The Ultimate Stonemage: A Modest Autobiography (41 page)

The Penultimate Section Of The Eleventh Part

In Which I Tell Of How The Actions Of Others Did Great Harm To My Standing

I spent the next day
wandering the beautiful grounds of the fortress. In my head, I made plans to place a maze upon the lawn. It was to be a very remarkable maze, and so complex that a map would be required in order to negotiate it safely. Further, remembering the lessons I had learned while building the
luma
, I thought of placing small biting animals at certain points in the maze, together with trapdoors, so those taking a wrong turn would quickly pay a painful price, thereby increasing the entertaining properties of the structure.

I did not see the queen that day, because I knew those accursed commanders would also be there with her in the throne room, and if they provoked me again, I would surely draw their blood this time.

In the evening, I drew a few preliminary sketches for the maze, then I kept company with my girls for a time, took a fine dinner in my room, and afterwards slept very soundly.

The next day it rained, so I remained indoors, working on my plans for the maze. I was so pleased with these that, in the evening, I found the
Principal Secretary, who was a greasy young man by the name of
Toteel, and said I would very much like to join the queen for a private dinner.

He said, in an indifferent tone, “I will see what I can do, but she is very busy and does not have the time for everyone who may wish to see her.”

At this, I said to Toteel, “Look here, I am a very close friend of the queen, and you had better watch how you treat me.”

He did not like this, and he left, saying he would speak to the queen on my behalf. I do not think he could have done so, for I received no invitation to dinner with the queen, but instead was forced to dine in my room. The food I received, moreover, was poor in flavour, and cold too, which put me in a foul temper.

The day after, I waited, but no invitation arrived. I sent another message to Toteel, but received no reply. On the fourth day, there was still no reply.

On the fifth day, I met Toteel in the corridors, and I gave him a severe dressing-down for withholding my messages from the queen. I said to him, “You are walking upon a very soft bog if you trifle with me. Now, give her my messages without delay, or it will be the worse for you.”

He said, “I have already given her every message, and it is none of my affair if she does not choose to answer them. I think she is angry with you.”

I said, “Oh, you envious, bitter youth! Why do you try such lies upon me, when I know the queen now holds me in higher regard than anyone else in the world? Go! Deliver my messages, and let us have no more of your courtier’s tricks, for I am well acquainted with the way things work in palaces, and if you give me such poor service, I will pay you the grotec you have earned, which is not a silver grotec, but another, very unusual kind.”

Then he said, “Oh really? And what kind of grotec is it that you will pay me?”

And I said, “This kind!” Then I punched him twice in the face and kicked him in his private parts with my versatile
golden leg. You see, although he was much younger than I, he was scrawny and weak, whereas I was still powerful and strong.

He gasped for breath, saying, “You will rue the day you treated me so,” and took his leave.

I laughed at his threat, for he looked a sorry sight with his bloody nose and broken teeth. However, I should have taken other measures on the spot, because he was true to his word.

As for me, I decided I would pay a visit upon the throne room the next day and talk to the queen in person, and if those bellicose commanders provoked me again, I would give them the fight they deserved.

Later that evening, a strange thing happened. I was lying upon my bed, looking at the walls of my chamber. They were covered with a ten-brush pattern. And if you do not know what this is like, for it is out of fashion today and not often seen, a
ten-brush is a fat brush, made of a great many small brushes which clip together. Each small brush is daubed with a different colour, so, when assembled, the ten-brush paints a rainbow effect, and, if the paint is wet enough, can produce strange swirls where the colours run together.

I was looking at the patterns on the wall to see what they might resemble. There was one part which looked much like a man’s head, but with long pointed hair. There was another which looked like a ladder with many people on it. And there was another that looked like a round, comical pig, although this was a hard one to find, because it would sometimes seem to disappear, even though I knew it was beneath the window, next to the hook. But surely I do not need to explain this game of mine, for it is a commonplace one, and I have seen children playing it as they looked at clouds or flames.

