It was the mage. Van Haasteren shut the door carefully behind him and came to where Sal sat on the bed.
“I’m sorry, Sal,” the mage said, his usually looming presence seeming diminished, his face even longer than usual. He sat down next to Sal and reached into his robes. His hand emerged containing food wrapped in a serviette. Giving it to Sal, he said again, “I’m sorry. I swear I had no knowledge of this. Neither does Jarmila, I’m sure, although she will hear about it soon if the Synod is involved.”
Sal knew that he was telling the truth. Officious and distant the Mage Van Haasteren might be, but he didn’t seem the deceitful type. Sal accepted the offer of food gratefully, and picked at it while they talked.
“You’re probably wondering why I don’t just take you away from here,” the mage said. “The truth is, I’m not strong enough to show any sign of weakness. Running will make us look guilty, and the last thing we should do is give Behenna any advantages. Especially if he’s bluffing.”
“Do you think he might be?”
“Not really. But if he is, we’ll be able to find out more quickly from here than at the Keep.”
Sal nodded, although his mind ached from trying to follow the web of double-crosses around him.
“If he’s not bluffing,” he asked, “will we really have to go to the Synod? Is it really up to them to send me back?”
“We do, I’m afraid, and it is. We’ll still be seeing Jarmila tomorrow, as planned, but I suspect it will be to confirm what lies ahead. When the Synod convenes at the Nine Stars, we will have to be there or our side won’t be heard.”
“Can we get there in time?” Sal had seen maps of the Interior. The place where the Synod convened was in the middle of a desert a great distance away. Six days didn’t seem a very long time in which to make such a journey.
“We can,” said the mage, “with the right sort of transport. By tradition, there are no Ways connecting any of the Interior cities to the Nine Stars, so we must travel by road—and as much as I hate to admit it, Behenna does make sense when he suggests we travel together. Two small caravans are no match for one large one on this sort of journey. We might have to combine our resources to make the most of them.”
“But—”
“I know what you’re about to say. There’s no reason to worry. You’ll be safe. He may be as cunning as a snake, but he’s toothless. Don’t forget that. He’s thousands of kilometres away from the sea, and that’s where his power comes from. He won’t be able to hurt you.”
That hasn’t stopped him from trying so far, Sal wanted to say, but he knew that would sound petulant. “Will that really stop him?” he asked instead, wanting reassurance on this score. “I mean, I can use the Change both here and in the Strand, so why can’t he?”
“Your abilities are part of what it means to be a wild talent, Sal. You tap into what you find around you, regardless of its source, but the results of your efforts are blunt, unfocused. Everyone who learns to use the Change properly learns to refine not just the end results but also the places they originally come from. It’s like making a diamond, or manufacturing a blade: if you don’t start out with the very best source materials, the product will be flawed. And they are not interchangeable. If you made a blade out of diamond, it would shatter, and steel has none of the properties that make diamonds precious.
“Sky Wardens are born exposed to the natural ambience of the Strand, which contains a mixture of background potential that is biased in the direction of wind and water. So they develop naturally to use that ambience. Training emphasises it. Ultimately, that is all they know. And it is the same with Stone Mages: we grow surrounded by, and are trained in, the ways of fire and earth. It becomes more than just our relative strengths. It becomes what we are.”
“Doesn’t the Change all come from the same place?” Sal asked.
“Ultimately, perhaps, but that is like saying that all life on the Earth comes from the Sun. It may be true, but it doesn’t mean that we can eat sunlight. We eat plants that convert the sun’s rays into fruit, or we eat animals that eat the plants. We are not equipped to tap directly into the Change. It is not natural.”
