The Storm Weaver & the Sand (Books of the Change) Read online

  The Storm Weaver & the Sand

  The Change Series: Book Three

  Sean Williams

  For Sebastian

  Contents

  Acknowledgments:

  Part One: Floating

  Chapter 1. A Bad Beginning

  Chapter 2. In the Wilderness of Glass

  Chapter 3. the Curl of A Lip

  Chapter 4. Echoes of the Dead

  Chapter 5. Fate’s Ink

  Chapter 6. Among Family

  Chapter 7. A Bad Ending

  Part Two: Falling

  Chapter 8. In the Face of the Void

  Chapter 9. Truth And Lies

  Chapter 10. Shades of Liberty

  Chapter 11. The Deepest Darkness

  Chapter 12. A Small Amount of Light

  Chapter 13. Terminus

  Part Three: Drowning

  Chapter 14. The Oldest War

  Chapter 15. Waking In Pieces

  Chapter 16. Three Good Reasons

  Chapter 17. In A Deadly Embrace

  Chapter 18. Submission to the Future

  Chapter 19. A Powerful Need

  Chapter 20. The Powerful Solution

  Epilogue: Light And Hot Water

  Character List

  Acknowledgments:

  The list is getting longer, not shorter. Thanks for services rendered go to James Bradley, Lyn Jacobs and Nick Linke. My agent, Richard Curtis, has been a rock, as always. The Australia Council, the SA Writers’ Centre and the Mount Lawley Mafia continue to prop me up. It simply wouldn’t be possible without HarperCollinsPublishers Australia behind me: Stephanie, Brian, Shona, Linda, Vanessa, Aleta, Darian, Theresa, Ian, Lisa, Jim, Fiona, Janette, Sylvia, Mel, Christine, Kaye, Anthony, Graeme, Paul…Shaun Tan’s art makes it all worthwhile.

  Family and friends have been enormous support during the writing of this trilogy; in particular: Katherine Brooks, Rob & Claire Brooks, Stella Brooks, Simon Brown, Bill Congreve, Shane & Nydia Dix, Terry Dowling, Rob Hood, Anna Jackson, Nick Linke, Kelly Manison, Anna MacFarlane, Keira McKenzie, Peter & Mariann McNamara, Garth Nix, Robin Pen, Bronte Ramsay, Tom Russell, Frank Ryan, Evelyn Schiller, Kim Selling, Cat Sparkes, Jonathan Strahan, Heather Williams, and Richard Wiseman. For patience alone they’ve earned my unending gratitude.

  Every novel I’ve written in the last two years has been under the splendid influence of Steve Roach, three of whose titles I was tempted to steal for this book (“The Magnificent Void”, “In the Catacombs (again)”, and “Infinite Shore”). For more information on his music, please visit www.steveroach.com.

  Last of all, my thanks and love go to Kirsty Brooks, who has read, edited and critiqued every word in this trilogy at least twice over. All the mistakes are mine, but a lot of the good stuff I owe to her. It is a credit to her determination and good taste that this story has concluded the way it does.

  Part One: Floating

  Chapter 1. A Bad Beginning

  The storm was coming.

  Far away—across the sea and the sand, across the scrub along the coast and the fields inland, across the Ruins and the settlements, and the many places where humanity had failed to retain their claim upon the earth—from beyond the Divide, with its dark watchers and restless shadows, along age-worn valleys and flattened hills, out of the depths of the desert where it was called, the storm gathered speed and power and swept unchecked from the north. Like a living thing, a creature of untameable will, it rolled on its thunderous belly across the land, scouring hills bare with its furious winds, stabbing tongues of lightning at anything daring to stand upright, smothering all thoughts of resistance beneath the weight of its shadow. In its wake it left a trail of destruction.

  It was coming. It couldn’t be turned back. Indefatigable, unstoppable, relentless, its purpose was simple and its destination plain.

  The storm was coming for its maker.

