The Rithmatist

by Brandon Sanderson

  Harding waved for Fitch to approach. The professor walked on shaky feet, obviously trying not to look at the blood. Joel joined them, kneeling down beside the doorway. He reached out, pressing his hand against the air.

  It stopped. Something pushed back, softly at first, then harder as he pressed. With a lot of effort, he could get a few hairs closer to the invisible wall, but never quite felt like he could touch it. It was like trying to press two magnets together with the same poles facing.

  The hallway had a carpet, but the boy’s room had a wood floor. The Line of Forbiddance was easy to see. It was broken in places, with holes large enough for chalklings to get through. At these points, Joel could reach his hand through and into the room.

  “Ah, hum,” Fitch said, kneeling beside Joel. “Yes.” He pulled out a piece of chalk and drew four chalklings shaped like men with shovels. Watching closely, Joel could see the glyphs the professor wrote below each chalkling as he drew it, giving them instructions to march forward, then attack any chalk they discovered.

  One at a time, the chalk drawings began to dig at the Line of Forbiddance. “There,” Fitch said, standing. “That will take a few minutes, I’m afraid.”

  “Inspector,” one of the officers said. “If you have a moment, you may want to see this.”

  Harding followed the officer a short way down the hallway.

  Joel stood. “You all right, Professor?”

  “Yes, yes,” Fitch said. “I just … well, I’m not good with things like this, you know. Part of why I never did well in Nebrask.”

  Joel nodded, then set his bag down and walked over to where the inspector knelt beside something on the floor. The bloodstain was shaped like a footprint.

  “The prints lead down that direction,” the officer was saying, “and out the back door. We lose them after that.”

  Harding studied the print, which was indistinct because of the carpet. “It’ll be hard to tell anything from this.”

  The officer nodded.

  “Are all the prints the same size?” Joel asked.

  The officer glanced at Joel, as if noticing him for the first time. He nodded.

  “That means there’s probably only one person doing this, right?” Joel asked.

  “Unless only one of them stepped in the blood,” Harding said.

  “What about other chalk drawings?” Joel asked. “Were there any besides the ones in the boy’s room?”

  “Actually, there are a few,” the officer said. “One on either side of this hallway.” He led them to a wall, set with the same looping pattern of swirls that had been drawn at the other scenes. Joel waved a hand in front of the pattern, but wasn’t repelled or affected in any way.

  “Professor?” Joel called, drawing Fitch’s attention. The professor approached.

  “Draw a chalkling on the wall here,” Joel said, pointing. “Have it move through this pattern.”

  “Hum, yes.… Yes, very good idea, lad.” Fitch began to draw.

  “What is the point of this exercise?” Harding asked, standing with hands behind his back.

  “If that pattern is really a Rithmatic sketch,” Joel said, “then the chalkling will have to attack the chalk to get through it. If this pattern doesn’t have any Rithmatic powers, then the chalkling will just be able to walk over it as if it weren’t there.”

  Fitch finished his chalkling. The crab crawled across the wall in front of them, then hesitated beside the looping pattern. The chalkling appeared to consider, then took another step forward.

  And stopped.

  Joel felt a chill. It tried again, but was repelled. Finally, it began to claw at the looping pattern, digging through it quite easily.

  “Well I’ll be…” Fitch said. “It is Rithmatic.”

  “So?” Harding said. “Soldier, I’m at a distinct disadvantage in this area. What’s going on?”

  “There are only four Rithmatic lines,” Fitch said. “So we assume.” He looked thoughtful, as if considering something deep. “Joel, tell me. Do you think this could be a Line of Warding? After all, we didn’t know about ellipses during the early years. Maybe this is just something like that.”

  “But why draw such a small Line of Warding? And on the wall? It doesn’t make sense, Professor. Besides, the chalkling is breaking through far too easily for that to be a Line of Warding. If it is one, it isn’t working very well at all.”

  “Yes…” Fitch said. “I believe you are right.” He reached up, dismissing his chalkling. “Odd indeed.”

