Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology

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

“No insects in the blankets,” Vathi said, sticking her head up out of the trap door behind him.

  “The cups?”

  “I’ll get to those in a moment. So these are your breeding pairs, are they?”

  Obviously they were, so he didn’t need to reply.

  She watched him check them. He felt her eyes on him. Finally, he spoke. “Why did your company ignore the advice we gave you? Coming here was obviously a disaster.”

  “Yes.”

  He turned to her.

  “Yes,” she continued, “this whole expedition will likely be a disaster. One that takes us a step closer to our goal.”

  He checked Sisisru next, working by the light of the now-rising moon. “Foolish.”

  Vathi folded her arms before her on the roof of the building, torso still disappearing into the lit square of a trapdoor below. “Do you think that our ancestors learned to wayfind on the oceans without experiencing a few disasters along the way? Ships lost, people vanishing on the waves? Or what of the first trappers? You have knowledge passed down for generations, knowledge earned through trial and error. If the first trappers had considered it too ‘foolish’ to come explore, where would you be?”

  “They were single men, well-trained, not a ship full of clerks and dockworkers.”

  “The world is changing, Sixth of the Dusk,” she said softly. “The Ones Above . . . the technology we have discovered . . . The people of the land grow hungry for Aviar companions; that things were once restricted to the very wealthy can be within the reach of ordinary people. We’ve learned so much, yet the Aviar are still an enigma. Why don’t chicks raised on the homeisles bestow talents? Why—”

  “Foolish arguments,” Sixth said, putting Sisisru back into her nest. “I do not wish to hear them again. You may sleep in my safecamp tonight.”

  “And then what?” she asked. “You turn me out into the jungle to die?”

  “You survived well on your way here,” he said, grudgingly. She was not a trapper. A scholar should not have been able to do what she did. “You will probably survive.”

  “I got lucky. I should be dead. I walked a few hours upstream to find this place—I’d never make it across the entire island.”

  Sixth paused. “Across the island?”

  “To the main company camp.”

  “There are more of you?”

  “I . . . Of course. You didn’t think . . .”

  He turned on her. “What happened?” Now who is the fool? He thought to himself. You should have asked this first. Talking. He had never been good with it, even before becoming a trapper.

  She shied away from him, eyes widening. Did he look dangerous? Perhaps he had barked that last question forcefully. No matter. She spoke, so he got what he needed.

  “We set up camp on the far beach,” she said. “We have two ironhulls armed with cannons watching the waters. Those can take on even a deepwalker, if they have to. Two hundred soldiers, half that number in scientists and merchants. We’re determined to find out, once and for all, why the Aviar must be born on one of the Pantheon Islands to be able to bestow talents.

  “One team came down this direction to scout sites to place other fortresses. The company is determined to hold Patji against other interests. I thought the smaller expedition a bad idea, but had my own reasons for wanting to circle the island. So I went along. And then, the deepwalker . . .” She looked sick.

  Sixth had almost stopped listening. Two hundred soldiers? On his island? Crawling across Patji like ants on a fallen piece of fruit. Unbearable! He thought of the quiet jungle broken by the sounds of their racketous voices. The sound of humans yelling at each other, clanging on metal, stomping about. Like a city.

  A flurry of dark feathers announced Sak coming up from below and landing on the lip of the trapdoor beside Vathi. The black-plumed bird limped across the roof toward Sixth, stretching her wings, showing off the scars on her left. Even flying a dozen feet was a chore for her.

  Sixth reached down scratch her neck, feeling stunned. It was happening. An invasion. He had to find a way to stop it. Somehow . . .

  “I’m sorry, Sixth,” Vathi said. “The Trappers are one of my areas of scholarship. I’ve read of your ways, and I respect them. But this was going to happen someday. The Aviar are too valuable to leave in the hands of a couple hundred eccentric woodsmen. They are a resource that we must protect.”

  “The chiefs . . .”

