Seeklight

The village of the stone-cutters had changed. The entropic process was accelerating. Daenek stood at the edge of the marketplace and watched the slowly milling crowd, jostling against each other as they moved from stall to stall. But now the trays of vegetables and other things seemed to be sinking towards the ground, bending and warped by the same gravity that tugged at the dilapidated houses and buildings. Soon the soil would have reclaimed everything. From behind him came the harsh mechanical noises of the quarried stone being hoisted aboard the caravan.

A few curious faces glanced at him. Daenek knew they saw only a mertzer, in the usual leather jacket and cap, and with a face that meant nothing to any of them. “Come on,” he said to Rennie, standing beside him. “Let’s see if they still have their inn open.”

They pushed through the crowded market and located the low-ceilinged building on the other side. The interior was dim and faintly steamy, filled with the quarry-workers converting their wages into beer.

More faces, sullen with alcohol, glanced at Daenek and Rennie as they entered, then turned back to stare into the depths of their glasses.

Rennie leaned against the serving counter and slid a couple of small coins onto it. She made motions of lifting an imaginary glass, then held up two fingers. The innkeeper set out two glasses filled with a dark liquid. Daenek sipped his and found it warm and sour.

He listened to the voices around them, of the quarriers standing on either side or clustered around the wooden tables. It had been a long time since he had heard their language, his own first language. It was still clear and lucid in his mind, a fact that none of the villagers seemed to suspect.

“Look at ’em,” someone muttered. Other voices, thick and slurring, joined in. “Damn mertzers… think they’re so great… what do they know about anything? Just hop on their big bloody machines ’n’ ride away… that’s all…”

Daenek sipped again at the beer. The chorus of stone-cutters murmured at his back like ocean waves breaking in the distance.

Beside him, Rennie looked bored, jingling corns in her pocket.

The voices caught his attention again.

“… machines… we used to have machines… just slice the damn rock right up… now we just get a few crummy blocks out by hand… sweat… look at those damn mertzers… things have changed… bad priests… subthane gone, and that new governor from the Capitol…”

He knew what they were talking about. He had seen the development hi several of the areas through which the caravan had passed. The old subthanes had grown too old or incompetent to handle the affairs of their regions any longer, and so had been removed and governors sent out from the Capitol to take their places. They were rarely seen, evidently preferring their own company to that of the people they ruled.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Rennie. She pushed her half-full glass away and stood up.

“You go on back,” said Daenek. “There’s something else I want to do.”

She shrugged and headed for the door of the inn.

The voices of the stone-cutters had sunk into whispers.

Daenek drew a line with his finger through a puddle of spilled beer, then stood up and turned around. One of the faces at the nearest table looked into his for a few seconds, then shifted back to his glass. Daenek recognized the man as the leader of the subthane’s militia that had hunted him down. The man was no longer wearing an immaculate black uniform, but rather the grey, dust-permeated clothes of a quarry-worker. His was also the drunkest face at the table, pale and dissolute. Daenek strode towards the door, wondering if he should feel somehow satisfied at what he saw.

He crossed the marketplace and headed for the edge of the village next to the foot of the hills. When he got there, he saw that the narrow path that led up through the rocks, was now choked with weeds. There was little trace that his or the Lady Marche’s footsteps had ever weighed upon the ground. Pushing the weeds aside, Daenek started up, following the small indications that were left.

Soon he emerged onto the level fields above the village. The top of the old house was visible in the distance, surrounded by the rustling weeds. He trudged towards it, as another man wearing a mertz-er’s jacket and cap had so many years ago.

The door of the house was open, tilting out at a crazy angle from the ripped-apart hinges. Daenek leaned through the opening and saw that the interior had been gutted by a fire. The walls were blackened with smoke. There was nothing recognizable inside.

He turned away and walked further on up the hillside. The bright sunlight pressed on his neck and shoulders.

The little pool in the rocks was still shaded by the over-hanging trees around its edge. Daenek sat on his haunches beside it and tossed a mossy pebble into the center. When the ripples died away, he leaned forward and looked at his reflection in the water.