The Storm Weaver & the Sand (Books of the Change)

by Sean Williams

  “So you say, Shom, but they can’t have one without the other. Without you, without me, none of this would have happened. They’d still be looking for Sal and Shilly right now. They owe us.”

  “They own us,” Behenna corrected her. “Question them all you like, but they’ll do what they want.”

  “I would question them, if they’d only talk to us.”

  “They’ll come when they are ready, and not before.”

  “Yes, yes. I see the picture quite clearly, except for one thing. How do you know all this? In all the time you’ve been with us, in all the time you were chasing Sal, did they talk to you even once? How can you speak with any authority about your mysterious masters?”

  There was a small silence. Skender held his breath, terrified of making the slightest sound that might alert them to his presence above them.

  “They told me to get the children,” Behenna said in a grating voice that rose in tone as though he was daring her to defy him, to tell him he was wrong. “They told me to get the children, no matter what it took, and to bring them back to the Haunted City. I’ve done exactly that. I’ve done what they told me to do. They knew they could trust me, and I’ve proved them right.”

  “But would you have been so willing if you’d known what it would cost? That you’d find yourself before a disciplinary hearing as a result? I wonder. I suppose you’re expecting a reward for your efforts; a pardon, perhaps. That’s why you have such blind faith in their trustworthiness: because it’s the only hope you have that you will come out of this clean.” Sal’s grandmother snorted. “Well, if the Mierlo family has learned one thing, it’s not to put our trust in anyone—blindly or otherwise. I’ve made my own arrangements. Highson will be waiting for us when things begin. I’d rather place my bets on a man I can see and touch than on a phantom, any day.”

  “The Weavers are not phantoms.”

  “No? How can you be so sure—here of all places?” She stifled a yawn. “Your hearing is in a matter of days. If the Weavers don’t appear by then, I suppose you’ll know exactly where you stand. For now, Shom, I suggest we get some rest. We’ll need all our strength for tomorrow, no matter what happens.”

  The black-haired, black-skinned man grunted and headed for the door. He took with him a cloud of tension that seemed almost palpable.

  Radi Mierlo watched him go, then moved across the room to lie on the bed. Her eyes glittered in the faint light, staring at the ceiling.

  “The Weavers are not to be taken lightly,” said a new voice, rasping and metallic.

  “Be quiet, Mawson. Until I address you directly, I don’t want you to say another word.”

  Skender peered more closely through the vent and made out the marble shape of the stone bust called Mawson sitting on the floor in one corner, near Radi Mierlo’s many trunks of belongings. Now that he knew to look for him, the man’kin’s presence was obvious.

  This animated head and chest of a man who may never have lived, yet existed so deeply in the Change that he saw things no human could see, had travelled with them all the way from Ulum with the rest of the Mierlos’ possessions. Bound to Sal’s grandmother by some sort of life-debt, the man’kin had no choice but to obey her every request, although Skender had seen Mawson bend the rules when he wanted to. The man’kin didn’t like telling stories, either. Hoping to liven up the trip south, Skender had tried many times to get him to talk about the things he must have seen in his long, unnatural life, but he had remained tight-lipped. “Man’kin do not tell stories,” Mawson told him. “There are too many endings and too many beginnings. The only thing we can be certain of is the now.”

  Skender had no idea what that meant.

  Complete silence indicated that Mawson was obeying the latest instruction from the woman who owned him. That was a shame, Skender thought, for he would have liked to learn more about the Weavers, those mysterious people who Sal suspected had a hand in Sal and Shilly’s enforced return to the Strand.

  “The Weavers are not to be taken lightly,” Mawson repeated.

  Skender almost jumped in shock; it had sounded as though the man’kin was whispering right into his ear. He froze, waiting for Radi Mierlo to berate Mawson for disobeying her instruction, but she didn’t stir. In fact, her eyes had closed. She looked like she was going to sleep.

  “Are you talking to me, Mawson?” he sent to the man’kin through the Change.

