Faith of the Fallen (58 page)

“Out at the site of the project?”

Richard nodded. “I had to deliver iron out there.”

She bent back to her needlework. Richard watched in the light of the linseed-oil lamp sitting beside her as she took a few more stitches in the patch to the knees of a pair of his pants. She finally paused and let her arms, one sheathed in his pant leg, sink to her lap.

“Brother Narev is the high priest of the Fellowship of Order—an ancient sect devoted to doing the Creator’s will in this world. He is the heart and soul of the Order—their moral guide—so to speak. He and his disciples lead the righteous people of the Order in the ways of the everlasting Light of the Creator. He is an advisor to Emperor Jagang.”

Richard was taken aback. He hadn’t expected her to be so versed on the subject. His caution, along with the hair at the back of his neck, lifted.

“What sort of advisor?”

She took another stitch, pulling the long thread through. “Brother Narev was Jagang’s pedagogue—his teacher, advisor, and mentor. Brother Narev put the fire in Jagang’s belly.”

“He’s a wizard, isn’t he.” It was more statement than question.

She looked up from her sewing. He could see in her blue eyes that she was weighing whether or not to tell him, or perhaps how much she wanted to tell him. His steady gaze told her that he was expecting the whole truth.

“In the language of the street, you could describe him as such.”

“What does that mean?”

“Common people, those who understand little about magic, would describe him as a wizard. Strictly speaking, though, he is not a wizard.”

“Then what is he? Strictly speaking.”

“Actually, he is a sorcerer.”

Richard could only stare at her. He had always assumed that a wizard and a sorcerer were the same thing. When he thought about it, he realized that people who knew about magic spoke exclusively of a male with the gift as a wizard. He had never heard any of those people mention a sorcerer.

“You mean he’s like you, like a sorceress, only male?”

The question stymied her for a moment. “I suppose you could think of it that way, but that’s not really right. If you want to compare it, then you would have to say he has more in common with a wizard, since both are male. The concept of sorceress introduces irrelevant issues.”

Richard swiped water from his face. “Please, Nicci, I’ve been up all last night working, and I’m dead on my feet. Don’t go all abstract and complex on me? Just tell me what it means?”

She set her sewing aside and gestured to his pallet for him to sit near her, in the light. Richard pulled his shirt back on. He yawned as he crossed his legs under himself on his pallet.

“Brother Narev is a sorcerer,” she began. “I’m sorry, but the distinction is just not something simply explained. It’s a very complex matter. I will try to make it as clear as I can, but you must understand that I can’t boil it down too much or it will lose any real flavor of the truth.

“Sorcerers are much the same as wizards, but different—in much the way that water and oil are both liquids, you might say. Both pour and can dissolve things, but they don’t mix and they dissolve different things. Neither do the magic of a wizard and a sorcerer mix, nor do they work on the same things.

“Anything he did against a wizard’s gift, or anything a wizard did against his, would not work. While both are the gift, they are different aspects—they don’t mix. The magic of each nullifies the other, making it just sort of…fizzle.”

“You mean like Additive and Subtractive are opposites?”

“No. While on the surface, that would seem a good way to understand it, it’s entirely the wrong way to think of it.” She lifted her hands as if to begin again, but then let them drop back into her lap. “It’s very hard to explain the difference to one such as you who has little understanding of how his own gift works; you have no basis in which to ground anything I could tell you. There are no words which are both accurate and which you would understand; this is beyond your understanding.”

“Well…do you mean that, much like a wolf and a cougar are both predators, they are not the same sort of creature?”

“That’s a little closer to it.”

“How common are these sorcerers?”

“About as common as dream walkers…” she said as she gave him a meaningful look, “or war wizards.”

Even though he couldn’t understand it and she couldn’t explain it, Richard, for some reason, found that bit of news troubling.

“What is it, though, that he does differently?”

