The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01

by Ricardo Pinto

  'Good, my Lord, you have gained us access. These Ichorians have been impertinently attempting to keep us from our Ruling Lord.'

  'At our Ruling Lord's express command.'

  'Surely you do not mean to say, cousin, that this command is intended to include his kin?'

  'We are in now,' said Opalid.

  Carnelian saw the commander's unhappy face. This far you have come, my Lords, but no further. My father is too busy with the election to meet you.'

  'It is on a matter pertaining to the election that we are come.'

  'My father's commands are not made to be broken,' Carnelian said severely. He watched their vast heads turning, snagging light as they looked in at their centre where Spinel stood very still.

  'We came, my Lord, to proffer fealty to our Lord,' said one whose crown glyph read, Topaz.

  'I have not been introduced to my kin, Spinel.'

  The Master's mass flowed with light as he slowly turned. 'You know my son, cousin.' He extended a pale hand upon which two Great-Rings were the only marks and began to point at the various Lords. These are Emeral and Tapaz also of my lineage.'

  Fire ran up then down their crowns as they bowed.

  'Berillus, Onyxor, Koril, Veridian and Amethus: the third lineage of our House.'

  Carnelian returned their bows. 'Be assured, my Lords, that I will let my father know of this visit. Your loyalty is gratifying to us both.'

  For a while they simply stood there looking down at him. Spinel was the first to bow. He turned. The others inclined their heads and then followed him glittering away.

  Carnelian returned slowly to his gloomy chamber. Tain was still sleeping. Carnelian tried to distract himself with a book. He paced. He made sure that Tain was well covered. The day dragged on into evening. Outside, the Great were determining the fate of the Three Lands while he was locked away like a woman in a forbidden house. As he lay down on the floor to sleep, he imagined his father imprisoned in his court robe, weighed down by his crowns, sustained by unnatural strength. Carnelian remembered the Sapients he had seen in his father's chambers and had a suspicion whence such strength came. He tried to dislodge his unease with memories of home, but it was like trying to light a fire with sodden kindling. Unbidden, it was a vision of the Yden that flared bright before his mind's eye. Dreamily, Carnelian relived his freedom among the shimmering lagoons. He saw Osidian beautiful in the dusk and burned with the delirious fever of their loving. He quashed a dark fear that threatened to quench the flames: the fear that he would never see Osidian again.

  An indistinct horror hung in Carnelian's dream. He lurched awake as he had been doing all night. He sat up, groaning a little as he pushed his stiff body up from the floor. A small black figure was obscuring the morning-bright crack between the shutters. It was Tain. Carnelian could feel his gaze.

  'You shouldn't have given me the bed.'

  'You shouldn't be up.'

  'I feel fine.'

  Carnelian grinned. 'You look as thin as a stick.' He regretted the words the moment they were said.

  'I didn't eat well in the quarantine.'

  Carnelian stood up and walked round Tain, pretending he was finding something to wear, trying to find an angle from where to see his face. When he found it he stared, trying to recognize it. 'Do you want to tell me about it?'

  Wearing a flickering frown, Tain looked down at his hands as they wrestled each other. He looked so small, so damaged, that Carnelian instinctively reached out to embrace him. Tain jerked away as if scalded. His eyes warned Carnelian not to touch him.

  Carnelian retreated.

  'You watched them strip me?'

  Carnelian freed his head enough from the tension to give a nod.

  They took us down into a maze of halls filled with half-black soldiers. In a courtyard they threw buckets of water at us. The blood washed off. They put us in among a crowd of naked men. We boys stuck together. Creatures came in silver masks—' 'Ammonites.'

  'Yes, ammonites. They ran their hands over me. Everywhere over and into me. They took the Little Mother ... smashed her to pieces on the ground.' His mouth twitched. 'They took us to a chasm. Any comment, any step out of line and we were cudgelled with sticks. A stair led down into the chasm. We descended to a shelf. We crossed to a bigger shelf. They swung the bridge away. Some ammonites were there with us. It was crowded. On one side was the chasm wall, on all others, a drop to darkness. The biggest men took the space near the wall. We had to make do with the edge. I looked over...' He stared as if he were there again. He shook his head, narrowed his eyes. 'Sometimes a little dimple of paleness showed the water far, far below. Hardly any light came down to us. Our blankets of sacking were torn from us. We huddled together for warmth. Cold and fear of rolling over the edge kept us always awake. In the morning, the ammonites checked us again then herded us over a bridge to the next shelf.'

