The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01

by Ricardo Pinto

  'And our blood, our burning blood?' said Vennel. 'Does my Lord deny the source of its fire to be divine?'

  Aurum frowned. 'I cannot deny what I myself have felt. Besides, it is self-evident that we are as far above other men as are the stars above the earth.'

  The Twins were our first Emperor. In mortal form, They put the fire in our blood, and through Apotheosis all subsequent God Emperors inject more.'

  That orthodoxy ... childish conceit,' said Suth. Through alignment with forces ... that move the world ... we achieved the Commonwealth.'

  Jaspar laughed. 'And they all lived happily ever after.'

  Suth's eyes blazed. 'And they lived plagued by blood intrigues, squabbling among themselves, lectured at by the Wise and sapped by their own vices of greed, pride and levity.'

  'Particularly levity,' said Vennel.

  Jaspar looked at Vennel with raised eyebrows.

  Carnelian saw his father had sagged back against the heliograph. He lurched to his side as his head fell forward. The Masters rose with a rustle. Carnelian leant close, relaxing when he heard him breathing. 'Father,' he said gently.

  The weight of his father's head stirred and lifted. 'Must rest...'

  'Not here,' said Carnelian.

  His father's lips twitched a smile. He gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  Carnelian turned and saw Aurum and Jaspar showing something like concern; Vennel, something like hope. 'He needs help.'

  As Aurum and Jaspar began to move, Carnelian was buffeted by his father standing up. Suth waved the Masters away. 'My son is all the help I need,' he croaked.

  Together they shuffled over the narrow bridge to the rib with its naphtha flare. Carnelian was wedged into the hinge of his father's arm. Its weight lying along his shoulders forced Carnelian to look down at the terrible distance they might fall. His father's breathing roared its moisture in his ear. The rot of the blood wafted with each step they took.

  Carnelian helped remove his father's cloak and then lie him down on the bed. Suth was trying to hide the pain but a twinge near his eye betrayed it. His side was a single black stinking stain. The smell creased Carnelian's nose. When he saw his father noticing his disgust, he was forced to speak.

  'You cannot continue like this, my Lord.'

  'It is better this way .. . Aurum and the ammonites were right... the ritual protection ... above all, the Law must be seen to be obeyed.'

  'We have both seen lapses in the Law's operation,' said Carnelian, 'and, this ... this mess cannot be better.'

  'But I could not allow Tain to . .. besides, now he is forbidden me...?'

  Carnelian reached out to touch the black bandages. His father's hand tried to brush his fingers away. 'You ... defile ... yourself.'

  Carnelian took his father's hand and gripping it firmly folded the elbow up and forced the hand down on his father's chest. 'Your blood is my blood, Father, how could it defile me?' He reached out again, felt the wet touch of the crusted bandages and winced when they cracked. He shook his head.

  This must be cleaned,' he said, before his father could say anything. He found some cleaning pads and unguents. He threw off the encumbrance of his own cloak.

  His father sat up with a look of horror on his face. 'What... ?' The effort was too much. He fell back with a groan. This is not for you to do.'

  There is no-one else, Father.'

  His father closed his eyes, breathing heavily. Carnelian took this for acquiescence. He surveyed the stain, made his decision, picked up a knife and then gingerly began to cut the bandages around it. Having done this he took one strip and peeled it back. It stuck in a few places. He grimaced each time he had to give it a tug. At last he had it off and dropped it on the floor in disgust. One by one he pulled the strips off while his father lay like a corpse, the only sign of life the twinges as the strips caught. To reduce his suffering, Carnelian began cutting bits away.

  'We must talk,' his father hissed through clenched teeth.

  Carnelian peered at the ridged fleshy mass his work had revealed. He went blind. What if he killed his father? His sight returned. In as level a tone as he could muster, he said, 'You are too weak, my Lord.'

  'Because of that... I might die.'

  'Don't say that,' snapped Carnelian. Instinctively, his hand flew up towards his mouth, as he remembered to whom he was speaking.

  His father smiled, shook his head, reassuring him. 'About Crail... my hands ... tied.'

  The grief welled up in Carnelian's eyes. He concentrated on the wound, seeing it distorted through tears, sniffing. He pulled one more strip.

