The Empire Stone

by Chris Bunch

  He hastily stuffed the Stone in the burlap sack, wrapping it in the toweling he’d brought. Peirol took rope out of the sack, ran it through the railing. He sheathed his sword, shouldered the sack, then looped the doubled rope over his shoulder, down his back, up between his legs and over one thigh. Then he began walking, backward, down the face of the tower, moving slowly. He’d seen men try to go down fast, seen them slip and fall to their deaths.

  Simple, simple, my gods, how simple this was …

  A shout: “Hey! Look! Up there!”

  Another shout: “Son of a bitch! That’s him!”

  He saw his shadow, as lanterns and torches came to life. There was a bang, and a musket ball whined off the stone three feet away. Another musket fired, and the ball went who knows where.

  “For the love of the gods, shoot him down!”

  Peirol knew that voice for Baron Agar. A volley rattled, and balls sang around him. He felt pain flash in his side, almost let go of the rope, knowing he’d been shot, then realized it was a bit of stone, flung off by a ricochet.

  There was nothing else but to keep moving downward. His foot found one of the spikes he’d driven in, then the next one. Quite methodically he pulled the rope down from the rail above, redoubled it over the upper peg, went on. At the last peg, he decided, he’d turn, chance a jump down into them, and hopefully be able to break through the melee and escape. Or at least take some with him, starting with Baron Agar.

  Then the great noise came, a groaning, a rumbling, and the tower swayed. He swung free for an instant, back, forth, almost fell. He recovered, though the tower still shook, and the rumbling ground at his soul. Someone screamed, and Peirol looked down. It was only thirty feet to the cobbles, but they were moving, as if they weren’t stone but seawater. The tower itself was whipping back and forth as the earthquake tore at Restormel.

  A roaring came, and the ground parted, a gouge running across the square, almost swallowing two running men. Peirol slid down to the bitter end of the rope, jumped, landed in the cleft — soft muck — as the world shook around him. The night air shimmered, moving, as the buildings around him swayed. The man who’d screamed stared blankly at Peirol, then began whimpering, while the ground tossed, swayed.

  Peirol saw the tower shatter and the stones cascade down, and all his mind could wonder was, Did I cause this, did my taking the Stone bring this about, or was there other magic? Are the gods laughing at their new game?

  20

  OF SEA WAVES AND RUIN

  Peirol rolled close to the tower’s base, and the stones fell around him. He heard a scream, cut off in the middle, then nothing. Deafened by the shock, ears ringing, he stumbled to his feet, ground still shaking. He wanted to cry out to the gods for it to stop, for the solid earth to be still, not roll like ocean waves, for this was madness. The stars above seemed to be moving. Then everything stopped. And the screams began.

  Peirol peered through the haze at the tower stones littering the square, buildings lying askew, beams, furniture everywhere. The city below was dark, and then flames began flickering here, there. The night was very bright, without a cloud, and he looked around dumbly.

  Over there, along the hillcrest, was the royal palace he’d looked into with the Empire Stone. Or, rather, where the palace had been. Its stones had poured down the steep hill, crushing buildings as they went. It was as if a child had built the huge palace of pasteboard, then crumpled it in boredom.

  He came back to himself a bit, realizing that the Stone was still safe in the burlap sack on his back. He hastily pulled his sword, sheathed it across his back, struck flint and lit the slow matches for his two pistols, slid the covers back on, and stuffed the weapons into his belt.

  Another shock came, this one shorter but more violent. Peirol fought for his footing, stumbled, went down. As he got up, the ground across the river rippled, and he saw the high tenements totter and crumble in silence. A moment later, the smash of their collapse washed over him.

  A uniformed man, an officer by the gilt on his armor, stumbled toward him, sword in hand. Peirol went on guard, but the man was no threat. He was sobbing as if he’d lost his closest, and brokenly muttering, “What do we do, what do we do, what do we do?”

  Peirol shook him with his free hand, and the man fell silent, stood swaying.

