Stonecutter's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Very good.”

  The officer, upon being dismissed, saluted and went downstairs, where Wen Chang and Kasimir could hear him speaking firmly to his men upon the subject of their behavior in the city.

  Now it was time for Kasimir to make the few preparations he thought necessary for his own assigned mission. He would leave off his desert traveler’s robe, and wear instead the street clothes of a professional man. He would carry with him only the small medical kit worn on his belt, not the large one that had occupied his saddlebags. And he would use his own name, as it seemed impossible that anyone in this city would yet have any reason to associate Kasimir, the obscure physician, with the famed investigator Wen Chang.

  On stepping through the gate of the inn’s courtyard into the street, the young physician began to walk with a certain sense of pleasure through the morning crowds. Around him thronged peddlers, shopkeepers, servants of the Hetman, beggars—no doubt there were thieves and pickpockets—busy people of every description. It had been a long time since he had traveled freely along the thoroughfares of a great city. And there could be few cities in the world greater or more exciting than this one.

  Kasimir spent the better part of an hour making his way gradually closer to the Red Temple. Frequently he lost sight of his goal in the maze of narrow streets that intervened, but he persevered, relying on a good sense of direction. At last he emerged from the maze on the western side of a great tree-lined square, whose eastern edge fronted directly on the temple he sought. Seen at this closer range the structure looked even larger than it had at a distance.

  The Red Temple in Eylau was perhaps six stories high, somewhat broader than its height, and proportionately deep. The facade of the building, following the usual Red Temple style of architecture, was marked by columns, most of them frankly phallic in design, and some as much as two stories tall, going up the front of the building in tier above tier. Between the columns the statues Kasimir had seen last night as distant white specks, and had heard described by the innkeeper, were now visible in detail. They were finely and realistically carved, and larger than life. Distributed in archways and niches at all levels of the facade, they were almost exclusively of human bodies, generally nude. Most of the bodies portrayed were beautiful, with a few of calculated ugliness to provide comic variety.

  The activities depicted among the statues were for the most part sexual, but involved as well the prodigious consumption of food and drink, and the amassing of wealth in games of chance. The ingestion of drugs also engaged the attention of certain of the figures, particularly in one frieze whose carven marble people appeared to float on marble clouds. Whoever had done that carving, thought Kasimir, was indeed an artist of more than ordinary talent.

  Behind its new facade, the building must have been recently enlarged. New timber showed in several places, and the color of structural stonework on the upper floors was slightly different from that on the lower. Again the job was not yet finished. Kasimir reflected again that this was indeed a very logical place to begin a search for the stone-working Sword.

  Chapter Five

  Kasimir had just started across the square—a hectare and more of tessellated pavement studded here and there with fountains and obscure monuments—in the direction of the temple, when his attention was drawn by a noisy disturbance to his right, at the border of the paved expanse.

  Some kind of official procession was making its way along that edge of the square. A modest crowd, quickly formed from the people in the busy square, lined the procession’s route. Now mounted guards in the Hetman’s colors of blue and gray were using cudgels and other blunt weapons to beat back a minority of the crowd who were trying to stage a chanting, arm-waving protest. The protesters, who were fewer in number than the troops and certainly not organized for resistance, promptly gave way. They had dispersed among the rest of the people on the plaza before Kasimir could get any idea of who they were or what they wanted.

  His curiosity aroused, Kasimir moved toward the place where the demonstration had flared up. The procession itself, he saw as he drew near, was quite small. It consisted of an armed and mounted escort, twenty or so troopers, surrounding a single tall, lumbering vehicle. Load beasts pulled an open tumbrel, carrying a single figure bound upright—a man, presumably some object of the Hetman’s wrath, who was thus placed on display for all the city to behold.

  The progress of the cart was deliberately slow, and Kasimir had time to walk closer without hurrying. When the cart finally passed him, he was quite near enough to get a good look at the prisoner. The bound figure was dressed in baggy peasant blouse and trousers, both garments dirty and torn. He had an arresting face—people who didn’t know a man might elect him their leader on the strength of a face like that—and he was paying no more attention to the modest crowds around him than he was to those orgiastic statues looming across the square. His eyes instead appeared to be fixed upon some unattainable object in the distance.

  A placard had been fastened to the front of the cart, but one corner of the paper had been torn loose; it was sagging in a deep curl, and Kasimir could not read it. Turning to a respectable-looking man who stood nearby, he asked what was going on.

  The sturdy citizen shook his head. The corners of his mouth were turned down in disapproval. He said: “I have heard something of the case. The man is called Benjamin of the Steppe, and they bring him out of his cell every few days for a little parade like this. I believe he was engaged in some treasonable activities in the far west, at the very edge of the Hetman’s territory. Something to do with organizing the small farmers there over water rights and taxes.”

  “Organizing them?”

  “To form local legislative councils. To vote, and govern themselves.” The citizen made a gesture expressing irritation. He obviously didn’t know, couldn’t remember, exactly how those farmers had intended to organize themselves, but it was an activity which he opposed in general. “They’re going to hang him on the first day of the Festival; it’s traditional in Eylau, you know, to execute one prisoner then, and set another free. It’s hanging, drawing, and quartering, of course.” The prospect of that extremely gory spectacle didn’t please the townsman either.

