The Ultimate Stonemage: A Modest Autobiography (4 page)

I responded: “If you will do me no harm while I am here on these islands, then I will happily stay.”

To which he said: “I’ll warrant you would. But I tell you now, we navigators are a patient lot. I will gladly wait here for years if I must.”

As you will see, these last words, spoken in jest, were prophetic. And I will now explain how this prophecy came true.

Naturally, I had no real intention of remaining on the Duck Islands, but it was clear to me that, for the present, I was safe here, whereas, if I were to chance an escape over the waves, my life would be in the direst peril.

Over the next few days, I surveyed the area thoroughly. The Spear’s warships were anchored away from view by an inlet on the far side of the island. And fortunate for me they were, for had I seen them in the harbour at Lyce, I should have fled immediately, and it is likely I would have met my end being hunted down on the seas.

There were three warships in all, each about twice the size of my own ship, and built for great speed. Each ship was armed with a large and formidable harpoon. This is a type of rocket spear whose tip throws out sharp barbs upon striking its target, gripping its mark with a tenacious hold. It can be fired great distances into the side of a ship. If aimed low, it will sink the vessel. If high, it will clutch onto the hull, and then, by means of a line fixed to the shaft of the harpoon, the ship may be slowly hauled towards its attacker. When fighting large ships, the practice is for several warships to fire harpoons from a number of directions, slowing the ship, and pull themselves in close enough that their myrmidons might board it. Harpoons are also used against a smaller ship, but this time they are fired below the waterline, so as to sink the ship. Later, the vessel may be pulled to the surface by means of the harpoon’s line, and its contents seized.

I observed the warships carefully from a nearby hill. Upon each warship I counted some forty slaves, perhaps twenty myrmidons belonging to one of the spiny or chitinous species, and two or three men. By contrast, I had just eight slaves and a head slave, giving me little chance even against a single warship in a sea battle. However, I had not the slightest intention of engaging these vessels in a sea battle, for a far better plan came to me as I studied the ships, and I will now explain my execution of it. I shall, however, conceal my plan’s goal, for you will be surprised and delighted when you discover it through the natural course of my narrative.

My first manoeuvre took place at Yorke’s mansion on an evening soon after. He had invited me to dine with him, and I suggested to him he should invite The Spear also. At this, he was much pleased. I believe the presence of such enmity upon his island was a great trial to him, and he wished The Spear and I should forget our quarrel and become fast friends forever. As I have already mentioned, Yorke was an astronomer and had little comprehension of the realities of the hard world that unfolds beneath those shining stars of his.

The Spear was invited to dine with us—an invitation which he accepted. At dinner, we talked congenially enough, and during the course of the conversation, I brought up the subject of eels, saying: “Oh, how I miss the taste of fresh, black eels. In my homeland I used to enjoy fishing for them. There is nothing like the taste of a black eel, caught by your own hand.” The Spear was slow to catch on to this, and spoke about the many fine dishes which he had eaten at this place or that.

Still, I continued: “Ah, but these are as nothing compared to black eels. Such fish are a meal fit for a noble. They are about this long, and this wide...” and so on, until at last he nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I believe I have seen such creatures as you have described. In fact, they swim in large numbers near the inlet where my ships are anchored.”

I knew this much, of course, for I had noted the eels during my observations of his ships, but, when he spoke the news, I feigned great wonder and excitement, saying what glorious and happy tidings these were, and imploring him to catch me a few of these eels as a gift between enemies. “For I realize you would not suffer me to approach your warships to catch eels by my own hand.”

“Nonsense,” he replied. “While we are both bound by the laws of guest-peace, I shall treat you with honour. If you want to fish for eels, I invite you to come tomorrow to my ships. I shall show you around the vessels, and then you may fish as you please from the decks.”

Yorke was gladdened by this cordiality and pressed me to accept the offer. And, after much head-shaking and hand-waving, I did.

