Stone Unturned: A Legend of Ethshar

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Morvash watched her go, then turned and re-entered the house. He shooed aside an inquisitive chair, then paused.

  He was hungry, and the kitchen was just down the passage, but there was no food to be had there. He had not yet had time to stock it, and if Erdrik had left anything edible behind it was long gone, though whether it had been the Wizards’ Guild or rats and other vermin or the house-cleaning sprite that got it, he could not be sure.

  The nearest real market, so far as he knew, was Southmarket, a good half-mile to the south; to the north there was a grand plaza in front of the overlord’s palace, which was a little closer, but that wasn’t a proper market with farmers and fishmongers. The New City did not have a market of its own, nor even a decent selection of inns and taverns; the homeowners here generally had enough money to have their supplies delivered.

  He would definitely need to fill the kitchen with groceries, but he was hungry now. Uncle Gror’s place was only a couple of blocks away. Unpacking and organizing his new home could wait.

  He turned and walked back out the front door, locking it behind him, and headed around the corner to Canal Avenue.

  When he stepped through the dragon gates he found Uncle Gror waiting for him in the forecourt.

  “How did you know I would be coming back?” Morvash asked, after an exchange of greetings.

  “I didn’t,” Gror replied, “but I know I always forget something, so I thought you might, and if you didn’t—well, it’s a lovely day, and I was enjoying the weather.”

  “I forgot food,” Morvash admitted. “I don’t have a thing to eat yet at the new place.”

  “I think I can feed you once more. Come on.” He led the way inside.

  Over dinner, the two men discussed the future. “You’ll still have time to work for the family?” Gror asked.

  “Of course!” Morvash replied. “I told you. Anything you need.”

  “Anything that doesn’t involve violating Guild rules, or killing people you don’t think deserve it.”

  Morvash grinned wryly. “Well, yes. Anything I have no moral or legal problem with. For one thing, Uncle, I’ll still need the money.”

  “So the Guild isn’t paying you to turn these statues back into people?”

  “No.” Morvash shook his head. “The Guild doesn’t care. Officially, anyway. I have the impression that Ithinia thinks it’s a good idea, but that’s speaking for herself, not the Guild. And she thinks there are some serious risks involved.”

  “She’s probably right. After all, someone went to the trouble to turn these people to stone; even if it turns out they aren’t dangerous, the wizards who petrified them might be annoyed at having their magic reversed.”

  Morvash stopped, a morsel of fish halfway to his mouth. “I hadn’t even thought of that,” he said. “I mean, I know some of the victims might not be the nicest people in the World, but I hadn’t thought about the people who changed them.”

  “Well, now you have.”

  “Now I have,” Morvash agreed. “I was already planning to have spells in place to protect me from the victims, but I hadn’t thought about defending against their enemies.”

  “More magical preparations you’ll need, then.”

  “Yes.” Morvash sighed. “This project looks bigger and more complicated all the time. It could be years before I finish it.”

  “Could you hire a helper, perhaps? Would that speed things up?”

  Morvash put the fish in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “The problem there,” he said, “is that I’d need to worry all the time about revealing Guild secrets. That would put too many limits on what a hireling could do for me.”

  “An apprentice, then?”

  “I’m only a journeyman. I can’t take on an apprentice until I’m rated as a master, and that’s going to be at least another three years—the minimum as a journeyman is six years, and I’m only halfway.”

  “And you can’t hire another wizard? A younger journeyman, perhaps?”

  “I don’t know anyone in this city. I could ask around, I suppose—but why would anyone want to sign on for something like that? I can’t pay much, after all. In fact, I’m not sure how I can pay anything.”

  “You said something about wanting someone to test your spells on.”

  “Yes, eventually, but…”

  “Morvash,” his uncle interrupted, “I know you want to do everything nicely, without hurting anyone, or even inconveniencing anyone, but you need to be realistic. You can’t do everything by yourself.”

  “Yes, I know…”

  “I’m buying you a slave,” Gror said. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense. You can use him as your helper, and if you need a test subject, he’ll be there, and you can use your magic to make sure he doesn’t run away or reveal any secrets.”

  “Uncle, I…”

  Gror held up a hand. “I know you don’t like the idea, but remember, people who wind up as slaves are generally in a terrible position to begin with. You’d be keeping him from starving, or being worked to death by a mine owner, or some other horrible fate.”

  That was true enough. Morvash hesitated.

  “I’ll try to find you someone reasonably young and healthy, but don’t expect too much. I won’t have much to choose from, and anyone good-looking, especially a girl, is going to go for more than I’m willing to pay.”

  This was all unfamiliar territory to Morvash; he had never seen a slave auction, had hardly ever seen a slave. There were probably fewer than a hundred in the entire city of Ethshar of the Rocks, most of them condemned criminals, and they were generally confined to the most dangerous and unpleasant jobs, such as reinforcing the sea wall below the Fortress. He understood that here in Ethshar of the Spices they were somewhat more common, but he had yet to encounter any in his brief stay.

