Stonefather

There was no one here in these ruins. It was not holy ground, as far as the watermages were concerned.

But it was to Runnel. He could feel the throbbing again here, stronger than ever. I have found the heart of the mountain. Maybe the heart of the world.

Following the words of Lark’s story, Runnel took off all his clothes and lay down upon the living rock, right where one of the rockbrothers must have lain, back when the battle was raging, and there was no hope for the city.

The sun shone down on him — it was afternoon now, and despite the coolness of the air, the sun was bakingly warm. Runnel realized, now that he was lying still, that his own body was trembling. What have I done? Brickel told me to do nothing, and I thought I knew better. I thought I was saving a bridge, and instead I’ve cost him his life.

The throbbing under him grew stronger.

He began to sink into the stone.

I’m not doing this, he thought. I’m not pushing myself into the stone. I’m just lying here, and the stone is welcoming me.

He sank; the stone closed over him. He lay in darkness, but he could still feel the sun beating on his skin. No, not on his skin — on the stone above him. The stone of Mitherjut, that was his skin now. He sank into the stone, but the stone also sank into him. He could feel the whole Mitherjut as if it were part of his body.

And he was not alone.

“Stonefather,” came a whisper. It was repeated, again and again, until two dozen at least had called to him.

“Who are you?” he asked. Only he did not move his lips — could not move them. Yet he heard his own voice as if he had spoken aloud.

“You know who we are,” said one of them. “We have waited long for you.”

“Are you the rockbrothers who created Stonemages’ Ditch? The ones who won the battle and then were burned?”

“They burned our bodies,” said one of them. And another, and another. “Our inselves died. But our outselves were wandering in the stone, shaping it. That is all that lives, and we are fading. We have waited for a stonefather to come. Now you are here. Save the city, Stonefather!”

Save the city? What was that about? “You saved the city,” he said. “From the Verylludden.”

“Long ago,” said the voices. “And they were only men. It is from the flowing stone we save the city. Feel how it wants to rise.”

It was as if they led him, for even though his body did not move, he was traveling through the rock. “Is this my outself that you lead through the stone?” he asked them, and they said, “Yes.”

They took him down under the Mitherjut to where a thick dome of cold rock pressed down as under it a hot dome of seething, flowing magma pressed upward. “The blood-stone wants to flow. It wants to burst free. We have held it down all these years, but now it grows stronger, and we grow weaker. Soon it will break free.”

“What can I do?” asked Runnel.

“What we have done. Hold it down. If it breaks free, the Mitherjut will disappear, the city will be utterly destroyed, the lake will become a mere river, and all this good land will be covered in ash and new basalt.”

“They killed you. Why don’t you let them be destroyed in turn?”

“Mitherstane was built as a partnership of stone and man. What if the watermages rule for this moment? We cannot let the holy city be destroyed.”

“I’m supposed to stay here for the rest of my life? Holding down a volcano?”

“Inside the stone your life will be long and longer. Till another stonefather comes.”

“I can’t. I have to save my master, Lord Brickel.”

“He’s only a cobblefriend. He can’t help in this work.”

“You don’t understand. It’s my fault that he’s in trouble. They’re going to kill him. I have to set him free from the prison he’s in. I have to do it now.”

And with that he wrenched himself free from the gentle pressure of their company and began to wander alone through the living stone. It was hard to imagine, deep in the rock, where he was in relation to the city above. Only when he brought his outself near the surface could he feel the cobblestones of the streets and the great buildingstones of the city walls, and the pressure of the heavy buildings as they pressed down into the earth.

He found the tower out on the peninsula and fused the stones of the tower to the bedrock on which they rested, making it a place of living stone. He did not bother to preserve the outward facade of separateness; he knew that the tower would no longer appear to be made of many stones, but of a single, smooth sheet of it, rising straight up out of the earth. Let the watermages see something of his power; let them wonder how it could be happening. He grew stone over the doors of the tower. No watermage could get in or out.