The Empire Stone

by Chris Bunch

  “Don’t bother replying. I might just know the answer and imagine that you would visit me, thinking I’d sent such a small doom against you, and that you would be willing to do anything to prevent such an awfulness from happening to someone as manly as yourself? Sir, you’ve gotten no more than you deserve.

  “I have a new suggestion,” Peirol went on, pleased at his eloquence. “I now suggest you and I present ourselves to the Men of Lysyth and have them put us to the question. I, sir, have been trained and am experienced in undergoing pain. You are a soldier, and should have the same talent. Let them take us to their dungeons and determine who is lying about that accusation leveled against me. I understand someone who confesses to wrong in front of them forfeits all that he has.

  “Look around. What you see is all I own. I am willing to chance its loss, to prove you a liar. What do you own? How many leagues of farm, how many rich castles, how many horses does your family hold? Do you want those to be forfeit? Who will chance the most in those dungeons?

  “Have you ever been tortured? No? I have,” Peirol lied. “It was … not uninteresting. Would you like me to tell you what they did to me with fire, with iron, with leather and ropes? I withstood them once. I think I can do it again. Do you have the same confidence?”

  Agar was growing steadily paler. “That’s a different kind of pain than a soldier faces,” Peirol said. “I recommend it to no one, would have no man undergo such torment. But when I am being dealt with in an underhanded manner, I play by the same rules as my enemy. Perhaps you want to return home now and, however you choose, discover I cast no spell, at least no spell that would linger.

  “Then I think you would want to return to the Men in Brown and tell them of your error, and how you wish to recant your accusation. I’m sure, if you accompany your apology with gold, they’ll forget about the matter.”

  Agar’s hand was on his sword. Peirol laughed in his face, a hard laugh. His hand, unnoticed, was on the dart behind his belt. Agar turned and almost ran out.

  Peirol rubbed his face, catching his reflection in a nearby mirror. “I did not realize,” he said to no one in particular, “what a complete bastard I can be.” He didn’t sound terribly ashamed.

  • • •

  “The Empire Stone,” Sereng whispered, “is the way the Men of Lysyth secretly rule Restormel. But they only consult it in time of great crisis, for the story is they’re afraid of its powers.”

  “Some of that I already knew,” Peirol said. “What is it?”

  “I’ve never seen it, nor has anyone I know. I know it’s a gem of great quality and size.”

  “Is it a clear stone that catches and reflects colors, many colors, not just the ones we know? Is it round, and cut with many more facets than any diamond?” Peirol’s voice was excited.

  “I don’t know. You seem to know more about it than I do.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know that, either,” Sereng said. “But there’s a man, a singer, once an acolyte to the Men. He drinks too much, and I heard he doesn’t hold his tongue, like sensible people do. His name’s Yasin.”

  “Most interesting.”

  “That’s all I was able to find out,” Sereng said. “Please, Peirol, don’t make me keep asking. A Brown Man came to me, said he’d heard of my curiosity, warned it was not a good thing for a noblewoman like myself to be talking about or being interested in. Please, Peirol, I don’t want to see the inside of one of their dungeons.”

  “I hope I have enough information, and I thank you,” Peirol said. “If I do, I free you from your debt.”

  “Why are you asking about the stone, anyway?”

  “When I return to my home,” Peirol said, “I want to be able to tell of my travels. Being a jeweler, having heard rumors about the great stone, I wanted to be able to tell my fellows about it. No more.”

  Sereng looked at him askance, and Peirol realized he’d better come up with a lie better than that one. He decided to change the subject.

  “Now,” he said, “may I ask another question, having nothing to do with jewels?” Sereng nodded. “This is a very personal question,” he said. “Has your husband, the Baron Agar, been, shall we say, especially, umm, romantic of late?” Sereng blushed, looked away.

  “Ah,” Peirol said. “Just curious. Now, about this gem I’m designing for you …”

  As he described the jewel, Peirol wondered about that small phallus he’d made. There had been two spells cast, but only on the box: one to prevent anyone but Agar from opening it, and one to create the flames after the box was opened. Everything else had been in the Baron Agar’s mind, or what passed for one. Peirol found that interesting.

