Stone and Spirit
Anaph sighed and looked upward. He couldn’t see through solid rock, but his Druid senses felt the presence of a metal, one he couldn’t identify. That meant it wasn’t copper, iron, nickel, silver, or gold, which he knew. The only other metals he even remembered names for were aluminum and platinum. Ryan should be told, he knew; maybe it could be used to make a better grade of steel; but the vein was bounded on the south by a small fault – it would slip if too much support was taken out.
“Can you feel it?” he asked the prince.
His companion considered. “I feel something. It’s sort of like my sword, but not the same. What is it?”
“What else is it like?”
The prince closed his eyes and let go of immediate sensations. Sound, temperature, weight took on a remoteness as he let his developing Druid senses feel everything around, comparing.... “Like copper, or iron, or gold, but not the same as any.”
Anaph nodded. “Good. You’re feeling a metal. I can’t tell what it is, which means it isn’t copper, iron, nickel, silver, or gold. Wizard Ryan might know.”
The prince pondered this briefly. “He could make new things with it, or make old things better?”
“Probably old things better. Maybe he can make a steel that won’t rust.”
“Can that be done?!”
Anaph smiled; to the Celts, if it had iron in it, it rusted. “It can be done. It isn’t simple. But in our homeland we had it.”
“A sword that wouldn’t rust”, the lad marveled. “What an excellent thing!”
“You’ll have the first, if it can be done”, Anaph told him, “and if I can persuade Wizard Ryan.” He concentrated then, memorizing the place so he could show Ryan. “Now, let’s go on – we have to visit the Stone.”
They didn’t even stop at the castle. Anaph left word with one of Rigel’s Riders, telling Ryan he’d found a vein of some sort of metal in the tunnel from the Valley of Horses eastward, and he’d show it to him one he got back. There was a message for him, in turn: in three nights Rigel and his Council would meet, and Anaph should be there.
“I have another duty”, the Druid told the Castle Guard corporal who delivered the message. “I won’t be back till the day after.”
On the way through the cavern, though, they ran into Rigel. The sight and sense of him brought focus to something Anaph had been aware of but hadn’t quite figured out. “There’s something I need to talk about when I get back from the Stone”, he told his lord. “I should be back in four days.” The Druid cocked his head to the left. “The weather will hold, clear and cold, for five, I think.” With that, he left, leading his troop of prince and escort into the falls tunnel.
Druid and prince traveled swiftly. Though hardly up to Scout standards, they could travel twice as far in a day as a typical person – and in a society where everyone labored, that was a great deal. They skirted Servant Village wide to the north; seeing the Druid jogging at a swift pace would have raised eyebrows at the least.
Late next morning they reached the Gathering Place. The prince picked up the pace as they neared it; Anaph matched him stride for stride. It was the young man who hacked trees with his sword who stopped them at the outer ring. “This place is alive!” he said with awe. The Druid was pleasantly surprised; not many could feel that.
“Yes. Now, let’s cross the line to where it’s warmer.” Anaph did that, the prince following.
“How did they do it?” the young man asked.
“I don’t know”, Anaph admitted. “It’s in the lore, but I haven’t learned enough to even ask the right questions yet.”
“If I go to the Stone, will I find out?”
“Perhaps – but perhaps not. Before that, though, the waters.” Anaph recalled his first encounter with the Pool. “But before that, let’s review what you learned.”
“Review” didn’t do justice to what followed. Anaph covered everything his prince knew, from different kinds of plants and animals to reading the weather, from traveling silently in the woods to starting a fire in a snowstorm, from swordplay to arithmetic. Yet it wasn’t a list of data all independent – the Druid remembered Dmitri saying patiently to Tanner, “The Bible isn’t a fact sheet”, and chuckled at the parallel – rather Anaph wove in and through it all how it was part of the prince’s life, what it meant in practical terms to him, how it defined who he was, in whatever small way.
It took two days, and at the end both dropped and slept like rocks. As he shed his cloak that night, Anaph decided that running – even when his companion made him look like a sheep racing a horse – was fun. He’d never felt that way before! Maybe it came from being a Druid, maybe it came from this new world – maybe it came from the Gathering Place? – but whichever, he was going to see that Druids ran, and climbed, and swam, and stayed very fit.
They rose in the morning before the sun. “Time to go sky-clad.” Anaph thought he’d picked that term up from Ocean, but wasn’t sure. If it had been important Druid lore, he would have remembered, of course, but it hardly qualified. Of course the prince didn’t need to be told; that was how a Druid greeted the sun, and whatever else he was, he was a Druid. They stripped in the hut, not for any thought of privacy, but for a place to leave their clothes; a light mist was falling, – snow, outside the membrane – and wet clothes would be cold despite the Stone’s climate control.
