Stonecutter's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  “The place where the Sword was stolen, according to the information given me by yourself and Prince al-Farabi, is a long way from the city. Too far, probably, for anyone to travel without stopping to renew his supply of water. And even if our thief’s destination was not Eylau, he would still most likely need to obtain water somewhere in this region.” The Magistrate paused. “But he did not come to Abohar Oasis for water while I was encamped there. The people there discussed each new arrival, whether by day or night. Therefore…”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Therefore he sought out another source of water, somewhere in this region.”

  “May I see the map, sir?” Gripping the paper tightly in the wind when the Magistrate handed it over, Kasimir pored over it for a few moments. Then he announced: “According to this there are no other oases or springs in the area we are considering.”

  “Exactly. Therefore…”

  “Yes?”

  There was no immediate answer from Wen Chang, who was still staring into the blue heat-shimmer that ruled the far horizon, but now had fixed the direction of his eyes. Following the aim of the Magistrate’s gaze, Kasimir was at last able to make out what looked like traces of white smoke, or more likely dust, hanging in the distant air. He thought that if that dust indicated the presence of a body of people or animals, their movement must be very slow. The cloud, as far as he could tell, was remaining in the same place.

  Wen Chang turned in his saddle. “Lieutenant Komi, have we reserves of water enough to safely take a side trip? An excursion as far as yon dust cloud?”

  Komi, working his mount a little closer to them, squinted into the distance under the shade of a sun burnt hand. “Looks like that little cloud might be half a day’s travel from here. But if Your Excellency wishes us to make such an excursion, water is no problem. Our supplies are ample.” His tone was neutral, giving away no more than his expression did; it was impossible to tell what he thought of the advisability of taking such a side trip.

  “Then we will do it.” And Wen Chang immediately urged his mount down the side of the hill away from the road.

  Midday gave way to afternoon as they traveled. Kasimir sipped sparingly at his canteen, and chewed on some dried meat and fruit. There was a stop to freshen the animals’ mouths with water. In the hours since they had left the direct road to Eylau the country had changed, become more merciless, with smooth desert giving way to low crags and boulders and broken outcroppings of black rock. Here and there the landscape opened before the animals’ hooves in a sudden crevice, compelling a detour. But gradually the wisps of white dust in the sky grew closer.

  Komi’s estimate of half a day for this side journey had been only a little too large. But eventually the source of the dust was near enough for them to identify it: a gang of laborers, several score of them, who toiled like well-disciplined ants in the hot sun, under the direction of whip-cracking overseers.

  Before the investigators reached the work site, they came upon the recent product of the workers’ labor. It was a road that did not show on the map, obviously newly made. It was a real road, suitable even for wheeled vehicles, as opposed to a mere trail through the landscape, and plainly its making had not been an easy or a pleasant task. As Wen Chang and his party began to follow the road, moving now at increased speed, Kasimir noted where minor crevices in the earth had been filled in, and a steep-sided arroyo bridged with rude stonework, leaving a passage under the bridge for rushing floodwaters when they came as occasionally they must.

  The road’s winding course among protruding rocks led Wen Chang and his followers inexorably toward the crew who still labored to extend it. But before the road drew very near the place where its creators were now toiling, it had to turn and run patiently along the side of a ridge. The ridge was a mass of sharp rock twice the height of a man, offering no soft spots to cut through, and no gentle slopes to offer a start for ramp-building. Then without warning the road turned again, almost at right angles, cutting straight and level through the obstacle.

  Just as the Magistrate was approaching the smooth-sided cut driven through the rock, he stopped suddenly and held up a hand, halting his small cavalcade behind him. By now the workers on the far side of the ridge were so close that their metal tools, probably steel and magically hardened bronze, could be heard clinking against rock. A dozen or more of the laborers were chanting in surprisingly hearty voices as they worked.

  So far there was no sign that anyone among the road-building crew had become aware of the approach of Wen Chang and his party.

