“Where he’s going, you don’t wish to go,” said the watermage.

  “What will you do to him?”

  “What he agreed to by the contract he signed when he first came here,” said the watermage. “He knew the penalty.”

  Runnel wanted to shout that Lord Brickel was not a stonefather, that he had only discovered Runnel’s abilities last night, that there was no way he could have known or prevented Runnel’s foolishness. I’ll undo it, Runnel wanted to say, I’ll make it back the way it was. But that would accomplish nothing—except to get Runnel inside the tower, subject to the same penalty that Lord Brickel was now facing.

  He thought of going back to the stonemage’s house and asking Lark’s advice. But what would that accomplish except to take him farther from Lord Brickel? Lark wouldn’t know what a stonefather could do, or ought to do.

  He thought back to her story of the stonemages in the great war. What had she said? “They bared again the rocks of the holy place, and lay naked upon the stone, and the rockbrothers sank into it as the cobblefriends sang.” He had no cobblefriends to sing for him, nor did he have any notion what their songs might have been. But he was a stonefather—if the rockbrothers could sink into the rock, so could he. Sink into the rock of the tower wall, and come out the other side—the inside, where Lord Brickel is held. I can bring him out again the same way, or tear open a door if I want to.

  He walked around the tower to a spot that was not observed and pressed his hands against the stone. But this was not living rock. He could climb it, and gaps would open for his fingers and toes, but he could not merge with it, as he could with living rock.

  Just as well that he had failed, for as he leaned against the wall, someone walked around the tower into view. Demwor.

  “I wondered where you’d got to,” said the former steward. “See what your fool of a master has done now?”

  “I don’t know what he did,” said Runnel.

  “He revealed himself,” said Demwor. “And he’ll die for it. Now come with me—I’m to dispose of all the stonemage’s property.”

  “I’m not his property,” said Runnel. “I’m a free man.”

  “Man?” said Demwor. “You’re a boy, and barely that. But a free one? That’s your choice. A free boy will have nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep. You can eat the stones in that bag, for all I care. Come with me now, and you still have a place; stay here, and I’ll have you ejected from the city under the vagabond laws, for you have no place here, neither a master nor kin.” Demwor reached to take Runnel by the shoulder.

  Runnel dodged away, then reached into the bag and pulled out a cobble of sandstone. “Don’t make me throw this at your head,” said Runnel. “I don’t miss.”

  “Are you threatening a citizen?”

  “I’m protecting myself from a man who wants to lay hands on me,” said Runnel.

  Demwor backed off one step. “Is that how you’ll have it, then? Fine. When I return, it’ll be with soldiers, and you’ll be ejected from the city by them. I don’t have to lay a hand on you.”

  As soon as Demwor walked away, Runnel dropped the bag and began to run. Back the way he had come, till he was through the walls and up to the highest point of the road that led around Mitherjut. But instead of continuing down to where the bridge was, Runnel scrambled up the steep slope, away from the road, up toward the peak.

  It might not have been the smartest move. For he soon discovered that near the peak, a spring gave birth to a stream, and it must have been a place very holy to Yeggut, because the stream was lined with the huts of sacred hermits, who would come out several times a day and immerse themselves in the stream, letting it flow over them until they were so cold they could barely move. And around the spring there were the houses of priests, and several temples, and a constant stream of visitors coming and going.

  But it was the very peak that Runnel wanted, not the spring or the stream. And at the peak, there was just the ruined stone circle that had once been a dome of living rock, in Lark’s story. Here it was that the bodies of the stonemages were burned alive inside that stone oven, as their payment for saving the city. A place of treachery. Mitherhome had first been built by stonemages; the watermages dispossessed them and ruled over them, then, when the stonemages might have thought they’d earned the right to be brought back into equality in their own city, they were murdered.

  There was no one here in these ruins. It was not holy ground, as far as the watermages were concerned.

