Memory of Stone

by West, Michelle

  Now, his meager gift was once again unbearable.

  The girl—Cessaly—had been moved to Fabril’s reach the moment her mother had left. He might have assigned the duty of settling her to Sanfred, or another of the Makers who served him directly, but cowardice prevented it, presenting him with the first of many menial tasks he was to adopt.

  Sanfred would not fail to see in the girl what Gilafas himself lacked. How could he?

  So it was that Guildmaster Gilafas ADelios led her to the winding tower stairs that led to Fabril’s reach.

  She had taken the steps timidly at first, her hands faltering upon the fine rails beneath the grand sweep of open tower, the fading light. She had no experience of this world, save in story—if that—and her fear made her precious to him, for he had no children.

  But the fear itself was fleeting.

  The light in her eyes was not; it was fire, of a sort, the fire of a forge, the fire of one makerborn who sees into the world of mages. Or gods. He could not himself say, although he had walked that path.

  But he knew the moment that she lost fear to wonder; he could see it in her. Could hear it, in the whisper of moving strands of her hair, taken by a breeze that did not—and had never—touched him.

  She carved birds; he remembered that the grandmother had mentioned it to Sanfred. Birds, butterflies, creatures not bound to the earth. And he? He worked water, and whales, dolphins, things of the deep that might break the bounds of their element in fleeting steps, with will and joy.

  So she flew. Up, up and up. She knew where the doors were. Were she not small, were her step not contained by the reach of short legs, she might have evaded him utterly. He could not let her do it. He could not let her make herself at home in Fabril’s reach.

  Was ashamed of the inability.

  We are not judged by what we create; we create. Maker’s motto. And what use that motto now? It was a lie.

  Vanity had its use.

  Cessaly stopped two thirds of the way up the stairs and placed her hand gently upon the wall. A recess in the smooth stone caught the shape of her palm, moulding itself to her fingers as if the stone were liquid.

  He heard the ocean’s voice, then. A roar, a roar of water breaking stone and wood, rending cloth, burying men. She opened a door that he had never found.

  And turned to stare at him, her eyes wide, her brows lost beneath the edge of poorly cut hair. Honey eyes, he thought, a shade too brown to be the eyes of a child of the gods. “Master Gilafas?”

  He shook his head, lifting hand to clear his vision. “I hear the ocean,” he told her bitterly. “Only the ocean.”

  “Can you hear me?”

  He stopped then, turning the full of his attention upon her, upon the question she had asked. She was a child. By age, she could be counted among adults, but there was nothing of that in her expression; she was made of curiosity, insecurity, joy and fear.

  “Yes, Cessaly. I can hear you.”

  * * *

  His answer was important, because she could hear him. She could hear the ocean in his voice, could see it in his eyes, her first glimpse of the blue surface against which sun scudded. She smiled, her hand against something soft and warm. “I can hear stone,” she whispered. “I can hear wood growing. I can hear wind in the leaves, and the rain dance. I can hear the birds, seabirds, great birds. I can hear the sun’s voice.”

  She had heard these things before, in the dells of Durant, in the furrows of her father’s fields, in the quiet of log and peat and moss, yards from the river’s edge, where the water pooled before resuming its passage.

  “I can hear silver,” she told him. “And gold. And the voices of rubies and diamonds. Sapphires are quiet.” She stopped. She had never said so much before. “But I hear other voices. There, past the door. Other voices.”

  “Open the door, then, Cessaly.”

  She started to. Started, and then stopped. She felt the cold in the cracks between stone. The voices she knew fell silent, one after the other; the cold remained, and she began to understand that it had a voice of its own.

  Death. Death there. The death of all things.

  She drew back. Shook her head, although it was hard; all of her was shaking.

  “Cessaly?”