So, the next morning, I made my way to The Spear’s ships equipped with a line, some weights, and some hooks. The Spear met me at the shore with a boat and took me aboard his ship. He offered to take me on a tour of the ship, but I declined at this point. “While this would be a great honour,” I said, “I see those eels wriggling in the water and cannot wait to catch a few. But when I have done so, I am keen to examine your magnificent ship.” And so I cast my line over the side of his ship, and he waited by me as I fished for eels.

Unfortunately, he was very observant. “Why,” he asked, “do you send your line so deep? I can see numerous eels swimming near the surface.”

To this, I replied: “Those are young eels. The oldest and most delectable specimens lie close to the bottom. But it seems they are not biting, so I would be as well to finish here,” and so saying, I pulled my line out of the water. He commented on the slow and careful way I wound the line back onto the frame, and I told him it was to prevent the line from tangling.

I then asked The Spear to show me more of his splendid ship. He gladly consented. “This ship,” he told me, “is my own, the
Silver Ray
. It was given to me when I was just seventeen years of age. It has served me faithfully through many battles.”

“It is truly a masterpiece of the shipbuilder’s art,” I said. “Please, show me every deck.”

This he did. I then requested to see the hold, and he took me there too. I examined the ship with great care, paying special attention to the beams which formed the floor of the hold, and the bottom of the ship.

With this done, I started talking once more of eels. “Truly,” I said, “it breaks my heart to have so many eels close at hand and not be able to catch them. Perhaps I would have better luck aboard the warship which is anchored nearby.”

“Very well,” he said, “I shall take you there.” And so he took me there in a longboat. From the side of the warship, I once more undertook my eel-fishing. Again, alas, I caught nothing and was compelled to carefully wind up my line once more.

I then turned my attention to the design of this second warship. “This one,” I said, “seems to me slightly smaller than the first.”

“In this you are mistaken,” The Spear replied. “The ships are identical in size. This ship, however, which is named the
Remora
, is the property of my uncle.”

“I would be interested to see the lower decks of this ship too,” I said, “for your own ship certainly possesses a grandeur which this ship lacks, and yet I cannot say quite from what feature this property derives itself.”

The Spear was flattered at my words, and once again took me all around the warship, while we exchanged views on the baseness of this feature or that compared to its fine counterpart upon his own ship. (To speak frankly, the two ships were quite identical in every respect, and I could see absolutely nothing to distinguish one above the other in any way.) Again, I showed great interest in the hold, and when he took me there I examined the floor with diligence, expressing at last my opinion that it was these beams, above all others, that were so regally placed on the
Silver Ray
.

When we returned to the deck, I requested we examine the third ship too, to see if its workmanship matched that of The Spear’s own craft, or whether it was of inferior construction, like the
Remora
. He readily consented, and we walked across a plank which connected the two ships while at anchor.

Immediately upon boarding the third ship, which was called the
Seahorse
, and was, again, indistinguishable from the other two ships, I gave a cry of excitement. I told him I had just sighted an eel of the most piquant sort swimming off the ship’s starboard side. At once, I set to work with my tackle. Once again, however, I was forced to abandon my efforts and wind in my line. “These old eels,” I explained, “are cunning beyond measure. I fear this one has made his escape.”

We then inspected the
Seahorse
, and I showed The Spear those aspects of the ship’s hold which rendered it so much subordinate to the hold of the glorious
Silver Ray
. “Feel” I said “how coarse the boards of this ship are, and how the wood lacks in the property of delicately hued smoothness which we stonemages call “velvescence’.” And he examined the boards, and agreed the “velvescence” of his own ship was, even to his own untrained eye, slightly superior to that of the two ships owned by his uncle.

We returned across the plank to the
Remora
, and from there to the longboat. The Spear invited me to join him in luncheon aboard the
Silver Ray
, but I declined, saying I had planned to pay a social call upon Yorke, so he rowed me back to shore, and gave me his commiserations for my failed fishing exercise.

I quickly ran back to
my ship and instructed the head slave to prepare for departure that day, but to ensure the preparations were made with discretion and subtlety. I then paid a visit upon Yorke and told the old astronomer how successful the previous night’s dinner had been in cementing the bonds of friendship between The Spear and me.

