Richard went back to chiseling a thick, unbending limb. At least, now, his own limbs worked again. It had been a while, but he was healed. This, though, seemed no less a torture.
People gathered every day to view the low relief carvings already up on the walls. Some people knelt on the cobblestone walks before the scenes, praying, till their knees bled. Some brought rags to put beneath their knees as they prayed. Many simply stared with forsaken looks at the nature of mankind depicted in stone.
Richard could see in the faces of many who came that they had come with some kind of vague, undefinable hope, hungering for some essential answer to a question they could not formulate. The emptiness in their eyes as they left was heartbreaking. They were people being drained of life no less than those bled to death in the dungeons of the Order.
Some of those people gathered to watch the carvers work. In the two months Richard had worked at carving for the Retreat, the crowds grew larger to watch him than any of the other men. The people sometimes wept at what they saw emerge from beneath Richard’s chisels.
In the two months Richard had worked at carving for the Retreat, he had come to understand the nuance of carving in stone. What he carved was dispiriting, but the act of carving itself helped to make up for it. Richard reveled in the technical aspects of applying steel to stone, guided by intent.
As much as he hated the things he had to carve, he came to love working stone with a chisel. The marble seemed almost alive under his touch. He would often carve some tiny part with reverence for the subject—a finger gracefully lifted, a eye with knowing vision, a chest holding a heart of reason.
After he accomplished such grace, he would deface it to suit the Order. More often than not, that was when people wept.
Richard invented impossibly stiff, stilted, contorted people bent under the weight of guilt and shame. If this was the way to preserve Kahlan’s life, then he would make everyone who saw the carvings weep their hearts out. In a way, they were doing the weeping for him, suffering over the carvings for him, being destroyed by what they saw, for him.
In this way, he was able to endure the torture.
When the shadows lengthened to dusk and the day was finished, the carvers started putting away their tools into simple wooden boxes before going home for the night. They all would return not long after first light. The master builder provided them with orders for areas and shapes to be covered with carving so they could shape the stones to the correct size. Brother Narev’s disciples came by to provide the details of the stories to be told in stone.
The stone Richard carved was for the grand entrance to the Retreat. Marble steps swept around in a half circle, leading up to the huge, round plaza. A colonnade of pillars in a half circle, mirroring the steps, surrounded the back half of the plaza. Richard’s job was carving the sweep of scenes that were placed above those columns.
It was to be an entrance which set the tone for the entire palace. In the center of the plaza Brother Neal had told Richard that Brother Narev’s vision was that there would be the statue dominating the entrance to the palace, and it was to be a work which would strike down any observer with an overpowering sense of their own guilt and shame at mankind’s evil nature. The statue, in its horror, was a call to selfless sacrifice, and was to be built into the form of a sundial, showing people cowering under the Light of their Creator.
Neal had described it with such delight that the image it created in Richard’s mind sickened him.
Richard was the last to leave the site. As he often did, he headed up the hill, along the winding road, to the workshops. Victor was in his shop, banking his coals for the night. With autumn upon them, the days weren’t insufferably hot, so the forge wasn’t the miserable place it had been in high summer. Winter this far south in the Old World was never harsh, but the forge in winter would be a good place to banish the chill that would come on cold rainy days.
“Richard! So good to see you.” The blacksmith knew why Richard was there. “Go on back. Maybe I will come sit with you when I’m finished, here?”
Richard gave his friend a smile and said, “I’d like that.”
Richard opened the double doors at the rear, letting the last of the light fill the room where stood the marble. He came often to see the monolith. Sometimes, after a day of carving ugliness, he had to come and look at the stone and imagine the beauty inside. That balance sometimes seemed as if it was all that sustained him.
Richard’s fingers, dusty from his work carving stone, reached out to feel the white Cavatura marble. It was slightly different from the stone he carved down at the site. He had the experience, now, to discern the subtle difference. The grain was finer in Victor’s stone, harder; it would better take and hold detail.
Under Richard’s fingers, the stone was as cool as moonlight, and just as chaste.
When he looked up, Victor was standing nearby, smiling wistfully, watching Richard and the stone.
“After carving such ugliness, it is good to look upon the beauty of my statue?”
Richard chuckled in answer.
Victor strode across the room, gesturing. “Come, sit with me and have some lardo.”
In the failing light, they sat on the threshold, eating thin slices of the heavy delicacy, savoring the cool air coming up the hill.
“You know, you don’t need to come here to look at my beautiful statue,” Victor said. “You have a beautiful wife to look at.”
Richard didn’t say anything.
“I never recalled you mentioning your wife. I never knew about her, until she came to me that day. For some reason, I always believed you had a good woman….”
Victor frowned off a
t the shell of the Retreat. “Why didn’t you ever mention her?”
Richard shrugged.
“I hope you don’t think me a terrible person, Richard, but she just doesn’t fit my idea of the woman I thought would be with you.”
“I don’t think you’re a terrible person, Victor. Everybody should have the right to think for themselves.”
“Do you mind if I ask you about her?”
Richard sighed. “Victor, I’m tired. I’d really rather not talk about my wife. Besides, there’s nothing to say. She’s my wife. What is, is.”
Victor grunted as he chewed a big bite of red onion. After he swallowed, he waved the half of onion he had left. “It’s not good for a man to carve such things in the day, and then at night have to go home to—What am I saying! What has gotten into me? Forgive me, Richard. Nicci is a beautiful woman.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“And she cares for you.”
Richard didn’t say anything.
“Ishaq and I tried to get you out of that place by bargaining for you with your gold. It wasn’t enough. The man was a pompous official. Nicci knew how to wiggle-worm him. She used her words to turn the key on your prison door. Without Nicci, you would be buried in the sky.”
“So, she told them that I could carve—to save my life.”
“That’s right. It is she who got you the job of carver.”
Victor waited for more, and finally sighed in resignation when it wasn’t forthcoming.
“How are those chisels I sent down?”
“Good. They work well. I could use a clawed chisel with finer teeth, though.”
Victor handed Richard another small slice of lardo. “You will have it.”
“What about the steel?”
Victor waved his onion. “Not to worry. Ishaq is doing well in your place. Not as good as you, but he is doing well. He gets me what I need. Everyone likes Ishaq, and is happy he decided to fill in the need. The Order is so desperate for progress to continue that they turn a blind eye to his work. Faval the charcoal maker asked about you. He likes Ishaq, but misses you.”