Hardway

by David Pilling

  But he also felt excitement and pride at the renown he would finally receive as the man who had created the biggest, most important work of art the World Apparent had ever seen. He was certain this was his big chance. His one shot to finally show all those who never believed in him. He would finally achieve the success and adulation he had always deserved. All he had to do was work hard and avoid doing anything stupid. What could be easier?

  Following his meeting with Tulgan, he had been given a day and a night to rest and to gather his belongings ready to be relocated into a room at the temple. Tulgan had promised luxury accommodation for him and Eva, though Maximilian knew he was being moved to a place where could not be distracted from the task at hand, and where he could be kept under close surveillance. Rollo was predictably punctual when he rapped on Max’s door at first light to escort him to his first meeting with Abbott Mankind, the highest authority at the Celestial Temple.

  Maximilian and Rollo were met in the main hall by a small shaven-headed man in an orange robe with a look of bliss on his round face.

  “Good day, gentlemen. Welcome to the House of the Celestial Sphere. I am Brother Envy. Abbot Mankind eagerly awaits you in his chamber.” Maximilian had heard the Celestial Monks named themselves after the vices of mankind, but he hadn’t believed it until now. Brother Envy seemed to float towards Maximilian and Rollo. His arms were outspread; his robes concealed everything but his face and hands. In his left hand he held a wooden staff taller than himself. As he drew closer Maximilian realised the staff was not carved, it had bark on it, and the top spread out into five or six branches, each with new green shoots and leaves. The staff was alive.

  “If you would be kind enough to follow me, I will take you to the Abbot immediately,” the little monk continued. “Following your meeting, Abbot Mankind will give you a tour of the temple and show you the location of your commission, should you choose to accept it.”

  Maximilian knew full well he had no choice in accepting his commission, but he doubted that Brother Envy knew that, so he smiled politely and followed the beaming holy man. Rollo strode behind him.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you Master Shackle. I have had the privilege of accompanying the Abbot on a viewing of a selection of your paintings,” Brother Envy said as he walked. “Most evocative sir, if I may be so bold, a highly contentious body of work. I am sure that was your intention. However one feels about the subject matter, one cannot deny the talent; the insight. You somehow capture the very spirit and imprison it in the canvas.”

  “Uh, you're too kind,” replied Maximilian. Something about the way Brother Envy had worded that last sentence and the tone in the monk's voice unsettled him.

  Suddenly Brother Envy stopped and turned around. Maximilian halted in turn and just avoided walking into the monk, only to be buffeted from behind by Rollo as the big man caught hold of him with one massive hand as if to stop him from falling. The monk's serene smile was gone, his eyes were suddenly piercing, and he gazed up into Maximilian's face as though studying him. “You see things,” he said, “things which a mortal man should not be able to see.”

  An awkward moment of silence followed as the monk gazed unblinking into Maximilian’s eyes.

  “All this you must discuss with the Abbot!” Brother Envy's grin was back as quickly as it had vanished, and the little man whirled around once again and continued walking.

  Maximilian turned to Rollo, eyebrows raised, but the giant henchman's face was blank. If he could see things, he wondered, why could he never tell what was going on behind Rollo's impervious visage?

  They followed Brother Envy through high-ceilinged corridors, cavernous halls, galleries lit by bright sunlight cascading through vast, dramatic stained-glass windows depicting yet more scenes of chaos and savagery and tranquil gardens with carp ponds and fountains. Eventually they were lead up a broad staircase covered in a thick carpet with a mesmerising pattern of tangled deep green vines and into a bright, airy room with a high window and balcony at the far end.

  Abbot Mankind's chamber was ornate but not lavish. His mahogany desk, although vast, was somehow elegant at the same time. The four legs were carved to into elongated figures of shaven-headed men in habits, holding the top above their heads as they gazed skyward. The chairs matched, so that the occupants were held aloft by monks, with upholstery embroidered with branches and green leaves, which appeared as though they were growing from the wood itself. On the far side of the desk was a tall window with heavy orange curtains, drawn to allow sunlight to shine into the room.

