The Stone Mage & the Sea (Books of the Change Book 1)

by Sean Williams

  “It was you …”

  “I?” The old man rose from a cushion by a low table. His tattoos glistened darkly.

  “…who lit the lights in the square!”

  “Really? What makes you say that?”

  Sal wasn’t sure exactly. The way the shadowy figure had moved was part of it, and so were the contents of the room. The rest was pure instinct. “It is you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said the old man. “I make and repair the globes.”

  “Chalk one up for the newcomer,” Shilly said. Pouring from a large clay jug, she handed Sal a drink of water. “Any other insights you’d like to share with us?”

  He ignored her. “How do they work?”

  “They trap light during the day,” the old man said patiently, “which I call forth every evening. It’s a small skill, really--most of the art lies in making the globes. Still, every town should have a glass-blower. I’ve found it a civilizing thing. You wouldn’t believe the problems I had when I first came here…” He shook his head in amused reflection, then suddenly extended his hand. “A pleasure to meet you under better circumstances, my boy. This is my workshop. You can call me Lodo, if you like.”

  That was the name Von had suggested. Sal took the hand and shook as firmly as he could.

  “When we met today …”

  “Yes?”

  He wanted to ask about Shilly’s picture, why the old man had helped him with Kemp, why the two of them had been following him before then, and why Von had never noticed Lodo’s tattoos even though they stood out like tribal scarring to Sal’s eyes--but what came out was: “You said there was going to be a storm.”

  “Hasn’t it hit yet?” Lodo looked at Shilly, who shook her head. “Well, it’s coming, trust me. Tash says so. See.” The old man produced the pendant hanging around his neck from beneath a stained work-shirt. From a distance it had looked like a thumb-sized lump of polished gray stone. Close up, Sal could see that it was carved in a rough likeness of a person, with the blunt, exaggerated features of a fetus.

  “Yadeh-tash is a charm,” Lodo said. “It feels storms passing over the feet of mountains before they reach here. But it can’t tell me precisely when they’ll arrive--which doesn’t make it much use as a predictive tool. Still, I have an affection for it. I’ve worn it a long time.”

  Sal would have liked to look more closely at the charm, but Lodo put it back under his shirt.

  “Are you interested in these things?” the old man asked.

  “I guess.”

  “So is Shilly, here. Aren’t you?”

  “He’s my teacher,” the girl said proudly. “He’s training me in the Change.”

  “As much as I can.” Lodo moved around the room as he talked, picking things up and putting them back down again, sometimes exactly where they had been before. “She has no innate ability, no spark--but there is much more to the Change than that. A Change-worker’s job, on the mundane level, is often done by the talent many ordinary people have in tiny, tiny amounts, plus that which can be found in natural features. For centuries, cabals and congregations have been using this accumulated background potential without knowing it. Given the right skill, any source can be exploited. Here.” He held out a hand, and Shilly gripped it with a delighted smile. “I would be grateful for some heat, my dear. My old bones grow tired of the chill.”

  Sal didn’t know what he was talking about. He had heard of the Change--everyone had--but the room was already stifling. That thought fled as Shilly bowed her head and concentrated for a second. A large black stone in the center of the room issued a loud crack, as though it had split in two, and a flickering blue ring appeared around it, much like a gas flame but with no visible source. Even from his position a couple of meters away, Sal could feel the heat radiating from it.

  He stared in wonder, and was chilled despite the heat. He had seen something like this before, although he wasn’t sure where. In a dream perhaps, or a long, long time ago.

  There was a buzzing noise in his head, like a swarm of bees looking for somewhere to land.

  Lodo sighed and released the girl’s hand. She looked up, pleased.

  “Much better--much better, indeed.” The old man warmed his hands on the strange fire and gestured that Sal should take a seat on a cushion near it. He did so, ignoring both the heat and the odd sensations in his head; perhaps they were related. Shilly likewise sat on the other side of the stone.

  “Theory accounts for a lot when given the right resources, you see,” Lodo said, pacing restlessly. “Talent is like iron ore: useless until you know how to refine and work it. That’s why the Selectors look for the brightest students, as well as those born gifted with natural talent. Shilly’s growing knowledge will guarantee her a place in any community she wishes to join, when I and my small talent are gone.”

  “Will she be Selected?” Sal asked.

  “Not if she can help it.” The old man chuckled, leaning his wiry frame against a bench crowded with crystals. “Our ways are different from those of the Sky Wardens. That’s why I’m living here in a hole in the ground, playing teacher and keeping the local streets safe at night. It’s not much, but it keeps me out of trouble, and sets me apart from those with whom I’d rather not be associated.”

  Sal studied the old man with a new respect and interest. The Sky Wardens governed the coastal regions of the Strand by virtue of their innate abilities, not because they happened to be born into the right family. He knew that much. Although some Lines did produce an unrepresentative number of children gifted in the Change, it was well known that any child anywhere could be born with the talent. Each year the Selectors--mobile Sky Wardens with individual territories--scoured the Strand town by town, partly to oversee local elections and perform other official duties, and partly to look for children who might become Wardens. Many hopeful teenagers spent long nights wishing to be spotted.

