"Why is he in trouble? I thought everyone had to wait their turn."
"The Retreat? What's that?"
Richard hadn't known the name. The emperor's new palace was the reason for all the workers coming to Altur'Rang. He supposed it was the reason Nicci had insisted they come to the city, too. She had some interest in having him be part of the grand project. He assumed it was her grotesque sense of irony.
"So, when the goods are for the Order, then you had better deliver, I take it."
Ishaq paused when one of the other loaders came down the aisle with a piece of paper. Ishaq read the paper the man gave him, while the man gave a sidelong look at Richard. Ishaq sighed and gave brief directions to the man. After he was gone, Ishaq turned back to Richard.
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Richard folded his arms. "You mean to say that if you do a good job, you get in trouble-just like I did."
Richard watched a couple of men off in the distance loading a wagon with charcoal. "You don't really believe that mouthful of mush, do you, Ishaq?"
Richard grunted a laugh. "My back is feeling fine."
"I remember."
"Sure, Ishaq. I won't make any trouble for you. You can trust me."
"No, it wasn't. I wish I was back there, now."
"Priests? What priests? How will I know them?"
"Brother Narev?"
Richard gave Ishaq a smile in order to put his mind at ease.
Ishaq heaved a sigh and hurried off to find his driver.
CHAPTER 48
Jori was disinterested in the construction, and only spat over the side, offering the occasional "I suppose" to some of Richard's questions.
For sheer size, the structure would rival anything Richard had ever seen. There were miles of grounds and gardens going in. Fountains and other towering structures along entrance roads were beginning to be erected. Sweeping stretches of mazes were being constructed with hedges. Hillsides were dotted with trees that had been planted according to a grand plan.
Across the river lay more of the city. On the palace side of the river, too, the city spread all around, though at a great distance from the Retreat. Richard couldn't imagine how many buildings and people had been displaced for the construction. This was to be no distant and remote emperor's palace, but rather it was set right in the center of Altur'Rang. Roads were being paved with millions of cobbles, giving the multitudes of citizens of the Order access to come and see the wand structure. There were already crowds of people standing behind rope barricades, watching the construction.
Stone of various kinds lay in great piles. In the distance, Richard could see men working at cutting it into the required shapes. The heavy afternoon air rang with the faraway knells of hundreds of hammers and chisels. There were stockpiles of granite and marble in a variety of colors, and massive quantities of limestone blocks. Special quarry wagons waited in serpentine columns to deliver yet more. The long blocks of stone, called lifts, were slung under heavy beams that bridged the front
and rear axles. Huts and great open shelters had been built for the stone workers so they could work no matter the weather. Timber was stickered in row upon row of huge stacks covered with purpose-built roofs. The overflow was covered in canvas. Small mountains of materials for mortar were scattered around the foundation, looking like anthills, the illusion aided by all the dark specks of men moving about.
Jori expertly backed his team, putting the rear of the wagon right at double doors standing open into blackness.
The blacksmith's shop was dark and stifling hot, even in the outer, cluttered, stockroom. Like all blacksmith's shops, the walls in the workroom were covered in soot. Windows were kept to a minimum, mostly located overhead and covered with shutters, so as to keep it dark in order to more easily judge the nature of the glowing metal.
The floor was choked with clutter: boxes overflowing with parts, bars, rivets; wedges; lengths of iron stock; clippings; pry bars; pole hooks; dented pots; wooden jigs; tin snips; lengths of chain; pulleys; and a variety of special anvil attachments. Everything was covered with soot or dust or metal filings.
Richard could hardly think in all the noise.
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A man in a leather apron stood not far away at a door to another workroom. He held out a chalkboard covered with a maze of lines as he studied a large contraption of metal bars on the floor in the room beyond. Richard waited, not wanting to interrupt the man's concentration. The sharply defined muscles of his sooty arms glistened with sweat. The man tapped the chalk against his lip as he puzzled, then swiped a line clean on the board and drew it again, moving its connecting points.
"Would you be the master blacksmith?" Richard asked when the man paused and looked over his shoulder.
Taken by inexplicable compulsion, Richard pointed at the line the man had just drawn. "That's wrong. What you just did is wrong. You have the top end right, but the bottom should go here, not where you put it."
