The Standing Dead - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 02

by Ricardo Pinto

  There, you see, you can think like one of the Chosen when you want to.'

  Carnelian knew what was to come and raised his hand. 'Please, Osidian, spare me your threats. I will do as you ask.'

  Thank you for being so understanding.'

  Carnelian controlled his anger. Nothing would be gained at that moment from violence. He would bide his time.

  The next day Carnelian began work on the cisterns. He had explained to Sil that the Bluedancing were going to stay in the Koppie during the withering. Once she had overcome her disbelief, then horror, she helped him find women to act as overseers.

  By the end of the second day, the first cistern had been cut: a rectangular hole in the ground the bottom of which was bedrock. He had sent the men Osidian had given him to the lagoon and, when they returned, their drag-cradles were sagging under the weight of the clay they had gouged from its banks. This was tipped into the hole, where the Bluedancing used it to plaster the walls and floor. When it had dried, waterskins were carefully emptied into the cistern. All that day, drag-cradles arrived laden with more. Slowly the level of the pool rose brown and murky up the clay sides of the pit. When it had nearly reached the top, Carnelian laid over it covers of woven fernfrond strengthened with scouring-rush poles. The structure sagged a little but held. Days later, as the Bluedancing and the others were digging the next cistern, Carnelian had the covers lifted off the first. A sigh of relieved delight rose from his Ochre helpers as they saw the clay had settled, leaving the water clear.

  When the mother trees announced the Withering with their cones, Poppy came to Carnelian eager to plant her seed. Though Akaisha had promised to ask permission from the other Elders, Carnelian was reluctant to ask her if she ever had. Besides, he suspected it was no longer their decision to make. He became anxious about what might happen to Poppy's precious seed once it germinated. In the end, he persuaded her it would be best to wait. A year was not, after all, such a long time in the life of a mother tree. Tearfully, she agreed.

  Torrid days blazed in indistinguishable continuity. Each morning the men set off to fetch water to fill the cisterns. Each time they had to ride further as the lagoon shrank away.

  'Most of its bed is cracked like old skin,' one of them coughed, resting his hand on the pole of a drag-cradle, trying to keep in his aquar's shadow. Their mouths and their eyes opened in faces caked with dust.

  Carnelian reassured them they had enough water stored. He had himself surveyed the nearly forty cisterns that morning. The wall of one had crumbled. The levels in each had fallen, no doubt through seepage as well as evaporation. Still, after consulting Whin, he gauged that they had enough for those who were to remain behind, at least until the Rains came.

  A morning after a full moon, the air began to haze with spores. Soon they so choked the day even the sun could not peep through. At night, hiding with Poppy beneath blankets, they could not sleep for the hissing. Seven days the storm lasted and on the eighth the whole world seemed to have rusted.

  The weddings held during the next moon were not the joyous events they had once been. People were uncertain whether the old should preside over them as they had always done. Besides, the ceremonies were tainted by mourning.

  When the Master came, he always brought dead with him. Never very many, he was a skilled commander, but enough to haunt the Grove with wailing. Ravan would talk to them of victories and show them the salt tribute they had forced their victims to pay. He and the Master would spend the night on the summit of the Crag and did not seem to mind sharing it with the corpses nor with the ravens that came to feed upon them. Carnelian shunned the Master, as did the rest of the Tribe, who had grown to dread his returns.

  Even in the shade, each breath was toasting Carnelian's throat dry. He looked out past the Newditch to where the curve of Osidian's ditch was already cutting into the burning plain. He imagined the Bluedancing suffering there with only improvised hats to keep off the sun; ubas over nose and mouth to filter the air their digging kept always clouded with dust. They already knew their fate. They were to labour all through the Withering on the new ditch. Worse, Carnelian imagined, was the news that it was nearly time to fire the ferngardens. The Tribe would then leave for the mountains. The Bluedancing knew this was when their tithe-marked children were to be sent to the Standing Dead in place of the Ochre's own.

