The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01

by Ricardo Pinto

  Carnelian looked past the cordon of the Marula, out over the squatting masses, over the clumps of wagons and huimur, to where the city walls had already been claimed by darkness.

  'I think I will retire, my Lords,' said Vennel. The shadow in the loop of his cowl scanned them as if he expected some retort. When the Masters said nothing, he rose, hunched as they always did to conceal their height, and shuffled off towards the tents.

  Carnelian glanced at his father's inanimate form and turned back to his vigil. He watched the city's shadow creep over the camp, lighting fires as it went. Its blackness washed over him, lapped at the foot of the gates, then scaled them to the very top. The sky gave one last violent blush, then indigoed. With its windows now lit up, Nothnaralan formed a hem to the starry night.

  Carnelian struggled to sleep in the clinging myrrhy heat. The bandages were restricting his breathing. Sweat crawled beneath the cloth. His heart would not quieten. Memories of his island home flashed into his mind. Every image had acquired a warm aura. He ached with the longing for friendly faces, familiar smells, a single lungful of cold clean wind that spoke with the voices of the sea. There were other darker visions. Tain eyeless, the empty sockets accusing him. He had made a promise to Ebeny to protect him. The thought of Jaspar's offer caused a rushing in his stomach. Carnelian fixed his mind's eye on the memory of the double-headed gate and felt a sweat of excitement. What wonders lay beyond?

  Jaspar groaned in his sleep. Carnelian sat up. The camp was murmuring outside. With slow care he rose. He fumbled for his travelling cloak, found it, gathered it in. He tucked his ranga shoes under his arm, crept to the opening, put the shoes outside, stepped up onto them, covered himself, then pushed his masked face out into the night.

  The moon was setting into a smoke-scratched blue darkness in which a hundred campfires flickered. The smells and sounds of beasts and men were gently settling. He looked over to the gate glimmered by moonlight.

  He was searching for Tain when he noticed some moving shapes. A coalescing of the night. Lifting up, moving, merging, dropping down, disappearing. He waited. They rose again, came closer. He wondered if they might be Marula. The shapes were too furtive. To see better, Carnelian dared to remove his mask. He turned it sideways so that he could still breathe through the nose-pad. Over its rim he scoured the night. The Marula were still round them like a ring of stones. Again the shadows slid into motion. Again they stopped and vanished. Cold sweat, fear and his eyes searching. He bit his lip, looked round and made his decision. He dropped down from his shoes. Half in crouch, half crawling, he moved forward, touching the earth now and then for balance. He reached one of the Marula and crept into the man's aura of stale sweat. His fingers touched the man's warm skin. As it jerked under his touch, Carnelian hugged the man hard against his chest and stifled a cry with his hand. He pushed his mouth into an ear. 'I'm a Master,' he whispered, and felt the bur of the man's hair and an earring moving against his lip. The Maruli tensed hard as wood. 'Silence. You understand?' The woolly head nodded against his face. Carnelian released him. Saw the yellow eyes. Watched them widen. The man scrunched into a ball against his knees.

  Carnelian grimaced as he understood. 'My face,' he muttered. He sighed, looked around desperately. He put the mask on again, bent down and prising the man up, forced him to look at the mask. There was more yellow-eyed terror before he forced the man's head round. At first there was nothing to see but then the shadows moved again, very close. The Maruli clutched his lance. Carnelian released his head so that the man's frightened eyes swivelled back to his mask. Carnelian indicated the other Marula. The man struck his forehead on the ground then slipped into the night.

  Carnelian retraced his steps. He was near the mounds of the tents. Cries broke out, so loud they stopped his breathing. He whisked round and saw a shadow dance. Screams. The swish of blades muffling into flesh. Growls. Two shapes broke from the fight and catapulted towards him. One fell forwards coughing with a tall shape on it working a lance out of its back. The other veered away.

  Carnelian saw where it was heading. The tents!' he cried and sprang after it. Uproar was spreading. Through the eyeslits of his mask he could just make out the figure. There was the stuttering rasp of canvas rending. Carnelian stooped as he ran, grazing his fingers along the ground, scooped up a stone, then charged howling. His father's voice cried out in alarm. Carnelian crashed into the invader, clawing and hammering with both fists. He was enraged, keening, fearing for his father's life. The body slumped against him. He let it slide off him to the ground.

