The Storm Weaver & the Sand (Books of the Change)

by Sean Williams

  Dazed though he was by the scenery—although not half so much as Skender, who stared at the sea as though hypnotised—Sal noticed two familiar faces among the ten or so students seated before him. One was Tom, his smile wide with delight. The other was Kemp, sitting apart from the others, face expressionless. The sight of the albino bully was as disorienting as the scenery.

  “Like it?” Fairney didn’t give them a chance to answer, turning to encompass the view with wide-flung arms. “The sea is an inspiration to us all. It provides for us and it accepts us in death. It is the great mother and the widow-maker in one. It shapes continents and lays down what will one day be mountains. By its nature, it is the true repository of the Change. An ever-turbulent flood of life is carried on its back.”

  Fairney lowered his arms and turned back to his charges. His blissful smile wasn’t dented at all by Skender’s scowl, no doubt prompted by the “true repository” comment. Stone Mages revered fire the same way Sky Wardens revered water. In their eyes, the sun was the source of all life, not the sea.

  “He always does this,” whispered one of the students, nudging Sal. “You get used to it.”

  “Don’t ever get used to the sight of the sea, Weyn,” Fairney chided the boy who had spoken. “As those who sail upon it for a living will tell you: the day the ocean ceases to amaze and terrify you is the day you die.”

  Sal didn’t know what to say in response to that, and no one else seemed to either, judging by the silence. Fairney took a deep breath and muttered something to himself. He clapped his hands together, and suddenly they were under water. The light turned a deep greenish-blue. Strong currents surged around them, tugging leafy plants backward and forward. A wide-eyed fish goggled at him, then darted away with a flick of its fins.

  Sal clutched the ground in terror until he realised that he could breathe perfectly well. It was just an illusion.

  “Tenorio.” Fairney stood before them as though on the bottom of the sea. He pointed at one of his students then at a strange, bulbous thing growing out of what looked like solid rock. “Tell me the uses of angelwood and when it is best harvested.”

  The student stammered a response. Fairney indicated that it was correct. Next, he reached down and plucked something from the swirling seabed. “Bastin, the life-cycle of the brownworm. You have ten seconds.”

  A second student frantically attempted to cram the entire journey, from birth to death, of the creature Fairney held between his thumb and forefinger. When the girl called Bastin was done, the satisfied tutor let it drift, wriggling bonelessly back to the silty bottom.

  The rapid-fire question and answer session continued for what seemed a long time—long enough for Sal to become accustomed to the sensation of being underwater. Even though he knew it was an illusion, the feeling that he might drown, as he almost had at Fundelry, was difficult to shake. It took him a long time to let himself notice that there was beauty at the bottom of the sea as well as fear and death.

  No doubt, he thought, that had been Fairney’s intention all along.

  The day wore on. Finally, the sun appeared from behind the wall of towers behind them. Skender felt a near physical relief as the warm, golden rays dispelled Fairney’s watery illusion and he was allowed to return to a more familiar world. Relatively speaking, anyway. In the towers behind them, half-seen ghosts paced their mysterious paths, as they had—and might continue to do—forever.

  Skender had to bite his tongue to avoid voicing his frustration. This isn’t what I’m here for, he wanted to cry. I’m going to be a Stone Mage, not a Sky Warden. This is all irrelevant to me! He would much rather be exploring the city, with or without the attendant in tow.

  Fairney moved on to exercises in illusion for everyone to practise. He moved around his group one by one, watching as they attempted the charms he gave them and showing them how to improve their technique. His teaching style was playful and engaging; on another topic, Skender would happily have been taught by him. But Skender’s restlessness grew with every minute. This wasn’t an adventure; this was just school, and he hadn’t stowed away for that. Even being loaned Sal’s ability, allowing him to experiment with the foreign charms, didn’t alleviate Skender’s disappointment.

