Weight of Stone

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Feared, or abused, the Guardian had said. A Vineart freed from Sin Washer’s Command could control a seaport or empower an army. He could pick and choose who received his spellwines, without fear of reprisal or rebuke.

  Or a man of power might overwhelm a Vineart, take control of his yards by force, his work gone to one man’s whim only, never shared save at another’s direction. A slave, once again.

  Impossible. For nearly two thousand years, unthinkable.

  The structure would break, and chaos would rule.

  Spellvines were creatures of order, pattern. There was a time and a place for everything, a reason for each action, a result from each action. Tested, consistent, known.

  Would chaos destroy the spellvines … or change them once again into something else? What would Vinearts become, in the aftermath?

  Suddenly, the quiet night seemed ominous, not peaceful.

  “Jerzy?”

  Malech’s voice made him start, leaping up from the bench in a reflexive motion. For that instant, he was once again a slave, nameless and disposable, without value.

  “Boy? Jerzy? What is wrong?”

  “I … was startled.” His heart slowing back down to a normal pace, he saw that his master, too, looked as though he had dressed in a hurry, wrapped in a deep green robe with a pattern of vines embroidered along the sleeves and hem. Jerzy noted almost absently that the vine pattern glowed with a faint green light, under the cool white light of the stars. A year ago, he would have been intrigued; two years ago, he would have been awed. Now he recognized it as a variant of Malech’s own spell-lights decanted into the threads, and returned to his master’s question.

  Caught off guard, he asked not the question he had meant to ask, but one that rose from him, unbidden.

  “Master … what is the Guardian?”

  MALECH OPENED HIS mouth to respond, and then looked more closely at his student and closed his mouth, thinking carefully. He called the boy a boy, but in truth Jerzy was a young man—grown and no longer so green. There were things he needed to know.

  Things that needed to be passed on.

  “I spoke to you once of the Iajan foreseer wine, yes?”

  Jerzy nodded, sitting down again as though sensing another lecture. Instead, Malech sat down on the bench next to him and looked up at the stars overhead. Sin Washer’s Pour splashed across the dark blue backdrop, and off to the side was the Great Ship, and the hindquarters of the Bull …

  Aware that he was avoiding the question, he closed his eyes once, and continued speaking.

  “Foreseer wine is a tricky thing. It will show you what is to come, yes, but magic does not speak in human tongues, for all that we use our words to incant our desires into the wines. What is shown must be interpreted, adapted to what is already known, or suspected.

  “I prefer, generally, to let events come as they will, to face them when they arrive, and not worry overmuch over the inevitability of hard times, or rejoice too early for good times. What will, will.” He smiled ruefully, as though remembering something that did not entirely please him. “We can only harvest what grapes have been grown, not those still to come.

  “But my master Josia was of a more … mystical bent, or perhaps more anxious about my place in this world, what role I might play. He paid dear coin for a hand flask of foreseer, and had me drink it all in one long pull.”

  Malech still remembered, vividly, how the smooth, silky liquid had swirled within his mouth, almost as though alive, and then slithered down his throat, leaving a trail of tingling warmth behind.

  And then, how the vision had hit him.

  “I fell to the ground as though felled by one of Mil’ar Cai’s backhand cudgel swings. When I awoke, all I could remember was a wave of red, sticky and slow, washing over me, filling my mouth and lungs with a taste I’d never encountered before—or since. I retained nothing more—save a weight, heavy as stone, on my chest, not weighing me down but lifting me up, whispering to me that the world would need healing.

  “I did not understand the whisper, but the feel of the weight, the shadow that fell over me, remained in my mind, even after the rest of the vision had dimmed and been near-forgotten.

  “Josia took the whisper to mean that I should focus on my healwines, even to the exclusion of the other vines he had cultivated, all his life. He also arranged for me to receive training from the local physick, an old man who had seen more lives come and go from this world than the Old Woman could count.”

