The Empire Stone

by Chris Bunch

  Baltit, face wizened from the pain of his wounds torn by the rowing, said, “They’re using magic to move, or else I don’t know aught about sails. Damned things should be stealin’ each other’s wind.” The whip cracked close beside him, and he cramped his mouth shut, pulled harder.

  Slowly the galleys closed on the four ships, and Peirol could see yellow-brown dots on the decks.

  “Gunners to your stations,” Captain Penrith shouted, and the cannoneers scurried. “Load your weapons.”

  Quipus started laughing again. “Now, now we’ll see it, we’ll see the dragon,” and Peirol, wondering what the hells he was talking about, elbowed him to shut him up.

  Quipus laughed on, but quietly, under his breath.

  “Do you have a range, gunner?” Penrith shouted.

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “When you do, take good aim for their rigging, to bring down their masts. I’ll give you the order to fire.”

  Then the four enemy ships, as precisely as if in a regatta, bore to port, toward shore. The land had changed without Peirol being aware. Now there were headlands in sight. Here and there, close in the shallows, Peirol saw what looked like buoys.

  The Sarissans drove hard for land — to beach themselves and flee, Peirol thought. Then he saw them zigging through those buoys, in a dredged channel, toward the wide mouth of a bay. There were shouts from the poop deck, and the sails clattered down. Other commands were shouted to the port and starboard oarmasters.

  “If we miss the channel and strike at this speed,” Baltit muttered, “it’ll rip our keel off, and we’d best hope it’ll be shallow enough for wading.”

  But the Slayer’s master and Penrith made no mistakes, the other galleys falling in line behind, and they were through the channel, land on either side, and the bay opened. It was huge, leagues across, big enough to anchor their fleet and many others beside. Then Peirol caught his breath.

  At the far side of the bay rose a great stone city, black and looming, and it was for this the enemy ships were scudding.

  The oarmasters shouted for more speed, whips thudding on flesh, and the slaves rowed as they never had, but the Sarissans’ ships pulled steadily away. There were docks ahead, but the ships didn’t turn for them, beaching themselves at full sail on the black sand, one ship’s mast cracking, going down with the impact. The sailors jumped overboard, waded ashore, turned back to shout what must be curses.

  “Fire!” Penrith shouted. The main gun boomed, and the ball lofted high, smashed into a stone building on the waterfront without appearing to do any damage.

  The Sarissans chittered, strange language that would’ve sounded better coming from an eagle, and Abbas’s language spell gave no translation. One Sarissan cast a spear that landed many lengths short of the Slayer. Then they ran up city streets and disappeared.

  “Back oars,” Penrith shouted, as the gunners reloaded, and the two leading galleys slowed, then backwatered a dozen yards, sat rolling in the small surf.

  “Here we are, in a fine, fine trap,” Quipus crooned, “for none of the bravos thought the enemy has guns, oh, but they will, they do, great guns, far bigger than any rowboat like us, like us, could carry, and now they’ll rend us like we were toys on a pond.”

  But nothing happened, no cannon were rolled out from hidden arsenals to shatter the galleys. Peirol, looking back at the headlands, saw no sign of forts guarding the gateway to this huge city. The larger ships in the fleet were carefully entering the harbor, spreading out, ready for battle. But none was brought.

  For a very long time, nothing happened. The slaves sat, oars out, waiting. The soldiers stood, weapons ready, waiting. The sailors stood at their posts, waiting. The cannoneers stood, fuses in hand, waiting.

  “Stick about, with yer thumbs up your ass, walking on your elbows, when the enemy’s close about, and men’ll start dying,” Cornovil muttered. “That’s the way I got captured, bein’ on the losin’ end with a lord who wouldn’t shit if his breeches were full.”

  At last, small boats started rowing back and forth between flagships. Lord Kanen came back from a conference aboard one, had his boat brought close aboard the Ocean Spell, shouted, “Volunteers, men! We’ve been picked to scout the city.”

  “Picked,” Baltit said, “or that bastard drew the short twig.”

  “No, no,” Quipus said merrily. “He did really, really volunteer. Men like that do things like that.”

  “Mmmh,” Baltit said. “You’re likely right.”

