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

by Sean Williams

They gave up when the moon was halfway up the sky. In two more nights, it would be full, and at that time the Synod would sit.

  “Do you know how long it would take for rain to come,” he asked Skender as they walked back to the camp, “if we could get it to work?”

  “No idea,” said the boy. “That would depend on the place you tried it. Here, we didn’t even get a nibble, so it might take days. Maybe it would never come. In the Strand it might just blow in off the sea in minutes. If the people who lived here had had that, maybe they’d still be here now.”

  “If there was a sea here,” said Sal, “the place would be crawling with Sky Wardens.”

  “True.” The boy yawned. “One’s quite enough for me, thanks.”

  Sal waited until he was certain Skender was asleep, then waited another half-hour to make sure that no one else in the camp was awake. When even the crackle of the fire had died down, he crept out of the wagon and dropped to the ground in his bare feet, the jar of pearl and blood paste in his hand. The desert night was still and cold. Dispassionate stars crowded in the sky above. A camel coughed as Sal wound his way through the darkness, but nothing else stirred. Zevan didn’t mount sentries, since potential bandits rarely came so deep in the desert. The dangerous portion of their journey had been on the plains, long past.

  Sal came to a halt when he was within a few metres of the buggy. Behenna was asleep on a bedroll by the passenger side. For a moment, he couldn’t find Tait, but the journeyman turned out to be propped up by the fire, dead to the world. Shilly was asleep on the tray, and she stirred as Sal approached. He held his breath, but she just turned over and muttered something under her breath.

  Sal moved closer, one careful step at a time. The keys weren’t in the ignition, and he was grateful to be spared that temptation. He doubted his father would have approved. He had to be cleverer than that.

  He hoped he was being clever. Crouching in the dark by the buggy’s right fender, terrified that he was about to be caught, he was pretty sure his father would have discouraged what he was about to do as well. But no other plan had come to mind, and he had given it plenty of thought. He had thought until he’d realised that thinking had become a means of avoiding action. He had only one chance, and he had to take it.

  Opening the jar, he scooped out a portion of the paste on the tip of one finger. Reaching under the fender, he painted a thick, curving line, then repeated the motion in reverse to complete a circle. Inching his way back along the buggy, he repeated the procedure at the rear. With half the jar left, he reached under the chassis and painted another circle by the exhaust pipe, then moved back to the front and put the last behind the bumper. No one would see any of the marks, he was sure. If all went well, he’d soon know if the paste was just a sop for wishful buyers, or if Lodo had known his stuff.

  Really known his stuff, Sal thought. When it came down to it, his plan rested on Lodo being right and the Mage Van Haasteren being wrong. Given that the mage’s own father had chosen Lodo over his own son to run the Keep, breaking generations of tradition, Sal felt as though he should be confident of his decision, but if there was one thing he was certain of it was that there were few certainties where the Change was concerned. How could anyone hope to pin down something as nebulous as change itself?

  When the job was done, he wiped his finger on one leg and backed away from the buggy.

  “Sal? Sal, is that you?”

  Shilly’s whisper froze him to the spot. Barely an arm’s reach away from him, she stirred on the tray and blinked around her in the darkness. Sal couldn’t guess what had disturbed her: maybe the same sixth sense that told him when she was nearby. He had become so accustomed to it that he worried that the loss of it would hurt more than her silence when they were together — but he hadn’t known that she felt it too.

  He waited. She didn’t seem entirely awake, and he couldn’t be sure that she had actually seen him.

  “Sal?”

  Tempted though he was to answer, he knew that doing so would be foolish. She had made her choice. No one was making her ride with the Sky Warden and his journeyman. She didn’t need him or his problems any more.

  He took five slow steps backward until the corner of a wagon stood between him and the buggy. Shilly didn’t call again. He was free to finish the job he had to do.