  • • •

  It took a bit of searching to find Yasin, and the trail led steadily downward — and physically upward, for the poor of Restormel occupied not only the tenements on the former marshland across the tidal basin but the heights of the city as well. The tavern was much like the thieves’ dens of Sennen: dark, smoky, with nooks and snugs to whisper illegal business in, and no doubt half a dozen exits in case the watch showed up looking for someone.

  Yasin was a big, thick man with an angry, torn face. He was scrupulously clean, in worn, well-mended clothes that might’ve been a priest’s habit. He wore a neatly trimmed beard and hair as short as a prisoner’s. His voice was wonderfully ranged, from a rasping base to a near-falsetto, and he accompanied himself on a multistringed instrument held flat on his lap. His songs were of the past and the present, most of the contemporary ones sly digs at the nobility, at the Dowager Custodian, at the annoying habit kings had lately of dying, even at the Men in Brown.

  His audience was mostly laborers or those who made their living in the shadows, with a scattering of slumming nobility.

  Yasin kept a bottle beside him, and when he finished his set, the bottle was empty. He upended it once more, had no better luck, muttered, “Shit,” and made his way to the bar, where Peirol waited.

  “On the ticket,” he growled at the bartender.

  “On my ticket,” Peirol corrected, and spun a gold coin across. “Whatever your taste is.”

  “Not this swill,” Yasin said, glowering at the empty bottle then tossing it over his shoulder, paying no attention to the yelp as it smashed on an unaware customer’s table. “The ten-year-old. I used to drink that when I was … better off. Two glasses, man. If I can’t buy you the next, at least I can share your generosity.”

  “No need,” Peirol said. “I have my brandy here.”

  Yasin ignored the glass put in front of him, drank off about a quarter of the bottle. “Whuf,” he said. “That died easy. I forgot what real liquor tastes like.”

  “You sing well,” Peirol said.

  “I know,” Yasin said. “I guess if I believed in gods, I’d be grateful that the voice hasn’t gone, given how I punish it. So what do you want, little man? I warn you, I know no songs about dwarves. Small kings expend my repertoire in that direction.”

  “I’m not interested in songs about me or mine,” Peirol said. He leaned a bit closer. “I heard you’ve no fear of anyone.”

  “That’s a lie,” Yasin said. “I fear my landlord, if I can’t find the coins for the rent of my room. I fear all three of my ex-wives. Sometimes, when I’ve my wits about me, I fear … others.”

  “Men who wear brown?”

  “Those might be in that category.”

  “You were of them once.”

  “Which is why I fear them.”

  “I’m interested in songs — or stories — about something called the Empire Stone.”

  A look of fear flickered across Yasin’s face. He drank the bottle halfway down in a draught. “I’m not drunk enough to remember if I know any songs about that.”

  “I’m from a far country,” Peirol said, “and a man who’s interested in rare gems. Why don’t the rulers of Restormel allow it to be exhibited?”

  Yasin lowered his voice. “The rulers of Restormel — the real
rulers — know where it is and where it can be seen, and have no interest in what others think or want. Plus, they’re a little afraid of it themselves.”

  “The Men of Lysyth?”

  Yasin didn’t answer, but drank. Then he stared into Peirol’s eyes, and his gaze was sober, cold. “No. I’m not that drunk, by far. Nice try, little man.”

  Peirol took another gold coin from his purse, tossed it to the bartender. “Make sure my friend here doesn’t have to rot his guts with the cheap stuff.” He slid off the stool. “I doubt if I’ll get tired of listening to your songs, Yasin. I’ll see you another night.”

  • • •

  Peirol was halfway home when the two men rushed from an alley. One had a sandbag, the other a dagger in each hand. Peirol took the sandbag on his left arm, numbing it, spun away from the man with the knives. His sword whispered out of his shoulder sheath, and he pulled his pistol, grateful he’d kept the slow match burning and shrouded. The man with the knives came in, while the other man jumped away. The knifer gasped once as Peirol’s blade flicked in, out of his lungs, stumbled back.

