The Ultimate Stonemage: A Modest Autobiography (45 page)

I objected to this line of reasoning, saying that, at one point while I was in the service of the
Emperor of Saskatoon,
I held the rank of a duke (which is absolutely true, although I have not told of the event here). I was, therefore, a noble of sorts and entitled under the law to own myrmidons.

But the bishop said, “We have heard enough of your past ranks, and we care nothing for them. At present, you are merely Yreth, a stonemage of some repute, and I will acknowledge no higher claim.”

I said, “What of my bounty, then? Am I not owed a generous reward for my actions in lifting the blight of war from
Cyprus? I should say seventeen million arrans was a very modest price to pay for such a happy transformation.”

Isenna replied, “In the first place, there is no proof that these giant ships and great black myrmidons you have spoken of actually laid waste to the lands of
India, or that they existed at all. But even if their existence and actions were to be proven beyond doubt, the payment of a victory bounty is not an obligation. If the queen wishes to pay one, or to grant some boon, whether for real or imagined victories, she is at liberty to pay it. But no person may compel her to do so.”

I said to Agrator, “I have heard enough. Now, let me give you my opinion of this man’s words.”

Unfortunately, the judge would not allow this, claiming the time for Flesh had elapsed, and we must now move into
Second Figs, which, like First Figs, is another break from the debate.

During Second Figs, Isenna was in a jolly mood, and he demonstrated a silly hopping dance to the judge, saying it was greatly enjoyed by the queen.

For myself, I talked further with the pretty young priest, who had been winking at me throughout Flesh. After a time, though, I became annoyed at Isenna’s prancings, and I shouted out, “Ho, there! Your bland steps are no way for a man to dance. Watch this.”

Then I hauled myself up onto the table and performed a magnificent quafe, stamping and marching in a very rousing manner, despite my leg. I sang a song too, which was
The Murderous Whore
, and all the priests around clapped heartily at my fine performance.

After Second Figs came
Bread-and-Wine. The bread served was just plain loaves, but the wine was that very rich, strong variety, which is known as
bloodwine. I do not normally take such things, but I made an exception here, for this was holy wine. It tasted so delicious I drank three full goblets, and it went to my head very powerfully.

Isenna then gave a summary of his arguments in the case, for the general purpose of Bread-and-Wine is to render the past arguments into a brief form. He was a fine speaker, certainly, but his arguments sounded no more plausible when stated concisely than they had done when stated at length. I knew though, that the judge would be impressed by Isenna’s words. The weather had been foul for me ever since the trial had begun, thanks to Isenna’s comments about my archbishop’s post. I also knew I would not get a fair hearing, no matter how cleverly I spoke my piece.

When it was my turn, I said, to Agrator, “I will not summarize my arguments, for they are so simple they need no summary. My case rests upon the words of an honest man, which is to say, me. Instead of more talk, let me challenge Isenna to a form of combat. We will throw knives at each other and see who is the first to die. The one whom God chooses to survive will win all the gold at stake in this case.”

Agrator replied, “That method of determination would not be appropriate. Moreover, since you do not wish to summarize your arguments, I declare Bread-and-Wine to be at an end.”

Judgement followed immediately. Agrator said Isenna’s arguments were compelling in every respect (which should tell you all you need to know about that judge’s wisdom!) and I should be paid nothing by the queen.

Truly, I expected no less, for I knew Isenna and Agrator were conspiring against me. Moreover, when we left the court, I saw Isenna and Agrator go off together, doubtless to indulge in some unnatural act.

Still, I was not angry, as you might think, for in my heart I felt justice would yet be done. Later, when I returned to the inn where I was staying, I had a strange and vivid dream, brought on by the holy wine. In this dream, I saw myself standing upon a hill, which I knew to be one of the hills of Heaven. Before me was my pile of treasure, exactly as it had appeared when it was in the caves above
Rowel. A voice said, “Here, Yreth, your treasure is waiting for you.”

Then I saw five more piles of treasure, identical to the first, floating in the sky all around my treasure. I knew then that I was seeing the future. These five piles were my rightful interest, and the amount of it indicated the passage of twenty-five years, meaning I would live another twenty years before I died and was reunited with my treasure. (You see, five years had already elapsed since the money was taken, and twenty-five less five is twenty.)

