George Martin - The Way of the Wizard

There was a splashing behind him, and he turned. Wommet, the council president, was clutching Carthus’s float. They bowed to each other, then Wommet (a small hunchback, whose ever so many times great-grandfather had made his fortune finding for King Emmidus the jewels that had bankrupted Ponti, and had thus laid the foundations for the Ruling Enclave’s two-thousand-year rule) said, “He will speak to you next, Messire Carthus. Down the corridor on the left. It’s the first room you come to.”

The other council members, on their floats, looked at Carthus blankly. They were aristocrats of Ponti, and so they hid their envy and their irritation that Carthus was going in before them, although they did not hide it as well as they thought they did; and, somewhere deep inside, Carthus smiled.

He suppressed the urge to ask the hunchback what this business was all about, and he slipped off his float. The warmed seawater stung his eyes.

The room in which Grew Croll waited was up several rock steps, and was dry and dark and smoky. One lamp burned fitfully on the table in the center of the room. There was a robe on the chair, and Carthus slipped it on. A man stood in the shadows beyond the lamplight, but even in the murk Carthus could see that he was tall and completely bald.

“I bid you good day,” said a cultured voice.

“And on your house and kin also,” responded Carthus.

“Sit down, sit down. As you have undoubtedly inferred from the message I sent you, this is Ruling Enclave business. Now, before another word is said, I must ask you to read and sign this oath of secrecy. Take all the time you need.” He pushed a paper across the table: it was a comprehensive oath, pledging Carthus to secrecy about all matters discussed during their meeting on pain of the Ruling Enclave’s “extreme displeasure”—a polite euphemism for death. Carthus read it over twice. “It — it isn’t anything illegal, is it?”

“Sir?” The cultured voice was offended. Carthus shrugged his great shoulders and signed. The paper was taken from his fingers and placed in a trunk at the far end of the hall. “Very good. We can get down to business then. Something to drink? Smoke? Inhale? No? Very well.”

A pause.

“As you may have already surmised, Glew Croll is not my name. I am a junior administrative member of the Ruling Enclave.” (Carthus grunted, his suspicions confirmed, and he scratched his ear.) “Messire Carthus, what do you know of the Bridge of Ponti?”

“Same as everyone. National landmark. Tourist attraction. Very impressive if you like that sort of thing. Built of jewels and magic. Jewels aren’t all of the highest quality, although there’s a rose diamond at the summit as big as a baby’s fist, and reportedly flawless… ”

“Very good. Have you heard the term ‘magical half-life’?”

Carthus hadn’t. Not that he could recall. “I’ve heard the term,” he said, “but I’m not a magician, obviously, and… ”

“A magical half-life, messire, is the nigromantic term for the length of time a magician, warlock, witch, or whatever’s magic lasts after his or her death. A simple hedge witch’s conjurations and so on will often vanish and be done with on the moment of her death. At the other end of the scale you have such phenomena as the Sea Serpent Sea, in which the purely magical sea serpents still frolic and bask almost nine thousand years after the execution of Cilimwai Lah, their creator.”

“Right. That. Yes, I knew that.”

“Good. Then you will understand the import when I tell you that the half-life of the Ponti Bridge — according to the wisest of our natural philosophers — is little more than two thousand years. Soon, perhaps very soon, messire, it will begin to crumble and collapse.”

The fat jeweler gasped. “But that’s terrible. If the news got around… ” He trailed off, weighing up the implications.

“Precisely. There would be panic. Trouble. Unrest. The news cannot be allowed to leak out until we are ready, hence this secrecy.”

“I think I will have that drink now, please,” said Carthus.

“Very wise.” The bald nobleman unstoppered a crystal flagon and poured clear blue wine into a goblet. He passed it across the table and continued. “Any jeweler — and there are only seven in Ponti and perhaps two others elsewhere who could cope with the volume — who was permitted to demolish and keep the materials of the Ponti Bridge would regain whatever he paid for it in publicity alone, leaving aside the value of the jewels. It is my task to talk to the city’s most prestigious wholesale jewelers about this matter.

“The Ruling Enclave has a number of concerns. As you can imagine, if the jewels were all released at once in Ponti, they would soon be almost worthless. In exchange for entire ownership of the bridge, the jeweler would have to undertake to build a structure beneath it, and as the bridge crumbles he or she would collect the jewels, and would undertake to sell no more than half a percent of them within the city walls. You, as the senior partner in Carthus and Aathia, are one of the people I have been appointed to discuss this matter with.”

The jeweler shook his head. It seemed almost too good to be true — if he could get it. “Anything else?” he asked. His voice was casual. He sounded uninterested.

“I am but a humble servant of the Enclave,” said the bald man. “They, for their part, will wish to make a profit on this. Each of you will submit a tender for the bridge, via myself, to the Ruling Enclave. There is to be no conferring among you jewelers. The Enclave will choose the best offer and then, in open and formal session, the winner will be announced and then — and only then — will the winner pay any money into the city treasury. Most of the winning bid, as I understand things, will go toward the building of another bridge (out of significantly more mundane materials, I suspect) and to paying for a ferry for the citizens while there is no bridge.”

“I see.”

The tall man stared at Carthus. To the jeweler it seemed as if those hard eyes were boring into his soul. “You have exactly five days to submit your tender, Carthus. Let me warn you of two things. Firstly, if there is any indication of collaboration between any of you jewelers, you will earn the Enclave’s extreme displeasure. Secondly, if anybody finds out about the spell fatigue, then we will not waste time in finding out which of you jewelers opened his mouth too wide and not too well. The High Council of the Ponti Jewelers’ Guild will be replaced with another council, and your businesses will be annexed by the city — perhaps to be offered as prizes in the next Autumn Games. Do I make my meaning plain?”

Carthus’s voice was gravel in his throat. “Yes.”

“Go then. Your tender in five days, remember. Send another in.”

Carthus left the room as if in a dream, croaked “He wants you now,” to the nearest High Council member in the anteroom, and was relieved to find himself outside in the sunlight and the fresh air. Far above him the jeweled heights of the Ponti Bridge stood, as they had stood, glinting and twinkling and shining down on the town, for the last two thousand years.

He squinted: Was it his imagination, or were the jewels less bright, the structure less permanent, the whole glorious bridge subtly less magnificent than before? Was the air of permanence that hung about the bridge beginning to fade away?

Carthus began to calculate the value of the bridge in terms of jewel weight and volume. He wondered how Aathia would treat him if he presented her with the rose diamond from the summit; and the High Council would not view him as a nouveau riche upstart, not him, not if he was the man who bought the Ponti Bridge.

Oh, they would all treat him better. There was no doubt of that.