Now his father was sleeping quietly and it seemed that the fever had passed into Carnelian. Tremors moved across his skin as if something were burrowing under it. He was desperate to sleep, to escape the numbness, to dull the pain.
Sounds were coming through the wall. One of the Masters was stirring. He swivelled his head round. A window slit showed a shade paler than night. The morning. A sigh deflated his body. Osrakum. Today, Osrakum. He opened his mind to receive the vision. He waited, then closed it when nothing came in. Was this to be the day his father died?
Something heavy struck the door. Groaning, Carnelian stood up, to put his body up as a shield between the door and his father’s face. He fumbled his mask up to hide his own. The door opened to frame a darkness in which an oval floated like a summer moon. Aurum came in stooping, trapping the whole room in the mirror of his mask. It fell away to reveal his Master’s face creased with dismay. That look sharpened Carnelian’s own fears.
‘Take this,’ Aurum said and pushed his mask onto Carnelian so that he had to let go of his father’s hand. The old Master leaned over Suth and bent to touch the dangling veined marble of his hand.
‘His blood still burns.’ Aurum’s face smoothed as he pulled his hand back over his grey stubbled head. ‘Perhaps there is still time.’
‘Perhaps . . .?’ Carnelian’s stomach curdled. ‘Why should there not be enough time? Surely, we are only a few stages away from the Wise?’
Aurum’s eyes were dulled, looking at some inner landscape. ‘There is much that can happen along those few stages.’
‘You mean Ykoriana?’
Aurum’s eyes ignited. ‘Bite your tongue. Just make sure you do what you can to keep your father alive. The rest is not your concern.’
The cistern wobbled sinuous patterns across the rafter-latticed ceiling. The Masters held their aquar themselves. Aurum had dismissed the grooms so that they would not witness a Master’s weakness. Jaspar clucked his impatience to be gone. An aquar was made to sink. With Aurum’s help, Carnelian wrestled his father’s body into the saddle-chair. They ignored Vennel’s question about his health. Carnelian took the reins and held them as he and the others mounted. He tied them to his chair.
Outside, it was cold. Lazy sounds came up from the encampment. Carnelian felt the unease around him. Vennel’s mask could not decide whether it wanted to look at his father or at the Marula.
Jaspar’s maintained a constant oblique angle to the Marula. The barbarians were clumped a little way off, already mounted. Their heads hung as if they slept in their chairs. They had turned their backs on the road ahead as if by not seeing it they could make it go away. Behind them, beneath an indigo sky, Osrakum’s wall was a gloomy island rising from the sea of mist that submerged the city.
Carnelian looked for Tain among the Marula. Wearied almost to tears, already grieving for his father, Carnelian knew he must find the energy to buy back his brother’s eyes.
Mist fingered the grim sleeping face of the land as they rode. It reached into Carnelian’s cloak to chill his skin. Its breath smelled damp and mouldy. The vague shapes of the Masters floated near him. The scratch of claws on the road seemed far away. Ahead, the Marula were wading through the twilight.
The sky paled, the blur cleared a little and Carnelian saw that they were riding along a causeway through a land of folded mud. Tarnished silver mirrors lay along the folds across which furtive creatures were spreading rings. Ridges bristled with reeds. Cranes lifted languidly into the air and flapped their angled silhouettes off, trailing their legs.
Ahead on a rutted mud shelf moored to the road like a raft another encampment was coming alive. Air fuzzed blue with smoke. Muffled voices worried the silence. The edges of a watch-tower contrasted with the liquid curves all around it. It grew huge and so solid that it made the fen look like a painted backcloth.
Then it was dropping behind and for a while Carnelian dozed away his misery only vaguely aware of the mottled dull-mirroring rush on either side. Mounds began curving up from the mud like the humps of huge fish, some with hovels on their backs, others caught in patches of netting. Carnelian sat up. Runs of grey water slipped around the mounds. Huts stood everywhere on legs. Boats lay half out of water, hiding like children behind tarpaulin skirts. Then he saw the edge of the city ahead. A mud bank textured with houses and shrubby trees. The carcass of some immense monster rotting on the marsh. A stench was floating on the wind. Their aquar drummed along the leftway. The buildings ahead were rising higher. Soft-edged canals branched off into the marsh patinated with scum, littered with boats like dead leaves. Here and there pimpling the mud in the distance little citadels of trees hid houses.
