"Which one is he?" he asked.
"That'n, sir." Biddon pointed, just briefly. "Yonder thickset fellow in the brown leggin's and yellow shirt. The one up on the stones, layin' mortar. I've seen him before, a'right, comin' to my shop for stone chisels, braggin' to wear me ear off. He's head stonemason of Yotha's temple, and what business, sirs, would he have here?"
"You all know more than I do," Sulun puzzled. "Who is Yotha, and why shouldn't his temple's chief stonemason come to work here?"
"Yotha, according to our friend Biddon, is an ill-tempered fire god," said Yanados, still watching. "His priests came and settled here some eight years back, built a temple some six leagues north, and have been doing well for themselves ever since. As to your second question, the chief stonemason of Yotha's temple is ordinarily paid quite well enough that he'd have no need to come work common labor on our walls. Do you see nothing suspicious there?"
"I see a mystery, and I wish you all would explain it."
"We seem to have some rivals," Zeren sighed. "Yotha's temple was the biggest and wealthiest in Ashkell Vale, before we came."
"What, simple jealousy?" Sulun asked. "How would that explain their mason working here?"
"More nor simple jealousy!" Biddon laughed. "See you all these folk workin' on your priest house, these many moons? Ye've paid 'em for their hire, day by day, not bought their service outright by the year. You folk pay well, too—in good copper and useful spells, not to mention yonder school at Ashkell House. And ye're none so haughty as Yotha's folk, nor has your Deese done harm to any. Need I tell you, then, how many folk would rather come to you than to Yotha's house?"
"We've drawn away many of Yotha's worshippers, you mean? And his priests don't like it?
"Neither like it nor accept it philosophically, I imagine," said Doshi. "So their chief mason has shown up here: for spying, spreading disaffection, spoiling the work, or what?"
"Spying, certainly," Yanados guessed. "We may as well assume the rest, too. Now, what shall we do about it?"
"First off, I would have Arizun inspect that section of the wall," Zeren put in. "See if it's made as well as the rest, or if some charm has been set into the mortar."
"Good thought," said Doshi, turning to go back down the stile steps. "I'll fetch him."
"Now wait," Sulun complained, feeling a bit left out. "What harm can a man do, setting mortar on a wall? What harm can his spying do, for that matter? Why not leave him where he is, lest these—these priests of Yotha send another spy who we don't know?"
Zeren laughed. "Sulun, my wonderfully innocent old friend, think; we've seen whole houses ill-wished, and from a distance. Why not a wall? Or the whole house, starting from the wall? That's the harm our insidious mason there can do."
Sulun thought about that, about the curse placed on Entori House, about the possible effects of such a curse in a house full of hot iron, firepowder, heavy tools—and a cellar full of sulfur. He shuddered.
"Very well, get rid of him. What will happen when his friends learn of his failure, I don't know."
"They'll know we're no fools," said Yanados. "That alone might make them behave better."
"High hopes," Zeren muttered. "More like, they'll just take another tactic. We must be watchful."
"Which is the man?" Arizun asked, climbing up behind them. "Where has he been working?"
Biddon gleefully pointed out the suspect, and the stretch of wall, adding: "There's more I could watch out for you, Masters, did I but live here. Would I not make a good initiate of Deese?"
"Soon, soon," Yanados promised, patting his shoulder. "Once Eloti says you're ready . . . Hey, the lunch bell!"
Sure enough, the iron bell so recently hung in its niche over the front was ringing the announcement for the midday meal. All the workmen on the wall cheered happily, put down their tools, settled the last stones they'd been working on, and sat down to eat. The brown-legged spy made haste to join them.
"Doshi's idea," said Arizun. "That'll give me time enough to go look at the wall." He strode off quietly, dark robe blending with the stone of the walls.
Sulun looked around at his companions and wrung his hands in dismay. "Aren't we worrying overmuch?" he asked. "Now that we've come to a good place, I had hoped we'll stop expecting enemies everywhere."
"Were we so free of foes back in Sabis?" Yanados asked, trying not to sound bitter.
