The Sky Warden and the Sun

by Sean Williams

  “All right. We’ll do what you say, if Shilly agrees.”

  Shilly nodded.

  “Good. Then let’s break camp.” Lutz stood. “The junction is a couple of kilometres further on. I’ll take you there, then find us somewhere safe to sleep. We need to get as much rest as possible. We’ll be on our way again at dawn, and it’s not an easy road.”

  Thus warned, Sal helped the surgeon place Shilly back onto the tray of the buggy, then rearranged the supplies so there would be room for their extra passenger. Lutz was happy to let Sal drive, only speaking when he knew of a hazard ahead. They bounced along the dirt track for a good thirty minutes, past strange rock formations that loomed out of the darkness on either side then fell back into shadow behind. The red desert surrounding Yor was barely an hour’s drive across, and the tangled landscape now around them was closer to the true nature of the Broken Lands: uneven ground filled with the remains of ancient habitation, such as the wall they had sheltered behind, where Lutz had found them. Who had once lived there and what had happened to them, Sal didn’t know. He suspected no one did.

  “There.” Lutz pointed at the turn-off with one long finger. Had he not done so, Sal would have driven right past it. It was little more than a gap in the landscape, a slight lightening of shadow between the remains of a low stone fence and the embankment of a dry creek bed. Even during the day it wouldn’t stand out among the other odd breaks in the path.

  Lutz led them a hundred metres along the new track, then had Sal bring the buggy to a halt. He disappeared for a moment to erase the marks where they had left the main road. When he returned, he unfurled a thin rug from his rucksack, lay down on the sandy ground with his head resting on his battered, black bag, and went almost instantly to sleep. They didn’t light a fire.

  Shilly wasn’t far behind the surgeon, falling into a deep, but occasionally disturbed, slumber. Sal lay awake listening to the sounds of the Broken Lands. It was busy, filled with insects and other small creatures scurrying about in the cool night air. As always, Sal was surprised by how much the temperature dropped at night in the desert and before long he was forced to go to the back of the buggy for the sleeping bag.

  Shilly stirred, moaning in her sleep. Her hands fluttered, reaching for her leg. Sal wondered if he should use the Change to help her, either to ease the pain or assist the bones as they knit. But he couldn’t take the chance. Behenna was too close. It would be like sending up a flare.

  So he forced himself to ignore her and curled up on the ground by the buggy, willing himself to sleep. No blame, she had said, but he still felt responsible. She had saved his life and was now paying the price for it. If she was lame for the rest of her life, would she really forgive him so easily?

  At some point, as a quarter moon the colour of sand rose over the jagged horizon, he closed his eyes for the last time that day, and slept.

  The next thing he knew, Lutz was shaking him awake.

  “Come on,” the surgeon said, nudging him again. “We have to get moving.”

  Sal struggled upright, rubbing his eyes. A dull half-light painted their impromptu campsite in pale browns and greys, barely enough to see by. The eastern sky was turning yellow. Shilly was glaring at him from her position on the buggy’s tray, lines of pain around her eyes. Did they really have to move so early?

  Tap-tap.

  He didn’t feel like sleeping after that. If Behenna was awake, too, the chase was already on. Their only hope was to beat him to the Lookout and cross into the Interior, where they would finally be safe.

  They packed up their small amount of gear and had a cursory breakfast. Lutz hadn’t brought any food with him, but they made do. Having Lutz along made caring for Shilly easier; Sal still felt embarrassed by some of it, but he told himself that this was what working together was all about and that he’d just have to get used to it until she was better. Regardless, he was still glad when it was over and they could set out.

  Lutz guided Sal unhesitatingly forward, deeper into the Broken Lands, away from the road they had intended to travel at first, then parallel to it.

