“Could we not tell the king that the prince has simply disappeared?” I asked, for I was naive in those days.
“Ah, this would be my dearest wish,” said the duke, “but life is not so simple. For you see, honour demands I tell the king the truth.”
Then I asked him what would become of Setina, and he said he would never allow my love for her to be sullied by that of another man, and instead he would marry her off to some wealthy merchant. (And I heard later he had kept this promise to me.)
Then he gave me ten arrans and let me escape to the west, while he delayed the king’s pursuit of me.
Now, if you think back, you will remember, when I spoke of my first arrival in Luthen, and at the court of Gavor Hercules, I said I had travelled west seeking inspiration for new works of architecture. And this was true, but my travels were also inspired by Bellay, the King of Cyprus, who had offered a bounty of one hundred arrans—and later, I have heard, six hundred arrans—to any person who would deliver me to his justice over the death of his brother.
You will perhaps think I should have revealed my status as a fugitive at the outset of my tale. But I reasoned—wisely, as it seems to me—that, had I spoken of this at the start, such a tale of princely murder might have prejudiced any reader against me, making me appear brutal and ignoble. Yet now you have learned so many other things about me, it will be plain my involvement with the death of the Prince of Piapa and my hasty escape afterwards is by no means a reflection upon my own virtue or upon my strict code of honour.
The accidental killing of a royal personage is merely one of those events which happens, from time to time, to every one of us.
So there it is. The darkest secret of my early years is told, and now I may continue to tell of my meal with Lyvell.
As Lyvell and I discussed my adventures with the Duke of Oaster, I became nostalgic, for I owed the duke a great debt of gratitude. I wondered aloud about events in Oaster, and about the fortunes of my first patron.
Here Lyvell was wonderstruck. “It is very strange you say this,” he said, “for not a week past I happened to meet a merchantwoman of my acquaintance who has lately returned from those very parts. The news is bad, for the duke was recently stripped of his title and driven from his own lands by the king.”
(Now, I should point out here that my companion had been misinformed. It was not the Duke of Oaster who had been driven from his lands, but that rogue the Duke of Imandello. Still, I believed it was the Duke of Oaster, and it would be many years before I discovered the truth of the matter.)
“How did this horror come to be?” I asked.
He said he did not know, but it was often the way of kings to dispossess their most loyal nobles in this way.
Then I said, “It is very wrong for any king to dispossess one as noble as Duke Huriband. For I will tell you, that duke would make a better king than Bellay.”
Lyvell laughed here, saying, “Then go there with your myrmidons and see it so. You are already a builder of churches. You might become a builder of kingdoms. And a toppler of them too, if you desired it.”
Now, although he spoke this in jest, and we did not talk more upon the subject, still his words stayed in my mind, ringing like great bells, and they set me to thinking.
I spent the following days in meditation. Slowly, I began to become aware of a pattern behind the events of my life. I will explain this.
As a stonemage, I must work constantly from a plan. Even when I was young and newly out of school, I could look at a plan and see, in my mind’s eye, the image of the final construction. Of course, this is the very essence of my profession, and there is no good stonemage who would not be capable of the same thing.
As I became more experienced, however, I learned a new skill. I found I could look at a building and, even though I might have no previous knowledge of it, I would quickly understand the plan behind it. For example, when I first saw the newly finished Arch of Lechittes, I saw not the great stone columns, nor the jewelled keystone, but the intricate network of bindings which holds the structure in place.
With the passage of time, this ability, which is based on keen observation, intelligent analysis, and divine guidance, became more acute. Gradually, I gained the ability to see the “plan” behind other things. So, if I was staying at an inn and the cook spat upon me while I was eating, I would not just shrug it off, but would instead think to myself “Ah, there is a reason for that!” and would instantly set my mind to analysing the cook’s motives. Only when these motives were clear to me would I settle the score with my throwing-razor.
Given my unusual abilities in discovering the plan behind all things, I suppose it was inevitable I would eventually attempt to deduce the plan behind my own life, and the great plan behind Life Itself. The first stages of this analysis are based in pure logic.
Let me now share with you my reasoning, and, since I am educated in these matters, I shall do so in the classical form demanded by the finest logicians. So:
The First Proposition: There is a reason to all things.
Proof: For the proposition to be false, either there is a reason to nothing or there is a reason to some things but not all things.
The first of these options we know to be false, for in everyday life we perform certain activities for which we can give good reasons. So at least some things have a reason.
Therefore, for the proposition to be false, there must be a reason to some things and no reason to others. A thing that happens for a reason can be said to have that reason as its cause. But what is the cause for a thing that comes about for no reason? We say it has "no reason" as its cause. It follows that "No reason" is itself a reason, so even a thing that happens for no reason in fact has a reason.
Since nothing can be reasonless, there must be a reason to all things. So the First Proposition is proved.
The Second Proposition: Every person’s life unfolds according to a single and coherent purpose.