  “There are fires,” Peirol shouted. The officer nodded. “Are there fire companies?” Again, a nod. “Take me there. Get your men and take me there.” The man went back into the swirling dust, shouting orders.

  • • •

  “Here,” the officer said. “Here’s where the company was.” The building the firemen lived in had collapsed around them, but wagons stood untouched in front of the ruin.

  “Where are their horses?” Peirol demanded.

  The officer looked about dumbly at the thirty men he’d gathered.

  “Back there, I guess,” someone said, pointing to what might have been a stable once. “Under everything.”

  “Do you know how to work this apparatus?” Peirol asked the officer.

  “Yes … yes, I saw an exhibition once. There are mains the wagon has hoses to hook into, but they’d be torn by the earthquake, so that’s no good, no good at all,” the man said. “But each of those wagons has a tank.”

  “Come on,” someone shouted. “We’ll pull the hogfutters to the waterfront, fill ‘em up there.”

  Peirol pointed to the shouter. “Yes! Do it! Now! You’re in charge!”

  The man looked at the dwarf, then shouted to his companions to find harness, and they by the gods could drag the wagons down, three of you on the brake, there.

  Peirol went down into the city. He wasn’t sure where he was going, what he was doing, but his mind kept thinking perhaps he’d been responsible for this nightmare, and he must do something as recompense.

  Peirol found other soldiers and men of the watch, gave them orders to find other fire companies and fill their wagons. He told half a dozen of the men, who still held muskets and appeared to have their wits with them, to come with him.

  They came into a street that was burning along one side as looters, already half-drunk, smashed into stores on the other. The men with him didn’t seem to care. Peirol saw a man tearing at a screaming girl’s clothes, drew his pistol, and shot him without a qualm.

  “‘At’s good,” one of the men beside him muttered as Peirol reloaded.

  “You and three others,” Peirol said. “Go grab three, no, four of those bastards. Bring them back here.” The men obeyed. “Line them against that wall,” Peirol said.

  One of the looters struggled, and Peirol leveled his pistol at him. The man started whimpering.

  “No, no,” another said.

  “Shoot them,” Peirol said, and the muskets came up, and three of them fired. Two looters lay motionless, the other writhed with a ball in the lungs. Peirol blew his brains out, loaded once more. “Go find other men of the watch or soldiers, or even men with their wits about them,” he ordered. “Do what I just did to any bastard who tries to harm or steal anything but bread. Smash any wine casks you see. There’ll be time for drunkenness when this is over.”

  Peirol went on downhill. Fires were breaking out everywhere he looked, and the screams of the buried, the wounded, the crazed rang out around him.

  He looked down a street, saw men and women carrying the injured on improvised stretchers, laying them out in the center of the street, as buildings crumbled on either side. Other men and women were tending to them, heedless of the fires. A pillar of fire burst into life at the far end of the street, and Peirol felt the blast against his face.

  A tall bearded man, wearing robes of an order Peirol’d never seen, walked toward the fire, arms spread wide, shouting an incantation — a wizard. The fire licked out a finger, swallowed him, roared pleasure. Then it sprang down the length of the street, taking women and men, both the hurt and the caregivers, capering for an instant in the flames, then falling, black, charred, forgotten.

/>   Peirol went on, wondering at his calmness. By rights he should start screaming, running to and fro as everyone else seemed to be doing, but he felt no panic pulling at him. He realized he was heading, vaguely, toward his shop, turned away, went on toward the water. He passed a corpse, a soldier, stopped and took his belt pouch, put the Empire Stone in it, strapped the pouch on firmly.

  Peirol reached the huge open esplanade and found more madness. People thronged the grounds they’d walked, had picnics, fallen in love in, now milling about, half shocked, half panicked. Here and there statues had fallen, sometimes with corpses lying under them.

  Peirol recognized a man on a horse, the High Priest Warleggen, and started toward him. Yet another tremor pulled him down, this one very sharp, continuing for almost a minute. Peirol thought it came from a new direction, from the sea. He came to his hands and knees, picked himself up.

  The advantage of being a dwarf, his mind said mockingly, is you don’t have as far to fall.