  The way was indeed hard, the shattered landscape worse than he had imagined from the relative safety of the road. It seemed to consist of a vast number of fragments flung together from very different parts of the world. At times they skated across a field of loose, grey stones, polished as though by water; then they would be back on desert sand, only yellow rather than the red he was used to. Then, without transition, the earth would buckle beneath them and they would be traversing the lip of a tumbledown cliff, or negotiating what might have once been a gentle hillside but was now tipped onto its side, presenting a rugged slope. All these sorts of terrain, and more, coexisted uneasily, some of them only metres across, making travel difficult.

  Sal soon learned, though, that the boundaries between the patchwork landscapes were the most treacherous places. Lutz was guiding him along the largest and most easily traversed sections, following a very faint track that frequently hairpinned to avoid obstacles. Sal’s arms became tired from turning the steering wheel, and his legs ached from frequent accelerations and braking—but his discomfort was nothing compared to Shilly’s. She quickly succumbed to the pain and took another of the surgeon’s tablets.

  That left Sal with only Lutz and Behenna’s tap-tapping for company. The surgeon was unforthcoming on anything other than the route, wrapped deep in private thoughts. In between directions, Sal tried to draw him out.

  “Turn left up here, past that rock face. The grey one.”

  “You know your way pretty well, Engenius. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “A friend walked me through here once, a long time ago. If you’ve been once, you never forget.”

  His grey eyes, almost the same colour as his beard, stared patiently ahead—through the landscape, Sal thought.

  “Have you always lived in the Broken Lands?”

  “Not always. Take us through that gap by the tree, there.”

  “Where did you study medicine?”

  “In Samimi. Be careful. It’s steep.”

  Sal steadied the buggy as it tipped down a rough incline. “Why—? Uh.” They hit bottom with a jolt, and he took a second to look behind him to make sure that Shilly was okay. She didn’t stir. “The Samimi near Yunda, west of the Haunted City?”

  “In Yunda. Have you been there?”

  “No.” Samimi was a large coastal town, far too deep into the Strand for his father to have felt safe. Only once had they ventured anywhere near the sea, and that had been at Fundelry. “I’ve only heard of it.”

  “You haven’t missed anything.” Lutz’s eyes drifted off the road for a moment, then came back. Sal wondered if bitter memories clouded the man’s feelings for the town, since it had a good reputation. Maybe he had lost a patient under dubious circumstances and been forced to leave. That would certainly explain why the man chose to live somewhere so isolated and with no great future.

  “I’m sorry if we’ve put you out too much,” Sal said, not wanting the conversation to stop so soon.

  “Not at all. I like a change of scenery every now and again, and there’s always work for me to do at the Lookout.”

  “How will you get back to Yor?”

  “I’ll get a lift with someone.” Lutz’s eyes drifted forward again, and his expression clouded. He started to say something, but it was mumbled so half-heartedly that Sal missed the beginning.

  “What was that?” Sal prompted. Something about Lutz’s father?

  “I’m sorry. Nothing you need worry about, Tom—I mean, Sal.” The surgeon slumped into himself. “Over that gravel, now, nice and quickly or you’ll slide. When you get to the top, though, go slowly. There’s another drop ahead.”

  That was the end of the conversation. The noise of the gravel under the wheels was too loud to talk over, and the next few kilometres were a maze of switchbacks and landfalls. It took all of Sal’s skill to negotiate it; not once did Lutz offer to take a turn
at the wheel.

  And still, as constant as his heartbeat, came the faint tap-tap from Behenna. By the afternoon, Tait and the Sky Warden would most likely have reached the place where Sal and Shilly had left the main road. Only time would tell if that confused Behenna. The best Sal could hope for was that they might regain some of their lead on the way to the Lookout. Behenna was unlikely to be deflected forever. There was only one way to cross into the Interior for a thousand kilometres in either direction, and they were both heading there.

  They stopped for lunch under the shade of a eucalyptus grove. A spring—the only flowing water Sal had ever seen in the Broken Lands—trickled from under a cluster of rocks and vanished into a crack not far away. When Sal took the opportunity to replenish their emergency tanks, he was startled by the distinct buzz of the Change in the water. Somewhere near them, or near the spring’s source, was a Ruin.

