by Jeff Grubb
Urza had returned to the partially built clock on his bench, and now fiddled with the lever arm of a particularly recalcitrant timepiece. “Are you listening to me?” Rusko asked.
“We tell them,” said Urza calmly. “Show what you can do. Sign your work. I am listening to you.” He did not look up.
Three months. Three months the Argivian had been working for him, sleeping in the shop at nights, and Rusko still knew almost nothing about him. He had employed an enigma; a hard-working enigma, but an enigma nonetheless.
Someone needed to show the young man there was more to life than his work. Rusko sighed. Failing anyone else suddenly appearing, that person would have to be he.
The older clockmaker observed, “You Argivians are such dull children. So proper and practical. Why does it hurt to admit that you’ve just seen a lovely vision?”
Urza set down the lever arm. “Fine. She was very pretty. Can I get back to work?”
“I think it’s a lack of gods,” said Rusko, holding up both fingers to frame his point. “The people of Argive don’t worship that much, do they?”
“Once,” returned Urza. “Not much these days.”
“That’s the problem,” said Rusko, placing a palm flat against the worktable. “No gods, no life. You’ve reduced your gods to sayings and psalms, parables and dry scriptures. Yotia’s gods are alive and well! We have an overflowing pantheon and bring more in from the hinterlands! Bok, Mabok, Horiel the swift, Gaea the earthpower, Thindar, Rindar, Melan—”
“A god for every occasion,” said Urza dryly.
“Exactly!” cried Rusko. “Whatever you do, some deity approves of it, or disapproves of it, or has some dire warning about it. It’s much more exciting that way.”
“Seems like a waste of energy,” said Urza. “Unless, of course, you’re in charge of the temples that benefit from all this veneration.”
Rusko waved at hand at his assistant in frustration. “You miss the point. A Yotian would at least admit that he saw a very pretty and powerful young lady. He’d enjoy that revelation. You are just denying it, and in the process you stunt your soul.”
Urza set down his tools and took a deep breath, then smiled deeply and shook his head. “I admit it, Goodsir Rusko! She was lovely. Radiant. And now that I have admitted it, what can you or I do about it? The warlord probably has her already promised to some powerful noble or faction leader to seal an alliance.”
Rusko looked hard at the young man, trying to determine if the Argivian was merely making fun of him. Then the clockmaker smiled. “There you would be wrong, my lad. Oh yes. The warlord had a wedding all arranged, but the young man in question drowned. His ship reefed in a storm en route to Korlis. And they call it the Shielded Sea, by Bok and Mabok! No love lost, of course.” He snorted. “You saw how deeply she was in mourning. She is free for a moment, free to pursue her own interests.”
“But only for a moment,” said Urza, “for your warlord probably has some other plan for his daughter. And then neither you nor I will ever see her again.”
Rusko sighed. The lad had all the romantic spirit of a box of nails.
Urza turned once again to his workbench. “Now, if you would like to get back to business, I’ve found why this old caisson clock you have is losing time.”
* * *
—
The warlord did have a plan for his daughter, though not one that Rusko would have thought of. The warlord had spent his early days in battle, married late, and fathered still later. Kayla was the apple of his eye and the prize of his kingdom. She was not a gift he gave away lightly.
Around him the warlord saw a nation at peace. His last major campaign, in which he had seized and held the Sword Marches and incorporated them into Yotia, was decades in the past. An entire generation, including his daughter, had been brought up in a land without war.
The warlord hated it.
He was surrounded by soft men and women: courtiers who used words instead of daggers; old generals content to spend their declining years playing with their grandchildren; dashing young captains who had earned their commendations by keeping clean uniforms, not by fighting an enemy.
Soft, all of them, he thought. Kayla’s betrothed had been the best of a bad lot, and the warlord had agreed to that one only after his own counselors made noises about a successor to the throne. And then the damned fool ran aground off Korlis and died.
He did not want to see his line diminished, as had been the blood of the weak kings of Argive. His line needed strength. Kayla, his angel, was a strong young woman, and deserved an equally firm mate.
