Even at the school in Eopan, where I learned my craft, students now ape the new style, throwing down a dozen bindings where they should use one, and filling every open area with a hundred steps.
When I learned they were teaching this rubbish at Eopan, I was horrified. I said then, and I say still, that to pass on such methods is a terrible betrayal of a great heritage in building, which has been handed down for centuries from the skilful hands of the great Henry Eagles.
To date, twelve students have learned the craft of building under my instruction. This is a small number, it is true, but I think it is better to teach a handful well than it is to teach a multitude badly, although my skills in teaching are now so refined, after ten years of practice, that I rather fancy I could teach a multitude well. And you may rest assured I certainly would be teaching multitudes, if I had been willing to make certain compromises in my principles, and to embrace the aesthetics of the new school. But I am proud to say I did not compromise my beliefs in this way, though it meant the loss of students—and well paying students too, from families of the noblest rank.
Earls, and dukes, and even princes have said to me, “Here, take my sons and daughters and teach them the ways of the stonemage, for it is the finest calling in all the world, and we know you are its greatest living practitioner, whatever prejudices the queen may have against you.”
To which I say, “I will take them gladly, providing you realize I will teach them nothing of the new school, for the styles of that camp are detestable to me.”
Then they say, “They are detestable to us also, but the world at large loves them, therefore we pray you to teach a little of this style.”
And I say, “Ptoy! The world at large may be damned for its bad taste, but I will have no part of it. Here my students learn only the great techniques which have survived the ages.”
And they reply, “If you will not teach as we ask, then our children must study elsewhere, for we wish them to learn the innovative new techniques. But we respect you greatly and admire you for your high principles.”
I have heard these exact words more times than I care to count, yet I do not take it much to heart, for I know these nobles are ignorant about architecture and judge by appearances only, thinking, since my school is humble in appearance, while the school in Piatia has many huge and tasteless halls, it must follow that the skill of building according to the Piatian style is a valuable one to have. Yet, if these nobles truly wished their children to learn innovative techniques, they would certainly be better off sending them to me, for the great structures I built in America were more innovative than anything the new school has ever produced, but these designs of mine were also firmly rooted in the ancient stonemage traditions.
I wish the queen had given me the money she owed me, for then I would buy a great plot of land and buy slaves and build the largest school you have ever seen, with great halls and towers cast in every colour of the rainbow. The nobles would come flocking back to me, you may be sure of that, and I would say to them, “The queen is little better than a whore.”
And they would say, “What? Are you not afraid of her?”
And I would reply, “Who, that little stick? She does not dare to show anger to such an important stonemage as me.”
As it is, of course, the queen hates me bitterly for having brought the trial against her, and she would gladly see me dead. I know she has tried many times to have me done away with, but her agents are afraid to strike at me by day, for any would-be murderer would quickly find himself set upon by my allies.
At night, though, I often hear the sounds of assassins creeping around in the streets below—and I know they mean me ill, for they slip into their hiding places when I look out of my window. To protect myself from their daggers, I bought myself a large dog, called Wing, who is very ferocious and who lives with me in my house. Also, once each week, I smear the doors and windows with a little goat’s cheese, which, I have discovered, is a thing all assassins fear. I give a little cheese also to the dog, to make the smell of his breath the more terrifying to them.
I also say a prayer each night, which goes as follows:
O, protect me, God,
And keep me from the knives of murderers.
And, should one enter my house,
In the dark hours,
Let me wake,
And give me strength to seize his weapon,
Driving it into his own wicked heart.
If scrupulously followed, my methods offer complete protection from the night attacks of assassins, and I recommend them to everyone who must deal with such things.
Still, I have strayed a little from my story, which, at this stage, is about my fine school, and the students there.
I was sitting in the Statue Square, talking to the renowned musician Olag Moon, who is a very good friend of mine, when I saw a girl by the name of Lepic. Now, this Lepic had been one of my students, and a good one too, so I waved my staff at her and called her over.