  A moment after Wen Chang reined in his riding-beast he had dismounted, and was closely inspecting the sides of the cut. Whatever he saw made him nod with satisfaction.

  In an instant Kasimir had dismounted too, and was standing mystified beside the older man. But the young physician’s puzzlement was only momentary.

  “These are strange marks in the ridge,” he breathed, with something like awe. “Long and smooth and easy, like those a knife or an ordinary sword might make in cheese or butter. I take these marks to mean that the Sword called Stonecutter has been used on this rock.” And he gave Wen Chang a glance of open admiration.

  “Exactly so.” Wen Chang looked around, and it seemed to Kasimir for a moment that the Magistrate was almost purring with satisfaction. “Lieutenant,” Wen Chang ordered, “send a few of your men secretly around to the other side of this work camp. If anyone should attempt to sneak out that way when we enter, detain them, whether they are carrying a Sword or not, and bring them to me.”

  The lieutenant had made no comment on the discovery of the Sword’s marks in the cut rock, though Kasimir thought he could hardly have failed to be impressed. Now Komi saluted and turned back to his small column to deliver some low-voiced orders.

  Presently Wen Chang remounted, and, with Kasimir beside him, and Lieutenant Komi, now attended by only seven troopers, supporting him in the rear, rode boldly forth, through the divided ridge, along the just-completed last hundred meters of the road in the direction of the laborers’ camp. In a moment the first of the scores of workers had become aware of their approach, and the sounds of labor faltered. But almost at once the whips of several overseers cracked, and the chink of metal on stone picked up again.

  From the square of shade produced by a square of faded cloth supported on rude poles, a foreman was now coining forward to receive his visitors. He was a corpulent man of modest height and middle age, wearing over his tunic a broad leather belt with an insignia of the Hetman’s colors, gray and blue. He looked worried, not unreasonably, at the sight of all these armed men in the garb of desert warriors, who outnumbered his small staff of overseers. Still, he managed to put a bold tone into his salutation.

  “Greetings, gentlemen! Our road, as you see, is not yet complete. But if you are willing to wait a few days, my brave men here and I will do our best to finish it for you.”

  Wen Chang squinted into the shimmering reach of emptiness extending to the horizon ahead of the road-builders, and allowed himself a smile. “My good man, if you continue to labor to such good effect as you did when cutting your way through this ridge behind me—why then I have no doubt that a few more days should see you at your destination, whatever it may be. What is it, by the way?”

  The smile had congealed unhappily upon the foreman’s beefy face. “I am given only a general direction, sir, in which we are to extend the road. Beyond that—” He shrugged.

  “Of course, of course. It does not matter. My name is Wen Chang, and my companion here is Doctor Kasimir, a physician; and this is Lieutenant Komi, who with his soldiers serves Prince al-Farabi of the Firozpur. And your name is—?”

  “I am honored indeed to meet all Your Excellencies! I am Lednik, foreman of this gang of the Hetman’s road-builders, and holding the rank of supervisor both of the Hetman’s prisons and his roads.” Having bowed deeply, Lednik looked up suddenly and slapped both palms upon his leather belt. “Ho, there! Keep those fellows working! N
o one has told any of you to stop for a vacation!”

  These last admonitions were directed at one of the supervisors, and a moment later a loud whip crack detonated in the air above some workers’ backs; the sounds of work, that had once more slackened, hurriedly picked up. Kasimir, looking at the laborers, thought they looked a miserable lot, as who would not, wearing chains and doing heavy labor under the lash?—but still they were better off than some prisoners he had seen, at least well-enough fed and watered. Apparently the Hetman of Eylau and his supervisors were more interested in getting their roads built than they were in mere sadistic punishment.

  He realized that Lednik the foreman was looking at him now. With a different kind of smile, and a small salute, the man asked: “Did I understand correctly, sir, that you are a physician? A surgeon too, perhaps?”

  “I have a competence in both fields. Why?”