  Carnelian saw Tain's lips moving but no sound came out. 'Was this new shelf the same as the last?'

  Tain nodded slowly. 'One shelf after another, after another ... for more than twelve days.'

  Tain's eyes made Carnelian's mouth almost too dry to speak. 'Were you ... did they hurt you?'

  Those who weren't protected by others of their House were victimized. We found protection where we could.' Tain's face became very bony. Those who didn't want to starve paid for their protection.'

  'Maybe we should forget this?' Carnelian thought his voice sounded very loud.

  Tain's eyes defied him. 'Every day the chasm deepened. There were whispers that it went down as far as the Underworld. One day we came round a corner in the chasm to see a brown tower rising in the distance. Each day brought it one shelf closer. Each day it grew redder as if it were a bone freshly hacked from a body. The chasm forked around its bloody roots. The last shelf was down the left fork. In the shadow under a bridge high above, stone doors led to new shelves. Thirteen of them. Colder. Darker. Under a skyful of shadow, Death's Gate, Nale fell.'

  'Nale?' asked Carnelian.

  The dragonfly Master's boy.'

  'Jaspar ... Fell, you say?'

  Tain glanced at him. 'He threw himself into the chasm.'

  Carnelian shuddered, remembering the punishments Jaspar had promised the boy.

  'Stone doors took us onto a path.'

  Carnelian was being numbed by Tain's lack of feeling.

  The chasm widened letting in more sky. The air was dank. We came to a place of chains and deafening waterfalls. More gates, some tunnels . .. then we came out into ...' Tain was staring at nothing.

  'Heaven?' suggested Carnelian.

  Tain gazed on as if he had not heard. Carnelian felt that if he were only to look close enough he would see a vision of the crater reflected on the boy's eyes. 'I felt that wonder too.'

  Tain's face turned to him the eye holes in his skull. 'I was sure I had died.'

  Carnelian felt the cold seeping up from the stone upon which he sat.

  The beating soon taught me otherwise. They took us up a stair to a cave floored with water. They demanded the names of our Masters. They put me on a boat, under its deck, where one-eyed monsters rowed. We arrived at Coomb Suth. They fished me out and put me on the quay. They rang a bell. I had the feeling I was in a story. The blue lake was not real. The island with its mountain. The vast, vast fencing wall. And there, at its foot, the coomb. So beautiful with its stepped gardens and gleaming palaces. Crail told me about it but I hadn't believed.'

  For a moment Carnelian thought Tain might smile. He waited for it like the dawn after a night of despair.

  'A man came down for me. The chameleon on his face fooled me at first. He wasn't one of our people. He was a stranger and spoke to me as a stranger. As I followed him he rattled off my duties, warned me that I should forget the ways I was used to. The coomb was ruled by the Master's mother and she wasn't a Mistress to be trifled with. Then I saw the hanging woman.'

  Carnelian felt a twinge of nausea. 'Hanging ... ?'

  ‘Sagging
off a frame ... arms wire cut ... above the path to one side ... stinking.'

  'A crucifixion,' said Carnelian.

  The wall behind her was stained with blood and shit. Her knees were like sea-logged wood. What was left of her arms looked barely in their shoulders. Her belly was red and swollen—'

  'Enough!' said Carnelian. He felt he was on the verge of remembering something. He was panting. Water was oozing in his mouth. 'Did ...' He swallowed. 'Did he tell you her name?'

  'Her name was Fey.'

  The sound of her name punched the vomit from Carnelian's stomach all over the floor.

  Carnelian helped Tain clean up. He felt the need to give him an explanation. 'She was Brin's sister.'

  Tain seemed to age a little more. Carnelian ducked his head, cursing, scrubbing the floor so hard he made his fingers raw. When they were finished he looked at Tain. 'I must know ...' Tain's face was a blank. 'What else did you see happening in the coomb?'

  'I left shortly after arriving to come here.'

  'Were there any other signs of slaughter?'

  'I didn't see any more ... crucifixions.'

