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

by Sean Williams

  “I guess.” She moved out of the way as he turned and his feet appeared out of the hole. In a shower of yet more dust, he dropped heavily onto her bed. She winced as the impact jarred her leg.

  “Sorry.” He steadied her, leaving a dirty handprint on her arm. When he tried to wipe it off, he only made it worse.

  She pushed him gently away before he could apologise again. Close up, under the grime, he looked exhausted. “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s late. I need to get some sleep. That’s why I’m here.”

  “You have your own bed, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” He shook his head irritably. “That’s not what I mean. Look.”

  He produced a smudged piece of paper from his pocket. She unfolded it and smoothed it out. The edges were smooth along three edges only, as though it had been torn from a book. One side was blank, but on the other was a simple pattern drawn in bold, black lines.

  “What’s this?” she asked. “A charm?”

  He nodded. “This morning, before breakfast, see if you can find Beli Brokate. There are some things we’ll need, and she’s the only person likely to have them here. If she doesn’t have them, she can get them for us.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Ink, needles, alcohol—”

  “We can get those anywhere.”

  “Not for making tattoos.”

  Shilly stared at him, then at the picture lying flat on her lap. It was beginning to make sense now. “For Sal?”

  “Yes.” Skender’s bleary eyes held a triumphant look. “It’ll help him break the bracelet.”

  Shilly was genuinely impressed. By whatever means Skender had got the pattern, he had clearly gone to some effort. And if it worked, all the better.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ll find Brokate. I’m sure she’ll help us, if she can.”

  “Thanks.” Despite the success of his venture, Skender was visibly fading. “Now, I need to get back up there,” he said, nodding at the hole in the ceiling. “Help me move the desk and you can go back to sleep.”

  They manoeuvred the furniture so he could climb up and into the hole. When the vent was back in place, Shilly looked at the pile of furniture, and then realised how difficult it would be to put in order with only one good leg. She did the best she could, then collapsed onto the bed to sleep.

  Of course, she didn’t sleep. Her mind whirled with possibilities and plans. How was she to get to Brokate’s caravan when she had no idea where it was? That Brokate was still on the island was a reasonable assumption. But it was a big island, and Shilly didn’t know where—or how—to start looking.

  In the end she stopped trying to sleep and sat up doodling on a notepad. She let her pencil move at random, sketching complicated patterns that blended into landscapes which, from a distance, resembled faces. Only as the light from the mirror began to turn yellow, signalling that the sun was rising outside the building, did she notice how often the images on the page turned into a particular ghostly face, pressed against glass. Once she noticed, the eyes from that face seemed to watch her as closely as they had in real life.

  She screwed the pages into a ball and threw them angrily into the bin.

  Chapter 5. Fate’s Ink

  Neither Skender nor Shilly was at breakfast the next morning, and when Sal asked why he was told by the stern-voiced attendant that Skender had slept in, and that Shilly had realised she’d left something in the caravan which had brought them to the Haunted City. Another attendant was taking her to see Belilanca Brokate. She would be back in time for the morning’s lecture.

  “What about breakfast?” he asked as his tray was heaped high with food. “You’re not going to let her starve, are you?”

  “It is not our responsibility if you fall behind schedule. We cannot be there to guide you every moment of the day. You must learn to accept the consequences of your own actions, be they as small as missing a meal or—”

  “Or what? It doesn’t seem fair that she should miss out, just like that.” Sal interrupted him. “Who made it your place to punish us?”

  “It is not our place, Sal.” The hooded attendant’s reply was muffled, as though he knew that he’d overstepped the mark. “We leave that to Master Warden Atilde and the Alcaide.”

  “But you have anyway. And judged us too, no doubt. You’ve made up your mind without hearing our side of the story.” Sal couldn’t help the indignation rising in him. “How dare you? You don’t know anything about us.”

  The attendant bowed and walked away, leaving Sal alone. He found his way to a seat, not seeing the faces around him. His hands shook as he put the tray on the table, but it was more than just indignation that made his heart race. It was guilt, too.

  In Fundelry, Lodo had given him a choice. He could go with the Sky Wardens and see what they wanted of him, or he could fight them. It wasn’t clear, then, how far they would go to get him, and there was a chance that their motives were pure. Sal had chosen not to give in because that would have meant abandoning his father. He had chosen to resist the Alcaide and the Syndic, no matter what it took. The cost of that decision had been the death of his father—the man he had thought was his father—and the loss of Lodo.

  So, in a sense, the attendant was quite right to remind him that actions have consequences. But he had already learned that lesson, and the decisions he was presently making weren’t made in isolation. What other people said and did affected him, and affected what he did in turn. That was a consequence of their decisions, and he shouldn’t feel guilty if what they thought he should do conflicted with what he thought was right.

  He wasn’t a child…

  Sal was seething so much he forgot his disappointment at his friends not being there that morning, even though he’d wanted to talk to them about his mother’s letter and the message he’d found in the book. He was still angry when the bell rang to announce the end of breakfast.

