Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

“If we leave now, we should be able to escape winter’s grip. We have the map, so we can stay away from the routes the Order’s troops use, and the heaviest population centers. There are good roads, and open country down there. Riding hard, I think that we can make it in a few weeks. A month at most.”

Zedd’s face contorted with concern. “But the Order controls much of the southern Midlands. It’s dangerous country, now.”

“I have a better way.” Cara flashed a sly smile. “We’ll go where I know the country—D’Hara. We will go east from here and cross over the mountains, then go south down through D’Hara—through mostly wide-open country were we can make good time—down through the Azrith Plains, to eventually join the Kern River far to the south. After the river valley clears the mountains, we will cut southeast into the heart of the Old World.”

Zedd nodded his approval of the plan. Kahlan curled her fingers lovingly around the old wizard’s thin arm.

“When will you go to the Keep?”

“Adie and I will leave in the morning. I think it best not to dally here any longer. Today we’ll settle matters of the army with the officers and the Sisters. I think that as soon as the people are out of Aydindril, and when the snow quickly deepens to insure the Order won’t be going anywhere until spring, then our men should begin slipping out of this place to make their way over the mountains to the safety of D’Hara. It will be slow going in winter, but without having to fight as they travel, it won’t be as difficult as it otherwise would be.”

“That would be best,” Kahlan agreed. “It will get our men out of harm’s way for now.”

“They won’t have me to be the magic against magic for them, but they will have Verna and her Sisters. They know enough by now to carry on protecting the army from magic.”

At least for a while. The words hung in the air, unspoken.

“I want to go see Verna before I leave,” Kahlan said. “I think it will be good for her to have other people to worry about. Then I want to see General Meiffert; and then we’d best start riding. We have a long way to go, and I want to be south before the snow hobbles us.”

Kahlan embraced Zedd fiercely one last time.

“When you see him,” Zedd whispered in her ear, “tell the boy I love him dearly, and I miss him something awful.”

Kahlan nodded against his shoulder, and told him a bold lie.

“You’ll see us both again, Zedd. I promise you.”

Kahlan stepped out into the early light of winter’s first breath. Everything was dusted with snow, making it look as if the world were carved from white marble.

Chapter 63

In one long fluid motion, with his fingertips adeptly guiding the far end of the file, Richard glided the steel tool down the fold of cloth held forever crisp in white marble. Concentrating on applying steady pressure to cut a precise, fine layer, he was lost in the work.

The file held hundreds of ridges, row upon row of tiny blades of hardened steel, which did the work of cutting away and shaping the noble stone. These were blades he wielded with the same commitment with which he wielded any blade. He blindly reached back and set the file down on the wooden bench, careful to put it on the wood and not to let it clang against other steel, lest he dull it prematurely. He exchanged the file for another, with even finer teeth, and took out the roughness left by the correction accomplished with the one before.

With fingers as dusty-white as those of a baker laboring with flour, Richard examined the surface of the man’s arm, testing it for flaws. Until polished, the minor flaws and facets were often easier to see with the fingers than the eye. Where he found them, he used a smaller file in one hand, while his other hand followed behind, riding the swell of muscle, feeling the subtle difference in what the tool had done to the stone. He was removing only paper-thin layers of material, now.

It had taken him several months to arrive at this final layer. It was exhilarating to be so close to the flesh. The days had passed, one upon another, in an endless procession of work, carving death in the day down at the site, and life in the night. Carving for the Order was balanced by carving for himself—slavery and freedom in opposition.

Whenever one of the brothers inquired about the statue, Richard was careful to hide his satisfaction with what he was creating. He did it by recalling the model he had been commanded to carve. He always bowed his head respectfully and reported his progress on his penance, assuring them that his work was on schedule and would be done on time to install in the palace plaza for the dedication.

Stressing the word “penance” helped to direct their thoughts to that issue and away from the statue itself. The brothers were invariably much more satisfied with his weariness from his toil at his work of contrition that they were interested in yet another dreary stone carving. There were carvings everywhere; this was but one more manifestation of the irredeemable inadequacy of mankind. Just as no one man in their cosmos was important, no one work mattered. It was the sheer number of carvings which was to be the Order’s overpowering argument for man’s impotence. The carvings were merely background props for the stage upon which the brothers moralized on sacrifice and salvation.

Richard always humbly reported his nights with little food and little sleep as he worked on his penance after his carving work during the day. Selfless sacrifice being the proper cure for wickedness, the brothers went away pleased.

Richard switched to a smaller file, one bent in a decreasing radius curve, and worked the muscle where it narrowed into sinew, showing the tension in the arm which revealed the underlying structure. During the day he observed other men as they worked, in order to study the complex shapes of muscle as it moved with life. At night, he referred to his own arms held up to the lamplight so that he might accurately depict veins and tendons standing proud on the surface. He referred to a small mirror at times. The surface of the skin he carved was a rich landscape stretched over bone and muscle, creased in corners, drawn smooth as it swept over curves.

For the woman’s body, his memory of Kahlan was vivid enough to require little other reference.

He wanted this work to show the capacity for movement, for intent, for accomplishment. The posture of the figures displayed awareness. The expression of the faces, especially the eyes, would show that most sublime human characteristic: thought.

If the statues he had seen in the Old World were a celebration of misery and death, this was a celebration of life.

He wanted this to show the raw power of volition.

The man and woman he carved were his refuge against his despair over his captivity. They embodied freedom of spirit. They embodied reason rising up to triumph.

To his great annoyance, Richard noticed that light was coming in the window above the statue, taking over from the lamps that had burned all night. All night; he had done it again.

It was not the quality of the light, which he actually very much favored, which vexed him, but that it signified the end of his time with his statue; he now had to go carve ugliness down at the site. Fortunately, that work required no thought or careful effort.

As he draw-filed the curve of the man’s shoulder muscle, there was a knock at the door. “Richard?”

It was Victor. Richard sighed; he had to stop.

Richard pulled the red cloth tied around his neck down away from his nose and mouth, where it kept him from breathing all the marble dust. It was a little trick Victor had told him about, used by the marble carvers from his homeland of Cavatura.

“Be right there.”

Richard stepped down off the ledge made by the base, where he had carved out the legs at midcalf. He stretched his back, realizing how much it hurt from hunching over, and from lack of sleep. He retrieved the canvas tarp and shook the dust from it.

Just before he flung the cover over the statue, he got the full view of the figures. The floor, shelves, and tools were covered in a fine layer of marble dust. But against the black walls, the marble stood out in the glory o

f light from above.

Richard threw the tarp over the incomplete figures and then opened the door.

“You look a ghost,” Victor announced with a lopsided grin.

Richard brushed himself off. “I forgot the time.”

“Did you see in the shop last night?”

“The shop? No, what?”

Victor’s grin returned, wider this time. “Priska had the bronze dial delivered yesterday. Ishaq brought it. Come see.”

Around the other side of the blacksmith’s shop, in the stock room, the bronze sat in a number of pieces. It was too big for Priska to cast as one piece, so he had made several that Victor would join and mount. The pedestal for the partial ring that would be the dial plane was massive. Knowing it was for a statue Richard was carving, Priska had done a job to be proud of.

“It’s beautiful,” Richard said.

“Isn’t it, though? I’ve seen him do fine work before, but this time Priska has outdone himself.”

Victor squatted and ran his fingers over the strange symbols filled in with black. “Priska said that at one time, long ago, his home city of Altur’Rang had freedom, but, like so many others, lost it. As a tribute to that time, he cast it with symbols in his native tongue. Brother Neal saw it, and was pleased because he thought it a tribute to the emperor, who is also from Altur’Rang.”