He made the announcement the month after the official mourning period for Kayla’s intended had passed. His daughter was to marry the strongest man in the kingdom. And to find this man, the warlord had established a test.
In the central court before the palace, he erected a great statue. It was made entirely of a single piece of jade, twenty feet in height, crafted with the warlord’s face. It took a team of fifteen men to winch it into place. His daughter’s hand, he decreed, would go to the man who could move the statue from one end of the court to the other.
When the first day of the contest arrived, Urza said that it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard of, which statement set Rusko off again on a comparative study of Argive and Yotia.
“That is because you have no romance,” argued Rusko, locking the shop behind them. Closing the shop seemed to be the only way to get the young man to leave its confines, and Rusko saw the contest as an excellent chance to expose Urza to the finer things that Kroog offered.
“The idea of mighty quests and impossible tasks is in all our folklore,” he continued. “Look at the saga of Bish and Kana, or how Alorian vied for Titania’s love.”
Urza stopped in the center of the street. “But the legends say Bish and Kana died on their wedding day, and Alorian was torn to pieces by Titania’s hounds after she rejected him.”
Rusko made a harrumphing noise. “I didn’t say it was an exact comparison.” He headed off down the street to the court. Urza followed, shaking his head.
The competition was set for the first of every month, when the warlord and Kayla would attend. Most of the city closed down for those five hours while sturdy men tried to win the princess’s hand. Servants cleared the court between the statue and the opposite end and set out lines of benches on each side as a makeshift stadium.
Urza and Rusko looked down and saw that a group of thick, stalwart men had already gathered in a rough line. The smallest was twice Urza’s size, and several looked as if they could take on an elephant bare-handed. From the scars on a few exposed torsos, it appeared some apparently had. At the far end of the court was a low riser. Seated on a padded bench were the warlord and his daughter.
As Urza and Rusko pressed into the court, a gong sounded. The first suitor strode forward to meet his jade foe. He wrapped his massive arms around the statue’s knees and gave a mighty heft. The towering figure did not so much as sway under his assault. The strong man grunted, regained his grip, then tried to lift again. The statue was immobile. The gong sounded again, declaring the attempt over.
Another burly individual waddled forward, this one so muscular that he was wider than he was tall. He tried to pry his fingers beneath the edge of the statue but was rewarded only with crushed digits. Another gong, and a third individual locked his arms around the statue’s legs, bending at his knees for better support. This contestant gave a mighty bellow as he attempted to pull the jade figure from its moorings. The bellow became a scream as the muscular man suddenly let go of the statue and dropped to the court’s floor, gripping another part of his anatomy. The gong sounded and a group of temple healers rushed forward to attend to the fallen champion.
“Come, let’s pay our respects,” said Rusko, nodding his head toward the royal bench.
There was a moving line in front of the warlord and princess. The Yotians passed before the pair, quickly bowing and touching their fingers to th
eir lips in the fashion of that city. Rusko joined the throng, dragging Urza behind him. The clockmaker made a full bow and finger-kiss, but Urza merely gave a respectful head bob. And then they were past the royal couple.
“She looked at you,” said Rusko as soon as they were past.
“She did not,” said Urza, shaking his head. “She’s seen a thousand people this day alone.”
“She smiled,” countered Rusko.
“She is a princess,” said Urza. “Smiling is automatic for such people. Were I she, I would be seriously worried that one of those muscle-bound warriors will actually succeed in lugging the statue around. I don’t think his majesty is breeding for intelligence in future generations.”
Rusko shook his head. “You’re being too logical, again, too pragmatic. Probably she is sure that no one will succeed. Sooner or later her father will come up with a more reasonable task. What’s wrong?”
Urza was staring intently, at the pile of treasure to one side of the dais. “What is that?” he asked.
