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

by Sean Williams

  He wondered, another what? Another person in the tunnel with them?

  But all he saw behind them was Aron slogging on, sweating and red-faced beneath his burden. If the man’kin was still listening, he made no sign.

  Chapter 12. A Small Amount of Light

  Sal was more relieved than he’d ever been when they reached the bottom of the tunnel and found themselves in a smooth, straight passage free of hideous faces. Light shone softly in the distance. The last stretch had been awful beyond imagining, as the formless pressure in the air had closed around the light like a suffocating smog. He had begun to hear voices—or imagined that he could—just beyond his hearing. Strange, silent cries, wordless and agonised, seemed to hang frozen in the air, demanding a response. He had to bite his tongue to stop himself from shouting out—not in reply, but to beg it to cease.

  As soon as the light ahead of them was bright enough to see by, he gratefully let the globe sputter and fade. It hadn’t dimmed even slightly during their descent, and he sensed that it still had plenty of light remaining in reserve. Stopping it from releasing it all at once was the problem. Instead of delivering a trickle, it wanted a flood. Keeping it in check had been more exhausting than starting it in the first place.

  In his head, keeping him going, were the words of Lodo from weeks back, when the old man had given him the globe: A thing is only as valuable as the need it fills, he had said. I think you will need a little light in the future, wherever you go. Glad that he had followed the impulse to bring the globe with him, knowing only that they were going underground for an unknown length of time, he had summoned the patterns Skender had showed them in the Keep and brought the globe to life. Just a small amount of light can dispel the deepest darkness. The Mage Erentaite had told him that in the city of the Nine Stars. And it was true; the suffocating tentacles in the tunnel of faces had been pushed back for a while, allowing him to breathe again.

  Shilly let go of him and sagged gratefully onto her crutch. Her assistance in maintaining the charm had been essential, although he wondered just how much of its effects she had experienced. The eyes of the faces in the bas-relief walls and ceilings had seemed to move as they passed, following him, winking or rolling maniacally. Strange shadows had swirled around the globe, like moths around a flame, desiring the light but wary of it at the same time. And around the face of the golem—

  Perhaps Shilly had seen that, too: Lodo’s face wreathed with ghostly tentacles and fringes, as though one of Fairney’s many-limbed underwater creatures was growing out of it. If she had seen it, that would explain the additional tension he sensed in her. The ghostly fringes hadn’t been there when the golem had collapsed to the ground. They had appeared only when it awoke and took control of Lodo’s body. Sal was convinced that what he was seeing was the golem itself—the strange, bodiless thing that inhabited Lodo’s flesh and made it dance to its will.

  The tunnel sloped down very slightly now. The last few metres were covered in a thin layer of perfectly flat sand. There were no footprints, even of animals. If anyone or anything had come this way before them, it hadn’t been for a very long time.

  The light was moonlight. They emerged from the tunnel onto a crescent-shaped stretch of sand, huddling under the arches of a cavernous stone cathedral carved over aeons by water jetting through a crack in the island’s cliff face. A small patch of sky peered around jagged stone ramparts, far above. They had been in the dark long enough for the stars to seem very bright. Waves boomed in the distance, but the tide pool in front of them was very still, lapping gently at the strip of beach as though belonging to a completely different ocean. Isolated and hidden from the rest of the world, the grotto was like a sinister oasis, slowly stagnating.

  A cloud of tiny, flying insects swarmed around, driven to a frenzy by their sudden appearance. Behind him, Skender swatted at the air in annoyance.

  “Ugh! Bloody things.”

  “They won’t hurt you,” said Shilly.

  “Doesn’t mean I have to like ’em.”

  The golem, ignoring them, walked to the water’s edge and tugged back the hood of its robe. Lodo’s haggard face was filled with a powerful intensity as the being inside it looked around.

  “Is the Golden Tower near here?” asked Sal.

  “The entrance to the catacombs is close.”

