Stonefather

Now that the walls of the tower were alive, his outself could rise up into them, and now, as naturally as if he had been doing it all his life, he formed a body for himself out of the living stone. He gave it eyes, so his outself could see; legs and feet, so it could walk. He pulled his new stone body free of the wall and began to walk the downward-spiraling corridor of the tower.

Watermages and guards tried to stop him — they broke their puny weapons on his stone body, and cast their spells, but there was no water in him to obey them, and he brushed them aside and went on.

At the base of the spiral ramp there was a pool of water, at the same level as the lake. Out in the middle of the pool, on a raft of reeds, floated Lord Brickel, tied down, unable to move.

Runnel took his stone body — his clant, for now he knew what he had created — to the edge of the water and knelt. His knees grew into the living rock of the ramp, and drawing on the stone he was once again a part of, he extended his arms, longer, longer, until one of them completely bridged the pool, passing just over the raft on which Brickel was bound. Then with his other hand, he broke open Brickel’s bonds.

Brickel climbed onto the bridge that Runnel had formed and walked over the pool to safety. “Runnel,” said Brickel. “What good will this do? You should have let them kill me.”

Runnel did not know how to make his clant speak. But he pressed his head against Brickel’s head, and spoke inside his mind, as he had spoken to the outselves of the rockbrothers. “It’s time to undo an old injustice,” he said. “Be my voice. It’s time for the stonemages to return to Mitherstane.”

“That’s our dream, but we’re not ready.”

“You have a stonefather now,” said Runnel. “Tell them.”

Runnel’s clant, his stone body, led the way back up the ramp, to where the wetwizards and soldiers were clustered around what used to be a door.

“Let us out!” they cried. “We won’t harm you.”

Lord Brickel stepped around Runnel’s clant. “Do you think I care about saving myself?” he said. “I bring a message from the stonefather whose clant you see before you. This is the city of Mitherstane, built by stonemages at the beginning of time. You are the children of treachery, who slew the stonemages who saved you from your enemy. This is the day of reckoning.”

“What can we do?” cried the wetwizards.

But then Runnel felt something terrible and strange. The living stone of the tower was being attacked by something that chewed through the stone and turned it into tiny bits of dead dust. A gap opened in the wall, and through it stepped one, then another, then a third creature made of water.

The wetwizards cheered. “The waterfathers bring you your answer, stonefather!”

The three waterclants strode to Runnel’s stoneclant, and the moment they touched him, he could feel them wearing away the stone of his skin. He tried to replenish himself from the living stone beneath his feet, but there were three of them, and he could not keep up.

So he flowed his clant back down into the living stone of the floor.

Once again, he had left Brickel at the mercy of the watermages.

I was a fool, he thought. I felt all this power, and forgot that the watermages have power of their own. They defeated us before; why did I think that I alone could defeat them now?

“Forget them,” murmured the rockbrothers. “Help us suppress the flowing stone.”

But Runnel was not going to forget anything. He thought: What can I do to hurt them? How can I make them release Brickel?

He thought of the porous stone in the cistern back at Lord Brickel’s house. There, it served as a filter. But here, that kind of stone could serve another purpose entirely.

Runnel sent his outself through the stone that underlay the lake. Starting with a little outcropping of rock surrounded by water, he expanded the stone by making it as porous as the filterstone in the cistern. He expanded it more, with larger holes and channels, and it filled with water. He spread the porousness through more and more of the lake-bed rock, and took it deeper and deeper. As the stone expanded, it rose higher, toward the surface of the lake; the water level fell as the water soaked into the stone.

Until finally there was no lake. Just a single sheet of porous rock, with all the water held inside.

He could feel the flow of the water down the channels as it came to a stop. The water flowing into the lake from the streams and rivers that fed it soaked into the stone as fast as it arrived. There was no lake. Below Mitherjut, there was no river.

Where will you draw your power from now, waterfathers?

He returned to the tower, to the pool in the middle of it, and there, too, he made the stones of the tower porous, so the water was soaked into the floor and walls. The pool was dry. Runnel formed another clant out of the newly porous stone of the walls and returned up the ramp. The waterclants were no longer there. No one was there.

Where had they taken Brickel?