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

by Sean Williams

  There was much more going on than appeared on the surface. All around her she could feel tension building, thrilling through the stone itself. Outside, the sun was setting in a wash of crimson fire, melting into the desert as though returning home. Soon the full moon would rise on the far horizon and the Synod would begin. The time would come for her fate to be decided. After all the effort she and Sal had put in to get to the Keep — to put their future in their own hands — she would never have guessed it would come to this.

  Tait kept his arm tight around her waist as she hobbled along the great stone tunnel. There hadn’t been time to find the buggy, even though one of the orderlies who had met them assured her it was nearby. Tait had offered to help her readily enough, but he was no substitute for her crutches. Her newly-bruised bone jarred with every step, making her wince. She tried to conceal the pain, but there was no hiding it from Tait. She was so close she could feel him breathe. Although she was grateful for his help, the intimacy made her uncomfortable in other ways.

  Warden Behenna and Radi Mierlo hurried ahead, impatient for the Synod to begin. The Mage Van Haasteren and Skender came up behind Shilly and Tait and matched their pace.

  “Are you nervous?” Skender asked. “I would be.”

  “I’m looking forward to it being over,” she said.

  “Me, too,” said Tait. “Then we can go home.”

  “What’s so good about that?” If Skender was trying to bait the journeyman, his voice held no hint of it. “This is your chance to see the world! Given the choice, I’d never go home.”

  “Not everyone’s like you, Skender,” said the Mage Van Haasteren.

  “You can blame his mother for that,” said a voice from the shadows.

  Shilly turned to look past Tait as a woman in dusty red robes strode into the light. She was tall and carried herself proudly. Her head was bound tightly in cloth, like a turban, and in one hand she held a long, straight staff. Lines of unfamiliar letters ran across her temple and down both cheeks. Shilly had seen such decorations before in pictures of Surveyors. They were a breed apart from both Stone Mages and Sky Wardens.

  When Skender saw her, his whole face lit up. “Mother!”

  She took him into her arms and pressed her cheek against his forehead. “It’s good to see you, kid.”

  “Hello, Abi.” The Mage Van Haasteren took one stiff step forward.

  She reached out to enfold his hand in both of hers. “It’s good to see you, too. When I heard you were both coming, I rode from the dig as fast as I could. I thought I might not get here in time — and it turns out it was almost you who got here late.”

  “Well, that wasn’t our fault.” The mage’s eyes glittered in the torchlight.

  “Where have you been?” Skender wriggled in the woman’s embrace, and looked up at her with something very much like awe. “Tell me everything!”

  “Not now, Skender,” said his father, glancing ahead to where Behenna waited impatiently at the end of the tunnel. “Wait until this is finished.”

  Skender’s mother nodded. “I’ll see you after, I promise. I’m not going back to the dig until the day after tomorrow.”

  Tait tugged Shilly along, and she dragged her eyes away from the family reunion. Another one for her to feel jealous of. Skender’s mother looked nothing like her son, but she could see now where he got his wanderlust. How Skender’s parents had ever found themselves in one place long enough to have a child was a mystery.

  Behenna’s face had lost some of its yellow pallor when they caught up with him. Between him and Sal’s grandmother — who had set herself apart from the rest of her dusty entourage by donning a full-length azure robe just prior to arrival — stood a slender young man dressed in a simple cotton smock. He bowed slightly when Shilly and Tait joined them, sending a lock of golden-blond hair across his forehead.

  He brushed it casually aside, revealing pale brown eyes. “Welcome.” His voice was soft but firm. “My name is Othniel, and I have been assigned to ensure your wellbeing. We’ll wait here for the others, then proceed to the commencement ceremony.”

  “Why can’t we go on ahead and meet the rest there?” asked Behenna, glancing back to where Sal’s beefy cousin, Aron, struggled under the weight of the man’kin Mawson, strapped to his back in a leather harness.

  “Because that is not appropriate,” Othniel said. “I appreciate that you are in a hurry, Warden Behenna, but I assure you that you will miss nothing important.”

