The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon)

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘Tell me, Jaspar, are the Marula rare in the Commonwealth?’

  ‘What does this—?’

  ‘Humour me.’

  ‘They pay us no flesh tithe and only a handful of them enlist as auxiliaries in the legions.’

  ‘Then I would suggest that the Ruling Lord Aurum always intended us to return using them as our disguise.’ Carnelian could not conceal the smugness in his voice.

  ‘I do not quite follow . . .’

  ‘Does it seem likely to you, Jaspar, that the Legate would just happen to have more than a dozen of these rare creatures in his auxiliaries?’

  ‘And so . . . ?’ said Jaspar.

  ‘And so, either Aurum brought them with him or he had the Legate obtain them. Either possibility makes it certain that the arrangements were made before you all set off across the sea. This suggests that Aurum knew my father would return with him.’

  ‘It is well reasoned.’ Jaspar’s mask nodded. ‘Well reasoned,’ he said, his voice lower, as if he were speaking to himself. His mask became very still. ‘Why then was Aurum so despondent on the journey out?’

  Carnelian deflated. The implication was that the influence Aurum had over his father he had not brought with him. If that were true then he must have found it on the island. Carnelian worried that Jaspar was moving towards the same conclusion and spoke quickly to ruffle the surface of Jaspar’s thoughts.

  ‘By the same reasoning, it cannot be the Lesser Chosen that we hide from. Whatever was written in the letter, it could not be that.’

  Jaspar said nothing. Carnelian became disconcerted by the Master’s mask floating its dead face in the night. ‘The Marula, my Lord, were already waiting for us.’

  Jaspar gave a slow nod. ‘Let us say, cousin, that you are right and we are hiding from the Empress, what then?’

  ‘Why are we hiding?’

  ‘Spinning pure conjecture, it could be that she intends to stop your father getting to Osrakum in time to influence the election.’

  ‘How could she do that?’

  ‘She could set assassins searching for him along this road.’

  Carnelian went cold with fear for his father. ‘She could not . . . the Blood Convention . . .’

  ‘She has already murdered her own daughter.’

  ‘Her daughter?’

  ‘Flama Ykoria.’

  ‘Why . . . ?’

  ‘Ykoriana was the first woman for generations to be born blood-rank four.’

  Carnelian almost gasped as he calculated it. ‘Her ring casts eight thousand votes. Nearly half as much as all the Great together.’

  Jaspar nodded. ‘Through her, Flama Ykoria inherited the same rank. Now, Ykoriana alone enjoys this distinction.’

  Carnelian was aghast. ‘But even she must fear the Law.’

  Jaspar laughed without humour. ‘She had already long before suffered all the punishments the Law can inflict on Chosen women: the purdah imprisonment, blinding.’

  Carnelian shuddered. ‘But not death?’

  ‘We do not slay our women, they are too precious to us.’

  Carnelian realized Jaspar was not being ironic. ‘What other crime did she commit?’

  Jaspar shrugged. ‘Some matter internal to the House of the Masks. That is in the past. It is the election that concerns her now.’

  ‘How will victory assuage her bitterness?’

  ‘Nephron is his father’s son, Molochite his mother’s: a weak prince, a wallower in rare vices. She would wed him, encourage his corruption, then rule unfettered from behind his throne. Of course, if your father were to ensure Nephron’s victory . . .’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘Then he would enjoy high favour at the new Gods’ side and, should he choose, could wield oppressive power over others of us of the Great.’

  ‘My father would never abuse such trust.’

  ‘He might not, but what if he became an instrument in another’s hand? Aurum’s, for example?’

  ‘Aurum?’

  ‘You must have noticed, Carnelian, what influence he has over your father?’

  Carnelian felt the sweat soaking the bandages on his back. ‘I . . . I really have no idea what you mean, my Lord.’

  ‘Are you certain that you have not, cousin?’

  ‘Absolutely certain.’

  ‘Well then.’ Jaspar’s mask was a dark mirror. ‘We have talked enough, cousin. One would not deprive you of much needed sleep. The days that follow promise to be wearisome, neh?’

  Jaspar turned and walked back up the slope. As Carnelian watched him fade away, his heart seemed to be shaking its way out of his body. A scent of menace lingered on the night air. He told himself that really nothing much had happened. It amused his cousin Jaspar to frighten him a little, that was all.

