Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 60

Richard touched the length of the point chisel to his forehead, as he had so often touched the Sword of Truth there in much the same way. This was no less a battle. This was life and death.

“Blade, be true this day,” he whispered.

The chisel had eight sides, so as to provide grip in a sweaty hand.

Victor had given it a proper heavy blunt point. He had also put his initials—V C—in small letters on one of the facets, proclaiming the pride of its maker.

Such a heavy chisel would shatter stone and remove a great excess material in short order. It was a weapon that would do a lot of damage, fracturing the structure of the marble down the width of three fingers. A point used carelessly on unnoticed flaws could shatter the entire piece.

Finer points would cause shallower fractures, but remove less material.

Even with the finest point punches, Richard knew that he could only approach to within the last half finger of the final layer. The network of spidery cracks left by a point were fractures in the crystalline structure of the marble itself. So damaged, the stone lost its translucence and its ability to take a high polish.

To do flesh in stone, the final layers had to be approached with care, and be left undamaged by any tool.

After the heavy point removed much of the waste, then finer-point chisels would allow Richard to get closer, refining the shape. Once he was within as close as a half finger of the final layer, he would turn to the clawed chisels, simply chisels with notches in their edge, to shear away the stone without fracturing the underlying structure of the marble. The coarse claws took off the most stone, leaving rough gouges. He would use chisels with a series of finer and finer teeth to refine the work. Finally, he would use smooth-bladed chisels, some only half as wide as his little finger.

Down at the site, where he carved scenes for the frieze, that was as far as the carvers went. It left an ugly surface, ungainly and coarse, rendering flesh as wooden, leaving no definition or refinement to muscle and bone. It robbed the people in the carvings of their humanity.

On this statue, Richard would really only begin where the carvings for the Order ended. He would use rasps to define bone, muscle, even veins in the arms. Fine files would remove the marks left by the rasps and refine the most subtle contours. The pumice stones would remove the filing marks, leaving the surface ready to polish with pumice paste held in leather, cloth, and finally straw.

If he did it right, he would have his vision in stone. Flesh in stone.

Nobility.

Holding the heavy point chisel to his palm with his thumb, Richard put his hand to the stone, feeling its cool surface. He knew what was inside—inside not only the stone, but inside himself.

There were no doubts, only the heart-pounding passion of expectation.

As he so often did, Richard thought of Kahlan. It had been nearly a year since he had looked into her green eyes, touched her cheek, held her in his arms. She would have long ago left the safety of their home for dangers he could vividly imagine. For a moment, he was overwhelmed with the weight of despair, choked by the sadness of how much he missed her, humbled at how much he loved her. Now he knew he must dismiss her from his mind so that he could devote himself entirely to the task he had to do.

As he so often did, Richard said his silent good-night to Kahlan.

Then he set the point at ninety degrees to the face of the stone, and took a powerful swing with the steel club. Stone chips exploded away.

His breaths came deeper and faster. It was begun.

With great violence, Richard attacked the stone.

By the light of lamps Victor left for him after the work day was done, Richard lost himself in the work, raining down blow upon blow. Sharp stone chips rattled off the wooden walls, and stung when they hit his arms or chest. With a clear vision of what he wanted to do, he broke away the waste stone.

His ears rang with the sound of steel on steel and steel on stone. It was music. Jagged chips and chunks fell away. They were the fallen enemy.

The air boiled with the white dust of battle.

Richard knew precisely what we wanted to accomplish. He knew what needed to be done, and how to do it. He was filled with a clarity of purpose, a course to follow. Now that it had begun, he was lost in the work.

Dust billowed up around him until his dark clothes were white, as if the stone were absorbing him, as he was transforming with it, until they were one. Sharp shards nicked him as they shot away. His bare arms, white as the marble itself, were soon streaked here and there with blood from the battle.

From time to time, he opened the doors to shovel out the ankle-deep scree. The white scrap avalanched down the hill, tinkling with a sound like a thousand tiny bells. The white dust covering him was cut through with dark rivulets of sweat, and red scratches. The cool air felt refreshing against his sweat-soaked skin. But then he once again shut out the night, shut out the world to be alone.

For the first time in nearly a year, Richard felt free. In this, he was in complete control. No one watched him. No one told him what he must do.

This work was his singular purpose, in which he strove for perfection.

There were no chains, no limitations, no desires of others to which he must bow. In this struggle to accomplish his best, he was utterly free.

What he intended would stand in unyielding opposition to everything the Order represented. He intended to show them life.

Richard knew that when the Brothers saw the statue, they would sentence him to death.

Stone chips burst forth with each blow, taking him closer to his goal.

He had to stand on a work stool to reach the top of the marble, moving it around the monolith to work all sides, narrowing it down to what would be.

Richard swung the steel club with the fury of battle. His chisel hand stung with the ringing blows. As violent as the attack was, though, it was controlled. A trimming hammer, called a pitcher, could be used for such rough work. It removed waste with greater speed than a heavy point to shape the block, but it was used with a full swing, and Richard feared, because of the flaw, to unleash that much power against the stone. In the beginning, the block had strength in its sheer mass, but even so, he considered such a trimming hammer too dangerous for this particular stone.