  “More tunnels?”

  The cold gaze fell on him, filled with disdain, then swept away. The golem walked along the water’s edge, following it around the corner of the cliff. Sal and the others trailed it, leaving a mess of footprints in the pristine sand—like the sand in the tunnel, nothing had walked here for what seemed like years. Sal wasn’t intimately familiar with beaches, the one at Fundelry being the only other one he had seen. He had seen marks in the sand there, left behind by birds and crabs, faint hieroglyphs scratched into the beach that would be gone with the next tide. Here there was nothing, not even a sign of the ever-present gulls, the “rats of the sea” as Shilly had called them. Perhaps they avoided the pool for some reason. Forbidding and forgotten, the beach seemed an entirely different world to the one they had left.

  The crescent of beach extended a surprising distance around the corner of the “cathedral” space. A whole series of linked chambers honeycombed the rock, joined by massive stone arches and irregular tunnels. Where this network of caverns existed with respect to the Haunted City, Sal couldn’t tell, but he presumed they were somewhere on the edge of the island, perhaps near the pier where the great bone-ship Os had docked. The entire island, he thought, might be riddled with such caverns, right under the wardens’ feet. A catacomb indeed, as the golem had called it.

  They rounded a jagged, stone buttress and came face to face with a scene from one of Sal’s dreams.

  While on the run from the Syndic, Sal had received a prophetic vision containing numerous images that had, one by one, come true. He had seen his grandmother talking to Mawson, seen the city in the salt lake, Tait and Behenna following them across the Strand, a globe of light surrounded by nothing but darkness, and Lodo himself, gaunt and hollow. There were images that hadn’t yet come true; one of them was Kemp in the Golden Tower, looking out at a city of glass. The other was before him.

  Two withered bodies hung on either side of a shadowy tunnel mouth downturned like a giant frown.

  “Goddess,” breathed Shilly, “where are we?”

  The golem turned to her, grinning. “These are old places, powerful places. They have no names.”

  “Someone’s been here.” She indicated the bodies with an expression of disgust. They hung upside-down, suspended by chains from rusted beams hammered into the naked rock. Desiccated and gnarled almost beyond recognition, it was impossible to tell what sex they were or how they had died.

  “Nothing comes without a cost,” said the golem.

  “Who pays, though?”

  “That’s ever the question.”

  “It’s me you want,” said Sal. “Take me down there, but leave the others behind.”

  “No,” said the golem flatly.

  “Why not?” Fear and desperation was building up inside him, reaching flashpoint. “Tell me why they have to come or I’m reneging on the deal. I don’t care what you threaten to do. You want something from me and you won’t get it unless you start talking.”

  The golem in Lodo’s form strode forward to confront him. In the dim moonlight, its face looked stretched, thin, as though it would shatter at any moment. “They have to come because you on your own are not enough. You have the talent, but he has the knowledge and she the understanding.” One dirty finger stabbed at Skender and Shilly in turn. “They must be present to open the Tower. The others—” Cold eyes danced from Tom to Aron and back to Sal. “The others are hostages. If you don’t do as you’re told, I’ll kill them.”

  Stated so boldly, the threat made Sal sick to the stomach.

  “
You said you don’t kill unnecessarily,” he countered.

  “I don’t.”

  “If you kill them, I won’t help you.”

  “Then I’ll kill you, too.”

  “You wouldn’t. You need me.”

  “I need someone like you, boy. That’s all. If I had an alternative, I’d strangle you right now and leave your body to rot in a hole, but don’t think you’re irreplaceable, because you’re not. Another wild talent will come along soon enough. I’ve waited millennia. I can wait a century or two more. I’ve got much less to lose than you. You would be wise never to forget that, and do as you’re told.”

  Sal felt as though every muscle in his body suddenly locked. He had never been so angry, and not because the golem had suggested he was replaceable. All his life he’d thought he was perfectly ordinary. The Change had destroyed that illusion very quickly, and taken much that he had loved with it. He didn’t like being special; he didn’t like being the one everyone wanted. If the golem really was prepared to kill him just to make that point, then that was a perverse kind of comfort.

