The ex-warden was thinking along the same lines. He motioned to her. “You first. Come with me.”
Shilly’s body moved without her mind’s volition. Shock had overtaken her senses. She barely resisted as he grabbed her arm and pulled her after him. A black hole in the hillside gaped before them, and the world spun beneath her. Any moment now, she thought, she’d feel a blow to the back of the neck or something equally as crude.
This is it. Goddess, make it quick.
“You’ll never win, Sal.” Highson’s breath was hot in his ear. “You can hate me as much as you like, but you’ll never defeat me. Do you really think you could, with all the might of the Conclave and the Alcaide and the Strand itself behind me? You knew that when I put the charm around your neck—I could see it in your eyes—and there’s even less point fighting now. Or later. You can try to escape if you want to, and I have no doubts you’ll find another way, in time, with similar consequences. But you’ll never truly succeed. I will always haunt you, as long as you live. As you burn out in a blaze of something that might have been glory, but ended up stifled and turned back on itself in frustration, you’ll remember this moment and you’ll wish you’d listened.”
Highson’s voice dropped to an intense whisper. “Hear me out, or die fighting me. For that is surely what will happen. The decision is yours.”
Sal nodded weakly, slumping back onto his backside, powerless throughout. He wanted to fight. All the rage pent up in him was yearning for a way out. If he could reach into his real father’s mind and rip whatever it was he wanted to tell him right out of his thoughts, he would happily do it.
But he couldn’t. He was helpless with the charm around his neck. Part of him wanted to deny Highson his confession or whatever it was he was looking for. Another part wanted to hear what he had to say and get it over with. Highson was obviously the one haunted, not Sal. If he could just get it out, maybe he would leave Sal alone.
If someone’s throwing stones at you, Lodo had once told him, don’t throw a bigger stone. It’s always better to make them not want to throw stones at all.
“All right,” he said, “let’s finish this. Tell me what you want me to hear and get out of my way. I want to go back to my room—anywhere away from you.”
“I didn’t kill your mother,” Highson said. “I loved her.”
“You keep saying that—”
“Because it’s true, Sal. She was so easy to love. So beautiful, so full of life. When she said she wanted to leave me, I was grief-stricken. I’ll admit that I didn’t know what to do. I had hoped that she would come to feel the same for me as I felt for her, in time, but her betrayal of me made me see that this would never happen. I couldn’t live with a woman who was in love with my friend’s journeyman, no matter how discreetly we maintained our affairs. But how could I let her go when her family and mine forbade the divorce?”
“So you hunted her down when she escaped,” Sal said, “and you dragged her off against her will. You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”
“How do you know it was me?”
“What? Of course it was you.”
“But how do you know?”
“Lodo said you led the sweep across the Strand when they first escaped. He was here, he said, when it happened.”
“That’s right, he was. And what else? Did Dafis tell you anything about me?”
“He said that you took my mother from me.”
“Did he say how he knew it was me?”
“No.”
“Unless he actually saw me, how could he be so certain?”
Sal shook his head, not wanting to get bogged down in a meaningless discussion over who said what. “What difference does it make?”
“All the difference in the world, Sal, because it wasn’t me. It was my aunt. The Syndic.”
Sal vividly remembered the power of Nu Zanshin’s all-seeing eye when it had scoured the Strand for him. “So? That’s the same thing.”
“It’s not. Don’t be an idiot, Sal. Think!” There was so much urgency and hurt in Highson’s voice that Sal could only listen, transfixed as his real father explained. “Seirian and Dafis loved each other as much as I loved Seirian, if not more. I could see that. They were determined to be together despite the ruling of everyone involved. Such defiance was destined to cause trouble. It was always going to end in disaster, whichever way it went. I decided that I wouldn’t contribute to it. I wouldn’t put her through hell on my account. My happiness was secondary to hers.
“I heard about their plan to escape. They had friends who stole a buggy and planned to smuggle them out of the city on a supply ferry. I aided them without them knowing, using my contacts to make sure they weren’t seen at either end. I helped them, Sal. I didn’t get in their way. The search party, yes, I led that—but I had to in order to hide my complicity in their escape. I did everything I could to lose the scent. I let them get away. I allowed them a life together.
“Or so I thought.” Highson hung his head. “That should have been the end of it. I didn’t reckon on the power of revenge. My aunt was humiliated by the whole affair. That I had lost the stomach for politics only rubbed salt in the wound. She maintained the chase, and she succeeded where I had deliberately failed. She snatched Seirian from the man you call your father, and robbed you of a mother. She brought back to me the woman I loved—the woman I had hoped never to see again, although I longed for her with all my heart.
“You can guess the rest. Returned against her will, Seirian never believed that I willingly let her go, although I think she knew at the end how I felt for her. She gave me the letter for you knowing I wouldn’t betray her. And I never did—although I wish I had, now, since what killed her almost caught Shilly, too. Seirian’s death was a tragic accident I would happily give anything to undo, including my own life. She died alone, with neither the man she loved nor her child by her side. My part in that tragedy wasn’t as great as the Syndic’s, but guilt still consumes me. I am trying to atone for it now, Sal, if you’ll only let me.”
