The Sky Warden and the Sun

by Sean Williams

  At the fourth junction, the driver stopped to light lamps on his cab and to water the horses at a shallow bowl that cupped water dripping from a metal pipe. The path he chose was the smallest of the ones before them and clearly the least travelled. It led down at a steady rate and was lit only every five metres or so. Shilly assumed that the light came from gas lamps, as in the other tunnels, until the cab slowed so the driver could point out that the light in fact came from smooth nuggets of golden stone fixed in brackets to the carved walls.

  “That’s the Change, that is,” announced the driver with a mixture of pride and awe.

  “Like in the Ruin,” Sal hissed to her.

  She nodded, thinking not only of the stone she had taught him to summon light from back in Fundelry but of all the strange artefacts filling Lodo’s workshop. The Stone Mages worked light and stone: the Keep had to be nearby.

  As the buggy picked up speed again, her eyes strained through the darkness to see the road ahead. There was a faint sense of the Change in the air—glimmering, trembling just below the level of her conscious senses—and she thought the echoes of the horse’s hooves might be returning differently than before. But it was hard to tell below the constant droning of the driver, currently expounding his theory of why living on the surface was infinitely inferior to life below ground.

  “It stains you, see? The sun and air, and all that rain falling on you whenever it wants. You might say it’s just light and wind and water—but what else is there in it? There’s bird shit and sky dust and pollen and only the Goddess knows what else. It gets into your skin. It pollutes. Look at you, for example.” His eyes glanced back again at Shilly, at her dark skin. “You live under the sun all day and you go black. I stay under shelter and I’m white. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, I reckon. You’d be better off living like us, if you don’t mind me saying so, because then you’d look right. You wouldn’t be, well, stained, as I said.”

  “Have you met many people from the Strand before?” asked Sal. If the driver noted the edge to his voice, he didn’t rise to it.

  “A few. They all look the same. They’re nice people, mind—I don’t mean to give offence—but they’ve all got the same problem. Too much sun and air and rain is bad for you. No wonder those Sky Wardens are so crazy. Open spaces are hell on the temperament, as well as the skin. And you know what?” Shilly was about to say that she didn’t want to know what, but she wasn’t quick enough. “It’s not just the Strand. That’s how I know I’m right. There are people who live in forests north and east of here, past the northern desert, right outside the Interior. Explorers come back with stories. These people live in the tops of giant trees filled with birds of every colour, and lizards so green you’d think a plant had come to life! They call it the Canopy, and they drink nectar from flowers and eat animals that look like tiny people. And the men and women who live in the trees, among all this greenery, they have yellow skins, see? As yellow as old paper. The world rubs off on them, and they look different. Now, if they built a big hut out of all those trees and lived in it, maybe then—”

  “Excuse me,” said Shilly, forcing the words out through clenched teeth. “How much further is the Keep, now?”

  The driver chuckled. “Don’t worry, miss. We’re almost there. Old Lebesh isn’t taking you off to a dark corner of the city to murder and rob you. Not like some drivers would, these days. I could tell you some stories that’d turn your hair white. Standards are slipping, I tell you. Standards are slipping fast.”

  And he was off again. Shilly sank back into the seat, grateful at least that the subject had changed. Skender Van Haasteren, she thought, you had better let me in at the end of this because I don’t think I could stand a return trip.

  Down they went along the tunnel, deeper and deeper into the Earth. Shilly wondered how far they had descended. It felt like kilometres. There was something wrong with the air—it left her feeling slightly breathless, as though it didn’t quite fill her lungs—and all around her was the pressure of rock. She felt that the muscles of the Earth might flex at any moment and crush her beneath a million tonnes of stone. The only sign that people had ever come this way before were the rocks lighting the way, stretching ahead of them in two converging lines, meeting in the impossible distance.