  He knew that some wizards did use slaves as test subjects, but he had never liked the idea, and had never thought well of the wizards who resorted to this.

  But it would be useful, and his uncle’s arguments had some substance. And when he was done he could free the slave, along with the restored former statues.

  There was still the question of what this slave would be like. “I don’t know what your choices will be, Uncle, but I’d prefer not to have a violent criminal to worry about.”

  “You’re a wizard; you can handle a mere thug.”

  “Yes, I can, but I would rather not need to.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. But you’ll accept, then?”

  “As long as it doesn’t come out of my pay.”

  “One reason I’m doing this, my boy, is to save you time, so you can devote more of your efforts to our business, rather than this project of yours.”

  “Thank you, Uncle. I think.” With that, he turned his full attention to the grilled fish.

  In the end he stayed the night at Uncle Gror’s rented mansion, ate breakfast there, and then headed for Southmarket to stock his pantry.

  Once the kitchen was fully supplied he once again left Erdrik’s house, bound this time for the Wizards’ Quarter in pursuit of the ingredients he would need for his spells. He also carried the list Ithinia’s agent had given him, so that he could find people who could teach him what he needed to know.

  One of the most useful bits of information he acquired that afternoon had nothing to do with magic; it was simply the existence of the notice boards outside the Arena. He stopped off on the way from the Quarter back to the New City, and read the various advertisements and requests until the fading daylight told him it was time to get home for supper.

  That board, he saw, would be helpful if he needed to hire anyone. He could find laborers if he needed to move any of the statues again, and he could do it without troubling his uncle. He could also find suppliers who would provi
de the ingredients he needed for his spells.

  He had thought that eating alone in the rented house might feel somewhat melancholy, but the animated furnishings prevented that; it was hard to work up a proper gloominess when a warm copper kettle was brushing against his shins, like a cat wanting to be petted, and a sugar bowl was running full-tilt back and forth from one end of the table to the other, in constant danger of sliding off and smashing itself on the floorboards but somehow always catching itself at the last instant and dancing back from the edge. It never even spilled any sugar.

  When he had finished his meal he made his way to the stone-floored workroom, which he had chosen as his laboratory, at least initially. If he got to the point of testing spells that might affect normal stone, like the slabs in the floor, he told himself he would take his work somewhere else—probably upstairs, closer to the statues.

  He set up a journal to record everything he did, and began sorting out possibilities. His preliminary studies had taught him that the most common reversible spell for turning someone to stone was Fendel’s Superior Petrifaction; there were two well-known ways to undo it. One was a spell called Javan’s Restorative, an eighth-order spell that generally returned damaged things to their natural healthy state; Morvash was only a journeyman, and any eighth-order spell was beyond his present abilities. Perhaps if he devoted himself exclusively to working on this single spell he could master it in a year or so.

  The other method was theoretically much, much easier, but in practice almost impossible. Casting Fendel’s Superior Petrifaction required a glass vessel; if the vessel could be found and shattered, that would break the spell on everyone ever enchanted using that particular tool.

  Finding the right cup or goblet or bowl, though, would not be easy—though thinking about it, Morvash wondered whether it might not be easier to find each of those vessels than to master an eighth-order spell. He had never yet succeeded at anything above fifth order, and was only really reliable up to about third order.

  Perhaps Fendel’s Divination could help him undo Fendel’s Petrifaction; the Divination, itself a fifth-order spell, would provide a magical and absolutely truthful answer to any question.

  Whether that answer would be useful was a whole separate issue, though; any question that could be misinterpreted probably would be. Answers might be misleading, or simply unintelligible—many wards or protective spells would cause the Divination’s answer to appear in obscure languages, or awkwardly-sized runes. Even magic not intended to defend against it might cause the Divination to misfire in some way. If the spell was done correctly the answer would always appear, and would always be truthful, but that did not mean it would be readable or helpful.

  Morvash did know another divination, a mere third-order spell, but he was not sure how helpful it would be. The Spell of Omniscient Vision could show him anything, in any place and at any time, but you needed to know precisely when and where you wanted to see. You couldn’t just say, “Show me when this person was turned to stone,” you needed to specify, “Show me the upstairs front room of the fourth house from the north end of the east side of Arena Street, two hours before sunset on the fourteenth day of Icebound, in the Year of Human Speech 5210, looking south from the back corner,” or whatever the location you wanted might be. You would then see a few minutes of images of that time and place—but you would not hear or smell anything; it was vision only. And if your target was dark at the time, well…

  He did not see how that spell was going to help. Fendel’s Divination, though, would be easier to master than Javan’s Restorative.

  Further complicating matters, he could not be sure the same spell had been used on all the victims. Even if it had, even if every one of the thirty-three victims had been enchanted with Fendel’s Superior Petrifaction, tracking down a couple of dozen glass goblets that might be scattered across the World, perhaps in the possession of wizards who did not want their spells reversed, would be challenge worthy of a storybook hero.

