The thick-bladed oars in the hands of the rowers were quiet as ghosts, slipping through water so thin it seemed one step above thickened mist. The courier watched them without focus, allowing the rainfall to turn the world soft around the edges as the drops blurred into the lake’s surface without a trace.
Even the docking was filled with that same unnerving quiet. Not a bump, not a thud. The prison-ship slid against the pier with the smoothness of an eel.
“Enjoying the silence of the Stone?”
The courier was not new to her position, and no stranger to either the small and idle cruelties of the powerful or her duty to submit to them. Nonetheless, she took a small and spiteful pleasure in refusing to flinch at the sound of the man’s voice. It was a strange thing, a habitual whisper forced into the volume of what the uninformed might think to be pleasant conversation.
“It’s the first thing that anyone notices,” he continued, smiling happily. A thousand laugh lines crinkled the corners of his eyes as he spoke. “Before they even see the walls. Amazing, that.”
The courier looked at the walls. She’d seen taller, but certainly none less friendly. The only windows were inch-thick slits, the door was a single slab of solid cragstone that must have cost the ransoms of two or three royals – its size hidden by the crowded closeness of the gate whose mouth it snugged into. The surface of the walls themselves was seamless: solid rock without a trace of manufacture.
“Mark my words, one day the whole world – the whole damn world, all of it – will fall down. And on that day, these walls won’t so much as quiver. The Stone stands.”
“Magnificent,” said the courier. “You are the warden of the Stone, then?”
“You haven’t introduced yourself.”
She tapped the insignia on her chest. “Courier Jessle. From Gelmorre. I have a prisoner for you.”
“Ah, a prisoner for Her Worshipped! Political, eh? Caught another one of ‘Gan’s very own little two-legged glow-eels snooping around the grand old girl’s secrets? Tut tut! Sloppy! The third time this decade.”
The courier did not sigh, although she considered several choice gestures. “This is not a political matter, and our inmate is not a political priso-“
“Right, right – I must mind my words, of course: I meant an enemy agent. Forgive my breach of courtesy, madame.”
“I am a courier. And what I bring in our hold does not hail from Matagan.”
Now she had the man’s attention. “If it isn’t one of them, then who?”
“What. Our cargo is an inhabitant from afar.”
“Well, how very informative of you, ‘courier.’ Afar where?”
“Afar.”
She saw the flicker of understanding billow into flame in his teeth. “Ah, I see. So the long arm of Gelmorre’s reach is no lie, hmm? What did you find over the waves, eh? And what of it has come to my Stone’s doorstep?”
“The prisoner,” said the courier, “is invaluable. Not one of a kind, but difficult to obtain and physically dangerous. Extremely so. Her Worship wishes to have it studied… but in a safe location. The safest that can be managed.”
“And you came here.”
“Yes. To be assured that it was the right decision.”
The warden’s smile was now a small, tight thing, out of place on such a broad face. “Courier, your worry is misplaced. This is the Stone, the place where things, people, and people that are things go and never, ever are seen again. We have locked away emperors and peasant revolutionaries, monsters and treasures. We held the Eleventh Lord of the Nagezz here, and the council that sentenced him too, once his brother claimed the throne. There is a tiny vault under half a kilometer of guard that holds the only known sample of the thing that destroyed the country of Demmer-Don-Dimmer. There are six… things from the Terramac in the tallest of our towers that we allow to commune with supervised engineers once per year, under guard, at ludicrous expense. There are families in our deep-cells, courier – entirely thousand-year dynasties descended from criminals who were to be imprisoned until the utter extinction of their bloodline by time’s hand alone. The skull of the creature that ate Cabbera is buried in the foundations. The crown of the King Who Left is in one of our vaults, I can’t be fucked to remember which. Do you see what I am saying, courier?”
“I am saying,” continued the warden, blithely ignoring the possibility of an answer, “that we are not worried. Things come here. None leave. None will ever leave. That is what it is, that is what has been, and that is what. Will. Be. Forever. Now, what wreckage have you brought to us?”
“In the hold,” said the courier. “Prepare a crane.”
The docking crane had transported cages containing hundreds at a time. It had lifted the entire tomb of a long-dead Schoolmaster of Demmerdant, including the man’s ten-thousand-piece laboratory. It could shift entire vessels if need be.
