Transformations

by Gwyneth Jones, Ann Halam

Genres: YA Fantasy; YA Wizards & Witches

Synopsis

In DAYMAKER, Zanne discovered her powers and the opposing forces of the Covenant and the Daymaker.

Nothing comes easily. With her fledgling magic training, Zanne has discovered that the history of Inland is more complex than she could have ever imagined, and its story contains horrors that could not be imagined.

On her journey, Zanne meets a young girl, Rat. Does this girl's childlike curiosity bely a darker secret? Can Zanne restore Inland to its former glory?

Book two of the DAYMAKER series, by award-winning author Gwyneth Jones writing as Ann Halam, continues Zanne's story and quest to find the truth behind her home. Perfect for fans of EARTHSEA, SHANNARA and THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA.

Release date: August 29, 1990

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

Zanne slept on the bare mountainside. It was early summer and the night was quite warm. The hard rock with its thin quilt of turf and flowers had been an uncomfortable couch when she lay down, but now it seemed as soft as a feather bed. She dreamed that she was sinking into the rock. The centre of her being was pulled inward, as if she were diving into a deep blue pool. Down, down into the mountain. She began to feel herself coming apart, breaking into a stream of bright fragments, flowing through the solid stone …

A shadow crossed the moon. A wild creature howled desolately.

Zanne woke sweating, gasping in fear. She grabbed her staff in one hand, and her pack in the other, and stared around her. There was nothing to be seen, only the moonlight and the bleak, steep slopes rising all around the little hollow where she had made her camp.

She dropped the staff and rubbed her eyes. She must have been having a bad dream to wake up in such a panic, but she couldn’t remember it. The cry she had heard still seemed to linger: but after all this was wilderness. It would be odd if there weren’t any strange noises on a night like this. Hunters or hunted—under the Covenant they were no threat to a human traveller.

Her waggon cloak had sneaked away from under her, collecting in an awkward bundle behind her knees. Perhaps the discomfort had contributed to her dream. She picked it up and climbed to the rim of the hollow, stretching her arms and legs. The whole landscape was clearly visible under a white half-moon: not a house or a tree to be seen, only dim moorland sliced by sudden, inky valleys.

Zanne knew that this appearance was deceptive. There were homesteads hidden in every steep valley, and almost under her feet lay the largest settlement in the mountains. Still, she shivered a little even in the soft, summery air. This was an inhuman sort of country compared to the little green fields and woodlands she had known as a child. It was comforting to remember that it was still Inland. The people of these mountains lived by the power and under the protection of the Covenant, like Zanne herself. She could not really be a stranger here. Zanne sighed. She’d been born with a longing for adventure, but now that she had her wish she often longed to be home again, in her childhood village of Garth, never leave it.

“Of course, of course,” she muttered to herself, huddling her cloak around her. “And if you were in Garth, you’d long to be on the road.”

She went back to her bed, which was no more than a fairly flat piece of turf, and tried to thump her pack into a kinder sort of pillow. She was chilly now, but there was no fuel for what Inlanders called “wildfire” so she didn’t bother to get out her tinderbox. She would not make a fire by magic. She was too close to the settlements: any small shift or holding she made here might alter the balance carefully worked out by the covener of the mountain meeting.

Cold and wide awake, she sat up in the silvery dark, reflecting.

It was four years since Zanne had been made a covener; four years since she had destroyed the great Daymaker in the outlands. She had spent the time between partly at Hillen school, and at the college of Kor, continuing her studies in magic. The other part had been spent in desolate ruined places all around the margins of Inland, following up stories of surviving relics of the past and giving them good death. Now Hillen Coven had sent her to disarm another great maker.

The name of this country was Minith. Somewhere in these mountains a centre of power survived. The thirteen guardians at Hillen could not tell Zanne the exact location. For that she’d have to rely on local knowledge.