“Just feet”, the Druid instructed when they reached the Pond. His prince nodded and stepped in without hesitation. Where most people reacted with some distress, this young man smiled slightly. There was strength of character in that smile; but more, there was self-knowledge. Most people spend a great deal of mental effort to hide from themselves, to a certain extent engaging in a sort of selective sanity, editing their world to fit their wishes of who they were, to defend themselves against painful or uncomfortable realities. But this future king knew himself and wasn’t ashamed of it, accepted it, an attribute part and parcel of his refusal to deny either clan of his parentage. For him, the waters were almost welcoming.
Anaph watched with Druid senses. Sparks stirred, the Druid, the Elder, the touch of Scout, and the other; the waters received them almost in welcome, fanned them lightly. The life of the waters mixed with the life of the chosen king, making each a little greater than before.
They spent hours talking about the experience. Slowly the prince waded deeper – ankles, calves, knees. “I was right to not deny either clan”, he asserted when he waded back out for a late afternoon bite to eat, wet halfway up his thighs. “It’s part of who I am.” He paused and looked into the distance, back toward where Anaph had found him. “I have Lhuyd blood, too. And MacRae.” He looked at Anaph as though daring him to deny it.
“Great-grandparents”, Anaph stated, nodding his head in agreement. “They were in slavery together, and escaped together. Born into slavery, they were deemed atuatha, clanless. The Volkhae adopted them.” He’d done more than a little discreet questioning about the lad, once he’d found him. That the prince could tell this about himself.... “Did you know this before?”
“I knew one grandfather was born of escaped slaves. I knew not what clans. How can you know this?”
Anaph smiled. “I knew you have two great-grandparents who were escaped slaves, adopted into the Volkhae. The rest of your lineage is clear there. Can you sense any other?” And how, he wondered silently, can the lad tell what clan he’s descended from?!
The prince concentrated, then walked back into the waters, going in waist deep. It was half an hour before he returned. “Siol Tormod”, he declared. “And Bethune”.
“Five of seven Great Clans, and one lesser”, Anaph agreed. He’d learned that from an old man obsessed with lineages, compulsively learning new ones wherever he encountered them. He hadn’t known of Anaph’s nameless prince, but given his clan descent and rank, they’d worked it out, and confirmed it by questioning clan bards, who were keepers of lineages. The man had wanted no gift for his aid; having this new lineage was enough for him. “Now what will you do with these?”
“Claim them”, his prince answered impudently, clearly pleased at the chance to tweak once more the noses of the respectable. “All my playmates had but one clan. They are poor, but I am rich!” He did a little dance there by the edge of the Pool.
Anaph was saddened by the use of that comparison. The Celts knew no difference in economic status; all were provided for by the clan. What status they had came from position or rank, and those were earned by talent and skill. Anaph was determined it would be that way in Rigel’s realm, too, the lord of each castle making sure everyone under his sword was provided for. He’d never liked welfare; he’d known too many people it made lazy. He hated food stamps and government disability; they were too impersonal, and the people running them didn’t care about the people getting help, only about their rules. His father had once made a speech about how all the government assistance programs were “bleeding the compassion from the American people”, and on that point he and the father were in agreement. He’d gotten a food basket one Thanksgiving, he and two friends living in a van, and the two ladies and college guy who’d brought it sat and talked with them; they had tea together and some pumpkin pie. He’d never seen any of the three again, but he knew that caring meant people meeting people and doing what they could, not fat lard-asses in expensive government chairs earning salaries big enough to fill a hundred food baskets every Thanksgiving and not even notice the expense.
That night Anaph went to the Stone, hoping to shake loose some memory or two that might help him craft a kingship ceremony. He was never sure of what was from the Stone and what was hauled out of his own mind – like the king standing on a large shield and being lifted by soldiers so everyone could see him, or having a crown put on his head by the great lords. He liked that last one; maybe he could get a torc made with something contributed from each clan? No, it would be huge; best to use a bit of gold from each – especially since he had a bit of gold from each in a pouch. And the shield idea wasn’t bad, either....
Of Plans and People
Ryan leaned back in his chair. He remembered not to tip it; these wooden chairs relied on glue, and the glue they had would crack if twisted or stressed often. “Crack” meant “fail”, and fail meant ass on floor, painfully, with pokes and worse from the collapsing structure. Having proven this by unintended empirical testing, Ryan was alert to the requirements for avoiding a repeat. He’d taken a precaution against his absent-mindedness, though: the Woodcraft Hall was supposed to deliver something much more robust, depending not on glue but on multi-level pegs: pegs holding the legs, smaller pegs holding the pegs, and virtual toothpicks holding the small pegs. His mug of ice beer traveled with him, drink for thought.
