The Empire Stone

by Chris Bunch

  Peirol blinked, but Quipus had disappeared into a world of his own, muttering “shame, shame, shame,” paying no further heed to his oarmate.

  Two things broke Peirol’s curiosity — the Ocean Spell rolled, dipped, and a wave drenched him; and the burly man on the catwalk shouted, “You! Dwarf! Your master wants you!”

  Peirol gaped; the man growled, lifted his whip.

  “He’s new,” Quipus said, suddenly reasonable. “Still learning. Have mercy, Barnack.”

  Barnack growled again, jumped down behind Peirol, went to his chain, lifted it, and whispered a spell. Suddenly the staple sprang open, and Peirol had an instant to vow he’d learn that spell somehow, someday, and then Barnack had the chain in one hand and was half-dragging Peirol to the catwalk. There were two guards there, with ready javelins. They prodded Peirol to the ship’s stern.

  Waiting was a thick-bodied man in elaborately worked armor, who he learned was Captain Penrith. With him stood a man not ten years Peirol’s senior, who also wore armor, but this even more decorative, worked with stars and the signs of the zodiac. This was Callafo the wizard.

  “Kneel,” Barnack ordered, and Peirol obeyed.

  “Stand, dwarf,” the magician said. “Who are you?”

  “Peirol of the Moorlands,” the dwarf said.

  “You claim to be a jeweler?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you any good?”

  “Very, sir. I apprenticed under the master Rozan, whom I am sure you’ve heard of, then I worked in the great city of Sennen, my shop was favored by nobility, and even sorcerers like — ”

  “Enough,” Callafo said. “All slaves have brags.”

  “But mine are true.”

  Barnack lifted his whip.

  “No,” Callafo said. “I’m amused, seeing someone of his size having courage.”

  Peirol thought of saying that was all that seemed left to him, but realized he had spoken as boldly as anyone would allow and just nodded.

  “I sought you for my galley because I believe small people have inordinate luck,” Callafo said. “Also, I wonder if, in time, your talents might not be profitable to me. I might consider allowing you to open a shop on the waterfront, as other artisans are allowed, assuming you show no signs of rebellion, such as that eunuch you slew when you were taken.”

  Peirol saw a bit of future hope. “No, sir. I’m a peaceful man.”

  “We shall see.” Callafo took something from a clip on his armor, touched a stud, and it grew into a wand almost two feet long, black onyx, with lights occasionally flickering its length. “But there is a more important reason I wished discourse with you. When I was casting our sailing spell, I smelled — detected, if you will — signs of other magic about. I traced those signs to you. Do you have the Gift, dwarf?”

  “I do not,” Peirol said, giving Callafo his most honest look, knowing little of Callafo’s concern except he could guess there’d be but one wizard aboard this ship.

  “Perhaps you have an idea why I smelled sorcery about you?”

  Peirol, seeing that the land was a mere haze against the horizon, thought the truth, or at least a version of it, might be best.

  “That is because” — he lowered his voice — “I’m on an errand for a magician. A great, great magician. You might, indeed, wish to engage me in the same quest, rather than for me to waste potential riches for all as a slave.”

  “Seeking what?”

  “Have you heard,” and now Peirol’s voice was a mere whisper, “of the Empire Stone?”

  Whatever reaction he’d expected, Callafo’s was a disappointment. The man roared laughter, loud enough to, Peirol thought, billow the ship’s sails.

  “Great gods,” he said. “You ask me to believe that mages in your part of the world still believe in that foolishness?”

  “We … they do, sir,” Peirol said, a little angrily.

  “Your great, great magician is seeking a chimera, something that could never have existed. Consider this, little man,” Callafo said: “why would the gods allow such a stone to exist, if ever it did, capable of upsetting the order they have given, making a man almost one of them?”

  Peirol could have said he wondered if there were any gods, could have said if there were, why couldn’t they play with men the way cruel boys play with broken-winged sparrows? But again, he held silence.

  Callafo stared, and Peirol, surprised at himself, was able to return that stare.

