Orson Card - Pathfinder

“The land these houses are built on was raised. It’s not as high now, because the weight of the houses presses it down. So some of the passages may have water in them now—this is the river delta, and water is just below the surface everywhere. But as long as we can breathe, we can make it out of here. One long passage leads to the Library of Nothing.”

“How can you know this? Have you gone into these passages before?”

“No,” said Rigg. “But I’ve seen the paths of the people who’ve used them. I know where they went. That’s what I do—I see their paths, even when they’re hidden behind walls or underground.”

“You have a much more useful gift than mine,” she said.

“Mine didn’t get me into this space. Mine doesn’t allow me to disappear in plain day.”

“Yours doesn’t burn you up when you pass through things.”

“I’m sorry I walked through you that time.”

“It wasn’t bad,” she said. “We were both moving—it means we didn’t occupy the same space for very long. Walls are stationary. I’m the only one moving, and the contact lasts a lot longer.”

He held her hands tightly. “What did you call him? The man I knew as Father?”

“Walker,” she said.

“So he was in this house?”

“Yes,” she said. “I told Mother that one of the scholars had inadvertently helped me understand my gift. But really he came here as a gardener. The gardens still show his touch. Why didn’t you know he was here? Couldn’t you see his path?”

“Father—Walker—he doesn’t make a path. He has no path.”

“How could he manage that?”

“I don’t know if he manages it or simply doesn’t have one. He’s a saint, I think. A hero. He has powers other people don’t have.”

“But when I was invisible, he couldn’t see me, the way you can.”

“I can’t see you, I can only see where you were —the spot you passed through and left behind a moment before. And it isn’t seeing, exactly. I can close my eyes or turn my back and still find your path.”

“He said you were the best of us.”

“Us?”

“All his students.”

“So he told you about others?”

“He said the world has bent itself to make us. These powers run strong in this wallfold, he said. So everything depends on us.”

“What everything?” asked Rigg. “Restoring the monarchy? I don’t really care about that.”

“Neither do I,” she said. “Neither did he.”

“He told you so much,” said Rigg. “He told me nothing.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Yes,” he said. “And angry. Why didn’t he trust me?”

“He trusted you most of all, he told me that. He said you were the most ready. His best student.”

“I can’t do anything myself. I can see paths, yes, but I can’t do anything without Umbo—he’s the one who actually lets me move back in time. The way you got me in here. I can’t do anything myself.”

“You knew where this passage was.”

Rigg realized they were wasting time on reassurances that his own gift had value. “We don’t have very long. Someone’s going to notice we’re gone.”

“Probably not ,” she said. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“You’d be surprised how closely they watch.”

“You forget that I’ve walked these rooms and halls for years now,” she said.

“Turning and turning,” he said.

“What?”

“You can’t hold still or you reappear. So you walk in small circles when you want to stay in a room without being visible. Your whole path is full of curlicues.”

“Yes,” she said. “Around and around. I’m so sick of it.”

“So why not reappear?”

“Because they’ll kill me,” she said.

“I thought it was just—they said it was a man who—took your clothes.”

“I was putting up with nonsense like that my whole life. No, this was a man with a knife. I didn’t have time to do anything but rush toward him—I call it ‘rushing’—and then pass through him. He didn’t know where I’d gone. Back then I hardly ever did it—rushing, I mean—and they might not have known I could do it. Now they know, though. Mother told me about the spies. They know everything.”

“They know only what they see and hear,” said Rigg.

“I can’t hear anything when I rush,” she said. “You were so clever to—the slate, I mean. Even Mother never thought of writing me messages and holding them really still.”

“We have to go. But first—can you see any mechanism here that seems to lead outside the room? Any connection to some trigger that might open the door from the outside?”

They both examined the walls of the passage, but there was nothing. The lever that opened it from this side was rooted in the wall, and everything else was hidden.

“I can go into the wall if you want,” she said, “but it’s pitch black in there. I won’t see anything and I certainly can’t feel anything. Except the heat and the thickness of it.”

“No, no, I don’t want you to do that. But . . . I’m such a fool . . . somebody had to build these passages, right? Somebody built the mechanism. If I go back to the beginning, I can find his path. Their paths. I can see where they went when they were hooking everything together.”

“You mean the paths don’t fade?”

“Not really,” said Rigg. “They get fainter, sort of, but it’s more like they get farther —but it’s not actually distance—they’re still there. They never go away or move. Shhh. Let me concentrate.”

It took five minutes for him to find the right time. Long ago there had been another building here, and as he struggled to find exactly the right path, Rigg realized that they must have built this portion of Flacommo’s house while the old house was still standing. To hide what they were doing from view.

Once he had the right paths, the answer was clear. “The trigger is in the ceiling of the corridor,” he said. “Too high up for us to reach, even if we jump. But if we had a broom, or a sword, or . . . anything with a handle . . . he worked in spots right at the corners of the wall panel. Maybe you have to push both. Or maybe one opens it and the other closes it.”

“Let’s go out and see,” she said.

Rigg reached for the lever.

“Wait!” she said. “What if somebody’s out there?”

“I’d know it if they were,” said Rigg. “There’s nobody.”

“When we go out, we can’t talk any more.”

“But there’s always tomorrow. And the next day.”

“Rigg,” she said, and hugged him again. “You know I’ve gotten younger, waiting for you,” she said.

“Younger?”

“When I rush, the rest of the world flies by. When I’m going really fast, whole days can pass in what seems like a few minutes to me. Most of the time I don’t rush so hard, but—”

“How do you know how much time has passed for you?” asked Rigg. “How do you measure time when you’re rushing?”

“Let’s just say . . . it’s a pretty accurate method. I know how many days have passed in the regular world, and I can—I measure my time by the month. Do you understand? I know when a month has passed for me. And since I went into seclusion, it’s only been two months for me. Everybody else has aged more than a year. But two months for me. So they think I’m sixteen now, but my body has barely lived through fifteen years. At this rate I’ll live forever—only I’ll have no life at all.”

She was crying. Not like a child, face bunched up and whining noises, but like a woman, silently, her shoulders heaving as he held her. “Param, we’ll get you out of here.”

“Getting out of this house isn’t enough. They’ll hunt us down in the city, in the library, wherever we go.”