  The sandbag came down on empty air, and Peirol pulled the serpentine. He’d intended to take the man in the shoulder, but he missed, and blew a significant hole below his ribs. Guts spilled steaming on the cobbles, and the man screeched and fell.

  The man with the sandbag gurgled long, then died. Peirol checked the other, found him already dead. He went through their pouches, found a few coppers, no more. Thieves. But his mind jeered at the easy explanation.

  That night he dreamed of Kima, sitting on the mossy bank of a pool. She was naked, and the sun gleamed on her oiled and shaven body. She had a yellow flower in her hair. She saw Peirol, smiled.

  “I am here,” she said, “in that vale you told me about, though I’ve seen it not in real life. This is a spell cast for me by my grandfather. Hurry home, Peirol, for Abbas has forbidden me to marry or go with men while you still live. This is not a punishment for me, Peirol. I’ve dreamed of you. I hope my dreams will be nothing compared to the real you, when you return.”

  She came easily to her feet, opened her arms, and Peirol moved toward her.

  Then he was in Abbas’s study. The wizard looked worried. “Good morrow, Peirol of the Moorlands,” he said, and his voice echoed. “I have been trying to touch you for a week now, without success. There is something … someone … blocking us. I thought I could go deeper, use … another symbol … and that might work. Evidently it has. I can feel magics swirling around this spell of mine, and am exerting great power to keep it from being broken. This is a great spell someone has cast, or possibly more than one wizard. Be careful. I think you might be in range of the Empire Stone, and that whoever possesses it is worried. Or perhaps you’ve disturbed the twig that holds a trap cocked. I cannot tell. I also sense that — ”

  Abbas vanished, and Peirol was beside the pool as Kima came into his arms. He felt her body’s warmth, breasts just touching his cheeks, nipples firming.

  Then he awoke in his apartment, in Restormel. He went to the windows, looked out, saw no one in the predawn blackness. Peirol went back to bed, but still felt as if someone, something, was watching him.

  Another thought came, and he considered, a bit disgustedly, the depth of Abbas’s lust for the Empire Stone, and how he would use anything, even his own granddaughter, to further that ambition. Or maybe he was being too cynical. Maybe Kima was telling the truth about her feelings. He snorted in total disbelief. After all this time, after all these betrayals, didn’t he know better?

  • • •

  “A small secret,” Peirol began, sheepishly realized what he’d said as Yasin snorted ale across the table and shouted laughter, fortunately missing him.

  “Let me put it another way,” he said. He’d gotten into the habit of dropping into Yasin’s tavern, trying to find information about the Empire Stone. Yasin seemed to enjoy not only the free drink but the duel of wits.

  “There was a king once, long ago and far away, who had the Empire Stone,” Peirol began. “He carried it, the legend goes, in a two-handed scepter, proud for all the world to see.”

  “And someone came and took it from him because of that,” Yasin added.

  “Well, yes,” Peirol said. “The men of the black ships.”

  Yasin looked at him in surprise. “So, unless there’s two sets of black ship sailors, that would mean they had the Stone for a time, and then we here in Restormel took it from them at the battle of Lysyth.”

  “Interesting, is it not?”

  “If I were of a suspicious mind, which I’m not,” Yasin said, “being only a humble singer of bad songs and drinker of worse potions, I might think you’ve come to take the Stone back to its rightful owner. A proper quest, worthy of great ballads.”

  “Dwarves don’t qualify for ballads,” Peirol said. “And the city that king ruled, long ago, is ruined, and no one but wolves and serpents live in its desolation. I swear that is the truth.”

  “And of course,” Yasin said, “being a humble man, I believe anything anyone tells me.” His smile twisted, became bitter. “Which is why I was stupid enough to swear to the Men of Lysyth that I wanted to become one of them. I still believed in truth back then, and thought they knew the path to it.”

