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

by Sean Williams

  “You missed another interesting day,” said Tom when he and Kemp arrived with two attendants in tow. “We learned how to use squid ink to write preventative charms. Did you know that ground scuttlefish mixed with sea wasp extract can protect wood from spray-rot?”

  Sal shook his head. He didn’t know what spray-rot or scuttlefish were, and he didn’t much care.

  “I heard about your grandmother,” said Kemp with an expression of very fake sympathy pasted over his overgrown, pallid features. “You’re running out of relatives, stone-boy. At this rate, you really will be an orphan soon.”

  “Shut up, Kemp,” said Shilly.

  “But I forget.” The bully wasn’t done yet. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “How’s your dad?” Sal shot back. “Got the hang of a fishing net yet?”

  Kemp sneered. “At least I have a dad. And a home. And maybe a future, too. That’s a whole lot more than you’ll ever have.”

  “Sal has friends,” said Skender, poking the big bully on the arm. “You’re always going to be short of them.”

  Sal saw a flash of hurt in Kemp’s eyes as he turned on the smaller boy, threatening Skender with his barrel chest. “Just give me a reason, runt.”

  “I thought I just did. Are you deaf as well as stupid?”

  “Right. You asked for it.” One meaty hand reached out to grab Skender by the hair.

  Shilly pushed it furiously aside. “If you boys don’t stop this right now I’m going to knock your blocks off myself. Especially yours, Kemp. Is that understood?”

  Surprisingly, the bully backed down. Glancing at Tom, who stood nearby clutching his notes to his chest with a frightened expression on his face, he said, “Yeah. Let’s all pretend we’re getting along just fine. Whatever makes you happy.”

  “What’ll make me happy is a bit of sense from you idiots, for a change.” Shilly crutched herself to Sal’s bed and slid along the mattress so her back was against the wall. “It’s been a long enough day as it is. Let’s not make this any harder than it needs to be.”

  His heart still pounding from the confrontation, Sal took a seat on the floor, opposite Skender. The boy looked strangely frustrated, as though he’d hoped that things would go further with Kemp than they had. Sal didn’t understand that. The boy was half the size of the big bully. What was so good about getting an unnecessary pounding?

  Tom and Kemp shared the desk, spreading notepapers before them and—in quite different ways—clearly enjoying their roles as junior tutors. Tom was a veritable wellspring of information, bubbling from him with far more eloquence than he normally exhibited. It was hard to keep up with him at times, and Sal didn’t try any harder than he had to. He just listened, made some cursory notes, and hoped the more important aspects would sink in naturally.

  Midway through the session, there was a knock at the door. Sal got up to answer it and found a burly man outside, straining under the weight of Mawson. The two attendants standing guard helped him bring the man’kin inside and place him on the table, between Tom and Skender.

  “He’s really yours?” asked Tom, his large eyes bugging out even more at his close proximity to the animated granite bust.

  “Birds of a feather, I guess,” said Kemp, failing to hide his amazement behind the insult.

  Sal thanked the man who had brought Mawson to his room and showed him out. When he closed the door behind him, he found himself caught by the eyes of the heavy, stone man’kin.

  “I did this for a reason,” Mawson said to Sal alone, via the Change.

  “What reason?”

  “I want my freedom, and you will give it to me.”

  “How?” Mawson’s tone was so self-assured and cold that he read it as arrogance, at first. “I mean, what if I don’t want you to be free?”

  “You don’t have to give it to me, but I will ask it of you. I have helped you, and will help you again in return for my freedom. I assure you that our relationship will not be dissimilar afterward. Ask yourself which you would prefer: a willing collaborator or a servant.”

  Another deal, groaned Sal to himself, painfully reminded of where his bargain with the golem had led. What sort of trouble would this one get him into?

  But Mawson’s point was quite pertinent. Did he want a slave, or someone who would help him because they wanted to? He didn’t care what the Mierlos would think if he gave away one of their greatest assets. His grandmother had treated Mawson like chattel. Even if the man’kin didn’t help him at all, that would be one weight off his conscience. And he doubted there was much mischief Mawson could do while sitting stonily on his table.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll set you free, if you help me. What did you have in mind?”

  The man’kin smiled. “All in good time. You have begun our association with a wise choice. I respond much better to encouragement than what I became accustomed to under your grandmother.”

  Mawson might have said more had not something thwacked across his face. The man’kin winced and recoiled as far as he was able. “Tell that fool to cease.”

  “Does it do anything more than pull ugly faces?” asked Kemp, bending back his ruler for another smack.

  Sal snatched it out of his hands. “It’s not a toy. Treat it with respect and maybe it’ll talk to you.”

  “That’s what you were doing just then, was it?” jeered the bully. “And here I was thinking you were just staring off into space.”

  Another knock at the door interrupted them. This time it was Sal’s aunt, Roa, standing in the hallway outside. She looked very frail and pale. Her eyes were red and accusatory, as though she blamed Sal for everything that had happened.

