The Memory of Stone
by Michelle West
Rosdan Press, 2011
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
SMASHWORDS EDITION: 978-1-927094-11-2
Copyright 2011 by Michelle Sagara
All rights reserved
Cover design by Anneli West.
Four Corners Communication
“The Memory of Stone” Copyright May 2002 by Michelle Sagara, first appeared in The 30th Anniversary DAW Fantasy Anthology ed. Elizabeth R. Wollheim and Sheila E. Glibert.
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Novels by Michelle West
The Sacred Hunt
Hunter's Oath
Hunter's Death
The Sun Sword
The Broken Crown
The Uncrowned King
The Shining Court
The Sea of Sorrows
The Riven Shield
The Sun Sword
The House War
The Hidden City
City of Night
House Name
Skirmish*
War*
*Forthcoming in 2012 and 2013
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Memory of Stone
Other Stories by the Author
Introduction
I am very fond of this story.
I am often fond of certain stories. I have never, however, been any capable judge of how those stories will work for readers. The stories I’ve often loved best work the least well, although this isn’t always the case. I learned early on not to second guess my readers; instead, I focus on the story and the characters and hope that when the story is finished, it will speak to others as strongly as it spoke to me.
Sometimes it does. This one seemed to. But if you asked me why this one worked better than any of the others I’ve written, I honestly couldn’t tell you.
This was written for a 30th anniversary celebration—in this case, my publisher’s. DAW put out one fantasy anthology and one SF anthology; I was invited to write for the fantasy book because that’s what I write for DAW. When I received the invitation, I called my editor and said, “Do you really mean six thousand words maximum?”
“Yes. We’ve got a lot of authors.”
“Oh. Ummm. If you want a story that isn’t connected to my novels, I can probably write one that length.” This is, by the way, completely unfounded optimism on my part. Luckily, I have an editor who understands my writing very, very well. “But if you want a story connected to the novels, I don’t have a hope in hell of writing one that comes in at less than ten thousand words because I’ve never managed to do it before.”
She preferred a story that had some connection to the published novels, and it seemed more fitting to me that I write one connected to that universe, so we agreed on ten thousand words. Which, as it turned out, was also unfortunately unfounded optimism.
But I thought I would have a chance of writing something that length if I chose to write about characters who never appeared directly in the novels, with small cameos by characters who did—and I had always wanted to write a story about the Guild of Makers, and in particular, the Artisans—the half-mad makers who weave magic into all of their work the way painters in this one use color.
So I started the story.
But it had two viewpoints. At about fourteen thousand words—with a story that wasn’t finished—I phoned Kate Elliott. I asked her how long her story was, because both she and I tend to think structurally, and not in terms of length, and hers was shorter than mine. Being the only person to muff the given length limits so badly didn’t have a lot of appeal. Oddly enough, my pleas for Kate Elliott to write a longer piece fell on deaf, if amused, ears, and I continued to write. I decided that I would cut it to pieces once I’d finished, because at that point I would know the shape of the story, and I could more easily pick out the unnecessary elements.
At length (no pun intended), I decided that the only way to bring the story in at its agreed on length was to cut one of two viewpoints. So I sent it to my editor. She read it and liked it a lot, and I told her that I couldn’t bring it in at ten thousand words unless I lost one of the two viewpoints; she said, “but it would be half the story in every possible way.” And I said, “That’s what I thought, too.”
So she generously let it stand.
The Memory of Stone
THE GUILDMASTER commonly acknowledged by The Ten Houses to be the most powerful man in Averalaan stood in front of the long window by which he might survey the eastern half of Averalaan Aramarelas. He had no throne, no place in the Hall of Wise Counsel, no direct route to the ears of the Kings, the two men who ruled the breadth of the Empire of Essalieyan. But money counted for much in the Empire; what The Ten owned in the political realm, he rivalled by the simple expedient of wealth.
He was not a young man, nor a particularly tall one, and his hair, on those days when he had no onerous public duties, fell in a white plume down the back of his head.
On this particular day, it was a solid braid.
He glanced out of the window, his eyes skimming the surface of the ocean beyond the seawall. Light sparkled there, in a pattern the makers of the east tower were doubtless attempting to capture. It reached his eyes, but no more; he looked away.
The ocean’s voice was strong. The strongest of the voices that he heard.
“Master Gilafas.”
Certainly the most welcome.
Gilafas was an Artisan. But in truth, he was only barely that; the weakest, the most insignificant of the Artisans the guild had produced in centuries. It galled him when he thought on it, and he was a maker: he could dwell upon any fact, without pause to eat or drink—or sleep, for that matter—for a full three days.
The man who had spoken knew it.
But he was called The Lord of the Compact, the leader of the Astari, the men who served in the shadows the Kings cast. Although the Lord of the Compact understood Artisans as well as any not makerborn could, he was not by nature a patient man. Nor was he a man that anyone angered without reason, and that, a good one.
