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

by Sean Williams

  “You called me here,” she said, keeping her voice flat, unaffected. She refused to note the way the skin hung loose and slack across Lodo’s face, the hair falling out, the smell of decay…

  “I did indeed,” said the golem. Its eyes were shut. It didn’t acknowledge her presence in any way other than speaking, and even then its voice was barely audible. She would have leaned closer to hear but for the air of ice about the bed. Everywhere else in the Privity, the air was kept warm and comfortable; only in Lodo’s room was it cold.

  “Why did you call me?” She wasn’t going to mince words with the golem. The sooner she found out what it wanted, the sooner she could get away from it.

  “I want to show you something,” it said. One arm stirred beneath the covers, and emerged painfully slowly into the light. Wrapped tight around its wrist was a leather charm very similar to the one Sal had once worn.

  “They have bound me,” the golem said, its eyes opening a crack to study her reaction.

  “I know that,” she said. “The Alcaide announced his verdict yesterday. You’re guilty of the murder of Radi Mierlo, and they’re going to make you pay for it.”

  “But you know what that means. I can’t leave.”

  “I don’t think you were going to, even before Lodo trapped you.”

  “I might have changed my mind.”

  “For a price, no doubt,” she said, harking back to her conversation with the golem by the tidal pool. “Lodo’s life for mine, or Sal’s.”

  “There’s always a price.” The hand flopped back onto the bed as though the effort of holding it up was unsustainable. “The only question is: would you have paid it?”

  “I guess we’ll never know.”

  The golem emitted a croaking noise that might have been a chuckle. “No. I guess not.”

  Shilly shifted in her seat. She could feel the attention of her attendants and the Privity therapist firmly on her and the thing in the bed. It was bad enough to be talking to the golem at all, let alone under such scrutiny.

  “Was that all you wanted?”

  The sunken eyes opened again. “No. I want to tell you something, too.”

  “I suggest you get on with it, then. I haven’t got all day.”

  “It won’t take long.” She felt the golem studying her from the confines of Lodo’s body. “I want to say that I’m impressed.”

  “With?”

  “You. You tried to kill me.”

  “That’s a good thing?”

  “Of course it is, and not just from your point of view. It may not seem that way at the moment—” the golem glanced down along its host body “—but not many people are so bold, or capable.”

  “It didn’t work. The ghost…” She faltered, remembering the horrible hunger of the creature she had summoned, the look in its eyes that told her she had made a terrible mistake and was about to pay for it with her life. She would never forget that moment, as long as she lived. “The ghost wasn’t what I thought it was.”

  “But it might have been. Had you not misunderstood its purpose, you might have had a chance. That was the only thing wrong with your plan. Everything else went perfectly. You stole the Change; you kept your plan a secret from your friends; you committed necromancy, one of the most reviled crimes in the Haunted City. All this, for me.” Again came the half-chuckle, half-croak. “I really am flattered.”

  “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for Lodo.”

  “Well, you can’t have one without the other, my dear. It’s both or none.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “But it is that way. We have come to a terrible impasse. I’m stuck here. Lodo and I are going down together unless you do something about it.”

  “Like what?” Realisation came with a flash of anger. “Steal you out of here? Reverse the binding charm? Set you free?”

  “All admirable goals,” the golem whispered.

  “Right,” she said. “I’m sure I could manage it quite easily, given the experience I’ve now had at stealing, lying, and putting myself in the shit.”

  “The ends justify the means.”

  “Do they?” Her hands balled into fists, but she resisted the urge to lash out physically. “In that case, I’ll settle for things as they are. Thanks all the same.”

  “Really?” The golem’s gaze was as sharp as an icepick. “Understand what you’re saying. Do you really want Lodo to die?”

  “No.” She could say that with absolute certainty, but it wasn’t as simple as that. She’d spent too many sleepless hours trying to work out how she felt. The conclusion she’d come to wasn’t a happy one, but at least it was a conclusion.

  “I don’t want Lodo to die,” she said. “I want you to suffer. You deserve to suffer for what you’ve done.”

  “Is it so wrong to struggle to survive?” the golem protested.

  “No, and I could accept that argument if that was all you’ve done. But you’ve done much more, and you know it. Lodo was old and sick, and you took him over without a second thought. You knew you could hurt us through him; you could make us do things we didn’t want to do. You made him do terrible things. None of it was necessary.”

  “That depends how you define ‘necessary’.”

  “Of course. Can you tell me why it was ‘necessary’ to open the Golden Tower? Or why you had to set the ice-creature free? If you can convince me that you weren’t just acting in your own interests, to cause trouble or whatever, maybe I’ll reconsider my opinion of you.”

  The golem was silent.

  “I didn’t think so.” Shilly blinked back acid tears. “If I help you escape, you’ll go unpunished. You’ll be free to hurt someone else, just as you’ve hurt us. I don’t want that—and I know Lodo doesn’t want it.”

  A shadow of the golem’s habitual sneer had returned. “You can’t possibly know that.”

  “I do. Even if he could let you go, I don’t think he would.”