  Wide bookshelves nestled into the walls either side of the desk. The bookshelves were carved in the same style as the desk and chairs, the figures of monks becoming trees and seeming to branch out across the stone walls like ivy.

  The walls were hung with tapestries and paintings depicting figures committing terrible acts. Scenes of murder, rape, pillage and torture, amongst others, were everywhere, while other works of art showed the various punishments doled out by demons in the afterlife. Maximilian recognised some of his own works amongst them, and understood why the Abbot was a fan—the man clearly had a taste for the more explicit pieces.

  “The Abbot will be with you shortly,” said Brother Envy, before bowing and padding back out the doorway. His guests were left alone.

  Maximilian glanced at Rollo, who seemed drawn to the artwork surrounding them, and looked up at the ceiling. He beheld a vast dome, made up of several tall wooden panels beautifully carved in the likeness of trees reaching to the heavens. Between the trees the wood was intricately shaped into smaller plants and shrubs, but it was the space at the very top that amazed him. As the dome reached its pinnacle the branches opened out to leave a space which seemed endless. He felt as though he was staring into the void. He couldn't tell how the effect had been achieved, but as he moved the ceiling seemed to move with him. He began to feel dizzy, but found it difficult to take his eyes off the captivating scene looming above him. He realised the higher reaches of the dome were not wood at all, but some sort of beautifully worked smoked glass, and beyond that the sky.

  Forcing his eyes downwards, he found Rollo studying a tapestry of the Lords of Hell on their bone thrones, while some hapless wrongdoer lay naked between them with a look of horror on his face. The few times Max had seen Rollo show the faintest hint of emotion was when the big man beheld some painting or sculpture, and once when he had caught him reading a book of poetry. Of course, he knew he could never speak a word of it. If word got out that Rollo had refined tastes, it would be bad for business, and there was always the chance that Rollo might use Maximilian's bones to reaffirm his reputation.

  “Good day, gentlemen!” Maximilian flinched as a deep voice echoed around the room, snapping him out of his reverie. Spinning around to find the source, he saw a figure silhouetted in front of the window. Impossible, he thought. The door was at the other end of the room. Had the figure been there the whole time?

  “Welcome to the House of the Celestial Sphere. I am Abbot Mankind. Please sit down. Would you like some wine?” The Abbot was much taller than Brother Envy, though still a head shorter than Rollo, which made it even more difficult to understand how he had suddenly appeared, apparently from nowhere.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Abbot,” said Maximilian, standing upright and trying to look respectful. “Forgive my rudeness, I did not realise you were present.”

  “Present?” The Abbot seemed to ponder the word for a moment as he poured them each a glass of wine from a crystal decanter. “It is I who should apologise—my mind wanders, and I sometimes forget whether it has taken my body with it.”

  “An impressive building, Abbot.” Maximilian tried to sound relaxed and informal, though he was nervous about meeting the Abbot and still bewildered by the holy man's sudden appearance.

  “Big,” said Rollo, without giving any clues as to whether he thought that was a good thing or a bad thing. The man rarely expressed anything as an opinion, merely an inescapable
fact, and Maximilian had never seen anyone disagree.

  “For show—” the Abbot waved a hand dismissively “—nothing more. No true faith really needs such a ludicrously lavish base. It is simply playground posturing. 'Our God is better than your god' and 'We're more righteous than you are'—it is all so tiresome.”

  “Then why build it? It must have cost a fortune,” asked Maximilian, in spite of etiquette. The Abbot's eccentricity had a calming effect, and so did his wine.

  “Well,” the Abbot leaned forward with a sly grin and a conspiratorial gleam in his eye, “think of it as a front. A distraction from our real work. Our real values.”

  “And what are they?” Maximilian was intrigued. He glanced at Rollo, who appeared to be scanning the bookshelves and not paying any attention.