It groaned under the weight of the cage that was winched up from the guts of the prison-ship. Iron bars surrounding iron chains surrounding something obscured and huge all out of proportion to its actual size. Dark grey links clanked against deep gray skin as the pale, cold under-jailers laid hands to its cell and began to haul it away, towards the gates, towards forever.
“Beautiful,” murmured the warden. “Beautiful. What is it?”
“Dangerous. We have no names for them, not yet. This was the second ever seen.”
“Ahh, the things envy will drive men and women to. Tell me, do the brave explorers and soldiers of Gelmorre regret their careers? The ones that are left, that is. Do they ask why their queen could not simply settle for the Sill, settle for the known terrors of the world? Do they cry out for answers in the night, courier?”
“They do their duty,” said the courier. “As you will do yours.”
“Pay me.”
A tiny bag was removed from the belt at the courier’s waist, bulging with uncertain weight. It shook violently as it passed into the warden’s hand.
“What’s this then?”
“Tremblemoss. It will grow slowly in lightless damp. Touch it to iron, it explodes. Violently.”
“How violently?”
“Very. Be cautious – that tremor was from the bars. A touch may explode, but being close enough for long enough will set it alight.”
“Iron, iron, iron,” mused the warden. He ran his fingers over the bag, felt it squirm.
“It is not the only creature from afar that cannot abide the metal’s touch. The bars keep the creature docile. Do not remove them.”
His hand snapped shut. “I am the warden of the Stone,” he said. “This is my prisoner, and you are standing on my dock. Our business is concluded.”
The courier bowed, turned away, and walked to the prison-ship, counting under her breath. At ten, she heard the hinges of the great cragstone door begin to swing.
“Be careful,” she said. And the stifled curse that followed her down the stairs brought a smile to her face as she knelt to rinse her hands in the water.
The eyelid unrolled itself. What lay underneath its surface was a soft, mild white. The iris was near pinpoint size, almost invisible.
“Sixty, that’ll do just fine,” said the warden. He chuckled; the warmest, most patronizing of laughs, as quiet and low as any words he spoke. “Do you know they had almost two hundred bars on your cage? Sixty will keep you just as feeble, but awake enough to enjoy your stay properly, and at less than a third of the effort. Typical of Gelms. Can’t trust anyone else to do their jobs properly, but can’t find their own asses with an army and sixty-seven secret plots. How do you feel, prisoner? Not too lively, I suppose.”
The pupil flickered.
“Quiet? Don’t mind that, I don’t mind that at all. That’s the way most of you are. The boasters, the jokers, they’re usually not who gets sent here. Those are the stupid ones. The ones that come here are smart, and they’re bright enough not to give away any sign of weakness.” Another chuckle, rich and thick enough to spread on toast. “But don’t worry. We don’t think you’re weak. We just don’t think it matters. You’re in the Stone now, thing. Come with me.”
The cobbles splintered as the cage rolled, fragments bouncing off the thick blackened boots of the under-jailers as they hauled at its iron chains, dragging their cargo down corridor after corridor, winding through halls and into towers.
“These are the cold-cells, prisoner. Softer and smaller inmates are kept here when they speak out of turn. They’re removed when their eyelids begin to freeze.”
Turn and crunch.
“The Drop Tower, prisoner. Turn your head – well, hah, maybe just your eye, with those chains – and you can just see daylight at the very top. Past all the cages. Escape artists come here after their third attempt, the little scamps, and they enjoy a new life sentence here, floating in the breeze. The lowest of the cages is a hundred feet from where we stand, dangling by a greased rope. Now and then one of them picks a lock, but only to jump.”
Around and again.
“The Maze. If you were just a little smaller, you’d fit in nicely, prisoner. As it is, you’d get stuck. Men and more than men are dropped in here. They claim their strength, well, they can prove it. Only so much food and water to go around. A good way to thin out cell space, particularly if you’re no longer necessary alive.”
And on.
“The Plunge. No space is wasted, prisoner, not even the space next to the refuse pits. The air down there aches, like a bruise inside your lungs. I understand that you grow used to it after the first few decades.”
And on.
“The Vaults. There’s things down that that have ruined nations, eaten minds, peeled open societies like a grape. And those are the ones we don’t keep secret.”
