by K. J. Parker
‘I’ll show you where you’re sleeping,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ Ciartan heard himself reply, and he wondered if he’d have his very own pile of damp straw or whether he’d be mucking in with the pigs. Instead, he found himself following the man up a flight of narrow stairs into what was presumably the roof space: big beams and joists, and a triangular ceiling. But the room was huge; ten feet square, at least, and in the middle was a large wooden thing, with something that looked like a flat square bag on top, and another smaller bag up against the wall. ‘What’s that?’ he couldn’t help asking.
‘What?’
‘That thing there.’
‘It’s a bed,’ the man told him, and Ciartan, whose best guess so far had been some kind of cider press, was too astonished to say anything. A bed. Well, bugger me. I wonder how it works.
The man put the lamp down on a stool and went away again, and Ciartan walked over and examined the large wooden contraption. Hell of a lot of trouble to go to just for sleeping, he thought; hell, even Grandad dosses down on a pile of old fleeces, and his room’s half the size of this. Do they all use these extraordinary sleeping machines, or is this just for princes of the whole blood and other honoured guests?
He tried hard to pluck up the courage to get up on it, but couldn’t quite manage it. For one thing, it had to be the best part of three feet off the floor; what was there to stop you rolling off it in your sleep and crashing to the ground? You could break your arm. Instead, he nervously tugged off a blanket, wrapped himself in it (no fire in the fireplace) and shivered himself to sleep. Perhaps it was the strangeness of his surroundings, or maybe it was just the horrible, indigestible food, but he found himself dreaming, and even by his standards, it was a very strange dream. There were crows in it, of course, and—
Poldarn woke up.
The familiar feeling, of the dream slithering away; but then he reached out and caught it, and it stayed trapped in his mind, like a lobster in a basket.
Memory, he thought. And the man in the dream was called Ciartan. That was me.
(A fire burning backwards; unconsuming what had once been destroyed and gone for ever. Crows that brought carrion, instead of taking it away.)
Time to get up. Get out of bed. Wash. Eat something. Go to work. He yawned.
Outside, in the hazy sunlight, something had begun without him. As he stood in the doorway of his cabin and watched the foundrymen hurrying backwards and forwards across the yard, he couldn’t help being reminded of Haldersness, where everybody knew what they had to do without being told. There was a difference, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
‘There you are,’ said a voice on the edge of his vision. ‘Been looking for you.’
Bergis, the head mud wrangler. Too late now to dart back inside; so he smiled feebly and asked how he could help.
‘We’re starting on the ward-tower bell for Falcata guild lodge,’ Bergis replied. ‘When you’ve pulled yourself together, I’ll see you down at the cutting.’
Poldarn managed not to groan until Bergis was out of earshot. Marvellous. The cutting was what the foundrymen called the thick seam of grey muddy clay, which was the main reason why the foundry had been built here in the first place. Mixed with straw and lots and lots of cowshit, the cutting clay was perfect for building moulds and lining furnaces, being capable of soaking up vast amounts of heat and retaining it without cracking. It was also very sticky and slimy, and it didn’t smell very nice, either. Bergis’s job was to pounce on anybody who didn’t see him coming and march him off to the cutting to dig and pack the revolting stuff. A job this size would probably call for at least five tons.
Oh well, Poldarn thought, never mind. He picked up a long-handled shovel from the tool store, and drifted slowly across the yard and down the slope through the scraggy wasteland the foundrymen referred to, rather bizarrely, as the orchard.
They’d already filled one cart by the time he got there. As usual, they’d piled so much into the cart that it was far too heavy to move, even with a team of mules pulling and the digging crew pushing; the more they heaved and struggled, the more bogged down the cart became, its wheels digging wide, soft ruts in the grey sludge. Eventually, someone would break down and fetch a few barrowloads of straw to pack under the wheels; until then, they’d wear themselves out and get spattered in mud up to their eyebrows trying to shift it by brute force. Hell of a way to run a commercial enterprise, but it wasn’t Poldarn’s place to make suggestions; particularly blindingly obvious ones.
