Broken Ground Read online

  Contents

  Swan Symbol

  Greencloak Letter

  Quote Page

  Title Page

  Map

  1: SHADOWS IN STETRIOL

  2: EYES IN THE DARK

  3: UNWELCOME NEWS

  4: SETTING SAIL

  5: CALL TO THE KING

  6: SHADOW PLAY

  7: TROUBLE AT SEA

  8: THE DANGEROUS DEEP

  9: THE LEFT PATH

  10: STETRIOL’S WELCOME

  11: THE ARACHANE FIELDS

  12: THE FESTIVAL

  13: THE CHASE

  14: UP IN FLAMES

  15: FALLING

  16: ATTACK ON STETRIOL

  17: NEWS AT SEA

  18: GREENHAVEN HAS FALLEN

  About the Author

  Online Game Code

  Sneak Peek

  Spirit Animals Game

  Copyright

  CLOUDS RAKED ACROSS THE SKY, BLOTTING OUT THE MOON and stars.

  It was not a night for looking up.

  If it had been, someone in Stetriol might have seen the shadows slipping over the rooftops, the shapes perched like gargoyles atop the walls. Someone might have seen the young man standing at the peak of a roof like a weathervane, his face hidden behind a pale, horned mask, his dark cloak snapping in the breeze. But all eyes were down, focused on books and hearths, meals and fires and drinks, and no one noticed.

  The figure straightened and began to walk lithely along the spines of the shingled roofs, the cloak billowing behind him. In the color-stripped night, the cloak looked black, but when he paused and the lamplight flickered up from the roads and courtyards below and caught the fabric, it shone red.

  All around him, Stetriol was alive in a way it hadn’t been in ages. The city had a pulse again, and it was beating, beating, beating in time with his heart, his steps.

  The streets fell away below him as he moved with animal grace over the tops of shops and houses until he found the one he was looking for. He paused against a chimney, then sank into a crouch, the horns of his mask catching the light before vanishing with the rest of him into shadow.

  In a courtyard below, a girl sat on the rim of a fountain, her long white-blond hair twisted up around her head like a crown. Her legs swished absently in the shallow pool, where a large swan drifted, its feathers as white as sunlight on snow. Behind the horned mask, the young man’s eyes—not human eyes, but slit sideways, like a ram’s—widened at the sight of the animal, and he leaned forward at an almost impossible angle, entranced as the swan slid gracefully over the water’s surface.

  So the rumors were true.

  Ninani had come to Stetriol.

  The girl’s hair and the swan’s feathers made twin pools of pale white light against the muted greens and blues and shadow grays of the courtyard. The girl had a book open and was reading aloud to the swan, her voice soft and sweet, the words lost beneath the gentle swish of the water around her legs.

  Back on the rooftop, a flash of movement caught the man’s eyes; another cloaked figure appeared on the opposite wall of the courtyard, only the snout of a coyote mask visible against the slated roof. Howl. The canine figure shifted his weight; on the ground, he was unstoppable, but he’d never been comfortable with heights.

  Howl, the first signed in greeting.

  Stead, the second signed back.

  A third cloaked shadow sprang out of the darkness to Howl’s right, a feline smile carved into the mask that hid her face, her movements so smooth he hadn’t even noticed her approach.

  Shadow.

  The girl signed a dismissive hello, then sank into a crouch and steadied herself on the roof, her nails glinting, curved and sharp as a cat’s.

  The three perched like stone statues above the courtyard, surrounding the girl and her spirit animal as she read on, unaware of their presence. Howl shifted his footing a second time.

  What now? signed Shadow, her fingers dancing lazily through the air.

  The young man in the horned mask—Stead, they called him—squinted, and then signed his command. Send word to King.

  Shadow drew a finger around her head in answer. The sign for horns was the same as the one for crown. They had wanted to call him that. Crown. He was, after all, King’s second-in-command. But the gesture made Stead uncomfortable—his loyalty to their leader was absolute, unflinching—so he’d opted for Stead. As in steadfast or steady-on-your-feet.