  An hour later, he returned from the desert with Skender’s patterns still turning in his mind. He had felt something this time, when he had really tried: a potential right at the edge of his senses like storm clouds lurking just below the horizon. And the paste had responded, burning like tiny brands in the darkness. If rain would come or not, he couldn’t tell. But he had found something, and it had heard him in return.

  Crawling into the wagon, he fell exhausted into bed. The mage rolled over as the wagon shifted slightly beneath them, but Sal had worn out any fear of being caught. He was too tired to worry.

  The first proper charm he had ever performed on his own was done. He had set the Change loose, and all he could do now was wait to see what effect it had on the world.

  Chapter 15

  A Kind of Charm

  “You’re kidding,” said Shilly, not believing her ears. “No, it’s true.” The sound of Tait’s voice was a musical contrast to the abrasive chugging of the buggy. “I’m telling you, there used to be creatures everywhere in the desert. They weren’t alive like animals, but they weren’t properly machines, either. They looked like a cross between a box kite and a...” He struggled for the right word, literally clutching with one hand as though to pluck it out of the dry, desert air. “... and a ...”

  “A ladder,” supplied the Sky Warden in the driver’s seat beside him, glancing away from the road for a second to join in on the story. “Several ladders that have been in an accident and ended up wrapped around each other.”

  “That’s exactly it!” Tait gesticulated enthusiastically. “And they’ve got sails, see, that catch the wind. The wind tips the sails forward, which rotates a wheel, which in turn moves some of the tangled ladders ahead a step, then the sails tip back, and it all goes round again. They can’t control where they’re going. The wind just drives them along like tumbleweeds — only they’re a lot bigger than that. Bigger than this buggy. Wider than all the wagons in this caravan tied together end to end. But not very deep. They’re like hedges that have come to life and gone marching across the land.”

  “Or a wave,” said Behenna. “A wave of ingenious clockwork driven by the wind.”

  “There were thousands of them! All over the desert!”

  Shilly could barely picture the image Tait was painting for her. “Here? This desert?”

  “Maybe. They certainly had them in the Strand, once, up north by the Divide.”

  “Do any of them still exist?”

  “I don’t know about that.” Tait looked at Behenna for the answer.

  “The stories about them date back a long way,” the warden supplied, “and they were considered ancient even then. But there might be working survivors somewhere. Perhaps here. I can’t see why not.”

  Shilly looked around her, at the horizon, half-expecting one of the strange machines to appear at any moment, still marching endlessly nowhere. It was a peculiar thought: unnerving and exciting at the same time.

  “Who made them?”

  “No one remembers,” Behenna said, “but the things themselves were called strandbeasts. That much we do know.”

  “If we had one now,” said Tait, “we could sail the desert like we do the sea. No more camels; no more smelly drivers; no more lugging fuel around for machines like this old thing. All you’d have to do was point it in the right direction, then sit back and relax. The wind would do the work for us.”

  He reclined in his chair as though imagining himself on such a voyage. Behenna slowed the buggy to avoid running up the back of the wagon in front. The warden was a reasona
ble driver, but heavy on the accelerator. He was constantly in a hurry, as though full of impatience he could barely contain. It was obvious to Shilly that, had he been able to convince Sal to ride with them, he would have left the caravan behind to travel at speed for the Nine Stars, and waited there for everyone else to catch up.

  But Sal had refused, even when Behenna had offered to let him drive. Shilly could tell that the sight of the buggy in the warden’s possession had upset him, but she didn’t understand why he was being so stubborn about it. Had she been in his position she might have taken the chance to enjoy it one last time, even if she refused to have anything else to do with the Sky Warden who now owned it. He had sold the buggy in good faith and Behenna had bought it on the same terms; Sal couldn’t fairly expect it back, just like that. And despite Tait’s best efforts at keeping her entertained, she wasn’t entirely comfortable driving with the Sky Warden and his journeyman without Sal as well.

