Down on the road the Marula's fire had gone out. The land spread away textured with shadow lumps. The snuffling of animals and some voices seemed eerily close. In the direction of Osrakum, the starry sky fell into a gulf of darkness. The heart of the city glowed dimly beneath it. Faint traceries showed the causeways. The land between seemed to be adjusting. He strained to hear something, some human sound that might come to him from the metropolis. There was only the rasp of frogs and, intermittent;y, the cries of creatures stalking the marshes. He closed his eyes. Breathed deep the sweet air.
He heard a cry, nearby, muffled. He craned round and saw yellow light in one of the tower's top-storey windows flicker then go out. His father. He scrambled back onto the beam and sprinted along it to the roof. The hatch formed a glowing rectangle. He found the rungs of the ladder and began descending.
'It wields a dagger.' A woman, voice raised in anger. No, it was Vennel.
Carnelian looked through the rungs down into the hall. Vennel loomed with Aurum coming up holding a lantern. Behind them both stood Jaspar. The three formed a frozen tableau of immense black figures, their gold faces smouldering against the deathly white stripe of their throats. All the masks were half turned away, peering off into a dark corner. Aurum lifted the lantern high, so that its edge of light pulled up the further wall. On the floor was the tight hooked figure of a man. A black man. A Maruli, shaking, with sliding slitted eyes and a blade hanging down from his fist.
As Carnelian slipped down into the room, the Maruli turned, sensing him. Carnelian knew the man's face. He saw it twisting, the lips drawing back from feral teeth, hissing.
Aurum took a step forward. 'Abase yourself before your Masters, slave.' His voice filled the hall.
The black man flinched but his face remained hard with defiance.
Aurum unmasked to reveal his cold white anger.
The black man cowered away, almost closing his eyes. The blade trembled in his grip.
'Kneel!' boomed Aurum.
The black man closed like a mussel.
'Hold these,' Aurum said quiedy, thrusting the lantern and mask into Vermel's hands. Shadows slid this way and that as Vennel fumbled, then they steadied.
'Come, kneel, it'll be better that way. It'll be better,' coaxed Aurum.
The black man's knees cracked against the floor. He bowed his head, his arm still out to one side, stiff clutching the knife.
Aurum took a few strides towards him, bent down, grabbed the man's hair, yanked back his head. In the glare of the Master's face, Carnelian saw the amber eyes strain round with terror. There was a glint at the black man's throat, a slicking sound. He gurgled, then grimaced. Aurum kicked his body away with a snort, wiping his hand down his robe. The black man twitched, face down on the floor, a black halo spreading round his head, his fist still gripping the knife.
Vennel was frozen. 'It tried to kill me.'
Jaspar circled the corpse as if it were a rabid animal. After surveying it he moved in, placed a ranga shoe on the wrist, crunched it down against the floor. Using a fold of his robe, he stooped down and worked the knife out of the dead man's grip. He held it up. 'A kitchen knife?' He sounded amazed. He flung it away with a clatter that made Carnelian jump.
That it should dare threaten one of the Chosen,' said Vennel. 'It is quite, quite, quite unbelievable.' 'It was attacking you?' Jaspar demanded. 'It sought my life.'
'It was me he was trying to kill,' said Carnelian quietly. Two masks and the old man's face snapped towards him.
'Explain yourself,' said Aurum. Carnelian looked down at the man lying in the blood. 'He saw my face.' 'What do you mean?'
That man lying there, he saw my face. The night we were attacked, he saw my face.'
'You little fool,' said Vennel, lunging towards Carnelian.
Aurum overtook him. He caught Carnelian by the shoulders and shook him till his mask was askew. 'Why did you say nothing at the time?'
Carnelian tore free of Aurum's hands and stared back into his cold eyes. He tried to slide the mask back into place. 'I did not want him to die. Not when his sin had come from the saving of our lives.'
Jaspar coughed a nervous laugh. Carnelian glared at him. He was close to blurting out that not only he but also Jaspar had been guilty of the same sin. The same sin, except that at least Carnelian had demanded nothing for his silence.
Suddenly, he was shoved round so that he was looking at the man bleeding over the floor. He looked away.
