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

by Sean Williams

  The voice was familiar. Skender’s suspicions were confirmed when the man looked up at the grille. Shom Behenna. Skender felt for an instant as though the ex-warden could see through the grille, just as the golem had after killing Radi Mierlo—see through the darkness to where he and Kemp crouched motionless, holding their breath—but that was impossible. A second later, Behenna’s gaze slid aside.

  “We’ll find them,” said the attendant, the picture of contrition and anxiety. “I’ll sound the alarm, get everyone out in force.”

  “No,” said the ex-warden. “I can guess where they’ve gone. Come with me. I know what to do.”

  The two left the room in a whoosh of robes.

  “Now what?” hissed Kemp.

  “We crawl—quickly!” Without waiting to argue, Skender set off along the familiar path through the crawlspace to Sal’s room. It was closest and bound to be the first place Behenna would go. The ex-warden wasn’t stupid.

  Skender crawled as fast as he could. He found it less painful than walking would have been, since the majority of the deepest cuts were on the bottom of his feet. Kemp gamely followed, larger and therefore more restricted in the cramped spaces, but uncomplaining. He didn’t say a thing as Skender navigated through the strange forest of upward-pointing shafts of light and its only inhabitants: dead mice.

  Skender warned Kemp to be quiet as they neared Sal’s room. Hardly breathing, he leaned over the grille. There was no sound from within, only a faint yellow glow from a lamp similar to that in Skender’s room. By its light he could see that the room was empty.

  “He’s gone,” whispered Kemp in his ear.

  “More than that.” Skender peered closer. “His bag’s gone as well.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they’ve moved him.” He pulled back. “Let’s get to Shilly, see if she knows.”

  More dusty scrambling took them to Shilly’s room. The same yellow glow greeted them, but this time the room wasn’t empty. Shilly was lying on the bed, reading a book.

  “Shilly!”

  She jumped and sat up. Her face was a brown oval as she squinted at the grille. “Skender? Is that you?”

  “No, I’m a ghost-mouse and I want your cheese. Of course it’s me!”

  “What are you doing?” She slithered off the bed and picked up her crutch.

  “We’ve come to rescue you,” he said, reaching forward to lift the grille out of its hole. “We—uh.” He stopped when the grille didn’t budge. “Hang on.”

  She didn’t look surprised. “It’s bolted in place.”

  “Maybe Kemp can work it loose. He’s stronger than me.” Skender shifted aside so the albino could get better leverage.

  “Kemp’s there, too?”

  “He helped me escape.” Kemp strained at the grille. It warped slightly, but still didn’t come free. “This isn’t going to be as easy as we thought.”

  “That’s stating the obvious,” muttered the albino.

  “Listen, Shilly,” called Skender back down the hole. “You have to be careful. We’ve just come from Sal’s room. He’s not there, and neither is his pack. They must have moved him. If we don’t know where he is, we can’t get him out.”

  “How are you going to get him out even if you can get to him?”

  “I don’t know.” Skender searched his memory for anything that might help. Charms to soften bolts, dissolve rock, or create deceptive illusions all existed, but he didn’t have Shilly’s knack of putting them into effect. Neither did he have Sal’s sheer talent behind him. Most of the obvious methods were beyond him.

  “Hold on, Shilly,” he said. “We’ll think of something.”

  The lock on her door clunked. She backed nervously away as the door opened and an attendant walked in. Just one attendant. There was no sign of Behenna.

  “Get your things,” said the attendant. “You’re being moved.”

  “What if I don’t want to be moved?”

  “That’s irrelevant. You can’t stay here.”

  “What are you going to do if I refuse? Carry me?”

  “If necessary, yes.”

  Skender was so focused on the discussion below that he almost didn’t hear the noise from behind them, a slight scrape followed by a thump. He looked up, suddenly not interested in whether Shilly or the attendant won the argument.

  “Did you hear that?” Skender whispered.