Sulun just shook his head and walked away. Is there no peace, he wondered, to be found anywhere?
* * *
Arizun strolled along the new section of wall, running one hand along the stones, keeping an eye turned toward the gang of workmen busy with their meal downslope. Did the brown-legged mason glance this way a little too often? Was he seated so to keep an eye on the wall? One couldn't walk too slowly, then, or seem too interested.
Arizun felt it first as a subtle heat, something like warmth clinging to the shadowed stone, right in the mortared seam between two blocks. He paused to shake an imaginary stone out of his shoe, casually leaning on the wall for support, one hand pressed to the mortar. Yes, the spell was there, probably anchored in a mage sign scribbled into the mortar under the block. He could almost picture the sign, the feeling was so clear. Yes, picture it: no more or less than a script initial in some foreign alphabet, an elaborate letter Y—no doubt for Yotha, very simple and direct. Well, well. Probe further, but quickly; the man might notice. Arizun closed his eyes and dropped for a moment, deeper into the Meditative State that Eloti had taught him to attain and feel with such facility.
Oh, yes: a simple and direct curse, set in the wall, meant to spread through the entire house, partly vitalized already. No doubt it would increase this very night, once the brown-legged spy got home to his friends. Ah, clever.
Arizun ground his teeth in cold, rising fury. He pulled his shoe back on, straightened up, and strolled on down the wall for a few paces more, down to where the completed wall rose over his head and concealed him from the work gang beyond. There he stopped, leaned against the dark stones, reached into his second belt pouch, and drew out a faceted crystal lens. The essentials, as lady Eloti had told him often enough, were quite simple: concentration, visualization, will, focus, purpose. He had will enough; easy for this rage to power it. The crystal would help concentration and focus. Visualization came easily too. Purpose . . . Arizun smiled wickedly. A simple deflection, change of target, would be so utterly fitting—and was much easier than neutralizing the curse altogether. Yes, just a proper deflection to a new target: he had sufficient talent and power to do that by himself. Eloti would be so pleased when he would tell her.
Arizun stared into the crystal, concentrating.
* * *
A second ringing of the iron bell signalled the workmen back to their task. They tossed away crumbs, recorked jugs, climbed to their feet, and went back to the waiting stones, derrick, and wall. The senior of the work gang poked at the trough of mortar, shrugged, added a little water, and stirred it in. The rest of the crew shoved another stone down its track of roller logs to the wooden crane and began tying it on. A mason in brown leggings and a yellow shirt trotted around to the back of the wall, up a makeshift wooden stepladder to the top of the present course of stones, and prepared to guide the new block into place.
On the way up, his foot slipped and nearly sent him tumbling off the ladder. He swore, climbing the rest of the way with more care, too busy thinking of his task ahead to question the minor accident.
"Up!" bellowed the senior workman, and the rest of the crew hauled on the crane's tail ropes. The tail sank, the wooden fulcrum groaned as weight came on the ropes, and the tied block began to rise. "Up, up," chanted the gang's senior.
"Now right, right," shouted the man on the wall, as the block rose level with his breastbone. He reached for the trailing guide rope, missed it, leaned further out—slipped and fell flat in the spread mortar.
The work gang below laughed heartily, but didn't let the ropes slacken.
The
brown-legged, mortar-daubed man grabbed for the guide rope, and this time caught it. Instead of pulling slowly, he yanked on it in exasperation.
The guide rope snapped taut, catching on one of the support ropes at the near corner of the block. The support rope, dragging along with the guide, pulled free.
The block shuddered for a second, then slid loose of the remaining guides and fell forward.
It tumbled straight into the brown-legged man, carrying him off the wall, and fell on top of him.
The work gang on the derrick fell flat as their ropes suddenly slackened. They all heard the short screech from behind the wall, and the grisly thud. Some cursed, some groaned, some wailed with horror. The bravest got up and ran for the wall at once; the more timorous followed slowly. Up the wooden scaffolding they ran, across the lower course of stones, through the spread mortar to the inner side of the wall—and paused there a long moment, surveying the damage.