  The neat rows of students broke up into a rowdy mass to head for lectures. He looked around, but the attendant hadn’t reappeared. He would have to find Tom or follow the first years to the right hall; otherwise he would get lost.

  He was putting his tray with the other dirty ones when a heavy shoulder bumped casually into his.

  “Watch where you’re going, stone-boy,” drawled a familiar voice.

  Sal turned with gritted teeth, not willing to submit to anyone that morning. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” he said to Kemp. The albino bully was looming over him, staring down at him with a look of contempt. “You could beat me up with one hand. Would that make you feel proud?”

  “I don’t think I could beat you any more,” Kemp said, a lazy smile spreading across his face. “You’re the big man now. You almost took the top off the Alcaide’s head, I hear. That’s quite a punch you pack.”

  “Right, so only an idiot would mess with me.” The comeback was lame, but it was the best he could think of. There was something about Kemp’s behaviour that didn’t ring true and was throwing him off as a result.

  “Who says I’m messing with you?” Kemp leaned closer. “I’m supposed to help you, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  “Don’t do anything for me, Kemp—”

  “Shut up.” A solid finger poked Sal in the chest. “Believe me, helping you is the last thing I want to do. But I’m going to keep doing it, and you’re going to like it. While I’m in charge, you’re going to do everything I say. And what I say is to do as you’re told. You may think you’re being tough or clever by resisting and making waves, but you’re just making my life more difficult. My dad lost his job because of you, and this is my chance to make good. If you get in my way again, I’ll…” Kemp didn’t finish his sentence immediately, “…I’ll think of some other way you can make me feel better. A good rumble always calms my nerves. And there are two s
tone-boys now, remember. I don’t have to start with you first. Is that clear?”

  Very, Sal thought. If he didn’t toe the line, Skender was going to get hurt. The thought made him sick to the stomach. Skender didn’t deserve to get caught up in all this, any more than he already was. This wasn’t the sort of adventure he had come along for.

  “Touch Skender and you’ll regret it.”

  “You’ll regret it, Sal. It’s your decision. I’m just telling you how things work around here. It’s up to you what happens next.”

  Sal felt like screaming in frustration. It wasn’t his decision. Why was everyone picking on him? But he kept his lips tightly closed as Kemp winked and eased away into the stream of students, expecting him to follow obediently.

  Tom appeared beside him. “Are you all right, Sal?”

  “I’m fine,” he grated, thinking, To hell with Kemp. There were other things to worry about. “Listen, Tom, where would someone who had overused the Change be kept? Someone who might have been taken over by a golem.”

  “I don’t know,” said the boy, looking puzzled. “The Privity, perhaps. Fairney would know. You could ask him.”

  “I can’t.” Kemp would hear if he tried anything so obvious as that.

  “What about Atilde, then?” Tom looked hopefully up at him, eager to please. “She knows everything.”

  “Good idea. Where will I find her?”

  “In her office. It’s deep inside the building, where there are no windows. She can’t abide light. It hurts her.”

  That accorded with Sal’s memories of the woman, and explained the broad-brimmed hat and extensive robes. “Thanks, Tom. I’ll catch you up.”

  He brushed by Tom and headed for the doorway on the far side of the hall to the one everyone else was taking. It was open and there were no attendants in sight: the perfect opportunity. He could find the answer Shilly needed without him having to make any deals with a golem.

  As he stepped over the threshold, a cold knife-blade of pain stabbed into his wrist. Still sore from his efforts the previous night, the inflamed skin felt as though it was being slit and dipped in salt water. He gasped and clutched his arm to his chest.

  “All right, all right!” He recoiled back into the dining room. The pain instantly vanished. “I get the idea!” Attendants or not, Kemp or not, he was far from free. He was allowed to do only what his new masters allowed him to do.

  Fuming to himself, he hurried to follow the last stragglers to the morning’s lecture. None of them offered to help him, as though he was marked in some way. Perhaps he was. Given the chip on Kemp’s shoulder—and if Alder Sproule, his father, had indeed lost his position as one of Fundelry’s ten Alders, that chip was likely to be very large indeed—he wouldn’t be surprised if numerous bad rumours had been spread prior to their arrival. He was surprised the whole school hadn’t pelted him with crusts and rinds the moment he’d first walked into the dining hall. But that hadn’t happened, and one of the students—Weyn, in Fairney’s tutorial group—had actually spoken to him in a friendly way.

  Only then did he realise what it was about Kemp’s behaviour that was really bothering him: there were no cronies hovering behind the bully, gloating at the sight of petty justice meted out with fists and insults. There were no crowds gathering to watch the age-old battle between the strong and the weak.

  Kemp, just like him, had been alone.

  Skender crept into the lecture theatre ten minutes late, but not as late as Shilly. She slipped into the corner seat next to Skender five minutes after him.

  “Did you get it?” he hissed.

  She opened a leather-wrapped bundle revealing everything they needed.

  As he pointed out where Sal was sitting, three rows back, a piece of chalk whizzed by his ear and exploded on the elevated desk behind him. He almost jumped out of his skin.

  “Late and not paying attention,” scolded the lecturer. “Give me an excuse, Mr Van Haasteren, and I’ll ask the Alcaide to send you back home.”

