The Standing Dead sdotc-2

by Ricardo Pinto

  'A spear,' shrilled Cloud's voice. 'For the sky's sake… a spear.'

  Fumbling, terrified mumblings as the mass rose.

  Carnelian forced his hand to creep over the mud feeling for a weapon. A wavering battle-cry Carnelian recognized with horror was Osidian's. A stinking breeze. Thunder in the ground. A scream, then slicing. The world detonated in a roaring frenzy. A wall slammed him flying into the night.

  UNDER THE TREES

  The poisons of decay can open the doors to other worlds.

  (extract from a beadcord manual of the Domain Immortality)

  Dirty light was filtering through cracks between the leaves. Carnelian's cheek was lying in mud. A corner of his mouth blew bubbles as he breathed. He adjusted his body gingerly to feel if any bones were broken. Groaning, he rolled over, pushed himself up, then stood. He was crusty with blood, aching all over, but apparently, whole.

  A blush of panic threatened to overcome him when he peered into the glooms and saw no sign of the Plainsmen. He set off to search for them. Spying through the shadows some vague man shapes, he stumbled towards them.

  Eerily still, they were standing on the edge of a clearing recently gouged from the forest. Ploughed-up mud was strewn with chunks and ribbons of flesh. Carnelian wanted to look away. Cloud's left shoulder was missing; from black-bruised neck to hip, his flesh frayed into purple threads and splintered bone. His head was thrown back on the broken hinge of his neck; his hps drawn thin and tight, exposed his teeth in a manic grin. One of the youths Cloud had been trying to protect had been crushed into the mud. The other lay broken, skin mottled indigo edged with yellow. Brown with blood, Osidian lay curled at the heart of this slaughter, his face hidden by his knees.

  In shock, Carnelian pushed through the Plainsmen and began the crossing to Osidian's side. Gore slicked and cracked under his feet. When he reached him, he crouched into the sweet rotting reek to touch his leg. He had expected it to be corpse-hard, but though cold, the skin gave under his touch. Hope made Carnelian's hand tremble as he reached above Osidian's rope scar to search for a pulse. He found one.

  Seeing Fern sickly and staring with the rest, he breathed: 'He lives.'

  Fern gave a slow nod and then, grinning with horror and disgust, he came through the carnage. Carnelian turned back to Osidian. Carefully grasping his head with both hands, he pulled the pale face free of the knees. Osidian seemed asleep. Carnelian slid his hands over him, searching for the wound that had bled enough to stain the ground.

  'I'll help you turn him,' Fern said.

  As they rolled him over, Ravan cried out, pointing: 'Father's spear.'

  Carnelian and Fern saw the shattered spear upon which Osidian had been lying. The iron blade was caked with the same gore that had spurted down his arm and splattered his stomach and legs.

  The demon's blood,' breathed Ravan, his wide-eyed stare tracing the edge of the stain it had soaked into the earth.

  Carnelian watched Fern lift the iron spearhead from under Osidian's hand and examine it with a frown.

  'It belongs to me now,' said Ravan.

  Carnelian and Fern both turned together to see Ravan with his hand outstretched.

  Fern walked towards his brother. 'I had never intended to claim it.'

  The pain in Fern's voice made Ravan blush. The youth became aware everyone was staring at them. 'You never had any right to it.'

  Carnelian felt Fern's humiliation as if it was his own. His friend extended his hand with the spearhead lying on the palm. Ravan regarded the gory thing for some moments before snatching it, his uncertain smile twisting to a grimace as his fingers stuck to the blood.

  Carnelian soaked a rag in the leather bowl, squeezed out most of the blood and used it to rub away some more clotted matter from Osidian's body. He needed to touch him, to feel the living warmth in his skin. The Plainsmen were arguing whether or not it was a demon he had driven off. Carnelian glanced round. Displaying the iron spearhead, Ravan was shouting at Ranegale. Loskai was siding with his brother. Beside them stood Krow, staring at the ground. The others formed an unhappy audience. Fern had disappeared.

  Carnelian was about to resume the cleaning when he found Osidian watching him.

  'Where are we?'

  Overcome, Carnelian bent to hug him, but Osidian stopped him with a frown. 'Where are we?' The Lower Lands.'

