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

by Sean Williams

  “I’ll give it some thought,” she said. “Goodnight.”

  “There is nothing good about eternity.”

  With that, the ghost stepped backward into the diaphanous light. In seconds, there was just her blurry reflection staring at her and a slight smudge on the glass where her sketch had been.

  She wiped it away and went back to bed.

  “They either exist or they don’t exist. I wish everyone would make up their minds.”

  Skender was half-listening to Sal and Shilly discussing the latest visitation of the ghost. It was lunchtime, and he was hungry. He was still growing accustomed to the Strand’s version of cuisine, finding it rather colourless and bland despite the large amounts of salt they used. He made sure he tried something different every day. At least the Novitiate’s rank-and-file system meant that Skender didn’t have to do any of the cooking himself.

  He was determined—he refused to call it desperate—to squeeze every last drop of distraction from it, before the novelty wore thin. Anything to keep the murder of Radi Mierlo at bay.

  “If the Weavers are just a myth,” Sal went on, revisiting very familiar territory, “who was Behenna really working for? And if they do exist, why doesn’t anyone seem to have a clue who they are or what they want?”

  “Beli thought they were interested in breeding stronger Change-users,” said Shilly. “The Mage Erentaite said that they were interested in us. You think Mage Braunack might have been one of them, and she was one of the Judges who voted for keeping us together. Maybe that’s it. They want us to mate.”

  Sal uttered an unconvincing laugh.

  “I’m not joking, Sal,” she said. She looked as uncomfortable as he did.

  What’s this? thought Skender, beginning to pay more attention. His two friends stared at each other for a long moment, then seemed to notice him watching. They both looked away and didn’t meet each other’s eyes again for a long while. Their avoidance was almost amusing to watch.

  So that’s why they’ve been so strange, he thought. At the Keep, he’d seen plenty of his fellow students fall into and out of crushes; some led to more serious relationships. He didn’t understand it, but he knew the signs. Sal and Shilly were the right age to be looking for that sort of thing, and they had been through a lot together. And it wasn’t as if they had many other choices. It made sense to him that it might happen.

  But was it what the Weavers wanted? He wasn’t able to second-guess a group of people no one was sure even existed. Apart from a few vague hints, he really had only Mawson’s words to go on. Unseen, the man’kin had said, they fashion the tapestry into the shape they desire.

  Like real weavers, when a thread or threads have served their purpose…

  He cut the memory off and forced himself to concentrate on finishing his lunch.

  “I’m more concerned with working out how to find the golem,” Sal said, as though he was talking about slipping a note in class. They were trying very hard not to be noticed in the dining hall, choosing a corner table and keeping out of sight of Tom.

  “That’s easy,” Skender said before he could stop himself.

  “Really?” shot back Shilly with some of her old fire. “Fill us morons in, then, genius.”

  He swallowed a mouthful of meat pie. “Well, you’ve got Mawson now, right?”

  “Yes,” said Sal. “How would he know?”

  “He wouldn’t. Not directly, but he can talk to other man’kin through the Change. They’re connected. It’s like they know what each other’s thinking without asking.”

  “I wish I did,” muttered Shilly.

  Skender put down his fork. “You’re forgetting something I know you know. I’m not being particularly smart. You showed Atilde an illusion when you arrived. It was an image of the necklace Lodo used to wear around his neck. You said it was a charm for predicting storms, but it was also—”

  “Yadeh-tash!” said Shilly. “A man’kin!”

  “Right.” Skender picked up the crust on the edge of his plate and determinedly stuffed half of it in his mouth. “Mawson and yadeh-tash can talk to each other. They can tell you where Lodo’s body is, via the Change.”

  “How do we know he’s still wearing tash?” asked Sal.

  “The golem said he was when we were on the salt lake,” said Shilly.

  “But it could’ve come off since then, or been removed.”

  “It wasn’t.” Skender shook his head firmly to cover the gooseflesh spreading over his skin. “I saw it.”

  “When he—?”

