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

by Sean Williams

  She shook her head, trying in vain to dispel her fears. Hugging the light-sink to her chest, she remembered something else the man’kin had said:

  The outcome is not clear. Sal has stirred the pot, put much in motion. I see many possibilities.

  If that was true, there was some hope. The thought of being tied to some inescapable destiny—that might just as easily drag her to her doom as bring her success—filled her with a feeling of despair.

  What sort of person are you, Carah? she asked herself. What is your fate? Will you stand alone and prevail, or will you and your friends fall as one?

  Aron had to be persuaded into the harness. He didn’t like the idea of “falling upside-down”, which Shilly could understand. She soothed him and held his hand as the harness jerked upward. His frightened gaze didn’t leave hers until he’d risen out of reach, then he turned his eyes upward and clung tightly to the rope, radiating barely controlled terror.

  Shilly felt tears trickling down her cheeks as she watched him go. She couldn’t stop them, and she didn’t care if anyone saw. She felt just like Aron: dangling helplessly on the end of a thread over a yawning precipice. There was nothing she could do to save herself, let alone Lodo—but she would not abandon him. Once she would have fought for independence with every fibre of her being, not wanting to be tied to anyone, but she was changing. Learning to lean on someone was a risk. It was a risk she had somehow chosen to take, despite herself.

  The thought of being alone—of losing Sal as well as Lodo—hit her hard. She wasn’t used to being so vulnerable.

  Aron disappeared into the upper reaches of the fissure. The sunlight shining through it was dazzling. Shilly looked down and wiped her eyes. At least now, she thought, the truth would have to come out. There would be no more secrets. The Sky Wardens would have to become involved—if only to find Lodo and get rid of the golem. Once that threat was dealt with, they could sort out the rest in their own time.

  The harness came down empty. She climbed into it willingly enough. As her feet left the ground, she released the breath she had been holding and let all thoughts go with it. The one good thing about being at the end of a rope was that there was no point worrying any more. Everything was completely out of her hands.

  As long as the rope wasn’t around her neck, she decided that she could put up with it for a while.

  Skender woke from a dream about drowning to find a tatooed woman leaning over him.

  “Mum?” He tried to sit up. “What are you doing here?”

  “Shhh.” Gentle hands pressed him firmly back to the bed. He smelt dust and sweat in the braided hair that swung down over his face. “I’m not your mother, child.”

  And she wasn’t. He could see that now. This woman just looked like his mother. She had the same mud-brown hair and tanned skin; her features were long and aristocratic. Lines of letters ran across her temple and down both cheeks, identifying her as a Surveyor. The tattoos were intended to ward off harm that might emerge from ancient Ruins. One of Skender’s earliest memories was of tracing the letters on his mother’s face and wondering what they meant.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, looking away. The brief glimpse of familiarity had struck him deeply. There was an ache in his chest he’d never felt before. It wasn’t sadness, but something deeper, more fundamental.

  “Your mother sent me,” the woman said. “My name is Iniga. I work with her in the western expanse. She is like a sister to me.”

  “Why did she send you?” he asked. “To bring me back?”

  Iniga shook her head, sending thick strands of hair waving. “Abi is worried about you, yes, but she would not dream of forcing you to return. She admires your courage and determination. If this is what you need to do to understand yourself better, then she will let you do it.”

  He nodded, unable to suppress a twinge of disappointment mixed with relief. Part of him had always wanted his mother to call for him, to sweep him up and carry him away on one of her adventures. But if the world outside the Keep offered nothing but murder and danger—sandwiched between periods of interminable boredom—why would he want to leave the Keep again?

  “Abi heard about what happened,” Iniga went on. “Word of the Ruin you and your friends discovered has spread among those who have a need to know such things. I happened to be here in the Haunted City, researching a cryptic chapter of the Book of Towers. Abi called me and asked me to check on you.” The woman smiled down at him. “I am glad to report that you look healthy enough. On the surface, at least, all is well.”

  Skender nodded. His mind was whirling with thoughts prompted by the woman’s words. They had discovered an important Ruin, he supposed, although he’d never thought of it that way. Wardens and students could have passed the secret entrance into the tunnel of faces for hundreds of years, never suspecting what lay beyond. It had taken Sal’s deal with the golem to bring it to light.

  “I remember,” he said, then stopped and started again. “I was in the Void. I saw things—met things—I never knew existed. I think I might have found out how the Cataclysm came about, where the Change came from.”

  Iniga frowned. “No one knows this. There are no records.”

  “There is one who knows. The Oldest One. He remembers. He told me a story that might be his. He might be the one who made the world like it is today.”

  Iniga opened her mouth to say something, then changed her mind.

  “I am not the one to tell this story to,” she finally said. “Not the only one, anyway. Can you wait while I fetch the others? I’ll be gone a minute or two.”

  He nodded. With a rattle of beads the woman stood and strode out of the room.

  Only then did he notice where he was.

