The Ultimate Stonemage: A Modest Autobiography

by McKenzie, Duncan

  I said, “In that case, it would be my honour and my privilege to give you the use of my wealth, according to the terms you have just stated.”

  Then the queen said, in her blunt way, “Well, there is no point waiting about for it. We must stash this gold in my treasury right away.” And she set her slaves to work collecting up all the gold and placing it into one of the treasury rooms.

  As they worked, I told everyone of how the Duke of Oaster had tried to steal my treasure, and I explained this had been the reason for my angry outburst. They were all shocked at the news, and the queen said the duke was a rogue to behave in such a way to a hero like me.

  She said, “Now you are dealing with me, and I will make sure you get what is rightfully yours.”

  I put this to the test on the spot and asked her when I would receive my additional money for my myrmidons.

  The earl replied for her, showing me a little book filled with numbers, where he had already made a note for the value of my myrmidons. He said, “Do not worry. You may be sure all it will be entered into the accounting, and the figuring will be scrupulous and exact, to the last grotec. Nothing will be forgotten.”

  This put my mind at ease, and the earl and I went off together to see my new apartment, leaving the queen to sift through all my fine gold things.

  It was a magnificent apartment, too. I was so delighted when I saw it that I turned to the earl and made him a gift of my donkeys, for I was done with them in any case, and they were a bother to feed.

  A Sixteenth Section Of The Eleventh Part

  In Which I Describe My Plans For Rebuilding Many Cities And An Injury That Befell Me

  The task of rebuilding which I had chosen for myself was vast in scale—a hundred times larger than any job I had done previously. I knew I would never be able to do all the building alone, so, using my new powers as Queen’s Own Builder, I summoned all the important principal stonemages from all the eastern regions of the Cypriot Empire, and I told them to bring maps of their towns and cities, so they might show me the extent of the damage.

  I spent some weeks talking with these stonemages and working with maps of the various towns and cities I had decided to rebuild, but I soon realized, if I was to do the job properly, I would have to visit these places. So, I packed up my plans, together with a good supply of food and some travelling clothes, and I spent three months touring the eastern regions of our empire, where the Indian armies had done the most damage.

  My tastes had become expensive by now, and I spent a great deal of money during my travels. This worried me not at all, though, because the Earl of Tarphonay was as good as his word and kept a very precise account for me, so whenever I was in need of more money, I had only to send a message to him, and he would promptly have a satchel full of gold delivered to me, wherever I was, by means of a fast runner.

  I made many plans and sketches during those days. With every hour that passed, I thought of another wonderful idea for improving this town or that city, especially when I was travelling on the road between each place. I will describe a few of these now, so you can see how fresh and original my conceptions really were.

  My Ideas for the Improvement of Peasmond:

  I talked to the people of Peasmond, and also to the Earlina of Livy who lives there, and I learned this town is subject to frequent floods, due to its location near the river.

  This set my mind humming, and I considered various ways to hold the water back with improved flood walls and so on. But then I thought, “Why fight nature? It is better for people to grow accustomed to it.” At once, my ideas took a new direction. I decided that all the roads of Peasmond should be dug up, and ditches should be put in their place, so the water might flow there from the river. There would be no streets, but only streams and pools, with every house designed so the water flowed right into it.

  Children born into this environment would quickly become so accustomed to the water they would swim around like fish, holding their breath for long periods, and never fearing the effects of future floods. Furthermore, these people would be most useful in any future war, for they could swim out to the enemy ships and attack them from below.

  As for those residents of Peasmond who were sick, or old, and therefore unable to hold their breath, they could easily get around the town using rowing boats.

  My Ideas for the Improvement of Treedle:

  Treedle’s two great industries are leather and cheese, both of which send unpleasant smells about the town. This is a shame, because in many ways Treedle is a beautiful town, all set in the hills as it is.

  My plan for this place was to mask the odour with the sweet smell of roses, and to this end I made sketches of the houses and other buildings which might be constructed here. Outside the window of each house, I planned to put a large flower box, as big as a wagon and filled with earth. Into this earth would be planted the roses, thanks to whose fragrant blooms it would be possible to open the windows wide and smell the sweet air once more.

  “Yes, very clever,” you will say, “but what about those who must walk upon the street? They will still be subject to the evil odours.”

  For those persons, I had a simple solution, which I designed in my head. It involved taking petals from roses and other fragrant flowers, placing them in a silk pocket, then sewing it shut to make a pouch. This pouch would be tied around the nose and mouth, so those upon the street would think, from the smell of the place, they were in some beautiful garden, even though, in fact, the air on the street would be as foul as ever.

  My Ideas for the Improvement of Savercass:

  If you have been to Savercass, you will surely know its worst failing: the city is so large and contains so many twisting streets that you can hardly walk fifty paces without becoming hopelessly lost.

  My plan was to eliminate this problem entirely by stripping away all the buildings and roads, then building them along a new pattern. The city would have a single road, spiralling inwards, and covering the entire area of the city. In this way, it would be impossible to get lost in the city, for no matter where you were, there would only be two directions you might travel: towards the centre, or towards the exterior.