  Shilly, on the other hand, took to the lesson like a lizard to a desert, as did Tom, who tapped into Fairney’s reserves and performed the charms with odd little twists that seemed to serve no useful purpose. As planned, Sal stubbornly refused to do anything. Fairney took that in his stride, neither confronting the issue head-on nor ignoring it. Whenever an opportunity came to give Sal an opportunity to change his mind, Fairney gave it to him, probably, Skender thought, hoping to wear Sal down with patient persistence.

  Skender was more interested to see what Kemp would do, since the bully had featured in his friends’ stories of Fundelry, looming large in the background behind the Alcaide and Syndic as a villain of the piece. To his surprise, Kemp turned out to be not naturally talented at all, and rough-handed with it, but he was at least determined to learn. Kemp gritted his teeth and concentrated on the visualisations like a man thinking for his life.

  Skender’s interest picked up as Fairney moved on to history, giving a very different account of border relations between the Strand and the Interior than the one he had been taught. He normally slept through history at the Keep, but enough had sunk in for him to realise that both sides had quite different impressions of the past. In more turbulent times, there had been frequent conflicts involving territory and access to the two passes over the Divide. The Interior tended to blame the Strand for each incursion, while in the Haunted City the reverse applied. That was understandable, he supposed. No one liked to think that their side was to blame for anything.

  He idly wondered why there hadn’t been any such wars recently. All the interesting things seemed to have happened centuries ago. Such speculation, however, was brought to an abrupt end by the arrival of six robed and faceless attendants who filed onto the stone shelf and waited to interrupt.

  Fairney finally looked up from his lesson. “Yes? What do you want?”

  “Sal, Shilly and Skender are required elsewhere,” said an attendant whose voice Skender recognised. It was the stern man who had collected him from his room early that morning.

  Fairney tsked in irritation. “Does it have to be now? Can’t it wait until I’ve finished?”

  “No,” said the attendant. There was no mistaking or arguing with that voice.

  “Very well,” the tutor said, “but the sooner this charade is finished, the better. These children have a right to learn. They are not peons in a game of Advance.”

  “We both serve the same masters, Apprentice Fairney,” chided the attendant. “It is not our place to question their decision.”

  With a snort, Fairney dismissed the attendant’s remark. “I suppose you’d better do what they say,” he said to his three new students. “Maybe one of the others here can fill you in later. You know Tom and Kemp already, right?”

  “Uh, yes,” said Sal, “but—”

  “Then they can help you with your homework. I’ll have them bring it to your rooms tonight.”

  Kemp looked as startled as Sal and Shilly. Tom looked delighted.

  “No, that’s okay—” The beginning of a protest from Shilly was cut off by the hand of an attendant coming down on her shoulder.

  “We’ll be late,” said the female attendant who had guided them that morning. “I wouldn’t keep these people waiting.”

  “Run along then,” said Fairney, shooing them with an exaggerated, irritated gesture.

  Kemp’s glare—as dark as a storm cloud, and threatening enough to make even Skender feel nervous—followed them as they filed off the rock shelf and re-entered the city the way they had come.

  “Where are you taking us?” Sal asked the attendant.

  “A reception is gathering for you,” was
the dry reply.

  “What sort of reception?” Shilly asked, although Skender was sure she could guess the answer.

  “A diplomatic reception.” The attendant leading the way spoke ominously and wouldn’t be drawn on details.

  Sal, Shilly and Skender drew closer to each other. Skender felt Sal’s hand on his arm, gripping tightly, and knew that Sal had hold of Shilly, too.

  “This is it,” Sal said, speaking via the Change to ensure they weren’t overheard.

  “Are you ready?” Shilly asked.

  “I don’t know. It depends what they do or say, and who’s there…”

  Sal’s thoughts trailed off into silence.

  This was the first time that Skender had had a chance to tell them what he had witnessed while in the crawlspaces the previous night. “Behenna thinks he’s working for the Weavers. He and your grandmother, Sal, are waiting to hear from them.”