It was too early in the morning for mud-wrestling and pulled muscles, so Poldarn gave the cart a wide berth and headed for the digging pit. The drill was to fill the wicker baskets with mud; when they were full and each one weighed slightly more than a farrier’s small anvil, they had to be manhandled up off the ground and onto the bed of the cart. Grabbing the nearest empty basket, Poldarn walked up to the glistening grey face of the pit and started carving his way into it, like a cook slicing a hefty joint of meat. There was, of course, a knack to it, a matter of angles, leverage, mechanical advantage, which Poldarn mostly understood but couldn’t quite get right.
Well now, he thought, as he stamped the shovel into the clay with his heel. The man – Gain Aciava, though that remains to be proved conclusively – was right about the dreams; so, either he’s a shrewd guesser who knows how dreams work, or he was telling the truth. As for the dream itself: entirely plausible, but it didn’t really show me anything I hadn’t already conjectured for myself, so it could just’ve been me reconstructing my first hours on this continent, like a scholar speculating about things that happened a thousand years ago. Nothing decided either way; but do I believe? It’s like asking me, do I believe in gods?
Do I believe?
Yes, Poldarn discovered, apparently I do. I think that’s how it was when I first came here: the plain girl and her annoying father, and everything seeming strange, and the revolting food. Question is: am I remembering what happened, or has somebody told me the truth about something I’ve forgotten, like the scholar suddenly discovering an ancient manuscript? Does it matter?
He considered the point; yes, it probably mattered a hell of a lot, because if he believed the dream, he probably couldn’t avoid believing Aciava as well. Now that could be awkward.
(But here I am anyway, in a filthy mess, digging clay out of a stinking hole in the ground in return for a few ladles of grey soup and the privilege of sleeping in a turf hut. The question can therefore only be: is it worth risking all this for the sake of finding out who I used to be? And the answer can only be: no, it isn’t.)
The blade of Poldarn’s shovel hit a stone, and the shock jarred his wrists and elbows. He winced; for some time he’d had an idea that he’d done something to damage the joints or tendons of his arms. Maybe it was the forge work, or perhaps it was an old injury, the result of drawing a sword and slashing empty air a thousand times a day for years on end. Pretty metaphor – no idea where the damage came from or how far back it went, dimly aware that it could have a harmful effect on his future, too stupid to care. His elbow was aching, as if he’d just banged his funny bone. Not a good sign, but here he was anyway; and the mud wasn’t going to prise itself out of the bank and climb into the basket.
Only an idiot ignores the past and takes risks with his future; but Nature relies on idiots, or nothing would ever work properly. If it wasn’t for the stupidity of all rabbits, hawks and foxes would starve to death; if cows and chickens stopped for a moment to consider that maybe something was wrong, there’d be no milk and eggs on the table. If the god in the cart happened to look over his shoulder and notice the trail of ruined cities and burning farms stretched out behind him, the prophecies would never be fulfilled and the world could never end. And then where would we all be?
But here he was anyway, digging clay when maybe he should be a Father Tutor, with purple slippers and a personal chaplain to open his letters for him. He thought about that; a sword-monk with a
trick elbow was about as much use as a blind helmsman, and just as liable to die young. By the same token, there’s not much call for a smith who can’t swing a hammer, or a foundryman who can’t dig. Once the injury’s there, and that joint or tendon has acquired its small, crippling piece of history, the damage is done; and the glorious irony is that it’s the craftsman’s history of practising his craft that makes him unable to practise it further in the future – you can lose the memory, but still the pattern bleeds through the bandage. I am what I was, I will be what I am, the mechanism of history is a circular movement with a repeating escapement, like a trip-hammer. Poldarn clenched his left hand. His elbow still ached, and the tips of his fingers had gone numb. (And if my arm is my life, the damaged tendon connects the pain and the loss of memory.) ‘Bugger,’ he said, and leaned the shovel against the side of the pit. What he needed, even more than the exquisite symmetry of it all, was some nice hot water to soak his arm in. Well, at least he was in a foundry, where hot water was never a problem.
‘Here,’ Bergis shouted as he hauled himself out of the cutting. ‘Where do you think you’re sloping off to?’
‘Furnace,’ Poldarn replied. ‘Done my wrist in.’