  No. The real problem was that the golem was trying to use that against him, as though he did care. He wasn’t going to stand for that. He had learned in Fundelry not to take being threatened lying down, and since then he had become heartily sick of being pushed around. He’d had enough of orders, of threats, of dire hints of what might lie ahead. While he might not be able to buck the entire Strand, the golem was just one creature. There had to be something that would hurt it—and if the golem was using Sal’s nature against him, perhaps the gesture could be returned.

  “The Weavers want me alive,” he said, clutching for the only threat he had left. “You’ll pay for it, if you kill me.”

  The golem pulled back as though stung. Lodo’s familiar face contorted into an utterly unrecognisable snarl.

  “Fool!”

  The blow came out of nowhere, so quickly Sal barely felt it connect. One moment he was standing up to the golem as best he could, the next he was sprawled on the cold beach, an explosion of pain centred on his right ear spreading hotly across his scalp.

  The world rang and spun around him. He could hardly hear Shilly calling his name, asking him if he was all right. He shook his head, not sure if he was saying no or just trying to think. Then her hands were turning him over so she could look at where he had been hit.

  Sal didn’t see her. All he saw was the golem standing behind her, grinning triumphantly. Gloating.

  That did it.

  He felt the Change gathering in him. He wanted to lash out in response—he needed to do something, to make a stand. But even as the mounting potential made his skin vibrate like a tarp in the wind, even as Shilly backed away with alarm in her eyes, he knew he couldn’t strike the golem directly. He didn’t want to harm Lodo’s body, and neither did he want to give the creature a way into his body. That was probably what it wanted. I yearn for something younger, stronger, it had said. It probably wanted that more than the Golden Tower. Sal would be damned before he became that something.

  Then a voice spoke from directly behind him.

  “Don’t,” it said.

  Sal knew who it was without turning. The Change rising up in him made everything glowingly real. He could see in all directions, in all colours of the spectrum.

  “Save it for later,” said Tom through the madly vibrating world, “when you’ll need it.”

  “There might not be a later,” he said through clenched jaw.

  “There will be.” The boy gripped him tightly, trying to reassure him. “You’re not the one who dies.”

  And suddenly Sal saw it. He saw the way it was meant to go. Everyone had been talking about him as though his life had been planned out ahead of him, dropping veiled warnings of what he had to do or keep an eye out for. Lodo gave him the globe on the grounds that he would need it in the future and told Shilly that the two of them were “destined”. Tom had dreamed of their escape from Fundelry and that Sal would make it to the Haunted City one day. Even his own dreams conspired to trap him. It was as though his entire future lay before him, and all he had to do was follow the path from beginning to end—a mindless peon in a cosmic game of Advance.

  With the Change thrilling through every cell in his body, and the moment seemingly frozen around him, he could see it all. Not just the fragments that others glimpsed, but the entire picture. And he didn’t like it. He wanted no part of it. It was one thing to be pushed around by the Syndic or his grandmother, another thing entirely to be pushed around by fate.

  Do as you’re told.

  Perhaps he had no choice—but if he was going to follow the golem into the tunnel, it would be on his terms. And if he was going to be with Shilly, it would be because he wanted to be, not because everyone told him he should be. If he was going to use his talent to shake up the divided world of Stone Mages and Sky Wardens, he would do it his way, no one else’s. And if he was going to take his friends into danger, he would make sure they all walked out of it with him.

  You’ve seen me before, the golem had said to Tom. You know what happens.

  I’m not going home, Tom had said on meeting Sal in the dining hall on their first morning in the Novitiate. You’re not the one who dies.

  Sal was having nothing to do with a twisted prophecy that demanded the death of a young boy.