Nicci let out a sigh. “I’m no expert, and I’m not entirely sure, but I believe he does the same basic sort of things a wizard would do, but just does them with a sorcerer’s unique quality of magic—liquor and ale both get you drunk, but they are different kinds of drink made from different things.”

“One of those is stronger.”

“Not so with wizards and sorcerers. Do you see why words and these kinds of comparisons are so inadequate? The strength of a wizard and sorcerer’s gift is dependent on the individual, it is not influenced by the fundamental nature of his magic.”

Richard scratched his stubble as he considered her words. In view of the fact that both could do magic, he couldn’t come up with any distinction that seemed of any practical importance.

“Is there anything that he can do that a wizard can’t?” He waited. She didn’t look like she was thinking about his question, but more like she was considering whether she wanted to answer it at all. “Nicci, you told me when you first captured me that you would tell me the truth about things. You said you had no reason to deceive me.”

She watched his eyes, but finally looked away as she pulled her blond hair back from her face. The gesture unexpectedly, painfully, reminded him of Kahlan.

“Perhaps. I believe he may have learned how to replicate the spell that surrounded the Palace of the Prophets. It took wizards, thousands of years ago, with both sides of the gift to create that particular spell. I believe that one of the ways sorcerers are different is that their power is not divisible into its constituent elements, as it is in wizards. So, while his magic works differently, he may have learned enough of how the wizards—who at that time possessed both sides of the gift, as do you—were able to create the spell around the Palace of the Prophets to be able to replicate it in his own fashion.”

“You mean the spell that slowed aging? You think he can cast such a web?”

“Yes. Jagang intimated as much to me. I knew Brother Narev when I was young. He was a grown man then, a visionary, preaching the doctrine of the Order. He spoke pensively about wishing to live long enough to see his vision of the Order come to fruition. When I was taken to live at the palace in Tanimura, I believe that may have given him the idea as he not long after went there, too.

“The Sisters knew nothing of him. They thought him no more than a humble worker. Since his gift is different than that of a wizard, they didn’t detect his ability. I now believe that he went there for the express purpose of studying the spell around the Palace of the Prophets so that he could re-create such a spell for his own benefit.”

“Why didn’t he storm the palace—take it over—and then he could have the spell for his purpose?”

“It’s possible that in the beginning he thought he might one day take over the palace for his cause—in fact, Emperor Jagang had that exact plan—but it’s also possible that he was from the beginning studying the spell because he wanted not simply to re-create it, but to enhance it.”

Richard rubbed his brow, trying to comfort his aching head. “You mean that now maybe he thinks he can create the spell over the Retreat—the emperor’s new palace—like that one at the Palace of the Prophets, but better, so that aging will be slowed even more, so that he and his chosen will live even longer?”

“Yes. Don’t forget, age is relative. To one who lives to a thousand years, living less than one century would seem all too brief. To a person who lives many thousands of years, though, a lifetime that lasts but a mere one millennium would seem fleeting.

“I suspect that Brother Narev has learned to slow aging to such an extent that it would make him the next best thing to immortal. Jagang had planned on capturing the Palace of the Prophets. It might have been that once they secured the palace, Brother Narev intended to augment its spell to suit his purposes.”

“But I spoiled that plan.”

Nicci nodded. “As are all of us who were once at the palace, Brother Narev now grows older just like everyone else. Once away from the spell, it feels like a headlong rush toward the grave. What youth Brother Narev has left, he is no doubt eager to preserve. Remaining relatively young forever has much to be said for it. Remaining old forever would be less attractive. Because you destroyed the Palace of the Prophets, where he could have had ample time to bring his plan to bear, he has been forced to act sooner, rather than later.”

Richard flopped back on his mat. He laid the back of a wrist over his forehead. “He has the blacksmith making a spell-form in iron. The blacksmith has no idea what it is he’s creating. The spell-form is to be covered with gold, eventually.”