  And well she might, Sal thought with a stab of compassion and remorse. But for the golem, her mother would still be alive right now.

  “I came to tell you that we’ve set a time for your grandmother’s leave-taking,” she said.

  Sal stared blankly at her until he realised that “leave-taking” was a way of avoiding saying “funeral”.

  “When is it?”

  “Tomorrow night at sunset. You have been given approval to attend.” She thrust a card at him with the same motion she might have stabbed him. “Don’t be late. She would want you there.”

  Sal took the card. On it was a map indicating where he should go. “Can I bring my friends? I’d feel uncomfortable on my own.”

  If his aunt objected to the notion that he would be alone surrounded by his family, she didn’t say anything. “I’m sure that would be all right, as long as they didn’t cause a disturbance.”

  “I also would like to attend,” said an unexpected voice.

  “You?” Roa peered around Sal at the man’kin with undisguised disgust. “You abandoned us the first chance you got. I suppose you want to gloat.”

  “That is not my intention.”

  The slight woman clicked her tongue in a manner reminiscent of her mother, but then abruptly folded. Her eyes filled with tears, kept barely in check. “Oh, very well. If you must. I’ll send Aron to collect you shortly before time. He can come with Sal and the others.”

  She touched her pockets as though looking for something, then nodded at the map in Sal’s hand. “Yes, I’ve given it to you. I’ll go now.”

  Without another word, she turned and hurried up the corridor, leaving a palpable trail of distress behind her. Sal watched her go, an uncomfortable feeling in his chest. Guilt? he wondered.

  “What did you do that for?” asked Shilly as he came back into the room, grabbing his sleeve as he went past. “I can’t think of anything worse than hanging out with that sorry lot.”

  “Really?” he shot back, glancing at Kemp. “You’d rather do this?”

  “Good point.” She slumped back and let him by.

  Kemp was watching them through narrowed eyes. “Whatever you’re talking
about, I don’t care. And don’t think you’re dragging me along tomorrow night. I’ve got better things to do.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Skender, smiling sweetly. “I know how full your social calendar is.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” said Tom. Sal wasn’t sure if he meant the funeral or was just trying to avoid another fight. “What’s an Interior funeral like, do you think?”

  “Nothing too exciting,” said Skender. “In Ulum, they feed bodies into giant compost heaps. No ceremonies there, of course. They just pile them up and let them rot, then plough them back into the soil.”

  Tom looked slightly green as he stared open-mouthed at the boy from the north, not realising that what he had said was mostly fabrication. Even Kemp looked slightly disgusted at the thought. Sal smiled to himself, glad that Skender had shown a flash of his old self, at last. The first of many, he hoped.

  Shilly slept restlessly that night. Her leg ached, deep in her thigh. When she wasn’t worrying about that, she was thinking about the ghost. Three things troubled her about the last thing it had said to her. The first was that, although she had a heart-name now, she didn’t know what difference that made. The second was that she was sadly deficient on knowledge of the forbidden art of necromancy. The ghost had said the conditions required to bring it into being were quite strict, and she had no idea what they were. The third thing…

  Find your heart-name, necromancer. Only then will I have an answer for you.

  She didn’t know what the question was, so even if she did obtain an answer, she might not know what it meant.

  That didn’t stop her wondering, though. And in the middle of the night, she got up to try an experiment.

  The first time the ghost had appeared, it had done so through a lucky coincidence. Her drawing of its face had collided with the mirror in her room during the full moon. The moon was past full, but she hoped there might be enough potency remaining to combine with the other two elements, if she could recreate them.

  Leaning on her crutch, she stood in front of the softly glowing mirror and sought her reflection. Although she had no innate ability to manipulate the Change with will alone, she could sense it and the flows it naturally followed. The mirror was a gentle source, but deep. It had reserves it could call on. At that moment, it was barely idling, the faint light it provided just enough to illuminate her face and not quite enough to bury her reflection completely. It was hidden within the light, a shadowy, tenuous thing.

  She reached out with her free hand and drew several smooth lines with a stick of charcoal. The lines it left on the glass were faint and smudged, but had exactly the right effect. When she lowered her hand, her reflection didn’t look like her any more. And it was moving…

  The ghost stepped toward her out of the light and into focus. It was smudged and indistinct around the edges, as though seen through dirty glass, but it could just as easily have been someone standing on the other side of a window, not an illusion in a mirror. Its handsome features were the same, belying the hard lines around its mouth.

  “You’ve called me back,” it said. “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s the problem, really. Sal’s mother told us to talk to you, but she didn’t tell us why.”

  “You want to open the Golden Tower.”

  “Yes. Can you tell us how to do that?”

  “You will need a heart-name.”

  “I have one now.”

  “Good.” The ghost studied her searchingly, and nodded. “You are equipped, then.”

  “How?” She kept a tight rein on her impatience, although it was difficult. There were attendants just outside her door, and she didn’t want them wondering who she was talking to. “How does me having a heart-name make a difference?”

  “Names bind you. They define you. Heart-names and family names have particular power.”

