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

by Sean Williams

  “Sal’s mother told us to ask you about the tower,” she said. “Why would she do that if you can’t tell me anything?”

  The ghost bristled at that. “I have told you something. It’s you who fails to understand. I can’t do everything for you, you know.”

  “Well, can you tell me about the Weavers, then? Where do they fit into this?”

  The bristle became a snarl. There was a flash of light so bright that Shilly was momentarily blinded, and a noise that sounded like lightning.

  The ghost’s voice said, right in her ear, “Find your heart-name, necromancer. Only then will I have an answer for you.”

  Then the light was gone, extinguished as suddenly as though a blind had been drawn. Shilly reeled back on the bed, blinded by bright red after-images. She flung out one hand to steady herself, and gasped as something seared her palm. Hissing, she brought the burnt hand to her mouth, and blinked to clear her vision.

  As her eyes readjusted, she saw that the mirror was back to normal, casting a cool, silver light over her room as though it had never done otherwise. The ball of paper still lay flat on the floor, but it was charred and crumbled into ash as she stared at it. Her sheets were also burned on the bed beside her, where she had flung out her hand. In the centre of the burnt patch lay Sal’s ward, glinting innocently.

  She stared at it for a long moment. The best explanation that she could devise was that the ghost had attacked her and been deflected by the ward, which she had still been holding at that point. The ward had radiated some of the excess energy of the attack as heat, burning her and the sheet in the process. But why would the ghost attack her? Simply mentioning the Weavers didn’t seem so bad. But what else had she said? What else could she have done wrong? Had it been warning her from the topic?

  The ghost’s parting words were burned in her mind as surely as the mark of the ward on her palm. Sal and Skender both had heart-names. She had thought it was just an Interior or borderland custom, no more significant than that. It had to be if the ghost was making it a condition of her return. And…

  Necromancer?

  The only other person she had heard called that was Lodo, and he had been driven in disgrace from the Haunted City for it. Even though the charges had been trumped up, judgment had been swift and severe. Was that what she wanted to become?

  Shilly wrapped her arms around her legs and tried to quell a rising sensation that, somewhere, something terrible was happening.

  Crunch.

  The skeleton of another dead mouse turned to dust under Skender’s knee. He didn’t break rhythm, concentrating solely on keeping quiet and moving quickly. Occasionally, pillars of light shone up into the crawlspace from the rooms below; sometimes he heard voices. He wasn’t tempted to stop and see what was going on. All he wanted to do was find Mawson and get back to Shilly as quickly as he could.

  There was something in the air, something strange that hadn’t been there before. He had an odd feeling that he was underwater, as in one of Fairney’s illusions. Liquid currents seemed to swirl and tug around him, making his skin crawl. But the dust, inches high against some rafters, undisturbed for generations, didn’t stir. It reminded him of the night the Synod had met in the Nine Stars, one month ago, when the moon had last been full. He had assumed that the feeling was the side effect of a charm laid over the Judges’ deliberations, slowing time and concealing their debate from those outside. He wondered now if he was wrong. Perhaps the full moon was responsible. Or the full moon—and the city. Perhaps he wasn’t so keen on seeing them in conjunction, now…

  He told himself to get a grip. He was just tired and annoyed that he was running chores instead of sightseeing. Sal hadn’t escaped. He was as certain of that as he was of his name. There was a perfectly sensible explanation for his absence, even if they couldn’t see it at the moment. If talking to Mawson was the only way to reassure Shilly, he would do it. And then he would go back to bed.

  When he arrived at Radi Mierlo’s room, he inched slowly to the vent and peered inside. The mirror was aglow, but the room appeared to be empty. The man’kin called Mawson, a bust of a long-faced man with a proud, high forehead, was resting in the centre of a table against one wall. It looked as dead as stone.

