The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon)

by Ricardo Pinto

  Sardian, I was coming to see you.

  ‘I must meet with your mother, Celestial.’

  The black Lord turned his vast head a little as if he could hear someone calling for him down the stairs. She will not welcome you, my Lord.

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  Have you strength enough to climb these steps?

  ‘I will find it, Celestial.’

  I shall wait for you in the Sun in Splendour. The black Lord made a gesture to hook Carnelian’s eyes. Take good care of him, my Lord.

  Carnelian stared, then inclined his head as the Lord swept past and began to move off towards the bronze wall.

  ‘Molochite?’ Carnelian asked, puzzled.

  ‘His brother, Nephron,’ his father replied. ‘Now, let us begin the climb.’

  For father and son, the climb was an ordeal. At first Suth managed to keep up a reasonable pace but after a while it was obvious that he was spent. They stopped. Carnelian could hear his father’s laboured breathing. Looking down the steps, the floor seemed far away. Above them, the summit seemed further.

  ‘Can you not be carried?’

  His father stretched open his hand. The Sun cannot be carried. It would be as much as admitting that I am unfit to wear the Pomegranate Ring.

  ‘But Father, why must you do this at all?’

  His father’s hand trembled, I must.

  They resumed the climb a step at a time. Even for Carnelian, lifting his ranga was an effort. He could imagine what it was costing his father, whose ranga were besides much taller. He leaned close and tried to help push him up. In front of them, the syblings carried the staves that his father clung to as if they were walking sticks. Carnelian waited for the clack of each shoe, chewing his tongue, fearing that one would not find its step. The last few steps, when they could look onto the landing, were the worst. Rasping each breath, his father climbed them. When he reached the top he sank down in among the empty court robes that forested the landing. As the disrobing syblings came, Carnelian tried to mask his father’s breathing with his voice as he told them to attend to his father first.

  ‘He-who-goes-before is the embodiment of the celestial nature of the Seraphim and as such is permitted to retain his pomp.’

  Carnelian looked with horror at his father, whose robe seemed as empty as the others standing round. He looked to the next flight, a hill of steps, and higher up he knew there was another. He drew as close as he could to his father and whispered to him. ‘This ascent will kill you.’

  ‘No,’ said the mass of gold. ‘By the time . . . you are disrobed . . . I shall have found more strength.’

  Carnelian allowed himself to be taken off by the syblings who removed his court robe and attired him in coarse fibre. His father had risen when Carnelian returned. Without his ranga, Carnelian hardly reached his father’s waist. They walked together to the next stair. Neither of them looked up it but just began to climb.

  Somehow, his father managed to reach the second landing, which swarmed with Masters in their supplicant robes. Cries went up of ‘He-who-goes-before.’ As they flocked towards them, Carnelian commanded their sybling entourage to form a cordon. Within this protection, his father slid on seemingly unaware.

  The third and final stair was almost more pain than Carnelian could bear. More of the Great wandered up and down on either side, and for appearance’s sake his father seemed to dig deep and moved up the steps steadily. Tears of bitter anger squeezed down behind Carnelian’s mask. He knew the climb was consuming his father’s life.

  When they reached the final landing they found many of the Great waiting before the glowering Iron Door. Carnelian expected his father to sink and rest but instead he commanded the syblings to take away the support of his staves and strike them both against the door, crying, ‘He-who-goes-before seeks audience with the Regent of the Twins.’

  Once the dull thunder reverberated to silence the door opened to show the Hanuses, who bowed.

  ‘I have come with the Regent’s nephew to speak to her.’

  The syblings lowered their double head in a deeper bow and the door closed. Carnelian felt the gleaming mass of his father turn to look back down the stairs and he went to stand beside him.

  ‘Do you remember standing on the weir gazing down at the sea?’ he asked in a low voice.

  His father’s sun-haloed head shot with fire as he nodded. To both that morning was already a lifetime away.

  The Iron Door rumbled open and a Ruling Lord came out walking with a staff, followed by other Masters of his House. He gave Suth an angry look before he and his companions inclined their crowns and stood to one side.