  Sal jerked awake with a gasp. The storm! It was coming for him! He had woken it from its rest in the dry wastelands surrounding the Nine Stars. They had to get away before it reached the caravan…

  He blinked.

  A cursory glance at his surroundings revealed that he was no longer in the caravan at all. He was sleeping on a real bed, clutching thin sheets in his fists and surrounded by stone walls. There was a single, wide air vent with a metal grille across it in the high ceiling, and the floors were made of polished wood. A mirror glowed on one wall, as though reflecting starlight, buzzing faintly with the Change. Under that silver glow he had fallen asleep almost as soon as his head had hit the pillow.

  It came back to him in a rush: his arrival in the Haunted City in the middle of the night, full of dread at what awaited him. This was the place where his parents had met, but he harboured no sentimental thoughts concerning that. It was also the place where his mother died and where his real father lived. The thought of meeting Highson Sparre—a man he knew nothing about except that he had hunted his wife across the Strand, stolen her away from her lover and child, and imprisoned her against her will so she died of a broken heart—sent waves of apprehension through Sal’s body.

  The Syndic, his great-aunt, had him in her clutches now. He might have felt relieved that she had not been at the dock to greet him had he not been so weak from seasickness at the time. Her absence only delayed the inevitable.

  He had been imprisoned the moment the solid door of the room had shut behind him as surely as though he’d been thrown into a cell. Not that he had felt free at any point during the long journey from Ulum. The band around his left wrist took care of that.

  Sweat cooled on his skin, making him shiver. He forced his hands to loosen their grip on the sheets, still feeling the fury of the storm in his dream, the single-minded determination of it as it roared across the parched land. Three times in the last week, he had had the nightmare. If that meant anything, he couldn’t work out what it was. Why should he be afraid of something coming out of the Interior, out of the past, when what lay ahead of him was far worse? It was reality he should be worrying over in his sleep, not dreams.

  He tried to go back to sleep, but even though he was exhausted his thoughts wouldn’t let him. It felt weird after such a long journey to be at his destination. The last stage had been a harrowing one as the bone ship, Os, had ferried them, and the caravan from the coast town of Gunida, to the island of the Haunted City. The sea had been choppy and Sal had spent most of the voyage leaning over the edge, throwing up. Riding the surface of the ocean being tossed up and down by the slightest wave was worse than he could have possibly imagined.

  His initial impressions of the city were, therefore, far from positive. He’d glimpsed it, woozily, on the horizon at sunset, silhouetted against an orange-blue sky. Its towers shone faintly green in the fading light, glinting like a giant quartz crystal balanced on the edge of the world. Its countless towers sprouted from a bare, kidney-shaped island that bulged upward at the end pointing away from the mainland of the Strand. Steep, forbidding cliff faces held back the sea on all sides, except where the incessant pounding of waves had hollowed out caves and blowholes that hung open like giant mouths, their teeth hidden just below the waterline.

  It was through one such cavern that Os passed. Within lay a magnificent dock, ready for the new arrivals. A small party of stern-faced Sky Wardens had waited patiently for them to disembark. While the wardens whisked him and his friends up a series of ramps and into the city, the caravan leader, Belilanca Brokate, remained behind to oversee the unloading of camels and wagons. She c
aught his eye as they ascended the first leg, and waved cheerfully. It didn’t look like a farewell, but Sal knew it could well be. He might never escape.

  Sal lay down in the dark, his mind filled with foreboding. Staring into the void of the future was worse, in its way, than staring into the black emptiness of the sea. Who knew what would come out at him from the darkness ahead? He didn’t know, but he was working on it, trying to work out what to do next.

  Behind every powerful solution, the Mage Van Haasteren had said, there lies a powerful need.

  His need had never been greater. If there was one thing he had learned—

  “Sal?”

  He stopped in mid-thought, certain that someone had whispered his name. It wasn’t possible, though. The walls were too thick. The door had locked solidly behind him the moment it had closed, and there was no one in the room except him.

