The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon)

by Ricardo Pinto

  The scrape of claws made him turn to see the Masters sweeping up with Aurum at their head.

  ‘I will take responsibility for the Lord Suth.’

  ‘You will not,’ Carnelian said.

  Aurum came very close to tower over him. Carnelian straightened his back and faced him. Aurum flicked the air in anger and turned his aquar, bellowing commands that sent the Marula hurtling past onto the road grooving off along the left-hand canyon wall.

  Jaspar came up. ‘Why have we stopped, my Lords?’

  ‘The Marula are the danger now,’ said Aurum, the eyeslits of his mask following the black men as they grew smaller and smaller in the groove road.

  Carnelian glanced up the length of the canyon. The sound of water made him look down to see the canal. ‘A river,’ his voice said.

  Jaspar snorted. ‘The vermin in the city below call it the River of Paradise. We call it the Cloaca. It is the sewer of our hidden land.’

  ‘We ride to the Green Gate.’ Aurum left the words behind as he launched into motion, leaving Carnelian and the other Masters to chase after him.

  Rock was hurtling past his head. The canyon narrowed into the distance where, in a gloomy haze, it turned abruptly southwards. All the way to this bend, the floor was a dusky swirl of wagons and people divided in two by the groove of the Cloaca. A scraping scuffling shook up the canyon walls and set Carnelian’s teeth to grinding. In the wind, his cloak became like a trapped bird struggling to escape. Up ahead Carnelian glimpsed the bladed edges of the canyon reaching high enough to graze the sun. It seemed impossible that any light should ever find its way down to the floor.

  As they sped round the canyon’s bend, Carnelian watched the next stretch of it coming into view. Billows of smoke rolling towards them engulfed the Marula, then broke over Carnelian till he was riding blind. He choked on the grey air. The clouds thinned enough to show the insect crowds below. Coughing, eyes welling, he tried to peer through the murk. He swam out spluttering as the smoke dispersed like morning mist. They had come to the prickling edge of what seemed to be an impenetrable forest.

  ‘The Green Gate, at last,’ cried Jaspar.

  Staring at the forest, Carnelian realized it was made of bronze, a bladed hedge shaped into a fortress wall that filled the canyon from side to side. The canyon floor was striped and chevroned with wagons covering these patterns in ordered files. Along its centre, the Cloaca had sunk into a chasm spanned by bridges.

  Carnelian could see no way through the bronze hedge. Tall banners burned red among the thorns. Other flames appeared and became figures shrouded in vermilion. Some were as small as children. All were enveloped in cloaks that brushed the ground.

  As Aurum’s mask looked back, Carnelian followed its gaze. The Master was studying the Marula who had fallen behind them in close escort. Their faces were wooden with fear. Mouths hung open as if they were panting. Their eyes fixed on their hands. Tain was there between the legs of a Maruli, slight, unblinking, like a doll.

  Dread began stirring in the pit of Carnelian’s stomach as he watched the vermilion figures forming into a crescent. He looked at their faces. Each was the same, each divided, half skin, half black. He drew back into his chair as they threw back their cloaks. All wore gold legionary collars. Their leather armour was baroquely textured on the same side as their faces were black and on the other side as smooth as their skin. On each chest was a red flower like a flame. Each man’s right side look charred, the left of each was barbarian brown.

  ‘Ichorians,’ he breathed. All his life, he had heard tales about these half-tattooed men. The Red Ichorians, guardians of the Three Gates.

  One of them stepped forward lightly, like a dancer. He stood smiling before Aurum’s aquar and then performed an elegant prostration.

  ‘Surely you are Masters,’ the man said, rising to his knees, ‘though you wear no cyphers, no banners, nor are you guarded by tyadra. And those,’ the Ichorian stabbed his black-tattooed hand towards the Marula, ‘those creatures defile this road.’

  Aurum pulled back his cowl to reveal the mask beneath and as he did so all the Ichorians knelt except the one in front of him who rose, still smiling.

  ‘You’re correct, Ichorian, in all you say,’ Aurum said. ‘We’ve come far through many perils and have had need of these disguises. Now we’ll happily discard them.’

  ‘We’ve heard that a party such as this accompanies the Master, Our-father-who-goes-before?’

