Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy

by Gardner Dozois

  “The fish sees only what’s in the water,” said Lord Brickel. Meaning: The watermages of Mitherhome can’t tell what’s going on deep inside the stone.

  “But when the spring flood rolls loose cobbles down the stream, the fish sees that.” Meaning: What if they tried to repair or remove some of this stone and found it was no longer loose?

  “Living stone doesn’t roll with the flood,” said Lord Brickel. Meaning: Why would anyone repair this hearth when living rock will never need repairing?

  “Well,” said Stokhos, resuming his seat, “a bird like me can tell if the tree is sound before building his nest—but such as I cannot heal a dead tree and bring it back to life.”

  Did that mean that Lord Brickel had leapt past the level of a rockbrother to do work that only stonefathers could do? No wonder Stokhos sounded surprised. A true stonefather was rare; a fathermage was rare in any of the houses of magic. That’s why in Lark’s story of the great battle with the Verylludden, the stonemages had been only cobblefriends and rockbrothers, and had to work together to do what a stonefather could have done alone. There might not have been a stonefather in all the world, or not one close enough to get to Mitherhome in time to save it.

  From things he had heard all his life, he had always believed that magery was a combination of what you were born with, what you learned, and what you earned. The stories of wolfmages that alternately terrified and fascinated the children of Farzibeck talked of how a child would find that dogs were always drawn to him, then his parents would fear he might be a wolfmage, and kept him away from dogs. In the stories, the child always found a wolf pup out in the forest and fed and protected it, and thus gained in power among the wolves, not just because of his inborn ability, but also because he took risks and spent many hours serving and saving a wolfkin. But the stories all implied that a mage could never surpass the level of ability born in him.

  Even if greater power could be earned, how could Lord Brickel have earned it when he was expressly forbidden to serve the stone? Of course, under that circumstance, it might be that any small service he gave could be magnified by the risk. That must be it.

  What surprised Runnel most, however, had nothing to do with Lord Brickel. It was when Stokhos said, “A bird like me can tell if the tree is sound.” To Runnel, this clearly meant that only a rockbrother could sense whether stone was living or not.

  But I can do that.

  The idea of this took his breath away. He was like the wolfmages in the stories. He was like Lark—having a mage’s power without realizing it. He had thought that at most he might be a pebbleson, a person who liked stone but had no power over it. After all, wasn’t he a worshipper of Yeggut, like all his village?

  And how had he ever served stone? How could you serve stone, except to bring it back to life when it was dead? And since that was a thing that only a stonefather could do, how could stonemages earn any increase in power? Yet Lord Brickel had done it.

  Then it dawned on him. If he was indeed a rockbrother, or at least had one of the powers of a rockbrother, then when he came to this house, perhaps the power of two stonemages—one trained and one raw and untrained—combined so that the trained one, Lord Brickel, could do things beyond his ability alone.

  I’m serving here in ways that I hadn’t even guessed, thought Runnel. It made him proud to be useful, not just in the housework but in the magery itself.

  The meal went on, but the conversation shifted to safer subjects—or else the code was more obscure, and Runnel didn’t know how to understand it. No matter—they began to send him out for more ale and finally for a second round of food, which he knew would irritate Sourwell, though Nikwiz never seemed to mind. It was a late night, and when Demwor came home and saw the dinner was still going on, he sent Runnel to bed. “I’ll tend them myself till they finally notice it’s late,” said the steward. “I’ll tell the master myself if I have to—he has much work to do tomorrow.”

  “Can I go along?” asked Runnel.

  “Ebb will be glad of the help in carrying the master’s touchstones.” It was the first Runnel had heard of “touchstones,” so he was all the more eager for morning. He would learn something about what stonemages actually do—he had only realized his own magery just in time to realize that he could profit from the learning.