  “Not a thing,” came the reply. “You’re just—”

  White light blossomed around them. Skender glimpsed four bright light-sources surrounding them before his eyes automatically squeezed shut. Behind them crouched half-seen figures. The Change swirled as thick as panic in the crawlspace.

  Sky Wardens!

  Or something very much like it, he corrected, as he grabbed Kemp’s arm and headed for a gap between two of the lights. Blinded and disoriented, their only chance was to try to crawl out of the wardens’ clutches, even if that chance was overwhelmingly small. Voices shouted; hands clutched at him and he dodged aside barely in time. A muffled curse followed him. The adults were restricted by their size, but they could see while he couldn’t. There had to be something, he told himself, that would even the scales a little.

  A memory came to him: an intricate pattern of U-shaped curves. He grasped at it and forced it into shape. Summoning every skerrick of the Change he had—defying every rule that told him he couldn’t do what he was about to do, because he was on the wrong side of the Divide—Skender flung the pattern out into the world. And it worked. The charm took hold, bent reality to his will.

  A strong, curling gust of wind swept around him with a noise like a moan. The charm Atilde had shown him on their first morning in the Novitiate was supposed to send refreshing breezes along corridors and through enclosed rooms. Skender wasn’t Sal, but with so much desperation behind it the charm created something more like a miniature hurricane in the crawlspace. The wind whipped up centuries worth of dust, clogging eyes, nostrils and throats and prompting a chorus of coughs. Skender hadn’t had time to warn Kemp. The albino floundered, choking, but Skender found Kemp by feel and, breathing carefully through the top of his tunic, pulled him out of the circle of wardens.

  The coughing and shouting fell behind them. Skender’s first thought was to head back to his room, knowing the way by memory, but he assumed that there would be more wardens waiting for them there. Recalling the path he had followed to the library, he set off in that direction instead, avoiding obstacles by feel until the dust storm was well behind and he could open his eyes again.

  “Are you all right?” he whispered to Kemp.

  “I’ll live,” came the hoarse reply. “Probably.”

  “I couldn’t warn you. It was the only thing I could think of.”

  “That’s okay. I forgive you, even if my lungs don’t.”

  “I don’t know how long it’ll hold them up.”

  Behind them, the shouting had turned to anger when the wardens had realised that their quarry had escaped. The cries were louder. Skender couldn’t tell if they were also getting closer.

  “Where are we going?” Kemp asked as they slithered over the top of a stone wall protruding into the ceiling.

  “I can take us to an exit. We can leave the Novitiate that way, if it’s not guarded. Once we’re in the city, it shouldn’t be hard to get to the caravan unnoticed.”

  “What about Sal and Shilly?”

  That question nagged at him for the small eternity it took him to answer. “I don’t know. There’s nothing we can do for them right now.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. I just wanted to make sure you agreed.”

  The darkness pressed in as they hurried on. The shouting had stopped, which Skender took as a sign that the chase was continuing. He told himself not to worry as he led Kemp across the uneven and occ
asionally unsafe ceilings. It was going to work out all right. Things always did. They could move faster through the crawlspaces because they were smaller and knew exactly where they were going. They hadn’t actually done anything wrong, so even if they were caught the consequences wouldn’t be too severe. And even if Behenna or one of his cronies did try anything stupid, Skender’s father would soon hear, and someone would pay dearly.

  The silence from behind them grew thicker, more ominous, and his anxiety mounted. There was just him and Kemp and a number of unknown pursuers. There were no witnesses. Anything could happen to them and no one would know. His father might actually believe that he had taken a wrong turn while exploring and broken his neck in a fall. The fear that he might have inadvertently put himself in very real danger began to suffocate him more than the darkness and close confines of the crawlspaces ever had.

  They came to a Y-junction of three long, cluttered roofs where they were able to stand. Pipes, chimneys and knee-high brick walls filled the ways ahead. Skender paused to catch his breath and instantly regretted it. A rush of previously ignored aches and pains clamoured for attention. The gashes and cuts all over his body stung in a discordant chorus. All he wanted to do was curl up into a ball and hide.

