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

by Sean Williams

  Sal glanced at Shilly, who nodded slightly. She had obviously brought the Alcaide and Syndic up to date on what had happened in the tunnels. “Yes,” he said.

  “We’ve asked Mawson to help, but he won’t cooperate. He insists that he will only obey your instructions.”

  Sal turned to the man’kin, surprised. “I thought I set you free.”

  “Not yet,” came the buzzing reply. “I promised to help you first.”

  “Well, you did help us, by showing us how to close the Way.”

  “Is that sufficient?”

  “I—” He hesitated. Mawson could direct them to yadeh-tash, thereby finding the golem. By setting Mawson free, they might be closing off that avenue. But the man’kin had already stated that the relationship wouldn’t change much, even if he was free, and Sal didn’t like the concept of ordering anyone—or anything—to obey his will. It smacked too much of what the Syndic was trying to do to him.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s enough. I set you free.”

  The man’kin’s expression didn’t change. “I thank you.”

  “You idiot,” the Syndic hissed. “You know what you’ve done, don’t you? You’ve just given away your best chance of finding the golem!”

  He ignored her. “Mawson,” he said, “will you help us again? Freely?”

  “I will. You wish me to locate yadeh-tash.”

  “That’s right. Can you do that?”

  “Yes. It’s—”

  “Wait a second.” Sal turned to the Alcaide. “I want to be there when you find Lodo and the golem. Shilly, too. If you don’t let us, we won’t tell you where they are.”

  “Blackmail, eh?” The Alcaide barked a laugh. “What do you think, Nu? Do we give him what he wants, or take our chances on finding the golem without him?”

  The Syndic just glared.

  “The thing is, Sal,” said the Alcaide, leaning closer, “she’s not going to kick you out of the city. Not if she can help it. She wants you right here, where she can keep an eye on you. All that stuff about exiling you was just a bluff. She’d no sooner do that than exile herself, or her nephew.”

  “Absolute rot.” The Syndic stood and put her hands on her hips. “The decision is not mine to make. It’s the Conclave’s, and yours.”

  “Exactly. And I’ll make it when I’m good and ready.” The Alcaide put his hands on his knees and levered himself upright. He indicated that Sal and Shilly should do the same.

  “Let’s find the golem,” he said, “and put an end to this episode once and for all. If you help us do that, it will count strongly in your favour. And yes,” he added before Sal could say anything, “you can come with us. I’d rather have you by my side than at my back, that’s for certain.”

  Sal glanced at Shilly. She looked nervous but relieved.

  “All right,” he said. “Mawson, where can we find yadeh-tash?”

  “Bring me Aron and I will take you there.”

  The Alcaide gestured. Two attendants left the room to fetch the man’kin’s former “steed”.

  “That’s settled, then,” said the Alcaide, rubbing his hands together as though in anticipation of a good meal. “I’m glad we’re making progress.”

  “What will we do with the golem when we find it?” Shilly asked.

  “That depends on what it wants. Golems have simple needs. They are creatures of pure mind, pure will, dependent on flesh to give them form and substance. Take away the flesh, and they are impotent.”

  “They like the Change,” Sal said, remembering how the golem had been attracted to them when he had tried to heal Shilly’s leg in the Broken Lands city. “Is that important?”

  “They like the Change in the same way that we like food. But they cannot use it. You may have noticed that when it guided you through the tunnels. It would have had no power of its own.”

  Sal had wondered about that. He had, however, learned that golems weren’t completely impotent without bodies. He had spoken to this one when it was nothing but pure mind, and it had done enough damage in that form for him to believe that they would always be dangerous. It didn’t take a boulder to start an avalanche.

  “How can a mind exist without a body?” asked Shilly.

