Light on Stone

The guard carried his blanket under one arm. Saeron followed with a cup. Some of the water had spilled on the stairs.

He stopped on the landing to adjust his grip. The man behind him laid a hand between his shoulder blades. He did not push. He kept it there until Saeron began to move again.

They passed through a corridor that smelled of boiled cabbage, then another, much colder. Saeron recognised the door to the old wardrobe room and was about to ask where they were taking him, but the guard turned before they reached it. Beyond that turn, the lower panes of the windows were covered. All he could see were bright rectangles overhead.

The new room was narrower than the last. A bed stood along the wall, with a table opposite it, a wedge beneath one leg. A jug and basin had been set under the window. The guard put down the blanket, checked the window bars, though Saeron could not have reached them without the table, and held out his hand for the cup.

It took Saeron a moment to hand it over.

The man set the cup beside the jug. He went out. The other stayed in the doorway, looked around the room, then shut the door.

They had not said how long.

Saeron sat on the bed. The straw gave beneath his hip, and he felt a crossboard through it. He shifted closer to the wall. The blanket still smelled of the other room, of damp plaster and his own sweat.

When the noon bell sounded, he was counting the hollows in the wood beside the door. Two held the dark ends of nails. The third was empty. Someone had taken the bolt off this side and fitted it to the other.

For a while he listened to footsteps. They passed the door and went on; some heavy, others quick, with a brief scuff as they turned the corner. He could no longer tell which way he had been brought.

He stretched out his legs.

There was still dark paint beneath the nail of his forefinger. He tried to pick it out with a nail on his other hand, but only pressed the speck further beneath the skin. He did the same thing at the canvas when he did not want to leave it to fetch a rag. Eiran usually handed him one before he could ask.

Thinking of his pupil, he glanced towards the window.

In the other room, at least, he had been able to see the face of anyone standing outside.

He got up, drank and returned to the bed. He tried to remember Meran’s hands. He remembered the left, resting against a fold of clothing, and the place where he still needed to break the overly smooth outline of the thumb. He could not remember the right. He must have painted it. Hands usually took him more work than coats of arms. He positioned each one separately so they would not look like a row of identical marks along the bottom of the painting.

But with his eyes shut, all he could see was the neck.

He opened them.

A patch of newer plaster showed white on the opposite wall. The edge of the repair ran at an angle, broken by small irregularities where the mortar had run short. He watched it until the burning beneath his eyelids grew too strong. He rested his head on the rolled blanket and covered his eyes with his forearm.

A stone shifted beneath his foot.

He kept his weight on his back leg. The slab ahead was cracked across the middle; its outer half had slipped a little lower, leaving a narrow gap. Saeron stepped over it and touched the handrail.

The stone was cool. A pale, very fine deposit lay in its hollows. The underside of the rail still had sharp edges, but its top had been smoothed so thoroughly that his hand slid without resistance.

The stairs ran between two walls. He had to lift his feet higher than he was used to. Each step had a shallow hollow in the middle, darker than the edges. Further up, the rail had been torn away. Dull metal protruded from the place where the next section should have begun.

He looked back. He could not see the foot of the stairs. They disappeared behind a low arch filled with a bluish half-light. He did not remember passing through it.

He kept climbing, placing his feet near the edges of the steps. The light grew slowly brighter, with no clear boundary between shadow and open space. When he came out into the street, he could not find the sun. A pale veil hung above the roofs; it glowed more brightly to the left, but gave no indication of the time of day.

The street curved. On one side, the fronts of buildings remained; on the other, low remnants of walls and a fallen row of columns. Above the more distant roofs he saw part of a great arch. It seemed far away, across the whole slope.

Nothing grew between the stones. Even where the accumulated deposit formed soft mounds, the surface was smooth, without stems or the tiny holes left by insects.

Saeron slowed at an entrance with no door. Two deep ruts crossed the threshold, their edges almost meeting. He stepped over one and looked inside. A row of niches ran along the wall. Beneath one stood a stone bench, cracked near its leg; fragments of the ceiling filled the rest of the room. A band of dark colour survived at the foot of the wall.

He crouched and ran a finger over the surface. It was grainy, with the paler ground showing through in places. From the street, he would have taken the band for a shadow. Up close he could make out a repeating interlace, several thin lines enclosed by a broader one. Where the wall had cracked, the pattern broke off with it.

Below the painted band, the plaster was smooth, darker just above the bench. Saeron sat on the unbroken end of the bench and leaned back against that very spot. He felt the cold through his clothes. The seat was too high; to set his feet flat, he had to slide his hips forward. From here he could watch the entrance. He might have waited for someone coming back from the street and seen their legs before they looked inside.

He moved away from the wall. His shoulder had left a paler mark on its surface.

When he stood, the doorway was much further away.

For a moment he did not move. He remembered needing only to cross the threshold and reach out. Now he had to pass the bench, two fallen stones and a broad slab he had not noticed before.

