by ich du
Although work still remained to be done on the houses when the Sisters had whitened their walls and inscribed the sacred symbols of their faith, plans had already been made for the erection of the temple. After careful consultation with the masons, Mother Thelinda had decided that this should be sited on a square platform overlooking a steep and densely-thicketed slope. Here the eastern tower of Khemis Kezula's fortress had stood, and the first task facing the temple-builders was clearing the rubble from the site. There were few huge stone blocks here, but there was a great accumulation of smaller debris, which had long been overgrown by mosses, lichens and ferns.
Once the obscuring cloak of vegetation had been stripped away, it quickly became clear that there might be useful things to be gleaned from the wreckage. No doubt the people of Selindre had made some effort over the years to search for weapons and items of commercial value, but they had not troubled to steal away such commonplace things as wooden bowls and clay goblets, or bronze cooking implements and copper sewing-needles, for which the thrifty Sisters of Shallya could easily find a use. Mother Thelinda therefore appointed Sisters Adalia and Columella to the task of sifting through the debris as it was exposed and cleared, to recover and repair anything which could be put to use.
This was a duty which Sister Adalia found at first to be much more to her taste than fetching and carrying. It was far less wearying, and the pleasurable possibility that a new discovery might at any time be made was ample compensation for the dullness of most of the work involved. The work had its less pleasant side, for the artefacts buried in the rubble were sometimes to be found in association with grisly reminders of the fierce conflict which had raged within the fortress when Lanval invaded it, but Adalia was not afraid of skulls and skeletons and parchment-like fragments of skin.
It was not Adalia herself who discovered the first pieces of coloured glass; they were brought to her by a workman who thought them odd, though he did not realize that they might be valuable. But the glassworker's daughter knew well enough how rare and precious stained glass is, and quickly realized that the fragments must have come from a window. She demanded to be taken to the place where the shards had been found, where she began to rummage about for others.
When she found several more shards, some the size of fingernails and others the size of copper coins, she immediately commanded the workman to set aside his spade and proceed more carefully. She asked him to collect all the pieces of glass which he could find, and any strips of lead which might have been used to bind them together. In the meantime, she hurried off to tell Mother Thelinda what she had found.
Mother Thelinda was less enthusiastic than Adalia expected. Though she was city-bred and had seen stained-glass windows in the houses of noblemen, she had never looked at the windows of Quenelles with the same proud and interested eyes as Adalia. In fact, she considered such decorations to be mere frippery.
"I suppose you had better collect all you can," said the Superior dismissively, "if it can be of use or value to somebody. Perhaps we can make a gift of it to Lanfranc de Valancourt, to appease him for the loss of his craftsmen. He seems to be the kind of man who might take pleasure in toys and baubles, and I dare say that he has a clever windowmaker at his beck and call."
Adalia was annoyed that her discovery should be so casually minimized - and, as it seemed to her, her father also. However, she took what had been said to her as permission to make an effort to recover as much of the window as she could. She therefore gave Columella and the workmen instructions to be very careful in working near the spot where the first fragments had been unearthed, and to save all the shards which they found, no matter how tiny. For the rest of that day and all of the next she waited fretfully nearby, ready to pounce on any glint of coloured light which showed as the rubble was scraped away from the rock beneath.
By the evening of the second day she had hundreds of pieces of glass and dozens of pieces of the lead which had once secured the pattern of the window. The idea was born in her mind that if she could recover a sufficient number of fragments she might eventually be able to reconstruct the pattern of the window - enough of it, at least, to know what had been depicted there.
She had no delusions as to the difficulty of the project, but she felt compelled to make the effort, so she cleared a space on the floor of her room and began to lay out the pieces there, shuffling them around in the hope that she might begin to see some semblance of order amid the chaos.
After an hour's pondering - which somehow used up the time which she should have spent at her private prayers - Adalia was forced to admit to herself that the task seemed hopeless. Although she had collected a good many fragments, many of them quite large, it was obvious that they were only a small fraction of the number into which the window had been shattered. She readily guessed that the vast majority of the remaining fragments must be very tiny, and would be very difficult to recombine even if they could ever be found. Because she had no idea what the pattern had looked like, it was hard to know where to start in trying to rebuild it.
More fragments of coloured glass turned up on the next day, and a few more on the next, but by now the workmen had completed the preparatory work of clearing the site, and it was obvious that no more pieces would be thrown up by the appointed routines of labour. Adalia turned her attention to the heaps of earth which had been shifted from the great platform, and to the cluttered slope which descended from its rim. She knew that much of the original rubble from the felling of the tower would simply have been tipped over the edge, and she knew that some of the glass from the window must have gone with it - but the slope was very steep, and the workmen had no intention of clearing the undergrowth from it.