“But what’s to stop someone from trying? The background potential is all around us, no matter where we’re from. If they really needed to—”
“No Stone Mage or Sky Warden would do it, Sal, because it would destroy them.” The Stone Mage’s voice was firm. “As I said, our different uses of the Change are more than just matters of convenience; they define us. Stone Mages and Sky Wardens use different tools to manipulate the Change, and these tools change us in the process. The calluses on a mechanic’s hand are different to those of a musician, for instance, because the two crafts are fundamentally different. Likewise, were we to break the patterns of a lifetime, it would destroy the foundations of our training. The reflexes we spent our lives developing would be undermined and we wouldn’t have new ones to take their place. We could take nothing for granted any more: the source of our power and the ways we manipulate it are so delicately balanced that the slightest shift can render our efforts worthless. Even the way we fit into society would be ruined, for such a thing is impossible to hide. It would be like changing our skin colour or sex as opposed to simply taking a new nationality or name. For both Stone Mages and Sky Wardens, there is no other way than the ones we have learned.”
Sal absorbed this. If it was true, then he was as safe from Behenna as he was from any other person. But there was one obvious exception—apart from him—to the rule Van Haasteren was trying to hammer home.
“What about Lodo?” Sal said.
The mage’s face instantly clouded. “What about him?”
“He was born in the Strand but he trained as a Stone Mage.”
“That’s true. Some people are like that. That’s why we Test all applicants, to see if they are developing askew and need to be relocated.”
“But then he left to come back to the Strand, to the beach. He said…” Sal thought back to remember the old man’s precise words. The Change doesn’t sit well with most people, he had said, because they think it’s for big things. It’s a powerful gift and a terrible responsibility, and big things don’t mix well with little people. “‘I prefer the small magic,’” Sal repeated aloud, “‘the magic of the everyday, and I came to Fundelry because the beach has its own magic, a magic that is neither water nor earth, neither fire nor air, but a mixture of them all. Here, on the edge of one world, I have found a bridge between two.’”
“He said that?” the mage asked, his expression darker than the shadows around them.
“Yes. Maybe he found another way.”
“Well, he was wrong, Sal. There is no other way.”
Sal was nervous about speaking for a long moment. The mage’s mood was almost frightening. He didn’t want to exacerbate it by saying the wrong thing.
It didn’t last, though. The mage took in a deep breath and slowly let it go.
“You know,” he said, “my father would have chosen him over me—to run the Keep, I mean. That’s why he gave Lodo the Scourge. Did he ever tell you that?”
Sal shook his head, surprised. “No, he didn’t. He told me your father had had high hopes for him, but that he had let him down, turned his back on him and everything he stood for. I wondered what he meant by that.” Sal understood, now, what his grandmother had meant when she had accused the mage of putting himself in Lodo’s shoes: she thought he was trying to prove himself by succeeding where the old man, his father’s favourite, had failed. And he understood why the absence of the Scourge bothered the mage so much. As a means of Testing students, it would have been a fundamental symbol of the school. Losing it would have both undermined the Keep’s reputation and created the opportunity for someone else to start a new one in competition.
“We were friends once,” the mage said. “He told me his heart-name.”
The sadness in the man’s eyes made Sal feel uncomfortable. “He said your father knew that he could never go
back.”
“Exactly. And that’s what I’m saying about Behenna. Once you cross the line, there’s no returning. You’re trapped in between, belonging to neither one nor the other. There is no in between, no matter what he said. If there’s one thing worse than being born a wild talent, it’s making one of yourself.”
“Lodo tried to fit into the Haunted City but he said that he had threatened the establishment there. I got the impression that they kicked him out on the basis of some made-up charge. I suppose that was why.”
“He was accused of necromancy,” said the mage. “Do you know what that is?”
“Trying to revive the dead?”
“Not only the dead, but the un-living as well. You know that you can only create illusions of animals and things, not people. People have a spark that the Change cannot reproduce. They said that Lodo tried to create such human illusions, regardless of this fact. I don’t know if it’s true, or, if it is, whether he succeeded. If he had succeeded, the illusions would have been as bad as golems, empty vessels looking for occupants, and where better to search for such occupants than the Void Beneath? They would have been abominable things to bring into the world.”