  Aurum lifted his hand in the affirmative and the Ichorian searched eagerly among the shrouded Masters. ‘We expected you on the left-way, my Masters. Are you desirous to pass swiftly through the Three?’

  Aurum repeated the affirming gesture. ‘But first there’s one matter you must attend to, centurion of the Red Lily.’

  There was a clack as two Marula chairs struck together. Aurum’s mask turned slightly to one side as if he were listening for more collisions.

  ‘We aren’t yours to command, my Master, unless you wear the Pomegranate Ring.’

  In answer Aurum pushed his white hand out of his sleeve and splayed it. The ring was a huge wound in the heart of his palm.

  ‘Father,’ the Ichorian cried and fell before him onto the pavement. The cry was taken up by the other Ichorians. The centurion rose up again to his knees. ‘Forgive the children that didn’t know their father.’

  Aurum turned his aquar so that he was looking back at the Marula. Carnelian followed his lead. Hunched in their saddle-chairs, the black men were huddling their beasts together. One of them who dared to look up had the shy look of a child expecting punishment.

  Aurum lifted his hand and pointed. ‘Destroy those animals.’

  ‘Destroy them,’ chorused Vennel and Jaspar.

  As one, the crescent of Ichorians swept forward, passing quickly between the Masters to face the Marula. The black men’s faces creased with panic. One of the guardsmen lifted his tattooed hand. In his grip was a bird of bronze winged with blades. He released it into whistling flight around his hand. As he let out its leash its blurring circle widened with the eyes of the Marula. Their lances wavered out in front of them as they backed their beasts away. The bladed bird began to keen. Other Ichorian arms were whirling similar weapons. Their keening modulated together into an eerie discordant chorus. The Marula began raggedly wailing as the first blade hurtled through the air. A Maruli slapped into the back of his chair, the blade deep in his throat. His lance angled lifeless. The line that held the blade yanked back and the Maruli’s head lolled forward, bounced on the dead man’s knees and thudded to the ground arcing blood. The air was sliced by more blade flights. The Marula ducked frantically but there was no place to hide. The aquar made cries like tearing metal, their flaring plumes were scythed like flowers. A hand flew off that was being held up as a shield. Screams were choked to gurgling. Carnelian looked down with horror and saw heads thudding to the ground like overripe fruit, rolling red trails. When he looked up, the headless trunks were jerking as the aquar milled bleating, blood welling in their saddle-chairs and spilling down their flanks.

  Carnelian remembered Tain with a gasp. Quickly untying his father’s reins from his saddle-chair, he threw them over to Jaspar and then forced his aquar into the maelstrom. Warning cries from the other Masters seemed remote. Everything was moving as slowly as curling smoke. As he ground his eyes round, Carnelian saw one of the Ichorians, only a boy, tugging twice on a line; it bellied back dragging its blade. Blood flicking off it across Carnelian’s hand was pleasantly warm. His aquar’s steps pumped him lazily up and down. He saw Tain sitting stiff and bloody, eyes screwed shut, clamped in the arms of a headless black and red man. An Ichorian placed himself in Carnelian’s path mouthing something. Carnelian urged his aquar on and watched the man jump out of his way. He lifted his gaze, saw Tain, leaned precariously out and prised him from the corpse. As he fell back into his saddle-chair, his brother’s weight crushed out a grunt.

  ‘My Lord! Carnelian!’ Aurum’s outrage blared
.

  Carnelian looked down into his brother’s face, felt him for wounds, prised a reddened eyelid open. His brother’s dark eye rolled to white. ‘Carnie,’ he gulped and burrowed his head into Carnelian’s armpit.

  Carnelian turned his aquar to face Aurum and the others.

  ‘What in the thousand names of They, do you think you are doing?’ Aurum boomed. ‘You could have been slain.’

  The golden frieze of the Masters’ faces were judging him. He ignored them, hugged Tain tighter and pushed his aquar through their line. He rode towards the hedge’s thick twisting thicket of thrusting bronze. A vinegar odour reeked off its mossy rust. Carnelian’s eyes became trapped in all that curving and wandered lost. He found he was looking up through its bristling where his gaze had found the top. A vast height of canyon wall rose to a faraway sky.

  He dropped his head into Tain’s warmth, rocking him, crooning so that neither of them heard the hedge clank its thorns as it began to open up in front of them.