  “You can’t hear him, Shilly. What if he’s begging to be set free? What if he wants you to listen to me? What if he doesn’t want to die?”

  Shilly stared at the golem for a long time. This was what she wanted to hear. If Lodo was suffering, if Lodo had changed his mind and wanted to come back to her, if things could ever be as they had once been…

  But they couldn’t. She knew better than that. Her mind might be in a turmoil of guilt and doubt, but her heart knew.

  Don’t be afraid to follow your heart, the Mage Erentaite had once told her. It’s a journey we all must take, if only once in our lives.

  Shilly had thought the elderly mage had been talking about Sal—and perhaps she had been. But the message was as applicable now as ever. She had to trust her instincts, for she had no other means available to judge what to do in these circumstances.

  She stood. The muscles in her good leg were weak; she felt as though she was swaying in a stiff breeze.

  “You called me a liar,” she said.

  “I did. You said you didn’t care if I rot in here, with Lodo.”

  She nodded. Get it over with, she told herself. Get it out.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I was lying. I do care. I care a great deal, in fact.”

  The golem stared hopefully up at her.

  “But you can still rot,” she finished, “and there’s nothing you can say that will make me change my mind.”

  She turned away. “I’d like to leave now,” she said to the therapist, who bowed and guided her to the door. As soon as she walked through it, she felt a terrible weight lift from her, as though the presence of the golem had been physically oppressing her. The world swam around her, but still she held the tears at bay. Lodo had died once before, and she had grieved then. She wouldn’t betray his memory or his sacrifice by giving in to despair.

  “You did the right t
hing,” said a voice. Shilly blinked, but her sight didn’t immediately clear. All she saw were faceless black-robed figures looming around her.

  “I did?” She didn’t want to sound uncertain, but not knowing who she was talking to undermined her determination.

  “Without a doubt.” The figure talking to her moved slightly, and Shilly identified a black hat atop its head. The voice belonged to Atilde. “Golems can’t lie,” the Master Warden said. “If Lodo had really been begging for his life, the golem would have told you so in no uncertain terms. It wouldn’t have suggested the possibility in the form of a question.”

  Shilly thought back. What if he wants you to listen to me? the golem had said. What if he doesn’t want to die?

  Questions, not statements. Therefore lies, not truth.

  “Thank you,” she said, wiping her eyes. “That makes me feel a little better.”

  “You should feel better than better,” Atilde said, taking Shilly by the shoulder and guiding her along the corridor, several paces ahead of the attendants. “You are a very brave and resourceful girl. I would be proud of you, if you were my apprentice.”

  Shilly wasn’t going to fall for another buttering-up. “Do many of your apprentices go on to become necromancers?”

  “No.” Atilde’s voice was soft and sad. “But I did.”

  Shilly stared at her, too surprised for a moment to speak.

  “It’s true. I’m not saying that to make you feel good. I was young and stupid, and it cost me. Look.” She took her arm off Shilly’s shoulder and pulled back her sleeve. With two brisk tugs, she removed her long, black glove.

  If Shilly had thought herself surprised before, there were no words to describe how she felt at what she saw now.

  There was nothing under Atilde’s glove but a faint shimmer in the air, as though an invisible hand was clenching and unclenching before her eyes, making the dust motes dodge and sway.

  “Necromancy is a dangerous business,” the Master Warden said. “We give form and shape to things that should never exist. I wonder now if that’s what makes the cities so dangerous. If someone in the past brought such creatures into this world and couldn’t return them from whence they came, a means of containing them would have been essential, or people would be hunted from the face of the earth. Ruins are probably the only sources of background potential powerful enough to sustain a containment charm of this magnitude for this long. Long enough to forget, anyway, that the charm even existed, let alone what it was for. And to forget that the ghosts are dangerous.” Atilde looked sadly at Shilly. “Who knows how many people have died, seduced by whispered promises and found mindless the next morning? But for Skender, who guessed before any of us, we might still be in the dark.”

  Shilly shuddered. “And I would be dead.”

  “Exactly.”

  She watched, fascinated, as Atilde put the glove back on. It inflated like a balloon, but flexed and twisted like an ordinary human hand. Shilly could see the bumps of knuckles and tendons and veins perfectly clearly where there had been nothing at all before. Was this what would have happened to her, if the ghost had fed on her?

  “What did this to you?” she asked. “Was it a ghost you summoned?”

  “No. It wasn’t a ghost, and I didn’t summon it alone. Luckily, I had someone to pull me back from the brink.” Atilde shook her head. “We came across the creature I raised in a book—a very old book we found in a niche in the library. It had been tucked away in there for centuries. We thought we knew what we were doing when we decided to summon something from it. We both had something to prove. I was proud of my knowledge but finding my job too tedious. My friend…” Atilde glanced at Shilly. “No, there’s no need to be coy around you. My friend was Lodo, and he wanted to show that he could do what no one else had done: blend the teachings of the wardens and the mages to accomplish mighty works, works that hadn’t been performed for centuries, if at all. We had such dreams.

