The Sky Warden & the Sun (Books of the Change)

by Sean Williams

  But he had lost track of himself for a while, there. He was surprised to see just how much of the day had passed. It was now late afternoon, and his stomach rumbled to tell him that he’d missed lunchtime. Once the caravan was underway in the morning, it didn’t stop until evening, but there were supplies to get them through the day in the back. He would get them later.

  Chastened, he watched the bird spiralling gracefully through the air as they slowly drew abreast of it, then past it. He was wondering how it would find a place to nest — let alone a mate — when Skender stuck his head through the wagon flap.

  “Here you are,” said the boy, squinting blearily at the day. “Are we there yet?”

  Sal didn’t take the question seriously. They were making good time, as far as he could tell, having left the relatively fertile soils of the Long Sleep Plains behind them on the second day. They had almost reached the halfway point. There, at a small town called Three Wells, they would stop briefly to water the camels and re-supply, then head on into the wilderness.

  And there, he reminded himself, he would have to put his plan into effect. Unless he changed his mind or thought of another solution ...

  “Dreamt I was a fish and a shark ate me,” the boy went on, either not noticing or not caring that Sal was more interested in thinking than talking. “Except, now that I think about it, I’m not sure what a shark actually looks like. Do they have arms?”

  “I don’t think so.” Sal knew only a little more than Skender about the sea and the creatures that lived in it.

  “Maybe it wasn’t a shark, then. Anyway, whatever it was, it ate me, gulped me down whole, and I found a golem living in its stomach. It was annoyed to see me. ‘I don’t eat meat,’ it said. It pulled a lever and the shark vomited me up. Then I was standing on a ledge in a city made entirely of brass, and I was polishing a wall with a cloth. Dad stuck his head out of a window and said —”

  “To keep it down, I imagine,” said the real mage Van Haasteren from inside the tent. “People are trying to concentrate.”

  “Only crazy people,” said Skender. “We’re on holidays!”

  Some holiday, Sal thought. “The driver isn’t,” he said.

  “Oh, sorry.” Abashed, Skender reversed back into the wagon and disappeared. Sal followed.

  Inside, it was cramped and hotter than ever. After Sal had eaten, he and Skender played Double Blind while the mage flipped through pages in the book, glancing cursorily at some, pausing for long minutes to stare at others. The time passed more slowly than it had outside, even though Sal had the game to distract him. The rocking of the wagon, the creak of the wheels and the ever-present rumble of the buggy’s engine were the only reference points they had for the outside world.

  Eventually a piercing whistle announced that Zevan was calling a halt. Skender broke the circle and rushed forward again to see what was going on. Sal followed at a more sedate pace and emerged to see the caravan looping around a collection of small, stone buildings, huddling for shelter in what looked like a crack in the earth. A long time ago, something had caused the otherwise perfectly flat landscape to buckle, resulting in a split that was tiny in the context of the hundreds of kilometres of emptiness around it but easily large enough to accommodate a small settlement. The disturbance must also have altered the flow of deep groundwater, for Sal could smell moisture in the air as clearly as if it had been smoke. Pockets of green plants — a welcome change after the ever-present browns and reds of the stony plain — took advantage of both the shade and the water and flourished in whatever fashion was available to them.

  Clouds of dust wrapped around the caravan as it parked near the settlement. Camels snorted and, one by one, the wagons rattled to a halt. With one last grumble, the buggy also fell quiet. The ambience of the desert collapsed instantly upon them, soaking up the cries of drivers and passengers alike without echoes, brushing away the slight human intrusion with a gust of wind that might be travelling unhindered from one side of the plain to the other.

  Sal hopped down to stretch his legs, and noticed the other passengers doing the same. His grandmother climbed awkwardly from a wagon not far away, helped to the ground by one of her grandchildren, a well-built, white-haired young man called Aron who, thus far, had shown little interest in the family’s new addition from the south. He behaved more like an attendant than a grandson, and she showed no interest in making it otherwise.