  Osidian's eyes widened. He stared up into the canopy and Carnelian watched memory returning: The slavers…' Osidian breathed.

  His brows knitted together. 'And after? I remember emerald flashes, barbarian faces…' He went deathly pale.

  Carnelian knew what Osidian was seeing in his mind's eye. The monster that attacked us had been stalking us for days.'

  'He came for me.'

  Carnelian smiled, loving him. 'It was a predator driven by hunger.'

  Osidian fixed him with huge, green eyes. 'He came for me.'

  The conviction in his voice was chilling.

  'How is he?' said Fern standing over them.

  Carnelian looked up and saw the awe lighting his friend's face.

  'He's gaining strength,' said Osidian in Vulgate.

  Carnelian sensed his acute discomfort at having the Plainsman look at his naked face. Osidian's eyes fell on Fern's brass collar. Realizing what the Master was looking at, Fern allowed his gaze to move down Osidian's neck to where the still tender scar of the rope formed its collar of dried blood. Osidian's hand strayed up to his throat. His mouth twitched as he felt along the rusty wound. His hand dropped away, his eyes closed, his face smoothed to wax. Thereafter, he would respond neither to Carnelian's voice nor to his touch.

  Unhappy, Carnelian helped gather up the slaughtered bodies then stood with others watching as Fern sheared the hair from Cloud's head. Once he had removed it all, Fern put the salt-beaded tresses into Krow's trembling hands. Now that Cloud was dead, Krow was the only remaining representative of the Twostone tribe.

  The men scaled the treeferns to hoist the corpses up as high as they could into their crowns while those below sang a hymn to the sky. Carnelian had watched them black the skin of the dead with mud. His instinct had been to wash the bodies first but Fern had told him the smell of blood would bring winged scavengers more quickly.

  When Osidian came alive again, he declared he would walk. Carnelian saw that nothing he might say would change his mind. Fern received the news without surprise. From the wreckage of the stretcher, he salvaged the bundle he had put there the day of the aquar slaughter. As he unfolded the cloth it gave off a stale odour of decay. Inside was a mass of grey hair beaded with salt that Carnelian recognized as being Stormrane's. Fern surveyed it for a while before lifting it with both hands and, reverently, rolling it into an uba which he then bound around his waist.

  At first Osidian refused to wear the dead man's clothes, but Carnelian pleaded with him that without protection, the flies would eat him alive and Osidian relented. His face twisted with disgust as Carnelian helped him into the robe and cloak, then wound the dead man's uba round his head.

  Ravens and sky saurians had already descended to feast upon the corpses when at last they all set off. Carnelian was only too glad to be leaving the bloody clearing behind.

  'Where are we exactly?' asked Osidian, his Quya ringing round another makeshift camp.

  Carnelian was not sure what answer to give. The encroaching night was bringing with it a fear Osidian alone did not seem to share. He looked frail, but his eyes revealed the fire that had driven his body to keep the pace all day.

  'Where did we leave the Guarded Land?'

  'Somewhere west of a city called Makar,' Carnelian replied, in Vulgate.

  Speak in Quya, Osidian signed using the hand speech of the Masters. 'I had seen the sky but not believed.'

  The sky?'

  The movement of the clouds suggested the deep south; their speed and opacity, that we are nearing the end of the second month of the Rains.'

  Carnelian nodded. For a moment he was puzzled by thi
s act of divination until he remembered how familiar

  Osidian was with the beadcord records of the Wise. It was in their Library that Carnelian, exploring, had come across him. Their first days together had been spent there as Osidian, secretly, taught him to read the strung beads, as the Wise did, by touch.

  Osidian was frowning. 'What I have been wholly unable to unravel is what part me being here could possibly play in my mother's schemes.'

  'It is likely she knows nothing of where we are,' said Carnelian.

  Osidian fixed him with a stare. 'How so?' Carrielian explained what the Ichorian had intended to do with them.

  Osidian looked incredulous. Trophies?' His eyebrows rose. 'I would not have believed a minion would dare such sacrilege.'

  The Ichorian did not know who you were.' 'You did not tell him?'

  'It did not seem to me he would have believed me.'