  “Which way?” Kemp whispered, his dusty face almost invisible in the blackness.

  Skender shook his head. He was confused and tired. For the first time in his life, his memory let him down. Neither fork of the Y-junction looked familiar. He didn’t remember coming this way at all.

  “I don’t know,” he said, fighting the frustration aching at the back of his throat.

  “I guess we’ll just pick one at random, then.”

  “No, wait. I’ll remember. I have to. That’s what I do.”

  “Take it easy.” Kemp shushed him. “It’s no big deal. Okay?”

  “It’s not okay.” He forced himself to be calm. Just because they were trapped in the dark, hunted by an unknown number of people and suddenly forgetting things, that was no reason to panic.

  He desperately considered the two ways. Both looked completely unfamiliar, yet he knew he had come this way before. He must have. As he fought to find a single landmark he recognised, he realised that he hadn’t just forgotten which way to turn. The mental map of the entire route to the library was gone too.

  After the death of Radi Mierlo, he had wished that he could forget. Then, in the Void Beneath, he had learned a very good reason to be glad he couldn’t. Why now, when he really needed to remember, was his wish being granted?

  A wave of dizziness rolled through him. He felt as though the world had shifted beneath him without him noticing, picking him up and placing him somewhere completely different, somewhere strange and unknown. Losing his memory was like losing a part of him. It was something on which he had relied completely all of his life. What if more had gone without him noticing? What else was missing from his mind that he would never know about until he needed it and it wasn’t there? Losing his memory was beginning to feel like the perfect reason to panic.

  He sat down on an exposed beam. Despair rolled through him. It was all too hard. He couldn’t do anything to save himself, let alone Sal and Shilly. Who was he kidding? He was just a kid. The Weavers or the wardens or whoever was chasing them would always win in the end. If they weren’t caught, he and Kemp would get lost and end up like the mice, two dusty skeletons slowly decaying into dust.

  It suddenly seemed so simple. They were doomed.

  “Skender?” A face loomed at him out of the gloom, white hair and skin not completely hidden by thick smudges of dirt. “Skender, are you all right?”

  He blinked in surprise. “Who are you?”

  “Quit fooling around. Sitting here isn’t doing us any good at all. I think we should get out of here and find the exits the normal way. They can’t watch every passage, can they?”

  Skender stared at the dirty shadow in absolute confusion.

  “Who can’t?”

  “What are you talking about? The wardens, of course!”

  “What wardens?” He looked around. “Where are we? What’s going on?”

  The face backed away slightly. “Skender, something’s wrong. This isn’t right.”

  Skender agreed completely. He was tired and he was sore. “What’s happened? I don’t remember.”

  “I’ll explain later.” A big hand grabbed his arm out of the gloom. “You have to come with me. We’ll pick a way at random. As long as we keep moving—that’s the important thing. We can’t wait here any longer.”

  Skender resisted as the strong hand pulled him to his feet. A terrible disorientation filled him. “Not until you tell me who you are and where we’re going!”

  “Quiet, Skender. We don’t want them to hear.”

  “Too late,” said a voice from Skender’s left. “Don’t move. You’re not going to surprise us, this time.”

  It was like a flashbulb going off in his head. The prickly suspicion that something wasn’t right became an absolute certainty. Suddenly everything was clear again. He knew where he was and what he was doing. He knew who had spoken and what it meant. A charm had been laid on him to make him forget. The effects had built up slowly so he wouldn’t notice them. While he had stood, frozen and indecisive at the junction, the wardens had caught up with them.

  He and Kemp stood back to back, trying to find their pursuers in the darkness. All they saw were shadows, but that didn’t mean the wardens weren’t there. They could easily have been camouflaged. They wouldn’t have revealed themselves by speaking, unless—

  Skender felt like a fool for the second time in a minute.

