Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy

by Gardner Dozois

  The door swung open, and for a moment Runnel thought it was magic. But no, there was a tall stupid-looking man pushing it outward, and Lark flounced through saucily. “Let my boy in, will you?” she said to the man.

  Runnel flashed with anger for a moment, but then realized that she was just playing, and besides, just now his only hope of a drink and a meal was her. At least she was letting him in. She could have said, Take the waterjar and get rid of this boy, and he could have done no more about it than with the men on the cargo raft. He was inside. That was a good thing. So he said nothing, just followed her through the door and into the courtyard.

  She led him to a stone structure about the height of a man and half more, with stone stairs winding around two sides of it. She motioned for him to climb the stairs behind her, and when he got to the top, she had already opened a small trapdoor in the roof of the thing. “Pour it in.”

  He did.

  She took the empty jar from him. “I’ll carry it now.”

  “Now it’s empty,” he said.

  “Believe it or not, this is the time when people are most likely to break the jar. Once it’s empty, it feels light, and you get careless. Only I’d be the one in trouble, not you. So I carry it down. Now move on down out of my way, Runnel, or I’ll mock you.”

  “Then you’d be an oathbreaker.”

  “Your back will be to me, so I can mock you without breaking the oath.”

  “Mock me all you want, I don’t care.”

  He shambled down the steps and headed for the door in the garden wall. The tall stupid-looking man was still standing there.

  “Wait,” she said. “Are you really angry?”

  “I’m not angry, I just need to get a drink of water and a bite of food and a job, and it’s obvious it’s not going to happen here.”

  “Why, because I teased you?”

  “Because you teased me after you promised not to,” said Runnel. “You don’t keep your word.”

  She grabbed his shirt and pulled him back. She was strong.

  She got right in his face. “That was not mocking. That was friendship. Haven’t you ever had a friend?”

  He almost made a sharp retort, but then he realized: probably not.

  “Mocking you is when I make fun of you in front of people you care about, so it shames you. And I’ll never do that, because I took an oath, and because I don’t do that to people anyway. How did you get to be this old without knowing anything about people? Were you raised in a cave?”

  No, I was raised in my father’s house.

  She tugged again on his shirt, and he followed her to the other side of the cistern where he had just poured the water.

  Down low, so she had to stoop, there was an opening, into which she set one of several beakers that stood on a table nearby. She placed it carefully in the middle of a circle etched in the stone base of the opening, and then pressed on a block of stone beside it. Immediately water started trickling into the beaker. It was steady, and the beaker filled faster than Runnel would have expected from the amount of flow.

  She let up on the stone she had pressed, and the flow stopped almost at once. She handed the beaker to Runnel.

  Runnel took it solemnly. It was a giving of water, and so he murmured the prayer of thanks, then offered it back to her.

  “Oh, I forgot, you come from a pious village,” she said. “Look, this doesn’t mean we’re married or anything, does it?”

  “It means I’m grateful for the water.” Then Runnel brought it to his mouth and began to sip, letting it fill and clean his mouth before swallowing, making sure not to let a drop spill, not even to dribble down his cheeks. The feeling of slakethirst was so strong it took a while for him even to notice the flavor of the water.

  “It tastes like a mountain spring, straight from the rock,” he said. “It tastes clean.”

  “Of course,” she said. “The water we pour in above seeps through stone, just like a mountain spring.”

  “I never heard of the watermages needing stone to purify their water.”

  “Of course not,” said Lark. “But my master won’t let them purify his water. He insists that he’ll draw his water from the same fountain as anyone, and filter it himself, without watermagic touching it.”

  “Why?” asked Runnel.

  “Oh, you don’t know, do you?” she said. “My master is Brickel. The stonemage of Mitherhome.” She said it as if Runnel should know all about it.

  But the only thing Runnel knew was that there were no stonemages in Mitherhome. He said so.