  “As you can see from my collection,” the Abbot said as he waved an arm at a particularly graphic canvas and a burning man shrieking as he was hurled from a cliff, “we are fond of realistic depictions of life's horrors. The evils perpetrated by mankind.” He tapped a finger against his chest as he said the last word.

  Maximilian nodded, frowning. Abbot Mankind nodded back and continued.

  “The House of the Celestial Sphere does not worship Gods, Mr. Shackle, it worships virtue. And there is no better reminder of the importance of virtue than vice. Complacency is one of man's most destructive traits. We serve to remind him what is at stake should he stray from the righteous path. The Gods are the manifestations of the virtues of that path, and demons are their opposites—the walking expressions of our darkest thoughts. Spawned in the netherworld but every bit as real as you or me, and far more powerful. Quite capable, given the right encouragement, of entering our world. You see, we are the guardians of the physical plane, and therefore the Celestial Sphere.”

  Abbot Mankind smiled as he refilled Maximilian's empty glass. Rollo's remained full. He had pulled a large volume from the shelf and studied it intently, seemingly oblivious of the conversation. The Abbot didn't seem bothered; his attention was directed at Maximilian.

  “Is this all making sense?” asked the Abbot, settling back into his seat and linking his fingers on the desk in front of him.

  “Yes, I think so.” In truth Maximilian thought the Abbot was an amiable fruitcake and nothing more. Gods were virtues manifest? Demons were bad thoughts in the form of monsters? He had never heard such madness but decided to humour the man. He was here on business after all.

  “Good.” The Abbot rose and turned to the great window behind him. “Come to the window, Mr. Shackle, and see where our real work takes place.”

  Maximilian went and stood next to the Abbot, who delicately touched certain points on the glass with his fingertips causing a panel to slide open. The Abbot led him out onto a balcony. They were much higher up than Maximilian had realised. The balcony looked away from the city and towards the coast. In the distance he could see the green hills that led to the dizzying, treacherous cliffs surrounding the island, and beyond that the ocean. On either side he could see the great temple which the Abbot had apparently built merely as a distraction. The building was huge, its whitewashed stone walls shining bright in the sunlight.

  “There,” Abbot Mankind pointed downwards, “the Infernal Arena!” Looking down, Maximilian saw a vast circular space like a parade ground far below. Faint symmetrical lines had been marked out with a circle in the centre.

  “What is it for?”

  “Ah,” the Abbot replied, “I'm afraid I have come to the end of the information I am able to disclose. Besides, you would probably be better off without such knowledge. I can tell you, however, that we serve man best by serving the Celestial Gods, and that is where you come in!”

  The Abbot beamed at Maximilian as though waiting for a response. He had none; the young artist was still at a loss as to what he was required to do. He had been expecting to be pointed towards a wall and told to paint on it. So far there had been no mention of painting and yet the Abbott appeared to be under the impression he had come to the end of the briefing.

  “And what is required of me?” Maximilian asked uncertainly.

  “A mural which can be seen by the Gods. A wide panorama, encompassing all of man's ill deeds!” Abbot Mankind spread his arms wide. “A scene so great that it simply cannot be ignored!”

  “All right,” Maximilian replied slowly. “Where?” He felt like he was missing something very important but he couldn't think what. He had been hitting the murka rather hard lately. Perhaps it was making his mind sluggish.

  “Why, on the floor of the Arena of course!”

  “On the floor?” Maximilian was stunned. “The entire arena?” The space was huge—at a guess, three hundred paces across, but it was difficult to judge from this height.

  “Of course,” Abbot Mankind replied, smiling serenely. The man was clearly mad. A work that size would take... Maximilian had no idea how long it would take.

  “Abbot Mankind, there must be some mistake. I am one man. Such a painting would take years.”

  “Time is immaterial, Mr. Shackle. The task transcends such base concepts, but if you must cling to the superficial, then think of the financial reward, not to mention the standing you'll have in the artistic community. The man who painted the Infernal Arena, the single most enormous, most powerful, most expensive work of art ever commissioned would be something of a legend, even before it was finished. I think you might be invited back to the Masters Temple then, don't you? Unless you decided to start your own temple of course.”

