The Ultimate Stonemage: A Modest Autobiography

by McKenzie, Duncan

  Well, as I have said, Raella pretended to dismiss my words. Since his good opinion meant little to me, I left the place without further comment.

  Now, mark this. A few days later the two armies met in battle outside Chonia. I watched from the hills above, together with many of the citizens of that city. As we sat with our drinks and pies, we saw Tary’s army deliver a furious attack, exactly as I had predicted. Raella’s troops resisted these attacks, then delivered a counterattack, driving straight through the heart of the Indian force to divide it, then soundly defeating each half.

  All around me, folk were saying, “Oh, see how they fight! He is a great strategist, that Raella.” Of course, I smiled at these words, for I knew this great strategist was merely following, to the letter, the precise instructions I had given him. I rebuked my companions then, saying, “If credit is to be apportioned fairly, it must go to me. Why, the battle we are watching conforms so closely to my own plans that I might as well be directing our troops myself.” They did not believe me at first, but when I explained my story to them, they were awestruck to think that the real general in charge of their forces had been sitting with them on the hillside all along.

  A Fourteenth Section of the Eleventh Part

  In Which I Reveal At Last How It Was I Who Won The War

  After the fight was done and Chonia was saved, I decided to stay there for a time, so I might bask in the warmth of victory. Raella stayed there too, and was considered a hero by the townsfolk; but after I spread the word of my involvement in the battle, they thought me a much greater hero, for he had merely pointed to myrmidons and barked commands, whereas I had ventured alone into the heart of the enemy’s camp. This turnabout in public opinion irked Raella bitterly, compounding my satisfaction.

  While I was there, the news started to come in that the Indian armies occupying certain other towns and cities in Veoth and Syria were also on the run. I explained to everyone that I had carefully chosen Chonia as my arena, and my victory there had inevitably led to other victories for us, because Chonia was located near the centre of the Indian vanguard, and to weaken the centre is to pierce the heart.

  As the months passed, it became clear that Indian forces everywhere were withdrawing, and victory was at hand. The townsfolk bought me gifts of food and fine wine, saying, “Ah, Yreth, how right you were. See, the wave of despair you predicted surges through the Indian forces, driving their armies from all our empire’s lands.”

  Well, I took the gifts and thanked them, but I was sorely puzzled. The battle in Chonia was important, to be sure, but was it truly possible that this single action had led to the winning of the war? No, it seemed to me there were even more significant events at work, and I had a strange feeling that, whatever those events were, I had been their cause.

  I asked many of the commanders for their opinions, for by now they were returning from the wars. “What events,” I said, “precipitated the sudden retreat of our enemies?”

  One of them, a ship’s captain, said, “It was the work of our navies, who launched a deadly attack on Maybo, the capital of India, and also upon other towns and cities on the Indian coast. After these attacks, the Indians knew they were no match for us.”

  I said, “What is your evidence for this claim?”

  He said, “Before my return, I talked to some Indian men. They told me what a grievous and demoralizing blow it was to them to discover their greatest cities had been laid waste.”

  Another captain explained to me that, yes, it was the navies that were responsible, but the key victory was the sinking of a certain sacred ship which, according to Indian superstition, brought them good fortune in battle.

  Later, a commander, a shrewd man named Demeth, said to me, “I will tell you the truth of the matter, although it is a great secret. This victory of ours had less to do with our work upon the battlefield, and more with events in the Indian court.”

  I said, “Your words intrigue me. Explain yourself.”

  He said, “No, for this is a great secret, and if I told you, you would think me a traitor.”

  I said, “Perhaps your words would be disagreeable to some, but I for one would rather hear the honest truth than a patriotic lie.”

  He said, “Ah, you are a rare and perceptive fellow, I can see that. Well, then, I will tell you. The truth is that the king of India had already lost much of his will to fight, for many of his commanders had died in the battlefield, and some were very dear to him. The final blow, according to my sources, who are spies working in India, came one night when a dark and sinister figure crept into the palace and took the lives of his two brave sons.”

  I asked, “Who was this assassin?”

  He said, “Oh, some enemy of his, I am sure. Their country is racked from within by such murderous hatreds. The king was so dismayed by the loss that he put an end to his warlike ways.”

  One thing at least was clear to me: all these explanations were typical of the simple-minded gossip one hears upon battlefields everywhere. And yet, phrases spoken by these commanders lit fiery beacons in my mind: a great naval attack upon Indian cities, and dark and sinister figures killing the Indian princes, and the sinking of a sacred ship. I knew there was a nugget of truth within these stories, but each was only part of the story—and it was a story only I might understand fully.

  Let me then share with you my own hypothesis, which, when you consider it fairly, does a more perfect job than these soldiers’ tales of explaining why the Indians so abruptly removed their myrmidons from our lands and made peace with us once again.