  The thought of Sal cast a pall over the conversation. There were a lot of things she didn’t understand about him, and she had told herself that she was no longer going to try to work him out. It wasn’t easy, though. His decision not to speak before the Judges had made her realise just how stubborn he was. She had assumed he was coasting along behind her burning desire to get to Skender Van Haasteren, but it might not have been that way at all. She remembered little things, like the way he had got past Behenna at the Divide without consulting her. They had been working together, hadn’t they? Not all the time, apparently. She wondered how far she would have lasted with him had she not wanted to go north in the first place. She might have found herself abandoned in the middle of nowhere while he followed his own counsel, alone.

  Then there were his secrets: about the globe and the way Behenna had helped save her life by the ravine. She knew that she had told him “no blame” about the accident itself, but she wasn’t sure how completely blameless he really was, now. Everything had gone wrong since he had come into her life. She had told him once that she didn’t want to be dragged into his family curse, and with every day she was leaning more toward the opinion that that had been the right attitude to take all along.

  “Did you learn about these things in the Haunted City?” she asked, trying to recapture the spirit of the conversation.

  “In a book called Historical Artefacts and Ruins,” Tait said. “There are lots of amazing things lying around out there, Shilly. You should see them. Talking statues like the ones they have up here; ice that never melts; crystals that reveal views of far-off places; and weapons that can kill people without even touching them. You have to be very, very careful in the wilds of the Strand.”

  “You’ve been Surveying?” she asked, hoping her envy wasn’t as obvious as it felt.

  “Not personally, no.” He looked uncomfortable for a moment. “But there are museums bigger than Fundelry, full of stuff the Surveyors brought back. You’d love it!”

  She was certain she would. It sounded much more exciting than theory and meditation at the Keep.

  Tait reached down for his water bottle and swigged from it. Scowling up at the sun as though it had personally offended him, he poured a measure of the precious liquid over his face and revelled in its coolness. Shilly could sympathise. She was sweating like a fish. The day had been a long one, for the caravan had fallen slightly behind schedule. The camels were jittery, and Zevan was wary enough of their nerves to lengthen rest stops throughout the day. If they were going to reach the Nine Stars before the following evening, they were going to have to push on through part of the night. The thought dismayed her.

  Shilly wasn’t looking forward to spending any more time on the back of the buggy than she had to, no matter who kept her company. She had considered moving into one of the wagons for the extra space to stretch her leg, but Tait and Behenna had talked her out of it.

  “I’m sick of this place,” the journeyman had said the previous day, near Three Wells, after she had admitted to him that, no, there was no one in the caravan who knew anything much about where she and Tait had come from. Not even Sal, for he had come from the borderlands. “I can’t wait to get home and have some decent food. I’d kill for a nice fish fillet. Not to mention decent clothes.” He looked disdainfully down at the robes he was wearing. “Whoever thought something like this would make sense in a desert must have been crazy.”

  “It stops your sweat evaporating too quickly,” said the warden, “and saves you from dehydration.”

  “I don’t care about that. It’s hot, and I’m still thirsty. If the sea was right here, I’d throw it all off and go for a swim.” He looked longingly at the mirages dancing on the horizon. “If only ...”

  Indeed, Shilly had thought, wondering how Vita the serving girl would have reacted to that sight. Probably swoon, she decided.

  “The rest of them might take it badly if you did that,” she had said.

  “So?” Tait had kneeled on the passenger seat to face her. “You’re with us, now. What does it matter what they think?”

  His vehemence had surprised her.

  “I may not fully subscribe to my young friend’s summary of the situation,” Behenna had said, “but in essence he’s right about how frustrating it is. Although we are travelling of our own accord, we are in effect captives of their system. We have no alternative but to go to the Nine Stars. Should we decide not to, for whatever reason, we will be held in contempt. Their ridiculous legal process has forced us into something we shouldn’t have to do, in order to do the right thing. Which is, of course, to get you home again, where you belong.”