  “Easily, although it might seem strange,” said the Alcaide. “Just as we divide study here into theory, illusion and actuality, so too is all life composed of three basic elements—flesh, mind and the Change—balanced to varying degrees and in varying ways. Humans consist of minds that live in bodies of flesh; golems are minds composed of the Change. We use the Change to alter the world; the golems use vessels of flesh to become part of the world. There are many other ways of existing. Some creatures have no minds at all, or none that we would recognise as such. Others are just minds: cunning intelligences hovering on the edge of the world. The rule common to all is that like devours like: we are flesh, so we eat flesh. Golems are made of the Change, and the Change sustains them.”

  “So how do we kill it?” Shilly interrupted, looking irritated at the lecture.

  “We don’t. You can’t kill a golem. How do you kill something that has more heads than a centipede has legs? Get rid of one and it pops up somewhere else, as good as new. It’s not possible.” The Alcaide shook his head. “The best you can hope for is to contain it.”

  “Where?”

  “In the body it’s taken over. There are simple charms we can employ to stop it moving on.”

  “So how do we save Lodo?”

  “We’ll work that out when we come to it.” Some of the Alcaide’s enthusiasm ebbed. “We’ll do our best, Shilly. I promise you that.”

  “And if your best isn’t enough?”

  He had no reply at all to that.

  There was a long, taut silence as the four of them stared at each other. Sal wondered who was going to talk first. The Syndic still looked as though she might explode at any moment, but for once her rage was directed away from him. The Alcaide seemed to endure it without effort, although he was obviously impatient for Aron to arrive. Sal wasn’t going to draw any attention to himself when he didn’t have to.

  In the end it was Shilly who broke the silence.

  “Is it going to be dark where we’re going?” she asked Mawson.

  “Most likely. The golem inhabits places not normally visited by humans.”

  She turned to the Alcaide. “Will you bring light?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mirrors?”

  “If that makes you feel better, yes.” His expression of concern looked almost convincing. “I can understand you feeling nervous of the dark, after everything you’ve been through recently.”

  She nodded shortly. “Yes, thank you. That does make me feel better.”

  And it did. Sal could tell that she was relieved, although he wasn’t immediately sure why.

  Mawson peered awkwardly over his shoulder in order to look forward as Aron carried him deep into the Novitiate buildings, following the man’kin’s every direction to the letter. The expedition to find the golem consisted of the Alcaide and the Syndic, Sal and Shilly, plus a dozen mixed Sky Wardens and attendants. Mawson guided them past Master Warden Atilde’s study, dark and empty, then through a series of narrow corridors and little-used access ways. Eventually they came to an empty storeroom that looked as though it hadn’t been swept or dusted for centuries.

  Several lines of footprints led across the floor to one corner. Before they could be disturbed, Shilly and the Alcaide came forward to inspect them.

  “Are these like the marks you saw on the beach?” the Alcaide asked, pointing at a series of triangular scrapes across the floor.

  “Exactly the same.”

  He straightened. “Well, it looks like we’ve found both of them. With any luck, they’ll finish each other off and save us the trouble.”

  The Al
caide waved the others into the storeroom and turned his attention to the corner. “I presume there’s a catch here, somewhere…” His eyes searched the wall for any sign of the way in. “Vick, this is your speciality. See anything?”

  A blue-robed warden strode forward. He extended two thin-boned hands and lightly stroked the wall, humming tunelessly under his breath. His fingers slid up the corner, then along the top of the rotting skirting board. His eyes were closed, irrelevant to his search. Shilly saw a faint shimmer of the Change flow over the wall where his fingers passed.

  “Yes.” The warden straightened and stabbed one long digit into a barely noticeable indentation. There was a deep grinding noise as a section of the wall high and wide enough for a full-grown person to pass through fell away into the darkness.

  “Is this how he opened the other door?” asked the Alcaide.

  “Not he,” said Shilly. “It. And no. There was a switch on the lintel. If you knew to look for it, you would find it.”

  The Alcaide nodded. “That’s how young Kemp followed you, then. I was wondering if the golem had left the door open.”

