“A what?” A thrill went through Runnel. He wasn’t sure if it was fear or joy. Both, probably.

  “What do you think, that cobblefriends and rockbrothers can do this? You slept your way through the stone—of course it joined to the bedrock, to the whole globe of living rock on which the oceans and the continents float. You’re ignorant, you know absolutely nothing, that much is obvious, but you have power. The stone loves you. Don’t you see it? Hasn’t it shown you its love all your life?”

  Runnel thought back to his rock-climbing and realized: The reason I could find cracks and handholds and toeholds where others couldn’t was because the stone opened up for me. Because it loved me.

  And I love the stone. Like the child wolfmage in the story loves the wolf pup. All my life, I’ve loved the feel of it in my hand. I’ve worked with it, built with it, cut with it, climbed it, slept on it when I could. And it never occurred to me that this made me a stonemage.

  “It has,” he said to Lord Brickel. “But I didn’t realize. It was part of being alive, to hold the stone, to climb it.”

  “And you didn’t feel yourself connect with the stone below?”

  “I thought it was my dream.”

  “If you had gone to school in Cyllythu, you’d know. Dreams like that must be told to a master. You would have been known for what you are.”

  “I can’t be a stonefather,” said Runnel. “I’m…Runnel.”

  “Well, you’re not a stonefather. You have the power of one, but you have no skills at all. You don’t even know what you’re doing. You can’t control it. You can’t keep yourself from doing it.”

  “Teach me.”

  “Impossible. Not here. Don’t you think Demwor would notice? No, you’re getting out of here, while I try to take these stones apart one by one.”

  The thought of dividing the rocks again struck Runnel like a blow. “But…it’s alive now.”

  “It shouldn’t be. It wasn’t till you meddled.”

  Now he registered what Lord Brickel had said before. “Where will I go?”

  “To Cyllythu, of course. Go to the temple of Tewstan and tell them what happened here. Stokhos will vouch for the truth of it, and they’ll test you and you’ll be fine, I promise. But you’re getting out of here tonight.”

  “I don’t know the way. And the soldiers of the guard will challenge me.”

  “They won’t see you. Don’t you understand? Just press yourself against the stone walls of the fortress and they’ll never see you.”

  “I’ve never—”

  “I don’t have time to argue. You are getting out of here tonight.”

  “Why can’t I wait for day?”

  “Because if Demwor challenges me, I will betray you, do you understand? It’s the only way to keep him from thinking I did all this. So yes, I’ll tell him the truth about you—that you clearly didn’t know what you were doing, that it was an accident. But do you think they’ll care? A stonefather, here in Hetterferry, at the very base of the Mitherjut.”

  “What will they do?” asked Runnel.

  “What they do to stonemages: drown you, then burn your body to ash and stir it into the living water.”

  “And you’d let them do that to me, just so you don’t lose your job?”

  “Stupid boy, it’s not my job. It’s the only connection the stonefolk still have with the Mitherjut. Even if they don’t kill me, they’ll never let another stonemage into this whole valley. My only hope of keeping trust is to denounce you myself. Now get out of here, out of the house, out of the garden, onto the street, while I take apart the mess you’ve made down here.”

  The “mess” was living stone, and it made Runnel sick at heart to think of it.

  “I can’t go,” he said. “I can’t let you do it.”

  “What?” demanded Lord Brickel.

  “I can’t let you kill the stone.”

  “And yet you will,” said Lord Brickel.

  Brickel laid his hand on a stone and Runnel could feel what he was doing—feel the cracks growing where they had originally been, the stones separating. Dying.

  And without even trying to, Runnel flowed the stone back together again.

  “Tewstan!” whispered Brickel. “I said get out.”

  “And leave the stones to die?”

  “Stop being such a child,” said Lord Brickel. “These stones would gladly die, for the sake of the stonemages someday returning to Mitherjut. I’m not killing them, I’m helping them make their sacrifice. Now go, upstairs, out. We’ve talked for far too long.”