I said, “I suggest you invite him to your dining room once more, and his men too, for I would like to know them better.” Yorke thought my plan an excellent one and immediately sent invitations by paid messenger (for he owned no slaves).

That evening, I made my way to the hill overlooking the inlet, where I lay and watched The Spear and his men leave their ships and march across the island to the town. Meanwhile, I had arranged for one of my own slaves to deliver a message to Yorke’s mansion I had been unavoidably delayed but I would join them shortly.

I kept my gaze upon those warships. There were now only slaves and myrmidons aboard. The sun had set, and lamps had been lit, but there was still light enough left in the sky to see the vessels clearly.

Now, you will have guessed my eel-fishing and close inspection of the warships earlier in the day were ploys of some kind. Certainly The Spear’s men thought this, for they gave me distrustful looks, suspecting, I imagine, that I was spying out the ground for some elaborate attack. But my visit was no spying exercise—it was the attack itself.

Here was the method of it. Each time I cast the line over the edge of a warship, I let the weight fall to the bottom of the inlet. Then, when I wound up the line, I counted how many times it wrapped the frame, for I had built this frame so each circuit of the line was exactly one half of one builder’s measure in length. By counting the windings, therefore, I was able to determine, with the greatest accuracy, the distance from the side of the ship to the bed of the inlet. During my tour of each ship, I measured (by eye) the interior height of the ship from its side to its keel (for these warships are round-bottomed, and the boards beneath the hold also form the belly of the craft); then, during my close examination of these boards, I used my finger to place a
Tarn rune, then placed an enchantment connecting the keel of the ship to the rock on the sea bed, for you see, by subtracting the two measurements, one is left with the distance between the keel and the bottom, although I added a few inches to account for the width of the wood at the keel, and the accumulation of silt on the rocks far below the ship. And along this precise length, I placed a Strut of Atlas.

Now, you will say, “Strut of Atlas? But did you not complain about the instability of this ancient spell?”

Indeed I did! The spell is old and unreliable. Every apprentice who learns it is warned to construct the three straight parts of the binding evenly, for otherwise the strut will contract away to nothing, pulling its two sides together.

Worse, I had drawn the rune with my finger, instead of using a chisel or stain. And I had used the Tarn rune, instead of the correct rune for the Strut of Atlas, which is Tessel. Oh, Tarn will work, but not for long! My
Struts of Atlas broke every strict rule or dire warning ever spoken about them. I knew they would endure no more than a few hours.

For my work aboard the warships, then, I had created struts of the weakest and most violently unstable character, carefully constructed to collapse after approximately nine hours. Moreover, by their nature, they were sympathetically tuned, meaning the collapse of one would trigger the collapse of the others.

As I watched now from the hill, I felt a tingling in my fingers and neck and could sense the ships’ wefts were straining. The sensation grew stronger and stronger still until at last, with a sound like thunder, the binding beneath the
Remora
gave way, and the ship was snapped to the bottom with such force and speed that, for an instant, it looked as if a deep well had been dug in the water and the ship had fallen in. And, in the next moment, great masses of timber and chank, which had been dashed into pieces by the rocks at the bottom, were thrown hundreds of feet into the air. Even as this was occurring, the binding gave way beneath the
Silver Ray
, and this ship too was wrenched below, then spewed up in a great white explosion. Then the
Seahorse’
s binding broke. Here, however, I had not been so accurate in my measurements, and had perhaps failed to take proper account of the depth of silt on the bed of the inlet, for instead of taking the ship to the bottom, the collapsed binding merely brought up a huge quantity of silt and dead weeds, which showered over the ship.

Fortunately, the extreme violence with which the other ships were destroyed worked to make up for my error, and as I watched, I saw the wreckage from those ships, which had been thrown into the air, come crashing down again with tremendous force. Some of the chunks struck the
Seahorse
, smashing through the ship’s decks and cracking the hull almost in two. A few seconds later, the
Seahorse
tipped on its side and sank.