“Just pick one,” snapped the golem. “I can only be so patient.”
“I’ll do it,” she said, stepping off the podium and swinging her crutch in long strides up the point of the star leading to the city of the Nine Stars.
“Shilly, wait!”
She heard Sal hurrying after her, but didn’t slow her pace. The passage should have been narrowing around her, yet it wasn’t. She didn’t let that slow her either. She kept her eyes on the spindly, fragile ruins ahead of her. She was tired and thirsty, and she was sick of being bullied by the golem. Wherever she was going, she would rather get there sooner than later.
The end of the passageway wasn’t getting any closer, so she stepped up the pace. Sal called something from behind her, but she couldn’t make it out. She felt a moment’s resistance, as though something was pushing her back, then a shattering sensation, as though the very air itself had broken. Then—
She was the wind.
She was the pale dawn creeping across the land.
She was a faint droplet of desert dew evaporating into thin air, and the shimmering of heat already trembling on the eastern horizon.
She was—
Shilly struggled to find herself. Her body was swaying, barely remaining upright while her mind stretched a stupendously great distance away—
—hanging web-like and invisible between ancient girders and pylons worn down by time to little more than frail sticks, shedding rust like dandruff.
Her thoughts drifted with the flakes of ruined steel, fluttering like feathers into blood-red mounds far below.
“Where am I?” she tried to shout, but the words didn’t come. Her body was fading, slipping away from her, falling into the distance—
“Where am I?”
The cry echoed off a thousand crumbled planes that had once been towers. Echoes swooped through her like a swarm of birds driven insane by the depthless infinity of the sky.
“You’re right here,” said Sal, reaching out to touch her shoulder, to steady her. “Why did you stop? Are you okay?”
As his fingers touched her body, a soundless shock rocked through them, and they both fell limp to the ground.
“Shilly?”
The voice came out of the earth, out of the deep, stony foundations of the city, the anchors that held it tight, gripped it with fists of bedrock and wouldn’t let it go.
“Shilly? Is that you?”
Shilly recognised the woman’s voice instantly. It was the Mage Erentaite. Before she could reply, another voice joined her.
“Shilly, where are we?”
That was Sal. Somehow he was there with her, bodiless and disoriented in this other place.
“We’re in the Nine Stars,” she said. She felt his mind coiled around hers, clinging desperately to the slightest hint of certainty she allowed in her voice. “We’re here, and we’re not.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.”
“Shilly and Sal,” came the voice of the elderly mage again, breathless with urgency. “You must go back!”
Shilly felt her body twitch, as one might feel a piece of string twitch if tugged from a long way away.
“How?” she asked the disembodied voice of the mage.
“Why?” asked Sal.
“You have done something terrible,” said the Mage Erentaite. “It can be undone—but you must act quickly, before it’s too late.”
Shilly felt a peculiar movement through the city, as though something were waking. Rust shivered from every beam. Dust rose in clouds.
“The golem said we could escape this way,” she said. “We want to come back.”
“The golem?” The mage’s voice contained surprise and dismay in equal parts. “Shilly, this isn’t the way. This is a trap. The city is a trap, and you have unlocked it.”
“Which city? The Nine Stars?”
“The cities we see are different aspects of just one city. The Golden Tower lies at its heart, binding it.”
“But if it’s a trap and we’ve unlocked it,” said Sal, “what’s the danger?”
“The danger is not that you will be caught in it—although you will be if the breach repairs itself behind you. The danger is what you might set free.”
The rumbling rose around them, sending their minds dancing like butterflies in a storm.
“What is it?” Shilly cried, beginning to be truly afraid.
“It’s what the golem wants.” The Mage Erentaite pushed them. Shilly felt her mind grasped by frail, elderly hands and shoved back the way they had come.
Shilly resisted. They had gone to a lot of trouble to get to the Golden Tower and, while she might not understand exactly what form they had escaped in, she wasn’t about to let it go so quickly.
But the rumbling was rising. She could feel it all around her, not as deep or as powerful as the hum of the Void Beneath, but no less ominous. The dawn was fading; the heat was ebbing. Dew returned from the air that had claimed it.
Nine stars blazed among the ruins of the city, growing brighter but casting no heat at all. Shilly could hear voices far off in the distance, shouting, possibly screaming.
“I think we should do as she says,” said Sal. She was beginning to agree.
“I’m sorry children,” said the mind of the distant mage. “You should never have been used this way.”
Their minds retreated at her urging. She felt the city grow faint around her. The whistling of the wind eased; the cold desert dawn sank back into darkness; the taste of ancient rust on her tongue was—
—gone. Shilly rolled over and bumped into Sal, stirring beside her.
“What just happened to us?” she asked.
“I think we opened the Golden Tower,” he groaned, struggling onto his hands and knees.
“Sal, Shilly!” Skender was calling them from the heart of the star. “What’s going on?”
Sal helped her to her feet. She clutched her crutch as though it was a lifeline. The rumble she had felt in the city of the Nine Stars was rising around her. Behind them, the illusion of the ruined towers—if illusion it was—was shimmering, shaking.