Rusko blinked. Urza was pointing toward a large pile of gifts laid out over a luxurious swath of gold cloth. There were great swords, mirrored shields, and armor of the type that no one had worn in generations. Bins of rubies, diamonds, and sapphires glittered in the sunlight, accompanied by red-velvet boxes holding crowns and diadems.
“That’s the dowry,” answered Rusko, and quickly added, “I know what you are thinking with your logical mind: ‘Why does the daughter of the most powerful man in Yotia need a dowry?’ Well, it’s a tradition. Those are all old items belonging to the previous warlords. Some date back to the dawn of the nation. Some were made before Kroog was even founded.
“What of the book?” said Urza.
Rusko had not seen the young man this excited in all the time he had been in Kroog. He squinted to see the object to which Urza was referring to. “You mean the one next to the ivory shield?”
“Yes, the large one,” said the young man, “What is it?”
Rusko leaned forward. “It’s a book,” he confirmed. “Definitely a book.”
“Yes, of course it’s a book. But look. On the binding are Thran glyphs!” snapped Urza.
Rusko blinked again. The young man was positively thrilled by the discovery.
Rusko removed his lenses, rubbed them on his shirt, and put them on his face again. He shrugged. “If you say so. Can you read them from this distance?”
Urza was silent a long moment, apparently puzzling out the geometric writing. Then he said, “‘Ja-lum.’ Was there a Jalum in Yotia’s history?”
“Hmmm,” considered Rusko. “I think there was an advisor or scholar. Or a philosopher. Long ago, before the temple schools. Is it important?”
Urza looked at the table laden with treasure, then back at the princess. As he looked, she was just turning away from him, apparently intent on the latest attempt to lift the statue. Her face was smooth and impassive and very lovely in the noonday sun.
Urza chewed on his lip, then said, “Goodsir Rusko, I think I want to move a statue.”
Rusko could hardly contain his disbelief. “And I want to fly to the moon, and kidnap the harim of the Pasha of Sumifa. I’ll even settle for my head to hurt less after a night of drinking brandy. But I don’t expect it to happen. That’s rule one in life—don’t expect the impossible, and you won’t be disappointed.”
“I do expect it to happen,” said Urza, staring intently at the huge jade statue. Another contestant was trying to manhandle it to no avail. “But I will need supplies.” He turned to the clockmaker, his voice hard and decisive. “Metal bolts, ironroot spurs, and other things. Will you help?”
Rusko stammered for a moment. He was all for romance, but suddenly this posed a threat to his own pocketbook.
“Well, I could give you an advance,” he said reluctantly, “but you’re talking about a sizable outlay.”
Urza nodded, then said, “Have you heard about ornithopters? The Argivian flying machines?”
Rusko nodded. “I’ve heard traveler’s tales.” He paused, then hissed a question at the young man. “You know how they work?”
Urza nodded again and said, “I…helped build the first ones. I could give you the plans. If I did, would you provide supplies for my work?”
Rusko felt both his heart and his pocketbook opening to the young man. He smiled.
* * *
—
“These are wonderful!” said Rusko, thumbing through the plans. The first purchase the clockmaker had made was a supply of parchment and quills, and the young Argivian spent the night sketching out the ornithopters. First was a general description in neat lettering. Then page after page of details, showing how the levers in the pilot’s housing functioned, how the wiring operated, of what materials the wings and struts needed to be made, and to what dimensions they had to be machined for perfect performance.
Rusko was astounded. All this from the quiet scholar who had been repairing his clocks. A trained ape could build ornithopters from these plans. No, even Rusko could build an ornithopter from these plans.
“Marvelous,” he muttered, leafing through the loose parchment pages. “Amazing. A work of art.” The clockmaker could scarcely contain himself, for the machine practically leapt off the page, fully realized.
Urza smiled, but Rusko could not tell if the smile was in response to his compliments or for his current work. They had curtained off the back of the shop, and Urza had begun constructing a new machine there.
