The Seekers: The Children of Darkness (Dystopian Sci-Fi - Book 1) (10 page)

Around the next corner, Orah spotted a brass symbol that matched
the image on the scroll, hanging over the doorway of a two-story brick building.
The shop’s open door beckoned, yet she hesitated to enter, plagued by a sudden
wave of doubt. What if the chain had been broken? What if the keep itself had
ceased to exist? What if both were the delusions of the old prisoner’s deranged
mind?

She searched for answers in the building. White curtains and
a flower box marked the upper floor as lodging. The store on the ground level
had a window large enough to display an impressive pyramid of yarn. Behind the glass,
the shopkeeper stacked spindles on shelves above the counter.

“What if he’s not the owner?” Nathaniel said. “We should be
certain before we blurt out the pass phrase.”

She shifted sideways to avoid the glare and peered inside. “Too
proud to be a laborer, too old to be an apprentice. He looks like the shop
owner, but I can’t be sure.”

“You’ve dealt with spinners before. Why don’t you go in and
pretend to bargain?”

She considered a moment and nodded. After patting the dust
from her clothing and checking her hair in the reflection of the window, she marched
in with Nathaniel and Thomas trailing behind.

Up close, the shopkeeper seemed older than he’d appeared through
the window, and he moved with difficulty, using an unusual walking stick with a
mallard’s head carved into its handle. His left leg hardly bent at the knee as
he shuffled about with his back to them.

Orah rapped on the counter.

The man turned, took them in with a glance and raised a skeptical
brow.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, trying to sound confident despite
his reaction. “I’m a weaver from the Ponds and have come to find the best yarn
available. I’m interested in seeing your wares.”

The brow remained raised, but his eyes narrowed. “Young
lady, are you looking or are you prepared to trade?”

“I’m prepared to trade, but not yet. First, I want to
compare your work with the others.”

He smiled in a way that seemed neither patronizing nor
unkind. “Then you won’t be back for some time, my dear, since my nearest competitor
is a two-day walk from here. I’ll be happy to do business with you when you
return. Now, I don’t mean to be impolite, but I have things to do.” With that,
he resumed his work.

Orah gathered her will, but a tremor crept into her voice,
betraying her uncertainty. “The first born... says to tell you he is doing
well, blessed be the true light.”

As she held her breath, praying for the correct response, the
man climbed a ladder behind the counter and placed two spindles on a high shelf.
The clatter of them falling into place echoed throughout the shop. After a few
seconds, she spun around and fled the store with Thomas and Nathaniel at her
heels.

“What do we do next?” Thomas whispered. “What if he’s not
the one?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He’s all I can think of.”

Nathaniel gathered them into a circle. “What if he’s hard of
hearing? We should try again.”

Orah turned to respond, and caught the shopkeeper eyeing
them from the behind the curtain. She lifted her chin, rose to her full height,
and strode back in.

“Sir....” She tried to speak louder this time, but the words
came out forced, as if mimicking an elder at festival. “The first born says to
tell you he is doing well, blessed be the true light.”

The old man’s hands began to shake. He grabbed her and drew
her farther inside, with the others close behind. After checking that no one
was watching, he pulled the shade down over the display window.

Finally, he spoke. “May the true light shine brightly upon
him and disperse the darkness.”

Orah stood dumbstruck. They’d done it. They’d found the
second keeper.

“Why didn’t you answer the first time?” she said

He stared past them as if remembering times gone by. “I’ve waited
so long I thought I’d never hear the words.” Then he smiled. “And if you’ll
pardon me, the three of you don’t look the part.” He glanced up at the ceiling as
if afraid he’d offended them, and proclaimed to no one in particular, “The seekers
have come. Blessed be the seekers.”

He closed his eyes as if sleeping, and when he reopened
them, they glistened. “Such a miracle that you found me after so many
generations. At times I believed my father’s tale a myth. But I haven’t yet
fulfilled my mission. Come with me.”