  “Sir, a couple of my workers are injured. If it would not be too much trouble for you to look at them—? I appeal to you in charity.”

  “It would not be too much trouble.” Kasimir, grateful for a break in the day’s ride, got down from his riding-beast and began to unstrap the medical kit that rode behind his saddle.

  “They will be thankful, sir, and so will I. Here, any man who cannot work is useless, and we can spare no food or water for those who remain useless for very long.”

  “I see. Well, show me where these injured workers are. I will do what I can for them.”

  Working under another simple shade-cloth that served here as the hospital, Kasimir put a splint and a padded bandage on one man’s broken finger. After administering a painkiller he swiftly amputated that of another which looked beyond healing. According to their stories, simple clumsiness had wounded both. With bandaged hands and pain-killing salve, both men ought to be able to return soon to some kind of productive work, and indeed they both got to their feet at once, ready to make the effort.

  From some muttered remarks among other prisoners who were getting a drink nearby, Kasimir understood that any injuries perceived as seriously and permanently disabling were treated on the spot with execution. There would be no malingering tolerated in this gang, and no benefit to be derived from self-inflicted wounds. Here, a crippling wound was a ticket to the next world, not back to a shaded prison cell in Eylau.

  Meanwhile Wen Chang had accepted the hospitality of the foreman’s own square of shade. Seated there in the foreman’s own rude chair, sipping at a cup of cool water, he had also engaged the man in casual-sounding conversation.

  “Unfortunately,” Kasimir heard the Magistrate say when he was able to join him again, “we cannot wait for the completion of this road, however efficiently you may be able to accomplish it.”

  “Then what can I do for Your Excellency?” Lednik seemed to be doing an imitation of a certain kind of shopkeeper, all anxiety to please.

  “You can,” said the Magistrate in a soft voice, “tell me all about the man who brought the magic Sword here to your camp a few days ago.”

  “Sir?”

  “I assure you, Lednik, that trying to look like a fish and pretending ignorance will not gain you anything.” Wen Chang pointed with a firm gesture. “Those marks on the walls of the cut through the ridge back there testify far too loudly to the presence of a certain magic Sword in which I have an intense interest. I rather imagine that before the Sword showed up you were stymied for some days by that ridge—a piece of rock too long to get around, too steep to readily go over. And much too hard to dig straight through, in any reasonable amount of time—if you had been digging with ordinary tools, that is. So the arrival of the man with the magical Sword was very opportune, was it not? Tell me what agreement you reached with him, and where he has gone now. Come, Lednik, I bear you no ill-will, and if you tell me the truth you need not fear me.”

  Lednik was now sweating more intensely in the shade than he had been a few minutes ago out in the sun. “Magic Sword? Is that what you said just now, Excellency? Alas, I am only a poor man, and have never heard of such—”

  “You will be a much happier poor man in the end, Foreman Lednik, if you do not try to treat me as an idiot. It is true that in this territory I have no official standing as an investigator. But I can go from this spot directly to the Hetman himself, and inform him of the suddenly improved technology of road-building in this portion of his domain. He will, I am sure, be interested to hear of it. And to hear the reasons why you, his trusted foreman Lednik, neglected to inform him of the presence in his domain of one of the Twelve Swords that—”

  “I want no trouble, sir!” Lednik was beginning to turn pale under his tan and sweat and road dust.

  “Then tell me, from the beginning, the truth about this visitor you had.” Wen Chang turned his head to glance at Lieutenant Komi. The officer, Kasimir noticed, was moving closer to the others, to stand inside the square of shade, from which vantage point he was better able to follow the progress of the interrogation.

  And now Lednik’s story came out. Yes, a man, a complete stranger to Lednik, had indeed appeared at the work site only yesterday. And this man had worn at his side a black-hilted Sword of marvelous workmanship.

  “Was there a device upon the hilt?” Wen Chang interrupted.

  “A device?”

  “A special marking.”

  “A device. Yes sir, there was such a thing. It was a little shape in white, the image of a wedge splitting a block. I did observe that much.”

