Even though he knew it might be a bad idea, he couldn’t resist looking down as he crossed the next gap. The space below was like a canyon, with sheer walls dropping straight down and extending some distance to either side of him. He could see ledges further down that had probably been more walls, and a hole that might once have been a stairwell, although there were no stairs to be seen any more. The very bottom was invisible: the tops of trees, similar to the one he had noticed growing out into the sunlight, overlapped, creating a dense mat that light couldn’t penetrate from above.
Coolness and birdsong radiated from the depths as he walked the plank. It was like stepping over another world.
They crossed two more plank bridges, the last angling down to a rubble-strewn platform inside the fallen building itself. From there, through what had once been a doorway but was now a hole, a rope ladder descended into the darkness.
“Wait until I’m down, then follow me.”
Shilly swung herself into the hole and climbed down without hesitation. Sal still couldn’t see the bottom. With each rung she slipped further away from the daylight, losing first color, then definition. The buzzing in the air was much stronger.
Then he realized that he was feeling the buzz, on his chest. When he slipped the ward out of his tunic and held it to his ear, he could actually hear a tiny hum.
The jiggling of the ladder ceased, and Shilly stopped shrinking. He assumed she had reached the bottom, although he couldn’t see what she was standing on.
Her voice floated up to him. “Okay, your turn!”
Sal took a deep breath and did as she had done. The ladder was more stable than it looked, the rope dry and rough on his hands. He couldn’t look down so he looked up instead, taking one careful step at a time, not letting go with either hand until he was completely certain of his footing. The rectangle of sky above him slowly shrank as he passed through fronds of trees then climbed below even them, into darkness.
Then her hands gripped his waist and steadied him down the last few steps. He tore his gaze from the rectangle of blue and looked around, his eyes slowly adjusting to the gloom. He was standing on a rough stone floor in what looked like a cave. The last few rungs had taken him through a wide gash in the floor of the fallen structure and into the natural earth. The remaining lip of wall acted as a rough ceiling, under which deep shadows hid all details from sight. In the dim light filtering down from above, Sal saw tree roots snaking in and out of the dirt, forming a rough circle around a large, angular chunk of rock protruding from the floor.
The chunk of rock looked like an altar. Had there been no light at all, he would still have known it was there: the hum was strongest in the rock, as though it was the source. On it lay several oddly shaped stones, varying from one of Sal’s knuckles to his clenched fist in size. They didn’t look like the sort of ancient artifact that would hurt anyone.
The way Shilly was watching him, though, as if waiting to see what he would do next, her eyes glittering in the gloom, made him nervous. Her dark skin blended into the shadows a little too perfectly.
“Why did you bring me here?” he asked.
“Because…” She hesitated. “Well, there’s more than one reason, although none of them really add up. Lodo tells me that instincts are no substitute for learning, but that neither is any good without the other. I’m following an instinct now.” She picked up one of the stones on the altar-like rock. “This is a special place. There are things he can teach me here that he can’t at the workshop. We’re closer to the bedrock, as well as the old times. If I’m ever going to tease a bit of the Change out of the background on my own, it’ll be here.”
She offered him the stone, and he took it. A single groove ran around the stone’s entire surface, beginning in a deep indentation at the top and ending similarly at the base. It was heavier than it looked and seemed to vibrate, like his ear-ring.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Twelve,” Sal replied. “Almost thirteen.”
“I thought it would be something like that. You’re due, then.”
“Due for what?”
“Thirteen is the age when successful male applicants are Selected by the Sky Wardens; girls tend to be a little younger. I’m a little older than you. Lodo waited for a sign that anything at all might come from me, but it didn’t arrive, even though he’d been teaching me to be ready if it did. I think he’d suspected all along, really, but made me his apprentice anyway. He needs someone to clean all his stuff.” She grimaced. “But not you. You’re full up. Aunty Merinda saw it straightaway, and so did Lodo, when she told him. The scabs feel it too. Even I can feel it. You’re full up and starting to brim over.”
“Full of what?”
“The Change, of course.”
His face felt hot. “That’s what you think is going on, is it?”
“Yes. You saw Elina’s flower. You saw Lodo lighting the globes, and you saw his face through the illusion. That’s more than most people. And when the seagulls attacked us--do you remember? I was angry. We were touching, and something happened. The birds scattered for a second; I felt something go through me like a hot wind. Like when I use Lodo’s talent, except Lodo wasn’t anywhere nearby. There was only you, and I was holding onto you to stop you falling. You have to touch someone to use their talent. So it had to be you.”
“But--”
“Don’t bother saying you don’t know anything about it,” she interrupted him. “That’s the way it happens to most people outside the Sky Warden Lines--or the Clans, I guess. It just appears. Like it or not, you have the Change, or you’re getting it. My advice to you is to like it. I’d kill to be in your shoes.”
Her eyes were intense, even in the gloom. He turned away, looking for something to sit down on. His legs felt weak. He had the Change? Impossible. It just couldn’t be. He couldn’t create fire out of nothing, as Shilly had, or call light from glass like Lodo; he couldn’t alter the weather, summon fish or fowl, or do any of the other things he had heard about the Sky Wardens. He wouldn’t know what to do with it, even if he did have the Change.
