by Shannah Jay
***
After five years’ service with Jerrith, Balas, at eighteen, was formally accepted as a fully-trained stonemason. He sat stolidly through the teasing and horseplay that marked this metamorphosis, then dressed himself for the celebrations.
Two others had become stonemasons with him. He felt glad to have learned his trade, of course he did, but he’d be even more pleased when today’s foolishness and teasing ended.
It was usual when young persons from Harrak came out of their apprenticeships for them to start by building houses for themselves. People joked that this way they had to live with their mistakes. In fact, most of them married quite quickly and needed the houses, because folk married young in all the hill settlements.
After some consideration Balas decided to build himself a small house in the woods nearby, outside the town walls.
Jerrith instantly vetoed this. ‘Too dangerous. There are still raiders about. Maybe not as many as before, but you can’t be too careful.’
Balas saw Ilennia shaking her head at him and took a deep breath before he replied. ‘I thank you for your concern, foster-father, but I want to try some things out and I’ll have more space there. I’ll be careful, I promise you. And after all, I shall always know if danger is approaching.’
Jerrith eyed him dourly. But the lad had grown into a man and must now make his own mistakes. Balas was still not of tall stature, but he was well-muscled and sturdy, a son to be proud of. It was time to let him go his own way.
‘Have you thought of marriage?’ Ilennia asked him hesitantly one day. She’d seen the girls eyeing Balas and one or two seemed quite taken by him.
‘No. Not for a while yet.’ In truth he wasn’t at all interested in girls. He was too filled by a hunger to work the stone.
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Ilennia sighed but didn’t press the point. There were men and women who didn’t marry at all, but she didn’t think her son was one of those. Maybe Balas was just slow to mature. But she’d have liked to see grandchildren. She envied the other women when the little ones came to visit them.
Balas chose a piece of land for himself near the stream that ran down to the River Teneber. The villagers took their water from this stream and the river itself was close enough for the building stones to be dragged down to it on sturdy wheeled flats which ran along an iron track to a big jetty at the water’s edge. The barges came up to this to load, then went downriver to Tenebrak. Riverfolk took care of that part of the trade, sharing the profits with the stoneworkers and using their sails to bring back trade goods and the empty sleds, which were used again and again.
Everyone in Harrak was glad to see business starting up again. The riverfolk said the wars were over and things were settling down everywhere, though there were small groups of raiders around, so you still had to be very watchful. They always anchored for the night in mid-stream. Soon, though, Discord would be only a bad memory. And they prayed it never came to the land again!
Balas put his request for land to the Village Council and with some reluctance the Elders approved his choice. The plot was further from the village than usual, therefore not as easy to defend, but close enough to the stream to get water easily. And after all, they said, shrugging, an adult had the freedom to do as he pleased. But Balas would have been wiser to build inside the walls like everyone else. Mind, the way things were going, they’d have to extend the walls again soon, or there’d be no space for the next generation. So maybe it would all work out all right in the end. Another two or three generations and his house would be inside.
As was the custom, every household in the village provided ten stones towards the building of the new adult’s house. Balas would be expected to do the same himself later whenever others finished their apprenticeships and started building.
The other folk insisted on helping him with the foundations. He wanted to change the design of the house, but when he told them what he wanted, they made such a fuss he found it easier to let them dig the trenches their own way.
He’d change it all later.
When the others had gone, Jerrith stayed behind and volunteered to help Balas set the first stones in place.
‘I thank you, foster-father, but as I tried to tell the others, I’m minded to try a few new ways in building this house,’
Balas said mildly. ‘I haven’t changed my mind about that.’
‘Then why did you let them dig the foundations this way?’
‘To get rid of them without argument. I can’t abide fussation and bother.’
Jerrith gave a wry smile. He felt a lot easier with Balas now that he didn’t have the responsibility for what the boy did. If Balas wanted to find out the hard way that the old methods of working stone and the old house designs were the best, now was the time for him do so. Jerrith would come back and help him change things later, when Balas had settled down a bit. ‘Well, if you need any help with the lifting, let me know. And don’t do anything which damages your back.’
‘No. I’ll be careful.’ In that, at least, Balas agreed with the others. If you damaged your back, you were useless in the quarries. He had a broad leather belt to support him when he worked, stout leather gloves for his hands, and he knew all the best stances for each task, had known them quite instinctively.
When everyone had gone, leaving Balas in the beautiful peace of the clearing, with a canvas tent and a small cookfire, he sighed with pleasure. It was spring already and warm enough to live rough, and he’d always enjoyed his own company. He went to run his hands over the big blocks of stone that the nerid teams had dragged on small sleds from the village. The sleds had made a track to his house and he’d led the first team himself on a route he’d chosen carefully when making his plans.
Slowly he moved from one stone to the other, getting to know them. His eyes grew glazed and his mind seemed to float in the air above them as he laid his hands on them. Some were just as strong inside as out; others had flaws and weaknesses, and he could sense those quite clearly. When’d had touched every stone, he started grouping them according to inner strength.