  A light. Carnelian stared frozen. On the ground, his father was pathetically stretching out his fingers trying to reach his mask; hands, face, bandaged body, black with blood.

  WINDSPEED

  Right-hand, left-hand

  Past and future

  The green and the black

  Earth and Sky

  Two faces and the Mirror

  But truly there is only one

  (fragment)

  'Douse that light.' Aurum was a tower of blackness in the night. The boy holding the lantern turned to stare at him, his eyes growing impossibly wide. The Master surged forward, snatched the lantern from the boy and dashed it to the ground.

  The sudden disappearance of his father's bloody face brought Carnelian back to life. His eyes slowly adjusted to the dark.

  Angry questions carried through the night with complaints about the noise, the lateness.

  One of the Marula appeared and fell at Aurum's feet.

  Take your brethren and silence those voices with fear,' the Master rumbled.

  The man punched the ground with his head, rose and was about to go when Aurum spoke again.

  Take this thing,' he said, lifting the boy squealing into the air. 'Destroy it.'

  There was a coughing behind him. 'He is ... my body ... slave,' said Suth.

  Aurum shoved the boy at the Maruli who received him with a grunt and loped off. The Master crouched down beside Suth. 'Are you wounded, my Lord?'

  Suth trembled his hand in the air. The boy . ..'

  'He saw your face, Sardian. You will have to make do without him. Are you wounded?'

  Suth gritted his teeth as he held his side. 'A cut in my belly.'

  Carnelian stared. 'He is covered in blood.'

  Suth smiled up at his son. 'Most of it is the assassin's.'

  Aurum peeled Suth's hand away from the wound and peered at it. He stood up. 'It is quite deep but bleeds cleanly. The bandages resisted the blade. Do you think you can walk, my Lord?'

  Suth jerked a nod. Aurum helped him up. Carnelian felt his father's wince like a stab. Suth pressed on the wound to keep it closed. A swathe of his bandages was black with blood.

  'Why are you just standing there, my Lord?' said Aurum to Carnelian with a flash of anger. Carnelian stumbled round to support his father's other side. This wounding is unfortunate but at least it has drawn Ykoriana's sting. Now we must abandon secrecy.'

  In Carnelian's grip, the stone still nestled warm and sticky.

  They gathered in the enclosure that Aurum had commanded the Marula put up around the corpse and shredded tent. He waved away Vermel's comment about the eyes from above and, by unmasking, forced the Master to remove his mask with the others. The light had gone out of Vennel's face. His colourless eyes turned reluctantly to Suth sitting stiff-backed on a stool. These robbers have spilled your precious blood, my Lord. They would not have dared had they known you to be Chosen.'

  These were no robbers,' said Aurum.

  With his foot he rolled the corpse's head to one side and drew its tunic down with his toe. A lantern on the ground revealed the red ruin of its face. Carnelian stared, clenching and unclenching the fingers from which Tain had prised the stone.

  Aurum indicated the six-spoked wheel tattooed just above the corpse's clavicle. 'It would be strange indeed if the Brotherhood of the Wheel were to send their men so far merely to rob some merchants.'

  Vennel was mesmerized
by the tattoo. 'What else?'

  'Assassination.'

  Carnelian tore his eyes away from the tattoo to look at Aurum. Vennel also looked round. Carnelian saw his eyes avoiding contact.

  Aurum looked down. These creatures meant to slay us all.'

  'All?' Vennel examined the old Master's face. 'How so?'

  They are hired killers. They came at night. They could not know which tent was which. To murder one they had to slay us all.'

  'Which ... which of the Chosen however desperate would thus dare breach the Blood Convention?' breathed Vennel.

  Jaspar gave Vennel a filthy look. 'Your pretences begin to wear parchment-thin, my Lord.'

  Vennel sneaked glimpses at the other Masters as if their sleeves might conceal daggers. 'Even Ykoriana would not dare ...' he said at last.

  Aurum rounded on him. 'You think not? Even after she murdered her own daughter within the very precincts of the Labyrinth?'

  That is an ugly rumour.'

  Suth had his stormy eyes on Vennel. 'Believe what you will, my Lord, but do not try to deny that your mistress lies behind this outrage. You should perhaps consider that your own blood would have soaked this ground had my son not raised the alarm.'