As I was looking, a strange and light-headed feeling came over me. Then, suddenly, my eye fell upon a pattern I had not seen before, and I pointed this out to one of my girls, saying, “Look at that pattern. It looks very much like a mouth.”

She said, “Where? I do not see a mouth.”

I said, “There, above where you saw the snail, and a little to the right of the winged bottle. And see, behind the mouth is a book that contains all the knowledge of the world.”

But even though I described the location of the pattern in the most accurate way, she was unable to see it.

At once, I realized God was speaking to me through these patterns. The mouth was His mouth, and the book was His wisdom, and He obviously wanted to tell me something important.

I studied the wall some more, and I saw a part which looked like a hill with a group of trees on top of it. After some thinking, I realized the meaning of this: that I must leave this fortress, and take a journey across the country.

Then I noticed a pattern which resembled a man clutching a shovel with a very large blade, although the girls thought it was like an old woman pulling bread from an oven, which I too could see. The man, I knew, represented hard work, and the meaning of it was that, after my journey, I would set upon some great task of building, greater even than the one I had already been given. And the image of the old woman indicated I would earn so much money from this work that my previous wealth would seem like a widow’s savings.

I thought, “What kind of wonderful task can this be? I have already been entrusted with the rebuilding of one-third of this great domain. Can it be that all of
Cyprus’s great empire will soon be mine to sculpt? Truly, there seems to be no other explanation, as incredible as it seems.”

Now, perhaps you will think my conclusion sounds far-fetched, for, you will say to yourself, “This man Yreth, while clearly very wise in all things, and skilled in both building and battle, is no trained augur. How, then, can he speak with such certainty upon the matter?”

However, the mother of one of my girls, who also worked in the fortress as a maid, was widely renowned as a great seer, and an augur too, and she was so talented that she charged five arrans for a single hour of private advice and prophecy. When I consulted her, she said my interpretation of the divine message was exactly correct in every detail. Moreover, she said I had hidden abilities as a seer myself, and I should always follow my visions in any difficult matter. And I knew she was correct in saying this, too, for there have been very many times when I have had troubles of various kinds, and often the answer would come to me in the form of some obscure vision, or some supernatural event.

I said to myself, “I will leave this palace soon, then, to set out on my profitable journey. Perhaps in another month.”

The next day, I went into
Ithron to buy some fine new clothes before I paid my call upon the queen. I found a very fine cloak with jewels upon it, but the tailor had heard I was wealthy and insisted on receiving a hundred arrans for it, whereas I was carrying only eighty. This, incidentally, is one of the problems of being very rich: all the best merchants will inflate their prices by ten or twenty times.

I was not in the mood to haggle that day, so I went back to the palace to get some more money from the
Earl of Tarphonay. I had got no further than the gates, however, when I was stopped by the guards. They said, now I had left the palace, I was not permitted to return.

I called for the gate commander, who eventually came, and I said to him, “What is the meaning of this? In the past I have always gone freely back and forth through these gates.”

He said, “That was the past, and it is so called because it has passed by. I have new orders now.”

I said, “Oh yes? And who gave you those orders?”

He said, “That is none of your concern.”

I said, “No, but it will soon be your concern, and the concern of the
Principal Secretary too, for men are apt to become very concerned when they are being tortured to death for the crime of treason.”

I knew, you see, that the Principal Secretary,
Toteel, was behind this, because he was responsible for the important messages that went to and fro within the fortress, including to the guards.

The gate commander said then, “There is no use discussing it, for I will not let you pass. If you wish, though, you may write a letter to the queen, and I will take it for you.”

I said, “No, for I know all too well where such a letter will end up.” (Which is to say, on the Principal Secretary’s desk, where he might mock it, and, when he was done mocking, place it in his fireplace.) Then I said, “But please send a message to the Principal Secretary from me. Tell him I am leaving Ithron for a secret destination. There I will forge a great hammer, and, in a few weeks, that hammer will fall upon his head.”

