Richard smiled at the memory of the nervous fellow. “I’m glad Ishaq is buying his charcoal.”
There were a lot of good people in the Old World. Richard had always envisioned them as the enemy, and now he was friends with a number of them. It had happened to him so often and in the same way; people were basically the same everywhere, once you got to know them.
There were those who loved liberty, who cried out to live their own lives, to strive, to rise above, to achieve, and those bent on the mindless equality of stagnation brought about through the enforcement of an artificial, arbitrary, gray uniformity—those who wanted to transcend through their own effort, and those who wanted others to think for them and were willing to pay the ultimate price for it.
Kamil and Nabbi both stood and grinned when Richard climbed the steps.
“Nabbi and I worked on our carving, Richard. Will you come and see?”
Richard smiled and put an arm around Kamil’s shoulders. “Sure. Let’s see what you’ve done today.”
Richard followed them down the clean hallway and out to the back, where Kamil and Nabbi had carved faces in an old log. The carvings were terrible.
“Well, Kamil, it looks pretty good. Yours, too, Nabbi.”
The carvings of the faces wore smiles, and to Richard that alone was priceless. Despite how poorly done, they had more life to them than what Richard saw executed day in and day out in precious marble by master carvers.
“Really, Richard?” Nabbi asked. “You think Kamil and I could be carvers?”
“Someday, maybe. You need more practice—you still have much to learn—but all carvers have to practice to become adept. Here, look at this, right here, for example. What do you think of this? What’s wrong with it?”
Kamil folded his arms as he frowned in concentration at the face he’d carved. “I don’t know.”
“Nabbi?”
Ill at ease, Nabbi shrugged. “It doesn’t look like a real face. But I can’t tell why.”
“Look at my face, at my eyes. What’s different?”
“Well, I think your eyes are a different shape,” Kamil said.
“And they are closer together—not out at the side of the head,” Nabbi added.
“Very good.” Richard smoothed some of the dirt where the carrots had been pulled up, and then molded the moist dirt into a mound. He used his finger and thumb to shape a simple face. “See here? By putting the eyes closer, like this, it looks more like a real person.”
Both young men nodded as they studied what he had done.
“I see,” Kamil said. “I’ll start a new one, and do it better.”
Richard clapped him on the back. “Good man.”
“Maybe one day we can be carvers, too,” Nabbi said.
“Maybe” was all Richard said.
Nicci had dinner on the table, waiting for him. A bowl of soup sat next to the glowing lamp. The rest of the room was left to the evening gloom. Nicci, too, sat at the table waiting.
“How was the carving today?” she asked as Richard went to the basin to wash the dirt from his hands.
He splashed the soapy water on his face, rinsing off the stone dust.
“Carving is carving.”
Nicci rubbed her thumb on the base of the lamp.
“Are you able to stand it?”
Richard wiped his hands. “What choice have I? I can either stand it, or I can end it all. What choice is that? Are you asking me if I am ready to commit suicide, yet?”
She looked up. “That isn’t what I meant.”
He tossed the towel down beside the basin. “Besides, how can I not be grateful for a job you got for me?”
Nicci’s blue eyes turned back to the table. “Victor told you?”
“It wasn’t all that hard to figure out. Victor said only that you were beautiful, and you saved my life.”
“I had no choice, Richard. They would only release you if you had a skill. I had to tell them.”
More than most days, he felt the essence of the engagement with her, the dance. She felt secure behind her shield of “had to tell them.” Yet it allowed her to watch him, to see how he would react.
All the effort of the day, moving heavy stone blocks, lifting the hammer countless times, had sapped his strength. His hands tingled with the effect of all those ringing blows. Now, he had begun yet again the battle with Nicci. He sat down on his pallet as exhaustion took him.
Fatigue was part of any battle. As much as he ever felt it when he held the blade, he felt it now, that life-or-death dance. This was no less a battle than any Richard had ever fought. Nicci stood in opposition to freedom, to life.
This was a dance with death.
The dance with death was really the definition of life itself, since all people eventually must die.
“I want to know something, Nicci.”
She gazed expectantly at him. “What is it?”
“Can you tell if Kahlan is alive?”
“Of course. I can feel the link to her at all times.”
“And is she still alive, then?”
Nicci smiled in that assuring manner of hers. “Richard, Kahlan is fine. Don’t let that weigh on your mind.”
Richard stared at Nicci for a time. Finally, he withdrew his gaze and lay down in his prison bed. He rolled away from Nicci’s gaze, from the dance.
“Richard… I made you soup. Come eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
He shut her from his mind and tried to remember Kahlan’s green eyes as weariness engulfed him.
Chapter 58
Richard could feel Neal’s breath on the back of his neck. The young disciple watched over Richard’s shoulder as he tap-tap-tapped the back of the chisel, carving the gaping mouth of a sinner crying out in agony as his body was being torn apart by the Keeper of the Underworld.
“Quite good,” Neal murmured, overcome with delight in what he was seeing.
Richard rested the wrist of his chisel hand against the stone to help push himself upright. “Thank you, Brother Neal.”