  “Anyway,” Peirol went on, “my question is this: Why would one ruler keep it in the open, others hide it? Restormel surely has nothing to fear from raiders, not even those Sarissans the rest of the world seems in terror of.”

  “Rule one is as I suggested,” Yasin said. “Out of sight, out of lust, to create a phrase. If that’s really the case. But I have a better puzzler. As we’ve agreed, I know nothing at all about the Empire Stone, correct? However, consider this. If the Empire Stone gives power and riches to he who holds it, what does it get in return?”

  “What?”

  “Think about it, little man. Nothing goes for nothing in this world. The diamonds you sell, for instance. They take in light, correct? Then they reflect it back, in various colors, to please the owner’s eye, correct? But they get something out of it, right?”

  “Like what?” Peirol said. “I’ve been dealing with stones for most of my life, and I’ve never had a diamond thank me for a sunbeam yet.”

  “Aaargh,” Yasin snarled. “Conversations like this are what I thought I’d get when I entered the Order. I left it, partially, because I got answers like the one you just gave me. A diamond, or other cut stone, absorbs heat when it’s in the sun, correct?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, who’s to say that doesn’t make its stony little soul happy?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I am not, especially as sluggardly as you are in buying the rounds. I’ll explain simply. The Empire Stone, if it exists, was created by god or demon, or was a normal stone of earth, given a spell by god, demon, or wizard.”

  “That seems probable,” Peirol admitted.

  “So things — feelings, thoughts, whatever — are attracted to it, and the owner of the Stone can use the knowledge he gains for his own purposes. I don’t know how he learns those things. Maybe by contemplating that rock.”

  “That’s what the legends say.”

  “What docs the Stone keep?”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “All right,” Yasin said. “Try another comparison. When you were a babe, I assume you blew soap bubbles. First you dipped the circlet in soapy water, then blew, gently, regularly, and the bubble grew and grew. At the correct moment, you twisted the circlet, and the bubble drifted away on the wind. What happened when you blew too much?”

  “The bubble burst, of course.”

  “Now think about this Empire Stone. Think about all those centuries it’s been, well, listening, to all the evils and plans of mankind, maybe even before that, to the schemes of the gods, for if there are gods, their lusts and plots must be greater than man’s. Slowly, slowly, the Empire Stone has been filling up, as one of your stones gets
hotter and hotter in the sun. What happens when it gets full?”

  Peirol considered Yasin for a long time. “That isn’t drunkenness talking,” he said finally. “It almost sounds like a theory someone might have come up with who’d been around the Empire Stone. Maybe not you, but maybe somebody in the Order.”

  “Maybe someone, very old, very senile, who babbled long to a very young acolyte,” Yasin said, looking away from Peirol. “Someone who, when they died, left a big hole in a boy’s life.” His voice lowered. “Something that still hasn’t been filled by man nor woman.”

  A day or so later Peirol, taking his midday meal at one of the stone benches, saw Ossetia pushing through the throng. He stood, waved. Ossetia looked straight at him, then away, as if he’d seen nothing, and kept moving, even faster than before. Curious, Peirol thought; and he heard in his mind the whisper of sands running through a glass.

  • • •

  Yasin was drunker than usual that night, or rather that morning. He’d growled at the barkeep, at the tavern manager, even at Peirol before stumbling up to the low stage. “Before I do my usual songs, I want to sing something I just remembered. A song from when I was a boy — yes, I was a boy, damned good-looking too. If anyone laughs, I’m liable to remember another part of my boyhood, and give lessons on how to fight with a razor.”

  The tavern, even though it was late, was full. Thieves keep hours citizens do not. But it was suddenly very silent.

  “This isn’t a very good song,” Yasin went on. “And I’m not sure I learned all of it, for the verses aren’t the same length. And the rhyme ain’t the same. This is what they call a people’s song, which is why it’s so shitty. Also, I won’t sing the chorus every time, like it’s supposed to be done, to keep you from getting bored. I’m singing this for a good friend of mine. Two good friends, really. Only one of them’s here. The other’s dead. Been dead a long time.”

  He swept a hand across the strings:

  “We saw them as they closed