Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 50

Richard took the snow-white slice when Victor held it out.

“What’s this?”

“Try it,” Victor said as he waved an insistent hand. “Eat. Tell me what you think. It’s from my homeland. Here, a red onion goes well with it.”

The white slice was smooth, dense, and rich with salt and herbs.

Richard let out a rapturous moan. He rolled his eyes.

“Victor, this is the best thing I’ve ever had. What is it?”

“Lardo.”

They sat on the threshold of the double doors out of the room with the marble monolith, watching dawn break over the site, where the walls of the Retreat had begun to rise. Only a few people stirred below. Before long, laborers would arrive in great numbers to begin again their work on the Retreat. It went on every day without pause, rain or shine. Now that spring was wearing on, the weather was pleasant nearly every day, with afternoon rains every few days, but nothing dreary or oppressive—just enough to wash you clean and make you feel refreshed.

If not for the ever-present ache of missing Kahlan, his worry over the war far to the north, his loathing of being held prisoner, the slave labor at the site, the abuse of people, the people who disappeared or those who confessed under torture, and the grindingly repressive nature of life in Altur’Rang, he might have found the spring quite enjoyable.

Day by day, too, his worry grew that Kahlan would soon be able to leave their mountain home. He dreaded her getting caught up in such a war as would be soon be roaring into full flame.

After he had eaten some of the mild onion, Richard went back to the delightful lardo. He moaned again.

“Victor, I’ve never tasted anything like this. What’s lardo?”

Victor held out another thin slice. Richard gladly accepted. After a long night of work, the dense delicacy was really hitting the spot.

Victor gestured with his knife to the tin beside him holding the pure white block. “Lardo is paunch fat from the boar.”

“And this tin of it is from your homeland?”

“No, no—I make it myself. I come from far to the south of here, far away—near the sea. That is where we make lardo. When I come here, I make it here.

“I put the paunch fat in tubs I carved myself out of marble as white as the lardo.” Victor gestured with his hands as he spoke, working the air as vigorously as he worked iron. “The fat is put in the tubs with coarse salt and rosemary and other spices. From time to time I turn it in the brine. It must rest a year in the stone to cure, to became lardo.”

“A year! . . .”

Victor nodded emphatically. “This we are eating, I made last spring. My father taught me to make lardo. Lardo is something only men make. My father was a quarry worker. Lardo gives quarry workers the stamina they need to work long hours sawing blocks of our marble, or swinging a pickaxe. For blacksmiths, too, lardo gives you power to lift a hammer all day.”

“So, there are quarries where you lived?”

He waved his thick hand at the towering block behind them. “This. This is Cavatura marble—from my homeland.” He pointed out at several of the stock areas below. “That, there, and there, it’s marble from Cavatura, too.”

“That’s where you’re from? Cavatura?”

Victor grinned like a wolf as he nodded. “The place where all that beautiful marble came from. Our city gets its name from the marble quarries. My family are all carvers, or quarry workers. Me? I end up a blacksmith making tools for them.”

“Blacksmiths are sculptors.”

He grunted a laugh. “And you? Where are you from?”

“Me? Far away. They had no marble there. Only granite.” Richard changed the subject, lest he have to start inventing lies. Besides, it was getting light. “So, Victor, when do you need more of that special steel?”

“Tomorrow. Are you up to it?”

The steel Victor needed was from farther away, at a foundry out near the charcoal makers. They needed a lot of charcoal to cook with the iron to make high-grade steel. Ore came in by barge, from not far away. It would take most of the night for Richard to get there and back.

“Sure. I will be sick today and get some sleep.”

He had become sick quite a lot over the last several months. It fit right in with the way most of the others worked. Work some, be sick, tell the workers’ group that you were ailing. Some people limped in with a story.

It wasn’t necessary; the workers’ group never questioned.

The only thing he rarely missed were the meetings where those with bad attitudes were named. People at the meetings were often named, but you were more likely to bring attention if you missed the meetings. Those named were often subsequently arrested and given an opportunity to confess. More than once, a person named at a meeting as having an unsatisfactory attitude killed themselves.

“One of Brother Narev’s disciples, Neal, came around last evening with some new orders.” Victor’s voice had taken on a tense edge. “What you just brought will last me the day, but I need that steel by tomorrow.”

“You will have it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Have I ever let you down, Victor?”

Victor’s hard face melted into a helpless smile. He passed Richard another slice of lardo. “No, Richard, you never have. Not once. I had given up hope of ever meeting another man who kept his word.”

“Well, I’d best be off and take care of my horses. They’ve had a hard night, and I’ll need them rested for tonight. How much steel do you need?”

“Two hundred. Half square, and half round.”