  Runnel tried to make sense of it all. He could feel the death of the stones under Brickel’s hand; yet he could also understand that it might be necessary. Didn’t cobblefriends work with dead stone all the time? Weren’t streets cobbled with it? And didn’t those dead stones feel warm and good under Runnel’s feet? Dead wasn’t dead, not the way people died. A stone could be cut off, but it could then be put back and joined again to the living rock, and it would live again itself. He must let this happen.

  I’m a stonefather. I must do what’s good for all the stone, the way the packfather in the story willingly died in his clantbody to save the pack.

  He went to the stairs and climbed to the main floor. He owned nothing; there was nothing to take with him but the clothes he wore. And maybe a single obsidian knife from the kitchen.

  Runnel walked quietly across the floor to the back door that led out to the kitchen. When he opened the door, Demwor was standing there.

  “What are you doing up?” asked Demwor.

  “Had to pee,” said Runnel.

  “Where were you?”

  “Asleep,” said Runnel.

  “I went to the attic. You weren’t there. I came out looking to see if you were peeing. I wanted to talk to you about last night. About our guests.”

  “I am peeing.”

  “Where were you when I looked in the attic?”

  Where could he claim to have been that would put him inside the house now, still needing to urinate?

  Runnel raised his voice a little louder as he stepped out onto the stone steps leading down into the garden. “Lord Brickel wanted to talk to me about tomorrow’s work,” he said.

  He pressed his feet into the stone and felt the connection of living rock all the way to the hearthroot where Lord Brickel was working. He found a section that was still alive and pushed it, squeezed it out so it bulged. Surely Lord Brickel would see it and realize it was a warning.

  “He wanted to take me instead of Ebb,” said Runnel, loudly enough that if Lord Brickel would just come up from the cellar, he’d hear. “To work in the city.”

  “You asked him, didn’t you?” said Demwor.

  “Why would I, sir?” asked Runnel. “You already told me I’d bear half the burden of touchstones.”

  Demwor glowered. “Why would he want to talk to you about it? You’ll do what you’re told.”

  “He doesn’t know me that well, but I’m…well, quicker than Ebb. Or at least he wanted to make sure of it. Maybe there are things he needs that Ebb has never been able to do. I don’t know, sir. I just do what I’m told.”

  “What did they talk about last night?” demanded Demwor.

  Suddenly Lord Brickel was in the doorway behind Runnel. “What did you just ask my servant?”

  Demwor clamped his mouth shut.

  “Are you spying on me, Demwor?”

  What, thought Runnel, was that a secret? No, it was a pretense that he was just a steward. Now the pretense is broken.

  “Is this how the Mithermages treat me? Have I not performed every service and kept faith with every term of our agreement?”

  “You have these visitors,” said Demwor.

  “I’m allowed to have friends come to see me,” said Lord Brickel. “It’s in the terms.”

  While they talked, Runnel was continuing Lord Brickel’s work, separating the stones in the hearth, in the hearthroot, on the cellar floor. He did it more quickly than Lord Brickel had, and he didn’t have to be touching the very stone he was working on. An hour ago he wouldn’t even have known to try what he was doing, but having seen Lord Brickel do it he now knew what it felt like, and how to show the stone, how to flow through it and make the separation.

  And Lord Brickel was right. The stone did not groan; it accepted the separation. It knew that Runnel was doing right, protecting it by this separation. It had loved him for joining them together, but it did not hate him for separating them now.

  “You’re not allowed to bring stonemages here,” said Demwor.

  “Exactly,” said Lord Brickel. “But who do you think my friends are? All pebblesons, at least, worshippers of Tewstan.”

  “A worship that’s forbidden here.”

  “And we don’t worship here,” said Lord Brickel patiently. “But you know that just as puddlesons have a bit of power clinging to them because of their service to Yeggut, so do pebblesons because of their service to Tewstan. If you’ve detected some sort of power in them, that’s why. But no mages.”

  “I’ve seen the links between you and them,” said Demwor.

