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CHAPTER 58
Richard could feel Neal's breath on the back of his neck. The young disciple watched over Richard's shoulder as he tap-tap-tapped the back of the chisel, carving the gaping mouth of a si
"Quite good," Neal murmured, overcome with delight in what he was seeing.
Richard rested the wrist of his chisel hand against the stone to help push himself upright. "Thank you, Brother Neal."
Neal's brown eyes, the same color as his drab robes, stared with arrogant challenge. Richard did nothing to meet that challenge.
"You know, Richard, I don't like you."
"No man is worth liking, Brother Neal."
"You always have an answer, don't you, Richard?" The young wizard smiled then as he reached under his hood and scratched his closely cropped brown hair. "Do you know why you have this job?"
"Because the Order gave me a chance to help-"
"No, no," Neal interrupted as he suddenly grew impatient. "I mean do you know why the position was open? Do you know why we needed carvers, enabling you to gain this great opportunity at employment?"
Richard knew very well why they had needed carvers.
"No, Brother Neal. I was a laborer, at the time."
"Many of them were put to death."
"Then they must have been traitors to our cause. I'm happy the Order caught them."
Neal's sly smile returned as he shrugged. "Maybe. I could tell that they had a bad attitude. They thought too much of themselves, of what they selfishly considered their. . talent. A very old-fashioned notion, don't you think; Richard?"
"I wouldn't know, Brother Neal. I only know I am able to carve, and I am grateful for the opportunity to do my duty to help my fellow man by contributing my efforts."
Neal backed away, giving Richard an appraising look, as if to measure whether or not the words had been mocking. Richard hadn't given Neal the opening he wanted, so Neal simply spilled out his point.
"I thought some among them might be deriding the Order with their work.
I thought they might be using their carving to mock and ridicule our noble cause."
"Really, Brother Neal? I never suspected."
"That is why you are nobody, and never will be anybody. You are a nothing. Just like all those carvers."
"I realize I am nobody important, Brother Neal. It would be wrong to think I was of any value other than in what I can contribute. I aspire only to work hard in service to the Creator so I might earn my reward in the next life."
The smile was gone, replaced by a fiery scowl. "I ordered them put to deathafter I had confessions tortured out of each one of them."
Richard's fist tightened on the chisel. Through a calm expression, he contemplated driving his chisel through Neal's skull. He knew he could do it before the man could react. But what would it gain? Nothing.
"1 am grateful, Brother Neal, that you uncovered the traitors in our midst."
Neal squinted in suspicion for a moment. He finally dismissed it with a twist of his mouth before suddenly swirling amid a flourish of his robes.
"Come with me," the brother commanded in a grave tone as he marched away.
Richard followed him across the field churned to mud by all the workers going back and forth, by all the supplies being dragged, carried, or rolled to the construction site. They strode, past what seemed the endless face of the palace. The stone walls were getting ever higher, with row upon row of window openings. Their trim was begi
There would be miles of corridors in the palace. Dozens of stairwells stood in various stages of construction.
It wouldn't be long before oak floors were laid over some of the rooms below, enclosing them. The roof had to be completed over those sections, first, though, lest rain ruin the flooring. Some of the outer rooms were to have roofs lower than the main section, which was to rise up to a towering height. Richard expected to see those lower rooms capped with slate and lead roofs before the winter rains.
He stayed close behind Brother Neal as they marched toward the main opening into the palace. There, the walls were higher and more complete, with many of the ornate decorations in place. Neal charged two at a time up the semicircle of marble steps leading up to the entry plaza. The white marble pillars stood in an impressive sweep, and over the top of them many of the stone carvings had been installed. With all the tortured people frozen in stone, it was an intimidating sight, as it was meant to be.
The floor of the plaza was gray-veined white Cavatura marble. The sun on the marble made the plaza, half encircled by the soaring columns, glow with glorious light. The decrepit people in the stone ringing the plaza seemed to be screaming in pain at that light-which was just the effect Brother Narev had wanted.
Neal made a sweeping gesture with an arm. "Here will be the great statue-the statue to crown the entry to the emperor's Retreat." He turned a complete revolution while holding the arm aloft. "This will be the place where people enter the great palace. This is where people will come while on their way to see the officials of the Order. This is where they will come closer to the Creator."
Richard said nothing. Neal watched him for a moment, then stood in the center and threw his arms up toward the sunlight.
"Here! — will be the statue to the glory of the Creator, using His Light in a sundial. The Light will reveal the loathsome creatures of the statues-mankind. This will be a monument to man's evil nature, doomed to the misery of his existence in this world, wicked of character, cowering in humiliation as His Light reveals man's hateful body and soul for what it is-perverted beyond hope."
Richard thought that if madness had a champion, it was the Order, and people who thought like them.
Neal's arms swept back down, a conductor concluding a triumphant performance. "You, Richard Cypher, are to carve this statue."
Richard was acutely aware of the hammer in his straining fist. "Yes, Brother Neal."
Neal waggled a finger held close to his nose as he gri
He strode off, his brown robes swirling behind like muddy waters in a flood. Neal collected something from behind the marble pillars and returned holding it in one hand.
It was a small statue. He set it down, where the radiating lines of the marble floor converged at a point in the middle of the plaza. It was a plaster statue of what Brother Neal had just revealed to Richard. If anything, it was even more gruesome than Neal had described it. Richard ached to smash it with his hammer, right on the spot. It would almost be worth dying to destroy such a vile thing.
Almost.
"This is it," Neal said. "Brother Narev had a master carver do up the model of the sundial to his instructions. Brother Narev's vision is truly remarkable. It's perfect, don't you think?"
"It is just as horrifying as you said it was, Brother Neal."
"And you are to carve it. Just scale this model up into a great statue in white marble."
Feeling numb, Richard nodded. "Yes, Brother Neal."
The finger waggled again with great delight. "No, no, you don't yet really understand, Richard." He was gri