Then my old friend the
Holy Ghost came before me, assuming a visible form. He had the appearance of a hanging lamp, with a cosy red flame on his wick, and a gentle smile upon his base, but no eyes or ears.

I said, “Holy Ghost, where is
Queen Sarla?”

His lips moved and he said, “She is in Heaven, but she lives in poverty, no better than a street dog.” Then he showed me a vision of Queen Sarla, dressed in rags, with dry leaves around her in the place of gold.

Then I said, “And where are Isenna and Agrator,
the Bishop of Meadric?”

He said, “Those sinners are burning very nicely in the flames of Hell.”

I said, “Ah, I am glad of that, for they were unjust.”

He said, “Yes, you must forget about them. There are great new battles for you to fight, my friend. Return to your own palace of learning,
Yreth’s School of Stonemagery and Architectural Knowledge, and make it your fortress in a great war. It will be a war not of soldiers, but of aesthetics, and your opponent will be the loathsome new style of building.”

I said, “Will you guide me in this war?”

The Holy Ghost replied, “Not in a pigeon’s ear! No, God has decreed that this is the last time we will speak together while you are alive. But when you are dead, we will chat again. I have a fine joke to tell you.”

Then the vision vanished, and I awoke feeling unspeakably serene and tranquil, and ready to emerge triumphant from the great struggle that lay before me. In the next part I will tell of my fight against the new style of building, and of the wonderful victories I have achieved in it so far.

The Twelfth Part

In Which I Explain The Meaning Of The Term “My Name Is Writ In Stones”

Henry Eagles, the great stonemage,
was once asked why he did not place upon his buildings a cornerstone bearing his name. This, you see, was the fashion in those days, and all his contemporaries did it. It is said that he replied by gesturing to the great tower he had built and said, “My name is writ in stones.”

I have followed his wise principles. I never inscribe my name on any building I have created. Instead, I let the building’s stones speak for themselves—although usually I add a frieze or pattern which cunningly contains my name repeated over and over in its swirls. In fact, you can visit any of the buildings I have described in this book, and if you study their decorations carefully, you will find my name written into the stones somewhere, just as Eagles recommends.

The fame of Henry Eagles became so great that he founded the school at
Eopan, and I have followed his guiding star in this too, for I too have founded a school, where I teach others to become stonemages, so my wisdom and experience can be passed onto them, and my name will be written in the stones my students work.

Although my school is very small, its reputation is spread over the continent—and even beyond, to
America, I am certain—for I teach many things, not merely stonemage techniques, but also how to deal in matters of business, and also in such day-to-day skills as how to eat at the table of a noble and how to handle a weapon.

I leave out no field of study which might benefit my students, teaching them even of the True Religion, for God can be a greater ally than any king, except at those times when He plays His jokes.

Mine is the only school in
Cyprus where the classical techniques are still taught in their pure form, unsullied by the vile methods of the
Piatian stonemages which have become so popular.

Even at the school in Eopan, where I learned my craft, students now ape the new style, throwing down a dozen bindings where they should use one, and filling every open area with a hundred steps.

When I learned they were teaching this rubbish at Eopan, I was horrified. I said then, and I say still, that to pass on such methods is a terrible betrayal of a great heritage in building, which has been handed down for centuries from the skilful hands of the great Henry Eagles.

To date, twelve students have learned the craft of building under my instruction. This is a small number, it is true, but I think it is better to teach a handful well than it is to teach a multitude badly, although my skills in teaching are now so refined, after ten years of practice, that I rather fancy I could teach a multitude well. And you may rest assured I certainly would be teaching multitudes, if I had been willing to make certain compromises in my principles, and to embrace the aesthetics of the new school. But I am proud to say I did not compromise my beliefs in this way, though it meant the loss of students—and well paying students too, from families of the noblest rank.

Earls, and dukes, and even princes have said to me, “Here, take my sons and daughters and teach them the ways of the stonemage, for it is the finest calling in all the world, and we know you are its greatest living practitioner, whatever prejudices the queen may have against you.”

To which I say, “I will take them gladly, providing you realize I will teach them nothing of the new school, for the styles of that camp are detestable to me.”

Then they say, “They are detestable to us also, but the world at large loves them, therefore we pray you to teach a little of this style.”