Richard performed a pained moan. “You’re going to make me strong, or kill me, Victor.”

Victor smiled his approval. “You want the gold?”

“No. You can pay me when I deliver.”

Richard no longer needed the money in advance. He had a heavy wagon, now, and a strong team of horses. He paid Ishaq to care for them along with the transport company’s teams in the company stables. Ishaq helped Richard with any number of the special arrangements that he’d had to make. Ishaq knew which officials lived in the nice homes. They couldn’t afford those homes with just their pay as officials of the Order.

“You be careful of Neal,” Richard said.

“Why’s that?”

“For some reason, he believes I’m in need of lecturing. He truly believes that the Order is mankind’s savior. He puts the good of the fellowship of Order above the good of mankind.”

Victor sighed as he stood and tied on his leather apron. “My thoughts about him, too.”

As they passed into the building, the sun was just lighting the marble standing there. Richard lingered and put a hand to the cold stone, as he always did whenever he passed it. It almost felt alive to him. Alive with potential.

“Victor, I asked you once what this was. Mind telling me, now?”

The blacksmith paused beside Richard and gazed up at the pure stone before him. He reached out and touched it lightly, letting his fingertips glide over the surface, testing, caressing.

“This is my statue.”

“What statue?”

“The one I want to carve, someday. Many in my family are carvers. As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to carve, too. I wanted to be a great sculptor. I wanted to create great works.

“Instead, I had to work for the master blacksmith at the quarry. My family needed to eat. I was the oldest living son. My father and the blacksmith were friends. My father asked the blacksmith to take me on. . . . He didn’t want another son lost to the stone. It’s a hard and dangerous life, cutting stone from a mountain.”

“Did you carve other things? I mean, like wood, or something.”

Victor, still staring at his stone, shook his head. “I only wanted to carve stone. I bought this block with my savings. I own it. Few men can say they own a part of a mountain. A part as pure and beautiful as this.”

Richard could understand the sentiments. “So, Victor, what will you carve out of it?”

He squinted, as if trying to peer beyond the surface. “I don’t know. They say that the stone will speak to you and tell you what it should be.”

“Do you believe that?”

Victor laughed his deep laugh. “No—not really. But the thing is, this is a beautiful piece of stone. There is none finer for statues than Cavatura marble, and few blocks of Cavatura marble with as fine a grain as this piece. I couldn’t bear to see it carved up into something ugly, like what they carve nowadays.

“It used to be, long ago, that only beauty was carved from beauty such as this. No more,” he whispered in distant bitterness. “Now, man must be carved with a twisted nature—as an object of shame.”

Richard had delivered tools down to the site for Victor, down to where the carving was taking place, and had had the opportunity to get a closer look at the work being done. The outside of the stone walls was to be covered with expansive scenes on a scale that was staggering. The walls that would enclose the palace went on for miles. The carvings being produced for the Retreat were the same as those Richard had seen everywhere in the Old World, but would have no equal in sheer, overpowering quantity. The entire palace was to be an epic portrayal of the Order’s view of the nature of life, and of redemption in the afterlife of the underworld.

The figures being carved were stilted, with limbs that could not possibly function. Those carved in relief were forever bound to the stone from which they only haltingly emerged. The poses reflected a view of man as ineffective, shallow, unsubstantial.

The elements of the hated anatomy of man, his muscle, bone, and flesh, were melted together into lifeless limbs, their proportions distorted to strip the figures of their humanity. Expressions were either impassive, if the statue was supposed to portray virtue, or filled with terror, agony, torment, if intended to illustrate the fate of evildoers. Proper men and women, bent under the weight of labor, were always made to look out at the world through the vacant stupor of resignation.

Most often, it was difficult to tell male from female; their worldly bodies, an everlasting source of shame, were hidden by bulky garments like those the priests of the Order wore. Further reflecting the Order’s teachings, only the sinful were shown naked, so that all could see their detestable cankerous bodies.

The carvings represented man as helpless, doomed by the inadequacy of his intellect to suffer every blow of existence.

Most of the sculptors, Richard suspected, feared to be questioned, or even tortured, and so repeated the view that man was to be carved accepting his vile nature, thus earning his reward only through death. The carvings were meant to assure the masses that this was the only proper goal for which man could hope. Richard knew that a few of the carvers vehemently believed such teachings. He was always careful of what he said around them.

“Ah, Richard, I wish you could see beautiful statues, instead of today’s scourge.”

“I have seen statues of great beauty,” Richard softly assured the man.

“Have you? I’m so glad. People should see those things, not this, this”—he waved a hand toward the rising walls of the Retreat—“this evil in the guise of goodness.”

“So you will one day carve such beauty?”

