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

by Sean Williams

  It didn’t seem real. It couldn’t be real, he told himself. Death was for old people, or sick people, or people prone to accidents. It didn’t happen to people for no reason at all—or even out of malice. Treacherous and grasping Radi Mierlo might have been, but she didn’t deserve to die like that. No one did.

  She was dead all the same. And Skender had watched it happen. He hadn’t helped her; he hadn’t raised the alarm. He had just stared, dumbfounded, and now there was nothing at all he could do about it.

  The urge to vomit almost overwhelmed him. The shock was fading, and his muscles began to tremble. He was filled with an urge to run and hide, to get away from the terrible reality: that there were killers and victims, and that the world was a dangerous place.

  The man in the room below suddenly looked up into the vent. Skender found himself staring directly into the eyes of Radi Mierlo’s murderer, wondering in a panic what had given him away. The man’s face was cast in half-shadow by the angle of the light. Weathered and time-weary, it was contorted in a mask of loathing and adorned with numerous tattoos: tight-wound spirals on his temples; circles on either side of his proud nose, like an extra set of eyes; an up-pointed triangle on his chin.

  But the eyes were the worst. Skender saw more than shadow in them. The light would never touch them, no matter how bright.

  A blast of cold reached up for him, turning the tears on his cheeks to ice.

  “You can’t escape me, Galeus Van Haasteren,” said the killer in a voice that was both far away and horribly close at the same time. He reached up as though to take the boy behind the vent by the throat.

  Skender needed no further encouragement. At the sound of his heart-name, he had already turned and fled.

  Part Two: Falling

  Chapter 8. In the Face of the Void

  The storm was near, and growing nearer by the hour.

  The stones felt it as a rumbling in the earth, like the combined footfalls of a mighty army trampling the soil flat far above. This army came and conquered without care or thought for those who lived in its path. It conquered, and then it relinquished the gains it had made. No barbarian horde had ever thundered so single-mindedly across the plain. No barbarian horde had ever been so unstoppable.

  But where an army might bring only death, the storm brought life as well. The wind carried seeds for many kilometres; the rain brought clean, vigorous water to parched lands; lightning created fires that kick-started cycles of regeneration and renewal. In its wake, the storm left a trail of devastation and destruction, and flowers, too. Like a wildfire—and indeed the sound it made was the same as a wildfire, from deep underground—it killed in order to bring life.

  That was small consolation, though, for anything other than a seed. Nowhere was the natural order made clearer than at the vanguard of such a storm, watching the avalanche of looming cloud engulf the sky, taking light and all hope with it. And no one knew that more clearly than the one who had brought it into being, and who could not now turn it back.

  Only the stones did not fear its coming.

  Sal woke to a pounding at his door. For a moment, he was completely disoriented, caught in a re-run of that morning. He had been trying to find his tattoo when the attendant had come for him. Was he still caught in that moment…?

  No. The room was dark, and he was in bed. His head was thick and heavy, as though he had only just fallen asleep. He had been dreaming. Something about a storm again? And stone?

  Heavy tendrils of sleep clutched at him, tried to pull him back down into unconsciousness.

  The door crashed open. “Sal, get up,” said the looming, hooded figure of an attendant.

  “What? Why?”

  “Something has happened. You must move quickly.”

  He forced himself to obey. It was the nice attendant, the woman, but there was an edge to her voice that he hadn’t heard before. If she said he had to move quickly, then that was what he had to do.

  He had barely tugged on the previous day’s clothes when he was hauled out into the hallway and frogmarched into the depths of the Novitiate buildings. His escort consisted of no less than six attendants, all stepping in time. He felt like a prisoner being led off to a hearing. This, combined with his sudden awakening, contributed to a growing sense of unease.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Almost midnight.”

  Sal nodded. He hadn’t been in bed long, then. “Will you tell me what happened?”

  “It’s not our place.” The attendant hesitated, then she added, “I’m sorry, Sal.”

  He almost asked, “What for?”, but knew he wouldn’t receive an answer. He would just have to bide his time until he met someone who could tell him.

  Luckily, he didn’t have to wait long. The attendants took him down the long corridor that led to the room in which they had first met Master Warden Atilde. The high-ceilinged chamber was as gloomy as he remembered it, as was the Master Warden herself. Her translucent features peered out at him from beneath her wide-brimmed hat as though she was in danger of becoming a shadow herself.

  There were other people in the room besides her. Shilly and Skender sat on the same stools they had occupied last time. Skender didn’t look up when he entered, but Sal could tell that he was deeply upset. Shilly stared at him with wordless appeal, as though she was desperately trying to tell him something. Standing behind them, dressed in a robe coloured such a deep blue that it was almost black, her grey hair unadorned and her expression grim, was the Syndic, Nu Zanshin.

  “Sit down, Sal,” she said, moving around the chairs to take his arm.

  He pulled away, made more concerned than ever by the expression on her face. Everyone was looking at him as though he would fly into pieces at any moment.

  “I’m not doing anything until someone tells me what’s going on.”

  “You’ll be told in due course,” his great-aunt began to say in an effort to mollify him.

  “Now,” he said, glaring at her.

