The Sky Warden and the Sun

by Sean Williams

  The buggy’s engine stopped under Sal’s touch and the echoes took a disturbingly long time to fade. More bricks tumbled in the distance, making Shilly jump. All the windows—and there were so many of them—were empty and black. They seemed watchful, wary. She felt as though she was drowning in their age and dereliction.

  Shilly wondered if they’d made the right decision, coming to this city. The small of her back itched. The air tasted of despair as much as it did of salt. She was no longer interested in knowing what the towers contained.

  “The fire,” Sal said, shivering. “It’ll be dark soon.”

  Lutz helped unload the wood they had gathered with more enthusiasm than he had shown all day. Shilly could do little but watch them as they worked, cursing yet again the inconvenience of her leg, the throb in her bone that warned against even attempting to move on her own. If anything happened, she would be helpless.

  When the fire was lit, they brought her down and made her comfortable on the ground. The feel of salt and sand under her buttocks was a welcome change from the tray of the buggy, despite the worsening smell.

  “I’ll make us something to eat,” said Sal, unloading more supplies.

  Lutz looked around and up. What little light remained of the sunset was dispelled by the warm crackle of the fire. The pool of yellow light surrounding it seemed very small, the darkness beyond impossibly deep. The only break in it came from shards of glass reflecting the firelight back at them, like eyes blinking.

  She tugged the sleeping bag over her shoulders, chilled despite the flames.

  “While you’re cooking,” the surgeon said, “I’ll scout the area. Make sure we’re safe.”

  “From what?”

  Lutz didn’t answer, just eased himself away from the fire and into the shadows. The last thing Shilly saw of him was his expression: frightened, but determined all the same. Whatever was out there, Lutz wasn’t going to let himself be deterred by his fears.

  Shilly helped Sal prepare vegetables, as she had done the previous night. When the stew was simmering in the pot, he came to sit by her. A wind had sprung up between the towers, carrying with it a biting chill as though somewhere deep inside the city lay a giant block of ice, untouched by the sun.

  “What’s got into him?” she asked, meaning Lutz.

  Sal shrugged. “I think he’s terrified. This place has him spooked.”

  “Understandable. But he wanted to come here.”

  “Not at night, remember? We blew a tyre after lunch and it took us a couple of hours to fix it. But for that, we would have made it during daylight. Maybe he would have been okay then.”

  “He could be afraid of the dark.”

  “If so, he’s braver than I am, going off on his own.” Sal peered out into the impenetrable darkness.

  “I think he’s looking for something,” said Shilly, voicing a gut feeling. She remembered Lutz’s envious look when they had headed off into the Broken Lands, the keenness with which he had led them off the usual road.

  “Any idea what?”

  “No. We’ll have to ask him when he comes back.”

  Neither stated the obvious: if he came back.

  “Something might well find him,” Sal said. “This is the most amazing Ruin I’ve ever heard of. I dreamed about it, once. It means something, I’m sure.”

  Shilly gently shifted her leg. Her toes were tingling and there was an itch out of reach below her knee.

  “Do you want me to—you know?” Sal asked, indicating the leg.

  “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “Here, I’m sure it is. I can’t feel Behenna at all. We’re completely swamped by the background potential.”

  “Okay, then. Before Engenius comes back…”

  Sal put his hands on the splint and bandages enclosing her leg and shut his eyes. Shilly did the same. The shimmer of the Change surrounding her didn’t go away; if anything, it became clearer, as though normal sight was usually in the way. For a brief instant, with the potential so strong and so close all around her, she thought that she might be able to access it herself, without help—but she could not. Even here the Change was completely out of her reach. She could only see it, and use it second-hand—sensitive, but passive.

  Sal’s touch sent a shiver up her spine. She could feel him visualising the breaks and damaged tissues as best he could. The Change gathered under his touch. It was as if a million tiny, glowing spiders were laying webs through her flesh, tying everything together. He was clumsy, though, missing some tender spots entirely and devoting too much attention to others. She bent her own will to the effort, using his gift via the physical connection between them.