“How are you progressing at your craft, young Lepic,” I said. “Are you building great castles to further your reputation?”
I said this only in jest, for such is the prejudice against classically trained stonemages these days that none of my students has received any major commissions, and those who have found paid work do only occasional repairs, or must earn a wage by commanding myrmidons (which is another skill I teach at my school).
But her reply surprised me, for she said, “No, I have been offered no castles, only a little water stall near to the Trader’s Arms, yet I do not think I will even submit a design for this task, for it is a lowly structure, and you taught us to build only great things.”
“By that,” I said, “I meant only that you should build things which show your skill to be very great. This water stall would give you every opportunity to do so.”
But she said the water stall was a base and degrading thing to build, and would be a place of foul smells and grunts.
I quickly set her mind right on this score, however, for I employed my keen mind and logical reasoning. I asked her, “Suppose, then, you had been offered a great new feast hall for your commission. Would you take the job?”
“Of course,” she said. “It would be a wonderful thing indeed, and I would be a fool for declining the chance to build so glorious a thing as a feast hall.”
“If a feast hall is glorious,” I said, “which is, after all, merely a place where people eat their food and drink their drink, then it follows that a water stall must share the glory, for what is that but a place where these same people deposit their food and spill their drink after their bodies have taken their fill of its goodness.”
She instantly saw the truth of this, and said I was very much wiser than she. And Olag Moon said I was wise also, and he said, “I have heard many times of your keen mind and precision in the ways of argument. What a rare honour it is to see these skills at combat in the field.”
I asked her then how many pots were to be in these water stalls. She said “There are to be ten—six for the women, and four for the men. And also there must be four pissing walls for the men.”
Olag Moon said, “Ten pots and four pissing walls. That is certainly a reasonable size of water stall!”
I agreed, and I told Lepic that, if she could win the commission, it would bring great credit to her, and also to me.
She said then that she would set upon the designs without delay. Yet I saw from her face that she was still uncertain, so I asked her to speak of what troubled her.
She said, “I worry I shall do the design poorly, for I do not like the smell of the water stalls, nor the noise from them either, and so I have never been inside one.”
I said, “Great God, my girl, what then do you do when you are in the street and feel the need to relieve yourself? Do you just squat down in the park, upon the lawn?”
To which she replie
d, “Oh, no, not upon the lawn!” Then she added, in her innocence, “It is among the trees that I squat.”
At this, I burst out laughing, and Olag Moon did too, for it was the funniest thing we had heard all month. I laughed so hard that the tears rolled down my cheeks, and I could make no noise for it tickled me so. The girl Lepic began to cry then, for she was just a simple country girl at heart and was ashamed of her ignorance. Therefore, I comforted her, and said I would help her with her designs, for it would be both of us who would benefit from the piece. Then she was most happy with the situation, and agreed her naive ways must indeed seem comical to us refined townsfolk.
After that, we spent a good week working upon the design. In truth, it was I who did most of the work, for she was inexperienced, and slow about reckoning even the simplest bindings. I settled upon a crescent shape for the building. On the inside of the crescent were the four pissing walls, with a good wide entrance to them. On the outside of the crescent were many doors, which each opened upon a stall with a pot. The crescent was covered by a circular roof, with pieces of glass set in the place of certain tiles so the interior might be well lit.
The design had some clever twists too. For example, I placed a number of pipes within the wall of each stall, so each patron might carry on a conversation with the occupants of other stalls, for the pipes carried the sound so well that you might think you were talking with somebody sitting a few inches away rather than forty feet.
Also, I placed perfume receptacles in the stalls intended for the women. The receptacles were filled with a perfumed liquid, and, just above the liquid, was placed a stick, and, glued to the underside of the stick, a great black beetle. The beetles were positioned so that, as they tried in vain to fly away, their wingbeats would splash the surface of the liquid and send it showering down upon the patrons in a fragrant, soothing mist.