  “This is not important,” said the Syndic from behind them. “There’s the door. Let’s go through it and get this over with.”

  “Of course.” The Alcaide cast her a dark glance.

  The warden named Vick stepped aside as the Alcaide approached. He had been examining the door mechanism, caressing it almost lovingly with his sensitive fingers.

  “It’s quite safe,” he said. “The doorway, anyway. I can’t vouch for anything after that.”

  “Thanks, Vick.” The Alcaide produced something from his pocket that looked like a small mirror on a stick. He tapped it once, and silvery light sprang from it, illuminating another corridor. Not the flight of steps Shilly had feared. She was heartily tired of negotiating steep slopes and stairs with her crutch.

  “How far away is it?” the Alcaide asked Mawson.

  “Some distance yet.”

  The Alcaide waved for two wardens and two attendants to precede them into the hidden passage. Aron and Mawson went next, and the rest of them followed, one by one. The air inside the tunnel was musty and surprisingly warm.

  Shilly managed to end up next to Sal, who put his hand casually on her back.

  “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  She was about to tell him about her plan when the Syndic’s voice echoed down the corridor. “Speak aloud, or not at all! The golem will hear us no matter how quietly we whisper, and I’ll not have you two conspiring in secret.”

  Sal’s hand stayed where it was. “All right,” he said. “You tell us, then. That thing we saw: the ice-creature. What is it? And what’s that city it came from? I thought there were only three cities in the Book of Towers.”

  There was a small silence. Shilly waited with interest to hear the response. Neither question was the one Sal had asked her, but no one challenged him on that point. Their conversation through the Change must have been noted only, not overheard.

  There was some shuffling as one of the wardens moved up the ranks to join them.

  “I’m Beall.” She was a black-skinned, middle-aged woman with greying hair tied back in a tight bun. “I’m the best person to answer your questions. The Book of Towers is known to be incomplete, representing only those observations recorded by wardens and mages in the early days following the Cataclysm. We have always suspected the existence of realms outside those we are familiar with. It’s quite probable that the city you saw in the jungle lies to the northeast, where such climes are to be found. The city in the ice could lie across the ocean to the south, or to the extreme north, at the Far Pole on the other end of the world. Your testimony is all we know of it.”

  “Couldn’t you go back into the Golden Tower?” Sal asked. “Take another look?”

  “That is far too dangerous at the moment. I am inclined to believe Mage Erentaite when she warned you and Shilly away. We can only rely on your description. The cities could well be aspects of the same city, bound up in some incredible charm we barely understand—presenting different faces to us that represent different stages in its decay, perhaps, or something even more arcane. If so, the Golden Tower could well be the key that binds the charm, and to break it could do untold damage.”

  “Such as?” Shilly, too, was interested now.

  “Well, the ghosts, for one. If the Golden Tower is a charm holding the cities—or city—in place, the question you have to ask is, why? Mage Erentaite warned you that the city was a trap, and that you might have set something free, something contained within. When I look at the Haunted City, the things I immediately see contained are the ghosts, trapped in the towers like prisoners. Similarly, golems have only previously been found in two of the three cities we know of—here and in the Broken Lands city—so they may be similarly trapped. Even the ice-creature, whatever it is: it came from one city to another via the portal you opened between them all. There must be more such things that could be released if we poke too carelessly into matters we don’t yet fully understand.”

  Shilly remembered the rising, earthquake-like sensation that had grown in volume as she talked with Mage Erentaite in the Nine Stars. At the time she had had no idea what that had been. Now she wondered if that was some other strange manifestation of life caught in the city trap. She dreaded to think what might have happened if that had escaped as well.

  “So the ice-creature is…what?” Sal asked.

  “We don’t know,” Beall admitted. “We presume the golem summoned it for a reason. Shilly’s description sounds decidedly bestial. It may be a creature that has no mind and can easily be subverted to the golem’s will. Or else it is empty of the Change, giving the golem easy access. The golem might have been looking for a new body.”