'Look at it,' Aurum said. 'Look at it, I say.'
Carnelian obeyed. The gash was a slack-lipped smile opening a mouth in the corpse's throat.
That thing could have spilled your precious blood.' Aurum's fingers dug into his arm. The Law of
Concealment must be obeyed. It is not some arbitrary nonsense. It is meant to stop that!' His finger jabbed at the corpse.
'Look,' shrilled Vennel, 'look.' He pointed at Carnelian's feet. 'He does not even wear the ranga.'
Aurum released him, turned away.
'One would have thought the boy would have learned something from the debacle on the baran,' said Vennel.
Hatred of the Masters overpowered Carnelian. He remembered Crail. He remembered that they had opened the chasm between him and his own father, whom even now they were expecting to die. He remembered Jaspar using Tain's eyes to bait his trap. He opened his mouth to spit his bitterness at them but at that moment his father's ravings came from behind the door, and he felt his anger seep away.
'Now we see the consequences of all this secrecy,' said Vennel. 'If we had travelled with our guardsmen this would never have happened.'
Aurum turned an icy face to Carnelian. 'Go and sleep.'
Carnelian went to his father, remembering what he had said. Before he closed the door, he heard Aurum say, 'We had better hide the carcass ... Yes, with our own hands. Everything must be done to avoid this contagion of rebellion spreading to the others. The creatures will all have to be destroyed.'
CROSSING the WHEEL
Facilitate commerce, encourage avarice, allow the widest variation in rank and wealth: let our subjects find enemies amongst themselves. The slave who is thrown the leavings from his master's table, will not have the stomach for rebellion.
(a precept of the Wise, from the Domain of Tribute)
Carnelian had his back against the bed. He so wanted to sleep but he had to guard the embers of his father's life. In his grip, his father's hand felt like ice. All night Carnelian had held on to him to stop him being tugged away. His muscles ached from the effort. Each time death pulled, his father would first heat like a kettle, raving ever more loudly, then cool until the sweat was beading on his skin. Silence would then come so suddenly that each time Carnelian thought him gone. A whisper of breath, a tiny trembling in a vein would turn his grief to anger. He would stare at the fevered face, grinding his teeth, wanting to rail at his father, to blame him, to tell him that it was not fair to leave him alone to shoulder all the burden. When he had managed to pack the anger back in somewhere he dried his father's face and rewrapped his body in the covers he had thrown off.
Drowsing over him Carnelian would sometimes become aware that his hand was stroking his father's head or his lips were mumbling one of Ebeny's healing songs. Once he wondered if it was perhaps their charm that stoked the fire inside his father's shell until it glowed red again and the babbling came hissing out. He had stood watch over him as long as he could, then had slumped to the floor, his head a hollowed stone in his hands.
Now his father was sleeping quietly and it seemed that the fever had passed into Carnelian. Tremors moved across his skin as if something were burrowing under it. He was desperate to sleep, to escape the numbness, to dull the pain.
Sounds were coming through the wall. One of the Masters was stirring. He swivelled his head round. A window slit showed a shade paler than night. The morning. A sigh deflated his body. Osrakum. Today, Osrakum. He opened his mind to receive the vision. He waited, then closed it when n
othing came in. Was this to be the day his father died?
Something heavy struck the door. Groaning, Carnelian stood up, to put his body up as a shield between the door and his father's face. He fumbled his mask up to hide his own. The door opened to frame a darkness in which an oval floated like a summer moon. Aurum came in stooping, trapping the whole room in the mirror of his mask. It fell away to reveal his Master's face creased with dismay. That look sharpened Carnelian's own fears.
Take this,' Aurum said and pushed his mask onto Carnelian so that he had to let go of his father's hand. The old Master leaned over Suth and bent to touch the dangling veined marble of his hand.
'His blood still burns.' Aurum's face smoothed as he pulled his hand back over his grey stubbled head. 'Perhaps there is still time.'
'Perhaps ... ?' Carnelian's stomach curdled. 'Why should there not be enough time? Surely, we are only a few stages away from the Wise?'
Aurum's eyes were dulled, looking at some inner landscape. There is much that can happen along those few stages.'