  The warden wasn’t going to acquiesce to the request with grace. “Is there anyone else I can speak to?”

  “No. Please be patient.”

  “They send a boy to meet us and expect us not to take insult?” Radi Mierlo sniffed. “We’ve come a long way for this, you know.”

  “I know.” Othniel smiled tightly and folded his arms. “And I am not as young as I seem.”

  The Mage Van Haasteren caught up at that moment. “Ah, Othniel,” he said, reaching forward to shake the young man’s hand. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “You too, Skender — and you, young Skender. And Abi! It’s been too long.” Skender’s mother embraced the young man. He barely came up to her shoulder.

  “You must come by the Keep soon,” said Van Haasteren. “The students could use a refresher course on optics.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Othniel nodded. “The spirit is willing, as you know, but the flesh...” He shrugged helplessly.

  Shilly followed the exchange with growing confusion. “You’re a Stone Mage?” she asked him.

  Othniel bowed again. “At your beck and call, this evening.”

  “A very good one, too,” Van Haasteren said with a smile. “Too good to play nursemaid to a bunch of tourists.”

  “Perhaps.” Othniel took obvious pleasure at the look of consternation on Radi Mierlo’s face. Behenna ignored him.

  “But —” Shilly began.

  “I’ll explain later,” whispered Skender, sidling up beside her. “Look ahead. That’s where we’re going!”

  “It’s a beautiful, clear night now the rain has gone,” Othniel said. “Conditions couldn’t be better. The Gathering isn’t complete, but we have enough to begin. That’s the main thing.”

  Shilly took the opportunity to let go of Tait and stood balanced on one leg, peering past the adults around her. Behind their guide, she could see a wide, flat surface sloping down into darkness. She received an impression of great space, open to the sky. There were lights, twinkling faintly in the twilight, and a patch of yellow in the distance. It looked like a bonfire, but if it was the flames weren’t moving and there was no smoke.

  The tangled framework of the ruined city — different both from the city in the Broken Lands and the Haunted City — stood out starkly against the greying sky. Within minutes it would be fully dark and the city would effectively vanish, but it would still be unmistakably present. Even with all the other novel sensations around her, Shilly could feel the Change emanating from it. Vast and impersonal, dwarfing her.

  When the rest of the party had caught up, Othniel put a finger to his lips then indicated that they should follow him. Tait put his arm back around Shilly’s waist and supported her while she walked. She endured the indignity purely because she had no choice, and she cursed Sal with every hobbled step for running off with her crutches. It was bad enough that she had been dragged into the centre of his mess; being unable to stand on her own only made it worse.

  Othniel led them out into the night, down a gentle slope into the enormous stone bowl at the heart of the city. Shilly looked around as best she could. The deepening night was full of soft noises, as though a large group of people awaited them at the heart of the bowl, in the centre of the yellow glow. She sensed the enormous wall surrounding the bowl receding behind her, leaving her feeling stranded under the infinite sky. A dozen stars had emerged from the bl
ue-black dome, hinting at constellations. More appeared as she watched. Some of them ...

  She stopped in her tracks and almost tripped up Tait. A longer look told her that her eyes weren’t deceiving her. Some of the stars weren’t in the sky at all, but hanging in the tangled mess that had once been a mighty city. She swung Tait with her as she turned on the spot, looking all around.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, trying his best to avoid bumping her leg, but not entirely succeeding.

  “They’re not stars,” she said. “They’re something else.”

  “What?” His brow crinkled deeply. “What stars?”

  “Those.” She pointed with her free arm. “That one there, and that one there, and that one...” She stopped and did a quick count. Of course, she thought: there were nine of them.

  “What are they?”

  “No one knows.” The buzzing voice of the man’kin came from startlingly close on her right.

  She turned to see that Aron had stopped to look as well. His eyes were wide and childlike with wonder. The granite bust twisted around to stare at her in a way she found unnerving.

  “What do you mean, no one knows?”

  “Just that.”

  “Couldn’t someone just climb up there in daylight and look?”

