“The motif symbolizes the Earth,” said Lodo. “I’d have to guess it was your mother’s.”
Sal had never seen it before, but knew it must be what his father had kept in the hidden space at the bottom of his pack. That knowledge tipped the balance. His throat constricted, his face screwed up and there was nothing he could do to stop the sob that came with the thought that his father had carried this memento of his mother everywhere he went, for almost as long as Sal had been alive.
Lodo didn’t touch him while he cried, and for that he was grateful. Distantly, he was aware of Von leaving the room and coming back a moment later. When he was able to look up again, he found a glass of water beside him on the floor. He wiped his eyes and washed the taste of tears from his mouth.
“I never met them,” said Lodo, “but I heard about them.” The old man took a seat on the bed and sat staring at his hands while he talked. Sal didn’t interrupt. “Your mother’s family came from Mount Birrinah in the Interior. Her grandparents had formed a powerful Clan alliance between Sun and Fire, making them part of the Earth Clan. But something went wrong a generation before your mother, some scandal or other involving her parents, and they left the Interior. They resettled in the Haunted City and formed new alliances there.
“Against the odds, your grandparents arranged a union that would bring their Clan together with the Cloud Line. Such a union wouldn’t have been unique. There have been marriages between Clan and Line before, but this one promised a lot more than just political advantage. You see, your mother’s family had a talent for the Change, which was why they’d been allowed into the Haunted City to begin with. And, at the time, several members of the Cloud Line had risen very high in the Conclave, increasing the chances that any offspring would be talented. Theirs was the most anticipated union of the decade.”
Lodo stopped and thought deeply for a moment. “I’ve never had a reason to tell this story before, and it surprises me how clearly I remember it. Maybe I sensed that I would brush against it, one day. You see, I too am an exile of sorts, from two worlds. My skin is brown; by right of birth, I should have been a Sky Warden. But my talent lay with the fire of the Stone Mages. I rejected my early teachers and abdicated to the Interior, to the Desert Ports. My years there were productive. I learned and achieved every goal I set for myself. I was never happy, though--I missed my home. In the end, I returned to the Strand and sought a position in the Haunted City.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t understand at the time why I so threatened the establishment there. I didn’t fit in, and moved from place to place before realizing that I would never be welcome. Before I left the City, I stood briefly on the fringes of your parents’ story. It was one of the few times when scandal pointed away from me, and I’ll admit to being glad of it for a while. When I did leave, I left voluntarily, and not a day too soon.”
Again he paused. “I’ll tell you this, Sal, then return to your parents. I think you’ll understand--later, if not now--although so many haven’t over the years. The Change doesn’t sit well with everyone. It’s a powerful gift and a terrible responsibility, that’s for sure, and big things don’t mix well with little people. I prefer the small magic, the magic of the everyday, and I came here 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--malleable, wild, subtly vital. Unique.” He looked up and met Sal’s red-rimmed stare. “You haven’t come into your full power yet. I know that. When you do, I want you to remember the words of a tired and old man. Here, on the edge of one world, I have found a bridge between two.”
He looked back down at his hands. Sal waited with increasing restlessness as Lodo collected his thoughts.
“Your mother’s name was--”
“Seirian.”
“Yes. You’ve heard her name before?”
“My father called it out in his sleep.”
Lodo nodded. “I told you earlier that she was of the Earth Clan. She had your coloring--same hair, skin and eyes--but you’re already taller than her. You take after your father there. Her family name was Mierlo, but she and her husband took the new name of Graaff when they wed.”
“That’s not the name you called my dad.”
“No, for one important reason: Dafis Hrvati is not the man your mother married.”
Sal’s stomach sank; he could see now where the story was going and how the word “adulterer” fitted in.
“Highson Sparre--later Graaff, then Sparre again--was a high-ranking member of the Conclave. Young and ambitious, he sought in your mother an alliance with an unknown political power. Her family was unlikely to be a threat, and there was a chance they could be an asset to add to the many he already possessed. Seirian was clever and had a raw talent in the Change. Also, she was beautiful, and talented children would increase his prestige. Her pale skin didn’t perturb him. He, like many in the Haunted City, had ancestors who cross-bred, and his skin was only slightly darker than hers.
“But he wasn’t the only one whose thoughts were more on politics than love. Your mother’s family sought induction into the Conclave, and Highson Sparre would give them that. There was talk that he might one day become Alcaide, if his rise continued unchecked, and Seirian herself responded to that thought. He was handsome, influential and sophisticated; he could teach her how to control her talent so perhaps she, too, could make her presence felt. So they wed and became Seirian and Highson Graaff of the Rain Line, one of the golden couples of the Haunted City.” Lodo’s eyes stared off into the distance, remembering brighter places. “Neither of them reckoned on her falling in love.”
“With my father,” Sal prompted.
