The Ultimate Stonemage: A Modest Autobiography (2 page)

I had originally estimated the repairs would take four days or so, but it soon became clear to me the job was simpler than I had first supposed. The small wall tower, for instance, contained just ten cross-bindings, and no other bindings of any kind. Can you imagine a great structure here in the east being held together by just ten bindings? I have seen children’s play huts with more sophisticated work! In any event, it took me just half an hour to finish work on this tower—and this despite the presence of all those jostling bystanders on the spiral stairs. By the end of the day, I had repaired all five towers.

That evening, I dined once more with Gavor Hercules. By then, news of my work was all over town, and, as you can imagine, it was the only topic discussed over dinner. Gavor Hercules and his guests repeatedly asked me to explain the procedures I had used to carry out the work. Their interest pleased me—although they seemed to understand few of my answers, and I soon grew fatigued by their slow-witted questions.

Hercules congratulated me on the speed with which I had completed my work. I quickly explained my work had hardly begun, and there were numerous and complex structural modifications which must be made to the towers.

He told me then about the very ancient history of the building, and of their superb, solid construction. You can imagine well enough what I thought of his opinions, and the age of the towers was no excuse for their extreme ugliness. Still, I said nothing, but merely listened politely as his lordship, and then his various fierce captains and warriors spouted their tiresome theories about “good, solid stone.”

I politely gave them half an ear, but in my mind I was considering another matter. For I was determined to carry out a far greater transformation than merely straightening the towers. I wished to turn them into objects of true beauty. My problem was that Gavor Hercules did not want extensive changes, because such warlike men have no architectural vision and cannot imagine how a finished structure will look. The moment I started demolishing the stones of his towers, he was certain to object and stop my work. But I knew he would be delighted once he had seen the completed towers. So how to proceed?

As I sat at dinner, deep in thought, a unique solution occurred to me, in the form of three omens.

First, my eyes fell on a design in a silver goblet in front of me. The pattern was of a butterfly. Then, a few minutes later, I noticed Gavor Hercules’s consort, Chryse, looking in my direction, and as I thought of her name, I was reminded of the word “chrysalis.”

There was a third omen, too, but I forget now what it was. Something or other to do with metamorphosis or butterflies I think.

In any case, the image came into my head of a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, and this was my inspiration! The towers would undergo a secret change, one which would remain invisible to all until the work was complete. I know this sounds impossible, but an ingenious method had occurred to me. The thought of it excited me so much it quite spoiled the rest of the meal. I yearned for the fine feast to be over, and for the night to pass, so I could return to my work in the morning.

The first thing, of course, was to remove those terrible Struts of Atlas, for I did not want them contaminating my work. It took me weeks of delicate labour to disassemble them safely, and in their place I cast Quater’s Firm-Beam, which a fine spell, very stable and durable.

On each of the towers I placed a temporary facade—a thin layer created using the spell
Spicesheet. It creates a white shell upon a surface, as thin as eggshell, but very strong.

As I completed each area of gleaming Spicesheet, I placed a second enchantment upon it—the Persistent Mural, a well known illusion spell. The Spicesheet had the precise shape and texture of the granite stones underneath, and was hard and cold to the touch, while the
Persistent Mural gave the exact appearance of the stone.

I placed similar facades along the inside walls of each tower, and connected the outer and inner facades with cross-bindings.

If can picture it then, the thick walls of each tower were now sandwiched between an outer and inner facade which closely resembled the appearance of the original tower. Within this facade—this “chrysalis”—I could make sweeping improvements to the towers without being detected.

If you wish to know how perfect these facades were, mark this: on the second or third week of my work,
I was standing on a low scaffold, rubbing powdered cloves into the stones to create an area of Spicesheet, when Gavor Hercules passed by.

He said: “Have you altered this stone somehow?”

I replied in the only way my integrity would allow: “Yes, sire, I have.”

