Men were working all over the hillside at a variety of shops. Tradesmen from leather workers to goldsmiths contributed to a constant din of saws, grinding, and hammering. The ceaseless uproar of the labor was nerve-racking. While many of the men coming and going gave Nicci a good look-see, her glare warned them off.
Once she saw Richard disappear beyond the blacksmith’s shop, she started down the road. She had told him she would wait until he was done before she came to see it. She had kept her word.
Still, she felt uneasy. She didn’t know why, but she felt almost as if she would be invading a sacred site. Ric
hard hadn’t invited her to see his statue. He had asked her to wait until it was done. Since it was done, she would wait no longer.
Nicci didn’t want to see it up on the plaza of the palace along with everyone else. She wanted to be alone with it. She didn’t care about the Order and their interest in the statue. She didn’t want to be standing with everyone else, with people who would not recognize it as something of significance. This was personal to her, and she wanted to see it in private.
She reached the door without anyone accosting her, or even paying her any mind. She looked around in the bright, hazy midafternoon light, but saw only men attending to their work. She opened the door and slipped inside.
The room was dark, its walls black, but the statue inside was well lit by light coming down from a window in the high roof. Nicci didn’t look directly at the statue, but kept her eyes to the floor as she hurried around the huge stone so she could see it for the first time from the front.
Once in place, her pulse pounding, she turned.
Nicci’s gaze rose up the legs, the robes, the arms, the bodies of the two people, up to their faces. She felt as if a giant fist squeezed her heart to a stop.
This was what was in Richard’s eyes, brought into existence in glowing white marble. To see it fully realized was like being struck by lightning.
In that instant, her entire life, everything that had ever happened to her, everything she had ever seen, heard, or done, seemed to come together in one flash of emotional violence. Nicci cried out in pain at the beauty of it, and more so at the beauty of what it represented.
Her eyes fell on the name carved in the stone base.
LIFE
Nicci collapsed to the floor in tears, in abject shame, in horror, in revulsion, in sudden blinding comprehension.
…In pure joy.
Chapter 65
After Richard had returned with the fine white linen he had bought to cover the statue until the ceremony the following day, he helped Ishaq and a number of the men he knew from down at the site begin the slow process of sledging the heavy stone down to the plaza. Fortunately, it hadn’t rained in a while, and the ground was firm.
Ishaq, knowing such business well, had brought along greased wooden runners, which were placed before the hefty wooden rails supporting the wooden platform under the statue so that the teams of horses could more easily pull the heavy load across the ground. After the statue was dragged onto the second set of greased runners, the men brought the ones left behind to the front, leapfrogging the statue as it was moved along.
The hillside was white with the scree of waste stone, so the statue weighed considerably less than it once had. Victor had originally hired special stone-hauling wagons to move the block. They couldn’t use them now because the finished piece couldn’t be turned on its side or handled in such a rough manner.
Ishaq waved his red hat in his fist, yelling orders, warnings, and prayers as they had moved along. Richard knew that his statue could be in no better hands. The men who helped seemed to pick up Ishaq’s nervous tension. They sensed this was something important, and, though the work was difficult, they seemed more pleased to be a part of it than they were about their everyday labor at the site. It took until late afternoon to move the statue the distance from the shop to the foot of the steps leading up to the plaza.
Men shoveled dirt at the bottom of the stairs and packed it tight in order to ease the transition in grade. A team of ten horses was taken around the other side of the columns. Long lengths of rope were passed through the vacant doorways and windows, and then secured around the stone base in order to draw the sledge up the steps. The extra runners were laid on the leading edge of the dirt ramp, later to be moved up onto the steps as the statue progressed upward. Near to two hundred men swooped in at Ishaq’s frantic screaming to help pull on the ropes along with the horses. Inch by inch, the statue ascended the steps.
Richard could hardly stand to watch. If anything went wrong, all his work would tumble back and shatter. The flaw would destroy it all. He smiled to himself, realizing how silly it was to worry that the evidence of his crime against the Order might be ruined.
When the stone had finally arrived safely up on the plaza, sand was packed underneath the platform to support its weight. With the sand holding the wooden platform secure, the heavy runners were removed. With the runners off, the platform was slid off its hill of sand. From there, it was a relatively simple task to coax the statue off the wooden base and onto the plaza itself. At last, marble sat on marble. Gangs of men with ropes around the stone base tugged the freed statue into its final resting place at the center point of the plaza.