  His father groaned, chuckled. 'Are you trying to hurry me from this world?'

  Carnelian saw his father's lopsided grin and grinned back. Their eyes met, smiling. The promise he had made to Jaspar was an ache in the marrow of his bones. Tain and his father were tearing him in two. Both were of his blood. This blood, he thought, looking at his reddened hands.

  'My son ... you look unconvinced.'

  Carnelian shook his head. 'No, it is something else.' He looked his father in the eye, seeing something of Tain there, then blurted out, 'Did you know Tain would be blinded?'

  The puzzlement in his father's face forced Carnelian to describe the events in the tent the night Tain had seen Jaspar's face. Horror glazed his father's eyes.

  Then you did not know this would happen?' said Carnelian.

  'Of course I did not! How could you even ... think that? Tain ... is ... my son.'

  Carnelian felt like a bow being unstrung.

  Suth was embarrassed by the emotion that came over his boy's face. 'Does he ask for ... something?'

  Carnelian blushed.

  'Is there a price ... for Tain's eyes?'

  Carnelian squared up to his father. 'Knowledge of what power it is that the Lord Aurum has over you.'

  'He did it on purpose ... to trap you.'

  Carnelian gaped. 'On purpose .. .' He shook his head, unable to comprehend such wickedness.

  Suth closed his eyes, thinking.

  Carnelian poured the unguent into the bowl, dipped in a pad and concentrated on cleaning the blood away. He felt the need to confess everything. 'Vermel told me that our exile was long ago rescinded.'

  Suth opened his eyes, saw the boy's pain, closed them again. That one ... looks at me... with vulture eyes. But he spoke truth. I will try to explain.' His eyes opened once more to look at his son. The man that later became God Emperor ... Kumatuya ...'

  'My uncle.'

  'We shared love.'

  Carnelian's eyes grew round.

  'His sister, Ykoriana ... coveting all his love, resented me. When their sister ...' Suth closed his eyes. 'My mother ...' suggested Carnelian. Suth nodded.

  Carnelian resumed the cleaning, waiting for his father to muster enough strength to continue.

  Suth went on. 'When she died . .. Ykoriana's resentment turned to hatred. At the last election ... she threatened to use her votes against Kumatuya unless ... unless I swore on my blood to quit Osrakum.'

  Carnelian frowned. ‘She blackmailed you.'

  'Without her eight thousand votes . .. Kumatuya would have died.' There was a long pause. His father stared at the ceiling. 'By the time that I was released from my oath . .. other factors.'

  'And these other factors lie behind Aurum's influence?'

  Suth nodded, then seeing the doubt returning to his son's face, he added, They are not shameful... but cannot be discussed. Will you trust me, my son?'

  Carnelian looked into his father's eyes and was moved by their appeal. He jerked a nod.

  'Good,' his father sighed.

  Carnelian resumed the cleaning. He had found the wound's slack mouth. He cleaned carefully around its swollen lips as his father trembled with the agony of it. Carnelian stopped and wiped away the sweat that threatened to blind him. Then he looked round, thought for a moment, checked to see his father was not looking, bent down and began to release the bandage from around one of his ankles. It gav
e and he unwound a length up to his knee and cut it off, as quiedy as he could. He took another length from his other leg and then began to wind them round his father's body to cover the wound.

  'And Aurum?' he said as a distraction.

  'He thinks me weak ... I let him believe it ... but I will cheat him yet,' he looked at Carnelian, 'with your help, my son.

  'You see how they have exploited ... our disunity ... cleave to me. When we ... enter Osrakum, I will be taken into the Labyrinth ... but you must go to our coomb ... will write letter ... trouble there ... too long away ... if I die ...'

  Carnelian began an emotional protest but his father's hand raised to stay him.

  '... find Fey ... let her advise you ...' 'Aunt Fey? Brin's sister?'

  His father gave a nod. 'Beware of the other lineage ... and my mother ... she knows nothing of reasons for exile .. .' The last words were sighs.

  Carnelian could not bear to look at his father's pain-scrunched face. He busied himself with his handiwork. The bandages over the wound were already blushing. 'We...'

  'You are squandering your strength, Father.'