  The room was long and narrow. He was surprised at the height of the ceiling; it vanished into shadows, far above. He was lying on a bed in one corner, one of four such beds in a row along the same wall. There was an attendant standing by the door, hooded face watching nothing, it seemed, but seeing all.

  Skender let his head fall back onto the pillow. He was in something very much like a hospital, then. He didn’t feel seriously ill, just exhausted. The memories of everything that had happened to him were strong in his mind. He would be keen to get them off his chest, if there was a way to do it without putting his friends in a worse situation than they were already.

  He groaned at the thought of who Iniga had gone to get. It would be the Alcaide and the Syndic for sure. That’s why he had been separated from Sal and Shilly. There would be no chance of them colluding to hide the truth. Divided they were weak—and he had cracked without any effort at all.

  But it wasn’t the Alcaide and the Syndic Iniga guided into the ward. It was Master Warden Atilde and Sal’s real father, Highson Sparre.

  Skender was as puzzled as he was relieved. “What are you doing here?”

  The Master Warden sat on a chair that Highson brought with him from the next bed along, her gaunt, glassy features gleaming in what little light crept around the edges of her wide-brimmed hat.

  “You’re going to tell us what’s going on,” she said in a stern tone that didn’t brook him saying no, but at least wasn’t angry or sarcastic. It was exactly the sort of tone his father might have used.

  Once Skender might have reacted without thinking, digging his heels in and saying nothing. Now, though, he had neither the energy nor the inclination to argue.

  “If I knew that, I’d tell you. Probably.”

  “You said you remember what happened in the Void,” Highson encouraged him. “There have been all sorts of theories as to what exists there, but very little evidence to prove or disprove any of them. No one has ever obtained more than the most vague of glimpses. Those that stay too long never return.” He hesitated, then said, “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “I know.” The certainty of how close he had come to not inhabitin
g his body again weighed his stomach down like lead.

  “Someone should have sent a Van Haasteren to look well before now,” said Atilde. “If anyone would remember, it’d be one of them.”

  “Would you volunteer, Risa?” asked Highson.

  The Master Warden grimaced. “I take your point.”

  “Tell us what you saw,” said Iniga, softly.

  And he did. He started at the point the Way collapsed and didn’t skip anything. Every word, every impression of his conversation with the lost minds and the Oldest One, were as clear to him as were the rapt expressions of those listening to his tale. He told them about his awakening in the Void and meeting the one who fought the world-eater; he told them about the lost minds and hearing their stories; he told them about his encounter with the Oldest One and the story he had heard.

  Midway through relating the tale, his stomach suddenly returned to life with a loud gurgle. Highson went to arrange a large, healthy breakfast for him and Skender waited for him to return before continuing his tale. Then, as breakfast arrived and while he gulped it down, Skender finished the Oldest One’s story and described how he had woken Sal. He was almost at the end, midway through telling how the one who fought the world-beast had tried to escape with him, when he faltered.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Iniga. The long-faced woman leaned forward to touch his arm. “If this is difficult for you to talk about, or you’re too tired—”

  “No, it’s nothing like that.” He just didn’t know how to put it into words in a way that wouldn’t sound stupid. “I didn’t tell you earlier that I asked them about Lodo. I thought that if this was the place where people who strained too hard at the Change went, then surely Lodo would be there with them. But no one remembered him. Either he hadn’t ended up in the Void, or he had already faded away and been forgotten.”

  “That sounds reasonable.” Atilde exchanged a glance with Highson that Sal couldn’t interpret.

  “But there was one—one who helped us get out.”

  “You think it might have been him, after all?”

  “Not Lodo, no.”

  I am the one who lost a son.

  Remember me.

  “I think it was Sal’s mother.”

  Highson straightened in his seat. “What makes you say that?”

  “She saved us from the other lost minds,” he said, “and that would make sense, if she had any idea who we were—but what was she doing there in the first place? She died, didn’t she?” He couldn’t tell if they believed him, and he could understand that they might not; he wasn’t sure he believed himself.

  Another meaning-laden glance. “Eventually, yes,” said Atilde.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” said Highson softly, “that her body took some time to die after her mind had left it.”

  Skender stared from one to the other. “She was like Lodo?”

  “Yes. She pushed too hard.”

  “And that’s how she got in the Void.” He felt like slapping his forehead. It was obvious now he thought of it. “She was trying to escape, and she tried too hard.”

  “If it was her,” said Iniga calmingly. “The Oldest One implied that some stories are passed from mind to mind. It might be possible to plant your own story in someone else, if you can impress them strongly enough, to make sure it survives. It could have been another person entirely who remembered her story and acted as if it belonged to them.”

  “So why didn’t she come forward with the others?” he asked. “Why did she only appear when I called Sal by his heart-name?” He shook his head, increasingly certain. “Maybe she’d faded so far that she hadn’t noticed us before, or maybe she was hiding, so Sal wouldn’t want to stay or try to rescue her. She only revealed herself at the end so Sal would be safe—and even then she only spoke to me. She might have picked up that I would remember her when we left.” He leaned forward. “Maybe she wants us to rescue her.”