He led them to a supply room in the back of the store and had
Nathaniel slide a wooden cabinet aside. Dust underneath showed the piece had
not been moved in years. Starting at the base of the wall, he counted with his
walking stick sixteen bricks up. From there, he tapped three to the right and
stopped at the fourth. He tried to remove the brick but his knobby fingers were
too weak to dislodge it.

Nathaniel stepped forward and tugged
until the brick came loose.

From the hole, the shopkeeper removed a scroll exactly like
the first. He grasped it in both hands and presented it to Orah. “The city, the
symbol, the pass phrase and the rhyme. Blessed be the seekers.”

The hair on the back of her neck tingled as she accepted the
scroll.

The shopkeeper bent his head, almost a bow. “My life’s purpose
as a keeper has been to wait for you and, now that you’ve come, to lead you to
the next in the chain. The rest is up to you, but I can give directions. The
next leg of your journey will require a trek of several days, and I see you’re
already road-weary. Please honor me by accepting my invitation to dinner. Then
stay the night and rest. In the morning, I’ll replenish your provisions and
start you on your way.”

All three nodded in appreciation. As Orah rubbed the glossy
surface of the scroll with the pad of her thumb, the realization struck with
much more force than one of Nathaniel’s notions--the keepers were real.

The keep must exist.

***

Since leaving Little Pond the week before, Orah and the
others had survived on cornmeal crackers and dried mutton, usually eaten in a
rush while squatting on the ground. Now, as she washed off the dust of the
road, the second keeper prepared a fine meal. The first inkling came from the smell
wafting up the stairs of seared lamb aromatic with forbidden spices--perhaps a
hint of mint or thyme—and yams glazed with honey.

When she arrived downstairs, the table had been set with the
spinner’s finest crockery, and a mouth-watering dinner awaited. Her mother had never
cooked such a meal.

In no time, she’d cleared her plate and
asked for more.

Afterwards, the friends sipped apple cinnamon tea and
learned about the keeper. He’d been born and raised in this house and had
learned spinning as a boy. At his coming of age, his father asked him to swear
loyalty to the family business. The spinner’s ancestors had run the Adamsville
shop with a fanatic commitment, longer than anyone could remember, but only as
his father lay dying did he reveal the reason: the place held a clue in the
keeper’s chain.

He’d married here, and his wife had borne him a son who
arrived sickly into the world and survived less than two years. They’d yearned for
another to fill the void, but had drawn the white stone at their nuptials. They
had pleaded with the vicar, but the clergy enforced the rules rigorously: a
family of the white stone may bear only one offspring. Had their child been
stillborn, they’d have been allowed another. When rules are made for the many,
they’re cruel for the few. His wife had passed to the light several years before,
and he’d since lived alone.

After dinner, he led them upstairs to a small but
comfortable room with a single window in back and eaves in the corners. It had
been his bedroom as a child, he explained, and his son’s nursery for the time he
had lived.

“My wife left it unchanged for years,” the keeper said, “a
kind of memorial for our boy. After her death, I removed all painful reminders of
my family and turned it into a guest room.”

The seekers had not slept in beds for a week. With their
stomachs filled and the doubts of the day diminished, they could barely stay
awake.

Seeing this, the second keeper bid
them good night and departed.

Despite her exhaustion, Orah itched to peek at the scroll. She
stretched the shiny parchment over a candle flame, and though only Thomas had never
seen the change, all three held their breaths until the words appeared.

This time, the city read “Bradford.”

Thomas lit up at mention of his forebear’s former home.

Orah took this to be a good omen and
moved on to the symbol, a poorly drawn square, with one end longer than the
other. She glanced at Nathaniel for guidance. He only shrugged.

But Thomas gasped, and the blood drained from his face. “I
know what it is. I see it every night in my dreams—a vicar’s hat.”

“It can’t be.” She gaped at the not-quite-square, and then squinted,
trying to force the picture to change. When the perception lingered, she buried
her concern to steady her friend. “We’ll go to Bradford and find a better
explanation.”

Thomas released his breath. “I hope so.”

“At least the pass phrase is clear.” She read the words below
the symbol, wanting to move on before the letters vanished. “‘We travel toward
the dawn to seek the light of truth,’ followed by, ‘May the light of truth keep
you safe and show you the way.’”