  Carnelian eyes were drawn away to where the Hanuses had one face turned obliquely to him, the other hidden. The syblings’ hand beckoned them to follow. Preceded by his staves, Suth slid glimmering into the Thronehall and Carnelian followed. After a few steps he moved to one side to allow him to see past his father’s brocaded trunk. Red braziers painted a bloody road across the night to a bonfire in whose heart something like a blade was standing.

  They followed the syblings down the road between the braziers, in whose lurid light Carnelian could just make out the sybling guardsmen on either side. Moonlight pierced the Creation Window and fell around the throne. A black fence edged the lamplit clearing below its pyramid. The palings turned and Carnelian saw they were Sapients with their hole eyes and scar mouths.

  Suth took hold of his staves and the syblings that had been carrying them walked away. ‘My Lords of the Wise,’ he said, with a nod.

  The Sapients bowed and turned back to strangle their homunculi, gazing blindly up into the light towards a welter of red like a blooded sword. This scarlet figure stood between two court staves. Curled at its foot was an exquisite carving of white jade, a youth crouching.

  Carnelian felt as much as saw the rustle of his father’s robe settling. Even kneeling, Suth’s chest was at Carnelian’s eye level. Carnelian stood uncertain, only falling to his knees when his father touched his shoulder.

  The red figure lifted a slim long-fingered hand that had two Great-Rings on it and released a veil. The gold angel face appeared like the sun at dawn. When the other hand rose Carnelian saw that it too had a pair of Great-Rings and then he knew without doubt he was in the presence of the Dowager Empress, Ykoriana. The hand kept rising and pulled a chain that in turn uncurled the white youth to his feet. By his height, his blue eyes and the perfect pallor of his skin he might have been Chosen. The youth’s nakedness, however, displayed his mutilation and when Carnelian looked more carefully he saw his eyes were sapphires.

  The scarlet mass slid down a little as Ykoriana knelt on her ranga. Her gold face bent towards the youth’s ear.

  ‘Sardian, have you become so decrepit that you must needs use your own son as a stick?’ The youth’s voice was smooth as honey but more sweet. Homunculi mutterings echoed it.

  ‘The Regent must know how long and perilous a journey I have had returning to Osrakum,’ said Suth.

  ‘We have heard something of it,’ said the melodious voice. ‘Do you come here as He-who-goes-before or as Suth Sardian?’

  ‘That is in your choice, Celestial.’

  Every word was repeated by the homunculi.

  ‘I would talk without the Wise.’

  The Empress flicked open a hand like a fan in a gesture of dismissal. The Sapients released the muttering throats of their homunculi who hand in hand fled away into the darkness.

  ‘Must their masters stay?’ asked Suth.

  ‘You forget, my Lord, that though I am Regent the rigour of my purdah must still be observed,’ said the melodious voice.

  ‘It is not only you, Celestial, who have suffered seclusion.’

  ‘Did you then suffer much those long years you spent in the wilderness?’ purred the youth.

  ‘Do you mock me, Madam?’

  ‘Perhaps a little. We have led parallel lives.’

  ‘You chose the suffering for us both.’

>   ‘Thwarted love is the charioteer of vengeful deeds.’

  ‘Tell me, Ykoriana, have your acts of vengeance brought you joy?’

  ‘Vengeance is a pale creature in comparison to joy, but still, Sardian, she is brighter than darkness.’

  ‘A darkness of your own making.’

  Laughter rang out from behind the golden mask making the youth turn round and gaze up at it.

  ‘Sardian, I do think you could take a little more pride in your handiwork,’ said the Empress in her own, rich voice.

  ‘This was no work of mine,’ he said in outrage.

  ‘How not? My husband, now sadly deceased, told me I could buy my eyes with your release.’

  Suth shook his head. ‘I was horrified when I heard what had been done to you.’

  ‘Spare me your pity.’

  ‘Outrage rather than pity, Ykoriana. Such mutilation was without precedent.’

  ‘The Wise found that it was not, my Lord. When I would not bend to my husband’s will, he asked them to enforce an ancient form of purdah. Oh, they put me into the dark gladly enough. They envy others the life of sensation that is denied to them.’

  ‘You cannot hate all the world, Ykoriana.’