  Carnelian wondered how the Wise would react once they discovered that the Bluedancing had not come to Osrakum to pay their tithe. Would this alert them to Osidian's presence? Perhaps the crime would be lost for a while in the ocean of their bureaucracy. This seemed a bleak hope. What was certain was that if Osidian continued to disrupt the Earthsky, one day there would be retribution. On that day, Osidian would have the war he craved.

  In the cool of the night, the Grove was sometimes disturbed by the cry of some woman calling for her husband. In the day it was hard to believe any of their men would return from the torrid, shadeless plain. The heavener djada was packed onto the drag-cradles ready for the migration. The Tribe sipped water drawn from the cisterns. Even the men who had come to tell them the lagoons were dried up were long gone. So it was that when the messenger came to declare that all their men would be returning the next day, he was disbelieved. No one dared to challenge the Gods by feeling hope. The next day many dared the summit of the Crag, but nothing solidified from the wavering air. Despair saturated the shade beneath the mother trees.

  Shouting raised Carnelian from fevered drowsiness. The greatest heat of the day had passed. When word reached them riders were approaching the Koppie, Carnelian joined the rest of his hearth running out along the Lagooning across the black deserts of the ferngarden to welcome them.

  That Fern was there alive would have been cause of joy enough for Carnelian and the hearth, but that there were no dead at all stunned people to silence. Riding at the Master's side, Ravan announced that the Ochre were everywhere victorious. The Tribe burst into song, ecstatic that what they had dreaded had not come to pass.

  The tension between Fern and Ravan had subdued the carnival atmosphere of the hearth. That and the demand the returning men had made that the Elders should give up their salt regalia so that the warriors could protect it along with the rest of the Tribe's wealth. Whin's and Akaisha's hair looked lank without beads. Even Sil's joy at the return of her husband could not withstand his moroseness. Carnelian was desperate to talk to him but he felt it was Osidian watching them through Ravan's eyes.

  Something woke Carnelian. Taking care not to disturb Poppy, Carnelian sat up. Someone was moving towards the rootstair. Instinct made Carnelian rise and follow. The cold night air made him glad he had thought to bring a blanket. The figure was climbing to the Crag, its footfalls lost in the sighing of the mother trees. Carnelian went as fast as he could, but when he reached the path that hugged the Crag, he found he had lost the figure. He hurried on, guessing that whoever it was, was going down the Westing to the latrines. Suddenly, a shape appeared before him.

  'Why are you following me?' it whispered.

  Carnelian realized with relief it was Fern. He had hoped it would be him.

  'It's me.'

  'Carnie? High father, you frightened me. Why are you stalking me?'

  T need to talk to you.'

  Cursing softly, Fern pulled Carnelian after him. They said nothing as they descended the Westing. When they reached the Homing, they turned right and walked along it until they reached two cedars from between which a piece of rock extended out over the ditch. This was one of the men's latrines.

  Fern turned to him. 'What do you want?'

  Carnelian could not make out his face. He tried to find a question. 'Something needs to be done.'

  'Why should I trust you?'

  Carnelian grimaced. As well as he could, he explained what had happened on the summit the day he had intended to kill Osidian.

  'Do you still love him?'

  Carnelian bit back the easy denial he was about to make. 'A part of him, but the
rest, I despise.'

  Silence fell between them. The cedars on either side of the ditch creaked. Beyond, the burned ferngarden was a paler darkness.

  'Don't worry. I'll do it.'

  Carnelian was shocked by his friend's cold determination. 'You can't.'

  Carnelian could feel Fern growing angry. 'Even now you try to protect him. Will you also betray me?'

  Carnelian became angry too. 'If I'd wanted to do that don't you think I've had plenty of opportunities?'

  He hesitated, then reached out and gripped Fern's hand, holding on to it when Fern made to pull away. 'He controls me by threatening you.'

  The hand relaxed in Carnelian's grip. 'You must see we need him now. Who else will stand between us and the revenge of the conquered tribes?'

  'You.'

  'What?'

  Take his place.'

  'Would the men follow me?'

  'Why not? One of the Standing Dead is very much like another.'

  Carnelian considered it. He released Fern's hand. 'I couldn't do it.'

  The men would follow you. The other tribes too.'