  Skender hissed through the vent. “Mawson! Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you.” The bust’s mouth moved, but the reply came directly into his head, not via his ears. Mawson moved in a series of discrete steps, as though propelled by ratcheted wheels inside. It was never possible to see him move from position to position, though; each jump was instantaneous. Skender had no idea how he or other man’kin did it.

  “Do you know where Sal is?”

  The stone head twisted to look up at him. Mawson’s eyes were the same colour as the rest of him; whether they actually saw anything or not was another open question.

  “I know.”

  “Will you tell me, Mawson?”

  “Why?”

  “Shilly’s worried about him. She’s afraid he’s done a runner.”

  “He has not. He is in his room.”

  “He can’t be. I was just there.”

  “You came to me from his room?”

  “Well, no. I came via Shilly. Are you telling me I missed him?”

  “I’m telling you that Sal is in his room,” the stone head intoned.

  Skender studied the man’kin’s expression as best as he could through the grille. “Is that the truth, Mawson?”

  “It is the truth as I see it. The stones feel his presence. Perhaps he returned a short time ago, as you would say it. On that score, I am uncertain.”

  “Where has he been all day? Can you tell me that?”

  “Your conception of the past is foreign to me. I am cogent only with the present.”

  Skender could accept this, although he wished it were otherwise. The man’kin had incredible powers of perception thanks to his links with the rocks and earth around him, but he didn’t really understand how humans thought. He knew the words, but the meanings were different for him. Communicating with him was like trying to conduct a conversation about the weather with someone who had never left their house.

  Skender was free to go back to Shilly, now that he had an answer, but he was exhausted from his third long crawl in an hour and wanted to rest. And there were so many questions to which they still needed answers. He didn’t know when any of them would next have a chance to talk to the man’kin alone.

  “Mawson, where is the Golden Tower?”

  “The flaw runs deep.”

  “The floor?” he repeated, not understanding. “Which floor?”

  “That which you call the Golden Tower. It is buried.”

  “Here? Under us?”

  “Yes. It makes the bedrock ache for release. The tension…” Uncharacteristically, the bust sought for words. “…increases.”

  “How do we find it?”

  “I don’t know. Dig?”

  Sometimes Skender wondered if the man’kin was poking fun at their lack of knowledge. He certainly had a sense of humour, usually exercised, it seemed, when he had run out of answers. This was perhaps one such occasion. Mawson certainly wasn’t making much sense—although the possibility that the tower was underground might explain why they’d had no luck finding it.

  “Do you know who I mean when I mention Lodo?” he asked next, knowing that Shilly would forgive him for being late if he brought back information on her old teacher, but knowing also that for Mawson to understand who a person was, he had to have been near them at some point. Mawson had never met Lodo, to Skender’s knowledge, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t meet one day. Since the man’kin’s timesense worked both ways—future to past as well as past to future—a positive answer would mean that Mawson did meet Lodo in times ahead, indicating that Shilly might be successful in freeing her teacher.


  The man’kin answered, unhesitatingly, “Yes.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “He is nearby.”

  “His body or…him?”

  “I do not differentiate. The stones see only flesh.”

  Skender nodded. That was reasonable. “How near?”

  “One hundred and seventy of my body-lengths in the direction you are currently facing.”

  Skender estimated the man’kin’s height to be a little more than a metre. Say two hundred metres away. That covered a large amount of ground, but was a much smaller area than the entire city. That was encouraging.

  “Where is he being held?”

  “He is not being held.”

  “He must be. He’s a prisoner here, or at the very best in hospital.”

  “He is neither. He is walking freely.”

  That Skender didn’t understand at all. This time, though, he resolved not to get bogged down in details. He had enough to convince Shilly that he hadn’t been wasting his time.

  There was just one more question he wanted to ask.

  “What about the Weavers? Is Shom Behenna really working for them?”

  “You know that he thinks so. You overheard him talking about it.”

  “Yes, we both did. But is he? And does he know who they are?”

  “I don’t know what he knows. I only know what I know.”