Sal helped her back along the arm of the star. Skender and Tom were waiting for them in the centre, urging them to hurry.
“What’s going on?” asked Shilly as they approached.
“I don’t know,” said Skender. “You went up there together and fell over. Then all this started.” The floor was vibrating beneath them; the air itself shook. The golden glow of the Change was beginning to flicker on and off impossibly quickly. “I was about to come and get you, but—”
“How long were we down?” asked Shilly.
“Not long. A second or two.”
The beginning of a headache throbbed in Shilly’s temples. It felt like they had been gone for ten minutes or more.
You have done something terrible, the ancient mage had said.
“Where’s the golem?” Sal asked.
Skender looked around as though only then realising that the creature was gone. Tom pointed down one of the other arms of the star, toward the city of ice. Lodo’s body stood at the end, arms and legs wide apart, transfixed.
The city is a trap, and you have unlocked it.
“We’ve got to get it out,” said Shilly. “We’ve got to close the Tower!”
“How?” asked Skender, looking frightened.
“What did the Mage Erentaite say?” she asked Sal. “About the breach?”
“You spoke to Jarmila Erentaite?”
Sal ignored Skender’s amazed interjection. “That it would heal behind us if we weren’t quick,” he said, his eyes widening.
“I think that’s the breach.” She pointed along the arm to the Nine Stars, to where the rising rumbling and rushing originated. The sensation of pushing through a barr
ier of some kind returned to her. “How we close it, I’ve no idea.”
The danger is what you might set free.
“We’ll have to collapse the Way,” Sal said.
“Yes, I think you’re right.” She turned to face him. “How?”
“I don’t know. But we have to try. Come on!”
Sal hurried back down the Way.
“What about the golem?” she called after him.
“It can stay inside, for all I care.”
“But it’s in Lodo’s body.”
He hesitated. “See what you can do, then, while I talk to Mawson.”
Sal disappeared around the bend, and Skender went with him. That left her and Tom. He stared at her with wide eyes.
“You don’t have to stay,” she said.
“I want to. You can’t do this on your own.”
“Do what?”
“Save Lodo,” Tom said. “He was always nice to me. So was Aunty Merinda. I miss them.”
Shilly felt tears spring to her eyes. She blinked them back. If they were going to save Lodo, this wasn’t the time to be sentimental.
Tom clutched her arm and together they headed up the arm of the star toward the ice city. As they approached Lodo’s body, his arms still wide apart above his head, she saw geysers of snow and frost springing up between the frozen towers. The ground below was blue; the windows were white. How anything could live there, she didn’t know.
Maybe nothing did live there, she thought. Maybe that wasn’t what the cities were for. Not for humans, anyway. In the Haunted City, humans were like rats in the walls, cowering for shelter around the bases of buildings they could only marvel at, never inhabit. People huddled under the Nine Stars, hiding from the sun, while in the Broken Lands, dread and a sense of death permeated the air, keeping people entirely at bay. Golems walked the streets and ghosts pressed up against glass.
The cities we see are different aspects of just one, the Mage Erentaite had said. The Golden Tower lies at its heart, binding it.
The cities weren’t for humans; they belonged to something else. Never, Shilly decided, had the Syndic uttered a more incorrect statement than when she’d called the Haunted City “our city”.
She and Tom came abreast of Lodo. His robe whipped around him, snatched at by the raising gale. His expression was gleeful, although the air was bitterly cold. It snatched away the last traces of warmth from her body as it howled by.
Again Shilly felt a sense of resistance to the air, as though they had reached some sort of boundary. She was careful to go no further.
“Now what?” shouted Tom over the gale.
“We can’t touch him,” she said, remembering how clutching her arm had dragged Sal to the Nine Stars along with her.
“We need something to grab him with,” said Tom, looking around.
“There isn’t anything.” Suddenly her plan seemed stupid and futile. How was she going to rescue Lodo? She was so near to him, yet he was still so far away.
A rush of dense, cold air swept by her. The robe covering Lodo’s body couldn’t hide the gauntness of his limbs, and she dreaded to think what the cold was doing to him. The wind was rising to a crescendo.
There was only one thing she could do. Steadying herself, she launched herself bodily at Lodo and knocked him down.
The ambience of the icy city clutched at her with sharp-nailed fingers. Barely had she felt it when the shock of her leg hitting the ground wrenched her out again. From a great distance, she felt herself fall in a tumble of limbs with Lodo beneath her. The pain blinded but didn’t deafen her. She’d had worse.
As the golem woke, blinking and startled beneath her, something followed.
There was a hiss of water boiling into steam, as though a mighty engine had come up behind them. Something thudded onto the floor beside her, and she looked up from a single, glassy hoof along a milky-white, translucent leg to the creature bending above her. She had a horrifying glimpse of teeth like stalactites unfolding from a mouth easily large enough to engulf her head, and eyes that glinted like diamond.
The golem found its voice. What it said were not words that Shilly understood, but they had an immediate effect on the ice-creature. It reared back and roared, waving icicle-tipped hands wildly. Steam and mist hid the creature from sight, and the golem wriggled free from beneath her. When the boiling mist parted and she could see again, both were gone.
