Sil burst into tears and he embraced her, muttering into her neck. When he released her she glanced round at her mother, as if Whin might forbid Fern. Instead, her mother gathered her and Leaf into her arm and, leaning against each other, they made off after Akaisha who had turned to wait, Poppy hanging miserably from her arm. Whin's sisters followed, with their husbands, their daughters, their grandchildren coming after them.
Carnelian forgot them, seeing Fern's face. It had a pallor which appalled him. Such bloodless lips, but his eyes were burning.
'Please forgive my wife.'
'She has reason to hate me.'
'She doesn't hate you.' Fern examined Carnelian's face. 'Will you take care of her for me?'
'Gladly,' Carnelian replied. 'And Ravan?'
Carnelian felt sick. He wanted so much to confess the choice he had made to return to see Fern and Poppy and which had freed Osidian from his oath.
Fern misunderstood his hesitation. 'I know that recently he's been unbearable, but he has a good heart.'
‘I’ll do what I can.'
Fern nodded slowly, pondering. The Tribe might well turn against you and your brother.'
Carnelian could not bear hearing that lie. 'He's not my brother.'
Unaccountably, Fern smiled.
'You knew?'
'I'm not a fool.'
'You must know that I did it to -' Fern stopped him by putting his fingers to Carnelian's lips. 'I know.'
Carnelian bit his tongue against the further questions he wanted to ask.
'My mother will stand by you, but even she might not be able to save you.'
'I'll not allow her to stand alone against the Elders. She's done enough for us already.'
Fern's eyes flashed. 'You will accept every scrap of help offered you.'
Carnelian's heart was stilled by Fern's intensity.
Fern glanced round and Carnelian saw Akaisha and the others were already ascending the rootstair towards the Crag. Fern turned back.
'In the last hope, you must cling to our mother tree and beg for sanctuary. None then may touch you unless my mother allows it.'
Carnelian grew exasperated. 'Forget me, what about you?'
Fern took hold of Carnelian's arm and held it hard enough that it hurt. 'Did you hear what I told you?'
Angrily, Carnelian twisted his arm free. T heard, but today, I'm more concerned about you.'
Fern grew paler. 'Don't be, I'm already dead.'
'Run. What's to stop you taking an aquar, riding far away from here?'
Fern managed to find some laughter which, for a moment, made him seem carefree.
'I'd go with you,' Carnelian said, surprising himself.
Fern frowned and shook his head, looking at Carnelian hungrily. 'You're a strange man, Carnie. You know I can't go. If I did, they'd punish the Tribe instead of me.'
'We could ride out after you, after the Gatherer has taken you away from here. We could take you from him.'
Fern scowled. 'You're being stupid now. You must know that only when the Gatherer reaches his next koppie in safety will he give the Tribe the warrant which we'd need to protect us from the Standing Dead should anything happen to him.'
His brow smoothed. 'Stop fighting this, Carnie. I'm a dead man. I've been one since I deserted the legions. I've lived with this doom for more than a year until it's like a stench in my nostrils.'
His eyebrows raised. 'You know, it's almost a relief.' He grew sombre again. 'I'm only glad you at least won't have to witness what they'll do to me today. Let's say goodbye now.'
The terror Fern was repressing was squeezing tears out of the corners of his eyes however much he clenched his teeth to stop them. Carnelian took a step forward and enveloped Fern in his arms. He felt Fern's arms slipping round him. Carnelian squeezed the solid body, digging his chin into the shoulder. He felt Fern's lips against his neck; felt his warm tears and turned into them; found Fern's neck and kissed it. They clung together thus and
Carnelian felt an intensity of desire which made him cling all the harder, not knowing how to express it.
It was the metal screeching of trumpets that broke their embrace. It gave a voice to their pain. They could not look at each other.
*Stay here ...' growled Fern. 'For my sake.' He turned away and Carnelian watched him move to the rootstair, then climb it until he had disappeared behind the traceries of the branches of the mother tree.