Actually it looked as if he were building a statue of his own to counter the jade one of the warlord. It looked like a beast of curved metal spars, fashioned in the upright form of a man. Its limbs were metal frames, cross-bolted in a thick latticework. Its upper torso was thinner metal and ironroot, and it pivoted at the base of the spine. One inelegantly long arm drooped at either side, each looking like that of a gorilla. A roughly hewn helmet, with a faceplate that flipped up or down, served as the head. The face guard was open now, revealing a tangle of cables and gears set around a single, dull gem.
It suddenly occurred to Rusko that Urza had smiled more in the past few weeks than in all the time the clockmaker had known him. They had not been the polite, for-the-customer smiles or smug Argivian-scholar smiles or even put-up-with-old-Rusko smiles. The young man seemed more alive as he tinkered with his creation.
Rusko had only made one suggestion during the entire process.
“You’ve got the knees on backward,” he said.
“Supposed to be that way,” muttered Urza, not waiting for a reply. He burrowed back into the creature’s chest with a spanner.
In two months the creation had blossomed from a mixed collection of parts that Rusko had gathered, cadged, or “borrowed” from other shops into a towering giant. It was vaguely humanoid, and Rusko wondered if it was based on any living creature. It was not a question he wanted answered.
Instead, late at night, as Urza was checking connections and splicing wires, he asked another question.
“Who is Mishra?”
Urza’s rapidly moving fingers almost dropped the splicing tool he was holding.
“Someone important to you, I assume,” continued the clockmaker.
Urza stared at Rusko, and for a moment there was a flicker of coldness on the youth’s face. Just for a moment, the quiet, solemn man of the past months was back, and Rusko was afraid he had lost the smiling Urza forever. Then Urza sighed and the moment passed. He turned back to his machine. “How do you know of Mishra?”
Rusko fought a temptation to laugh. “You rarely sleep, Urza, but when you do, you talk. You mention Mishra a lot. And another. Tacashia.”
“Tocasia,” corrected Urza. “Tocasia…was my teacher. She’s dead now.”
“Hmmm,” said Rusko. “And Mishra?”
“My brother,” said Urza quietly. He peered more intently into the creature’s interior.
“Alive?”
“I suppose.” Urza shrugged. He gazed up with the pretense
of working on the wiring and leaned back. “I don’t know. We parted on less than friendly terms.”
“Ah,” said Rusko. There was a lot going on beneath the surface there, and he felt resistance to his questions. “And you feel badly about it,” he persisted.
“I wish there was something that could have been done to change things,” said Urza. Rusko thought the youth’s statement was probably true, as far as it went, but there seemed to be something more, something yet unsaid.
A silence grew between the two men. Finally Rusko broke it. “In Yotia, we believe a man has many souls. Did you know that?”
Urza shook his head, but a small smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. A put-up-with-old-Rusko smile, the clockmaker thought.
“You don’t wear the same clothes as you did when you were a boy, and you won’t wear the same clothes when you’re older,” Rusko continued. “The same applies to souls. You have one soul as a child, another as a youth, and several as an adult.”
Urza shrugged. “I wear different clothes. I don’t know about souls, though.”
Rusko stroked his chin. “Most Yotian faiths believe that when you die each of your souls is judged individually. Let us say your first three souls were basically good. Then you became a robber and a thief and grew a fourth, evil soul. Then you repented and lived a virtuous life, growing a fifth, more kindly soul. When you die, your souls are judged independently. The first three souls, and the fifth, will be rewarded for their virtue. The fourth soul will be sent to hell, destroyed, or sent back, depending on what gods you venerate.”
“You are going somewhere with this?” asked Urza. His eyes strayed toward his machine.
Rusko smiled. “Only that you may be feeling guilty about what happened with your brother. Or your late mentor. Don’t. You have a new soul since you’ve arrived here: a Yotian soul. Let that be your guide.”
Urza stood for a moment, untangling Rusko’s advice. Then he shook his head. “Until I talk again with my brother, I will carry my regrets with me. But thank you for your advice. It’s very…” He paused, then broke into a wide smile. “Much like Kroog itself.”
