Faith of the Fallen tsot-6

by Terry Goodkind

  “Neither will I.”

  Victor gestured angrily at the model. “That is what you are to carve. How can you even think of that ugliness visiting my pure marble?”

  “I can’t.”

  Richard set the plaster model on the floor. He picked up a large hammer, its handle leaning against the wall, and with a mighty blow shattered the abomination into a thousand pieces. He stood as the white dust slowly billowed over the threshold, out the door, and down the hill toward the Retreat like some ghost of evil returning to the underworld.

  “Victor, sell me your stone. Let me liberate the beauty inside.”

  Victor squinted his distrust. “The stone has a flaw. It can’t be carved.”

  “I’ve thought about it. I have a way. I know I can do it.”

  Victor put his hand to his stone, almost as if he were comforting a loved one in distress.

  “Victor, you know me. Have I ever done anything to betray you? To harm you?”

  His voice came softly. “No, Richard, you have not.”

  “Victor, I need this stone. It is the best piece of marble—the way it can take in light and send it back. It has grain that can hold detail. I need the best for this statue. I swear, Victor, if you trust me with it, I will be true to your vision. I won’t betray your love of this stone, I swear.”

  The blacksmith gently ran his beefy, callused hand up the side of the white marble that towered to nearly twice his height.

  “What if you were to refuse to carve them their statue?”

  “Neal said that then they will take me back to the prison until they get a confession out of me, or until I die from the questioning. I will be buried in the sky in return for nothing.”

  “And if you do as you want, instead”—Victor gestured to the fragments of the model—“and don’t carve them what they want?”

  “Maybe I would like to see beauty again before I die.”

  “Bah. What would you carve? What would you see before you die? What could be worth your life?”

  “Man’s nobility—the most sublime form of beauty.”

  The man’s hand paused on the stone, his eyes searching Richard’s, but he said nothing.

  “Victor, I need you to help me. I’m not asking you to give me anything. I’m willing to pay your price. Name it.”

  Victor returned his loving gaze to his stone.

  “Ten gold marks,” he said with bold confidence, knowing Richard had no money.

  Richard reached into his pocket and then counted out ten gold marks. He held the fortune out to Victor. The blacksmith frowned.

  “Where did you get such money?”

  “I worked and I saved it. I earned it helping the Order build their palace. Remember?”

  “But they took all your money. Nicci told them how much you had, and they took it all.”

  Richard cocked his head. “You didn’t think I’d be foolish enough to put all my money in one place, did you? I have gold stashed all over. If this isn’t enough, I will pay you whatever you ask.”

  Richard knew that the stone was valuable, although not worth ten gold marks, but it was to Victor, so Richard would not argue the price. He would pay whatever the man asked.

  “I can’t take your money, Richard.” He waved a hand in resignation. “I don’t know how to carve. It was but a dream. As long as I never carved it, I could dream of the beauty in the stone. This is from my homeland, where once there was freedom.” His fingers blindly found the wall of marble. “This is noble stone. I would like to see nobility in this Cavatura marble. You may have the stone, my friend.”

  “No, Victor. I don’t want to take your dream. I want to, in a way, fulfill it. I cannot accept it as a gift. I want to buy it.”

  “But, why?”

  “Because I will have to give it to the Order. I don’t want you giving this to the Order; I will have to do that. More than that, though, they will no doubt want it destroyed. It must be mine when they do that. I want it to be paid for.”

  Victor held out his hand. “Ten marks, then.”

  Richard counted out the ten gold marks and then closed the man’s big fingers around them.

  “Thank you, Victor,” Richard whispered.

  Victor grinned. “Where do you wish me to deliver it?”

  Richard held out another gold mark. “May I rent this room? I would like to carve it here. From here, when I’m done, it can be sledged down to the entrance plaza.”

  Victor shrugged. “Done.”

  Richard handed over a twelfth gold mark. “And I want you to make me the tools with which I will carve this stone—the finest tools you have ever made. The kind of tools used to carve beauty in your homeland. This marble demands the best. Make the tools out of the best steel.”

  “Points, toothed chisels, and chisels for fine work—I can make them for you. There are hammers aplenty about you may use.”

  “I also need rasps, in a variety of shapes. And files, too. Straight, curved—a wide selection—the finest smoothing files. I need you to get me pumice stones, the fine white close-grained pumice-ground to the same shapes to match the rasps and files, and a good supply of powdered pumice, too.”

  Victor’s eyes had gone wide. The blacksmith had come from a place where they had once done such carving. He knew full well what it was Richard meant to do.

  “You intend to do flesh in stone?”

  “I do.”

  “You know how?”

  Richard knew from statues he had seen in D’Hara and in Aydindril, and from what some of the other carvers told him, and from his own tests in his work for the Order’s palace, that if carved properly, then smoothed and polished to a high luster, quality marble could take in the light and give it back in a way that seemed to liberate the stone from its hardness, softening it, so that it assumed the look of flesh. If done properly, the marble could seem to almost come alive.