  He waved Shadow’s tease away.

  Below, the girl trailed off and went to turn the page when the book slipped from her hands. She fumbled with it, but it fell, bounced off her knee, and landed with a splash in the fountain.

  The swan bristled, fluttering her wings.

  “Oops,” whispered the girl, dragging the sodden book out of the water. She held it up by one corner, and sighed as water dripped from the pages. “Don’t tell Father.”

  She set the book aside; it landed with a soft wet smack on the fountain’s edge.

  Just then, Howl shifted his footing a third time, and slipped.

  A loose tile beneath his boot came free and went skittering down the peak of the roof. Howl managed to catch himself against the nearest chimney, but he was too late to save the tile. It rocketed forward toward the edge of the roof and the courtyard below. Stead recoiled, back pressed against the chimney, already braced for the crash, but Shadow lunged, body arcing gracefully, and caught the slate with a claw-like nail before it could plummet down to the courtyard floor.

  Mortar pebbles skittered down the roof and over the edge, as soft as rain.

  The cloaked figures held their breath.

  Below, the swan stilled in her pool.

  The girl looked up, but it was dark above the lanterns. “What was that?” she asked softly. She and the swan both craned their necks. The girl squinted, as if she could almost see the outline of a figure, the edge of a mask.

  “Tasha!” called a voice from within the house. The girl’s attention wavered, drifted back down to the fountain and the house behind her.

  “Must have been a bird,” said the girl. “Or a mouse. Or the wind.” She swung her legs out of the water, and then trailed her fingers through its glassy surface.

  “Come on, Ninani,” she said pleasantly.

  The swan fluttered for a moment, lifting her wings as if about to take flight, before disappearing in a flash of light. As she vanished, a mark appeared, black as ink against the girl’s fair skin, a swan wrapping from wrist to elbow. With that the girl padded inside, leaving a trail of damp footprints in her wake.

  Tasha. So that was her name.

  The moment she was gone, the feline Shadow uncoiled and hauled herself upright on the roof. Her usually green eyes were black, the pupils blown out in the low light, and they glared daggers at Howl. She looked as if she planned to chuck the discarded tile at his head.

  “Idiot,” she hissed aloud.

  “We weren’t all meant for scaling buildings,” he growled in return.

  “Enough,” ordered Stead, his voice low and even. Howl and Shadow both drew breath, as if about to go on, when Stead’s hand shot up in warning.

  A sound, like the shuffle of bare feet on stone.

  An instant later Tasha hurried back out into the courtyard to retrieve the book she’d left on the fountain’s edge. Halfway there, she caught her foot on a mat, and nearly stumbled before righting herself and taking up the sodden book. She pressed the covers together to squeeze out the last of the water and turned back toward the house.

  And stopped.

  She hesitated, cast a last look at the rooftops and the night sky above.

  “Tasha!” called the voice again.

  And then the girl was gone, retreating back inside.

 
When the courtyard had been still for several moments, Stead made a signal with one hand, a silent command to retreat. Shadow set the roof tile against the nearest chimney, and she and Howl peeled away, vanishing into the dark. He watched them go with his sharp, slit gold eyes, and then looked back at the courtyard, the damp footprints already beginning to disappear.

  Tasha.

  They knew where she was now.

  Where Ninani was.

  And they would be back.

  With that, Stead slipped away and followed the others into shadow and night.

  THE TORCHLIGHT MADE THEIR SHADOWS DANCE.

  They walked through the tunnels below the world, casting a train of eerie silhouettes, all stretched out and flickering against the cave walls. Conor tried to focus on the people instead of their monstrous shadows, but he couldn’t stop his eyes from wandering to the rock walls, where their distorted versions twisted and hovered. Meilin, Takoda, and Xanthe were nothing but spindly forms. Briggan’s shadow was low, all ears and tail.

  But it was Kovo’s that disturbed him most.

  The ape’s shadow stretched and loomed, towering over the others with its teeth bared. In the haunting, unsteady light, Conor thought he could even see the beast’s red eyes glowing impossibly in the shadow’s warping face.