  At that intersection, finally, a stronger light appeared. Whatever lay at the end of this tunnel was a long way off still, but it was well lit and yellow in colour. She craned her neck to see better, as did Sal. There was nothing else to be made out, at first—just light growing brighter and brighter with every minute.

  As they neared the light, the cab driver finally fell silent. For the first time, she sensed that he was nervous about where they were going. Perhaps, she thought, that was why he had chattered so incessantly: to keep his mind off their destination. It wasn’t a reassuring thought.

  Then the mouth of the tunnel was upon them. The naked rock from which the tunnel had been hacked was lined with wide, grey slabs that slotted together without mortar. For the last dozen metres it ballooned outward, tripling in width and height. The rough and rutted road beneath the cab’s wheels was paved at the very end, and their passage became very quiet a heartbeat before they shot out the tunnel and into the light.

  The light! It was impossibly bright, like a thousand lanterns all shining at once, blinding her. The horses whinnied and the cab jerked to the left. The driver cracked his whip, straightening its course with a determined curse. The wheels jolted over something, bumping Shilly’s leg. She hissed with pain, but not loud enough to cover Sal’s muttered exclamation:

  “I don’t believe it!”

  She forced her eyes open and confronted the glare. The first thing she realised was that, despite having travelled down at a steady rate for more than a half an hour, down through solid rock into the heart of the Earth, the light that blinded her didn’t come from lanterns or any form of Stone Mage Change-working. It came from a point above and ahead of her—and when she glanced at it, she had to look immediately away with her eyes watering.

  It was the sun!

  But that was impossible, she told herself. They had to be underground. A strong gust of wind told her otherwise, bringing with it scents of dust and dirt. She could no longer smell people, or smoke, or perfumes. The air was fresh and baked by the desert into a dry wind that stung her eyes as much as the light.

  With the wind came a sensation of movement overhead. A voice boomed down at them:

  “Stop!”

  The horses whinnied again and shied back. Through the crack between her eyelids, she glimpsed something enormous leaning over them like the column of a fallen arch. There was another on the far side of the road, just as large.

  The driver reined the horses in, his indrawn breath audible over their stamping.

  “I—I can take you no further,” he stammered to his passengers.

  “Are we at the Keep?” Sal asked.

  “Whether we are or not, you get out here.”

  The jittery horses tugged the cab under the shadow of one of the looming things, and Shilly took the opportunity to open her eyes properly.

  The towering shapes on either side of the road turned out to be worn statues of men, pockmarked and eroded by the weather. Six metres tall or more, they leaned like trees over the cab, faces downcast and brooding. Faded writing on their bases might have announced their identities, or—most likely, Shilly thought—advised the traveller that a toll was due ahead, but the script was unfamiliar to her so she couldn’t tell for sure. The only way ahead was to go between them.

  She looked around, unable to see what had made the horses so skittish or who had ordered them to halt. Both the driver and Sal were looking up, and she naturally followed their gaze.

  “I—I’m sorry to disturb you,” said the driver, and Shilly still couldn’t work out who he was addressing.

  “Who are you talking to?” she asked. “Why can’t you take us the rest of the way?”

  “They woul
dn’t let me go any further, even if I wanted to.”

  He indicated the statues with a fearful nod of his head, and she was about to point out the blatant absurdity of this—for the road passed unimpeded between them, as safe as any other—when the statue on her right turned its head with one impossible, rapid movement and fixed its stony stare on her.

  She almost wet herself when it spoke with the same voice she had heard before:

  “Set them down and leave this place!”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” The driver hurried to obey. He jumped out of his seat and unloaded their packs, then helped Shilly onto her crutches with indelicate haste. Barely had her good foot touched the ground when he was back in his seat.

  “Wait!” she yelled. “What if they won’t let us pass, either?”

  “That’s your problem!” The driver didn’t meet her eyes as he tried to untangle the reins, only knotting them further in the process. “I’m not going to do anything but exactly what they tell me.”

  “We’ll be stranded!”