It was impressive.
* * *
Arizun took good care to arrive after the others, to sound and look surprised. Doshi and Zeren gave him thoughtful looks as he elbowed through the crowd, but they said nothing. Biddon the blacksmith saw him coming and stepped hastily out of his path, throwing him a white-eyed look, like a frightened horse. Yanados gave him a sardonic smile and a hint of an ironic salute. Arizun ignored her, pushed to the front of the crowd, and looked.
The man was still alive, breathing in thin wheezes, fingers scrabbling aimlessly at the edge of the stone. From the waist down, his body was hidden under the tumbled block. The stone appeared to lie level on the ground, perhaps even a bit sunken into it. Blood seeped from under its edges.
"like a berry under a brick," mumbled one of the workmen watching. A small gang of the more muscular in the crowd was trying to dig under the edges of the block and tie on ropes from the crane. None of them looked at the man under the stone, nor, for all their haste, did they seem very willing to lift the block and reveal what lay beneath it.
"Can't last the hour," one of the nearby watchers mumbled.
"Soon, soon . . ." chanted another, his tone reminiscent of prayer.
The ropes were worked under the corners, looped, tied on, drawn taut. "Its tied!" snapped the head of the work gang, keeping his eyes on the knots. "Haul it!"
On the other side of the wall, the rest of the work gang heaved at the crane's tail ropes. The derrick creaked, and the stone began to rise. Sunlight spread beneath the rising stone. The crowd groaned softly, all together.
The man under the block continued whining thinly, noticing nothing.
The gang on the crane lifted the stone until it reached its niche on the wall, then lowered it. The block slipped neatly into place, perfectly aligned, though no one drew the rope to guide it there. A film of blood on its underside stained the top of the mortar.
Arizun turned away quickly. He'd taken two steps toward the house when a hand caught his shoulder. He glanced up, and saw Sulun glaring down at him.
"No, stay and watch," Sulun whispered fiercely, in Sabirn. "That was your doing; you look at it."
"It couldn't be helped!" Arizun hissed back in the same tongue. "All I could do was deflect the curse, discharge it back on him who set it. Otherwise it would have sprung on us."
"No other choice? Nothing else you could have done?"
"No! I couldn't just wipe it away; I don't have that power, and I didn't dare wait for Eloti to come back and help me. All I could do was deflect it, send it back. Gods, I didn't know it would do that. . . .
Sulun dropped his hand and turned away. "Bad beginning," he muttered.
Then he saw the workmen watching him, trying not to look at the body on the ground being bundled into a stretcher improvised of cloaks. He could read their faces clearly enough, see why no one had dropped the ropes off the settled block, guess why no one now was working the crane. Time to say something. Sulun gritted his teeth, pulled his robe around him, and marched up the scaffolding to the top of the unfinished stretch of wall.
"Carelessness," he intoned, "exacts a heavy price. Carelessness can slaughter more than armies. Carelessness is our enemy here—and we dare not drop our guard against it, not for a moment, not out of anger or impatience or distraction. Not ever." One quarter of his mind coolly approved the balanced shape of the speech; another cringed at its grotesque irrelevance. "You see now what harm even a moment's carelessness can do. Be warned, then. Learn the lesson well. Let us never have to learn it again."
The workmen below him nodded solemnly, accepting the words.
Sulun tried to find words to send them back to work, but couldn't think of any. The sound of the crane's ropes slapping the wood made him think of corpses hanging on gallows. No, no more of this, not today.
"Bear that poor man to his home," he said, struggling to get the words clear. "The rest of you, secure the crane, the stones and the tools, and take the remainder of the day—at full pay—to ponder this matter. Er, dismissed." He strode hastily off the stone and down the scaffolding, trying not to hear the amazed murmurs of the crowd as he passed, and headed for the new house. Somewhere among all the food stocks there had to be some strong berry wine, and he needed a few cups of that.
Behind him, the work gang rumbled in amazement.
"Did ye hear that?" said the senior workman. "All of half the day off, and at full pay!"