"Well, not exactly, but I-"
The man looked like he wanted to stuff Richard in the forge and melt him down.
"You had better be the man with the iron."
"Where have you been all day? I was told it would be here first thing this morning. What did you do? Sleep till noon?"
"I'm not interested. You said you had the iron. It's already late enough. Get it unloaded."
"Where would you like it?"
"If you'd have been here when you were supposed to be here, you could have put it out there, just inside the door in the outer supply room. Now they brought that big rock sled that needs welding, so you will have to put the iron in the back. Next time, get out of bed earlier."
"Ishaq made it quite clear that you were to get iron today, and he sent me to see to it. I have your iron. I don't see anyone else able to deliver on such short notice."
"How much iron did you bring?"
"Fifty bars, eight feet."
"Do you want to hear the way it is, or do you want to yell at someone? If you just want to spout off to no point and no useful end, then go right ahead as I'm not much injured by ranting, but when you finally want to hear the truth of the way things are, just let me know and I'll give it."
"Richard Cypher."
"The foundry wanted to fill the order. They have bar stock stacked to the rafters. They can't get it delivered. They wanted to let me have the whole order, but a transport inspector stationed there wouldn't let us have the whole hundred bars because the other transport companies are supposed to get their equal loads, but their wagons are broken down."
"That's right," Richard said. "At least until the other companies can move some more goods."
"Were it up to me," Richard said. "I'd go back for another load today, but they told me they couldn't give me any more until next week at the earliest. I'd suggest you get every transport company you can find to deliver you a wagonload. That way, you'll have a better chance to get what you need."
"At least I have fifty bars for you."
He led Richard through the congested workshop, among the confusion of work and material. They went through a door and down a short connecting hall. The noise fell away behind. They entered a quiet building in back, attached, but set off on its own. The blacksmith unhooked a line attached at a cleat and let down a trapdoor covering a window in the roof.
It seemed completely out of place in a blacksmith's workshop. There were tall doors at the far end, where the monolith had been brought in on skids. The rest of the room had space left open all around the towering stone. Chisels of every sort and various-size mallets stuck up from slots along the pitch black walls.
Richard blinked. He had almost forgotten the man was there with him. Still he stared at the lustrous quality of the stone before him. "I'll be careful," he said without looking at the blacksmith. "I won't bang it into the stone."
As the man started to leave, Richard asked, "I told you my name. What's yours?"
"Is there more to it?"
Richard smiled as he followed the man out. "Yes, sir, Mr. Cascella. Ah, mind if I ask what this is?"
"This is none of your business, that's what it is."
Mr. Cascella watched Richard watching the stone. "There's marble all over this site. Thousands of tons of it. This is just one small piece. Now, get my shorted order of iron unloaded."
When he finished, Richard found Mr. Cascella back at the chalkboard, alone in the suddenly silent shop, making corrections to the drawing and writing numbers down the side.
"Thank you," he mumbled.
The glare was back. "What's it to you?"
The glare darkened. "Like I said, what's it to you?"
"So, you're a thief, too."
"Then how are you going to sell me iron for a quarter mark less than the foundry is selling it for? You smelting a little iron ore in your room at night, Mr. Richard Cypher?"
His mouth twisted in annoyance. "'balk."
Why?"
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The man gaped as if Richard was a bar of iron that had just come to life before his eyes and started talking.
"Because," Richard explained, "I want to sell it for less than you'd have to pay through a transport company so that you'll buy it from me, instead, and, because I need you to loan me the one and a quarter gold marks, first, so I can buy the bars in the first place and bring them to you. The foundry will only sell them to me if I pay when I come to take them."
"My word."
"I told you, my name is Richard Cypher. Ishaq is scared to death of you, and he trusted me to get you the iron so you won't come wring his neck."
Richard shrugged. "If you don't want me to, I won't tell him you know how to smile. I know, though, that you're in a tighter spot than Ishaq. You have to deliver goods for the Order, but you're at the mercy of their methods."
"I don't have a wagon. But, if you agree, I'll have your fifty iron bars right there"-Richard pointed at a spot out the double doors beside where Jori had parked the wagon-"in a pile, by dawn."
"That's right."