  Her hand fell away from the wall. “No,” she told him sadly. “The cold will kill us.” She turned to look at him, and she saw the shadows that the walls contained, straining for freedom, for something that might have looked like flight to a person who had never seen birds. Never made them, inch by inch, never carved the length of their flight feathers, the stretch of their pinions.

  It was dark now. The world was dark.

  But Master Gilafas was still in it.

  * * *

  He caught her hand; it was blue.

  “Come,” he said gently. “We are not yet there, and there is no cold in Fabril’s reach.”

  “Where is Fabril’s reach?”

  “Up,” he told her gently. “Up these steps.”

  “I can’t see them.”

  “No. Sometimes they are hard to see.” The lights in the wall sockets were bright and steady; they had never failed, and he was certain they never would. Fabril had made them himself, had made this tower, the reach.

  “Will you take me there?”

  “Yes, Cessaly. Can you feel my hand?”

  She appeared to be thinking, as if thought were her only vision. He waited.

  “I can feel it.”

  “Good. You have never made hands,” he said. “But when we arrive, I will bring you wood and tools, and you must try.”

  “Just hands?”

  “For now, Cessaly. Just hands.” Speaking, he began to walk, the steps as solid and real as the fading light of day, the passage of time, the Holy Isle.

  * * *

  After she had made her way up the stairs—and in his estimation it took some two hours—she had to face the gauntlet of the great hall.

  It was in the great hall that his envy, his bitterness, his resentment gave way to something more visceral: fear.

  She screamed.

  She screamed, and pulled away from him. Pulled back, turned to flee. He lost her, then. The hall swallowed her whole. She was gone.

  He cursed as he had not done in years, the reserve and distance of age swallowed whole by the intensity of emotion.

  * * *

  She heard the voice of stone. The voice of mountains, old as the world; the voice of the molten rock in the heart of its ancient volcanoes; the voice, insistent, of its cracking, sliding fall. All the voices she had heard in her life were made small and insignificant; she lifted hands to capture them, and they came up empty.

  She had no tools. No way to speak to stone with stone’s voice, no way to soothe it.

  But that didn’t stop her from trying.

  Trying, now, clawing at things too heavy and solid, her arms aching with effort, hands bleeding.

  * * *

  Past midnight, the fear left him, sudden as it had come. He was drained of it, like a shattered vessel of liquid, and what remained was the residue that had haunted his adult life.

  Think. Think, Gilafas.

  What a Maker heard—if a Maker heard what an Artisan heard at all—did not destroy the world; it did not unmake a reality. Fabril’s reach, in all its frustrating, distant glory, was there before him. And he knew that the girl had come with him, slowly and hesitantly, eyes wandering across the face of its carved, misshapen walls.

  And what of the door, Gilafas? What of the door that did not exist until she placed hand against wall?

  It did exist. It always existed. I never found it. I never thought to look. I knew what the shape of the tower was—and is—I knew that such a door at that place could not exist.

  Think.

  He ran to the closed doors of his workrooms, those vast, open spaces in which light dwelled when there was any light at all. He opened drawers and cupboards, looking for chisels, for the knives which woodworkers used;
wood was not his medium, but all Makers of note often dabbled.

  When he dropped a drawer on his foot, when the slender tubes made for blowing glass shattered about him, he paused long enough to avoid their splinters. Just that.

  He did not think to call Sanfred, and would wonder why later. For now, he continued to search until he found the oldest of his supplies; blocks of wood as long as his forearm.

  Thus armed, he paused again. Think, Gilafas. Think.

  No. Not think.

  Listen.

  * * *

  By dawn, he found her, and in finding her, he found a room that he had never seen.

  It lay behind the stone work on the west wall, between the arch made of the raised arms of two men whose likenesses were said to be perfect: the first Kings of Essalieyan. They were not overly tall, and the space between them just large enough to fit a small girl with ease. A large man would not have been able to follow that passage, and if he had never felt cause to be thankful for his lack of physical stature before, he was grateful now.

