Sailing to Sarantium (27 page)

And this modest, beautifully made old chapel in a quiet, isolated
place on the ancient Imperial road in Sauradia was that dividing
line.

He'd had no warning at all. Crispin took some steps forward in the
subdued, delicate light of the chapel, noting, absently, the
old-fashioned mosaics of intertwined flowers on the walls, and then
looked up.

A moment later, he found himself lying on the cold stones of the
floor, struggling to breathe, gazing up at his god.

He ought to have known what was waiting for him in this place. Even
setting out from Varena it had crossed his mind that the road through
Sauradia would take him past this chapel at some point-he wasn't
certain exactly where, but he knew it was on the Imperial road-and
he'd even been looking forward to seeing what the old craftsmen had
done in their primitive fashion, rendering Jad in the eastern way.

But the intensity and the terror of what had happened this morning in
the fog and the wood had driven that thought so far from him that he
was wide open, defenceless, utterly exposed to the force of what had
been done by mortal men on this dome. After the Aldwood and the bison
and Linon, Crispin had no barriers within himself, no refuge, and the
power of the image above hammered into him, driving all strength from
his body so that he fell down like a pantomime grotesque or a
helpless drunk in an alley behind a caupona.

He lay flat on his back staring up at the figure of the god: the
bearded face and upper torso of Jad massively rendered across
virtually the entirety of the dome. A gaunt image, battle-weary and
grim, weighted down-he registered the heavy cloak, the bowed
shoulders-by his burdens and the stern evils of his children. A
figure as absolute and terrifying as the bison had been: another
dark, massive head, against the pale, golden tesserae of the sun
behind him. A figure seeming as if it would descend in overwhelming
judgement from above. The image encompassed the head and shoulders,
both lifted hands. No more, no room on the dome for more. Spreading
across the softly illuminated space, gazing down with eyes large as
some figures Crispin had made in his day, it was so out of scale it
should never have worked, and yet Crispin had not in all his life
seen anything made that touched the strength of this.

He had known this work was here, westernmost of all the renderings of
the god done with the full dark eastern beard and those black,
haunted eyes: Jad as judge, as worn, beleaguered warrior in deathly
combat, not the shining, blue-eyed, golden sun-figure of Crispin's
west. But knowing and seeing were so far from the same thing it was
as if... as if one was the world and the other the half-world of
hidden powers.

The old craftsmen. Their primitive fashion.

So he had thought, back home. Crispin felt an aching in his heart for
the depths of his own folly, the revealed limitations of his
understanding and skill. He felt naked before this, grasping that in
its own way this work of mortal men in a domed chapel was as much a
manifestation of the holy as the bison with its blood-smeared horns
in the wood, and as appalling. The fierce, wild power of Ludan,
accepting sacrifice in his grove, set against the immensity of craft
and comprehension on this dome, rendering in glass and stone a deity
as purely humbling. How did one move from one of these poles to the
other? How did mankind live between such extremes?

For the deepest mystery, the pulsing heart of the enigma, was that as
he lay on his back, paralysed by revelation, Crispin saw that the
eyes were the same. The world's sorrow he'd seen in the zubir was
here in the sun god above him, distilled by nameless artisans whose
purity of vision and faith unmanned him. Crispin was actually unsure
for a moment if he'd ever be able to get up, to reassert his
self-control, his will.

He struggled to disentangle the elements of the work here, to gain
some mastery over it and himself. Deep brown and obsidian in the
eyes, to make them darker and stronger than the framing brown hair,
shoulder length. The long face made longer by that straight hair and
the beard; the arched, heavy eyebrows, deeply etched forehead, other
lines scoring the cheeks-the skin so pale between beard and hair it
showed as nearly grey. Then down to the rich, luxurious blue of the
god's robe beneath his cloak which was shot through, Crispin saw,
with a dazzling myriad of contrasting colours for a woven texture and
the hinted play and power of light in a god whose power was light.

