by Jack
* * * *
The Spark (A Romance in Four Acts):
A Tale of the Change
Sean Williams
ADITI SABATINO
The young man lay cool and unresponsive on Adi’s bed. She had undressed and washed him, and in the process thoroughly examined his body for any sign of injury. She knew him now much better than she ever had, but not in a way that satisfied her.
His eyes were open and they did not see her. She lay next to him in the hot room, wearing only her underclothes, and he made no move to touch her.
‘What do I do now, Ros?’
He gave no sign of hearing.
‘Tell me what happened and I’ll do whatever it takes to fix it.’
His expression didn’t change, not even when she rattled him by the shoulders like a vat of settled ale.
‘You’re supposed to be my husband, not a corpse!’
Roslin of Geheb lay quietly beneath her, lungs steadily breathing and heart steadily beating.
Adi bent forward and wept onto his hairless chest.
* * * *
A day earlier, she had checked into the Lost Dolphin Hostel under the name Hakamu, an alias they had used on their last journey together. As a boy, Ros had bested both the Bee Witch and the Golem of Omus, and had saved her life no less than twice along the way. Adi had saved him too, that last time, and stories of their deeds had spread like locusts across the land. Everyone knew Aditi Sabatino and Roslin of Geheb, or thought they did. For some years it had bothered her that people told tales by firelight that amplified or decreased her role, or ignored her entirely to focus on the farmboy-made-good. Then she had learned that it was fine for business, and discovered that she wasn’t above using the weight of storytelling to drive a harder bargain.
On this occasion, she didn’t avail herself of that opportunity. She happily took the hostel’s going rate and hid her Clan markings behind a veil. She had come to finish a story that no one but she and Ros knew anything about.
Despite this resolve, her hands shook as she unfolded her pack on her bed. The precious brassy charm lay within, nestled carefully among wadded clothes and her toiletries, worn smooth by years of careful examination — dented too by being occasionally hurled into a wall — but it still functioned. At one end was fixed a crystal that glowed red when she pointed it at the south-east corner of the room.
She shuttered the windows and tested it again. The sunlight reflecting down crystal chimneys to the underground thoroughfares of Ulum was not a patch on standing under the naked sky, but her eyes had become used to it, making subtle gradations of shade in the crystal difficult to tell. Swinging the rod from side to side in the gloom, she confirmed her first impressions. South-east it was.
Caught between impatience and dread, her empty stomach festering, Adi waited until nightfall before putting the promises she had made to the test.
* * * *
The charm was a limited thing. Its crystal glowed only when it was pointed in the direction of Roslin of Geheb. That simple trick had sustained her for five years of separation. Many, many times in the years they had been apart had she taken comfort from it. No matter how far away he was, the charm would seek him out and tell her where he lay. South, north, east, west — on lonely nights, he could have been on the far side of the world or just outside the walls of her wagon.
She never once opened a window to test the latter hope. Until his apprenticeship was complete, she knew it was bound to be dashed.
One hour after sunset, when the halls of Ulum were as dark as they were going to get, she dressed and placed the veil across her features once again. Tightly clutching the charm in both hands, she left the room and headed into the warrens outside. Still south-east, the crystal said. Ulum was cramped and crowded, a city squeezed into caves that were forever too small, no matter how much the civil miners dug. At the highest points of the underground city, curving towers reached for the ranks of luminescent algae that dotted the night ‘sky’ like stars. Elsewhere, winding roads fought with buildings for space, and people squeezed in where they could.
Even after nightfall the city was busy. Traders mixed freely with locals once the markets were closed. Accents varied, as did clothes and skin colour. Adi’s skin was darker than most to the north, her hair and eyes with it. With her Clan markings covered, she could have passed for an emissary from the Strand — perhaps even a Sky Warden, had she the tore to match.
The charm led her deep into a maze of lanes and teetering buildings. For seven days, according to the charm, Ros hadn’t moved. She didn’t expect him to move now. It was a sign, she told herself, a sign from him. It had to be. He had never before stayed so long in one spot, and the charm had never pointed her so surely to a city like Ulum — a natural meeting place if ever there was one.
Her nostrils breathed with easy familiarity the comingled scents of perfume, spice and camel shit. It wasn’t lack of air, then, that made her feel light-headed. Roslin of Geheb was in the city somewhere. She wouldn’t sleep until she found him.
* * * *
The charm led her truly, but the ways of Ulum were ever crooked. Straight lines, like the flagstones underfoot, had long been worn into curves or cracked entirely. When she wanted to go left, every road tended right. Crowds of people and flocks of animals frequently blocked her path. It took her half the night to travel a mile.
Tired and on edge, she arrived at a tiny, hexagonal courtyard that was lit by reddish glowstones and greened only by weeds growing through the cobbles. The charm pointed to one of two doors on the far side. Plunging through the doorway, she collided heavily with someone emerging from within.