The stench of the city was wafting stronger. The channels Carnelian could see were matted with filth. Two towers with sagging walls formed a kind of gateway through which the city received the road. They flashed between them and in among the mess of tenements. The angles of walls and alleys jagged his eyes. He could not make out a pattern. It was like a termite mound cut open and exposed to a rain that had melted everything together. Now and then he would see a flight of steps winding down to a canal hemmed in by rickety warehouses, along which long punts were sliding.
Then they came to a more prosperous region where the tenements wore blistered whitewash. The stench was ever changing like music. The mud walls heaved closer, riddled with passages, spined with the ends of beams that betrayed the anatomy of floors within. Dusty gardens crammed into corners. A single fig tree roofed a courtyard with its branches. In the midst of all this riot another watch-tower rose like a woman wading through rubbish up to her waist.
As they slowed, the city’s perfume thickened: mouldering mud, frying, the tang of slimed alleys, the dull odour of stagnant water, the vinegar reek of men.
Aurum had reached the monolith guarding the watch-tower door. Their aquar swung their heads from side to side as they slowed from their run. Aurum commanded the Marula to dismount. He herded them with his aquar behind the monolith and disappeared. Carnelian was intent on the saddle-chair holding the huddle that was his father. He leaned close, desperate for some sign of life. His father’s aquar adjusted its feet and the huddle gave a groan that let Carnelian breathe again. ‘My Lord?’ he whispered but there was no reply. He looked round at the others.
‘Where has Aurum gone?’ He did not even attempt to mask the anger in his voice.
Jaspar motioned with his head.
Carnelian turned his aquar and saw that Aurum was there, his gold face peering from his hood.
‘Why do we stop, my Lord?’ Carnelian demanded.
‘To leave the leftway and descend to the road.’
Jaspar’s hands expressed surprise. ‘Into the herd?’
‘We cannot do that,’ said Carnelian.
‘There is no choice, my Lord,’ said Aurum.
‘There must be. The delay – not to mention the commotion – it will kill my father.’
Aurum rode up to him. ‘Last night I sent a messenger to the gates to announce our coming along this leftway. For that very reason we must leave it. This road leads only into peril.’
‘You anticipate another attack, Aurum?’ asked Jaspar.
Carnelian noticed that the Master’s voice lacked its usual note of amused detachment. ‘Surely we do not know for certain there will be another attack.’
‘There will be another attack,’ Aurum said darkly.
‘Even if there is, how can my Lord be certain where it will occur?’
‘The messenger, my Lord, the messenger,’ snapped Vennel.
Carnelian turned on him. ‘Does my Lord not think it possible that his mistress will see through Lord Aurum’s subterfuge?’
‘You are impertinent, my Lord.’
‘Nevertheless, Vennel, my cousin makes a reasonable point,’ said Jaspar.
Aurum lifted his hands. ‘I have taken all this into consideration. Our enemies will see in the messenger our attempt to hide our intention to leave this leftway. It wo
uld be unlike them not to see through this deception. Thus, they will expect us on the leftway. We shall thus do the unexpected by in fact leaving the leftway.’
‘In other words, my Lord, you have no idea whatsoever where our enemies are looking for us,’ Carnelian said. ‘For all we know they will be waiting for us on either route. Since this is possible it behoves us to take whichever route will more quickly bring my father to his healing by the Wise.’
Vennel gave him a nod. ‘On the contrary, if there is danger both ways we would be better in the marketplace of the Wheel where we would be as invisible as fish in the sea.’
Jaspar squeezed his hands together. ‘Let us not forget the filthy Marula. It would be prudent, cousin, if we were to find them work to do. The crowds will distract them.’
Carnelian felt that the situation was slipping away from him. ‘Since when are the Chosen fearful of such animals?’