  'I'm not the Master. I don't have his stomach for violence.'

  'I've seen you fight well enough when you have to. Besides, if we're careful, there shouldn't be any need.' 'What would we gain?'

  "The end of this madness. I believe the Master is possessed. Somehow, the spirit of the swamp ravener passed into him when he spilled its blood.'

  Carnelian was chilled by how close this was to what Osidian believed. 'I could slowly undo what he has done. Eventually restore the Elders.' The very thought warmed him, but then he was pulling his blanket round him. It was one thing to kill Osidian in the heat of anger: quite another to plan it coldly. There was no other way. 'When would we do it?'

  'Not now. It's too close to the migration and, with the other tribes involved, only the Master knows how it is to be arranged. We can do it in the mountains.'

  Carnelian felt Fern's hand seeking his own and clasped it to seal their agreement.

  Poppy insisted on going with Carnelian to the Crying Tree. They walked down hand in hand as dawn was breaking. People were dowsing their fires in preparation for leaving the Koppie. The Tribe's palpable relief they were not losing any of their own children was soured by the shame that they were putting others in their place.

  Glancing round, Carnelian saw Akaisha, helped by Sil, following him with Whin and Fern behind them.

  'At least we'll be off to the mountains,' Sil had said, smiling nervously, for the moment it seemed, having forgotten that her husband and almost all the men would be returning across the desert to the parched Koppie. Still people had smiled back though their eyes avoided contact.

  The five Bluedancing children were there with their mothers beneath the Crying Tree. A forbidding circle of Tribe warriors stood nearby with Ravan as their commander.

  Fern indicated the men. 'Did you really need to bring these?'

  'We wouldn't want any of them escaping,' said Ravan. 'Have you come to gloat, brother, or to give thanks that, through his mercy, the Master will one day spare your daughter?'

  Fern scowled. 'I've come to show respect to those whose sacrifice saves our own.'

  Ravan frowned. 'I don't know why you're all so grim.' He indicated the tithe children with his chin. They would've all been sent to the Mountain anyway.'

  'Ravan, if you've nothing kind to say, say nothing at all,' said Whin.

  Ravan flushed. 'Who do you think you are speaking to me like that?'

  'What're you going to do, nephew, have me killed?'

  Ravan was unable to hold his aunt's glare and ended up glowering at his fist gripping his spear.

  The Bluedancing mothers were taking leave of their thin children. All were crying, the tears smearing their dirty faces into fearful masks. Akaisha hobbled towards them. Her hair snaked out from under her head blanket and clung lifeless to her face. She lifted her hands shakily and then let them flutter down to her side. 'It's better ... but then you must know. It's better to let them go quickly.' She was crying.

  One of the Bluedancing mothers began shrieking at her and all Akaisha could do was nod her head. Ravan bellowed at the woman and, instinctively, she grabbed her boy and put her body between him and Ravan's lowered spear.

  Akaisha flew at her son, snatched the spear from his grip, then flung it down. She spluttered something angrily. He stooped to pick it up and backed away. Ashen, Sil was holding Fern back. Poppy was watching it all through tears.

  Whin took some steps towards Ravan menacingly. 'Where's the salt the Master gave you for their journey?'

  The youth fished a loaf from his robe and handed it to Whin, whose eyes were stony. She gave the salt to one of the tribute bearers. They made sure the children were secure in their saddle-chairs. Then, without ceremony, the tributaries rode away.

  They're the lucky ones,' said Ravan.

  'What do you mean?' asked Carnelian.

  The rest of them are staying.here with their mothers until the Rains come.'

  Sil and her mother exchanged a look of misery. Akaisha was frowning while staring at nothing. Carnelian was imagining how terrible the coming heat would be.

  'Where's the Master?' he asked Ravan, who shrugged, already busy bustling the Bluedancing mothers back to their digging.

  That the steps leading up to the Ancestor House were unguarded made Carnelian certain Osidian was not on the Crag summit. He wandered around asking any men he saw, but none knew where the Master was. When he glimpsed through the cedar canopy men gathering by the cisterns, Carnelian went down there.

