The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon)

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘So, the Lord Aurum has yet again out-manoeuvred his enemies.’ Spinel’s tone was conversational but his eyes were sharp.

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ said Carnelian, ‘although my Lord might recall that my father has always been of independent mind.’

  Opalid flickered a frown.

  Spinel fixed Carnelian with his eyes. ‘This delay in his return, though regrettable, does give us time to make all the required preparations.’

  ‘You will quit those first lineage halls that you now occupy?’

  Spinel’s face became a cake of salt. ‘Yes, my Lord, though you will appreciate this is something that cannot be effected in a moment.’

  Carnelian nodded.

  ‘In the meantime, perhaps, my Lord would condescend . . .’

  Carnelian gave the Master an expectant look.

  ‘. . . to occupy the halls of the third lineage in the Eyries?’

  ‘For the moment.’

  ‘In less than a month we shall make the journey to the Halls of Thunder to vote in the election.’

  ‘Am I to understand that my grandmother is up in the Eyries?’

  Spinel gave him an enquiring look and a slow nod.

  ‘I intend to meet her today.’

  Spinel shaped a barrier gesture with his hands. ‘The Lady is old now and frail and receives no visitors . . . the shock of this sudden appearance . . . not to mention—’

  ‘My grandmother already knows that I am here.’

  Spinel frowned. ‘How could you know this, my Lord?’

  ‘I have a letter from her.’

  ‘A letter? I see.’ Spinel put on a jovial smile. ‘It seems then there is no problem whatsoever.’

  Climbing into the palanquin, Carnelian felt like a jewelled doll being put into an oven. His train was fed in after him, the door slid closed and then he was hoisted into the air. The swell of the carrying poles damped away to stillness, then, with a sway, they were off. He breathed his hot, humid perfume slowly and tried to loosen some of his robes. He found a grille that he could open to let in some air. Walls and gilded pillars, glimpses of courts, manicured trees, all slid past in bewildering procession. He slumped back and fidgeted with his blood-ring, watching the play of light the grille freckled over the satin wall. He tried to ignore the heat, to think about his grandmother. His guts churned. What was he going to tell her about her son?

  At some point the palanquin angled up and the pressure of its wall slid up to his back. He could hear a watery tumble and hiss. A mossy smell greened the air. He drowsed during the long climb up the Sacred Wall, as he was cooled and heated in alternating rhythms.

  It was the palanquin settling to the ground that woke him. Carnelian sat up and put on his mask. He listened but could hear nothing. He slid back the door. Guardsmen knelt in a half-circle. They helped him climb out into their midst. When he straightened, he saw a columned hall running deep into the rock. Hugging the cliff, a wide stair with many landings wound down from where he stood, past galleries and colonnades, under balconies, round gargoyled buttresses. The whole cliff seemed to have been carved like a piece of wood. His eyes strayed to the stair’s open side and he reeled. He gripped the balustrade that was all that lay between him and an infinite realm of air. The Skymere below might have been a sea seen from the clouds. The rim of the Yden traced its circle into vague distance, barely containing its emerald world that was all atremble with slivers of sun. In all that melting world the only solidity was the Pillar of Heaven. Carnelian leaned over the balustrade. The rock plunged down and further down until he saw the roofs and courts of the Lower Palace like a border of ivory plaques sewn into the Skymere’s edge.

  The air was cooler than it had been below. He drank it in so deeply that he felt his lungs were dragging him forward into flight. He turned his back on the sky and its beckoning fall and took some steps into the shelter of the columned hall. His train was lifted without need of his command. He reached out to touch one of the columns. His hand slid up and round the twist of its cabled stone, which was of a piece with the ceiling and floor.

  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he began to make out the guardsmen and the door that lay between them, which had moulded upon each of its leaves the womb glyph. He walked towards it and the guardsmen knelt. The door was of silver flecked with red and was stitched down the middle with several enormous locks. One guardsman rose and struck the door three times and then returned to his knees. Carnelian tried to lift them to their feet with a sign of command, but it only put more strain into their backs, and set their heads to ducking in apology, muttering, ‘It’s forbidden, Master, forbidden . . .’