  Suth looked at his son. The warm pride Carnelian saw in his father's eyes melted him a little.

  Vennel’s face was ice. 'Even the Empress could not hope to wash her hands of such blood as ours.'

  Suth indicated the corpse. ‘She wore these creatures like gloves that could easily be discarded. Who would dare accuse her as she pointed to her own emissary found among the dead?'

  Jaspar nodded grimly. 'Our disguise would allow the Wise to give interminable sermons on the price that must be paid by those who disregard the Law.'

  Carnelian's eyes had been pulled back to the corpse. 'How many of the Marula were slain?'

  'A handful,' Aurum said, without turning. His mouth twisted with contempt. ‘She has used you for a fool, Vennel.' He snorted. 'And now you even confess complicity in a breach of the Blood Convention.'

  Vennel turned away to hide frantic, calculating eyes. 'By all the huimur of the Commonwealth and on my own blood I swear that all I was party to was a temporary abduction, a delay that would ensure the election should go ahead without us, nothing more, no attacks, certainly not bloodshed ...'

  Jaspar was looking into space. 'How can one believe that the Brotherhood would dare raise their hands against the Chosen? We have tolerated their activities for so long. This single act invites their annihilation.'

  'It is likely they knew not what they did,' said Suth.

  'How did they find us?' asked Carnelian.

  'Well...' said Vennel. They all looked at him. He floated his hands in elegant apology. 'In good faith, my Lords, and bearing in mind that my blood is as much at risk as yours—'

  Jaspar dropped his forehead into his hand. 'Do we have to listen to this?'

  Vennel flinched. The Legate and I came to an arrangement. A message was sent to Osrakum.'

  Jaspar chopped a sign of contempt. 'You imagine we did not know? Why else do you think we forwent the left-way where you expected us to be?' He turned his back on Vennel and addressed Aurum. 'Do you think, my Lord, that any of these vermin escaped to carry word of their failure?'

  That is immaterial,' said Aurum. He swung his arm round in an arc to take in the city wall. 'It is certain the Brotherhood had eyes up there to monitor the attack.'

  Carnelian searched the wall, but it was as dark as the sky.

  'When will Ykoriana know that they have failed?' asked Jaspar.

  'Even by leftway courier, she could not have received Vermel's message much before the day that we passed Maga-Naralante, ten days after we set off from the sea,' said Aumm.

  'Surely not ten days,' said Jaspar.

  'You ignore the difficulty in getting the message secretly up from the City at the Gates to Osrakum and into Ykoriana's hand in her forbidden house.'

  'Assuming you are right, my Lord, that would allow her at most only nine days to get the assassins here.'

  Aurum jabbed the corpse with the toe of his ranga. 'We are at least sixty days by road from Osrakum. This thing was already here.'

  'Not if it came here on the leftway,' said Jaspar.

  Suth shook his head. That would be difficult without the complicity of the Wise. Besides, she would not risk being so easily incriminated. The traffic records for the leftways are meticulously kept.'

  'Either way,' said Aurum, 'it is probable that in a few days Ykoriana will learn that she has failed. Desperation will make her doubly dangerous. We must reduce the time she has to spin another web. We must use the leftway.'

  'On the leftway we will be exposed,' said Vennel.

  Thanks to you, my Lord, we are exposed wherever we go,' grated Suth.

  'What of your wound, Lord Suth?' asked Jaspar.

  Carnelian disliked the way Vennel's eyes turned to feast on his father.

  Suth smiled. 'A scratch.'

  Carnelian remembered how much blood there had been. He looked away, over the canvas wall and saw above the gate a paler edge of sky. 'Behold, the morning,' he said, with wonder. He had believed the night would never end.

  The clanging of stone bells could be heard all across the field. Beneath the city wall everyone stood waiting, looking towards the still-closed gates. Carnelian and the other Masters were formed up within the cordon of the Marula. He was anxious that his aquar as it shifted should not step on the flattened tents. Beneath the canvas the corpses of the assassins lay side by side with the Marula they had killed. Though it was their custom, Aurum had not allowed the Marula to burn their dead. They glanced furtively at the canvas, stroking the salt bracelets they had stripped from the corpses. One of them sat stiffer than the others. Carnelian kept noticing the red corners of his eyes and knew the man was looking at him. When the black face angled towards him, gaunt with fear, Carnelian recognized it as belonging to the Maruli who had seen him unmasked the night before. There was no way he could reassure the man that he was safe, but Carnelian was determined to keep their secret. There was already enough blood on his hands.