Richard would have Victor make him a set of drill bits for a bow drill.

With a bow’s cord run around the shaft of the drill, it could be twisted and driven through the marble. Richard had thought long and hard about the problem of the flaw. He had resolved to cut out most of it. First, to stop any further cracks from running through more of the stone, he would drill holes through the crack to relieve the stress. With another series of closely spaced holes, he would weaken the stone in a waste area around the flaw and simply remove most of it.

There would be two figures: a man, and a woman. When finished, the space between them would be where Richard had removed the worst of the flaw.

With the weakest stone removed, the sound stone that remained would be strong enough to take the stress of the work. Since the defect started at the base, he couldn’t eliminate it all, but he could reduce the problem it presented to a manageable level. That was the secret to this piece of stone: eliminating its weakness, then working in its strength.

Richard considered it a fortunate flaw, first of all because it had reduced the value of the stone, enabling Victor to purchase it in the first place. To Richard’s mind, though, the flaw had been valuable because it had caused him to think about the stone, and how to carve it. That thought had brought him to his design. Without the flaw, he might not have come to the same design.

As he worked, he was filled with the energy of the fight, driven onward by the heat of the attack. Stone stood between him and what he wanted to carve, and he craved to eliminate that excess so he could get to the essence of the figures. A huge corner of waste broke loose, slipping away, slowly at first, then crashing down. Chips and shards rained down as he worked, burying the fallen foe.

Several more times he had to open the doors and shovel out the scrap.

It was invigorating to see what was once an irregular shaped block, becoming a rough shape. The figures were still completely encased, their arms far from being free, their legs not separate, yet, but they were beginning to emerge. He would have to be careful, drilling holes in the open areas to prevent breaking off the arms.

Richard was surprised to see light streaming through the window overhead. He had worked the entire night without realizing it.

He stood back and appraised the statue that was now more or less roughly a cone shape. Now, there were only lumps where the arms would extend out from the bodies. He wanted the arms to be free, the bodies to convey grace and movement. Life. What he carved for the Order was never free, always tightly bound to the stone, forever stiff, unable to move, like cadavers.

Half of what had been there the night before was now gone. Richard ached to stay and work on, but he knew he couldn’t. From the corner, he excavated the canvas tarp Victor had left for him, and flung it over the statue.

When he threw open the door, the white dust billowed out. Victor was sitting among the rubble of his stone monolith.

The blacksmith blinked. “Richard, you have been here the whole night!”

“I guess I have.”

He gestured as a grin split his face. “You look like a good spirit. How goes the battle with the stone?”

Richard could think of nothing to say. He could only beam with the joy of it.

Victor laughed his belly laugh. “Your face says it all. You must be tired and hungry. Come, sit and rest—have some lardo.”

Nicci heard Kamil and Nabbi shout a greeting as Richard came down the street, and then their footsteps as they ran down the front stairs. She glanced out the front window and, in the failing light of dusk, saw them meet up with Richard as he came down the street. She, too, was happy to see him coming home this early.

Nicci had seen precious little of Richard in the weeks since he took on the duty of carving the statue for Brother Narev. She couldn’t imagine how Richard could endure carving a statue she knew had to be agony for him—not so much because of its size, but because of its nature.

If anything, though, Richard seemed invigorated. Often, after working all day carving the moral lessons for the facade of the palace, he would then work late into the night on the grand statue for the entrance plaza. As tired as he had to be when he came home, he would sometimes pace. There were nights when he would only sleep for a couple of hours, rise, and go to work on the statue for hours before his workday at the site began. Several times he had worked the entire night.

Richard seemed driven. Nicci didn’t know how he could do it. He sometimes came home to eat and to take a nap for an hour, and then he would go back. She would urge him to stay and sleep, but he would say that the penance had to be paid or they would put him back in prison. Nicci feared that possibility, so she didn’t insist that he stay home to sleep. Losing sleep was preferable to him losing his life.

He had always been muscular and strong, but his muscles had become even more lean and defined since he came to the Old World. All that labor of loading iron and now moving rock and swinging a hammer had built him up even more. When he went out back to the washtubs and removed his shirt to rinse off the stone dust, the sight of him made her knees weak.

Nicci heard footsteps passing down the hallway, and the excited voices of Kamil and Nabbi asking questions. She couldn’t understand Richard’s words, but she easily recognized the timbre of his voice calmly giving the two the answers to their questions.

As tired as he was, as much as he was away at his work, he still took time to talk to Kamil and Nabbi, and to the people of the building. He was no doubt now on his way out back to give pointers to the two young men on their carving. During the day, they worked around the building, cleaning and caring for the place. They turned over the dirt in the garden, mixing in compost when it was ready. The women appreciated having the heavy spade work done for them. The two washed, painted, and repaired, hoping Richard would approve and then show them how to do new things. Kamil and Nabbi always offered to help Nicci with anything she might need—she was, after all, Richard’s wife.

