The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon)

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘One more question, my Lord.’ Vennel leaned towards Suth. ‘Who are these enemies so terrible that they can force Lords of the Great to hide like thieves?’

  ‘A conspiracy among the Lesser Chosen.’

  ‘To which, no doubt, our friend the Legate is totally immune?’

  ‘Do you think we apprised him of all our plans?’

  ‘And from all this caution can one conclude that these conspirators might dare to breach the Blood Convention?’

  Aurum moved closer to Vennel. ‘It seems that they might indeed attempt our lives, Lord Vennel, and so it behoves us all to show great care. These are evidently very desperate people. You do understand, my Lord?’

  Their two masks reflected each other’s for a moment.

  ‘Only too well, Ruling Lord Aurum,’ said Vennel.

  Looking from one to the other, Carnelian could almost see the anger passing between them. He was sure more had been said than had been in the words.

  Something touched his shoulder. It was his father. Follow me, his hand signed. Carnelian clacked after him though he was reluctant to be alone with him. Crail’s blood flooded between them like a river.

  Carnelian and his father stood on the weir and looked down the valley to the sea.

  ‘Behold Thuyakalrul,’ said Suth.

  There it lay, beguiling like a ring: the Grand Harbour a paler region of the sea within its circle; the inner harbour of the tower a tiny winking jewel.

  ‘This sea is a strange wealth,’ his father said.

  Carnelian wrinkled his nose as he thought of the stinking purple dye.

  Suth pointed to where the coast, curving round into hazy distance, was inlaid with tiny mirrors. ‘There lie the pans in which the yellow-salt is made with which we buy soldiers from the Lower Lands. The sun’s ardour distils it from the sea and the Chosen use its currency to buy barbarian blood. Is it not a paradox that a few holes in the ground should yield up such conquest?’

  Carnelian played with his fingers.

  ‘The Quyans came to these lands across that sea,’ his father said. ‘The Wise maintain it was the sea that was the mother of the Quyan race. They claim for evidence the colours of our Chosen eyes that constantly reflect her.’

  Behind them there was a mutter of voices. The aquar were fidgeting.

  His father looked back at the other Masters. ‘We cannot risk being divided, you and I.’

  Carnelian stared seawards but saw nothing. His eyes were searching inwards, seeking a way out of the prison of his anger.

  ‘I did all I could to save Crail,’ Suth said quietly.

  ‘If you did, my Lord, it was evidently not enough,’ said Carnelian. The words were out before he could recall them. He felt his face burning against the metal of his mask. He could taste his words’ venom. He felt his father turn towards him.

  ‘Henceforth, my Lord, always wear your gloves. A single pale, symboled hand could betray us all.’

  As his father strode off to join the others, Carnelian lingered frozen by the coldness in his voice. He knew it was unfair to blame him but he could not help it. The bile rose in him as he told himself that it was his father’s weakness that had consigned Crail to his terrible death.

  The Marula had returned and were standing in the deepest shade. Apart from their outlines all that could be seen of them was their amber sliver eyes. Carnelian watched his father move towards them. He could not hear his words but saw the way the black men quaked. They scurried out among the aquar and began to unbale baggage from one of them.

  Carnelian walked carefully back on his ranga shoes, avoiding his father. The Marula were tying all kinds of shoddy objects to the saddle-chairs. Carnelian came up to his chair and fingered the gourds, the filthy feathered bags, coils of rope, a wood harpoon.

  ‘The barbarian has such a childish liking for clutter and whimsy,’ said Jaspar as he gingerly poked the objects hanging round his chair. Carnelian watched him wipe his gloved hand against his cloak. Standing looking up the valley, Vennel’s mask gave him a look of contemptuous detachment.

  Carnelian managed a better vault into his saddle-chair than he had before. He cursed when he found that he had trapped a corner of his cloak under him. Some contortions were needed to release it before, at his signal, his aquar rocked him back into the air. He made sure to see Tain scrambling back up into his place amongst the baggage.

  As they set off Carnelian took a good look at the bracelets that covered the forearms of the Marula. After what his father had said, he decided that they were not bone but bitter salt.

  The GREAT SEA ROAD

  A hundred days to the sea

  Along the high white road

  But I shall fly there with the wind

  To leave behind this land of dusts.