  Conor swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to separate what was real from what was fever and fatigue. More and more, the two blurred together in his sight. The edges weren’t sharp, and if he didn’t focus, the nightmares could slip so easily out of his dreams and into the darkened tunnels around them.

  “Are you sure you know where you’re going?” asked Meilin—the real Meilin, not shadow but flesh and blood and stern resolve—from the path ahead. She was gripping the torchlight, angling its beam from the pale pink eyes of the other girl, the one who was leading the group through the underground maze.

  “I’m sure,” said Xanthe.

  “How can you be sure?” muttered Meilin. “Everything looks the same … ”

  “Maybe to you,” said Xanthe simply, running a delicate hand along the wall.

  But it looked the same to Conor, too. Now and then he could feel the ground beneath them slope slightly downward, could feel the air get a fraction warmer or colder, a strange current like the breath of a sleeping beast. But otherwise, the tangled tunnels of Sadre did all look the same. An endless repetition of caves and caverns and tunnels. He felt like they were going in circles. Spirals.

  How could Xanthe possibly know where they were going? And yet, she seemed to.

  They came to a kind of crossroads in the tunnel. The three paths, one ahead and one to either side, looked identical. Xanthe held up a hand for them to stop, while she alone continued forward to the very center of the intersection. She readjusted the pack on her shoulder and knelt, laying her hands flat against the stone, and closing her eyes. Conor didn’t know if she was listening or feeling or smelling or using some other sense he didn’t have. All he knew was that, when she opened her eyes a few seconds later and straightened, she gestured to the tunnel on the left.

  “This way,” she said, continuing on without even looking back.

  Kovo and Meilin each let out a skeptical sound, something between a sigh and a grunt, then shot dark looks at each other. Takoda chuckled, and even Conor managed a smile. It wasn’t the first time the two had behaved alike. Meilin might have summoned Jhi the Panda, the picture of serenity, but she was as stubborn as the ape when she wanted to be.

  Meilin strode after Xanthe, and Takoda and Kovo fell in step behind.

  Now that he’d stopped, Conor’s body felt sluggish, detached, and he struggled to make it move again. When the others had entered the tunnel and he had not, Briggan’s muzzle found his thigh, nudging him forward. The gesture was small, but enough to coax his legs into motion.

  “Thanks,” he whispered tiredly, running a hand along the wolf’s scruff. Briggan leaned against his leg, not hard enough to set him off balance. Just enough to show Conor that he could lean on him, too.

  “It’s not magic,” Xanthe was saying when Conor caught up.

  “Then how do you do it?” asked Meilin. “How do you know which way to go?”

  “I listen to the caves,” answered Xanthe, as if this explained it.

  “Will you teach me?” pressed Meilin, and Conor wondered if her insistence was because she didn’t think Xanthe really knew where they were going, or if Meilin simply didn’t like relying on anyone else for help. Probably both.

  Xanthe chewed her lip. “I don’t think I can teach you,” she said. “I know because I have always known. And I have always known because I need to know.”

  Meilin frowned. “Well, that is both mysterious and entirely unhelpful.”

  “Sorry.”

  Takoda, who’d been busy trying to teach Kovo how to sign a question instead of a statement—and having no success—looked up. “So everyone down here knows how to find their way?”

  “Not everyone,” said Xanthe, stepping up and over a low rock, and holding a few tendrils of mossy rope out of the way so they could pass. “When the children in Sadre are—were—old enough to walk, our mothers and fathers would take us to a place in the caves, somewhere close to our homes, and leave us.”

  Meilin let out a short gasp. “That’s awful.”

  Xanthe shrugged. “It wasn’t far, and almost all the children could find their way back.”

  Almost all, thought Conor grimly. And what of those who couldn’t? He’d seen animals in the wild abandon their young, focus their time and energy on those strong enough to survive.

