Shoreseeker

by Brandon M. Lindsay

  “Sentinels,” Rannald said, looking down to where they were gathered, “I give you a choice of orders. Stay and help rebuild, or go with me and the Warden to find Farshores.”

  “Sir!” Major Metsfurth snapped to attention, the rest of the Sentinels following suit in perfect unison. The sound of their bootheels clapping filled the air. “I request permission to speak freely.”

  “Granted, major.”

  “We are, to a man, incensed that you would even think of leaving without us. Sir.” Again, they saluted, even crisper than before.

  It was all Rannald could do to hold back the tears. He didn’t dare test his voice. He merely gave a small nod.

  Tharadis clapped Rannald’s shoulder, gratitude clear in his face, before turning back to the people. “To those who choose to stay behind, I wish you all the best. Rebuild as best you can. Live for as long as you can. I hope you find some measure of peace here. There is little that would make me happier. But I know that we shall never meet again, so here, now, we must say farewell.”

  Tharadis drew his remarkable sword, Shoreseeker, from its sheath. It’s no longer the sword that deserves that name, Rannald thought, but the man who wields it.

  Perhaps they both do.

  “But to those of you who embrace this uncertain future.” Tharadis raised his sword above his head, parallel to his shoulders, the flat of its sky-blue blade facing forward. Andrin’s salute.

  “Let us go together,” Tharadis shouted as he swung Shoreseeker until it pointed north.

  To the land beyond the Wall. To a land of possibility.

  Then, as if everyone could see the Pattern of his words, they all thrust their fists in the air and shouted as one, “To Farshores!”

  Epilogue: Dust and Bones

  Noredren lay on his back among red dust and red stones, his fingers laced behind his head as stared at the eternally starry sky.

  The world, once his home, now beyond his reach, loomed large directly above him, though not as large as it had the night he last visited it. The night he had met his savior in person for the first time. The name rang in his mind like the echo of some cosmic bell.

  Tharadis.

  Even from the immense distance, Noredren could still see the faintest ripples in the Patterns of the world—not as much as he could sense if he were still on its surface, but enough for his purpose. What they told him was that without his future savior, Noredren would be trapped here on Aylia, living out his punishment, for all time.

  With a sigh—an affection, really, since there was no air on Aylia’s surface—Noredren rose to his feet and brushed off the dust that clung to his long, white jacket, which still remained nearly pristine after all these centuries. The dust drifted down slowly, as if reluctant to return to the ground. Noredren sympathized. He knew that once he left this cursed moon, he would never return.

  He walked to where he knew Kirulk, one of Noredren’s three remaining companions, would be. Kirulk knelt with his huge hands on his knees. The twin braids of his gray beard reached beyond his chest, bare save for a thicket of coarse brown hair, down to his ample belly. The sand around where he knelt was etched with thousands of intricate Patterns that Noredren had etched with the tip of his finger. They were inert now, having served their purpose, yet Kirulk had stomped many of them out anyway. As if he could have changed what they had done, what they had taken.

  “Did it have to be her?” Kirulk asked, his voice hoarse. Even after all this time, Noredren still was not used to how loud the man’s voice was in the otherwise absolute silence of their moon prison. Still, Noredren was not so bored that he would tinker with the Pattern that let them speak in the first place.

  Noredren cocked his head and regarded Kirulk with amusement. “Would you rather it had been you?”

  Kirulk looked away.

  In front of Kirulk lay the charred remains of Shivelca, the one companion who was no longer among them.

  Kirulk stared at her blackened bones, his fingers clawed as if he ached to touch them but dared not for how fragile they were. “She always loved that rhyme of us,” Kirulk said, more to himself than to Noredren, it seemed. “‘The five faces in the moon.’”

  “Now there are only four,” Noredren said. “But she sacrificed herself to give the rest of us a chance to leave.”

  Kirulk’s eyes flashed as he turned them to Noredren. “No. You sacrificed her.” He gestured to the Patterns, which only Noredren could have made.

  Noredren shrugged. “It was necessary. It was what our savior required. It was what we required.”