‘Since, my Lord,’ sneered Vennel, ‘they are poisoned near unto death and know that we slew one of their number and, no doubt, will soon find a way to slay them all.’
‘If we move down to the road a greater distance will be put between them and their antidote. This will endanger them as much as it does my father. Surely they will know this and so become more dangerous.’
‘They will know nothing,’ Vennel said scornfully. ‘Did you not yourself say that they are animals?’
Carnelian cast around him. ‘My father still has his vote.’
‘Would you use up his last strength?’ said Aurum.
Carnelian hesitated and looked from one mask to the next.
‘Lord Suth should form no part in our calculations,’ said Jaspar. ‘It is unlikely he will live.’
Aurum’s hand darted up to cut short Carnelian’s outrage.
Enough. ‘If we three vote together we will carry the decision.’
Vennel and Jaspar nodded.
‘It is decided then. We will descend to the road.’ Vennel made no attempt to conceal the note of triumph in his voice.
Carnelian went cold with anger. ‘If my father should die . . .’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘You will be elevated to Ruling Lord.’
‘A privilege rare in one so young,’ said Jaspar and turned his aquar away.
As the others filed into the watch-tower, Carnelian gazed down the leftway that narrowed off into a hazy crush of towers dwarfed by the dark mountain wall. The entrance to the Canyon of the Three Gates had widened into a narrow valley. Standing guard on either side of it were manikins almost hidden in its shadow. The mass of the city between served to cut them off at the knees. Carnelian shook his head, making no sense of their scale. What was certain, however, was that there was still a long ride to the gates and through the crowds it would take much, much longer.
He rode into the tower in despair, pulling his father’s aquar after him, muttering under his breath, over and over again, ‘He’ll hang on. He’ll hang on.’
In the gloom he could make out the immense shapes of the Masters on their aquar. In his anguish he had almost forgotten Tain. He tied the reins of his father’s aquar to his own saddle-chair and then joined the Master’s line. When his turn came he turned his aquar onto the first ramp and his father’s followed after. Halfway down one of the ramps he managed to get close to Jaspar. He forced his pain aside, his anger, his hatred and reached out to pull the Master’s sleeve.
We must talk, he signed when he had Jaspar’s eyes. The Master pointed inquiringly at Suth. Carnelian shook his head. They let the others move round the landing and begin descending the next ramp. Carnelian moved his hands into the light of a lantern.
If I pay your price, he signed, you will forget my brother’s sin?
Your slave will keep his eyes, signed Jaspar with eager fingers.
‘Swear on your blood.’
‘You challenge my honour?’
‘Swear!’
Jaspar protested but swore the oath.
Carnelian signed the lie his father had given him. He hoped that Jaspar would interpret the tremble in his signs as guilt at the betrayal.
As they moved out onto the road, it was like walking into a crowded room. Carnelian resisted putting his hands over his ears lest their brightness should betray them. He ground his teeth. All around, people were packing up and getting ready to move on. Feet were smudging fires to smoke. Uneven walls shoved in on every side, echoing the clatter.
Aurum ordered the Marula forward through the encampment. They sat their saddle-chairs like dummies. Carnelian’s aquar was disturbed by all the commotion. He looked round to see his father’s shy away from some children and almost cried out when his father slumped over. More and more people were gathering to look at them. Soon they would be revealed as Masters. The news would pass all along the road and choke it. Their attackers would know where they were. Seeing the danger, Aurum moved into the Marula and woke them with his anger. Their uncurling seemed as slow as ferns. The Master’s hand flashed a jab into the ribs of one of them. The man jerked up into a grimace and threatened the Master with his lance. Aurum grew larger in his chair. The man withstood his menace for a moment before bowing his head and going to join the others.