Ishaq stood beside Richard when it was over, mopping his brow with his red hat. The entire statue and sundial was shrouded in its white linen cover, with line securing it, so Ishaq couldn’t see what it was. Still, he sensed something of importance stood before him.
“When?” was all Ishaq asked.
Richard knew what he meant. “I guess I’m not sure. Brother Narev is to dedicate the palace to the Creator tomorrow, before all the officials who have traveled to see how the money they’ve looted from the people is being spent. I guess that tomorrow the officials, along with everyone who comes to the ceremony, are to see the statue along with the rest of the palace. It’s just another display of the Order’s view of man’s place—I don’t think they intend any unveiling or anything like that.”
From what Richard had learned, the ceremony was a matter of great concern to the brothers. The drain of the expense of the palace on top of the expense of the war required justification to the people who were paying that price not only with their sweat, but with their blood. The Fellowship of Order ruled, through the Imperial Order, with the necessary collaboration of brutes to whom they gave moral sanction. While the brutes had easily crushed the bodies of those who had revolted, the brothers wanted to crush the ideas such revolt represented, before they could spread, because it was such ideas that were the greatest threat to them.
To that end, it was also important to inspire the officials: the minions of the Order’s tyranny. Richard imagined that with scenes of man’s depravity carved into thousands of feet of stone wall, the flock of far-flung officials of the Order were going to be given guided tours, by the brothers, of all mankind’s failings, and thus coerced into their duty of turning over money they had already confiscated at the point of a blade—a blade they wielded under the moral sanction of the brothers through the Fellowship of Order. Such petty officials were allowed a slice for their service to the Order, but the brothers no doubt wanted to forcefully dissuade them from any grander notions.
Under the direction of the brothers, the collective of the Order, like any autocratic ruler, ultimately ruled only by the acquiesce of the people, who were controlled either by moral intimidation, or by physical threat, or by both. Tyranny required constant tending, lest the illusion of righteous authority evaporate in the light of its grim toll, and the brutes be overpowered by the people who greatly outnumbered them.
That was why Richard had known he couldn’t lead: he could not bludgeon people into understanding that bludgeoning was wrong because their lives were of great value, whereas the Order could have them bludgeoned into obedience by first making people believe that their lives were of no value. Free people were not ruled. Freedom had first to be valued before its existence could be demanded.
“From what I’m told, it is to be a big event,” Ishaq said. “People from all over are coming to the dedication of the emperor’s palace. The city is full of people from far and near.”
Richard looked around at the site as the workers trudged back to their regular jobs.
“I’m surprised none of the officials have come to have a look at the palace in advance.”
Ishaq waved his hat dismissively. “They are all at the gathering of the Fellowship of Order. In the center of Altur’Rang. Big doings. Food, drink, speeches by the brothers. You know how the Order likes meetings. Very
boring, I imagine. From what I know of such events, the officials will be kept busy hearing of the needs of the Order and their duty to get people to sacrifice to that need. The brothers will keep them all under tight rein.”
That meant the brothers would all be busy—too busy to come out to the site for the trivial task of checking a statue one of their slaves had carved. In the scheme of things, Richard’s statue was insignificant. It was only the starting point of the stately tour of the miles of walls displaying extensive scenes depicting the grand cause of the Order, as dictated by the brothers, under Narev’s leadership.
If the officials and the brothers were too busy to come today, the people of the city were not. Most would probably attend the events of the next day, but they wanted to get a sense of the place for themselves, first, without the boring speeches that would drag out the ceremony. Richard watched many of those people go from one scene on the walls to another, their faces stricken with the desolate emotion of what they were seeing.
Guards kept people at a respectful distance, and out of the labyrinth of rooms and hallways inside, now enclosed by upper floors, and in some places, roofs. Now that the statue was set in place, those guards moved in to clear the plaza entrance.
Richard had only gotten a few hours of sleep in the last week. Now that the statue was in place, exhaustion overwhelmed him. With all the work on top of so little sleep, and little to eat, he was almost ready to drop where he stood.
Victor appeared out of the long shadows. Some workers were leaving, but others would still be at it for several more hours. Richard hadn’t even realized that it had taken the better part of the day to move the statue. With the heat of the work over, his sweat-soaked shirt felt like ice against his flesh.
“Here,” Victor said, handing Richard a slice of lardo. “Eat. In celebration that you are done.”
Richard thanked his friend before devouring the lardo. His head was pounding. He had done all he could do to show people what they needed to see. With the work done, though, Richard felt suddenly lost. He realized only then how much he hated having finished, to be without the noble work. It had been his reason to go on.