“For purity. It’s likely that is merely part of the process. It could even be that the gold-covered spell-form is nothing more than a pattern, from which the true spell-form will be cast in pure gold.”

Richard squinted in thought. “If it is a pattern for casting, that would make it more likely that Narev intends to cast a number of these spell-forms—that they will work together.”

Nicci looked up and frowned. “Yes, that is a possibility.”

“Will making such a thing harm the blacksmith?”

“No. It is propitious conjuring. Disregarding for the moment the purpose for which it is desired, such a spell is meant to be beneficial; it is to slow aging in order to lengthen life.”

“What about Brother Narev’s disciples?”

“Young wizards from the Palace of the Prophets.”

Alarmed, Richard sat up. “I was at the Palace of the Prophets. They will recognize me.”

“No. They were young wizards in training there, but they left to follow Brother Narev before you arrived. If they see you, they will not know you.”

“If they’re wizards, won’t they recognize that I have magic?”

A smile of contempt colored her features. “They are not that talented. They are but bugs to what you are.”

Richard found no comfort in the compliment. “Won’t Brother Narev, or his disciples, recognize you?”

Her face turned serious. “Oh, they would know me.”

“It sounds as if Brother Narev must be strong in his gift. Won’t he be able to recognize that I have the gift? He was looking at me strangely. He asked if he knew me. He sensed something.”

“Why did you think him a wizard?”

Richard picked at the straw stuffing coming out of the pad over his pallet as he considered the question.

“There was nothing that gave it away for a fact, but I strongly suspected it from a lot of little things: the way he carried himself; the way he looked at people; the way he spoke—everything about him. Only after I surmised that Narev was a wizard did I realize that the thing the blacksmith was making for him looked like some sort of spell-form.”

“He would suspect you of being gifted in much the same way. Can you tell the gifted?”

“Yes. I’ve learned to recognize an ageless look in their eyes. I can in some way see the aura of the gift around those in whom it is powerful—you, for instance. At times, the air crackles around you.”

She stared in fascination. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. It must have something do to with you having both sides.”

“You have both sides. Don’t you see it?”

“No, but I acquired the Subtractive side in a different manner.”

She had given her soul to the Keeper of the underworld.

“But you see nothing of the sort in Brother Narev, do you?” When Richard shook his head, she went on with her explanation. “That is because, as I explained, you have different aspects of the gift. Other than with your faculty of reason, you have no wizardly ability to recognize the gift in him; he has no sorcerous ability to recognize the gift in you. Your magic won’t work on one another. Only your faculty of reason betrayed his gift to you.”

Richard realized that, without saying it, she was telling him that if he didn’t want Narev to learn that he had the gift, then he had better be careful around the man.

There were times when he thought he had her game figured out.

There were times, like now, when it seemed his entire perception of her purpose shifted. At times, it almost seemed to him as if she threw her beliefs in his face, not because she believed them, but because she was desperately hoping for a reason not to, hoping he would find her in some lost, dark world and show her the way out. Richard sighed inwardly; he had given her his arguments as to why her beliefs were wrong, but, rather than sway her, it only angered her, at best, or worse, further entrenched her in her convictions.

As tired as he was, he lay in his bed, his eyes but narrow slits, watching Nicci lit by the light of a single wick, bent in concentration over her sewing—one of the most powerful women ever to walk the world, and she appeared perfectly content to sew a patch in the knee of his pants.

She accidentally stuck herself with the needle. As she shook her hand and winced with the pain, Richard had the sudden cold recollection of the link between her and Kahlan; his beloved would feel that prick.

Richard took the snow-white slice when Victor held it out.

“What’s this?”

“Try it,” Victor said as he waved an insistent hand. “Eat. Tell me what you think. It’s from my homeland. Here, a red onion goes well with it.”

The white slice was smooth, dense, and rich with salt and herbs. Richard let out a rapturous moan. He rolled his eyes.

“Victor, this is the best thing I’ve ever had. What is it?”