  'We must save Tain's eyes.'

  Carnelian looked at him with hope.

  'If Jaspar wants you ... betray me, then betray ...' His fingers hooked in spasm. Tell him of the oath ... blood oath, I swore to Ykoriana... best to stay close to truth ... oath kept me in exile ...'

  'Will he know nothing of its rescinding?'

  'He might know of oath ... but not of...'

  'Rescinding.'

  Suth lifted his hand. Take it...'

  Carnelian gripped his father's hand. He could feel the pain in its trembling. 'But—'

  His father's hand squeezed. There is more.' He took some ragged breaths. 'God Emperor and Aurum found a loophole ... in Law. Oath made as Suth ... not as He-who-goes-before. As long as I hold ... post, I am free ... to return ... but...'

  'But Aurum controls the Clave and thus your appointment to that post and can at any point strip you of it and force you back into exile.'

  Carnelian felt his father squeeze his hand.

  'I understand, Father. Please rest now.'

  Suth gave another squeeze. Carnelian carefully laid his father's hand down on the bed and disengaged his grip. He scooped up the filthy bandages and turned to leave. His father's hand grazed his. Carnelian looked round at him.

  'Make sure ... bind him with blood oath.'

  Carnelian leaned forward to kiss his father's forehead. 'Sleep, father, I will do everything as you say.'

  The next day his father put on a show of strength. Carnelian rode beside him and helped him make the changeovers. At first he was surprised when Aurum did not challenge his new place. Then he realized how fearful the Master was that his most important piece might yet be snatched from the game.

  'My father will die.' Carnelian hoped to cheat his fear by speaking it.

  'If we can get him there in time, the Wise will heal him,' said Aurum.

  They hurtled down the channel that centuries of couriers had worn in the leftway. Although they maintained a furious pace, it seemed to Carnelian they were not moving at all. Each time they stopped they were in the same place: a watch-tower amidst a simmering plain.

  That night his father began to burn with fever and had to be carried up to his cell. Carnelian tended him and made a bed on the floor beside him. He hardly slept. He cooled his father by smearing water on his face and sprinkling it over his bandaged body. The wound had already stained the new bandaging. Carnelian dabbed the blood with water to soften the crust. His father moaned and whistled like a wind among trees. Carnelian looked down at him bleak with fear. He could not understand how quickly the Master of the Hold had been stripped of all his granite strength.

  Morning found them already slicing through the wind. Another long, long day melted past. Carnelian nodded in a stupor, trying to snatch some sleep. He had still found no chance to be alone with Jaspar.

  The horizon had been thickening for a while before he noticed it. His mask's eyeslits reduced the glare enough to see there was a definite smudging along the lower sky. His stomach tightened. Although he knew what it was he dared not name it, but watched it grow as they rode a few more stages down the road.

  When next they stopped he saw all eyes looking in that direction.

  'My palaces, my treasures, my slaves,' said Jaspar with greedy delight.

  To be rid of these filthy wrappings,' said Vennel. Carnelian watched the Master's mask move round just enough to bring his father within reach of its eyeslits.

  The Marula were gazing at Osrakum as if she were their hated mother. All day they had lolled in their saddle-chairs. At the changeovers they moved with the slow, careful deliberation of the aged. Like his father, they were dying. He could see what Osrakum meant to them but what did she mean to him? The end of this cursed journey? Tain's blinding? He looked over at his father, slumped lifeless. For the hundredth time, Carnelian reassured himself that his father was only asleep behind his mask.

  'We shall not enter her crater today,' said Aurum.

  Carnelian swung round. 'In the thousand names of the Twins why not, my Lord?'

  'Because it is too far.'

  'What is that there?' Carnelian pointed a stiff finger down the road at the umber burnt into the edge of the opalescent sky.

  'Can you not see how low is the sun, my Lord? There is still a long ride to the City at the Gates.'

  'But my father—'

  'We would not reach the gates themselves before nightfall. We would be forced to lodge in the city. It would do the Lord Suth little good to spend a night breathing the vapours of the Gatemarsh. In the morning, we can finish the journey refreshed.'

  'We must think of the Lord Suth,' said Vennel. He waved a hand. The vapours ...'