He found a thick root and eased himself onto it, subconsciously moving away from the rock altar but still holding the carved stone in his right hand.
“You don’t believe me,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
He shook his head.
“I could be wrong,” she admitted. “There’s really only one way to find out. Well, two ways. We could wait for your voice to break and puberty to really kick in; by then we’ll know for sure. You’ll either have it or you won’t, and any flutters that come or go beforehand will have settled down for good.”
“I’ll be long gone by then,” he said, hoping against hope that it was true.
“Exactly, and I’m impatient. I want to know now.”
“You want to use me,” he said.
“No. I want to test you.”
“By using my powers.”
“They’re not powers, Sal, and they’re not yours. The Change just is, and you can be part of it sometimes. If what I think is right, anyway.”
“How can I have the Change and it not belong to me?”
She shook her head. “That’s not the way it works, Sal. It’s a gift, not a thing you can own. It’s a responsibility too, Lodo says. I don’t know what he means half the time but I think I understand that. I want it, but can’t have it. If it could be got, could be owned, I’d have a found a way. Lodo would’ve shown me. This isn’t something I’d happily miss out on, no matter what it costs.”
“And what if I’m not like you--if I don’t want it?” he asked.
“Don’t you? Really?”
That was another question with no easy answer. Sky Wardens and Stone Mages were legendary figures looming over the Interior and the Strand. Few people met more than one or two in their lifetimes, and then only briefly, when Se
lection time came, but their deeds and histories were foremost in the cultures of both countries. Even a lowly weather-worker or seer lived a better life than most, given just a little talent. He would be a fool to say no, given the choice.
Instead of speaking, he reached out to take her hand. As soon as their skin touched, he felt a strange sensation thrill through him, as though something simultaneously cold and hot had slid down his spine.
Shilly stiffened and took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, and the cave-like chamber beneath the ancient building suddenly felt much darker. In Sal’s other hand, the carved stone seemed to grow in size. The deep hum from the altar swelled in his mind, in his bones, until it dominated the entire world around him. There was only the hum, the throbbing stone in one hand and Shilly’s skin in the other. He couldn’t even feel himself breathing.
Shilly’s fingers tightened on his, and a light flared in the darkness.
With a soundless explosion, the rock in his fist blossomed like the sun. Not pale blue like the fire in his memory, this was white and bright, flaring through his fingers as easily as though they were air. Beams of light cast the shadows aside, throwing every nook and cranny into sharp relief. Sal saw the crumbling former wall sagging above them, shedding dust, and thick roots lacing the earth below. They met in oddly regular niches all around them, tiny spaces difficult for even a child to crawl into--and from each glinted the white of bone. Dozens of animal skulls stared back at him, wide-eyed, from the recesses of Lodo and Shilly’s secret space.
He gasped and pulled free. Instantly the darkness returned, and he was blind behind a bright purple after-image.
“What?” asked Shilly, her voice annoyed. He knew why: the last thing he had seen before killing the light was her face, eyes tightly closed, smiling, reveling in the Change.
He opened his mouth to describe what he had seen, then shut it. Oddly, the thought of all the dead animals around him didn’t bother him. They were part of the place, and he wasn’t threatened by the place as a whole. He had just been startled by the sight. If she knew they were there, they obviously didn’t bother her either.
“Nothing,” he said. “It was just too bright.” He squeezed the rock in his hand. It was warming slowly to the temperature of his fingers but was otherwise unaltered.
He couldn’t say the same about himself. He felt flushed and confused. Changed himself, somehow, in a way he couldn’t define. He had no idea what, exactly, Shilly had done, but the feeling that had passed through him, into her, tugged at him. Although he was nervous that he might be doing the wrong thing, part of him wanted to try again, very much wanted to try again.
He could feel her uncertainty, her fear that he would ask to leave. She wanted to try again, too.
“Maybe you should go a little easier next time,” he said, giving in.
“Easier? I wasn’t even trying.”
“Well…” He couldn’t see her face. “Try something different, then. An illusion, like Elina’s, perhaps? You said you were learning.”
He felt her nod. “Can you draw?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s okay. I can do that side of it. Know any bird calls, then?”
“What’s that got to do with--?”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll make it up as we go along.” She moved away from him, and he heard her rearranging the stones on the altar. “Come over here and let’s see what happens.”
He stood, but didn’t obey immediately. The memory of the light--its potency and purity, its sheer power--made him hesitate.
“Are you sure it’s all right to do this?”
“Yes. Positive.”
If she was at all uncertain about that, she kept it carefully hidden from her voice.
Chapter 7. “A Meeting of Sorts”
The sun was sinking by the time Sal and Shilly left the cave under the Ruins and headed back to Fundelry. A light breeze rustled through the scrub, bringing with it scents Sal was used to--dust and leaves rather than salt and fish. He was, for several minutes, quite disoriented. The smells reminded him of the life he had always taken for granted, whereas everything he had seen under the Ruins, still hanging fresh in his mind, came from another world entirely.
