Stonefather

Runnel first restored the sacred spring and stream that flowed down the slope of Mitherjut. Then he worked his way from the farthest edge of the Mitherlough, shrinking the stone of the lake bed so it was no longer porous. But he did not release the water from the stone; instead, he guided it to flow down to the magma, ever deeper, cooling it more and more. “Yes,” murmured the rockbrothers. “It will be as if the stone had never been hot. The flowing stone is deep again, where it belongs.”

As the lake bed sank back down, the steam continued to rise. It was not until well after dark that the entire lake bed had been restored. Now the waters of the inflowing rivers flowed out onto the stone, and slowly the lake began to form itself again. It would take many days to refill the lake as it had been. But it would refill.

“Move my household into the city,” said Lord Brickel. “We will have a new home in the shadow of Mitherjut, near the walls our ancestors built. I will invite as many stonemages to come to the city as you now have watermages. One for one, our numbers equal. We will sit on your councils in exactly the same numbers as you. We will have an equal voice in the making of the laws. All according to the treaty we have signed today.”

And the watermages said yes, for they could see that their lake was coming back to its place.

Runnel flowed his stoneclant into the rock of the treaty tower.

High above, at the crest of the Mitherjut, his body of flesh rose upward out of the stone.

But it was not the same body that had sunk into the stone earlier that day. For he had been too closely bonded with the granite of the mountain, and now his skin was hard and flecked; there was stone in him, all through him. He moved as flexibly as ever, but he could feel that his feet would never grow tired from walking, and only the sharpest obsidian could cut his skin. He was not pure stone like his clant had been, but neither was he pure flesh and bone.

He put on his clothes again and made his way down the way he had come. No one noticed him in the gathering night. He was just a boy walking the streets.

When he got to the low port across from Hetterferry, he only had to tell the ferryman that he was Lord Brickel’s servant. After the events of this day, that paid for his passage, for everyone feared the stonemage. After all, they believed that it was Brickel who had done all that was done today. They could not afford to cross him by offending his servant.

At the stonemage’s house, Demwor was already there, but his errand had changed. Instead of disposing of the stonemage’s wealth, he was supervising the move to the upper city. Runnel immediately began to help with the work, and if anyone noticed that he was now carrying loads far heavier than anything Ebb could bear, they said nothing about it. In the darkness, no one could see how his skin had changed.

All night they worked, carrying everything to the ferry. On the other side, a team of puddlesons lifted everything onto their backs and carried it up the long stair.

By dawn, Lord Brickel’s new house was ready, and, exhausted, they all fell into bed and slept well into the next day.

Except for Runnel, who was not weary. He lay down on the stone of the new cellar floor and fused the stone walls of the house together into living rock. This was the home of a stonefather — it would look like it.

Lord Brickel came to him late in the morning.

“What were you thinking?” he said softly.

“Isn’t this what you and your friends were working for?” asked Runnel.

“Were you planning this, then? All of it?”

“None of it,” said Runnel. “I didn’t have the faintest idea what I was doing.” Then he told Lord Brickel about the rockbrothers, and the near volcano that the water of the lake had cooled. “I didn’t know the water could do that,” he said.

“It was Tewstan that guided you,” said Brickel.

“Look what it did to me,” said Runnel.

He led Brickel up the stairs and stood where the light shone through a window.

Brickel touched his skin. “You are part of the Mitherjut now,” he said, in awe. “I’ve heard of such things, a man taking the stone inside himself. But I’ve never seen it.”

“Will it go away?”

“No,” said Brickel. “Not if the lore is true.”

“I don’t know anything,” said Runnel. “Will you take me as your apprentice? Will you teach me?”

“Me? Teach you, a stonefather?”

“Is there a stonefather somewhere in the world right now who can do it?”

“No,” said Brickel.

“Then what you know, all the lore, all the secrets, I have to learn it. Will you teach me?”

“Of course.”

“And let the watermages go on believing that you’re the stonefather,” said Runnel. “I don’t want to be Lord Runnel Stonefather.”

“You have no choice,” said Brickel. “Among stonemages, that is your name, though we shorten it. ‘Runnel Stanfar.’ “

“But my common name, here on the streets of the city. Let me be…Runnel Cobbleskin. Your apprentice. Your servant. Let this skin be known as something that you did for me, to make me strong and tough.”