  While the others moved around him as though through thick honey, he stood up and reached into his pack for the globe Lodo had given him. He could see in the moment the way he was supposed to use it. Its light could burn away the golem, drive it from them in one fiery blast. If he could lock the golem and the globe together in the Golden Tower, he could rid the old man of the creature that plagued his body, and seal the Tower behind them as well. But the light would kill Lodo in the process, rob them of any chance of bringing him back.

  That sacrifice might have seemed perfectly acceptable to those pulling his strings—fate, the Weavers, unnamed manipulators lurking in the shadows, whoever—but it wasn’t to Sal. There had to be another way.

  He would make himself find it.

  The globe came to life in his hands, and this time he didn’t rein in its urge to burn. A thousand days of sunlight woke as he tipped the globe back behind his head and threw it as hard as he could. Like a shooting star, it arced out across the beach, getting brighter and brighter until it seemed the world had cracked open, letting in a flood of impossible energy. Sal dimly heard himself cry out. He threw an arm across his eyes, too late. A bright afterimage burned on his retina—a fiery line curving up and then down towards the water.

  The stagnant pool exploded with a roar when the globe hit it. Spray erupted from its surface as the globe fell in a furious rush of bubbles to the bottom. Sal staggered back, feeling stinging spots on his skin. Hands tugged him away from the edge of the water, away from the light boiling up from the bottom of the pool. Glancing behind him, around the arm still covering his eyes, he saw a tower of steam rushing from the surface of the pool, swirling into the air like the heart of a hurricane and lit from below as though the very earth was on fire.

  They took shelter in the only place they could: the mouth of the tunnel, below the swinging bodies. A sharp wind sprang up as hot, moist air rushed up the centre of the cathedral cave, to its one possible exit, the stone chimney far above. Sal shivered, feeling the Change leave him in a sudden rush.

  Rippling waves of light from the globe at the bottom of the pool cast strange colours across the faces of those around him. Shilly stared, stunned, from him to the pool and back. Skender’s expression was one of puzzled awe. Tom just gaped in surprise, as though Sal had done something absolutely impossible. Aron gasped in wonder at the steam boiling up into the sky. Mawson—

  The man’kin was watching Sal closely. He nodded, as though in approval.

  Sal was grateful for that. Now that the moment of clarity w
as over, he had lost his grip on the way things were supposed to go. He couldn’t see why what he had done was any better than the path he was supposed to take. All he knew was that he had pushed the golem in a direction it hadn’t expected.

  “No more games,” Sal said to the golem. There was a ringing in his ears from where the golem had struck him, and fatigue made every muscle in his body ache. He had to speak up to be heard over the roaring of the steam. “When the sun comes up, there’ll be a cloud above these caves that no one could possibly miss. You’ve got until then to get us where you want us to be and out again. When we’re out, I’ll stop the globe. If you don’t get us out safely, you’ll be caught.”

  “The Sky Wardens can’t hurt me,” mocked the golem, but with less ferocity than before. The creature had lost some of its cockiness. “And you can’t intimidate me.”

  “I guess it works both ways, then.”

  The golem stared at him for a long moment, as though weighing its options.

  Unexpectedly, it chuckled.

  “I’m glad we’re on the same side, Sayed Hrvati,” it said, “otherwise I might almost be afraid of you.”

  It whirled around before Sal could ask what it meant, and headed off into the tunnel. “We must hurry,” it called. “The Golden Tower awaits!”

  Chapter 13. Terminus

  After the confrontation by the pool, Shilly felt as though she was falling, not walking, down the sloping tunnel. It was wide, although relatively low, so there was a strong sense of space around her, and none of the strange faces they had experienced before. Not that they could see anything at all, once they’d left the flickering glow cast by Lodo’s globe behind them. From there on it was nothing but dark. No phosphorescent fungus lit their way; no glow-stones or mirrors cast light from the Change. There was just darkness, and the feeling that she was being tugged downward by some awful force that would never let her go.