Sal couldn’t move. Stronger than any physical blow was the shock he felt at Highson’s words. It couldn’t possibly be true.
Yet…Of course Highson had a choice, Gram had said. He was a fool to let her go.
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
“Still? What do I have to do to convince you?”
A nervous tremor ran through him. “If it was true, you’d let me go.”
Highson reached behind Sal to touch the collar around his neck. With a faint sigh, it loosened and fell away. “Exactly.”
Sal felt as though a weight fell off him with it. The Change rushed back in, buoying him up. He rocked back on his haunches. His real father stared at him from the shadows, silently awaiting his reaction.
The blow didn’t come. Slowly Shilly realised that Behenna was talking to her, not killing her.
“Look down. Shilly, listen to me. Look where I’m pointing. There’s a ladder. See it?”
She blinked. In the faintest gleam of moonlight through the clouds she could make out the top of a rope ladder that hadn’t been there before, attached to bolts fixed securely to stone. “I—I see it,” she stammered.
“Climb down while I untie your friends. Tell them down there that I need help up here. We’ll have to winch Lodo down.”
She gaped like a fool at him. “What?”
“He can’t very well climb in his condition, can he?”
Shilly looked back at the buggy, at where Lodo’s withered body sat hunched in the passenger seat, and shook her head.
“You’re not going to kill us?”
Behenna snorted and pushed her toward the ladder. “Get going before I lose my patience.”
Numbly, she did as she was told. One step at a time, with her crutch slung over her shoulder and the pain in her leg a constant remind
er that she was still alive, she descended toward a faint light glowing at the bottom.
Chapter 20. The Powerful Solution
Skender craned his neck to watch as Lodo’s unconscious body, strapped to a stretcher, disappeared into the hole in the headlands. Kemp had gone ahead to help steady the old man as he descended. Behenna was paying out rope through a series of pulleys and winches, grunting with effort. Skender was still tied in place on the back of the buggy with Mawson. He kept his face as expressionless as the man’kin’s to hide a growing sense of hope that they had received not just a reprieve, but an indefinite stay of execution.
“What’s happening, Mawson?”
“The Weavers are acting.”
“But acting how? What are they doing with us?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you decide to do with yourself.”
Skender shook his head. Being irritated and confused by the man’kin was a familiar feeling, but now more than ever he wished it could talk in a straight line.
“Are they going to kill us?”
“No. You still have work to do.”
“What sort of work?”
“Again, that is up to you.”
Behenna had finished winching Lodo down into the hole. He returned to where Skender sat, bound to the buggy. A knife gleamed in his hands.
Skender wasn’t as frightened as he had been the first time that knife appeared, and not just because of Mawson’s words. Behenna had used it to cut Kemp free of his bonds minutes before, and he did the same again now, slicing through the rope holding Skender’s wrists together as though it was cotton.
“You know where to go,” the ex-warden said, indicating the ladder with a jerk of his head.
Skender didn’t waste time in case Behenna changed his mind. Mawson watched him descend backwards down the ladder, expression blank. He didn’t have far to climb, no more than fifty rungs. The familiar light of glow-stones welcomed him at the bottom, and he looked around in wonder, rubbing his chafed wrists. He found himself on the edge of the same tidal pool they had walked around to enter the catacombs with the golem. He hadn’t recognised the scenery from above, at night. The pool Sal had almost drained dry was full again, and gleamed darkly in the light. The white sand was soft beneath the ragged soles of his feet.
The entrance to the catacombs gaped darkly before him under a looming stone overhang. Its twin guardians, centuries dead, reminded him of the twins who had lost their minds in the Void Beneath simply to be together.
“There’s still some way to walk, I’m afraid,” said a voice from the shadows.
He spun around to see Iniga, the Surveyor, moving toward him, a water bottle in one outstretched hand.
“What are you doing here?”
She thrust the bottle into his hands. He sniffed at its contents, but couldn’t detect anything other than water. His mouth, parched from so much nervousness, sang as he quenched his thirst.
“What am I doing here?” Iniga repeated, her beaded hair rattling softly. “Exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. Examining the Ruin you found. That’s the official story, anyway.”
Someone else emerged from the tunnel entrance behind them. Skender wiped his forearm across his lips as he recognised Luan Braunack, slightly flushed in the face.
“Whew,” she said, breathing heavily. “That’s a long hike.”
“You too?” he asked, a feeling of unreality creeping over him.
“Alas, yes.” She indicated the tunnel mouth. “Give me a moment to recover and I’ll walk you down.”
The bottom of the rope ladder had begun to dance. All three of them looked up to see who was coming. Skender assumed it would be Behenna, so was surprised to see the black robe of an attendant instead.
“Any signs of pursuit?” asked Braunack.
“Not yet.” The attendant—the same one who had met the buggy on the road out of the city, with Shilly—shrugged off his hood.
Skender’s eyes bugged. Beneath was none other than the Alcaide.
“I’ve received a high-level alert from the Novitiate,” he continued. “The children have been missed. They’ll be searching the city as we speak.”
“How long until they come here?”