He had not expected how easily the Change in him had been harnessed to Shilly’s will. Far from being a simple demonstration of what she had learned, the illusions she had called forth from the darkness had unnerved him completely. Birds and beasts, snakes and insects, solid or ghostly, brightly colored or drab--all had materialized at her mental command, and vanished just as readily. Without any volition of their own, they were perfectly docile and obeyed every spoken instruction. The only thing they lacked was sound: whether it was horse or python, dog or red-breasted robin, not one of the illusions ever made a noise.
All it had taken was a rough sketch in the dirt floor, an imitation call, or even the vaguest outline drawn in the air, and out they had poured: an endless series of animals that had seemed, at times, to startle Shilly just as much as Sal.
Perhaps strangest of all was the dolphin Shilly had drawn with dust on one of the low banks beneath the overhanging “roof” of the cave. He hadn’t realized what it was at first, thinking it to be a person lying on their side, asleep. Animated, the dolphin had circled them silently through the stone walls as though swimming through water, one eye fixed always on them.
Later, when Shilly had tried to create the illusion of a person, the figure had refused to come to life, hovering on the edge of drawing and reality as though seen through a heat haze, then suddenly vanishing into nothing at all.
Shilly was silent on the way back, her expression one of concentration. Sal was tired and his chest was still sore, but Shilly showed no signs of fatigue--and hadn’t once in the cave. If anything, she could have stayed longer. Had it not been for his father and a lingering sense of guilt, she might have insisted.
“Don’t you see?” she had asked him, gripping his arm tightly to maintain the link between them. Her skin was hot, feverish. “This is what life is about. The Change is everything. Without the Change, there’s nothing.”
Her intensity had frightened him a little. He had been relieved when she had eventually agreed that they’d explored enough--and confirmed her suspicions about him, which is what they had set out to do.
He felt dizzy just thinking about it, as though he was back on one of the wooden planks, teetering over the drop. He had the Change, or the beginnings of it, anyway. There was a flicker of something in him that he had never suspected before. Even if it faded away, later, it deserved to be explored. That much at least he agreed with Shilly about.
He wondered if that was why his father had brought him to Fundelry, and why he was looking for Lodo. Perhaps he too had seen it building in his son and hoped to find a way to use it.
But if that was the case, why had he kept all knowledge about the Change hidden from Sal--not just throughout his life, but even now, on the brink of its emergence in himself?
The breeze stiffened, throwing dust into his eyes. He shook his head, clearing it. There was no point guessing blindly, he told himself. He would have to ask his father. And if what he and Shilly now knew turned out to have no relation to why they were in Fundelry, it might yet prove useful …
They were met by Lodo on the edge of the small town. Shilly saw him first.
“Uh-oh,” she said.
“What?”
“The old boy’s upset about something.”
Sal peered ahead and saw Lodo walking towards them at a rapid pace, his arms swinging wildly. He was too far away to determine his expression. “How can you tell?”
“I just can.” As the old man came into earshot, she glanced at Sal from under the tangle of her fringe and hissed: “Here’s hoping it’s not over us.”
The deep scowl visible on Lodo’s face as he came closer didn’t put Sal
’s mind at ease. When he spoke his annoyance was clear:
“What have you two …?”
He stopped in mid-sentence and mid-step, and sniffed the air. “No, Shilly, tell me you haven’t!”
Shilly put on an innocent look. “Haven’t what?”
“You know what I’m talking about,” Lodo snapped. “Of all the stupid things to do. I expect much better of you than this!”
“Why?”
Sal was lost until he recalled what Shilly had said about Lodo smelling the Change, rather than seeing or hearing it. Lodo could tell what they had been doing, and his glare was terrifying. Sal felt as though he was being physically struck as those dark gray eyes were turned full on him.
Lodo ignored Shilly’s question. “Where?” he asked.
“The Ruins,” she answered. For the first time since Sal had met her, she sounded defensive and uncertain. “I thought--”
“Ah, well!” To Sal’s surprise, Lodo’s wrinkled face broke out into a relieved grin. “Thank goodness. Even if you didn’t know what you were doing, you did it the best possible way. Come on. We might yet salvage something.”
He stepped between Sal and Shilly, grabbed each of them by their upper arms--his fingers digging deep into their flesh--and led them into Fundelry. Wincing, Sal could do nothing but let himself be led. He received the distinct impression that Lodo was keeping him and Shilly apart as much as making sure they came along quietly.
“Your father is waiting for you, boy,” the old man said, his tone more calm than before, but still urgent. “Von has had a hard time of it, making sure he stayed put until you got back. I don’t know what he’d rather have done, but he hasn’t liked waiting. You should do your best to reassure him that nothing untoward has happened.”
“Nothing has,” Sal asserted. “Has it?”
“That depends entirely on where you’re standing.” He shot Sal a stern look as he dragged them through the quiet streets toward the square.
The Stone Mage & the Sea (Books of the Change Book 1) Page 10