  Skender felt himself flush to the tips of his ears. He sank down into his seat as the lecturer turned his glare to the blackboard. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. He was supposed to slip into the background while Sal stirred up the trouble, not the other way around.

  He resolved to pay attention as the lecturer droned on about Change-rich plants and their effect on the environment. Despite his late start, he was still exhausted from his search through the library the previous night, and Shilly had to nudge him a couple of times as his head nodded. The lecturer would no doubt rate falling asleep in class as poorly as not paying attention.

  When it was finally over, he, Shilly and Sal regrouped on the way to their tutorial group. Outside, the morning was grey-skied but not dull; the sun poked around the edges of the clouds, sending sparks off the glass corners of the towers.

  “Glad you could make it,” said Sal, looking more relieved than annoyed. “What did you leave behind in the caravan?”

  “I’ll show you later.” Shilly had stuffed the tattooing gear in her bag after showing Skender. “What was in the letter your dad, um—Highson Sparre, gave you?”

  “It was from my mother. She left me a message. Look.” He produced a narrow, flat book and opened it on a dog-eared page. “See that poem?”

  Skender peered past Sal’s arm. Poetry wasn’t his strong point, but he didn’t think that was what Sal wanted him to appreciate.

  “She marked letters with a pin. See here? And here?” Skender couldn’t make out the tiny holes, but he could see that Sal had highlighted individual letters with pencil.

  There shrines and palaces and towers

  (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

  Resemble nothing that is ours.

  Around, by lifting winds forgot…

  Skender’s eyes widened just at the thought of it. Adventure indeed!

  “What does it spell out?” Shilly asked.

  “The Golden Tower,” he said. “Ask the ghosts.”

  They stared significantly at each other for a moment, then Shilly’s gaze danced away, to the strange shadows in the buildings around them.

  “What?” prompted Skender, confused. “What Golden Tower?”

  Shilly explained. “Back in Fundelry, we used a trick to spy on Kemp. It showed us what he was thinking and doing—and something else, too. There was a warning: ‘Beware the Golden Tower.’ We never knew what it meant, or who the warning was for. Us or Kemp.”

  “But it was a warning?”

  “Definitely.”

  “And your mother wants us to go there?”

  “Yes,” said Sal. “I think so, anyway. What else could she mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Skender thought. “Any idea where this Golden Tower might be?”

  “The only Golden Tower I’ve ever heard of is right here, in the Haunted City,” Shilly said. “It was mentioned in School. But it wasn’t in the vision Behenna showed me, and we haven’t seen it since we arrived. You’d think something like that would stand out.”

  “It can’t be that hard to find.” Skender didn’t let the mystery worry him unduly. “We’re not doing so badly on that front, so far.”

  Shilly nodded and patted her bag. “Right. One down, two to go.”

  It was Sal’s turn to look puzzled.

  “I’ll explain later,” Shilly said. “The tower makes two things to find. After Lodo.”

  Sal opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by a small group of their fellow students, hurrying to their tutorial.

  “After homework tonight,” he whispered, taking each of their arms, “there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Something more than the golden tower business?” Skender sent back.

  Sal nodded and they broke apart as they reached the stone bowl where Fairney conducted his prac
tical instruction in using the Change. Once again, they were forced to endure illusions of being underwater while the young tutor reinforced some of the lessons he had given the previous day. They looked at new information designed to familiarise them with the ecological systems existing on the ocean floor. Skender was briefly amazed to learn just how many different types of sea worms there were, but soon lost interest again. What did it matter if one worm was blue and the other translucent? A worm was a worm was a worm. It was as crazy as counting different sorts of ants.

  At the first opportunity he got, Skender raised his hand.

  “Excuse me, but what can you tell us about the Golden Tower?”

  “The Golden Tower?” Fairney looked puzzled. “Nothing, really. Why?”

  “I read about it back home,” he lied, “and was hoping to see it before I went back.”

  “You must have been reading an adventure or a children’s story, then, because the Golden Tower is a myth. A legend. It’s like one of those stories they tell about Ruins. You know: adventurers go looking for it and disappear, or they find it and lose it, and no one believes them when they get home.”

  “Like the city in the Broken Lands?” asked Skender.

  “Not really,” said Fairney, “because we know that’s real.”

  Shilly wasn’t giving up so easily. “How can you be so certain it doesn’t exist?”

  “Because it doesn’t appear in the Book of Towers.”

  “Neither does the Divide,” countered Sal.

  “True, but I know people who have seen the Divide. You yourself have crossed it, twice. No one has seen the Golden Tower, and Surveyors have looked for it. On balance, I think it’s safer to believe that it doesn’t exist than that all of them are wrong.”

  “Like the Weavers, then.”

  Fairney stared at Sal for a good second before turning away. “Yes,” he said. “Now, if I can return to my lesson, we’ll run through the exercises I gave you yesterday. I don’t suppose, Sal, you’ve reconsidered your unwillingness to join us…?”

  Sal glanced at Kemp, then shook his head. The albino bully glowered threateningly at him.