  “All night we laboured to prepare the charms. It was a full moon. We worked alone. It might have been romantic, but for our purpose. Certainly, I’d had thoughts to rekindle what we’d lost years before, when he went to the Interior with Skender Van Haasteren the Ninth. Perhaps, by the glow of our success, we might have struck a spark or two.” Again, the Master Warden shook her head. “We were confident of success, he and I. We drew lots to see who would go first, and I won. I began to weave the charm in the air itself. I created a portal through which the creature stepped. I built a body to suit its needs. I—”

  She stopped for a moment, as though gathering herself. “I underestimated the danger. The book was hidden not for safekeeping or by accident, but because it was a trap. The creature I brought into the world didn’t desire a body to inhabit, but to devour. It tried to devour me—in a way that I still don’t entirely understand. It took my substance while leaving my form behind. My arm is gone, but I can still feel it, still use it. Had Lodo not been there to drive it back, I would have lost the rest of me too. As it was, I lost the arm and both my legs, and not one part of me is unmarked by the experience. The softest touch pains me, now. The light batters me, erodes me further. Were I to step out into full daylight, I would dissolve like a pillar of salt in the sea.

  “Worst of all, though,” she said, “is that I lost Lodo. He attracted attention when destroying the creature. There was no way to hide what we had done. When the Alcaide of the time started asking questions, Lodo—”

  “I know what you’re about to say,” Shilly interrupted her. “Lodo took the blame. He let himself be called a necromancer. He was cast out.”

  Atilde nodded.

  “And you let him.”

  “No.” The Master Warden’s glassy gaze flashed at her. “I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen. He said I had more to lose. I tried to tell the Alcaide, but he wouldn’t believe me. They wanted Lodo to be guilty. They couldn’t accept that he had successfully defied the natural laws. His greatest crime was to challenge the status quo, and of that he had already been found guilty.”

  They walked in silence for a dozen steps.

  “So he left,” Atilde said. “He accepted the judgment of the Conclave and vanished into the west. I often wondered what happened to him, but I never heard from him again. I couldn’t believe that he would let his great experiment remain incomplete. But he must have. If he continued his work, it was to a more patient schedule. He had learned the dangers of attempting too much.

  “As had I. I knew how lucky I was to be alive. My job in the Novitiate no longer seemed so tedious. When I was offered the post of Master Warden, I took it, thinking that I would enjoy a quiet life. And I have, for the most part—until you arrived.”

  Atilde’s smile was hesitant, almost sad. “You’ve brought back lots of memories, you and Sal,” she said. “Memories of Lodo, and what it was like to have a belly of fire, hot with ambition. We were foolish, then, in ways that I don’t think you and Sal have been. We chose to be foolish, whereas you were driven to it. Either way, I think Lodo would have been proud of you. You have fought well and remain unbowed.”

  They reached the broad antechamber that marked the entrance to the public hall, where the hearing was being held. There Atilde stopped and waited for the attendants to catch up.

  “Thanks,” said Shilly. “Thanks for telling me the truth.”

  “That’s all I have ever done—unlike the golem.” The Master Warden nodded. “Be strong. I’ll see you again when the decision is passed down. Remember: there are no guarantees in this world. We must make our own fates.”

  With a swish of fabric, the Master Warden turned and headed back into the maze of corridors linking the buildings of the Haunted City. She moved like a black cloud, and Shilly watched her go feeling as though a storm had just passed. There was something in the air she couldn’t quite work out. Atilde hadn’t been telling her about Lodo just to make her feel bett
er. Maybe the Master Warden had been warning her about further experimentation in necromancy, or advising her to choose more carefully.

  We must make our own fates.

  The chance, she thought as the attendants guided her back into the hearing, would be a fine thing.

  Skender jerked awake with a fright. It was the middle of the night, and he’d been dreaming about the man’kin guarding the public Way between the Keep and Ulum. He had tried to pass between them, but they had forbidden him entry.

  “Tainted,” they intoned, drawing their stone swords and raising them high above their heads to block out the sun. The word sounded like the worst insult he had ever heard. “Tainted…”

  Just a nightmare. He told himself to relax and go back to sleep. There was nothing to be scared of.

  A shadow moved next to his bed. Reddish light flared. A face appeared out of the darkness just centimetres from his own, and it was all he could do to stifle a scream.

  “You’re awake. Good.” The square features and pulled-back hair belonged to Stone Mage Luan Braunack, the Synod’s envoy to the Stone Mages.

  “What are you doing here?” Skender whispered. Although Braunack had done very little envoying, as far as he could tell, creeping around in the dark was about the last thing he had expected of her.

  “I have to ask you something.”

  “Me?”

  “Of course you. Do you see anyone else?”

  Skender glanced automatically at Kemp, but his ward-mate was snoring softly, undisturbed.

  “I meant, why me?”

  “You’re closest. You’ll know best.”

  “Know what best?”

  “What Sal and Shilly will do next.”

  Skender studied Braunack closely, wondering if this was some sort of dream. The woman’s face was lit by a flickering glow-stone of a sort Skender hadn’t seen since he left the Interior. Its light was soft and warm and made him feel hollow inside.