  The cart had rumbled past; Kasimir cast one more glance after it. Then he thanked his informant and turned away, reflecting that such public executions were probably rather routine events in a city of this size, even though, as far as he knew, the Hetman had no particular reputation for ferocity. Kasimir supposed that very few rulers would be willing to let people, even remote farmers, start governing themselves. Once started, where would that end?

  Still walking at a moderate pace, he now turned his steps again in the direction of the main entrance of the Red Temple.

  He approached the establishment with mixed feelings. In general Kasimir considered the White Temple, devoted as it was to healing and the worship of beneficent Ardneh, morally superior to any other, particularly to either the Blue or the Red. But in his opinion other forms of religion, including both Red and Blue Temples, had their places in society too. The Blue, at best, served the rest of the world as bankers, offering—for a price, of course—investments that were sometimes sound, and a secure depository. As for the Red—well, Kasimir liked to think that he enjoyed sex, food, and drink as much as the next man. Perhaps even a turn of the gambling wheel now and then. But he had grave doubts about the wisdom of worshipping the gods of those engrossing activities—or any other gods, for that matter. And as a physician he knew too much about the drugs that were so popular among Red Temple worshippers to feel any temptation along that line himself.

  The main entrance archway of the temple was draped in red, with scarlet curtains hanging in long folds over the duller masonry. Through the gap between those curtains there came out of the dim interior a hint of crimson light, along with a taste in the air of some exotic incense. The pulse beat of a drum was throbbing somewhere deep inside that doorway. As Kasimir delayed outside, making his last m
ental preparations, another man hurried past him and inside. And then a second customer. Business was not bad, even this early in the morning.

  Having done his best to put on a businesslike mien, Kasimir followed. Just inside the curtains, as he had expected, a physically impressive attendant waited to exact a small fee from each person entering; a greater contribution would be required of each worshipper later, depending upon the form that his or her devotions might take today.

  Today Kasimir managed to avoid paying the nominal entrance fee. In answer to his question, the attendant pointed to a small sign, so inconspicuous that Kasimir almost missed it even as he looked for it. This sign directed the business-minded visitor to the offices, which were up a narrow flight of stairs.

  Ascending these stairs, and pushing his way through a double set of sound-deadening curtains at the top, Kasimir found himself in a moderately large room well lighted by several windows, and occupied by a minor episode of bedlam.

  A clerk who looked as if he had been born to sit at a desk was on his feet and trying to stand taller than he was, while shouting instructions and vague warnings to a room full of men and women. Meanwhile all the people in this small throng, most of them young and physically attractive, were waiting restlessly, even anxiously—for what? So far Kasimir was unable to tell. While they waited they argued with one another, or waved their hands trying to get the clerk’s attention.

  Before Kasimir could decide how best to approach someone and ask for a job in a dignified and professional manner, a couple of assistant clerks entered the fray, just in time to keep their leader from entirely losing control of the crowd. Kasimir found himself taken by the arm by one of these assistants, and pushed into a line along with the rest of the job-seekers. He considered making an effort to establish his dignity as a physician, but then decided it would be wiser not to draw too much attention to himself. His first objective, after all, was not really to get a job but to spend as much time as possible within these walls. He relaxed, resolving to let himself be processed along with the rest.

  “You,” cried a clerk, pointing at someone in the line—randomly, as far as Kasimir could tell—and then pointing again and again. “And you! And you! Come with me now!”

  The last jab of the clerk’s finger had been aimed at Kasimir. With an unreasonable feeling of satisfaction at having been so promptly singled out—though he had no idea what the pointing clerk might have had in mind—he elbowed his way forward. Behind him, as he followed the red-clad fellow by whom he had been selected, the remainder of the line was quickly collapsing into a minor mob once more.

  With the two who had been selected with him—both of them, Kasimir now realized, were sturdy, chunky young men of average height like himself—he was directed on up yet more stairs, and then still more, until he began to wonder whether they were going to come out on the roof.

  But the termination of this stairway was not on the roof, but rather within a great open, well-lighted loft-space one or two stories below that ultimate level. It was a loft, or great room, whose high walls consisted mostly of draped canvas, like barriers meant to block off the sights and sounds of some process of construction. Indeed, other signs of new construction were all around, in the form of raw timbers and unfinished stonework.

  Overhead was mostly more fabric, shades or awnings of translucent cloth now partially opened to the morning sky, which had turned gray. Kasimir supposed that treatment with oil, and perhaps magic, would serve to keep that cloth roof waterproof.

  Ordered to stop where he was and wait without moving, Kasimir stood and looked about. A score or more of agitated people, including artisans, priests, and others less easily identifiable, were milling about the L-shaped loft, some of them shouting at each other in anger or excitement. In the middle of one of the long sides of the L, an open freight-elevator shaft yawned dangerously; above it a system of pulleys creaked in slow motion, and the taut chains and cables going down into the shaft vibrated. A man standing at the head of the shaft yelled something down into it, and presently an unhappy answering shout came back.