  “Damn them.” Kirulk’s finger joints creaked as his massive hands curled into quivering fists. “Damn them all for what they drive us to do.”

  “And damn them we shall. Worse than we have ever damned them before.” Though, in truth, it would be hard to top the loosing of the sheggam on the world.

  The sheggam. For some reason, thinking of them and how Noredren and the other four had unleashed them all those centuries ago always made him feel hollow. He suspected it had something to do with the gaps in his memory. There were so many.

  Such as why he was the way he was. And why he had done the things he had done.

  On the surface, such questions had easy explanations. But even after convincing himself of them, the hollowness remained, and it was an emotion he did not understand. It made him feel even more helpless than being imprisoned on this cursed moon.

  Kirulk’s broad chest rose and fell with a deeply indrawn breath. “Go. Leave me to my vigil.”

  Noredren clasped his hands behind his back and left without a word. Once he was alone again, he lifted his gaze back to the world looming above.

  “Savior,” he whispered. “Find your Farshores. The sooner you do, the sooner I can take my vengeance on this world.”

  Here ends Book One of The Farshores Saga. The story continues in Book Two, Drawingpath. Read on for a sample!

  Prologue: Councilor of Nothing

  Dozens of rusty cages swung languidly in the breeze, hooked to poles tilted at odd angles. The poles had been punched into cracks in the stones on either side of wide, crumbling stairway leading up to the top of the pyramid. Some of the cages were occupied, though few by actual living people; most held corpses in various states of decay. The living people only seemed that way in comparison to the corpses. With how little they moved and how blankly they stared, they might have already died too, if only a bit more recently than the others.

  With his hands bound in iron shackles, Yarid took each step one at a time, trying his best not to cover his nose against the overwhelming reek of rot carried by the breeze. He was a guest, and he didn’t want to offend his hosts.

  Presumably, that’s how one ended up in a cage.

  The flat of a spear head cracked into the small of Yarid’s back, sending him stumbling forward. He barked his knees on the next step. Without thinking, he quickly bowed his head and picked up the pace. He didn’t complain about the pain or look back at the one who had struck him. He didn’t want to look into the sheggam’s eyes.

  There was madness in their eyes. Every time Yarid looked into those crimson orbs with their tiny yellow pupils, he felt a little piece of his own sanity stripped away.

  Not mad yet, he muttered silently. Not dead yet. It had become a sort of mantra for him and calmed him when things started to look bleak.

  It was a constant litany humming in the back of his mind.

  He did his best to ignore the sheggam, but their massive bulk made it so damn difficult. That, and it was hard to ignore the constant threat of their black talons, each one as long as Yarid’s little finger, or that of their long muzzles lined with sharp teeth. Ignoring an axe as it descended on your neck would be easier than ignoring the sheggam.

  To his side walked Gorun, who had been Yarid’s Greater Councilor counterpart on the Council of the Wall—back when there had been a Council of the Wall. But Andrin’s Wall has been reduced to rubble, Yarid thought. No need for a Council then, is
there? The weathered old man wore no shackles, but then Gorun had been the one to orchestrate the sheggam invasion of the Sutherlands in the first place. He had earned the trust of the sheggam—if the sheggam were capable of such a thing as trust—and so was allowed to walk unfettered.

  Yarid had always thought Gorun looked decrepit, nearer to death than the people in the cages. But now there was a fire in the old man’s step, a sparkle in his eye. He had been able to keep up with the rest of them during their two-week trek here. It’s almost as if coming to Sheggamur filled the man with vitality.

  On the other side of Gorun was Jordin, who had been Yarid’s own manservant. Before Gorun had somehow bought him, or threatened him, turning him against Yarid. At first, Yarid had been incensed at the betrayal. But Jordin seemed to have aged five years in the past two weeks, almost as if Gorun were somehow sucking the life out of him. Jordin’s eyes were sunken and haunted, his frame thinner than even their harsh journey should warrant. The gray in his beard was closer to white now—at least where it wasn’t smeared with mud and soot. Even back in Garoshmir, Yarid had always pitied the man, but now that pity had become acute. Whenever fear seized Yarid and seemed like it would never let go, all he would need to do was look into Jordin’s eyes and realize things could be worse.