  Carnelian bit his hand, looking at his brother.

  There was an atmosphere of fear.'

  Carnelian's eyes went out of focus. 'It seems to be the way the Masters celebrate their assumption of power.'

  Tain gazed at him.

  Carnelian still felt queasy. 'I must go and make Father aware of what I have done.'

  Carnelian quickly found that Tain was unable to dress him in his court robe and so he had to summon servants. When he was ready he went immediately to see his father. The Ichorians guarding the entrance to the Sun in Splendour would not let him pass. Towering over them he used all his powers of coercion but this only served to reduce them to quivering. One of the cohort commanders came to see what was happening.

  Carnelian swung round to look down at the man. They refuse to let me pass.'

  'He-who-goes-before himself barred this gate, Master.'

  'I've urgent need to speak to him.'

  'Our father's in conclave with the Jade Master Nephron.'

  Carnelian calmed his anger. 'Please tell him as soon as you can that I must talk to him.'

  He began the journey back to his chamber. The storm he had unleashed upon Coomb Suth, only his father could abate. No doubt he would conclave well into the night and then return to his chambers exhausted. Even if the commander managed to get his message through, there was no assurance that his father would pay it any attention.

  A plan occurred to him. Carnelian turned slowly on his ranga and returned to the door of his father's chambers. After some discussion, the Ichorians there allowed him to enter. The Suth guardsmen in the atrium greeted him with surprise. He ignored the questions in their eyes and passed through into the chamber beyond where he had them remove him from his court robe and ranga. When they were finished, he sent them away. For a moment, he stood gazing at the walls with their wheels and eyes and pomegranates, but then he crossed the stone-wood floor to a couch on which he settled down to wait.

  A movement of air woke him. Carnelian opened his eyes and was transfixed. An angel was coming across the floor in an aura of gold. Two mortals walked beside it. It seemed miraculous that its furnace robe did not consume them with its fire. The angel lifted a hand and the men fled towards the door and were soon gone.

  The angel slid towards the wall. It wavered a white hand out to touch the gold. Its whole shimmering bulk leaned forward, its fiery head clinking against the ruby seeds of a graven pomegranate.

  Thus propped up, the angel raised both hands to its face. The fingers disappeared trembling into the fiery crowns. The gold mask detached like a lid to reveal a pallid face beneath. His father. The next moment

  Carnelian was jarred as the pale fingers lost hold of the mask and it fell flashing, like a skystone, clattering, then screeching along the floor.

  Carnelian's gaze had been pulled after it but when it stopped making sound or movement he looked back in time to see his father raising an object to his face. He watched him sink his nose into the square spoon. Two sharp snorts, a groan and then breath hissing out through his mouth's gape, the spoon dangling from his fingers. Even as Carnelian watched, it was as if his father was a withered tree drawing young sap up from its roots. He slowly straightened, his shoulders broadened, his face grew brighter. His eyes opened and he saw Carnelian.

  'My Lord,' he said, appalled. His face jumped into fury. 'You spy on me?'

  Anger disappeared as his father's face sagged. Carnelian stood up, stooped to pick up the fallen mask, went to him. He could see the mucus running down from his father's nostrils and the head hanging with shame.

  'You knew ... the Wise ... their drugs sustain me.'

  'You mean, they keep you alive,' Carnelian snapped. His father was a man trapped in a slab of gold. Carnelian could not be angry with him. 'Please, Father, let me remove some of this ...' His hand pointed up at the sunburst crown, the stiff slopes of the court robe.

  His father frowned and Carnelian could see the protest forming on his lips, so he reached up, fitting his fingers up into the elaborate metallic folds. 'Not there,' his father sighed. 'Round the back . ..'

  Carnelian skirted him and stood on his toes to reach, felt around, found the catches, pressed and was thrown back as the sunburst fell into his arms. He walked with it and leaned its disc against the wall. He returned to lift down the upper crown, the lower, the sunstone circlet with its jewelled beadcords, the ear flanges, until the long dome of his father's head was revealed. His father moved it from side to side, grimacing, releasing the tension in his neck.

  'Aaah! That does feel better ... thank you, my son.'