  “All twenty chiefs in council agreed to this plan,” Vathi said. “I was there. If the Eelakin do not secure these islands and tame them, someone else will.”

  Sixth stared out into the night. “Go and make certain there are no insects in the cups below.”

  “But—”

  “Go,” he said, turning to the woman, “and make certain there are no insects in the cups below!”

  The woman sighed softly, but retreated into the room, leaving him with his Aviar. He continued to scratch Sak on the neck, seeking comfort in the familiar motion and in her presence. Dared he hope that the shadows would prove too deadly for the company and its iron-hulled ships? Vathi seemed confident.

  She did not tell me why she joined the scouting group. She had seen a shadow, witnessed it destroying her team, but had still managed the presence of mind to find his camp. She was a strong woman. He would need to remember that.

  She was also a company type, as removed from his experience as a person could get. Soldiers, craftsmen, even kings he could understand. But these soft-spoken scribes who had quietly conquered the world with a sword of commerce, they baffled him.

  “Father,” he whispered. “What do I do?”

  Patji gave no reply. Well, none beyond the normal sounds of night on the island. Things moving, hunting, rustling. At night, the Aviar slept, and that gave opportunity to the most dangerous of the island’s predators. In the distance, he heard a nightmaw roar, its horrid voice echoing through the trees. In his hands, Sak spread her wings, leaning down, head darting back and forth. The sound always made her tremble.

  In truth, it did the same to Sixth.

  He sighed, and started to rise, placing Sak on his shoulder. He turned, and almost stumbled as he saw his corpse at his feet. He came alert immediately; there wasn’t supposed to be anything in his safecamp that could kill him. What was it? Vines in the tree branches? A spider, dropping quietly from above? Something larger? On Patji, any one of a hundred different animals could kill a man in a heartbeat.

  Sak cried out.

  It was a screech; he had not heard her screech in years. Nearby, his other Aviar cried out as well, a cacophony of squawks, screeches, chirps. No, it wasn’t just them. All around . . . echoing in the distance, from both near and far, wild Aviar squawked. They rustled in their branches, a sound like a powerful wind blowing through the trees.

  Sixth spun about, holding his hands to his ears, eyes wide as corpses appeared around him. His own body, eyes staring dead, appearing and vanishing. They piled high, one atop another, some bloated, some bloody, some skeletal. Haunting him. Dozens upon dozens.

  He dropped to his knees, yelling. That put him eye-to-eye with one of the corpses. Only this one . . . this one was not quite dead . . . Blood dripped from its lips as it tried to speak, mouthing words that Sixth did not understand.

  It vanished.

  They all vanished. All of the corpses, every last one. He turned about, wild, but saw none of them. The sounds of the Aviar quieted, and his flock settled back into their nests. Sixth breathed in and out deeply, heart racing. He felt tense, as if at any moment, a shadow would explode from the blackness around his camp and consume him. He anticipated it, felt it coming. He wanted to run, run somewhere.

  What had that been? In all of his years with Sak, he had never seen anything like it. What could have upset all of the Aviar at once in that way? What had they felt? Was it something about the nightmaw he had heard?

  Don’t be foolish, he thought at himself. This was different, different from anything you’ve see
n. Different from anything that has been seen on Patji. But what? What had changed . . .

  Sak had not settled down like the others. She stared northward. Toward where Vathi had said the main camp of invaders was setting up.

  Sixth stood up, then clamored down into the room below, Sak on his shoulder. “What are your people doing?”

  Vathi spun at his harsh tone. She had been looking out of the window, northward. “I don’t—”

  He took her by the front of her vest, pulling her toward him in a two-fisted grip, meeting her eyes from only a few inches away. “What are your people doing?”

  Her eyes widened, and he could feel her tremble in his grip, though she set her jaw and held his gaze. Scribes were not supposed to have grit like this. He had seen them scribbling away in their windowless rooms. Sixth tightened his grip on her vest, pulling the fabric so it dug into her skin, and found himself growling softly.