  “And what is that, Mawson? Do you know who the Weavers are?”

  Another pause, this one considerably more protracted. When the man’kin spoke, his voice was more grating even than usual.

  “Human lives are like threads to those who live only partly in what you call ‘time’. The threads vibrate when their ends are fixed. They curl like whips when one or both ends fly free. They snap taut when pressured to do so, and can even break completely if pushed too far. This property, this malleability, is what the Weavers exploit.”

  Skender struggled to visualise what the man’kin was saying. He could see that life might be like a thread, with birth and death at either end, but he couldn’t see how the path a life took could change from what it was supposed to be.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Life forms tapestries and knots; patterns abound in all shapes and sizes. Some lives intertwine for a while, like you and your friends, then separate to form new patterns with others. You believe that the shape of your life and its place in the tapestry is yours to ordain. Perhaps that is true for some. For others it is not true. Unknown, unseen, the Weavers fashion the tapestry into the shape they desire.”

  “But how is that possible?”

  “Their methods are many and complex.”

  “Then why? What do they get out of all this?”

  “Aesthetics.”

  “That’s all?” Skender was increasingly sure that Mawson was having a lend of him. Cosmic clothmakers didn’t sound all that scary. “You said that the Weavers are not to be taken lightly.” He quoted the man’kin’s words to him, the memory of when he had heard them crystal-clear in his mind. “Why not?”

  “Like real weavers,” the man’kin said, “when a thread or threads have served their purpose, sometimes they must be cut short.”

  The word struck Skender with the force of a light slap. “Cut short? You mean they—?”

  “Be quiet.”

  Skender swallowed the words as the door to the room below clunked and swung open. He pulled back from the grille to avoid any chance of being seen. Mawson adopted his usual impassive pose.

  Skender could see the top of Radi Mierlo’s head as she entered the room and shut the door behind her. With a sigh, she tugged her hair loose and put something on the bed.

  Afraid that she might be about to undress, Skender inched backwards and began to turn around.

  “Stay,” said Mawson soundlessly into his mind.

  He froze, torn between the man’kin’s command and commonsense. Shilly would be waiting for him, and he didn’t want to see this.

  “You must see,” the man’kin insisted. “It will change the path of your life.”

  Reluctantly, Skender returned to his bug’s-eye view from the vent. Sal’s grandmother wasn’t undressing. She was sitting on the bed, writing rapidly in a small notebook. Skender could just see her face, and its lines ran deeper than he had ever seen them to be. She looked anxious and tired, as though she had been under pressure for a long time: with no need to put on a face for others, she seemed suddenly older. Her shoulders were slumped. The silver light of the mirror cast heavy shadows on half her face.

  She stopped writing and threw the book across the room.

  “What’s the point, Mawson? Why do I bother?”

  “Are you expecting me to answer?”

  “Well, yes.” She glared at the proud-faced bust. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  “I was not created to serve you, although I do so at this time,” the man’kin reproved her.

  “Don’t you like working for me?”

  “I have a higher purpose than this.”

  “Oh, I see. A purpose is it?” Sal’s grandmother got up and began to pace about the room. “When Sahen and Jack dug you out of the dirt at Quorn, you were grateful enough to pledge yourself to our cause. Begging to, if I recall correctly. You’ve really changed your tune since then, but who am I to argue with that? I’d be happy to put you back in that smelly pit any time you want. Or perhaps a garden somewhere. Just say the word, and you’re a flagstone.”

  “You wouldn’t. I am too valuable.”

  “To whom? You’re not helping me much at the moment.”

  The man’kin was silent. Skender didn’t blame him. The woman looked furious enough to take a sledgehammer to him if he said another word out of line. He wondered if that would hurt Mawson, and supposed it would, otherwise threats would have no effect.

  Radi Mierlo suddenly deflated, as though punctured.

