Stone Unturned: A Legend of Ethshar

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “There were other things, too,” Zerra said. “There were several reasons the Guild wasn’t happy with him before he disappeared.”

  “The Guild,” Morvash said. “Maybe we should go tell them what’s happening. I mean, what can we do?”

  “By the time we could get back to Ethshar, that dragon would be alive and stomping all over Tazmor.”

  “Couldn’t they send someone with a spell to kill it?” Darissa asked.

  Morvash sighed. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Once it’s alive, nothing can kill it. Ever. Everything that’s ever had Ellran’s spell used on it is still alive, and the spell has been known for centuries. People have been trying to find a counter-spell since the Great War, and have never succeeded.”

  “I’ll contact Ithinia,” Zerra said. “Tonight, with the Spell of Invaded Dreams. She may have some ideas.”

  “Good,” Morvash said. He looked up at the towering stone carving. “I hope you get through. We only have until the day after tomorrow.”

  “I know,” Zerra said, her gaze following his. “Believe me, I know.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Hakin of the Hundred-Foot Field

  2nd of Newfrost, YS 5238

  The entire party was welcomed into Pender’s family home for supper, but the language barrier made that somewhat awkward. Hakin watched as Morvash and Marek and Darissa tried to communicate with their hosts, and were introduced to various people with odd Sardironese names that he did not bother to remember—after all, when would he need them, since none of them could understand a word he said? For his own part, he made the usual polite gestures and spoke the polite words, but did not really pay much attention to the locals.

  Karitha just sat there, dazed and miserable, not talking to anyone, and Hakin felt a wave of sympathy for her—but on the other hand, she was a murderer, and her current ghastly situation was at least partly her own doing. He decided that if she wanted to continue wallowing in her own gloom, he would not try to stop her.

  Instead he found himself speaking to Zerra as they dined. He and the wizard had wound up seated at the foot of the table, far from Pender and Morvash struggling to keep up a polite conversation with Pender’s parents. Three teenaged girls separated them from the others, so if they did not want to eat in complete silence they had only each other.

  They discussed the journey from Ethshar over the soup, and then Hakin told Zerra the entire story of how he had become Tarker’s companion—she had heard the rough outline before, but now he filled in the details. By the time the hosts cleared away the chicken bones and brought out a platter of fruits both fresh and dried that subject had been largely exhausted, and Hakin began asking questions about this animation spell that Erdrik was trying to perform.

  “Ellran’s Immortal Animation,” Zerra explained. “It will bring anything at all to life, and once that’s done, nothing can kill it. Oh, it can be smashed, or imprisoned, but not killed—if you break it into pieces, each individual piece will be alive. Which is really pretty horrible, when you think about it. Fortunately, its creations can’t feel any physical pain, and not much emotional pain, so they don’t seem to suffer much.”

  “But how can they not be killed? What if you ground one to powder?”

  “Then you have living powder. Ithinia of the Isle has a jar of the stuff, in fact; it’s weird.”

  “But…” Hakin tried to imagine how this could work. “What if you brought a piece of wood to life?”

  “You’d have an immortal piece of wood.”

  “But would it still burn?”

  “Of course. And then you’d have a pile of immortal ash, and living smoke.”

  “That’s just…hard to grasp.”

  “Wizardry often is. It’s based in chaos.”

  “All right, suppose you brought something to life, and then cut it in half?”

  Zerra took a drink of wine—Pender’s parents apparently kept an excellent cellar. “You’d have two living halves.”

  “Would they be two separate beings, or would they still be parts of one?”

  Zerra emptied her glass. “I’m not actually sure about that,” she said. “But if you put them back together, however many pieces it is, and attached them by sewing or gluing or something, I know they’d merge back into a single creature.”

  “What if you brought two things to life separately, then put them together?”

  “Oh, that one I know. They’d still be separate, and probably not happy about being stuck together. It’s whatever was included in the original transformation, nothing more, nothing less. You can’t add or subtract any substance. Something that’s been brought to life with Ellran’s can’t ever digest food, for example. It may be able to go through the motions of eating, if it’s been constructed for it, but the food will just sit there in its belly.”

