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

by Sean Williams

  “Are we finally done here now?” asked the Syndic.

  “Yes,” said Sal’s father. “There is an injured child to treat.”

  Sal looked up in surprise, as though noticing Highson only then. But his eyes were on Skender—and Skender in turn was surprised to realise that Highson was talking about him.

  Thank you, Sal mouthed.

  Skender nodded in acknowledgment, happy to take gratitude even if he hadn’t averted anything.

  Then the search party was shuffling along the damp, stuffy corridor, away from the smell of blood and fear, out of the oppressive darkness. Skender went with them, limping, his perfect memory replaying the image of Sal and Shilly standing together in the near dark, bent but not broken. Shilly had supported Sal through the confrontation with the golem, and now he was supporting her. Skender could tell that the gesture was offered selflessly, automatically, as though to do otherwise was unthinkable.

  Sal’s father supported him as they passed through the secret door and entered the Novitiate corridors. That was well and bravely done. Highson’s words buoyed him just as much as the hand under his arm. Gradually, Skender began to convince himself that he might have earned those words, but not himself alone. The troublemaker, tourist and try-hard hadn’t done so badly together. They had lit light-sinks and opened Ways. They had stared in the face of monsters and survived. There was nothing they couldn’t do if they put their minds to it.

  Wherever and whoever the Weavers were, and whatever they had in store next, Skender hoped they knew what they were messing with.

  Chapter 17. In A Deadly Embrace

  On the third day of the hearing, Kemp woke from his coma. After what had felt like a small eternity of strictly monitored routine—meals at exact times, evening lessons monitored for the slightest sign of disturbance, contact with Shilly kept to a bare minimum, all the mirrors confiscated from their rooms—Sal was allowed to leave the Conclave to its deliberations and visit him. Warden Timbs, guiding the proceedings with the same firm hand with which he had overseen the inquest into Radi Mierlo’s death, watched silently as four attendants and four Sky Wardens led Sal from his seat, then allowed the discussion to resume.

  Once out of the sealed hall, Sal felt the tension melt off him. The air was sweeter, even in the close confines of the corridors. His legs loved the freedom of being able to stretch and move at will. It may have been an illusion, but he felt almost free. He had abandoned the pretence of wearing the binding charm around his wrist, and the wardens hadn’t been able to give him a new one yet, thanks to his tattoo. But for his escort closely watching every move he made, he might have been taking a leisurely stroll to see a friend.

  “Is Shilly going to be there?” he asked the lead attendant, lightly touching the man’s arm to get his attention.

  “I don’t know,” was the blunt, discouraging reply. The voice belonged to the stern man who had guided him on and off since his arrival in the city. Sal had glimpsed his face only a couple of times, and had never been offered his name. It seemed bizarre that Sal could spend so much time with one person and know next to nothing about him.

  “Tell me something,” he said. “Where do you people come from? Were you students here, once? Is this what you chose to do?”

  “That’s none of your business,” said the leader, but the one on his left disagreed.

  “Some of us were students,” she said. Her voice had become familiar, too: measured, clear and occasionally compassionate. “Some of us were apprentices, out in the Strand, who for various reasons chose to return to serve the Novitiate. Some belong to families that have served for generations. We are all different. Our decisions are always voluntary. We are never coerced. Service is not a punishment.”

  “Do you have to have the Change?”

  “No. A large number of us do not.”

  Sal nodded, thinking of the man he had believed was his father. He had worked in the Haunted City, serving a high-ranking Sky Warden despite having no talent of his own. Shom Behenna had told Shilly that there were openings everywhere for bright people, whether they had the Change or not. Sal wondered if this was what he had had in mind—and if Shilly would ever accept it as a possible answer.

  His reserves of the Change had returned since attacking the ice-beast. Not since Fundelry, when Lodo had dampened his talent in order to avoid detection by the Sky Wardens, had he felt the total absence of the Change in him, and it had been an odd, disconcerting sensation. Losing it was like losing a limb or his sight. The Change was both a part of him and a way of sensing the world around him. Without it, he had felt disconnected and hollow.

  His connection to Shilly had remained, though. The wardens weren’t letting them spend any more than a moment or two together, outside the hearing, but he knew she was nearby. When the hearing was in session, he could see her on the far side of the hall, sitting very still and concentrating on every word that was being said. Their actions of the previous days were deconstructed and analysed. Every word they said to various well-meaning interrogators was turned over and over, searching for any sign of deception. Shilly watched it all impassively. He wished he had her patience.

  She hadn’t been at the hearing that morning, hence his question to the attendants. If she had been allowed to visit Kemp, then that would explain her absence.

  They walked a short way in the open air, under the distant but now slightly threatening gaze of the ghosts. A group of Novitiate students passed them, and Sal recognised one of them by sight. He waved, but Weyn looked pointedly away to talk with his friends. The snub left Sal wondering what he’d done to deserve it. Was it his constant missing of lessons, or something more? Had word got out about what he had done? It struck him as sad that he hadn’t needed Kemp to turn people against him—he had managed it alone!—but there was little he could do about it.