And then the hands. The hands were heartbreaking. Contorted,
elongated fingers with the ascetic spiritualism suggested by that,
but there was more: these were no cleric's fingers, no hands of
repose and clasped meditation, they were both scarred. One finger on
the left hand had clearly been broken; it was crooked, the knuckle
swollen: red and brown tesserae against white and grey. These hands
had wielded weapons, had been cut, frozen, known savage war against
ice and black emptiness in the endless defence of mortal children
whose understanding was... that of children, no more.

And the sorrow and judgement in the dark eyes was linked to what had
happened to those hands. The colours, Crispin saw-the craftsman in
him marvelling-brought hands and eyes inescapably together. The
vivid, unnaturally raised veins on the wrists of both pale hands used
the same brown and obsidian that were in the eyes. He knew,
intuitively, that this precise pairing of tesserae would exist
nowhere else on the dome. The eyes of sorrow and indictment, the
hands of suffering and war. A god who stood between his unworthy
children and the dark, offering sunlight each morning in their brief
time of life, and then his own pure Light afterwards, for the worthy.

Crispin thought of Ilandra, of his girls, of the plague ravaging like
a rabid carnivore through all the world, and he lay on cold stone
beneath this image of Jad and understood what it was saying to him,
to all those here below: that the god's victory was never assured,
never to be taken for granted. It was this, he realized, that the
unknown mosaicists of long ago were reporting on this dome to their
brethren with this vast, weary god against the soft gold of his sun.

'Are you all right? My lord! Are you all right?'

He became aware that Vargos was addressing him with an urgency and
concern that almost seemed amusing, after all they had survived
today. It wasn't especially uncomfortable on the stones, though cold.
He moved a hand vaguely. It was still somewhat difficult to breathe,
actually. It was better when he didn't look up. Kasia, he saw as he
turned his head, was standing a little apart, staring at the dome.

Looking over at her, he grasped something else: Vargos knew this
place. He'd been along this road, back and forth, for years. The girl
would never have seen this incarnation of Jad either, had most likely
never even heard of it. She'd only come from the north a year ago,
forced into slavery and the faith of the sun god, had only known Jad
as a young, fair-haired, blue-eyed god, a direct descendant-though
this she wouldn't know-of the solar deity in the pantheon of the
Trakesians centuries ago.

'What do you see?' he said to her. His voice rasped in his throat.
Vargos turned to follow his gaze to the girl. Kasia looked over at
him anxiously, then away. She was very pale.

'I... he ...' She hesitated. They heard footsteps. Crispin struggled
to a sitting position and saw a cleric approaching in the white robes
of the order of the Sleepless Ones. He understood now why it was so
quiet here. These were the holy men who stayed awake all night
praying while the god fought daemons beneath the world. Mankind has
duties, the figure overhead was saying, this is an unending war.
These men believed that and embodied it in their rituals. The image
above and the order of clerics praying in the long nights fit
together. The men who made the mosaic, so long ago, would have known
that.

'Tell us,' he said quietly to Kasia as the white-clad figure, small,
round-faced, full-bearded, came over to them.

'He .. . doesn't think he is winning,' she said finally. 'The
battle.'

The cleric stopped at that. He eyed the three of them gravely,
apparently unsurprised to find a man sitting on the floor.

'He isn't certain he is,' the cleric said to Kasia, speaking
Sarantine, as she had. 'There are enemies, and man does evil,
abetting them. It is never sure, this battle. Which is why we must be
a part of it.'

'Do we know who achieved this?' Crispin asked quietly.

The cleric looked surprised. 'Their names? The craftsmen?' He shook
his head. 'No. There must have been many of them, I suppose. They
were artisans . . . and a holy spirit possessed them for a time.'

'Yes, of course,' Crispin said, rising to his feet. He hesitated.
'Today is the Day of the Dead here,' he murmured, not sure why he was
saying that. Vargos steadied him with a hand at his elbow and then
stepped back.

'I understand as much,' the cleric said mildly. He had an unlined,
gentle face. 'We are surrounded by pagan heresies. They do evil to
the god.'

'Is that all they are to you?' Crispin asked. In his mind was a
voice-a young woman, a crafted bird, a soul:
I am yours, lord, as
I ever was from the time I was brought here.