  The wardens wouldn’t have revealed themselves unless the forgetfulness charm had begun to fail. A simple thrown voice could hold the fugitives in place long enough for the wardens to catch up properly. If that was the case, then the shadows really were empty, and he and Kemp were gawping like fools as the wardens closed in on them.

  Grabbing Kemp by the arm, he turned and ran down the junction to the right, the one he now remembered. A shout rang out. He ducked as something black lashed out of the darkness. Whatever it was, it struck Kemp’s shoulder instead. The albino stumbled forward, tearing at it. Skender tried to help him. The thing looked like a bat—all webbed wing and hook-like claws—but it had no central body. Skender pulled at it, wondering if it was really alive. It came away with a ripping sound just as two more passed narrowly over them, unfolding like vicious little umbrellas designed to tangle in their hair and clothes.

  Skender helped Kemp to his feet, then felt himself being pushed away.

  “Run, Skender! I’ll hold them back.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. I can’t leave you here.”

  “I’m not an idiot, and you will. Get!”

  Kemp gave him another shove that sent him stumbling across fragile beams. Skender staggered into something soft that hadn’t been there before and felt an arm go across his throat.

  “Got you!” crowed a voice in his ear.

  “No, you haven’t.” Reflexes honed by years of play-fighting with older students came to his rescue. He dropped and twisted with one movement, forcing the warden holding him to grab tighter. At the same time, Skender hooked one leg around an unprepared knee and pulled hard. The warden lost his balance with a grunt of annoyance and crumpled backward. Skender was dragged with him, still pinned by the arm around his neck. They hit the roof with a dusty crash.

  Annoyance became alarm as the ancient wood gave way beneath them and they fell through. There was a horrible moment of freefall during which Skender wondered frantically where they were in the Novitiate. If they were over the dining hall, the fall could easily kill them both.

  They landed in a corridor, warden-first, after a three-metre drop. Skender felt the air explode out of his attacker and the grip around his throat go limp. He clambered unsteadily to his feet,
brushing splinters and cobwebs out of his eyes. By seemingly bright mirror-light the corridor was empty. The warden didn’t move.

  “Kemp, hurry!” he called into the ragged hole above him.

  “—can’t!” came the muffled reply. “Got me!”

  The ceiling shook, raining dust. Kemp’s voice was cut off by the sound of fighting. Skender stood frozen, unable to tell what was going on or to help his friend. A cry of pained defeat from Kemp suggested that running might be a good idea, but it wasn’t until black-clad legs slipped through the hole that Skender saw the wisdom behind it.

  Pausing only to yank on one of the legs, bringing the attendant down in an ungainly heap, he fled. Angry curses followed him, but it was some seconds before the downed attendant set off in pursuit. Skender used those seconds to his best advantage, taking the first two turns he came to and putting as much distance behind him as possible. Ignoring the tearing pains in his feet, he ran for his life, too afraid to look behind him, half-expecting a hand on his tunic at any moment. With breath sobbing in his throat, he followed familiar landmarks to the only possible sanctuary he could think of.

  The double doors of Master Warden Atilde’s windowless office were open. Skender skidded between the two attendants guarding them, yelling for help. Atilde was inside, bent over a wide desk that hadn’t been there the first time he had seen the room. Her hat rested to one side. Her pale, translucent face looked up at him in unconcealed surprise.

  “Skender? What on earth—?”

  “Help me!” he gasped, running to put her between him and the door. “They’re after me. They got Shilly and Kemp—and Sal too, I think.”

  “Easy, boy.” She made urgent soothing motions with her gloved hands. “Who is after you? Tell me, quickly.”

  Hurried footsteps sounded on the other side of the door. “Behenna and the others,” he said, swallowing. “The Weavers, I think.”

  “You think? What makes you think that?”

  “Mage Braunack,” he stammered in his haste to explain. “She was with him. I saw them. She said—” His suspicions sounded stupid in the face of her glassy stare. He had so little to base them on. “She said she was an interested party.”