  He didn’t seem to care about that. With one frantic tug, the reins were free, and he urged the horses forward. They didn’t need much encouragement.

  “You can’t do this!” she yelled at the driver.

  The cab turned and rattled off into the tunnel, leaving nothing but a cloud of brown dust in its wake. Shilly watched it go with a feeling of dread in her heart. They were trapped under the bright, impossible sun. And they weren’t alone.

  “Speak,” said the voice.

  They turned as one to face the statues.

  Chapter 8

  Found Wanting

  “We’re looking for Skender Van Haasteren,” said Shilly. She found her voice before Sal did, and that impressed him. All he could do was gawp dizzily up at the statues towering over them, his mind stuck as much on their size and weight as on the fact that they had moved and talked.

  “He is here,” the nearest replied. Now that Sal was watching he could see that its lips didn’t actually move. The words issued from it like smoke from burning wood, or steam from boiling water. When it did move, it flickered in and out of reality, as though it started off frozen in one position, jumped instantaneously to a new position—which might be only slightly different to the old one—froze again, then repeated the process an instant later.

  How they did that when they were undoubtedly made of solid stone—shaped in the fashion of armoured guards, with eroded helmets hanging low over their frowning brows, swords longer than Sal was tall in scabbards at their sides, and ornate armour bearing unfamiliar coats of arms on their trunks and limbs—eluded Sal completely. They made no sound at all when they moved, even though they must have weighed many tonnes. There was no evidence of the Change that he could sense. There was only dust drifting down from the fine cracks in their surfaces, and the sun, blasting down on the stone with a power that could not be denied.

  “Where do we go to meet him?” asked Shilly, a mixture of fear and excitement in her voice.

  The statue simply repeated: “He is here.”

  “In the Keep? Is this the way to go?” She pointed between the statues. The road led out of sight behind a yellow cliff face. There was nothing visible except a perfectly barren landscape: cliffs behind them, cliffs to either side, and a tall mountain ahead of them. They had emerged from the tunnel into a canyon cul-de-sac with nowhere else to go but up the road ahead or back through the tunnel to Ulum.

  “That is the way to the Keep,” said one the statues; Sal couldn’t tell which.

  “Good. We’ll be on our way, then.”

  Shilly took a determined step forward on her crutches, intending to walk between the two statues and up the road.

  “Wait!” The voice came from above them and to their right. The head of a young boy wearing a wide-brimmed sunhat appeared from behind a spur of rock. He waved his arms to make sure he had their attention, then disappeared. They heard a series of loud scrabbling noises, as if a miniature landslide had begun behind the outcrop. Pebbles and dust rolled in a cloud to the bottom of the canyon and came to a halt not far from where Sal stood.

  He backed cautiously away. Shilly cast him a look that said: What now?

  “Don’t move!” said the voice. Seconds later, the dusty figure of the boy emerged from behind the base of the spur and rushed forward. “Wait! I’m Skender Van Haasteren. What do you want?”

  “You’re not Skender Van Haasteren,” Shilly said.

  “I am so.”

  “You can’t be.”

  “Why not?” the boy asked indignantly.

  “Because Skender Van Haasteren is a Stone Mage, that’s why.”

  “Ahhh.” Comprehension dawned on the boy’s face. “You’ll be looking for my father, then. He’s Skender Van Haasteren too. But don’t call him Skender. He hates it. I’m Skender. Call him Mage Van Haasteren, if you have to call him anything, and watch out for his temper. He’s not good in the mornings. Have you come to take the Test?”

  Both Sal and Shilly stared at the boy. Skender junior was shorter than both of them and looked at least two years younger. His colouring was similar to Sal’s, with pale skin and black hair, but there was no resemblance beyond that. His face was round and boyish and the hair peeking out from under his sun hat did so in wild disarray. He moved with restless energy, always shifting his feet, or brushing his robes, or looking around. He would have been easy to dismiss as an ordinary kid but for one thing: all around him was the faint buzz that Sal had learned to associate with the Change. The statues didn’t have it, but Skender did. That was enough to convince Sal that he was telling the truth about his name.