Neal’s brown eyes, the same color as his drab robes, stared with arrogant challenge. Richard did nothing to meet that challenge.
“You know, Richard, I don’t like you.”
“No man is worth liking, Brother Neal.”
“You always have an answer, don’t you, Richard?” The young wizard smiled then as he reached under his hood and scratched his closely cropped brown hair. “Do you know why you have this job?”
“Because the Order gave me a chance to help—”
“No, no,” Neal interrupted as he suddenly grew impatient. “I mean do you know why the position was open? Do you know why we needed carvers, enabling you to gain this great opportunity at employment?”
Richard knew very well why they had needed carvers.
“No, Brother Neal. I was a laborer, at the time.”
“Many of them were put to death.”
“Then they must have been traitors to our cause. I’m happy the Order caught them.”
Neal’s sly smile returned as he shrugged. “Maybe. I could tell that they had a bad attitude. They thought too much of themselves, of what they selfishly considered their…talent. A very old-fashioned notion, don’t you think, Richard?”
“I wouldn’t know, Brother Neal. I only know I am able to carve, and I am grateful for the opportunity to do my duty to help my fellow man by contributing my efforts.”
Neal backed away, giving Richard an appraising look, as if to measure whether or not the words had been mocking. Richard hadn’t given Neal the opening he wanted, so Neal simply spilled out his point.
“I thought some among them might be deriding the Order with their work. I thought they might be using their carving to mock and ridicule our noble cause.”
“Really, Brother Neal? I never suspected.”
“That is why you are nobody, and never will be anybody. You are a nothing. Just like all those carvers.”
“I realize I am nobody import
ant, Brother Neal. It would be wrong to think I was of any value other than in what I can contribute. I aspire only to work hard in service to the Creator so I might earn my reward in the next life.”
The smile was gone, replaced by a fiery scowl. “I ordered them put to death—after I had confessions tortured out of each one of them.”
Richard’s fist tightened on the chisel. Through a calm expression, he contemplated driving his chisel through Neal’s skull. He knew he could do it before the man could react. But what would it gain? Nothing.
“I am grateful, Brother Neal, that you uncovered the traitors in our midst.”
Neal squinted in suspicion for a moment. He finally dismissed it with a twist of his mouth before suddenly swirling amid a flourish of his robes.
“Come with me,” the brother commanded in a grave tone as he marched away.
Richard followed him across the field churned to mud by all the workers going back and forth, by all the supplies being dragged, carried, or rolled to the construction site. They strode past what seemed the endless face of the palace. The stone walls were getting ever higher, with row upon row of window openings. Their trim was beginning to take form. Many of the beams for the second floor had been placed in sockets in the walls. A maze of inner walls was going up, too, defining the interior rooms and hallways. There would be miles of corridors in the palace. Dozens of stairwells stood in various stages of construction.
It wouldn’t be long before oak floors were laid over some of the rooms below, enclosing them. The roof had to be completed over those sections, first, though, lest rain ruin the flooring. Some of the outer rooms were to have roofs lower than the main section, which was to rise up to a towering height. Richard expected to see those lower rooms capped with slate and lead roofs before the winter rains.
He stayed close behind Brother Neal as they marched toward the main opening into the palace. There, the walls were higher and more complete, with many of the ornate decorations in place. Neal charged two at a time up the semicircle of marble steps leading up to the entry plaza. The white marble pillars stood in an impressive sweep, and over the top of them many of the stone carvings had been installed. With all the tortured people frozen in stone, it was an intimidating sight, as it was meant to be.
The floor of the plaza was gray-veined white Cavatura marble. The sun on the marble made the plaza, half encircled by the soaring columns, glow with glorious light. The decrepit people in the stone ringing the plaza seemed to be screaming in pain at that light—which was just the effect Brother Narev had wanted.
Neal made a sweeping gesture with an arm. “Here will be the great statue—the statue to crown the entry to the emperor’s Retreat.” He turned a complete revolution while holding the arm aloft. “This will be the place where people enter the great palace. This is where people will come while on their way to see the officials of the Order. This is where they will come closer to the Creator.”
Richard said nothing. Neal watched him for a moment, then stood in the center and threw his arms up toward the sunlight.
“Here!—will be the statue to the glory of the Creator, using His Light in a sundial. The Light will reveal the loathsome creatures of the statues—mankind. This will be a monument to man’s evil nature, doomed to the misery of his existence in this world, wicked of character, cowering in humiliation as His Light reveals man’s hateful body and soul for what it is—perverted beyond hope.”
Richard thought that if madness had a champion, it was the Order, and people who thought like them.
Neal’s arms swept back down, a conductor concluding a triumphant performance.
“You, Richard Cypher, are to carve this statue.”
Richard was acutely aware of the hammer in his straining fist. “Yes, Brother Neal.”
Neal waggled a finger held close to his nose as he grinned with fiendish delight. “I don’t think you understand, Richard.” He thrust up a commanding hand. “Wait. Wait right there.”