  Two Stone Mages Sal didn’t know emerged from another wagon. They and a combined staff of five were travelling to the Nine Stars for the Synod and had booked Zevan’s caravan through his grandmother. Sal gathered that the caravan leader made a reasonable living going backward and forward across the desert each month, being one of the few people who could endure the repetition without going slightly crazy.

  Or maybe he was already crazy, Sal thought, watching the wiry man ducking and weaving between wagons, barking orders in his guttural mishmash of languages. Quite apart from the alarming, jagged tattoos on his lips, there was a whiteness to his eyes that most people didn’t have.

  Sal walked between the wagons, wanting a closer look at Three Wells. Skender came too, kicking up a small cloud of dust under his fast-moving feet.

  “Doesn’t it ever rain out here?”

  “Rarely,” said his father, moving after them both in a more dignified fashion. His reddish robes blended almost perfectly into the background. “When it does, though, it’s quite spectacular. There is a pent-up energy to this land that, when released, can cause deluges. Afterward, the desert comes alive with flowers that sprout and bloom almost overnight. Everywhere you look, as far as the eye can see, is colour. They last as long as the water, then die, leaving seeds behind for the next storm to bring to life. I know it’s hard to imagine on a day like this, but it does happen.”

  Sal kept quiet, wondering if the Stone Mage had seen it himself, or if he’d only read about it. Sal had experienced such monsoonal flourishes in the lesser deserts of the Strand — such as the storm that had swept away the road in the Broken Lands and killed the caravan leader called Diamond Fargher — but he knew nothing about the flowers. Fortunately, Skender was intrigued by the thought of so much rain in so much emptiness. It was a thought Sal wanted to pursue, later that evening.

  People from the small town moved among the wagons, filling waterbags and topping up rations. Sal found his way to a better vantage point and watched unobtrusively as Zevan negotiated with someone in charge. His arms gestured violently, but the woman he was speaking to didn’t flinch. One hand held a piece of paper; her index finger stabbed at something written on it for emphasis. Zevan grinned his alarming grin — with no trace of humour — then stalked away.

  Sal didn’t have to move to learn what was going on. Just out of sight, the caravan leader held a brief but intense conversation with Radi Mierlo. Sal would recognise her ingratiating yet rock-hard tones anywhere.

  “Prices,” said Zevan without preamble. “They go up.”

  “You said —”

  “I said, they said. Things change. You want to go on?”

  “Yes, of course, but —”

  “Prices go up. You pay four hundred extra. No questions.”

  “I’ll pay you when we get back.”

  “No good. Pay now.”

  “I can’t pay you now. I don’t have the money on me. Do you think I’m stupid? There are bandits on roads like this. There are people like you. I hired you to protect me, not rob me, remember?”

  “Business, not robbery,” said the caravan leader, and Sal could imagine his lips tight, his tattooed teeth grinding together. “You pay six hundred, then.”

  “Six hundred? You said four before!”

  “Six hundred when we get back. Or four hundred now. Your choice”

  “Thief!”

  “Pizta! You want to walk home?”

  There was a tense silence, then: �
��All right. Six hundred it will have to be. I simply don’t have the money to pay you now. Satisfied?”

  “When I see money.” The caravan leader loped off to talk to the woman with the piece of paper. Sal’s grandmother, meanwhile, went away to renegotiate her deals with the Stone Mages sharing the caravan with her, muttering under her breath.

  Sal didn’t listen for long. He had already guessed that the Mierlo family was broke and that any extra fee would be difficult for them to pay. The way his grandmother had leaned so heavily on Manton Gourlay’s generosity, the subtle hints he had picked up from Wyath Gyory and his friend Ori, the determination with which his grandmother clung to her chance to return to the Strand — a place she clearly associated with golden opportunity, so briefly in her clutches and so tragically lost — all spoke volumes to Sal. He didn’t need to hear her beg to know that she was desperate, even if it was buried under bargaining or outright lies.