The mountain people were an independent lot. On some level, naturally, they were intimately part of the web of magic, giving their consent or refusal to any major shift or holding that was proposed by the meetings of all Inland. But on a day-to-day basis they had little to do with outsiders, apart from some necessary trade. That was their right. Inland was a country made up of many little lands, each holding firmly to its separate ways. Besides, it was from the mines of Minith that Inland got most of its precious small harvest of clean metal. And though some people believed that excessive use of metal was downright uncovenanted—because of the wicked makers of the past—life would be difficult without the stuff. The Minithers deserved respect. If they chose to take it in the form of isolation, nobody was going to argue. So it came about that even Hillen Coven could tell Zanne very little of what she would find here. All she had were some enigmatic warnings. Be diplomatic, she had been told. Walk carefully. Don’t make hasty judgements, and don’t tell everybody your business all at once.

Zanne laughed and shook her head. A few years ago she had been a schoolgirl in awe of Hillen Coven. Now those women were more like friends. They knew their emissary’s faults. It was their tact that made her chuckle: Zanne, please don’t start laying down the law in your usual manner. Try not to offend anyone, or to pick any fights. If that is possible!

Well, she would try not to get into any trouble this time. She had no inclination to lay down the law or pick fights. It would be a sad and lonely job, that was all: to kill the great, marvellous creature that must not be; that could only live in Inland as a sickness and a curse. She wondered what the maker would be like. She knew more than most scholars about the lost past by now, and she’d learned that the powerhouses could take many forms. For the first time she reached out, cautiously, deliberately studying this mountain land with her mind. Where are you? she asked, thinking of the great masses of stone, the unknown crags and peaks stretching all around: and then she remembered her dream, of diving into blue granite, like diving into a pool. It wasn’t a bad dream at all, she thought. How strange. I wonder why I woke so frightened.

She was settling to sleep again when she heard movement. Soft feet trotted around the rim of her hollow. Zanne sat up. The shadowy form was indistinct: a wolf or a wildcat. Something panted. It was not a pleasant sound, but Zanne was ashamed of her earlier panic. She reached into her pack and brought out a sweet biscuit.

“Hello cousin, wild cousin. Do you want to be friends?”

Another long, shuddering cry. The creature was gone.

She was glad she’d seen the four-legged shape and heard its breathing. Otherwise she’d have thought she’d been visited by a ghost. Zanne had met many kinds of wild beast, but never one that made such a miserable noise: like a human voice robbed of words, crying out in hopeless fear and pain … Oh, Zanne, stop being such a baby. Shut up and go to sleep. She pulled the cloak over her head and did her best to obey her own instructions. She would need to have her wits about her tomorrow for her first meeting with the Minithers.

The slack yard was an unattractive place, at least Sirato always thought so. It stood on the mountain side of the farm, walled in on three sides with brick pressed from grey tailings. The fourth wall was the back of the brickyards. Opposite to it was the open gap where the sled track came down from the mine workings, a mountain vale away, straight above Sirato’s home. The burnished cobbles of the track glistened violently in all weathers; sometimes they seemed to shine in the dark. Sirato used to think it was like the tongue of an enormous fierce animal stretching down to lick her up.

As she crept in through the wicket gate from the farmyard the little girl dropped on her knees, covered her face, and gabbled the Covenant promise in a rapid mumble. The covenant is in the minds and heart … Under the Covenant, she finished fervently. Mountain forgive me …

The gritty refuse of the mines, the ‘slack’ or tailings, were poisonous in their raw state. Minith people used them, because everything must be used: making them into hard wearing brick. Every house in Minith was built of the same glittering grey blocks and they were traded all over Inland. But it was only the strength of Minith’s Covenant that stopped the people who worked in the dust from getting ill. But Sirato didn’t have that protection, because she wasn’t supposed to come here. She sneaked along the wall, half-deafened by the noise of the brickyard, into a shed by the sled track gap. This was a big space with a floor of packed rock dust and a high airy roof. It was dark inside when she carefully shut the doors behind her, but she didn’t falter as she slipped between trestles and stacks of old tools. Still, her heart was beating very hard by the time she reached her secret place. There were watchers in the dark. They tormented Siri everywhere, even when she was in her own bed at night. It was worse when she was doing something forbidden.