"I don't have a wagon, and I want to earn the money. It's not all that far. I figure I can carry five at a time. That only makes ten trips. I can do that by dawn. I'm used to walking."
"My wife isn't getting enough to eat. The workers' group assesses most of my wages, since I'm able to produce, and gives it to those who don't work. Because I can work, I've become a slave to those who can't, or who don't wish to. Their methods encourage people to find an excuse to let others take care of them. I intensely dislike being a slave. I figure I can entice you to go along with the deal by offering you a better price. We each gain a benefit. Value for value."
"I need the money to buy a wagon and a team of horses."
"I need the wagon to deliver you all the iron you're going to buy from me because I can get it for you cheaper, and because I can deliver it when you need it."
"You looking to get buried in the sky?"
"If the officials of the Order want to have the work progress-and not have to explain to Emperor Jagang why it isn't they will be inclined to look the other way. In that narrow crack of need, there is opportunity. I expect I'll have to bribe a few officials to get them to be busy elsewhere when I come to pick up loads, but I've already figured that cost into it. I'll be acting on behalf of myself, not an established transport company, so they will be more inclined to see this as a way of accomplish ing what they need without suspending their morass of restrictions.
The blacksmith stared for a moment as he tried to find a flaw in Richard's plan.
"I understand, Mr. Cascella."
"Agreed. Who is this Brother Narev, anyway?"
"Did I hear someone mention my name?" The voice was deep enough to nearly rattle the tools off the walls.
Mr. Cascella bowed. Richard followed his lead.
"Where are all my new chisels, blacksmith?"
"I have stone sitting down there with no chisels to cut it. I have stonecutters who need more tools. You are holding up my palace."
The high priest held up his hand for silence.
"It can be done."
"Then do it."
The shadowed figure turned to the shop. "Show me, blacksmith."
When the blacksmith snapped his fingers and pointed at a lamp on his way by, Richard snatched it up. He lit a long splinter in the glowing coals of the forge and then lit the lamp. He held it up behind the two men as they stood just inside the doorway to the room with the complex contraption of metal bars sitting on the floor beyond.
Richard felt an icy tingle at the base of his scalp when he suddenly realized what the thing on the floor was.
"This line is wrong," Brother Narev growled.
"I told you to add braces, I didn't invite you to ruin the main scheme. You can leave the top of the support where you have it, but the bottom should be attached . . . here."
Mr. Cascella scratched his head of short hair as he stole a glance over his shoulder just long enough to scowl at Richard.
"I'm not concerned with how easy it is," Brother Narev said with menace. "I don't want anything attached to this area, here."
"It must be seamless, so none of the joining work shows through when it is covered in gold. Get me those tools made, first."
The high priest turned an uncomfortable scrutiny on Richard. "There's something about you .... Do I know you?"
He glared askance at Richard. "Yes, I suppose you would. You get the blacksmith his iron."
The Brother grunted irritably. "So you did."
Brother Narev opened his mouth to say something, but his attention was caught by two young men entering the shop. They wore robes like the high priest, but without caps. They had simple hoods pulled up over their heads, instead.
"Brother Narev," one called.
"The book you sent for has arrived. You asked that we come for you at once."
"Get it done," he said to both.
It felt as if a thundercloud had just departed over the horizon.
Richard followed him into a little room where the master blacksmith pulled out a strongbox attached with massive chain to a huge pin in the floor under the plank serving as his desk. He unlocked the strongbox and handed Richard a gold mark.
Richard looked up from the gold mark and frowned. "What?"
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After leaving Ishaq's place and before going to get the iron for Victor, Richard rushed back to his room. It wasn't dinner he wanted, but to let Nicci know that he had to go back to work. She had in the past made it clear that they were husband and wife, and that she would take a dim view of him vanishing. He was to remain in Altur'Rang and work, just like any other normal man.
Richard stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at the two. "I'm sorry, Kamil, but I have to go back to work-"
"I was going to say that I have to go back to work, so we have to do this right away."
"This is Nabbi. He wants to watch your foolish labor, too."