  To make things even easier, I planned to build a large tower in the centre of the city, so people might see at a glance which way they were travelling. If the tower was to their left, they were travelling outwards; if to their right, inwards.

  My Plans for the Improvement of Beacon:

  I had a wonderful idea for Beacon. I said to myself, “Since the town is called Beacon, I shall build it a beacon—the biggest and brightest in all the world.” As I envisioned it, the beacon would be contained in a great glass bowl as big as a mansion, supported at the junction of three vast leaning towers. The glass bowl would be filled with wood from the nearby forests, then, every night, it would be set alight, so it would shed its warm beams down upon the town as brightly as the sun.

  If you have read that fine philosophical work of Ducambe Aletto’s entitled On the Necessity of Sleep, you will know sleep is induced by the debilitating effects of darkness. Aletto explains that, if the sun were to be in the sky during the night as well as the day, we would all have no need to sleep at all, and, moreover, we would never age.

  My great beacon, then, simulates this state of constant daylight, thereby conferring everlasting life and wakefulness on the fortunate people of Beacon, who would happily work and play all the day long, hardly noticing as one day crept into the next, and the next, and so on.

  Of course, not all my plans were as original as those I have described above, and in such towns as Zoam and Redwall and Dresh-by-Sea, and many others besides, my ideas followed more conventional lines, with rolling walls and fine towers and wide roads. After all, let us never forget that the true aim of building is not to create some vainglorious bauble to please the stonemage, but to serve the real needs of those who must live their lives i
n the place.

  Even so, every one of my drawings, even those I considered relatively ordinary, was met with the utmost astonishment by the nobles of these places, and they all said my designs were the finest they had ever seen.

  I would say, “You realize, of course, these constructions will be very expensive. Just because the queen has chosen me as her own builder does not mean you must accept my designs.”

  But they said, “No, but we will accept them, for this is what we truly wish, whatever your position with the queen might be.” They cared not a flea for the price, either, for my plans were so lovely that thoughts of gold dissolved from their minds, and they thought only of eternal beauty.

  The Earl of Omerlind, whose regions included the towns of Carping and Treedle, said the sketches were more like the work of God than of man.

  Then I said to him, “Perhaps that is because I became an archbishop when I was in America, and, indeed, since the post was never taken from me, I can only say I still hold it today.”

  And he said, “It certainly explains everything. But how did it happen that you gained such a rank in that far-off land?”

  Whereupon, I told him of my adventures, and he said my stories were astonishing in the extreme and must be recorded for future generations.

  Upon thinking this over, I saw he was right. But at the time I was too busy with my plans for buildings, and I did not take my labours in this new direction until recently.

  I was received by more than thirty great nobles, and to see the cordial manner in which they greeted me, you would think I was a great noble myself. Although, artistically speaking, I suppose it was true I possessed a kind of nobility which made me greater in rank than any of my hosts.

  Wherever I went, I would summon all the local stonemages before me and give them words of advice on how the first stages of the reconstruction should be dealt with.

  I said to them, “I am the Queen’s Own Builder now, so you must not build anything, or even draw any plans, until you have first presented the idea to me for my approval. In that way, my own good taste will be reflected upon your entire city.”

  Many of the younger stonemages used to follow me from city to city, watching how I appraised each place, and listening to me lecture about how each place should ideally be laid out. Oh yes, I was a popular fellow in those days, and much admired by all who met me.

  Now, an unfortunate thing happened to me during my travels. I was travelling on my way from Teodrick to the little town of Mian Staff. Since it was just to be a quick visit, I travelled alone, without my usual accompaniment of junior stonemages. It was getting dark on the road, and I knew Mian Staff was still a good few miles on, so I stopped at a little village on the road and went into an inn there.

  That night, I got to talking with a number of men. They saw my fine clothes and asked who I was and where I was from.

  I said, “I am Yreth, the Queen’s Own Builder, and I now live in the palace at Ithron.

  They said, “No, you are joking with us. Prove that you are who you say.”

  I said, “How shall I prove it?”

  Well, they thought about this, and then one of the men, a big farmer, said, “I know. Tell us where the queen comes from. That is to say, tell us who she was before she was queen.”

  I said, “That is easy enough.” Then I told them the story the physician had told to me, that she was a hunter who had poisoned King Bellay after he had married her.

  The farmer said, “Wrong.”

  I said, “What do you mean, wrong?”

  He said, “I have heard the true tale, from a very wise traveller, and if you were really from Ithron, you would have heard it too.” Then he told me the story as he believed it. He said, “The fact is, before Queen Sarla was queen of Cyprus, she was a warrior queen from a far-northern tribe. One day, though, she wandered too far south, and, from a high mountain in the Deyern range, she caught a glimpse of the glittering cities of Cyprus, saying to her followers, ‘I will have those lands for my own.’ Then she marched forward, but on the way she met the mighty Bellay with his armies. He said, ‘Where are you going?’ and she said, ‘I mean to have these lands for my own.’ Then he said to his followers, ‘And I mean to have this woman for my own!’ He did, too, and they were married until he died a hero’s death.”