  “It’s true there are none in Mitherhome,” said Lark. “You can see we’re in Hetterferry, across flowing water from Low Mitherhome. But he’s still the stonemage of Mitherhome. The one they allow to live nearby, in exchange for keeping their walls and bridges and temples in good repair. Keeping the stone from cracking and crumbling, repairing the damage from ice and snow in winter. Even the watermages of Mitherhome need stonework, and that means a stonemage, if you want things made of stone to last, in the presence of so much water.”

  “You serve a mage?” he said. “Then why aren’t you proud?”

  “Because,” she said, lowering her voice, “he’s a stonemage. They need him here, but they keep constant watch, lest he start trying to bring other stonemages here. Because they need one stonemage to keep their city in repair, but too many stonemages could bring the whole thing toppling down and break open the sacred Mitherlough.”

  “Why would stonemages do that?”

  “Maybe they have cause,” said Lark. “All I know is, people don’t get in my way because they know whose servant I am, and that he’s a powerful man, and no one dares offend him. But nobody wants to befriend him, either. So…nor have I any particular friends in Hetterferry.”

  “Except among the servants here.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes, we’re one big happy family.”

  “So why do you work here?”

  “Because I was an ignorant farm girl when I came here and could find no work. And Master Brickel could find no servants worth anything. I knew nothing, but I worked hard and learned fast. I get coin and I save some and send some home to my family. My brothers are paying a teacher to learn them their letters, from the money I send. So you see? I’m a servant here, and they can hire a servant there, and my brothers will have a chance to be clerks, maybe.”

  “And what will you have a chance to be?”

  She looked at him like he was insane. “A servant in a mage’s house. You think I don’t know how lucky I am to be here?”

  The only question in Runnel’s mind was: Will I be as lucky?

  Silently he finished drinking, watching her closely. Watching her face, how she cocked her head to watch him drink, how there were tiny changes in her face reflecting whatever thought she was thinking. He realized that he had always been able to judge other people’s moods by what their faces showed. It had never occurred to him that nobody could judge his.

  He thought of the stupid man at the doorway. How did Runnel know the man was stupid? Because of the slack-looking face, the way his grin seemed to have no purpose in it. From his size, he might have been set at the door to guard it. But from the apparent lack of wit, he was there just to open and close it, this being the full extent of his skills.

  What if he wasn’t stupid? What if his face simply was slack, and he was actually quite keen-witted?

  The stupid man’s face showed him a lackwit; Runnel’s own face showed him proud and aloof. Lark’s face showed her to be friendly, quick-witted, but also earnest.

  “So when you look at me like that,” she said, “what are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that I wish I knew how to make my face as clever and generous as yours.”

  She blushed. “I would slap a man if he said such a thing to me,” she said.

  “Why?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “Because when a man says such things to a woman, he wants something from her.”
/>   “I don’t,” he said. He held up the half-empty beaker. “Already got what I wanted.”

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and immediately began to drop toward the ground, so when this person shoved him down he wouldn’t fall so far.

  But the hand didn’t shove him, and Lark greeted the owner of it with a smile. “Demwor,” she said, “I want you to meet this lad. His name is Runnel, he’s from the mountain village of Farzibeck, he carried a full jar for me the whole way without spilling any, and he doesn’t want to get under my skirt.”

  “Yet,” said a soft, deep voice. Runnel tried to turn to see the face from which it came, and found that the hand held him fast.

  “He’s a different sort,” she said. “I think he might be worth it.”

  “I think he must be a fool,” said Demwor, “to let you talk him into carrying a full jar.”

  Only now did Runnel realize that she must have meant to spill out some of the water before carrying it herself. He glared at her, then realized that perhaps it didn’t look like a glare. Perhaps none of the looks he gave people meant anything. What if he always looked the same.

  But she smiled benignly at him. “I didn’t know you then,” she said. “And besides, you were strong enough to carry it full, because you did.”