Proof: We know from experience that life consists of a single series of events, and though we may profoundly wish some-and-such a thing had not occurred, or may wish some other fortune had fallen upon us, yet these wishes cannot be granted, for at each juncture where a decision must be made between several alternatives, there is only one alternative we can choose, no matter how we might desire them both.
This simple truth is summed up in such common phrases as “You cannot be in two towns at once.”
Secondly, we know that, in life, the passage of time is continuous. It is not possible to leap across the years, as the hero does in The Adventure of Toe the Mariner, going from one’s third birthday to one’s thirtieth. Neither can a portion of one’s life be omitted, even though this may be desired (as it is, for example, by the victims of torture). Even while we sleep, time continues to pass steadily, and when we wake it might be the next morning, but it is never the previous morning.
From this we learn that every life has two important properties: it is single (consisting of only one series of events) and it is coherent (it is unbroken in time).
Since life itself is fundamentally single and coherent, it follows that all its attributes must also be single and coherent. One of those attributes is life's purpose. Therefore life unfolds according to a single and coherent purpose, and this proves the Second Proposition.
(It has been suggested to me the above argument might be misapplied, so one might say since life is violent, its purpose must also be violent. Or since an apple is green, its purpose must also be green. Such reasoning must be ignored, since its intention is not to enlighten but to confuse, for who ever heard of a “green purpose”? Let no one use the precious tool of logic for such flippant entertainment, but let it rather be used to uncover eternal verities, as I have used it in my reasoning, so people everywhere shall be enriched.)
The Third Proposition: Through the analysis of the events in life, one may
discover life’s single and coherent purpose.
Proof: This proof is very elegant. Think about the first and second propositions. Now think about the fact that you are capable of thinking about them. Because we have analysed and thought about those propositions, it follows we have the ability to analyse and to think.
Is there, then, a reason we should have this ability? Of course! We know from the First Proposition that all things have a reason. Why, then, do we have the ability to think and reason? There is only one possible answer—so we can think and reason. Therefore, since the ability to analyse exists for a reason, it is only proper we should use that ability.
Next we must ask ourselves, where must the ability to reason be used? Why, in life, of course (for I doubt there are any dead people reading these words!).
But remember: according to the Second Proposition, life is single and coherent. It follows that the analysis of any event in life is identical to the analysis of life itself. And, since life’s purpose is a part of that life, and life is, by its nature, singular, the analysis of life’s events is identical to the analysis of life’s purpose. Therefore, in discovering the purpose for any event, we come closer to discovering the purpose for life as a whole. Thus, the Third Proposition is proved.
The Fourth Proposition: Those persons capable of discovering the purpose to their life must do so, thereby enabling them to achieve that purpose with greater efficiency.
Proof: If a person has the ability to discover his or her life’s purpose, then it follows (from the First Proposition) that there is a reason for the person to have that ability.
Since there is a reason for the ability, the ability must be used, for if an ability is possessed but never used, then it exists for no reason, and this, as we have seen, is impossible. Note that the requirement to use this ability is not a moral obligation but a logical one. It is a logical necessity that an ability which is possessed should be used, and not to do so is to the detriment of reality itself.
Yet let us now take a step back. For we have shown the utmost necessity of using those abilities of analysis which we may possess to analyse the events of life in order to understand its purpose. But what is the reason for this activity? (For, like all other things, it, too, must have a reason.) For the answer, I might easily turn once again to the stark rules of logic, but in this case I do not think it necessary, for the answer is very obvious: we must understand the purpose of life so we might attain the goals required for that purpose with greater speed; for, just as a sighted man may find a doorway more immediately than a blind man, so a person with greater awareness may achieve the goals of his life more readily than one who lacks this awareness. This, then, proves the Fourth Proposition.
Now, the foregoing reasoning was carried out over several days, while I sat in my chamber in a large house I had occupied, together with my myrmidons. During this time, I ate little, and drank only watered ale, for I wished all my faculties to be focused upon the intellectual battle which I was waging. I did not leave my room during those days—not even to relieve my bowels or bladder (I accomplished this task from the side window, which is the custom in most of America). Nor did I take any interest in the events of the town, nor in the great cathedral I was still designing.
When I had finally finished my pondering and had proved the Fourth Proposition, I was well satisfied, for now, at last, I saw how perfectly the events of my life had led to that moment.
For example, it was necessary in the scheme of things that I should have trained as a stonemage, for, as I have said, this gave me an understanding of plans and designs, even those which formed the design not to a building, but to a life.
Also, it was necessary I should have been forced to leave the service of the Duke of Oaster, for this drove me to greater glory with Gavor Hercules. And the unfortunate events which occurred after I left the employ of that great man raised me to still greater heights, because my escape across the Atlantic resulted in my command of a great and powerful army, and this would certainly never have occurred had I stayed in the kingdoms of Europe.