The charm went flying. She clutched at it, caught it just as it made contact with hard stone. Something tinked within its metal casing. A cold feeling rushed through her at the knife-sharp thought: broken.
She spat a word she only used when negotiations took a particularly atrocious turn. The man she had run into didn’t stop. He was moving too quickly, already disappearing out of the courtyard. She flung another harsh word at his back, and let him go.
With faint hope, she raised the charm and pointed it south-east.
The crystal was dark.
Sickness rose up in her, physical and existential. There was only one course left to her: through the door, with momentum regained; trusting in the charm’s last flicker just as she trusted Ros to be there, waiting for her.
The building was a doss-house, cramped and stinking. Every door was open, every screen pulled aside. People came and went freely, muttering and cursing in the fashion of the broken-minded. She stumbled through their filth and refuse, thinking that this wasn’t the life Ros had set out to find. What had gone so badly wrong? Or was it possible that the charm had been malfunctioning all along, and he was no closer than he had ever been?
Then through the darkness of her thoughts she saw him — a pale shape sprawled partially-clothed across a filthy narrow mattress. Dark, lank locks hung in lazy spirals across his brow. Half-open eyes cast deep shadows across his cheeks. His lips were slack. He was older, larger, manlier — but it was him.
Him . Truly, truly him.
She ran to him and cupped his head in her hands, lifted it as she would a child’s. The weight of it surprised her, as did the tears that came on seeing him. They dripped unchecked onto his face and she called his name in relief.
He neither moved nor spoke. His eyes saw right through her, if they saw anything at all. He didn’t register her presence, no matter how she implored him, then shook him, then slapped his face lightly, hoping that would bring him back to himself.
‘Won’t do no good, miz,’ said a wild-bearded man from outside the room. ‘He been like this a full week.’
At first, she had no response. A small crowd had gathered, watching her with wide-eyed curiosity. She suddenly saw herself as they did, and wondered at the determination that filled her.
This wasn’t how the story was supposed to go, but that didn’t mean
it was over. It was only beginning.
Her tears vanished. Her spine straightened. She put Ros’s head down gently but firmly. Whatever had done this to him — a golem, perhaps, or a charm backfired — she would fix it.
‘You’ll help me,’ she told wild-beard and his friends. ‘I’ll pay you to carry him.’
Shrugging, sceptical, but convinced by her coin, the city’s under-dwellers were as compliant as she needed them to be, and no more.
* * * *
The manager of the Lost Dolphin had seen stranger things, no doubt. His right eyebrow might have risen a fraction on seeing the strange procession coming up his steps, but it was soon restored to its proper location. Once Ros was installed in Adi’s room and the grubby entourage despatched, he provided all that courtesy and custom demanded. The staff entered only when asked to bring tubs of warm water and clean towels, and food that only Adi ate. Ros drank drops of water at a time, when she tipped his head back and forced him to. She spoke to him, telling him how they had come to be together again, then asking him how he had arrived in Ulum. He hadn’t necessarily been injured in the city, she thought. He might have been brought here by persons unknown, rescued from the desert, perhaps, in which he would have quickly died. If such a benefactor existed, Adi wished she could track them down and press the questions that burned inside her on them.
Ros said nothing.
‘You’re supposed to be my husband, not a corpse!’
Ros said nothing.
* * * *
She wept because she had to. Powerful emotions were like sparkling wine: a vessel could contain them only so long before shattering under rising pressure. If she shattered, that would do neither of them any good.
The moment she regained control, she washed her face and dressed, moving swiftly but calmly. She rolled Ros onto his side and covered his nakedness with a sheet. A maid appeared at the door the moment she rang. Adi paid her to watch him while she was gone. She doubted he would be going anywhere.
Back out into the city she went. Dawn light was beginning to filter down the chimneys, pouring a brighter shine on the dirty streets. Adi’s hopes of a quick solution had evaporated during that long night, but she hadn’t given up yet. A physician was the next step, the best the city could provide at short notice. She had money in the form of coins and credit, the latter backed by the wealth and reputation of Clan Sabatino.
The third physician she called upon was willing to leave his bed and return with her to the hostel. Doctor Rishard, a hale-looking fellow of middling years with a crest of greying hair that stood up like a galah’s no matter how he tried to plaster it down, walked with long, sweeping strides, and to keep up Adi had to take two steps for every one of his. She responded positively to his haste, though, feeling as though he was giving her strength just by taking her plea seriously.
‘And you say he has been like this for how long?’
‘Seven days, I suspect. Perhaps longer.’
The physician nodded and went back to lifting Ros’s eyelids and poking at his flesh. He employed crystals, hammers, and needles, all without response. He passed a sample of Ros’s breath across a mirror and tested the consistency of several bodily fluids. Ros had soiled himself during Adi’s absence, and the maid’s half-hearted attempt to clean the mess proved to be a blessing in disguise.