He strode off, his brown robes swirling behind like muddy waters in a flood. Neal collected something from behind the marble pillars and returned holding it in one hand.
It was a small statue. He set it down, where the radiating lines of the marble floor converged at a point in the middle of the plaza. It was a plaster statue of what Brother Neal had just revealed to Richard. If anything, it was even more gruesome than Neal had described it. Richard ached to smash it with his hammer, right on the spot. It would almost be worth dying to destroy such a vile thing.
Almost.
“This is it,” Neal said. “Brother Narev had a master carver do up the model of the sundial to his instructions. Brother Narev’s vision is truly remarkable. It’s perfect, don’t you think?”
“It is just as horrifying as you said it was, Brother Neal.”
“And you are to carve it. Just scale this model up into a great statue in white marble.”
Feeling numb, Richard nodded. “Yes, Brother Neal.”
The finger waggled again with great delight. “No, no, you don’t yet really understand, Richard.” He was grinning like a washwoman standing at a fence with basket full of dirty gossip. “You see, I did some checking on you. Brother Narev and I never trusted you, Richard Cypher. No, we never did. Now, we know all about you. I found out your secret.”
Richard’s flesh went cold. His muscles tightened as hard as stone. He prepared to throw himself into battle. There appeared to be no choice but to fight, now. Neal was about to die.
“You see, I talked to People’s Protector Muksin.”
Richard was taken aback. “Who?”
Neal displayed a triumphant grin. “The man who sentenced you to work as a carver. He knew your name. He showed me the disposition of the case. You confessed to a civil infraction. He showed me the fine—twenty-two gold marks. Quite a sum.” Neal waggled the finger again. “That was a miscarriage of justice, Richard, and you know it. No man can get a fortune like that through a mere civil infraction. Such a gain can only be ill-gotten.”
Richard relaxed a bit. His fingers ached from how hard he had been gripping the hammer.
“No,” Neal said, “you had to have done something much more serious to have collected a fortune of twenty-two gold marks. You are obviously guilty of a very serious crime.”
Neal spread his hands like the Creator before one of his children. “I am going to show you mercy, Richard.”
“Does Brother Narev approve of your showing mercy?”
“Oh, yes. You see, the statue is to be your penance to the Order—your way to atone for your evil deed. You will create this statue when you are not doing your other carving for the palace. You will receive no pay for it. You are commanded not to steal any marble from that which the Order has purchased for the emperor’s Retreat, but to procure the marble with your own money. If you have to work for a decade to earn such a sum, all the better.”
“You mean, I am to carve, here, in the day, at my job, and I am to carve this statue for you on my own time, at night?”
“Your own time? What a corrupt concept.”
“When am I to sleep?”
“Sleep is not the concern of the Order—justice is.”
Richard took a calming breath. He pointed with his hammer at the thing on the ground.
“And this is what I am to carve?”
“That’s right. The stone will be purchased by you, and your labor will be contributed by you to the benefit of your fellow man. It will be your gift to the people of the Order in penance for your evil deeds. Men like you, with the ability, must happily contribute their all to help the Order.”
Brother Neal swept his arm out. “There is to be a dedication of the palace, this winter. The people need to see tangible evidence that the Order can bring such a great project as this magnificent palace to reality. They desperately need the lessons this palace will teach them.
“Brother Narev is eager to dedicate the palace. He wishes to hold a great ceremony, this winter, which will be
attended by many dignitaries of the Order. The war is progressing; the people need to see that their palace is, too. They need to see results for their sacrifices.
“You, Richard Cypher, are to carve the great statue for the entrance to the emperor’s Retreat.”
“I am honored, Brother Neal.”
Neal smirked. “You should be.”
“What if I’m not…up to the task?”
Neal’s smirk widened into a grin. “Then you will go back into custody, and Protector Muksin’s questioners will have you until you confess. After you finally confess, you will be hung on a pole. The birds will feast on your flesh.”
Brother Neal pointed down at the grotesque model.
“Pick it up. This is what you shall devote your life to.”
Nicci looked up when she heard Richard’s voice. He was talking to Kamil and Nabbi. She heard him say that he was tired and couldn’t look at their carving, that he would look tomorrow. Nicci knew they would be disappointed. That was unlike Richard.
She spooned buckwheat mush and peas from a dented pot into a bowl. She placed the bowl and a wooden spoon on the table. There was no bread.
She wished she could make something better for him, but after their voluntary contributions were taken out, they had no money. If not for the garden the women of the building had taken to planting in the back of the house, they would be in desperate straits. Nicci had learned how to grow things so she could have food for him.
His shoulders were stooped, his eyes distant. He was carrying something in one hand.
“I have your dinner. Come and eat.”
Richard set the thing on the table, beside the oil lamp. It was a small, intricately carved statue of figures cowering in terror. They were partially surrounded by a section of a ring. A tall lightning bolt, a common symbol of retribution by the Creator, came down in the center, piercing a number of obviously evil men and women, pinning them to the ground. It was a staggering representation of the evil nature of mankind, and the Creator’s anger at their wanton ways.
“What’s this?” she asked.
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