Some people, on hearing of this device, have said the idea is ridiculous, and could not work. But they are wrong, for we had the receptacles made, and they did work, and very well too. Indeed, they would be working today if the man who oversees the water stall would periodically replace the beetles, for the creatures die after just a few days, and he is too squeamish to stick a new one in place. He does not admit this, of course, but instead claims the beetles pull themselves loose and fall upon the women who sit below, but this is a lie, and he says it only to hide his fear.
In any case, the design was completed, and Lepic took it to the Baker’s Guild, which is responsible for maintaining the water stalls here in Rowel. The bakers looked over the design, and they said it was very good, but they would not give her the commission upon the spot. Lepic asked them the reason for this, and they said they were also considering a second design, which came from a stonemage of the new school. Now, she is a clever girl, and did not grow angry at this news, but instead feigned a great interest in her opponent, asking to see his plans, and, while admiring them, taking note of the signature, which bore the name Ghymlan.
She brought the news back to me, describing the plans she had seen, which, as far as I could make out, were exceedingly tasteless, for this Ghymlan had surrounded his water stall with columns, and, atop each column, was a loaf of bread carved in stone. Of course, this motif was a very pleasing one to the bakers, but to everyone else it would have been laughable, for there is no bread to be bought within the building.
Still, I knew well how to deal with such a competitor, and I asked my friends in the Statue Square whether they had heard tell of a Ghymlan who had come to the town. I quickly learned that the fellow had arrived two months before from the mainland and had a room in a farmhouse owned by one of my distant cousins.
Then I summoned together all my old students—there were twelve, just as there were twelve disciples of Christ—and I asked them to pray with me. I said:
“God, although this man Ghymlan has done no wrong to me, it would serve us all very well if some accident should befall him, so the commission for the water stall might go to a student of my school, whose style is so beloved by you. God, we pray to you, send your spirit to the my cousin’s farmhouse by the river, the farm where the donkeys and pigs are all in the same field, and wreak your judgement upon Ghymlan.”
And they all said, “May these things all happen. Amen.”
Well, as luck would have it, an accident did befall our fine friend Ghymlan a few days later, because his hands were crushed under a heavy stone! As a result of this event, he was unable to practise his trade further, for a stonemage needs a delicate touch, and Ghymlan had certainly lost his.
It was, therefore, Lepic who received the commission. She was paid twenty arrans for the work. I took fifteen arrans from this sum, though, for fifteen-twentieths of the work had been my own.
You will think it was a cruel and unhappy thing that befell poor Ghymlan, and you are right in thinking so. But then, this world is a cruel and unhappy place to us all, and if the unhappiness we bring to others through our prayers can relieve our own misery for a short time, then it is proper we should ask God to inflict unhappiness, for, were the positions reversed, our enemies should surely do so to us.
This is a lesson which I learned only very late in life, yet I practise what I learn, and, as a result of other heartfelt prayers, two more stonemages who came to this town seeking work have left with their arms in bandages, so I think the next great structure which goes up here in Rowel will be solidly in the classical style.
Until then, however, I take much delight in the water stall which I helped build. It is a lovely sight, and brings admiring glances from all who chance upon it. And within are further enhancements, which I created as I built, and which were not in the plans. If you come to Rowel, I urge you to visit the building, which is near the Trader’s Arms, just off the Harbour Road, and please sit upon the pots there, for, when you gaze down at the floor, you will see glazed images of the various buildings I have mentioned in my tale.
And, if you are a man, you must also pay a call upon the pissing walls, for there you will discover, to your utmost delight and pleasure, that the black walls are crafted, in places, of stones that become very dark when wet, so as you relieve yourself, you will see a word forming before you. And this word is none other than the name of your humble and unworthy narrator, which is to say
Yreth.
About the Author
Duncan McKenzie was born in Plymouth, England, but now lives in Oakville, Canada. He occasionally works as a TV writer and producer, and helps run an improv theatre. He has four children, one wife, and no knowledge of architecture or magic.
The Ultimate Stonemage: A Modest Autobiography Page 43