The lord of Cavern Hold smiled at the thought of ice beer. It was a strange concoction, not properly beer at all because almost no fermentation was involved. One of the Celt clans had come up with it, accidentally, and they swore it was the greatest thing there ever was. They made it by soaking grains until they were soft, then putting them out to freeze, which fairly well destroyed the grains. Thawed, it was a pulp – except that thawing was done slowly, enough that the parts that thawed first managed some fermentation. The pulp was mixed thoroughly, and put out again to freeze. The recipe varied from family to family; some boiled the pulp after the first freeze, or second – but whatever the remaining steps, the result was a strong-flavored beverage that took some getting used to. Ryan had done so for a simple reason: one version, with a “secret ingredient”, kept him alert, but with the superb virtue of not keeping him from sleep.
He sighed. Faces up and down the table looked at him expectantly. One hefty sip later, he propped elbows on the table. “I say ‘no’”, he said straight to Rigel. “Anaph’s got the clans under his staff. He’s coming here to anoint his king, or whatever Druids do. So you don’t need to visit all the clans.
“And Antonio is doing just fine up in his new place. He’s got two estates in two different towns, and connections with that bishop. He’s got local advisors who know the scene better than our peasant Pablo did – remember from his report I thought there might be sixty thousand Quistadors?” he asked with a grin. “Closer to four or five times that, I think. But the point is you don’t need to go poking around up there, either – let them keep doing what they’re doing. And don’t worry about money; just the emeralds we’ve found and cut are worth more than everything he owns in those two towns.
“Then exploring more – that’s where my real ‘no’ is: we’ve been here a year, and we know Celts, Quistadors, Escobars, and British! We don’t need any more! What we need is time to... integrate what we’ve got, build on what we’ve started. Spend a year seeing what we can trade between the Escobars and Quistadors, between them and the Celts, getting the Houses the Heir is sending settled and established, and developing our technological base. We can make an early-style rifle, what we’re selling to the Celts, in a day now, but it still takes five days to make one of the new ones. The only way to fix that is to get the school bigger and teaching more, and let the Crafthalls get more people up to Master level. And that takes time – so relax a bit and give us some.”
“Rye’s got a good point, Rigel. It’s not like you don’t have other things to do”, Rita commented. “You promised more horses to the Escobars; getting those to them personally will help Osvaldo when his Conclave comes. He needs people who understand the rifles better; take some along. Check out what de Cadiz has made of the Line.” She glanced at Ryan, who’d been unhappy at the news that the dissident lord was now an ally – because he’d had plans for the man and his House. Ryan grinned back at Rita and shrugged.
“Then I’ll go see if the official unwelcome stands after Earl Kevin has reported to his queen”, Rigel declared. “That’s no one new; it’s working on a contact we already have.”
Ryan nodded. “I’ll buy that. There’re things we should know.” He lifted his left hand and began popping up fingers. “Why don’t they want outsiders around? What do they know about the Others? How big is their kingdom? What can we trade? Heck – will they trade?
“They have ponies, we have horses. I can think of places ponies would be better than the monsters we have – no insult to Titanium, Austin. In fact, breeding Titanium with some pony mares could give us an interesting batch of foals – bigger, stronger. Mountain ponies, maybe.”
“They’ll want rifles”, Rita pointed out. “Tanner, ours shot farther than theirs – by how much?”
“Fifty percent”, their commander of the military academy replied. “Ours are more accurate, too. But bargain tight for those!”
Ryan chuckled. “No worries. Our Mark II is better than what they have – we bargain it, and keep the Mark III ourselves. Besides, I bet their artillery isn’t as good, either, and there’s a whole new round of bargaining.”
“Horses, rifles, artillery”, Rigel summarized. “Know what I want to bargain for, though? People. The Quistadors have people, the Celts have people, the Escobars have people, the British have people – by the tens of thousands, each. Ours are in the hundreds – we need more.”
Lumina looked at him curiously, her head tilted left. “That doesn’t sound like the Rigel I know, seeing people as numbers.” She sat in a “Konan-chair”....
News that the head Healer needed healing had reached Healer Hall by semaphore. The twins Shannon and Shannon met Lumina at Rigel’s castle, where there indeed were rooms. The two worked as one, one mind in two bodies. By morning and time to move on, Lumina was ready to travel a lot more easily.
Lumina’s tale of adventure was totally eclipsed at Healer Hall when Konan came rolling out in a tricycle-like contraption, a sort of wheelchair with just one front wheel. He’d devised it himself so every one called it a “Konan Chair”. They’d made two more, one for another patient and the third to have on hand. Lumina got the third one....