  Jerzy made an involuntary warding gesture at the mention of the guide of the dead. It was a silly superstition, as though a hand movement might ward off death’s attention, but he did it anyway, and Malech’s long fingers twitched in a similar fashion.

  “All well and good, but the weight was unexplained, digging at my mind until it was a shadow with me, every day, haunting my steps and crowding my breath. And then Josia fell ill, suddenly, when I was bringing healing spells to a distant village, and it came to me: if Josia had died while I was away—farther away than our own yards—the vintnery needed protection. From what, I was unsure—but the need was urgent in my mind.

  “My kinfolk were stone carvers. I had some memory of them, faint but true, whenever I passed my hands over the stone walls of the House, and it seemed proper, somehow, to create the House Guardian from that same material. Josia and I worked together to craft the spell, his knowledge and my skills, blending carefully, cautiously, to bring life to my work, awareness….

  “I could not do it on my own, could not replicate it now, even if Josia had written down what he did. My share was minor … but when we were finished, the Guardian lived; more, it was linked to the lands, to the House it was carved from, and to every creature that is affiliated with these vines, and lives within this House. It can reach any of us, if we are within The Berengia, and even beyond, as you discovered, although greater waters confuse it. It is loyal the way only stone may be, forever a part of the House, forever bound to its borders, to protect the House and all within it if its master was called away.”

  Malech fell silent, and in the quiet that surrounded them, the cool darkness of the starlit night, he could hear his student breathing quietly beside him, slow and steady, as though he might have fallen asleep.

  In truth, Malech had no idea of the depths of the stone dragon’s connection to the vineyards—or what the Guardian was capable of. He had taken a quiet comfort in that lack of knowing, as though if he did not know, he did not have to worry.

  “All those years, I assumed that the foreseer wine had shown me the coming great death, the rose plague. I was ready for it, prepared as few were, and we lost few souls, compared to other lands that were hit. But now, I wonder.”

  He did not look at Jerzy, but kept his gaze on the great wash of stars that made up Sin Washer’s Pour.

  “I wonder if perhaps it foresaw not me, but you.”

  He let that fall into the air around them, and then reached over to touch Jerzy’s knee, allowing himself this one moment of affection. “Go back to bed, boy. No day will be easier, and I suspect they will only become worse. Best to get rest while we can.”

  He got up, hearing his knees crack with the effort, and shuffled off to his own quarters, leaving the boy sitting there, silent and still.

  Chapter 8

  You should not.

  “Hush,” Jerzy said, shooting an annoyed look over his shoulder at the stone dragon.

  The first day or so after Malech’s revelation, Jerzy had been uneasy around the Guardian, watching it as though it might suddenly do something, or say something, or—in truth, he didn’t know what he thought, or expected. Then one day passed, and another, and Jerzy found himself reaching up to touch the Guardian’s tail as he passed through a doorway where the dragon was perched, just as he always had before, and nothing had really changed.

  The Guardian was special magic. Important. Jerzy had always known that, even if he didn’t know why, or how unique it was. There were more important thi
ngs to take precedence in his thoughts right now. Malech’s words to him lingered in his every action, kept him company when he slept, and ate at his brain until he thought he might go mad.

  “I prefer, generally, to let events come as they will, to face them when they arrive, and not worry overmuch over the inevitability of hard times, or rejoice too early for good times. What will, will.”

  His master considered the vineyard, the House, and the villages surrounding, and only then the rest of the Vin Lands. But Jerzy knew people there. Vineart Giordan had not been a name, but a person. Ao and Mahault, Kaïnam …

  What will, will. The cycle moved forward, one season following the next. But like the wind carrying a storm, like fire unchecked, a bad season could cause the next to fail as well. People starved, if crops failed. People died, if winters were too harsh, or the rainy season too wet. The Guardian warned of chaos, and Master Malech feared the destruction of the world as they knew it …

  If things were to get worse, what was his master waiting for? Jerzy felt the tension grow in him until he could no longer contain it, not without bursting.