  “That’s…wait, so they don’t eat?”

  “No, they live on magic. Didn’t you hear Morvash telling Darissa that? They can’t eat, they don’t need to breathe…”

  “But if they don’t breathe, are they really alive?”

  “Well, we say they are, because we don’t have any other word for it. They can move. If one has a mouth, it can talk, even though it doesn’t have any lungs or breath—it’s not the way people talk, it’s like a speaking rune, with the voice coming out of nowhere.”

  “But if it doesn’t have a mouth, it can’t talk? That doesn’t make sense.”

  Zerra turned up an empty palm, then reached for the wine decanter. “Wizardry often doesn’t.”

  “But any kind of mouth can talk?”

  “Well…” Zerra paused to pour. “Not necessarily. I don’t know the details of the spell, but apparently it’s possible to make creatures that don’t talk. But they all understand human speech, and I think they can all talk unless the wizard actively prevents it.”

  “You’ve never done the spell?”

  “Me? Oh, gods, no! It’s not my sort of magic at all. I’ve never tried it, never even read the formula. But I’ve seen it done, and Ithinia used it a few times, and I’ve talked to her about it.”

  “So it can’t be reversed? I know there are spells to undo things, like the one Morvash used to turn all the statues back into people.”

  “It can’t be reversed. I don’t know why. Nothing can undo Ellran’s. Something brought to life with Ellran’s won’t age, won’t die, is never ill even in the middle of a plague, is immune to death spells, is immune to most magic, really. Gods don’t see them as alive in the first place, so theurgists can’t do anything to them. Warlocks, back when there were warlocks, could smash them, but not kill them; the usual way a warlock killed anything was by stopping its heart, and most animated creatures don’t have hearts. Witchcraft can’t do anything to them—I don’t know why not.”

  “So why isn’t the World full of these immortal creatures? I mean, spriggans got into everything in just a few years, and they’re a real nuisance; why aren’t these Ellran things all over the place, getting in everyone’s way?”

  “Because it’s a really, really difficult spell, and not many people know it, and most of the ones who do are bright enough to only use it very rarely. Nobody left a magical mirror lying around popping these out every few minutes. And there are ways to get rid of them in an emergency—break them up small enough that they aren’t very strong, seal them in a box, and drop them in the ocean, for example. Though why you’d bother once they’re broken up small enough to be harmless I’m not sure; as I said, Ithinia has one she ground to powder and keeps in a jar.” She took another gulp of wine. “Or you could send one through a portal to another world, I suppose. I don’t know whether anyone’s ever done that.”

  Hakin glanced at the window, where he could just barely see a little of one of the gigantic dragon’s legs. “Nobody is
going to keep that thing in a jar,” he said.

  “No,” Zerra agreed. “You’d need millions of jars, and that’s after you broke it up. How do you break up a mountain? And it’s too big to fit through any portal I ever heard of.”

  “So if Erdrik brings it to life, it’s going to be around forever?”

  “Probably. We might be able to talk it into living out in the wilderness, where no one will bother it and it won’t hurt anyone, but we can’t kill it.”

  “You said it won’t need to breathe, so we couldn’t drown it.”

  “No. It won’t need air, or food, or anything but magic.”

  “And there’s magic everywhere.”

  “That’s…” Zerra stopped, with her glass halfway to her mouth. She blinked, then set it down again and stared at Hakin.

  He stared back, realizing for the first time that Zerra had been drinking a lot of wine, and was feeling its effects.

  “You know,” she said, almost whispering, “there are places where there isn’t any magic.”

  “There are?” Hakin asked, startled.

  Zerra looked around at the others, then leaned close to Hakin. He could smell the wine on her breath. “It’s a secret,” she said. “Or at least, it was until they killed Empress Tabaea.”

  Hakin blinked. He knew that Tabaea the Thief had been an ordinary criminal who had somehow gotten hold of some incredibly powerful magic a decade or so back; she had used it to conquer Ethshar of the Sands and declare herself Empress of Ethshar. The Wizards’ Guild had killed her, almost destroying the overlord’s palace in the process, but Hakin had never heard any of the details. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  Zerra glanced again at the other diners, who were paying them no attention as they focused on Pender, who was translating multiple conversations back and forth. “It’s not something the Guild is proud of,” she said. “They try to keep it quiet, but when it’s in the middle of a city, you can’t really keep it secret.”