He said: “It seems to me it is slightly cleaner. And it has a lustre and a depth which before now it had lacked.”

I said this was certainly the case.

Then he placed his hand against part of the facade and smoothed it, saying: “How I love these old stones. Since boyhood I have known them, and in all my voyages I longed to return to them. I am well pleased with your work upon them now.”

You may be sure I was encouraged! If Gavor Hercules could take pleasure in what he thought was a slight “cleaning” of the old stones, his pleasure would be increased a hundredfold when he beheld the magnificent spectacle which I was working underneath.

Let me now reveal to you the nature of my work.

In the first place, I had applied many fire spells, heating the walls of the towers until rock melted and fused, turning ugly and irregular bricks into a smooth sheet of a glasslike material. I then placed hundreds of powerful spells through the walls of each tower—cross-bindings,
Sheet Walls,
Peregrine Clasps, and
Lasser Spheres in abundance—creating a surface as strong as the finest armour.

For further strength, I bound the towers each to the other with
Firm-Beams, so even if one were subjected to so much force it might fall, it would be solidly supported by the other four towers. Finally, I placed invisible
Seizure Lines radiating out from the towers and attached to other buildings all over the town. Through these spells, my mighty towers would bestow some of their strength on the surrounding structures.

Having thus established the strength of my towers, I set about industriously fashioning their beauty. But in this, take note, I did not merely impose my own taste. It is important, when doing such work, to bear in mind the tastes and inclinations of the patron. In this case, Gavor Hercules was clearly a man of conservative taste, and the colours placed upon the materials of the towers had to be similarly conservative. With five towers, the choice was obvious: the five primary colours. Simple, elegant. One colour for each tower. So, the square tower in the castle I made a gentle green. The two round towers on the east corners of the castle I made yellow and peach. The small tower in the town wall I made beige. And the great tower in the centre of the town was a soft shade of purple.

I had decorated the interior of the towers, floors, walls, and ceilings with a deep red fur, spun, if you can credit it, from the rock itself. The making of this fur, which is called
mashena, is not really a stonemage’s skill, but is a little trick I learned from an old instructor at Eopan. Unfortunately, it has become something of a lost art. Correctly spun, the fur is not only far softer than any animal fur, it is infinitely more durable, and also completely fireproof.

Even with no further changes, these towers would have been a worthy addition to any city in Cyprus, and certainly the wonder of the west. But I desired more than this: I intended to make these towers the wonder of the whole world.

To the outer wall of each building, then, I applied a range of transmutations, adding tubes and filaments of gold in a weblike pattern. Within the areas enclosed by this web, I created large glass jewels of all colours, so curved as to catch the rays of the sun and reflect them about the town, and so placed that, at any given time of the day, every area of the town would be bathed in beautiful colours. So you see, these towers would share not only their strength with the dull stone buildings of the town, but also their beauty.

Finally, and most wonderful of all, I had fashioned the walls of the towers so they were narrower in some places than others, in much the same way the sounding board of a well made violin is carved thinner in some parts than others. The slightest vibration on any of the buildings (caused, for example, by a light breeze, or the natural hubbub of the town) would set all these towers into a rapid vibration, producing a pure musical tone from each tower, and a lovely five-note chord from them all. Never, to my knowledge, had so delicate a construction been attempted.

As you may guess, this work, so simple in theory, was mind-taxing in its complexity. For the jewelled reflectors, I was obliged to make careful observations of the sun’s movements, ensuring my adjustments left no part of the town unlit. And the tones of the towers were so exquisitely interconnected that every slight tuning of one would send the others into a state of discord. And all this, working by touch beneath the stone facade I had laid. It was many months before these two jobs were completed.