“Lardo.”

They sat on the threshold of the double doors out of the room with the marble monolith, watching dawn break over the site, where the walls of the Retreat had begun to rise. Only a few people stirred below. Before long, laborers would arrive in great numbers to begin again their work on the Retreat. It went on every day without pause, rain or shine. Now that spring was wearing on, the weather was pleasant nearly every day, with afternoon rains every few days, but nothing dreary or oppressive—just enough to wash you clean and make you feel refreshed.

If not for the ever-present ache of missing Kahlan, his worry over the war far to the north, his loathing of being held prisoner, the slave labor at the site, the abuse of people, the people who disappeared or those who confessed under torture, and the grindingly repressive nature of life in Altur’Rang, he might have found the spring quite enjoyable.

Day by day, too, his worry grew that Kahlan would soon be able to leave their mountain home. He dreaded her getting caught up in such a war as would be soon be roaring into full flame.

After he had eaten some of the mild onion, Richard went back to the delightful lardo. He moaned again.

“Victor, I’ve never tasted anything like this. What’s lardo?”

Victor held out another thin slice. Richard gladly accepted. After a long night of work, the dense delicacy was really hitting the spot.

Victor gestured with his knife to the tin beside him holding the pure white block. “Lardo is paunch fat from the boar.”

“And this tin of it is from your homeland?”

“No, no—I make it myself. I come from far to the south of here, far away—near the sea. That is where we make lardo. When I come here, I make it here.

“I put the paunch fat in tubs I carved myself out of marble as white as the lardo.” Victor gestured with his hands as he spoke, working the air as vigorously as he worked iron. “The fat is put in the tubs with coarse salt and rosemary and other spices. From time to time I turn it in the brine. It must rest a year in the stone to cure, to became lardo.”

“A year!”

Victor nodded emphatically. “This we are eating, I made last spring. My father taught me to make lardo. Lardo is something only men make. My father was a quarry worker. Lardo gives quarry workers the stamina they need to work long hours sawing blocks of our marble, or swinging a pickaxe. For blacksmiths, too, lardo gives you power to lift a hammer all day.”

“So, there are quarries where you lived?”

He waved his thick hand at the towering block behind them. “This. This is Cavatura marble—from my homeland.” He pointed out at several of the stock areas below. “That, there, and there, is marble from Cavatura, too.”

“That’s where you’re from? Cavatura?”

Victor grinned like a wolf as he nodded. “The place where all that beautiful marble came from. Our city gets its name from the marble quarries. My family are all carvers, or quarry workers. Me? I end up a blacksmith making tools for them.”

“Blacksmiths are sculptors.”

He grunted a laugh. “And you? Where are you from?”

“Me? Far away. They had no marble there. Only granite.” Richard changed the subject, lest he have to start inventing lies. Besides, it was getting light. “So, Victor, when do you need more of that special steel?”

“Tomorrow. Are you up to it?”

The steel Victor needed was from farther away, at a foundry out near the charcoal makers. They needed a lot of charcoal to cook with the iron to make high-grade steel. Ore came in by barge, from not far away. It would take most of the night for Richard to get there and back.

“Sure. I will be sick today and get some sleep.”

He had become sick quite a lot over the last several months. It fit right in with the way most of the others worked. Work some, be sick, tell the workers’ group that you were ailing. Some people limped in with a story. It wasn’t necessary; the workers’ group never questioned.

The only thing he rarely missed were the meetings where those with bad attitudes were named. People at the meetings were often named, but you were more likely to bring attention if you missed the meetings. Those named were often subsequently arrested and given an opportunity to confess. More than once, a person named at a meeting as having an unsatisfactory attitude killed themselves.

“One of Brother Narev’s disciples, Neal, came around last evening with some new orders.” Victor’s voice had taken on a tense edge. “What you just brought will last me the day, but I need that steel by tomorrow.”

“You will have it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Have I ever let you down, Victor?”