  A grinding grumble drew his eyes away to where a crack was widening down the centre of the gate. The faces on the doors swung inwards to look at each other. The crowd murmur rose in pitch. Everything began to shuffle forward. A slow rhythm of huimur bells, axles and wheel trundle answered the steady ringing from the towers. Fully opened, the gates released a river of travellers coming out from the city. The two flows sheared against each other with a continuous protest. Consternation spread outwards from their meeting. Something fearful. The uproar hissed towards the Masters like flames across a parched fernland. Carnelian snatched the single, chilling word 'plague' again and again from the chatter.

  Aurum barked an order and the Marula dismounted round them to form a ring of spear points. It looked to Carnelian a frail defence. Still, when he looked for Tain, he was relieved to see him with the baggage inside the ring.

  Carnelian watched Aurum's hunch lean down to one of the Marula. As the old Master sat back his action seemed to jerk the man up into his saddle-chair. The Maruli strode his aquar off into the crowd. For a moment he was consumed by it, his head bobbing in the boil. Then he came back and spoke to Aurum, pointing his arm towards the gate.

  Aurum turned to shout something at the other Masters. Carnelian strained to hear.

  ‘... mere rumour carried here from ... south. If plague exists ... far away.. . might... burn itself out before ... reach it. We go on.'

  Vennel straightened up. ‘Should we not consider remaining in Nothnaralan?' His high voice carried more clearly than the old Master's. 'We could wait it out. Surely it would be foolish to ignore the peril.'

  'We shall go on,' shouted Aurum. 'If it is your wish ... remain here.'

  Carnelian saw his father and Jaspar lift their hands in agreement.

  Aurum nodded, then commanded the Marula to remount. Their saddle-chairs rocked as they
clambered up. Aurum's hand punched more commands into the air. The Marula reversed their lances and began to bludgeon a path with the hafts. Their aquar cleaved into the flow like boats. Carnelian could see the animals' distress. Their heads flicked from side to side, plume fans quivering open and closed. The Marula jerked tight their reins and continued hacking into the crowd. Carnelian's chair jolted as he rode after his father into their wake. One hand struggled with the reins while the other clenched the chair.

  The crowd surged in waves against him. He grew tired. When he looked up, the gate seemed further away. The tide was against them. More and more people were pouring out from the gateway into the field. Their stench maddened him. More impacts shook him to anger.

  This is unbearable!'

  For a moment Carnelian fancied it was his own voice crying out, but his teeth were clenched, his lips pressed closed.

  'Digging a ditch in water.'

  His father's voice rang clear above the turmoil. Carnelian saw his shrouded mass unfolding to betray his height. His huge hand appeared, like a spotted dove, floating, alighting on his head. Then, with a sudden motion, it pulled the hood back. The bandaged head was revealed and the mask that was a piece of sun. Carnelian was transfixed. His father's golden face was the serene centre of the storm. Carnelian's gaze followed its lunging forward. He watched his father's saddle-chair collide with one of the Marula, watched him grab the man's salt-bangled arm. The Maruli turned, lifting his lance in menace, stared wide-eyed at the mask, then down at the white Master's hand that held him. Suth shouted something before he let go. The Maruli bowed so low his head disappeared between his thighs. When he came up he was bellowing and holding his arm out as if he were cooling it from the Master's touch. The other Marula craned round, saw the Master's terrible mirror face, slitted their eyes and brayed battle cries as they turned their lance blades on the crowd.

  'We are revealed Lords of the Hidden Land,' boomed Aurum as he too pushed back his hood. The crowd slid distorted across his mask as he scanned it. Take care, this riot might conceal our enemies.'

  Jaspar gave a fierce cry and straightened in his chair as he revealed himself. Vennel unbent more slowly. Carnelian watched his hand waver but then the Master followed the others. Reluctant to give up his hold on the chair, Carnelian was last of all. He glanced uneasily at the throng but realized it was futile to search it for assassins.