  “Where is this place?” Sal asked, ignoring the boy’s own question. The size of the mountain ahead was bothering him. He didn’t recall anything like it on his father’s maps. “We’re nowhere near Ulum any more, are we?”

  “You tell me,” said the boy, a sly smile on his face. “Can you read the stars?”

  “I might be able to, when the sun sets.”

  “That’s a long wait. Why not read them now? There’s Kienan and Sadaqah.” The boy pointed up at the sky with a stiff, insistent finger. “And Ghafur and Girvin and Dzik.” He looked back at Sal and Shilly, relishing the puzzled looks on their faces. “What? Don’t tell me you can’t see them.”

  “Of course we can’t,” Shilly snapped. “The sun’s still out. They’re invisible.”

  “That’s why they’re called the Invisible Stars. There are seventeen of them, but only nine are in the sky at any time. You have to know how to look.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Well, they’re there.”

  “So what? You’ve demonstrated that we don’t know about them. Does that mean we’ve failed that test of yours?”

  “That wasn’t the Test,” he said, facing her squarely. “You’ll know all about that when you get to it. They make you do all sorts of things to work out what you can do. Only the best make it through, and even then it’s never easy for them.”

  “Tests like the Scourge of Aneshti, you mean?” asked Sal, remembering the awful test Lodo had put him through.

  The boy looked startled. “What do you know about that?”

  Shilly shook her head in annoyance. “Look, we can’t stand around here talking all day. It’s hot and we have somewhere to go. Will you show us the way to your father or not?”

  “Sure. He’s up there.” Skender nodded along the road, between the two statues.

  “In the Keep?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.” She turned and began to hobble up the road.

  Skender watched her retreating back for a moment, as though warring with himself, then said to Sal: “You’d better go with her, if you’re coming in together.”

  Together, thought Sal. Yes. That was the point. “What about you?”

  “I’ll wait for a second.”

  “Why?”

  “To see what happens. Be on your toes.”

  The b
oy’s tone was ominous. Sal sensed that they were being tested again. Even if it was just Skender’s childish game of one-upmanship, he couldn’t let Shilly walk alone between the statues and into possible danger.

  He caught up with her and slowed to match her pace. They walked side by side under the shadow of the nearest statue, the dusty surface of the road crunching beneath their feet. Two more steps took them into the space between the two statues, and a silence fell about them. Sal waited for the ground to open up beneath their feet or for a mighty stone sword to come crashing down before them, barring their way.

  Nothing happened. They walked between the statues and emerged on the other side.

  They kept walking. The sound of scampering footsteps came from behind them.

  “That’s it?” Skender shouted. “That’s it?”

  Sal turned. Skender was addressing the statues from a point on the road between them. One of them was bent almost double at its waist, so that it looked like an ungainly puppet, albeit one over five times as large as the boy it addressed:

  “We have better things to do with our time.”

  “Like what, huh?” Skender kicked dust in frustration. “The first newcomers in months. And they asked for my dad by name. You could at least have given me a little fun!”

  The statue didn’t reply to that. With silent, impossible grace, it straightened and turned its attention back to the tunnel entrance.

  Skender waved his hands above his head, blew a raspberry, then gave up trying to regain its attention. He glanced at his small audience, shrugged, and ambled amiably over to them.

  “Dumb as posts,” he said.

  “What are they?” asked Sal.

  “They guard the way. They make sure only suitable people get through, and like Dad they can get quite cranky. I’ve seen them actually throw people back into the tunnel for being too insistent. Not to hurt them, mind, but to make sure they get the idea.”

  Before Sal could ask what made him and Shilly “suitable”—and which particular outcome Skender had been hoping for—Shilly broke in.