In the meantime, I dined nightly with
Gavor Hercules and quickly became a favourite within his circle for my tales of life in Cyprus. Frequently he would ask me about the wars being fought there at that time, or ask me if I knew of certain Cypriot sea captains. A strange aspect of this, which I have since observed in other warriors, is that Gavor might ask a question like, “Tell me, do you know of a fine commander by the name of Illian,” and from the tone of his voice I took this man to be some old comrade of his, and I would tell him what I knew of the warrior in question, and he would nod and laugh and make some remark such as “That rascal killed my son, you know,” or “Ah yes, he is a worthy enemy indeed.” On one occasion during my stay, one of these enemies actually came to visit Hercules, and I saw him treated with all the civility and generosity the lord extended to any of his merchant friends.

I could expound at great length upon various aspects of Gavor Hercules’s court, and upon the town of
Luthen. I witnessed a thousand marvels and curiosities during my stay. However, I fear this would take me from the proper drift of my historical account, and these fascinating tales must be saved for some other time.

Finally, the jewels in the towers were perfectly placed, and the music of the towers was exactly tuned. The work had taken me, from start to finish, just over ten months, and was by far the longest commission I had yet completed. I was more than pleased with the detail of the work, but I found myself now facing a new problem. My work, you see, satisfactorily paid off my gift-debt to Gavor Hercules; however, if I were present when the true beauty of these buildings was revealed, it was likely he would bestow some further gift upon me. After all, this lord had paid me well over one thousand arrans for a simple repair task. How much more would he reward such elegant and scrupulous work as this? And if he gave me further payment, I would once again be indebted to him.

I resolved upon an ingenious solution. First, I placed
Wefts of Sympathy on the facades of all the towers. Then I placed a matching weft on a brick to which I had also added a Spicesheet facade. I took this brick onto the ship which Gavor Hercules had given me as a gift and left it there.

Over the next few days, I made my farewells to all, explaining my work was now finished and I would be leaving shortly. Gavor Hercules implored me to stay, but I explained I had urgent business to attend to further south. He thanked me graciously for my hard work on the towers and made me a final gift of a fur cap and cloak. This, of course, was a token gesture only. The lord had seen no further improvement in his towers in nine months and naturally assumed the remainder of my work had been minor details. My debt was paid, then, and I was free to leave in good conscience.

Very early the following morning, I went to my ship and departed Luthen, bound for the city of
Ubari in the kingdom of
North Africa. When we were a mile or so from shore, I dissolved the magical facade on the brick I had taken with me. At once, the Wefts of Sympathy on the towers caused their facades to vanish, and at last those structures on which I had laboured so long were revealed.

The experience of seeing those dull chrysalises fall away to reveal the beautiful butterflies beneath is impossible to describe. The towers were ten—no, one hundred times more lovely than I had anticipated. Even the early rays of the sun were enough to catch the jewels of the towers, flooding the town in a brilliant pool of ever-changing hues. And the sound of their music was like angels singing from heaven—a perfect, unwavering chord. Though we were a mile from shore, I could feel the vibration of that divine chorus upon my chest.

I instantly fell upon the deck of the ship, reduced to tears, and my weeping continued unabated until the town of Luthen was just a shimmering spot upon the horizon, and its song was nothing more than a faint pulse, growing and fading with the wind.

We sailed on at a gentle pace, for, having completed such a great and arduous labour, I wished to relax for a time and felt no need of haste. We meandered along the African coast, and I whiled away the hours delighting in the variety of exotic birds and animals I could see among the trees, and sometimes shooting them with my bow.

After five days of this pleasant life, we came upon a fishing boat, and I called out our greetings to them. The pilot answered in kind, then asked us where we were bound.

“Ubari.”

“Ah, it is but a few hours further. And whence do you sail?”

“Out of Luthen.”

“Could it be,” he asks, “that you are a builder from the east?”

“I am,” I told him.

“Then I advise you to steer clear of Ubari, for twenty fast warships lie in wait for you there, with orders to catch you and to hang you.”

This was scarcely to be believed! I asked the fellow: “By whom were these orders given?”

“By Gavor Hercules. It seems he is angered by certain singing towers.”