  The Strand was huge, however, and there were numerous isolated communities. That brief annual contact with a Selector was all many places received. As a result, some children slipped through the Sky Wardens’ net. These lost talents usually became weather-workers or fortune-tellers or other lesser Change-workers; Aunty Merinda, the old woman who had grabbed him in the market, was probably such a one. Perhaps Lodo, too, although he seemed to have the Change in a way different from the Sky Wardens. Where their charms influenced air and water, his seemed to involve stone and fire--giving him more in common with the Stone Mages of the Interior. Sal wondered how he had come by the knowledge. Perhaps he had stumbled upon it, or had been taught by a gifted ancestor just as he was now teaching Shilly. The Stone Mages themselves never came so close to the coast.

  Such speculation quickly exhausted Sal’s knowledge. His father avoided any mention or manifestation of the Change, just as he avoided music and the Sky Wardens. He didn’t trust the change: he said it was dangerous. To be so close to it now made the hair on the back of Sal’s neck stand on end--and made him wish that he had paid more attention to the tales told by fellow travelers around highway campfires.

  “How does it work?” he asked.

  At that Lodo laughed. “One thing at a time, my boy. It has taken Shilly eight years to progress this far. You want me to enlighten you in one night?”

  “So why did you bring me here?”

  “To find out what you are,” Lodo said, matter-of-factly.

  Sal looked away. He found himself staring at Shilly, who winked.

  “The mosquitoes are bad tonight,” she said. “Did you notice them on the dunes? I was eaten alive.”

  He shook his head. “They don’t bother me.”

  “Oh?” said the old man, who had moved around behind him. “Some people are lucky that way, I hear.”

  “I guess.”

  “Or it might have something to do with this.”

  Sal felt a hand at his ear. �
��Hey!” He jerked away, too late.

  “I thought so.” Lodo was holding his ear-ring and studying it closely.

  “Give that back!” He jumped up, but the old man dodged his grasping hand with surprising agility. Light glinted through the ring’s three tiny holes like stars through clouds.

  “Do you know where this came from?”

  “I don’t care. Just--”

  “Not so fast, my boy.” Lodo avoided another grab. “If I’m right, this is very old and very rare. I spotted it the moment I saw you, but couldn’t make the connection. What’s it doing on you, here, now?”

  “I’ve always worn it.” The frustration of having lost something so close to him nearly made him choke.

  “I’m sure you have. Do you know where your father found it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Was it your mother’s?”

  “I don’t remember my mother.” This blurted out before he could stop it.

  “Really? How interesting.”

  Sal opened his mouth, then shut it. The pressure of the old man’s gaze was making him feel very uncomfortable. He was suddenly very conscious of the fact that he was an unknown distance underground with two people he hardly knew and only one door leading to freedom.

  Lodo offered him the ear-ring. He snatched it out of the old man’s hands and returned it to its proper place, fuming.

  “I’m sorry,” Lodo said. “That wasn’t very fair of me. Would you like me to tell you what it is?”

  Sal managed a surly nod.

  “It’s a ward. A charm of protection, if you prefer. It keeps harm away from its wearer, where that harm comes from dumb or inanimate things. Like mosquitoes, for instance, which you say you aren’t bothered by--along with colds, I’d wager, or broken bones. The ward helps you avoid them, without you even knowing.” Lodo smiled. “When I say ‘dumb’, of course, I’m not talking about boys like Kemp. Only you can fight those battles.”

  Sal nodded again. He was indeed immune to many of the small maladies the people around him occasionally endured. And he hadn’t ever broken a bone. But that didn’t necessarily prove anything. As far as he knew, his ear-ring was just that: a sliver of pierced silver with a gap barely large enough for his lobe to fit through, so he could slip it in and out of the hole it occupied in his ear.

  “Do you know why you are here, Sal?” Lodo asked. “In Fundelry, I mean.”

  His defensiveness was automatic: “Why should I tell you?”

  “Why shouldn’t you tell me?” the old man shot back. “That’s more the point. Why the secrecy? What are you afraid of? What are you running from? Can you tell me that, Sal?”

  The sudden barrage of questions took him off-guard. They were the same ones he had been asking himself in recent weeks. “I--I don’t know.”

  “Well, I don’t know either, but I do think your father is looking for something. No one comes here without a reason, even at the best of times, and I can tell that you two aren’t exactly perched on the summit of life. Do you have any idea what that reason might be, what the thing is that he’s looking for?”

  Sal warred with himself for a second. Just like Lodo, he wanted to know what his father was up to, but talking about it with strangers wasn’t the right way to go about finding out. He knew that--and he also knew that he hadn’t had any luck on his own. Although he didn’t have much to bargain with, giving away some of it might be the only way of getting more in return.

  “My father’s looking for someone,” he said slowly, “not something.”

  “Really?”

  “An old friend, or so I heard him tell someone.”

  “Do you know this friend’s name?”

  Sal thought hard. What had it been? Mystery? Misery? “Misseri, I think. Payat Misseri.”

  The old man’s eyebrows went up. “How interesting.”

  “You know him?”

  “Well, yes, I do.”