  “Your grandmother,” said the Master Warden, “is dead.”

  The Syndic shot Atilde a sharp look and opened her mouth as though to issue a reprimand, but just as quickly backed down. With a sigh, she turned and went back to stand behind Shilly and Skender.

  “She’s what?” asked Sal, staring from one face to the other. “Dead?”

  Shilly nodded, and he could tell from her eyes that there was more to come.

  The Syndic provided it. “It’s true, Sal. Radi Mierlo was found strangled an hour ago. The alarm was raised by Shilly, who was told about the murder by the man’kin your grandmother kept in her room. It saw everything, and also informed Skender. Mawson didn’t see fit to tell anybody else. Did you know?”

  Sal shook his head. He was still getting his head around the notion that his grandmother was dead. Strangled? It didn’t seem possible. “I was asleep,” he said, wondering if he was still asleep. The news had the air of a nightmare. “I would have woken up if Mawson had called me. I’m sure of it. I wouldn’t sleep through something like that, no matter how tired I was.

  “And how did—?” He stopped. The question was stupid; he knew how someone was strangled, although it was hard to imagine it happening to someone he knew. Hard to imagine it happening to his grandmother, whom he had defied from the first moment they met. She didn’t deserve to die like that. Murdered, alone…

  “Who did it?” he asked instead.

  The question dropped into the room like a heavy stone. The Syndic and Atilde exchanged a nervous glance. Shilly and Skender swapped roles: she looked away, biting her lip, while his hot, swollen gaze met Sal’s in something like defiance.

  “We have evidence,” said Nu Zanshin, “suggesting that the necromancer Payat Misseri is responsible.”

  “Lodo?” Sal couldn’t have been more surprised if told that his late father had done it.

&
nbsp; “Or something inhabiting his body,” said Atilde.

  Ice flooded through him. “Like what?” he heard himself say, weakly.

  “We don’t know.”

  “I’ve yet to hear a convincing possibility,” said the Syndic. Clearly they disagreed on that part. “All we know is that Payat left his bed in the Privity some time after sunset, overpowering two orderlies who tried to stop him. They are in no doubt that it was he. The murder itself was witnessed by the man’kin Mawson. The description it gives matches the man you call Lodo.”

  “Payat has been empty-minded for two months,” said Atilde. “Why would he suddenly awake, escape from his room, and kill someone on the other side of the city? Indeed, how could he do this? His physical condition was poor. Under normal circumstances, he would barely have been able to lift his head.”

  “You have a better explanation, then?” snapped the Syndic.

  “No, but that shouldn’t stop us looking.”

  Sal didn’t need to look any harder at the mystery. It was the golem. It had to be. The golem had promised to bring Lodo out of where he was being hidden, and it had certainly done that. It had neglected to mention that it would make him a murderer in the process.

  He felt sick to the stomach. So much for his confidence that he could stop the golem if it tried to put one over him. It had been one step ahead of him before they’d even begun.

  “What’s this Privity you keep mentioning?” asked Shilly. “Is it a prison? A hospital?”

  Atilde turned to face her, and her expression softened. “More the latter. It’s a place where those who have lost their selves can rest. It’s usually a quiet place. No one moves; no one talks. Occasionally something disturbs the peace, taking residence in one of the bodies and causing a ruckus, but there are charms in place to make such events unlikely.”

  “Exactly,” said the Syndic.

  “Unlikely, not impossible,” Atilde asserted. “It has happened before that something particularly strong and particularly bent on mischief has broken through the barriers.”

  “You said Lodo’s condition was poor,” Shilly persisted. Sal could see her chin trembling, as though she was on the brink of tears.

  “Yes,” said Atilde, turning back to her, “Payat was losing strength. I don’t think he would have lasted much longer.” She spoke sadly, as though personally grieving.

  “You knew him?” Shilly asked.

  “We studied together, long ago—before he went to the Keep. And we renewed our acquaintance when he returned here.” Sal wondered if the liquid glassiness of the Master Warden’s eyes was solely a symptom of her disease. “I visited him in the Privity several times. He was—is dying.” She turned her attention back to the Syndic. “He could not have committed this crime. Not in his right mind. He did not have the capacity.”

  “The man destroyed himself in order to summon an earthquake,” said Sal’s great-aunt frostily. “You do not know what he was capable of.”

  Atilde looked away. “We’ll know for sure,” she said, “when he is found.”

  Sal stared from one to the other. “You don’t know where he is?”

  “No,” snapped the Syndic, “but we soon will. All routes to and from the city—our city—have been closed. He can’t hide for long.”

  Sal’s legs felt weak. There was no way to get out of it now. Who else would the golem kill if Sal didn’t keep his promise?

  Master Warden Atilde must have noticed his distress. “Here,” she said, “sit.”

  Sal felt her hand on his arm, and he turned to look at her face. From close quarters, it really was translucent, like smoky glass. He could see her jawbone faintly through the skin and muscle.

  He looked away, embarrassed and a little alarmed. The glimpse reminded him of the time he, Skender and Shilly had woken the light-sink that Lodo had given him. Its powerful glare had seemed—briefly, and to his eyes alone—to strip his friends back to their skeletons. He had brought the experiment to a halt, fearing what else the light might do.

