The Ultimate Stonemage: A Modest Autobiography (26 page)

He was startled for a moment, but instead of staying that way, he narrowed his eyes, looked up at me in defiance and said, “Make your cut, then, if you will, but remember, the emperor will put you to death for it.”

I said, “Perhaps I will not kill you. Perhaps I will simply slice off your ear.”

He said, “Kill me or injure me, it will make little difference to your punishment.”

He was right, of course, and I saw I could not inflict any visible hurt upon this child.

I thought on this problem for a moment or two, keeping the child in my grasp, and, as I pondered, I glanced this way and that around the room, looking at the various swords and equipment which were hung up here. Suddenly my eyes fell upon a leather training gauntlet which lay upon a table.

Now, in case you do not know, a training gauntlet is a huge thick glove, with heavy padding upon the palm. It is used by those swordsmen who favour the use of a gauntlet in the left hand instead of a shield or a dagger. For practising, they do not like to use a metal gauntlet, for it damages the opponent’s blade, so they use a leather one in its place.

I put my throwing-razor back in my boot and dropped the child. Then I went over to where the training gauntlet rested. The brat ran up behind me, kicking at the backs of my legs and calling me names, but I did not respond, and instead deliberately let the anger well up inside me. When I put the glove on my hand, the child began to see what I was about, and tried to escape from me. Well, I quickly swatted out with the glove, and gave him a solid blow on the shoulder which sent him sprawling to the carpet, yet without putting any bruise upon him!

I said then, “I am now going to teach you how to nod politely to your visitors. In this way, you will appear noble, and you will come to be loved and respected.”

He responded by spitting at me, but his expression of contempt instantly changed to one of alarm and astonishment as I snatched him from the ground and gave him a very hard blow across the back.

He ran from me then, jumping and twisting like a little ape, and trying with all his heart to reach the door. I was fast, though, and I blocked his every attempt to pass me, swiping at him with the useful glove.

Next he threatened me with magic. He said, “I know a powerful spell. If you strike me again, I will use it upon you, and you will burst open like a grape.”

I called him a liar and struck him a good number of times, saying, “Very well then, use your magic. Burst me open!”

Of course, he did not, because he did not know any magic.

Finally, some of the spirit began to go out of him, although there was still a hatred within his eyes. When he had regained his breath, he said, “You have hurt me. You will be put to death.”

I said, “Show me the bruises and cuts that will be evidence of your claims.”

Well, he looked at his arms and waist, but he could find no bruises or cuts, because, as I have said, the glove did a good job in cushioning all my blows.

Then he said, “I will tell the Imperial Aunt, my mother, what you have done, and she will take me to see the emperor. I will tell him you hurt me without bruising me, using that evil glove.”

I said, “Then I am truly afraid, for I know the emperor will believe your word. That is, unless you are the kind of child who often tells lies, for in this case neither your mother nor the emperor will believe you, and I need fear nothing.” I knew, you see, this was a child who was in the habit of telling lies. Then I said, “Better than that, I will have for myself the great pleasure of bringing you back here the next day and beating you all the harder for trying to have me punished.”

He immediately understood the truth of my arguments, as well as the threat behind them, and he fell silent.

I said, “Now you can see the value of honesty, for if you had been honest in the past, you would not now be in so desperate a position, and would not be left without any official protection from my attacks. However, I rather fancy that if you had been honest and good, your mother would not have seen the need to summon me in the first place. Your sorry plight, then, is one you have brought upon yourself.”

Then I pulled him to his feet and said, “Now, let us begin your training in manners. We will pretend I am a visitor just arrived. Give me a polite nod.”

He would not do it, though, and instead he tried to give me a polite kick. I quickly grabbed his ankle and pulled him over again. Another series of tussles followed, as he, once again, divided his efforts between escaping the room and attacking his teacher. Of course, he came away from the fight very much worse off than I did, and when I next asked him to show me how he should nod to visitors, he gave me a proper nod. We practised these nods for some time.

