With a furious roar, Tharadis shoved both sword and axe away—right into the face of the approaching sheggam.
It didn’t die as Nina hoped. The blow from the axe stunned it, and the sword’s edge left a nasty gash under its eye. But it shook its head like a wet dog, flipping its greasy black hair about, and snarled at Nina, even more incensed than before.
None of that mattered, though.
Her father had broken free.
What he did next was like a dance. Each motion was so fluid, it seemed like something he had rehearsed a thousand times—or something that came to him by instinct. It was a flurry of motion, yet not hasty, no stroke wasted. Every time his blade moved, flesh parted, spilling blood and guts and severing limbs. It was as elegant as it was horrifying.
In the space of a heartbeat, all four sheggam were in twitching pieces on the ground.
With a single twist of his wrist, Tharadis shook the blood free of Shoreseeker’s blade, then sheathed it.
Both of them turned at the sound of snarls nearby. Without a word, he gathered Nina onto his back and jogged out of the market, back the way they had come. Again, Nina squeezed her eyes shut.
For some time—how long, Nina had no way of telling—all she heard was the sound of her father’s quick yet heavy footsteps as he carried her through the city. She didn’t think they were going the way he’d told her they should, but if they weren’t, she trusted he knew what he was doing. His breath was coming heavily. Small as she was, Nina knew carrying her for so long couldn’t be easy, especially when you had to fight for your life. Occasionally she felt him jump over obstacles; every time he did, she felt as if she were floating. Any other day, she would have smiled at the sensation. Now, it just turned her stomach.
Tharadis turned sharply. The sound of his footsteps flattened; they were no longer in a narrow, echoing alley. The gentle lapping of water came from the left.
Then there were more footsteps. Nina didn’t need to open her eyes to know they belonged to sheggam.
Tharadis broke into a full sprint. “Nina!” he shouted. “Take a big breath and hold it!”
Before she could make sense of this command, Tharadis leapt, and they were in the air again. Only this time her father’s foot didn’t meet the ground right away.
They were falling.
As they did, Nina felt them twisting in the air. Her father’s right arm, the one holding Shoreseeker, jerked hard. Shoreseeker’s edge bit into something.
A monstrous shriek split the air. It came from only inches away. Hot, horrid breath washed over Nina’s face.
She opened her eyes and looked straight into the gaping maw of the beast falling alongside her. Terrified, she let go of her father’s neck.
The surface of the river slammed into her back.
The impact forced all the air from her lungs. Water rushed up her nose. It stung like mad. She fought the instinct to breathe, but even in the brief moment since she was submerged, it was getting harder and harder to fight it.
She couldn’t tell up from down and thrashed madly, desperate for air. The water stung her eyes, and it was too dark to see anything anyway. She knew she didn’t have much longer.
Something under the water bumped her leg. She jerked away, expelling what little air she had left.
When her head broke the water’s surface, Nina sucked air into her lungs. She coughed and sputtered, but she could breathe. She’d thought she would never breathe again.
She treaded water, rubbing her eyes so she could see. Again, something floating in the water brushed against arm. Even though her vision had cleared, it still took her a moment to realize what it was.
A human arm, gnawed off at the elbow.
Nina whimpered. Other things, lots of other things, floated in the river. She wanted out of the river. She didn’t care what lay in waiting for her on land. She only knew that she had to get out of the water.
Where was her father?
Something else was wrong. Her hands went to her neck.
The Raccoon Family was gone.
Tears stung her eyes as she scanned the water. It was so hard to see anything. Everything was wrong. Her father was gone, her mother was gone, and she was all alone in this horrifying water.
A huge white corpse floated face-down beside her. She realized it must have been the sheggam her father had fought while they fell. White mist bubbled up around it. It was dead now; Nina was sure of it. It was a small comfort, though. She didn’t want to be alone with that thing.
Something in the water moved toward her. Nina felt her heartbeat surge.