  “I’ve seen it done before, Victor. I’ve carved before. I’ve learned how to do it. I’ve thought about it for months. Ever since I started carving for them, this purpose has kept my mind alive. I’ve used my work for the Order to practice what I’ve seen, what I’ve learned, and what I’ve thought of on my own. Even before, when they questioned me . . . I thought about this stone, about the statue I know is in it, to keep my mind from what they did to me.”

  “You mean it helped you to endure their torture?”

  Richard nodded. “I can do it, Victor.” He lifted a fist in firm conviction. “Flesh in stone. I only need the proper tools.”

  Victor rattled the gold in his fist. “Done. I can make the proper tools for what you want to do. This is what I know. I don’t know how to carve, but this will be my part—what I can do to bring the beauty out.”

  Richard clasped forearms with Victor to seal their agreement.

  “I have one thing I would ask you—as a favor.”

  Victor laughed his deep belly laugh. “I must feed you lardo so you may have the strength to carve this noble stone?”

  Richard smiled. “I wouldn’t ever turn down lardo.”

  “What is it then?” Victor asked. “What is the favor?”

  Richard’s fingers tenderly touched the stone. His stone.

  “No one is to see it until it is done. That includes you. I would like to have a canvas tarp, so I can cover it. I would ask that you not look at it until it is done.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need it to be mine alone while I carve it. I need solitude with it as I shape it. When I’m finished, then the world can have it, but when I work on it, it is to be my vision and mine alone. I wish no one to see it before it is finished.

  “But most of all, I don’t want you to see it because if anything goes wrong, I don’t want you involved in this. I don’t want you to know what I do. If you don’t see it, you can’t be buried in the sky for not telling them.”

  Victor shrugged. “If that is your wish, then it shall be so. I will tell the men that the back room is rented, and it is off-limi
ts. I will put a lock on the inner door. I will put a chain on the outer double doors, here, and give you the key.”

  “Thank you. You don’t know what that means to me.”

  “When do you need the chisels?”

  “I need the heavy point to rough it out, first. Can you have it done by tonight? I need to get started. There isn’t much time.”

  Victor dismissed Richard’s concern with a flourish of his hand. “The heavy point is easy. I can make that in short order. It will be done when you come from your work down there—your work with the ugliness. Long before you need the other chisels, they will be ready for you to carve beauty.”

  “Thank you, Victor.”

  “What is this ‘thank you’ talk? This is business. You have paid me in advance—value for value between honest men. I can’t tell you how good it is to have a customer other than the Order.”

  Victor scratched his head and turned more serious. “Richard, they will want to see your work, won’t they? They will want to see how you are doing on their statue.”

  “I don’t think so. They trust my work. They gave me the model they want scaled up. They have already approved it. They’ve told me my life depends on this. Neal delighted in telling me how he ordered those other carvers tortured and put to death. He wanted to frighten me. I doubt they will give it a second thought.”

  “But what if a Brother does come, wanting to see it?”

  “Then I will have to bend an iron bar around his neck and let him pickle in the brine barrel.”

  Chapter 60

  Richard touched the length of the point chisel to his forehead, as he had so often touched the Sword of Truth there in much the same way. This was no less a battle. This was life and death.

  “Blade, be true this day,” he whispered.

  The chisel had eight sides, so as to provide grip in a sweaty hand.

  Victor had given it a proper heavy blunt point. He had also put his initials—V C—in small letters on one of the facets, proclaiming the pride of its maker.

  Such a heavy chisel would shatter stone and remove a great excess material in short order. It was a weapon that would do a lot of damage, fracturing the structure of the marble down the width of three fingers. A point used carelessly on unnoticed flaws could shatter the entire piece.

  Finer points would cause shallower fractures, but remove less material.

  Even with the finest point punches, Richard knew that he could only approach to within the last half finger of the final layer. The network of spidery cracks left by a point were fractures in the crystalline structure of the marble itself. So damaged, the stone lost its translucence and its ability to take a high polish.

  To do flesh in stone, the final layers had to be approached with care, and be left undamaged by any tool.

  After the heavy point removed much of the waste, then finer-point chisels would allow Richard to get closer, refining the shape. Once he was within as close as a half finger of the final layer, he would turn to the clawed chisels, simply chisels with notches in their edge, to shear away the stone without fracturing the underlying structure of the marble. The coarse claws took off the most stone, leaving rough gouges. He would use chisels with a series of finer and finer teeth to refine the work. Finally, he would use smooth-bladed chisels, some only half as wide as his little finger.

  Down at the site, where he carved scenes for the frieze, that was as far as the carvers went. It left an ugly surface, ungainly and coarse, rendering flesh as wooden, leaving no definition or refinement to muscle and bone. It robbed the people in the carvings of their humanity.

  On this statue, Richard would really only begin where the carvings for the Order ended. He would use rasps to define bone, muscle, even veins in the arms. Fine files would remove the marks left by the rasps and refine the most subtle contours. The pumice stones would remove the filing marks, leaving the surface ready to polish with pumice paste held in leather, cloth, and finally straw.