  As always, Runnel “went to bed” by climbing up to his attic room and sitting in the middle of the floor, practicing controlling his dread of being so far from stone. Tonight he managed it easily, for now he understood why he needed the stone so much and why he feared being in structures that to other people felt safe and solid. Here he would wait until the house was fully quiet, then creep down to the cellar to sleep. It never mattered to him that he got less sleep than anyone. As long as he could sleep with his hand touching the stone of the hearthroot, then he could get his full rest in only a few hours and awaken refreshed long before light. But if he slept away from stone, then his rest was fitful, waking often, and in the morning he felt as though he hadn’t slept at all.

  Because I’m a stonemage!

  He wondered how Lord Brickel managed to sleep. There was no channel of stone from his bedroom down to the earth. The master slept on a wooden bed, which rested on a wooden floor, which rested on wooden beams and joists.

  Runnel lay down on the attic floor and closed his eyes as he listened for the sounds of the house to quiet down.

  He awoke in darkness and silence.

  The floor trembled under him. He sprang to his feet. How had he slept? That had never been possible before on this high wooden floor. But maybe he could do it, now that he knew why he feared being away from stone.

  The things he had learned tonight flooded back into his mind. He felt ridiculous.

  I was even more blind than Lark, he thought. She knew she might be a mage, and refused to believe it. It never even crossed my mind about myself.

  He was hungry to get down to the cellar and feel what Stokhos had felt in the hearthstones. Lord Brickel must have bonded the stones into a living whole during the day yesterday, or surely Runnel would have felt the change the night before. It must have been a great undertaking.

  But Lord Brickel had been out at the dock of Hetterferry most of the day, keeping company with his visitors and greeting Stokhos, who only arrived that afternoon. How could he have done it in the few hours he spent at home?

  Because he was so excited, Runnel found himself being careless and making a bit of noise on the stairs. That was no problem on the way down to the main floor—he could always say he was going out to pee. But then he really would have to do it, and put off going down to the cellar till later. Better not to waken anyone. So he was extra careful going down the rest of the stairs.

  There were still a couple of candles guttering on their sconces on the main floor, but they were nearly gone. To his surprise, going down the cellar steps, there was a light ahead of him. Someone was down there, but by now his feet were visible. He had been seen. So there was nothing for it but to continue, and decide what lie to tell based on who was down there. If it was Demwor, he could tell him that he was looking for him to report to him now, since they’d be busy in the morning.

  It was Lord Brickel himself, holding a candle and pressing the other hand on the hearthroot stones. As soon as he recognized Runnel in the dim light, he set down the candle and beckoned.

  When Runnel was close enough that they could talk in whispers, Brickel took him by the shoulder and brought his lips close to Runnel’s ears.

  “What are you doing to me?” he asked.

  Runnel thought he was asking about the things he told to Demwor. “I never tell him anything that you didn’t used to say in front of him.”

  The hand squeezed harder. “Where did you study?”

  Now Runnel was confused. “I never studied anything, sir.”

  “To do this—I tried to dislodge a stone down here, any of them, an easy thing. Dislodge it, pull it out, push it back in—it’s what I do. Only I ca
n’t. The stones are all of a piece. They’re alive, as Stokhos said. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I know you understand us. I trusted you.”

  No point in pretending now. “It wasn’t alive when I first came down here,” said Runnel.

  “So you can tell which stones are living and which are dead?”

  “I didn’t know that it was magery,” said Runnel. “Nobody told me.”

  “You can’t be that stupid.”

  Runnel grew angry. “I grew up in a village that’s faithful to Yeggut. Who would teach me anything about stone?”

  “It’s not just the hearthstones, it’s the flagstones, too. They underlie the floor with wood, but you bound all the stones together into a continuous sheet of living stone. Do you think they won’t be able to tell? All he has to do is walk down here and feel how they don’t spring back up under his feet.”

  “He” had to mean Demwor. “He sends me down here,” said Runnel.

  “But one day he won’t. You’ll be on another errand, and he’ll come down himself, and he’ll realize what you’ve done. Only he’ll think I bound them together, and I’ll lose my position. And if he realizes that it’s living rock, I’ll lose my life.”