  At the insistence of Atilde’s hand, he sat in a chair next to Shilly.

  “Are you okay?” Shilly asked.

  “I don’t know what I am,” he said, feeling as though he was thinking through a dense fog. “What about you?”

  She shook her head. He didn’t know if that meant she didn’t know, if it was too bad to put into words, or if she simply wasn’t able to talk just then.

  Skender, on the far side of Shilly, had withdrawn into himself again. The boy sat, staring feverishly at the ground, worrying at his lip. He hadn’t said a word since Sal had arrived. Sal had no idea what was wrong with him. He seemed more shocked than Sal felt, and the victim had been Sal’s own grandmother. He may not have liked her, and hadn’t even known she existed until two months ago, but she was still his mother’s mother. Or had been. Now all he had left on that side of the family was his uncle and aunt and his cousins. He wondered what would happen now that the woman holding them all together was gone.

  Don’t ever think that I don’t admire you, Sal, she had said.

  He wondered what might happen to him next.

  A Sky Warden robed in blue entered the room and whispered in the Syndic’s ear. She nodded, and the warden strode back out.

  “The rest of the family are here,” she said. “I’ll give them the news. The Goddess knows how they’ll take it, beyond bitching about security. There’s no way an old maniac should have been able to escape and harm anyone in the Novitiate chambers. That’s what they’re going to say, and I agree with them, but I’m hardly going to admit it.” The Syndic sighed heavily. “These are dangerous times,” she said, looking at Sal but addressing all of them. “You will appreciate this better now, I hope. It is in your interest to let us help you. We’ll discuss how best to do that later.”

  She swept out of the room with two attendants in tow before anyone could contradict her.

  Sal exchanged a dark look with Shilly. He was in no doubt that his great-aunt would use the incident to clamp down on them even more than she had already.

  Master Warden Atilde stood motionless before them for a moment, as though listening to an inner voice. And perhaps she was, Sal thought. There was probably a whole web of silent communication flashing around them that only she could hear.

  Then she stirred.

  “I’m reluctant to send you back to bed just yet,” she said to them, “and if I were you, I know I wouldn’t sleep. But keeping you here isn’t doing anyone any good. I’ll rouse one of the cooks and get them to make you a hot drink in the dining hall. You’ll be looked after and on hand if anything new eventuates. Please…” She hesitated. “Sal, Syndic Zanshin wasn’t exaggerating about the seriousness of this incident. I want you three to be careful. Do you understand?”

  The glassy eyes, taking in each of them in turn, were concerned and suspicious at the same time. Sal wondered how much she had guessed. Did she know that Sal had made a pact with the golem that had inhabited Lodo’s body—or was she simply connecting their arrival and the outburst by Shilly’s former teacher? It could have been nothing more perceptive than educated guesswork. But she could also know more than she was saying.

  Atilde didn’t say anything more than that, though. She just waited for confirmation that they would do as they were told. The three of them nodded obediently.

  Sal had no intention of being anything other than careful, so he wasn’t lying. He just wasn’t telling the whole truth. He had no choice but to fulfil his side of the bargain with the golem. If he didn’t, he had no doubt that he or someone very dear to him would end up like his grandmother.

  Failure is not likely, not when you want success enough, it had told him. I know you will want it very badly.

  He shook that horrible thought from his mind and stood up. The attendants ushered them forward. He had to talk to Shilly and Skender soon. Shilly
had to understand what he had done. Together, hopefully, they could work out what to do next.

  The dining hall by night was an echoing, empty vault. Heavy shadows gathered in the corner, smothering the yellowish light cast by a gas lamp one of the attendants lit for them. Rows of chairs stood like angular, spindly trees on the long tables filling in the room. Shilly sat with Sal and Skender at the end of one of them, mugs clutched in their hands against a very real chill.

  The attendants stood a respectful distance away, but the slightest sound carried far. Shilly felt as though she could hear the air itself flowing around them, whispering as it brushed their skin and hair. She detected no telltale twinkling of the Change, but there was definitely something odd about the night.

  A woman had been murdered by a man Shilly had loved as a father. Odd wasn’t the word. Interminable, perhaps. It seemed to be lasting forever.

  Shilly reached into her pocket for Sal’s ward. She hadn’t let it out of her sight, and had felt glad for its presence during the night, but it was time she returned it to its rightful owner. The relief on Sal’s face when she placed the silver ring carefully on the table before them affirmed that she was doing the right thing.

  He picked it up and, with practised fingers, slipped it through the hole in his ear.

  “I need to talk to you,” he whispered, sending streamers of steam dancing off the hot chocolate in his mug.

  Shilly glanced at the attendants. They didn’t react. Skender likewise didn’t move from his inspection of the tabletop. He hadn’t said a word since he had left her room to go back to his, after he had told her what he had seen.

  She remembered the horror in his eyes, and the terror that made his movements jerky and incomplete. He would raise a hand to cover his eyes only to run it over the back of his head instead. He would look at her, then look away. He wasn’t finishing sentences. She had only managed to get it out of him in frantic bits and pieces.