As Carnelian sat morose with his back against the mother tree, the trumpets sounded again. Their sinister screams forced on him thoughts and feelings about the Masters, about Osrakum. Even after the fanfare had fallen silent, the memory of the sound lingered like a smell, making the shadows under the mother tree strange and menacing.
He could not help thinking about the way he and Osidian had parted. A conviction was rising within him that their destinies had separated. He had chosen the Tribe over Osidian. A time would come when he would have to pay for making that choice. He feared that others might also have to pay.
He clamped his head between his fists and made himself remember why he had defied Osidian. 'Fern and Poppy,' he said through clenched teeth and saw again that last look she had given him. Why had he made her that promise?
He rose, and stumbled among the many bowls still standing with their water to find the one he had used to wash Poppy. Her hair formed a sad pattern around the bowl. He hesitated, then spilled some of its water on a clear patch of earth and rubbed it in with his palms. The mud he made looked like blood. He cursed. It seemed an omen of death. He gouged some of the red stuff onto his fingers and smeared it over his face, round his neck, his lower legs and feet, the backs of his hands. He searched around for the largest blanket he could find and wrapped it round him.
Another fanfare made his heart jump up into his throat How much would he be endangering the Tribe? Though he told himself he was doing this for Poppy, perhaps he was only desiring to satisfy his curiosity to see the childgatherer that had haunted his childhood. Was it a craving for one last glimpse of the exquisite wonders of Osrakum? He felt a surge of self-loathing. He was a Master. He held his hands up. Nothing could hide the brightness that lay beneath the brown. Nothing could change that he was a Master. Osidian was right; his kind had all been right. What were his sensibilities but a thin garment he wore to conceal his true nature from others; from himself. A sickening fear oozed into him that his revulsion of what was happening to the Tribe down at the Poisoned Field might be nothing more than an attempt at denying the appetite in his blood at this rare chance to fully experience, to soak in the misery of the Plainsmen; to savour the torture of these barbarians he chose to fool himself he loved.
Wild with the torment of these thoughts, he ran to clutch the mother tree. He laid his cheek upon her soft bark. He could feel the power in her coming up from the good earth. She cleansed him. She gave him the courage to believe it was not wholly a Master's heart that beat within him. Salvation came from the love he bore Poppy, Fern, Akaisha and the Tribe. A love he had to believe in or else be lost, not knowing who nor what he was.
Tentatively, he released the tree and folded his arms over his chest, trying to catch any vestige of the warmth Poppy had left when her body had trembled against his. He could not abandon her. Whatever Fern had said, or Akaisha, his place today of all days was with these people who had given him love in spite of what he was. He must share their suffering. He began to mutter to himself, listing arguments why he would not really be putting the Tribe in danger.
'No one could see me. No one would expect to. Least of all the childgatherer. How would he guess that one of the Seraphim would choose to conceal himself painted in mud among barbarians.'
He shook himself free of this mood. He had to do this now or not at all. Before self-hatred could weaken his resolve any further, he made off in the direction he had seen Fern go; a direction which he knew led over the hill and eventually down to the Poisoned Field.
The air was deathly still as Carnelian crept ar
ound the Crag. He could hear nothing but the sound his feet made on the path. Peering down the slope into the Grove, he saw the branches of the mother trees were mute. It was as if they were listening out for their lost children. In that frozen world, he alone seemed to be capable of movement.
The clearing that lay below the Ancestor House was filled with amber heat. He groaned at the shock of passing into it from the shadows. He ran down the clearing to its further end, panting relief as he regained the cool, concealing shade.
On the edge of the rootstair he could see meandering down between the cedars, he paused to peer in the direction where he knew the Poisoned Field lay, but could see nothing through the meshing canopy. He descended the stair until he reached a fork. The right hand one led to the Northgate; the left one, to the childgatherer. Today, he could feel in his stomach why the Tribe called it the Sorrowing. He forced himself down it lest his doubts should make a coward of him.