The rhyme, however, taunted her, as mysterious as before.

Twixt water and dark walls of pine

A cave made by men who must die

The Temple of Truth you shall see

Golden doors that are closed for all time

“What does that mean?” Thomas said. “How do we get in if
they’re closed for all time?”

“It’s worse than the other.” Nathaniel scowled. “What’s a
cave between water and dark walls?”

Orah hid her disappointment, needing to keep their spirits
up. “Remember what the first keeper said. The rhyme makes sense only if
complete. We’re the seekers. Look at how many obstacles we’ve already overcome.
When the time is right, we’ll know what to do.”

Yet she knew at this moment the title of seeker meant little.
Before they reached their goal, each would be called upon to do more than they’d
dreamed possible, and only then would they earn the name.

The words faded and the day rested
heavily upon her. Their journey stretched beyond the horizon, with no end in
sight.

***

After the others had gone to bed, Orah rummaged through her
pack and withdrew her log. At long last, she found a moment to chronicle the
events since that day the vicar had dragged her off to Temple City. She wrote
for an hour and then paused, the pen poised over the paper.

The story lacked something—a
meaning, a hope, a fear.

Here she sat on this bed in the home of a stranger, a seven-day
trek from Little Pond. She’d abandoned her mother and all she’d ever known,
beat through the brush, slept in the woods and fled from the deacons... but to
what purpose?

She began to write.

The meaning: To right a wrong. The Temple and its teachings
exist for a single purpose—to keep the people from questioning the vicars. What
are they hiding?

The hope: To lift the constraints on my people. As the
first keeper told Nathaniel, to give them a life of possibilities rather than a
life of limits.

The fear....

She raised the pen. What did she fear most? To rot away in
the prisons of Temple City? To die a death by stoning? To lose Nathaniel?

The last gave her pause, and she shook her head. What good
were any of these if she lost herself? She recalled her father’s deathbed words,
and with sudden clarity, denying them became her greatest fear.

The fear: To let the vicars or anyone else set my mind. To
aspire to be less than I might be. To be unworthy of another’s love.

Satisfied with the entry, she restored the pen and paper to
their waterproof container and stuffed it away in her pack.

***

Orah stirred first. A sliver of sunlight found a gap in the
curtain and landed on her right eye. She opened it, closed it, and then
startled awake—the light of midmorning, not dawn.

She staggered to her feet to rouse the others, but paused
when she caught an odd tapping on the stairs—the click of a walking stick on
stone, but approaching too fast.

The old spinner burst into the room, his face ashen. In his right
hand he waved a crumpled piece of paper.

“Deacons. Searching from house to house. They’ll be here in
minutes.”

Thomas jumped up and began filling his pack, while Nathaniel
rubbed sleep from his eyes.

“They can’t be looking for us,” Orah said. The keeper handed
her the paper, and she read it aloud. “Urgent bulletin. Three friends of the
darkness believed to have arrived in Adamsville overnight: a tall, dark-haired
man; a shorter one; and a slender girl with auburn hair. If sighted, report.”

Thomas snarled at Orah as he rolled a blanket and jammed it
into his pack. “I thought you said word couldn’t travel that fast.”

She glared back at him, but he kept his head down,
continuing to fill his rucksack.

Nathaniel started packing as well and
urged her to do the same.

“We have time,” the spinner said. “The deacons are clumsy
fools, so quick to harsh treatment they’ve foretold their coming. I have bags ready
for each of you, with food for ten days. I’ll fetch them while you finish. Fold
your bedding and clean up. Leave no sign you stayed here. I’ll return in an
instant. Please hurry.”

They finished with the linens just as he returned with the
bags. The three accepted the food, secured their packs, and rushed toward the
stairs, but a knocking at the door froze them in place.

The shopkeeper placed a finger to his lips, came close, and
whispered, “I’ve planned for this. It wasn’t hard to guess how the Temple would
feel about the seekers.” He turned and pointed. “That window leads to a small
alley out of view from the front of the house. The building has no back door,
so they won’t suspect anyone trying to leave that way.”