They took him down under the Mitherjut to where a thick dome of cold rock pressed down as under it a hot dome of seething, flowing magma pressed upward. “The blood-stone wants to flow. It wants to burst free. We have held it down all these years, but now it grows stronger, and we grow weaker. Soon it will break free.”
“What can I do?” asked Runnel.
“What we have done. Hold it down. If it breaks free, the Mitherjut will disappear, the city will be utterly destroyed, the lake will become a mere river, and all this good land will be covered in ash and new basalt.”
“They killed you. Why don’t you let them be destroyed in turn?”
“Mitherstane was built as a partnership of stone and man. What if the watermages rule for this moment? We cannot let the holy city be destroyed.”
“I’m supposed to stay here for the rest of my life? Holding down a volcano?”
“Inside the stone your life will be long and longer. Till another stonefather comes.”
“I can’t. I have to save my master, Lord Brickel.”
“He’s only a cobblefriend. He can’t help in this work.”
“You don’t understand. It’s my fault that he’s in trouble. They’re going to kill him. I have to set him free from the prison he’s in. I have to do it now.”
And with that he wrenched himself free from the gentle pressure of their company and began to wander alone through the living stone. It was hard to imagine, deep in the rock, where he was in relation to the city above. Only when he brought his outself near the surface could he feel the cobblestones of the streets and the great buildingstones of the city walls, and the pressure of the heavy buildings as they pressed down into the earth.
He found the tower out on the peninsula and fused the stones of the tower to the bedrock on which they rested, making it a place of living stone. He did not bother to preserve the outward facade of separateness; he knew that the tower would no longer appear to be made of many stones, but of a single, smooth sheet of it, rising straight up out of the earth. Let the watermages see something of his power; let them wonder how it could be happening. He grew stone over the doors of the tower. No watermage could get in or out.
Now that the walls of the tower were alive, his outself could rise up into them, and now, as naturally as if he had been doing it all his life, he formed a body for himself out of the living stone. He gave it eyes, so his outself could see; legs and feet, so it could walk. He pulled his new stone body free of the wall and began to walk the downward-spiraling corridor of the tower.
Watermages and guards tried to stop him—they broke their puny weapons on his stone body, and cast their spells, but there was no water in him to obey them, and he brushed them aside and went on.
At the base of the spiral ramp there was a pool of water, at the same level as the lake. Out in the middle of the pool, on a raft of reeds, floated Lord Brickel, tied down, unable to move.
Runnel took his stone body—his clant, for now he knew what he had created—to the edge of the water and knelt. His knees grew into the living rock of the ramp, and drawing on the stone he was once again a part of, he extended his arms, longer, longer, until one of them completely bridged the pool, passing just over the raft on which Brickel was bound. Then with his other hand, he broke open Brickel’s bonds.
Brickel climbed onto the bridge that Runnel had formed and walked over the pool to safety. “Runnel,” said Brickel. “What good will this do? You should have let them kill me.”
Runnel did not know how to make his clant speak. But he pressed his head against Brickel’s head, and spoke inside his mind, as he had spoken to the outselves of the rockbrothers. “It’s time to undo an old injustice,” he said. “Be my voice. It’s time for the stonemages to return to Mitherstane.”
“That’s our dream, but we’re not ready.”
“You have a stonefather now,” said Runnel. “Tell them.”
Runnel’s clant, his stone body, led the way back up the ramp, to where the wetwizards and soldiers were clustered around what used to be a door.
“Let us out!” they cried. “We won’t harm you.”
Lord Brickel stepped around Runnel’s clant. “Do you think I care about saving myself?” he said. “I bring a message from the stonefather whose clant you see before you. This is the city of Mitherstane, built by stonemages at the beginning of time. You are the children of treachery, who slew the stonemages who saved you from your enemy. This is the day of reckoning.”
“What can we do?” cried the wetwizards.
But then Runnel felt something terrible and strange. The living stone of the tower was being attacked by something that chewed through the stone and turned it into tiny bits of dead dust. A gap opened in the wall, and through it stepped one, then another, then a third creature made of water.
The wetwizards cheered. “The waterfathers bring you your answer, stonefather!”
The three waterclants strode to Runnel’s stoneclant, and the moment they touched him, he could feel them wearing away the stone of his skin. He tried to replenish himself from the living stone beneath his feet, but there were three of them, and he could not keep up.
So he flowed his clant back down into the living stone of the floor.
Once again, he had left Brickel at the mercy of the watermages.
I was a fool, he thought. I felt all this power, and forgot that the watermages have power of their own. They defeated us before; why did I think that I alone could defeat them now?
“Forget them,” murmured the rockbrothers. “Help us suppress the flowing stone.”
But Runnel was not going to forget anything. He thought: What can I do to hurt them? How can I make them release Brickel?
He thought of the porous stone in the cistern back at Lord Brickel’s house. There, it served as a filter. But here, that kind of stone could serve another purpose entirely.