The Sorrowing brought him within sight of the Childsgate. Wary of the light pouring through onto the stair, Carnelian left it, slipping under the cedars, aware he was trespassing on the rootearth of another hearth. Picking his way over roots, he made his way down the slope, approaching the Homeditch with stealth.
When he reached one of the cedars bordering the ditch, he crushed his back against it and closed his eyes. It was a while before he could hear anything over the beating of his heart. Then eerie silence. Carefully he turned and, clamping his chest to the trunk, he edged round. Every crack and channel in the tree's russet skin was starkly visible. Every tendril of moss, each molten glowing drip of resin. At last one eye was able to look out over the Poisoned Field.
The Tribe were formed up on the other side of the Homeditch, with their backs to it. Looking out over them were creatures from another world, with faces of pure sunlight from behind whom rose a billowing cloud of purple speared through with poles that were shafts of light topped with spiralling fire. Carnelian tried to still the beating heart of his terror. Ammonites, they were only ammonites catching the sun on their silver masks. His eye was drawn squinting to the centre of their glaring line. Some giant stood there, an alarming monster with two heads, masks; no, it was just the green and the black face standards of the God Emperor, rising up behind a chair that seemed to be made of shimmering water.
It was his heart that made him search for Poppy. He was forced to move around the tree and peer out the other side. She must be there beneath the Crying Tree, in among the massing of rosy brown skin that was the naked children of the Tribe. When Carnelian glimpsed the face of a mother or father, he saw it wore a strange passivity. Even the youngest looked old. Only their eyes moved, furtively, as if they feared they were being watched.
A throaty fanfare broke out, so harsh, so terrifying, Carnelian clapped his hands to his ears. He located the source of the sound: three ammonites, the lips of their fiery masks fixed to the mouthpieces of curving trumpets whose bellies were sunk into the dead and ashen earth. His attention was arrested by an apparition rising up from behind the platform like a sun, its perfect face, of metal, flashing. Dragging its purple brocades, accompanied by a staff of ammonites, the Gatherer came to the edge of the platform and looked out over the assembled Tribe. Wherever he looked, light moved over the crowd of covered heads, as if sunrays were leaping from his eyes.
'We are come from the paradise that lies within the Mountain at the centre of the world.' The clear Vulgate rang the silver of the Gatherer's face. 'Come as the emissary of the God and their angels to speak to you their commands. Obey them as you have always done. The tribute you give to them of your flesh should be a thing of joy to you. Those of your children chosen here today will at the proper time be given to them. They are to be considered fortunate indeed whom the God and his angels consider worthy to be their slaves. Shall you obey them?'
Carnelian broke free of the compulsion to gape and glanced at the sullen faces of the Tribe, knowing that few of them could have understood. But then, as one, the crowd rumbled: 'As they command so shall it be done.' A response in Vulgate many could only have learned as sounds.
The Gatherer waited for them to fall silent and then sat himself down upon the silver chair. At a lifting of his hand, one of the ammonites nearby let drop a length of glimmering string Carnelian knew must be a beadcord record.
'At the last audit, how many of the male gender?' the Gatherer asked.
The ammonite felt a portion of the cord. 'Eighteen twenties, and eleven, my master.'
'How many of the female gender?'
'One four-hundred and three, my master.'
'How many creatures in this tribe?'
'One four-hundred, eighteen twenties and fourteen, my master.'
'How many live offspring are projected by the Wise for this octad?'
'Eighteen twenties and twelve.'
'How many were not delivered to the Mountain?'
'Six, my master.'
The number to be chosen is therefore ... ?' 'A twenty and eighteen.' 'Ignoring the fractional part?' 'Precisely so, my master.'
The Gatherer turned his polished face towards the Plainsmen and cocked it slightly to one side. 'Are we not generous then in this calculation of your flesh tithe?'
The Tribe seemed to have been turned to stone. Mouths were lines. Eyes shadowed by hatred did not move their narrow stare from the mirror of the Gatherer's face.
As he threw up his hands, their honey-gold betrayed him to be a marumaga in whose veins some tiny portion of the blood of the Masters ran.
'You may petition us now.'
