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Chapter Fourteen
"Phrobus!"
Brandark's soft-voiced curse, rich with wonder, expressed Bahzell's own feelings almost perfectly. The Horse Stealer glanced at his friend, but only briefly, for the sight before them wouldn't let him look away for long.
The stonework of Belhadan and the Empire's roads had been marvel enough, but this was the first time the hradani had seen the work of dwarvish engineers untouched by the influence of any of the other Races of Man, and they knew it. No one could have looked at the western face of the Dwarvenhame Tu
The entire face of a mountain had been sliced away to create a sheer, vertical wall of smooth rock eight hundred feet high at the least. There was something merciless about the perfection of that sweep of stone, a purity of line and plane which nature could never have produced. It had been imposed by a hand and eye which thought in straight lines and the consummation of function, and it loomed above the puny mites at its feet with a majestic severity too intense for beauty.
The mouth of the tu
Truth to tell, Bahzell had paid the guards little heed, for his attention was riveted to the tu
They didn't require reflectors because the walls themselves served as reflectors. The stone wasn't simply smooth; it was polished almost to the quality of a mirror, without a single tool mark to mar its surface, and he shook his head in baffled wonder.
"What?" Wencit asked quietly from beside him, and Bahzell turned his head. The wild wizard's eldrich eyes looked eerier than ever in the subdued lighting, floating like twin pools of witchfire under his brows. Their shifting glow was so bright Bahzell thought he could almost have read by it, yet not even that u
"The walls," he said after a moment, his voice soft, almost hushed, as if he felt some compulsion to speak without the tu
"No, there isn't," Wencit agreed, turning to cock his head and consider the walls himself. He studied them almost critically, then shrugged. "Actually, I think this may be even better than some of the work I saw in Kontovar," he mused. "Of course, it's been a while. I suppose my memory could be playing tricks on me."
Bahzell swallowed, jarred by the casualness of the wizard's tone. He could forget Wencit's age and reputation for days on end—or no, not forget so much as set them aside or fool himself into thinking he'd come to grips with them—and then some offhand remark would drive the old man's sheer antiquity home like an arbalest bolt. Like now. No one else in the world could possibly refer to twelve hundred tumultuous years as "a while," yet to Wencit of Rūm, that was precisely what they had been.
For an instant, Bahzell was terrifyingly aware of the age and knowledge—and power—riding peacefully along at his side. This was the man who had strafed Kontovar. Who had fought the Lord of Carnadosa himself, and all his i
But the moment passed. Not because the Horse Stealer felt any less respect, but because Wencit had chosen for it to pass. It would have been impossible for Bahzell to imagine anything less like the dark and terrible wizard lords of the ancient tales than the plainly clothed old man on the horse beside him. No one who ever met Wencit of R?m could mistake the steel at his core, but the wizard had never sought wealth or pomp. His was a quiet authority which came from who he was and what he had done, not from the sort of mailed fist which could impose obedience. He was a wanderer, moving about on missions of his own, often inscrutable and mysterious to those about him, who turned up unexpectedly and then disappeared as unexpectedly as he'd come. He was as comfortable with barbarian hradani as at the King-Emperor's own court, and for twelve hundred years he had been a law unto himself.
Now he looked at Bahzell, raising one snowy eyebrow, and smiled. It was an oddly intimate little smile, as if he knew what the hradani had been thinking and found it amusing, yet there was a wry twist to it, as well. Perhaps, Bahzell thought, the real reason Wencit had never built himself the sort of wizard's tower the old tales described or established himself in luxurious wealth and authority in Axe Hallow or Midrancimb or Sothfalas was far simpler than most people had ever imagined.
He was lonely. Could it truly be that simple, the Horse Stealer wondered? And yet, how could it not be? This man's flame-cored eyes had witnessed the fall of the greatest empire in history. He'd seen the wreckage of that empire washed up on Norfressa's shore, watched over and guarded it as it painfully and laboriously set about putting its pieces back together. And aside from some of the elves of Saramantha in their self-imposed seclusion, he was the only one who had. How many people—how many friends—had he known across that vast sweep of years? How many times had death washed them away and left him alone once more to pursue his lonely task as a continent's guardian? The grief of so much loss must eat at a man's soul, yet the only way to avoid that sorrow would be to isolate one's self as Saramantha had—to erect barricades and defenses against feeling—and that, Bahzell somehow knew, was something Wencit simply could not do. And so he took people as he met them. All people, on their own terms, accepting them for who and what they were, for he needed them to remind him of who he was... and why he had given and sacrificed so much to protect them for so long.
"You were commenting on the walls?" The old man's voice prodded Bahzell with unusual patience, and the Horse Stealer shook himself, then gri
"Aye, so I was," he replied, grateful to Wencit for breaking the train of his thoughts. "I'd not've thought anyone would spend the effort to polish them this way. Tomanāk ! I'd've said no one could do it!"
"Ah, but they didn't—polish them, I mean," Wencit said. Bahzell looked at him for a moment, then flicked his eyes back to the glass-smooth stone.
"And just how would you describe whatever they were after doing, then?" he asked politely.
"Oh, the stone's smooth enough," Wencit agreed, "but they didn't have to 'polish' it. This—" he flicked a hand to indicate the entire wide sweep of the tu
"Sarthnasik? " Bahzell repeated carefully. The word was obviously dwarvish, though it seemed overly short for their language, but he'd never heard it before.
"It translates—roughly, you understand—as 'stoneherd,' " Wencit told him.
"Does it, now? And what might a stoneherd be?" Bahzell felt Brandark urging his horse up behind him and sensed the Bloody Sword leaning towards Wencit with his ears cocked. Vaijon wasn't far behind, and Kaeritha smiled crookedly as she moved her own mount to the side to make room for the young knight-probationer. Clearly she was already familiar with the term, but Bahzell wasn't, and he eyed the wizard intently.
"A stoneherd is a dwarf who practices sarthnasikarmanthar ," Wencit explained. "That's the traditional dwarvish discipline—or art, perhaps—which allows them to command stone."
"Command stone?" Brandark repeated, sounding as dubious as Bahzell felt, and the wizard chuckled.
"That's the simplest way to put it," he said dryly. "I can give you a more technical explanation if you really want one, but I doubt it would mean a great deal to you." The Bloody Sword raised an eyebrow, and Wencit shrugged. "Do you remember the night I tried to explain how wizardry works?"
"Yes." Brandark rubbed his nose. "You said something about the entire universe being composed solely of energy, however solid it may look."
"Precisely. And if you'll recall, I also said that all wizardry consisted of was a set of tools or techniques with which to manipulate that energy?" It was Wencit's turn to cock an eyebrow, like a professor checking to see if his students followed him.
"Oh, aye. We recall it, right enough," Bahzell assured him. "Which isn't to be saying we're after understanding it, of course, but we do recall it."
"Good. Because sarthnasikarmanthar is simply a specialized version of the same thing—one which applies only to stone and which only the dwarves have developed. A sarthnasik doesn't 'dig' or 'cut' a tu