  The stone bust looked up at the vent and nodded, once.

  Skender thought fast. So much for going unnoticed. The man’kin must have picked him out from the many minds surrounding it, using the Change. He had known he was there all along.

  But Mawson hadn’t opposed him. He could have informed his mistress that there was an eavesdropper at any time during her conversation with Behenna, and Skender supposed that would have been the right thing to do. Instead, the man’kin had stayed silent. Why? So it could make sure Skender got the point about the Weavers? Was it trying to tell him that, not Radi Mierlo?

  There was another explanation.

  “You can’t talk to me, can you?” he silently asked the man’kin.

  Mawson solemnly shook his head.

  That explained it. Until I address you directly, Radi Mierlo had told the man’kin, I don’t want you to say another word. All Mawson could say until freed from her instruction was the one string of words he had already uttered.

  “The Weavers—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. They’re not to be trusted. And how frustrating for you.” Skender smiled at the bust’s predicament. “Whatever you’re trying to tell me, it’ll have to wait.”

  The man’kin’s gaze drifted away, as though tired of the conversation.

  All right, Skender thought. I can take a hint.

  He slithered through the crawlspace to the vent over his room. If Mawson had spotted him so easily, someone or something else might too, and the last thing Skender wanted to do was ruin his chances to explore by being caught.

  He scrambled like a rat down the crude ladder he had made out of his cupboard and a chair. As he quietly rearranged the furniture, his mind turned over everything he had learned during his exploration. Shilly and Sal were both nearby, which was reassuring. Everyone was keen on keeping those two together, although he still hadn’t worked out why. Even his father, Skender Van Haasteren the Ninth, had thought the same. This Skender would figure it out, or he wouldn’t feel worthy of being the tenth in his line.

  As for the rest…Behenna thought he was working for the Weavers. Radi Mierlo was in contact with Highson Sparre, Sal’s natural father. Plans within plans within plans—and he was sure they weren’t the only people in the Haunted City plotting and scheming how best to use the new arrivals to their advantage. Whatever the next day brought, he felt safe assuming that it wouldn’t go as either Shom Behenna or Radi Mierlo expected.

  Shilly was startled out of restless sleep by a rapping on her door. She climbed awkwardly out of bed, still dressed in her travel clothes, and was told by a black-robed and hooded man that her presence was required before an examining committee.

  “Examining what?” she protested, trying futilely to wake up properly. To her sleepy eyes, the mirror-like glass light hanging on one wall seemed much brighter than it had the previous night.

  “Your fitness for the Novitiate,” he replied. Three people had come to wake her, all identically dressed, but he was the only one who spoke. His voice was deep and commanding, as though used to having orders obeyed.

  “I don’t know anything about a Novitiate,” she responded. “Who says I’m interested in joining?”

  “That’s what you’re here to find out,” said the attendant.

  Shrugging to conceal her nervousness, Shilly slipped her crutch into its well-worn place under her armpit and followed them out of the room. The attendants took her along narrow, rectangular corridors lined with a
rches. The arches had been filled in with bricks, so what might once have been a pleasant thoroughfare was now a narrow tunnel. She didn’t know where they were going; she didn’t know why she was being taken there. All she could do was hope that she would wake up in time to make sense of things when she arrived.

  Don’t be afraid to follow your heart. The words of the elderly Mage Erentaite were of some comfort. It’s a journey we all must take, if only once in our lives. Shilly knew that the decisions she had made and the allegiances she had chosen were right—or the closest to right she could discern at that time—but her leg still ached with a dull throb she suspected she would have for the rest of her life. Every step sent a dagger of pain up her hipbone and into the base of her skull, reminding her that even being right could be costly. The hooded attendants walked briskly, seemingly ignorant of her handicap, and she refused to say anything, to admit any weakness in front of them.