'You mean Ykoriana?'
Aurum's eyes ignited. 'Bite your tongue. Just make sure you do what you can to keep your father alive. The rest is not your concern.'
The cistern wobbled sinuous patterns across the rafter-latticed ceiling. The Masters held their aquar themselves. Aurum had dismissed the grooms so that they would not witness a Master's weakness. Jaspar clucked his impatience to be gone. An aquar was made to sink. With Aurum's help, Carnelian wrestled his father's body into the saddle-chair. They ignored Vermel's question about his health. Carnelian took the reins and held them as he and the others mounted. He tied them to his chair.
Outside, it was cold. Lazy sounds came up from the encampment. Carnelian felt the unease around him. Vennel's mask could not decide whether it wanted to look at his father or at the Marula. Jaspar's maintained a constant oblique angle to the Marula. The barbarians were clumped a little way off, already mounted. Their heads hung as if they slept in their chairs. They had turned their backs on the road ahead as if by not seeing it they could make it go away. Behind them, beneath an indigo sky, Osrakum's wall was a gloomy island rising from the sea of mist that submerged the city.
Carnelian looked for Tain among the Marula. Wearied almost to tears, already grieving for his father, Carnelian knew he must find the energy to buy back his brother's eyes.
Mist fingered the grim sleeping face of the land as they rode. It reached into Carnelian's cloak to chill his skin. Its breath smelled damp and mouldy. The vague shapes of the Masters floated near him. The scratch of claws on the road seemed far away. Ahead, the Marula were wading through the twilight.
The sky paled, the blur cleared a little and Carnelian saw that they were riding along a causeway through a land of folded mud. Tarnished silver mirrors lay along the folds across which furtive creatures were spreading rings. Ridges bristled with reeds. Cranes lifted languidly into the air and flapped their angled silhouettes off, trailing their legs.
Ahead on a rutted mud shelf moored to the road like a raft another encampment was coming alive. Air fuzzed blue with smoke. Muffled voices worried the silence. The edges of a watch-tower contrasted with the liquid curves all around it. It grew huge and so solid that it made the fen look like a painted backcloth.
Then it was dropping behind and for a while Carnelian dozed away his misery only vaguely aware of the mottled dull-mirroring rush on either side. Mounds began curving up from the mud like the humps of huge fish, some with hovels on their backs, others caught in patches of netting. Carnelian sat up. Runs of grey water slipped around the mounds. Huts stood everywhere on legs. Boats lay half out of water, hiding like children behind tarpaulin skirts. Then he saw the edge of the city ahead. A mud bank textured with houses and shrubby trees. The carcass of some immense monster rotting on the marsh. A stench was floating on the wind. Their aquar drummed along the leftway. The buildings ahead were rising higher. Soft-edged canals branched off into the marsh patinated with scum, littered with boats like dead leaves. Here and there pimpling the mud in the distance little citadels of trees hid houses.
The stench of the city was wafting stronger. The channels Carnelian could see were matted with filth. Two towers with sagging walls formed a kind of gateway through which the city received the road. They flashed between them and in among the mess of tenements. The angles of walls and alleys jagged his eyes. He could not make out a pattern. It was like a termite mound cut open and exposed to a rain that had melted everything together. Now and then he would see a flight of steps winding down to a canal hemmed in by rickety warehouses, along which long punts were sliding.
Then they came to a more prosperous region where the tenements wore blistered whitewash. The stench was ever changing like music. The mud walls heaved closer, riddled with passages, spined with the ends of beams that betrayed the anatomy of floors within. Dusty gardens crammed into corners. A single fig tree roofed a courtyard with its branches. In the midst of all this riot another watch-tower rose like a woman wading through rubbish up to her waist.
As they slowed, the city's perfume thickened: mouldering mud, frying, the tang of slimed alleys, the dull odour of stagnant water, the vinegar reek of men.
Aurum had reached the monolith guarding the watch-tower door. Their aquar swung their heads from side to side as they slowed from their run. Aurum commanded the Marula to dismount. He herded them with his aquar behind the monolith and disappeared. Carnelian was intent on the saddle-chair holding the huddle that was his father. He leaned close, desperate for some sign of life. His father's aquar adjusted its feet and the huddle gave a groan that let Carnelian breathe again. 'My Lord?' he whispered but there was no reply. He looked round at the others.