And on and on all the way down all those winding miles and sentences and secrets until at last the procession reached a pit gouged into the living stone of the island’s innards.
“Here we are, prisoner. Your accommodations. Thrice your height and barred with an iron grate that couldn’t be lifted by a hundred men, controlled with a lever your handless self cannot lift. Enjoy yourself. And remember this rule: keep the silence of the Stone, and you get fed. You break it, you don’t. Tip him down.”
And so the under-jailers groaned and heaved and pushed and another prisoner joined the ranks and rows of the thousands within the Stone, embedded deep within its heart. And for an instant as it faded into the shadows of its cell it was revealed, as the chains slid from its form. Sinuous and scaled, grey and cold, but the eyes were what stuck, the eyes wouldn’t leave you.
Only one person saw it, but that was enough.
The days passed, the weeks too, and the Stone’s magic settled in, the true magic of a true prison: turning reality into mundanity. The food was brought, the prisoner remained so, the Stone still stood, and all was made as it should be, as if it was folly to imagine it any other way. A day was the same as any other, and would be so forever.
Which was why it was most disconcerting when the knock came at the oaken door of the second-tallest tower of the stone, where the little oil lamps burned all night.
The warden glared up from his desk. The paperwork was appalling this week: an under-jailer had climbed to the top of the Drop Tower and hurled himself off, and the funerary arrangements and cleaning supplies needed were considerable when combined. “What?” he hissed in the small words that were the loudest voices were raised in the Stone. “It’s not time for your payments, you all know that. It’s not an emergency, I’d know that. It’s not about the weather, we all know that. So what, what, WHAT are you doing here?”
The under-jailer winced under the verbal blows, but shouldered them aside. He was a veteran of fifteen years, fifteen keys to his belt, fifteen prisoners his wards. This was not his first rebuke.
“News, warden.”
“Really. What, did the ‘Gans and the Galms finally come down to business?”
“No, warden.”
“Did the dunes finally swallow Nagezz whole, like those tiresome little sand-skitterers keep saying they will?”
“N-“
“Did the Terramac finally witness the birth of a machine that will tear us all to mulch and whispers? Well, what? What news is so exciting that it must come to me at this instant, not a moment later?”
“The news is from inside the walls, warden.”
The pen clattered to the desk, the chair was emptied, the warden was afoot.
“Listen.”
In the Stone, you learn how to do that. A silence like that can’t be shut out, you have to open up to it, get used to sifting the tiniest scraps of hints of something-out-there. The rats in the walls were a comforting ever-present shiver to an under-jailer’s ears. The distant murmur of voices in cells and wards halfway across the island. The scrape of a distant bone against a cell wall.
The sounds faded, of course. The warden had the privilege of working high, high above them all. Only the scratch of his pen made his nights noisy – all else was the faintest whisper on the breeze. He needed the focus. But he came down from above to manage, to watch, to gloat, and so he knew the noises still. He hadn’t spent forty years there for nothing. His ears knew the silence.
But they didn’t know this one.
“Can you hear it, warden?”
His nose wrinkled. “No. Not even a little. Tell me, when did this start?”
The under-jailer shrugged. “A week ago, maybe. Hard to say.”
“Our latest friend is offensive to more than just our own senses, it seems. Well, nothing we can’t take advantage of. We have spare cells here, yes? Convert them into food storage. We might as well get some use out of this…interesting little effect.”
The under-jailer nodded and made his way up, up, up into the world of the Stone, and he found that his steps slowed and his breathing evened as he did so, though he was loathe to admit it.
It was good to hear the scurrying of rats again. They’d always been there, always the same, never changing. It wasn’t right to be where they weren’t, and he wasn’t too proud to admit those deep cells held a worry for him that they hadn’t since he was a boy of sixteen, the last time he’d known what it was to not hear the pitter-patter of rodent feet.
Which was why he must be confused right now, shaken up, a bit off-centre. Because to his rattled ears, they sounded like they were moving quicker.
It was fast after that. Every time the mind wandered, every time the eyes roved heedlessly, every time the little watchman that was the consciousness strayed from its chores, it was there, and moving onwards. One man at a time. Not steady, but fast.
“Warden, there’s a man sick down in the Maze. Wants off shift.” And the warden signed that, and it was so.