  “Didn’t you say there was a second drawing on the wall?” Harding asked the police officer.

  The man nodded, leading Harding and Joel to the other end of the hallway. There was another copy of the same swirling line at this end of the hallway.

  Joel ran his fingers around the perimeter, then frowned.

  “What is it, son?” Harding asked. “You look troubled.”

  “This one has a break in it,” Joel said.

  “It was attacked by a chalkling?”

  “No,” Joel said. “It doesn’t look scraped. It just looks unfinished, like it was drawn too quickly.” Joel looked down the hallway. “You found this drawing at Lilly Whiting’s house. Which wall was it on there?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “It was on the front outside wall of the house,” Harding said. “Toward the street.”

  “And at Herman’s house?”

  “Outside his door,” Harding said, “in the hallway.”

  Joel tapped the wall. “This is the first time that someone other than the Rithmatist has been harmed. The four dead men.”

  Harding nodded. “From the reports, they were probably up playing cards in the servants’ kitchen.”

  “Where’s the kitchen?” Joel asked.

  Harding pointed down the stairs.

  “This side of the hallway,” Joel said. “Near the broken symbol. Maybe there’s a connection.”

  “Maybe,” Harding said, rubbing his chin. “You’ve got a good eye for this sort of thing, son. You ever consider becoming a police officer?”

  “Me?” Joel said.

  Harding nodded.

  “Well … not really.”

  “You should think about it, soldier. We can always use more men with a good eye for detail.”

  An inspector. Joel hadn’t given it any thought. More and more, he wanted to go study Rithmatics, as Fitch had suggested. But this … well, that was another option. He would never be a Rithmatist—he had accepted that years ago—but there were other things he could do. Exciting things.

  “Inspector?” Fitch called. “The Line of Forbiddance is down now. We can go in.”

  Joel glanced at Harding, then together they crossed the hallway and walked into the room.

  CHAPTER

  “By the Master,” Fitch breathed, standing just inside the doorway. Beyond was a short hallway that turned right, running a short distance into the room itself.

  The hallway was filled with broken Rithmatic drawings. Circle upon Circle of Warding, dozens of Lines of Forbiddance. Joel looked on, amazed by the sheer amount of chalk on the floor.

  “This looks like a battlefield,” Harding said from the doorway. “I’ve seen it before. Not with chalk, of course—with men.”

  Joel looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s easy to see,” Harding said, pointing. “The Calloway boy drew an initial circle near the doorway, then blocked off the sides with lines so he couldn’t get surrounded. When his front was breached, he abandoned that circle, drawing another one behind it. Like an army slowly retreating on a battlefield.”

  “He was good,” Joel said. “Those defenses are intricate.”

  “Yes,” Fitch said. “I never had Charles in my class, but I heard much of him. He was supposed to be something of a troublemaker, but his skill was unrivaled.”

  “The three kidnapped students had that in common,” Joel said. “They were the best Rithmat
ic students in the school.” He stepped forward—he could walk over the Lines of Warding that formed the circles, though the Lines of Forbiddance at the sides would block him if he tried to go through them.

  “Please try not to step on any of the chalk,” Fitch said, getting out rolls of paper and settling down to make sketches of each of the defensive lines. “Don’t disturb anything!”

  Joel nodded. There were a lot of small lines and dots that, when he looked closely, he could tell were the remnants of chalklings that had been destroyed. Inspector Harding motioned for his officers to remain outside the room, then edged around Fitch and carefully picked his way through the hallway with Joel.

  “There,” Harding said, pointing to the last circle in the line. “Blood.”

  Indeed there was. Just a few drops, like at the other scenes. Joel rounded the defense and whistled softly, squatting down.

  “What?” Harding asked.

  “Shoaff Defense,” Joel said. “A nine-pointer. He got it right on, too.” He reached over, picking up a slip of paper that lay discarded near the circle. It detailed the Shoaff Defense.

  Joel held it up for the inspector. “Cheat sheet. Even with a pattern, it’s hard to do a nine-pointer.”