  (extract from the ‘Lay of the Lord of the Sea’)

  SHOALS OF PEOPLE SLIPPING PAST, SCRAPING, SCUFFLING. DENSE RAFTS OF bales, of poles and palanquins, floated in the flow. Wheels taller than men drove irresistibly round like mill stones. At a command, the Marula scrabbled down the slope, making the throng a shadow procession behind their kicked-up dust.

  ‘Conceal yourselves,’ cried Aurum, ‘sit low in your chairs to disguise your height.’ Then his aquar was stumbling down into the rolling ochre air. In front of Carnelian, a cloud billowed up. He pulled his cowl forwards as it broke over him. His aquar’s plumes rustled as he urged it down into the haze. Every step jarred the saddle-chair. The grind and creaking grew louder with the babble of voices and the clatter of stone bells.

  He broke through the dust and pulled his aquar up. The river had faces. He peered from one to another. Some were dark, some painted, some cried, some laughed. Across the eddy of heads something floated like a broken ship: a wreckage of wood and canvas held together with ropes. He watched it totter back and forth, waving above it a tatter of flags.

  ‘Hey, you! Get on or get out of the way,’ came a cry from behind him.

  Carnelian peered round the edge of his saddle-chair but could make no sense of what he saw. A huge wedge of bone swayed ponderously from side to side, tapering down to a cruel beak. Horn stumps curved out from the four corners of the wedge. Behind all this more bone fanned out into a fluted crest.

  ‘Out of the way, barbarian, or by the horns I’ll run you down.’

  A small man was creasing his belly against the crest’s mottled edge. A tarpaulined mound rose behind him, criss-crossed with thongs. The man was piercing-eyed and grimacing as he shook his hooked goad at Carnelian.

  Something impacted the side of his saddle-chair. Carnelian whisked round. The reins were snatched from his hand. He saw the cowled figure of one of the Masters lean back into his seat to yank them taut. Carnelian’s aquar went with the tugging.

  ‘Try and be more careful,’ his father said angrily in Vulgate.

  The rebuke stung Carnelian. A smell like malt distracted him from any outburst. He turned to see bronzed hide flexing. His chair shook as he watched the monster lumber by. A wagon pole juddered past like a battering ram. Then the edge of a solid wheel of wood rolled into view, its splintered rim turning slowly. It lurched into a rut, causing Carnelian’s aquar to flare its eye-plumes. He shook around in his chair as the creature recoiled.

  Carnelian saw the other Masters nearby, waiting for the wagon to pass. He moved towards them, recognized Jaspar by his gloves and drew close to him. ‘Was that a dragon?’ he shouted in Vulgate over the noise.

  ‘What?’ the Master shouted back. ‘No, no, only one of its smaller cousins.’

  The movements of their aquar separated them. Suth was making the party form up. Carnelian was directed into place with curt gestures. Resentment burned up in him. His father was treating him like a child.

  The Marula sculled a way into the throng with the hafts of their lances. The Masters and baggage animals waded in after them. The Marula dug a space in the middle of the road then fell back to shield the Masters with their bodies. The inexorable march swept them all in its
tide off into the south.

  Drab drifts of barbarians jabbered like birds. Chariots studded with shell buttons snaked streamers. Strings of smaller half-feathered aquar carried nests of clutter. Sawn-horned huimur clacked stone bells, their backs like upturned boats. Some had howdahs, some were snail-shelled with trussed goods, some pulled carts or painted wagons. Carnelian’s mood brightened. He indulged his curiosity and looked at everything. It surprised him that the road’s two streams slid so smoothly past each other. One was going to the sea, the other coming from it, penetrating deeper into the Naralan. He peered to front and back to see their march swallowed at both ends by hazing horizons. Swarthy hawkers clamoured at the edges of the road waving their meagre wares. Children threw stones, stared, pointed laughing. The baked land behind was patterned with spaced trees. Boulder-bordered tracks scratched off into the hinterland. The land folded distantly into vague hills or crusted here and there into clusterings of hovels.