  Carnelian looked to the door. Its silver was a white garden, sinuous with flowers, pendulous with fruit, into whose riotous growth embedded rubies and amethysts drizzled their blood rain. He looked down the hall to where its last columns framed the glaring sky. He fiddled with his ring.

  ‘How long will I have to wait?’ he asked at last.

  The guardsmen shrugged, hunching.

  The door was struck from its other side and then Carnelian heard mechanisms operating. The guardsmen rose and a few of them lifted keys like fish bones and began to open the locks on this side. As the door began to open it breathed out an odour of mummified roses.

  Carnelian walked through. More guardsmen awaited him but these seemed to have had their chameleons painted on their faces with blood. Though as tall as men, they had the shape of boys. It had never occurred to Carnelian that eunuchs might wear his cypher. The silver face of an ammonite came through them, and then another, both of whom were wearing purple. They bowed.

  You were expected, one signed while the other lifted his hand shaping the sign, Close.

  Carnelian felt the shudder in the air as the door shut behind him. On its other side, the guardsmen were resecuring the locks.

  Seraph, all the standard procedures are to be observed.

  Carnelian lifted his hands. I do not know the standard procedures.

  The ammonites moved aside and indicated the wall behind them. In the stone, glyphs burning with jewel fire read:

  The Wise certify this house appropriate to the sequestering of fertile women of the Chosen. To ensure blood line integrity, all creatures who are fully male are forbidden entry. Chosen males are permitted visits to the sequestered under the following, specific conditions:

  First, before the visitor is admitted to this house, the sequestered shall be placed in a chamber of audience to which the visitor shall then be admitted accompanied by two ammonites;

  Second, the visitor must submit throughout to supervision by the ammonites;

  Third, the visitor must not touch the sequestered unless such touch is sanctioned by conjugal rite;

  Fourth and concurrently, the visitor and the sequestered may make no exchange of any kind unless that exchange has been declared legal by the observing ammonites and recorded, said record to be submitted to the Wise;

  Fifth, before the sequestered is removed from the chamber of audience, the visitor must have quit this house;

  all this by order of the Law-that-must-be-obeyed.

  The words chilled Carnelian to the bone. One of the silver masks angled to one side. Shall we proceed, Seraph?

  Carnelian broke his immobility with a nod. The slicking of bolts made him look to see them locking the door behind him.

  ‘Seraph?’ said one of the ammonites in a strange voice.

  He turned to follow the creature’s narrow back into the gloom. He could feel the other padding behind him carrying his train. He climbed a stair. On his right side, tunnelling slits were glazed at their further end with the brilliant colours of the crater. On his left, the stone was pierced to form screens behind which was a world of shadows.

  They came to a door inlaid with red stone. The ammonite ahead of Carnelian scratched it. A woman’s voice gave them leave to enter and the ammonite crept in.

  The Lady Urquentha was the first Chosen woman Carnelian had ever seen. He
r beauty lit the chamber like a lamp. A jewelled halo that framed her face took all its glimmer from her skin. The rest of the chamber was dark.

  ‘You are not my son.’ Urquentha’s face thinned to fragile alabaster.

  ‘Lady,’ said Carnelian and made a clumsy bow. ‘Did they not tell you?’

  She gazed at him. ‘Who would tell me? It has been my fate to know of the world only as much of it as I can see through windows. Rumours are the only communication to penetrate this house.’

  ‘But your letter, my Lady, it came so swiftly.’

  She frowned a little. ‘That was delivered by my keeper ammonites. But how came it into your hand, my Lord?’

  ‘I am the son of your son.’

  Urquentha’s face loosened but quickly tightened again.

  Her hand began sending a series of quick signs to the ammonites which Carnelian could not read. He turned to see the creatures nodding, and when he looked back Urquentha was gently beckoning him. He went as a moth to her flame. When he was in range, she asked permission with her eyes before reaching out to catch his chin. Her fingers were warm. He returned her gaze. Her eyes were peepholes on to a violet sea. She turned his face with her hand as if it were a vase she was checking for imperfections.