  But it was to Runnel. He could feel the throbbing again here, stronger than ever. I have found the heart of the mountain. Maybe the heart of the world.

  Following the words of Lark’s story, Runnel took off all his clothes and lay down upon the living rock, right where one of the rockbrothers must have lain, back when the battle was raging, and there was no hope for the city.

  The sun shone down on him—it was afternoon now, and despite the coolness of the air, the sun was bakingly warm. Runnel realized, now that he was lying still, that his own body was trembling. What have I done? Brickel told me to do nothing, and I thought I knew better. I thought I was saving a bridge, and instead I’ve cost him his life.

  The throbbing under him grew stronger.

  He began to sink into the stone.

  I’m not doing this, he thought. I’m not pushing myself into the stone. I’m just lying here, and the stone is welcoming me.

  He sank; the stone closed over him. He lay in darkness, but he could still feel the sun beating on his skin. No, not on his skin—on the stone above him. The stone of Mitherjut, that was his skin now. He sank into the stone, but the stone also sank into him. He could feel the whole Mitherjut as if it were part of his body.

  And he was not alone.

  “Stonefather,” came a whisper. It was repeated, again and again, until two dozen at least had called to him.

  “Who are you?” he asked. Only he did not move his lips—could not move them. Yet he heard his own voice as if he had spoken aloud.

  “You know who we are,” said one of them. “We have waited long for you.”

  “Are you the rockbrothers who created Stonemages’ Ditch? The ones who won the battle and then were burned?”

  “They burned our bodies,” said one of them. And another, and another. “Our inselves died. But our outselves were wandering in the stone, shaping it. That is all that lives, and we are fading. We have waited for a stonefather to come. Now you are here. Save the city, Stonefather!”

  Save the city? What was that about? “You saved the city,” he said. “From the Verylludden.”

  “Long ago,” said the voices. “And they were only men. It is from the flowing stone we save the city. Feel how it wants to rise.”

  It was as if they led him, for even though his body did not move, he was traveling through the rock. “Is this my outself that you lead through the stone?” he asked them, and they said, “Yes.”

  They took him down under the Mitherjut to where a thick dome of cold rock pressed down as under it a hot dome of seething, flowing magma pressed upward. “The blood-stone wants to flow. It wants to burst free. We have held it down all these years, but now it grows stronger, and we grow weaker. Soon it will break free.”

  “What can I do?” asked Runnel.

  “What we have done. Hold it down. If it breaks free, the Mitherjut will disappear, the city will be utterly destroyed, the lake will become a mere river, and all this good land will be covered in ash and new basalt.”

  “They killed you. Why don’t you let them be destroyed in turn?”

  “Mitherstane was built as a partnership of stone and man. What if the watermages rule for this moment? We cannot let the holy city be destroyed.”

  “I’m supposed to stay here for the rest of my life? Holding down a volcano?”

  “Inside the stone your life will be long and longer. Till another stonefather comes.”

  “I can’t. I have to save my master, Lord Brickel.”

  “He’s only a cobblefriend. He can’t help in this work.”

  “You don’t understand. It’s my fault that he’s in trouble. They’re going to kill him. I have to set him free from the prison he’s in. I have to do it now.”

  And with that he wrenched himself free from the gentle pressure of their company and began to wander alone through the living stone. It was hard to imagine, deep in the rock, where he was in relation to the city above. Only when he brought his outself near the surface could he feel the cobblestones of the streets and the great buildingstones of the city walls, and the pressure of the heavy buildings as they pressed down into the earth.

  He found the tower out on the peninsula and fused the stones of the tower to the bedrock on which they rested, making it a place of living stone. He did not bother to preserve the outward facade of separateness; he knew that the tower would no longer appear to be made of many stones, but of a single, smooth sheet of it, rising straight up out of the earth. Let the watermages see something of his power; let them wonder how it could be happening. He grew stone over the doors of the tower. No watermage could get in or out.