Sal tried to reconcile such a practice with the old man, and found that he could not. It had to be untrue. “They lied about him, then,” he said. “They lied to get rid of him.”
“I suspect so,” said the mage. “Here was this man who dared teach that their way was not omnipotent, that it could be undermined. The fact that it worked for him didn’t matter; he was a threat to them. Similarly, the fact that it worked only for him didn’t matter to Payat; he refused to acknowledge the danger that he was putting himself into. So they got rid of him, as you say. He was expelled from the city and forced to live in the wilds as little better than an outlaw. He should have known that there was no other way it could end. All that talent was wasted.” The bitterness in the mage’s voice surprised Sal. The mage’s jealousy of his old friend was mixed up with feelings of betrayal and regret as well. “That’s how it would be for Shom Behenna if he attempted to use his powers here, Sal. Even if it worked, which it wouldn’t, it would change him irrevocably, and his superiors would know when he returned. He would be marked as an outsider and outcast just like Lodo. Unlike Lodo, though, I don’t think this man has enough native wisdom to survive on his own, let alone find a new meaning to his life, as you say Lodo did. He is too ambitious, too hungry for the power he knows already exists. He has too much to lose. And he has obviously found other ways to get what he wants.”
Sal nodded. “My grandmother.”
“It seems so. She was expelled from the Strand after the scandal your parents caused, and you are her best means of getting back. But I don’t know exactly what’s going through her mind. I could be misrepresenting her. She hasn’t survived the last ten years by being simple-minded, after all. I fear there are so many layers to her scheming that sometimes not even she knows the full truth of what’s going on.”
“If only I hadn’t asked you to contact her,” Sal said. “If she hadn’t known I was here—”
“She did know. Behenna went straight to her. He didn’t know exactly where you were going, but he knew about your mother’s family, and they are easy to track down. All he had to do was tell your grandmother the story, and between them they guessed the rest. They knew where you had crossed the Divide and where your caravan was headed. Anyone in Ulum would tell you to try the Keep, if you were looking for training, so they came to Ulum to see if they could get close. There was no business bringing them here: it was all for you. When I contacted them to see if they would like to meet you, everything fell into place for them.” The mage hung his head. “Again, Sal, I’m sorry. I don’t think my actions have changed events terribly much, but it has certainly made finding you easier for them. The only good thing is that it will soon be out of all of our hands. The Synod are the ones we’ll have to worry about.”
The mage would have said more, but the door opened. Skender, Amahl and Raf entered the room, chatting animatedly among themselves. They stopped in the middle of the room when they saw their teacher sitting with Sal.
“I was just leaving,” the mage said, squeezing Sal firmly on the shoulder and standing. “If you’ve finished eating, I suggest you all get some rest. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.”
“Yes, Dad.” Skender was more cautious than usual of his father. “Is everything all right?”
“No. Everything most certainly is not.”
The mage swept out of the room and closed the door behind him. They listened to his footsteps recede down the hallway. When they were gone, Skender was instantly onto Sal.
“What’s going on? What happened? What did we miss? Tell us!”
Sal considered refusing but knew he would have to endure the boy’s nagging all night if he didn’t. He gave them an abbreviated version of what had happened during his meeting with Radi Mierlo and Behenna. He didn’t mention Shilly or what Skender’s father had told him. Skender sat raptly through it, eyes wide, and seemed to pick up more than Sal had intended to say. When the story was over, Raf and Amahl expressed their indignation by promising to do anything Sal needed to help him get back at his grandmother for betraying him like that. But Skender didn’t join in. He just sat on the bed with Sal for a long while.
“Maybe it’s a misunderstanding,” he finally said. “Behenna got to her first, so she sees his side of the story. When you talk to her again, I’m sure you’ll be able to convince her that she’s made a mistake, and that going back to the Strand would only make things worse.”