It was her father’s head, partly submerged. His eyes fixed on hers as he held a finger to his lips.
Nina almost wept with relief when she realized he was okay. But she kept silent, as he asked. She let the current pull her to him. He grabbed a hold of her wrist and pulled her closer.
“Stay still and be silent,” he whispered into her ear. Nina nodded as the river slowly pulled them west, under a footbridge, and out of the city.
Chapter 72: Pattern's Victory
Agust of wind streaming over the ramparts tugged loose a few strands of her white hair as Lora Bale surveyed the battlefield below.
For that was what the grounds outside Falconkeep had become. Dozens of sheggam already lay dead among streaks of blackened earth, laid to waste by Lora Bale’s small army of fensoria.
Sheggam. She snorted, a corner of her mouth lifting in amusement. Lora Bale had long known that the World Pattern wanted to be rid of her. It hadn’t taken any skill to discern this; it was a truth she could feel in her bones. Falconkeep, and by extension Lora Bale, had simply become too powerful for the World Pattern to let live. However, mere human armies wouldn’t be enough to uproot her. The World Pattern had had to summon the sheggam from beyond the Wall to deal with her.
But she knew something that the World Pattern didn’t. She was invincible.
She shifted her head a few inches to the side. A breath later, a thick-shafted arrow zipped past her ear, passing through the space her head had just occupied. She didn’t even flinch. She had seen the arrow’s path before it had even been loosed.
To any other Patterner, the winds were a dear friend, whispering secrets that the World Pattern often tried to obscure.
To Lora Bale, the winds were a slave. No arrows would touch her.
Another line of flame erupted along the ground near the stables, throwing dozens of screaming sheggam in every direction. These ones had been carrying a ladder. Where had they gotten that? A flutter of concern rose in her chest, but she shoved it down. The ladder was smoldering splinters now. It was nothing to worry about. Still. The sheggam were more resourceful than the stories suggested.
She walked over to Zeho, standing a few paces away. He gripped the edges of the merlon tightly in his gloved hands, brown hair stirring in the wind. Soot streaked his Falconkeep uniform, as it always did whenever he called his flames. His eyes were locked on the rushing sheggam, but his mouth was split in a wild grin. Though the night was cold, sweat ran down his face. At sixteen, he didn’t have long to live, even if he did survive this battle. He had no reason to hold back, but more than that, Lora Bale knew that he would give his life to protect Falconkeep. He might even hope to die for the sake of Falconkeep.
Lora Bale would not get in the way of his ambition. She touched his shoulder, gently at first, like a mother might. Then she squeezed it tightly. “Keep going,” she whispered in his ear. His smile widened.
As she stepped past him, she scanned the ramparts. Several more of her young soldiers were positioned at various intervals, waging war with their powers on the hundreds of sheggam down below. But Lora wasn’t interested in them right now.
Where were her war tables?
She felt them before she saw them. She turned and saw two of the littler Falconkeepers struggling to drag one of the heavy wooden tables up the stone steps to the ramparts. Lora frowned. Those weren’t part of the group she had sent to fetch
her tables. And why were they bringing only one?
Again, that flutter of panic. This time, it was harder to smother.
Three more arrows flew past as she strode to where they had set the table, pale-faced and panting. Lora frowned at them. “Where are Char and Storn? Why aren’t they with you?”
The fat, freckled boy named Noil wiped his hand across his forehead. “They said they had to do something else. Said there was a breach in the east wall.”
A breach? No, that was impossible. “Set it up over here and get the other two. And don’t waste any more time. Understood?”
Both nodded as they shoved the square table to where she’d indicated and scrambled off. Lora sighed through gritted teeth, telling herself she was more frustrated than afraid. There could be no breach. Just flights of fancy from frightened children. You’ll not have me yet, World Pattern.