  “Excellent. Continue.”

  Lednik continued in a halting voice with frequent hesitations, describing how the stranger had been willing to demonstrate the power that he claimed for the weapon, cutting away the rocky ridge as if he were digging in soft clay, or wood.

  “No, not even like wood, sir. Like butter is more like it. Like melting butter, yes. And that thing, that tool, that must have come somehow from the gods, why it made a dull, heavy hammering noise all the time that it was working, even though it was just slicing along smoothly. My workers had to scramble to move the chunks of rock away as fast as he could cut them out. He demonstrated the power of his Sword beyond all argument, and then he took it away with him again. I did nothing to interfere with him. No, you may bet that I did not. Who am I to try to interfere with a wizard of such power?”

  “His name?”

  Lednik looked blank for a few seconds. “Why, he gave none. And I wasn’t going to ask him.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Lednik appeared genuinely at a loss. “His clothing was undistinguished. Such as everyone wears in the desert. He was thirty years of age, perhaps. Almost as dark as you are, sir. Middle height, spare of frame. I did not pay that much attention to his looks. I feared his power too much.”

  “No doubt. Well, be assured that my own powers are formidable too, Foreman Lednik. And they tell me that you have not yet revealed the whole truth. What was the nature of the bargain that you struck with this stranger?”

  Eventually the full story, or what sounded to Kasimir like the full story, did come out. As payment for the stranger’s help, Lednik had agreed to release to him a certain one of his prisoners.

  Wen Chang squinted suspiciously when he heard this answer. “And what were you going to say to your superiors when they asked you about the missing man?”

  “It’s unlikely that anyone would ever notice, sir, that one of them was missing. They are all minor criminals here, and no one cares. If someone should notice, it would be easy enough for me to say that the man died, and no one would question it. A good many do die in this work.”

  “And if someone should question it? And ask to see his grave?”

  “Bless you, sir, we keep no record of the burials out here. No markers are put up. They go into the sand when they die, and the sand keeps them. How could we ever be expected to find one of them again?”

  “I see.” The Magistrate ruminated upon that answer, which had sounded reasonable enough to Kasimir. Then Wen Chang resumed the questionin
g. “And what was the name of the prisoner that you released, in return for getting your ridge cut through?”

  The foreman gestured helplessly. “Sir, I do not know his name. They have only numbers when they come to me.”

  “I see. Well, had this man been with you long? What did he look like? Who were his workmates?”

  “His number was nine-nine-six-seven-seven … I do remember that because I looked it up, wondering if it was an especially lucky number, which would be worth remembering next time I visited the House of Chance. But I don’t see how that will be of any use to you. He had been here for several months, I think. Yes, he was young and strong, and might have endured a long time yet, so for that reason I was sorry to see him go. And as for workmates, he had no special ones. None of the men do, I see to that. It helps immeasurably, I assure you, sir, in cutting down on escape plots and other nonsense of that kind.”

  “Young and strong, you say. What else can you remember of his appearance?”

  “I’m trying, sir, but there really isn’t much I can tell you. Hundreds of prisoners come and go. I believe—yes, he tended to be fair instead of dark. Beyond that there isn’t anything I can say. Oh, he and the man who rescued him were well acquainted with each other. They were real friends, I could see that from their greeting when they met.”

  “But, during the course of this joyous demonstration, neither of them ever called the other one by name?”

  “That’s right, sir, they were very careful.”

  “And presumably they left together yesterday, the stranger and his rescued friend?”

  “Yes sir, exactly. They didn’t want to hang around. Cutting through the ridge with that Sword took that strange wizard no more than an hour, while my workers scrambled to carry away the chunks of rock as fast as he could carve them free. He had brought a spare riding-beast with him, and he and his friend took three filled water-bottles from our supply. They headed out into the desert, sir, that way.” Lednik gestured in the direction away from Eylau. “Have mercy upon me, Your Excellency, for I am only a poor man!”