The Standing Dead sdotc-2

by Ricardo Pinto

  She tugged on his arm. 'Let's go and meet them, Carnie.'

  Carnelian shook his head, needing time to prepare himself. Desperate for, but dreading, the news the visitors might bring.

  'You go,' he said, 'I'll wait here.'

  For a few moments Poppy hesitated, wanting to be in both places at once, but then, whooping, she ran after the other Plainsmen. Carnelian watched her, smiling and then began to work out his questions.

  They were all young; some in the first flowering of their manhood, many still boys. Everyone had his face painted white in imitation of the Master. One uncovered his drag-cradle with a flourish, pleased at the cries of delight greeting the sight of the bales of djada, the neatly stowed fernroot and some luxuries besides.

  Carnelian had been watching from a distance. As he approached them, the visitors all at once fell onto one knee. Carnelian registered Poppy's surprise at this deference, unease even, before, angrily, he told them to get up.

  'I'm not the Master.'

  Their reverence just served to make him fear even more the news they brought.

  'Which of you is the leader here?'

  A youth stepped forward and Carnelian beckoned him to approach. The youth bowed his head and came to stand before Carnelian with his eyes downcast. He has made slaves of you, Carnelian thought.

  'What's your name?'

  'Woading Skaifether,' said the youth, his Vulgate thick with the accent of another koppie.

  'Come, Skaifether, walk with me.'

  Carnelian began climbing the knoll, shortening his stride so that the youth could keep up.

  The supplies you brought; where did they come from?'

  'We took them, Master,' Skaifether said, in a rush of pride.

  'From which tribe?'

  The Lagooning.'

  'Didn't they resist you?'

  'Oh yes, but the Master broke them in a great battle.' 'Was there much slaughter?'

  The youth shrugged. 'Not much. The Master is the father of battles.'

  Carnelian nodded grimly. 'And what did he do to the Lagooning once he conquered them?' 'He took their men into his army…' Carnelian waited, knowing there would be more. 'And their children that were marked for the tithe.' Took them where?'

  'Back to the koppie of the Ochre. They'll be kept there until it's time for my tribe… the allied tribes' – the youth looked proud – 'until it's time for us to send our tribute to the Mountain -'

  'He's promised you Lagooning children to send instead of your own?'

  The youth smiled. 'Or those from the other tribes that will be conquered.'

  Carnelian could see how this policy might strengthen support among the 'ally' tribes but only at the expense of making the conquered tribes hate the Ochre.

  ‘Is there more?'

  ‘If the men from the conquered tribes fight well for us, then they'll be given salt and their children will be returned to them.'

  To be replaced by those from the newly conquered?' The youth grinned and nodded. Carnelian turned away to hide his disgust. 'Have I offended you?' the youth asked, in a fearful tone.

  Carnelian reassured him. 'Did the Master send any message for me?'

  The youth was clearly still frightened. 'None came from him.'

  'Came from…? Did you not come from him?' 'No, Master, our commander is Ochre Fern.' Carnelian regarded the youth with disbelief. 'He commands you?'

  The youth gave a slow, fearful nod.

  'Are there other commanders?'

  Twostone.'

  Twostone Krow?'

  Skaifether nodded.

  'And Ochre Ravan?'

  The youth frowned, shaking his head as if he had never heard the name before.

  'What did Ochre Fern bid you do?'

  To bring the supplies here and to return with all the salt you have collected for us.'

  'Nothing else?'

  'Nothing, Master.'

  Two days of brooding later, a cry brought Carnelian to the opening to his hollow. One of his Plainsmen, Cloudy, was shouting something up at him that was lost in the gusting rain. The man pointed east. There beneath the frowning wall of the Backbone, Carnelian saw shrouded Oracles riding down the escarpment, dragging behind their aquar a stumbling string of captives alongside which jogged Marula spearmen. Even through the rain, Carnelian could see the captives were Plainsmen and that the Marula were driving them towards the riverpath. When he saw many of his own men streaming down the knoll to intercept the party, he threw a blanket about his shoulders.

  ‘I’ll come with you,' said Poppy.

  'No. Stay here. Wait for me.'

  At first, startled by his tone, the girl was soon protesting, but he did not have the time to argue with her. He abandoned the dryness of their hollow and swung out to descend to the ground. Once there, Cloudy confronted him, soaked, looking sick.

  'What shall we do, Master?'

  'Whatever we can,' cried Carnelian and bounded down the slope, quickly leaving the man behind.

  As he reached the open ground beyond the wooden wall, he saw the Marula had levelled their spears at the approaching Plainsmen. He coursed towards them bellowing, desperate to avoid bloodshed. Hearing him, his men turned, backing away from the Marula as they waited for him. Out of breath, he saw in their eyes their confidence that he would do something to save the captives. Carnelian moved in among them, glancing up at the Oracles sitting haughty in their saddle-chairs. Bound naked one to the other, the captives were mostly men past their prime. He saw how their ribcages were pumping for breath, how they hung their heads. Strangely, what shocked him most was their bloody feet. They had been forced against their most deeply held belief to run barefoot across the Earthsky.

