Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 64

Richard pulled away the fistful of straw. He brushed the fragments of grasses from his leather apron. His arms ached from the labor of rubbing the straw, lightly loaded with fine abrasive clays, against the stone.

Yet, when he saw the luster of the stone, the character of the high polish, the way the marble glowed, taking light deep into the stone and returning it, he felt only exhilaration.

The figures emerged from a sparkling stone base of rough marble. The grooved lines of the toothed chisels used in opposing directions to shear off thin layers of stone were still evident on the lower calves, where the legs emerged he wanted the statue to bear testimony to the hand of man and the figures’ origin in stone.

They rose up to nearly twice his height. The statue was in part a representation of his love for Kahlan—he could not keep Kahlan out of the work, because Kahlan was his ideal of a woman—yet the woman in the statue was not Kahlan. It was a man of virtue with a woman of virtue joined in purpose. They complemented each other, the two universal parts of what it was to be human.

The curved section of the sundial had been placed by Victor and his men several days before, when Richard had been working down at his job at the site of the emperor’s palace. They had left the tarp over the statue as they worked. After the ring had been set, Richard had placed the pole that served as the gnomon, and finished the hand holding it. The base of the pole was fixed with a gold ball.

Victor had yet to see the statue. He was beside himself with eager anticipation.

As Richard stared at the figures, only the light from the window above entered the darkened room. He had been given the day from work down at the site in order to prepare the statue to be moved to the plaza that evening.

In the rooms beyond the shop door, the hammers of the blacksmiths rang ceaselessly as Victor’s men worked on orders for the palace.

Richard stood in the near darkness, listening to the sounds of the blacksmith shop, as he stared up at the power of what he had created. It was exactly as he had intended.

The figures of the man and woman seemed as if they might draw a breath at any moment and step out of the stone base. They had bone and muscle, sinew and flesh.

Flesh in stone.

There was only one thing missing—one thing left to do.

Richard picked up his mallet and a sharp chisel.

When he looked up at the finished statues, there were moments when he could almost believe, as Kahlan insisted, that he used magic to carve, yet he knew better. This was a conscious act of human intellect, and nothing more.

Standing there, chisel and mallet in hand, gazing at the statue that was his vision in stone, was a moment when Richard could savor the supreme achievement of having his creation exist exactly as he had originally conceived it.

For this singular moment in time, it was complete, and it was his alone.

It was, for this moment, pure in its existence, untainted by what others thought. For this moment it was his accomplishment, and he knew its value in his own heart and mind.

Richard went to one knee before the figures. He laid the cold steel of the chisel to his forehead and closed his eyes as he concentrated on what he had left to do.

“Blade, be true this day.”

He pulled the red cloth tied at his throat up over his nose so not to have to breathe the stone dust, then set the chisel to the marks in the fiat place he had already prepared just above the heart of the flaw. Richard brought the mallet down, and began to carve the title of the statue in the base for all to see.

Nicci, standing behind the corner of a building around a curve in the road, watched farther down the hill as Richard left the shop where he had carved his statue. He was probably going to see about getting the team to move the stone. He closed the door, but he didn’t put the chain on it. No doubt, he didn’t intend to be gone for long.

Men were working all over the hillside at a variety of shops. Tradesmen from leather workers to goldsmiths contributed to a constant din of saws, grinding, and hammering. The ceaseless uproar of the labor was nerve-racking. While many of the men coming and going gave Nicci a good look-see, her glare warned them off.

Once she saw Richard disappear beyond the blacksmith’s shop, she started down the road. She had told him she would wait until he was done before she came to see it. She had kept her word.

Still, she felt uneasy. She didn’t know why, but she felt almost as if she would be invading a sacred site. Richard hadn’t invited her to see his statue. He had asked her to wait until it was done. Since it was done, she would wait no longer.

Nicci didn’t want to see it up on the plaza of the palace along with everyone else. She wanted to be alone with it. She didn’t care about the Order and their interest in the statue. She didn’t want to be standing with everyone else, with people who would not recognize it as something of significance. This was personal to her, and she wanted to see it in private.

She reached the door without anyone accosting her, or even paying her any mind. She looked around in the bright, hazy midafternoon light, but saw only men attending to their work. She opened the door and slipped inside.

The room was dark, its walls black, but the statue inside was well lit by light coming down from a window in the high roof. Nicci didn’t look directly at the statue, but kept her eyes to the floor as she hurried around the huge stone so she could see it for the first time from the front.

Once in place, her pulse pounding, she turned.

Nicci’s gaze rose up the legs, the robes, the arms, the bodies of the two people, up to their faces. She felt as if a giant fist squeezed her heart to a stop.

This was what was in Richard’s eyes, brought into existence in glowing white marble. To see it fully realized was like being struck by lightning.

In that instant, her entire life, everything that had ever happened to her, everything she had ever seen, heard, or done, seemed to come together in one flash of emotional violence. Nicci cried out in pain at the beauty of it, and more so at the beauty of what it represented.

Her eyes fell on the name carved in the stone base.

Nicci collapsed to the floor in tears, in abject shame, in horror, in revulsion, in sudden blinding comprehension.

. . . In pure joy.