Evening came and Jerrith’s new apprentice came strolling into the clearing. ‘Ilennia says the food’s ready and you’re to come before it goes cold.’
Balas blinked at Marra as if he had never seen her before and so strange was his expression she frowned and asked,
‘Are you all right?’
He pulled himself together. ‘Yes. Sorry. What did you say? I was thinking about the stones.’
‘Ilennia says the food’s ready.’ For it’d been arranged that Balas would eat his evening meals with his family for a while.
‘Thanks.’
She looked around the clearing. ‘You haven’t done much, have you? I thought you’d have got the first row of stones in place by now.’
‘I’ve done as much as I wanted to,’ he growled. ‘And I can do without your cheek, young Marra. Come on! I’m
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hungry.’
For three days he moved the stones around. Some he split into smaller pieces, following very carefully the lines of the interior weaknesses he could sense, but other folk could not. People came to the clearing to watch him, shook their heads and walked away again.
Jerrith came alone one evening, standing there with a disapproving look on his big square face. ‘You been sitting here a-dreaming, lad? You’ve got nothing done. Let me help you move a few stones into place.’
Balas stood protectively in front of his piles. ‘Thank you, but no.’
Jerrith frowned. ‘You’ll need to get back to work or you’ll soon have no credit to buy your food.’ All the Harraki sold their stones together and dealt in credit to the Village Council when they wished to buy something.
‘I’ve been saving my credit for a long time and I’ll pay Ilennia for my food, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll be all right for a while. I want to try a few things out.’
Jerrith sighed. What could
you do with a lad so stubborn? He was glad now that there was no marriage in view.
Balas would make a poor provider until he came to his senses.
After a few days, people stopped coming to look at the house, for Balas had still not started building, but was digging out new foundations. He was working hard, they’d grant him that, but to what avail? He was also digging a channel from the spring so that he could bring the water right to the hut along a conduit lined with the weaker stones, the ones that had no bearing strength, as he called it.
When Jerrith came to study the conduit one evening, he found it well-made and holding the water nicely, with the stones cemented together. It had taken Balas a while to construct and the idea had raised a few eyebrows, though some said it might be a good thing to have the water so close at hand and even suggested they extend the idea to the village.
Others said the stream was fine for washing and working, and since the village had huge stone cisterns that took water from the roofs for drinking water, why bother? What had been good enough for their ancestors was quite good enough for them, thank you very much.
‘You’ve fitted the stones together well,’ Jerrith allowed after studying the conduit from one end to the other. ‘I’ll give you that, at least. And your wife will be glad to have the water so close.’
‘I’m not thinking of marrying for a while yet.’
‘You will one day, even if you have to go outside the village to find a wife.’
Balas didn’t argue. Men and women from outside knew nothing about stone, were regarded as inferior by most Harraki and did most of the domestic chores and agricultural work. He wasn’t going to marry anyone who didn’t understand stone. He didn’t think he could bear that.
Jerrith went back to worry to his wife about how long it was taking the lad to come to his senses.
A few days later, Ilennia decided to go out to the clearing and speak seriously to Balas about what he was doing because she couldn’t bear it that the lad she’d raised should be an object of scorn in the village.
When she got there she saw that the walls of the new house were mostly in place. At last! One wall had a great square opening in it for a window, far bigger than the usual window size. And the door frame was made from solid pieces of rock, instead of wood. How had the lad ever brought those here? He’d asked no one for help. If he had, she’d have heard about it.
She looked around, but couldn’t find him, so called his name. ‘Balas! Balas, where are you?’ Thinking she heard a faint sound from the woods, she went along a little path that Balas must have made. Where the woods thinned out near a rocky outcrop, she paused because she had heard a chanting sound. An involuntary shiver ran up her spine. That was Balas’s voice, but it sounded - well - strange. Very strange.
She hesitated. Should she leave the poor lad be? Was he indeed running mad? Then she shook her head. No. He was her foster-son, however strange he’d become, and if he needed help who better than she to give it?
As she started walking uphill towards the rocky outcrop, the chanting started up again.
‘Stone then, stone then, stone then break!’
Balas’s voice had a crooning, rhythmic sound to it.
There was the sound of a chisel, then more chanting.
Ilennia crept forward and peered around a tree. There stood Balas right next to the rock face, which showed signs of having been recently quarried. The breaks were clean-cut. No experienced stone-worker could have done better.
‘Now break!’ called Balas in a loud voice.
Before Ilennia’s eyes, the rock began to split. She gasped, unable to believe what she was seeing. Rock fractured when you worked it, of course it did, but not so far at once and not along such straight lines. You had to hit it hard to get it to break, but Balas wasn’t hitting it hard. Instead, he was tapping it with a small chisel and - well, chanting to it.
She stood like one frozen.
When the piece of rock came away, he lowered it carefully to the ground, then turned and saw her, jerking in surprise and sucking in a deep breath, as if he wasn’t pleased to have a visitor.
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‘What are you doing, son?’ she asked sternly.