  A ghost? he thought, somewhat nervously. That couldn’t be true either—but what else did he expect in the Haunted City?

  “Sal!” The whisper came again, unmistakable this time. Its source was above him. “Sal, it’s me!”

  “Skender?” Sal sat up, eyes bugging at the air vent. Two small fingers were wiggling at him through holes in the metal grille. “What—? How—?”

  “Hang on.” More fingers appeared and curled around the grille. There was a soft click. With a shower of dust, the grille lifted up and away. Skender’s face appeared in its place, dirty but grinning from ear to ear.

  “Surprise!”

  “What are you doing up there?” Sal whispered.

  “Exploring. What else would I be doing?”

  “But—” The response, You could get into trouble, was obviously not going to make a difference. Skender’s exploration of the ancient spaces of the Keep had taken place with a similar lack of concern for the rules. “Aren’t you tired?”

  “Exhausted, but there was no way I could sleep. We’re in the Haunted City, Sal. Think about it!”

  “I am thinking about it.”

  “Too much, probably.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve found a way out yet, have you?”

  “Not yet.” Skender’s eyes gleamed. “Want to help me try?”

  Sal shook his head.

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded, even though saying it betrayed every instinct in his body. “Maybe another night. When we’ve settled in and they won’t be watching us so closely.”

  “Your loss. It’s great up here, Sal. You can go anywhere. Who knows what I’ll find?”

  Sal smiled at the boy’s smudged features. “A lot of dirt, by the look of it.”

  “Pfft.” Skender waved in dismissal. “Okay, I can take a hint. I’ll let you know if I find anything useful.”

  “What about Shilly? Have you found her yet?”

  “She’s a couple of corridors across, out like a light.”

  Sal had known that she wasn’t far away: the part of him that sensed when she was near had been tingling deep in his chest ever since he had been locked in. It was good, though, to hear that Shilly was safe and able to rest. “Has anyone come to see you, to welcome you?”

  “Not a soul. Some reception, eh?”

  “At least the Syndic’s going to let us catch up on our sleep before she does whatever it is she intends to do with us.”

  “Sure. You’ll probably get a last meal as well.” Skender’s grin was undentable. “Lighten up, Sal. And remember what we decided. They think they’ve worked us out. If we give them what they expect to see, we’ll have a better chance of surprising them later on.”

  Sal nodded. This was Shilly’s idea, and he could see the logic in it. The wardens knew only so much about the three of them: that Shilly had shown some interest in learning at the Haunted City; that Skender had stowed away on the caravan to see more of the world; and that Sal was firmly resisting any attempt to take him back to the Strand. The wardens would, therefore, expect Sal to be the troublemaker and Shilly to do as she was told. Skender, Shilly reasoned, wouldn’t be regarded as a threat at all. They could use such assumptions against the wardens if the chance arose.

  A troublemaker, a tourist, and a try-hard. It wasn’t much of an army to take on the might of the Sky Wardens, but it would have to do. If he was going to escape from the clutches of the Syndic and his real father, he had to take every advantage he could.

  “Can I go now?” asked Skender.

  “Sorry. Feel free,” he replied. “Just remember to get some rest. We’ll need to be alert for tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry, Sal. I’ve got plenty of time. We’ve only been here an hour or so.”

  Sal groaned inside. That left the rest of the night ahead. Sleepless, probably.

  “Thanks for dropping in,” he said with a weary smile.

  “My pleasure.” Skender winked as the grille dropped back into place. “It was worth it just to see the look on your face.”

  Skender retreated from the vent and turned back the way he had come. The narrow gaps above the ceilings were cramped and warm, and smelt of the dust of ages. The close proximity of the rooms to each other made noise a constant concern. And the crawlspaces wouldn’t be a good place to hide, either, if he was discovered.

  Still, he decided, it was well worth the effort. After the long and uncomfortable journey south, he was in an entirely new place—one as far away from his home as he could imagine. Who knew what he would see during his nocturnal explorations?

