work,” said the Falconkeep girl. “Get up and move to your right. Hurry now.” Nina did as she was told, ignoring the stinging pain in her ear. She had quit bothering to wonder why praise was coupled with punishment. She had quit bothering to wonder about anything anymore and simply went about her task with a show of effort, though she knew it mattered little. She had fought back at first, but she soon learned it didn’t help. Nothing did. The strikes would come or they wouldn’t. What Nina did had nothing to do with it.

  Her mind drifted. Where were Rogert and Noil? She hadn’t seen them since that first night, when they’d all been separated. Chad she saw on occasion, but they were never alone long enough for Nina to talk to him. But when she met his eyes, the sparkle that had always been there was gone. She could tell that his mind hadn’t left him yet, not like the children that had been here longer. But he wasn’t the same boy that he’d been when Nina first met him.

  She suspected that she wasn’t the same either.

  Bristles from her brush broke off. Nina stared at them, not slowing her work, but unsure what to do. Pick them up? Her job was to clean this spot, but she was only making a mess of it. She decided that she would wait until the Falconkeep girl told her what to do. She did her best to ignore the broken bristles, but they nagged at her attention until tears filled her eyes.

  Only the gentle clacking of the Raccoon Family at her waist kept Nina from screaming and going mad, the way she’d seen one of the other children do. No matter how badly she’d failed some task or how rough the punishment, they’d never touched the Raccoon Family. It was Nina’s anchor to the ground; without it, she knew her mind would simply float away and become one of the clouds that she no longer saw. Sometimes she wanted to throw it away just to get it over with, but those moments were rare. The Raccoon Family was her, and she was the Raccoon Family. She could never throw it away.

  The hours dragged on, filled with nothing but the ache in her arms and her back and the ever-present sound of brushes on stone. Judging by the angle and color of the light coming through the narrow slit high in the wall, it was late afternoon when Nina heard the clack of boot heels marching in rough unison up the hall, echoing ever louder as they approached.

  Even when the pair of strangers stopped right behind her, Nina didn’t look up from her work. She hadn’t been told to.

  But she could hear the whispers of danger from the Raccoon Family.

  The hairs on Nina’s arm rose in alarm as she felt the strangers’ eyes bore into her back silently. Something was different about this. Usually there was only one person watching her, if not the blond girl, then someone else. But now there were three. There were never three.

  Rough hands grabbed Nina, yanking her to her feet. A black woolen sack was pulled over her head. Nina wanted to scream, to fight back, but she was just so tired. She hung limp as the hands dragged her down the hallway.

  At the end of the hallway, they picked up her feet as well, the two strangers carrying all her weight down a curving stairc
ase. Nina didn’t know about this staircase; it had never been part of her route between where she slept and where she worked. As they descended the steps, the weak light that had filtered through the sack vanished, leaving Nina in total darkness. They were taking her deeper into Falconkeep.

  She didn’t know how long they carried her. It could’ve been all night, or it could’ve been a few minutes. But they finally came to a room that reeked of mold and worse things, and Nina hoped beyond hope that all they wanted was for her to scrub this room too.

  Her feet were lowered to the ground. A moment later, Nina heard a flint being struck. A weak light, perhaps a lantern or a candle, flared to life, but still they kept the sack over her head. Her feet were gathered up again, but they didn’t carry her far. Gently they lowered Nina into a box so small that she had to bend her knees a little to fit inside.

  “Keep your eyes closed, vermin.” Nina recognized the voice. It belonged to a girl she knew, but for some reason she couldn’t remember her name. Nina did as she was instructed, squeezing her eyes shut until they ached, as the girl and the other stranger removed the bag from Nina’s head.

  Alicie. That’s whose voice it was.

  Alicie and the other one—likely Vidden, she thought—slid a plank of wood over the box, brushing against Nina’s knees and blocking out the light entirely.

  “Don’t move or make a sound until we tell you to.” Alicie’s voice was filled with menace. Nina kept herself as still as possible, daring only to breathe.

  Something scraped over the wood. Then something heavy and metallic smashed into the lid. Shudders ran through the whole box with each impact.

  Nina bit her lip to keep from crying out, to keep Alicie from getting mad at her. She remembered the man in the woods, how that man just fell to pieces when Alicie had looked at him. Nina didn’t want the same thing to happen to her, but she was also frightened, terribly frightened, and she wanted to scream and cry all at the same time.

  The smashing continued around the edges of the lid, and it wasn’t until it was halfway done that Nina realized that the metallic sound was a hammer hitting a nail. They were nailing the lid shut.

  Tears burned at Nina’s eyes, yet still she did not cry out or move. She was too scared. She clutched the Raccoon Family tight to her chest, so tight that it hurt her ribs. But she didn’t care. She just wanted it—everything—to stop.

  Finally, the hammering did stop. Then Nina faintly heard footsteps getting quieter and quieter until there was silence. The two of them had left Nina alone in this box, and they still hadn’t given her permission to move.

  Nina no longer worried about that. She screamed, pounding the lid until her hands hurt and her throat was raw, and even then she didn’t stop.

  She heard a voice. It was so faint that Nina was almost sure she’d imagined it. Nina fell silent then, listening for that voice, for any hint of salvation.

  Nina.

  She was sure she heard it then. It was a voice, a real voice, but it wasn’t coming from outside the box. It was here, with her, inside the box.

  I’m here with you, my Nina. I’m here with you, my love.

  Tears fell from Nina’s eyes. It was the Raccoon Family. It wasn’t just the faint, wordless whispers she normally heard, the subtle suggestions. Nina heard an actual voice.