Victor’s hard face melted into a helpless smile. He passed Richard another slice of lardo. “No, Richard, you never have. Not once. I had given up hope of ever meeting another man who kept his word.”

“Well, I’d best be off and take care of my horses. They’ve had a hard night, and I’ll need them rested for tonight. How much steel do you need?”

“Two hundred. Half square, and half round.”

Richard performed a pained moan. “You’re going to make me strong, or kill me, Victor.”

Victor smiled his approval. “You want the gold?”

“No. You can pay me when I deliver.”

Richard no longer needed the money in advance. He had a heavy wagon, now, and a strong team of horses. He paid Ishaq to care for them along with the transport company’s teams in the company stables. Ishaq helped Richard with any number of the special arrangements that he’d had to make. Ishaq knew which officials lived in the nice homes. They couldn’t afford those homes with just their pay as officials of the Order.

“You be careful of Neal,” Richard said.

“Why’s that?”

“For some reason, he believes I’m in need of lecturing. He truly believes that the Order is mankind’s savior. He puts the good of the fellowship of Order above the good of mankind.”

Victor sighed as he stood and tied on his leather apron. “My thoughts about him, too.”

As they passed into the building, the sun was just lighting the marble standing there. Richard lingered and put a hand to the cold stone, as he always did whenever he passed it. It almost felt alive to him. Alive with potential.

“Victor, I asked you once what this was. Mind telling me, now?”

The blacksmith paused beside Richard and gazed up at the pure stone before him. He reached out and touched it lightly, letting his fingertips glide over the surface, testing, caressing.

“This is my statue.”

“What statue?”

“The one I want to carve, someday. Many in my family are carvers. As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to carve, too. I wanted to be a great sculptor. I wanted to create great works.

“Instead, I had to work for the master blacksmith at the quarry. My family needed to eat. I was the oldest living son. My father and the blacksmith were friends. My father asked the blacksmith to take me on…. He didn’t want another son lost to the stone. It’s a hard and dangerous life, cutting stone from a mountain.”

“Did you carve other things? I mean, like wood, or something.”

Victor, still staring at his stone, shook his head. “I only wanted to carve stone. I bought this block with my savings. I own it. Few men can say they own a part of a mountain. A part as pure and beautiful as this.”

Richard could understand the sentiments. “So, Victor, what will you carve out of it?”

He squinted, as if trying to peer beyond the surface. “I don’t know. They say that the stone will speak to you and tell you what it should be.”

“Do you believe that?”

Victor laughed his deep laugh. “No—not really. But the thing is, this is a beautiful piece of stone. There is none finer for statues than Cavatura marble, and few blocks of Cavatura marble with as fine a grain as this piece. I couldn’t bear to see it carved up into something ugly, like what they carve nowadays.

“It used to be, long ago, that only beauty was carved from beauty such as this. No more,” he whispered in distant bitterness. “Now, man must be carved with a twisted nature—as an object of shame.”

Richard had delivered tools down to the site for Victor, down to where the carving was taking place, and had had the opportunity to get a closer look at the work being done. The outside of the stone walls was to be covered with expansive scenes on a scale that was staggering. The walls that would enclose the palace went on for miles. The carvings being produced for the Retreat were the same as those Richard had seen everywhere in the Old World, but would have no equal in sheer, overpowering quantity. The entire palace was to be an epic portrayal of the Order’s view of the nature of life, and of redemption in the afterlife of the underworld.

The figures being carved were stilted, with limbs that could not possibly function. Those carved in relief were forever bound to the stone from which they only haltingly emerged. The poses reflected a view of man as ineffective, shallow, unsubstantial.

The elements of the hated anatomy of man, his muscle, bone, and flesh, were melted together into lifeless limbs, their proportions distorted to strip the figures of their humanity. Expressions were either impassive, if the statue was supposed to portray virtue, or filled with terror, agony, torment, if intended to illustrate the fate of evildoers. Proper men and women, bent under the weight of labor, were always made to look out at the world through the vacant stupor of resignation.