  And it was hard to hate a man when your hatred changed nothing.

  They continued to climb the steps that were too high and too long for a normal human gait, better suited to a sheggam’s stride. The troop of eight sheggam, armored in battered mail shirts and armed with spears, had no problem with the steps. Yarid felt like his thighs were on fire. At least they were almost to the top.

  An open pavilion with a flat roof supported by thick stone pillars was their destination. When they finally reached it, the sheggam soldiers behind them roughly herded Yarid and Jordin forward, letting Gorun walk forward at his own pace. Yarid was just glad there were no more steps.

  Stretched out beyond the pyramid, nestled into the crook of the valley below, was a gray city.

  Eleankuron.

  Buildings of gray stone rose up above the perpetual gray mist blanketing the streets, obscuring them. Yarid had caught a glimpse of Eleankuron from a distant, poor vantage point as they made their way to the pyramid. But now the city sprawled before him as if for inspection. As if to flaunt the fact that yes, even the sheggam were capable of building cities.

  Yet the mist obscured much. As if to display only that a city was there, yet hide its condition.

  Yarid pulled his attention from the city. It wasn’t worth thinking about, not now anyway. He instead glanced about the pavilion.

  More sheggam guards stood at attention between the pillars on either side of the pavilion. Unlike those that had accompanied Yarid and the others until this point, these had the look of discipline about them—an unsettling thought, considering they were sheggam. Gripped by their taloned hands, the wide, flat blades of their swords had an oblong, padded hole about halfway up—a handle. Yarid imagined such weapons could be used as battle axes as easily as swords with a mere change of the grip. These sheggam seemed at ease with their weapons—though, with sheggam, at ease was a relative term—and they wore thick wrought-iron breastplates, hammered with simple designs. Soldiers.

  The beasts that had overrun the Accord had been that—feral beasts. Lacking much in the way of direction, lashing out randomly in whatever way seemed to cause the most damage in that moment. Those feral sheggam had nearly leveled the entire Sutherlands in a single night. Yarid shuddered to imagine what an organized sheggam force would look like.

  I don’t have to imagine, he thought wryly. They’re standing right in front of me. Still. He wouldn’t want to see what they were like in battle.

  If there were soldiers, then there were commanders—or at least some sort of hierarchy. Yarid wondered who gave these sheggam soldiers their orders.

  Behind a white marble block threaded with veins of green stood another sheggam, this one even taller than the soldiers. Greasy strands of black hair spilled out from under the headdress it wore, which was fashioned from a variety of feathers which were bound into a cone by leather strips, nearly brushed the ceiling. It wore no armor, but rather a red silk brocade robe that made its sickly pale flesh appear even more sickly by contrast.

  No, not a regular brocade, Yarid realized. The embroidery was not a simple repeating pattern. The robe was stitched with Patterns.

  Yarid felt his mouth go dry. Why had they brought Yarid here? What kind of twisted magic was this creature going to perform on him? Yarid was no Patterner himself, but he had seen enough of them to recognize them. And he had often seen their effects. More often than not, they caused ruin.

  The sheggam Patterner pulled back its thin lips to reveal its muzzle. It almost seemed to sense Yarid’s fear, and revel in it.

  On the marble block—an altar of some sort, judging by the intricate scrollwork carved into it, as well as its placement in the center of the pavilion—was another of those strange weapons like the soldiers carried. Only this one was etched with Patterns. The sheggam Patterner rested both of its hands on the sword as it watched him, then turned its regard to Gorun a moment, teeth still bared, before motioning to one of the soldiers.

  The soldier barked something wordless—or was it? After hearing Orthkalu, Sheggamur’s supposed ambassador, speak in front of the Council of the Wall just before the sheggam invasion, Yarid had never suspected that the sheggam had developed their own language.