  “Certainly, but they would find nothing, just as nothing has been found on previous attempts.” The man’kin looked smug. “Besides, the lights are in a different place every full moon. And looking during a full moon is dangerous.”

  “Why?”

  “Try and you’ll find out.”

  “Are there golems up there?”

  “Is there a problem, Tait?” asked Warden Behenna, striding out of the darkness toward them, scowling deeply.

  “Sorry,” said Tait. “We just stopped to look.”

  “We’re not here to sightsee.”

  “I know. Sorry.” The warden stalked off ahead, and Tait urged Shilly along faster. Aron, Sal’s cousin, maintained a slow, steady pace at their side, his face completely expressionless again. Every now and then he glanced at her as though making sure she was still there.

  “Don’t you ever talk?” she asked him.

  “No,” said the man’kin. “He doesn’t.”

  “I wasn’t asking you.”

  “Well enough, but this is the only way you’ll get an answer.” She felt the man’kin’s stony gaze still on her, but she refused to acknowledge it by returning it. “His silence is endearing. I’ve had many steeds, but few so compliant.”

  “Is that why you put up with her?”

  “With Radi? No. I owe a debt to her family that has yet to be discharged. Until then, I am bound, within certain limitations, to do her will.”

  “And in exchange you get Aron.” She could appreciate that the young man was well suited to the task, but it still didn’t seem fair. She could see muscles straining in his neck and shoulders with every step. “Why don’t you have one of your own carry you?”

  “Never!” The man’kin hissed like a snake. “’Kin never carries ’kin. Don’t you know anything, child?”

  The vehemence in its voice stung her. Her first instinct was to snap back an angry retort, but she didn’t want to argue with it, if it could help her find Lodo. “If I don’t, it’s only because no one tells me anything.”

  That seemed to calm it down. “Well, perhaps you’re safer that way. You shouldn’t believe everything you’re told.”

  “I’ve been told to be careful of man’kin, as a matter of fact.”

  “You will find that someone much closer to you than I is doing the lying.”

  “Someone close to me? Do you mean Sal?”

  It said nothing.

  She looked at Tait, who shrugged. “Do these things ever speak in a straight line?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “What did it say?”

  Before she could answer, the rest of the party slowed them to a halt where Othniel waited.

  Their guide raised a hand to indicate east. The sky in that direction was growing lighter as the moon rose behind the city wall.

  “It is about to begin,” Othniel said. “Please, sit.”

  Shilly’s adjusting eyes took a moment to register a series of low, stone benches just ahead of them, facing the heart of the bowl. They stretched into the distance like the seating of an enormous stadium, and most of them were full. Tait guided her to one that had been kept free for them, and she collapsed gratefully into it, noticing as she did so that the ground beneath the benches appeared to have been recently wet. Aron chose a position nearby and unburdened himself of the man’kin, which he made sure was facing the right direction. Skender skidded up to Shilly and leaned in close.

  “Are you ready?” he whispered.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, given that I didn’t ask to be here.”

  “Well, I’m on your side. Remember that. We made too good a team to break it up now.” With a brief squeeze of her shoulder, he slipped away to join his parents, sitting together two rows down.

  Shom Behenna stood behind Tait, a picture of barely restrained energy. Radi Mierlo sat on her own not far away. When they were all in place, Othniel nodded in satisfaction.

  “I’ll let them know you’re here,” he said, and vanished into the darkness.

  Shilly waited impatiently for the moon to rise. They were much closer to the yellow heart of the bowl than they had been before, but still she could see surprisingly little apart from a number of slender pillars looming over the light. There was something about that yellow glow that bothered her: it didn’t seem to cast any actual illumination, so everything around her looked like it was embedded in amber. It reminded her of the glow Lodo’s light-sink had first made when she, Sal and Skender had brought it to life in the Keep. The pale silver haze to the east, heralding the full moon, was the only note of ice in an ambience that was otherwise just a little too warm.

  “Theatrics,” Behenna muttered, almost too softly for her to hear. She didn’t know how the Sky Warden Conclave made its decisions, but doubted it aspired to anything less mysterious than the Stone Mage Synod.