  He retreated back to the wagon he shared with Skender and Skender’s father and sat on the running board, looking up at the cloudless sky, trying as always not to dwell on the things that hurt him most, but in the main, not succeeding. When the time came to move on, he was no surer about what he would do about them, but he was more certain than ever that he had to try.

  Over the camels and wagons stirring reluctantly back into motion, he heard the buggy’s engine turning over. Through the wheels of the wagon, before he could turn away, he caught a glimpse of the Sky Warden driving it into position at the rear of the caravan. Tait sat beside the warden in the passenger seat, facing backward to talk to Shilly, where she sat propped up on the tray as she had been on their journey together through the Broken Lands.

  The problem wasn’t going away, bringing tears of anger as well as sadness to his eyes. He couldn’t stop thinking about it, although he tried; he was constantly confronted by reality, no matter how hard it was to believe, or to what lengths he went to avoid it.

  He blinked away the tears. If he couldn’t change the situation, at least he could deal with it more maturely. It made sense that Shilly ride in the buggy. There was more space and she could be more comfortable there. She didn’t need him to change her dressings any more, or to help her to the toilet, or to drive her around. Once they had reached the Keep, they hadn’t really needed to stick together any more, even though everyone else seemed to want them to. It was perfectly natural that she might go her own way, without him.

  But — with them?

  He wished he didn’t care. But wishing didn’t solve anything, he told himself. He had only himself to rely on, now, and that would have to be enough.

  The mystery of how Behenna had overtaken them in the Interior — not just beating them to Ulum, but going beyond the underground city to Mount Birrinah, where the Mierlo family lived — had been solved on the first day of their trip to the Nine Stars.

  Behenna had the buggy. Not just any buggy, but the very same Comet copy his father had once owned, and which he and Shilly had driven from Fundelry to the Divide. When Belilanca Brokate had sold it on the far side of the Divide, neither she nor Sal had suspected that Behenna might see it for sale upon crossing himself, two days later, and recognise it for what it was. He had immediately bought it with Sky Warden funds — the irony not lost on him — and used it to set off after Sal, travelling more quickly than any caravan could manage.

  Luckily for Sal, the warden had assumed he would be heading for his mother’s family in Mount Birrinah, and had overshot Ulum completely. But he had soon turned the disadvantage around. It was Behenna who had brought Sal’s grandmother to the underground city in order to press for the Keep to let them in. And now he added it to the caravan as his own personal means of transport.

  No doubt he had enjoyed the look on Sal’s face when the buggy had appeared. It had seemed a miracle at first, until the truth had been revealed. Behenna had the keys. The symbol of Sal’s freedom now belonged to the Sky Wardens.

  It didn’t change anything, though — or so Sal tried to tell himself. He had sold it to Brokate, who had sold it in turn. If a complete stranger had owned it, it would have bothered him less. The best thing to do was to pretend it was a different buggy entirely. If that felt like pretending to be a completely different person, then maybe he should do that too. He had to get used to disappointment, especially if his plan failed and he ended up being returned to the Strand.

  The caravan rode for another hour, then stopped just before sunset at a stone cairn where, judging by the wide space worn into the desert plain around it, caravans had stopped for generations. Zevan didn’t waste any time setting up provisions for the evening meal; barely had the fattening moon risen over the eastern horizon than dinner was over, the dishes were being cleaned, and all there was left to do was settle in for the night. Like most deserts, it was going to be cold.

  Although the landscape hadn’t changed at any point in the previous two days, it was easy enough to encourage Skender to set off on an expedition of discovery. You never knew what might lie hidden among the boulders and the dust, Sal told him: coins dropped by other caravans, fragments of pottery, old charms ...

  When they were out of earshot of the camp, but still within easy sight of the campfire, Sal felt safe to begin probing.