Rigel sighed. “I know. But since figuring we’ve got neighbors totaling a million people, a thousand times ours... well, the numbers just seem heavy. But it isn’t just the numbers, it’s... it’s what the numbers mean: having people means getting things done. I keep thinking about where the Snatcher wants us to go: It’s west, and that means through the Others. The Quistadors know of them, the Escobars know of them, the British know of them, so they’re stretched from as far north to as far south as we know! To get through, will I have to take an army? Unless we get tanks and jeeps, the bigger the army, the slower it goes, and moving slow takes more supplies! How do we get more supplies? Technology – each person making more. Or should I go fast and light? But going fast and light takes technology! And developing technology means having people. It’s...” He groped for words, frustration on his face. “It’s like in the smithy when I visit Master Kinneagh, or go see Kinner – every one has more projects than people to work on them. We need more people!”
“The plow”, Rita declared.
“They have the plow”, Ocean pointed out with a frown.
Ryan chuckled. “As an example, she means – right, Reet?”
“Bingo”, she responded automatically. “People planted using sticks. Then came the plow, and two out of three people on the farm weren’t needed any more. The point is, you start at the bottom if you want to free up labor. Down with the Escobars, four out of five people are still involved with producing food – and they
have plows”, she pointed out, warming to the subject. “But their plows are wooden, with copper beaten over the edge or with iron edges. Rigel, John Deere’s steel plow, the one that revolutionized agriculture, is in
How Things Work. It wouldn’t be much good for the little fields the Celts use – well, it would for the Valley, but except for a few, the Servant People aren’t much talking to us – but the Escobars go for long fields, where it would be perfect! Once they’ve seen how useful it is, we can trade a plow for a team of horses! And at the same time, they’ll find they have more farmers than they need – and you can get people.”
“From when the British were snatched, they might not have that plow”, Ryan mused. “When was that invented – 1840ish? and in America, too, so odds are they weren’t hauling any to the colonies, I mean the Dominions.” He shook his head again at the different history, where the different royal house in London had meant a bloodless Revolution that didn’t just affect America but turned the British Empire into something he was willing to bet would never need a Ghandi – would have never needed a Ghandi, he corrected himself. “So it would market to the British, too.” He turned to Rita. “We need to go through that book and list everything important invented around or after the eighteen-forties. Maybe they have some, maybe they don’t – but let’s have a list of trade items for Rye and you!”
Rita happily accepted Ryan’s concession that she’d be going along. Mistress Yulla, Mistress Astrid, Captain Laighere, and the others had managed acceptably under Eiryka Laighere’s direction, and under her watchful, though distant, eye since they’d returned, they’d shown that she really wasn’t needed. Eiryka still needed sharpening, but there were three more months of snow for that! And it wasn’t as though she lacked in teachers, even with Rita gone. “And examples”, she agreed, nodding to him. “Rigel, don’t even say trade isn’t your goal – people are. Inventions save work. Just trading the Escobars our loom tech will free up a thousand people. Our kitchen gadgets are enough better they could free up another thousand. Ditto the forges, ditto the metal mills. When we trade, we don’t just get coin, we jar people loose from their places, and since we have places that need people, we can get them – and use the coin we earned to bring them.”
“Give me the people, I’ll build a railroad, we’ll get them here fast, too”, Devon declared. “The Celts are learning how to make roads, and they work in winter, too, the idiots.” The Engineer shivered at the thought. “The Clans have got this notion of showing each other just how much good road they can build before spring – my money says they’ll each have over a kilometer done, though”, he continued with a chuckle, “whether they’re in the most useful places is a different question.”
Rigel hesitated – but he was the lord, after all. “There’s someplace else to go, Ryan – not just the British. Osvaldo told me about an ancient city of steel, still shiny. They have some kind of rule or tradition against going there, but it doesn’t apply to us. If we can find it, and work that steel....” His gaze shifted to Devon. “You’ll have to send an engineer. I know you don’t want to give up a Cutter, but we might need one to get samples of the stuff. With it, we’d have plenty of metal for your railroad.” And for rifles, and cannon! a voice in his mind added emphatically.
In good time, he told it.
“Too many jobs, not enough tools”, Devon grumbled. The phrase had become a sort of unofficial Engineer motto. “Fine – you’re right; it’s too valuable a chance to pass on. But you don’t go: you send the best commander with a team of my engineers, and they find it and come back. You’ll spend all summer wandering around meeting new people, and forget the steel until after harvest. I’ve got too many projects that need done by next harvest to have a Cutter off somewhere.” He looked around the table.
“You want rail line, I need to make rail bed. That means rock, a lot of rock. It doesn’t have to be shaped, but the easiest way to get a lot of rock is take a cutter to cliff faces that aren’t stable anyway. Second easiest is scrap from tunnels. Until someone manages dynamite, my back-up for a Cutter is plain old powder.”
“Two months, and you can have the newer version”, Ryan informed him. For his artillery tests, they’d been making it in batches as needed, not in an assembly line process. He turned to Rigel with a grin. “To reach a good supply, though, we need more people.”