Last of all, Doctor Rishard took a small bell out of his bag and rang it softly next to each of Ros’s ears. The tone warbled oddly, as though it was being sounded underwater.
He nodded.
‘What is it? Can you tell me what’s wrong with him?’
The physician bundled all his instruments back into the bag. ‘He was a Change-worker. That much I can tell you.’
She felt her ears growing pink. ‘How does that make a difference?’
‘It means I can’t treat him. I can only guess what might have put him in this state.’
She nodded, even as disappointment filled her. ‘Go on, then. Guess.’
‘It’s not a physical thing like a drug or a disease, but Stone Mages talk of it. They call it the Void Beneath. It eats minds. Dissolves them.’
‘How?’
He shook his head. ‘There, I’m of no use to you. The Void doesn’t appear in any of my textbooks. You’ll need another Change-worker if you want an answer.’
She did. Thanking Doctor Rishard, she paid him and sent him back home.
* * * *
A Change-worker. She was on quicksand now, and she knew it. This was Ros’s world, not hers. If he had got himself into trouble that way, she might not be able to get him out of it.
She briefly considered calling his teacher for help. Master Pukje was a strange being, though, part-dragon and entirely capricious. It was his demand that Ros be trained in the ways of the Change that had led to their long separation. Any help he offered would be coloured by that history. She soon decided to do what she could on her own before following that path.
Her first step was not the obvious one. The Stone Mages who ruled the Interior would recognise Ros immediately, and she wasn’t ready yet to cast off her cloak of anonymity. Adi was sure they weren’t the only Change-workers in the city. Illusionists, charm-makers, and seers all gravitated to the light of respectability, even if they were themselves denied a place within the brazier. With the markets open more than an hour already, she would have no trouble finding someone to talk to about her problem. The quality of the answer was the only variable.
This quest took her considerably longer than had her search for a physician. Carefully worded enquiries and bribes led her slowly up the ranks from tricksters and fakers to the genuinely talented. Along the way she received advice she had no intention of following: ensuring that the foot of Ros’s bed faced exactly north; daubing his skin with a salve made from wolf spider venom; chanting a series of nonsense words over him at every dawn and dusk; tattooing complex symbols at key points on his body, so the grace of the Goddess would be drawn to him, and restore him to himself. The procedures were offered with all appearance of sincerity, but she doubted even the practitioners believed in them. She was no more a Change-worker than a physician; nothing she did would make any difference, beyond finding the right person.
She came at last to a stately home in a relatively quiet corner of the city. Cubical and blunt, the house even sported trees at each corner — spindly, sick-looking things but trees nonetheless. They were the first of any size that Adi had seen in Ulum. It struck her as strange that a Change-worker should live in such opulent surrounds, but that wasn’t the mystery she had come to solve.
She knocked on the door and asked for Samson Mierlo. The house boy led her to a book-filled study and invited her to sit. She waited patiently, feeling very little by now but fatigue and desperation. Elsewhere in the house, doors opened and shut, and floorboards creaked. A woman coughed, long and throatily. On a plinth in the corner of the study, the bust of a high-templed man turned its head to regard her more closely.
She stared calmly back at it. Man’kin bothered some people, who saw in them nothing but falsity, a parody of life, but she was untroubled. They had their uses.
‘Now, Lady Hakamu,’ said a voice from the doorway behind her, ‘what is this grave matter of which you speak?’
She stood and shook the hand of the man she hoped would bring Ros back to her. Samson Mierlo had been described as something of a maverick, courting controversy and condemnation from the establishment he criticised, but he looked like nothing so much as a lawyer. Instead of robes he wore a grim, grey suit. His eyes were cool and grey, but weren’t without warmth.
Once again Adi explained the situation. This time, however, she went into greater detail. Mierlo was the city’s foremost expert in the Void Beneath. From him she hoped to gain a greater understanding of Ros’s condition, at least.
He waved for her to resume her seat, but didn’t rest himself. Pacing the room as she talked, he nodded and uttered short phrases that conveyed no actually meaning but encoura
ged her to continue.
‘Yes.’
‘Indeed.’
‘How so?’
‘Quite.’
The man’kin’s granite eyes tracked Mierlo smoothly as he walked and listened.
‘Naturally.’
‘Well.’
‘Hmmm.’
Only when she had finished did he take the seat opposite her and fold his long-fingered hands into a steeple.
‘The physician you consulted would have been no help at all, Lady Hakamu. This is quite beyond his understanding. Be thankful for his honesty, though; a less scrupulous surgeon might have insisted on treating your friend regardless, and done him more harm than good. Nothing in the world of medicine can help him now.’
