Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology

by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Dusk said soothingly. “They prowl the night. Even when they cannot sense our minds, they can smell us.” Their sense of smell was said to be incredible. This one had come up the trail behind them; it must have crossed their path and followed it.

  Dangerous. His uncle always claimed the nightmaws were growing smarter, that they knew they could not hunt men only by their minds. I should have taken us across more streams, Dusk thought, reaching up and rubbing Sak’s neck to soothe her. There just isn’t time. . . .

  His corpse lay wherever he looked. Draped across a rock, hanging from the vines of trees, slumped beneath the dying nightmaw’s claw . . .

  The beast trembled once more, then amazingly it lifted its gruesome head and let out a last screech. Not as loud as those that normally sounded in the night, but bone-chilling and horrid. Dusk stepped back despite himself, and Sak chirped nervously.

  Other nightmaw screeches rose in the night, distant. That sound . . . he had been trained to recognize that sound as the sound of death.

  “We’re going,” he said, stalking across the ground and pulling Vathi away from the dying beast, which had lowered its head and fallen silent.

  “Dusk?” She did not resist as he pulled her away.

  One of the other nightmaws sounded again in the night. Was it closer? Oh, Patji, please, Dusk thought. No. Not this.

  He pulled her faster, reaching for his machete at his side, but it was not there. He had thrown it. He took out the one he had gathered from his fallen rival, then dragged her out of the clearing, back into the jungle, moving quickly. He could no longer worry about brushing against deathants.

  A greater danger was coming.

  The calls of death came again.

  “Are those getting closer?” Vathi asked.

  Dusk did not answer. It was a question, but he did not know the answer. At least his hearing was recovering. He released her hand, moving more quickly, almost at a trot—faster than he ever wanted to go through the jungle, day or night.

  “Dusk!” Vathi hissed. “Will they come? To the call of the dying one? Is that something they do?”

  “How should I know? I have never known one of them to be killed before.” He saw the tube, again carried over her shoulder, lit by the light of the lantern she carried.

  That gave him pause, though his instincts screamed at him to keep moving and he felt a fool. “Your weapon,” he said. “You can use it again?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Once more.”

  “Once more?”

  A half dozen screeches sounded in the night.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I only brought three spears and enough powder for three shots. I tried firing one at the shadow. It didn’t do much.”

  He spoke no further, ignoring his wounded arm—the bandage was in need of changing—and towing her through the jungle. The calls came again and again. Agitated. How did one escape nightmaws? His Aviar clung to him, a bird on each shoulder. He had to leap over his corpse as they traversed a gulch and came up the other side.

  How do you escape them? he thought, remembering his uncle’s training. You don’t draw their attention in the first place!

  They were fast. Kokerlii would hide his mind, but if they picked up his trail at the dead one . . .

  Water. He stopped in the night, turning right, then left. Where would he find a stream? Patji was an island. Fresh water came from rainfall, mostly. The largest lake . . . the only one . . . was up the wedge. Toward the peak. Along the eastern side, the island rose to some heights with cliffs on all sides. Rainfall collected there, in Patji’s Eye. The river was his tears.

  It was a dangerous place to go with Vathi in tow. Their path had skirted the slope up the heights, heading across the island toward the northern beach. They were close. . . .

  Those screeches behind spurred him on. Patji would just have to forgive him for what came next. Dusk seized Vathi’s hand and towed her in a more eastern direction. She did not complain, though she did keep looking over her shoulder.

  The screeches grew closer.

  He ran. He ran as he had never expected to do on Patji, wild and reckless. Leaping over troughs, around fallen logs coated in moss. Through the dark underbrush, scaring away meekers and startling Aviar slumbering in the branches above. It was foolish. It was crazy. But did it matter? Somehow, he knew those other things would not claim him. The kings of Patji hunted him; lesser dangers would not dare steal from their betters.