'What else should they be to me?' the white-robed man said, raising
his eyebrows.

It was a fair question, Crispin supposed. He caught an anxious look
from Vargos and let the matter rest. 'I am sorry for .. . how you
found me,' he said. 'I was affected by the image.'

The cleric smiled. 'You aren't the first. Might I guess you are from
the west. .. Batiara?'

Crispin nodded. It wasn't a difficult conjecture. His accent would
have given that away.

'Where the god is yellow-haired and comely, his eyes blue and
untroubled as summer skies?' The white-robed man was smiling
complacently.

'I am aware of how Jad is rendered in the west, yes.' Crispin had
never been much inclined to be lectured by anyone.

'And as a last hazarded guess, may I assume you are an artisan of
some sort?'

Kasia looked astonished, Vargos wary. Crispin eyed the cleric coolly,
'A clever surmise,' he said. 'How would you know this?'

The man's hands were clasped at his waist. 'As I said, you aren't the
first westerner to react this way. And it is often those who make
their own attempts at such things who . . . are most affected.'

Crispin blinked. He might feel humbled by what was on the dome, but
'attempts at such things' was not acceptable.

'I am impressed by your sagacity. It is indeed a fine piece of work.
After I attend to certain requests from the Emperor in Sarantium, I
might be willing to return and supervise the needed repairs to the
erratic groundwork done on the dome.'

The cleric's turn to blink, pleasingly. 'That work was done by holy
men with a holy vision,' he said indignantly.

'I have no doubt of it. One shame is that we don't know their names,
to honour them, another is that they lacked technique equal to their
vision. You do know that tiles have begun to dislodge towards the
right side of the dome, as we face the altar. Parts of the god's
cloak and left forearm appear to have recklessly chosen to detach
themselves from the rest of his august form.'

The cleric looked up, almost reluctantly.

'Of course you may have a parable or a liturgical explanation for
this,' Crispin added. In the oddest way, fencing with the man was
restoring his equilibrium. Not necessarily a proper thing, he
supposed, but he needed it just now.

'You would propose changing the figure of the god?' The man seemed
genuinely aghast.

Crispin sighed. 'It has been changed, good cleric. When your
extremely pious artisans did this work centuries ago, Jad had a robe
and a left arm.' He pointed. 'Not the remains of dried-out
groundwork.'

The cleric shook his head. His features had reddened. 'What manner of
man looks up at glory and speaks of daring to set his own hands upon
it?'

Crispin was quite calm now. 'A descendant in the craft of those who
did it in the first place. Lacking, perhaps, their piety, but with a
better understanding of the technique of mosaic. I should add that
the dome also appears near to losing some of its golden sun, to the
left. I'd need to be up on a scaffold to be certain, but it seems
some tesserae have dislodged there as well. If that goes, then the
god's hair will soon begin to fall out, I fear. Are you prepared to
have Jad come down upon you, not in a thunderous descent but in a
dribble of glass and stone?'

'This is the most profane heresy!' the cleric snapped, making the
sign of the disk.

Crispin sighed. 'I am sorry you see it that way. I do not mean to
provoke you. Or not only that. The setting bed on the dome was done
in an old-fashioned way. One layer, and most likely with a mixture of
materials we now understand to be less enduring than others. It is-as
we all know-not holy Jad above us, but his rendering by mortal men.
We worship the god, not the image, I understand.' He paused. This was
a matter of extreme contention in some quarters. The cleric opened
his mouth as if to answer, but then closed it again.

Crispin went on. 'Mortals have their limitations, and this, too, we
all know. Sometimes new things are discovered. It is no criticism of
those who achieved this dome to note such a truth. Lesser men may
preserve the work of greater. With competent assistants I could
probably ensure the restored image above us would remain for several
hundred years to come. It would take a season of work. Perhaps a
little less or more. But I can tell you that without such
intervention those eyes and hands and hair will begin to litter the
stones around us soon. I would be sorry to see it. This is a singular
work.'