  The passageway was narrow and poorly lit; it was cold with lack of light, and almost silent; his breath was captured by folds of cloth, muted.

  He could not have said why he chose to follow this path. But having begun, he heard her, and hearing her, saw her clearly, small, fine-boned, clear-eyed. He thought of what she might be, robbed of color and lent the clarity of glass or crystal, and this helped; he could imagine the fires, the glass, the workroom, the movement of hands and lip, the changing contours of a medium that was fluid, as close to the ocean in texture as anything solid could be.

  He had never had to work so hard just to walk in Fabril’s reach.

  Fabril’s reach will teach you everything you need to know.

  For the first time in years, he turned those words over in his mind’s eye, blending them with Cessaly until they were a part of her, a part of his making. What, Master Nefem, do I need to know? And if this is a part of it, why do I need to know it?

  The hall ended; it opened into a room that had windows for a ceiling, a dome of fractured light. Crystal cut its fall into brilliant hues that traced the sun’s progress.

  She huddled in their center, her hands scratching the surface of the floor. She did not see him; could not see him. What she saw, he could not say, but he knew that she would see it until she found some release from it, until it was exorcised.

  He could see what she could not: blood, dried and crusted upon the palms of her flailing hands.

  He did not touch her. Instead, he knelt by her side and placed those tools he had found into the hands that were so ineffectual.

  For the first time since he had entered the room, her focus changed. He placed the wood before her, but above the flat, smooth surface of stone.

  He would take her from this room, in time. But that time was not yet come.

  “Cessaly,” he said, although he was certain she wouldn’t hear him, “make what you must; I will return.”

  * * *

  She loved the sound of Master Gilafas’ voice.

  No one had ever had a voice like his, and she marveled at it, for there was a texture beneath the surface of his words and his emotions that moved her to listen. She had thought to miss home; to miss her Da and her mother; to long for Bryan and Dell, the two people who had brought her close to flight in the days of her childhood.

  She forgot that longing quickly. The soles of her feet forgot the earth and the tall grass; forgot the slender silver stream; forgot the soft mosses, the heavy leaves of undergrowth. The stone spoke to her in a voice that was so close to her own she felt it as a part of her. To lose that would kill her.

  And the only person with whom she could share this strange homecoming was Master Gilafas. His friends, Sanfred and Jordan, were as deaf as the man who had helped to birth her.

  Master Gilafas understood her. He came to her with bits of wood, smooth stone, raw gems; he gave her room in his workshop, and brought to her the glass that he loved. She did not love it, but she listened to its voice as it spoke to him, and sometimes, when the world was peaceful and her hands could be still, she would sing a harmony to its quiet voice.

  But at other times, the stones would lead her to rooms that Master Gilafas could not find on his own. She was afraid of the stone, then; afraid of being alone. She hated the darkness that lingered at its edges; it hurt her, and it promised to hurt her more.

  She knew it, because she heard what the stones said to him when he walked by her side. She would glance anxiously at his face when the stones spoke in their sharp, cold voices.

  Sometimes she would ask him about the voices.

  And he would take her hands in his and smile gently. “Yes,” he would say, “I hear them. But they are only words, Cessaly. Pay them no heed.”

  And she would see her death in these stones, but his words and his voice were stronger.

  * * *

  He was reduced, he thought, to being a babysitter.

  He had, in that first month, attempted to foist that duty upon Sanfred’s broad shoulders, and Sanfred was more than willing to accept it.

  But the greatness of the talent that all but consumed Cessaly was denied in its entirety to Sanfred. He could not hear what she heard. He could not see what she saw. Instead, he heard madness, and only madness.

  The stories were there, of course. Every apprentice, every young journeyman, every man who desired to be called Master—and there were not a few of those in the guild—knew the stories.

  The Artisans were mad. Gloriously, dangerously, mad. Only madness could conceive of a small jewelry box in which the whole of a room might be contained. Only madness could create Fabril’s reach, bending the fabric of the real and the solid to the vision of its maker. Only madness, yes.