Most often, it was difficult to tell male from female; their worldly bodies, an everlasting source of shame, were hidden by bulky garments like those the priests of the Order wore. Further reflecting the Order’s teachings, only the sinful were shown naked, so that all could see their detestable cankerous bodies.

The carvings represented man as helpless, doomed by the inadequacy of his intellect to suffer every blow of existence.

Most of the sculptors, Richard suspected, feared to be questioned, or even tortured, and so repeated the view that man was to be carved accepting his vile nature, thus earning his reward only through death. The carvings were meant to assure the masses that this was the only proper goal for which man could hope. Richard knew that a few of the carvers vehemently believed such teachings. He was always careful of what he said around them.

“Ah, Richard, I wish you could see beautiful statues, instead of today’s scourge.”

“I have seen statues of great beauty,” Richard softly assured the man.

“Have you? I’m so glad. People should see those things, not this, this”—he waved a hand toward the rising walls of the Retreat—“this evil in the guise of goodness.”

“So you will one day carve such beauty?”

“I don’t know, Richard,” he finally admitted. “The Order takes everything. They say that the individual is of no importance except inasmuch as he can contribute to the good of others. They take what art can be, the lifeblood of the soul, and turn it to poison, turn it to death.”

Victor smiled wistfully. “This way, as it is, I can enjoy the beautiful statue inside the stone.”

“I understand, Victor—I really do. The way you describe it, I can see it, too.”

“We will both enjoy my statue the way it is, then.” Victor took his hand from the stone and pointed to the base. “Besides, you see there? There is an imperfection in the stone. It runs all the way through. That is why I could afford this piece of marble—because it has this flaw. Were most anyone to carve this, it would endanger the stone. If not done just right, and with the flaw taken in mind, the entire piece could easily shatter. I have never been able to think of how to carve this stone to take advantage of its beauty, but to also avoid the flaw.”

“Perhaps, someday, it will come to you how to carve the stone, to create a thing of nobility.”

“Nobility. Ah, but wouldn’t that be something—the most sublime form of beauty.” He shook his head. “But I will not do it. Not unless the revolt comes.”

“Revolt?”

Victor’s careful gaze swept the hillside through the open door. “The revolt. It will come. The Order cannot stand—evil cannot stand, not forever, anyway. In my homeland, when I was young, there used to be beauty, and there used to be freedom. They were shamed into giving up their lives, their freedom, bit by bit, to the cause of fairness to all men. People didn’t know what they had, and let freedom slip away for nothing but the hollow promise of a better world, a world without effort, without struggle to achieve, without productive work. It was always someone else who would do these things, who would provide, who would make their lives easy.

“We used to be a land of abundance. Now, what food is grown, rots, while it awaits committees to decide who should have it, who should move it, and what it should cost. Meanwhile, people starve.

“Insurgents, those disloyal to the Order, are blamed for all the starvation and strife that slowly destroys us, and so ever more people are arrested and put to death. We are a land of death. The Order continually proclaims its feelings for mankind, but their ways can but cultivate death. On my way here, I have seen corpses by the thousands go uncounted and unburied. The New World is blamed for every ill, every failure, and young men, eager to smite their oppressors, march off to war.

“Many people, though, have come to see the truth. They, and the children of these people—me, and others like me—hunger for freedom to live our own lives, rather than be slaves to the Order and their reign of death. There is unrest in my homeland, as there is here. A revolt is coming.”

“Unrest? Here? I’ve seen no unrest.”

Victor smiled a sly smile. “Those with revolt in their hearts do not show their true feelings. The Order, always fearful of insurrection, tortures confessions from those they wrongly arrest. Every day more are put to death. Those who want things to change know better than to make themselves targets before the time has come. Someday, Richard, revolt will come.”