She swiveled several of the handles protruding from the table’s sides, adjusting the positions of the various lodestones beneath the war table’s surface. In moments, she was satisfied with the configuration. Using her body to block the brunt of the wind, she unhooked her pouch of iron filings from her belt and dumped its contents on the table. Within the space of a heartbeat, the filings danced their way over the table’s surface, drawn by the lodestones into a perfect Pattern.
First one, and then over a dozen lightning bolts rained down upon the sheggam army, accompanied by cracks of thunder that shook the air. Once the Pattern was spent, Lora began twisting the handles again, changing the rippling shape the filings made.
But something broke her concentration. Screams from behind her, from within the walls of Falconkeep.
She spun, her eyes wide. “No!” she whispered fiercely. She worked faster—too fast. She jostled the table with her hip, throwing one of the lodestones out of place. Quickly she reached over to twist the corresponding handle.
An arrow clipped her shoulder.
Lora Bale stopped and stared down at the welling blood, feeling more betrayed than injured. Damn you, winds!
Wait. Why had Zeho stopped calling fire?
She glanced at where he stood—or at least where he had been standing. Now he lay there, his legs hanging over the rampart’s edge, dangling above the courtyard. His head was gone.
Behind Zeho’s body loomed a massive, pale-skinned beast, naked save for the clumps of black hair draped over its shoulder. It gripped a heavy wooden club. Lora could see bone flecked among the gore smeared over its surface.
Lora Bale’s eyes met the sheggam’s, her jaw slack. “But I was invincible,” she said. The wind carried her words away as the sheggam sped toward her.
In the moment just before the sheggam’s club met her skull, Lora Bale conceded that the World Pattern had finally won.
Chapter 73: Reunion
Adim, unwavering gray light glowed in the various alcoves in the Council Chambers in the heart of the Dome and Spire. Not enough light for a normal man to walk about in complete confidence of his footing. But Dransig was hardly a normal man. Hardly a man at all anymore, he thought grimly. The figure standing in the middle of the cavernous room, back to Dransig, was as clear to him as if it had been standing in sunlight. A figure that was too tall, too muscular, too angular to be human. But a figure that, despite all its changes, was recognizable to him.
“Shad.”
At the sound of her name, she twitched slightly. But she didn’t turn to face him yet. “Father. I was wondering when you would come to find me.”
Her voice was recognizable, but … wrong somehow. Had the years changed her so much? Or was it the shegasti that infected her, as it did him? Little clothing covered her; it would have merely been an obstruction for her piercings—as well as the changes her body would undergo as a result of the turning. Seeing her like this stole something from Dransig, nearly staggered him. All those piercings, to let the shegasti in … But had he any right to judge and condemn her?
He drew his short sword and held it in front of him. I have that much humanity in me, he thought. Enough to kill my own daughter. The irony of it made him want to laugh or vomit. He didn’t know which.
She turned to face him then, but stopped partway. From this angle, Dransig could see that the transformation had already changed her face. Her mouth and nose were more muzzle than not, the tips of fangs poking up over bloodless lips. Her spine was curved, hunching her shoulders as she held her overlong arms, tipped with claws held in front of her. After a moment she met his eyes. He wondered what she saw there. Her face betrayed nothing. At least, nothing more than the ultimate betrayal. My daughter … sold the Accord to monsters to become a monster herself.
“There’s nothing you can do to stop it, father. It’s already begun.”
“I know.” He had seen the mayhem destroying the city, saw horrors beyond imagination. It was everything he had feared would happen, and worse. He had failed to prevent it. All he could do now was put things to rights. At least some of them. “That’s not why I’ve come.”
The edges of Shad’s mouth curled up in a slight smile. Dransig saw a hint of the girl she had once been, back before her mother died. Back before Dransig fell into a deep well of grief, abandoning his true name and thus the governorship of Twelve Towers to find solace in the austere purpose of the Knights of the Eye. But that girl was gone now, consumed by the monster he saw before him. Just as Dransig was gone, consumed by the monster he had become.