There was a stack of lumber in front of her corner, a pile of old pit props that hadn’t been used for years and years. The timber was velvety when you touched it, with a coating of dust and cobwebs. Siri brushed by with a murmur of gratitude: she was safe. She crouched on the ground and her fingers found by touch the loose brick in the corner. When she pulled it inwards a little dust fell down with a tiny sound. Light came after the dust so that Siri’s hands suddenly appeared, small and work-hard and glinting with silver. She scraped away a patch of dirt at the base of the wall. There was a cavity underneath. It must have had some purpose once but now it belonged to Siri. She pulled out a parcel of dark oiled cloth, an odd shaped and awkward bundle longer than her arm. Underneath it there was a little wooden box, she took that out too. Inside the box there was a mirror, not a magical one but a simple piece of tradecraft glass with a silvered back. It might well be the only one of its kind in Minith. Siri propped it against the timber stack and looked at her own face. She was eleven years old, she was pretty sure of that; though nobody at Slack Road paid much attention to frivolities like birthdays. She had dark brown hair that grew in a peak in the middle of her forehead, dark eyebrows in perfect semicircles that gave her face a surprised look, and clear brown eyes, the colour of mountain water. Her chin was rather pointed, her skin naturally pale, with red cheeks that showed through the tan of outdoor work.

Siri took down her hair, which was kept severely tucked behind her ears. She pulled it forward around her cheeks and then scraped it back. She didn’t know which was right, no one would tell her.

“Mother?” she whispered.

It was the face of her mother that she saw in the glass. Her father had told her so. He had probably forgotten, but she always remembered. He hardly ever talked about mother: Aunt Lecte didn’t like it. When someone dies, the Covenant has taken them. To go on talking about them was like saying the Covenant did wrong. What’s gone’s gone, it must not be called back … Sirato wished that was the only reason that mother must be forgotten. She was afraid there was more. Mother had been ill for a long time, and people don’t get ill unless the Covenant is angry with them. Frightening, terrible things happen to people who defy the Covenant. She tried not to think about it. In a way she was glad no one would talk. As long as she didn’t know, she didn’t have to hate mother. She touched the glass that held her only friend very gently. Sometimes when she came here she cried and poured out storms of bitterness, but this wasn’t one of those days. It was a day for silently telling mother things and imagining that she listened, gave you a hug and good advice for how to deal with a hard world.

After a while she put the mirror away, feeling quiet and comforted. She unwrapped the oil cloth parcel. Inside there was a violin and a bow, it was a full-sized instrument, rather large for an eleven year old. Sirato sat up straight, cross-legged, and settled the violin in the hollow of her shoulder with an automatic gesture: which she might have seen perhaps when she was a very small child. There was just enough room in the corner for her to move the bow. She tried the strings and twisted the pegs one by one. She didn’t know that she was tuning her instrument, she didn’t even know the names of the notes. She had found the treasure here years ago, and realised that mother must have hidden it before she was so ill she had to stay in her room. Everyone knew Rian Mountainside used to have a fiddle. She had it from her grandmother. The Mountainsides were very wild and shocking people, and therefore of course they didn’t prosper. Rian had been the last of her kind when she came to Slack Road, the Mountainside farm didn’t exist anymore. No one who belonged to Slack Road would play ‘unnatural’ music. Leave it to the wind and the water and the birds in the sky. That’s where What Is put music, anything else is wicked imitation …That was what Aunt Lecte had told her niece, when she asked for music lessons. Luckily she’d managed to ask without revealing that she had found her mother’s fiddle.