  The hand released him and receded into a pearl-crusted sleeve. She looked sad. ‘I can see nothing of my son in your face.’

  Carnelian blushed.

  She smiled. ‘That at least is his. The rest is wholly your mother’s. I should have recognized her beauty when you came through that door. Who else could you be but Azurea’s son?’ Her smile warmed him. ‘Have you been made comfortable?’

  ‘Yes, my Lady.’

  ‘You may call me Grandmother, child.’ Her eyes darkened to purple. ‘You have spoken with the second lineage?’

  ‘Lord Spinel came down to meet me, Grandmother.’

  ‘Did he indeed,’ she said, souring, showing the cracks in her marble face. She chuckled without humour. ‘I would very much have liked to witness that fish floundering in the net he knotted for himself.’

  A movement caught the corner of Carnelian’s eye. He glanced round at the watching ammonites. With their numbers and fixed expression, their yellow faces could have been cast tallow.

  ‘Where is my son?’

  Leaning close to his grandmother, Carnelian whispered, ‘Could we not be alone?’

  ‘You wish to be free of my chaperons?’ She turned a thin smile towards the little men.

  Carnelian nodded.

  She laughed like a girl. ‘I more than you have wished to be free of those jaundiced faces, but it is forbidden by the purdah. But do not worry about them, Carnelian; they may have eyes but they have no ears.’ She smiled at him. ‘We were talking about your father.’

  ‘My father, Lady . . . Grandmother . . .’

  His grandmother used her hands to tease out his words as if they were a ribbon he had stuffed in his mouth.

  ‘He has gone to the Halls of Thunder.’

  Her lips narrowed as they pressed together. The jewelled structure around her head rustled and glimmered like a flight of beetles. She sighed. ‘It seems it is always to be thus?’ She looked through him as if her eyes were seeking the edge of the sky. ‘Always it is the Masks that win the greater part of his affection.’

  ‘He was hurt.’

  Fear washed across her face.

  ‘Wounded.’ The word squeezed out of his mouth like a pebble.

  ‘Will he die?’ The words were flat and lifeless.

  Carnelian could see the pain in her violet eyes. ‘The Lord Aurum is confident the Wise will save him.’

  Urquentha threw open her hands. ‘Of course, that one would be in this.’

  Carnelian was a little dazzled by the flower of her fingers. He tried to find a thread to pull, some way to unravel their journey for her, but she seemed almost to have forgotten him.

  ‘Is it not enough that he should have my daughter to lock up in his coomb but that her brother should also conspire in his intrigues? My son has always been a fool.’

  ‘His honour—’

  ‘Aaah, yes,’ she said, and the halo behind her head quivered. ‘His honour. Fifteen years this House has suffered for his precious honour. He told me he would be but a little time away. His honour demanded that he leave Osrakum before the Apotheosis: that he remain in the outer world long enough to give the new Gods time to consolidate Their reign free from the entanglement of Their love, the same entanglement that another, less honourable man would have used to his advantage. His honour, taagh! What of the honour of this House and its first lineage? Fifteen years we have been a pale power among the Great. For fifteen years at the dividing of the flesh tithe we have had to stand at the end of the line, lost there without distinction among the Lesser Houses. For thirteen long years I have been imprisoned here . . .’ Urquentha subsided, looked forlornly around the chamber as if seeing it for the first time. ‘In his absence, I was to maintain the ascendancy of our lineage in this House. He left me the Seal. . .’

  Carnelian nodded.

  ‘He told you that, Carnelian?’

  ‘No, Fey did.’