  “Of course I’m right, right, right, when it comes to important matters like dying. You’ll see, you’ll see, you’ll be with me at the last.”

  Evidently the sailors and soldiers made the same analysis, for there was a distinct shortage of volunteers, except for officers. Aboard the Ocean Spell, Callafo shouted vainly, was forced to detail twenty men, including ten musketeers, from the soldiery. Gangplanks were dropped into the shallows, and men clattered down them, splashed ashore. Callafo paused, saw Peirol.

  “You, dwarf! We’re after the Sarissans’ treasure. You’re to come with us. If you know your gems, your metals, you’ll be rewarded. If not …” He didn’t finish, but followed his men.

  Barnack hurried up, knelt, whispered the unlocking spell. Peirol was bending close, and caught three of the four words — “Toas cugs namde …” — but he missed the final word. He couldn’t guess at it, since the phrase was in no language he’d heard, and Abbas’s language spell gave no assistance. The manacles fell away, and Peirol straightened.

  “Come on, dwarf,” Captain Runo of the guard shouted. Peirol staggered down the gangplank, almost falling, but then he was on land, dry land, wearing no godsdamned chains. He saw some of the ships in the fleet lowering boats filled with armed men.

  “Follow the wizard,” Runo ordered.

  “Could I have some sort of weapon?”

  Runo laughed harshly. “Slaves don’t get weapons, so you’d best stick close to the wizard and hope he’ll defend you if our furry friends start trouble.”

  Peirol grimaced, trotted after Callafo. Other galleys were beaching themselves, more troops landing. Other, bigger ships sailed close inshore, turning so their cannon could broadside the city.

  This is a great city, Peirol thought. Perhaps as big as Sennen. Certainly the buildings I see are as great as anything on Sennen’s wharves, and far taller. But where are the people — the Sarissans? They should be fleeing, and we should be hearing screams, and their soldiers should be trying to drive us off. But there is nothing.

  He shivered.

  The buildings around him appeared of solid stone. He remembered the legends about builders of myth, who would quarry and shape huge stones with magic, use other spells that laid them in place atop one another, so no mortar was needed, and a fingernail wouldn’t fit between the stones. He went to one building, saw, with an odd thankfulness, where mortar had oozed and dried, leaving a good small-finger’s-width between the blocks. The paving stones he walked on were strange, completely smooth. He knelt and touched them, and they were polished, slightly greasy, resilient. He thought, oddly, of bits of meat in aspic.

  “Dwarf!” Callafo shouted. “To me!”

  Peirol scurried, and the columns moved deeper into the city. The streets were wide at first, then narrowed, turning, twisting. The soldiers kept close watch for ambushers. But there was nothing.

  The shops Peirol looked into, if shops they were, had neatly stacked items like none he’d ever seen. Triangular bottles, strangely colored cloth in rounds, not bolts, utensils and tools he couldn’t see the purpose of.

  As the streets curved back and forth, leading deeper into the city, he was reminded of traps the shepherds on his moorlands set when it was time to shear their wily flocks: wide V-shaped lines of piled heather with rocks behind them, so the sheep would amble, unthinkingly along, slightly chivvied and worried about the shouting men and dogs behind, and then realize, too late, they were in the shearing pen.

  Or, he thought, on
the killing floor, as the street opened into a huge square, as big as some towns he’d been in. In its center was an enormous squat building, with strange, yawning portals. They weren’t shaped for men, nor for the Sarissans to enter easily, but were low, slotlike. A strange light gleamed from within.

  The raiders debouched into this square from several avenues and stood looking about, wondering what should next be done.

  Peirol noted round posts, no taller than he was, set in the flat stone of the square at irregular intervals, like posts to hitch horses, oxen, or zebras to.

  He saw the glitter from them, about the time someone shouted. Callafo was one of the first to stride forward, examine them.

  “Dwarf! What of these?”

  Peirol goggled as he came nearer. The posts were made of some crystal, cut and worked like gemstones. But Peirol couldn’t imagine why anyone would use jewels as hitching posts. He tried to figure how many varjas each jewel would be but failed. He knelt, looked deep into the crystal, tried to think of a conventional stone it reminded him of, could not.

