Shadowland: Book III of the Brotherhood of the Conch, Page 3

  “What happened to the Brotherhood?” Nisha blurted out.

  “I’m not sure. The healers most adept in magic were probably pulled into the other world with the conch. The others may be stuck in the abyss. Poor souls!”

  Anand remembered his first time in the abyss, when he’d lost both the conch and Nisha in its violent, black whirling. He shuddered, imagining how terrifying it must be to be caught in that whirling forever, not knowing what had occurred.

  “Can’t you do something to help them?” he asked.

  The hermit shook his head. “I relinquished all such skills a long time ago, when I chose the meditative life. There’s only one remedy to this problem. Someone must go into the other world and retrieve the conch, which has the power to set things right by its mere presence. Perhaps the two of you can do it.”

  “Us?” Anand cried, aghast. “By ourselves?”

  The hermit nodded. “You have reserves that run deep, though you are not aware of them yet. And the healers have taught you many skills.”

  Anand wasn’t convinced. But before he could express his doubts, Nisha said, “Without the conch to open a portal for us, how can we travel to another world?”

  “That is a problem,” the hermit admitted. “Is there perhaps another object of power to which you have access?”

  Anand stared into the firelight, thinking hard. The objects of power that had been there in the valley had all disappeared with the conch. Probably there were other such objects hidden in the everyday world of the cities, but he did not know how to find them.

  As he blew out his breath in a great, disheartened sigh, the orange flames leaped up. He thought he saw a flash at the heart of the fire. It looked like a small square of glass. And, just like that, he remembered the Mirror of Fire and Dreaming. After defeating the jinn, Anand had left the mirror in the care of the Nawab’s son. But the mirror had promised to come to Anand’s aid if he needed it again.

  What could be a greater need than this?

  Excited, he turned to Nisha. “We’ll ask the mirror to help us,” he said.

  Nisha’s eyes lost some of their worry. To the hermit, who was looking at them questioningly, she explained, “Not only can this mirror take you to any place you need to visit, but it can also get you into buildings that may be heavily guarded. That’s how we got into the Nawab’s treasure house the last time and rescued the conch.”

  “It is the perfect object, then, and you are fortunate to have its friendship,” said the hermit. “I’ll add my mental energy to your invitation.” He sprinkled a handful of dust onto the fire—but perhaps it wasn’t dust, for it made the flames turn a deep pomegranate color—and took their hands in his gaunt ones.

  Sitting in a circle, hands clasped, the three of them closed their eyes and focused. Anand couldn’t quite remember what the mirror looked like, but he did remember how it had felt in his hands, hot and throbbing and heavier than normal as it showed him scenes from another time. He focused on that feeling and used Search, a skill that fashioned his mental energy into the shape of an arrow, and launched it into space.

  * * *

  Anand wasn’t sure how much time had passed since he had closed his eyes. His head ached with effort. A Search arrow was supposed to be able to find whatever a healer was looking for and communicate the healer’s thoughts to it. But Anand had never tried to use Search to reach another period of time. Was it even possible? He was about to give up when, to his excitement, he felt words forming in his mind.

  Anand! Why do you call me?

  In response Anand sent out an image of the devastated valley. We need you to take us to the conch, he added. You’re our only hope.

  The answer floated back to Anand, gracious in its simplicity. Then I will come.

  Anand opened his eyes. Before he could explain to his companions what had taken place, there was a crash, along with a fountain of light. A shining square of about three handspans appeared on the floor of the cave. It was the mirror.

  The hermit looked at it with great interest. “I do believe this is one of the three looking glasses forged in the Age of Truth from the sands of the Great Northern Desert.” Closing his eyes, he held the mirror in his hands for a while. Then he said, “I have told it all I know of the world into which you must go. Find the conch and return as soon as you can. Most importantly, do not get involved in the events of that world, be they good or bad. And hurry. Right now the shape of the valley, being new, is malleable. I can help keep it so—but not for long. In seven days, the universe will harden itself around this new shape. Then even the conch might not be able to restore it.”