Richard came in the door as Nicci stood at the table cutting up carrots and onions into a pot. He slumped down into the chair across the table. He looked spent from his day of work—after having been up hours earlier working on the statue.

“I came home to get something to eat. I have to go back and work on the statue.”

“This is for tomorrow’s stew. I have some millet cooked.”

“Is there anything more in it?”

She shook her head. “I only had enough money for the millet today.”

He nodded without complaint.

Despite how exhausted he looked, there was some remarkable quality in his eyes, some inner passion, that made her pulse race faster. Whatever it was that she had seen in him from the first moment seemed to have only gotten stronger since that night she had almost put the knife through his heart.

“Tomorrow, we’ll have this stew,” she said. His gray eyes were staring off into his private visions. “From the garden.”

She retrieved the cook pot after setting a wooden bowl on the table before him and spooned millet into his bowl until it was full. There was little left, but he needed it more than she. She had spent the morning waiting in line for the millet, and then had spent the afternoon picking all the worms out of it. Some of the women just cooked it until you couldn’t tell. Nicci didn’t like to feed that to Richard.

Standing close to the table, cutting up carrots, she could finally stand it no more. “Richard, I want to come to the site with you and see this statue that you’re carving for the Order.”

He was silent for a moment as he chewed and then swallowed. When he finally did speak, it was with a quiet quality that matched that inexplicable look in his eyes.

“I want you to see the statue, Nicci—I want everyone to see it. But not until I’m finished.”

“Why?”

He stirred his spoon around in his bowl. “Please, Nicci, will you grant me this? Let me finish it, then you will see it.”

Her heart pounded against her ribs. This was important to him.

“You aren’t carving what they told you to carve, are you?”

Richard’s face turned up until his gaze met hers.

“No, I’m not. I’m carving what I need to carve, what people need to see.”

Nicci swallowed. She knew: this was what she had been waiting for. He had been ready to give up, then he wanted to live, and now he was willing to die for this.

Nicci nodded, having to look away from those gray eyes of his. “I’ll wait until it’s ready.”

Now she knew why he seemed so driven, lately. That quality hinted at in her father’s eyes, and blazing in Richard’s, she felt was somehow tied to this. The very idea was intoxicating.

In more ways than one, this was a matter of life and death.

“Are you sure about this, Richard?”

“I am.”

She nodded again. “All right, I will honor your request.”

The next day, Nicci got an early start to buy bread. She wanted Richard to have bread with the stew she was cooking. Kamil offered to go for her, but she wanted to get out of the house. She asked him to keep an eye on Richard’s stew as it simmered on the banked coals.

It was an overcast day, and cool—a hint of the rapidly approaching winter. The streets were crowded with people out looking for work, with carts hauling everything from manure to bolts of coarse dark cloth, and with wagons, mostly carrying building materials for the palace. She had to step carefully to avoid the dung in the road and squeeze between all the people moving as slowly as the sludge of the open sewers as she made her way through the city.

There were crowds of needy people in the street, many come to Altur’Rang for work, no doubt, although there were few people at the workers’ group hall. The lines at the bakeries were long. At least the Order saw to it that people got bread, even if it was gray, tough bread. You had to go early, though, before they ran out. With more people all the time, the shops ran out earlier every week.

Someday, it was rumored, they were going to be able to provide more than one kind of bread. She hoped that this day, at least, they might have some butter, too. Sometimes, they sold butter. The bread, and the butter, were inexpensive, so she knew she could afford to buy a little for Richard—if they had any. They almost never had any butter.

Nicci had spent a hundred and eighty years trying to help people, and people seemed no better off now than they ever were. Those in the New World were prosperous enough, though. Someday, when the Order ruled the world, and those with the means were made to contribute their fair share to their fellow man, then everything would finally fall into place and all of mankind could at last live with the dignity they deserved. The Order would see to it.

The bread shop stood at an intersection of two roads, so the line turned around the corner onto another street. Nicci was around that corner, leaning a shoulder against the wall, watching the passing throngs, when a face in the crowd caught her attention.

Her eyes went wide as she straightened. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. What was she doing in Altur’Rang?

Nicci didn’t really want to find out—not now, when it seemed she was getting close to finding her answers. Matters seemed to be at a critical state with Richard. She felt sure that it would soon come to resolution.

Nicci flipped her dark shawl up over her head of blond hair and tied it snug under her chin. She sank back behind a wide woman and hugged the wall as she peeked out between the people in line.

Nicci watched Sister Alessandra, her nose held high as her calculating gaze swept the faces of all the people on the street. She looked like a mountain lion on the prowl.

Nicci knew who Alessandra was hunting.

Ordinarily, Nicci would have been only too happy to cross paths with the woman, but not now.

Nicci sank back against the rough clapboards, staying low behind the people ahead of her, until Sister Alessandra had vanished into the vast sea of people crowding the street.