Lark was waiting table tonight so she was in and out of the kitchen, and she certainly didn’t speak to Runnel.
“Going to buy the new one something respectable to wear?” asked Sourwell.
“Wasn’t thinking of it,” said Demwor. “He’s not naked. He’s not going out on errands for the house.”
“He’ll have to wear something when she washes his clothes,” pointed out Sourwell.
The mentioned “she” had to be Lark. Runnel was sure Lark would be thrilled to know she’d be doing that chore.
“I can wash my own,” said Runnel. “If you show me where.”
“It talks,” said Nikwiz.
“With its mouth full,” said Sourwell.
They didn’t smile, and nobody laughed, but Runnel knew he was being teased, and with good humor. It felt good.
“Take him to market with you tomorrow,” said Demwor, “and buy him something that fits. I’ll take it out of his earnings. But if he runs off and takes the new clothes before they’re earned out, I’ll dock your wages.”
“Just try it,” said Nikwiz.
“When we prepare every bite of food you eat,” said Sourwell.
“What kind of household is this?” said Demwor. “Two cooks, one smart-mouthed girl, a mountain bumpkin, and a cheerful dolt.”
“You’re forgetting Ebb,” said Nikwiz.
It took a moment for Runnel to get the gibe; he laughed aloud.
Demwor glared at him. “Don’t get the idea that I’ll let you speak disrespectfully to me, boy, just because I let the cooks do it.”
“No, sir,” said Runnel.
“And you’ll wash those clothes and bathe yourself tonight. With soap! I won’t have you bringing fleas into the house.”
Which explained why Lark’s clothing was so clean. Demwor insisted on it.
“Where do I wash them?” asked Runnel. “Since there’s no stream close by.”
“The washbasin is at the west corner of the garden,” said Nikwiz.
“Carry your own water there,” said Sourwell.
“There’s a stove out there for heating the water,” said Demwor, “but if you break a jar from overheating it or setting it cold on a hot stove, I’ll dock you.”
Runnel had no idea what “docking” him might mean, but he was sure it was something he wanted to avoid having done either to him or his wages. But that was all right. He had never heard of heating water for washing clothes. And only Father washed in hot water back home, and only in winter.
After supper he found the laundry tub, estimated how much water he’d need to wash and rinse the clothes and himself, and then carried a large jar of water from the main cistern. He stripped off his clothes and put them in the water, then soaped them on the washboard.
“You nasty boy!” said Lark behind him. Her voice was full of revulsion.
“I haven’t washed myself yet,” he answered.
“I don’t care that you’re dirty, stupid. You’re naked.”
“Excuse me, I didn’t think of washing my clothes with me still in them,” said Runnel.
“Do you always do your laundry naked back in Farzibeck?” she said snidely.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s that or sit naked in the house like a baby while somebody else washes them. Only in Farzibeck, the girls have sense enough to stay away while the boys are laundering, and we boys’d be killed if we walked up on the girls like you just walked up on me.” This was not strictly true. When boys got their man growth, they would keep a loincloth on. But Runnel had not started wearing one yet.
“I have laundry to do,” said Lark. “For the master.”
“Then you can either wait till later, or you can do it with your eyes closed, because I’m not leaving here till my clothes and my body are clean.”
“Dry! It’ll take forever for your clothes to dry!”
“Dry?” asked Runnel. “Where will they dry, except on me?”
“I’m not going to go to bed late because you picked this moment to discover cleanliness.”
“Demwor told me to wash clothes and boy,” said Runnel. “And the reason I was so dirty was because I had just taken a journey along roads and through woods, and slept in leaves on the forest floor. Next time I’ll remember to have someone carry me in a litter or pull me in a carriage.”
She set down a full basket of white linens.
“The master must wear a lot of white,” said Runnel.
“This is his underwear, mountain boy,” she said contemptuously. “Obviously you’ve never heard of it.”
It was a strange world, indeed, for a man to have underwear like a baby—and a whole basketful at that.
Lark poured the rest of the water from his jar into the tub and dropped a cake of soap in with it. Then she took the washboard from Runnel’s side of the tub and began scrubbing the linens.
“I guess my clothes are clean enough now,” said Runnel, getting up.
“Don’t stand up!” she said. “Don’t you have any modesty?”
“You just poured out the rinse water,” said Runnel. “I have to get more.”
“You should have brought more water in the first place,” she said.
“I brought enough water for my body and my clothes to be washed and rinsed,” he said. “You brought none.” He picked up the empty jar and headed back across the garden to the courtyard where the cistern waited.
The jar was almost half-full when Demwor came up to him. “In this house we wear clothing,” he said sharply.
Runnel bit back all his two possible answers: “I’m not in the house” would get him slapped or kicked out for insolence. “You told me to wash my clothes when you knew I didn’t have any others” was likely to get the same result. So instead he said, “I had to replenish the water so Lark could do the laundry.”
“So you were naked with Lark?” Demwor’s expression turned furious.
He could not leave that one unanswered. “I was naked alone with a laundry tub! She decided she had to do her laundry right then and use up all the water I brought. I had to get more so I could rinse my clothes because not even for you am I putting them back on with soap still in them!”