  She wiped at her cheeks, drawing in a shaking breath. “Mother? Is that you?” she whispered.

  I’m here with you, my love, came the voice. I know you’re afraid, but you’re not in danger.

  Nina sniffed. “I’m not?”

  A pause. Not right now.

  New tears fell from Nina’s eyes.

  I’m sorry, my love. I didn’t mean to frighten you. They aren’t going to hurt you, but you have to get away from this place.

  “But I don’t know how. Mother, please. You have to help me get out of here.”

  Another pause. Someone’s coming.

  The voice fell silent, and so did Nina. She listened hard, willing her heart not to beat so loudly, but the stupid thing wouldn’t listen.

  Silence. Utter, total, black silence.

  Then the bottom of the box disappeared, and Nina fell through darkness.

  Chapter 31: The Shadow World

  Nina fell onto a rough stone floor. The impact of it knocked the wind out of her. Hadn’t she been in that tiny box just a moment before? Where was she? And how did she get here? She struggled to get her breath back for several agonizing moments, but once she did, she staggered to her feet and looked around.

  She was in a cave-like tunnel. There was no light source she could see, but she could faintly see herself and the details in the stone, which glistened softly as if its rippled surface were made of dark, smoky glass. The tunnel disappeared not far off, or at least it seemed to until Nina realized that it just turned. Where was she? How did she get here? She didn’t know how she knew, but she could feel in her very bones that she wasn’t in Falconkeep anymore. The air was cool and damp, with a faint scent that she couldn’t quite place. Almost like a musty book, but bitter, somehow.

  “Hey.”

  Nina spun and stared at the apparition standing before her. She was so confused it took her a moment to realize that she was looking at a person. A very familiar person.

  Standing with his hands stuffed in his pockets, Chad grinned at her with that familiar sparkle in his eyes.

  Nina gaped at him, unbelieving, before launching herself at him, nearly bowling him over. They grappled as much as embraced, Nina sobbing her relief like a river breaking through a dam.

  “Whoa, there,” he said, but he only held her tighter.

  “Did they, did they do the same to you?” Nina asked between gasps. Her voice sounded strange to her ears, as if she were talking with a mouthful of cotton.

  She felt as much as saw him shake his head. “No, they pretty much left me alone. I just sat in my room most of the time, eating with the kids in uniforms. No hard work, no boxes.”

  Nina sobbed even harder at the unfairness of it all. “Why me, then?” She pushed herself back and looked up at him, hardly able to see him through her blurry, watery eyes.

  “I think,” he said, “that they needed to … to hurt you. To get you to do whatever it is that they think you can do.” He shook his head. “Remember my secret? The one that I showed you on the road?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, I’m pretty sure they know about it too, and that’s why they let me be. Only the kids who haven’t shown any special abilities are the ones they’re treating badly. I think maybe they’re trying to scare those kids into being special. I overheard Lora Bale talking to herself about it—trust me,” he said, eyebrows raised, “she’s crazy, that one. But I heard her talking about breaking kids. Breaking their minds. Like their minds are nutshells, and she’s trying to get at the good stuff inside.”

  A hundred questions flooded Nina’s own mind. “Lora Bale? You’ve seen her? I haven’t seen her at all since the first day.”

  Chad nodded, that familiar grin spreading across her face. “You’d be amazed the places I can go.”

  Only then did Nina understand where they were. The realization chilled her. “This is the shadow world.” She frowned. “But I thought only you could come here.”

  “Me and whoever I want to bring.”

  “Can you get us out of here?” She seized his vest in her fists. “Can we leave Falconkeep?”

  His grin faltered. “I tried. But I think whatever Lora Bale did to hide the gate, she’s doing to me here too. She’s a Patterner, and a strong one too. I tried finding my way out of Falconkeep, but I just kept circling back on myself.”

  Nina felt her hope crumble. She let go of his vest. “We’re stuck here then.”

  “Nina. I need to know. What can you do?”

  She flinched from the weight of his gaze. I’m just a normal girl, she thought. There’s nothing strange about me. But that was a lie, she knew. She remembered what Uncle Tharadis always told her: in th
e end, liars only end up hurting themselves. Doubly so when lying to themselves.

  Nina sighed. “I don’t really know. I can … hear things.”

  Chad nodded sharply. “Like the graveyard. I remember now. You knew there was a graveyard, but you hadn’t even seen it yet.” He tilted his head, studying her. “What do you hear?”

  She shrugged. “A voice. Sometimes it’s from places where people used to be.” She looked down at the Raccoon Family looped over her belt. “But usually the Raccoon Family is the one talking to me.”

  Chad nodded again as if that was what he was expecting to hear. “Lora Bale mentioned something about the Raccoon Family. She said no one was supposed to touch it. She called it something, a … I think she said ‘talisman.’”

  Nina didn’t know that word. She didn’t understand any of what was going on. Why was Lora Bale doing this? Why couldn’t she just leave them alone?

  “Did something happen in the box, Nina?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was very small. “I heard words this time.”

  “Whose words?”

  “My mother’s.” She felt tears running hot across her cheeks again. “She died a long time ago. I never heard her voice before, but I know it’s hers.”

  “I believe you.” He grabbed her hand and they started walking down the tunnel. Strange, faint images passed by them under the surface of the glassy stone, flitting away as soon as Nina tried to focus on them. Curving walls of cut gray stone, small, shadowy forms crouched over menial tasks. She was catching fleeting glimpses of Falconkeep.