“I have no idea. But the sooner this ridiculous charade comes to an end, the better. What’s wrong, boy?” Alcaide Braham growled in response to Skender’s stunned expression.
“N-nothing,” he stammered. He felt as though whole chunks of his mind were shutting down, one by one—giving up trying to make sense of things and quietly going to sleep.
With a bad-tempered snort, the Alcaide headed off down the tunnel.
Skender turned back to Iniga and Mage Braunack.
“Shom didn’t tell you what we’re doing here, did he?” asked the mage.
He shook his head.
“Good. He was under strict instructions not to talk to anyone where he might be overheard. Now we know we can trust him, we’ll leave him here to watch the entrance. Give it five minutes, Iniga, then follow us down.” Braunack took a long drink from her water bottle. “Okay, Skender, we’d better get moving. I’ll tell you the rest on the way.”
She guided him into the tunnel mouth, and he let himself be led.
Occasional glow-stones illuminated sections of the passage, welcome sanctuaries that approached too slowly and fell all too quickly behind. The fear with which he had last walked this route returned to him unbidden—and perhaps, he was beginning to consider, unwarranted.
“Can you guess why we’re here?” the Mage Braunack asked him.
His mind worked. There was only one possibility he could think of. “You’re opening the Way into the Golden Tower?”
“That’s half-right,” she said. “The Golden Tower will remain sealed forever, I hope. This time, your destination will be somewhere much safer.”
“Where?”
“That’s up to you and your friends.”
“You’re letting us go?”
“More than that. We’re setting you free.”
Skender stared at the mage with what he was sure was a dumb expression on his face. He couldn’t tell in the dim light whether the mage was telling the truth or not.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Not you. All of you: Iniga, the Alcaide, Atilde, Shom Behenna…” He trailed off, not knowing how far the conspiracy went.
“You know what we’re called,” she said.
“The Weavers?”
“Yes. But we’re not what you think we are. We’re not a secret society that controls everything in the Strand and the Interior. We don’t breed superior stock to fuel the Conclave and the Synod. We don’t compete for mastery over the Change. Is that what you’ve heard?”
He admitted that it was, pretty much. “Some people think you don’t exist.”
She laughed softly. “That’s the beauty of rumours. You hardly need to spread them. They form on their own. The truth, as always, remains hidden.”
“What is the truth?”
“The opposite of everything you’ve heard,” she said. “We do exist. We don’t control anything that happens in the Strand or the Interior, although we do have influence, here and there. We don’t breed people like cattle, and we have no interest in increasing tensions between the Interior and the Strand. Quite the reverse, in fact. Much of our work is involved in keeping friction to a minimum. Can you tell me the last time there was a war between the Interior and the Strand?”
Skender shook his head. “I don’t like history.”
“Good. Perhaps that’s because it’s been boring for the last few centuries. And you can thank us for that. The Interior and the Strand used to fight all the time. Coast-huggers wanted minerals and space; desert-mongers wanted fish and water. Huge wars were fought over access to resources but, more
often than not, masqueraded as conflicts over ideology. The Broken Lands are just one consequence of that war. The two nations grew spiritually as well as physically apart, until they became fundamentally—some would say artificially—opposed in all things. Those were terrible times.”
“What happened? Did someone win?”
“No,” she said, “the Weavers stopped the fighting. They created the Divide to physically separate the two nations. They encouraged the diverging philosophies of Sky Warden and Stone Mage to ensure that people would never compete for the same repositories of Change. They promoted trade instead of raiding parties. They influenced the mingling of bloodlines to blur the boundaries of race that ever undo the best attempts at diplomacy.
“They knew, though, that without conflict there is no growth, no change. It doesn’t have to be progress; change is an end unto itself. The first Weavers tried to set up a system wherein change may occur without tumult—a system of dynamic stability, if you like, not dissimilar to life itself. If either the Interior or the Strand becomes too strong, threatening to dominate and stifle the equilibrium, we have ways of correcting the imbalance. The system of checks and balances persists today—guiding, not controlling, and invisible to all.”
She glanced at him, as though testing his reaction. He was remembering something Master Warden Atilde had told him: It’s amazing to think that we’re still here after all this time, fighting the same battles. He’d thought she was just talking about his father and Lodo. Perhaps not, he realised.
“Do you see why we’re here now, Skender? Do you understand our purpose?”
He still wasn’t sure. “You’re trying to keep the peace?”
“Exactly.” She nodded. “The union of Sal’s parents was intended to unite a Line and a Clan that had never crossed before, thereby creating a new tie between the nations. No one could have predicted how badly it would go wrong. Seirian’s elopement with Dafis Hrvati was a public humiliation for both Strand and Interior—as was Seirian’s capture and subsequent death. That a child was on the loose—potentially one strongly gifted in the Change—didn’t help. There are more than just the Weavers involved in this game, you see. There are families whose pride depends on what Sal will do, whose ‘side’ he will choose. The tug of war between the Strand and the Interior hasn’t been as tense for a long time as it has been in recent months. All our efforts are directed at reducing that tension—and by helping Sal make the choice he needs to make.”
The Storm Weaver & the Sand (Books of the Change) Page 40