  Now that the walls of the tower were alive, his outself could rise up into them, and now, as naturally as if he had been doing it all his life, he formed a body for himself out of the living stone. He gave it eyes, so his outself could see; legs and feet, so it could walk. He pulled his new stone body free of the wall and began to walk the downward-spiraling corridor of the tower.

  Watermages and guards tried to stop him—they broke their puny weapons on his stone body, and cast their spells, but there was no water in him to obey them, and he brushed them aside and went on.

  At the base of the spiral ramp there was a pool of water, at the same level as the lake. Out in the middle of the pool, on a raft of reeds, floated Lord Brickel, tied down, unable to move.

  Runnel took his stone body—his clant, for now he knew what he had created—to the edge of the water and knelt. His knees grew into the living rock of the ramp, and drawing on the stone he was once again a part of, he extended his arms, longer, longer, until one of them completely bridged the pool, passing just over the raft on which Brickel was bound. Then with his other hand, he broke open Brickel’s bonds.

  Brickel climbed onto the bridge that Runnel had formed and walked over the pool to safety. “Runnel,” said Brickel. “What good will this do? You should have let them kill me.”

  Runnel did not know how to make his clant speak. But he pressed his head against Brickel’s head, and spoke inside his mind, as he had spoken to the outselves of the rockbrothers. “It’s time to undo an old injustice,” he said. “Be my voice. It’s time for the stonemages to return to Mitherstane.”

  “That’s our dream, but we’re not ready.”

  “You have a stonefather now,” said Runnel. “Tell them.”

  Runnel’s clant, his stone body, led the way back up the ramp, to where the wetwizards and soldiers were clustered around what used to be a door.

  “Let us out!” they cried. “We won’t harm you.”

  Lord Brickel stepped around Runnel’s clant. “Do you think I care about saving myself?” he said. “I bring a message from the stonefather whose clant you see before you. This is the city of Mitherstane, built by stonemages at the beginning of time. You are the children of treachery, who slew the stonemages who saved you from your enemy. This is the day of reckoning.”

  “What can we do?” cried the wetwizards.

  But then Runnel felt something terrible and strange. The living stone of the tower was being attacked by something that chewed through the stone and turned it into tiny bits of dead dust. A gap opened in the wall, and through it stepped one, then another, then a third creature made of water.

  The wetwizards cheered. “The waterfathers bring you your answer, stonefather!”

  The three waterclants strode to Runnel’s stoneclant, and the moment they touched him, he could feel them wearing away the stone of his skin. He tried to replenish himself from the living stone beneath his feet, but there were three of them, and he could not keep up.

  So he flowed his clant back down into the living stone of the floor.

  Once again, he had left Brickel at the mercy of the watermages.

  I was a fool, he thought. I felt all this power, and forgot that the watermages have power of their own. They defeated us before; why did I think that I alone could defeat them now?

  “Forget them,” murmured the rockbrothers. “Help us suppress the flowing stone.”

  But Runnel was not going to forget anything. He thought: What can I do to hurt them? How can I make them release Brickel?

  He thought of the porous stone in the cistern back at Lord Brickel’s house. There, it served as a filter. But here, that kind of stone could serve another purpose entirely.

  Runnel sent his outself through the stone that underlay the lake. Starting with a little outcropping of rock surrounded by water, he expanded the stone by making it as porous as the filterstone in the cistern. He expanded it more, with larger holes and channels, and it filled with water. He spread the porousness through more and more of the lake-bed rock, and took it deeper and deeper. As the stone expanded, it rose higher, toward the surface of the lake; the water level fell as the water soaked into the stone.

  Until finally there was no lake. Just a single sheet of porous rock, with all the water held inside.

  He could feel the flow of the water down the channels as it came to a stop. The water flowing into the lake from the streams and rivers that fed it soaked into the stone as fast as it arrived. There was no lake. Below Mitherjut, there was no river.

