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tiles were rendered with the same expertise, he saw.
    Some of the tiles were the work of highly sophisticated artists; some the work of journeymen; some—especially those that were devoted to areas of pure foliage—the handiwork of apprentices, working on their craft by filling in areas that their masters had neither the time nor perhaps the interest to address.
    But none of this spoiled the power of the overall vision. In fact the dis-continuity of styles created a splendid energy in the piece. Portions of the world were in focus, other parts were barely coherent; the abstract and the representational sitting side by side on the wall, all part of one enormous story.
    And what was that story? Plainly, given the kind of quarry Sandru had listed, this was more than simply a hunt: it smacked of something far more ambitious. But what? He peered at the tiles, his nose a few inches from the wall, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
    “I looked at the whole room, before we put all the furniture in here,”
    Sandru said. “It’s a view, from the Fortress Tower.”
    “But not realistic?”
    “It depends what you mean by realistic ,” Sandru said. “If you look over the other side”—he pointed across the room—“you can see the delta of the Danube.” Zeffer could just make out the body of water, glittering in the gloom: and closer by, a mass of swampy land, with dozens of inlets winding through it, on their way to the sea. “And there!” Sandru went on, “to the left”—again, Zeffer followed Sandru’s finger—“at the corner of the room, that rock—”
    “I see it.”
    The rock was tall, rising out of the ocean of trees like a tower, shrubs springing from its flank.
    “That’s called the May Rock,” Sandru said. “The villagers dance there, on the first six nights of May. Couples would stay there overnight, and try CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 31
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    to make children. It’s said the women always became pregnant if they stayed with their men on May Rock.”
    “So it exists? In the world, I mean. Out there.”
    “Yes, it’s right outside the Fortress.”
    “And so all those other details? The delta—”
    “Is nine miles away, in that direction.” Sandru pointed at the wall upon which the Danube’s delta was painted.
    Zeffer smiled as he grasped what the artists had achieved here. Down in the depths of the Fortress, at its lowest point, they had re-created in tile and paint what could be seen from its pinnacle.
    And with that realization came sense of the inscription he’d read on the threshold.
    Though we are in the bowels of Hell, we shall have the eyes of Angels .
    This room was the bowels of Hell. But the tile-makers and their artist masters, wherever they’d been, had created an experience that gave the occupants of this dungeon the eyes of angels. A paradoxical ambition, when all you had to do was climb the stairs and see all this from the top of the tower. But artists were often driven by such ambition; a need, perhaps, to prove that it could even be done.
    “Somebody worked very hard to create all this,” Zeffer said.
    “Oh indeed. It’s an impressive achievement.”
    “But you hide it away,” Zeffer said, not comprehending the way the room had been treated. “You fill the place with old furniture and let it get filthy.”
    “Whom could we show it to?” the Father replied. “It’s too disgusting . . . ”
    “I see nothing—” He was about to say disgusting , when his eye alighted on a part of the tile-work that he’d cleaned with his arm but had not closely studied. In a large grove a round stadium had been set up, with seating made of wood. The perspective was off (and the solution to the perspective changed subtly from tile to tile, as various hands had contributed their piece of the puzzle. There were perhaps twenty tiles that had some portion of the stadium represented upon them; the work of CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 32
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