All of these remarkable insights were fresh and buzzing in my head, and I was anxious to share them with another person. Although there were many people in the town who treated me with great courtesy, there was only one I had come across who I considered a friend—the brave merchant Lyvell; therefore I swiftly made my way from the mansion which was my home to the shop where Lyvell carried out his business.
On arriving there, I found the shop to be gutted, the insides burned, the door broken off, and the windows smashed. When I asked the neighbours to tell me what had happened, they said that, two nights earlier, a mob of all Lyvell’s old enemies and their families had come to the shop and destroyed it, and had then beaten and strangled the old man, leaving his body in the gutter.
It was distressing news, you may be sure, yet it also brought me a strange satisfaction; for I now knew that the purpose of the life of the merchant Lyvell was to give me the news of the duke, and to set me reasoning upon the purpose of my life. It was only natural, then, that his life should end once it had achieved this worthy goal, which, in God’s mercy, it did. And this, in turn, provided yet further evidence of the truth of my new theories.
I returned to work on my cathedral to Saint Elifax the Mariner, and quickly finished it. It is a construction whose simplicity and elegance doubtless brings admiring gasps even today, for, as one approaches the structure from a distance, it seems very like a real ship upon the waves, and it is only upon closer inspection the waves reveal themselves as tiny hillocks, upon which grow blue spinewort.
The ship has no entrance door from the ground, for I built it to be entirely watertight, exactly like a real ship. Those who wish to gain access to the great interior hall must climb one of the long ladders of rope which dangle from the sides of the vessel, and then enter by the deck. Neither does this render the building useless for the old or the crippled, as some have speculated, for those cripples who truly wish to enter will frequently find the strength to climb those ladders is bestowed upon them by God, and, upon reaching the top, they discover they are entirely cured of their maladies, so, instead of entering the cathedral to pray for the restoration of their health, they pray instead to give thanks to God.
As I had planned, the cathedral was built in exactly one month. This would not have been possible but for the great size of my army, for I set every one of them to working on the cathedral. Some went to chop trees and gather rocks and magical ingredients, others transported the wood, while others hauled it into place and fixed it with pegs, which I later reinforced with bindings. I do not think I would have spent more time upon it even if I had had twenty years at my disposal, for although the wood (which was the principal material for the structure) was rough-hewn and splintered, yet this places in the mind the image of the sufferings of Saint Elifax as he drifted upon the waves. It is the same for the sparse interior of the building: it is like a great ship’s hold, with neither rooms nor windows, but merely a wooden staircase descending from the deck, and it reminds us of the saint’s privations during his voyage (for it is written: “he had not grain nor drink nor any soft thing for his head to rest upon”), and the ladders remind us of the path to heaven.
As to the sails, in this I made a minor error, for I set local workers to make real sails of canvas, which were then lashed to the masts, and held in a billowing state through the use of the binding scheme I described earlier.
Unfortunately, a storm struck a few months after I left Molys, and the strong winds wrenched off the sails and broke the masts. (I heard about this years later) And yet it seems to me this is a very trivial loss, for the same might well have happened to the real Saint Elifax, just as it happened to me at the Duck Islands, and the lack of masts and sails reminds us of the terrible storms which he must have endured—and not merely the storms of rain and wind, but also the storms of fury which later fell upon him from Uss
Naygler and the so-called Legion of Toads.
When the month was up, I left Molys, and though I was given my two thousand arrans for my builder’s fee, yet I left the town carrying a much greater treasure, which was the treasure of Knowledge, and an understanding of the way in which my destiny was meant to unfold. And I am sincere in saying that this knowledge is worth far more than two thousand arrans, and more even than five thousand. In fact, I would gauge its worth at close to ten thousand arrans, yet it was given to me for the price of a few bruises inflicted by a piece of cheese.
This thought I find a very remarkable one.
The Eighth Part
In Which I Tell Of My Travels West From Molys And My Coming To Learn Of The Principle Of Directional Exhaustion
If you did not read the previous chapter (and I am speaking here of the four great proofs contained in it), but skipped over it, because its contents seemed too tedious or difficult, I urge you to turn back to it now, and work through it, with a pen and paper in hand, if it is necessary. Work slowly and steadily, absorbing all the arguments I present, for they are very important, and they will certainly change the course of your own life, as they did mine. But more, you must understand these arguments if you are to understand my motives for the decisions I made at that time.
When you consider the matter a little, you will see my four proofs show the existence of destiny and providence, and show the value of prophesy, and of omens, and dreams too, for there is no thing that does not happen without there being some reason to it.
There are those who will say attending to dreams and omens is mere superstition, but this is too narrow a view. Heeding dreams is not superstitious—only heeding them foolishly. So, to pick an example which befell me just weeks ago, if you dream of a pig wearing shoes, and draw from it (as a fool would do) that you will have both food and footwear in abundance, then this is no more than superstition.
The Ultimate Stonemage: A Modest Autobiography Page 12