To pry the steps apart, Richard used his knife and a rusty metal bar Kamil found for him. It wasn't difficult-they were ready to fall apart on their own. As the two youths watched, Richard cleaned the grooves in the stringers. Since they were chewed up from being loose, he deepened their bottoms, showing the two what he was doing and explaining how he would bevel the ends of the treads to lock into the deepened channel. Richard watched Kamil and Nabbi as they whittled wedges to match the one he made as a pattern for them. They were only too delighted to show him their knife work; Richard was delighted that it helped get the job done sooner.
"You both did a good job," Richard told them, because they had. They didn't make any smart remarks. They actually smiled.
He didn't give Nicci the details of his second job. She was insistent only that he
work; the work itself was irrelevant to her. She tended to her household chores and expected him to earn them a living.
As he took another spoonful of millet, Nicci casually mentioned that the landlord, Kamil's father, had come by.
"He said that since you have a job, the area citizens' building committee had assessed us extra rent in order to help pay the rent of those in the local buildings who can't work. You see, Richard, how life under the ways of the Order cultivates caring in people, so that we all work together for the benefit of all?"
She seemed smug about the fact that their rent was past due. Foodstuffs, at least, were relatively inexpensive-when they were available. People said that it was only by the grace of the Creator and the wisdom of the Order that they could afford any food at all. Richard had heard talk at Ishaq's place that more plentiful and varied food could be had, for a price. Richard didn't have the price.
"Self-sacrifice is the moral duty of all people," she said in challenge to his clenched teeth.
Nicci gaped at him. It was as if he had just said that a mother's milk was poison to her newborn.
"It's cruel to say that I would not happily sacrifice myself for that thug, Gadi? Or for some other thug I don't know? It's cruel not to willingly sacrifice what's mine to any greedy wretch who lusts to possess plundered goods, the unearned, even at the cost of their victim's blood?
"The suicide of self-sacrifice is but a requirement imposed by masters on slaves. Since there is a knife to my throat, it is not to my good that I am stripped of what I earn by my own hand and mind. It is only to the good of the one with the knife, and
those who by weight of numbers but not reason dictate what is the good of allthose cheering him on so they might lap up any drop of blood their masters miss.
She stared, not at him, but at the flame dancing on the pool of linseed oil. "You don't really mean that, Richard. You're just tired and angry that you have to work at night, too, just to get by. You should realize that all those others you help are there to help society, including you, should you be the one in desperate need."
"That's not true, Richard," she whispered, "I sacrifice for you .... I saved what millet we had for you, that you might have strength."
"Because it was the right thing to do-it was for the good of others."
When she didn't answer, Richard pushed the rest of his dinner before her. "I don't want your meaningless sacrifice."
Richard felt sorry for her, for what she couldn't understand as she stared at the bowl. He thought about what would happen to Kahlan if Nicci were to fall sick from not getting enough to eat.
She finally picked up her spoon and did as he said.
"Thank you, Richard, for the meal."
He strode to the door. With his hand on the loose knob, he turned back. "I have to go, or I will lose my work."
Richard made the first trip from the foundry through the dark streets to Victor's shop carrying five bars. From windows along the way, a few people blinked out at the man lugging a load past. They blinked without comprehension at the meaning of what he was doing. He was working for nothing but his own benefit.
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He got the last three bars to Victor's place before dawn. His shoulders were bruised and painful. He had to walk all the way to his job at Ishaq's place, so he couldn't wait for Victor to arrive to complete his payment of the last quarter gold mark.
--]--- As he returned home after an interminable day, Richard looked up and saw Kamil and Nabbi standing at the head of the stairs. They both had on shirts.
Richard swayed on his feet. "What job?"
"We did that last night."
This was their idea of a little test. Richard knew he would lose an opportunity if he put them off. He was so tired he couldn't think straight.
"Got any tea?"
"Please bring it out to the back," Richard said. "I promised to fix the stairs."
"There are still a couple hours of light. I can eat while we're working."
When Richard had finally finished, he went to the room that had once been Ishaq's parlor, and was now his and Nicci's home. He took off his shirt and splashed water on his face from the washbasin. His head was throbbing.