  “The next year,” continued Xanthe, skirting a crumbled section of wall, “the parents would take the children farther, somewhere with a few twists or turns, but still not too many dangers, and they would return home to wait. Every year, the children were taken somewhere and left to find their way, and every year, the path got harder, the pitfalls more precarious. Parents would spend all year teaching their children about the caves—how to make light, how to find food, which water was safe to drink, which mushrooms were edible and which were toxic, how to tell where you were from the direction of the markings left by water in the rocks—to help them survive that one day. Every year … ” Xanthe trailed off, lost in her own thoughts. Perhaps in memories of Phos Astos and the family she’d lost.

  When Xanthe spoke again, she was smiling, but her voice was laced with sadness. “So no,” she said apologetically. “I don’t think I can teach you.”

  Meilin stared at the girl with a look Conor had rarely seen before on the warrior from Zhong. He thought it might be respect. Or awe. Takoda’s mouth was open. Even Kovo’s face was steady with appraisal.

  The tunnels around them were changing again, oscillating. Their ceilings and sides rose and fell in a way that made Conor’s head swim. He felt himself stumble once, then again, over loose rocks. The second time, he stuck out his hand and caught himself against an outcrop, the wall’s texture strange and chalky against his hand.

  The stone was darker here, flaking like charred coal under his touch and smudging on his skin. A drop of sweat ran down his cheek and landed on his palm, turning the black ash into ink. He shuddered, feeling unwell, but straightened and forced himself to follow.

  “Watch your step,” called Xanthe, treading gingerly around a hole in the center of the floor.

  Conor wouldn’t have noticed it. Even knowing it was there, he nearly fell, and then he realized, too late, that it wasn’t clumsiness or fatigue slowing him down, weakening his limbs and robbing him of balance.

  It was the parasite working its way through his body.

  Panic rippled through him. He’d wanted to forget so badly that he almost had. Now the remembering hit him like a blow. His skin was burning, but his blood felt icy in his veins. The shiver, once an occasional thing, was now constant, a tremor that followed him through the days—if they could be called days in a place without sun—and into fevered sleep.

  Briggan pad
ded along beside him, his body a simple reassuring presence in the dark. Conor curled his fingers in the wolf’s fur, then recoiled as he felt the parasite shift beneath his skin.

  A voice—like water over rocks—whispered through his head.

  Xanthe glanced over her shoulder at Conor, and he fought back a shudder. Her pale skin, white hair, pink eyes, suddenly reminded him of the Many, those horrible creatures that had somehow once been human, and were now only things. And soon, too soon, Conor would be one, too.

  Was there anything left of the Many but teeth and nails and horror?

  What would be left of him?

  The only physical difference between him and them was the dark spiral that marked their foreheads, and once the parasite finished its slow trek through his body, it would leave that mark on him, too.

  How far had it spread?

  He didn’t want to see.

  Didn’t want to know.

  But he had to.

  Conor bit his cheek and slid the fabric of his sleeve up to his elbow. The last time he’d checked, days before, the spiraled tip of the mark stopped there, in the crook of his arm. He’d marked it with his nail, scratching a thin red line to note the parasite’s progress. The line was still there, but the streak of black had vanished beneath his shirtsleeve. It was still moving, and Conor could only imagine the path it would take up toward his shoulder, his throat, his cheek, his forehead. He gripped his forearm until it ached, until his fingers left bruises on the skin. But it did nothing to stop the thing moving through him, just as it couldn’t stop the whispers starting in his head, as soft and steady as a distant stream. Words muffled like voices beyond a door. Words he couldn’t understand, and didn’t want to.

  Conor shook his head, trying to push away the voices, the image of the Many, the fear, and to remind himself that he still had a chance, still had time. If they could get to the Wyrm before the Evertree died, if they could defeat the age-old creature, if winning could save the infected, if, if, if …

  Briggan looked up at him, his blue canine eyes wise and worried.

  “It’s okay,” said Conor, trying to still the tremor in his voice, to sound calm and soothing, the way he did when he spoke to his sheep so long ago, when he was just a shepherd. Not a boy famous for summoning one of the Great Beasts. “We’ll be okay.”