“Yes. Dafis Hrvati was a journeyman apprentice to one of the senior Sky Wardens of the day, a woman named Esta Piovesan who died not long after I left the Haunted City. Her position brought him into regular contact with Highson Graaff. Despite their age difference, they became close friends and frequent companions. Seirian, your mother, apparently didn’t like Warden Piovesan, Highson’s new friend, and sought company of her own. The journeyman was an obvious choice, for their free times frequently coincided. He, like Highson, had learned a great deal about the methodology of the Change, although he had no talent of his own. He also knew some of the more worldly arts, particularly those of music and storytelling.
“No one knows exactly when they become lovers, or when Highson found out. Suffice it to say, the scandal was enormous--not least because the lovers refused to desist. Such liaisons happen often enough in and around the Conclave, but usually they end swiftly and are never discovered, or are ended upon discovery, with no great loss of face. But not this time. Seirian requested an annulment of her marriage to Highson and sought permission to wed Dafis Hrvati instead.”
Sal’s spirits rose, hearing of his parents’ love for each other. Lodo went on: “Perhaps the greatest error on anyone’s part occurred at this time. Falling in love is never a mistake, whatever the circumstances. We err only in how we deal with it. Both families could have accepted the reversal easily enough, but neither could without the other’s willingness. Seirian’s family had a great deal to lose: if she backed out of the marriage, they risked public humiliation and loss of status; they would be back where they started when they arrived in the Haunted City. So they refused to grant their daughter her wish, and Highson’s family had no choice but to back them. Seirian’s formal options were reduced to just two: to stay married to Highson and end her affair with Dafis, or to seek annulment without the consent of her family or her husband, a process that could take years to proceed through the Conclave.
“So they took a third option that hadn’t been offered them. They ran away. In the middle of the night, with the help of two friends who went to jail rather than confess how they had done it, the two lovers were spirited out of the Haunted City and into the Strand. There, they disappeared. No trace was ever found of th
em beyond the City’s outer precincts. The search was massive and thorough--and utterly fruitless. Highson himself led the final sweep. He turned up nothing. Your mother and her lover were gone forever.
“At least, that’s what it looked like. Clearly they went to ground somewhere, and kept moving to avoid suspicion. Your father, like Highson, has relatively light skin, so it made sense that they would go to the borderlands for a while, at least until the fuss settled down; it was probably there your father obtained the buggy, since such machinery isn’t used widely in the deeper Strand, near the Haunted City. That’s my belief as to what happened, anyway, even though Highson found no evidence that they had passed near or through any of the usual border crossings. Only your father could tell you for certain. Beyond that point, for me, the story ends.
“Until now.” He looked up from his hands and fixed Sal with his storm-gray eyes. Sal thought of what his father had said about stealing something from the Sky Wardens. “When your father turned up looking for me, I had an inkling who he might be. When I saw your ward, I was certain. I had never known about a child--but why couldn’t there have been one, later? And any child of your mother was likely to be talented, especially if its father had some form of talent, latent or otherwise. At least it would solve half the mystery: the whereabouts of Dafis Hrvati is bound to be something Highson Sparre would dearly like to know. I can understand why Dafis Hrvati is still running.
“But the mystery doesn’t end here. I’d like to know where your mother is, and what caused her to leave you and your father. How do the Sky Wardens know about you and why do they want you so badly?” Lodo got up and ran his hands through his hair. “And why did your father pick me of all people to solve this particular mess?”
“I don’t know,” said Sal.
“No, I know you don’t, and it’s not your fault.” Lodo tried to smile, but it was obviously forced. He reached down a hand and helped Sal to his feet. “With time to prepare, we could have hidden you easily. You would have worked on your concentration until you were ready to face the Selectors. If you hadn’t been subjected to their full scrutiny, there’s more than an outside chance they would have overlooked you. If we’d only had time.”
“But we don’t.”
“No.” Lodo looked back down at Sal. “And what’s happened with Sproule isn’t helping us at all. We’re going to have to take an enormous risk if we’re to have any chance whatsoever. Will you do what I tell you, no matter what it is?”
Sal nodded. “Yes.”
“Good. Then I can help you, with luck.”
“And Dad?”
Lodo’s hand gripped his shoulder. “I don’t know, Sal. It all depends on who they send.”
Sal put his mother’s silver clasp in his bag and stowed the clothes back in their correct places. When he was finished, Lodo bade Von farewell and they headed out into the world. The square contained only school children, busy playing. No Kemp, Sal was relieved to see.
“I apologize for Von’s suspicion,” Lodo said as they walked through town, toward the dunes. “She has learned not to trust people--with good reason, I’m afraid.”
“What happened to her?”
“Several years ago one of her guests robbed her, then tried to destroy the evidence. She was burned very badly in the fire, and would have died but for a healing technique I learned from my old teacher. The experience taught her to be too careful at times. But it did open her eyes to Stone Mage techniques, and that helped my acceptance here.”
Lodo put his hand on the amulet hanging around his neck.
“There’s another storm coming,” he said. “A big one.”
His gaze turned inward, then, and Sal let him think. He tried to concentrate on the Mandala while he walked but was too distracted by what he had learned about his parents. He couldn’t picture his father as a journeyman in the Haunted City; it was too strange, too wrong. Similarly, he could barely conceive of his mother as errant heir to a Stone Mage family. It contrasted so totally to the life he had shared with his father. What did a man who traveled in a buggy for a living know about courtly ways and the Change? More than he had ever guessed, obviously.