  She lost track of time. The bubbling of the stew faded into the background. It could have been hours or minutes that they worked on her leg, feeling their way by instinct through the damage and doing what they could to repair it. Although she couldn’t tell how much good they were doing, the injury was so severe that any improvement would be better than none. As long as they weren’t doing harm—and it didn’t feel like they were. It felt right. Gradually, the tingling in her toes retreated, and the ache began to ease.

  That small progress encouraged speculation. How far could they go? Would it be possible for the two of them, in such a place, to heal her leg entirely? She doubted it; they didn’t know exactly what to do, for a start, and it was very close work, requiring the utmost concentration. Maybe a small wound could be healed, but not something so large, affecting so great a proportion of her body. If they stayed there a week or more…But she knew they couldn’t. There was no food, for a start, and it was getting so cold…

  A faint noise—a footstep—distracted her, and her eyes snapped open, expecting to see that Lutz had returned and discovered their secret.

  She gasped. There was someone standing on the other side of the fire, watching them closely, but it wasn’t Lutz. Where the surgeon was tall and grey-haired across his scalp and face, this man was shorter, stockier and bald, dressed in a worn cotton top and ragged pants. His eyes and mouth were mere shadows in a heavily lined face.

  Sal jumped to his feet the moment he saw the man. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”

  The man smiled broadly. Even then, Shilly couldn’t see his teeth. “I live here,” he said. His voice was clear but seemed to come from a long way off. “I know someone you know.”

  “Engenius? Have you seen him?” Sal stepped forward to put himself between the man and Shilly. “If you’ve done anything to him—”

  “Not him. He means nothing to me.”

  By then, all the hairs were standing up on the back of Shilly’s neck. Something was terribly wrong with the man before them. It took her a long time to notice it, because it could not be true: he wasn’t breathing.

  A palpable chill emanated from him; the flames between them fluttered as though fanned by an icy breeze.

  “What are you?” she asked.

  Deep in the shadowy eye sockets, two invisible eyes turned on her. “Can you guess, Shilly?”

  She faltered under that terrible regard. “How did you know my name?”

  “I told you,” said the cold voice. “I know someone you know.”

  “Who?”

  “You’re a golem,” broke in Sal. “That’s what you are.”

  The smile disappeared as the eyes went back to Sal. “No. The body is the golem. I am its resident. The distinction is important.”

  “What should we call you, then?” Sal’s voice was firm, but there was fear behind it.

  “I have been called by many names. The part of me that you see before you, through this body, is but a small part of the whole. I am in many bodies at once, many golems. I see many things through them. Not all are worth seeing. Here…” The empty gaze of the golem looked dismissively around at the towers in shadow, at the black windows, and then returned to Sal and Shilly. “You are worth seeing.”

  Shilly shifted herself closer to Sal, wishing she could stand beside him to fa
ce the creature. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What do you want from us?”

  “Nothing,” the creature said with another smile, “but to be close to you.”

  “Are you cold? Is that it?”

  “Yes and no. It’s not heat I lack, but life, physicality. That is what I seek, and what you have. I cannot take it from you, but I can stay near in case it is offered to me.”

  “Suppose we don’t want you to stay.”

  “Well, Shilly, then you must make me go. I encourage you to try. It won’t be easy, even here. How strong is your friend, do you think? Will his gift suffice?”

  Sal shook his head, and squatted next to her. “Don’t listen to it. It wants us to try to use the Change to get rid of it, to burn me out so it can come inside.”

  “Inside you? Take you over?”

  “Yes,” said the golem, “that’s the way it works.”

  “How?” She looked in alarm from the creature to Sal. “What would happen to Sal if you did that?”

  “Horrible things.” The golem seemed to enjoy her discomfort. “He wouldn’t be dead, but he wouldn’t be alive either. He would be in the Void Beneath—ah…you know the place.”