The Marula began pummelling their way through the crowd. Their stiff arms rose and fell as they cleared a path for the Masters. People grumbled out of their way. Some fell, loosing their bundles to be trampled by the aquar. Others were pushed onto those behind and came to blows. Anger rippled out into the crowd. Carnelian could see the Marula were wasting what little strength they had left. Their hands lifted less frequently, less high. In one place a Maruli was driving some men back against a huimur whose driver struck at their backs with his goad. One man turned to fight. Another was shoved forward by the stump of the huimur’s horn as it tossed its head. His companions turned on the Maruli, shouting, threatening him with sticks. The black man’s aquar shied back, plumes jittering, as he struggled to control it. Two of his brothers raised a baying in which Carnelian could hear weary desperation. Their mouths stretched in a fixed gape. They gleamed with sweat and pain and anger. They began a feverish stabbing. Throats in the crowd pumped out cries of panic. People tried to escape. Carnelian watched one of the Marula breaking his lance in a woman’s body. Her face registered surprise as she plucked at the wood poking from her breast before slumping into the arms of the people around her.
‘They are out of control,’ Vennel cried over the roar.
Jaspar backed away and his posture suggested he was looking for some direction in which to flee.
It was Aurum who rode forward into the carnage, his shrouded figure serene in the midst of fury. His huge hands pulled the Marula back. Carnelian looked on nervously as the Marula mobbed him. Aurum’s cowled head looked around at them. The Marula hesitated and their mouths’ rictus slacked. When Aurum came back through the roar the Marula were about him, obedient, menacing only those who came too close.
The Masters and Marula percolated through the crowds. Camp-fires and wagons forced wide detours. The Marula angled their lances up and the gore ran down the shafts. Carnelian turned his face just enough to see their eyes darting and the way their faces twitched as if under their cloaks something were eating into them. When they scowled and showed their teeth they looked like demons but mostly they looked like old men.
Each slow step made Carnelian despair. His father’s time was running out. He was letting go of what little hope he had left when a clamouring of bells drifted from somewhere up ahead. Like ice on a spring river the crowd broke into chunks and began to drift forward along the road. Their exhalations overpowered the stench of the city. Wheel-creak, footfalls and chatter drowned the bells. They picked up speed. Hope returned like an ache. Carnelian searched ahead for the dawn. The sky above the dark wall of Osrakum was already blue but the sun still hid behind her rampart. The light that filtered down into the canyon only served to reveal the contempt with which its guardians were looking down on the toy towers of the city.
Visions of the termite city interwove his weary vigilance. Yellow walls mottled like the flanks of lizards. The tunnel of an alleyway; glimpsed shadowy doors; a brilliant flutter of doves; light slicking on a scum-fringed canal. Bridges swagged everywhere and the faded bunting of clotheslines. Tenements rose higher, opened shuttered mouths and breathed out the perfume of a thousand rooms. Carnelian glimpsed the face of a girl looking down at them. A child swung on a beam end. People melted off into alleyways. Once the dirty curtain of tenements parted and he saw the long mound of another road rising faintly off across the hut-pebbled mirrored fen, angling towards them so that he guessed that they converged somewhere up ahead like the spokes of some gigantic wheel.
He was startled by a swell of sound, as if a door had opened nearby. A width of steps cascaded the crowd down to a harbour jostling with punts. Water lapped the lower steps where barefoot, half-naked people were unloading barges. He darted his gaze over the bobbing heads on the road about him, looking for assassins. He peered round past the mesmerizing circling of spokes, the pendulum palanquins, to see his father’s chair. The body sagging in its curve looked already dead.
Barbarian voices babbling made Carnelian raise his eyes, see fingers pointing ahead and follow them to a pale rectangle flanked by two massings of shadow. As he drifted closer he began to hear a sound like swarming bees. The carpet of their march dragged slowly on. The shadows solidified into two gatehouses like sentinels standing guard upon the road. The buzzing had become a distant roar. He passed the last tenement whose sharp edge defined the beginning of airy space. Voices broke out around him in excited exclamation. From the babble he gleaned the single word, ‘Wheel.’
Carnelian’s eyes widened with wonder as he reached the threshold of a moat canal. A bridge carried the road across to the gatehouses looming to receive it. These gave entrance to a plain; a vast roaring marketplace; a seething mass grained with countless heads whose sluggish currents carried toy-like palanquins and the stalks of aquar heads. Skinned with crowds, the Wheel stretched off to vague distance half-darkened by the shadow of the Sacred Wall.
The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Page 28