  And of course, finding the glass vessels might not be enough. Vindictive wizards had long ago found ways to defend such tools—embedding them deep in blocks of concrete, for example, and then sinking the concrete in the harbor.

  Javan’s Restorative might be difficult, but it was a known difficulty, where locating and breaking the glasses was a mystery that he might never be able to solve. And the Restorative should reverse other petrifaction spells besides Fendel’s, as well. In theory.

  But maybe there was a third way, or a fourth. Maybe there was some low-order spell that would do what he needed. He had heard of something called Lirrim’s Rectification that was supposed to be fairly easy, though he didn’t know any details. That should be investigated.

  There was something called the Spell of Reversal that could undo petrifaction under the right circumstances, but it was far too late for that, even if he knew how to perform it, which he did not; supposedly that one could practically reverse time and undo anything, but only going back half an hour or so, and all the statues had been stone far longer than that. And he had the impression it was a very high-order spell, possibly higher than Javan’s Restorative. But was there some way to alter time itself that would make it effective?

  Or perhaps an animation spell would be better than nothing; that could bring the victims back to life, even if they would still be stone instead of flesh.

  So many possibilities! So many questions! It would help, he thought, if he knew more about who the statues had been, and who had enchanted them, and how, and why. With that in mind, he went upstairs, lamp and notebook in hand, and went through his catalogue of the thirty-two statues, checking it against the collected statues and adding additional notes about every detail he could.

  He hoped he had not missed any other petrified people among Lord Landessin’s collection of sculpture—or at least, none who might be saved. He knew there were petrifaction spells that were completely irreversible, and that anyone enchanted with those was dead, their stone remains no more alive or magical than any pebble on the beach.

  The possibility that there were more victims among Erdrik’s belongings had also occurred to him, but a quick look did not reveal any life-sized statues of humans among the clutter on the ground floor, so he put that aside, at least for the moment.

  Finally, though, he decided there was nothing more he could do that night. He would return to the Wizards’ Quarter in the morning and ask some more specific questions.

  And, he thought, he might talk to a few magicians other than wizards. Ordinarily wizards did not hire other varieties of magician, both as a matter of professional pride and because the Wizards’ Guild did not approve of any sort of mixed magic, but Morvash thought it might be useful to talk to a witch or a theurgist—theurgists were good at healing, which might be applicable somehow, and at obtaining information, which should definitely be useful, while witches could sense things no one else could. It was said that some witches could hear thoughts, and Ithinia had said that some of the statues might still be conscious, so perhaps a witch could communicate with some of the victims and learn more about what had happened to them. That might help him find some of the glass vessels used in the spells that petrified them—assuming they hadn’t been sealed up securely and thrown in the sea.

  He knew the standard wizard’s approach would simply be to study and practice until he could perform Javan’s Restorative, but Morvash hoped to find a faster, more innovative, and frankly, less boring approach. He would try out every idea he had, and see which ones held promise.

  And he would start in the morning, but for now, he decided, he was going to bed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hakin of the Hundred-Foot Field

  8th of Longdays, YS 5231

  From the front Wosten’s shop looked perfectly normal, albeit closed in the middle of the day. One blow of Tarker’s fist broke in the locked door, thou
gh, and when Hakin stepped inside he found the interior of the shop anything but normal. The front room was not too bad, but the room beyond, where Wosten had worked his spells, was a horrific mess.

  The demon had not exaggerated in saying it had ripped out the wizard’s throat. Most of the wizard lay face-down on his workshop floor, but a few pieces and most of his blood were spread across his workbench and the walls. Those were almost lost in the splinters and plaster dust, though; Tarker had obviously come in through the roof on its previous visit. The wreckage somehow made the sight less ghastly.

  The room smelled very strange; Hakin had no idea what the odor was. It was slightly sweet and acrid, but beyond that unlike anything he had ever encountered before. Sunlight and distant birdsong spilled through the gaping hole in the ceiling.

  “Why didn’t you use the door?” Hakin asked.

  “The door bore a protective rune,” Tarker growled. “No one who wished the wizard harm could pass it.”

  “But you just now smashed through it!”

  “I wish him no further harm.”

  “Why didn’t anyone hear anything when you broke in to kill him? It must have made a tremendous crash!”

  “Some heard.”

  “Then why didn’t they do anything?”

  “He was a wizard.”

  Hakin stared at the demon for a moment, then decided that was probably enough of an explanation. He had not had very much experience of wizards, but he supposed it made sense that their neighbors would become accustomed to strange sights and sounds. He looked around the workshop.

  A fat leather-bound book lay open on the workbench; blood was spattered across the pages, but Hakin could still read some of it. He was slightly startled to see that it was written in plain Ethsharitic, and not some arcane language he never saw before.