  You should not, the dragon repeated, not moving from the wall niche where it had settled. Its sightless stone eyes stared down at Jerzy, gray and unblinking, and at the assortment of flasks and vials spread out on the table in front of him.

  “I have to.”

  Jerzy had woken that morning to the sound of a soft rain on the roof of his bedchamber. Not more hail, just a normal, refreshing rain. There was no need for him to go outside today. No need to throw himself over a horse’s back or into a jolting wagon, no need to get wet and muddy … and nothing for his body to do, no exhaustion to keep the worry at bay.

  Master Malech had already been in his study when Jerzy came down to receive his orders for the day, a smear of ink on his angular face and a crease between his brow that meant, Jerzy knew, that Detta had finally cornered him with the House accounts. The day-to-day running of the House was her domain, but the Vineart still had to place his seal on certain orders, and approve her plans—although Malech had merely nodded in approval when Jerzy told him of his own decision to raise prices.

  Master Malech needed not only to consider what they had in the cellars, but what they would need to craft from this year’s harvest. If men of power were suspicious of one another, there would be a need for more bloodstaunch, of a certainty, and purges. Blended together, cirurgiens used them to ease fevers, but they had to be made fresh each season or else the spellwine faded and was useless.

  It had been that casual mention of blended spells by Master Malech that had given root to the thought Jerzy was now contemplating, and sent him down into the cellar, to his current course.

  The one the Guardian was warning him against.

  “I’m not going to test it on anyone,” Jerzy said in response, defending himself. “I just want to see what it would take.”

  “It” was an incantation that would prevent a hailstorm like the one they’d just had from doing quite so much damage. But it was what such an incantation might mean to a Vineart that had Jerzy fascinated. If you could protect a vine from storm damage, then a major risk would be averted from the early growing season. But more, if it could be used to further protect travelers on the road, caught away from shelter …

  Someone like Mahault, or Ao.

  You should not.

  “I know what Master Malech said about mixing spells.” When a fishing village along the coast had been attacked by a sea creature, months before, Jerzy had been sent with a spellwine to help cure an odd melancholia afflicting villagers in the aftermath. But another creature had attacked while he was delivering the spells, and Jerzy had added his own decantation to the princeling’s counterattack, not truly thinking about what he was doing save that the spell needed to be reinforced.

  He had been right: it had worked, and the beast was defeated. Master Malech had not praised him when Jerzy admitted what he had done, but rather had warned him about the dangers of using spellwines in concert with another, especially without more training.

  This was not that. He was not trying to force two different spells to work at the same time, but to incant them together, to be greater than their individual strengths. He knew how to incant safely, and he knew how to handle both healspells and weatherspells.

  It is not done. You should not.

  Tradition. Habit. Must nots and should nots.

  He sighed, letting the small clay vial of Giordan’s weatherwine rest back in its holder on the table. “That it has not been done does not mean it should not be done. I am not going against any Command, Guardian. No more so than Master Malech was when he sent me to learn from Giordan.”

  The spellwine he was experimenting with was the one he had bought in Tétouan. It was a basic weatherspell, useful for lifting a light wind to fill a sail, or clear away the stench of illness. At worst, he might make a storm in the area slightly worse—or even cause it to lighten up slightly.

  There was no hesitation in his mind. He knew these wines better than anyone else still living; he had worked in their soul, been there when Giordan shared his own blood with the mustus, forcing the stubborn, difficult weathergrapes to accept incantation. He knew what to do, and how to handle them.

  Or at least he thought he did. The worry flitted into his brain and would not leave. Giordan had thought that Jerzy could handle that full-strength spellwine in Aleppan, too, and look what had happened there—he had accidentally called up a full storm where he had meant only to bring a slight rain, and the precious vines had been damaged. Knowing the vines made his touch more powerful, more uncontrollable, not less.

  Jerzy bit his lip. No. He knew more now. He understood what he was trying to do, and what the dangers were. Plus, he was using a spellwine of his own, one he had helped cultivate and harvest. He had pressed the crush and worked the mustus. He could control this.