  You remember, while I was sailing the Pacific, I had sent a fleet of great ships to lay waste to the barbaric peoples of Poagh. Well, later on I thought about this, and I asked myself, what would have happened if those ships had, through some error in navigation, sailed past Poagh? It would be an easy mistake to make, certainly, for Poagh is a very small island, and could be easily missed. If this happened, where would those powerful ships have sailed?

  The answer to this question is obvious: they would finally arrive at Dranseet, just as I did. Moreover, if they followed the coast west, they would come, after a month or two, to the coastal cities of India, and they would lay waste to those cities believing them to be the islands that had so offended their ruler.

  When I thought it through, I knew this was precisely what had happened, for the logic of it made so much sense. The great ships had sailed all that distance and attacked. They launched ten thousand rockets upon those Indian cities, then they let their thousands of myrmidons loose, killing every man, woman and child in those places.

  Of course, the cities of India called upon their own puny warships to fight these invading giants. Their best efforts, however, were useless against such powerful craft, and, very soon, all those Indian warships lay on the bottom of the harbour, with rocket holes through their hulls.

  Wave upon wave of the giant ships made their attacks, for there were two hundred of them in the whole fleet, you remember, until at last the people of India cried out for mercy.

  “Who is it that unleashes such destruction upon our towns and cities?” they said.

  Then others replied, “Why, who else but our enemies in Cyprus! How strong they are, and how foolish we were to declare war upon them.”

  But it does not end there. If you cast your mind back, you will also remember how, many years earlier, in America, I had given a final order to my Behemoths, telling them to strike at the princes and kings who commanded the enemy armies. The Behemoths, mistaking my instructions, ran from the battlefield and away into the distance.

  In their brutish minds, they reasoned thus: “Yreth is a Cypriot and has asked us to attack the kings and princes of his enemies. By this, he surely means not these armies before us now, but the enemies of his people, the Cypriots. Let us travel hence to Cyprus and see who those enemies might be.” So they fled the battlefield, seeking Cyprus. The j
ourney surely took them many long years, for I fancy no ship would have those brutes as passengers and probably they were obliged to swim across the vast ocean.

  At last, though, the Behemoths completed their great journey, arriving in Cypriot lands. Once there, they quickly understood who were the enemies to our people and they travelled far and wide, seeking out the tents of Indian commanders, nobles and princes all, and killing them without mercy. Then they travelled to India itself, and slew the princes in their royal palace, much to the king’s dismay.

  The description of the “dark and sinister” assassins perfectly matches a Behemoth, for they were exceedingly sinister to behind, and their hides were black, which is certainly a dark colour. Moreover, who but the Behemoths could creep into a heavily guarded palace and murder princes with such ease?

  It is easy to guess what must have happened next. The king of India, beside himself with grief, said, “Enough! I will call back all my myrmidons who are so wrongfully occupying the cities of the Cypriot Empire. Perhaps then these terrible fleets and fearsome black assassin myrmidons, which I believe to be from Cyprus, will cease their attacks upon my lands and my family.”

  But his counsellors, many of whom were surely naval men, just as they are here, said, “No, king. Let us fight on. Our sacred ship will yet bring us victory at sea, and a great naval victory would be a fitting revenge against the Cypriots and their powerful forces.”

  The king agreed, and, in order that the sacred ship should not be sunk, he commanded that it should be sent away from Indian waters and instead travel to the Mediterranean, there to sink a few of the weaker Cypriot craft.

  “The Cypriots will not think to look for it there,” he said, “and besides, all their warships are busy attacking India.”

  I think you will now guess the thrust of my argument. That sacred ship was none other than the Flame, the craft I defeated with my proud Moray. This explained the small size of the Indian ship, for it was an ancient vessel, and warships are built larger today. Also, it is why there were no slaves or myrmidons aboard, for the Indians would not suffer such folk to step upon their holiest ship. Finally, it explained the name of the craft, which, I must confess, had puzzled me from the first, for what does a flame have to do with the sea? Why, nothing, to be sure, but it bears an intimate connection with temples and holiness and all manner of sacred things.

  Well, once the king of India heard his sacred ship was gone, the rope had frayed its final strand. Despairing utterly, he gave the orders for his armies to retreat, and they quickly obeyed. However, when our commanders saw the movement, they did not stop to wonder at what miracle might have brought it about. No, they merely quaffed their ale, saying, “Ho! We are clever fellows indeed! We have outsmarted the Indian armies, and they are retreating in terror before our troops.”

  Now, you may say all this hypothesis is groundless, a mere flight of fancy. However, a few years ago, I overheard a man talking of his travels, and I heard him mention that he had been to the rocky island of Poagh. Excited, I quickly interrupted his conversation and asked him whether the people of Poagh still lived.

  He said, “They live, yes. But it is a barbaric, simple life.”

  I said, “In your time among them, did you hear tales of a terrible attack upon their island, laying waste to their towns and killing most of their number.”

  He said, “No, I heard of no such attack.”

  There you have it, then. It is the proof of my hypothesis, and now you can see why the war came to such a rapid end. It was not the strength of the Cypriot armies which drove off the invaders, but rather the results of my own actions, guided by the hand of God.

