“They’re a very formal society,” he went on. “A very ancient, complex empire by their own account, and their craftsmanship and language support that. In our encounters with them, we have had to adopt a more formal, ornate style than is common in Fin Panir.” He let himself chuckle. “I confess I rather like it—it’s like a dance, making intricate patterns.”
Cob looked at him. “I can see you would like that, but do the patterns mean anything?”
“All patterns hold power,” Luap said. Cob’s eyes widened; he realized he’d quoted a proverb learned from the king’s ambassador. “The elves say that,” he said, which was also true. “That’s what they said when I asked how the mageroad works, why the magery alone wouldn’t do, or why those without magery could not use the patterns. Patterns hold power, and those with power can both find, and use, the power in patterns.”
“The patterns of language and manners as well?” Cob asked. “Are you saying that those with the most elaborate manners have the most power?”
“I—never quite thought of that,” Luap said. He liked the idea; certainly it had been true in Fintha before the war. Would the peasants, who now had the power, develop more elaborate manners because they had it? Or did it work only the other direction? “I did think that the patterns show where the power is, in a way. The Khartazh, for instance: they have different ways to say something depending on the ranks of the people involved. That reveals the way their society is organized; if you know there are eight ways to say something, you know there are at least eight different ranks.”
“Or eight different crafts,” Cob said. “Each has its own special terms.”
Luap wondered if he were missing the point on purpose, and decided not to pursue it. He wanted Cob to see how much they had accomplished, how well they were doing, not quibble over the interpretation of Khartazh social structure and language. “Would you like to see the farm terraces this afternoon, or would you rather visit one of the outlying homesteads?” Either one of those should provide plenty of innocuous conversation, he thought.
Cob frowned thoughtfully. “I’d like to see the farmland, I suppose. See what you’ve made of those two sacks of earth. But—is it all in the sun?”
“Not all of it. We’ll take care of your sunburn.” Luap asked the cooks for a loaf to take along, and led Cob down the side-canyon, back across the bridge, and into the shade of the pines.
“We can stay in the shade, here, while I explain what we did. In another glass, the sun will be off this terrace, and you can dig in it if you wish.” He leaned against a tree-trunk and Cob leaned beside him. “Gird was right, in what he said: there was not a flat bit of earth in this canyon larger than my hand. But there was water—the stream—and Arranha knew how terraces worked. Now the little terraces you know—the ditches and dykes every farmer uses to keep wet fields drained and slow runoff on slopes—are the same idea, but we had to build bigger ones. The rocks came from the walls, by magery as I told you before. Then we had to shape and place them, some by magery and most by hand. That left us with a series of rock walls across the canyon—and notice all the terraces are fan-shaped, with curving walls.”
“Because straight ends wouldn’t stand flood?”
“Right. The canyon widens downstream—it doesn’t look much like it, but it does—so the terraces reflect that shape. But what we had when I came to you for soil was a lot of broken rock heaped into the walls that now form the lower edge of each terrace. Look upstream there—” Luap pointed; Cob leaned out to see a curving, breast-high wall. “Downstream, the terraces are lower; the stream falls less rapidly. That wall is thicker than it looks—Arranha told us how far back to slope it so that it would hold. But that left us with spoon-shaped hollows to fill with soil. We had broken rock for the base, and plenty of sand—good drainage—but nothing with which to make good soil for grain and vegetables.”
“So you brought two sacks of earth, about enough for two healthy redroot plants. . . .”
“And doubled it by magery. And doubled that. And doubled that. I know—” Luap held up his hands at the look on Cob’s face. “I know, it seems impossible. It did to me. The only reason I rode off with two sacks was that Binis was with me, and I wanted to be free of her more than I distrusted Arranha’s numbers. The short of it is that the mageborn used to have the power of doubling many things, but lost it—for misuse, of course. Some fool couldn’t resist doubling gold and jewels, and another tried to increase crops. But earth was not under the ban: we could double a clod of dirt to two clods, and that two to four clods, and so on. Arranha said it would be enough, so we tried it. And it worked.”
“But doesn’t it take—I mean, I thought the larger the magery, the more power it took—the more it cost you.”
“That’s true. Supposedly the doubling should have been the same no matter what amount we doubled. But we couldn’t think of it like that, so as the amounts grew larger, it was harder. What we had to do was double small amounts many times.” Luap grinned as he remembered just how difficult and time-consuming that had been. He explained to Cob, who after awhile began to see the humor in magicians having to haul one sack of soil a few feet, double it, and haul it another few feet and do it again. “And when I think that I almost dumped it out loose—that would have been a real mess. If we’d had to move it shovelful by shovelful from one terrace to another—”
“How long did it take?”
“Longer than I planned for. We didn’t make a full crop that year.” He pointed. “We didn’t finish upstream from that one, or go farther downstream than—the third, there, with the tall tree beside it.”
“What about wood? I notice you haven’t cut this area recently.”
“We get most of our wood up on top—the very top of the mountain is heavily forested. Down here, we use the trees for shade—as you see—and as shelter for the herbs we need. Aris has found that some of the natives are also medicinal, but we have gardens of the same ones you’d find in Fintha.”
“But as your population grows, will you have enough cropland?”
Luap shrugged. “If not we’ll spread into neighboring canyons, as I said. This year we should have a good surplus. In another few years, the fruit trees should be bearing, too.”
Cob nodded; if he was the friendliest of the Marshals, he was also the one Luap respected most, and most wished to have respect him. The rest of that visit went as Luap had hoped, although he and Cob were both disappointed that the Rosemage, Aris, and Seri did not return until the last day before the caravan must return.
“It was all very complicated,” the Rosemage said. “They asked if we could give testimony at the trial, and then there was a message from the caravaners, sent north from Vikh, the next town south. Had you arrived safely, they wanted to know. The captain had to hear all about Cob and the new trail—he thought we would fly them in by magery, I think. Anyway, it all took much longer than we expected, or we’d have come back by the mageroad, if only for a day. We have messages from their king, by the way.”
“And I have a letter for you, from Raheli,” Cob said. He handed it to the Rosemage, who opened it and began reading.
“I wish I’d known,” she said ruefully. “This needs an answer—I wish I could take time off and visit her—”
Luap, who had opened the king’s message pouch, shook his head. “Not now, I’m afraid—he wants to send his heir to visit. We’ll have a lot of work to do beforehand.”
“One thing after another,” the Rosemage said, shrugging. “Tell her I will come as soon as I can, Cob—and I wish we’d had more time.”