  She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “I suspected you wouldn’t.” The ghost looked resigned. “You must trust me. Names are important. Wars have been fought over them, you know.”

  “We’re not fighting a war. We’re just trying to get away from here.”

  The ghost stared at her as though she’d said something stupid.

  “Do you have a name?” she asked.

  “That is irrelevant.”

  “Then tell me something that is relevant. Or am I just wasting my time?”

  “That depends on how you define ‘relevant’, doesn’t it?”

  “Can you tell me where to find the Golden Tower?”

  “No.”

  “Can you tell me how to open it?”

  “No. I told you last time that you would need to find this out yourself.”

  “You told me I had to find someone who could tell me what was on the other end of the Way.”

  “What Way?”

  “The one inside the Golden Tower.”

  “I never said it was a Way.”

  “You said it was like a Way.”

  “No. You said that. You believed what you wanted to believe.”

  Shilly resisted an urge to smash the mirror with her crutch. “So it’s not a Way?”

  “It’s exactly what I said: a means of crossing between.”

  “Between what?”

  “Between what you, in your ignorance, would call the cities.”

  She nodded slowly. “I think I see, now.” If she understood the ghost right, the Golden Tower connected the three cities that she and Sal had visited: the Haunted City, the abandoned ruin in the Broken Lands, and the Nine Stars. The knowledge reassured her. The Golden Tower might not be a road to paradise, but when they stepped through the Way—or whatever it was—they would definitely end up away from the Haunted City. That was just fine with her. From the Nine Stars they could call for help via the people who lived there looking after the empty-minded the Stone Mages used as vessels during their monthly Synods.

  And she understood more than that. The golem probably wanted the Way open so vessels could move more freely to the ruins in the salt lake. It needed hosts, wherever it was, and this was its way of getting its hands—metaphorically speaking—on them.

  The job, she decided, would be to make sure that she, Sal and Skender didn’t fall victims to its plans—along with anyone else. Maybe, she thought, if they shut the Way behind them immediately on passing through it, that would stop potential victims following through after them. Forewarned was forearmed.

  So the ghost had helped her, perhaps unwittingly. It unsettled her, watching her from the far side of an impossible mirror. It looked and acted perfectly human, but there was something missing from it. Its eyes were empty, as though the space behind its face was hollow. Unlike Mawson, who was solid stone all the way through but seemed perfectly animated, this creature, which had seemed perfectly real the first time she had seen it, was dead on the inside.

  “You became angry the last time we talked,” she said, willing to risk the subject again. “Do you remember?”

  “Yes,” it said with a scowl.

  “Why?”

  “This talk of Weavers is nonsense. I prefer not to waste my time.”

  “And you have plenty of that, I suppose.”

  “Enough to come when you call, yes. But don’t suppose that we see time the same way as each other. To me, every moment is an eternity. Would you like to spend eternity answering a question about something that does not exist?”

  “Are you sure the Weavers don’t exist?” she asked, puzzled. She hadn’t expected that answer. “A lot of people seem pretty sure that they do.”

  “Those who would have you believe that they are Weavers thrive on such rubbish.”

  “No one’s claimed to be a Weaver, that I’m aware of.”

  “They wouldn’t, not aloud, but they would let you think it.”
>
  “I’ve never thought it of someone, either.”

  “You will. As you near the centre of the lie, you will become increasingly certain that it is the truth. I have seen it happen before.”

  “In who?”

  “The last necromancer. She became convinced that they were against her.”

  A thought sprang fully formed into her mind, as though it had been waiting there, biding its time. “That last necromancer,” she asked. “She wouldn’t have gone by the use-name of Seirian Mierlo, would she?”

  “Yes,” said the ghost, looking surprised. “Did you know her?”

  “No, but…” She stopped. But I wish I had, she thought to herself. She had met Sal’s father briefly before he died. When Sal did or said things that she hadn’t seen in Dafis Hrvati, she wondered if she was glimpsing Seirian, his mother. They obviously had more than just Sal in common. Shilly couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to be trapped in the Haunted City with nothing but ghosts for company.

  A yawn surprised her. She had made some progress on both fronts; the ghost had told her something new, and her body was ready to let her sleep.

  “I have to go now,” she said. “Can I call you back like this when I need to?”

  “As the moon wanes, this will become increasingly difficult for you to accomplish.”

  “How do I do it, then?”

  “You must tap another’s power to bring me fully into being,” the ghost said with, for the first time, something like animation in its eyes. “Thus far you have but dabbled. It is time for you to complete the exercise.”

  Shilly nodded, knowing instinctively what the ghost meant. For much of her life, she had wondered about illusions of human beings. She had been taught first of all that they were impossible to create. Only later had she learned that it was possible to create something very much like a human, but dangerously empty, ready for things to inhabit. That was the crime called necromancy, of which Lodo had been accused, and which the ghost now associated with her and, apparently, Sal’s mother.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to tread that path, knowing where the other two had ended up. She had come a long way along it already, but it was never too late to turn back.