  “Yes.” Skender shuddered and put down the remaining crust. There was no point even thinking about eating now. “He was definitely wearing it.”

  “That’s it, then,” said Shilly excitedly. “We can find Lodo any time we want.” She turned to Sal. “You can ask him tonight, after the funeral. Or beforehand, if we have time—”

  “And then what?” asked Sal. “Turn Lodo in? That’s what’ll happen if we go looking for him. The attendants follow us everywhere now. We’ll never get a chance to talk without him being arrested.”

  “Or worse.” Shilly’s excitement evaporated as quickly as it had come. “You’re right, Sal. Going blundering after him would be a disaster.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that either,” said Skender. “Sorry to get your hopes up.”

  “That’s okay,” Shilly said to him. “It was a good idea.”

  “We’ll know if the golem tries to escape with him,” said Sal. “That’s something.”

  “True.”

  The end-of-lunch chime rang, and their chance to talk alone ended. Skender put his plates on the bench for cleaning, glad yet again that he wasn’t one of the ones on the other side of the wall facing a mountain of dishes. It was difficult to imagine an environment more different to the Keep, where a small number of students taught each other and performed all the chores between them. The fact that he didn’t have to do any work in order to be fed was appealing, but the rigid timetables and just-one-more-face-in-a-crowd mentality irked him. That morning, the lecturer had quizzed him on some of the finer points of pearl transubstantiation, no doubt hoping to put a student he considered an interloper and potential troublemaker firmly in his place. Skender had answered in precise detail, proud that his memory had come in handy in a subject he had no desire to expend any energy on, but instead of being surprised—let alone pleased—the lecturer had warned him against being cocky. The practical exams would sort the wheat from the chaff, apparently.

  Exams? The very thought sent shivers down his spine. The Keep operated on a continuous assessment basis and had never stooped lower than the occasional weekly test. Better to fix a student’s mistakes while he or she was making them, his father said, than wait until it was too late and make them repeat an entire year.

  Luckily, Skender thought, he wouldn’t be anywhere near the Haunted City when exams came around. He would be scrubbing pans with Raf and helping Bethe dust. He would mark the dates of the Novitiate exams in his diary when he got home. They would make the everyday drudgery almost enjoyable in contrast.

  The three of them walked to Fairney’s tutorial on the edge of the unnamed island, not exactly in the mood to learn more irrelevant charms. Fairney was nice enough, but this wasn’t what Skender had hoped for in the Haunted City. At least, he told himself, he would see something new that night, when they went with Sal to the funeral. That would be a change of routine and an opportunity to see something outside the Novitiate, even if its connection to the murder was uncomfortably close. He hadn’t tested the new security in place on their rooms following the attack on Sal’s grandmother, telling himself that so much as lifting the grille off the air vent might sound an alarm that would bring an end to his exploring. Deep down, he knew that the real reason was because he was nervous of crawling around in the dark on his own. For the moment, it was worse than being
locked in his room, unable to explore.

  The thought dismayed him. What would his mother think? Abi Van Haasteren was a Surveyor, free to explore the deepest, most dangerous places in the Interior and beyond. He had always wanted to be like her, rejecting the staid, homebound alternative his father offered.

  But if the world outside the Keep offered nothing but murder and boredom, why would he want to stay there? There had to be more to it. If he stuck it out a bit longer, he might see what it was.

  As soon as the tutorial was over, he hurried back to his room to get changed so he wouldn’t be late for the funeral. He hadn’t brought many clothes with him, but his spare Novitiate uniform would do for something like this, he decided. Cleaners washed their clothes every two days. He shrugged into his spare set then left the room, his attendant dutifully trailing him.

  As he rounded the first of the corners that took him to Sal’s room, he almost walked straight into Master Warden Atilde. With her hat pulled down over her face, as though fearing even the dim light allowed to seep into the Novitiate hallways, she didn’t see him until he walked into the billowing sails of her voluminous cloak.