  “What would be the value of these?” Callafo demanded.

  “Reshaped into normal configurations … if the stones find worth in the eyes of those who value gems, they are of incalculable value. Or, if they fail to find favor, who knows?”

  Callafo licked his lips greedily.

  “If these monsters put jewels of this value outside, what must be in that building?”

  Peirol gave him a slave’s blank look of stupidity, calculated to enrage an owner without going far enough to merit a beating, and had the pleasure of having Callafo snarl. He stamped toward the nearest entrance as Lord Kanen, at the head of a hundred or so troops, trotted into the square. “There, men,” Kanen called. “There’s their palace, and we’ll all be rich within the hour. After me!”

  He ran forward, ducked through the entrance, his men after him. Peirol noted Callafo hesitating at the entrance. Captain Runo stuck his head out of the building.

  “Sir! M’lord commands you to join him.”

  Callafo looked about, perhaps seeking Peirol, who ducked behind a scatter of soldiers. Callafo hissed annoyance, went inside.

  Peirol suddenly realized there were no more than half a dozen soldiers in the square — the rest had heard Kanen’s call to gold and obeyed, hundreds of them. Peirol had a chance to run. But where? Deeper into the Sarissans’ city, hoping to throw himself on their mercy? Into the desert beyond, and hope for the succor of sand-demons?

  The air seemed suddenly thick, thick and beginning to blur, as if an invisible pot was starting to fill the square with steam. Then came a scream, high, drawn out, as if a woman had made it, but Peirol knew it to come from a dying man’s throat.

  Another scream echoed from the huge building, then the clash of steel against steel, the thud of gunshots and shouts. The square, except for the handful of soldiers, was still empty, and the sound of distant battle rang clear, echoing off the great stones.

  A man wearing ornate armor, waving a discharged pistol, stumbled out a doorway. Peirol knew him not, guessed he was from one of the other galleys or perhaps one of the warships. The man’s face was bleeding, and blood spouted from his left forearm, where his hand had been. The man was babbling in terror and pain. He managed, “Inside! They were waiting, and — ”

  A dark rope whipped out of the doorway, wrapped twice around him, yanked him out of sight. It wasn’t a rope, Peirol realized, but a tentacle, like that of the tiny cuttlefish he so dearly loved sliced in rings and fried in garlic and oil — but a tentacle five times or more the height of a man.

  More screams came, and more soldiers poured like ants out of their drowning hill, out of the doors of the building, a building Peirol thought of, for some unknown reason, as a temple. Some ran, afraid to look back, others backed out, weapons ready. Tentacles came out of the building, took them, pulled them back. Musketeers shot at the tentacles, which seemed impervious to harm.

  Lord Kanen stumbled out of a doorway, a sword in one hand, a pistol in the other. A tentacle looped after him, he shot at it, and it jerked back. Another tentacle came out, lifted, curled, like a snake about to strike. Kanen’s eyes were on it, sword raised, and a second tentacle took him around the waist.

  Kanen slashed, but the arm seemed to feel no pain, and then the upper appendage came down, whipped twice around his helm, and pulled Kanen’s head off. Blood fountained high, and the body was tossed away.

  Peirol saw a sword lying on the cobbles, a loaded pistol nearby, seized them. He was starting to run when Callafo pelted past him.

  “Gods, gods,” he sobbed, dignity and magic gone. “The Sarissans aren’t the rulers, no, others, beyond them, greater ones, we must away … pray, pray to gods I never knew, never dreamed, power, they have all the power, my spells gave nothing, no warning, no clue, empty, empty …”

  Not having the slightest idea what Callafo was babbling about, but not caring, fear keening, Peirol followed, running as hard as he could and cursing, not for the first, not for the hundredth time, his stubby legs. There were other soldiers running with them, and tentacles came out of the shops, out of the windows above, harvesting men as they ran. Peirol ducked under one tentacle, slashed at another, saw the harbor three, no, four blocks away, and there were no more than a handful of men still alive and fleeing.