  He stood up and looked around. If it was in their path and they found it by nightfall, it would serve as a good hiding place from Behenna. All they had to do was convince Lutz to stop there without alerting him to the fact that Sal was sensitive to the Change.

  The only things that stood out in the confused landscape ahead of them were the towering, angular shapes on the horizon. He had seen them before, from the main road, but never from this close. They were growing nearer as the day wore on, yet even from this new perspective they were still mysterious: too tall and thin to be mountains; too big to be buildings of any sort he’d seen before. Something about them made him think of the story of Polain the Butterfly Merchant and its city of metal and glass, but it couldn’t possibly be the same thing, not in the middle of such a wilderness.

  “Is that where we’re going?” he asked Lutz, raising his voice to catch the surgeon’s attention and pointing at the shapes ahead.

  Lutz looked up, frowned and nodded. “We’re going through there, yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll see all too soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Today.”

  Sal knew that had to be wrong. At the rate they were travelling, they wouldn’t reach the strange silhouettes that day, maybe not even the next. But he didn’t argue; there was clearly no point trying to talk to the surgeon until his mood passed. Instead, he did as he had originally intended: he filled the water bottles, and made sure afterward that Shilly drank from the Change-rich water.

  Shilly awoke from her drug-induced daze to the sound of arguing.

  “We have to.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s not safe!”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too complicated to explain right now.”

  “But we need to go there.”

  “Why?”

  “We just do!”

  “That’s not good enough, Sal. There must be a reason.”

  “Why should I tell you, when you won’t tell me why it’s unsafe in there?”

  “Hey!” Shilly levered herself into an upright position, startled by the annoyed tone in Sal’s voice. “Where do we have to go? Why isn’t it safe? What’s going on?”

  He and Lutz were standing on the top of a slight rise, facing each other. At the sound of her voice, Sal turned and came down the hill.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  But she was no longer paying attention to him. Her eyes had been caught by what lay beyond him—and what was, obviously, the cause of their argument.

  She saw towers, hundreds of them facing her in a wall more than a kilometre wide. They were like nothing she had ever seen before, of varying heights and shapes, in different colours and styles. She couldn’t tell how tall they were: higher than she dared imagine, if the haze between her and them was an accurate judge of their distance.

  And they were old. Even from so far away she could see holes where walls had fallen away, gaping mouths where cornices had collapsed, and empty sockets where mighty sheets of glass had once hung. With the sun dipping low over the horizon behind her, its golden light catching the buildings perfectly, she was struck by their tragic, terrible beauty.

  “Can you feel it?” Sal whispered.

  She wrenched her eyes off the view, back to him, and was confused for a good while as to what he had meant. Then it hit her. She looked back at the towers. They were golden from more than the sun. Below the optical effect was something more unique still: the twinkling of the Change. To be visible across such a distance, she knew, it must be very strong indeed.

  No wonder Sal wanted to go in. If the towers were a massive Ruin, there was no way Behenna could find them there.

  Sal turned back to Lutz, making a visible effort not to let frustration get the better of him. “I want to go there and you said earlier that we were going to. What’s the problem?”

  “That was when I thought we’d make it before nightfall. If we pitch camp now, we can go in the morning and everything will be fine.”

  “I don’t understand what difference it makes being at night.”

  “It makes all the difference. Trust me.”

  “But if we stop now, we’ll lose the rest of the day.”

  “It’s only an hour or so, Sal.”

  “It’s only a Ruin, Engenius!”

  Lutz held up a hand. “Okay, okay! We’re not getting anywhere, shouting at each other. How about we let Shilly decide?”

  She looked between them, reluctant to distrust their guide, but unwilling to trust him completely, either, if he wouldn’t give them a reason for his opinion. Obviously Sal had tried to get him to, and just as obviously Sal didn’t want to tell Lutz why he wanted to so badly.