Rather than argue that he had no lice, Richard dipped his face in the water and scrubbed his head with the cake of coarse soap. It was easier than talking her out of it so he could go to sleep. Nicci hated lice.
lent arrangement. She kept the room, bedding, and his clothes clean, despite the difficulty of hauling water from the well down the street. She never objected to any work necessary to simulate the lives of normal people. She seemed to want something so badly that she often lost herself in the role to the extent that while he never forgot she was a Sister of the Dark and his captor, she occasionally did. He dunked his head again, swishing his hair, rinsing out the soap.
Nicci, sitting on her pallet sewing, paused and looked up. Her sewing suddenly looked out of place, as if her parody of domestic life lost its aura for her.
"I met him yesterday, out at the blacksmith's."
Richard nodded. "I had to deliver iron out there."
"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."
"What sort of advisor?"
"He's a wizard, isn't he." It was more statement than question.
"In the language of the street, you could describe him as such."
"Common people, those who understand little about magic, would describe him as a wizard. Strictly speaking, though, he is not a wizard."
"Actually, he is a sorcerer."
"You mean he's like you, like a sorceress, only male?"
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?"
"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.
"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."
"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."
"That's a little closer to it."
"About as common as dream walkers..." she said as she gave him a meaningful look, "or war wizards."
"What is it, though, that he does differently?"
"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."
"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.
"You mean the spell that slowed aging? You think he can cast such a web?"
"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."
"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."
"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.
"But I spoiled that plan."
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 spellform is nothing more than a pattern, from which the true spellform will be cast in pure gold."
Nicci looked up and frowned. "Yes, that is a possibility."
"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."
"Young wizards from the Palace of the Prophets."
"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."
A smile of contempt colored her features. "They are not that talented. They are but bugs to what you are."
Her face turned serious. "Oh, they would know me."
"Why did you think him a wizard?"
"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."
"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."
"You have both sides. Don't you see it?"
She had given her soul to the Keeper of the underworld.
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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, 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.
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.
CHAPTER 50
"What's this?"
The white slice was smooth, dense, and rich with salt and herbs. Richard let out a rapturous moan. He rolled his eyes.
"Lardo."
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.
After he had eaten some of the mild onion, Richard went back to the delightful lardo. He moaned again.
Victor held out another thin slice. Richard gladly accepted. After a long night of work, the dense delicacy was really hitting the spot.
"And this tin of it is from your homeland?"
"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!..
"So, there are quarries where you lived?"
"That's where you're from? Cavatura?"
"Blacksmiths are sculptors."
"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?"
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.
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.
"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."
"Are you sure?"
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."
"Two hundred. Half square, and half round."
Victor smiled his approval. "You want the gold?"
"No. You can pay me when I deliver."
"You be careful of Neal," Richard said.
"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."
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.
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.
"What statue?"
"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."
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."
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."
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.
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 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.
The carvings represented man as helpless, doomed by the inadequacy of his intellect to suffer every blow of existence.
"Ah, Richard, I wish you could see beautiful statues, instead of today's scourge."
"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."
"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."
"I understand, Victor-I really do. The way you describe it, I can see it, too."
"Perhaps, someday, it will come to you how to carve the stone, to create a thing of nobility."
"Nobility. Ali, 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."
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.
"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.
"Unrest? Here? I've seen no unrest."
Richard shook his head. "I don't know, Victor. Revolt takes resolve. I don't think such real resolve exists."
Richard tensed. "Freedom to the north?"
Had it not all been so overwhelmingly tragic, Richard would have burst out laughing.
Victor fixed Richard with a look that Richard remembered from the first time he met the blacksmith.
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Victor's glare, so full of his emotion, his burning hunger for freedom, turned back to his wolfish grin.
Richard thought it would be best to change the subject. He saw that it was getting light.
The blacksmith feigned a scowl, but it was a poor spoof of the very real one that had just departed. "That is always what I thought, too."
"No, nothing."
Victor tapped his temple, as if to dissuade a skeptic. "In here I have ability. In here I have beauty. That is all that matters to me. If I never touch steel to this stone, then I will always have the beauty of what it could be, and that, the Order can never take away from me."
CHAPTER 51
Nicci knew that spring had nothing to do with it.
The backyard, such an overgrown tangled place, so filthy, with piles of scrap and garbage, was now a garden. The men who lived in the building, after they came home from work, had rid the yard of the refuse. Even several of the ones who didn't work had come out of their rooms to help cart away an item or two. After it was cleared out,- the women of the building had turned the soil and planted a garden. They were going to have vegetables. Vegetables! There was talk of getting a few chickens.