  “Do you think people might have lived here, once?”

  “Not likely. There’s nothing to eat but dirt.”

  “Maybe it hasn’t always been like this. What if the weather changed one year and the rain stopped coming? Things like that happened elsewhere, you know. Crops failed; rivers dried up; settlements were abandoned. If it was long enough ago, there might not even be ruins left.”

  “We could be standing on one of them,” said Skender, his eyes wide in the moonlight.

  “There might have been forests from horizon to horizon right here, and we’d never know.”

  “There would be stories about that, if a forest suddenly vanished.”

  “Maybe there were stories, but it happened so long ago that people don’t tell them any more. It’s all forgotten. Dried up like the land.”

  “Why didn’t they use weather-workers?” Skender asked. “Rain doesn’t just stop overnight.”

  “Could they summon enough to live on?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on how much rain there is floating around up there.” Skender pointed vaguely up at the sky, then added: “Whatever. You can’t get blood from a stone.”

  Or flowers from a desert, Sal thought to himself. But he remembered what Skender’s father had said about the stony plain being a deluge waiting to happen. All the weather needed was a nudge in the right direction.

  “Do you know how to summon rain?” he asked as innocently as he could.

  “Probably. I’ve seen the pages in Dad’s books. The patterns are reasonably simple. You just need a bit of grunt behind you to make it work, as always.”

  “My dad bought a jar of pearl shell and blood mix from a vendor in the Strand.” The vendor had been Lodo, but Sal didn’t feel it was necessary to explain that. “That’s supposed to be good for getting rain, isn’t it?”

  “Pastes and ointments are generally applied to the place you want a charm to take effect, then activated by the Change. I don’t know how that would work with weather.” The boy looked at Sal through narrowed eyes. “If you’re about to suggest we extend the syllabus again, I’m definitely interested.”

  “I don’t know.” Sal feigned uncertainty. “I’m just curious. If the people who lived here couldn’t do it, I doubt we could.”

  “That’s if there were ever any people here. Maybe no one’s tried before. Do you want to or not?”

  “I suppose we can muck around. See what happens.” He thought of what Skender’s father had said. “It’d be nice to see the flowers, if it worked.”

  “We should get Shilly in on it too,” Skender said. “She’s great with patterns. Remember how we
ll the trick with the light-sink worked?”

  “I remember.”

  “I’ll go get her, if you want.”

  “No,” said Sal, a little too sharply, and Skender noticed.

  “What’s going on with you two?” he asked. “You’re barely talking to each other these days.”

  “It’s nothing. She’ll be tired after the trip, and I don’t want to bother her.”

  “You sure? She hasn’t done anything to you?” the boy asked sharply.

  Sal feigned innocence. He didn’t want to risk Behenna or Tait finding out what he was up to. Everything would be ruined if that happened, and he simply wasn’t sure he could trust Shilly not to mention what they had been doing — even if he didn’t tell her why he wanted to do it.

  “No. We’re just — not getting on, I guess.”

  The half-truth seemed to satisfy the boy. He shrugged and looked around. “Well, here’s as good a place as any.” He squatted and held out his hands. Sal took them and formed the circle they used to share images and words without speech. “Okay. Here’s one pattern. See it? The idea is to make the lines turn — not like tops, but like a stick rolling between your hands. Pretty simple, huh? Or there’s this one: you visualise little clouds forming out of nothing then collapsing into points, like flowers in reverse. You combine that with this one — the spinning boxes — and that’s supposed to do something. I don’t know what, exactly, but that’s what the book says.”

  They ran through several such patterns, from the simple to the fiendishly complex, and Sal committed as many of them as he could to memory. He made a few token efforts to see if the patterns would work, but he always stopped short of trying too hard. They didn’t want to attract the attention of the mages in the caravan — let alone the sole Sky Warden — any one of whom might put a stop to things. Behenna might have been toothless, but he wasn’t blind as well.