  Slowly and carefully, he peeked into three more rooms. They weren’t lit, and he could hear no sound of breathing. That wasn’t encouraging, but was fairly typical of what he had found thus far. Shilly and Sal’s rooms were the only two inhabited quarters that he had come across. He didn’t let that dampen his enthusiasm, though. Each room held a wealth of potential discoveries; if he didn’t look, he would never find.

  This, he told himself, was the life.

  He crawled at random from vent to vent, never once concerned that he would lose his way. He had memorised every centimetre of the route, just as he had unconsciously memorised the pattern cast by light through the vents around him, the expression on Sal’s face, the smell of the dust in his nose—everything, in fact, that he had seen and sensed that day. The memories crowded his mind like a roomful of people, jostling his thoughts and distracting him from serious contemplation. The only way to be rid of them, he had learned, was to find new things to distract himself with, to prevent the wash of associations that came with each familiar sensation. When every moment he had ever experienced could be recalled as clearly as the present, the weight of the past soon began to overwhelm the brief flicker called “now”.

  Sleep helped. Sometimes after a good, long rest he awoke feeling almost calm, as though his mind had reorganised itself overnight, putting everything back into place and steeling itself against the mad clamour of the day. Mornings like that were to be treasured and encouraged. His memory was always perfect, but there were different ways of remembering, some better than others: memories could come unbidden or in response to a trigger; he could seek them deliberately or let them wash over him, uncontrolled. That was what it boiled down to; or so his father said. He had to learn how to control his gift, or it would become a curse. As well as Stone Mage teachers, there were numerous lunatics and renegades among his ancestors. An only child, he didn’t want the last Van Haasteren to let the side down.

  He was being careful. And when he wasn’t being careful, at least he was having fun. In the past month, he had seen more things than he had in all the years previously. He had seen the full moon hanging frozen over the Nine Stars during the Stone Mage Synod and soon, in just two days, he would see the full moon rise again over the Haunted City, home of the Sky Wardens. He had sailed across the sea in a boat made of bone. Even in his wildest dreams, he had never hoped to see so much: for the rest of his days, the memory of eve
ry sight would be fresh and vivid. Travelling with Sal and Shilly was the adventure of his lifetime, and he knew it. He wasn’t going to miss out on anything.

  Something crunched under his open palm. He looked down and found a fine powder where the brittle bones of a mouse or bird had lain for centuries, perhaps, before he had crushed them. He didn’t flinch; he was well used to such things from his exploration of the ancient spaces of the cliff-city in which he had grown up. It was a small price to pay.

  Two more rooms, also empty. So much for treasure, he thought, his enthusiasm beginning to wane. Perhaps it was time to start heading back to his room. Sal was right about getting some sleep. He could almost feel himself getting tired—if he really tried.

  Halfway to the open vent leading to his room, he stopped. Just within earshot he made out a low mumble of voices. Wondering who could be up so late at night—apart from himself—he slithered in the direction it came from. Two rooms along, a bright, silver light shone up through a vent into the dusty crawlspace. Lying flat on his stomach, he peered carefully down through the vent, but could see only the tops of heads, one pitch black, the other white.

  Two voices floated up to him.

  “—thought they would have contacted us by now,” one was saying. Strong to the point of overbearing and sharp as a whip, it belonged to Radi Mierlo, Sal’s maternal grandmother, the woman who had lied to and manipulated Sal in an effort to get him to return to the Strand. “If, as you say, they wanted us here so badly, why haven’t they given us any sort of welcome?”

  “It’s not us they want,” replied a voice, so thick with bitterness that Skender could picture Shom Behenna’s sneer perfectly. The ex-warden had rarely spoken to them on the caravan journey, but when he did he made no attempt to hide his feelings over the fall from grace he had suffered at Sal’s hands. By allowing himself to be tricked into breaking his vows, Behenna had been publicly humiliated at the Synod a month ago, and was likely to be punished by his former superiors now that he had returned to the Haunted City. “They want the children.”