Ian Esslemont - Stonewielder

The man jumped, and glared about myopically beneath bushy white brows. ‘Who’s that? Who?’

‘It’s Hiam, Stimins.’

‘Oh, young Hiam. What in the Lady’s name are you doing down here?’

‘Looking for you,’ Hiam observed tartly.

‘Ah! Well, whatever for?’

Hiam crooked his head to motion away his escort. Bowing, they moved off to lean back amongst the tumbled boulders, arms crossed over the hafts of their spears. ‘Your report.’

The engineer was fiddling with small rocks in the palm of one hand, turning them round and round. ‘Report? What report?’

The Lord Protector slapped a hand to the hot gritty side of a boulder. Dried bird guano streaked the stone white and patches of lichen grew green and orange. ‘Your report on the state of the wall!’

‘Ah. That report. Well, it’s not conclusive yet. I need to study things further.’

‘That’s what you said last year, and the year before that.’

The snowy brows rose over pale, watery blue eyes. ‘I did? Well, there you go.’

‘With all due respect, Master Engineer. We no longer have the time for the luxury of conclusiveness… Your current assessment will have to do.’

Stimins sniffed his disapproval. ‘That’s the trouble with you younger generations — no patience to do the job right. Things are off to the Abyss in a broken wagon, they are.’

Hiam crossed his arms, and his cloak fell open to reveal the broad scarred forearms, the dire gouges and deep scrapes in the bronze and leather vambraces. The Master Engineer extended his bony hand, clenched, knuckles knotted in joint-ache. Hiam held his own out, open. Two small stones fell into his palm.

‘My report,’ Stimins said.

Mystified, Hiam studied the two stones. Taking one in each hand he found that they fitted together exactly: two halves of the same piece. ‘What’s this? A broken rock?’

‘Shattered cleanly in half, Lord Protector. By the corroding cold itself.’

Now Hiam regarded his Master Engineer. ‘The cold? How could it do such a thing?’

Stimins raised his hands for patience. ‘Let me correct myself. By frost. By moisture, freezing suddenly. Explosively.’

Hiam thought of casks of water left out during the worst of the assaults, how some exploded at the touch of the Riders’ sorceries. ‘I see… I think.’

‘All up and down the wall,’ Stimins continued, his voice becoming dreamy, ‘freezing, thawing, year after year. But not the mild slow advance of nature, mind you. The forced unnatural fist of the Riders slamming winter after winter. Pounding the wall to slivers.’

‘How-’ Hiam coughed to clear his throat. ‘How long do we have?’

The old man, his face still unfocused, shrugged his maddening disregard. ‘Who is to say? Another one hundred years — or one.’

Struggling to contain himself, Hiam threw the stones to clatter among the boulders. ‘Thank you for your report, Master Engineer.’ Though it be utterly useless to our current crisis. ‘And I remind you that such information is to be shared only between you and me.’

The old man blinked his confusion, his brows crimping. ‘But of course, Lord Protector.’

‘Very good. Carry on.’ The Lord Protector left his Master Engineer scratching his thin hair and frowning among the rocks.

His escort, Stall and Evessa, straightened from where they leaned among the menhir-sized boulders. Stall tossed away a handful of pebbles. ‘Odd noises among these stones, hey, Evessa?’

‘The strangest echoes, Stall.’

Ivanr hacked his farm out of the unsettled far south of Jourilan, hard up against the foothills of the immense mountain chain some named the Iceback range. Wanderers and religious refugees fleeing south from the cities often passed his field. Many claimed that the Priestess was nearby but still Ivanr was surprised when she appeared one day. Her voice startled him as he was bent over weeding his garden and he straightened, blinked the sweat from his eyes.

‘Ivanr,’ she said, ‘what is it you fear about me?’

He studied the slip of a girl-woman in her dirty rags before him. A foreigner come to convert an entire land. He saw a face lined and drawn by a suffering no youth should be asked to endure; limbs emaciated, almost warped by the tasks that had been exacted from them. And yet the undeniable aura of power hovered about her, warning off any who would consider a challenge. Shrugging, he returned to his weeding.

‘Priestess, I do not fear you.’

‘Yet you resolutely avoid me.’

He gestured broadly to his field. ‘I have work to do.’

Dry leaves shushed as she closed. Her bare feet were dirty, her robes no more than mud-smeared tatters. ‘As do I. Could it be, Ivanr, that you fear I may have other work for you?’

‘You have plenty of others to choose from.’

‘Yet here I am speaking to you.’

He straightened, towering over her, and she raised her chin to meet his gaze. Her tangled black hair blew about her face like a cowl. He had to flinch from the depths of those compelling eyes. ‘Well, you’re wasting your time.’

‘You presume to know what I am doing? They mock you, you know. Call you farmer. Dirt-grubber. Coward.’

‘And I grow things called tomatoes, beans, marrow.’ That raised a brief haunted smile. ‘You do not need me. I’m told you have many of the aristocrats. The pure-blooded ruling families.’

‘True. Sons and daughters of the highest Jourilan names have marched up to my modest fig tree. “Teach me,” they demand. “Instruct me in this new way we hear of.” Already perhaps they are too far down the wrong path. But I cannot show them that — only you can.’

He studied his dirt-smeared hands; cut and bloodied, calloused, nails broken. Just as during all those years of training and duelling. ‘They won’t listen to me. I’m… of the wrong background.’

‘Ah yes. That taint so shameful to the Jourilan. Mixed blood. Do you know the name of your ancestors, Ivanr?’

He shrugged, his gaze hooded. ‘My mother said her people were of the Red-Rock tribe of the Thoul-Alai. That is all I know.’

The Priestess’s voice hardened in sudden outrage. ‘Your people were of the Toblakai, Ivanr! Blessed of the children of the Great Mother! Some of you survive, isolated, in pockets here and there, despite the best efforts of all those who have stolen your lands.’

‘Stolen? Strong language for an outlander.’

Now the Priestess hugged her angular frame, the lines at her mouth deepened in shadow. ‘It is a story not unfamiliar to me.’

Ivanr stared wonderingly. So, a vulnerable side. An opening up. Careful. Seduction bears many faces. ‘Immaterial. What’s done is done. Nothing can bring back the past.’

‘I would never seek that.’ Her words were softer now, her tone closer to that of her true tender age. He felt the wounds that she carried and something within him ached to hold her, to soothe that pain.

Dangerous indeed.

‘The question is how to proceed into the future. You, Ivanr, the warrior champion who defied the call to the Stormwall. I have heard many rumours as to why. But I have my own theory…’

His gaze found a flight of crows crossing over the face of the distant Jourilan central plateau. Smoke obscured the north horizon; he shielded his eyes, squinting. Burning already — damned early. ‘It was cowardice — leave it at that.’

‘No. It would be cowardice to leave it at that.’

He let his hand fall. She eyed him levelly, almost coolly, and he felt himself shrinking under that steady gaze. Such suffering scoured into that lined hatchet face that should be unmarred! And a haunting glow as well- the lingering hint of the revelation everyone whispers of? Who is he to dare dispute this one’s choices? But surely he must be unworthy! How could he, who once gloried in conflict, possibly serve Dessembrae, the Lord of Tragedy, or any of these foreign gods?