Bergis pulled a face; either sympathy or annoyance at lost production. Knowing Bergis, probably lots of both. ‘Don’t take all day,’ he said.
Number five furnace was a baked-clay beehive, suitable for bees the size of vultures. As Poldarn approached, lugging a large copper pan full of water in his good hand, the two firekeepers looked up from their game of knuckle-bones and grinned at him. ‘Hurt your arm?’ said one of them.
Poldarn nodded. ‘Hit a stone.’
The firekeeper nodded. ‘Watch you don’t splash the clay,’ he said. ‘It’s getting pretty warm in there.’
Fair point; a stray drop of water on the hot clay could make it crack or even shatter, and that’d be a week’s work spoilt. He set the pan down very carefully, then sat on a spare stool. ‘Room for one more?’ he asked, though he wasn’t all that wild about knuckle-bones; as a game, it was too random to be interesting, and besides, he was a pretty hopeless gambler.
‘Sure,’ the other firekeeper said ‘Basic rules: five and seven wild, three means roll again, and twelve pays the banker. Two quarters buys you in, half-quarter to raise and quit. All right?’
Poldarn nodded. ‘I’ll have to owe you,’ he said. ‘Left my money in my other coat.’
‘You haven’t got another coat.’
‘True,’ Poldarn admitted, and dug out a handful of coins, which went in the pot. True to form, he lost on the first four games.
‘Don’t worry,’ said the firekeeper, raking the coins over to his side of the playing area. ‘Your luck’s about to change, I can feel it.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ Poldarn replied gloomily.
He won the next game, lost the next two, won the fourth. By then, his pan of water had warmed through. The fire-keepers helped him lift it off, and he sat out the next five games, his arm sunk in the hot water. He had three quarters left to his name, having lost a total of nine.
‘You used to have another coat, though,’ the firekeeper suddenly remembered. ‘What happened to it?’
‘Lost it playing knuckle-bones,’ Poldarn replied. ‘Go on, I can throw right-handed if I’ve got to.’
The firekeeper pursed his lips. ‘Dead unlucky, that.’
Poldarn grinned. ‘Ah yes,’ he said, ‘but my luck’s about to change. Your half-quarter and raise you a quarter.’
‘Can if you like.’ The firekeeper shook the bones in his cupped hands, blew on them for luck and threw. ‘Three,’ he announced. ‘Roll again. Bugger.’
‘Twelve,’ said his friend. ‘Twelves pay the bank. Who’s the bank?’
They counted back through the previous games, and it turned out to be Poldarn’s go. Including the three quarters he’d just paid in, the pot came to exactly twelve, which was what he’d started with. ‘That’ll do me,’ he announced cheerfully and stood up, ignoring the protests of the fire-keepers. ‘My arm’s much better now, so I think I’ll go and do some work. Thanks for the game.’
‘Welcome,’ grunted one of the firekeepers, his eyes fixed on the bones and his small pile of coins. Poldarn waved to his turned back, and walked slowly across the yard toward the cutting. Someone else had appropriated his shovel and bucket, not that he minded. ‘About bloody time,’ Bergis grumbled, as he came back with replacements. ‘What took you so long?’
‘Won twelve quarters in the dice game.’
(Which was true, he reflected, as he stamped in the shovel blade; at least, it was true in the present, though the past made it a lie. He wondered if the same applied to what Aciava had told him. That’d be a laugh, if no matter how long he played for, he always ended up with exactly what he’d started out with. Forever going round in circles, like the miller’s donkey.)
‘Is it just me,’ Spenno the pattern-maker complained to nobody in particular, ‘or doesn’t anybody care whether we make this fucking bell or not?’
Nobody said anything. In all the time he’d been at the foundry, Poldarn couldn’t recall a single instance of anybody answering one of Spenno’s questions. He seemed to exist in a bubble floating on the crest of ordinary communication, up where everybody could see him but no one could make out what he was saying.
