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

by Sean Williams

  Radi Mierlo was dead, murdered by a man who, according to Skender’s description, sounded very much like Lodo. They had to tell someone. There was no doubt about that: what if someone else was murdered because they hadn’t sounded the alarm? But how would they explain what they’d seen without revealing Skender’s access to the crawlspace? To lose that means of escape would close the cage even more securely around them. Neither of them wanted that.

  So they had decided to lie. From their separate rooms, they would both call for help. They would tell the wardens that Mawson had warned them of the murder. If it was important for them to get away with the lie, Mawson would know and go along with it. Thus far the lie had held. It was the one thing in the whole evening about which she could feel any satisfaction.

  Getting Skender back into the crawlspace had been hard. She didn’t blame him for that; wild camels couldn’t have dragged her up into that darkness, no matter how important it was in the long run. And as she lay back on her bed, waiting anxiously to allow Skender enough time to return to his room, hoping the golem wasn’t up there, lying in wait, she realised that the thing she had been missing all night was back: the place inside of her that looked for Sal was at ease. He was nearby. He hadn’t escaped after all.

  Skender’s journey through the dark had been for nothing.

  I need to talk to you. Sal’s expression was urgent, almost fearful. She needed to talk to him, too, but she’d be damned before letting the attendants hear anything. With grim satisfaction, she reached out and took one of Sal’s hands from the mug in front of him and clasped it firmly in hers.

  “Shilly, I—”

  “Wait.”

  Turning to Skender, she did the same thing. The boy looked up, startled but relieved. His hand gripped hers as though it would never let her go.

  Something crackled through them—an energy that came not from Sal, but from Skender. It made the small hairs on Shilly’s arms stand on end, and brought with it a faint smell of vinegar. The current flickered backward and forward between the three of them, building in strength. Skender’s gaze danced away from hers, into the shadows, and she felt something begin to snap inside him—a barrier that had until then been holding back a terrible weight.

  “I saw her die!”

  It was like a dam collapsing. Feelings rushed through her and Sal in a torrent. She felt Skender’s horror at seeing the murder unfold before him; she felt the same paralysing fear that had frozen him at the grille, unable to stop watching; she felt the terror that had sent him running when the golem had lunged threateningly for him. She didn’t want to end up like that. She had to get away!

  The murder of Radi Mierlo flooded through her, via Skender, with such emotional clarity that she thought she would scream.

  And behind it all was the thought: I did nothing! I just watched it happen!

  “It’s my fault,” said a voice in her mind.

  She struggled to separate her self from Skender’s feelings. “What?”

  “It’s my fault,” repeated Sal. “I made a deal with the golem we met in the lake city. It killed her, in Lodo’s body, and it would have killed you too, Skender, if you’d tried to intervene. So don’t blame yourself. She would have died whether you were there or not. She’s dead because of me.”

  The tide of horror subsided. “No. They killed her,” the boy said, his mental voice shaky but clear. “The Weavers. Mawson said so.”

  “The Weavers?” Sal was thrown by the response, Shilly could tell. “Why would the Weavers do something like that?”

  “They didn’t need her any more. They cut her short.”

  “But why kill her?”

  “Why would you make a deal with the golem?” Shilly wanted to know, unable to suppress a flash of bitterness. “Don’t you remember the last time we met it?”

  “Of course I do. That’s why I did it.” He wanted her to understand, that much was clear. “It was going to give us Lodo. Or so I thought. And the Golden Tower, too, although now I’m a little less keen on that possibility.”

  “Maybe you should still be,” she said. “It’s a Way.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “A ghost told me.”

  There was a momentary silence around the table as the three of them stared dumbfounded at each other. To Shilly it would have been comical, had it not been so tragic.

  “We’ve obviously got a lot to talk about,” she said. She glanced over her shoulder at the attendants, who thus far had chosen not to intervene. “I suggest we do it now, while we’ve got the chance.”

  “Okay,” said Sal. “I’ll go first.”

  “Then me,” said Skender.

  She nodded. “Then me.”

  Sal took a deep breath. Steam from his mug made delicate shapes in the air as he began to talk.

  Skender listened to Sal’s account of his day with half a mind. Afterward, the same half recounted his version of the story’s events, making the words come out as though from a great distance. The words were just a pale echo of what had happened in those few minutes, but he was relieved when he could go back to listening when it was Shilly’s turn. That half of his mind was wearing out.

  The other half was fully occupied with reliving the murder, experiencing it again and again as though trapped in that moment forever. He saw the sightless eyes of the dead woman, heard the heavy effort required to hold an unwilling victim down, smelled the fear filling the room, tasted his own fear on his tongue, and felt the cold of the golem lashing out at him at the end.

  And it wasn’t just the murder; there was the buildup to it. Mawson had virtually told him that the golem was on its way—or at least the body it inhabited. He had told him that Lodo was walking freely, not being held. He had also warned him about the Weavers just before the golem burst through the door. When a thread or threads have served their purpose, Mawson had said, sometimes they must be cut short. The clues had all been there, and he hadn’t seen them.