“I don’t know, Richard,” he finally admitted. “The Order takes everything. They say that the individual is of no importance except inasmuch as he can contribute to the good of others. They take what art can be, the lifeblood of the soul, and turn it to poison, turn it to death.”

Victor smiled wistfully. “This way, as it is, I can enjoy the beautiful statue inside the stone.”

“I understand, Victor—I really do. The way you describe it, I can see it, too.”

“We will both enjoy my statue the way it is, then.” Victor took his hand from the stone and pointed to the base. “Besides, you see there? There is an imperfection in the stone. It runs all the way through. That is why I could afford this piece of marble—because it has this flaw. Were most anyone to carve this, it would endanger the stone. If not done just right, and with the flaw taken in mind, the entire piece could easily shatter. I have never been able to think of how to carve this stone to take advantage of its beauty, but to also avoid the flaw.”

“Perhaps, someday, it will come to you how to carve the stone, to create a thing of nobility.”

“Nobility. Ali, but wouldn’t that be something—the most sublime form of beauty.” He shook his head. “But I will not do it. Not unless the revolt comes.”

“Revolt?”

Victor’s careful gaze swept the hillside through the open door. “The revolt. It will come. The Order cannot stand—evil cannot stand, not forever, anyway. In my homeland, when I was young, there used to be beauty, and there used to be freedom. They were shamed into giving up their lives, their freedom, bit by bit, to the cause of fairness to all men. People didn’t know what they had, and let freedom slip away for nothing but the hollow promise of a better world, a world without effort, without struggle to achieve, without productive work. It was always someone else who would do these things, who would provide, who would make their lives easy.

“We used to be a land of abundance. Now, what food is grown, rots, while it awaits committees to decide who should have it, who should move it, and what it should cost. Meanwhile, people starve.

“Insurgents, those disloyal to the Order, are blamed for all the starvation and strife that slowly destroys us, and so ever more people are arrested and put to death. We are a land of death. The Order continually proclaims its feelings for mankind, but their ways can but cultivate death. On my way here, I have seen corpses by the thousands go uncounted and unburied. The New World is blamed for every ill, every failure, and young men, eager to smite their oppressors, march off to war.

“Many people, though, have come to see the truth. They, and the children of these people—me, and others like me—hunger for freedom to live our own lives, rather than be slaves to the Order and their reign of death. There is unrest in my homeland, as there is here. A revolt is coming.”

“Unrest? Here? I’ve seen no unrest.”

Victor smiled a sly smile. “Those with revolt in their hearts do not show their true feelings. The Order, always fearful of insurrection, tortures confessions from those they wrongly arrest. Every day more are put to death. Those who want things to change know better than to make themselves targets before the time has come. Someday, Richard, revolt will come.”

Richard shook his head. “I don’t know, Victor. Revolt takes resolve. I don’t think such real resolve exists.”

“You have seen people who are unhappy with the way things are. Ishaq, those at the foundries, my men and me. All those you deal with, other than the officials you bribe, hunger for change.” Victor lifted an eyebrow at Richard. “Not one of them complains to any board or committee about what you do. You may want nothing to do with it, as I believe is your right, but there are those who listen to the whispers of the freedom to the north.”

Richard tensed. “Freedom to the north?”

Victor nodded solemnly. “They speak of a savior: Richard Rahl. He leads them in the fight for freedom. They say that this Richard Rahl will bring us our revolt.”

Had it not all been so overwhelmingly tragic, Richard would have burst out laughing.

“How do you know this Rahl character is worth following?”

Victor fixed Richard with a look that Richard remembered from the first time he met the blacksmith.

“You can judge a man by his enemies. Richard Rahl is hated by the emperor, and by Brother Narev, and by his disciples, as no other man is hated. He is the one. He bears the torch of revolution.”

Richard could muster only a desolate smile. “He is but a man, my friend. Don’t worship a man. Worship his cause, but not him.”

Victor’s glare, so full of his emotion, his burning hunger for freedom, turned back to his wolfish grin.

“Ah, but that is what Richard Rahl would say. That is why he is the one.”

Richard thought it would be best to change the subject. He saw that it was getting light.

“Well, I have to get going. I’m sure you’ll figure out what to do with the stone, Victor. It will come to you when the time is right.”

The blacksmith feigned a scowl, but it was a poor spoof of the very real one that had just departed. “That is always what I thought, too.”

Richard scratched his head. “Have you ever carved anything, Victor?”

“No, nothing.”

“Are you sure you are able to carve? That you have the ability?”

Victor tapped his temple, as if to dissuade a skeptic. “In here I have ability. In here I have beauty. That is all that matters to me. If I never touch steel to this stone, then I will always have the beauty of what it could be, and that, the Order can never take away from me.”