  ‘Do not presume to lecture me, my Lord, on hatred. On that subject I am as learned as the Wise.’

  ‘Let go your bitterness, Ykoriana, lest it should consume you with its fire.’

  She chuckled. ‘Do you know he never stopped loving you? All I achieved by sending you away was to make you even more permanent in his heart. The Wise claim that embalming makes the dead live for ever. I thought if I brought you back from your tomb in the sea, your faded beauty, your bitterness would poison the memory of the youth he clung to. It was this that made me release you from your blood oath. But you cheated me even of that small hope. Tell me, Sardian, why did you not return when once more you could?’

  ‘I feared what you might do to my son.’

  The Empress braced herself on the youth. Her head fell. ‘You know how much I loved Azurea. How could I ever harm her son?’

  ‘You really think you did not harm him, forcing him to grow up outside in the wilderness?’

  Ykoriana sat back. ‘Have you forgotten the offer I made you long ago? My quarrel was never with the child.’

  ‘Perhaps I misjudged you.’

  ‘It is too late for apologies, Sardian, too late for regrets.’

  ‘Is it too late for him to know his mother’s sister?’

  Ykoriana turned her mask away. ‘Have him speak that I might hear his voice.’

  Suth urged his son forward. Carnelian obeyed him and found himself staring up at the Dowager Empress in her widow’s robes.

  ‘Speak then . . . nephew,’ she said.

  Carnelian licked his lips. ‘Celestial . . . I do not know what it is that you wish me to say.’

  The Dowager Empress’s mask nodded. ‘Perhaps there is something of her in your voice. Sardian, does he look like Azurea?’

  ‘Very much.’

  A sound of footfalls was coming up behind them. Carnelian turned to see a pillar of green jewel fire sweeping towards them from out of the dark. He saw the mask floating high above and the horned crowns.

  ‘Celestial, I did not expect . . .’ he heard his father say, then Suth bowed his sun-crowned head as the Jade Lord swept past trailing a quetzal-feathered cloak.

  Carnelian knelt watching the cloak slide past. The faces of the Sapients had turned towards the Jade Lord. With his staff, one of them rattled out a rhythm on the floor. The Jade Lord loomed above the Sapient. Carnelian imagined he could feel his hot anger. The homunculi were streaming back. As they folded into their masters’ embraces, they began to mutter, first one then another until all had murmured the word ‘Molochite’. The Sapients bowed and then opened their fence to let the Jade Lord through. He climbed the steps towards the Dowager Empress, who put out a hand that he caught and folded in his own. Carnelian watched their hands flow in each other’s lasciviously and saw that the homunculi were watching too, murmuring, relaying every touch back to the hands at their throats.

  ‘Jade Lord Molochite, I was talking to the Regent,’ his father said.

  ‘Well, now you can talk to us both who shall soon be wed.’

  ‘Does the Regent wish that I should speak before her son and the Wise? What I came to say would be better said to her alone.’

  Ykoriana leaned towards the youth who said, ‘It matters naught to me. Say what you came to say in the hearing of my son, and of the Wise too.’

  Suth glanced down at Carnelian. He lifted both his staves and brought them down again with a clack.

  ‘Then, Celestial, you force me to speak as He-who-goes-before.’

  Molochite stood beside his mother, holding her hand like a child. ‘Well, get on with it.’

  ‘When I wear the Pomegranate Ring I am become merely the lens through which the Clave focuses its will. I am acting in a similar capacity for your other son. Nephron bade me say to you that should you cease your opposition to his election he would give you thereafter such freedoms as you have been deprived of. I stand here witness to his blood oath.’

  Again the Dowager Empress threw back her crowned head and laughed like a girl. ‘What gift is it to a bird to open its cage once it has forgotten the freedom of the sky? Besides, even the Twins cannot give me back my sight.’

  ‘Sacrilege, Celestial, you come close to sacrilege,’ shrilled one of the homunculi.

  She laughed again, then looked at Suth. ‘Still, you and Aurum have built about me a wall of votes that I can see no way to breach.’

  Molochite tore his hand out of hers and came to the edge of the dais to look down. ‘By my burning blood, Suth, I swear that when I become God Emperor, I shall bend all my power to pursuing your House to ruin.’