Mother Thelinda soon relieved Adalia and Columella of the task of sorting through the debris, on the grounds that everything useful had now been recovered, and gave Adalia - who still seemed too pale and frail for heavy work - a list of domestic duties to be carried out in the house. Adalia had no option but to accept them, but found that the duties were sufficiently lenient to allow her a few hours of spare time even during the hours of daylight. She began to use these hours in looking for more fragments of glass, wherever she thought they might be found - and she found enough, day by day, to make her feel that it was worth her while to persist in the task. Indeed, she came gradually to believe that she had a special instinct which guided her search, and might eventually bring it to a successful end.
As summer gave way to autumn and autumn to winter the hours of daylight decreased and those of darkness expanded. This reduced the amount of time which Adalia could devote to her search for pieces of glass, but increased that which she could devote to the attempt to figure out how the pieces she already had might be connected with one another. This puzzle became very absorbing indeed - so much so that it routinely absorbed the time which should have been given to her devotions - but when Mother Thelinda once suggested to her that she might be neglecting her prayers, she denied the charge vehemently.
There were several occasions when she was brought to the brink of despair, and became convinced that the project was hopeless, but on each occasion her half-formed resolution to give it up was subverted by a sudden gleam of inspiration which showed her how a group of pieces might be slotted together, or where a junction in the lead could be reconstructed. Eight years as a servant of Shallya had taught her many things, including the value of patience, and an occasional happy discovery was enough to persuade her that the task should not be abandoned.
While the pieces remained scattered on the floor of her room she could never leave them alone for long, but was always drawn irresistibly back to the puzzle. Her moments of insight gradually accumulated into an emergent understanding of the form and organization of the original work of art. She discovered that the window had been circular, and that there had been several concentric circles within the outer one. She deduced that the paler-coloured glass belonged mostly to the outer circles, with more vivid blues and roseate shades c
loser to the centre. She realized that the innermost circle had contained a detailed image of some kind, perhaps a representation of a bird with bright plumage.
Each of these discoveries reinforced her resolution, and encouraged her to increase her efforts, which she began to do by denying herself sleep. It was soon noticed, however, that Adalia burned more candles than any three of her companions, and she was summoned to the Superior to explain why this was so.
She took Mother Thelinda to see her work, sure that the sight of the partially-reconstructed window would be sufficient explanation and excuse, but the Superior had no notion of it as an intriguing puzzle to be solved, and could not see the picture emerging within the confused array of lead and glass. Mother Thelinda saw the broken pattern only as a silly and trivial mess, and said so.
"You must see, Sister Adalia," she said, in a gentle and kindly fashion, "that the objective cannot be worth the effort. What could you possibly gain by completing a task whose achievement would bring no worthwhile reward? You must understand that it is not fitting for a priestess of Shallya to become obsessed with worldly things. A window of coloured glass, however beautiful, is only a window on the everyday world. Our concern is to bring the mercy of Shallya to those who suffer grief and pain, not to play with ornaments."
Adalia accepted these rebukes very mildly, but her penitence was feigned, and she was glad that Mother Thelinda did not think to offer a specific instruction commanding her to abandon her work. Nevertheless, she did resolve to try harder to perform those observances which her faith required of her.
For some days she was unable to collect more than a handful of very tiny fragments of glass from the slopes beneath the burgeoning temple. Nor, in those few days, did she use more candles than any of the other sisters. But her enthusiasm for her task was not really lessened at all; almost every piece of glass which she found was now the cause of a tangible thrill, for she was very often seized by the conviction that she knew exactly where her new find would fit into the growing whole.
The outer circles of the window came steadily nearer to completion, and she soon redoubled her efforts once again in searching for the missing fragments. When the outer circles had been restored, save for a mere handful of fugitive shards, a most astonishing thing happened.
There began to emerge from those outer rings of glass, during the hours of deepest darkness, an uncanny glow, which grew by degrees into a flickering silvery radiance. It was as though the window was no longer laid out on a solid floor at all, but had been set in place to transmit the effulgence of a dawnlit sky.
Had Sister Adalia been less absorbed in her project, she might have been made anxious by this mystery. She might have remembered that this window had not been an ornament in some nobleman's pretty palace, but a part of the fortress of Khemis Kezula, where it might conceivably have had some other purpose than mere decoration. She might even have recalled to mind that curious warning about "glorious light" which had passed through the company as an item of idle gossip.
Had she been able to think in this way she would then have understood that her duty to Shallya demanded that she consult her Superior at once. But her mind was filled by now with other thoughts and desires, and she had already acquired the habit of secrecy. As things were, the thought which first sprang into her mind when she saw this radiance was that it would help her to save candles, and thus be freed from further pressure to abandon her self-appointed task.
Her stratagem worked well; Mother Thelinda was satisfied with what appeared to be a return to normal conduct - and Sister Adalia was trapped in the unfolding web of her deceit, unable now to seek advice about the significance of the eerie light which lit her room for a few hours on either side of midnight.