"What generous folk they be," agreed the nearest. "And wise, too. His talk of carelessness be good sense."
"Aye," noted his neighbor. "Have ye seen, this is the first sore accident since the building work began? The first life or limb lost, in all these moons."
"And that on a new fellow, first day here, who didn't know the workings," another added. "'S'truth, I think he was a stranger here."
"'Tis sure, I don't know him," commented one of the men at the stretcher. "Does anyone here know where his house lies?"
"I do," rumbled Biddon, coming up on them. "'Tis far off north, by the caravan road. Yotha House, and none other."
The workmen stared at him, then at each other, then nodded knowingly.
* * *
An hour later, two riders on mules set out from Deese House. Before dusk they reached Ashkell Villa, meeting Eloti on the way and taking her back with them. Gynallea invited them in and set dinner for them at the upper end of the table, calmly as if she'd been expecting them. Wotheng, after his usual custom, asked no questions and discouraged all talk until the meal was finished and the dessert drinks brought out.
"You did say, m'lord," Sulun began, "that if any local wizards tried to harm us, we should bring our complaint to you."
Wotheng glanced sidelong at his wife, then shrugged. "Aye, so we did. What wizards have troubled you folk, and in what way?"
Sulun looked hopefully at Zeren, not certain that he could carry off this little plan. The big soldier launched into the story as smoothly as if he were giving a standard military report.
"Shortly after noon today there was an accident at the construction site on the new Deese House outer wall. A stone slipped from its cradle, crushing a workman. Upon inspection, the wall was found to have been temporarily ill-wished. The injured workman was found to have been a resident of Yotha's estate. Apparently he was attempting to set a curse on the walls when our own protective spells deflected it, causing it to discharge upon the sender."
Wotheng looked calm, mildly interested; his eyelids barely fluttered at the name of Yotha. Still, Eloti noted it.
"We wish to know," Sulun took up the complaint, "just who these people are, why they tried to ill-wish our house, and whether we may expect more of this."
Wotheng puffed at his pipe, harrumphed a few times, glanced again at his wife. "Well, Yotha's some imported fire god," he began. "Came from off to the east somewhere, no place we ever heard of. These priests of his, now, they've some sorcerous powers they claim he gives 'em; came here about eight years ago and set up to the north, maybe five leagues up along the caravan road. They say that Yotha came fi
rst, and the priests were only following where he led. What I know is that fires were seen running along the hilltops—running in lines and curlicues, dancing, like. Didn't harm any but stretches of turf; stampeded some sheep, scared some folk out of their wits, and everyone came hollering to me about it."
Wotheng tapped out his empty pipe, refilled and relit it before going on.
"Next day it was, I clearly recall, these priests of Yotha showed themselves in the village. Very fierce and solemn, they were. Proud, too, as if they held themselves too high to speak to the common run of folk. Came asking to see 'the lord of this place,' which was myself, saying they knew the 'source and nature' of the fires. To be sure, I gave 'em audience."
"It was Yotha, they said," Gynallea sneered, pouring herself another berry cordial. "Their triple-damned fire god."
"Oh, aye. They said they'd been following their god's trail for moons, and now they'd found him here. They said they could entice him into a shrine, keep him appeased, keep him from doing mischief, but 'twere best if they did it quickly. Best, in truth, if they could find some empty building already standing—like the old burned mansion up by the north road. Yotha'd be drawn to that, they said, since fire had 'already frolicked there.'"
"And what of all the poor folk living there?" Gynallea added. "Hah, never mind! Go they must, so the priests could set their god trap there."
"Now what was I to do?" Wotheng shrugged. "Here's the people all afrenzy over these fires, here's these priests saying they can put an end to it, and here's only a few poor folk in the way." He sighed and tapped out his pipe.
"What became of the poor folk who were moved out of the mansion?" Eloti asked.
"Oh, many of them weren't moved out at all—just became builders, then servants, at Yotha House. The rest, well, I granted them some sheep and some help building cottages elsewhere. Tricky juggling with land rights that was, too."
A Dirge for Sabis Page 28