Under other circumstances, Poldarn might have found Spenno’s patterns of behaviour disconcerting or even alarming, but he’d come to the conclusion that they were just another aspect of the different rules that applied to everything concerned with casting bronze. In this instance, it was a positive comfort to hear Spenno yelling into space, since he only ever seemed to get this frantic when everything was going perfectly according to plan. As soon as an unforeseen difficulty arose, Spenno would stop ranting and prancing; instead, he’d scuttle purposefully about the yard as quickly and deftly as a mouse, muttering, ‘It’ll be fine now’ or ‘That’s got that sorted’ under his breath. In the face of disaster and catastrophe, he’d pull out an ancient folding chair, park it in the middle of the yard, prop his feet up on a pile of scrap metal or cordwood, and spend a relaxing hour or so turning the pages of a battered and incredibly ancient-looking book with the intriguing title Concerning Various Matters, which he carried with him at all times, stuffed down inside his shirt. Whether the book really did contain the answers to all conceivable problems, as Spenno claimed, or whether he used it as an aid to relaxation and concentration, and thought the solutions up out of his own head, nobody knew or greatly cared.
Today, however, Spenno was yelling and waving his arms about, so it was safe to assume that all was well. The pattern itself was already well under way. Spenno had started at crack of dawn with a stout oak pole, which he’d planed down to a taper. He’d worked with drawknives and spokeshaves and planes and scrapers, hurling each tool over his shoulder when he’d finished with it and yelling for someone to pick it up and hand it to him when he needed it again. Once he’d finished it and walked round it several times, squinting along it from various angles, shaking his head and swearing fluently, he fitted a cranked handle at the top end and slotted a thick oak plank over each end, so that the pole spun freely when the crank was turned. Now he was building the mould itself around this spindle, smacking and punching handfuls of clay onto the gradually forming core, while two bored-looking men slowly turned the handle. Every so often he’d stop, run his clay-caked hands through his hair and shriek abuse at his handiwork, before plunging his fingers into a basin of water. Apart from Poldarn, nobody seemed to be paying any attention to this performance; and Poldarn, who’d seen it all before, was only watching because he had nothing in particular to do.
‘You there.’ Poldarn, who’d slipped into a sort of gentle trance, looked up. ‘Yes, you, miserable gloomy bastard with the big nose. Get up here and do exactly what I tell you.’
Poldarn sighed and stood up. He knew what Spenno would want him to do, because he’d watched him
the previous evening, cutting a bell-shaped template out of pine board with a large fretsaw. It wasn’t the template itself that was needed at this point in the operation; rather, Spenno would use one side of the leftover plank, which had a perfect silhouette of half a bell cut out of it. Poldarn’s job would be to shove this against the clay core as the crank-operators turned it, to shear off the excess clay and leave the exact profile behind, smooth and regular. Marvellously clever, Poldarn reckoned; pity it was such a filthy job.
How long it took, he couldn’t say; it seemed like a very long time, and since all he had to do was stand still and lean on the plank, he allowed his mind to wander. Spenno’s constant stream of rage and despair soon began to have a pleasantly soporific effect, like rain on thatch, or the chatter of a shallow rill tumbling down through rocks. In the distance, forming a kind of counterpoint, he could hear the heavy clang of sledgehammers on thick bronze plate, where a working party was smashing up an old, flawed bell for scrap. More pleasant symmetry, Poldarn thought; and everywhere he turned there was symmetry, from the relentless cycle of scrap and melt to the clay core being turned to shape next to him. A man could be fooled, if he let his guard down. He could allow himself to be persuaded that symmetry was his friend, instead of the main component of the trap he should be avoiding. Maybe, he speculated, that was why Spenno ranted against it, when everything seemed to be going so well; no doubt about it, Spenno was a clever sod, a genius in his own way, so it wasn’t inconceivable that he’d noticed something that had managed to escape everyone else’s attention. Symmetry, pattern, shapes being formed; perhaps that was the secret wisdom known only to pattern-makers – eccentrics like Spenno, and himself.
‘Bloody fucking thing,’ Spenno said; and that was apparently the accepted word of command to stop turning the crank. The core stopped dead, making Poldarn lurch forward and drop his plank scraper. ‘Right, you lot bugger off, and for crying out loud none of you touch it, it’s wet, it hasn’t dried yet. Understood?’