  The Guardian merely looked at him down that long stone muzzle, and Jerzy could almost see impossible wafts of air rising from its nostrils.

  Some of Jerzy’s confidence deflated. “What else am I to do, Guardian? Malech is busy with cellar work, there is nothing to be done in the fields except wait, and if I sit here and think about what may or may not be happening in the rest of the Lands, I will go mad.”

  The Guardian had no response to that. If Malech’s words in the courtyard were true, if the spelled vision he had been given years ago had not been about the rose plague, but rather the illness they faced now, this creeping fear … then shouldn’t they be doing something? Something more than waiting, and listening, and … more waiting?

  “It keeps my hands and my thoughts occupied,” he said again to the Guardian. The stone figure did not speak again, but curled its long narrow tail around its dog-sized body and rested its head on stone-clawed paws, watching as Jerzy picked up the vial once again. It was not approval, but the Guardian was not stopping him, either.

  Left to his own thoughts, Jerzy acknowledged that there was more to it than he was admitting to the Guardian. That small taste of discovery he’d had with Giordan, the feel of the windspell in his blood, the oddly greenish fruit in his hands, in his mouth, had triggered something inside him, restless as the wind itself. Something that not even the firespells of House Malech could match. What happened on the ship merely proved his suspicion, that those vines had touched him more than should have been possible.

  A slave was sold to the vintnery he was intended for. A Vineart became one with the vines he worked. Those were truths that had never been questioned, never doubted. There had been no reason to doubt them.

  Master Malech was a healer; it was his very nature to make broken things whole. But the spellwines that grew for the House of Malech did not speak so loudly to Jerzy. The healing of flesh, the sparking of purifying fire, those spellwines touched him, gave him satisfaction to craft, yes, but carrying Giordan’s work with him, remembering the moment in the workroom where he had watched the Vineart give a few deli
cate drops of blood to the mustus, to better bind it to his commands, shivered against his spine like the rising wind itself, and made his pulse race like … like the sail belling with a freshening breeze.

  Jerzy should never have touched the windvines, should never have let their leaves brush against his skin. But he had, and he would never be the same. Magic brought slaves to where they belonged … but maybe Mahault was right, and it wasn’t that simple. Maybe, sometimes, there was some other place to be.

  The thought rocked Jerzy back onto his heels, and he paused.

  Tradition, order, they had kept the Lands Vin strong for two thousand years. Vineart Giordan had broken tradition in a handful of ways, and that had gotten him killed, but it also meant that his work had not entirely died with him. Jerzy had no access to his vines … but he had the mustus within him, the smell of the soil, the touch of their leaves and roots. He had heard the whisper of the weathervines, and they knew his name. Tradition tied him to healvines and firevines, as his master and his master’s master worked … but the weathervines had spoken to him, although they were not his, and he could not let the knowledge of them die.

  Jerzy’s head hurt as though he were back under the blazing sun, assaulted by the endless cries of seabirds. His thoughts were too busy; he needed to calm them, to focus on the wines, not things he could not control.

  He breathed in once, letting it go, letting the thoughts come and go, draining from him until his mind was clear and steady once again.

  You are Vineart. The Guardian, neither supporting nor protesting.

  Jerzy lifted the vial of weatherwine and poured it, slowly, into the cup that held an equal amount of heal-all, the most basic—and easily mutable—of Malech’s spellwines. The more specific—melancholia, for example—the more specific and rigid the incantation, the less it would yield to later influences.

  He tried, first, with a vin magica from the cellar, a deep red liquid he had helped craft the season before. It had not yet been given a specific incantation, and so he thought that it might be more malleable. But Giordan’s incanted wine overwhelmed the vina, and the magic went out of them both like water quenching flame, leaving him with an odd-tasting vin ordinaire. Thinking it a matter of blending, the second time he added them together gradually, alternating small doses, but with the same result. It was odd; an alternating or joint pouring seemed the proper way to blend them, just as Malech did for fever purges, but …