  When Carnelian was calmer he began to climb the knoll. The Marula squatting in the dark like boulders stood up silently as he passed and followed him.

  Mattresses thick enough to satisfy the commands of the Law had been rolled out to form a floor in the tent. The air was weighed with incense. Carnelian jerked a nod at Jaspar. He frowned when he saw Tain prostrate with another gangly boy beside him. His brother looked up and twitched a smile.

  ‘What a relief it would be to remove these accursed wrappings,’ said Jaspar, speaking from behind him.

  Carnelian could feel his own bandages embracing him like clammy arms.

  ‘One fears we will have to stew in them until we reach Osrakum.’

  Carnelian gave the boys leave to rise. He registered the look of horror on Tain’s face and could make no sense of it. The other boy slipped past him with hands held out. ‘Let your slave help you, Master,’ he said in a thin voice.

  In increasing confusion, Carnelian watched Tain clasp trembling hands over his face. Carnelian turned and saw the other boy’s small hands reverently coping with the weight of Jaspar’s mask as it was handed down.

  ‘My slave is not as pretty as yours, cousin, but he is a wonder with a brush,’ Jaspar was saying.

  Carnelian felt sudden nausea as he stared at the Master’s naked face. ‘You have destroyed my brother.’

  Jaspar started back and put on an expression of childlike innocence. ‘Cousin? Aaah, you are being droll.’

  ‘You removed your mask.’

  ‘Indeed. Did you think I would sleep in it?’

  ‘But the Law . . . he will have to be punished.’

  ‘He will have to be blinded.’

  ‘You did it deliberately?’ Carnelian put his hand to his head. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said in Vulgate.

  ‘All the slaves we brought with us will be blinded. Did you really think, Carnelian, that the Great would choose to suffer inconvenience merely to save the eyes of a handful of slaves?’ He laughed. ‘It is too grotesque.’

  Carnelian turned back to Tain. His brother’s hands hung limp at his side. He would not lift his eyes

  ‘One can see no reason for so much distress. What is this pretty creature to you, cousin?’ Jaspar gave a knowing smile. ‘He will still be able to perform for you.’

  ‘He is my brother!’ Carnelian said, aghast.

  ‘That is a ridiculous word to use of one whose blood runs dull and cold.’ Jaspar reached down to his slave’s hand and lifted it. The boy could have been a rag doll. Jaspar opened the boy’s hand. ‘I might as well start claiming this one to be my nephew, or some such.’

  A green tattoo on the palm proved the boy had been fathered by a Master. Jaspar let the arm flop down.

  ‘The procedure can be made painless. Besides, you can give him beautiful new eyes of stone. Turquoise would match his colouring. Give him sapphires if you wish to pamper him.’

  Carnelian gaped at Jaspar, then dug his chin into his chest and held his stomach. He dared not look round at Tain.

  ‘Do not be cruel, cousin. Think on my loss,’ said Jaspar.

  Carnelian looked up.

  ‘Yours might at least preserve some of his uses while mine . . .’ J
aspar took his slave’s chin in a gloved hand, lifted it. The boy’s enormous dark, bruise-lidded eyes closed and trembled. ‘Without his eyes, this one will be of very little use.’ He pouted his lips, lapsed into Vulgate. ‘Isn’t that so, little one?’ The boy produced a tearful grimace that attempted to be a smile. Jaspar released the slave’s chin and turned to Carnelian. ‘Feel at liberty to remove your mask, and then we shall be equally responsible for the damage of each other’s property.’

  Carnelian shook his head slowly, seeing nothing. Everything was drenched with decay. His father must have expected this would happen and had done nothing to stop it.

  Jaspar was all joviality. ‘You really will have to forget these peculiar sensibilities, Carnelian. They are so unbecoming in one of the Chosen.’

  Only in the dark did Carnelian remove his mask. Then he lay down, rubbing the edges of his face where the mask had dug in. He clasped his left hand over his blood-ring, the sign of his manhood. It was no a charm. He felt like a lonely child. Tain was somewhere outside. Jaspar had insisted it was not fitting that a Lord should sleep in the same place as another’s slave. Carnelian had said nothing to Tain. What comfort could he have given him even if Jaspar had not been there? His brother could not have understood the Quya, but he knew well enough what punishment would be his for looking on a Jaspar face.