The memory of the room returned suddenly, without fear: the rolled blanket beneath his neck, the edge of his sleeve beside his eye.

He was asleep.

He felt the relief mostly in his shoulders. He let them drop, though he did not know when he had begun holding them so stiffly. He looked again at the coloured band. He wanted to see how fresh pigment would look on it, but the wall remained dark and scraped bare.

He made his way back to the threshold between the stones, skirting the broad slab. Beyond the doorway, pale specks drifted down, visible only against something dark. One settled on his sleeve as he came out into the street. He brushed it off, already looking for the passage between the columns. From there he should be able to see what lay beyond the row of buildings. He headed that way.

Part of the covered walkway’s vault remained. A channel ran along the wall, a hand’s breadth wide, its rim worn down on one side. Saeron went to the place where it disappeared beneath a collapse of masonry. A shallow layer of dark water lay at the bottom. Above it were several pale rings of sediment, each a little higher than the next.

He knelt to look beneath the stones and suddenly wanted to hear water dripping.

He waited. No voice or rustle reached him from the distance. The water beneath the rubble stayed smooth. When he shifted his knee, his boot scraped against a slab, and the sound seemed too loud.

He rose only when his knee began to go numb. He moved cautiously, keeping a hand against the wall. A few paces further on, the walkway opened onto stairs. They were broad, broken along the sides; rubble covered the steps, but there was room to pass up the middle. At the top stood the structure he had seen above the roofs.

He could not remember the roofs themselves.

At the last column he had to skirt the base, which had split at an angle. A narrow rib of stone remained near the ground. He drew his foot back to avoid catching it and looked at the shape once more. It should help him recognise the foot of the stairs on his way back.

The great arch rose above the stairs. Its sides rested on massive pillars covered in shallow ornament. Some of the carving had worn away completely; white sediment had collected in other parts, bringing out grooves the sculptor had probably never intended to show so clearly. Several pieces of cornice were missing on the left. They lay below, their carved faces turned to the ground.

Only when Saeron passed the pillar did he see the whole figure.

A woman stood on a high plinth. Her long robe clung to her torso, then spread into heavy folds below her hips. The stone had broken away at one side. Thin, almost sharp edges remained, with shadow gathering between them.

Her raised arms held two curved blades apart. Their tips reached above her head, close to the inside of the arch. One retained its whole edge; the other broke off halfway along the curve. Saeron spent a long time studying the hand holding the broken blade. The fingers were slender, set well apart. The stone between them had been cut away so deeply that in places he could see through to what lay beyond.

He came closer. From below, the face seemed too narrow. He moved back two steps, then to one side. The features regained their proportions. The sculptor must have expected people to look at her from precisely here, coming up slowly with their heads raised.

Saeron knew that adjustment. On large canvases, he too enlarged things that then looked awkward from close by.

He moved a little further, to where the broken handrail left an open space. From there he could see the cheek, the line of the mouth and the crown, its long rays spreading towards the temples and the back of the head. Two narrow pieces above the forehead curved towards each other, but their tips did not meet. They enclosed a slender opening shaped like a drop, leaving a small gap at the top.

There was sky in that opening.

The small bright shape remained distinct even when the rest of the crown merged with the arch. Saeron raised a hand and covered it with the tip of his finger. At once the face grew heavier. He lowered his hand and looked again, no longer measuring.

The woman’s chin was slightly lowered. The mouth had been carved sparingly, almost harshly, with one deeper cut at the corner. A dark crust had gathered in the hollows of the eyes. He could not see which way the pupils faced, if they had been carved at all.

He went around the plinth. At the back, the folds of the robe were broader and less carefully worked. One merged into a support, concealed so that from the stairs it would look like a hanging edge of cloth. Near the ground, short, parallel tool marks remained. Saeron passed his hand above them without touching the stone.

Someone had worked here bent over, probably for many days. They must have set their tools on the ledge where the pale deposit now lay, shifted a leg, wiped dust from their face. Saeron looked at the narrow space between the support and the pillar. There would have been room for a person with a lamp.

He could not imagine the light of that lamp.

Rubble blocked the passage behind the support. He went back the way he had come, placing his feet between the jutting edges of the slabs.

Through the open side of the arch he could see buildings scattered across the slope. Only from here could he make out the width of the street he had followed. It should have crossed the covered walkway and continued downhill towards the low roofs. Instead, it broke off above a dark drop.

He slowed near the edge of the terrace. Rectangular sockets remained of the balustrade, half filled with fragments. He widened his stance, avoiding a crack beneath his left boot. Only once he had laid a hand on a surviving post did he dare to lean out.

There were more houses below.

They stood so close together that from above it was hard to distinguish one roof from another. Many had collapsed in the middle. Through one opening he could see a broad staircase inside a building, reaching a wall where the upper floor was gone. Further on, between high walls, stretched a long strip of smooth surface. It might have been a road or an old reservoir. Beyond it, the buildings disappeared into the pale air.