Gilafas ADelios turned. He did not bow; Duvari’s rank did not demand such a gesture of respect. Indeed, his presence today almost demanded otherwise.
“Master Duvari.”
“Duvari.”
“Duvari, then. How may I help you?”
The insincerity of the question was not lost upon the Astari, but it brought a cold smile to his lips, his austere face.
“You may help me by tendering the Kings their due.”
“You’ve become a tax collector, have you?” Testy, testy words. The door opened. Sanfred, Gilafas’ assistant, and a Master in his own right, froze beneath the steepled wooden frame, his robes swirling at his feet. Clearly he had run the length of the hall.
He had the wit to bow instantly. “Guildmaster.”
“I am afraid, Sanfred, that we will begin the testing late today. Tell the adjudicators to stand ready.”
Sanfred was not a subtle man. He hesitated. But he was not an Artisan, either; the only madness that possessed him, possessed him when he made, and none of the Makers worked without the leave of the Guildmaster during the testing. “There are—”
“Not now, Sanfred.”
“Yes, Guildmaster.”
The doors swung shut. Gilafas turned to face the man who ruled the Astari. “The applicants are waiting in the city streets.”
“Indeed.”
“The adjudicators will not begin without me.”
“Then I will be brief.”
“Good.”
Again, the winter of Duvari’s smile crept up his face. Gilafas wondered idly if Duvari possessed a smile that did not make his expression colder and grimmer. The guildmaster was not, however, a simple noble, to be intimidated by a mere expression. “The Astari had heard that you were to personally oversee these applicants. A highly unusual step for a man of your rank, is it not?”
“Your business, Duvari. Please.”
“It is my business.”
“You overstep yourself. It is guild business; an entirely internal matter.”
“May I remind you, Guildmaster Gilafas ADelios, that in the history of the guild annals, the guildmaster has only presided over the testing when he has had reason to suspect that among the applicants, he will find someone … unusual?”
Gilafas shrugged, and considered, briefly, the folly of giving himself over to the ocean’s song. As Artisan, he could almost do so without giving offence. Frowning, he lifted his hands; they were shaking. He had not expected that. “A moment,” he said, more curtly than he had intended. He reached out and gripped the edge of curtains heavy with the fall of chain links. They snapped shut audibly at the force of his pull.
“Guildmaster, is there any chance that you seek your successor among the applicants?”
Gilafas chuckled. “No chance whatsoever, Duvari. Is that all?”
Duvari did not move.
They stood a moment, two men assured by their successes in life of their rank, their power.
To Gilafas’ surprise, it was Duvari who spoke first.
“I was sent to tell you,” he said stiffly, “that the orb in the Rod is now white.”
Ah. Gilafas closed his eyes. Were he any other man, he might pretend that the words had no significance; he might ask, in a pleasant, modulated tone, what rod, what orb? But that game was not a game he could play. Not against Duvari; Duvari served the Kings.
Behind the shell of closed lids, he could see not the Kings, but the hands of Kings, and in them, the items gifted their line by an Artisan centuries ago: the Rod and the Sword. Wisdom. Justice. Weapons for the oldest of the Empire’s many wars, and the most important: the war that was its founding. Magic lay within them and upon them, bound to the blood of the godborn.
He had never touched them, Rod or Sword. Had prayed that he never would. He could not say what force they summoned, what spell they contained, but he knew them for more than simple ornament. They were weapons against old magic, old darkness, old wars.
And they had slept for centuries.
When he opened his eyes again, Duvari was closer; he had closed the distance between them without making a sound. “You expected this,” he said softly. It was the first accusation he had made.
“Aye, we expected it,” Gilafas replied, weary. Why now? Why today? He brushed nonexistent hair from his eyes. Yes, his hands were shaking; the pull of the ocean was stronger than it had been in weeks, and he would have to take care.
“What of the Sword, Duvari?”
“The Sword?”
“The gem in the Sword’s hilt.”
“It is as it has always been.”
“And the runes upon the blade itself?”
“The King has had no cause to draw the Sword.”
“He has cause,” Gilafas said, forcing strength into words that wanted to come out in a whisper. “Tell him—ask him—to draw the blade. Read what is written there. Return with word of what it says.”
“I suspect, from your demeanour, that you already know.” Duvari held his gaze, and that, too, was a threat. “Very well. I will return with your answer.” He walked away, and only when he reached the doors did he turn and proffer the most perfunctory of bows.
Gilafas waited until he left, and then made his way to the grand desk that served as this great room’s foundation. There he paused, running his hands over the surface of a very simple box. It was a deep, deep red, and the carvings across its face were not up to the standards of the least of the guild’s Makers.
But he had been told what lay within.