The mirror she hadn’t found. She had stolen it, creeping one day into the room that had been mother’s sickroom and was always shut up now. Sirato was a bad girl. She wished she wasn’t, but there was no denying it. She could scarcely remember a day in her life when she hadn’t been in serious trouble over something or other, or else waiting guiltily for some crime to be found out. And here she was right now, defying the Covenant again. It was a shame, a wicked shame, to do things that gave people a chance to say: there goes Rian’s daughter, as bad as the one that’s gone … But she couldn’t help herself. However she struggled she would still come back here, sneaking and hiding. She sighed, and lifted the bow.

Sing, sing lovely wooden shell. Like the wind and like the water, like the wild birds crying on the mountain. Once long ago a roadwalker had come by Slack Road: a young man with a flute and a little drum and a memory full of songs. The Minithers fed him cold charity and sent him on his way. They never welcomed strangers, not even the decent kind. But Sirato remembered. She played all those tunes now, and others that had no names, which she had heard perhaps when she was a tiny baby. And others still, which were hardly tunes at all, that she had made up herself. Time slipped away, her fingers grew cramped on the strings: she didn’t notice.

The noise of the brickyard covered Sirato’s music and almost stopped her from hearing herself. But as always there came a moment when she knew that the song had collapsed and she was just making awful noises. The fiddle lay disconsolately across her lap. Really, she wasn’t breaking the Covenant at all, she thought sourly. No one could call that disgusting row music—natural or unnatural.

The light from the hole in the wall went out. Sirato stopped breathing. Part of it came back and she could see what was blocking the space. It was an eye, a round gleaming eye: the same peat water colour as her own, and fringed in curling dark lashes. She gasped. The fiddle and bow were already behind her back. She had jerked them there instantly. Had the eye seen? It vanished, as silently as it had come. Sirato’s breath hissed like an angry little snake. She shoved the loose brick back into place violently. In pitch darkness with desperate speed and care she wrapped up the precious guilty things, pushed them into the cavity and scooped dirt over them. Frantically her hands smoothed the place, feeling to make sure no fold of oilcloth showed above the ground. She scrambled from behind her lumber stack backwards, her heart thumping in panic and rage.

He wasn’t in the shed. She brushed her clothes down, smoothed her hair and came out into the sunlight with her chin up. The owner of the spying eye was leaning against a pile of empty sleds, smiling infuriatingly. It was her brother Holne. He had the same dark hair and bright eyes but she was absolutely certain he looked nothing like mother.

She glared at him. “Sneak!”

Holne grinned. He was sixteen, not a child anymore but a flores, as people called half-grown young adults in Inland. He ought to have been Siri’s protector and her ally but he wasn’t. He was always teasing and spying and telling tales, and there was no one to stop him. He was Aunt Lecte’s pet.

“Sneak yourself,” he responded cheerfully. “You know this yard’s not meant for little girls.” Holne laughed, showing a lot of bright white teeth. It was easy enough for him. He was never in trouble, no matter how many chores he missed. He never needed a place to hide.

“I hate you.”

She clenched her fists. If she had any magic in her, she would give him a festering rash over his handsome face. She would make him see monsters following him about. But he only laughed again at her helpless fury.

“You ungrateful little Rat. I thought you might like to know: Aunt’s looking for you. She was just about to launch a search. I decided you might even prefer me to find you first.”

Sirato’s face went white under the brown. “Don’t call me that. If you can’t say my whole name call me ‘Siri’—like m-mother used to.”

“What nonsense. You don’t remember mother at all. And if you did, you’d know she used to call you her little Rat. It suits you.”

Sirato glared. It was true that Siri was a name she’d made up for herself. But mother had never called her Rat. That was a foul lie. Without a word she began to hurry to the wicket gate.

Holne easily kept pace. “What do you get up to in there, Rat?” he asked curiously. “Are you nursing a sick cat?”

She felt sick hers. . .