  Nisha—always intrepid—was the first to approach the shining square. She bowed to the mirror, and then turned to Anand, eyes dancing at the possibility of a new adventure. “I, for one, am ready to leave this dreary place!” she said, placing her feet squarely on the mirror.

  Just as she disappeared with a flash, Anand heard the hermit laugh. At the sound, a strange foreboding filled him. Did the hermit laugh because the world into which the mirror would plunge them was far worse than this present moment on the chill mountainside? What kind of creatures inhabited this world? How powerful they must have been, to pull the conch from its home! How could Anand hope to wrest the conch from their grasp? But there was no time to hesitate. He stepped onto the mirror and felt its cool smoothness through the soles of his shoes. A burst of light dazzled him, and he felt himself tumbling with amazing speed into the abyss that lies beneath the dimensions.

  3

  SHADOWLAND

  Anand landed on his back on a rough surface, the breath knocked out of him. He sat up, shaking his dazed head. The journey through the abyss—different each time—had felt like he was being spun in one of the mixie-machines his mother had described to him when she worked as a maid in a rich man’s house. He took a deep breath to clear his head, but this only made him feel worse. That was when he noticed the brownness. It was all around him: on the cracked pavement where he had landed, on the walls of the gutted buildings, on the metal poles that looked like lampposts but were much taller—and in the air. Was he in the midst of a dust storm? Was it smoke of some kind? But when he looked around, he realized that the brownness was even and stretched as far as the eye could see, obscuring the sky so that he could not tell what time of day it was. He realized with a shock that in the world to which the conch had been pulled, the air had turned brown. It had a strange, scorched smell to it and scraped his throat as he breathed, making him want to retch. Nisha, who had landed near him, scrunched up her nose and coughed.

  “The air tastes funny, like rusted metal,” she whispered. “And everything is—faded. Are we in Shadowland?”

  Anand shivered. According to the books of lore they had studied, Shadowland was the world occupied by the restless spirits of those who had met violent ends. He knew it couldn’t be. The dead had no need of the conch’s powers. Still, he felt deeply uneasy.

  Nisha was dressed in a baggy brown bodysuit that extended from her neck all the way to her feet. It looked like a uniform of some kind. Glancing down, Anand saw that he was similarly clothed. He knew from earlier experience that the mirror had the ability to change people’s appearance to fit the world to which it transported them, and he wondered who he was supposed to be here.

  Anand peered around to see what other people (if indeed people inhabited this world) were wearing, and how they dealt with the rusty air that was getting increasingly hard to breathe. But the alleyway in which he found himself was completely empty. With a little shiver, he realized that they were in a bad part of town. Piles of garbage were heaped against large buildings that looked like abandoned warehouses or apartment complexes. Graffiti—strange, tantalizing red scrawls that Anand could almost decipher—disfigured their walls. As he stared at them, he heard the sound of an approaching siren, a high-pitched, nerve-racking sound he recognized from his old life in Kolkata. Some things, at least, were no different here.

  “Som
eone is in trouble—or about to get into it,” he rasped to Nisha. “We’d better find a hiding place.” She nodded. As a street child, she knew that the farther one stayed from the authorities, the better. But as Anand glanced around for a sanctuary, she pulled at something around his neck.

  “What’s this?”

  He looked down. It was an assortment of tubes, one end of which disappeared into the suit. The other opened into a bowl-like structure with an elastic band attached to its rim.

  “Maybe it goes over your nose and mouth,” he guessed. Nisha’s suit had the same tubed attachments. They pulled the bowls over their faces.