Eventually, I was satisfied he had learned how to greet his guests, and I said, “We will now return to your mother, and you will remain silent until you are spoken to, whereupon you may answer either ‘Yes, dear Yreth,’ or ‘No, dear Yreth.” Do you understand?”

He did not answer me, so I slapped him with the glove a few times until he finally agreed to my terms. Then he added, very cheekily, “Since I am compelled, I will do as you ask. But if you wish me to be honest, you should not have me call you ‘dear Yreth’ for you are not dear to me, and there will be no truth to my saying you are.”

I replied, “Indeed there is truth to it, for until that time when I am
dear
to you, you will
dear
ly rue the day you met me.” It was a very clever turn of phrase, and I chuckled as I thought about it afterwards.

I took the child back to its mother then, and she was delighted with my rapid progress. He was surly, as you might expect, but he did what I had told him, even when there were people watching.

Later, I explained to the Imperial Aunt that his lack of smiles was because he was feeling sad. After all, changing one’s nature is always a difficult thing, even when the change is a great improvement.

During the following weeks and months, young Pandrick and I paid many visits to the fencing room, and, gradually, he began to see the value of the lessons I taught him, for he saw that even the slaves treated him better when he assumed a manner more appropriate to his high rank. In time, this noble behaviour started to come more naturally to him, and he began to look more like a cousin to the emperor, and less like a common street sparrow..

Still, I did not want him to behave well in front of others and to be a demon in secret, so I took elaborate steps to spy on him. At first, I watched him from behind windows, and around corners, but he sometimes saw me, so I became more sophisticated in my methods. I made a careful study of the plans of the palace and found a number of places where I might watch him without his knowledge.

For example, he often played in the courtyard, and when he did I would go to one of the cellars, for I had made a discreet crack there, high in the wall, so I might look out over most of the courtyard. If I saw him attacking the other children, I would make a note of it and punish him later.

He played in the garden too, so I secretly had a number of pits dug there, connected by a series of underground tunnels. The pits were covered with sacking, which I made rigid with sheet bindings, then earth and grass was placed on top of this. It looked very solid from above, because the sacking was brown, and the space below it was dark. When I was inside the pit, though, I could easily see out through the holes in the sacking, and if the child moved out of the sight lines of one pit, it was an easy thing for me to scurry underground to a better pit. From this excellent hide, I watched him in all manner of wicked activities. I noted everything, even the most minor infractions, and later on, during my sessions with him, I would tell him of his deeds and seek recompense with the padded gauntlet.

I even spied upon him at night, although I risked my life in doing so, because my hiding place in this instance was high above the ground. You see, I had set a rope along the outside of the palace, running through a number of rings which I had stuck to the wall with point bindings. Each night, I left my room through the window, carefully made my way along the wall, walking upon the rope, then climbed around a corner tower and along another wall to a certain point outside the boy’s room.

This was a dangerous journey, not only because of the risk of falling, but also because of the myrmidons who patrolled the area below. I had told their commander of my nightly excursions, of course, but even so I ran the risk of having some poorly trained myrmidon mistake me for a thief and throw a spear into my back. Still, when I do a job, I try to do it well, and I care little for any danger it might bring me. After all, is not every moment in life fraught with dangers of some kind or another? We have all heard stories of those who flee a war in one town only to die of plague in the next. There are also reliable tales, told by honest men, of people who are sitting at home, in clear and beautiful weather, when suddenly a stray bolt of lightning flashes through the window and strike them dead. Life is innately dangerous and beyond our control, so it is important we accept the fact and take pleasure from its perils.

In any case, once I was outside the boy’s room, I climbed a piece of ornamental tubing up into an old bartizan inhabited chiefly by pigeons. This overhang opened into a small nook above the boy’s room. I had made a hole in the floor of this nook which opened up into a cunningly concealed slit in his ceiling, and from this station I could not only watch him but also hear him talking in his sleep. Later, during our sessions in the fencing room, I would confront him with the wicked things he had said in his dreams, and I would punish him for those words. He was truly astonished at me then, for he surely thought I could read all the secrets of his soul. It was this, I think, which brought me my final victory over the child, and after that he became very docile and easy to teach, not only for me, but also for the other tutors the
Imperial Aunt had employed.