  “Poor lad,” Harding said, taking off his round policeman’s hat and tucking it under his arm in respect. He looked back past the line of seven circles leading out of the room. “He put up one dusting good fight. Real trooper.”

  Joel nodded, glancing at those drops of blood. Again, there was no body. Like at the other scenes. Everyone assumed the students were being kidnapped, but …

  “How did they get him out?” Joel asked.

  The others looked at him.

  “We had to go through a Line of Forbiddance at the doorway,” Joel said. “If they’re kidnapping the Rithmatists, how did they get him out of the room?”

  “They must have redrawn the line,” Harding said, scratching at his chin. “But it had holes in it, as if attacked. So they redrew it, then attacked it again? But why would they do that? To cover up taking the boy? Why bother? We’re obviously going to know he was kidnapped.”

  None of them had an answer to that. Joel studied the defenses for a moment, then frowned, leaning closer to the broken, ripped Shoaff Defense. “Professor Fitch, you should look at this.”

  “What is it?”

  “A drawing,” Joel said. “On the floor—not a Rithmatic pattern. A picture.”

  It was done in chalk, but it looked like a charcoal drawing someone would do in art class. It was hastily done, more a silhouette than a real drawing. It depicted a man wearing a bowler hat and holding a long, oversized cane to his side, tip down against the ground.

  The man’s head seemed too big, and there was a large undrawn section on the face, like a gaping open mouth. It was smiling.

  Beneath the picture were a few short, hastily written paragraphs.

  I can’t see his eyes. He draws in scribbles. Nothing he does keeps its shape. The chalklings are distorted, and there seem to be hundreds of them. I destroy them, and they return to life. I block them, and they dig through. I scream for help, but nobody comes.

  He just stands there, watching with those dark, unseen eyes of his. The chalklings aren’t like any I’ve seen. They writhe and contort, never keeping a single shape.

  I can’t fight them.

  Tell my father that I’m sorry for being such a bad son. I love him. I really do.

  Joel shivered, all three of them silent as they read Charles Calloway’s final words. Fitch knelt and drew a chalkling on the ground, then used it to check the sketch, in case it was Rithmatic. The chalkling just walked over the picture, ignoring it. Fitch dismissed the chalkling.

  “These paragraphs make little sense,” Fitch said. “Chalklings that return to life after they’re destroyed? Rithmatic shapes that don’t hold their forms?”

  “I’ve seen such things,” Harding said. He looked up and met Fitch’s eyes. “At Nebrask.”

  “But this is so far from there!” Fitch said.

  “I don’t think we can deny it any longer, Professor,” Harding said, rising. “Something has escaped the Tower. It got here, somehow.”

  “But it’s a man who is doing this,” Fitch said, hands shaking as he tapped the drawing Charles had done. “That’s no Forgotten shadow, Harding. It’s in the shape of a person.”

  As Joel listened, he realized something: there was a whole lot more going on at Nebrask than people knew.

  “What is a Forgotten?” Joel asked.

  Both turned to him, then grew quiet.

  “Never mind that, soldier,” Harding said. “You’re a great help here, but I’m afraid I don’t have clearance to tell you about Nebrask.”

  Fitch looked uncomfortable, and suddenly Joel knew what Melody felt like, being excluded. He wasn’t surprised, though. The details of what happened at Nebrask were kept nearly as quiet as the secrets of complex Rithmatics.

  Most people were actually fine with that. The battlefield was a long way away, out in the central isles. People were content to ignore Nebrask. The fighting had been pretty much constant since the days of King Gregory, and it wouldn’t ever go away. Occasionally there were deaths—but they were infrequent, and were always either Rithmatists or professional soldiers. Easily ignored by the general public.

  Unless something managed to get out. Joel shivered. Something strange is happening, even by Nebrask standards, he thought, studying Harding and Fitch. Harding had spent over a decade on the battlefront, and he seemed dumbfounded by what was occurring.