Nicci had hardly believed her eyes when she had seen Kamil and Nabbi-in shirts---digging the holes for the new privies. Everyone thanked them profusely. The two toughs beamed with pride.
The people in the buildings to either side, at first surly and suspicious of the activity, began asking curt questions. Richard, Kamil, and Nabbi went over and explained what they had done, and how they could put their place in shape, too, and even helped them get started. Nicci had yelled at Richard for spending his time at
other people's places. He said that she was the one who had told him that it was his duty to help others. Nicci had no answer-at least, none that made any sense so as she could say it aloud and not sound a fool.
Nicci collected her washing in the woven basket Richard had shown the women of the building how to make from thin strips of wood. Nicci had to admit that the basket was easy enough to make, and a better way to lug clothes.
As Nicci walked down the hall, she saw Gadi, without his shirt, sitting up the stairway, in the shadows. He was using his big knife to whittle at a piece of wood and in so doing make clear his dangerous nature. Later, the women living i31 the building would tsk and clean it up. Gadi, not happy about people nagging at him of late, leered down at her. She now had something for him to leer at, now that she had gained her weight back.
Kamil and Nabbi, sitting on the front steps, saw her through the open door. They stood and bowed politely as she came down the hall.
"Could we help you carry that?" Nabbi asked.
"Thank you, no. I'm there, now."
She thought of them as Richard's soldiers. He seemed to have a private army of people who broke into grins when they saw him coming. Most people seemed only too pleased to do whatever they thought Richard might like done. Kamil and Nabbi would have washed diapers, if he asked it, for the chance to ride with him at night in the wagon as he picked up and delivered things around Altur'Rang. He only rarely took them with him, saying that he could get in trouble with the workers' group. The youths didn't want Richard to get in trouble and lose his job, so they patiently waited for the rare times when he tilted his head for them to come along.
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She suspected he had come to fix the wobbly table. She rapped the top with the flat of her hand and then showed him how it wobbled. He nodded and grinned and chattered. She finally left him to his work while she went to the city store to wait in line to buy bread. She was there the entire morning. In the afternoon, she waited in line for millet.
Nicci stood in the center of the room, stunned to be looking through the window to the building next door. She gaped out the window in the wall where there had been no window before. She was able to see the street. Mrs. Sha'Rim, from next door, had smiled and waved as she'd walked past.
She had brought Richard to the worst place in the Old World, to the worst build
But she had never meant it to be like this.
She only knew that she lived for the times Richard was with her. Even though she knew he hated her, and wanted nothing more than to be away from her and back with his Kahlan, Nicci could not help feeling her heart rise into her throat when he came home. Through the link to Kahlan, she thought that at times she could feel the woman's longing for him. Every inch of her ached with understanding of Kahlan's longing.
The door opened. Richard put one foot inside. He was speaking to Kamil as the young man was going off to his family's place upstairs. It was getting late. Finally, still smiling, Richard came in and shut the door. The smile faded, as it always did.
Nicci lifted a hand weekly toward the millet she had spent the afternoon in line to buy. It had bugs in it. It was moldy.
Richard shrugged. "If you prefer. Your millet soup saw us through some pretty lean times."
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Richard stood in the center of the room, watching her, a puzzled frown creasing his brow between his eyes. Nicci closed the distance to him. She was aware of the exposed flesh of her bosom rising and falling above the top of her black dress. Gadi had just been staring at her bosom. She wanted Richard to stare at her like that. Richard watched only her eyes.
"Make love to me," she whispered.
"Richard, I want you to make love to me. Now."
His voice came, not at all harsh. If anything, it was tender, but it was also resolute. "No."
It hurt to her core--worse than anything Jagang or any other man had ever done. She had thought . . .
He was standing in the center of their room, looking into her eyes. The lamp on the table cast harsh shadows across his face. His shoulders looked so broad, tapering down to his waist, a waist she ached to encircle with her arms. She wanted to scream. Instead she spoke softly, but with authority he could not mistake.
Nicci made a snipping gesture with two fingers.