  “Release me,” she said, “and we will speak.”

  “Bah,” he said, letting go. She dropped down a few inches, hitting the floor with a thump. He hadn’t realized he’d lifted her off the ground.

  She backed away, putting as much space between them as the room would allow. He stalked to the window, looking through the mesh screen at the night. His corpse dropped from the roof above, and he stepped back, worried that it was happening again.

  It didn’t, not the same way as before. However, when he turned back into the room, his corpse lay in the corner, bloody lips parted, eyes staring sightlessly. The danger, whatever it was, had not passed.

  Vathi had sat down on the floor, holding her head, trembling. Had he frightened her that soundly? She did look tired, exhausted. She wrapped her arms around herself, and when she looked at him, there was a cast to her eyes that hadn’t been there before. As if she were regarding a wild animal, let off of its chain.

  That seemed fitting.

  “What do you know of the Ones Above?” she asked him.

  “They live in the stars,” Sixth said. “They claim that we once did too.”

  “We at the company have been meeting with them. We don’t understand them, at least not their ways. They look like us, at times they talk like us. But they have . . . rules, laws that they won’t explain. They refuse to sell us their marvels, but in like manner, they seem forbidden from taking things from us, even in trade.”

  “That is fine,” Sixth said. “They are not of us, no matter what they look like. If they leave us alone, we will be better for it.”

  “You haven’t seen the things they can do,” she said softly, getting a distant look in her eyes. “We have barely worked out how to create ships that can sail on their own, against the wind. I thought that development to be amazing until the Ones Above arrived. They can sail the skies . . . sail the stars themselves. They know so much, and they won’t tell us any of it.”

  She shook her head, reaching into the pocket of her skirt. “They are after something, Sixth. Their laws forbade them from contacting us until we were able to harness steam on our own. Now they can speak to us, but their laws won’t let them teach us. If that is the case, what interest do we hold for them? From what I’ve heard them say, there are many worlds like ours, with cultures that cannot sail the stars. We are not unique, yet the Ones Above come back time and time again. They do want something. You can see it in their eyes . . .”

  “What is that?” Sixth asked, nodding to the thing she took from her pocket. It rested in her palm like the shell of a clam, but had a mirror-like face on the top.

  “It is a machine,” she said. “Like a clock, only it never needs to be wound, and it . . . shows things.”

  “What things?”

  “The location of Aviar.”

  “What?”

  “It’s like a map,” she said. “It points the way to Aviar.”

  “That’s how you found my camp,” Sixth said, stepping toward her.

  “Yes.” She rubbed her thumb across the machine’s surface. “We aren’t supposed to have this. It was the possession of an emissary sent to work with us, but he died. The death was natural; he choked while eating. They can die, it appears, even of mundane things. That . . . changed how I view them.

  “The others have asked after his machines, and we will have to return them soon. But this, this tells us what they are after: the Aviar. The Ones Above are always fascinated with them. I think they want to find a way to trade for the birds, a way their laws will allow. They hint that we might not be safe, that not everyone Above follows their laws.”

  “But why did the Aviar react like they did, just now?” Sixth said, turning back to the window. “Why did . . .” Why did I see what I saw? What I’m still seeing, to an extent? His corpse was there, wherever he looked. Slumped by a tree outside, in the corner of the room, hanging out of the trapdoor in the roof. Sloppy. He should have closed that.

  Sak had pulled into his hair like she did when a predator was near.

  “There . . . is a second machine,” Vathi said.

  That’s right. She had said machines, earlier. More than one.

  “Where?” he demanded.

  “On our ship.”

  The direction the Avair had looked.

  “It’s much larger,” Vathi said. “This one in my hand is limited in what it can do. The larger one . . . it can create an enormous map, one of an entire island, then write out a paper with a copy of that map. That map will include a dot marking every Aviar.”

  “And?”

  “And we were going to turn on the machine tonight,” she said. “It takes hours to get ready—like an oven, growing hot—before it’s ready to draw its map for us. The schedule was to turn it on tonight just after sunset so we could use it in the morning.”

