Lemos wet his lips, gazed down at the rail of the witness box, sighed, and then, meeting the jury’s eyes as he had been coached, said, ‘I remember I was in a great hurry to get home with the stone. I didn’t know why at the time, I just knew I wanted to examine it more closely. When I reached the shop, I went to my workbench and sat with it awhile. The part you see now was gripped by what appeared to be claws of corroded-looking orange material, whose color came away on my fingers; it was flaky, soft, rather like old wood or some other organic matter. As for the stone itself, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. Its clouded surface seemed so lovely, so mysterious. I became certain that an even greater beauty was trapped within it, beauty I knew I could unlock. Usually I will not cut a stone until I have lived with it for weeks, sometimes months. But I was in a kind of trance, invested with a strange confidence that I knew this stone, that I had known it always, that its internal structures were as familiar as the patterns of my thoughts. I cleaned off the orange material, then clamped the stone in a vise, put on my goggles and began to cut it.
‘With each blow of my chisel, light seemed to fracture within the stone, to spray forth in beams that penetrated my eyes, and these beams acted to strike sprays of images from my brain, as if it too were a gemstone in process of being cut. The first image was of Griaule, not as he is now, but vital, spitting fire toward a tiny man in a wizard’s robes, a lean, swarthy man with a blade of a nose. There followed another image that depicted both dragon and man immobilized as a result of that battle. Then other images came, too rapidly for me to catalogue. My mind was alive with light, and the ringing in my ears was the music of light, and I knew with every fiber of my being that I was cutting one of the great gems. I would call it The Father of Stones, I thought, because it would be the archetype of mineral beauty. But when at last I set down my chisel and considered what I’d done, I was more than a little disappointed. The stone was flashy, full of glint and sparkle, but had no depth and subtlety of color. Indeed, it appeared to have a hollow center. Except for its weight, it might have been an intricate piece of blown glass.
‘I was distressed that I’d wasted money on the thing. I couldn’t imagine what I’d been thinking – I should have realized it was worthless, I told myself. The shop was already in danger of going under, and I’d had no business in making the purchase under any circumstance. Finally I decided to present the stone to Zemaille. He’d been harrassing me to come up with something unusual for one of his rituals, and perhaps, I thought, he would allow the superficial brilliance of the stone to blind him to its worthlessness. And I also hoped I might get the chance to see Mirielle. I wrapped the stone in a velvet cloth and hurried toward the temple, but when I reached it I found the gates locked. I knocked again and again, but no one responded. I’ve never considered myself an intemperate man; however, being locked out after having walked all that way, it seemed a terrible affront. I paced up and down in front of the gates, stopping now and again to shout, my anger building into a towering frustration. Finally, unable to contain my rage, I set about climbing the temple walls, using the creepers that grew upon them for handholds. I pushed my way through the garden – if such noxious growths as flourish there can be called such – becoming even more angry, and when I heard chanting coming from a building that stood at a corner of the compound, I rushed toward it, so angry now that I intended to fling the stone at Zemaille’s feet, to cast a scornful look at Mirielle, and then storm out, leaving them to their perversions. But once inside the building, my anger was muted by the barbarity of the scene that met my eyes. The chamber into which I’d entered was pentagonal in shape, enclosed by screens of carved ebony. The floor was carpeted in black moss and declined into a pit where lay an altar of black stone worked with representations of Griaule. It was flanked by torches held in wrought-iron stands of grotesque design. Zemaille, robed in black and silver, was standing beside the altar – a swarthy hook-nosed man with his arms lifted in supplication, chanting in company with nine hooded figures who were ranged about the altar. Moments later, a door at the rear of the chamber opened, and Mirielle was led forth, naked except for a necklace of polished dragon scale. She was in an obvious state of intoxication, her head lolling, her eyes showing as crescents of white.