With his gray eyes on her the whole time, Richard stepped out into the hall. She put a finger to the center of his chest and pushed until his back was against the wall beside their door.
"Nicci, you're better than this. Think about what you're-"
He let out a breath. "Yes."
Nicci looked him in the eye. He was the same height as she.
"What?"
A smirk spread on his face as his gaze slid to Richard. He looked back at her bosom, at what was within his power to possess.
Gadi was young and bold and stupid enough to believe himself irresistible to her, to believe his puerile primping had swept away her inhibitions to the point of helpless lust for what he had to offer.
Gadi's hands squeezed her bottom, pulling her hard against his groin. He moved against her in a lewd fashion. She panted in his ear to encourage his confidence in his dominion over her body.
"I'm sick of his gentle nature, his kind touch, his caring ways. That's not what a real woman needs. I want him to know what a real man can do-I want what he can't give me."
"Yeah?"
His rough hands squeezed her breast. She performed another moan. He smiled.
His smirk sickened her. "No, mine," she whispered in breathy submission.
Nicci held on to his shoulders as he groped her. His upper lip curled in a haughty grin. His fingers worked without mercy. Her eyes watered. She trembled and bit the inside of her cheek to hold back her cry. Mistaking agony for lust, he was inflamed by her whimpers.
She forced her hand down between them and seized him.
"Afraid? Of him?" His voice came in a husky growl. "Just tell me when."
"I thought so."
"Say `please,' first, you little whore."
With his arm around her waist, Gadi gave Richard a taunting sneer as he swaggered past. Nicci's fingers on Gadi's back urged him to go on into their room and wait. He smiled over his shoulder and did as she wanted. Nicci paused to glare into Richard's eyes.
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His voice was so tender, so compassionate. She almost threw her arms around him to beg him to stop her . . . but the flame of his refusal still burned shamefully in her heart.
--]--- Kahlan gasped. Her eyes opened. She could only make out obscure shapes in the swirling darkness. She gasped again.
She felt the weight of a shadow over her.
It was as if Richard were there, in bed with her. It felt so good again. She was panting. Her mouth was dry as dust.
She drew a sharp breath. She felt herself in that headlong rush, now.
This was not human. It made no sense. She gasped again in panic as the most awful feelings burgeoned through her. She moaned at the horror of it, at the hint of pleasure in it, and at the confusion of nearly enjoying the sensation.
Tears stung her eyes. She rolled onto her side, torn between the joy of feeling Richard, and the pain of knowing that Nicci was feeling him in this way, too. She was slammed onto her back.
She cried out at the pain. She twisted and struggled, covering her breasts with her arms. Her eyes watered at agony she couldn't explain or completely identify.
She gave in to him, even in this, she surrendered herself to him. A low wail escaped her throat.
She burst into tears as it ceased, her body finally able to move again, but too exhausted to do so. She had hated every violent appalling brutal second of it, and grieved that it had ended because she had at least felt him.
She felt joy that she had so unexpectedly sensed him, and blind rage at what it meant. She clutched the sheets in her fists as she wept inconsolably.
It was Cara's whisper. Cara set a candle on the table. The light seemed blindingly bright as Cara looked down. "Mother Confessor, are you all right?"
Maybe it was just a dream. She wished it was. She knew it wasn't.
Cara knelt on the ground beside her and gripped Kahlan's shoulders. "What is it?"
"What's wrong? What can I do? Are you hurt? Are you sick?"
Cara held her at arms length, her face a picture of concern.
Her words cut off when she realized what Kahlan meant.
"She no doubt made him," Cara insisted. "He must have done it to save your life. She would have had to threaten him."
Cara shook her until Kahlan thought her teeth would come loose.
Kahlan blinked as she looked around. She was panting, still getting her breath. She had stopped crying.
"You're right," Kahlan said in a voice hoarse from crying. Her nose was stuffed up so that she could only breath through her mouth.
When she felt her face go red, Kahlan wished for the darkness. How could she tell anyone what had happened? She wished Cara hadn't heard her.
Cara looked skeptical. "Did it feel like when, well, I mean, are you sure? Could you tell it was him?"
Cara scratched her head, averting her gaze, unsure how to frame her question. Kahlan answered it for her.