Stone Unturned: A Legend of Ethshar

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  They flew over another fork in the road, and followed the right-hand branch again. Morvash thought the left-hand road looked more heavily traveled.

  Less than an hour later they came to another fork, but at this one the right-hand branch looked almost abandoned, the edges uneven, the weeds along the sides crowding in. Zerra turned to the right anyway, following the formula Pender had given her.

  “No, no, no!” Pender called. “This is not a road! The other way!”

  Annoyed, Zerra swung the carpet back toward the other route. “You’re sure?” she said. “You said to always take the right fork.”

  “Not that one!” Pender said. “That is not a road.”

  “What is it, then?” Morvash demanded.

  “It was a road long ago,” Pender said. “It is not now.”

  “Then what is it? Where does it go?”

  “It is nothing. It goes…” He hesitated. “It goes to the Northern Deserts, where the heart of the Northern Empire was. It was a big highway once, in the Great War. Now it is nothing.”

  “Northern Deserts?” Morvash asked, staring off to the northeast.

  “They were not deserts in the war. The gods made them deserts when the Northern Empire was destroyed.”

  “Oh,” Morvash said—still intrigued, but no longer considering any further investigation.

  “You see how there are spaces between farms, below us?” Pender asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Some of those are the places where there were things left from the Northern Empire. Buckles, and shoes, and coins, and building stones, and things I do not know names for. The magicians say they are harmless now, but people like to be cautious. In the deserts, they are everywhere.”

  “Oh,” Morvash said again. They were actually inside the Northern Empire, he thought—or at least, where it had once been. That was an odd feeling.

  “We are getting close now,” Pender said, looking north. “One more fork, and then to the mountains, and I will be home.”

  “And I’ll finally get to see Erdrik’s secret project.”

  Pender smiled. “Oh, yes,” he said. “You will see it.”

  Morvash did not like that smile.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Morvash of the Shadows

  2nd of Newfrost, YS 5238

  When they were over the foothills Zerra asked Pender, “Which village is yours?”

  “Not one of these,” Pender replied. “Over the ridge.” He pointed ahead, where a high stone crest blocked their view

  Morvash looked down.

  The road they had been following had disintegrated into dozens of small paths, connecting a network of farms, villages, and mines; Pender had continued to direct them always to the right, to the east, as they made their way north into the snow-capped mountains rimming Tazmor.

  All the villages and farms and mines were now to the west of them, and none of them extended more than halfway up the stony line of mountains that formed the ridge Pender indicated. Nothing extended up that ridge—except one winding trail, at the easternmost limit of the settlements. A heavy gate blocked this path well below the peak, a stone barrier extending to either side.

  That trail was apparently the route to Pender’s home, and to Erdrik’s mysterious project.

  “How much farther is it?” Zerra asked, as they passed over the barred gate—barred on the north side, Morvash noticed. It was not meant to keep whoever lived beyond the ridge out of the countryside below, but to keep the rest of the world from intruding on Erdrik’s mysterious project.

  What’s more, Morvash realized that the gate was enchanted—he could sense powerful wizardry. He guessed that Erdrik had put some sort of wards or other spells on it to keep visitors out. The magic only extended up a few feet, though, so the carpet passed over it unhindered.

  “Over the ridge,” Pender said. “You will see.” He hesitated, then added, “There are two villages. My village is to the west of the road. The other is to the east. I don’t know where Erdrik will be.”

  “Hmph.” The ridge was high enough that Zerra had to send the carpet higher, then still higher, and by the time they reached the snow-dusted crest they were at least a thousand feet above the highest of the villages on the southern slopes, yet skimming no more than fifteen feet above the gap in the rocks that was all that remained of the road.

  And then they were through the gap, giving Morvash and the carpet’s other passengers their first sight of what lay beyond. It rose before them, and for a moment Morvash thought he was dreaming, or seeing some sort of magical vision.

  The ground below them dropped off abruptly into a steep, deep valley, perhaps three miles across, much of which seemed to be full of boulders, though there were cleared areas on the far slope that appeared to be farms. The year’s crops had been harvested, leaving stubble and exposed black earth. The valley was somewhat strange, but none of them paid much attention as they stared instead of what stood on the far side.

  At first they could not grasp what they were seeing, but finally it sank in.

  “It’s a dragon!” Darissa gasped.

  It was indeed a dragon—or rather, a statue of a dragon, carved from the same gray stone as the mountains around them. In fact, it had clearly been a mountain before it was carved. It was the largest man-made thing Morvash had ever seen, and that was counting the city walls and towers of Ethshar of the Spices; in fact, he thought it might well be larger than the entire city.

  Its head was at the eastern end of the carved ridge, its hundred-foot stone eyes staring at the eastern horizon, the mouth below open and displaying gigantic stone fangs; the slit nostrils in its immense muzzle were the mouths of caves that could hold entire houses—or mansions, or possibly whole villages. Its monstrous gray chin rested on a vast framework of massive timbers, gigantic beams that must have come from trees larger than any Morvash had ever seen.

