The Stone Mage & the Sea (Books of the Change Book 1) Page 2

  “What sort of things?”

  In a darkened corner of the window, Sal’s father’s reflection shook its head. Where Sal was all lightness and dark, his father was the pale tan of kangaroo leather. Hair and skin and eyes were the same color, making it hard to tell his age. His father said Sal had inherited his looks from his mother--most especially his eyes, which were many shades of blue mottled with white flecks. But Sal’s father rarely spoke about her. He rarely spoke about anything important, these days.

  Sal wondered if he was referring to the Sky Wardens. The men and women who controlled the Strand seemed as unreal to him as demons or ghosts, and he had had as much actual experience of them. The ones who chose not to live in the Haunted City were always on the move and usually easy to avoid. But unlike demons and ghosts, he knew that Sky Wardens were real. He had seen pictures of them and heard the stories. There had been a couple of close calls. He imagined them to be giants, with robes the same deadly blue as a desert sky. The crystal torcs they wore around their necks flashed like lightning in his mind, and their eyes saw into everything.

  Sal didn’t know that they were, in fact, what his father was talking about, this time. Ever since Gliem, his father had been distracted and concerned, and Sal had worried that he might have done something wrong. But his father wasn’t angry with him; he just seemed worried. The fact that he wouldn’t talk about it only made Sal worry too.

  Another light flickered into life below, and another, and the reflection of his father vanished, replaced by faint hints of movement through the glowing pools. Sal tried to follow them, but could not. He couldn’t even be sure they were there at all.

  Eight lights now burned on the square, and he noticed a handful more scattered through the town. They didn’t banish the night, but they at least pushed it back a few meters. The town felt slightly friendlier for it.

  But there was still the sea, churning away at the edge of his hearing--and a nagging feeling that he was being watched.

  He stepped away from the window, and realized only then that his father had failed to respond to his last comment. Sal turned and saw that the man who called himself Gershom--which meant “exile” in a very ancient tongue--had fallen asleep fully clothed. Clearly no questions would be answered that night. Again.

  Sal turned down the lamp and wished he could silence his own doubts so easily.

  Chapter 2. “The Art in Her Eyes”

  The next morning, after a simple but filling breakfast of salty porridge and bread, Sal’s father returned to the mechanic’s, hoping for work. No mention was made of their conversation of the previous night. Sal did, however, get permission to go exploring.

  “Just be careful,” his father said in the hostel’s hallway.

  “I know, Dad. If there are any Sky Wardens here, I’ll keep well away from them.”

  “Good.” He looked as though he was about to say more, but changed his mind and went out the front door. Sal wasn’t far behind.

  The town was much livelier by mid-morning, with people of all ages out and about to beat the afternoon heat. He could hear them before he even left the hostel: children shouting and laughing; a dog barking a staccato counterpoint in the middle distance, excited by the ruckus; adults talking too quickly for him to follow. Stepping outside was like diving into a completely different world. He was grateful for the shadowy verandah to hide in.

  The square was full of children of all ages; maybe forty in all. Some were playing, while others sat on benches reading from books or talking among themselves. A couple of adults sat to one side, watching as the children went about their activities. Occasionally they intervened, but more often they seemed content merely to observe.

  This was the local version of School, he realized. During break; or maybe School was conducted in the square all the time. As long as the standard syllabus was dealt with, the Sky Wardens didn’t care how each town went about it. Sal had seen Schools with very rigid codes of conduct and classrooms that looked more like prisons; he had seen ones where the teachers and students conversed as equals. He preferred to be taught by his father, who filled in as best he could when they were on the road.

  Watching from the shadows, he knew he should join the students of Fundelry, and could do so at any time he wanted. But his father had given him the day off to settle in; that only happened in towns where they intended to stay longer than a week or two, and was more evidence that this wasn’t an ordinary stop. He didn’t want to waste his chance to find out why they had come to this place.

  Sal turned away and walked along the verandah.

  “Hey!”

  He glanced back over his shoulder. A shock of white caught his eye: a solidly built teenager with white hair and pink skin. An albino. The albino was standing next to a small boy whose nose and ears would have looked more at home on a bilby. The second boy was younger than Sal, and looked nervously at the albino’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey, you!”

  The albino waved his free hand, but instead of replying Sal headed quickly down the side of the hostel, pretending he hadn’t seen.

  Putting the incident behind him, he headed west, parallel to where he knew the beach to be, although it was hidden by dunes on that side; he wasn’t yet ready to face the sea, either. The sun was clear and the air smelled of fish. Gulls whirled above him, lazing on updraughts or swooping for scraps. Their cries competed strongly with the School behind him, producing an odd aural mix of people and birds.

  The sound of human voices grew louder again as he walked. A couple of blocks on he discovered the reason why. There, a long, narrow road served as the town’s market. Stalls and sellers were packed together in rough lines like too many plants crowding for a glimpse of sunlight. Vendors called out and buyers haggled over a constant background noise of clucking chickens and mewing alpacas, while idle browsers picked through the merchandise looking for bargains.