  From the opposite side of the pyramid, which apparently had another set of steps, three humans walked up, prodded along by spear-wielding sheggam much as Yarid had been. The humans—no, Yarid thought, correcting himself, just people—the people walked slowly, arms hanging limply, eyes ahead, focusing on nothing. How long had they been here, among the sheggam?

  Long enough to see their hope vanish, Yarid thought. The thought chilled him, but he was made of stronger stuff than these three. He had seen many fail where he had flourished; this place would not get the better of him, no matter how hard it tried.

  Yarid inspected them. A woman and two children, a young girl and an even younger boy. They wore little more than tattered rags, hanging on withered frames. Soot streaked their faces and darkened their hair, making it difficult to know what they’d look like when washed. Yarid was horrified to realize that on all three, their left arms had been chopped off at the elbow. All that remained were scarred stumps. The wounds looked too clean, too similar to be mere accidents.

  Yarid thrust that from his mind, lest he lose what little food was in his stomach, and studied their faces. They looked like a family. But if that were so, who was the father?

  Jordin, by falling to his knees and erupting in hysterical sobs, answered that question. The former manservant’s eyes were pleading, hands stretched out in front of him uselessly. He had the look of a man suddenly succumbed to madness, a madness that had lay hidden and just out of reach, waiting for just the right moment to rush up and sink its fangs into him.

  “Moira!” Jordin cried. “Nori! Peyte!” Spittle flew from his lips on the last name. The three watched him impassively as if watching a beggar in the street.

  The guard behind Jordin cracked him across the shoulders with the haft of his spear, sending Jordin sprawling onto his face. The man lay there, with only his continued sobs to indicate he was still conscious.

  “As promised,” Gorun said, “you may have your family back, Jordin. If you want them.”

  Weeping suddenly ceased, Jordin lifted himself up to his hands and knees, eyes wide as his gaze bored into Gorun. “And why would you think I wouldn’t want them?”

  Gorun shrugged and gestured at them. “There isn’t much left of them, as you can see. The sheggam have had them for several months.”

  Yarid thought about that. Andrin’s Wall, the only thing that separated the Sutherlands from Sheggamur had stood until just a couple weeks ago. Yet the sheggam invasion happened because the sheggam had come up
through volcanic tunnels crossing underneath the Wall. Since the Wall was still standing at that time, these three humans—no, people, dammit!—had to have been taken through those same volcanic tunnels.

  Yarid couldn’t imagine what that must have been like. Trapped in dark tunnels of sharp rock, air reeking of sulfur, being passed along by an army of monsters that were only supposed to exist in songs and stories and nightmares. Then to be trapped in a city full of them. For months.

  Not for the first time, Yarid wondered if he was mad for following Gorun here. No, he thought in sharp reprimand. I am made of stronger stuff than them. I will survive. I will flourish!

  I was a Councilor of the Wall, he reminded himself.

  Then a small voice whispered in the back of his mind, Councilor of nothing now.

  Jordin rose to his feet, grinning and beckoning. “Come here. Papa’s come to take you home. You want to go home, don’t you? Just take my hand, and we’ll go home. As easy as that.” The look of wildness hadn’t left his eyes.

  His family didn’t look like they were going to take a step towards him, but Jordin’s wife turned to the sheggam Patterner.

  From within the folds of his robe, the Patterner drew a horn-handled iron knife with a curved blade and set it on the altar.

  Jordin seemed not to have noticed. His voice grew more panicked, though. “Come on, then! That’s a good boy, Peyte. Take your sister and your mother and bring them over. Let’s go home and eat something. Whatever you’d like. I’ll even make it myself.”

  Jordin’s wife took the knife in her right hand, gripping it tightly, and walked over to Jordin to thrust the blade into his stomach.

  Jordin’s eyes bulged. Speckles of blood flew from his mouth to dot his wife’s shoulder. He collapsed to his knees, then to his side, breath rattling wetly as he clutched his wound. Jordin’s wife then went down on one knee, pressing her other knee against his face, then dragged the blade across his throat. Blood blossomed red.