  If he did it right, he would have his vision in stone. Flesh in stone.

  Nobility.

  Holding the heavy point chisel to his palm with his thumb, Richard put his hand to the stone, feeling its cool surface. He knew what was inside—inside not only the stone, but inside himself.

  There were no doubts, only the heart-pounding passion of expectation.

  As he so often did, Richard thought of Kahlan. It had been nearly a year since he had looked into her green eyes, touched her cheek, held her in his arms. She would have long ago left the safety of their home for dangers he could vividly imagine. For a moment, he was overwhelmed with the weight of despair, choked by the sadness of how much he missed her, humbled at how much he loved her. Now he knew he must dismiss her from his mind so that he could devote himself entirely to the task he had to do.

  As he so often did, Richard said his silent good-night to Kahlan.

  Then he set the point at ninety degrees to the face of the stone, and took a powerful swing with the steel club. Stone chips exploded away.

  His breaths came deeper and faster. It was begun.

  With great violence, Richard attacked the stone.

  By the light of lamps Victor left for him after the work day was done, Richard lost himself in the work, raining down blow upon blow. Sharp stone chips rattled off the wooden walls, and stung when they hit his arms or chest. With a clear vision of what he wanted to do, he broke away the waste stone.

  His ears rang with the sound of steel on steel and steel on stone. It was music. Jagged chips and chunks fell away. They were the fallen enemy.

  The air boiled with the white dust of battle.

  Richard knew precisely what we wanted to accomplish. He knew what needed to be done, and how to do it. He was filled with a clarity of purpose, a course to follow. Now that it had begun, he was lost in the work.

  Dust billowed up around him until his dark clothes were white, as if the stone were absorbing him, as he was transforming with it, until they were one. Sharp shards nicked him as they shot away. His bare arms, white as the marble itself, were soon streaked here and there with blood from the battle.

  From time to time, he opened the doors to shovel out the ankle-deep scree. The white scrap avalanched down the hill, tinkling with a sound like a thousand tiny bells. The white dust covering him was cut through with dark rivulets of sweat, and red scratches. The cool air felt refreshing against his sweat-soaked skin. But then he once again shut out the night, shut out the world to be alone.

  For the first time in nearly a year, Richard felt free. In this, he was in complete control. No one watched him. No one told him what he must do.

  This work was his singular purpose, in which he strove for perfection.

  There were no chains, no limitations, no desires of others to which he must bow. In this struggle to accomplish his best, he was utterly free.

  What he intended would stand in unyielding opposition to everything the Order represented. He intended to show them life.

  Richard knew that when the Brothers saw the statue, they would sentence him to death.

  Stone chips burst forth with each blow, taking him closer to his goal.

  He had to stand on a work stool to reach the top of the marble, moving it around the monolith to work all sides, narrowing it down to what would be.

  Richard swung the steel club with the fury of battle. His chisel hand stung with the ringing blows. As violent as the attack was, though, it was controlled. A trimming hammer, called a pitcher, could be used for such rough work. It removed waste with greater speed than a heavy point to shape the block, but it was used with a full swing, and Richard feared, because of the flaw, to unleash that much power against the stone. In the beginning, the block had strength in its sheer mass, but even so, he considered such a trimming hammer too dangerous for this particular stone.

  Richard would have Victor make him a set of drill bits for a bow drill.

  With a bow’s cord run around the shaft of the drill, it could be twisted and
driven through the marble. Richard had thought long and hard about the problem of the flaw. He had resolved to cut out most of it. First, to stop any further cracks from running through more of the stone, he would drill holes through the crack to relieve the stress. With another series of closely spaced holes, he would weaken the stone in a waste area around the flaw and simply remove most of it.

  There would be two figures: a man, and a woman. When finished, the space between them would be where Richard had removed the worst of the flaw.

  With the weakest stone removed, the sound stone that remained would be strong enough to take the stress of the work. Since the defect started at the base, he couldn’t eliminate it all, but he could reduce the problem it presented to a manageable level. That was the secret to this piece of stone: eliminating its weakness, then working in its strength.

  Richard considered it a fortunate flaw, first of all because it had reduced the value of the stone, enabling Victor to purchase it in the first place. To Richard’s mind, though, the flaw had been valuable because it had caused him to think about the stone, and how to carve it. That thought had brought him to his design. Without the flaw, he might not have come to the same design.

  As he worked, he was filled with the energy of the fight, driven onward by the heat of the attack. Stone stood between him and what he wanted to carve, and he craved to eliminate that excess so he could get to the essence of the figures. A huge corner of waste broke loose, slipping away, slowly at first, then crashing down. Chips and shards rained down as he worked, burying the fallen foe.

  Several more times he had to open the doors and shovel out the scrap.

  It was invigorating to see what was once an irregular shaped block, becoming a rough shape. The figures were still completely encased, their arms far from being free, their legs not separate, yet, but they were beginning to emerge. He would have to be careful, drilling holes in the open areas to prevent breaking off the arms.

  Richard was surprised to see light streaming through the window overhead. He had worked the entire night without realizing it.