  When Sal and his escort arrived at the ward Kemp had been assigned to, Shilly wasn’t there. None of the laughter spilling from the open doorway came from her throat. There were three voices, all of them familiar. Two attendants stood guard outside the door.

  They waved Sal and his entourage inside. The room contained four beds. Kemp occupied one, and Skender another; the remainder were empty. Sitting on a chair between Skender and Kemp was Tom. There was an Advance set open on the wheeled table before him. The game was resting in its finished state, and Sal noted that Tom had won convincingly against whoever had played him.

  “At least someone’s having fun,” said Sal on entering. Skender and Tom’s smiles didn’t alter; both looked as pleased to see him as he was to see them. Kemp sobered, and looked down at his plate.

  “Laugh a minute in here,” said Skender. “Probably not as much fun as your hearing, but we try our best.”

  “How are you feeling?” Many of Skender’s numerous scratches and cuts, particularly those on his feet, had required stitches. His arms were covered in a crazy mess of fine, red lines.

  “Itchy as hell,” the boy said with a grimace. “They say that’s a good sign, and that I shouldn’t scratch, but I don’t believe them. I think they’re just trying to keep things lively.”

  “And you?” Sal turned to Kemp. The big albino didn’t look obviously unwell, but there were heavy bags under his eyes and his skin was grey.

  There was a hint of challenge in Kemp’s reply. “Never better.”

  “I, uh—” Sal had been trying all morning to work out how to say what needed to be said, but the words sounded awkward in his mind and would no doubt come out even worse. He had to try, though.

  “I’m sorry you got mixed up in all this,” he said. “It wasn’t meant to happen like that. We didn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Yeah, well.” Kemp shrugged. “I wish I hadn’t followed you. All the time I was under, I kept thinking about why I’d done it. It seems pretty stupid now. Not worth dying over, that’s for sure.”

 
“You could think?”

  Kemp nodded. “I was stuck: couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything at all except lie there. I could hear and see what was going on, but it was muffled, like it was happening a long way away. For a while, I thought I was dead.” Something of that time showed in the tightness around the albino’s eyes, although his words were deliberately casual. “I swore that, if I came back, I’d give up trying to rescue stupid stone-boys from their own crazy messes.”

  Tom’s eyes were very round. “You were incredibly brave,” he said.

  Kemp shook his head. “I was incredibly stupid. I should have warned the wardens as soon as I saw where you were going. If I’d done that, none of this would have happened.”

  Sal nodded in agreement, although had a flood of wardens and attendants interrupted the opening of the Way, he was sure he would have seen things differently. But not having to deal with the ice-creature or the ghost would have made his present situation a lot easier.

  Perhaps it would have worked out the same, anyway. It was hard enough, sometimes, to decide what had happened in the past—as the hearing was finding out—let alone anticipate what might have happened had things been slightly different. And then there was the future…

  “Have you had any dreams lately?” asked Skender of Tom, as though reading Sal’s mind.

  Tom glanced at the floor. “I don’t trust my dreams any more,” he said. “Things didn’t go the way they were supposed to.”

  “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” asked Kemp. “You dreamt that you died in the Way. Aren’t you grateful your dreams got it wrong?”

  Tom nodded almost reluctantly, as though death might have been preferable to losing his prophetic talent. “But if the future can change like that, what’s the point of remembering my dreams at all? I’ll just confuse things, get things mixed up.”

  “Well, join the club.”

  “Personally,” said Sal, “I like the idea that we don’t know what’s coming. That way, we’re not locked into it.”

  “I don’t see why we should be,” said Skender. “If you can see what’s coming, you can take steps to avoid it. We know now that the future can be changed. That means we can try to avoid the bad and aim for the good.”

  Sal nodded. “So we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do?”

  “Sure. You can’t fight destiny, though,” said Skender with a knowing wink.

  Sal felt himself flush. “What’s destiny but another way of thinking about the future? If nothing’s fixed—”

  Skender’s low chuckle cut him off. “I guess you only have to fight it if you don’t want it to happen. Otherwise, you just lie back and enjoy the ride.”

  Sal nodded again, and let a small silence claim the conversation. There, again, was the thought he’d had about changing the future. He too had had prophetic dreams, and at least one of the things he had seen in them hadn’t come true. He had seen an image of Kemp standing in a golden tower looking out at a city of glass. Figuratively it might have occurred, but not literally. That was an important difference.

  And then there were his dreams of the storm he had summoned, rolling across the land toward him. What did they mean? Were they not to be taken literally, too?

  “How’s the hearing coming along?” Kemp asked, reaching for a new topic.

  “Slowly.” Sal outlined the latest developments. The golem was still trapped in Lodo’s body and refusing to testify; the tunnel leading to the hidden tide pool and the catacombs had been sealed by an array of powerful charms, intended to keep the Golden Tower out of bounds until Iniga and a team of Surveyors from both the Strand and the Interior could examine it properly; the nature of the ice-creature was still a mystery, despite extensive searches through the Book of Towers and other ancient sources. The deaths of the attendant and the various experiences of those involved in the events of recent days were being examined one by one in the hope that blame could be assigned, and an appropriate reaction decided upon.