Then, after buying some food for my journey, together with some cheap leggings to hide my golden leg from thieves, I left the city of Ithron and took the road to
Beacon to begin some of my building work.

The journey took about a week. Along the way, I did indeed meet a group of thieves, who robbed me of the money I was carrying, which was about eighty arrans, together with some fine jewels I was wearing, worth more than five hundred arrans. Because I had covered up my golden leg, though, they did not steal it. I also met an angry stag, but I stood my ground against his fierce horns, throwing rocks at him until he wandered off.

When I reached Beacon, I was welcomed by the earl there, whose name was
Elliel, and I was made an honoured guest.

We talked once more of the many plans I had made, and the earl expressed his enthusiasm for my project, saying he could barely wait for the work to begin, and was very honoured that the Queen’s Own Builder would come personally to oversee the work, to which I responded that I would start the detailed plans without delay.

He said, “I will see you are well paid for your speed, yet do not go so fast that any important detail might be overlooked.”

I assured him I would overlook nothing, for I was, by nature, an exceptionally fast worker, and, also a very diligent one.

Then I said to him, “Will you permit me a favour?”

He said, “State it.”

I said, “I wish to send a message to the queen, but, for various reasons, I wish to conceal the identity of its sender until it is in front of her. Perhaps, when you next send a letter to the queen, you will permit me to enclose a letter of my own inside the package.”

He said, “I will be happy to serve you in this way, good Yreth. Moreover, your request is exceptionally well timed, for I have just finished a letter to the queen, and I plan to send it this very afternoon.”

This was excellent news, to be sure, and I quickly called a scribe and dictated a short letter to him, with a second copy for my records. It went as follows:

My Dear Queen,

I have left Ithron because of the rude treatment I have received at the hand of your Principal Secretary. I do not think I will return while he still lives. It is a shame, too, for I was planning to write a second poem, even more heartfelt than the first.

I am your honest subject,

Yreth.

Then I wrote another letter, this time to the
Earl of Tarphonay. It read:

My Good Earl,

Alas, I was set upon by thieves on my journey here. Please send a large satchel of gold to me here at Beacon. Also, please see to it that the Principal Secretary is put to death, for he has committed treacherous acts.

I thank you for your trouble,

Yreth.

I enclosed these letters into the envelope containing the
Earl of Beacon’s own letter, then watched as it was securely sewn shut, and a good measure of the earl’s wax was dripped along the thread.

Now, letters sent by nobles are treated differently from letters that other important persons have sent. Only the queen herself may open the envelopes containing such letters, and Toteel would not dare to interfere with the delivery of such a package, even if he knew that a letter from me was also inside. But, since I had told nobody where I was, he would not know even this. So, by sending my letter in this way, I could be certain it would be delivered directly into the hands of the queen.

I was very pleased by my plan, and I imagined
Toteel proudly taking the package to the queen, little realizing that the message inside it would, within a few minutes, bring him face to face with the executioner’s sword.

During the following weeks, I spent many hours thinking about my great project in Beacon. As you will remember, I wished to build for Beacon a kind of artificial sun, bathing the town in life-prolonging light from a fire in a great glass bowl. But I talked to glassmakers, and they said there was no glass in the world that would withstand such fire. Of course, the glass might be protected by a layer of magic, but I wanted to avoid this, for I reasoned that light shining through a magic sheet might lose its health-giving character.

Then they said, “Quartz might work.”

I said, “Excellent, for I can create a giant bowl of
quartz very easily, using my stonemage skills upon certain common rocks.”

However, when I used my spells of fire and furnace, I found it was difficult to create the clear quartz I needed. In fact, the best I could manage was to create slabs of coloured quartz, which were very beautiful to look at, but were opaque, or only partially translucent.