  “I pick the city,” she said, adding, since she couldn’t use the Change as a reason either: “We’ll be able to light a fire in there, hidden from view. That’d make a nice change.”

  Lutz looked disappointed, as though he’d thought she might choose otherwise. His mood had changed dramatically since the morning, from eagerness to be on their way to something bordering on fear, and she thought he might continue to argue the point. She almost hoped he would; maybe then they would find out why he didn’t want to proceed any further that night. But he gave in with a shrug.

  “All right,” he said, “the city it is. A fire is a good idea, but we’d better grab wood now. There’ll be none from here on.”

  What he meant by that only became clear when the buggy was loaded up and carried them over the hill. Instead of more of the twisted landscape she had half-noticed on the journey thus far, all she saw between her and the towers was a completely flat, white plain.

  “Salt lake,” said Sal when she asked. “This is how we’re going to make the towers by nightfall.” He put his foot down on the accelerator, urging the buggy onward. Although built for reliability rather than acceleration, over an uninterrupted stretch it was capable of a surprising turn of speed.

  The air—with its strange, chemical stench—whipped through Shilly’s hair and stung her eyes. The surface of the salt lake was different to anything she had ever seen before; it made the desert seem normal. A dried-up sea, out in the middle of nowhere. The sparkling surface crunched under the wheels, not everywhere pure white; patches of colour rolled by like flattened reflections of a non-existent cloudy sky. Occasional rocky “islands” stood out from the perfect smoothness of the lake. From one they startled a large emu; the long-legged, awkward-looking bird stared at them and then ran for the horizon.

  Even across such an expanse, it took some time to reach the base of the towers. The setting sun had painted the salt lake in pinks and reds by the time they were there. And then Shilly saw the weirdest thing of all.

  The base of the towers lay beneath the dry bed of the salt lake, as though the city had been flooded before the lake dried up. She couldn’t tell how deep they went. They stuck out of the ground like the pylons of a pier at low tide. There were no doors, although in numerous places broken windows were within reach or were half-buried so that a simple crawl would give access t
o the inside. She was curious to find out what they might contain and wondered if she could convince Sal to crawl inside for a look.

  The towers loomed over her, imposing and ominous at close quarters, even with the colours of sunset across them. There were so many of them huddling so close together she couldn’t see the sky between them. Peering through gaps, she saw others behind the front ones, and others behind them—all different, all decaying. She had no way of telling how many there might be: hundreds, maybe. It couldn’t possibly be thousands, she told herself. Her mind baulked at the thought.

  Sal skirted the edge of the towers, looking for a way in. There was little room between them, at times barely enough for the buggy to squeeze through, and the white ground was littered with rubble. Sometimes the sound of the buggy’s engine triggered decay high up in a tower, and a rattle of falling masonry or glass greeted them, making Shilly jump. It sounded like evidence of life, but it could not be. The place was dead; she could feel it in her bones.

  Yet it was vibrant with the Change. The twinkling in the air wasn’t like light; she wouldn’t be able to see anything by it. It was there all the same, making her nerve endings tingle.

  Lutz half stood in his seat, worrying at his lip. Shilly thought he looked torn between nervousness and eagerness. “There,” he said, pointing ahead at a relatively wide avenue between two particularly large, pointed towers. “If you must.”

  They drove through the gap as the shadow of the horizon reached for the base of the towers. The air grew instantly cooler and darker, as though a veil had been drawn. Shilly looked up in awe. The towers loomed over her, reducing the sky to a faint patch far, far above. She felt giddy looking up so high, and couldn’t imagine what it would be like to scale such edifices.

  Sal turned left, then right, then stopped in a clear patch where no masonry had fallen.

  “A compromise,” he said to Lutz. “We’ll stay near the edge, but not so close that a fire could be seen from outside.”

  “You really think this Behenna would follow you here?” The surgeon’s eyes didn’t look at Sal. They roamed the growing shadows instead, nervously. “This is a cursed place.”