  She wanted to ask him how he could be so certain where she belonged, when she herself was having doubts. It wasn’t Fundelry itself she missed — not really. The town had been claustrophobically small and its people petty-minded. Apart from a few of Lodo’s friends, there was little there she actually wanted back in her life. What she missed was the idea of home, of a place where she could feel safe and loved, an environment she found familiar. She had hoped that the Mage Van Haasteren might provide her with such a place, but she now realised that hope to have been naive. Nowhere in the Interior so far had even come close to meeting that expectation. It was too hot, and the food tasted weird to her still. And the mage had never been more than a distant figure at best.

  But was it really a home she was after? She remembered thinking before leaving Ulum that Lodo had been all the family she had ever needed. A father figure, friend and teacher, the old man had been there for her for most of her life, and it was him she missed more than Fundelry, the sea or the Strand as a whole. More than anything else, she wanted to reel back time and go back to the days before Sal and his father arrived, and her world had been turned inside out.

  She doubted the Sky Warden could offer her that. But would a new family fill the same need?

  Tait poked her in the side and she snapped back to the present. He had been talking about museums and her mind had wandered.

  “I said it would be great to take you there, one day,” he repeated, and she nodded. Yes, she thought, it would be great — but what about the Keep and her studies?

  “You don’t look convinced,” he said, poking her again. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

  “I...” She didn’t finish the sentence, being unsure if she had completed her first thought, let alone her second, or was, in fact, so confused that she’d reached her third or fourth without even noticing. It was great that Tait had come back into her life and befriended her; she hadn’t realised how lonely she had become, and how much of her life revolved around Sal’s concerns rather than her own. But she didn’t entirely agree with some of what the warden and his journeyman said, and that made her wonder again what her concerns actually were. Simply finding the Mage Van Haasteren obviously hadn’t eased them.

  “Go easy on her, Tait,” said Behenna. “She’s nervous, and you can’t blame her for that. If I�
��d been through what she’s been through — stolen from my home, injured, taken to a strange place where I didn’t know anyone — I’d be a little unsure of things, too.”

  “It’s just...” Again, she faltered, remembering the clear sense of threat that she and Sal had run from after his father had died. Lodo had sacrificed himself so they, or at least Sal, could get away. Should that be so easily forgotten?

  It all came down to what she actually wanted. Was it the Change alone, or something more fundamental? Perhaps the answer was as simple as control over her own life, the ability to make her own decisions without having to worry about someone else.

  She took a deep breath. “I came here to look for a teacher,” she said, trying to sound strong, “and I found one.”

  “A Stone Mage,” sneered Tait.

  “I didn’t have any other options. He was all I had.”

  “And you’re reluctant to give that up so soon.” Behenna nodded. “I understand. But remember the old saying: a bad beginning leads to a bad ending. You must take everything into account before you head along this path. If you don’t learn correctly, you will learn badly. Trust me.”

  The Sky Warden’s eyes were on the road, but Shilly felt herself being weighed by him nonetheless.

  “I think it’s time we found you a proper teacher,” he said. “Back home, I mean. In the Haunted City.”

  For a moment she goggled at him. “But — but I don’t have the Change.”

  “That’s no impediment. You know that Sal’s father was a journeyman, and he didn’t have a drop of the Change in him. Nor does your friend Tom at the moment. He was Selected as much for his intelligence as his latent talent. Why shouldn’t you be treated the same way?”

  “No one’s wanted to before,” she said, remembering the Selectors and their assistants who had come through Fundelry and never paid her the slightest attention.

  “That was clearly a mistake,” the warden said, “one I am keen to rectify. Lodo kept you hidden from us for too long, and when you did come to our attention, Amele Centofanti proved too incompetent to realise what she’d found. That’s why I replaced her — and why, also, I am here, doing this for you. As much as I disagree with their methods, I respect the opinions of people like Lodo and Mage Van Haasteren. They both saw something in you that had potential, something that slipped through our net. I don’t want to lose you, Shilly — what you could be. You deserve us just as much as we deserve you.”