  “Goddess!” she exclaimed, disentangling them with gloved hands, taking care not to touch him. “My apologies, young Skender. I didn’t see you there. Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay,” he said, feeling himself stare and trying very hard not to. The Master Warden’s hat had gone flying and part of her coif had come away, revealing a hairless, smooth scalp that looked more like a crystal ball than a human head. Light danced on it like the sun on waves. “It was my fault for walking too quickly. I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s call it even, then.” She smiled and adjusted her coif. The disturbing glimpse of what lay beneath disappeared. Kneeling, she picked up her hat and returned it to its proper place. She stayed at eye-level with him for a moment.

  “You remind me of your father when he was your age,” she said, studying his face with her glassy eyes. “Always in a hurry to get somewhere, never happy where he was. It was an endearing quality, for the most part.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I taught him, a very long time ago. He was one of my first students, and utterly memorable. His father—your grandfather—sent him here for a season, to give him a glimpse of how the other half lived. He was brilliant and unpredictable. That was when he met Payat Misseri, the man your friends call Lodo.” A wash of sadness spread across her features like nightfall down a cliff face. “It’s amazing to think that we’re still here, after all this time, fighting the same battles.”

  “What battles?” he asked, confused and a little startled to hear his father described in such terms. He must surely have misheard “unpredictable”.

  She shook her head. “Not the sort that can be won, unfortunately. They are necessary. I understand that. They drive the dynamos that keep both our societies vital. But even vitality has a price…”

  She smiled again—at herself, Skender thought.

  “But listen to me,” she said, standing up. “Trickling on like a leaky tap. On your way, young Skender, to wherever it is you’re hurrying. Be sure to admire the scenery along the way.”

  He obeyed, thinking: Scenery? What scenery? All he saw around him were the walls of the Novitiate like bars in a cage. Even when they were let outside to go to lectures and tutorials, they followed well-worn paths through their quarter of the city. He had seen nothing else since their arrival that he hadn’t stolen for himself. It wasn’t his fault that he was unhappy when cooped up.

  With a shake of his head at the craziness of adults, he hurried on his way to Sal’s room, there to wait for their guide to the funeral of the woman whose death he had witnessed.

  Chapter 11. The Deepest Darkness

  Half an hour before sunset, Aron came to Sal’s room to collect Mawson. Skender, Shilly and Tom were there, ready to go. As promised, Kemp was nowhere to be seen. Sal was fidgety and restless, not sure what to expect but keen to get it over with regardless.

  “I have located yadeh-tash,” Mawson had said just moments before.

  “Where is it? Is it still on the island?”

  “It is nearby. Its wearer has been watching you.”

  “Watching me?” Something cold seemed to slide up Sal’s spine. “Where from?”

  “Many different vantage points. Yadeh-tash is a simple creature. It thinks like stone, in slow waves, with little care for anything else. The activities of humans are transient events it barely notices.”

  Sal had almost nodded, but turned the motion into a cough to hide from Tom the fact that he was talking to the man’kin. “Thanks for asking,” he had said, although the information didn’t help very much. Later, when he could talk freely, he would explore the possibility more closely. There might be a way for tash to pinpoint a precise location, if only by identifying stone features that were nearby.

  Aron was dressed in a simple yellow robe edged in blue with a leather harness strapped around his shoulders. He said nothing when Sal opened the door, but his smile was genuine and uncomplicated.

  “How come you get all the dirty work?” Sal asked, waving his burly cousin inside. “They could’ve got someone else to do it, if they’d asked.”

  Aron shrugged and crossed to where Mawson sat on Sal’s desk. The man’kin watched the boy he had once referred to as a “steed” approach. There was no sign of familiarity in his expression as Aron turned around and hunched down to tie the leather straps of the harness about the base of the bust. Sal stepped forward, wanting to help, but his cousin was more than capable of doing it on his own. Three straps looped cleverly to anchor the man’kin to his back; then, with a powerful flexing of muscles, Aron stood up.