  Shilly felt Sal stiffen beside her, and she remembered that he had glimpsed the Void in Fundelry, while they had been spying on the Alcaide and the Syndic. He had never described what he’d seen, and that was enough to make her fear it.

  “I think you’re trying to frighten us,” she said. “I don’t think you’re telling the truth.”

  “Oh, I am,” it said. “I cannot lie. The only way I can avoid telling the truth is by saying nothing at all, so if I speak to you, you know that what I say is, well, true.”

  “But you are trying to frighten us.”

  “Yes,” it admitted, “that is so.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?” Its smile became more natural then, which only made the face of its empty host look more unnerving. “It’s boring here. There is little to do. Nothing ever changes.”

  “Travellers like us are your entertainment?”

  “There are few enough of those, and even fewer like you. This golem I inhabit—” limp hands rose to pat the torso before them “—he was the last of any talent to come here, some years ago. He wanted to find the secret of the towers, and I wouldn’t let him. He tried too hard to dispel me, so here I am. He fits well, don’t you think?”

  Shilly forced herself to ignore the relish with which the creature flaunted the body it inhabited. “What is the secret of the towers?”

  The gleeful expression faded. “There is none, but that doesn’t stop people like Lutz looking.” Its mouth curled into a moue of distaste. “There’s nothing here but death.”

  “Why don’t you leave, then?”

  The golem’s empty eyes swung to Sal, who had spoken. “Because I can’t,” the voice spat. “Know this, Sayed Hrvati: there are three places to which creatures such as I are drawn. This one is in decay; the second is north of here, beyond my influence; the third lies far to the south. You know of the last, I suspect.”

  Sal frowned. “To the south…You don’t mean the Haunted City, do you?”

  “Do I? We shall see. Perhaps we shall renew our acquaintance there, one day.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Perhaps I don’t.”

  Sal shook his head in irritation, and Shilly sympathised. She was beginning to wonder if the creature was just playing games with them.

  “Look,” she said, “are you here for a reason?”

  “That depends.” It neither looked at her nor answered her question directly. Instead it began to walk slowly around the fire, one step at a time.

  “Are you going to try healing your friend again?” it asked Sal.

  “Not with you sniffing around,” he replied. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Very much. It is to me as that fire is to you.” For the first time a real emotion appeared on the golem’s face: one of wistful desire, of longing. Of hunger, Shilly thought. Hunger for the Change.

  “You can’t have it,” said Sal.

  The golem kept coming around the fire. Sal edged closer to where Shilly sat.

  “Stay away,” he said. The flames cast the golem’s face in half-shadow, making its ghastly expression stand out even more. With each step the cold became more piercing until Shilly noticed that her breath was fogging.

  When it was within arm’s reach, it raised a hand as though to touch them. Sal instantly knocked it aside.

  “Good,” it whispered, raising the hand again. “Good boy—”

  A cry sounded from outside the clearing—a man’s shout of fear, distant but clear. The golem, distracted, turned to look into the shadows. The cry was repeated, nearer, this time. When the golem’s empty eyes fell on them again, its amused smile had returned.

  “Saved by the fool,” it said, backing away. “Until next time, children.”

  Mingled relief and dread swept through Shilly as it walked toward the edge of the firelight. The heat of the fire returned in a rush and she put a hand on Sal’s leg for support. He knelt down beside her, also watching the golem’s retreating back.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It couldn’t have hurt us unless I used the Change.”

  She wasn’t so sure. And that didn’t mean it wouldn’t try to hurt them in other ways.

  As though it had heard her thoughts, the golem turned on the verge of the shadows. With a quick motion, it flicked an object toward them, glinting gold in the flames. She automatically flinched. Whatever it was, it fell far short, landing with a shower of sparks in the fire.

  The golem smirked at their startled expressions. “I’ll send Lodo your regards.”