  “But didn’t you do it?” Runnel reached for the hearthstones, then shook his head. “My lord, these hearthstones are no different from the way they were when I got up this morning. I mean yesterday morning.”

  “Why would you have checked them yesterday if you didn’t know something was changing with them?”

  “I didn’t check them,” said Runnel. “I sleep down here.”

  “So you can’t tell if these stones are living rock?”

  Runnel pressed his hand against the stone and deliberately traced the stone inside, to find where it ended…and it didn’t. It kept going down into the earth, in a single column. It never rested on hard-packed earth. All the tiny stones that had once formed a thousand chains down to bedrock were now a single great sweep of stone that grew out of the bedrock and soared through soil till it came out here as hearthstones and flagstone, creased where they had once been separate pieces, but now fused inside, where it was hidden from view.

  “I didn’t…I didn’t look,” said Runnel. “I never noticed a difference. It felt the same every day.”

  “You’ve been sleeping down here?” asked Lord Brickel. “Show me.”

  Runnel lay down where he always did, and pressed his hand against the stone.

  “Aw, Tewstan, what a fool,” said Brickel. “A natural mage sleeps every night with his hands in the stone.”

  “Not in the stone, my lord,” said Runnel.

  “Of course your hand is in the stone, and the stone is in your hand. You’ve been pouring your life into the stone, and the stone has been pouring strength into your body. Look at your face; I should have seen it, it’s half stone already.”

  Runnel touched his hand to his face. It felt like ordinary flesh to him.

  “And Demwor tells me you can carry full water jars without ever stopping to rest, and I don’t even wonder? I deserve whatever happens to me.”

  “Why should anything happen to you, my lord?” asked Runnel.

  “Because I swore an oath that I was nothing but a cobblefriend, and by Tewstan it was the truth. But they’ll never believe that it’s sheer chance that brought a…a stonefather here to my house.”

  “A what?” A thrill went through Runnel. He wasn’t sure if it was fear or joy. Both, probably.

  “What do you think, that cobblefriends and rockbrothers can do this? You slept your way through the stone—of course it joined to the bedrock, to the whole globe of living rock on which the oceans and the continents float. You’re ignorant, you know absolutely nothing, that much is obvious, but you have power. The stone loves you. Don’t you see it? Hasn’t it shown you its love all your life?”

  Runnel thought back to his rock-climbing and realized: The reason I could find cracks and handholds and toeholds where others couldn’t was because the stone opened up for me. Because it loved me.

  And I love the stone. Like the child wolfmage in the story loves the wolf pup. All my life, I’ve loved the feel of it in my hand. I’ve worked with it, built with it, cut with it, climbed it, slept on it when I could. And it never occurred to me that this made me a stonemage.

  “It has,” he said to Lord Brickel. “But I didn’t realize. It was part of being alive, to hold the stone, to climb it.”

  “And you didn’t feel yourself connect with the stone below?”

  “I thought it was my dream.”

  “If you had gone to school in Cyllythu, you’d know. Dreams like that must be told to a master. You would have been known for what you are.”

  “I can’t be a stonefather,” said Runnel. “I’m…Runnel.”

  “Well, you’re not a stonefather. You have the power of one, but you have no skills at all. You don’t even know what you’re doing. You can’t control it. You can’t keep yourself from doing it.”

  “Teach me.”

  “Impossible. Not here. Don’t you think Demwor would notice? No, you’re getting out of here, while I try to take these stones apart one by one.”

  The thought of dividing the rocks again struck Runnel like a blow. “But…it’s alive now.”

  “It shouldn’t be. It wasn’t till you meddled.”

  Now he registered what Lord Brickel had said before. “Where will I go?”

  “To Cyllythu, of course. Go to the temple of Tewstan and tell them what happened here. Stokhos will vouch for the truth of it, and they’ll test you and you’ll be fine, I promise. But you’re getting out of here tonight.”