  For the first time in his life, he cursed his perfect memory. Usually, he cursed those who had unrealistic expectations of him because of his gift. His father was one of those, as were some of his fellow students who resented his natural advantage over them. This time, though, it was the perfect recall he despised—the incredible detail with which the murder scene was etched in his mind, and the readiness for it to surface over and over again.

  It will change the path of your life.

  Yeah, thanks, Mawson, he thought. Thanks a lot. This wasn’t what he had wanted to see in the world outside the Keep. This wasn’t the sort of experience he wanted to carry home with him. It was exactly the sort of thing forgetting was for.

  Given that forgetting wasn’t possible, no matter how much he willed the images to evaporate, he forced himself to concentrate on the conversation—anything other than the horrors in his mind.

  “What’s a necromancer?” Shilly asked after they were all up to date. Their mugs sat empty and cold between them.

  “Someone who brings back the dead,” said Skender, dredging the information up from a conversation he had heard between two senior students.

  “And the unliving,” said Sal. “Your dad told me that in Ulum. If you create the illusion of a human, you make an empty thing, the sort of thing a golem could inhabit. That’s what Lodo was accused of doing.”

  “Why would the ghost call me one?” asked Shilly.

  “Well, you’re good at illusions,” Sal said with a shrug. “Perhaps you’ll do it one day.”

  “Why would I?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe to get yourself kicked out of the Haunted City.”

  She almost smiled. “If I can’t think of a better way, maybe I’ll give it a try.”

  “It also said you had to get a heart-name,” Skender said.

  “Only if I wanted to hear its answer—whatever that is.”

 
“I guess you’ll have to get one, then,” said Sal. “It’s told us more about the Golden Tower than the golem’s ever likely to. It told us that it’s a Way, or something like that.”

  “Mawson said that it’s underground,” Skender added.

  “All the Ways I’ve seen have been at least partly underground,” said Shilly. “I’d assumed that was normal.”

  “You might be right.” Skender had never noticed that detail, or read about it, but it made sense. If the Golden Tower wasn’t underground, people would have found it by now. It was exactly like Shilly to notice an interesting and potentially important detail about something he had taken for granted his entire life. It was she who had taught him that there was more to Blind than running and fighting, and she who had shown them how to activate the light-sink from patterns he had in his head but couldn’t have utilised on his own.

  Skender was sure that she would have understood what Mawson had been telling him.

  “Regardless of whether I think we should talk to the ghost or not,” she went on, “how do I get a heart-name? Is there a special ceremony or something? I don’t know anything about them. Sal was the first person I met who had one.”

  “I have one,” said Skender, forcing down rising images of blue-toned skin and empty red eyes. “The ceremony is simple and short. It’s usually conducted by a parent when a child is young. Sometimes there are others present; usually it’s just the namer and the person getting the name. It’s supposed to be a private thing shared only with a few. Making a big deal of the ceremony would defeat the purpose.”

  “But why go to the trouble at all?” she asked, looking puzzled. “Doesn’t it just make things more complicated, having two names?”

  “No more complicated than the Strand custom of creating a new family name every time two people get married.” Sal explained that his mother, Seirian Mierlo, and his father, Highson Sparre, had chosen the name Graaff to symbolise their marriage, to show that they were a new entity belonging to neither of their old families. “A heart-name is like that. It’s a piece of you that you only give to those you trust the most. The ones you’re closest to.”

  “But it’s nothing more than that?” she asked. “Nothing…magical?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  Skender shuddered, remembering the voice of the Golem, warning him away.

  “My heart-name is Galeus,” he said, knowing that if he couldn’t trust Sal and Shilly, there was no one else for thousands of kilometres to rely on.

  “Mine is Sayed,” said Sal.

  “Great, but where the hell am I going to get mine from?” exclaimed Shilly. “I don’t even know who my parents are, let alone where they might be.”

  “I guess you ask someone else to do it instead,” Skender said. “As Sal said, the person you trust the most.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He’s either wanted for murder or lost in the Void Beneath, depending how you look at it.”

  “Would there be anything stopping me from giving Shilly her heart-name?” asked Sal.

  Skender noted an odd look pass between his friends. “Sure, you could do it,” he said, frowning slightly, “if Shilly wanted you to.”

  “What would I need in order to do it?”

  “Not much more than a name, really. The rest is just window dressing.”

  Sal and Shilly exchanged another look. Their expressions were unreadable. If they were communicating with each other via the Change, he was most definitely being left out.

  Shilly cleared her throat. “It’s good to know that it’s an option, but I think we have more important things to worry about. What if the wardens find Lodo’s body? How are we going to convince them that it wasn’t him who did it?”

  By “it” she meant the murder. Skender understood that, but the word trivialised the awfulness of what he had seen, and was continuing to see.