  “Who told you we were looking to hire someone?” asked Demwor.

  “What, are we?” asked Lark.

  “No,” said Demwor.

  “Then it’s a good thing I didn’t promise him anything except a drink of water and an introduction to you.”

  So that was it. Another trick. Only now he had water in him, so it wasn’t as bad as the first one. Except he was even wearier now, and still had to go out and find a meal and a job.

  “You don’t like him?” asked Demwor.

  “Of course I like him,” she said. “Do you think I’d bring somebody I hated? What if you did hire him?”

  “What I’m asking,” said Demwor, “is whether the two of you are going to make a baby here at Lord Brickel’s expense.”

  Lark looked at Runnel with a cocky smile. “I told you that’s what men always think of.”

  “Sir,” said Runnel, “I work hard, and I learn as fast as anyone, and I keep my word.”

  “Whom did you run away from?”

  “Nobody that will miss me,” said Runnel.

  The hand tightened on his shoulder. “The name of your master.”

  “No master, sir,” said Runnel. “My father and mother. But I’m the ninth son. As I said, I’ll not be missed.”

  “No mother will come weeping at the gate, complaining we kidnapped her little boy?”

  “No one will notice I’m gone, sir.” Except Father, Runnel thought. He won’t have anyone to beat. Still, there was no point in saying that. If he mentioned that he had ever been beaten, Demwor would think it was for good reason and assume he was a troublemaker.

  “So why did you come here?”

  “Because where else does a ninth son go?” he asked. And realized, finally, that it was true. No one had ever explained it to him, but that, as much as his proud face, was why none of the village girls ever looked at him. What did he have? The farm would go to one of his older brothers. His sisters would be married out. One of his brothers had married a girl with a prosperous father—the dowry was his farm. But the next brother would expect to get Father’s farm, in due time. What would any of the younger boys have? He had known this without knowing he knew it.

  Was that why he had taken it into his head to walk over the Mitherkame to this place? It must have been.

  The hand on his shoulder relaxed. “It’s not a light thing, serving a mage,” he said, as Runnel turned to face him. The man was tall and swarthy—a man of the south, like some of the travelers that had passed through Farzibeck.

  “So you’re no man’s prentice?” asked Demwor.

  “We’re all farmers in Farzibeck,” said Runnel.

  “No smith? No harness maker?”

  “We make our own harnesses. We work in stone and wood. We drink the water Yeggut gives us, and we eat what Yeggut makes to grow from the earth. I’ve heard of prentices because some of the travelers have them, but I couldn’t figure how they were different from slaves.”

  “The difference,” said Demwor, “is that the master pays for the slave, but to take a prentice, the father pays the master to take him. That’s how useless prentices are, and why Master Brickel will never, never, never take a prentice.”

  “That’s good news to me,” said Runnel, “because I’d never want to be taken for a prentice.”

  “Just so you understand,” said Demwor. “We’d hire you as a servant only. Base labor, you understand. There’ll be manure, there’ll be slops, there’ll be backbreaking work with stone, there’ll be burdens.”

  That described the life of everybody in Farzibeck, including the stones, which they had to haul out of their fields every spring, after the winter heaved them up to snag the plow. “I’m not afraid of work, sir.”

  “Then I have only one more question,” said Demwor. “How do you feel about stone?”

  Feel? About stone? What was he supposed to feel about it? “I’m in favor of it for walls,” said Runnel, “and against it for soil.”

  Demwor chuckled. “You have a proud face,” he said, “but a humble wit.”

  “The face is not my fault,” said Runnel. “Nor is my wit, since I was born with both, and both are humble enough, sir.”

  “What I ask about stone is simple. Have you worked in stone? Have you built with stone? Have you shaped it?”

  “Is it required? Because I can learn if you want. But no, I’ve never worked stone. We just find it and make barriers sometimes, to slacken the floods of spring in a heavy snow year. And the foundations of our hovels are of stone pressed into the earth. But I’ve never actually helped to build such, since no hovel has been built since I’ve been big enough.”