  Carnelian wondered at the narrow track that ran alongside the road beyond a ditch. In some places this was paved but he saw nothing move along it. He deduced it to be the much vaunted left-way. It did not impress him much until he saw a tower up ahead with its stiff banners. As it came closer he realized it was a fort standing by the road. The banners turned out to be gibbets hung with the tatters of flesh and bone the birds had left. Behind the fort, churned earth spread as far as he could see. Charred spots and litter showed that the land had held a huge encampment.

  The heat made him drowsy. He had grown used to the rocking of the saddle-chair and even found a comfortable way of sitting. The crowd noise became a rushing of water. The road flowed ever on, eating up all time, all distance.

  At last the sky began darkening in the east. People began streaming off the road onto a field of trampled earth. A few dust-greyed trees stood here and there among the ruts. A rush was on for the better sites in the stopping place. People were being absorbed into the hazy hem of the sky. Aurum passed back a message that they would press on. They would make better speed on the emptier road.

  The air cooled. Nightfall slowed their progress. Wagons lit feeble flickering lanterns. These winking flecks sparked off into the distance, showing the windings of the road. On they went until the moon rose to silver everything. Carnelian drifted in and out of sleep.

  He woke suddenly. The rhythm of his chair had changed. The stars covering the earth all round him outshone those in the sky. Wafts of roasting meat. Songs, night-thinned, nasal-voiced. He realized they had left the road. His reins were hanging loose but his aquar was following the others.

  They found their way round fires and wagons, tethered beasts, tents, pavilions and all the other flotsam washed up by the road. Calls and curses came from every side as they blundered through the flickering night.

  Aurum found them a sandy knoll on the edge of the camp. The Marula put up tents. Some were sent to fetch water from the wells, while others led the aquar off to find drinking troughs. Those who remained, squatted in a ring around the tents, facing outwards, their lances aslant against their shoulders.

  The Masters sat in a circle unmasked, eating, each cross-legged on a low stool, their ranga shoes beside them on the ground. The air was wreathed with purifying myrrh. Around them flapped a canvas wall stretched over a ring of uprights.

  ‘Are you sure it is high enough?’ asked Jaspar, carefully unpeeling the leaf that wrapped a hri cake.

  ‘Even a rider could not look over,’ said Aurum.

  ‘The Marula will protect us against intrusion,’ said Suth. ‘But still it might be wise if my Lords were to keep their masks close to hand.’

  Aurum put a crumb of the yellow porridge-cake into his mouth and nodded.

  ‘It makes one uneasy to be so naked in the outer world,’ said Jaspar.

  Vennel’s eyebrows lifted. ‘But then, my Lord, does not such nakedness serve to hide us from the terrible eyes of our enemies?’

  ‘Often the blinded see further than those with sight,’ said Suth severely.

  Even though Vennel dropped his gaze, seeming to give all his attention to his porridge-cake, Carnelian had glimpsed the wariness on his face.

  ‘I had expected the road to be more than just a dusty track,’ he said. He crumbled a piece of cake and put it to his lips. It exhaled saffron, like attar of lilies.

  ‘We are still only in the Naralan, cousin,’ drawled Jaspar.

  Vennel looked at Carnelian. ‘My Lord had better become accustomed to the dust.’ He gave the others a sour look. ‘It seems that we will be a long time journeying to the Guarded Land.’

  ‘Oh, the weariness,’ sighed Jaspar. He shook out a sleeve of his robe and clouded the air with dust.

  Frowning, Vennel blew on his hri cake, brushed it clean with a twist of leaf wrapping. ‘If our journey has become so wearying, my Lord, it is because of the choices that others have made.’

  Jaspar frowned. ‘It is true. Had one imagined the discomfort, one’s ring might have voted for the faster way, whatever the risks. To travel with the common herd is hideous enough, but at their level . . . without perfumes . . . it is perfectly too much.’ He turned to Suth. ‘Alas, my Lord has been proved only too correct: one has utterly forgotten the molluscs.’

  Vennel looked round the circle of luminous faces. ‘Is it any surprise that we should pay a heavy price for the flouting of the Law?’

  ‘We do not flout but choose to set aside in direst need, my Lord,’ said Aurum.

  ‘Once one begins this business of setting aside the Law,’ said Jaspar, ‘one does begin to wonder where it will all end. Are we now to disregard the whole Law?’

  Aurum’s face became limestone. ‘Only the Law of Movement has been set aside. The rest of the Law remains sacrosanct.’