Demwor at first got angrier, but then calmed himself. “You could have left your underwear on until your outerwear was clean.”
Runnel just sighed.
“Don’t have underwear?” Now Demwor was amused.
“I’m not a baby,” said Runnel.
That was apparently the funniest thing of all. But after one bark of laughter, he was back to chiding. “We don’t do our laundry in the filtered water.” He showed Runnel the tap that drew water directly from the cistern without passing through the porous stone first. It flowed much more readily, and the jar was quickly full.
“He’s naked!” said Ebb cheerfully, when Demwor passed him on the way back to the house.
So Runnel had learned something else—people went insane when you took your clothes off. In the village, clothing was for warmth. Only girls worried about modesty, and only when they got near that age. During summer, men often worked naked in the fields. It was part of life; during hot weather, a man would strip himself as surely as he’d shear the sheep. What did they do here in the city? Sweat in their clothing so it would stink? No wonder they had to wash all the time.
He carried the full waterjar back to the laundry. Lark was still scrubbing linens. He tipped all the water out of the tub onto the stone flags of the washing pit. Lark leapt to her feet with a cry, then began picking up linens. “Now I have to wash them again, you fool! You oaf!”
“You felt free to take my water and the washboard from me,” said Runnel. “That’s how I thought things were done.”
“I’m doing the master’s laundry!”
“And I’m doing the laundry that Demwor told me to do,” he said. “You’re the one who decided to be mean. If you want to get along with me, then treat me fairly. I’ll do the same in return. But right now, I’m rinsing my clothes. And washing and r
insing myself. Then you can do what you like.”
Only then did he see that she had already slopped his clothes out of the tub and tossed them, not onto the clean flagstones, but out into the dirt. She saw where he was looking and she blushed. That was all he needed—he knew she was sorry for having caused him extra work.
“Thank you for helping me get this position,” he said. “Even if you punish me the rest of my life for saying one wrong thing without meaning any harm, and for washing clothes the way we do it in the mountains, I’ll still thank you for helping me get a place here. I’m in your debt, and I won’t do anything like pouring out your washwater again. I’m sorry for that. It wasn’t right.”
As he spoke, he went for his clothes and brought them back to the tub. By now she was pouring water in, her lips set and her eyes downcast. He put his clothes back in the tub and knelt to wash them again. But she held on to the washboard and began scrubbing his clothing herself.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
But she ignored him and scrubbed.
“I don’t want you serving me,” he said.
“Go stand behind something till I have your clothes clean,” she said irritably. “Pretend to be decent.”
He obeyed and leaned against the stone wall of the garden, with a tree between him and her. He thought of climbing the wall to see what was on the other side, but decided that nude wall-climbing wasn’t in the spirit of decency that she had in mind. He could hear her wringing out his wet clothes and spattering water on the pavement.
After a while she brought his trousers and tunic and, still averting her eyes, offered them to him. He took the shirt and pulled it on over his head. “I’m covered now,” he said.
“Just take your pants,” she said.
He took them, but didn’t fasten them with the cord; they’d stay up well enough, being damp, and it wouldn’t do to tie the cord wet or he’d never get it off. He went back to the washtub as soon as he was dressed.
“Go away,” she said.
“Lark,” he said. “I don’t ask you to be my friend. Just let me help you do your work faster, since I delayed you.”
“I do this job myself.”
“I can wring out the linens,” said Runnel. “I can pour water, even if you don’t let me scrub.”
In reply, she handed him a pair of underdrawers to wring. He did, and draped it where she pointed, on one of several strings between two tree limbs.
After most of the linens were hanging, she finally spoke to him. “It was a waste of time, you know, putting that stupid owl back up on the kitchen roof.”
“Doesn’t it work?”
“The mice live inside the kitchen walls and never see the owl,” she said. “And no birds come here.”
“Doesn’t that mean that it does work?”
“It means no birds come over these walls, whether there’s an owl or not.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’d expect me to feed them and care for them, and I can’t,” she said. “So I ask them not to come.” She looked up at him defiantly.
He nodded gravely. “You’re a birdfriend, then.”
“I’m no mage of any kind,” she said. “I just get along with birds.”
“Birdfriend,” he said, “but I won’t tell.”
“It’s one of the reasons it’s so hard for them to find servants here. Nobody likes to admit they’ve got no magery, not even a scrap. First thing people do is show off, or brag if they’ve got nought to show. Even though birdmagery has nothing to do with stone, and birdmages aren’t forbidden to enter Mitherhome anyway. Makes no sense and does no harm, but Demwor won’t have a mage of any kind in the household.”
“For fear they’ll learn stonemagic?”
“It’s because of the great war,” she said. “When the soldiers of Veryllydd came to try to force Mitherhome to become part of the empire of Yllydd again, and the watermages here said no, for when Yllydd was a great empire, it was Mydderllydd that ruled it, and Veryllydd was subject to them then.”