Runnel sent his outself through the stone that underlay the lake. Starting with a little outcropping of rock surrounded by water, he expanded the stone by making it as porous as the filterstone in the cistern. He expanded it more, with larger holes and channels, and it filled with water. He spread the porousness through more and more of the lake-bed rock, and took it deeper and deeper. As the stone expanded, it rose higher, toward the surface of the lake; the water level fell as the water soaked into the stone.
Until finally there was no lake. Just a single sheet of porous rock, with all the water held inside.
He could feel the flow of the water down the channels as it came to a stop. The water flowing into the lake from the streams and rivers that fed it soaked into the stone as fast as it arrived. There was no lake. Below Mitherjut, there was no river.
Where will you draw your power from now, waterfathers?
He returned to the tower, to the pool in the middle of it, and there, too, he made the stones of the tower porous, so the water was soaked into the floor and walls. The pool was dry. Runnel formed another clant out of the newly porous stone of the walls and returned up the ramp. The waterclants were no longer there. No one was there.
Where had they taken Brickel?
He emerged from the tower through the hole the waterclants had made. Outside, the streets were deserted. He could see that the sun was low, nearing the horizon—it had taken him longer to swallow up the lake than he had thought.
Where were the people? There were a few, kneeling at what had been the shore—the docks now hung over bare stone. But not the watermages.
Of course, he thought. They’ve gone to the holy place. To the spring near the peak of Mitherjut.
“It’s working,” said the rockbrothers. Runnel did not know what they meant—nothing was working.
Runnel’s stoneclant strode up the steep, rocky slope and walked directly over the spot where his real body, his inself, lay buried in stone. He could feel his clant tread over him. Then it went down to the spring.
There they held Brickel in the flow of the stream. Brickel was gasping.
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The watermages shouted at Runnel’s clant. “We’ll sacrifice him! We’ll drown him if you don’t return our water!”
In reply, Runnel turned the streambed porous and soaked up all the water there. The spring ceased to flow.
The watermages wailed.
Brickel rose to his feet. To Runnel’s great admiration, Brickel immediately resumed his role as spokesman for the stonefather.
“It is time for you to abide by the ancient treaty,” he shouted. “When first the stonemages allowed the waterkin to settle here, you made the vow that stonemages and watermages would dwell in peace here together, in a place holy to us both. You were the ones who broke that vow! You were the ones whose treachery murdered the best of us a hundred years ago! No more will a single cobblefriend live like a prisoner in order to tend the ancient walls and bridges that were built by ancient stonemages. Either we live here together in a place of stone and water, or it remains as it is now, a place where only stone can live.”
“We will!” answered the leader of the watermages. “But only if you give back the sacred Mitherlough.”
“When you have taken the solemn unbreakable oath in the treaty tower,” said Lord Brickel.
“How can we get there from here?” said the watermage. “The Stonemages’ Ditch blocks the way.”
“Only because you broke down the living bridge we made there.”
“It was a tunnel!” said the waterfather.
“It was a bridge!” roared Brickel back at him. “We all know what a tunnel is—it’s where your water is now, in millions of tiny tunnels through stone! A bridge that leaves many yards of air between the water and the stone is no tunnel! We will have bridges wherever the stonemages wish to have them. Bridges of living stone that will never break down!”
With that, Runnel began to walk his stoneclant down the dry streambed, and Brickel followed him. When he reached the broken-down wall that had once been the inner defenses of a peninsula, and now marked the edge of the Stonemages’ Ditch, Runnel led them along the wall to the place where once a living bridge had crossed the canyon—where soldiers had poured over the bridge to slaughter the Verylludden.
While his clant stood on the surface, Runnel himself reached into the living stone and extruded a wide bridge that reached out over the open air and finally met the stone on the other side. Then he walked out onto it with his clant, Lord Brickel following him, and all the watermages after. They walked on through the forest until they reached the tower that Runnel had seen on the first day, when he was trying to find his way into Mitherhome. This was the ancient temple of the treaty, which had long since been converted into a temple of Yeggut.
Runnel reached into the tower and made it, also, a thing of continuous, living stone.
Then he turned and looked out over the sheet of stone where once the little lake had been. To his surprise, he could not see the stone at all. Instead, thick steam rose from the whole surface.
What is happening?
The rockbrothers answered him: “You brought the water down to the flowing stone and cooled it. We are turning it to granite, deeper and deeper, by pouring the heat of the magma into the water.”
“I didn’t know it would do that.”
“The flowing stone is already far below where it used to be. Soon we will need no one to keep it from bursting through. You have saved the holy city.”
But at the treaty tower, the watermages saw the steam and wailed. “You’re making our holy water vanish!”
“Will the rains not come?” said Brickel. “When the stonefather restores the stone of the lake bed, will the rivers not flow and fill it again? Now in your hot blood and mine, the mixture of water and stone that flows in all of us, we will sign again the treaty that you broke.”
The ancient document was sealed under clear quartz; Brickel did not need Runnel’s help to separate the quartz from the surrounding stone and lift it off. There he and the watermages opened their veins and dipped pens in blood and signed their names again.
When it was done, Lord Brickel replaced the quartz and fused it again to the granite pedestal.
“Now give us back our lake!” they said.