  Where will you draw your power from now, waterfathers?

  He returned to the tower, to the pool in the middle of it, and there, too, he made the stones of the tower porous, so the water was soaked into the floor and walls. The pool was dry. Runnel formed another clant out of the newly porous stone of the walls and returned up the ramp. The waterclants were no longer there. No one was there.

  Where had they taken Brickel?

  He emerged from the tower through the hole the waterclants had made. Outside, the streets were deserted. He could see that the sun was low, nearing the horizon—it had taken him longer to swallow up the lake than he had thought.

  Where were the people? There were a few, kneeling at what had been the shore—the docks now hung over bare stone. But not the watermages.

  Of course, he thought. They’ve gone to the holy place. To the spring near the peak of Mitherjut.

  “It’s working,” said the rockbrothers. Runnel did not know what they meant—nothing was working.

  Runnel’s stoneclant strode up the steep, rocky slope and walked directly over the spot where his real body, his inself, lay buried in stone. He could feel his clant tread over him. Then it went down to the spring.

  There they held Brickel in the flow of the stream. Brickel was gasping.

  The watermages shouted at Runnel’s clant. “We’ll sacrifice him! We’ll drown him if you don’t return our water!”

  In reply, Runnel turned the streambed porous and soaked up all the water there. The spring ceased to flow.

  The watermages wailed.

  Brickel rose to his feet. To Runnel’s great admiration, Brickel immediately resumed his role as spokesman for the stonefather.

  “It is time for you to abide by the ancient treaty,” he shouted. “When first the stonemages allowed the waterkin to settle here, you made the vow that stonemages and watermages would dwell in peace here together, in a place holy to us both. You were the ones who broke that vow! You were the ones whose treachery murdered the best of us a hundred years ago! No more will a single cobblefriend live like a prisoner in order to tend the ancient walls and bridges that were built by ancient stonemages. Either we live here together in a place of stone and water, or it remains as it is now, a place where only stone can live.”

  “We will!” answered the leader of the watermages. “But only if you give back the sacred Mitherlough.”

  “When you have taken the solemn unbreakable oath in the treaty tower,” said Lord Brickel.

  “How can we get there from here?” said the watermage. “The Stonemages’ Ditch blocks the way.”

  “Only because you broke down the living bridge we made there.”

  “It was a tunnel!” said the waterfather.

  “It was a bridge!” roared Brickel back at him. “We all know what a tunnel is—it’s where your water is now, in millions of tiny tunnels through stone! A bridge that leaves many yards of air between the water and the stone is no tunnel! We will have bridges wherever the stonemages wish to have them. Bridges of living stone that will never break down!”

  With that, Runnel began to walk his stoneclant down the dry streambed, and Brickel followed him. When he reached the broken-down wall that had once been the inner defenses of a peninsula, and now marked the edge of the Stonemages’ Ditch, Runnel led them along the wall to the place where once a living bridge had crossed the canyon—where soldiers had poured over the bridge to slaughter the Verylludden.

  While his clant stood on the surface, Runnel himself reached into the living stone and extruded a wide bridge that reached out over the open air and finally met the stone on the other side. Then he walked out onto it with his clant, Lord Brickel following him, and all the watermages after. They walked on through the forest until they reached the tower that Runnel had seen on the first day, when he was trying to find his way into Mitherhome. This was the ancient temple of the treaty, which had long since been converted into a temple of Yeggut.

  Runnel reached into the tower and made it, also, a thing of continuous, living stone.

  Then he turned and looked out over the sheet of stone where once the little lake had been. To his surprise, he could not see the stone at all. Instead, thick steam rose from the whole surface.

  What is happening?

  The rockbrothers answered him: “You brought the water down to the flowing stone and cooled it. We are turning it to granite, deeper and deeper, by pouring the heat of the magma into the water.”

  “I didn’t know it would do that.”