  Somehow Warleggen had kept his seat. He saw Peirol. “Help me!”

  “To do what?”

  “Get the people down here, out into the open, away from the buildings! We’ll have to let the fire burn out, then we can start worrying about rebuilding!”

  “Good,” Peirol said, turned to obey, gaped at the tidal basin. Water was receding from it, leaving bare mudlands, rushing out to sea even faster than the river could replace the flow. Peirol thought it was some sort of strange tide, then remembered a tale from a seaman, back aboard the Petrel.

  “Get them out of here!” he shouted to Warleggen. “Get them to high ground!”

  “What?”

  “The sea! The quake’s struck it!”

  “You’ve gone mad, dwarf! Now do as I order!”

  Peirol started to argue, remembered what else the sailor had said, knowing there was no time left, and ran, cursing not for the thousandth time his short legs. He ran up a street away from the square, fire on either side, not turning to look as a great roaring built behind him. His lungs seared fire, his legs were rubber, but he pushed on until he could run no more, stopped, panting, and others ran past him, abandoning children, whatever goods they held, seeing the newest doom rush on them.

  A great wave swept toward Restormel, a wave taller than any of the waterfront buildings, a wall of water moving faster than a horse could gallop. Peirol ran on, not knowing how he managed, and then the wave crashed, and he could hear nothing but its coming. A wind pushed against him, almost knocked him down, and he glanced back, saw the sea foam over the waterfront, spray flying high. A statue of some soldier or other fell, and Peirol thought, more likely imagined, he saw Warleggen and his horse sent tumbling by the wave, then buried.

  The wave rushed on, swallowing people, wagons, horses, buildings, came up the street toward him. Peirol saw a lamp standard and clung to it, both legs wrapped around it, and the sea washed around him, came to his shoulders, foaming, and then receded, pulling at him, trying to tear his grip away. A woman with a baby in one arm floundered toward him, was pulled under, was gone.

  Peirol looked down at the esplanade, washed clean, saw the rubble of a city clogging the bay. He stood numbly; then the rest of the sailor’s story came, and he ran on, always uphill. Twice more the wave came, and each time part of Restormel died with it.

  Dawn finally came, a harsh twilight, and it was more terrible to be able to see — see the ruins of a city.

  Another aftershock came, this another lingering series of tremors. Peirol was looking across the bay, at the ruins of the tenements, wondering how many had died there. He gaped, seeing yet another way for the earth to strike man, as the ground around those tenements, once marsh, became liquid, and the remaining buildings and their ruins leaned, fell, and were sucked down to disappear in the jellylike mire, swallowing all, until there was nothing but a roiled flat.

  Peirol found men, gave them orders to start putting out the still-spreading fires. He found women and men, told them to set up nursing stations, ordered other people to stop the looters by any means necessary. Some of those who gladly, grimly, took muskets or halberds were women, a few children.

  Then it was almost dark, he dimly realized, and he was pulling at stone, trying to free a child, a girl, who was beyond tears, beyond fright, staring. Someone shouted, knocked him aside, and as he rolled, reaching for his pistol, a cornice fell, crushing the child.

  Peirol next remembered filling a flask he’d taken from somewhere with brandy, remembering his orders about drink, not giving a damn, swallowing half the flask and refilling it from the stove-in barrel.

  Then it was night, then it was day, and he could never put together the order of things.

  He was pumping hard at a fire wagon, water spraying on a fire, then the wagon catching fire and he and some others running;

  He was standing over the body of Ossetia, a dagger in its chest, a dead man lying nearby, Peirol’s pistol barrel still smoking;

  A harridan was offering him her body, because he was the lucky dwarf, and it’d be good for her, let her live another day;

  Someone was telling him the young king had died in the earthquake, but the Dowager Custodian was, gods be thanked, still alive and healthy, and Peirol couldn’t stop laughing;

  Half a dozen men were pulling in unison at a beam, a man winkling his way out of burial, getting up, smiling, saying, “Thanks, friends,” walking a dozen paces, and falling dead;