  “What do you know of the Masters Temple?” Maximilian replied, suspicious that the Abbot knew something about his past even though they had never met, and something that cut so close to the bone too.

  “I know a lot things, Mr. Shackle,” the Abbot chuckled. “Knowledge is a virtue. You can ask my colleague, Brother Ignorance.”

  “Most expensive? I don't believe we agreed a fee?” The Abbot had appealed to Maximilian's ego. Maximilian knew it was deliberate, but he couldn't deny the truth of it. Still, he thought he better at least try to appear in control.

  “The fee was agreed with your agent,” said Abbot Mankind.

  “My agent?”

  “Of course. Master Tulgan. We agreed a weekly fee of a thousand sovereigns, a lump sum of a million at the halfway stage and a further million on completion.”

  Maximilian felt dizzy and sick. He had never heard of such a huge sum of money, let alone seen it. He knew Tulgan would take a sizeable cut of it, but it was still more wealth than a man could ever hope to spend, even a man who enjoyed wine and murka as much as he did.

  He turned to look back into the Abbot's chamber. Rollo was still sitting at the desk. The volume he was reading was massive, but his vast bulk made it look like a small notebook. Rollo looked up from the book and Maximilian remembered he had no choice anyway. Without Rollo's protection he was a dead man. The choice between that and being rich and famous, and alive, was no choice at all.

  5.

  Pain, followed by light.

  General Dusek was quite used to pain: he had spent much of his hard and thankless life administering and enduring it, quite often at the same time. But he had not known light for many years, ever since they took his eyes.

  The light rapidly grew more intense, a burning white glow that seemed to scour the inside of his skull. Dusek screamed and held up his hands to ward it off, but there was no escape.

  “Gods, the old fool is going to have a seizure at this rate,” he heard a man’s voice say.

  “Pour some of that cordial into him,” said another. “It’s powerful stuff, and should calm him. Failing that, we could always smother him with a pillow.”

  The men laughed—nasty, mean-spirited laughter—and Dusek felt a hand grab the back of his head.

  His warrior’s instincts took over. Unable to see his assailant, he seized the offending wrist in both hands and gave a savage twist.

  The hand fell away from his neck. “The bastard’s crippled me!
” one of the men howled. “My hand! He almost tore it off!”

  “Pipe down,” said the other, more wary this time. “It’s dislocated, that’s all. We should have known better than to try and tackle him by ourselves. Let’s go and fetch the priest.”

  Their feet padded away across smooth stone, accompanied by the whines of the man with the injured wrist. Dusek felt better for hurting him, and the light in his head started to ebb somewhat.

  The light gradually acquired a more definite form. Thin cracks started to appear in it, forming a regular pattern until Dusek realised he was staring at bricks covered in white plaster.

  No. It wasn’t possible. He could see nothing except in dreams. Was he dreaming now? It all felt real: the sharp crack of the man's wrist under his thumbs had felt as real as it was satisfying.

  He moved his head to the left. The plastered wall remained visible, and was joined by a small wooden bench. On the bench lay a roll of bandages, a pair of scissors, and a small brown bottle containing some cloudy liquid.

  Dusek groaned and laid his head back on the hard pillow. His mind was full of fog, but he strained to marshal his thoughts into a semblance of order.

  He could only be in the Sanatorium, Hardway’s public hospital, founded and run by the priests of the House of the Celestial Sphere, situated near their temple. Dusek had been here before, when an ague he contracted last winter overcame even his stubborn pride and forced him to seek medicine. The priests were kind, and infinitely charitable, and refused shelter and aid to no one, so long as they were in genuine need of it.

  He could hear voices echoing in the corridor outside. The orderlies were coming back, no doubt with a priest in tow. Despite the kindness of the priest at the House of the Celestial Sphere, Dusek distrusted and secretly feared priests. Almost all holy men, in his experience, were hypocrites, hiding their lust for power under a mask of sanctimony.