  When Carnelian lifted his head, he saw silver faces floating in the gloom. Lamps glowing like stars lent vague substance to the walls. Masters’ masks streaked with their reflections. Looking round, Carnelian could not locate the doorway they had come through. Tain stirred against his chest as if awaking. Carnelian felt him stiffen as ammonites drifted near. Carnelian tried to make his aquar back away but one of them touched a hand to the creature’s neck and it sank down.

  ‘Give the slave to us, Seraph,’ one of the ammonites said in Quya.

  Carnelian clutched Tain.

  Ranga shoes clacked towards them.

  ‘You must give them the boy, my Lord.’

  Carnelian turned on Jaspar. ‘Curse you, I paid your price.’

  Jaspar backed away. ‘Calm yourself, cousin.’ He looked round to see if any of the other Masters were paying attention. ‘The boy’s eyes are safe, but he must pass through the quarantine with the others.’ He pointed. ‘Look, my Lord, we are all handing them over.’

  Carnelian looked and saw Jaspar’s pallid blood-smeared boy creeping into the waiting hands of an ammonite. He turned back to Jaspar. ‘How long?’

  ‘Before he is returned to you?’

  Carnelian nodded.

  ‘Thirty-three days.’

  ‘A month,’ Carnelian cried in disbelief.

  ‘Twenty cells lie between here and the Blood Gate and there are another thirteen beyond. He will have to spend a day in each before he is allowed to pass through the Black Gate.’

  ‘Promise me on your blood that he will not be harmed.’

  Jaspar shrugged. ‘My Lord cannot expect one to vouch for everything. If the child is found to have plague . . .’ The Master put his wrists together in a sign of powerlessness.

  ‘He does not,’ said Carnelian, more emphatically than he felt. He nudged Tain. ‘Come on, we must talk,’ he said in Vulgate.

  Tain clambered over the edge of the saddle-chair. Carnelian fumbled on his ranga shoes and then climbed out beside him. He waved the ammonites back and walked a little way from the others, beckoning Tain to follow.

  He looked down at his brother. Carnelian could see his own bloody hand-print on his brother’s face. He touched his mask. ‘I wish I could remove this thing.’

  Tain looked back at him with huge bruise-rimmed eyes.

  ‘Tain, you’ll have to go with them.’

  His brother looked fearfully back at the ammonites. ‘Will they let me come back . . . back to you and the Master once . . . once . . . once they’ve blinded me?’

  Carnelian threw his head back and moaned. ‘Oh, no, no, Tain, it’s not that. It’s been sorted out. It’s not that.’

  Tain was still gazing at him.

  ‘No, really, I promise, I swear on my blood, your eyes are in no danger, but. . .’

  ‘But. . .?’

  ‘You must be kept apart from us for a month until they’re’ – Carnelian indicated the ammonites – ‘sure that you’re clean of plague.’

  ‘Plague,’ nodded Tain.

  Carnelian noticed the ammonites gathering around one of the kneeling aquar. ‘Please go with them. I must see to Father. Trust me, Tain.’

  ‘At the end of it, they’ll send me to where you are, Carnie?’

  ‘I promise.’ Carnelian gave his brother’s arm a squeeze. There was nothing to grip but bone. Tain looked stuck to the ground. Carnelian pushed him gently away. ‘Go on, pull yourself together, endure it, you’re strong enough.’ He remembered something. He fished out the Little Mother from a pocket and pressed her into Tain’s hand. ‘She’ll look after you.’

  Tain gave a watery smile and hid her in his fist. Carnelian watched him turn, hesitate looking at the ammonites with their sinister silver faces, then pace towards them. Carnelian turned away and strode off towards his father.

  Ammonites were crowding him. Aurum was standing looking in over their heads. Carnelian heard the tearing sound. He pushed through them and saw they were tearing through his father’s cloak like a crab’s shell to expose the yellow-white body inside. One of the silver masks leant so close that it caught a twisting reflection of the wound-stained bandages.

  The creature straightened up and looked round at the gold masks. ‘Seraphim, these bandages have been tampered with.’

  Aurum leaned over to see. ‘Perhaps his slave . . .’

  The ammonite whisked round, looking off towards the boys who were undressing. ‘Which is he? He must be destroyed.’

  ‘It is too late for that; he was one of the Lord Aurum’s numerous victims,’ said Carnelian bitterly.