  Carnelian could hear Master’s slow breathing. He wondered why he felt no anger towards him. It was a terrible betrayal to feel no anger. With a peculiar detachment he considered the conversation he had had with the Master. He knew now that Jaspar’s motives for talking to him had not been any attempt at friendship. Jaspar was no different from the other Masters. In that, at least, his father had been right.

  Outside a voice was singing. Its sad sound failed to touch Carnelian. Everything seemed to be shut outside him. He wanted to die. What point was there to a life in which one felt nothing? His fingers found the mattress edge. They dangled over. Then, daring sacrilege, they pushed down to touch the unhallowed, corrupted earth. Carnelian expected something, a shock, a sting but there was nothing, nothing but his fingers stirring dust.

  Carnelian was woken by aquar song welcoming the dawn. He sat up. He could hear the murmur of the camp. His body ached all over. Jaspar was gone. Squatting in a corner, Tain was staring at the ground. As Carnelian stood up, his brother came over to help him dress. They adjusted Carnelian’s riding cloak avoiding each other’s eyes. Carnelian felt that if he were to stretch out his hand he would stub his fingers on the wall that had risen between them.

  ‘I bet you thought those four-horned monsters on the road were dragons, eh, Tain?’ He could hear the flat emptiness of his words.

  His brother shrugged, bit his lip and continued to adjust the riding cloak.

  Carnelian drooped as if his bones had been removed. He put his hand on his brother’s chest. ‘How are you feeling, Tain?’

  His brother looked up, furious. ‘How do you think?’

  Carnelian looked at those bright angry eyes and imagined them replaced with dead stone. ‘It’s not my fault,’ he shouted. ‘It’s not.’ The last word tailed off. He could see that Tain was close to tears.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tain,’ he said gently. His legs felt too weak to hold him up. Reassurances were on his tongue but he remembered Crail and swallowed them. He reached out to touch Tain, but his brother drew away.

  ‘A Master might see us.’

  Tain held out his mask. Carnelian took it, put it on, drew the cowl over his head then walked out into the morning.

  A dewy fragrance overlaid the smoky stink. Clinks and voices sounded sharp, seeming nearer than they were. The throng was fidgeting into motion.

  Soon Carnelian was mounted with the other Masters and filing back through the camp. Tain sitting on the baggage found a smile for him. It hurt Carnelian as much as if his brother had thrown a stone. Men levered wagon wheels into turning. Pots clacked as they were stowed. Urine dribbled on embers, hissing steam. Laughter and the shrilling of babies pierced the swelling hubbub.

  The Marula jogged their aquar onto the road. Mist hid the animals’ bird feet. Another of the way-forts lay a little distance back along the road with its sinister fence of punishment posts. Carnelian looked out over the stopping place. Its brown flood of travellers was leaching towards them. A diamond-bright gash had torn between earth and sky. Chattering clouds of starlings flashed down from the trees. Then he turned as he felt the Masters moving and they were off: amidst the trundling chariots, the creaking axles, the chatter of the women, they were off into the south, to where the Naralan met the Guarded Land.

  For days they rode the road’s relentless rhythm, pounding into endless dusty distance. Night brought hri cake, incense, weary hope. Carnelian looked across a chasm at his father. The other Masters were quick to anger. The Marula cordon beat away the hucksters and the curious. Tain’s eyes dulled as if they were already stone. Carnelian hid in his cowl, blood pulsing in his head. The thud and thump of huimur feet. Sandals scuffing, scraping. Wheel rims always rising always falling. Litters rocking. People dragging squalling infants. Hand-carts hard pushed to keep in chariot shadow. Swaying horned saurian heads. To kill time, people quarrelled over trifles. Heat. Unbearable heat desiccating everything to chalk. Out from the haze far behind them the road’s procession bubbled. Up ahead, it simmered away to nothing. Carnelian sagged dozing, sometimes sucking furtive gulps of water in the shadow of his cowl, brooding, licking without caring the stone of salt that had been pressed on him as protection from sun madness. His legs, his back, his neck nagged aching. His head nodded bobbing, keeping time with the rhythm of the road.

  Tain was wasting as thin as Jaspar’s boy. Carnelian had tried to make him eat, to comfort him. All this had to be done in snatches, for at night Jaspar was always there and in the day Tain was lost amongst the baggage.