When they arrived at the workshop and he saw the stone fire in the center of the room, he wondered if the nagging thought it had prompted--that he had seen such a thing before--might not have something to do with this.
But there was no time to ponder it. Lodo put him through an increasingly complex series of exercises designed, it seemed, to put all extraneous thoughts out of his head. He barely had time to notice that Shilly wasn’t there and was, in fact, still absent from his senses. His mind filled with images of spirals, cubes and pyramids until they all seemed to merge into a horrible, uncontrolled mess.
As though Lodo could sense his state of mind, the old man soon called a halt to that exercise. He set Sal the task of calling forth light from a stone, while he went about other duties.
“If you strain hard enough,” he said, “you might dull some of the shine off you. Or it could do the opposite …”
Sal tried not to let thoughts of his father or the Selectors get in the way of this new task. He focused on what Shilly had told him in the Ruins--to summon the light from the dark heart of the stone as though drawing water from a well--and did find some small success. The light he called up looked weak compared to the flasks of frozen fire scattered through the workshop, but it was progress and, afterwards, he did feel exhausted. The effort combined with lack of sleep left him yawning compulsively.
Lodo looked up from his work and noticed him struggling.
“I have to go out,” the old man said, standing up and scooping a handful of small objects off his workbench and into a pocket. “I’d prefer to take you with me, but you should be safe enough in here. Keep up with your exercises as long as you can, then get some rest. I won’t be long.”
Sal nodded, waited until Lodo had gone, then found a pile of cushions in a corner and fell instantly asleep.
He was woken what seemed only minutes later by a hand at his shoulder shaking him roughly.
“Wake up, Sal!”
He twisted onto his back and jerked his eyes open. “What? What?”
“You’re on my bed.” It was Shilly, crouched scowling over him. “Where’s Lodo?”
“I don’t know.” Sal blinked, disoriented, and tried to get his bearings. “Where have you been?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“You’ve been at the Ruins.” The realization came to him in a flash. “That’s why I couldn’t sense you.”
“So what? I don’t have to tell you where I am.” Her expression darkened, and he thought she was about to say something else, but instead she turned away and strode angrily through the workshop to get a drink.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her.
“Nothing.”
“There is. Something’s happened.”
“You happened,” she spat back at him.
“Me? What’ve I done?”
“’What’ve I done?’” She mimicked him with sarcastic venom. “I’ll tell you what you’ve done. You’ve messed everything up, that’s what. Before you came along, Lodo and I fitted in perfectly. We did the jobs we were asked to do and stayed out of everyone else’s way. We were comfortable enough. We were even happy. Now you’re here and everything’s going wrong. Alder Sproule is threatening to kick us out; the School won’t let me back in; no one will talk to me--or even look at me without making the sign of the evil eye. It’s one thing to be ignored, quite another to be actively shunned. And it’s only going to get worse. With the Selectors and the Goddess knows who else on the way, there’s no doubt who’s going to get the blame. You’ve ruined my life, Sal!”
He gaped at her for a second. “I didn’t mean to--”
“Well, that makes it all right then.”
“No, Shilly,
listen to me--”
“Why? You can’t tell me this isn’t your fault. Your damned father came here looking for Lodo. Are you going to deny that? No? So stop pleading innocence. Whatever curse it is you’re dragging around after you, I didn’t ask to be part of it. Don’t expect me to be grateful. Just stay out of my way until it all blows over, and maybe--when Lodo and I have finished picking up the pieces--I’ll forget about you. All right?”
Sal got up and went to go to her, but she stopped him with a look.
“I know what you’re going to say. Don’t. You go through your life as though nothing’s your responsibility. You’re like a hermit crab letting himself be picked up and moved around without taking charge. You can’t do that forever, Sal. You have to join the real world at some point. Maybe when you’ve done that it’ll be easier to be around you. Until then, just leave me alone.”
Hurt and bewildered, Sal retreated to another niche of the workshop. There, out of her sight, he tried to concentrate on the exercises Lodo had given him. It was hard, even with his eyes tightly shut. He could hear Shilly moving around the room as though she was trying hard not to break things. He could understand her point of view. Up until his father’s arrest, none of it had seemed real; it had felt more like a game. Reality had hit home hard for both of them.
The echo of her words still stung in his mind. He didn’t know what a hermit crab was, but he got the idea. Maybe she was right. He did tend to go with the flow. He let his father decide where they would travel and he spent most of his time trying to avoid trouble rather than confronting it head on. But what else could he do? He wasn’t especially strong or smart; he trusted the people around him to do what was best. That had usually worked for him.
Or had it? If, now, his father stayed in jail, where would that leave him? His father’s decision to keep him in the dark had brought them to a situation that could only be described as unsatisfactory. Perhaps if he had spoken up sooner things might have turned out differently …
The Stone Mage & the Sea (Books of the Change Book 1) Page 21