  “I think,” Callafo said, “you are telling what you believe to be the truth. And no, dwarf, I’ll not unchain you and let you wander away on your fool’s errand. I’ll keep you as an oarsman, perhaps one day a jeweler.

  “Or perhaps one day, one of my greater spells might require a … participant.” Callafo laughed again. “Barnack, return him to his station.”

  • • •

  That evening, after they were fed stew and bread, Peirol, after noting that Quipus slept, chanced asking, “What in hells did he do?”

  He’d expected Baltit, who seemed to know a great deal, to answer, but surprisingly, it was Ostyaks, the man who never spoke: “Lord Quipus fancied artillery. Had himself a company of cannoneers. He was showing off his brass and smoke to the lord who’d hired him, one of the greats of Beshkirs, named Poolvash, with his ladies and retainers, and something went wrong. The gun exploded, killed the lord, two or three of his wives, twenty retainers, and Quipus now pulls an oar. Lucky they didn’t have him drawn and quartered.”

  Ostyaks lapsed into silence, not speaking again for a day.

  • • •

  They wing-crossed the open water between Parasso and the Manoleon Peninsula, then south along it, looking for prey. Four times they sighted sails, and the slaves were put to it, pulling until their hearts thudded in their mouths and the lash gave a harder rhythm than the drums.

  Once Peirol almost fainted, and Barnack’s whip shocked him alive.

  Once they closed on a great galleass, and the guards and oarmasters brought vinegar-soaked sponges for them to taste, and drove them harder, and this time Peirol knew he would die, but the galleass outsailed them and was gone. The guards and oarmasters, bitterly disappointed, prowled the catwalks, whips ready, and no oarsman dared speak or even look at anyone unchained.

  They sailed on, but the seas remained empty, no rich merchantman to seize. Once they raided a village, but their sails must’ve been seen as they approached, for the village was empty but for half a dozen snarling dogs by the time the soldiers splashed ashore. The soldiers killed the dogs, stove in the beached fishing boats, and tried to burn the huts, but mud burns badly, and the only thing that caught fire were the easily replaced thatched roofs.

  • • •

  “One thing we know,” Baltit said one evening, “is a muscle you don’t use, don’t work.”

  Cornovil and Ostyaks said nothing; Quipus nodded wisely and said, “With a light old-fashioned gun, such as a ribaudequin, always make sure the foundry provides two chambers, or refuse to make more than half payment.”

  “That makes sense,” Peirol said. “What you said, Baltit, I meant.”

  “And the brain isn’t any different. So we talk, and then we ask questions, like we were in school. Sooner or later, we might get a chance to … to go on about our own business,” he said, glancing about. “Best we be learning, be stretching our head-muscles.”

  “Yes, yes,” Quipus said, excitedly. “And there’s someone new, someone intelligent, someone to teach.”

  And so it was that Peirol learned about cannoneering, as Quipus gouted knowledge. If the others had already heard about artillery, they said nothing. Quipus quizzed the dwarf after every monologue, seeming to think he was a soldier under his command.

  “Gunner,” Quipus would bark. “Load me this mortar.”

  Obediently, Peirol would reply, often not sure what the terms he was using meant, “First I elevate the muzzle to what degree I would have to perfectly assail the target, swab the barrel with water, dry it
, then, once the piece is made clean, I put the powder in the chamber, and upon the powder I ram down a wad of rope yarn, hay, or whatever, then a turf of earth, cut on purpose, wider than the bore of the piece, just moistened to avoid premature discharge or explosion, and then the granado. Once ready to fire, I set fire to the fuse of the granado, see it burn well, then touch fire to the touchhole …”

  Or:

  “Gunner! With a great gun, commanded to deliver overhead fire, what is your best positioning?”

  “Uh … first, try to set up on high ground, firing over the foot soldiers’ heads, which is safest, giving you protection from a cavalry charge by the enemy, or in front of the infantry if so ordered, or if that is your only chance to strike your target true, or between their brigades.”

  Or:

  “Gunner! Name me the types of guns and the weights of their shot.”