  So he was key—not really a mage, but able to find magical links.

  “Of course,” said Lord Brickel. “But never when I’m working. I do no magery for the city when such links are present. If you’re what I think you are, then you know that. You know I’ve never bound myself to stone except when the Mithermages ask me to.”

  Runnel realized that was a warning. If Demwor really was a key, he would sense Runnel’s connection to the stone beneath his feet the moment he looked for it. So he stepped back up over the wooden sill and onto the wooden floor, and held the wooden doorframe.

  In case Lord Brickel had not heard what he said earlier, Runnel chimed in. “I told you he wanted to speak to me about what we’d do tomorrow,” he said. “Now can I go pee?”

  “What will you do tomorrow?” Demwor asked Lord Brickel.

  “My duty,” said Lord Brickel. “As of this moment you are not my steward. If you stay here, then it’s as a spy, and as long as they have a spy with me, they’re in breach of the contract.”

  As Runnel headed into the bushes where he routinely peed—he saved the private house for other uses—he could still hear the argument.

  “Well, then, you know I was using the boy as a spy,” said Demwor. “So is he going as well?”

  “If you aren’t here to ask him, whom will he tell? He works hard and he’s ignorant. You’re the one who’s leaving. Now. We’ll put your things out the front gate in the morning.”

  “Where am I supposed to go at this time of the morning?” asked Demwor.

  “To your masters, to report on me,” said Lord Brickel. “Tell them that their bridges and arches can all fall down, now that I know I’ve been serving oathbreakers.”

  “You knew I was a spy.”

  “I wondered,” said Lord Brickel. “Now I know. Get out.”

  What have I done? thought Runnel. I never meant for any of this to happen.

  When he got back to the house, Lord Brickel and Demwor were both gone—presumably to the gate.

  Runnel ran down into the cellar and quickly finished the work of separating the stones. He tried not to think of it as killing them. Someday I’ll make you whole again, he thought over and over, promising Tewstan, the stone god.

  If you think of it as stone, how can you talk to it? But if it’s Tewstan, a god, then you can pray, and hope to be heard.

  Yet he felt a twinge of guilt, for he had grown up with the worship of Yeggut, the god of water, the master of all things, who brings life to the desert and tears down mountains.

  How did I become a stonemage, when all my thought was of Yeggut?

  It is not the rituals of worship that please the gods, he realized. I worshipped Yeggut, but I climbed the stone, I put my fingers into the rock. There in the mountains, it was the stone heart of the world that made me who I am, no matter who or what I prayed to.

  THE wetwizards of Mitherhome came for Brickel when the sun was halfway to noon. The day was cool and bright, so many of the people of Hetterferry came out to watch the procession. Lord Brickel wore an elaborate costume that Runnel thought looked ridiculous, but it seemed to impress everyone else. What does clothing have to do with magery? But the watermages were also in fancy headdresses and bright-colored robes, and there were boys carrying banners and pipes and drums being played as they walked down to the dock.

  There was a raft there waiting for them. It reminded Runnel of the raft he had once helped to load, his first day in Hetterferry. If the raft had carried him to Mitherhome that day, would he ever have discovered his ability? Then again, if he had never discovered his power, would he be more or less happy?

  Of course, as far as anyone knew he was only the stonemage’s boy, carrying on his back a heavy load of many different kinds of rock—small samples of each, but in the aggregate, it felt like he was carrying a wall. Yet he could carry it, and he wondered if it was because the stone was somehow lighter for him than for other people. Or perhaps there was enough stone in him that he was sturdier and could bear more of a burden. That would explain why he could carry a full waterjar, even though he was not a full-grown man. Maybe everything about him that mattered came back to the stone in his heart.