  Sal kept an eye out for the sky-blue clothing worn by the Wardens, but saw none in evidence. Still, he was nervous as he walked through the crowd, admiring wooden carvings, dried fish, different types of grain, herbs and other produce. He didn’t know whether the market was an everyday occurrence or whether he and his father had happened to arrive when it was active. Clearly, though, more than one town was involved. Fundelry possibly served as a gathering place for merchants and customers from neighboring communities as well as locals, with profits from the market supporting several cottage industries apart from fishing.

  But the goods were irrelevant to him. He was more interested in the people. Not only was their skin universally darker than his, but they also had accents different from the ones he was used to inland. That made their cries more difficult to understand. Sometimes he felt they were calling in a completely different language or singing in an ancient tongue--the latter idea supported by the odd snippets of music he heard as he strolled cautiously through the crowd.

  “Jewellry worn by the ancient Sun Line! Drum chili all the way from Yunda! Nets charmed here at half the going rate!”

  The sound of a guitar and small flute playing a duet caught his ear and drew him in search of its source. Music was a novelty in his life. His father owned no instruments and had never encouraged him to learn, but he sought it out when he had the chance. Minstrels sometimes paid for tunes he had memorized from listening to songs in other towns. His memory for melody was good and he could sing well enough to get the idea across.

  He followed the sound to a stall selling tools imported from the Interior. He studied a knife, shining in the center of the display, as he passed. The pommel was crudely fashioned, probably cobbled together from a broken blade and resold as new. Inland, such a poor job would never sell, but finely crafted metal was a novelty along the Strand. A good-looking fake might garner a high price among those who knew no better.

  The music came from behind the stall. Before he could slip between the sta
ll and the tent next door, the occupant of the tent reached out a clawed hand to grab his sleeve.

  “Fortune, son? You look like you could use a good telling.”

  He found himself eye to eye with an ugly old woman. Her hair was bone-white in shocking contrast to her dark skin. Shaking his head, he tried to pull away, but her grip was every bit as strong as her gaze was piercing and her spiel relentless.

  “I have sand, glass, dice and cards. I can do palms and irises as well, and will even look at the bumps on your head if that’s what you want. They’re all the same; it don’t matter which tool I use. When the Change is strong in someone, y’see, it comes out whether you ask it to or not. I’ll lend you some of mine, for a price. Just say the word, and the future will be yours.”

  The stench billowing out of her tent made him gag.

  “What?” she asked, drawing away. “Shark got your tongue?” She cackled. “You’re a quiet one, right enough, and I’d wager you don’t have any money, either. Why am I wasting my time with you? You should be in School, anyway.”

  He thought desperately of his father’s warning not to attract any attention. “I--I’m sorry. I’ll go now, if you let me.”

  The old woman’s fingers didn’t ease their grip. If anything, they tightened, and the hair on Sal’s arms tingled. He felt as though she was looking right into him, under his skin.

  “Yes. You go on your way. I have things to do. And so do you, I wager.” Then she let go of him and pushed him backward. “Aunty Merinda will give you one piece of advice for free: don’t eat Sancho’s pies. Unless you like dune rabbit, of course--which means cat round here.”

  She cackled again and the meat vendor across the street cast her a dirty look.

  Sal backed down the length of the market, away from the old woman’s stall. The music had gone. All he could hear now were the gulls again, squawking over the cries of the humans below, and he felt, for the second time, as though he was being watched.

  He didn’t feel safe at the market after that. He explored the northwest side of town until midday, finding little else of note, until thirst forced him back to the hostel. His father still hadn’t returned--or, if he had, hadn’t left a note with Von. The proprietor of the hostel had a look in her eye that told him he wasn’t welcome to hang around, so he went back out into the streets, this time taking a bottle of water with him.

  He had noticed on his return to the hostel that the square had emptied of older children, and now even the younger ones had disappeared. The earlier ruckus must have been a break, after all. He could hear toddlers laughing, not far away, and he was tempted to join the older kids’ classroom to get out of the heat. When he couldn’t find the class, though, a small part of him was relieved. He had been saved the embarrassment of walking unannounced into a roomful of strangers--a chore he had performed many times before, but never learned to like. The students must have taken the afternoon off, so joining them could wait another day. He wasn’t lonely on his own: he had had years to get used to it.

  He headed east, away from the market this time, along a nondescript road that followed the line of the shore for a while then curved away north, inland. The sea was hidden by a series of high dunes sporting large tufts of grass and bushes. Grains of sand stung him every time the wind blew. The sky above was very blue, with only a few scattered clouds moving quickly from west to east. The scrub-lined road looped around a dozen or so empty-looking houses then joined the main road that led southward into town. He passed several small gardens along the way; the flowers were all either yellow or orange, and there were few trees larger than two or three meters high. A barren graveyard huddled in the lee of a low hill; most of the headstones were weathered or broken and the names were all unfamiliar: Vermeulen, Trowse, Kyriakidis, Bax …

  His puzzlement grew. Nothing he saw marked Fundelry as special; just another Strand town, no different from others he had visited, except that it was as close as he could get to the sea without standing in it. Left with the mystery of why they had come there, he found himself missing the things he was most familiar with: the sound of emptiness and the wind skimming the road; endless plains and the horizon unfolding around him; time spent alone with his father, thinking or telling stories; the earth rolling endlessly beneath him, one way or another.