  A Fifteenth Section Of The Eleventh Part

  In Which I Describe My Second Triumphant Return To My Homeland And Events Concerning My Treasure

  I returned to Rowel, on foot this time, two months after my spying expedition. When I told everyone about my adventures at the war, they held a great celebration in my honour which lasted for two full weeks and cost me a thousand arrans in food and drink.

  Still, the expenses were nothing to me, for, as near as I could calculate, there was so much gold in my cave I could have spent two hundred arrans a day for the rest of my days, and I would still have enough left over for a grand funeral, and I could have done all this without doing another stroke of work, if I had been of a lazy disposition. As you will know by now, though, I am very active by nature, and easily bored by too much rest, so instead I used my hours productively, working on all manner of imaginative new designs for buildings of all sorts.

  I also made plans for a new house for myself, since none of the houses in Rowel suited my new station in life. The house was to be round, with a high wall around it, and a tall tower in its centre which I intended to use for an observatory. I made meticulous drawings of the building and invented a host of novel features.

  In the meantime, I lived with my father, my brother and his family in the old home, sleeping at night in the bedroom that we boys had occupied when we were young. Thanks to my great wealth, we lived like princes, with all sorts of exotic food and drink. One night it was spicy udder drenched in orange juice, the next it was tower-of-beef, the next it was mariner’s delight, which is to say fresh sea snake wrapped around a fat horsefish.

  The money did not give me any worries either, despite what they say about a rich man’s hair, for I had twelve good myrmidons protecting my fortune in a safe place. I knew I would never be at risk from common thieves, and I imagined I would be wealthy forever.

  What I did not realize was that when you have such vast sums as I had, it is not the common thieves who are the danger. Rather, it is the noble thieves. A common thief, after all, may take your purse, but a noble thief will try to take all you have. And when I say a noble thief, I do not mean an arrogant prig who wears a colourful coat and walks the street with an ivory stick, but the kind who lives in a castle and has a fine title to his name.

  I had not been back in Rowel long before Luro, the new Duke of Oaster, came to visit me. Luro was the only son of the old duke, Huriband. He had been but a child when I worked for the duke, and I barely remembered him (I chiefly had eyes for his older sisters!) but looking at him now I could see he resembled his father in appearance, although his hair was lighter.

  I was honoured by the visit, of course, and I made sure the duke was made very welcome at our house. I insisted he stay with us there for the night, and I gave him my father’s room to sleep in, which is a good large one, with a fine view of the vegetable garden. We placed rabbit cages in there too, for the breeding of rabbits was my father’s livelihood, and he was so proud of his animals he wanted the duke to be able to see them as he lay in bed.

  The duke had brought several advisors with him, and I put them into my brother’s room, which is as good a room as any you will find in a king’s palace, for it had a water basin set right into the wall. The bed is so large that four might easily share it, which meant there was plenty of room for the three of them. As for my brother, he shared my room, with me upon the bed and him on the floor with his wife, while my father slept in the kitchen with the two children.

  I spent great sums of gold on the very best foods for my noble guest. To impress him further, I brought some of my treasure into the house and set it about the dining room. I had nailed a gold chain over the fireplace, and hung an American gold-and-silver shield upon the wall, and I had also scattered coins all over the floor, so the tiles chinked as you walked upon them. Everywhere was gold and jewels, and it looked very lovely, you may be sure.

  The first evening was most cordial, and my father was delighted to have such rich company. Unlike me, you see, he was not used to meeting with noble persons, and he could hardly believe his good fortune in having one as a guest under his own roof.

  The next day, I showed the duke around our neighbourhood, taking him to the places where I used to play as a child, and tellin
g him entertaining stories of my youthful misadventures. I took him up to the caves, too, where all that gold was piled up. Even if you were standing in the town square, you could often see it shining as brightly as the sun itself, with my myrmidons standing bravely around it.

  The duke was impressed by everything he saw, and he talked to me as if we were old friends, although in fact he had been but a young lad when I had worked for his father. Still, all was not quite right to me, and it struck me that, while the duke Luro was very much like the old duke, still there was something about him which did not seem quite so noble.

  In the evening—which is to say, the second evening the duke was with us—we all sat down to dinner together, eating duck and octopus and all manner of good things, and talking about this and that.

  The duke asked me a little about my adventures, and I told the tales as well as I was able, which is to say, exceedingly well. Then he said, “So, then, now you are a man of wealth and power. How do you plan to put your gold to work for the good of all?”

  I said, “What do you mean by that? You may ask anyone in this town and you will find I am charitable enough with my money. All the merchants hereabout have gained business from me.”

  He said, “No, that is not my meaning. Such wealth as you have is not for free spending. Rather it carries with it many responsibilities. It must be used wisely.”

  I said, “Well, I do not think I have ever been one to spend money foolishly: I am always careful to buy only the things I like, and I never purchase things I hate or despise. But perhaps you would like to give me some advice.”