  Carnelian felt his hackles rising.

  Ykoriana’s hand let go of the youth’s chain and reached up to tug upon Molochite’s sleeve. He turned the malice of his eyeslits on her. For moments, Carnelian was convinced that he would strike his mother, but then he moved back to stand by her side. She stroked his hand.

  ‘It is Aurum who is its architect. Once the election is over I intend to retire to my coomb to live in quiet retreat with my son. I am not your enemy.’

  ‘Perhaps that is so, Sardian.’

  Carnelian watched the three masks looking at each other.

  Ykoriana’s was the first to turn away. ‘But I will not abandon my beloved. Several days have yet to pass before the House of the Masks and the Great meet in the Chamber of the Three Lands, and only then will this be decided. Until that time, my son and I are content enough to leave our fates entirely in the hands of the Chosen.’

  ‘I will take this answer back to Nephron. Be certain, Celestial, I shall do what can be done in urging him to free you, notwithstanding your response.’

  ‘Until the election, then. But lest your faction should become too proud, My-Lord-who-goes-before, remember that even the sun is bound by earth and sky.’

  Suth’s mask looked at her a while. ‘I shall remember.’

  Ykoriana terminated the audience with her hand.

  Suth bowed his sunburst head. Syblings appeared to relieve him of his staves and he turned away. Carnelian walked beside him all the way back to the Iron Door where the Hanuses awaited them. The syblings bowed but when their head came up their eyes, living and stone, lingered gluttonously on Carnelian’s face. It was only with the closing of the door that Carnelian was free of them.

  In the gloom of the Sun in Splendour the Ichorians lowered his father’s dull fire to the ground. Carnelian stared at him. The journey back down the Approach had been even harder than the climb. Somehow his father had avoided falling. Somehow he had managed each one of the myriad steps. But when they reached the waiting Ichorians and the dais, his father stopped and would move no more till Carnelian had begun to think that he had died and only the stiff robe kept him upright still. At last, he had had to have him
carried onto the dais. There, the knees of his ranga had bent, though Carnelian had no way of knowing whether it was his father who had knelt or simply that his ranga had collapsed. All the way back, blinded by the throng, deafened by the storming shawms, Carnelian had had to follow fearing that at any moment his father would topple to the ground.

  Now they were alone in the Sun in Splendour, Carnelian found the courage to step up onto the dais. Each step he took made his father tremble. He stopped when he was standing very close. With his father kneeling, and him on his ranga, they were of a height.

  ‘Father?’ he said.

  It seemed quite natural that the huge, golden puppet should make no response. Carnelian became desperate to look inside to know if the suit had become his father’s sarcophagus. He reached out to run his fingers down the edges of his father’s sun-eyed mask. Finding the bands, he followed these back over ears that seemed to be made of leather. His fingers traced the bands into narrow channels that burrowed round into the sculptural mass of his crowns. His fingers came together at a knot. They struggled to undo it, then carefully removed the mask. He stifled a cry as he exposed the closed eyes. The face had the texture of weeping wax. He moaned as he stroked it. He thought the sighing was his own till he saw a quiver in the pale lips.

  ‘Father, O Father?’

  ‘So . . . tired,’ said the lips.

  Carnelian kissed him. ‘We’ll soon get you to bed.’

  He carefully replaced the mask and walked away with many glances back. He raged through the tunnel into the chamber of doors, scattering Ichorians. He demanded that they go and find their commander and then went to his father’s apartments and dug out House Suth attendants. He had them in tow when he met the grand-cohort commander. He had the man send for a Sapient from the Domain of Immortality and made him remove all his Ichorians between the Sun in Splendour and his father’s chambers. When the commander hesitated, Carnelian said, ‘He is dying,’ in such chill tones that the man immediately did his bidding.

  With some of his people, Carnelian returned to the Sun in Splendour where, towering over them, he directed them as they freed his father. He watched as they disassembled his sunburst crown and opened the shell of his robe. He shouted at them to be careful as they lifted the sagging body down from the huge ranga. He had them shield it as they carried it in its underrobes to his father’s chamber.