  “It is not required,” said Demwor, “and we don’t want you to learn it.”

  “Then I won’t,” said Runnel.

  “Because if you think you can try to learn magic from Master Brickel, I can tell you that you will be detected, and it will go hard for you.”

  “Magic?” said Runnel. “How can I learn magic? I’m no mage.”

  “Just remember that,” said Demwor, “and you won’t get this house into trouble.”

  “The house? Your master is a stonemage.”

  “No, lad,” said Demwor. “My master is the stonemage. The only one permitted to enter Mitherhome. The only one allowed within this whole valley. And he is sworn never to learn new magics, beyond what he knew when he came here. Stonemage he is, but not a rockbrother, and especially not a stonefather. He’s a cobblefriend, which is all the power needed for the work he does here. That is why the watermages of Mitherhome pay him so handsomely, and provide him this house—because he hasn’t the power to do us harm.”

  And suddenly it became clear to Runnel. Demwor didn’t work for Brickel, he worked for the Mithermages. Yes, he saw to the affairs of Brickel’s household and hired the servants and paid for the food, but he was also Brickel’s overseer, making sure Brickel did not break the terms of his oath. Without even meeting him, Runnel felt a little sorry for Brickel.

  But not too sorry. Because here the man lived with wealth—servants, a garden courtyard ten times larger than the hovel where Runnel’s huge family slept, all the food he needed.

  “Sir,” said Runnel, “my aim in life is to earn enough to eat and a place to sleep and maybe a little of this money everyone wants so much. So Lark is safe, and you are safe, and your master is safe, and your city is safe from my ambition, because I’m little and ignorant and hungry and tired. But if you take care of the hungry and tired, you’ll find me big enough to do whatever work you need, and I’ll only get bigger, because all my older brothers are as tall as soldiers, and so is my father, and my mother isn’t tiny by any measure.”

  Demwor burst into laughter. “I�
�ve never heard such a sales pitch—and from such a serious face, too. I take you at your word, boy. What’s your name again?”

  “Runnel, sir.”

  “Start thinking of what you want to change it to,” said Demwor.

  “I won’t, sir.”

  “We can’t have the stonemage’s servant with a watername, lest the people think he’s mocking them.”

  “He’s not my father, he hired me is all,” said Runnel. “So no one with half a wit will think he’s responsible for my name.”

  “But he hasn’t hired you, and he won’t, with a name like that.”

  “Then I thank you for the water, sir,” said Runnel. “But I didn’t come here to be any man’s slave, nor to give up my name neither.”

  “Who said anything about a slave?”

  “It’s the owner of a slave who gets to change his name, sir,” said Runnel. “I know that because the three old servants in Farzibeck were given new names when they were taken captive in war.”

  Demwor shook his head. “So that pride in your face isn’t all illusion, is it? Too proud to change your name in exchange for a job.”

  “Not proud, sir,” said Runnel. “But Runnel of Farzibeck won’t die here to have a waterless coward rise in his place.”

  “Waterless coward?” said Demwor. “Farzibeck—it’s in the mountains, is it?”

  “West of here, along the Utteroad,” said Runnel. “Just beyond the pass over the Mitherkame.”

  “So you’re named Runnel out of piety. You serve Yeggut?”

  “I come here to find I may be the only one who does,” said Runnel.

  Demwor put a hand on his shoulder once more, and Runnel flinched, but the hand was kindly this time. “You’ll do, I think,” said Demwor. “A boy from a mountain village, with a watername that means devotion, not ambition. Yes, that’s better. You were right to stand your ground and not give up the name.”

  Demwor patted his shoulder and walked back toward the house.

  Lark wasn’t having that. “Is he hired then, sir?”

  “Yes,” said Demwor.

  “What’s his wage?” she demanded.