  “The others,” Sixth demanded, “they’d use it without you?”

  She grimaced. “Happily. Captain Eusto probably did a dance when I didn’t return from scouting. He’s been worried I would take too much of the credit for this expedition. But the machine isn’t harmful; it merely locates Aviar. You don’t need to worry so much.”

  “Did it do that before,” he demanded, waving toward the night. “When you last used it, did it draw the attention of all the Aviar? Discomfort them?”

  “Well, no,” she said. “But the moment of discomfort has passed, hasn’t it? I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  Nothing. Sak quivered on his shoulder. Sixth saw death all around him. The moment they had used that machine, the corpses had piled up.

  If they used it again, the results would be horrible. Sixth knew it. He could feel it.

  “We’re going to stop them,” he said.

  “What?” Vathi asked. “Tonight?”

  “Yes,” Sixth said, walking to a small hidden cabinet in the wall. He pulled it open, and began to pick through the supplies inside. A second lantern. Extra oil. He would need those.

  “That’s insane,” Vathi said. “Nobody travels the islands at night.”

  “I’ve done it once before. With my uncle.”

  His uncle had died on that trip.

  “You can’t be serious, Sixth. The Nightmaws are out. I’ve heard them.”

  “Traveling quickly,” Sixth said, stuffing supplies into his pack, “and cutting across the center of the island, we can be to your camp by morning. We can stop them from using the Above machine again.”

  “But why would we want to?”

  He shouldered the pack. “Because if we don’t, it will destroy the island.”

  She frowned at him, cocking her head. “You can’t know that. Why do you think you know that?”

  “Come on.” He walked to the hatc down and pulled it open.

  Vathi rose, but pressed back against the wall. “I’m staying here.”

  “They won’t believe me,” he said. “You will have to tell them to stop. You are coming.”

  Vathi licked her lips in what seemed to be a nervous habit. She glanced to the sides, looking for escape, then back at him. Right then, Sixth noticed
his corpse hanging from the pegs in the tree beneath him. He jumped.

  “What was that?” she demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “You keep glancing to the sides,” Vathi said. “What do you think you see, Sixth?”

  “We’re going. Now.”

  “You’ve been alone on the island for a long time,” she said, obviously trying to make her voice soothing. “You’re upset because something unexpected has happened in our arrival. You aren’t thinking clearly. I understand.”

  Sixth drew in a deep breath. “Sak, show her.”

  The bird launched from his shoulder, flapping across the room, landing on Vathi. She turned to the bird, frowning.

  Then she gasped, falling to her knees. Vathi pulled back against the wall, eyes darting from side to side, mouth working but no words coming out. Sixth left her to it for a short time, then raised his arm. Sak returned to him on black wings, dropping a single, dark feather to the ground. She settled in again on his shoulder. That much flying was difficult for her.

  “What was that?” Vathi demanded.

  “Come on,” Sixth said, taking his pack and climbing down out of the room.

  Vathi scrambled to the open hatch. “No. Tell me. What was that?”

  “You saw your corpse.”

  “All about me. Everywhere I looked.”

  “Sak grants that Talent.”

  “There is no such Talent.”

  Sixth looked up at her, halfway down the pegs. “You have seen your death. That is what will happen if your friends use that machine. Death. All of us. The Aviar, everyone living here. I do not know why it will happen, but I know that it will.”

  “You’ve discovered a new Aviar,” Vathi said. “How . . . When . . .”

  “Hand me the lantern,” Sixth said, raising a hand.

  Looking numb, she obeyed, handing it down. He put it into his teeth and climbed down the pegs to the ground. Then he raised the lantern high, looking down the slope toward the jungle below. The inky jungle at night. Like the depths of the ocean.

  He shivered, then whistled. Kokerlii fluttered down from above, landing on his other shoulder. He would hide them. Hide their minds, at least. With that, they had a chance.