The Ultimate Stonemage: A Modest Autobiography by Duncan McKenzie Read Free Book Online

Strut of Atlas.
    Now, you will say, “Strut of Atlas? But did you not complain about the instability of this ancient spell?”
    Indeed I did! The spell is old and unreliable. Every apprentice who learns it is warned to construct the three straight parts of the binding evenly, for otherwise the strut will contract away to nothing, pulling its two sides together.
    Worse, I had drawn the rune with my finger, instead of using a chisel or stain. And I had used the Tarn rune, instead of the correct rune for the Strut of Atlas, which is Tessel. Oh, Tarn will work, but not for long! MyStruts of Atlas broke every strict rule or dire warning ever spoken about them. I knew they would endure no more than a few hours.
    For my work aboard the warships, then, I had created struts of the weakest and most violently unstable character, carefully constructed to collapse after approximately nine hours. Moreover, by their nature, they were sympathetically tuned, meaning the collapse of one would trigger the collapse of the others.
    As I watched now from the hill, I felt a tingling in my fingers and neck and could sense the ships’ wefts were straining. The sensation grew stronger and stronger still until at last, with a sound like thunder, the binding beneath the Remora gave way, and the ship was snapped to the bottom with such force and speed that, for an instant, it looked as if a deep well had been dug in the water and the ship had fallen in. And, in the next moment, great masses of timber and chank, which had been dashed into pieces by the rocks at the bottom, were thrown hundreds of feet into the air. Even as this was occurring, the binding gave way beneath the Silver Ray , and this ship too was wrenched below, then spewed up in a great white explosion. Then the Seahorse’ s binding broke. Here, however, I had not been so accurate in my measurements, and had perhaps failed to take proper account of the depth of silt on the bed of the inlet, for instead of taking the ship to the bottom, the collapsed binding merely brought up a huge quantity of silt and dead weeds, which showered over the ship.
    Fortunately, the extreme violence with which the other ships were destroyed worked to make up for my error, and as I watched, I saw the wreckage from those ships, which had been thrown into the air, come crashing down again with tremendous force. Some of the chunks struck the Seahorse , smashing through the ship’s decks and cracking the hull almost in two. A few seconds later, the Seahorse tipped on its side and sank.
    You will imagine the joy I felt at witnessing the success of my plans—and the emotion was intensified by the fact that not only had I deprived The Spear of his ships, but also of all his slaves and myrmidons. Still, I did not dally at the scene but rather ran, as fast as I was able, to my own ship, which was waiting inLyce. As soon as I reached it, I gave the order to cast off and set sail, and as we pulled away, I observed The Spear and his men emerging from Yorke’s mansion, doubtless to investigate the source of the explosions they had heard.
    We then proceeded west, away from the Duck Islands. I stayed up a few hours and kept watch from the stern to make sure my enemies were indeed stranded. In this fact, incidentally, I felt some regret, for The Spear had kept honourably to the guest-peace (as I had done myself), and not every navigator would have done the same.
    These sentimental feelings, however, were quickly dispelled when I finally went to my cabin very late that night. There I met with the most disagreeable smell you can imagine. I found a large quantity of eels had been placed in a bucket on the floor. These, my head slave informed me, had arrived earlier in the day as a gift from The Spear. An accompanying message read: “I regret I cannot give you eels caught by your own hand, but I hope you will take some small pleasure in these eels, which I caught from my longboat using a deep-net.”
    Of course, I would no more