  Interest quickened in him. If he could give his father the whereabouts of this man, maybe he could justify the entire midnight excursion. “Can you tell me where he is?”

  “That’s not so easy to answer. It’s clear you don’t know him, so your father’s obviously not as good a friend as he might like to pretend.”

  Sal frowned.

  “Don’t be dense,” said Shilly. “It’s him--Lodo. He’s this Misseri character your dad is looking for.”

  It was Sal’s turn to look surprised. “Really?”

  “I’m saying nothing of the sort,” said Lodo, scowling at his apprentice. “Shilly is faster than a startled sandpiper at times, but not nearly cunning enough for my liking. You’ve given me no good reason to admit to anything, young man, whether I am Misseri or not. Until you do give me a reason, I will not tell you anything about him.”

  “But--” Sal stared at both of them in turn, slightly stunned by the unexpected turn of events. “But how do I know you wouldn’t be lying, anyway? I told you the name first. You could just be saying you recognize it.”

  “That’s true,” Lodo agreed, while Shilly rolled her eyes. “And it’s very sensible of you to question me. But you must see my side of this too. It would be very sensible of me to lie. Just because you seem harmless enough, that’s no reason to throw all caution to the wind. Your father could mean this Misseri fellow ill, or could be working for those who do.” Lodo tapped the triangular tattoo on his chin with one long forefinger. “So we have attained something of an impasse. Quite unexpected.”

  Sal didn’t know what to say. Here he was, most likely sitting in the company of the man his father had come all the way to Fundelry to find, and that man was refusing to do anything about it!

  “Very strange,” Lodo mused, running a hand across his lined face. “’Payat’ was an old use-name. Very old. I’d thought it quite forgotten by now …”

  There was a jewel embedded in the old man’s little finger that Sal hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a ruby--blood-red and brooding--and it made him think. Use-names were mainly a Stone Mage custom, like nick-names, although Sal and his father both had one. Their real or “heart” names were a secret known only to each other, as Lodo’s probably was by his family, whoever or wherever they were. Sal assumed that he and his father had been granted theirs during their travels in the borderlands, where Stone Mage customs were stronger and the two of them were well-known. Sal’s heart-name was Sayed, and his father’s Dafis.

  The fact that Lodo had a use-name--combined with his talent with rock and heat--struck Sal as highly odd. Perhaps Stone Mages did come this far into the Strand, after all. One at least, anyway …

  He surprised himself by yawning. Tiredness, heat and confusion were taking their toll. He needed sleep more than he needed mysterious encounters in the middle of the night with people he still didn’t know were trustworthy, for all that they had helped him with Kemp.

  “I should go,” he said. In the morning he would confront his father with what he had seen and learned. Maybe then, finally, Sal would find out what he was doing here, and what he should do next.

  Neither Lodo nor Shilly moved, though. Shilly remained sitting on her cushion, legs folded beneath her, watching him solemnly.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said the old man. “It’s too risky to trust us. Your father has warned you to be careful who you talk to and you’re afraid that you’ve done the wrong thing.”

  Sal jumped. Was the old man reading his mind, now? “I--well, that is--”

  Lodo held up a hand and smiled. “That’s okay, my boy. Only a fool is offended by the truth. You have no reason to trust me, or any other stranger. To do so in your position would be foolish--especially when you don’t actually know what your ‘position’ really is. Is that more or less what you would like to say?”

  Sal nodded. The old man was about as far distant from his image of the Sky Wardens as
it was possible to get, but that still didn’t make him trustworthy.

  “Yet you came here with Shilly,” Lodo said. “You trusted her that far. How do you justify that?”

  “I--can’t,” he said, remembering the hunch that had come to him when looking down at her in the square. It had just felt right, apart from any other justification he might have had.

  “I thought so,” mused the old man. “Light is a by-product of heat just as heat is a by-product of light. Separating the two is very difficult. It’s the same with knowledge and talent. So rarely does one come across two such divergent poles, with essences so pure and uncorrupted. And as they say, opposites attract.”

  Sal wasn’t sure what Lodo was talking about. Was the old man trying to suggest that he had some sort of calling to the Change? Or something else entirely? Either way, he felt himself beginning to flush--and that was worse than any embarrassment the old man could have inflicted upon him.

  “I really must--” he began.

  “Yes, yes.” The old man shook his head as though waking from a dream. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Shilly, would you--?”

  “I can find my own way.”

  Lodo smiled. “At least let her open the door for you. That’s something you can’t do on your own, yet.”

  Sal nodded, feeling his flush deepen. He hoped that in the reddish light of the room it would be mistaken for shadow.

  “Sleep well, Sal,” the old man said with a faint smile.

  Shilly showed him the way up the tunnel and back to the round antechamber. There she touched something on the wall and stepped back as it dissolved in a shower of sand to reveal the night outside.

  “Are you sure you’ll make it back okay?” she asked.

  “Positive.” He found it hard to meet her eye.

  “Good, because there’s a chance I might decide to follow you in a minute to make sure. And if I find you stumbling around in the dark, as lost as a blind rabbit, I’m really not going to be very impressed.”