  A wall opened where there’d been no portal, and Sarissans attacked them. They brandished strange swords whose points curled, one in each hand. One ran at Peirol, and he shot him, flattened as a sword whipped overhead. Peirol rolled to his feet, lunged with the clumsy blade he’d picked up. The sword cut deeply into the tawny one’s chest, and those slit eyes blazed fury, then blanked, and the creature fell, pulling Peirol’s sword away.

  Peirol spun, running as hard as he could for the beach, running past men wounded, men winded. Somehow he passed Callafo, and there were no more than a handful of men left in the street. Peirol heard an agonized screech. He turned, and saw impossibility. The street was becoming liquid, just as aspic will melt in the sun, and Callafo was sinking into the stone, up to his waist.

  “Help me, dwarf! Help me, for the love of the gods!”

  His hand was outstretched, and Peirol could just reach it, and he was stretching for it …

  … the dead face of that nameless girl, slashed to ribbons, floating away, under the galley’s keel … Quipus’s beribboned back, blood runneling down …

  Peirol’s hand jerked back, as if he’d touched fire, and Callafo screamed again, this time as much in rage as panic, and something came up like a great fish through the stone and pulled Callafo down, and there was red spreading across the liquid stone, like blood on water after a shark’s strike.

  Peirol ran on, feeling the stones pull him down, wading, and then he was on solid sand, galleys in front of him and ships lifting their anchors, trying to flee the nightmare.

  Barnack was at the end of the gangway, paying no attention to Peirol, eyes wide in horror at something behind the dwarf. Peirol was past him, up the catwalk and into his station, jumping down onto the bench, pulling with the others as the Ocean Spell’s keel grated off the sand and the ship was afloat.

  Other galleys came free of the land, turned, oars flailing like the legs of frightened waterbugs to get away. Galleys crashed together, careened, spilling slaves, soldiers, sailors, into the bay, and fanged creatures came into the shallows and took them.

  There was open water in front of the Ocean Spell, and far away, leagues away, the bay’s mouth. The other, greater ships in the fleet were putting on full sail, canvas flapping, unfurling, reaching for the gentle wind.

  Peirol looked back, almost screamed at what he saw. The city had become something like a dark sea anemone, tendrils waving, beckoning — but it wasn’t, was still dark stone. But each window, it seemed, had a reaching tentacle, and the stones he thought for an instant were moving, coming toward the water, the city itself in motion. But everything shimmered; the delusion, if that’s what it was,
vanished, and the buildings were still once more, except for those groping, reaching arms.

  The drums were thundering, oarmasters shouting, and Captain Penrith and his mates bellowing, when the Sarissan fleet appeared from nowhere. Not from nowhere, Peirol realized, but from caverns in the low hills, sea caves with entrances cleverly hidden by sand-colored nets with green brush painted on them. The ships were the same strange style as the four they’d chased into this trap, but far larger, as large as the biggest human galleass, with cannon lining their sides. They were on both sides of the human fleet, closing like pinchers, the mouth of the bay unreachable leagues distant. As had the four ships — bait, Peirol now realized — they moved precisely, as if on tracks like mine cars, or moved by some invisible puppeteer.

  Guns boomed, and smoke boiled from the bows of the Sarissan ships. Ranging shots and cannonballs arced through the air, smashed into ships. Men fired back, and here and there an enemy ship was struck and smashed like a toy of light-wood.

  Now Peirol understood that officer’s complaint about too many admirals as squadrons broke away from the fleet, crowding on full sail, trying to reach, like trapped flies, for the mouth of the bottle, not realizing their only hope was unity, fear breaking, tearing them.

  He was pulling at the oar, shouting, and the others on the bench were pulling as well, no need for the whip or even the drum. If they were trapped here, they’d die horribly like the sailors in the city, or maybe worse.

  The great gun just in front of him slammed, and Quipus whooped in pleasure. The gunners reloaded as the two swivel guns cracked. Peirol realized something must be closing on them, but couldn’t, wouldn’t look up, nothing but the iron cleat in his hands, beechwood scraping his knuckles, breath sobbing in, out, with the oar’s sweep. Then he heard a scream, and that forced him to lift his head. The galleys had sped through half of the shambles that’d been a fleet, and the bay’s mouth was in front of them.