  Vathi followed with difficulty. Those skirts were trouble, but she caught up to him each time Dusk had to occasionally stop and cut their way through underbrush. Urgent, frantic. He expected her to keep up, and she did. A piece of him—buried deep beneath the terror—was impressed. This woman would have made a fantastic trapper. Instead she would probably destroy all trappers.

  He froze as screeches sounded behind, so close. Vathi gasped, and Dusk turned back to his work. Not far to go. He hacked through a dense patch of undergrowth and ran on, sweat streaming down the sides of his face. Jostling light came from Vathi’s lantern behind; the scene before him was one of horrific shadows dancing on the jungle’s boughs, leaves, ferns, and rocks.

  This is your fault, Patji, he thought with an unexpected fury. The screeches seemed almost on top of him. Was that breaking brush he could hear behind? We are your priests, and yet you hate us! You hate all.

  Dusk broke from the jungle and out onto the banks of the river. Small by mainland standards, but it would do. He led Vathi right into it, splashing into the cold waters.

  He turned upstream. What else could he do? Downstream would lead closer to those sounds, the calls of death.

  Of the Dusk, he thought. Of the Dusk.

  The waters came only to their calves, bitter cold. The coldest water on the island, though he did not know why. They slipped and scrambled as they ran, best they could, upriver. They passed through some narrows, with lichen-covered rock walls on either side twice as tall as a man, then burst out into the basin.

  A place men did not go. A place he had visited only once. A cool emerald lake rested here, sequestered.

  Dusk towed Vathi to the side, out of the river, toward some brush. Perhaps she would not see. He huddled down with her, raising a finger to his lips, then turned down the light of the lantern she still held. Nightmaws could not see well, but perhaps the dim light would help. In more ways than one.

  They waited there, on the shore of the small lake, hoping that the water had washed away their scent—hoping the nightmaws would grow confused or distracted. For one thing about this place was that the basin had steep walls, and there was no way out other than the river. If the nightmaws came up it, Dusk and Vathi would be trapped.

  Screeches sounded. The creatures had reached the river. Dusk waited in near darkness, and so squeezed his eyes shut. He prayed to Patji, whom he loved, whom he hated.

  Vathi gasped softly. “What . . . ?”

  So she had seen. Of course she had. She was a seeker, a learner. A questioner.

  Why must men ask so many questions?

  “Dusk! There are Aviar here, in these branches! Hundreds of them.” She spoke in a hushed, frightened tone. Even as they awaited death itself, she saw and could not help speaking. “Have you seen them? What is this place?” She hesitated. “So many juveniles. Barely able to fly . . .”

  “They come here,” he whispered. “Every bird from every island. In their youth, they must come here.”

  He opened his eyes, looking up. He had turned down the lantern, but it was still bright enough to see them roosting there. Some stirred at the light and the sound. They stirred more as the nightmaws screeched below.

  Sak chirped on his shoulder, terrified. Kokerlii, for once, had nothing to say.

  “Every bird from every island . . .” Vathi said, putting it together. “They all come here, to this place. Are you certain?”

  “Yes.” It was a thing that trappers knew. You could not capture a bird before it had visited P
atji.

  Otherwise it would be able to bestow no talent.

  “They come here,” she said. “We knew they migrated between islands. . . . Why do they come here?”

  Was there any point in holding back now? She would figure it out. Still, he did not speak. Let her do so.

  “They gain their talents here, don’t they?” she asked. “How? Is it where they are trained? Is this how you made a bird who was not an Aviar into one? You brought a hatchling here, and then . . .” She frowned, raising her lantern. “I recognize those trees. They are the ones you called Patji’s Fingers.”

  A dozen of them grew here, the largest concentration on the island. And beneath them, their fruit littered the ground. Much of it eaten, some of it only halfway so, bites taken out by birds of all stripes.

  Vathi saw him looking, and frowned. “The fruit?” she asked.

  “Worms,” he whispered in reply.

  A light seemed to go on in her eyes. “It’s not the birds. It never has been . . . it’s a parasite. They carry a parasite that bestows talents! That’s why those raised away from the islands cannot gain the abilities, and why a mainland bird you brought here could.”