  “Why hasn’t the golem taken it, then, and left Lodo behind?” he asked.

  “We don’t know.” The warden shrugged. “There is much still to determine.”

  A series of shushes came down the line from the front. Sal nodded his thanks and Beall fell back slightly. Shilly felt a ball of nervousness begin bouncing in her stomach at the thought that they must be getting close.

  The Alcaide’s words were still clear in her memory. The golem was composed of the Change and needed access to the Change in order to survive. It also needed a body, through which its mind could enforce its will upon the world. In that sense, the golem was similar to a human, with flesh and the Change reversed.

  The ghosts, on the other hand, were another sort of creature altogether. Trapped in the glass towers, they too lacked bodies, but they didn’t seem to be drawn to the Change. If anything qualified as a creature of pure mind—which the Alcaide had described as cunning intelligences hovering on the edge of the world—the ghosts were it. And if, she thought, as the Alcaide had also said, like devoured like…

  Just behind Warden Beall, an attendant held a long, shield-like mirror by a handle on its dull side. Light shone from it as though it was made of the moon, casting shadows in all directions. It was half as tall as Shilly, but easily wide enough for a man to pass through. Or a ghost.

  If the golem was looking for somewhere else to go, she was going to give it a reason to leave in a hurry.

  The tunnel ended in a wide, domed chamber resembling a barn that was easily large enough to fit Belilanca Brokate’s caravan. Numerous alcoves lined the walls like open, toothless mouths. Rounded cobbles muffled by dust made odd clomping sounds underfoot as the party of wardens and attendants spread out to examine the space. Shilly was careful of her footing, unwilling to risk hurting her leg when everything was coming to a head.

  “I’ve never seen this place before,” said the Alcaide. “Or heard of it.”

  “It’s just an old storeroom,” said the Syndic. “An empty one, at that.”

  “Why would someone seal it up?” asked Sal.

  �
�To honour the dead,” spoke a voice from the shadows. Lodo’s voice.

  The search party reacted instantly. Wardens and attendants put themselves between the golem and the Alcaide, Syndic and children. Light flared from the shield-mirrors, revealing a thin, crouching figure huddled in one of the alcoves. Shilly peered over the shoulder of the nearest warden. She was dismayed to see Lodo’s body, filthy and frail, squinting into the glare. His robe was torn. His hair was matted and hanging in irregular clumps. There was a brown stain down one arm that looked disturbingly like dried blood.

  “What do you mean, ‘to honour the dead’?” asked the Alcaide, pushing through his bodyguard once it was clear the golem was in no condition to attack anyone.

  “Look down. Those aren’t cobblestones.”

  As one, they dropped their eyes. Shilly saw hundreds of round, white stones arranged in a crudely geometric pattern. She tried too long to work out the sense of the lines and whorls, and didn’t realise the obvious until someone in the party gasped in shock.

  It hit her. They weren’t standing on stones at all. The floor was composed entirely of skulls.

  A sound of sudden movement was quickly followed by two sharp grunts of pain. Shilly looked up in time to see a scrawny shadow duck behind the folding figure of an attendant and through a doorway on the far side of the room.

  “Quickly,” she shouted. “It’s getting away!”

  The wardens were already moving. Shadows danced crazily. Black and blue robes fluttered as the search party followed the golem along another narrow tunnel. Sal grabbed Shilly’s free hand and, with Aron, Mawson and two attendants close behind, they followed as best they could. They passed numerous tunnel mouths but never became lost. Scuffed footprints in long-settled dust once again led the way.

  Shouts from ahead indicated that the search party had found something. Shilly couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it sounded urgent. She stepped up her pace, afraid she would arrive too late, and soon found herself at one end of a long, straight tunnel with exits evenly spaced along it.

  Several things happened at once to indicate that her fears were entirely misplaced.