  'It is hard to see, my Lord Aurum,' said Jaspar, 'how one could find spending a night in another stinking shed at all refreshing. But, no doubt, anticipation will make the reaching of one's coomb all the more delightful.' He turned to Carnelian. 'One finds that pleasure is so often enhanced by the delay in its consummation, neh?'

  It was all Carnelian could do to stop himself ripping away the Master's mask to punch the dirty smirk off his face.

  Watch-tower sea three rose near the edge of the Gatemarsh: a vast mirror scribbled over with mud calligraphy. The City at the Gates was like a half-rotted golden starfish. Causeway threads pulling out through the marsh formed its arms. A gilded mould grew in the angles. Behind lifted the Sacred Wall of Osrakum, as if the sun had been hammered flat to make a frieze for the darkening sky.

  Carnelian stood stirred by fear and hope for his father, for his brother, but also he felt a yearning that had the taste of the silver box. The starfish's head seemed to have cracked a fissure in the golden frieze. His heart was like a bird trapped in his ribcage. That fissure could be nothing other than the beginning of the canyon that led up into Osrakum. He would walk in her crater before the next setting of the sun. It was easier to imagine entering the Underworld.

  Carnelian struggled under his father's weight to the watch-tower door. While he was getting his breath back, his eyes were drawn back to Osrakum. Aurum was a black spindle around which the Sacred Wall vibrated its gold. He was talking to a Maruli from whom he kept his distance. He threw something that landed on the ground between them. The man bent down, grimacing from the pain, hesitated a bow, crawled into a saddle-chair and sped off. Carnelian watched him shimmer away to nothing against the gold, then heaved his father into the watch-tower.

  The Masters had locked themselves away and so Jaspar was out of reach. Carnelian knuckled patterns of light into his eyelids. Beside him, his father was restless, hot, stuttering half-words, sighing. He was the voice of Carnelian's despair.

  The babble stopped. Carnelian came awake. He stood up and saw the moonlight catching his father's open eyes. His lips moved. 'Forgive me.'

  Carnelian took his hand. It was cold and heavy. He laid his lips against hi
s father's brow and felt that he was kissing underwater stone. He prayed to the Twins, Their avatars, the Two Essences, but all were deaf. He kneaded the Little Mother in his hand and promised her anything if she would save his father. He found the bundle with his clothes and rummaging in it felt the roughness of Ebeny's blanket. He tugged it out and burrowed his face into it. For a moment he could believe that she was there with them. He pressed it harder to muffle his sobs. When he had done, he stood up and spread it over his father, pulling its edge up so that his father could smell her too.

  'Sleep now,' he whispered and his father obeyed him. Carnelian felt for his hand through the blanket and squeezed it and then lay down.

  He jerked awake breathing hard. His blanket was soaked with sweat. Above him, his father was muttering some fevered incantation. A scent of horror smoked around the edges of the cell. He was reluctant to return to the red face smiling in his dreams. Standing, he swayed a little and stared at the thing muttering on the bed. He did not recognize it. It was something malevolent he had to escape.

  Robe. Mask. Cold stone under his foot. He went out into the silent hall. All the other doors were closed. Moonlight fell in columns round him. He climbed the ladder to the roof.

  Through the copse of the ribs he glimpsed a wonder of stars. He edged across to the inverted arch between the northernmost ribs. The keel-beam ran out from the edge of the roof to the lookout in his deadman's chair. He walked out towards him. The man turned. Imagining his stare, Carnelian wobbled. He walked further out. Below, the leftway ran its dim canal.

  'Master?' said a fearful voice ahead.

  'I will take your watch for a while,' Carnelian said.

  The man hesitated, then swung himself up onto the beam into a crouch.

  'Wait on the roof.'

  The man ducked past with a waft of stale sweat.

  Carnelian took a few more steps forward. A cylinder pushed out from the end of the beam. The hoop formed a halo around this. He reached out, grasped the hoop then swung down onto the cylinder. It rotated, almost throwing him out into space. Trembling, he used the hoop to pull himself back into balance. He was panting hard. Now he understood why it was called a deadman's chair. At least the fright had brought him some relief from the foreboding. He looked out.