  Behind the base of the mountainous skull the neck stretched a thousand feet back to shoulders like cliffs, that long throat resting on a dozen pillars each as big as the watchtowers at Westgate, each stone pillar capped with a wooden bed between the stone throat and its supports.

  A village—a town, really—stood beneath the base of the throat, beside a foreclaw the size of a palace. It did not look even the size of a toy, but rather as if the dragon’s foot rested beside a patch of moss.

  Behind the shoulders wings sprouted from its mountainous back, but they were not raised; they were folded back and wrapped around that long, reptilian body. Morvash guessed that there had been no natural stone formation that could have served to create them in any other position. He glimpsed more wooden frameworks, barely visible, in the gaps between wings and body. An entire forest must have been obliterated to supply so much lumber.

  The hips must once have been the top of a mountain, but now joined two tremendous legs and a long, long tail to the stone body. The tail was supported by a thin layer of timbers, as were the feet—it appeared that no part of the tremendous creature was still attached to the ground beneath.

  Morvash stared, taking in the whole thing, then began focusing on little details.

  He could see now why Pender’s home was called Hindfoot Village. It was built up beside the outermost right rear claw.

  He could see why Erdrik had needed such an isolated location, and two hundred years, for his project; he could never have kept something like this hidden anywhere nearer civilization, and carving an entire mountain—really, an entire ridge—would obviously require centuries.

  He estimated the thing’s length and concluded it was at least two miles long, probably much more; the tip of the tail was hidden, and the only things he had to judge the scale against were the two villages, so he could not be sure.

  “I don’t understand,” Karitha said.
“Where did it come from?”

  “They carved it,” Morvash said. “Pender’s people. They carved an entire mountain into the shape of a dragon.”

  “What for?” Hakin asked. “No one can see it way out here!”

  “Look at the wings,” Morvash said. “See those wooden beams that hold the wings out from the body? If it was just to look at, no one would bother—they’d have just left the wings attached.”

  “It was scary, climbing under there,” Pender said, nodding. “It’s dark and narrow, and if the stone broke…” He shuddered.

  “But it didn’t,” Morvash said.

  “No, it didn’t,” Pender agreed. “I brought the carvers food when I was a boy, climbing up the wood. And when the wings were finished, and I was old enough to cut stone, I worked on the tail, polishing scales to shape.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Hakin said. “What’s it for?”

  “Erdrik is going to bring it to life, isn’t he?” Morvash said, looking at Pender. “He’s an expert on animation spells—his house was full of animated furniture and nicknacks. That was all practice for this. I’m sure of it.”

  “Animate it?” Hakin exclaimed. “That thing?”

  “Of course,” Pender said.

  Hakin stared at the immense carving. “Why?”

  “Probably just to prove he can,” Morvash said. “Old wizards get strange sometimes.”

  Zerra had let the carpet slow almost to a stop as they topped the ridge, so that they could all look at the gigantic sculpture; now she turned to Pender. “Where would I find him?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Pender said. “But someone in my village might.” He pointed at the buildings clustered around the monstrosity’s right rear claw.

  The carpet hesitated for another few seconds, then swooped down toward Hindfoot Village.

  They made no attempt at stealth, and by the time they reached the town dozens of people were shouting and pointing. Pender leaned over the edge of the carpet and called out in Sardironese as Zerra guided their craft lower.

  Morvash could hear several people shouting Pender’s name as they cruised up the central street about a dozen feet off the ground, and Pender called back, but since everything else was in Sardironese he had no idea what they were talking about.

  Pender had always called his home a village, but what Morvash saw around them was more than that. This was no simple cluster of homes with a smithy and perhaps a few shops at the center; this was a good-sized town, with solid houses of stone and wood standing in tidy rows, and collections of shops that would not have been out of place in Ethshar’s New Merchants’ Quarter. And there were hundreds of people out in the streets, watching as the carpet swooped into the town square at the tip of one of the dragon’s huge claws.

  The surrounding houses stood three stories high, with a few peaked roofs thrusting even higher—but that gigantic talon was taller than them all, and the foot behind it, resting on a shallow bed of ancient timbers, rose like a great stone hill until it curved up to become the monster’s leg. To the north the vast stone belly was like a huge roof, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of feet above them, shadowing everything north of the town.

  Zerra brought the carpet to a halt two or three feet off the stone pavement of the town square—a pavement not of rough cobbles, but of smooth stone, cut and fitted in an elaborate pattern of squares and diamonds. “Talk to them,” she told Pender. “Find out what’s going on, and where Erdrik is.”

  “I’ll try,” Pender said, dropping from the carpet to the ground.

  He was promptly grabbed and vigorously embraced by several of the locals, and a babble of Sardironese surrounded the travelers.

  A man with a dark blue sash over one shoulder, apparently marking him as an official of some sort, stepped up to the front of the carpet and asked a question.

  “I don’t understand Sardironese,” Zerra said. “None of us do.”