  'Let me remove the robe.' Before his father could forbid him Carnelian had unhitched the shoulder pole with its cloaks. He unhooked the robe from the floor up. As its carapace came apart it released an odour of myrrhed sweat. Carnelian prised the suit open like two doors. His father's long narrow body was revealed in its underclothes, kneeling high upon enormous ranga that were attached to heavy belts. Carnelian squeezed into the robe, stooped and began to undo the shoes. As he worked he was bothered by a fetid, familiar smell. As he helped his father climb down he saw a raised area blushing red through the silk. When Carnelian leaned closer he could smell the rot of old blood. He groaned. 'It has not healed.'

  The drug gives me strength but at a price. The wound remains open but it hardly bleeds at all.'

  'And pain?'

  His father shrugged. 'A little.' He smiled. 'From long companionship, it has become a friend.'

  Carnelian felt a trembling of anger. 'The Wise ... they are embalming you alive.'

  'It was my choice. Without their drugs I would have become an invalid long ago.'

  The wound will heal, then?'

  His father rolled his hand. 'When I have time.' His face grew immeasurably sad. 'After the election.'

  Carnelian tried not to see how much his father was resembling Crad. 'Something has happened.'

  His father's yellowed eyes fell on him. 'I suppose the news will soon be widely known.'

  Carnelian watched him, urging him to speak. 'Jaspar has betrayed us.' 'Jaspar ... ?'

  'He has gone over to Ykoriana.' 'With his faction?'

  'It is too early to tell ... some will follow him.' He affected cheerfulness. 'I did not ask why you came here, my son.'

  Carnelian looked up, saw his father's bleary look. It was the fear of continuing massacre in the coomb that made him speak. Tain is here.'

  'Good, good. Has he come through the ordeals of the road and quarantine unscathed?'

  'We are none of us unscathed, Father.'

  'No, I suppose not.'

  Tain brought with him terrible news.'

  His father's eyebrows squeezed wrinkles into the top of his nose.

  'Fey is dead.'

  His father blinked at him, not understanding. 'Dead?'

  'Your mother had her crucified.' Carneli
an watched his father's face crumpling. He saw the tears oozing out. 'Father, don't,' he stuttered in Vulgate, horrified. He rushed to catch him in his arms and held him, feeling the racking in his body. 'Don't, don't cry,' he mumbled, touching with his lips the dry skin of his father's neck. 'I ... was ... a fool.'

  Carnelian could feel the words begin to rattle up from his father's chest. He squeezed harder but the words still escaped. 'We should never have returned. I have lost. I have lost it all.'

  Carnelian pushed him away so that he could see his face. He forced himself to look on all the evidence of its ruin. 'It was my fault,' he said. 'My fault.'

  His father looked at him with flickering red eyes. Carnelian stared back. His father's trembling had stopped. He seemed suddenly of stone. 'Your fault?' His voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else in the chamber.

  'I killed her. I gave the Lady Urquentha the Seal.'

  His father became flesh again. The Seal?' He looked as if it was the first time he had ever heard the word.

  The coomb was not as you left it. Spinel had taken the Seal and forced the Lady Urquentha into the forbidden house.'

  His father gave a slow nod and narrowed his eyes.

  'She was trapped there like an animal.'

  'And so you gave her the Seal to set her free?'

  Carnelian grimaced. 'It was done as much from a dislike of Spinel.'

  His father opened his hand. 'And so? It was your right, you are higher than he.'

  'But Fey was crucified.'

  His father looked down, his eyes unfocused. 'Why did my mother do this?'

  'She believed that Fey had conspired against her with the second lineage.'

  'And had she?'

  'In a manner of speaking.'

  Then my mother did what she had to.'

  Carnelian gaped. 'Had to?'

  'What Fey did was unforgivable.'

  'But she did it for you, for us.'

  'Nevertheless.'

  'You mean she was only a slave.' His father's eyes flashed. 'She was my favourite sister. I trusted her ... I loved her, even.' Carnelian slumped. Then why . . . ?'

  His father put his hand on Carnelian's shoulder. 'My son, when I chose exile, I knew that I was choosing suffering for many others apart from myself. I could not take all the household with me. Fey asked to be left behind. Even if her actions were carried out from love of me, she betrayed my mother. No servant, however loved, can be allowed to live after betraying one of the Chosen.'