“Warden, there’s something wrong in the Plunge. None of the inmates will move. Permission to relocate them?” And the warden signed that, and it was so.
“Warden, the cold-cell guards have all come down with something, they can’t work, we need to replace the shifts.” And the warden cursed to himself, and signed that, and it was so.
“Warden, the prisoners in the Drop Tower won’t speak anymore.”
“Warden, there’s something wrong in the lower levels.”
“Warden, the Vaults haven’t been inspected in a month. The patrols are missing.”
“Warden”
“Warden”
“Warden”
One day, the warden laid down his pen – the sixteenth sick bay incident in as many days – and realized that he couldn’t hear a thing outside his door.
His footsteps were absent from the cold stone stairs. His under-jailers avoided his gaze, shrank from his touch, stood unblinking at their posts. He opened his mouth to command, to scold, to yell, and felt something cold stir inside him at the thought. This was the silence of the Stone. To break its grip was wrong. It was as quiet as he’d ever heard it – even the clouds seemed to have paused in their aimless circling of the sky.
The walk felt longer, though that could have been his imagination. His heartbeat wasn’t there, his breath was gone. Nothing left to feel time by. Every moment like every other moment. Just the silence.
He knew what he would see somehow. Knew it before he’d even reached the pit. The grate set aside. The level thrown back. The cell itself empty. The eyes, looming over him. It was how it must have been, though he didn’t know how. It was the only thing that made sense.
The grate was still there.
The grate was still there! STILL THERE!
He beat his fists bloody against it, felt the pain rocket up and down his arms, felt his lips move back in a snarl he couldn’t hear. Still there!
It was a trick. It must have escaped. It had to. It had replaced the grate. Yes. That was the only thing that made sense. It had to have done that. It had to. It had to. If he turned around right now it would be right behind him. Yes it would. It would.
It wasn’t.
Well, that was good. That was how things should be. He was the warden. It was the prisoner. It was still locked away. He was still in command of the Stone. The silence of the Stone remained unbroken. More than unbroken, it was stronger than ever. He was in command.
He just had to be sure.
With great effort, he peered over the edge of the pit. Shadows stirred, and a pair of giant eyes peered back up at him, pupils swollen in the dark nearly from lid to lid.
He was in command. He ran back all the way to his tower, and shut himself in there ‘till consciousness faded.
It was dark again when the warden woke, after a sleep so deep he could not even recall it. The sun had hidden itself behind a haze of half-fog half-clouds and slunk away before he could see its face. Maybe once, maybe a hundred times.
He picked up his pen, and he waited.
Experimentally, he scribbled with it, and strained his ears for the sound that was his and no other’s.
Later, he set it down, and step by step, descended.
The walk was even longer this time, but he gritted his teeth and kept moving. The lever. That was it. The lever. Within his grasp.
The lever came down with the smooth grace of applied elbow grease, and the grate – the iron grate that a hundred men could not move – squealed itself open, the first sound that the warden had heard in what seemed like forever, so loud that he clutched at his skull and nearly toppled on the spot.
Be free! he screamed without words. Be free! You’ve won! You’re released! We cannot hold you! You are yours, not ours! Take yourself and go! Be gone!
A heaviness fell upon him, and he raised his eyes to meet others, inches from his face.
Go, he wanted to say. Go.
A lipless grin twitched in front of him. There were no teeth in its mouth, he noted faintly. A beak only.
You’re free. Go. Leave.
The beak approached him, and with the tenderness of a mother, smacked itself against his face. He toppled onto his back, legs flailing like an upturned beetle’s, felt the cold, smooth wood of the lever in his hand again before he knew what it was, felt the crack, felt the splinter, felt the shift.
The grate screamed shut, the lock jammed, and alone in the silence, alone in his pit, the warden listened to the newest of his prisoners scream.
No one else could.
Not much word comes from the Stone these days, though there have been those that tried to bring it. They came back grey in the face and gone in the eyes, and said that the silence has spread. Even birds don’t dare call on the shores of the lake now, and the wind has faded from a gentle breath to dead weight in the air. The sky never changes past grey, and the door opens for no one, prisoner or no.
But the Stone still stands, they say. The Stone still stands.
Although what it stands for now, nobody knows.