* * *
Cessaly stood between the twin pillars of her mother and her grandmother, her knuckles white as the alabaster statues in the distance.
Distance was a tricky thing to measure. There were men who could do it; they could tell you things by the length of cast shadows, the rise of buildings beneath the fall of sunlight some arcane measure of the shape of the land. Or so her father had once said. He had stayed in the Free Town of Durant. Said his good-byes at the edge of the fields that had yet to be tilled and planted, his face dark, his eyes squinting against the light. Except that the sun had been at the back of his head, a shining glint over the brim of his weathered hat.
Her brothers, Bryan and Dell, had hugged her tight, lifting her in the twirl and spin of much younger years. They hadn’t said goodbye. Instead, they had offered her the blessing of Kalliaris, asking for the Lady’s smile, and not her terrible frown.
She had offered them gifts. Wooden carvings, things made from the blunt edge of chisel and knife. To remember me by, she’d said. In case I don’t come back.
A bird. A butterfly. Nothing useful.
But in those two things, some quickness of captured motion: tail-feathers spread for flight, beak open in silent song; wings, thin and fine, veined and open, devoid only of the color that might have lent them the appearance of life.
Dell had handled the butterfly as carefully as he might have had it been alive; his clumsy, heavy hands, callused by the tools of their father’s trade, hovering like wings above wings, membrane of wings, afraid that his grip might damage the insect flight.
Her father had taught them that, each in their turn, and butterflies sometimes sat on the perch of their steady fingers, wings closed to edge, feelers testing wind. Birds had been less trusting, of course, and they were predators in their fashion, beaks snapping the skein of butterfly wings in a darting hunt for sustenance.
Cessaly loved them, hunter and hunted, because they were small and delicate when in flight. She had never been large.
Her brothers took after their father; they were broad of shoulder, silent, slow to move. But they put their backs into the labor that had been chosen for them, taking comfort in the Mother’s season.
Cessaly had tried to do the same, she a farmer’s daughter. But the hoes and the spades, the standing blades of the scythes, often spoke to her in ways that had nothing to do with the Mother. She might be found carving mounds of dirt, or fallen stalks of wheat, into shapes: great fortresses, sprawling manors, even small castles—although the poverty of her splendor had become apparent only when she had reached the outskirts of Averalaan.
They thought her clever, then.
Her father would often cry out her mother’s name, and the deep baritone of his voice, cracked by the dry air of the flat plains, returned to her. Cecilia, come see what your daughter has made!
Even her mother’s habitually dour expression would ease into something akin to smile when she came at her husband’s call, and they would stand, like a family of leisure, for moments at a time, oohing and aahing.
She had loved those moments.
But those moments had led to this one.
“How long,” her grandmother said, when the man in robes came out from the distant building and walked down the streets, a pitcher of water in hands as callused as her father’s. She asked it again when he was ten feet away; repeated it when he was before them.
His face was lined with shadow, eyes dark; his chin was bereft of beard. But he smiled, and if the smile was curt—and it was—it was also friendly. “I fear, good lady, that it will be some hours yet. You are not at the halfway mark.”
“You’re sure that they�
�ll see us all?”
Again, he offered her a curt smile. “Indeed.”
“We’ve brought some of her work,” her grandmother said. “If you’d like to see it.”
“I would, indeed.” His tone of voice conveyed no such desire. “But I fear that my opinion, and the opinion of the guildmasters, do not have equal standing here.”
Her grandmother frowned and nodded, allowing him to pass. There were others in the line who were just as thirsty as they were, after all, and if she was anxious, she wasn’t selfish.
“Cessaly, stand straight, girl.”
I was, she thought sullenly, but she found an extra inch or two in the line of her shoulder, and used it to silence her grandmother’s nervous edge.
Her mother had not spoken a word.
* * *
The halls of the guild’s upper remove were unlike the simple, unadorned stone that graced its lower walkways. They were also unlike the halls in which the Makers worked, for those stone walls were decorated, from floor to vaulted ceiling, with the paintings and tapestries, the statues, the interior gargoyles, that were proof of the superiority of the artists that had guild sanction.
No; in the halls of Fabril’s reach, the walls were of worked stone. These contours, these rough surfaces, these smooth domes, took on the shape of trees, of cathedrals, of Lords and Ladies, of gods themselves; they began a story, if one knew how to read it. There were very few who could, in the history of the Guild of the Makerborn, for such a reading could not be taught; it could be gleaned if one had the ability and the time.
No, Gilafas thought, with a trace of bitterness. It was the ability that mattered; time was what the inferior could add, if they lacked ability in greater measure.
Guildmaster Gilafas, to his shame, was only barely an Artisan. No Artisans had survived in the generation that preceded him in the maker’s guild, and no men remained who might have seen the spark of his talent in time to kindle it, to bring it to fruition.
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