  “Keep what secret?”

  “You know they killed Tabaea, right?”

  “Right.”

  “They tried a lot of different magic, but she could counter everything that had a counter, so finally they resorted to something that doesn’t. Which was really stupid.”

  “What did they do?”

  “There’s a spell—I forget what it’s called, maybe it’s just called Death. Anyway, you know wizardry works by tapping into the chaos underneath reality?”

  “I’ve heard that,” Hakin agreed. He did not mention that he had only heard it twice, once from Shenna, and then in Zerra’s own remarks a few minutes earlier.

  “Well, this spell, the Ultimate Death or whatever it’s called, turns that chaos loose. It just lets everything dissolve into unreality. And it spreads, and there’s almost no way to stop it. The spell has only ever been used maybe twice, because it could destroy the entire World. We don’t even know how they stopped it the first time, when the spell was originally discovered, but the second time was when they used it to kill Tabaea, and they thought they had a way to stop it, but they were wrong. It didn’t work, and this thing was spreading, eating the overlord’s palace from the inside, and that’s when they used this other spell, one that was so secret only a few wizards had ever heard of it, that makes magic stop working completely. Well, wizardry, anyway; I think other magic may still work, but I don’t know for certain. Wizardry doesn’t. And it’s permanent—once it’s used in a place, wizardry will never, ever work there again. Never. It was discovered during the Great War, and it was immediately banned—anyone who even mentioned that it existed would be executed, because Old Ethshar used wizardry and the Northern Empire mostly didn’t, so it would only really be useful against our own side. They really, really didn’t want the Northerners to know about it. But it got written down anyway, because we wizards are obsessive about this stuff, and a couple of wizards knew it, and years later one of them used it, maybe in a feud with another wizard, and ever since there’s been a dead area in the mountains in the Small Kingdoms, out in the wilderness where nobody knew about it. I’ve heard that was about five hundred years ago. Nobody knows where the first dead area is, from when the spell was originally discovered, but the second one is still there, up in the mountains, somewhere. I don’t know where; they keep it secret.”

  “Wow,” Hakin said, leaning close.

  “Yes. So anyway, the Guild tried to trick Tabaea into going to that dead area, but it didn’t work, and they had to use that death spell on her instead, but then they used the magic-absorbing spell to stop the death spell, so the third dead area, the one that made it imposs…impossible to keep the secret, is in the middle of Ethshar of the Sands, inside the overlord’s palace. Wizardry doesn’t work there anymore. Lots of people know about it, but the Guild doesn’t like that.”

  “I see.”

  “Anyway,” Zerra said, her speech now noticeably slurred, “I don’t think anyone’s ever tried it, if they did I never heard about it, but I bet that if you took a creature that had been brought to life with Ellran’s Immortal Animation to the dead area in the palace there, it would die. It would starve to death without magic to keep it alive.”

  “That’s fascinating.” Hakin was not merely humoring the wizard; this was fascinating, if not particularly useful. They could not expect to lure a mountain-sized dragon into the overlord’s palace.

  “Yes.” Zerra looked over her shoulder. “I wonder if Ithinia ever thought of that? I’ll have to ask her when we get back to Ethshar.”

  “You should do that,” Hakin said. “Or tonight—weren’t you going to try to contact her tonight?”

  “Was I?” She looked confused.

  “Yes, you said you were,” he replied, carefully moving the wine decanter out of Zerra’s reach. “Something about dreams.” He looked up the table. “Pender, do you have any tea? I think Zerra’s had too much wine.”