  Osidian nodded, but his mind was already lost in calculation. To Carnelian, he seemed to have aged a dozen years. His skin had dulled, his carriage no longer seemed to hold his head among the clouds; even his neck had lost its graceful line. Seeing this, guilt churned Carnelian's stomach and a question formed in his mind which was an agony to utter.

  'Do you blame me?'

  Osidian's gaze came back into focus, emotion softening his face. For a moment Carnelian recognized the boy in the Yden and almost let out a mingled cry of joy and grief, but as suddenly as it had come, the vision passed away, leaving a coldness in Osidian's eyes as he smiled.

  'How like you, Carnelian, to crave absolution. Tell me, have your recent experiences not hardened your heart even a little?'

  Osidian reached out and Carnelian allowed himself to be taken by the chin. Osidian shook his head indulgently. 'Your beauty has weathered our adversity well.'

  His hand fell. Tell me how we came to be here. Leave nothing out.'

  Carnelian would have clung to that discussion, but Osidian had become limestone and so Carnelian saw no other path but to tell the story from the beginning. He had barely taken them in their urns through the City at the Gates, when Osidian began to look morose and Carnelian fell silent. Osidian's hand strayed up to the angry scar the rope had left around his neck. His voice was flat when he spoke.

  'Of what follows I have memories enough.' He looked around in the gloom to where the Plainsmen sat away from them. 'Recommence from the time when we were captured by these barbarians.'

  Carnelian poured the story out and as he did, lived in that time again. When he reached the morning when the raiders were intending to let them be found by the legion, he ran dry.

  'I had to choose,' he said.

  Osidian seemed startled. 'And you chose to come here?'

  Carnelian gazed at him. ‘I could not bear that you should die.'

  Osidian's laughter wounded Carnelian.

  'One has to keep reminding oneself that you really are everything you appear to be. It is inconceivable any other of the Chosen could have made such a decision: to willingly consign oneself to this life of savagery for another… Incredible.'

  Now Carnelian wanted to hurt him. 'Perhaps, in truth, I was intent on saving myself. I cannot imagine your mother would welcome my return.'

  'You would have no call to fear her. It is beyond doubt that if I had returned, my blood would have anointed my brother's Masks, but be sure I would have dragged my mother into the tomb after me.' 'And your brother?'

  'Once a God Emperor is made, They cannot be unmade, but the revealing of Their plot would unite the Great against Them. Even They could not have harmed you then.'

  Carnelian's anger ebbed away.

  Osidian reached out to touch him. 'It was a kindness, Carnelian, I will do my best to repay.'

  Carnelian burned up. 'It was no kindness, but an act of love.'

  It had grown so dark they could no longer see each other, but Carnelian sensed Osidian had become as ensnared as he in uncomfortable emotion.

  'And I had feared you would hate me for bringing you here,' he said almost to himself.

  'I might have if it had not been revealed to be my manifest destiny.'

  Carnelian felt the swamp smothering him.

  'But tell me, why did the barbarians accede to your request? Surely even they must be aware of how dangerous we are.'

  Though it felt selfish, Carnelian did not wish to dwell on what danger his choice might have brought upon the Plainsmen.

  'I appealed to one of them. Fern.'

  'Fern,' said Osidian.

  'I had shown consideration for his father when he was close to death.'

  'I can see how such condescension might be impressive to such as they.'

  Osidian's hauteur irritated Carnelian. They have seen us as we are, my Lord. Do you really believe we still appear to them as angels?'

  'What we appear to be matters less than what we are,'

  Osidian said in ominous tones. 'But I sense there is something else that caused this Fern to take us with him.'

  Something deep inside urged Carnelian to hide the truth, but he was certain Osidian would see through any lie.

  'You watched them blacken the bodies of their dead? Well, we appeared to them thus, clothed in bitumen.'

  'And my birthmark?' Osidian asked in a strange voice Carnelian felt compelled to answer.

  That played a part.'

  'If I read it right, then it must have been this Fern who found us among the sartlar.'

  'It was his brother who noticed the Ichorian,' Carnelian said, feeling as if he were trying to deflect some attack.

  'An older brother?'

  'A younger, Ravan.'

  'I see.'

  Carnelian had a feeling that the night was taking possession of Osidian. The Empress must be aware we still live.'

  'Why should she?' the darkness said.