‘I’m working with the stone, Mother, instead of attacking it.’
She went forward to run a finger down the rock face. A clean, true cut - only it hadn’t been cut. It had just seemed to split away of its own accord. She knew instinctively that the Elders wouldn’t approve of this way of working.
It was as if he could read her mind. ‘Are you going to tell them?’
‘Tell them what?’ She turned away and began walking back to the half-finished house.
He fell into place beside her. ‘I’ve used no evil arts,’ he said quietly.
‘They won’t like it, Balas.’
‘That’s how stone should be worked,’ he insisted. ‘There’s too much waste the other way.’
She stopped and stared at him. ‘You’ll never change, will you?’
He shook his head.
‘And you’re the stubbornest creature in the whole world, so I’ll not waste my time trying to change you.’
His face lightened for a moment into a smile, then fell into tranquil lines again. ‘Would you like to hear what I plan?’
‘Yes. Very much.’
What he planned for the house made a great deal of sense. As she was leaving, she kissed his cheek and said quietly,
‘I won’t tell about how you get your stone.’
‘Thank you, Mother.’
When the house was ready, Balas invited Ilennia and Jerrith to share a hearth-warming feast with him. He wouldn’t let Ilennia bring the food, insisting on providing everything himself. His little garden was doing well, and he’d gathered berries and nuts in the woods. He had some spare stone to trade for credit against meat. They were not to do a thing.
Jerrith had been too proud to come and inspect what he wasn’t invited to see, but now he went round the little house with Balas, amazed.
‘The door frame’s too wide.’
‘I like to see out through it.’
‘And such big windows. How will you defend the place?’
Balas’s face took on a shuttered look.
‘How, boy?’ Jerrith repeated.
‘I’ve set traps. No raiders will get into my house. And anyway, Discord is dying down. It won’t go on for ever.’
‘Show me the traps.’
Balas did so.
Jerrith was puzzled by the clever pits that could be set to trigger if anyone tried to break into the house. ‘How did you know to do these?’
Balas shrugged. ‘I worked it all out in my head.’
The meal was simple but good. They ate quietly together, then Balas took a deep breath. ‘Now that I’ve finished here, I’m going to lock the house up and leave Harrak for a time.’ He had to leave, had to find the building he’d been dreaming of for the past two years, a big building of stone set on a small hill overlooking a town which he was pretty sure was Tenebrak, so big was it. Suddenly the need to see that building was urgent.
‘But you’ve only just finished the house!’ Ilennia protested. ‘Don’t you want to live in it?’
‘I wanted to see what I could do. Anyway the house will still be here when I come back. Now, I need to travel, so that I can see other places, other buildings, other rocks.’ Then he looked at them and said in solemn, formal tones, ‘I want to thank you for taking me in and teaching me to be a stonemason. If you ever need me, I shall know and return.
And you need not fear for your old age. I shall be honoured to provide for that, as you provided for the boy that I was.’
He came to set his hands on their shoulders, each in turn, kissing them formally on both cheeks, and his eyes were steady and honest upon them.
‘You’re a good lad,’ Jerrith said, for this gesture had warmed his heart, ‘even if you do have a few strange ideas.’ He jerked a head towards the house. ‘And y
ou build true lines.’ From him, that was a huge compliment.
Balas nodded. The praise was his due, but the words pleased him nonetheless.
Ilennia wept in Jerrith’s arms that night. ‘I don’t want him to go.’
The next morning Balas didn’t weep, didn’t even look back, but tramped down to the river and began to follow it downstream to Tenebrak. Now that he was moving in the right direction, the need to see that huge building wasn’t as urgent. If he walked, taking his time, he could look at the different types of rock he met on his way, try quarrying them, see how they felt to work with. In Harrak they used only one sort, solid but fairly soft as stone went, though it grew harder as it weathered. He wanted to try the harder types.
He sighed with happiness as he tramped along. This was meant to be, he was quite sure of that.
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CHAPTER 14 Sarann
Sarann stayed at the settlement until she was nearly eighteen. She lived with a childless couple, who treated her like a beloved daughter. She had friends, good food and clothing, and they made sure she attended morning school.
But although she was grateful to Maurin and Chella and grew to love them dearly, she found staying in one place frustrating after the fascinations of the road. The love of trading was born in her and never left her. Quite soon after her arrival, she took over the bartering of spare produce at market for Chella, young as she was, and obtained better prices, too.
To keep her skills alive she also showed Chella how to recognise and use the herbs that grew wild in the woods, as her real mother had taught her. Some made good medicines, some enhanced hair washes and others made clothes sweet-smelling in the storage chests. Some of them had seeds that were good to eat, too, if you knew how to prepare them. All traders automatically gathered such things as they travelled, and children began very young to help their parents harvest the rich produce of the roadside.
Later, as Sarann grew to womanhood, the young men of her village began to pester her to marry them, for she was a capable girl and pretty, too. The older folk encouraged her to accept, but she didn’t want to marry any of these boys.