  “I’m fine,” Zerra said, but she pushed her wineglass away. “What’s for dessert?”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Morvash of the Shadows

  2nd of Newfrost, YS 5238

  The entire party from Ethshar had dined with Pender’s family, and they all had been introduced to Pender’s parents and his three younger sisters, though Morvash had not gotten the names straight. After the meal, though, they had been scattered to several places for the night, since Pender’s father did not consider the house big enough for everyone—or at least, that was the excuse he gave, by way of his son, but Morvash suspected he thought it might be unhealthy to have so many foreigners under the same roof as his teenage daughters. The house, while not a palace by any means, seemed large enough to Morvash to accommodate half a dozen guests, but he did not argue.

  He himself was assigned the one guest bed, in a pleasant little sitting room/workshop on the upper floor. Hakin stayed at the home of the man with the blue sash—the mayor, Morvash decided, from Pender’s stumbling attempt to find an Ethsharitic equivalent for his Sardironese title. A smiling, elderly woman whose exact position Morvash did not quite understand took in Darissa and Prince Marek, while after much discussion Karitha and Zerra were allowed to sleep in the town’s immense workshop, where centuries of accumulated tools and papers lined the walls, while stone fragments, unused timbers, and iron brackets were stacked on all sides, providing some idea of how long and carefully the townspeople had worked on their gigantic task.

  Zerra had clearly drunk more than her share of the family’s wine at supper, but she assured everyone that she would still be able to perform the Spell of Invaded Dreams; the cool air on the walk to the workshop had cleared her head. Just to be sure, she used an amethyst enchantment to dispel the last of the liquor.

  The workshop was clearly not meant for guests, but they chose it anyway. This rather unusual accommodation was not because t
he village had nowhere better, but because Zerra wanted space to perform her magic, and because she wanted room to keep the carpet ready in case she had to whisk Karitha skyward to keep her away from Tarker, should the demon arrive in the middle of the night. The big double doors that had once allowed workers to move slabs of stone, support timbers, and other large objects in and out were easily large enough for the carpet.

  Morvash was reasonably pleased with these arrangements, since they left him with the only man in town who spoke Ethsharitic; he thought Hakin came out the worst, but the lad did not seem to mind.

  Before the group split up, Darissa suggested that when Zerra talked to Ithinia that night, if the Spell of Invaded Dreams worked, that she might also ask Ithinia if someone could find out who ruled Melitha now. Dealing with Erdrik’s monster was obviously the more urgent concern, but if she was going to be talking to Ithinia anyway…

  Zerra nodded. “I’ll try to remember,” she said.

  Once everyone had been distributed Morvash and Pender returned to Pender’s home, where the expectation was obviously that everyone would be going to bed, but Morvash held Pender back for a moment.

  “I wanted to ask you a few things,” he said.

  Pender glanced at his bedroom door, but then followed Morvash to the sitting room. “What do you want?” he asked, sitting on a chair as Morvash settled onto the edge of his bed.

  “Tell me about this place,” he said. “When we spoke back in Ethshar and you talked about your home I had pictured a miserable little village, dirt-floored huts and muddy streets, enslaved to Erdrik, but instead I find a flourishing town with fine houses and fancy pavements. Why is your home wealthy?”

  Pender took a moment to compose his reply, clearly searching for unfamiliar words. At last he said, “The wizard is not stupid. People work better when they have full bellies and strong arms and calm heads, and when they are allowed to rest. He did not want a tired or hungry stone-carver to ruin his work when a chisel slips. He did not want us to run away to find better places when he was not here to watch us. So yes, we must do as he commands, but he pays us well, and we do not work on the mountain when the weather is not safe. The stone we cut away was ours to use for walls and pavements. When the snow came or ice made the mountain too dangerous, our carvers would work in town, on our homes and streets. There was much more than we needed, so we threw the rest down in the valley, but we had all we wanted for the town. When we cut down trees for bracing, the part that was not needed was ours to use as we pleased. When our carvers dug gold or gems from the mountain, we could keep them, and sell them to people in other towns—that was how I became a jeweler and how I had the diamonds. Children or women or old men who were not strong enough to work on the mountain could do other work instead. So we had money and workers, and hunters and gardeners, and money to buy from the farmers on the other side of the ridge what we could not grow or make for ourselves, and if there was not enough food the wizard brought us more. We have lived this way for two hundred years. Why would we not do well?”