  Deep down, she feared that the time of reckoning had come. She had been dreading this moment ever since the caravan had left Ulum, weeks before; ever since she had made the decision that had brought them hundreds of kilometres from the Nine Stars to the Haunted City. Her fate had been sealed the moment she had told the Synod that she wasn’t certain that staying in the Interior was the right thing to do. Although Shom Behenna had tricked her into it, and part of her had never really believed that the consequences of her mistake would catch up with her, they were about to. She was sure of it. There would be no hiding what she was from the Sky Wardens.

  A crippled, untalented girl. Dead wood.

  All dreams of rescuing Lodo and learning how to use the Change would have to be forgotten if she couldn’t show the Sky Wardens otherwise. Her life might as well be over.

  It was up to her to ensure that it wasn’t. Troublemaker, tourist, try-hard.

  They came to an open door twice as high as the attendant leading the way. It hung open, and she heard voices echoing from the chamber within. A woman was addressing someone, and Shilly’s heart beat fast at the thought that it might be the Syndic. But the voice wasn’t the same: Nu Zanshin wasn’t so velvety. She wore her strength on her sleeve.

  “—won’t be long now, I’m sure,” the woman was saying as Shilly was led into the room. “Ah, here she is now. Does that address your concern, Sal?”

  Shilly took in the scene at a glance. The room was cavernous and gloomy, with pillars and alcoves alternating around the walls, creating numerous opportunities for shadow. There were no windows, just a silver brazier on a wooden stand in the centre of the room, casting a steady, blue light. Sal and Skender were seated on two low stools before a tall, emaciated woman dressed entirely in black. Even inside she wore a wide-brimmed hat that hugged the skull. Her face was shadowed but not hidden in the same way as the attendants bringing Shilly to the examination, and her features were a surprise: sharply defined, inhumanly gaunt. Her skin was so pale, Shilly could see veins through it. Shilly had become somewhat accustomed to paler features after her journey through the Interior, but this woman was even whiter than Skender.

  Beyond the woman, the room contained only hooded attendants standing in the alcoves, lining the walls like sentries, faceless and motionless. Despite the eerie threat they conveyed, Shilly breathed a sigh of relief. No sign of the Syndic. Not yet, anyway.

  “Yes, it does. Thank you,” said Sal. He looked as relieved to see Shilly as she was to see him, and just as exhausted; he had clearly been dragged out of bed still in his old clothes as she had. Skender was even filthier than he had been the night before, but was fairly vibrating with eagerness. After shooting Shilly a quick wave, his attention was back on the skeleton-thin woman before them.

  “The Novitiate is like a school, right? Where you train your students?” the boy asked as Shilly was shown to the seat next to Sal. She wasn’t given the option to decline.

  The woman tilted her head in assent. Her voice rolled over them like an orator’s. “To the Novitiate is given the task of training Sky Wardens. I am Master Warden Atilde. It is my purpose to examine every applicant upon arrival to see if the Selectors have correctly assessed their abilities. This includes you. You are behind by some weeks, and although I have been told that you have received some education at the Interior school known as the Keep, you must understand that this in no way guarantees that you will pass my examination. Our standards here are quite different.”

  “But we didn’t apply to join the Novitiate,” Sal said. “What if we don’t want to be tested?”

  “You are here now, and I will not have you wasting your talent. I made that very clear when I heard you were coming. Who you are means nothing to me; it’s what I can make of you that matters.” Master Warden Atilde’s eyes glittered oddly in their sockets, and a chill went down Shilly’s spine when she realised why. The woman’s eyes were translucent, as if made of glass—but with no attempt to disguise them as real eyes. Atilde had to be as blind as the Mage Erentaite—yet was, impossibly, just as able to see. There was no question of who the woman was looking at: Sal, then Skender, and lastly, Shilly.