  “Ah! It’s a lot easier to breathe now,” Nisha said thankfully. From inside the bowl, her voice sounded distorted, mechanical. But Anand had no chance to remark on this—nor on a quick movement he’d caught, out of the corner of his eye, near an abandoned building—because the sirens had suddenly grown very loud. They sounded as if they were directly overhead. Looking up, he saw that high above them ran a crisscross of raised, see-through roadways, and along one of them a red bullet-shaped car was fast approaching. Strobe lights flashed from it.

  “Quick!” he called, grabbing Nisha’s elbow, dragging her toward the only hiding place he could think of—the nearest pile of garbage.

  “Even if they see us, they can’t get down here,” Nisha whispered, as they ran toward a stack of furniture that looked like it had met a violent end.

  But as Anand nodded agreement, he saw the bullet car lift off the road. Whirring blades, as on a helicopter, had appeared on its roof, allowing it to land right next to the young people. Two red creatures—he did not know what else to call them—jumped out, carrying what Anand suspected to be weapons: long blue tubes with tiny holes. Before Anand and Nisha could dive behind a broken sofa, the creatures had grabbed them and clapped a thin metal collar around each of their necks. Anand pulled at his, trying to tear it off, but it was immensely strong. The cold metal sent a shiver through him as he wondered what it was for.

  “Take out your time and place permits,” the taller of the two creatures barked. Up close, Anand could see that it was actually a man in a tight-fitting bodysuit made of a shiny red material. He wore a red mask that molded itself to his face, obscuring his features. Though he understood what the man said, Anand didn’t recognize the language he spoke. But like the graffiti, it tantalized him with a sense of familiarity.

  At least, he thought with a sigh of relief, he was in a world peopled by humans.

  “What’s a time and space permit?” Nisha asked, speaking in the same language. Obviously, the mirror had adjusted their speech as well as their appearance.

  The mirror! It was still lying on the edge of the street, in the spot where they had entered this world! Anand could see it glinting faintly through the smoky air. It was a wonder that the policemen (if that was who they were) hadn’t noticed it yet.

  Anand knew he had to hide it. But how would he manage that?

  “Don’t act smart with us, girl!” the other man, who was short and burly, said. “Everyone knows what permits are.” His hand shot out with startling speed to deliver a cuff to Nisha’s head. But Nisha’s years as a street child had been spent dodging many similar blows. She leaped back with amazing agility, and then, before the man realized what had happened, she rushed forward, barreling into him with all her might. The policeman wasn’t expecting such a response. (Anand suspected that his victims were usually too cowed to attack back.) He lost his balance and landed heavily on the ground, the breath audibly knocked out of him. Yelling at Anand to follow, Nisha ran toward the nearest building, intending to jump through a broken window. But the other policeman aimed his blue cylinder at them. Anand stiffened, expecting bullets or maybe a stream of fire. He saw nothing, but a paralyzing pain wrenched his joints and he fell to the ground. Nisha had suffered the same fate. His heart beat faster as he listened to the ominous tread of approaching boots. What would happen to them now?

  He was equally worried about the mirror, still lying exposed on the street. Whatever force had torn the conch from the Silver Valley would not spare the mirror if it sensed its presence. And if anything happened to the mirror, they would be trapped forever in this nightmare world.

  Help me to help you! he cried silently to the mirror.

  In response, a ray of light arced from the mirror to where Nisha lay. It fell on her face, lighting it up, and then seemed to travel into her. She sat up slowly, shaking her head as though emerging from underwater. When she spoke to the staring policemen, her voice was calm and very pleasant. “Please forgive my previous action, sirs. Panic made me respond in such an inappropriate manner. We come from a faraway place. We have never been in this city before. Our customs are different, so we don’t know about the permits you mentioned.”

  Anand held his breath. Nisha was using Persuasion—but at a very high level, far beyond the capacity of even a senior apprentice. Had the mirror enhanced her skill?

  The man sprawled on the ground gave an angry snort of disbelief, but the other policeman tapped his chin. “It’s possible,” he said to his companion. “Remember how last year we heard that one of the guards had found some people from the Outer Lands?”