  “I don’t think the golem’s going to let itself be caught,” said Sal. “I think it wants the body, wants to be active. It said it knows the secret places of the city—which I guess it must do, assuming it does actually know where the Golden Tower is. If it wants to stay hidden, it’ll find a way.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Shilly. “Just wait for it to show up?”

  “There’s not much else we can do. Is there?”

  “What about the Weavers?” asked Skender. “We’re no closer to knowing who they are, or what they want. I hate the idea that they can kill again, any time they want, while Lodo is loose.”

  “Lodo’s body,” Shilly corrected him. “The mind of the golem.”

  “That’s what I can’t work out,” said Sal, sticking to Skender’s point. “Shom Behenna thinks he’s working for the Weavers, and my grandmother helped him get us back here. Why would they kill her for helping them? It’s not as if we can ask anyone about it. The Weavers are a closed subject.”

  “The ghost didn’t like me mentioning them,” said Shilly gloomily.

  “No one does.” Skender looked around at the shadows. “It’s like a secret that’s either so big no one can see it, or so small it could be anywhere.”

  Shilly looked at him hard for a long second, then barked a loud laugh. The sound echoed off the stone walls of the dining hall and seemed to dispel some of the darkness. Sal followed a second later with a tension-releasing chuckle that made the attendants glance curiously between themselves.

  Skender shifted nervously in his seat. He hadn’t meant to be funny, and he didn’t feel like laughing, not with the death of Radi Mierlo still reverberating through his mind. But he was glad he had inadvertently given his friends something to feel good about. In time, perhaps, he would be able to join in.

  Chapter 9. Truth And Lies

  The sound of Master Warden Atilde’s footsteps across the stone floor of the dining room was deafening in the silence of their mental conversation. Sal automatically pulled away from the others.

  “As much as can be organised,” she said, without preamble, “has been organised. Your family, Sal, has been notified. They will arrange a suitable memorial when your grandmother’s body is released to them. There will need to be an inquest first, however, and the Syndic will hold that tomorrow. You will need to attend. I’m sorry to place you under additional stress, but the truth of this matter must be revealed.”

  Her glassy gaze swept over them. “Security on your rooms has been doubled. You can sleep easy, knowing that nothing can get in to harm you.”

  And we can’t get out? Sal thought, wondering how much the Master Warden had guessed.

  She waved for them to stand. Skender yawned hugely, and immediately set Shilly off.

  Atilde’s expression softened.

  “This isn’t a good start to your education,” she said, “and I’m sorry for that. Under other circumstances, perhaps you would have enjoyed it here. There is much we would like to share with you, if you would only let us.” Sal sensed that she was talking almost exclusively to him, now. “Don’t let the actions of a few taint everything you see. Things are not and have not always been so in the Haunted City.”

  Sal nodded warily. His habitual defiance of the wardens didn’t seem appropriate in the context of his grandmother’s murder, and when the head of the Novitiate seemed to be softening the tone of things for no other reason, it seemed, than to make him feel better, some sort of graceful response was surely required. He couldn’t think of one, though, so it came as a relief when Shilly spoke for him.

  “Thanks. None of this is your fault. We know you’re just trying to do the right thing.”

  Do we? Sal wondered. For all they knew, Atilde could be one of the Weavers, subtly influencing their behaviour.

  But the way she inclined her head, with apparently genuine gratitude, made him suspect otherwise.

  The attendants came forward as the Master Warden bade them goodnight. Sal had no idea what t
ime it was. He seemed to have been awake for hours, and he wondered if there was any point in going back to bed. But that was where they were taken, one by one.

  On the way to Skender’s room, first of all, he felt Shilly’s free hand nudge his, as though by accident. He slid his fingers into hers, thinking she had something else she wanted to say.

  “What is it?”

  There was a small silence.

  “Uh, did the tattoo work?” she said.

  “Oh.” Sal felt himself blushing, realising that her intention hadn’t been to talk to him at all. He forced himself to concentrate on the events of the previous morning. It felt like days ago: waking up to find the tattoo, first missing, then roaming his body freely. The scab on his back was itching, now that he was reminded of it, and he forced himself not to scratch. “It broke the binding charm, just as Skender thought it might,” he said. “Although it was a bit strange…”

  “Strange how?”

  The group of attendants ahead of them came to a halt. They had reached Skender’s room.

  “I’ll have to tell you later.”

  They broke apart as they said goodnight. Skender was quiet, but less upset than he had been before. His pain had been piercing through their linked hands in the dining room. Sal felt terrible for exposing him to it, and wondered how the Mage Van Haasteren would feel on learning what had happened. At least Skender wouldn’t have any trouble sleeping. He looked exhausted.

  As they headed off to Shilly’s room, Sal found Shilly’s hand again. He didn’t know when they would next be able to talk in private.

  “If I was to give you a heart-name,” he said, “it would be Carah.”

  The pause was even longer, this time—long enough to make him wonder if he’d done the wrong thing.

  But then she squeezed his hand. “I guess you just did.”