Now, you must not imagine I spent my every waking hour peeping through cracks to spy on this child. In fact, my duties as a teacher, both open and furtive, took up no more than a few hours of each day. The rest of the time I wandered freely around the Imperial City of
Saskatoon, learning about the place and meeting its people.

I discovered the city was a very ancient one. It had been the seat of the American emperors for centuries, even in those days when the emperor ruled the whole North American continent, and
Brazil besides. In saying this, I do not wish to belittle the power of the Emperor in our own times. Even today, his dominion is vast indeed, including the kingdoms of America from
Manitario west to the Pacific ocean, and south as far as the wastes of
Mexico.

Saskatoon is also a great centre of learning. It is said to have been the birthplace of the great engineer and architect
Tuno Peefe (or, if you prefer, Tunotric). I spent many long hours in the great libraries of the city searching for ancient manuscripts by this great man, hoping I would uncover some valuable lost secret. In fact, I did succeed in finding several ancient works he had written, but, alas, none of them contained anything useful, and they were really of no more than historical interest. Some of his theories on building were quite wrong, or at the very least simplistic, so, in the interest of those who might come after me, I scratched out the various mistaken passages and wrote in my corrections before returning the documents to their shelves in the library. If only more people would do this, it is my belief that the growth of human knowledge would be accelerated.

Aside from its extraordinary fortifications, the architecture of Saskatoon was competent but unremarkable in its styling. Even the emperor’s palace was not especially innovative or beautiful, merely very large. But one aspect of that building intrigued me: I could see the top of a tall triangular structure within the palace walls. It was like a ramp of some kind, and I observed people climbing it and descending it, but I could not discern its function. When I asked around, people told me it was the emperor’s
luma
, but they did not know what it was for, or if they did know, they did not wish to tell me. I was very intrigued, but any further investigation was impossible: the
luma
was not on the plans for the palace, and it was situated in one of the emperor’s private gardens, making it quite inaccessible to me.

I rarely caught a glimpse the emperor himself in those days. He lived in the central part of the palace, which was completely shut off from the area occupied by the Imperial Aunt and her son. He kept himself hidden away most of the time, almost like a prisoner, despite his unimaginable wealth and power. In fact, compared to him, even a wealthy woman like the Imperial Aunt Diaphrone was insignificant, for she was merely one of dozens of Imperial Aunts and Imperial Uncles, and cousins and nephews, none of whom might even set eyes upon the emperor unless they had first made an appointment through his courtiers, many months ahead of time.

After six months or so, I had brought Pandrick to a level of behaviour I deemed appropriate to his age and position. I went to the boy’s mother then and said, “I consider my work to be complete. The rest of the boy’s training may easily be completed by ordinary tutors.”

She said, “Oh, you have done a wonderful job with Pandrick. He is so sweet-natured now that I am even tempted to hug him myself, and everyone around the palace speaks of how much he is improved over what he once was.”

I said, “Then I trust you will be gracious enough to pay the fee we agreed on.”

She said, “Certainly. What amount did we say?”

I said, “Ten thousand arrans, of which one thousand have already been paid.”

She gasped then, and said, “Is that all? I cannot believe we agreed to so little.”

I said, “No, ten thousand arrans was the sum, and I am content with this amount.”

She said, “Come, let me pay you more. Will you take sixteen thousand?”

It was like my conversation with Gavor Hercules. And, just as I had said to him, I told her I wanted only the sum we had first agreed on and nothing more, for this is my way, as a man of honour. “And if you deem my work was worth more,” I added, “then I am flattered by your praise and pleased you consider my work to have been of such good value to you.”