  “Yes.”

  “This changes everything, Dusk. Everything.”

  “Yes.”

  Of the Dusk. Born during that dusk, or bringer of it? What had he done?

  Downriver, the nightmaw screeches drew closer. They had decided to search upriver. They were clever, more clever than men off the islands thought them to be. Vathi gasped, turning toward the small river canyon.

  “Isn’t this dangerous?” she whispered. “The trees are blooming. The nightmaws will come! But no. So many Aviar. They can hide those blossoms, like they do a man’s mind?”

  “No,” he said. “All minds in this place are invisible, always, regardless of Aviar.”

  “But . . . how? Why? The worms?”

  Dusk didn’t know, and for now didn’t care. I am trying to protect you, Patji! Dusk looked toward Patji’s Fingers. I need to stop the men and their device. I know it! Why? Why do you hunt me?

  Perhaps it was because he knew so much. Too much. More than any man had known. For he had asked questions.

  Men. And their questions.

  “They’re coming up the river, aren’t they?” she asked.

  The answer seemed obvious. He did not reply.

  “No,” she said, standing. “I won’t die with this knowledge, Dusk. I won’t. There must be a way.”

  “There is,” he said, standing beside her. He took a deep breath. So I finally pay for it. He took Sak carefully in his hand, and placed her on Vathi’s shoulder. He pried Kokerlii free too.

  “What are you doing?” Vathi asked.

  “I will go as far as I can,” Dusk said, handing Kokerlii toward her. The bird bit with annoyance at his hands, although never strong enough to draw blood. “You will need to hold him. He will try to follow me.”

  “No, wait. We can hide in the lake, they—”

  “They will find us!” Dusk said. “It isn’t deep enough by far to hide us.”

  “But you can’t—”

  “They are nearly here, woman!” he said, forcing Kokerlii into her hands. “The men of the company will not listen to me if I tell them to turn off the device. You are smart, you can make them stop. You can reach them. With Kokerlii you can reach them. Be ready to go.”

  She looked at him, stunned, but she seemed to realize that there was no other way. She stood, holding Kokerlii in two hands as he pulled out the journal of First of the Sky, then his own book that listed where his Aviar were, and tucked them into her pack. Finally, he stepped back into the river. He could hear a rushing sound downstream. He would have to go quickly to reach the end of the canyon before they arrived. If he could draw them out into the jungle even a short ways to the south, Vathi could slip away.

  As he entered the stream, his visions of death finally vanished. No more corpses bobbing in the water, lying on the banks. Sak had realized what was happening.

  She gave a final chirp.

  He started to run.

  One of Patji’s Fingers, growing right next to the mouth of the canyon, was blooming.

  “Wait!”

  He should not have stopped as Vathi yelled at him. He should have continued on, for time was so slim. However, the sight of that flower—along with her yell—made him hesitate.

  The flower . . .

  It struck him as it must have struck Vathi. An idea. Vathi ran for her pack, letting go of Kokerlii, who immediately flew to his shoulder and started chirping at him in annoyed chastisement. Dusk didn’t listen. He yanked the flower off—it was as large as a man’s head, with a large bulging part at the center.

  It was invisible in this basin, like they all were.

  “A flower that can think,” Vathi said, breathing quickly, fishing in her pack. “A flower that can draw the attention of predators.”

  Dusk pulled out his rope as she brought out her weapon and prepared it. He lashed the flower to the end of the spear sticking out slightly from the tube.

  Nightmaw screeches echoed up the cavern. He could see their shadows, hear them splashing.

  He stumbled back from Vathi as she crouched down, set the weapon’s butt against the ground, and pulled a lever at the base.

  The explosion, once again, nearly deafened him.

  Aviar all around the rim of the basin screeched and called in fright, taking wing. A storm of feathers and flapping ensued, and through the middle of it, Vathi’s spear shot into the air, flower on the end. It arced out over the canyon into the night.

  Dusk grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back along the river, into the lake itself. They slipped into the shallow water, Kokerlii on his shoulder, Sak on hers. They left the lantern burning, giving a quiet light to the suddenly empty basin.