  It was gone before either of them could respond.

  Chapter 4

  Division

  Sal jumped when the golem threw the object into the fire and vanished into the shadows of the ruined towers. Feeling foolish, he turned that motion into a step toward the woodpile. There he found a long stick with which he reached into the fire and attempted to retrieve the object. His hands were shaking, which didn’t help matters.

  It called me Sayed Hrvati. My heart-name; my father’s surname…

  “What did it mean?” asked Shilly from behind him, her voice strained. “What does it know about Lodo?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, forcing himself to concentrate on the matter at hand, moving around the fire to get a better angle of approach. Whatever the golem had thrown, it had fallen heavily and sunk deep into the glowing coals. “It said it knew someone we both knew. Maybe it knows him.”

  “But how? He can’t still be alive. Can he?”

  Sal paused in his task. The last evidence they had of Lodo being alive was during the earthquake the old man had summoned to help them escape. Beyond that, there had been no sign. But if he had survived, and if the summoning had taken too great a toll on the old man’s strength…

  They had left him to a fate worse than death—assuming, of course, that what the golem had told them really was the truth.

  Shilly was obviously thinking along the same lines. Her face was etched with horror. “No. He can’t be. I won’t believe it. That thing—it just wants to hurt us! It’s messing with our heads. It can’t actually harm us, so—”

  She stopped as someone stumbled into the clearing. Sal rounded on the figure with the smouldering branch upraised.

  “Hey!” It was Lutz, white-faced. He backed away in alarm. “What’s wrong?”

  “Where have you been?” Sal asked.

  “I was looking,” he said, around heavy breaths. “There was something out there. An animal, I think.” He hesitated and Shilly realised that it must have been Lutz who had distracted the golem with his cries. He hadn’t been attacked, but he had been frightened. Like them.

  “What were you looking for?” asked Sal.

  Lutz didn’t answer. He was staring at them as though seeing them for the first time. “Wha
t happened here? You two look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Something like that—” Sal started to say, but Lutz broke in over him.

  “No! Where is he? Where did he go?” Suddenly animated, he ran around the clearing, looking out into the shadows. “Father!” he called. “Father, come back!”

  Sal watched him warily. “Was your father a Change-user?”

  Lutz’s eyes were wide. “No—no, he wasn’t. Why?”

  “This wasn’t him, then. It was someone—something—else.” Sal returned his attention to the object in the fire, losing patience and scattering the burning logs in order to gain access to it. It slipped under the pot of stew, which he lifted out and put carefully to one side.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lutz, collapsing onto his knees at a point opposite both of them. “I shouldn’t have mixed you up in all this.” The fire reflecting in his eyes had all the vividness of tears.

  “In all what?” asked Shilly, her voice cold. “Where did you go?”

  Lutz didn’t look at her. “The last time someone tried to survey this place was fifty years ago,” he said. “My father was part of the expedition, and he never came back. None of them came back. But I know he’s still in here, somewhere. This place doesn’t let go easily.”

  “You’ve tried to find him before?”

  “Yes, but I don’t have a vehicle and few people will come here. Those who know of it are afraid. Those who don’t—”

  “Like us?” she broke in, angrily. “I suppose we have to be tricked.”

  “No, no.” He opened his hands, pleading with her to understand. “It’s not like that. I swear it isn’t. I lied about nothing. This really is the only way I know to get across the Broken Lands without Behenna following you. The road skirts the salt lake, so you would have passed by the city anyway. You wanted to come here as soon as you saw it. I would have been happy to wait until dawn, to look then, but it was you who insisted on coming here at night, when the things walk…”

  He faltered. Sal had managed to hook one end of the stick under the object in the fire and drew it slowly into the light. It was brass, not gold, and it had been blackened by the fire. But it still had its shape, that of a squat X with a hole through its centre, attached to a long, heavy-linked chain. The loops of the chain were tied around the cross in numerous thick knots; one broken end hung free.