  The news didn’t improve Sal’s gloomy mood. “Maybe they have now, hence this ‘reception’.”

  “Quiet, there,” said the lead attendant. “I hear you whispering.”

  He gestured and attendants moved the three of them apart. Sal’s dread was infectious. Even though Skender had nothing personally to worry about, he couldn’t quell a feeling of nervousness that spread over him like a cold, mountain mist. For the first time, he wondered at the wisdom of getting too involved. His journey south with Sal and Shilly had been a fine adventure; stowing away in the caravan had been the most exciting thing he had ever done. He would treasure the look on Sal and Shilly’s faces when word had come from Ulum that he was with them and he had crawled out of his hiding place—a trunk right next to where they slept. Many times he had been tempted to wake them at night with a whisper, or give them some sort of clue that he was there, but he had resisted. The longer he remained a secret, the less likely it was that he would be sent back.

  He didn’t know how close it had been. The message from Ulum, conveyed directly from his father to Luan Braunack, one of the Stone Mages travelling with the caravan, had been brief: If he wants to go this badly, Skender Van Haasteren the Ninth had said, then I will let him, but tell him from me to be careful. I’ll be here for him when he gets home.

  And that was that. No threats, no promises of punishment, no instructions. With those few, unexpected words, Skender had been set free. He had everything he wanted, and he had managed to avoid paying any sort of cost. His plan had gone better than he had dared imagine!

  Except he wasn’t really free. He was as caught up in Sal’s story now as Shilly was. He went where they went; he did what they did. That meant school and helping them to escape. And if the words of the man’kin Mawson were to be believed, he might be the “third” that the two of them needed to complete some sort of destiny. Not that he believed everything or even most of what Mawson said—but if there was a chance of it being true, then he could be heading for a lot more than he had expected when he had slipped into the trunk and tipped the lid shut.

  Shilly felt the eyes of the ghosts on her as the attendants led them through the narrow, winding thoroughfares of the city. The sensation of being watched was a constant ache in the back of her head, but when she turned to see who was looking, there was never anyone there. No eyes peering around the edges of the newer buildings, no faces pressed against glass on upper floors. Just distant blurs, like characters in a long forgotten story.

  She wondered if the others felt the attention as keenly, but was afraid to ask them in case they didn’t. What would that mean? Perhaps she was just imagining it, driving herself mad with made-up problems because she didn’t have enough real ones already…

  The rhythmic clicking of the base of her crutch on the road was an anchor to reality, when the pain in her hip didn’t suffice. She concentrated on the cobbles they moved across on the way to the reception. Rounded, worn and yellowish, the stones had been quarried from the mainland and carried across to the city by ferry. She remembered Fundelry’s one and only Schoolteacher, Mrs Milka, telling her that many years ago. She had never thought to see them with her own, suddenly welling, eyes.

  Enough, she chided herself, willing the tears away. What must be done is worse delayed—or so Lodo used to tell her. She had a part to play. Once the reception was over, she could stop dreading it and get on with whatever life the wardens would let her have.

  They rounded a high, curved wall and found themselves entering an open square lined with statues and slender columns that was easily large enough to hold two hundred people. Perhaps a quarter that number, most robed in a shade of blue or white, occupied its centre. Their combined voices were a low buzz accompanied by a quartet of musicians playing soft music in one corner. Wardens in copper-blue armour—similar to the ones who protected the Strand’s Divide crossing at Tintenbar from their rust-red opposite numbers on the other side—watched the entrance closely, but waved the attendants through without saying a word. Heads began to turn as the group approached. The sense of exposure mounted precipitously.

  “Ah!” A cry went up from a dense cluster of people toward the middle of the group. It broke apart as a tall, solid man broke through the crowd and came toward the new arrivals with his arms outstretched. His light-brown, rectangular features expressed nothing but eagerness and delight—but the expression was marred by an angry, red patch that extended from halfway up his right cheek, over the eye and into his scalp. No hair grew on that patch of inflamed skin, nor anywhere else on his head. It looked like a fresh burn.