She did not feel as if she was imprisoned by her deceit. Indeed, she felt more contented than she had ever been before. It was as if that emptiness within her being, of which she had only been half-aware, had been filled as neatly and cosily as it could be. She was now possessed of a completeness which all her sincere and heartfelt prayers to Shallya had somehow never provided for her.
Most of the pieces of glass to which her instinct led her as she patrolled the slopes beneath the temple were rosy or blue in colour, and the reconstruction of the circles where they belonged soon progressed to the point where almost every piece could be put unhesitatingly into place. And as these inner circles neared completion, they began to add their own measure to the light which poured into Sister Adalia's room in such a magical fashion.
Adalia loved that light - which was certainly very beautiful - and delighted in studying its many changes. It was not in the least like true sunlight, for it had a ceaseless ebb and flow in it; what had earlier been a casual flickering was now a more tempestuous agitation. Whenever she knelt beside the window, bending over it in search of the place where a particularly problematic shard belonged, her many shadows would move on the whitened walls behind her like a troop of wild dancers capering about a magical fire.
The dingy walls of her room were quite transformed by the light of the window; their greyness was utterly banished by it and the sacred symbols of Shallya's worship were completely blotted out. So too was the dreary greyness of her habit redeemed, for the light made it blaze with brightness, as though it were not a priestess's robe at all but the coloured costume of some mighty wizard of the Colleges.
Of the figure in the centre of the picture, however, Adalia could as yet see almost nothing. There were only a few fugitive pieces of glass which seemed to belong there, which gave the merest impression of feathery form, without any proper indication of the configuration of the wings, nor the least sign of beak or eye. No light came, as yet, from the innermost circle of the window.
Adalia's quest was nearly brought to an abrupt conclusion when Sister Penelope and Sister Myrica, who chanced one night to be out and about at an unusual hour, reported seeing strange lights in her window. Adalia was summoned yet again to see the Superior. She became very anxious lest it be commanded that her work must cease, and she stoutly denied that anything unusual had occurred. She insisted that she had been asleep at the time the light was reported, and knew of no possible source from which it could have come.
Because Penelope and Myrica could offer no tentative explanation of their own, Adalia's word was accepted, but Mother Thelinda took the opportunity to question her further about the fate of the stained glass which she had collected. Adalia denied that she was any longer interested in the reconstruction of the window, and said that in any case, no sizeable pieces of glass had been found for some considerable time. Because the latter part of the statement was true, the whole was believed.
After this interview, Adalia took the precaution of hanging up a dark cloth to curtain the narrow window of her room while she worked, and always left the greater window on the floor covered by a rug when she went out.
That Mother Thelinda believed Adalia's story was due in part to the conviction with which she told it, but also to the fact that she seemed so healthy and cheerful nowadays that it was impossible for any of her fellows to believe that she was going without sleep. When the sisters had come to Selindre, and for some time after, Adalia had been pinched of feature and pasty of face, and far from being the strongest of the company - but now her skin was tanned and lustrous, and her laughing eyes were as bright as a bird's.
Her companions could only think that it was the sunlight and the air, and the hard but willing labour, which were at long last changing her for the better.
Adalia no longer fell eagerly upon the few tiny slivers of glass which were occasionally found while work on the temple proceeded; indeed, she professed indifference to them. One way or another, though, the fragments disappeared into her sleeves and pockets, and were carried anxiously at the end of each evening's communal rituals to the privacy of her room. There, the periphery of the innermost circle was slowly filled in, and she waited with rapt anticipation for the vital moment when the light which streamed through the
outer circles would spread to the centre - when that enigmatic image would, as she thought of it, "catch fire".
She lived for that day; nothing else seemed to matter at all.
Unfortunately, the central motif remained irritatingly absent; there were a few fragments of glass which seemed to represent feathers, and enough lead to imply that the figure was the head of a bird, but of the beak and eyes there was still no trace. By now she had searched every inch of the slope beneath the burgeoning temple most assiduously, and she knew that there was little hope of finding anything but tiny fragments there.
Without the vital pieces, there was little more of the puzzle to be done, and nothing to occupy her hands and mind in those hours when the light of another world filled her room with its gorgeous colours. Her old habits reasserted themselves, but when she prayed - without taking care to specify which deity it was to whom she addressed her prayers - she prayed only for a gift and a revelation; her prayers expressed the yearning of her obsessive heart, which had no other object of affection than the face in the centre of the window.
For seven times seven nights the light waxed and waned, and each time it died Adalia went meekly to her bed. But on the next night, she was so filled with the glory of the light that she was utterly entranced, and was driven out by the fierceness of her hunger - out of her room and out of the house.
Winter had come by now, and the night was bitter. Snow was falling on the slopes, its whiteness all-but-invisible in the cloudy night. But she did not feel cold at all, and made her way unerringly to the site of the temple, which was nearly complete.
In the courtyard of the temple, someone was waiting for her. He carried no lantern and she could not see his face, but she knew by his stature and his voice that he must be a dwarf.