  But madness had created more, much more.

  And Gilafas was doomed to understand it. To see what he could not be; to almost touch what he could not achieve. His curse.

  Sanfred lost Cessaly for two days. He came to Gilafas, ashen and terrified, and all but fell in a groveling heap at the Guildmaster’s feet, weeping. Two days, Gilafas searched; two days, he listened.

  He found her at last in a room he had visited once in nightmare, standing before the effigy of an altar upon which her naked body lay, cradling Rod and Sword. What he found a second time in search of Cessaly, he was never allowed to lose again. It waited, that room.

  He had carried her from it with care and difficulty; she had in her hands the softest of stones, and powder flew from it as she carved and polished its face, her eyes unseeing, her ears bleeding.

  Two days later, she begged him for gold. He brought that, and more besides: gemstones, large as eyes. She was thin as a bird; lifting her, he could believe that her bones were hollow. She said, “I’m flying, Master Gilafas. You’ve made me fly!” And laughed, delirious. Insane.

  He loved the sound of that laugh, and he understood, when he called Sanfred again, that Sanfred not only did not love it, but was in fact terrified by it. The fear galled Gilafas; the pity and horror that Sanfred could not hide when he next saw Cessaly enraged him. He had not expected that. Had he, he might have been more temperate.

  More cautious.

  “Do you not understand what you have witnessed?”

  Sanfred was mute in the face of his words.

  “The guild has not been graced by a talent as pure as hers since its founding. Do you not understand the significance of her presence?”

  An ill display indeed, for he knew the answer. No. How could he?

  “You … are not … as she is.”

  “No, Sanfred, I am not. To my profound regret, I am not. Get out. Get out; I will tend her myself.”

  * * *

  He was her captive. He came to understand that. The whole of his life, his authority, his stature meant nothing to her. And where was the justice in that? For his life revolved around her. The hours of his rising, the hours in which he might sleep, were dictated by hers, and she slept the
way a newborn does: unaware of the strictures of day and night, light and darkness.

  She took food at her whim, and when that whim was weak, at his; she drank because he demanded it. Sometimes, when he was exhausted beyond all measure, he went to the apothecary and fed her bitter brew; it dulled her for some hours while he slept.

  Sanfred, unable to champion Cessaly, became in all things Gilafas’ ears and eyes. Only upon royal command did Gilafas choose to leave Fabril’s reach. He had lost Cessaly for two days. He did not intend to do so again.

  Captivity breeds either hostility or resignation, and in Gilafas it bred both.

  He was surprised, then, to find that in the stretch of the days from summer to Henden, he had learned to love the cage.

  * * *

  He discovered it thus: Duvari came to visit.

  It had been months since their first meeting in the heights of Fabril’s reach; the Astari had sent no word, and by its lack, Gilafas understood that the Sword at least was whole. But when Duvari appeared in the doorway of his workroom, he knew that the lull had ended.

  Cessaly was in the corner, by the cooling glass. She had, in her fashion, been singing, and together they had blown a bubble in which one of her butterflies was encased, its lines brought out by light. They had learned to work together in this fashion, Gilafas the hands behind their mutual will.

  “Remember, Cessaly, not to touch it yet. It will burn your hands, and you will not be able to make until they are healed.”

  She nodded, too absorbed to look up.

  Trusting her then, he stepped away.

  He was not dressed for an audience; indeed, he wore the oldest of aprons, the most worn of gloves. The glass that protected his eyes sat upon his head like a wayward helm; he almost lowered it when he saw Duvari. The threat in his presence was palpable.

  But he did not do it. Cessaly was sensitive to gesture this close to making’s end, and she was always sensitive to the tone, the texture, of his voice.

  “I would speak a moment in private,” Duvari said quietly.

  In that, they were of a mind. Gilafas nodded politely. “I … would prefer … to remain in sight of her.”