Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

Then he would erase a corner of the slate and write messages to her. He would print them out and then hold the slate as still as he could, so that she could still have plenty of time to read them. And he saw right away that she was reading them, for she orbited around him while he was writing to her, though she couldn’t answer with chalk or voice.

He told her little bits about his own life—about Father, how he died, how they had lived together. About discovering the truth—especially that he had a sister, something he had never suspected until Father lay there dying and told him to go find her.

He told her some things about Umbo and less about Loaf—but enough so she’d know he hadn’t planned to come alone. But he didn’t say anything except what General Citizen knew—nothing about the jewels, or the knife Rigg had stolen from the past; nothing about Umbo’s ability or the way it allowed Rigg to go back in time.

He also told her about the secret passages—the ones that the spies used, and the ones that hadn’t been used in centuries. “I don’t know if they are blocked or forgotten,” he wrote to her. “I can see where entrances are . . .”—erase, write again—“but I don’t know how to open them.” Erase again. “When I’m out of sight for long, someone looks for me.”

One morning, when he went to pull the slate from the place he had stashed it that night before he fell asleep in the garden, he found that it had been moved and someone had written on it in a tiny, barely legible scrawl—chalk was not designed to make letters so small.

“I am afraid brother. Mother is plotting. We will be killed.”

Rigg clutched the slate, reread the message, and then erased it thoroughly. She must have come to him in the night while everyone was sleeping and allowed herself to enter realtime long enough to write the message.

Mother is plotting? So she wasn’t the innocent she seemed to be. But how could she plot with anyone? Whom could she talk to without being observed?

More to the point, though, was Param’s fear. We will be killed, she said. But did she mean that the Council would execute them after Mother’s plots failed? Or that Mother’s plotting included plans to have them killed? Mother might be willing to sacrifice Rigg, but he doubted she would actively seek Param’s death. So the danger must be from someone else. Or perhaps Mother’s plot included escaping from Flacommo’s house in order to lead a rebellion, leaving him and Param behind for whatever retribution the Council decided on.

He needed to talk to Param all the more. He looked for her path and found it—but she had apparently moved away from him visibly last night, because she was far away by dawn, back in Mother’s room.

That evening she was already waiting when he brought his slate out into the garden. “We must talk,” he wrote. “I know ways out of this house . . . if we can get into the passages . . . one of them leads to the library . . . We can hide there to talk . . . very quick talks so no one notices we’re gone.”

Then he erased “we’re” and replaced it with “I’m,” since no one would know whether she was missing or not.

That night he tried not to sleep, hoping she would come again and he might see her. But sleep overcame his plans, and he woke with someone jostling his shoulder. As he stirred, a hand lightly touched his lips. He opened his eyes. It was a woman’s shape, but he couldn’t make out a face.

He got up silently and followed her. She moved unerringly, keeping to her habit of walking near the edge of each corridor and skirting around the borders of each room. She seemed to know the routines of the night quite perfectly—and why wouldn’t she? They encountered no one.

Finally they were in a rarely used corridor that led to some guest rooms. She stopped, and Rigg approached her. “Param?” he whispered softly.

In reply, she embraced him and whispered in his ear, “O my brother, he said that you would come.”

In that moment Rigg realized that Father must have come to her, as he had come to Umbo and Nox, and helped her learn to control and use her power. For who else could have promised her anything about Rigg? Who else knew that he existed? Yet had Father ever been gone from Fall Ford without Rigg long enough to come to Aressa Sessamo and return again? Rigg knew it would be foolish to think that anything was impossible to Father. In a world where Rigg, Umbo, Param, and Nox had such odd powers, who knew what Father was capable of?

“There’s an entrance to the unused passages not far from here,” he whispered back.

She gave him her hand, and he led her to the place. He could see old paths as they moved through what now seemed to be solid wall. As he had done before, he passed a hand all the way around the aperture, but couldn’t find any sign of it.

She touched his shoulder and drew him away. “There’s really a door there?” she whispered.

“There was. But not used in two hundred years.”

“So the wall cannot be stone or cement or brick,” she said.

“It’s an interior wall. I assume that even if they sealed it up, it would still be lath-and-plaster or wood. But I don’t know. Does it matter? It might be light enough that we could kick it in—but then we could never close it behind us.”

In reply, she pushed him gently against the opposite wall of the corridor: Stay, the gesture meant. He watched as she quickly faded, then stood patiently waiting as she passed into the wall, her path echoing exactly the paths of the people who had once used this passage.

On the other side of the wall, he couldn’t tell what she was doing. But after a while, he heard the faintest thud and then a ping, as if a long unused spring had been forced into service after the loosing of a latch. To his surprise, instead of a doorway opening in the wall, the whole section of wall between support posts rose up smoothly, revealing a passage behind it—with Param there waiting.

Rigg stepped through into the passage. Param worked a lever and the wall slid silently back down. No wonder Rigg hadn’t been able to find a door. Just one of the limitations of his gift. He could tell where people had passed, but not what the place had looked like when they came through.

Rigg had expected the passage to be dark, but there was a faint silvery light. He made his way toward the seeming source of the light, wondering if there was some exterior vent that let in the ringlight.

It was soon clear that the light came from a mirror, which was reflecting light from another mirror—beyond that Rigg could not see how many other bends there might be. The light in this space was ringlight. On a cloudy night, this passage would require a candle—or such knowledge of it as would allow someone to pass through it in the dark.

“Did it hurt you?” he asked. “To go through the wall? Or door, or whatever it is?”

“Yes,” she said. She held out a hand. He touched it and recoiled. She was hot, like a child with a bad fever. He touched her forehead, her cheek. Hot all over.