'Where has Aurum gone?' He did not even attempt to mask the anger in his voice.
Jaspar motioned with his head.
Carnelian turned his aquar and saw that Aurum was there, his gold face peering from his hood.
'Why do we stop, my Lord?' Carnelian demanded.
To leave the leftway and descend to the road.'
Jaspar's hands expressed surprise. 'Into the herd?'
'We cannot do that,' said Carnelian.
There is no choice, my Lord,' said Aurum.
There must be. The delay — not to mention the commotion — it will kill my father.'
Aurum rode up to him. 'Last night I sent a messenger to the gates to announce our coming along this leftway. For that very reason we must leave it. This road leads only into peril.'
'You anticipate another attack, Aurum?' asked Jaspar.
Carnelian noticed that the Master's voice lacked its usual note of amused detachment. 'Surely we do not know for certain there will be another attack.'
There will be another attack,' Aurum said darkly.
'Even if there is, how can my Lord be certain where it will occur?'
The messenger, my Lord, the messenger,' snapped Vennel.
Carnelian turned on him. 'Does my Lord not think it possible that his mistress will see through Lord Aurum's subterfuge?'
'You are impertinent, my Lord.'
'Nevertheless, Vennel, my cousin makes a reasonable point,' said Jaspar.
Aurum lifted his hands. 'I have taken all this into consideration. Our enemies will see in the messenger our attempt to hide our intention to leave this leftway. It would be unlike them not to see through this deception. Thus, they will expect us on the leftway. We shall thus do the unexpected by in fact leaving the leftway.'
'In other words, my Lord, you have no idea whatsoever where our enemies are looking for us,' Carnelian said. 'For all we know they will be waiting for us on either route. Since this is possible it behoves us to take whichever route will more quickly bring my father to his healing by the Wise.'
Vennel gave him a nod. 'On the contrary, if there is danger both ways we would be better in the marketplace of the Wheel where we would be as invisible as fish in the sea.'
Jaspar squeezed his hands together. 'Let u
s not forget the filthy Marula. It would be prudent, cousin, if we were to find them work to do. The crowds will distract them.'
Carnelian felt that the situation was slipping away from him. 'Since when are the Chosen fearful of such animals?'
'Since, my Lord,' sneered Vennel, 'they are poisoned near unto death and know that we slew one of their number and, no doubt, will soon find a way to slay them all.'
'If we move down to the road a greater distance will be put between them and their antidote. This will endanger them as much as it does my father. Surely they will know this and so become more dangerous.'
They will know nothing,' Vennel said scornfully. 'Did you not yourself say that they are animals?'
Carnelian cast around him. 'My father still has his vote.'
'Would you use up his last strength?' said Aurum. Carnelian hesitated and looked from one mask to the next.
'Lord Suth should form no part in our calculations,' said Jaspar. 'It is unlikely he will live.'
Aurum's hand darted up to cut short Carnelian's outrage. Enough. 'If we three vote together we will carry the decision.'
Vennel and Jaspar nodded.
'It is decided then. We will descend to the road.' Vennel made no attempt to conceal the note of triumph in his voice.
Carnelian went cold with anger. 'If my father should die . ..' he said through gritted teeth.
'You will be elevated to Ruling Lord.'
'A privilege rare in one so young,' said Jaspar and turned his aquar away.
As the others filed into the watch-tower, Carnelian gazed down the leftway that narrowed off into a hazy crush of towers dwarfed by the dark mountain wall. The entrance to the Canyon of the Three Gates had widened into a narrow valley. Standing guard on either side of it were manikins almost hidden in its shadow. The mass of the city between served to cut them off at the knees. Carnelian shook his head, making no sense of their scale. What was certain, however, was that there was still a long ride to the gates and through the crowds it would take much, much longer.
He rode into the tower in despair, pulling his father's aquar after him, muttering under his breath, over and over again, 'He'll hang on. He'll hang on.'
The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 Page 27