  “Yes!” The shorter man sat up, excited. “I heard he made a solid bundle of money from it, too, turning them in to one of the rehabitationals. Maybe we can do the same!”

  “You’d better keep your hands to yourself, then,” his partner responded. “Our clients don’t like damaged goods.”

  While the men were busy conferring, Anand crawled to the mirror. He was afraid that if he took the mirror to the garbage pile to hide it, the policemen would notice him. So he picked it up and, with a whisper of apology, lobbed it onto a pile of mattresses that leaked stuffing. Keep yourself safe until I can come back to you, he said.

  I will, came the answer. The ray of light faded.

  “What was that?” said the short policeman, looking around suspiciously. “I thought I saw something shining in the sky.”

  “Probably another meteor shower,” his companion responded. “Let’s get these two to Rehabitational 39—that’s the closest one— before it hits us and collects our payment.”

  Anand and Nisha were herded into the backseat of the bullet car, which was fenced in by thick black bars. The windows were blacked out, so they could see nothing outside. The short policeman glowered at them as he slammed the door, but he did not attempt to hurt them. Anand guessed that the officer’s newly found self-control was motivated largely by greed. As the car took off with an impatient jerk, with a sinking heart he wondered what waited for them at their destination.

  * * *

  Anand sank down on the narrow metal cot nailed to the floor of the room into which he’d been thrust and looked around in dismay. The cot took up most of the small, low room, and Anand could barely stand up without hitting his head on the ceiling. The walls around him were made of some kind of wiry mesh. When Anand touched it, the mesh gave off an electrical charge that tingled unpleasantly all the way up his arm. Startled, he jumped back—and was further startled by the sound of laughter. At least that’s what he thought it was; the sound was choked off almost immediately. Looking into the next cell—for that’s what these rooms were, he realized—he saw that it held a curly-haired boy about the same age as him. He was dressed in a too-small uniform the color of mud—the same kind of clothes that Anand had been given upon being admitted into the rehabitational. The boy gestured, a series of fluid hand movements that Anand guessed was some kind of sign language.

  Anand shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he began to say. But scarcely had he spoken the first word when a shooting pain came from the collar around his neck, making him gasp and stagger. The boy grimaced, pointing to his own neck. Anand saw that he, too, wore a similar collar. Now he understood! The collars were voice-sensitive devices, activated whenever the authorities wanted to prevent the people forced to wear them from communicating with each other. Hi
s heart sank. He desperately needed to know more about this strange world, but it was impossible.

  He wasn’t sure how many hours had passed since the policemen brought Nisha and him to the rehabitational, a hulking, sooty structure with no windows. Was it morning, or was it still night? It was imperative to keep track of time. Otherwise, how would he be able to get back to the valley within a week, as the hermit had warned them to?

  Upon arrival, Anand and Nisha had been herded to the Intake Department and separated from each other. There, men in black uniforms bombarded Anand with questions about his name, his tribe, his place of origin, and his reason for being in this city. He was unable to provide satisfactory answers to any of these. He wondered how Nisha was faring; he hoped that she was holding on to her temper.

  At first Anand’s interrogators had been angry, but then they hooked him up to a machine and decided he wasn’t lying to them. They, too, came to the conclusion that he had arrived from the Outer Lands but suspected that he was suffering from memory loss, probably as a result of some trauma.

  “I wonder what happened to him,” one of the smaller uniforms said in a voice that was softer than the others. With a start, Anand realized that it was a woman.

  The man who had led the interrogation shrugged. “Who knows? Just being here in the city of Coal is enough to traumatize anyone, especially some poor fool from the Outer Lands!” His voice turned stern. “M-4372, you know the rules: You must not show interest in any of the inmates, or get involved with them in any manner. Otherwise you won’t be able to do your job—and then we might have to send you to the Outer Lands!” Several of the black uniforms hiccupped with laughter at the joke, but the woman seemed frightened and did not speak again.