Tom helped her up, glancing nervously back to the centre of the star. “They went that way,” he whispered, pointing fearfully. “What was it, Shilly?”
“I don’t know.”
She ignored the deep throb in her leg as Tom gave the crutch to her and she slipped it into her armpit. They hurried back the way they’d come, back to the centre of the star. The dais was filled with wisps of mist, swirling in the wake of the creature. The floor shook beneath her feet.
Footsteps came from the Way. She and Tom backed nervously away, but it was Skender who appeared. His expression was anxious.
“Quickly,” he shouted, waving for them to follow him. “Mawson showed us how to close the Way, but I’m not sure we did it right. Sal’s holding it open, and—”
With a roar, acrid steam rushed into the chamber from one of the arms of the star, filling Shilly’s eyes with blinding moisture. She screamed as something brushed past her with a sound like glass chimes tinkling. Clutching Tom’s arm and pulling him after her, but losing Skender in the commotion, she headed in the direction of the Way. The surge of relief when she found it was like nothing she had ever felt before. She half-ran, half-slid down it.
Her eyes were still filled with mist when she reached the end. Stumbling, she let go of Tom and fell to the ground. Someone loomed over her, someone pale-skinned and large. Aron, she assumed, until he spoke.
“Shilly—where’s Skender?”
She looked around, blinking in the golden Change-light. There was Tom, backing away from the entrance of the Way. There was Sal, rigid and concentrating on the Way, trying to keep it open. Aron and Mawson made a hunch-backed figure next to Sal—so who was talking to her?
“Shilly!” Strong hands shook her shoulders, and she forced herself to concentrate.
“Hasn’t he come out? He was right behind us.”
“Shit.” The figure let go of her and suddenly sprang into focus.
“Kemp?” She stared up at the albino in amazement for a full second, then put the mystery of his appearance aside. Now simply wasn’t the time. “If Skender’s still in there, we have to get him out. There’s something else in there with him. Not the golem—something new.”
“Something else?” Kemp looked around the group in disbelief. “I should leave you here to sort out your own mess. Whatever you’ve got yourselves into—”
“Quickly!” hissed Sal through clenched teeth. “Can’t hold it—much longer!”
“Right,” said Shilly, clambering painfully to her feet. “I’ll get him.”
“No,” said Kemp. “You’re in no condition to do anything except stay here and help Sal.” He pushed her back from the Way. “Hold that door open. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He vanished into the Way. Shilly grabbed Sal’s arm. The moment she did, the effort he was making to halt the closing pattern filled her head. She clenched her fingers around his flesh and slid her thoughts into the visualisation. It wasn’t the reverse of the one they had used to open the way. It was a different pattern entirely, featuring slender, feathery tendrils swirling around a central circle. The trick was to fold the tendrils into the circle without causing them to touch. This they did readily enough once the process was started. Stopping it in mid-collapse was taking all of Sal’s concentration.
She assumed some of the burden.
“Thank you” he breathed through the link.
“Why didn’t you wait until I was out befo
re starting?”
“I didn’t know how long you’d take, or how hard this would be. I didn’t think it’d happen so fast.”
She nodded, accepting his exhausted explanation. “Where did Kemp come from?”
“I don’t know. He just appeared. He must have followed us down the tunnels.”
Shilly nodded, remembering the glimpse of someone at the end of Sal’s corridor when the golem had led them out of his room. She’d thought she had imagined it. “The sneaky shit,” she said, “but I’m glad he’s here. If he can get Skender out—”
She stopped as something collided heavily with them both, knocking her and Sal apart. There was a snarling noise from a human mouth. Her eyes flew open as she staggered backwards, hopping on her good leg and flailing for balance with both arms. Through a fading cloud of steam, she caught a glimpse of a black-robed figure scurrying blindly into the distance. The golem!
Sal’s cry of dismay drew her attention back to the Way. They had been distracted, and she felt the pattern collapsing. She tried to hold it back, but she had no talent of her own, and Sal was too far away to Take from. He was throwing himself forward, at the entrance of the Way.
Shilly saw it all as clearly as though it happened in slow motion. The edges of the Way rippled then began to shrink, contracting like a pupil in response to bright light. Around the bend, following in the golem’s wake, was Kemp, dragging Skender behind him. At the sight of the shrinking exit, he put on an extra turn of speed, but it was clear he wasn’t going to make it.
“No!” The Change flexed and suddenly Sal was right there, on the threshold of the Way. He reached inside, through the shrinking gap, and grabbed Kemp’s arm. With unnatural strength, he wrenched the albino toward the gap—
—just as it closed around his arm. The pattern in Shilly’s mind contracted down to a point and disappeared.
With a soundless explosion, the Way slammed shut. Squeezed out of it like an orange pip between two fingers, Sal, Kemp and Skender flew across the sandy ground and fell into a sprawled heap. The earth shook, and Shilly heard someone shout in alarm. It might have been her, but she was too caught up in the moment to tell.
The Storm Weaver & the Sand (Books of the Change) Page 26