Sal nodded, knowing that this was exactly what he wanted to hear. His grandmother wasn’t selfish and manipulative; he wouldn’t be forced to go somewhere he didn’t want to; he could stay at the Keep with Shilly and forget all about his mother’s family; Behenna would be sent home empty-handed, and that would be the end of it.
But he wasn’t stupid. It would never be that easy. This wasn’t a situation he could wriggle out of with a few well chosen words. In order to escape the Sky Wardens once and for all, he would have to think of another way to thwart them—something cleverer than just running away. Something he could do on his own, without anyone’s help.
Without Shilly. She had turned away from him at the Keep and again when Behenna appeared. If she thought their deal was over, so be it. He had gone most of his life without friends to rely on, and he could do it again if he had to.
“Thanks, Skender,” he said. “I hope you’re right. But right now, all I really want to do is get some sleep.”
“Of course. Tomorrow will be better. You’ll see.” Skender and the others turned down the lamp to let him rest. In silence, they undressed and got into their own bunks. The only sounds came from the creaking of the house around them and the faint sounds of traffic from the street outside.
The scraps of the Mage Van Haasteren’s dinner in his belly did nothing to quell an ache that came from a different part of him entirely.
Alone, Sal slid under the covers and thought for his life.
Chapter 13
Iron and Glass
Shilly woke the next morning to hear her two bunkmates discussing Tait. Behenna’s journeyman had joined them in the dining room after Sal had been taken away, not to eat but to ensure that the Sky Warden he served was being looked after.
“His hair, his eyes—”
“Are you kidding? I can’t get past his skin. It’s so black!”
“But that’s the best bit. It’s so soft looking. He looks like he’s made of chocolate.”
“Now I know you’re kidding.” The young women laughed softly. “You don’t really think he’s cute, do you?”
“The competition pales in comparison, Chema. Literally.” That meant it was Vita talking, the local girl who had waited at the table the previous night and who had shared the room with the two visitors afterward. “He just looks so…different.”
“Well, there’s no accounting for tast
e. I’ll settle for picking his brains, thanks. The places he’s been, the things he’s seen…”
Shilly stirred. “Don’t let him fool you,” she muttered, opening her eyes a crack. “He’s no genius.”
Vita laughed again. “I can live with that, for long enough.”
“Of course,” said Chema, moving onto Shilly’s bed. “You come from the same place as him—that village, whatever it’s called. It must be weird seeing him here.”
Shilly didn’t answer at first. It was strange, yes, to bump into someone she’d known most of her life so far away from their home, just when she’d given up all thoughts of seeing anything like home again.
But that wasn’t what she was feeling. She had grown up with him around. She knew his face as well as anyone’s from Fundelry. His narrow, handsome features and his dense mat of black hair; even though he had been at the Haunted City, training with the Sky Wardens for over three years, his voice was exactly the same as she remembered.
“Good weird,” she said, wishing she could just go back to sleep. Whatever she felt, she wasn’t interested in sharing it with perfect strangers.
“Told you,” said Vita, punching her new friend lightly on the arm. “He is cute. If only Mr Gourlay was going with you to the Nine Stars—”
“Well, you two can fight over him until then,” Chema said. “I’m not interested. There are plenty of ordinary boys like Raf around to keep me busy.”
The conversation shifted to whether or not Chema’s redheaded fellow student was more interested in her or Bethe, the student overseer, and Shilly let her attention wander. Judging by the pale light creeping through the dormitory’s sole narrow window, the day was only just dawning on the world far above the underground city. She’d never been an early riser, and missed the days with Lodo, when she could sleep in. As long as she’d finished her chores before bed each night, the old man had let her organise her own daily schedule.
The memory of him brought tears to her eyes. She fought them down, not wanting to face the interrogation of the other girls. The memory of what the golem had told her was still too painful to talk about. That he could be adrift in some terrible Void, unable to call for help while his body lay helpless, made her angry and upset. She wished there was something she could do to find him, but she didn’t even know where his body was, let alone the rest of him.
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