  They were poled across the water to Mitherhome, and then began the long trek up the endless stairways to the upper level of the city. Their course wound around the steep slopes of Mitherjut, and as Runnel’s bare feet trod the stone steps he could feel a throbbing inside the mountain, not like a heartbeat, but rather like the slow fluttering of a huge bird that was trapped and could not get free. He thought of trying to find the source of it, but Lord Brickel had warned him to do nothing, seek nothing, think nothing about stone. “It’s too dangerous,” said Brickel. “Look what you did to the stones of this house—in your sleep, without even meaning to.”

  So Runnel did not explore the stone. Instead, he trod the steps upward, upward, with the well-maintained city wall on one hand and the buildings clinging to the steep slope on the other.

  They came to a gate in the wall and went through it. In only a few steps they were at the brink of a cliff—not the steep drop-off of the Stonemages’ Ditch that he had seen on his first day, but a natural channel cut by water. A stone bridge with a single arch led across the water. It was this bridge that Lord Brickel had been brought to strengthen. And without even trying to, Runnel could see why. All the vibration of carts and pedestrians crossing the bridge had vibrated the stones, making them rub against each other, shrinking them. The arch was sagging, putting outward pressure on the stones near the edges. They were going to break free, and the whole bridge would come down as the loss of a few stones weakened the rest. Maybe in a year. Maybe in a month. But the bridge was not strong.

  Lord Brickel walked out onto the bridge and knelt, then lay on it, face-down, as if he were staring into the stone. Runnel stood by him, the bag at the ready. Brickel raised a hand from the surface, and Runnel brought the mouth of the bag to his hand. Brickel rummaged through it and came out with a cobble of granite and another of quartz. These he now held in each hand and pressed them into the stone.

  He’s not doing a thing, thought Runnel. This bridge is failing, and he’s doing nothing but making a show. It’s fakery.

  When it falls, people will die.

  But if Runnel fused a few of the stones together, right in the center of the bridge, so they were one piece, no one could see from the outside, but the stones would no longer rub against each other, and the pressures would return to being vertical instead of horizontal, as the bridge was designed. As long as he was careful not to let the fusing go right to the living rock at the ends of the bridge, the stone would not come to life.

  It was so simple, so subtle, to link stone to stone.

  But it got away from him. Runnel hadn’t the skill or self-control to stop himself in time. The fusing went beyond his intention. The bridge linked to the living stone at both ends of the bridge.

  Lord Brickel raised himself up on his elbows, and cried out, “No!”

  Underneath the bridge, the water suddenly roiled and splashed, as if it were angry.

  “What have you done!” cried one of the watermages.

  “He’s tunneled the stream!” shouted another.

  At once they reached down and dragged Brickel to his feet. One of them made as if to drag him to the edge of the bridge and cast him off, but the others held firm and did not let him do it.

  “You’re no cobblefriend!” said the leader of the watermages. “You roofed the stream with living rock! You made a tunnel of it! Sacrilege! All along you’ve lied to us. You’re a stonefather!”

  Lord Brickel looked long into Runnel’s eyes. But he did not say, It wasn’t me, it was this boy. He said nothing at all as they dragged him from the bridge, back through the gate, and on up the stairs into the city.

  Runnel followed, carrying the bag of stones, cursing himself for a fool. It did not help Lord Brickel that Runnel had made the fatal error by accident. Nor was it an excuse that he did not know that water hates to be roofed and tunneled, that it constantly struggles to break free. And how, above all, could he have known that the watermages would sense the moment the bridge became living rock?

  It would do no good to declare himself to be the stonefather, Runnel knew. For then Lord Brickel would be charged with knowingly allowing another stonemage to practice in the city, and the penalty would be the same. They would both be punished then.

  I have to free him, thought Runnel. I did this to him by disobeying him. It’s my responsibility now to get him out of it.

  Runnel followed until they came into the main city, which clung to the southwest shore of the Mitherlough. Most of the city was outside of the walls, which ran much higher up the slope of Mitherjut. They took Lord Brickel to a single tower that stood at the far point of a stubby peninsula that projected into the lake. When Runnel tried to follow them inside, one of the watermages stopped him.

  “I belong with my master,” said Runnel.