And I say, “Ptoy! The world at large may be damned for its bad taste, but I will have no part of it. Here my students learn only the great techniques which have survived the ages.”

And they reply, “If you will not teach as we ask, then our children must study elsewhere, for we wish them to learn the innovative new techniques. But we respect you greatly and admire you for your high principles.”

I have heard these exact words more times than I care to count, yet I do not take it much to heart, for I know these nobles are ignorant about architecture and judge by appearances only, thinking, since my school is humble in appearance, while the school in
Piatia has many huge and tasteless halls, it must follow that the skill of building according to the Piatian style is a valuable one to have. Yet, if these nobles truly wished their children to learn innovative techniques, they would certainly be better off sending them to me, for the great structures I built in America were more innovative than anything the new school has ever produced, but these designs of mine were also firmly rooted in the ancient stonemage traditions.

I wish the queen had given me the money she owed me, for then I would buy a great plot of land and buy slaves and build the largest school you have ever seen, with great halls and towers cast in every colour of the rainbow. The nobles would come flocking back to me, you may be sure of that, and I would say to them, “The queen is little better than a whore.”

And they would say, “What? Are you not afraid of her?”

And I would reply, “Who, that little stick? She does not dare to show anger to such an important stonemage as me.”

As it is, of course, the queen hates me bitterly for having brought the trial against her, and she would gladly see me dead. I know she has tried many times to have me done away with, but her agents are afraid to strike at me by day, for any would-be murderer would quickly find himself set upon by my allies.

At night, though, I often hear the sounds of assassins creeping around in the streets below—and I know they mean me ill, for they slip into their hiding places when I look out of my window. To protect myself from their daggers, I bought myself a large dog, called Wing, who is very ferocious and who lives with me in my house. Also, once each week, I smear the doors and windows with a little goat’s cheese, which, I have discovered, is a thing all assassins fear. I give a little cheese also to the dog, to make the smell of his breath the more terrifying to them.

I also say a prayer each night, which goes as follows:

O, protect me, God,

And keep me from the knives of murderers.

And, should one enter my house,

In the dark hours,

Let me wake,

And give me strength to seize his weapon,

Driving it into his own wicked heart.

If scrupulously followed, my methods offer complete protection from the night attacks of assassins, and I recommend them to everyone who must deal with such things.

Still, I have strayed a little from my story, which, at this stage, is about my fine school, and the students there.

I was sitting in the
Statue Square, talking to the renowned musician
Olag Moon, who is a very good friend of mine, when I saw a girl by the name of
Lepic. Now, this Lepic had been one of my students, and a good one too, so I waved my staff at her and called her over.

“How are you progressing at your craft, young Lepic,” I said. “Are you building great castles to further your reputation?”

I said this only in jest, for such is the prejudice against classically trained stonemages these days that none of my students has received any major commissions, and those who have found paid work do only occasional repairs, or must earn a wage by commanding myrmidons (which is another skill I teach at my school).

But her reply surprised me, for she said, “No, I have been offered no castles, only a little water stall near to the
Trader’s Arms, yet I do not think I will even submit a design for this task, for it is a lowly structure, and you taught us to build only great things.”

“By that,” I said, “I meant only that you should build things which show your skill to be very great. This water stall would give you every opportunity to do so.”

But she said the water stall was a base and degrading thing to build, and would be a place of foul smells and grunts.

I quickly set her mind right on this score, however, for I employed my keen mind and logical reasoning. I asked her, “Suppose, then, you had been offered a great new feast hall for your commission. Would you take the job?”

“Of course,” she said. “It would be a wonderful thing indeed, and I would be a fool for declining the chance to build so glorious a thing as a feast hall.”

“If a feast hall is glorious,” I said, “which is, after all, merely a place where people eat their food and drink their drink, then it follows that a water stall must share the glory, for what is that but a place where these same people deposit their food and spill their drink after their bodies have taken their fill of its goodness.”

She instantly saw the truth of this, and said I was very much wiser than she. And Olag Moon said I was wise also, and he said, “I have heard many times of your keen mind and precision in the ways of argument. What a rare honour it is to see these skills at combat in the field.”

I asked her then how many pots were to be in these water stalls. She said “There are to be ten—six for the women, and four for the men. And also there must be four pissing walls for the men.”