He stared until his eyes began to water.

No smoke.

Nor could he see cloth hanging from a window, movement on the stairs, a dark speck passing between walls. Something glinted in a few places, but when he stopped looking directly at it, the glint vanished. Light caught on exposed edges.

He took his hand off the post.

He wanted to look inside one of the nearer houses. Find a place beside a hearth, the trace of a shelf, anything that would let him imagine an ordinary human task. He had already seen the sculptor’s work at the plinth; there, at least, he knew how someone had stood and what they had done with their hands.

On the right side of the terrace he saw a narrow stairway leading down.

He went towards it, trailing his fingers along the rough wall. The stairs turned after a few steps. Beyond the turn lay a short corridor with two entrances. One was blocked from the inside. In the other, half a stone threshold remained.

He stepped over it and found himself back in the covered walkway.

The split column stood before him. The narrow rib at its base had exactly the shape he remembered. Behind the column, the stairs rose towards the statue.

He looked back at the doorway. Through the empty opening he saw a strip of street and the room with the cracked bench.

He turned his head slowly, trying to keep all the places in view at once. The bench, the threshold, the column. They were beside each other. The walk he remembered would not fit between them.

He closed his fingers around the edge of his sleeve.

He could go back beneath the arch. He had a good view of the surroundings from there. He only had to climb the stairs, go around the same side of the plinth and look down at the stairway again.

He set his foot on the first step.

The stone slipped beneath his boot. Saeron threw his weight forward and caught the rail. For a moment he stood with his knees bent, listening. No sound of falling stone came from below.

His hand had left a long smear on the rail.

He wiped his fingers on his clothes. He was about to leave the stairs when he saw the woman’s face. From this side it was almost level with his eyes, though the plinth still towered above the steps. He only had to tilt his head for the bright drop above her forehead to disappear behind a ray of the crown.

He remembered the table in his studio and a clean board he had not had time to prime.

Against the dark background he would have to preserve that small opening above the forehead. He wanted to paint it before he forgot how the light changed the face.

He tried once more to find his earlier viewpoint.

He stepped back.

There was no longer a step behind him.

He reached for the rail and found a cool, smooth surface. Beneath his fingers he felt tiny grains of plaster.

Something metal fell in the corridor.

Saeron opened his eyes. His hand was pressed against the wall above the bed, and his sleeve had ridden up and drawn tight around his elbow. He straightened his fingers. There was a dull ache in his shoulder.

Someone outside the door swore. A brief laugh answered, followed by the scuff of a boot.

He sat up.

Bright light still came through the window, but the rectangle on the wall had shifted lower. The room smelled of straw. Saeron pushed the blanket aside and waited for the tightness in his chest to pass. The dream was already fading; he could no longer work out which stairs he had taken to the terrace.

He drank from the cup. The water was lukewarm.

At the second sip he heard an ordinary conversation in the corridor. He could not make out the words, but he listened for a moment, holding the cup in both hands.

The food arrived when the bright rectangle had reached the edge of the table.

The guard held the door open with his boot. He carried the bowl on a folded rag; fat gleamed on the surface of the porridge. He set it on the table and pulled the rag out from beneath it. Beside it he laid bread and a wooden spoon.

Saeron got off the bed and went to the table. He moved the bowl into a corner and put the bread and spoon beside it. He swept the crumbs from the lit part of the tabletop.

“I could use some canvas.”

The man folded the rag in half.

“What kind of canvas?”

“For painting. A small piece. Brushes and some paint.”

The guard looked at the table, then the window. Without thinking, Saeron moved so he would not block the light.

“I can’t bring you that.”

“You don’t have to fetch it yourself. They know what I use in the studio.”

The man folded the rag again, leaving the wet corner on the outside.

“You’re not to be given painting materials.”

Saeron looked at his hands.

“Whose order?”

“The king’s.”

Another man passed outside the door. The guard drew his foot back to let him through, but kept the doorway open.

Saeron looked at the paler plaster above the bed. For a moment he remembered clearly how to arrange the stairs and where to leave room for the plinth. He did not have to recreate everything. The arrangement alone would be enough to let him return to the rest later.

“Paper and charcoal, then. Or a scrap of board.”

“Those count too.”

He said it without emphasis. He waited with his hand on the latch, already looking towards the corridor.

“Will you tell them I asked?”

“I’ll tell my superior.”

Saeron nodded.

The guard pointed at the bowl.

“Eat before it gets cold.”

The guard went out and shut the door.

Saeron sat down. The wedged leg shifted when he rested his elbows on the table. For a moment he kept his hands on either side of the space he had cleared. Then he drew the bowl towards him and set it in the middle.

He picked up the spoon. The end of the handle was rough. He turned it between his fingers and found the smoother side. He ate a little porridge from the edge. It was still hot further down; he spread it with the spoon, letting out the steam.