The Elders of the Tribe were let through, each accompanied by a youngster. Carnelian looked for but could not discern which of them was Akaisha. The Elders seemed suddenly very old as they leant on the youngsters and climbed the few steps to a shelf that lay below the Gatherer's feet. Slowly, painfully, they slid down to sitting. The wealth of salt in their hair seemed dull and mean in comparison with the flashing silver of the Gatherer's face.
'Petition me,' he said again, impatiently.
For an age the Gatherer and the Elders negotiated, the process made necessarily slow by those among the Elders who spoke Vulgate having to translate for those who did not. At last, one of the Elders stood to face the Tribe. Carnelian saw it was Harth.
They asked for thirty-eight, which takes into account the marked children who died before they were taken to the Mountain.' She paused. Her posture spoke of defeat. 'We've managed to reduce their demand by three.'
It was a small victory but Carnelian could see how much hope it gave the Tribe.
'Begin,' said the Gatherer.
Everyone craned to see the children creep forwards towards the ammonites. Those who could not yet walk were carried by those who could. Carnelian watched the first few being clasped in the hands of the ammonites, shrinking from their instruments and the reflections of themselves they could see distorted in their masks.
In ones and twos, the rejected were forced to plunge their hands into jars of black paint and then were released, coming tottering back into the arms of their families. Others, however, were driven up the steps to the Gatherer. One at a time they were given to him. He took their heads and squeezed, felt their bones, his fingers controlling their squirming as if they were nothing more than fish. He forced their mouths to gape by putting pressure on the hinges of their jaws and peered inside. He prised their eyelids open. Watching this, the faces of those waiting in line creased with terror. One little boy looked out across the Tribe screaming for his mother. Breaking, a woman's voice answered him. At the sound the children on the platform began whimpering. More women shrilled names, encouragements. The Tribe began to lose their sullen composure as their agony began bleeding out of them in a wailing. Carnelian felt himself being unmanned by the sound. He lived again the day he was forced to abandon his people on the island to famine. It was only the hard faces of some of the men that helped him retain control. He chewed his tongue like them and ground his teeth and clenched his fists aga
inst the lust for violence.
And so it continued as the sun rose high and scorched them and then began sinking. Carnelian's legs ached from standing too long, but he would not even allow himself to seek the relief of crouching when he saw how the Tribe were bearing their pain.
The Gatherer examined one child after another, sending some down to the tattooists with their needles, releasing the rest to have their hands blackened. The mothers of these rejected children would push through the press and grab them, shrieking with joy. The other mothers looked on these scenes with a kind of hatred, before resuming their bleak vigil.
Carnelian could not see the selected children among the tattooists, but could hear their moaning, their cries for their fathers and mothers as the glyphs were pricked into their palms. These too would find release at last into their mother's arms. Many stumbled as they ran, dropping the small pieces of cloth they had been given to staunch the bleeding. The bloody palms would be stared at in the vain attempt to read there how much time they had before they must be sent away.
Wearied by the heartache, nevertheless, Carnelian kept searching the snivelling line of children being fed up the steps for examination. At last he saw what he had feared to see. Poppy, her tiny face looking for him. He willed her to see him though he knew that if she did, so might others and that would bring disaster down upon the Tribe. As she drew closer and closer to the silver chair, he wrung his hands until they hurt. The moment came that Carnelian had been dreading: Poppy was pushed into the Gatherer's hands. He forgot to breathe as her little shaved head was turned this way and that. The Gatherer pressed it with his fingers as if he were determining the ripeness of a melon. Carnelian gulped air again when the Gatherer seemed to have detected some fault. He clamped the girl as his face of silver leant close to one of the scribes. The mask flashed as he nodded and then Carnelian fought nausea as he watched Poppy being shoved off to be tattooed. She was crying as she looked back, hopeless, distraught at not seeing him among the crowd. As he imagined his little girl gritting her teeth against the needle's pain, Carnelian cursed himself bitterly he had not thought to disfigure her.
The Standing Dead - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 02 Page 32