Olag Moon said, “Ten pots and four pissing walls. That is certainly a reasonable size of water stall!”

I agreed, and I told Lepic that, if she could win the commission, it would bring great credit to her, and also to me.

She said then that she would set upon the designs without delay. Yet I saw from her face that she was still uncertain, so I asked her to speak of what troubled her.

She said, “I worry I shall do the design poorly, for I do not like the smell of the water stalls, nor the noise from them either, and so I have never been inside one.”

I said, “Great God, my girl, what then do you do when you are in the street and feel the need to relieve yourself? Do you just squat down in the park, upon the lawn?”

To which she replied, “Oh, no, not upon the lawn!” Then she added, in her innocence, “It is among the trees that I squat.”

At this, I burst out laughing, and Olag Moon did too, for it was the funniest thing we had heard all month. I laughed so hard that the tears rolled down my cheeks, and I could make no noise for it tickled me so. The girl Lepic began to cry then, for she was just a simple country girl at heart and was ashamed of her ignorance. Therefore, I comforted her, and said I would help her with her designs, for it would be both of us who would benefit from the piece. Then she was most happy with the situation, and agreed her naive ways must indeed seem comical to us refined townsfolk.

After that, we spent a good week working upon the design. In truth, it was I who did most of the work, for she was inexperienced, and slow about reckoning even the simplest bindings. I settled upon a crescent shape for the building. On the inside of the crescent were the four pissing walls, with a good wide entrance to them. On the outside of the crescent were many doors, which each opened upon a stall with a pot. The crescent was covered by a circular roof, with pieces of glass set in the place of certain tiles so the interior might be well lit.

The design had some clever twists too. For example, I placed a number of pipes within the wall of each stall, so each patron might carry on a conversation with the occupants of other stalls, for the pipes carried the sound so well that you might think you were talking with somebody sitting a few inches away rather than forty feet.

Also, I placed perfume receptacles in the stalls intended for the women. The receptacles were filled with a perfumed liquid, and, just above the liquid, was placed a stick, and, glued to the underside of the stick, a great black beetle. The beetles were positioned so that, as they tried in vain to fly away, their wingbeats would splash the surface of the liquid and send it showering down upon the patrons in a fragrant, soothing mist.

Some people, on hearing of this device, have said the idea is ridiculous, and could not work. But they are wrong, for we had the receptacles made, and they did work, and very well too. Indeed, they would be working today if the man who oversees the water stall would periodically replace the beetles, for the creatures die after just a few days, and he is too squeamish to stick a new one in place. He does not admit this, of course, but instead claims the beetles pull themselves loose and fall upon the women who sit below, but this is a lie, and he says it only to hide his fear.

In any case, the design was completed, and Lepic took it to the
Baker’s Guild, which is responsible for maintaining the water stalls here in
Rowel. The bakers looked over the design, and they said it was very good, but they would not give her the commission upon the spot. Lepic asked them the reason for this, and they said they were also considering a second design, which came from a stonemage of the new school. Now, she is a clever girl, and did not grow angry at this news, but instead feigned a great interest in her opponent, asking to see his plans, and, while admiring them, taking note of the signature, which bore the name
Ghymlan.

She brought the news back to me, describing the plans she had seen, which, as far as I could make out, were exceedingly tasteless, for this Ghymlan had surrounded his water stall with columns, and, atop each column, was a loaf of bread carved in stone. Of course, this motif was a very pleasing one to the bakers, but to everyone else it would have been laughable, for there is no bread to be bought within the building.

Still, I knew well how to deal with such a competitor, and I asked my friends in the
Statue Square whether they had heard tell of a Ghymlan who had come to the town. I quickly learned that the fellow had arrived two months before from the mainland and had a room in a farmhouse owned by one of my distant cousins.

Then I summoned together all my old students—there were twelve, just as there were twelve disciples of Christ—and I asked them to pray with me. I said:

“God, although this man Ghymlan has done no wrong to me, it would serve us all very well if some accident should befall him, so the commission for the water stall might go to a student of my school, whose style is so beloved by you. God, we pray to you, send your spirit to the my cousin’s farmhouse by the river, the farm where the donkeys and pigs are all in the same field, and wreak your judgement upon Ghymlan.”