  Trying to sleep, but alcohol was the only thing to offer relief, vomiting the food he reluctantly swallowed;

  Realizing it was never night, never day, the fire and the flames the world’s sun and darkness;

  A high-piled stack that might have been logs but was bodies flaming up, and the sweet smell, oddly like roasting mutton, spreading over Restormel;

  Standing on the waterfront, flames still spreading in the city, thinking for an instant that at least certain districts here and there were safe, realizing they were dark because there was nothing left to burn;

  Making love to a woman in a burned-out house, both of them crying, and he didn’t know why or who she was;

  Half a hundred men cheering him as they ran past, some with axes, some with soaked burlaps, against another flare-up.

  All he could remember was that he worked when someone told him to, or told others what to do when he saw something that needed doing. The rest was a haze of pain, blood, and brandy.

  Then someone called out, and it was if nothing had happened, no time had passed, since he’d come down from the tower of the Men of Lysyth.

  “You! Dwarf!”

  He was in a small square, having no idea why, where he was going. Across the square, on horseback, was a grimy man in armor, Baron Agar of Sancreed. “You bastard, my wife’s dead, and it’s because of you!”

  Peirol stared in bewilderment as Agar slid from his horse and stumbled toward Peirol, drawing a sword. “Die now, die you will,” Agar shouted. “Pull sword and fight me, you demon son of a bitch!” He was running.

  Peirol reached to his belt, took out a pistol, cocked, aimed, and pulled the trigger as he realized the match had gone out. He frowned at his carelessness, took out the other weapon, realizing Agar was almost on him, but there was more than enough time for proper aim, and the pistol went off. Agar’s head slammed back, red and gray sprayed the air, and he skidded sideways on his face, sword spinning high through the air.

  Peirol stared at the body, felt nothing in particular, slowly turned, hearing another shout. He saw the rest of Agar’s party, wondered how they’d managed to stay together since setting the ambush at the tower, and if they’d been looking for him, him and the Empire Stone. He recognized the monk Damyan.

  “Take him,” the monk screeched, rushed at him with a leveled halberd. “He’s a demon-spawn, and the one who’s stolen the — ”

  Peirol knelt unhurriedly, picked up a broken cobble, and threw it full into Damyan’s face before he could finish. The man screamed, spun, and fell, kicking.

>   A musket went off, and the ball went by his ear. Peirol ran, zigging, toward a smoldering building. A ball bounced off the cobbles, and he was in the ruins, running through them, feeling burning under his feet, going toward a street still in flames, hearing the clatter of pursuit. He darted past a collapsed house, jumped a flaming beam, and was gone — the smoke, the fire, his friend, Peirol a small furry animal whose hide was the destroyed city.

  Then he was back at the waterfront, and it was dusk, and he was wondering how many times in the past days — however many days there’d been — he’d come around and around in a grand circle. There was a small boat tied not far distant, painted green, one of the boats that ferried people across the bay to the tenements, now swallowed by the returned marshland. He jumped down into it, surprised no challenge came, found one oar, no other.

  Peirol untied the painter, pushed himself into the current, felt the chop rock the boat, tried to steer it away, downstream, toward the open sea. He looked at Restormel, still flaming, smoke blanketing the sky, a city still writhing in its death agonies, and sat down carefully, worried about tipping the boat.

  • • •

  The village had not been touched by the sea wave at all. Peirol’s boat still sat on its rollers, and there were men around the village who’d help him launch it. He couldn’t remember if he’d slept or eaten. He must have, for he felt healthy, even if everything seemed somewhat distant, as if he were looking through a smoked glass.

  There were people staring at him, at his tattered clothes, his ready weapons, concerned, friendly, asking things, wondering. But he would have little to say, other than to buy whatever foodstuffs and drink they would sell, to have them launch his boat, and give him a course west through the straits, toward Sennen. Once through the straits, once beyond the island of Restormel, then he’d drop sail, wash the stink of fire, smoke, and death off his body. Then he’d sleep.

  When he was safe.

  21

  OF SENNEN AND A CERTAIN VALE