  ‘And yet there are other laws that our present circumstances will make it difficult to enforce.’

  ‘Such as, my Lord?’ said Suth.

  Jaspar smiled. ‘The various punishments that one might have to mete out to one’s slaves, not to mention our barbarian escort. Surely, my Lords, the honouring of those laws would only serve to reveal who we are? It might be wiser to show mercy or to seek postponement.’

  ‘The Law, my Lord, does not allow for mercy,’ said Aurum.

  Carnelian looked at the Master’s face. It had the same hard look as when it had pronounced Crail dead. He went cold with fury. Though he pressed his lips together the words mumbled out. ‘No . . . not . . . mercy.’

  Aurum turned his Master eyes on Carnelian. ‘Did you say something?’

  The unyielding face maddened Carnelian. ‘Only that my Lord seems to have a whore-keeper’s appetite for inflicting punishment,’ his voice rang out.

  A slow smile formed on Aurum’s lips, humourless, intimidating. He turned to Suth. ‘Sardian, your son gives insult to my blood.’

  Suth looked sick as he focused his eyes off into the distance. Carnelian stared at him, willing him to confront Aurum in his defence.

  ‘You will apologize to the Ruling Lord,’ Suth said, not looking at his son.

  Carnelian looked at him in disbelief. He wanted his father to turn round. He needed to look into his eyes. The smile was still fixed on Aurum’s face. Carnelian despaired. When he spoke his voice was hoarse. ‘No, my Lord Father, I will not apologize.’

  Jaspar lifted his hands in a gesture of peace. ‘Come, come, my Lords. It is not fitting that we should quarrel thus. The road has frayed our tempers. We should retire for the night. No doubt, the morning will bring its own distractions.’ He turned to Vennel. ‘Does my Lord know the sleeping arrangements?’

  ‘There are only four tents,’ said Vennel.

  ‘Obviously, the intention was that the Lord Suth should share with his son.’

  Carnelian was appalled. He had never slept in the same room as his father. At any time this would have been difficult; now that there was such bad feeling between them, it was unthinkable. ‘No,’ he blurted.

  ‘No?’ parroted Vennel.

&nb
sp; Carnelian could feel all the Masters looking at him. The anger in his father’s eyes only served to spur him on. ‘Surely it is unseemly that a Ruling Lord should share with anyone?’

  Jaspar looked surprised. ‘You suggest, my Lord, that you and I share a tent?’

  ‘The boy has a point,’ said Vennel, acquiring a predatory leer.

  Jaspar looked briefly exasperated, then shrugged. ‘So be it.’

  Such a swift victory made Carnelian uneasy. He looked to his father but he averted his gaze. Aurum’s eyes were bright with malice. Carnelian knew he had made this happen and now he would have to see it through. He put on his ranga and his mask, rose, and left the enclosure.

  Fire spangled the darkness. The smell of men and beasts mixed with the smoke of meat charring. The rising falling murmur of voices was pierced by flutes, rhythmed by tambours.

  Two of the Marula had followed Carnelian to the edge of the knoll. They moved when he moved as if they were his shadows. Carnelian heard a sound behind him and turned. Against the faint light from the Masters’ enclosure, a bar of blacker night was drifting towards him flanked by the shapes of more Marula.

  ‘Night is best to brood in, cousin.’ It was Jaspar.

  Further up the slope the Marula had made a fire and were cooking something of their own.

  ‘Their food smells better than ours,’ said Carnelian.

  ‘But then of course it is unclean,’ Jaspar said, sounding regretful.

  Carnelian turned to look at him, a hole cut into the starry sky. ‘From whom do we hide, Jaspar?’

  ‘We Chosen hide from everyone, Carnelian, out of care, lest the radiance of our faces blast them to ash.’

  ‘It is the Empress Ykoriana who threatens us, is it not?’

  ‘Lower your voice,’ hissed Jaspar. The hole consumed more stars and gave birth to others as he moved away. Carnelian heard him muttering commands. The Marula melted away and Jaspar returned. Carnelian felt the gold face sizing him up. ‘It is unthinkable,’ it said at last.

  ‘Aurum and my father are thinking it, my Lord.’

  ‘It is this Lesser Chosen plot they fear.’