Runnel first restored the sacred spring and stream that flowed down the slope of Mitherjut. Then he worked his way from the farthest edge of the Mitherlough, shrinking the stone of the lake bed so it was no longer porous. But he did not release the water from the stone; instead, he guided it to flow down to the magma, ever deeper, cooling it more and more. “Yes,” murmured the rockbrothers. “It will be as if the stone had never been hot. The flowing stone is deep again, where it belongs.”
As the lake bed sank back down, the steam continued to rise. It was not until well after dark that the entire lake bed had been restored. Now the waters of the inflowing rivers flowed out onto the stone, and slowly the lake began to form itself again. It would take many days to refill the lake as it had been. But it would refill.
“Move my household into the city,” said Lord Brickel. “We will have a new home in the shadow of Mitherjut, near the walls our ancestors built. I will invite as many stonemages to come to the city as you now have watermages. One for one, our numbers equal. We will sit on your councils in exactly the same numbers as you. We will have an equal voice in the making of the laws. All according to the treaty we have signed today.”
And the watermages said yes, for they could see that their lake was coming back to its place.
Runnel flowed his stoneclant into the rock of the treaty tower.
High above, at the crest of the Mitherjut, his body of flesh rose upward out of the stone.
But it was not the same body that had sunk into the stone earlier that day. For he had been too closely bonded with the granite of the mountain, and now his skin was hard and flecked; there was stone in him, all through him. He moved as flexibly as ever, but he could feel that his feet would never grow tired from walking, and only the sharpest obsidian could cut his skin. He was not pure stone like his clant had been, but neither was he pure flesh and bone.
He put on his clothes again and made his way down the way he had come. No one noticed him in the gathering night. He was just a boy walking the streets.
When he got to the low port across from Hetterferry, he only had to tell the ferryman that he was Lord Brickel’s servant. After the events of this day, that paid for his passage, for everyone feared the stonemage. After all, they believed that it was Brickel who had done all that was done today. They could not afford to cross him by offending his servant.
At the stonemage’s house, Demwor was already there, but his errand had changed. Instead of disposing of the stonemage’s wealth, he was supervising the move to the upper city. Runnel immediately began to help with the work, and if anyone noticed that he was now carrying loads far heavier than anything Ebb could bear, they said nothing about it. In the darkness, no one could see how his skin had changed.
All night they worked, carrying everything to the ferry. On the other side, a team of puddlesons lifted everything onto their backs and carried it up the long stair.
By dawn, Lord Brickel’s new house was ready, and, exhausted, they all fell into bed and slept well into the next day.
Except for Runnel, who was not weary. He lay down on the stone of the new cellar floor and fused the stone walls of the house together into living rock. This was the home of a stonefather—it would look like it.
Lord Brickel came to him late in the morning.
“What were you thinking?” he said softly.
“Isn’t this what you and your friends were working for?” asked Runnel.
“Were you planning this, then? All of it?”
“None of it,” said Runnel. “I didn’t have the faintest idea what I was doing.” Then he told Lord Brickel about the rockbrothers, and the near volcano that the water of the lake had cooled. “I didn’t know the water could do that,” he said.
“It was Tewstan that guided you,” said Brickel.
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�Look what it did to me,” said Runnel.
He led Brickel up the stairs and stood where the light shone through a window.
Brickel touched his skin. “You are part of the Mitherjut now,” he said, in awe. “I’ve heard of such things, a man taking the stone inside himself. But I’ve never seen it.”
“Will it go away?”
“No,” said Brickel. “Not if the lore is true.”
“I don’t know anything,” said Runnel. “Will you take me as your apprentice? Will you teach me?”
“Me? Teach you, a stonefather?”
“Is there a stonefather somewhere in the world right now who can do it?” “No,” said Brickel.
“Then what you know, all the lore, all the secrets, I have to learn it. Will you teach me?”
“Of course.”
“And let the watermages go on believing that you’re the stonefather,” said Runnel. “I don’t want to be Lord Runnel Stonefather.”
“You have no choice,” said Brickel. “Among stonemages, that is your name, though we shorten it. ‘Runnel Stanfar.’”
“But my common name, here on the streets of the city. Let me be…Runnel Cobbleskin. Your apprentice. Your servant. Let this skin be known as something that you did for me, to make me strong and tough.”
“You really don’t want to take your rightful place of authority?”
“I’m a child,” said Runnel.
“You were man enough yesterday, to steal the lake from the wetwizards and burn it into steam.” Brickel laughed. “Once I stopped being so terrified myself, it was really funny.”
“If I had known what I was doing there at the bridge, I would never have done it,” said Runnel.
“You should have obeyed me. But it turned out well.”
“I’ll obey you now,” said Runnel.
Brickel laughed. “Except when you think I’m wrong.”
The days and weeks and months passed by, and Runnel’s new stoneskin did not stop him from growing taller, till he had a man’s height. Stonemages came to the city, many of them to live there and take part in the government of the place, but many more merely to meet the young apprentice who had restored them to their holy city. Runnel went with them and stood in the circle when the leading rockbrothers built back the dome of living rock that had once enclosed the bodies of those who saved the city from the Verylludden.
Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy Page 50