  Prince Merek asked a question back in another tongue—it did not sound quite like the Melithan Morvash had heard before, and he thought it might be Trader’sTongue. He had learned a few words of Trader’s Tongue when working for his father, before he had been sent into exile at his uncle’s place, but he was far from fluent. He thought he caught the word for “we,” but could not make out the rest.

  The official looked from Zerra to Marek, then to each of the others on the carpet—Morvash, Hakin, Darissa, and Karitha—then turned up his hands in defeat and walked away.

  “Doesn’t anyone here speak Ethsharitic?” Hakin asked.

  “Probably not,” Morvash said. “I don’t think they have much contact with the outside world.”

  “No?” Zerra asked. “Then how do they have all this?” She waved a hand to take in the surrounding town.

  That, Morvash thought, was a good question. From Pender’s descriptions he had pictured Hindfoot Village as a rural, poverty-stricken place, eking out a meager existence in the cold and barren north, where the people devoted their spare time to laboring on whatever Erdrik’s mysterious centuries-old project might be.

  That did not match the reality around them.

  He saw the man with the blue sash talking to Pender, and a moment later their companion came over to talk to them.

  “Welcome to Hindfoot Village!” he said.

  “Where’s Erdrik?” Zerra demanded, obviously not interested in pleasantries.

  “Our master, Erdrik the Grim, is up on the…the head,” Pender replied. “He appeared in Forefoot Village a sixnight ago, and talked to the village elders. He took the spells off them! And everyone! But I wasn’t here, so I still can’t talk about…” He waved at the belly far above.

  “What’s he doing?” Morvash asked.

  “What has he been doing?” Zerra asked.

  “He looked at…he…” Pender looked helplessly at the others.

  “He inspected the creature,” Darissa offered. “I can sense the image.”

  “Yes!” Pender agreed. “He inspected everything. It had to be perfect. And it is! My people have worked on it for two hundred years, and we made it perfect—every scale, every joint.”

  “So is he still inspecting it?” Morvash asked. “Is that why he’s up on the dragon’s head?”

  “No, no,” Pender said. “He finished inspecting last night. This morning he started his spell.”

  “What spell?” Zerra asked.

  After living in Erdrik’s house for so long, Morvash did not need to ask. “You mean…he’s bringing it to life? Right now?”

  “Yes,” Pender said happily. “He told my friends the spell needs two days. He must not be interrupted.”

  “Two days?” Morvash felt his belly tighten. He had studied up on animation spells when he was trying to find the best way to restore all those statues to life, and he only knew of one that took two days, neither more nor less. “He’s using Ellran’s Immortal Animation? On that?”

  “Ellran’s?” Zerra said. Her face went pale.

  “Wait a minute,” Darissa said. “He’s really bringing the entire mountain to life?”

  Pender nodded.

  “He’s trying, anyway,” Morvash said. “No one’s ever animated anything close to that size before; I don’t know if it will work.”

  “That’s insane!” Darissa said. “A dragon that size?”

  “An immortal dragon that size,” Morvash said. “The spell’s name is not an exaggeration.”

  “But there must be some way to stop him!” Marek said. “What if we interrupt the spell before it’s finished?”

  “I don’t know,” Morvash admitted. “But interrupting a spell is always dangerous. And if he started this one this morning, then it’s already been building up magical potential for hours.”

  “We can’t interrupt it,�
� Zerra said. “That could be even worse than letting him finish.”

  “Worse than unleashing a dragon three miles long?” Marek demanded. “What could possibly be worse?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Morvash said. “I mean that literally.”

  Darissa looked genuinely frightened by that, but she asked, “What will a dragon that size eat?”

  “Nothing,” Morvash said. “That’s the good news, such as it is—creatures brought to life with Ellran’s Immortal Animation don’t need to eat. They live on pure magic. Most of them can’t eat anything; they don’t have throats.” He glanced at Pender. “Your people didn’t give this thing a throat and stomach, did you?”

  Pender shook his head. “The mouth goes back just a hundred yards. To look real.”

  “That’s more than enough to chew things up and spit them out,” Zerra said, “even if it can’t swallow.”

  “Why would it do that?” Pender asked.

  “Because its master told it to, perhaps?” Darissa suggested.

  “That’s another thing,” Morvash said. “I’m sure Erdrik intends to be its master, but it may not work. Its personality will be determined by its natural composition, and the precise proportions of the ingredients Erdrik uses in his spell, and the texts I’ve read on the subject say that it’s extremely difficult to predict just how those will interact. The wizard performing the spell can adjust the ingredients, but he can’t do anything about the mountain’s elements, and the larger the spell’s subject, the more its own materials matter, and the less important the spell’s ingredients. With something that size, I don’t think there’s any way Erdrik can ensure obedience.”

  “Does he know that?” Darissa asked.

  “He ought to,” Zerra said, “but from what I’ve heard about him, he was always prone to rejecting news he didn’t want to hear.”

  “Like those poor tax collectors he enchanted,” Morvash said.