  Well, I had heard this foolish story before, and I knew very well how to show it up as the nonsense it was.

  I said, “What you say cannot be, for I have talked to travellers who have visited the Deyern Mountains and climbed their peaks, and they say, from these high points, they saw only mountains and forests stretching to the horizon. The cities of Cyprus are simply too far away to be visible from the mountains.”

  He said, “Perhaps those travellers lied to you.”

  I said, “No, for I am an excellent judge of such things as whether a person is lying or telling the truth. Moreover, if you approach the matter in another way, you will realize that, if it were possible to see the cities from the mountains, it would also be possible to see the mountains from the cities. But everybody knows this is not so, and even if you climb the tall towers of Eopan, you will not see the Deyern Mountains, just as you will not see America.”

  Well, he had no answer to that, so it seemed I had proved my point. Just then, though, an old falconer, all in black, spoke to us from across the room.

  He said, “I have been listening to you fine fellows discussing the queen, and I will tell you that you do not even know what it is you are saying.”

  Then the farmer said, “Well, Mild Lestic, if you are so wise, then tell us the truth of the matter.”

  Mild Lestic said, “I will, though you must swear you will keep this tale a secret, for I had to swear the same when the tale was told to me.”

  We all swore we would not tell another soul.

  Then he said, “The truth is that Sarla was a princess, the daughter of King Yreth [after whom I was named, incidentally]. When she was just a tiny baby, a passing eagle spotted her lying upon her bed, and Vush! it swooped down and stole her away. Yet the eagle, breaking with its savage nature—for it is the king of all birds, you know—did not eat the child, but raised her as its own. So, when the king’s family were slaughtered by Bellay, she alone escaped. Later, Sarla swore she would be avenged against King Bellay. And do you know how she did this? Well, I will tell you: she carved a monster from the very rocks of the mountain, and she said to it, ‘Go! Go and kill Bellay.’”

  I said, “Come now! You cannot believe such a tale.”

  He said, “You cannot prove it false!”

  I said, “Indeed I can, for how did the eagle teach Sarla to speak? Moreover, is it not the habit of eagles to toss their young from their nests, in order that they might learn to fly?”

  He said, “You know much about these great birds, for what you say is correct.”

  I said, “Well, then, since Sarla does not have wings, she could not possibly have survived the ordeal. But most of all, if the child was stolen before King Yreth’s family were slaughtered, then why did she harbour such a burning desire for revenge against King Bellay? She could not have known of the slaughter—unless perhaps she was told of it by a passing dove.”

  Then Mild Lestic said, “Yes, perhaps that is how it happened,” for he was such a fool he did not even realize I was making a joke with my comment about the dove.

  Well, then somebody else said we were all wrong, and Queen Sarla was the child of a demon. A woman denied this, saying the queen was not a demon, but a goddess in human form. A young fellow replied that, according to what he had heard, the queen was actually a man in disguise.

  The farmer laughed at this last story and said, “Well, I think we can all be agreed upon the falsehood of that tale, for, no matter how he was disguised, a man could never make himself to be as beautiful as we know the queen to be.”

  I said, “
How do you know she is so beautiful? Have you ever seen her?”

  He said, “Yes, for her portrait is upon the new coins, and she is certainly very lovely to behold.”

  Well, I knew the man who had engraved those coins, and I knew too that he had not even used the queen for a model, but instead had copied an old engraving of Malina the Radiant, who once ruled Pheyos.

  I said, “There is no doubt the lady on the coins is lovely. But I will tell you this: she is as much like Queen Sarla as a butterfly is like a clod of earth.”

  For some reason, this comment of mine, which was no more than a statement of fact, made the farmer very angry, and he struck me a powerful blow across the face with his hand. It came so unexpectedly I was knocked straight to the ground.

  Well, I was not taking any of that, especially with my high station and all, so, the moment I came to my senses, I pulled out my throwing-razor—the old one, not the silver one—and I ran at him, intending to cut his throat, but I was no more than halfway to him when one of his friends, standing by the door, lunged out with a fishing spear, sending its point straight through my right leg, a little below the knee, which brought the fight to an end before it had even really started.

  The conversation in the inn took a new direction then, and, instead of talking about the queen, they were all talking about leg wounds. Everyone gave his or her opinion on how the spear should be removed, for it was the sort with a barbed metal point, and if you pull it back out, it will do even more damage than it did going in. We discussed this for some time, with them all gathered around me in a big circle, as I lay upon the floor with the spear through me.

  At length, it was decided to cut the tip of the spear near the point it entered my leg, so the tip and the piece of the shaft attached to it, could be pushed through to the other side of my leg and then out. This was done, albeit painfully for me, and then they put dandelion leaves on the wound and wrapped bandages around my leg.