“When does this become interesting?” Marla asked.
Finch sighed. “Do you know why the barley took root? Most people don’t. It was the Cornerstone, Marla. Some sorcerer—we don’t know which one for sure, but it was probably Sanford Cole, who later became the secret court magician to Emperor Joshua Norton—wanted the park to succeed, and he sank the Cornerstone down in the sand in the desert that would become the park. Then he spoke a simple binding spell—a spell made incredibly effective and permanent by the Cornerstone—and the next thing that got planted on the dunes took root. That just happened to be Hall’s barley. Cole was an interesting fellow. You’ve heard of him?”
“Sure,” Marla said. “He’s the Ben Franklin of sorcerers. He’s responsible for our foothold in America, according to some people.”
“True enough. By all accounts, he was a good man. Can you imagine? A sorcerer that powerful, being described as good? That’s not the way you or I will be remembered, I suspect. Perhaps it was a different time.”
Marla kept silent, watching buildings slide past outside the window. People who thought things were fundamentally better or kinder in earlier times were clearly not true students of history.
“There’s a legend that Cole will return in the hour of San Francisco’s greatest need, you know,” Finch said.
“Huh. Like Merlin, the way he’s supposed to return to England?”
“In a few hundred years, Cole might be remembered the way Merlin is, at least among our people.”
“You believe that story?” Marla said. “That he’ll come back?”
Finch shrugged. “Not really. Some do, of course. Some of the techno-mages thought he would return when the dot-com bubble burst, but he failed to arrive, not surprisingly. I suspect Cole is gone forever. Though if he had constant access to the Cornerstone, I suppose anything’s possible. Even returning from the dead.”
“So this Cornerstone,” Rondeau said, “it makes spells last forever?”
“Among other things,” Finch said. “There are four known Cornerstones in the world—”
“Three, since Ballard ate one,” Marla said.
“Yes, three in the world, and their origins are unknown. They’re good for binding spells, for making things last, for making improbable things likely, for anchoring things. We’ve got the Golden Gate Bridge bound to the Cornerstone, so it won’t fall down in the event of a catastrophic earthquake. Of course, the ordinaries don’t know that, and they’re still retrofitting the bridge to make it earthquake-proof by more mechanical means. But that’s all right. It keeps people busy. Fortunately, most sorcerers only have a vague notion of what the Cornerstones are, and most of those don’t know where to find them. The one under the British Museum was relatively common knowledge, and look what happened to it. I don’t actually know where the other two are.”
“Neither do I,” Marla said. “I wouldn’t know about the one here if not for Lao Tsung. But that other guy, Mutex, he heard about the Cornerstone in San Francisco somehow. Did he say why he wanted it?”
Finch waved his hand dismissively. “Mutex came to me raving about old gods, the universe running down like an unwound watch, blood sacrifices, and so forth. He said if people didn’t start making offerings to his gods, the sun and stars and planetary bodies would stop moving in their appointed grooves.” Finch shrugged. “I politely refused to help him, he became belligerent, and I had him escorted out. I sent out some inquiries about him following Lao Tsung’s death, and heard back early this morning, though there wasn’t much to tell. Mutex used to be a talented young man, apprenticed to a shaman west of the Andes in Colombia, but he abandoned his studies and spent some years traveling through the Americas, much of it in the jungle, doubtless licking the wrong sort of toad. The years of isolation seem to have affected his judgment.”
“When you spend a long time away from people, sometimes you forget how to behave,” Marla said.
“Persistent little bastard, though,” Finch said. “I found out he’d secured appointments with most of the major sorcerers in the city—as I said, he used to be a promising sort, so most were willing to see him—and told them all the same thing, that he needed the Cornerstone, or the world would fall to pieces. Everyone turned him away. I imagine he slunk off to seek his fortune elsewhere.”
“Huh,” Marla said. She thought that sounded like either wishful thinking or stupidity. “After making appointments with a dozen sorcerers, putting up with all their bullshit, pressing his case, and then killing Lao Tsung, you think he just gave up and skipped town?”