  Aurum’s mask looked down at him from a height.

  ‘Besides,’ Carnelian continued, ‘it was I who cut the bandages.’

  ‘Indeed, my Lord,’ said Aurum. ‘Now we see why he is dying.’

  Carnelian flared up. ‘How dare you accuse me of that? I did it with his agreement. The bandages were rotting . . .’

  ‘The Law—’

  ‘Does my Lord speak of the same Law which he has seen fit to break at his every whim?’

  Aurum’s mask angled a little to one side. ‘This impertinence—’

  ‘Are you then, my Lord, He-who-goes-before? You must be since you wear his ring.’

  ‘The boy makes a hit, my Lord, a palpable hit,’ said Vennel gleefully.

  ‘I think, Lord Aurum,’ said Carnelian, ‘it would be better if the ring was returned to him to whom it legally belongs.’

  Aurum seemed to grow taller, more menacing.

  ‘The Law must be obeyed,’ said the ammonite.

  ‘I merely borrowed it to protect He-who-goes-before when he could not protect himself,’ grated Aurum. He put his hand out and opened it to reveal the muted flame of the Pomegranate Ring.

  Carnelian reached out and took it. The ammonite began to protest, but stopped when Carnelian lifted his father’s hand, threaded the heavy ring onto the middle finger and closed the hand around the gem.

  Vennel turned to the ammonite. ‘This matter will have to be reported to your masters.’

  ‘Perhaps, before he does that, he should first attempt to save the Ruling Lord Suth’s life, or would you both rather have him die,’ said Aurum icily.

  Vennel pulled back like a snake ready to strike.

  The ammonite lifted his hands. ‘Seraphim, this behaviour is unworthy of your blood.’

  ‘His life, ammonite . . .’ hissed Aurum.

  ‘It . . . this wound, it is beyond my skill, Seraph. Only my masters can save him.’

  ‘Then, ammonite, do you not agree that we had better make haste to get him to your masters? I promise you, your skin will not long remain your own if they find that you have let him die.’

  Ammonites led them up a flight of stairs to a hall where the Masters were divested of their riding cloaks. Their long slim bodies were revealed wrapped in bandages sweat-stained yellow. New ranga were brought and jade-green robes spiralled with ferns. Their old cloaks and ranga shoes were gathered up with tongs and burned in a brazier.<
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  As Carnelian came back down, he clenched and unclenched his hands that were sticky with Marula blood. He watched his father being moved to a bier and then covered with one of the green robes. Tain was a little way off, naked with the other boys, just skin stretched over bones. His head was in the grip of an ammonite being turned this way and that as the ammonite’s silver mask peered at him. His shoulders and back were painfully bruised. Carnelian could guess by whom. Another boy whimpered as he was folded for examination. Carnelian turned away, knowing he had to let his brother go.

  As a bright rectangle opened in the further wall, Carnelian strode after his father’s bier. The green silk was heavy as he lifted it with his knees. The new ranga were taller than the old ones. He had to swing his feet. It was like walking on stilts.

  He clacked out onto the road with the other Masters. The air had grown hot. Amid kneeling rows of Ichorians were chariots like jewel boxes. His father was being carried to one whose wheel rims rose above the heads of the people round it. Carnelian followed. The back of the chariot was a dull mirror of gold from which a Master was surfacing as if from a bath. Ammonites reached up to the handles with hooks and halved the Master by pulling open the doors. Others lifted the bier, rested its edge on the chariot floor, then, careful to touch nothing, fed his father in feet first.

  Carnelian watched Jaspar climbing into another chariot nearby. He saw that it was yoked to a pair of pale-skinned aquar. Naked half-coloured men held their halters.

  ‘Fetch riders,’ Aurum said to an Ichorian.

  Three ammonites converged on him, protesting.

  ‘. . . too slow,’ Carnelian heard Aurum say, and, ‘The Law . . .’ one of the ammonites responding.

  Aurum muted the man with an angry gesture and flowed towards Carnelian like a column of green water. He pointed over Carnelian’s shoulder. ‘Your chariot awaits.’

  ‘I will travel with my father, Lord Aurum.’

  The Master said nothing though a slight curling in his fingers betrayed his anger as he strode past Carnelian.

  One of the chariots was already being led off at a jog by an Ichorian as Carnelian climbed the steps into his father’s chariot.