  “I wish Sahen were here,” she said, her voice infinitely weary. “Or Jack. They’d know what to do.”

  That was the second time she had mentioned someone called “Jack”. The explorer Jack Gourlay, perhaps? Skender bet it was. The Mierlo matriarch had stayed at the house of Manton Gourlay in Ulum, so there was obviously a connection to the family. And buried man’kin didn’t just turn up in everyday backyards.

  “Tell me what to do, Mawson. I need your help.”

  “In which particular matter?”

  “Nu Zanshin, of course. Now she has Sal, she’s reneging on our deal. She thinks she can turn him around to her cause simply by giving him time. But I know the boy. He’s not going to give her time. He’ll let her believe she’s making progress, then he’ll bolt when she least expects it. That’s assuming he doesn’t find a way to escape before then. He’s tenacious and stubborn. He’s one of us, in other words.” She sat down on the bed. “He will never admit that, but it’s true. He’s his mother, and he’s me. His poor father doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “Highson is wiser than you think.”

  “He’s a fool. Still in love after all these years. Does that strike you as sensible? There’s no coming back from where Seirian went; he should have let her memory die long ago. If he had, he might’ve recovered. He might still be on track to become Alcaide. Instead, what is he? He’s nothing, Mawson, except a means of getting Sal. And he knows it.”

  She was silent for a moment, staring off into space. “He took Sal to see the old bag today.”

  “Emelda Sparre?”

  “Who else? She clings to life like a loose tooth. What he thinks she can do where I am failing, I don’t know. The boy is like granite.” She sighed heavily. “So, do you have any advice, stone man, or are you just going to ask questions all night?”

  “Answers are binding,” the man’kin said. “It is hard to be certain when things are in flu
x.”

  “But you must know something, surely. You see everything. What do you see right now?”

  “I see that it makes no difference what you do. The end is the same.”

  She frowned. “Well, that’s something. What sort of end is it, though? Who wins?”

  “It isn’t that simple, Radi Mierlo.”

  “Of course it is. Life is never a draw. Someone always comes out on top. Telling the losers apart is what’s difficult.” She half-smiled at the man’kin, as though enjoying the banter—or perhaps thinking that she was near to a definitive answer. “Tell me, Mawson. Who comes out on top?”

  “From whose perspective?”

  “From mine, of course. I don’t care about anyone else.”

  “For you, it’s just the end.”

  Sal’s grandmother opened her mouth to rebuke the man’kin, but the door burst in at precisely that moment, admitting a wild-haired man dressed in muddy brown robes. Radi Mierlo barely had time to turn her head before he was on her, pushing her back onto the bed and locking his hands around her throat. She struggled, flailing her arms and legs, kicking and pounding wherever she could reach him, arching her back and trying to push herself off the bed. But the man was too strong. He pushed down on her with unbending strength, oblivious to her resistance even when she grabbed handfuls of his hair and tore them out.

  Apart from the soft smacks of flesh against flesh and the occasional shifting of the legs of the bed, the strangulation took place in absolute silence.

  Skender watched in horror, terrified but unable to tear his eyes away. He wanted to call out—for help, or for the attacker to stop—but his throat had closed tight. He felt as though he too was choking. It was like he was caught in a nightmare, frozen as terrible things happened that he was unable to prevent.

  It seemed to take an eternity, yet was over in a flash. The hammering and scratching gave way to purposeless convulsions. Radi Mierlo’s attacker maintained the pressure for a full minute after the convulsions had faded away.

  Then the killer let go and stepped back to admire his handiwork. Radi Mierlo lay spreadeagled on the bed, her clothes and the sheets beneath her in violent disarray. Her bulging eyes were red, and there was a bloody foam on her mouth and lips. The crimson stain stood out in bright contrast to the unnatural blueness of her skin, especially around her mouth. Skender could see the dead woman’s tongue protruding from between her lips. There were vivid marks around her neck, where her killer had crushed her throat shut.