Jack Whyte - The Skystone

My homecoming with the skystone was a triumph for me and, in a strange way, for Gaius. By vindicating myself in the finding of the stone, I had also vindicated his faith in my strange obsession. He had wanted me to find a skystone for years; it meant a lot to him. Only occasionally did his fine mind balk at the impossibility of everything involved in the quest. The day I found the stone and brought it back to the villa should have been a day for rejoicing all day long. But it was not to be. The arrival of the skystone at the villa was an event whose light was soon eclipsed by other happenings. That particular day was a day of days for all of us, although our human frailties precluded us from identifying the directions in which we were being steered.

We had had a fruitful and excellent year on the villa, which we had already started to call the Colony. Our crops had prospered, and we had more land under the plough than ever before. Quintus Varo, our neighbour to the north, had worked his fields with ours, as had Terra and Firma, who had bought two villas to the east and south of us. In all, we now held a block of nine contiguous villa farms, forming a solid rhomboid tract of arable land some twelve miles long by five miles deep at its widest, and we were confident of adding to those holdings in the coming year. There were at least three villas that Caius knew of to the south and west, and several more in the north and east, whose owners lived outside of Britain: one on the Emperor's island of Capri, one outside Rome itself and one in southern Gaul. These we knew we could have — by default, if things progressed too quickly. They were maintained and farmed by trusted staff of the finest quality — people of the type our plans called for. Throughout the summer and the autumn months, we had also had a steady trickle of newcomers to the villas — craftsmen and artisans, all with families, selected by various members of our newly formed Council. The first of these to arrive was a family from Verulamium. The father and his two adult sons were tanners; the mother, daughter and the wives of the two sons were highly skilled workers in leather. Caius welcomed them with open arms. They were followed within the month by a family of coopers, sent by Tonius Cicero from Londinium. Domus, the father of the clan, was also a skilled carpenter, and his son Andronicus shared all his father's talents.

In August came a family of brewers from the hop country far to the east, and the next month brought the arrival of another family of carpenters and wagon-builders, and a man from the north who, with his wife and daughters, had taken the art of basket-weaving to new virtuosity. Within a week of their arrival, they were making baskets that would hold water! A potter arrived shortly after them, bringing his wheel with him—a huge device on which he threw amphorae and other large storage jars and pots.

Caius had begun to list all the resources we had at our disposal, and the people in our group who were best able to make use of them, and it was from this task that he was summoned by the commotion of my arrival. He was waiting with Luceiia at the gates as I turned my heavily laden wagon around the last bend in the road, and I could see his teeth gleaming in a grin from a hundred paces. The excitement being generated by my coming might have seemed, to a stranger's eyes, more suited to the arrival of an important visitor than a lump of rock, but everyone in the Colony had been aware for months of the importance I placed on the stone I had been searching for so painstakingly.

I stood upright on the wagon tongue, holding the reins, feeling my grin threatening to split my face in two. And then I was in front of them, and I stopped and leaped down to kiss Luceiia and embrace Caius.

"So! You found it!" he said. Luceiia said nothing, smilingly enjoying my obvious pleasure.

"Aye. I found it. Right where I knew it was. " Elated beyond words, I squeezed him tightly to me, hooking my right elbow round his neck in an unusual display of my affection, unaware that I was endangering his dignity. He eased himself gently free from this uncharacteristic embrace and eyed the canvas-covered heap on the bed of the wagon.

"Well, then? Let's see this prodigy! Let's have a look at it!" I leaped back up onto the wagon bed and threw off the covering. It was huge. Or rather, they were. There were four of them. Four massive stones, the smallest of them as big as a strong man's torso, the largest like the hindquarters of a draft horse.

I had known what this sight would do to Caius. I saw all his doubts come crashing back to him at the sight of them. How could these mighty things have fallen from an empty sky? He bit his lip. Everyone had fallen silent.

The rocks seemed to gleam in the sunlight. They almost looked ordinary — four big stones. But they had that polished, glassy look in parts that marked the other seven, smaller stones.

Caius cleared his throat, since he could see that I, and everyone else, was obviously waiting for him to say something.

"They... They're very clean. "

I laughed aloud. "And so they should be! We washed them. "

"You... washed them?"

"Yes, of course we washed them. They had been buried under tons of muck for years. I had to wash them to be sure of what they were. Their weight told me they were skystones, but I couldn't be sure from looking at them, so we stopped at the first stream we came to and cleaned them. And there they are!"

There they were, indeed.

There was still a look of dreadful doubt on Caius's face. "Did you not expect to find only one, Varrus?"

I slapped my right hand onto one of the smooth surfaces. "They are only one, Caius. At least I think they are. My guess is that it shattered on striking the earth. If you look closely at them you'll see that each has smooth surfaces and jagged planes. I fancy that if a man had the time and the strength to juggle with them, he could piece them all together like a broken nut. "

"I see. " The tone of his voice told me he really did not see. "What will you do with them now?"

"Break them in smaller pieces and smelt them. "

"Will that take long?"

"Who knows?" I said. "I hope not. It depends a lot upon the kiln we build, the degree of heat we can generate and on the hardness of the stones themselves and the quality of iron they contain. It could take a month. Perhaps much longer. I only know I'll do it, no matter how long it takes. "

I could see the doubt tugging at Caius's mind. "Varrus, " he said,

"Publius... what if the stones contain no metal?" I leaped back down to the ground. "They do, Caius! They do. " I suddenly became aware that everyone around was listening to us, and I turned to address them with raised arms, acutely conscious of their scrutiny, their curiosity and the scepticism that few of them were able to conceal as well as Caius.

"My friends, " I told them, speaking into their polite, attentive silence,

"these are the skystones you've all heard me talk about. " I glanced from face to face, smiling at the studied non-expressions on most of them.

"They're not much to look at, are they? But they're big, and that's what I was hoping for. "

I jumped up onto the bed of the wagon and rubbed my hand against the smooth curvature of the biggest piece of stone.

"Don't let their plainness mislead you. They are real, and they were found where I expected to find them, and their true magic remains to be discovered in the months that lie ahead. " I drew my skystone dagger and held it up so that they could all see its shining, liquid-silver blade. "They contain metal, " I said, raising my voice to reach everyone there. "Metal like this, and as real as this is. I don't know what kind of metal it is, but it's more than simple iron. Whatever it is, I'll get it out of them. " I saw in their faces — and in a few kindly but sceptically shaken heads — that they were prepared to accept and make allowance for my strangeness. They had begun to go about their interrupted affairs even before I jumped down from the cart again. I turned to Equus, who had not left my side in weeks.