  “Have they told you about your mother?” Skender’s voice was uncharacteristically cautious.

  Sal nodded. Skender had been interviewed from his hospital bed and Master Warden Atilde had related his testimony to the hearing on the first day. The truth behind his mother’s death had rocked Sal. She hadn’t died of a broken heart at all; she had been tricked by a ghost. The trap could have resulted in the ghost consuming her mind, had she not drained herself of the Change in order to drive the ghost away, literally emptying herself in the process. What had happened to the creature was unknown—although some suspected that it might have been the same one that attempted to trick Shilly—but Seirian Mierlo’s fate was clear. Mindless and empty, her body had lingered for weeks before finally wasting away.

  That she had been trying to escape was also not disputed. The ghost had lured her with hints of freedom, just as Shilly had been lured a decade later. It had even convinced her to leave a clue for her son, should he ever be captured by the Sky Wardens. The note Sal’s mother had left for him with her ex-husband had explicitly instructed him to seek help from the ghosts. Had he and the others been more determined to follow that path, they could all have ended up mindless, too.

  She tried to escape, and she couldn’t. The thought stuck in Sal’s mind. If his mother hadn’t been able to get away from the Haunted City, what hope did he have? Was he going to die in the attempt, too—as had almost happened once already? Was Shilly?

  One thing he was sure of: neither of them would consider going near the ghosts again. Or the golem. They had enough to worry about without inviting more supernatural creatures to the party.

  Skender seemed to be waiting for something more from him than just a nod, so he said, “Mawson is refusing to let Aron carry him, after what happened. He’s trying to find someone else to get him from place to place.”

  “Isn’t that your job now?” asked Kemp.

  “No. I freed him.”

  “Maybe you could carry him, Kemp,” said Tom.

  The big albino snorted disdainfully. “I’ve got better things to do than lug talking rocks around.”

  “Apparently not,” said Skender. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be hanging around with us.”

  Conversation devolved from there to a good-natured bantering that Sal felt happiest to sit out. Kemp and Skender made natural antagonists: one used to getting his own way by force, the other employing guile or humour. Somehow—perhaps because of Kemp’s attempt to save Skender’s life—they actually seemed to be getting along. That peace obviously extended to Sal as well, since Kemp was the most agreeable Sal had ever seen him.

  Maybe, Sal thought, it was just that the bully had had plenty of time to think things through while trapped in his coma. Could someone really change that much, he wondered, or was this a side of Kemp he’d simply never seen before?

  There came a knock at the door. It opened, and Highson Sparre stuck his head around it.

  “You’re needed back at the hearing, Sal.”

  Sal sighed and nodded. “Needed” didn’t mean that they actually required him to do anything. They just wanted to keep an eye on him.

  “See you guys later,” he said.

  “Good luck.” Skender waved a bandaged hand from his bed. Kemp managed a brusque nod.

  Tom stared up at Sal from his chair with big eyes, and said, “Athim will go home.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what my dreams tell me, Sal. Athim will go home. I think it’s important.”

  “Who’s Athim?” asked Skender.

  “I don’t know.” Tom shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out when—if—it happens.”

  Sal kept his face blank as his entourage guided him from the room. Athim was Lodo’s heart-name. Skender’s father had told him it during the tense wait for the Stone Mage Synod to convene in the Nine Stars, when his fate had been decided. But wh
at did Tom’s dreams mean by saying that Lodo would go home? He had lived in both the Interior and the Strand, neither happily. Where could his home be?

  Highson walked with him back to the hall. He didn’t say anything, apparently content to match Sal’s pace with perfect patience.

  “How’s Gram?” he asked. Anything to break the silence.

  “Oh, she’s well enough, for her age.” Highson smiled. “She asks occasionally about the polite young man who came to visit her. She remembers you, even if she doesn’t always remember who you are. Does that make sense?”

  “I guess so.” Sal wasn’t used to old people and the way their minds worked—or didn’t work, as was the case with Gram. That memory could break down into pieces seemed very strange to him. Even stranger was that it could happen without affecting the person it belonged to in any other way. “Will I get to visit her again?”

  “Would you like to? Don’t offer out of a sense of obligation.”

  Sal shook his head. He wasn’t doing that. “I like her.” That day spent in her sitting room was the only peaceful time he’d found in the Haunted City.

  “All right, then.” Highson seemed cautiously pleased. “I doubt we’ll get permission before the hearing hands down its decision. As soon as that’s done, though, I’ll make a time. She’d like that too.”

  Sal nodded. “Okay.” He wanted to talk some more, about anything, but he couldn’t think of what to say. The only other thing they had in common was his mother, and he doubted that would go down well.

  Mum died trying to escape from you. How does that feel?

  They walked in silence back to the hearing, then went their separate ways.

  Shilly sat by the bed on which Lodo lay dying and tried to keep any feelings at all from showing. The Privity attendants had told her that he might last two or three days, but no more. The end could come at any time. She would not cry. She would not rail against her inability to save the man who had adopted her as a daughter. The thing within his body didn’t deserve to see her grief.