  The lake was not deep. Two or three feet. Even crouching, it didn’t cover them completely.

  The nightmaws stopped in the canyon. His lanternlight showed a couple of them in the shadows, large as huts, turning and watching the sky. They were smart, but like the meekers, not as smart as men.

  Patji, Dusk thought. Patji, please . . .

  The nightmaws turned back down the canyon, following the mental signature broadcast by the flowering plant. And, as Dusk watched, his corpse bobbing in the water nearby grew increasingly translucent.

  Then faded away entirely.

  Dusk counted to a hundred, then slipped from the waters. Vathi, sodden in her skirts, did not speak as she grabbed the lantern. They left the weapon, its shots expended.

  The calls from the nightmaws grew farther and farther away as Dusk led the way out of the canyon, then directly north, slightly downslope. He kept expecting the screeches to turn and follow.

  They did not.

  The company fortress was a horridly impressive sight. A work of logs and cannons right at the edge of the water, guarded by an enormous iron-hulled ship. Smoke rose from it, the burning of morning cook fires. A short distance away, what must have been a dead shadow rotted in the sun, its mountainous carcass draped half in the water, half out.

  He didn’t see his own corpse anywhere, though on the final leg of their trip to the fortress he had seen it several times. Always in a place of immediate danger. Sak’s visions had returned to normal.

  Dusk turned back to the fortress, which he did not enter. He preferred to remain on the rocky, familiar shore—perhaps twenty feet from the entrance—his wounded arm aching as the company people rushed out through the gate to meet Vathi. Their scouts on the upper walls kept careful watch on Dusk. A trapper was not to be trusted.

  Even standing here, some twenty feet from the wide wooden gates into the fort, he could smell how wrong the place was. It was stuffed with the scents of men—sweaty bodies, the smell of oil, and other, newer scents that he recognized from his recent trips to the homeisles. Scents that made him feel like an outsider among his own people.

  The company men
wore sturdy clothing, trousers like Dusk’s but far better tailored, shirts and rugged jackets. Jackets? In Patji’s heat? These people bowed to Vathi, showing her more deference than Dusk would have expected. They drew hands from shoulder to shoulder as they started speaking—a symbol of respect. Foolishness. Anyone could make a gesture like that; it didn’t mean anything. True respect included far more than a hand waved in the air.

  But they did treat her like more than a simple scribe. She was better placed in the company than he’d assumed. Not his problem anymore, regardless.

  Vathi looked at him, then back at her people. “We must hurry to the machine,” she said to them. “The one from Above. We must turn it off.”

  Good. She would do her part. Dusk turned to walk away. Should he give words at parting? He’d never felt the need before. But today, it felt . . . wrong not to say something.

  He started walking. Words. He had never been good with words.

  “Turn it off?” one of the men said from behind. “What do you mean, Lady Vathi?”

  “You don’t need to feign innocence, Winds,” Vathi said. “I know you turned it on in my absence.”

  “But we didn’t.”

  Dusk paused. What? The man sounded sincere. But then, Dusk was no expert on human emotions. From what he’d seen of people from the homeisles, they could fake emotion as easily as they faked a gesture of respect.

  “What did you do, then?” Vathi asked them.

  “We . . . opened it.”

  Oh no . . .

  “Why would you do that?” Vathi asked.

  Dusk turned to regard them, but he didn’t need to hear the answer. The answer was before him, in the vision of a dead island he’d misinterpreted.

  “We figured,” the man said, “that we should see if we could puzzle out how the machine worked. Vathi, the insides . . . they’re complex beyond what we could have imagined. But there are seeds there. Things we could—”

  “No!” Dusk said, rushing toward them.

  One of the sentries above planted an arrow at his feet. He lurched to a stop, looking wildly from Vathi up toward the walls. Couldn’t they see? The bulge in mud that announced a deathant den. The game trail. The distinctive curl of a cutaway vine. Wasn’t it obvious?