  “A syren, sixty-pound shot; basilisk, forty-eight pounds; a carthoun, also forty-eight pounds; bastard cannon, thirty-six pounds; half carthoun, twenty-four pounds; whole culverin, eighteen pounds; demi culverin, nine pounds; saker … uh … four pounds?”

  “You were guessing! A saker fires an eight- or six-pound shot, depending on whether it is large or small. Begin again!”

  Peirol sometimes found himself dreaming of cannon, of gunpowder, of being able to blow into smithereens various of his enemies, and that was a very satisfying dream for a slave.

  • • •

  The ten galleys were lying to, off a point, hoping to surprise some shipping when the sun came up. The seas were calm, the moon three-quarters. Quipus was the only one on the bench who appeared asleep.

  “So where’re you from?” Baltit asked Peirol.

  “Cenwalk,” Peirol said. “A long ways south. South and west. Beyond, even, the kingdom of Rokelle and its capital of Sennen.”

  “What sorta land is it?” Cornovil wondered.

  “Bleak,” Peirol said. “Dreary.”

  And so it was, long leagues of endless, rolling wasteland or bare crags, dotted here and there with tiny villages or estates. Rain swept the land in sheets, and it seemed there was always a wind. The fortune of the lords who ruled Cenwalk was in sheep, black-faced, canny escape artists who roamed the marshlands and were rounded up twice a year for shearing by the shepherds following them as they wandered.

  “Which your family was?”

  “No. We were tin miners.”

  “Down the hole, and like that?” Cornovil asked. “Slavin’ for the nobles?”

  “No,” Peirol said. “We were free men.”

  “Free?” Ostyaks snorted in disbelief.

  “Didn’t think anybody but sailors was free, and we’re foolin’ ourselves mostly,” Baltit said.

  A tinner could go and come as he wished, dig where and how he liked, according to an ancient charter with the far-distant ruler of Cenwalk. He’d find a promising piece of land, hire one of the roving magicians to cast a divination, and begin digging. Other miners might join him on shares. The landowner would get a share but could not interfere with the mining.

  When a vein was worked out, the tinner and his family would move on. They had their own charter and courts, and the only tax they paid was on the metal.

  Sometimes they would live in a village, more frequently next to the diggings, piling river stones for a rude hut or roofing a ruin with turf, laying heather down for bedding at night, the women and children cutting, drying peat while the men were underground. The tin would be taken to a nearby smelter, and then to a coinage town.

  “Not a bad life,” Baltit allowed.

  Not a bad life? Peirol remembered his father, a drunken bruiser, his eight brothers and sisters, all with normal bodies, his mother, who he remembered perpetually hunched against a blow. Tin men were known for violence and anger, and frequently crossed the line to become highwaymen, robbing and killing a traveler and tipping his corpse into an abandoned, water-filled quarry. Wary, brave men were the only travelers on the moors, moving in groups.

  “How’d your family handle you bein’ what you are?” Ostyaks asked.

  To Peirol’s older brothers and sisters, he was a bit of a pet, an oddity, especially since he was quicker in his mind than they were. But he found, as he grew, he’d as soon be by himself as not, wandering the mist-hung hills, feeling the wind’s sadness against his soul. In the purling creeks, he found pretty pebbles, gifts that pleased his mother and sisters. Later he kept some of the prettiest for himself, discovered he could rough-polish them to a luster with certain kinds of sand, then hang them in rapids and let the water finish the task. Sometimes he pretended he was seeking the Empire Stone.

  His father would growl that Peirol wasn’t from his loins, but a changeling or fathered by an underworld spirit, a knacker. These were evil spirits, about three feet high, with squinting eyes and ear-to-ear mouths, who went about in groups, changing shape, vanishing or changing into black, scampering goats when a tinner came near.

  His mother would protest the canard, and be struck.

  His father seemed to hate Peirol, but for some reason talked to him more than to the other children, telling him tales of mining, underground sprites, the legends of the land, like the Empire Stone and the greatness of Thyone, before the black ships.

  His mother favored him as the youngest and, she said, the prettiest, making sure he learned to read and write.

