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

Chapter 1

"Light on the Sand"

Father and son were on the run when they came to Fundelry, a small, coastal village on the stretch of the Strand known by its ancient name of Gooron. The sun was low in the sky, shining wanly through a spattering of wispy clouds. Kneeling on the front passenger seat, Sal clutched the roll bar with one hand to keep his balance as the buggy bounced along a winding path through the dunes. Its engine grumbled when his father tapped the accelerator; prickly grass and scrub crunched loudly under its wheels. He couldn't hear the sea over the racket as he supposed he should by now.

His father didn't like being this close to the sea and, although Sal didn't know why that was so, some of that nervousness rubbed off on him, too. It was impossible to avoid. Tension showed in the way his father drove. His knuckles were white around the wheel, his movements quick, almost curt: accelerating sharply when a wheel lost traction, then braking just as quickly when a slope turned out to be steeper than expected. His gaze flicked restlessly to the fuel gauge, to the gear lever, to his son, to the scrub whipping by, and to the way ahead, as though he were uncertain about which way he was going.

Why he had brought them so, deep into Sky Warden territory, Sal had no idea.

"How much longer?" Sal asked. The dunes around them were too high to see over, even standing on the seat. If Sal had ever been so close to the sea before, he couldn't remember it.

"I'm not sure. Have you been counting the milestones?"

"Yes. One hundred and thirteen."

"The man in Gliem said less than a hundred. He must've been wrong." Sal's father shrugged. "Still, we should be there by sunset. If it's light, we can have a look around and see what's on offer. Maybe grab something to eat. And then..."

His voice trailed off. Sal knew what usually would have followed: find a room for the night, or for a few nights perhaps; the next day, find a job to help replenish the buggy's alcohol reserves; locate another destination--the next town along the Strand, or even the next region--then move on. The most important thing of all was to stay hidden from the Sky Wardens.

And that was how it normally went as they traveled across the Strand together: they arrived, they stayed briefly and unremarkably, then they left. Only this time, Sal was coming to suspect, was different from the others.

The sandy road doglegged sharply, took them back almost the way they had come. Through a gap between two particularly large dunes, Sal saw the sky as it would appear closer to the horizon, a markedly lighter blue than it was overhead. Gray specks wheeled over something in that new distance. He thought he could hear the harsh cries of birds he had read about but never seen before.

Gulls.
* * * *

The path joined a worn but sealed road before entering town. Its waysigns were faded; clearly, the road saw few travelers. Fundelry promised similar facilities to the thousands of other towns along the Strand, and these included a hostel, a bath house, a school, a fishery, a grain silo and an ironmonger who doubled as a mechanic. No surprises there, apart from the last: engineers of any sort were rare this far from the Interior, where metalworking was common. But that knowledge was welcome; the buggy had clocked its odometer limit many times over and could always use a proper service. The last had been four months and a thousand kilometers away, in Nuud.

They followed the sealed road southward at speed, relishing the relative smoothness of the ancient tarmacadam and the wind sweeping through their hair. Sal whooped, forgetting his uncertainty in the joy of the moment, and his father smiled at the sound. Few ancient roads had survived the ravages of time, and they rarely saw any other motorised transport so close to the coast. Sal and his father were alone on the entire length of this road; it was theirs to enjoy, for the moment.

Then they hit the edge of town and they were forced to slow down, because the road disintegrated immediately, as though an ages-lost machine had run out of tar at that point and never returned to finish the job. With sand once again under their wheels, and acutely conscious of the sound of the motor breaking the sleepy silence, they trundled slowly into town.

The ironmonger-cum-mechanic wasn't far beyond the municipal border. At the familiar sign of crossed spanners, they drew off the road and under the shelter of a low, rusted verandah. With a crunch of gears, the buggy jerked to a halt. Sal's father climbed out and removed his hat in order to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

A dark-skinned man in heavily patched overalls stepped from the shadows under the verandah. Young but careworn, as though he had always endured life rather than reveled in it, he wore a charm of polished brown stones threaded on a thong tied around his neck.