  Carnelian wore a face of patience over his anguish. He kept Tain away from the tent when Jaspar was there, hoping that the sin might be forgotten. Sometimes, when Carnelian had to undress himself, Jaspar would give him his indulgent idol smile. It was then that Carnelian’s self-control wore thinnest.

  Jaspar persisted in finding fault with his own slave. It had been agreed that there were to be no punishments on the road and so instead the Master amused himself by describing to the boy those that were waiting for him in Osrakum. Carnelian turned from the slave’s sweaty trembling, bit his tongue, struggled for deafness. Their tent stank of the boy’s fear.

  Pulsing cicadas, buzzing flies, the sounds of the road, all were muffled by the lazy heat. Even in the cedar’s shade the air was stifling, but Carnelian was thankful for the tree. The throng shimmered along the road. Away towards the melting horizon the towers of Maga-Naralante danced their dark flames. The city was like a mirage. Vennel pointed towards it.

  ‘My Lords, there we could find discreet comfort: a welcome respite from the road. We would resume our journey refreshed.’

  ‘Sometimes legionaries collect the tolls,’ said Aurum. ‘They might see through our disguise.’

  ‘The markets, the narrow streets,’ said Suth, ‘all would be inimical to secrecy.’

  Vennel muttered his discontent. His aquar echoed him with a rumble in its throat.

  The shadow-dapple fused each Master and aquar into a single fantastical creature. Carnelian chewed his lip. Even though their saddle-chairs were almost touching, his father was beyond his reach.

  ‘However much we may share your desires, Vennel, the risk must be avoided,’ said Suth.

  Carnelian fixed his eyes back on the road. He was always on the lookout for Ykoriana’s assassins.

  ‘Again I am overruled,’ said Vennel, ‘and again I think the diversion will prove the more delaying choice.’

  ‘Does my Lord wish to have the matter put to the vote?’ said Jaspar.

  Vennel turned to him. ‘Would there be any point?’

  ‘I would vote with you, Vennel. I have a notion to spend a night in something like co
mfort.’ He turned to Suth. ‘Whatever the risk.’

  ‘So be it,’ Aurum said sharply. ‘My ring I set against yours, Jaspar.’

  ‘And mine against Lord Vennel’s,’ said Suth.

  Jaspar looked at Carnelian. ‘It seems then that it is you, cousin, who is to decide the matter.’

  Even muffled by his cowl and mask, Carnelian could tell the Master was smiling his damned, self-satisfied smile. He surveyed the four Masters in their saddle-chairs. It occurred to him that if he voted with Jaspar it might help the Master forget Tain’s sin. There would also be the pleasure of voting against Aurum. The most important consideration, though, was that he would be voting against his father. His father was to be pitied. Every day he showed more clearly the power Aurum had over him.

  ‘Carnelian,’ Suth said. ‘How shall your ring fall?’

  It was the first time that his father had said anything to him for days. Carnelian looked at him, wishing he could see his face.

  ‘Why do you delay?’ said Aurum, as if he were talking to a boy.

  ‘I shall vote with my father,’ said Carnelian.

  ‘One is not surprised, my Lord,’ said Jaspar, ‘but a little disappointed. Now that you have come of age one did not think that you would so blindly follow your father’s lead.’

  Carnelian started at the emphasized word. As they rode back into the crowds, he wondered if there was anything Jaspar would take in exchange for Tain’s eyes.

  They left the road within sight of Maga-Naralante’s black gate. Rolling dust broke over them. Wheels rattled violently as they jolted into the ditches that criss-crossed the track. Foul stenches rose with the flies. Hovels all sticks and wattle leant over into their path. When the air cleared a little Carnelian saw more of this debris sloping up towards the city’s mud rampart like a scree. There were too many vehicles squeezing along the track. A chariot snagged a hovel and tore it down. Its wheel collapsed, swerving the chariot into the path of a huimur. Bleating, the monster swung away, crushing into a crowd of travellers. The wagon it pulled tipped over. Bundles rolled into the gutters. Filthy urchins appeared and swarmed the wreck. The traffic built up behind. Annoyance swelled to anger then burst into riot. It was easy for Carnelian to imagine assassins in the crowd. Aurum must have shared his fears for he ordered the Marula to slay a path through the mob. People were cut down screaming. Carnelian stared into a face foaming blood, then he leapt his aquar over the wagon pole and loped off along the track after his father.