“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-limits. 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.
He stood back and appraised the statue that was now more or less roughly a cone shape. Now, there were only lumps where the arms would extend out from the bodies. He wanted the arms to be free, the bodies to convey grace and movement. Life. What he carved for the Order was never free, always tightly bound to the stone, forever stiff, unable to move, like cadavers.
Half of what had been there the night before was now gone. Richard ached to stay and work on, but he knew he couldn’t. From the corner, he excavated the canvas tarp Victor had left for him, and flung it over the statue.
When he threw open the door, the white dust billowed out. Victor was sitting among the rubble of his stone monolith.
The blacksmith blinked. “Richard, you have been here the whole night!”
“I guess I have.”
He gestured as a grin split his face. “You look like a good spirit. How goes the battle with the stone?”
Richard could think of nothing to say. He could only beam with the joy of it.
Victor laughed his belly laugh. “Your face says it all. You must be tired and hungry. Come, sit and rest—have some lardo.”
Nicci heard Kamil and Nabbi shout a greeting as Richard came down the street, and then their footsteps as they ran down the front stairs. She glanced out the front window and, in the failing light of dusk, saw them meet up with Richard as he came down the street. She, too, was happy to see him coming home this early.
Nicci had seen precious little of Richard in the weeks since he took on the duty of carving the statue for Brother Narev. She couldn’t imagine how Richard could endure carving a statue she knew had to be agony for him—not so much because of its size, but because of its nature.
If anything, though, Richard seemed invigorated. Often, after working all day carving the moral lessons for the façade of the palace, he would then work late into the night on the grand statue for the entrance plaza. As tired as he had to be when he came home, he would sometimes pace. There were nights when he would only sleep for a couple of hours, rise, and go to work on the statue for hours before his workday at the site began. Several times he had worked the entire night.
Richard seemed driven. Nicci didn’t know how he could do it. He sometimes came home to eat and to take a nap for an hour, and then he would go back. She would urge him to stay and sleep, but he would say that the penance had to be paid or they would put him back in prison. Nicci feared that possibility, so she didn’t insist that he stay home to sleep. Losing sleep was preferable to him losing his life.
He had always been muscular and strong, but his muscles had become even more lean and defined since he came to the Old World. All that labor of loading iron and now moving rock and swinging a hammer had built him up even more. When he went out back to the washtubs and removed his shirt to rinse off the stone dust, the sight of him made her knees weak.
Nicci heard footsteps passing down the hallway, and the excited voices of Kamil and Nabbi asking
questions. She couldn’t understand Richard’s words, but she easily recognized the timbre of his voice calmly giving the two the answers to their questions.
As tired as he was, as much as he was away at his work, he still took time to talk to Kamil and Nabbi, and to the people of the building. He was no doubt now on his way out back to give pointers to the two young men on their carving. During the day, they worked around the building, cleaning and caring for the place. They turned over the dirt in the garden, mixing in compost when it was ready. The women appreciated having the heavy spade work done for them. The two washed, painted, and repaired, hoping Richard would approve and then show them how to do new things. Kamil and Nabbi always offered to help Nicci with anything she might need—she was, after all, Richard’s wife.
Richard came in the door as Nicci stood at the table cutting up carrots and onions into a pot. He slumped down into the chair across the table. He looked spent from his day of work—after having been up hours earlier working on the statue.
“I came home to get something to eat. I have to go back and work on the statue.”
“This is for tomorrow’s stew. I have some millet cooked.”
“Is there anything more in it?”
She shook her head. “I only had enough money for the millet today.”
He nodded without complaint.
Despite how exhausted he looked, there was some remarkable quality in his eyes, some inner passion, that made her pulse race faster. Whatever it was that she had seen in him from the first moment seemed to have only gotten stronger since that night she had almost put the knife through his heart.
“Tomorrow, we’ll have this stew.” she said. His gray eyes were staring off into his private visions. “From the garden.”
She retrieved the cook pot after setting a wooden bowl on the table before him and spooned millet into his bowl until it was full. There was little left, but he needed it more than she. She had spent the morning waiting in line for the millet, and then had spent the afternoon picking all the worms out of it. Some of the women just cooked it until you couldn’t tell. Nicci didn’t like to feed that to Richard.