  When the first sliver of moon poked up over the city wall, a sigh went up around them as though the world itself had inhaled. Then a voice spoke.

  “Welcome.”

  Shilly felt the word in her mind, not her ears, coming to her through the background potential surrounding her. Who was speaking, she didn’t know; the voice had no accent and could have belonged to an old man or a young woman. It could even have belonged to a man’kin. Without seeing its source, she simply couldn’t tell.

  “Welcome, all, to this the Cold Moon Synod — the last of many for some, the first of many for others. As always, we have new members to welcome and old to mourn, and I’ll move onto them in a moment. We have observers and petitioners from all parts. Their turn will come too. We have decisions to make and put into action. All things in their time, friends. For now, be welcomed and welcoming to those around you. We are here, we are the Synod, and we are united, burning with the desire to take the word of the world and write it into stone. We have many voices, yet we speak with one.”

  A murmur rose up around her and Shilly peered into the yellow-tinged haze. The more the moon rose above the wall, the more detail she could make out. She was surrounded by a great crowd of people, some of them in the full red robes of the Stone Mages, others in more simple attire, like Othniel. Al faced inward, except when asked to “be welcomed and welcoming”, at which time they turned to their neighbours and renewed acquaintances in various ways.

  Everyone seemed to know each other well. The Mage Van Haasteren and Skender’s mother, Abi, exchanged warm greetings with several nearby people. Nobody spoke to anyone else in her party, however. Shilly felt invisible for all the attention they paid her, until a tap on her shoulder made her jump.
>
  She swivelled in the seat, knowing who it was before looking. “Sal?”

  “Here.” He held both of her crutches in one hand. She took them silently. His face was drawn and his eyes held an imploring edge. She opened her mouth to thank him, but Tait beat her to it.

  “Try thinking about someone else instead of yourself, next time,” he said, taking the crutches from Shilly’s hand and putting them between her and him on the bench.

  Sal glanced at Tait, then at Shilly, and the hurt in his eyes grew strong.

  Oh, hell, she thought. Is he jealous?

  “Sal, listen —”

  He turned to walk away from her and came face to face with Behenna. Both wore mixed expressions of determination and — strangely, she thought — confusion. They stared at each other for a timeless split second, then Sal was past, weaving through the crowd.

  “We’ll be seeing you afterward,” shouted Tait after him, every inflection ringing with challenge.

  “Shut up, Tait,” muttered Behenna, turning his attention back into the heart of the bowl.

  Tait winked at Shilly and did as he was told.

  On the inside, she groaned at Sal and Tait’s behaviour. What have I done to deserve these two idiots? That was all she needed, after everything else. She wanted to go after Sal, but he had disappeared among the pale faces.

  The moon crept slowly into the sky as the voice launched into a summary of the night’s agenda. If she had expected arcane pronouncements and cryptic ceremonies, she would have been disappointed. The truth was that she hadn’t known what to expect. She had thought it would be more inspiring, though, as she sat through endless lists of names she didn’t know.

  Her own appeared in the middle of it:

  “— the matter of Sal Hrvati and Shilly of Gooron as brought to us by Sky Warden Shom Behenna in Special Petition number forty-eight —”

  Then it was back to the endless list of names. She wondered how they were going to fit it all in. Shifting restlessly in her seat, she cast her gaze around her and tried to find something interesting to look at. The crowd was universally focused inward, except for the odd pocket of restlessness. Other petitioners, she assumed. Among them had to be Sal, although she couldn’t see him anywhere. Despite the growing clarity cast by the moon’s silver orb, the interior of the bowl was still difficult to discern. The tall, looming objects reminded her of obelisks that had been stretched upward and twisted slightly in the process, so none of them stood quite true. There were a dozen or so of them in a very rough ring around the centre, in which stood several smaller, blockier constructions. She half saw people in the very centre and something tall and white moving among them. Maybe, she thought, she wasn’t supposed to see very well. This was secret Interior business, after all, and there was a Sky Warden present. Her view could have been obscured along with his.