  The man’kin rode his back like a limbless noble, surveying them from a lofty, albeit backward-facing, perspective.

  “Let’s do it,” said Shilly. “You’ve got the map, haven’t you, Sal?”

  Sal produced it from his pocket. “Right here.” He walked out into the hall and showed it to one of the attendants. “Can you show us the way?” he asked, pointing at where the funeral ceremony was to be held. “We’re allowed to go.”

  The attendant nodded. “Master Warden Atilde has given her permission for you to attend. We will escort you there.” He waited until all of them—Sal, Shilly, Skender, Tom, and Aron bearing his heavy burden—were in the corridor with him and the door was closed before heading off. The second attendant brought up the rear as though making sure that no one split off to escape.

  They left the Novitiate buildings by the usual way and headed into the city. It was a cloudy evening. The towers were gloomy and grey, ghosts barely visible in their crystalline depths. The additions to the city crouched around the bases of the towers like mushrooms in a forest, low forms greatly reduced in comparison. The streets were dark and narrow as Sal and the others walked on. What little light remained in the day was stretched thin in the artificial canyons. A breeze whistled around them. Sal shivered.

  The sound of the sea became more pronounced and the roads more uneven. They passed through a section of the city that reminded Sal of where Gram lived. The shape of the island undulated around the towers, which stood as tall and solid as though they had existed that way for all time. They passed rows of squat houses with tiny windows and doorways, some with lights glowing inside, others that might always have been empty. The air was thick with the smell of old stone and mildew.

  They came suddenly to the edge of the city and a wide shelf protruding over a high cliff. Vertigo seized Sal as the attendant led them out onto it. Even though the shelf was over twenty metres wide and there was a low stone wall around the edge to keep the people standing on it safe, Sal could still feel the weight of nothing below, sucking him down. On the northern horizon, barely more than a blur, was the mainland, while above and behind them, the sheer cliffs of glass reflected the last glimmers of the
sun, poking through the clouds to the west. The wind was stronger, and tugged stubbornly at him. He felt like a tiny bug, liable to be swept away at any moment.

  His mother’s family stood in the dying light at the centre of the platform, dressed in sombre tones. They made no move to greet him. They were clustered around a glass barrel filled with a substance he couldn’t identify—surely not wine, he thought—and a carved stone totem like the ones he had seen in the memorial, where his mother’s was displayed. Standing nearby but not with them was Shom Behenna. He was wearing a deep black robe, as though in mourning, and glowered at Sal when he arrived.

  The attendants left him and his friends to their own devices. Sal felt momentarily lost. He knew he should talk to his relatives, but what would he say? He’d never been to a funeral before.

  A small hand slipped into his.

  “Carah,” he whispered through the Change. He would recognise Shilly’s scent anywhere. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Well, I’m not,” she replied, shifting her crutch into a less uncomfortable position after the long walk. “Don’t get cocky, Sayed. That’s my advice.”

  “Sal, you came.” He looked up to see Highson Sparre approaching. His real father acknowledged Shilly and the others with a smile. Sal introduced him to Tom.

  “Quite a little gang, aren’t you?” Highson inclined his head to Mawson. “And you, the stone man. You’re in fine company now.”

  “A distinct improvement,” the man’kin agreed.

  “Is Gram here?” asked Sal.

  “She doesn’t get out much any more. I’m afraid that something like this would only distress her.”

  A throat cleared loudly and silence fell around them. Shilly and Sal turned with everyone else to face the seaward edge of the walled space, where a Sky Warden stood with arms extended as though to embrace them all.

  “We are here,” said the warden, a thin man with long, solemn features, “to mourn the loss of a loved one. Radi Mierlo was a woman known to you all. A mother to some; to others an aunt, a grandmother, a friend, a colleague, and perhaps even an enemy.” The warden smiled faintly. “She was a powerful presence in all our lives. That presence will be deeply missed, and by this simple ceremony we honour her. Through us, her memory will persist. Her life and death enriches us, even as we grieve. Ranan, Roa?”