  As Peirol got older, he began to fear his weird, going underground like his father, candle fixed to the brim of his hat, feeling the rock close about him, his mind being ground away by the drudgery with his pick, until he was no more than the others, a grunting, jostling animal.

  Relief from the barren land and life were the assemblages in the coinage towns, four times a year, when the king’s officers would buy tin, mark it with the royal symbol, and take it away to be rolled and stamped into coins. The biggest of these was the Midsummer Festival, a time of frolic and drunkenness, hurling, cockfighting, wrestling. Merchants would peddle wares, necessities and luxuries.

  Peirol remembered the festival when he was just twelve, having disconsolately realized he probably would grow no taller, when he met one of the Master Jeweler Rozan’s journeymen. The man — slender, young, a bit foppish — had rented a small shop for the festival and had a display of rings, necklaces, torques of gold, silver and precious and semiprecious stones for the staggering tinners to placate their wives and daughters into another dismal season in emptiness.

  Peirol wanted to buy something for his mother but had of course only a few coppers, certainly no silver. He saw a discreet sign — I BUY GEMS — next to a necklace he knew his mother would love, a small diamond glittering at its center, set with other, red stones around it. He thought of his collection of beautiful rocks, knew none were really valuable, but ran back to his family’s tent, pitched just beyond the town walls, and came back with his treasures.

  The youth, whose name was Ty Lanherne, sorted through them with quick fingers, pushing most away, keeping a few. “This green one, now, is a garnet. Not really that valuable, it’s quite soft, but it’s big, which helps, and it can be fashioned into a bauble for a trader’s daughter, far prettier, once it’s been cut and polished, than its price would reflect…. Ah, now this one’s worth a bit of silver, a cat’s-eye. Nice, reddish, which isn’t that common, the eye shows well … looks like you did a careful job of polishing … you can see how clear it is when you hold it up to the light…. It’ll make a nice gem for a man’s ring, or perhaps a pommel for a dress dagger.”

  “I thought I saw something in there, in the heart of the stone, when I found it,” Peirol said proudly. “And I worked as carefully as I could, getting that color-slit, what you just said was a cat’s-eye, to show.”

  “You have a bit of talent,” Lanherne murmured, continuing to finger the bits of rock. “These three are zoite, notice how blue they are, almost like a sapphire … this pink one’s beryl…. Hmm. I’ll give you five pieces of silver for the lot.”

  I
t of course wasn’t enough to buy the necklace, but it was more money than Peirol had ever seen, as much as his father sometimes made at a coinage sale with his tin. He picked out a lesser necklace, gave back the coins.

  He didn’t want to go back out into the drizzle and bluster, back to that crowded tent to wait for his drunken father to stumble in, so he lingered in the shop. Lanherne didn’t seem to mind, answered Peirol’s questions about the various gems.

  “What about those,” Peirol finally asked, pointing to two small diamonds. “Where are those found?”

  “Not around here,” Lanherne said. “But many places. Sometimes deep underground, in veins, they say, called pipes, which I’ve never seen. Some of the biggest pipes are in Osh, and some say to the east. Sometimes diamonds are found in creeks, in streambeds. But you’ll not see them like this, for it takes great skill and art to turn diamonds in their raw form into gems like these.”

  Peirol suddenly blurted, “I could spend my life doing what you’re doing, traveling, handling jewels.”

  “I studied for five years as an apprentice before my master, Rozan, let me accompany him on a selling expedition like this,” Lanherne said. “And it was three more before he trusted me to go on my own. In two, perhaps three more years, I’ll go before my guild, be tested, and maybe then be allowed to call myself a lapidarist.”

  “How did you get into your master’s service?”

  Lanherne grinned like a boy.

  “I bothered a journeyman who was selling stones like I am now when he came to my village until he lost his temper, told me to go away. I followed him, when he left, until he reached Ferfer, which is Rozan’s home. Then I sat on the master’s doorstep for three days, getting kicked when he went in and out. Finally he took me in as an apprentice, sleeping on straw, eating but twice a day, having only ten feast days a year.”

  Peirol thought it sounded far better than the life he had.

  “Let me ask you this, boy. Who’s your master?”