"That's either a Comet or a fair copy," he said, indicating the buggy.

"A copy," Sal's father replied, "but it serves us well enough."

"That's all that matters. You've obviously looked after it." The mechanic strode forward, holding out his hand. "Josip."

"Gershom," said Sal's father, his voice economical, wasting no energy. They shook hands firmly. "This is Sal. Short for Salomon."

"But getting taller by the day, eh? How old are you, boy?"

"Twelve."

"A good age."

Sal nodded politely, fascinated more by the mechanic's charm necklace than by anything he had to say. Like the man's trade, it was an oddity along the Strand, where people used Sky Warden charms made of crystals and feathers instead of stone. Even odder was the fact that Josip didn't have the fair skin of someone from the Interior, as Sal did, to explain the charm's origins. Sal couldn't imagine how Stone Mage lore could have made it so far south.

"Are there rooms near here?" his father asked. "We'll be staying the night."

"See Von. She runs the hostel on the main square. It's not much, but she's reasonable and you look like you could use that."

"Work?"

"Harvest is over, butE" Josip the mechanic thought for a moment. "Come back tomorrow. I'll see what I can rustle up."

Sal's father nodded his thanks and put an arm around Sal and together they headed back to the buggy.

The mechanic's call followed them: "You can leave that in here, if you want." He was pointing at an open shed full of boxes and tools next to the verandah. "I can make space, and you'll keep the keys, of course. It'll be less obvious than parking in the open."

Sal's father hesitated for a second, automatically reluctant to trust a stranger too far. But...

"True," he said. "Thank you."

The mechanic smiled as though they'd bestowed an honor on him, and moved off to find room for the buggy.

Sal studied the town as they walked along the main road, still heading south. It felt the same as all the places he had visited over the years; in some ways, though, it was very different. There was sand everywhere he looked: underfoot, piled in drifts against buildings, filling up corners where it hadn't been swept away. The air smelled strongly of salt. As well as crumbling stone structures rarely more than a single story high, they passed shanties leaning in hollows by the road, as though made of driftwood deposited by a freak storm that might return at any moment to sweep them away again.

Having spent his entire life on the move, Sal quite liked Fundelry's air of impermanence. It made sense to him. Its proximity to the sea, though, was another thing entirely.

Few people came out to watch them pass. He supposed the others were working: fishing, or repairing nets, or teaching children, or doing whatever else the villagers here did this late in the day. The ones he did see were darker in color than his father, whose skin was light brown rather than black, and they were much darker than Sal. The villagers stared openly at them as they passed, making him feel uncomfortable. They stood out as strangers in every place they went, but they rarely encountered such open curiosity.

When they reached the local census building, they stopped to check in. The Strand administrators were as strict about procedure as they were about democracy, and the Sky Wardens imposed stiff penalties on those who failed to declare their movements. The forms Sal's father completed were yellow with age, giving the impression that such formalities were rarely needed here.

"You just passing through?" asked the young woman behind the counter with an air of distrust.

"Maybe." Sal's father's false signature entwined around itself like a snake. "Is there much to see or do around here?"

"No."

"It's lovely weather, anyway."

"It can change overnight."

Sal's father smiled, but said nothing.

"Do you know where you'll be staying?"

"We're looking for a hostel run by someone called 'Von'."

This only seemed to confirm the woman's poor impression of them. "Up the road, on the far side of the main square."

"Thanks." Sal's father made to leave, then stopped as though a thought had just occurred to him. "I don't suppose you know a man named Payat Misseri?"

"Should I?"

"He was an old friend. I heard he passed through here at some time or another."

"If he's not from here, I don't see how you can expect me to have heard of him."

"I thought it was your job to know these things."

She sniffed. "I'm only filling in for Bela. She's gone home."

"Well, maybe we'll come back in the morning."

"We're closed tomorrow."

His smile didn't falter. "Another day, then. Goodbye."