  Sal decided to turn right at the main road and head north, thinking he might find Josip the mechanic and see what his father was up to. Just before he reached the main road, a head ducked out of sight behind a wall. He half-saw it out of the corner of his eye. Startled, he looked to confirm the impression. There was nothing there, and he almost managed to convince himself that it hadn’t been there at all. A glimpse of brown hair and a dark face--it could have been his eyes playing tricks on him.

  But why, he asked himself, would they do that? They would see a flash of blue, or the glinting of a crystal torc, if he really wanted to scare himself. Still, he had an odd feeling that someone was nearby. It unsettled him, made him nervous. He wasn’t the sort to imagine things.

  As he turned to walk up the hill to Josip’s along the road he and his father had walked the night before, he heard a faint noise very much like a footstep from the way he had just come. It certainly wasn’t his water bottle sloshing. He told himself to keep walking up the hill without looking back. If someone was there, he didn’t want to look guilty or afraid. He just wanted to get away.

  At the census building where his father had filled out the forms, the sound came again. This time he did look back, and someone was definitely there. Too slow for him to miss, they ducked out of sight behind a fence. He walked faster. The hair had been a different color--black, rather than brown as before--but that didn’t matter. Be careful, his father had warned him, and he intended to stay out of whatever trouble he might find himself in.

  The footsteps started up again after the briefest of pauses. He broke into a trot, and the sound of pursuit intensified. He was being chased, and by more than one person. Instead of turning to confront them, he sped up. Within moments he was running with his head down, heartily glad he’d left his pack at the hostel. Even without it he was soon panting for breath and boiling hot from the inside out. Above his gasping, the footsteps chasing him sounded very loud.

  Then, without warning, the footsteps ceased. He looked over his shoulder to see what had happened.

  He ran headlong into something and rebounded as though off a wall. Someone had stepped out in front of him. Big hands pushed him the rest of the way to the ground. He glimpsed white hair before falling on his back. Someone laughed as he scrambled to his knees, spitting sand.

  “Hey there, stone-boy.” The albino loomed over him, an unusual and threatening figure dressed in cut-off shorts and gray cotton smock. He was missing a tooth, the gap visible inside his mouth as he leered down at Sal. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

  “My father--” Sal gasped.

  “What about him?”

  “I was just--”

  “Running to him like a baby?”

  “No, I--”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  The albino picked him up by the shirt-front, then threw him down again. Sal’s bottle of water spilled open, staining the sand gray. Behind him, someone laughed. Great, Sal thought. An audience was all he needed. But there always was one. People like the albino thrived on them.

  “Where you from, stone-boy? This must seem pretty dull compared with your big cities. Maybe we should liven things up for you. Eh? Would you like that?”

  Sal never knew whether to stay quiet or talk. Pleading to be left alone only confirmed that the bullies had the upper hand.

  Halfway to his feet again, he tried to be amiable. “I like it enough as it is, thanks.”

  The albino leaned into his face. “You like it here? Really?”

  “Yes.” Sal was standing now, and dusting himself down without taking his ey
es off his opponent.

  “Then why wouldn’t you talk to me before? Aren’t I posh enough for you? Is that it?”

  “No, of course not--”

  “Good, because we don’t like strangers coming here and telling us they’re better than we are. That makes us annoyed.”

  The albino nodded to someone over Sal’s shoulder, who tripped Sal from behind.

  “Really annoyed.”

  More laughter from the albino’s cronies, one of them a girl. Sal clenched his fists and closed his eyes. A single deep breath, then he would spring to his feet and retaliate as best he could. He’d be pounded into the sand for sure, but at least he would go down fighting.

  “Haven’t you lot got anything better to do?”

  The voice took everyone by surprise. Sal froze on the verge of moving.

  “This is none of your business, old man,” said the albino to someone Sal couldn’t see.

  “I think that’s for me to decide.”

  “I think you should keep moving and let us get on with what we’re doing.”

  “Do you think he agrees?”

  Sal didn’t dare look up but knew the man was talking about him.

  The albino’s voice was thick with venom. “I think he knows when to keep quiet.”

  “I see. Well, perhaps we should ask the Selector, see what she thinks. I bet she won’t take kindly to reports of bullying, or dodging chores.”

  “You wouldn’t dare--”

  “Bet your life on it?”

  It was the albino’s turn to back down, and Sal could tell he hated it from the snarl in his voice.

  “Fine. Stick up for your own kind.”

  “How ironic coming from you. Your skin is paler than his.”

  The albino drew breath sharply. “I’m warning you, old man--”

  “You don’t frighten me, boy. And your dad doesn’t frighten me either. Do send my regards next time you see him, won’t you?”