Runnel could tell that it was a story she had committed to memory, especially because she pronounced the “ll” of Yllydd in the old way, that hissing sound from the sides of the tongue when it was forming an “L.” It was the language of stories. Though he hoped it wouldn’t be too long. He was very tired. Also, having drunk much at supper, he needed to pee.
“The armies of Veryllydd had their mages of light and mages of metal, for in those days Mitherhome had only swords of obsidian to raise in battle. Thus in the day, the blood of the holy forest was soaked with the blood of heroes. And at night, the lightmages made the night of their tunnels into day, so they sapped under the mighty western walls of Mitherhome.”
Runnel felt a chill as he realized that this was the explanation for the broken walls he had seen, approaching the city from the west. The blood of heroes: That was why the western forest was sacred, and no one built there.
“The elders of the city knew the western approach was their great weakness, so they built the second wall at the foot of the Mitherjut. This, too, the Verylludden sapped, and the doom of the Mitherfolk was plain for all to see.
“Now came the stonemages of Mitherhome, who had once ruled all of Mydderyllyd before the waterfolk conquered them long before. ‘We do not wish to be ruled by Veryllydd,’ they said. ‘We can stop them: Rockbrother and cobblefriend, we shall do it.’
“Then the stonemages went to the peak of Mitherjut, where once their ancient temple stood. They bared again the rocks of the holy place and lay naked upon the stone, and the rockbrothers sank into it as the cobblefriends sang. First their temple arose, new and whole, made not of blocks like the temples of all other folk but of living stone thrust up until rockbrother and cobblefriend were entirely surrounded by their temple, with neither door nor window in the dome. Now they were surrounded by stone, almost as if they were stonefathers who can move within the living rock.
“The Verylludden sappers set fire to the beams in their tunnels, and the inner wall of the city trembled and began to fall. But as it fell, lo! A great cleft opened in the earth, from the Mitherlough to the river below, cleaving the Veryllydd army in twain. Many fell into the great crevice, including all the lightmages, as the waters of the lake swept into the breach, forming a new channel, the Stonemages’ Ditch, flowing down to the river, making Mitherhome into an island with water on all sides. Now no need of walls! The portion of the Verylludden on this side of the crevice were pushed back and cast into the cleft; the army on the other side screamed and wept and pleaded as the ground beneath them shook so no man could stand.
“A great bridge grew from the hither side of the Stonemages’ Ditch to the yon, and the army of Mydderllydd crossed over to wreak havoc on those who would have destroyed them. Now, with the hearts of the stonemages in them, the stone swords of the Mydderfolk cut the bronze swords of the mighty Veryllydd like new cheese, and their blood flowed like water, until ten times as many Verylludden died there as they had killed before. So many were dead within the broken outer walls of the city that you could walk from wall to Ditch without stepping on the ground.” She stopped and bowed her head, for all the world like a traveling talespinner. For such a tale as that, a traveler could earn a meal and a bed for the night; she had told it well.
“I walked that ground just yesterday, and slept there, and woke this morning in that wood,” said Runnel in reverent tones.
She looked at him wide-eyed. “Were the bodies there?”
“Covered with leaves and soil, maybe,” he said. “I didn’t see any. But, Lark, if the stonemages saved the city, why have they been banned? Why are they not welcomed as brothers?”
“That’s the sad part of the story,” said Lark. “I never like to hear it, but I learned it, if you must have the telling.”
“Please,” he said.
“The rulers of the city went to the great cleft, and saw the torrent of water that formed a little lake, then tumbled down the canyon to the river bel
ow, and they said, ‘This new outflow will drain our lake and leave Yeggut diminished so he will no longer bless us.’
“Now it happened that the stonemages had foreseen this, and raised stone on the other side to reduce the outflow there, so the lake level was unchanged. The watermages knew this, for the water told them so, but they feared the power of the stonemages to steal their water. ‘Today they were our friends,’ said the watermages. ‘But tomorrow, what if they remember that Mitherhome was once Mydderstane, built by stonemages and conquered by latecome watermen? They will say, “It is ours by right,” and they will destroy us as they destroyed the Verylludden.’
“So in fear of the power of the stonemages, the rulers caused great heaps of wood to be piled all round the solid living temple that contained the great mages who had saved them, and they lighted the fire, which heated the temple until the stone glowed red. Nothing could live inside it. For two days the fire burned, then it died, yet for five more days no man could touch the stone.
“When the rock at last was cool, the rulers of the city caused the dome to be broken open, and inside were found ashes in the shape of each of the stonemages; even their bones were ash. The watermages called water up through the rock and it flowed from the center of the temple, so it became a spring, holy to Yeggut, and not an outcropping of stone.
“Then the temple was broken entirely apart and the pieces carried down and cast into the cleft. The bridge of living stone was broken apart, for it was said that the stonemages had done this to turn the new channel into a tunnel, with living stone all around it. It was decreed that forever no bridge would span that cleft.” She broke off the narrative. “That’s why Hetterferry came to exist.”
“It’s a sad story,” said Runnel. “And it doesn’t make the watermages of the city sound very noble, to murder the very folk who saved them.”
Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy Page 46