  “Now you are all present,” Atilde said, “we can begin.” She raised her stick-thin arms as though trying to make herself look larger, like a lizard puffing itself up. Her black robes billowed around her. “The Change comes in many shapes and forms, but through us it can do only three things: it can promote our understanding of the world; it can imitate the appearance of the world; and it can alter the substance of the world. Theory, illusion and actuality—these are the foundation stones of all our teaching. A Sky Warden must master two of these three in order to graduate, and all must have more than a passing familiarity with the third. The exercises I am about to give you will determine how far advanced each of you is along these three roads.

  “Shilly first.” With a series of sweeping gestures, the warden drew a design out of glowing lines in thin air. It looked like a star made from smaller stars and turned slowly clockwise once complete. “Can you tell me what effect this visualisation would have on the world?”

  Shilly studied it closely, wanting to impress even though she resented the way their desires had been so casually dismissed. Her part was easy to play.

  The design reminded her of one that Lodo had shown her a long time ago, one of a number that both Stone Mages and Sky Wardens could use.

  “It freezes water,” she said.

  “Could you demonstrate for us?”

  Atilde gestured. One of the attendants came forward with a glass of water and handed it to Shilly. She stared at it for a moment, thinking, Now what do I do? She had no talent; all the knowledge in the world couldn’t help her turn even a thimbleful of water into anything else without a grain of ability to make it happen.

  Then she felt a hand on her shoulder. A voice in her head whispered, “Use me.”

  Shilly shook her head, knowing without needing to look who the hand and voice belonged to. She had sworn never again to Take from Sal after almost draining him dry in the Keep. She could have killed him, or worse.

  “You have to, Shilly. The wardens need to see what you can do. If things don’t work out—” Sal hesitated, “—they’re your best hope of getting what you want.”

  The bald statement flashed through her mind like a crack through glass. She wanted things as they had once been, with Lodo free and whole and teaching her to use the Change. Would the Sky Wardens give her that? Would Sal? She didn’t know.

  “We agreed, remember?”

  And he was offering…

  She closed her eyes and reached through him for the Change. It stirred immediately at her command. The visualisation rotated smoothly in her mind, then poured through her, into the glass. With a soft crunching noise, like stepping on dead leaves, the water turned to slush then swelled into a solid block of ice. Cold blossomed in her fingertips.

  Sal squeezed her shoulder and withdrew his hand.

  “Well do
ne, Shilly.” Atilde’s thin lips pursed in something that might have been approval. The attendant who had given her the glass took it away. “For your last test, I want you to show me something important to you. An image from your past.” The gaunt figure approached with gloved, claw-like hands extended. Corded fingers gripped Shilly’s wrists in a surprisingly strong grip and pulled her to her feet. “Your friend will not assist you, this time.”

  Shilly couldn’t look at the woman’s ravaged face. It was like staring too close at a jellyfish. She averted her eyes and struggled through a rising panic to think. She had to concentrate, focus on the task she had been given. She wouldn’t have Sal to help her, this time, and she had to impress Warden Atilde. Something from her past, yes: but what?

  A glint of glass under Warden Atilde’s black robe caught her eye. It was a torc similar to the one Behenna had let her touch on the way to the Nine Stars. Atilde’s was full of swirling bubbles, frozen in the act of escaping. The way it hung around the warden’s neck reminded her of the charm Lodo had worn around his own neck: a thumb-sized carving in brown-grey stone, shaped like a blunt-featured child. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the memory, picturing it in her mind. Lodo had used the charm to predict the weather, saying that it could feel storms passing over the feet of distant mountains. When she touched it, it whispered words too faint to be understood. Lodo had been given the charm by Skender’s grandfather when he had studied at the Keep, and its name was—

  “Yadeh-tash.” Atilde’s voice was approving. Shilly opened her eyes and saw an illusion of the charm floating in the air between them, as distinct as the real thing, but silent, dead. It had no weight, no substance, and would dissipate into nothingness the moment she let the thought of it slip from her mind. Keeping it in place was like holding a butterfly between her hands. It wanted to fly away but was too fragile to break free. She liked the feeling of mastery it gave her. Maintaining the illusion required a delicate touch.