  Half a dozen statues of gigantic nudes, most of them looking nearly finished, stood about the great room, surveying the scene with pallid marble gazes that passed above the people’s heads. Some of these statues were still being worked on, and the rough boards underfoot were gritty with powdered stone. A background sound of chipping and hammering testified to the presence of more workers around the corner of the L, invisible from the place near the top of the stairs where Kasimir was standing.

  Even amid all the confusion among the several dozen people present, there was no doubt, thought Kasimir, as to who was supposed to be in charge here. Or, rather, the number of candidates for that honor could be quickly reduced to two. Both of these were men, and one of them, garbed in glossy black richly trimmed in red, could hardly be anyone less than the Chief Priest of the temple. The second candidate for dominance was a man garbed in rougher clothing, as tall as Wen Chang, but unlike the Magistrate in having cold, pale eyes, and a blond beard trimmed with such fanatical neatness that it managed to look quite artificial.

  This layman, who wore a sculptor’s apron whitely powdered with ground stone, was moving about energetically, passing judgment upon a number of the other people present, who, as Kasimir now realized, were models or would-be models and had been brought up here for his consideration. The prospective models were being ordered to appear nude, two or three at a time, on low platforms or pedestals crudely built of packing crates.

  The black-and-red-garbed priest, who kept following the sculptor tenaciously as the latter moved about, was in something of a temper. Evidently his anger had nothing to do with the prospective models, but a great deal to do with the sculptor himself, upon whom the priest’s attention was unwaveringly fixed. Nor was the Chief Priest accustomed to being argued with. Especially not—so Kasimir gathered—by a mere artisan who earned his living by carving stone.

  On the other hand, neither was the artist much impressed by ecclesiastical authority, at least not the one by which he was currently confronted. At one point the tall blond man interrupted his talent search to stalk over to a cluttered desk at one side of the huge workroom. There he rummaged in the litter of paperwork until he could come up with a sheaf of sheets that his shouts identified as a contract. This document he waved under the priest’s nose as the two men resumed their peripatetic argument.

  The burden of the argument, as Kasimir had by now determined, was twofold; first, whether or not the sculptor was going to meet his deadline for finishing his work in this room and clearing out of it so it could be returned to its original intended purpose of a gambling casino; and secondly, what was going to happen if he failed to meet the deadline. The deadline was the first day of the Festival—Kasimir had recently heard that mentioned in another connection—and for several reasons it was very important to the Red Temple that all the statues be finished and in place by then, and the gambling tables be opened.

  The artist, while listening—or perhaps refusing to listen—to these arguments, went on in a coolly professional way about his business, inspecting one nude prospective model after another as they appeared upon their little sets of elevated stands, male on one side of the center of the room and female on the other. Most of the models were rejected as quickly and decisively as were the protests of the priest, with quick, curt gestures and a few well-chosen words.

  And still the argument between the two men went on, the priest trying to convince the artist that it was all very well to be a perfectionist and have artistic scruples, but right here and now the important idea was to produce the contracted number and type of statues, so that the grand official reopening of the remodeled temple could go on as scheduled, in time with the Festival.

  The blond man sneered over his shoulder. “You mean so that the passersby in the square will stop having doubts as to whether you’re completely open for business, and will rush in to spend their money without hesitation.”<
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  It was not that at all, said the man in black and red, outraged at being thrown momentarily upon the defensive—it was important that the consciousness of all the people be awakened to their full sensuous potential!

  Meanwhile, another model had just stepped up on a recently vacated stand, where she attracted Kasimir’s attention. She was a graceful young woman, really only a girl he thought, not yet out of her teens. Her face was unprepossessing and her hair, worn in awkward braids, the approximate color of used wash water. But her body was striking, tall and strong without being either fat or in the least unfeminine, and he found himself immediately distracted from trying to follow the argument, or even thinking about the Sword.

  Kasimir’s appreciative gaze was at once tempered with sympathy; even worse, he supposed, than having everyone in a roomful of people stare at you when you were undressed might be to have the same roomful ignore you almost completely. That was what was happening to the young woman now, and she did indeed look a little faint.

  Kasimir was jolted out of his contemplation when one of the many clerks in this room grabbed him by the arm again and hustled him, along with the two men who had been chosen with him, across the floor of the great room and into a small antechamber lined with benches. Here and there on the benches were little piles of clothing.

  The clerk snapped orders at them, in the tone of one who enjoyed being able to snap orders. “All three of you, get your clothes off, quick. What are you waiting for? Hurry, hurry!”

  “But I’m applying for a job as—”

  The clerk was already gone; and anyway, as Kasimir kept reminding himself, the purpose of his coming here was not to defend his dignity or even to get a proper job, but to discover as much as possible about this sculptor and his operations. So, in company with his two rivals, all three of them casting wary looks at one another, Kasimir removed his clothes and piled them on a bench.