  Only as he approached did Shilly recognise him as Dragan Braham, Alcaide of the Strand. His appearance was completely changed by that terrible scar.

  “Here they are, at last!” The Alcaide swooped down upon them, and Shilly physically recoiled in alarm. “Sal—” The Alcaide grabbed Sal’s hand and shook it vigorously. “I’m so glad you made it safely. Shilly—” It was her turn, and she felt rattled by the pumping her arm received. “You have had a long journey, and no doubt an exhausting day. Please, take the opportunity to relax. Skender Van Haasteren—” The Alcaide studied Skender with a penetrating eye. “You have a famous name, my boy, and you are very welcome here. For as long as you wish to stay, you are a guest of the Haunted City and the Strand.” Skender looked as rattled as she felt as his hand vanished into the Alcaide’s solid fist. “Everyone?” called the Alcaide, turning to the rest of the crowd, who had followed him and formed a half-circle around them. “Our guests are here.”

  As though that was the signal they had been waiting for, the crowd broke over them like a wave. Shilly was suddenly at the centre of an overwhelming storm of smiling faces, clutching hands and enthusiastic welcomes.

  “We’ve heard all about you, Shilly,” said one narrow-faced woman with a silver headdress and a glass of golden liquid in one hand. “You are very brave.”

  “I wish I had the nerve to stand up to Dragan like you did in Fundelry,” chuckled a large man in ill-fitting but finely made robes. “What a day that would be.”

  “He’d die of shock.” The comment came from a small man with deeply black skin and bright, alert eyes. “Shilly, you mustn’t put ideas in Beraldo’s head.” He poked his neighbour’s large belly. “The world can take only so much whimsy.”

  The group around her laughed good-naturedly, then was shuffled to one side by others wanting to say hello.

  Shilly looked around for Sal. They had been driven apart by the pressure of the crowd; he was the focus of a similar group of well-wishers pressing in on him from all sides. He must have sensed her looking for him, for he glanced up at that moment and caught her eye. His expression mirrored her thoughts exactly.

  What the hell was this?

  After what felt like an eternity of stammered replies and a bewildering series of names that she would never remember, the crowd parted at the sound of three handclaps perfectly pitched to get attention.

  “Please,” came a powerf
ul, female voice over the ebbing babble of voices. “You must let them through. They will be hungry. There is food here, and others for them to meet. You will all get your chance in due course.”

  The press of people around Shilly evaporated. She recognised the long, dark features of the Syndic standing by a heavily-burdened table of food. Nu Zanshin, chief administrator of the Strand, was small in stature but large in presence, holding the crowd to attention like a fisher hauling in a net. Her pepper-grey hair was pulled tightly behind her ears by a gleaming silver clasp. A smile that didn’t touch her eyes blossomed across her face as a clear path opened between her and Sal.

  “Come closer, all three of you,” she said, beckoning Shilly and Skender forward as well as Sal. Shilly felt as though all choice had been taken from her. Being in the presence of the woman who had sought Sal in Fundelry all the way from the Haunted City, and found him with the power of her mind alone, made her knees go week.

  “There’s plenty to eat,” the Syndic said, “and someone who wants to meet you very much.”

  Warily, Sal did as he was told. Shilly crossed to stand next to him. Behind the table and to one side stood Radi Mierlo, Sal’s grandmother from the Interior, her expression intense. There was no Behenna or Tait at her side as they had always been during the journey from Ulum. There was, instead, a short man with honey-coloured skin. His hair was as black as his dark, brooding eyes, except around the ears where it was going to grey. There was a toughness to that face, and a strength that Shilly didn’t immediately recognise.

  Neither did Sal. They had almost reached the Syndic when he stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the man with a shocked expression.

  Skender walked into the back of him, but he didn’t budge. Shilly turned to ask him what was wrong, when the truth dawned.