  ‘Fey.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘When my son went off into the wilderness, I begged him to leave you with me. What kind of life can the bleak outer world provide a scion of the Great? Besides, with you and the Seal together I could have ruled. Without you my hand was weak enough for Spinel to snatch the Seal away. Your father said that he would leave Fey to be my support. It did not take more than two years for Spinel to bring her over to his cause. I was told that House Suth would fall even lower if we did not participate in the festivities and masquerades of the Great, and that in such society men were essential. Men will always claim this and it is always a pretext. It was nothing but greed and power-lust that made Spinel take the Seal.’ One of her hands crushed the other. ‘If that usurpation was not enough, he buried me here in this house, though my womb had long been an empty husk.’

  She looked up and the smile that came through her tears allowed Carnelian to see the girl that she had once been. That girl had a look of his father that put a stone in his throat.

  ‘But now you are here, Carnelian. The damage will be difficult to repair but not impossible. It might not be too late for us to secure for you a worthy blood match. She will be a child destined for years to remain barren to your seed, but what matter that? You are as youthful as the morning.’ She smiled a cold smile. ‘Spinel had begun to believe that you would never return. He thought his usurpation all but complete. He and the Lords of the third lineage support the Empress in the election. She has made sure of gathering about her all the lower orders by making extravagant promises of the blood and iron she will give them once she rules through Molochite. I suspect Spinel actually hoped to have the Imperial Power aid him in becoming the first lineage in this House.

  ‘Now, whether Ykoriana triumphs or not, it is all over for Spinel and his hopes. With my aid, Carnelian, you shall rule until my son returns. Together we will push Spinel and his sycophants back into the shadows where they belong. With the Seal in our hands House Suth is ours. Tell me quickly, what arrangements have you made to have the Seal returned?’

  Carnelian opened his hands in something between apology and a shrug.

  His grandmother’s eyes lost their colour. Her skin’s light dimmed. ‘But why?’

  ‘I did not think it appropriate to act without my father’s sanction.’

  ‘But without the Seal, we can do nothing. I will have to stay here.’

  She bent visibly under the weight of her years. Carnelian could see the tears she tried to hide. He reached out, took her hand, stroked it as if it were a dove. The ammonites stirred in alarm. ‘On my blood, Grandmother, I will get the Seal, then end your imprisonment.’

  Carnelian would have preferred to return without the aid of the palanquin, but his cumbersome robes made this impractical. He was carried down the stair. Through the grille he watched the sculpted cliff slide
by. When they put the palanquin down, he climbed out. Guardsmen formed an escort up some stairs. He walked between them to reach a platform and passed through a door into an atrium where he was greeted by servants, and the purling of fountains. They led him into the cliff, through chambers panelled with malachite and purple porphyry, lambent with lamps, filled with bronzes, feather carpets and tapestries.

  He chose a chamber cooled by a waterfall, one wall of which was windowed with glaring sky, where his attendants released him from his robes and mask. He took a few steps away from them in the delight of almost floating. He whisked round to thank them. ‘Now I know the pleasure a snake must take in discarding its skin.’

  The smile waned on his face as he saw them all standing their eyes fixed upon the floor. The moult of his robes hung heavy in their arms. ‘Does the Master want aught else?’ one of them said without even lifting his head.

  ‘No,’ said Carnelian and watched them creep away. The hiss of the waterfall echoing off the lofty cold mosaiced walls made him feel as if he were lost in a cave. The windows with their sky seemed far away. He felt utterly alone.

  Carnelian composed the letter carefully in his mind before drawing the glyphs on the parchment. He was trying for forcefulness without discourtesy. When it was finished he read it several times. He was unhappy with some of his glyphs but told himself not to be so precious and made to seal it. He removed his blood-ring. He chewed his lip, then returned the ring to his finger. He pulled the chain that was round his neck over his head and dangled his father’s ring before his eyes. To use that was almost to admit his father dead. He reminded himself of his grandmother in her captivity. This had to be done. He inked the Ruling Ring and pressed it down firmly on the parchment. He folded the letter, placed a sealing frame over the join, melted wax into it and printed it with the ring. He sent for a servant and was surprised when Fey appeared.

  ‘I need someone to deliver this.’

  ‘I’ll do it, Master.’

  ‘You?’