  Eventually, Harding returned to inspecting the room and Fitch returned to his drawing. Joel knelt, reading the paragraphs one last time.

  He draws in scribbles.…

  With some persuasion, Joel got Fitch to let him help do sketch replicas of the defenses. Harding went outside to organize his men to search for other information, such as signs of forced entry.

  Joel drew quietly, using charcoal on the paper. Charcoal would have no Rithmatic properties, even if drawn by a Rithmatist, but it approximated chalk fairly well. The trouble was, no sketch would exactly re-create the drawings on the floor, with all of their subtle scratch marks and broken lines.

  After Joel finished a few sheets, he walked over to Fitch, who was again studying the circle where Charles had made his final stand.

  “Notice how he outlined the entire room in chalk to keep the chalklings from crawling around his lines by going on the walls?” Fitch said. “Very clever. Have you noticed, yet, that the format of this attack reinforces our thoughts on the previous ones?”

  Joel nodded. “Lots of chalklings, attacking in mass.”

  “Yes,” Fitch said. “And we have some evidence, now, that this attacker … this Scribbler … is probably a male, which lets us narrow our results. Would you mind going out and making copies of those swirling patterns on the walls so that we have several versions done by different hands? I suspect that will help us be more accurate.”

  Joel nodded, grabbing a roll of paper and some charcoal, then picking his way out. Most of the officers were down below, now. Joel hesitated in the doorway, looking back into the room.

  Charles had blocked himself in, just like Herman. He had even drawn Lines of Forbiddance around the window, and those lines showed signs of being attacked from the outside. Perhaps he had intended to climb out, and had found his escape route blocked. He’d been out of options.

  Joel shivered, thinking of the hours Charles must have spent during the night, resisting the chalklings with defense after defense, trying desperately to survive until morning.

  Joel left the doorway and walked to the first of the two wall marks. This crime scene seemed to give more questions than answers. Joel put his paper up against the wall, then eyed the swirling pattern and began to do a sketch. It was—

  Something moved in the hallway.

  Joel spun, catching sight of it scuttling along the floor of the room, barely visible against the whi
te carpet. A chalkling.

  “Professor!” Joel yelled, charging after the thing. “Inspector Harding!”

  The chalkling moved down the steps. Joel could barely see it against the white marble, and lost sight of it once he reached the base of the stairs. He glanced about, shivering, imagining it crawling up his leg and gnawing at his skin.

  “Joel?” Fitch asked, appearing at the banister above.

  There! Joel thought, catching sight of a flash of white as the chalkling crossed the wooden doorway and moved down the steps outside.

  “A chalkling, Professor!” he yelled. “I’m chasing it.”

  “Joel! Don’t be a fool! Joel!”

  Joel was out the door, running after the chalkling. Some officers saw him immediately, and they charged over. Joel pointed at the chalkling, which was much easier to see now that it moved across grass, its lines conforming to the shape and contours of the blades much as a shadow would look when it fell on an uneven surface.

  The police called for more backup, and Fitch appeared at the doorway of the building, looking frazzled. Joel kept running, barely keeping pace with the chalkling. The things were very fast and completely tireless; it would outdistance him eventually. But for the moment, he and the police kept up.

  The chalkling reached the fence and shot underneath; Joel and the officers charged out the gate. The chalkling moved over to a large oak tree with thick branches, then—oddly—moved up the side of the trunk.

  It was then that Joel finally got a good look at the shape of the chalkling. He froze.

  “A unicorn?” Oh no …

  The police officers piled around the base of the tree, looking up, lifting clockwork rifles. “You!” one called. “Come down immediately!”

  Joel walked up to them. Melody sat in the tree. He heard her sigh dramatically.

  “Bad idea?” she called down to him.

  “You could say that,” he replied.

  * * *

  “You will explain yourself,” Harding said, standing with hands on hips.

  Melody grimaced, sitting in a chair in the mansion’s kitchen, her white skirt dirtied from climbing the tree. To the side, one of the police officers meticulously wound the gears in his rifle. The clicking sounds rang in the small kitchen.