  Osidian looked up as Carnelian approached. 'You have saved me having to send for you. Come walk with me.'

  Osidian waved Krow and his other guards away and Carnelian fell in beside him as they sauntered up towards the Grove. Neither said anything until, with sighs of relief, they reached the cool of the cedar shade.

  Carnelian found it strange Osidian felt safe to be with him unguarded. 'Are the cisterns what you wanted?'

  They are functional,' Osidian replied.

  'Why are we not taking the Bluedancing children with us?'

  'You are not coming.'

  Carnelian stared at him.

  'You will stay here to oversee the Bluedancing.'

  Carnelian realized that he should have expected this.

  'You seem surprised.'

  'Who will you leave with me?'

  'Krow and enough men to make sure you can control the slaves.'

  'It will be hard here.'

  Osidian searched the canopy as if he were looking for holes. These cedars will maintain their leaves and you will have water. Use it sparingly. Remember I shall be returning here with the men of all five tribes.'

  Carnelian realized his plotting with Fern had come undone and became terrified his friend might act alone.

  'You seem distracted, my Lord.'

  Take the Bluedancing children with you.'

  Osidian shook his head. Their mothers will work better if they remain here.'

  'In the mountains the children would act as a guarantee of their good behaviour.'

  Silence deepened between them before Osidian fixed Carnelian with a cold smile. 'I will take the children, though it is transparent that you only seek to protect them.'

  Carnelian would not look him in the eye.

  'You will make sure the earthwork continues apace?'

  Carnelian nodded. 'I had better go take my leave of Akaisha and the others.'

  Osidian assumed the pose of a Master weary of the world. 'I suppose you had better.'

  Carnelian walked away and only broke into a jog once he was sure Osidian was out of sight.

  'Cisterns or no cisterns, anyone who stays here during the Withering will die.'

  Carnelian was desperate to find Fern, but he could see Akaisha was getting upset and was reluctant to abandon her. She looked so wretched. Reaching up to stroke her hair, her hand hesitated when it did not find the familiar b
eads.

  'Really, my mother, we've taken every precaution not to run out of water,' he said, reaching out to reassure her.

  She threw his hand off angrily. 'You've no idea what it'll be like here.'

  She turned away, wet-eyed, blind, her eyebrows raised. She gave a little shrug. 'Not that what I feel matters any more.'

  Her dark eyes fixed on him. 'What about the huskmen?'

  Carnelian knew nothing about that but supposed it unlikely the Grove gates would be sealed with so many people left behind.

  'I'll be here to protect the Koppie.'

  Akaisha made a face.

  At that moment Poppy ran up. 'Carnie, it's time to go.'

  Carnelian sagged. He had forgotten he would have to say goodbye to Poppy. 'Have you seen Fern?'

  Poppy shook her head. Carnelian was in an agony of indecision. Akaisha hefted a sack. He disliked seeing her burdened like that.

  'Is there no one coming to help you?'

  'I can manage.'

  Carnelian grimaced. He insisted on taking the sack,

  then, motioning Poppy to go round to Akaisha's other side,

  they proceeded towards the Lagooning.

  * * *

  On every side, under the trees, people were moving, converging on the Lagoongate. Carnelian, Akaisha and Poppy reached the crowd and had to wait until it was their turn to cross the earthbridge into the ferngarden. As they walked along between the cisterns and the magnolias, Carnelian kept scanning the crowd looking for Fern.

  'Carnie,' cried a woman's voice. They turned and saw Sil pushing her way towards them.

  Thank the Mother,' she said as she saw Akaisha. 'You were supposed to wait for us by the mother tree. My mother and I didn't know where you were.'

  Akaisha scowled. 'I'm not a child, Sil.'

  'No, my mother.' She and Carnelian exchanged glances.

  'Do you know where Fern is?' he asked her.

  She frowned. 'Ravan came for him. No doubt he's off with the Master.'

  He must have shown his dismay because she said: 'What's wrong?'

  'Will you tell him something from me?'

  'Why can't you tell him yourself?'

  'He's not coming with us,' Akaisha growled.