  Carnelian explained their ride past the watch-tower. 'So you see -'

  'Most likely, the Wise will have seen us but as to whether they shall reveal this to my mother or my holy brother, that is another matter altogether; and one which will be determined by the balance of power in Osrakum.'

  A harrowing thought occurred to Carnelian. 'Will they search for us?'

  The thought of the Wise is unfathomable,' said Osidian in a tone which was intended to terminate any further speculation.

  'Please finish your account of how we came here.'

  Carnelian did, sensing throughout how interested Osidian had become in Fern and Ravan. Carnelian concluded the tale with Osidian coming awake. He was reluctant to touch on the horror of the previous night.

  Tell me what you have learned about these barbarians.'

  Carnelian relayed what he knew, but after a while, Osidian interrupted.

  'You seem strangely privy to much which passes between them.'

  Carnelian hesitated a moment before answering. The tongue they speak is one I have known since I was a child.'

  'You are telling me you comprehend their barbarian speech?'

  Carnelian could hear Osidian's amazement. 'It was the tongue my wet nurse, Ebeny, spoke.'

  That any wide assemblage of barbarians should speak a single tongue stands in vivid contrast to the belief the Wise hold that their languages are legion.'

  The Wise are not in error. These people have told me their language is only one of many.'

  'Which you just happen to have been taught by one of your household slaves?'

  'I have told you before she was much more than a slave.'

  'How can you explain such a singular coincidence?'

  It was something Carnelian had been unable to resolve. He could see how this development only served to harden Osidian's belief that some force was guiding their destiny. Dread welled up in him.

  'Do they know you speak their tongue?'

  'Please, Osidian. No more questions. I am tired. I cannot -'

  'Do they know?'

  'Fern does.'

  'And has not revealed this to any other or else they would all know.'


  Carnelian thought this a rather patronizing assumption. He hoped Osidian would say nothing more.

  'Who leads them?'

  Osidian's voice seemed one with the night. Carnelian did not want to answer, but to seek the escape of sleep. Anticipation of Osidian repeating the question became almost painful until Carnelian felt compelled to say: 'Look for the man who has suffered almost as many mutilations as a Sapient.'

  In the long, weary days that followed, they struggled through the swamp following Ranegale and Krow who had become his shadow. They tried to keep to the mounds and runs of higher ground but these were often so overgrown they were forced down into the quagmire where they sank up to their knees in the stinking mud. A leg had to be dragged out, swung forward, then allowed to be sucked back in again. Fatigue made each step seem their last. They had to make innumerable rest stops. If they were fortunate, they would find a knoll to climb: if they were not, they might have to clamber up into the branches of a tree. Talk was rare. People chewed djada and licked at a saltstone, staring with unfocused eyes. Osidian's emaciated body was sheened with sweat as he struggled to breathe. His gaunt face betrayed his exhaustion but his eyes were green embers. Miserable, Carnelian tried to peer into his heart through those eyes, without success. Osidian seemed focused on some problem. Sometimes his lips moved as if he were holding a conversation.

  As the darkness thickened round them, Ranegale would call a halt. Sometimes, Carnelian would be so grateful that tears would squeeze from his eyes even as his muscles went into their usual spasm. In the camps, only Osidian would not jump when an unhuman cry came filtering through the dusk. When they heard crashings near them, they would wait almost without breathing until they had passed. Osidian would sit as calmly as if he were reposing in a garden. More and more, Ravan was to be seen beside him. Once, coming awake, Carnelian heard two voices rustling in the dark. Though he could make out no words he knew it was Osidian whispering to Ravan. Something made him fear for the youth. He felt something else which, eventually, he was unable to deny. He was jealous of the one person Osidian did not treat as a stranger.

  Rain began to fall incessantly day and night. Nothing ever got a chance to dry. The djada became slimy. Before they ate, they had to scrape off a fur of purple-black mould. Disgust and the bitter taste made it hard to keep down. The blankets were transformed into a sodden burden which at last they had to reluctantly discard. The leather of the Plainsmen's shoes swelled up and chafed their feet so that they were forced to take them off and walk barefoot with the two Standing Dead. Each morning brought an aching rise from unrestful sleep with nothing before them but another slogging, punishing day. As night approached they would drop into the mud not knowing whether they were closer to the Earthsky or even if they had been plodding around in circles.