  “I don’t know the way. And the soldiers of the guard will challenge me.”

  “They won’t see you. Don’t you understand? Just press yourself against the stone walls of the fortress and they’ll never see you.”

  “I’ve never—”

  “I don’t have time to argue. You are getting out of here tonight.”

  “Why can’t I wait for day?”

  “Because if Demwor challenges me, I will betray you, do you understand? It’s the only way to keep him from thinking I did all this. So yes, I’ll tell him the truth about you—that you clearly didn’t know what you were doing, that it was an accident. But do you think they’ll care? A stonefather, here in Hetterferry, at the very base of the Mitherjut.”

  “What will they do?” asked Runnel.

  “What they do to stonemages: drown you, then burn your body to ash and stir it into the living water.”

  “And you’d let them do that to me, just so you don’t lose your job?”

  “Stupid boy, it’s not my job. It’s the only connection the stonefolk still have with the Mitherjut. Even if they don’t kill me, they’ll never let another stonemage into this whole valley. My only hope of keeping trust is to denounce you myself. Now get out of here, out of the house, out of the garden, onto the street, while I take apart the mess you’ve made down here.”

  The “mess” was living stone, and it made Runnel sick at heart to think of it.

  “I can’t go,” he said. “I can’t let you do it.”

  “What?” demanded Lord Brickel.

  “I can’t let you kill the stone.”

  “And yet you will,” said Lord Brickel.

  Brickel laid his hand on a stone and Runnel could feel what he was doing—feel the cracks growing where they had originally been, the stones separating. Dying.

  And without even trying to, Runnel flowed the stone back together again.

  “Tewstan!” whispered Brickel. “I said get out.”

  “And leave the stones to die?”

  “Stop being such a child,” said Lord Brickel. “These stones would gladly die, for the sake of the stonemages someday returning to Mitherjut. I’m not killing them, I’m helping them make their sacrifice. Now go, upstairs, out. We’ve talked for far too long.”

  Runnel tried to make sense of it all. He could
feel the death of the stones under Brickel’s hand; yet he could also understand that it might be necessary. Didn’t cobblefriends work with dead stone all the time? Weren’t streets cobbled with it? And didn’t those dead stones feel warm and good under Runnel’s feet? Dead wasn’t dead, not the way people died. A stone could be cut off, but it could then be put back and joined again to the living rock, and it would live again itself. He must let this happen.

  I’m a stonefather. I must do what’s good for all the stone, the way the packfather in the story willingly died in his clantbody to save the pack.

  He went to the stairs and climbed to the main floor. He owned nothing; there was nothing to take with him but the clothes he wore. And maybe a single obsidian knife from the kitchen.

  Runnel walked quietly across the floor to the back door that led out to the kitchen. When he opened the door, Demwor was standing there.

  “What are you doing up?” asked Demwor.

  “Had to pee,” said Runnel.

  “Where were you?”

  “Asleep,” said Runnel.

  “I went to the attic. You weren’t there. I came out looking to see if you were peeing. I wanted to talk to you about last night. About our guests.”

  “I am peeing.”

  “Where were you when I looked in the attic?”

  Where could he claim to have been that would put him inside the house now, still needing to urinate?

  Runnel raised his voice a little louder as he stepped out onto the stone steps leading down into the garden. “Lord Brickel wanted to talk to me about tomorrow’s work,” he said.

  He pressed his feet into the stone and felt the connection of living rock all the way to the hearthroot where Lord Brickel was working. He found a section that was still alive and pushed it, squeezed it out so it bulged. Surely Lord Brickel would see it and realize it was a warning.

  “He wanted to take me instead of Ebb,” said Runnel, loudly enough that if Lord Brickel would just come up from the cellar, he’d hear. “To work in the city.”

  “You asked him, didn’t you?” said Demwor.

  “Why would I, sir?” asked Runnel. “You already told me I’d bear half the burden of touchstones.”