  Atilde shook her head sharply. “No. That would be impossible.”

  “Why? We came out okay, didn’t we?”

  “You had not been gone long, and you still had bodies. By now, if what you say is true, there would be very little left of her, and she has nowhere to go even if there was. It would be pointless trying.”

  “There might be a way,” said Highson, “although I know you won’t like it.”

  The Master Warden’s expression stiffened, and she shot Highson a sour look. “No. I will not suffer necromancy in my school.”

  “It doesn’t have to be done here. We could—”

  “You could not,” she snapped. “I would report you immediately if I thought you were serious.

  “I am serious, Risa. If it would bring her back—”

  “Pah!” Atilde cut him off with a savage gesture. “Get a grip on yourself, Highson. Hear what you’re saying. It would be an abomination to put that poor woman in such a vessel. She would tell you so herself, if she was here.” The Master Warden’s expression softened. “You know I’m right.”

  Highson’s chin rose, as though he was about to deny Atilde’s pronouncement. Skender had never seen him look so stubborn—almost fierce, in a dangerous way. Gone was the man who had patiently attended on Sal, staying carefully out of the way. Revealed at last was the man who might have been Alcaide, had his wife not caused a public scandal. The man who had hunted his wife all across the Strand until he had finally caught her.

  And now, here he was, twelve years later, trying to save her. Skender didn’t understand that. Was Highson hoping to take revenge, to prove that punishment was not so easily evaded?

  “I don’t understand,” said Skender. “Why wouldn’t it work? If you made a human illusion, it’d be empty, right? So you put Sal’s mum in it, and off she goes, right as rain. Who cares if she doesn’t remember what happened to her in the Void? I’m sure she’d rather forget it.”

  “What if she remembers nothing at all?” asked Iniga. “How to eat. How to dress. Who she used to be…She’d be no better off just for being in a body.”

  “And there’s no way to create a human illusion in the first place,” said Atilde. “I told your friend when you arrived that it was impossible to create one. It’s true.”

  “But—” He bit his lip on the protest that Shilly had made illusions of her ghost appear in a mirror. That was close to true necromancy, surely—and the ghost had actually called her a necromancer. But if Atilde learned about that, she would probably explode.

  I will not suffer necromancy in my school.

  Maybe it was different, he reasoned, when a ghost was involved. If the ghosts were more like man’kin than humans, then maybe they could be made by illusion.

  Ask the ghosts, Sal’s mother had told him, via the note in her poetry book.

  The look on Highson’s face had passed and he lowered his eyes. Skender was surprised to see moisture pooling in them.

  “Of course,” he said to Atilde. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” the Master Warden said. “I know what she meant to you.”

  “What happened to her?” Skender asked. “What did Sal’s mum do to make her…that way? Empty-minded?”

  Highson shook his head. “We never found out. One night she was fine, the next morning she was gone. Her body lasted six months.”

  “When did she give you the letter to give to Sal?”

  “What letter?” asked Atilde sharply.

  Highson looked as though he might attempt to lie, but only for a moment. “The night before she left us. The night before she went into the Void.”

  “So she knew she was about to do something dangerous,” Skender said.

  “We never found out what it was.”

  “Perhaps if you had told us about the letter,” snapped the Master Warden, “we might have.”

  Skender i
gnored the tension between the Master Warden and Sal’s real father, and tried to think. What could Seirian Mierlo have been up to that left her mindless? Did it involve the ghosts, or was that just a coincidence?

  He had the pieces of a complex puzzle before him. The golem, the ghosts, the Golden Tower, Sal, Sal’s mother, the letter, the Void…They all had to fit together somehow. They had to, even if he couldn’t figure it out. If only, he thought, Shilly was here…

  “What happens now?” he asked.

  Atilde answered: “Your position is being assessed.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, you and your friends have caused us a considerable amount of trouble. You’ve missed lessons, disrupted classes, broken rules, put yourselves and your classmates in danger. If the Conclave decides that you are uncontrollable, you might be expelled.”

  “From the Novitiate?”

  She shook her head. “From the Haunted City.”

  He stared at her for a moment, not quite believing what he was hearing. That they would be kicked out of the school he could understand. They hadn’t been the best of students, after all, although it wasn’t always their fault: more than half the times they’d been absent were because the Alcaide or the Syndic needed them for some pointless reason or other. But to throw them off the island altogether, like the ex-Warden Shom Behenna? That would be a decidedly ignominious way to go home to his father.

  Perhaps that, he thought, was the reason why Iniga had come to see him: to prepare the way should he need to leave suddenly.

  “The Weavers won’t like that,” he said. “Not after the trouble they went to to get Sal and Shilly here.”

  “Well, they can argue their case if they like,” said Atilde evenly, “but they’ll have to come out of the woodwork to do it.”

  Highson nodded. There was an odd expression on his face. “This would be a way of proving, one way or another, if they actually exist.”