“You never replied to the letter I sent you,” she said. “I waited. Waited for years. I told all you the things I had done since you left Twelve Towers to me.” She turned away. “I know you received it. I spoke to the man who personally saw it to your hands. And you never once wrote to me. You never came home.”
“Your mother was the only home I knew,” Dransig whispered.
“You’ve been adrift, then,” Shad said, voice flat. “Homeless.”
Dransig nodded, though she couldn’t see him. “Yes.”
“You never loved me, did you, father?”
The breath he took shuddered his lungs. He had tried to steel his nerve for this meeting, a meeting he had been dreading for years. If I am to die, he thought, it will do it without regret. “There is a difference between never loving, and never forgiving.”
She cocked her head slightly and nodded, as if she heard the wisdom in his words. She turned. He expected tears in her eyes, but they were dry. Dransig wondered if she—or he—were now beyond the capacity for tears.
“I learned all I could about the Order, father. If you’re going to use that sword on me, you’ll have to wait until I’ve completely turned.”
Dransig tapped his chest where his sigil once was. “I’m not longer a Knight of the Eye.”
“No? Just a murderer then.” Shad smiled again, but this time it was a smile of bitterness. “All this time, I sought redemption. I thought if only I could be like my father, maybe he would forgive me for what I’d done. Or at least come to love me again.” The smile withered. “Yet here you are, sinking to the level of your unworthy daughter.”
“You must pay for what you’ve done!” Dransig shouted. “You murdered your mother!”
Shad staggered back, clutching her chest as if Dransig had already stabbed her. “She was a horrible woman! I saw what she did to you. I felt what she did to me.” She quivered. “It was worse than anything I’ve done to myself since … or anything you could possibly do to me. I was a little girl. I was your daughter.”
“Don’t.” It was the only word Dransig could summon.
“I only wanted to help you, to show you I was worthy of carrying on your name. Dransig Belgrith, the uncompromising statesman.” Shad shook her head. “The only man I’ve ever loved.”
Dransig lowered the tip of his blade. “Repent. Tell me you sincerely regret murdering her, and I will spare your life.”
Shad shook her head. “I was a little girl, driven mad by an abusive mother. What is there to regret?”
“You can change. You can st
art right here.”
She laughed softly. “No one can change what they are. You and I, both of us. We’re beasts. Killers. As much as we may aspire to be better, that’s what we are.”
“Two strokes, then,” he said. “One for you. One for me.”
Shad paused. Nodded. “That’s how it must be, it seems.”
Dransig took a deep breath. He lunged, blade flashing in the dim artificial light.
But before he took a step, he collapsed to the ground, blade clattering to the floor.
Shad fell to her knees and gathered him up in her arms. “Father,” she whispered. “You’re hurt.”
“No. Just old.” How long had he been fighting the shegasti, keeping it from taking him over? It felt like more than a lifetime. It took all he had to keep it at bay, stall it long enough to do what he needed to. Two strokes of the sword were all he needed.
But perhaps more than he could handle. He coughed, spattering flecks of blood against his daughter’s neck. The cough loosened his control slightly. He heard as much as felt the joints in his left hand pop and spread. He shuddered as he tried to rein it in, but all he could do keep it from spreading.
Dransig felt another presence at the doorway behind him. Not a full sheggam—the feeling was too weak. “Herrin?” he rasped.
“Yes.” Dransig heard the steel-capped staff drop to the floor and Herrin Fayel’s sword whisper free of its scabbard. “It looks like I’m here to do what I tried to stop you from doing.”
Shad suddenly flared so bright that Dransig couldn’t see anything at all. He heard her roar, felt the overwhelming river of shegasti pouring out of every one of her pores. She dropped him carelessly to the ground, jarring his shoulder, and leapt over him. The clash of steel and claw echoed throughout the Council Chambers as the sheggam, who had been his daughter only moments before, engaged the Commander of the Knights of the Eye.
Shoreseeker Page 47