  His own Plainsmen began crying out to him. They made many pleas, demands. Though he could make none out clearly, he did not need to. He could see and feel their pity and their outrage that men should be treated thus. Many of the captives had lifted their heads and, as their eyes fell on Carnelian, they ignited with a hatred that struck him hard. He knew who it was they thought they saw or, as likely, they did not care. He was as much of the Standing Dead as the conqueror who had delivered them into misery.

  Carnelian looked to either side of him and saw how numerous were his men; how few Manila the Oracles commanded. He was desperate to free the captives.

  A voice carried through the hissing rain as one of the Oracles addressed him. Even had there been silence, Carnelian would have not understood a word. He considered approaching them, negotiating in Vulgate. The realization sank in that even if he could make himself understood to the Oracles there would be no pity in their hearts. One of them lifted an arm swathed in indigo cloth and pointed. Carnelian did not turn his head to look, always aware in which direction lay the malign presence of the Isle of Flies.

  He turned to his own people. With the accent of the Ochre, he told them the captives had been condemned by the Master himself and that his commands none could gainsay without bringing his wrath down upon themselves and their kin. His speech was hardly finished before they erupted into rage. He caught their feeling and threw it back at them. He told them that if he could, he would set the captives free. He could see they did not believe him and had to resort to commanding them back to the knoll. They railed against him, they even dared to threaten him, but then their resolve cracked and, unable to look the captives in the face, they turned like punished children and began the slog back to the camp.

  Carnelian remained behind to watch the Oracles resume their march. He threw away the sodden weight of the blanket and turned his face up towards the glowering sky and prayed the rain would wash him clean. When absolution did not come, he forced himself to stand there long enough to watch the captives being ferried across the swollen river in narrow boats.

  ***

  When night fell, the screaming began. Carnelian had prayed the storm would drown it out. His first thought was to reassure Poppy, to comfort her, but the look of accusation in her eyes was a wall of thorns bet
ween them. He cursed the weakness that had made him keep her in the Upper Reach. He tried to hide away in sleep. The rain lessened. Exposed by the silence, the sounds of agony formed an infernal harmony with the roaring Thunderfalls. Poppy joined her whimpering to the nightmare until Carnelian could bear it no longer and crushed her in his arms. Rocking together, they tried as best they could to survive sane until the dawn.

  For many nights, the horror was repeated. Then it stopped. The rainfall began to ease. Carnelian descended with Poppy and they found a salve for their nightmares in lighting fires upon the crown of the knoll. Huddling round them with Plainsmen, they exchanged stories of their peoples, yearning to return home.

  Often, Carnelian would find Poppy staring at the Isle of Flies. He would try to draw her away, but the girl always returned as if she had some need to keep a watch upon that awful place. She was the first to observe the shapes slipping from the Isle of Flies into the flood. As he watched them tumble amidst white fury down into the chasm, Carnelian tried to pretend they were logs, but Poppy turned to him and bleakly said, 'No, Carnie, they're the corpses of our tortured dead.'

  The sky cleared to an infinite blue. Rain, when it fell, was diamond bright from clouds as pale as wood smoke. As the Thunderfalls lost their fury, they became sheathed in rainbows. The days sank into a pregnant murmuring in which, stealthily, the world came back to life. Even the ridges of earth that were all that was left upon the scoured rock of the clearing began to uncurl ferns. With his back to the Isle of

  Flies, in the clean sunlight, Carnelian found it hard to deny hope and a fragile joy. He summoned Kor and had her bring the sartlar blinking up from their caves and begin the vast ' labour of lifting the Ladder from the chasm floor. He and Kor together supervised the lowering of the first sartlar down into the chasm. Soon they were drawing the Ladder up from where it had fallen, unrolling it up the cliff face, pegging it with new posts they carved from the fallen baobabs.

  The busy rhythm of their lives allowed them momentarily to forget the Isle of Flies. It was an illusory reprieve. Every twenty days or so, convoys of Plainsmen would appear with supplies. Carnelian's men would welcome them up onto the knoll and there the visitors would tell of the battles they had fought; of the tribes they had conquered. Carnelian would sit among them concealed, his back to the sun so as to hide his alien green eyes. The visitors would speak of the Master as if he were a god. The following day, they would leave with the slabs of salt the sartlar brought up from the caves. Sickly anticipation would come as a fever in the succeeding days. When the next batch of captives were spotted coming down from the Earthsky, people became busy with the tasks they had reserved for the occasion. None would look up in case they saw the new victims being ferried across to the Isle of Flies. Carnelian might have shared their cowardice, except that Poppy seemed compelled to witness the whole sickening business and he could not bear that she should do so alone. In the nights that would follow, unable to sleep, it became their habit to join the men around the fire trying to drown out the screaming with their talk.

  Marula poured down the escarpment following a host of riders. The rumble, their slipping movement, recalled for Carnelian the night of the landslide. In their midst, any of the shrouded Oracles might have been the Master.

  Carnelian turned to Poppy somewhere in the darkness behind him. 'Our people have returned.'

  She gave no reply, though he knew she was there. He looked down again from their tree at where the massed aquar were sinking into their own dust. He would have to go and meet the host, however reluctant he might be to see Osidian.

  'I'll return as soon as I can,' he said over his shoulder and then descended to the ground.

  His appearance among his Plainsmen produced a clamour as they asked him what they should do. He shook his head, watching the black tide breaking against the baobab wall. One of the shrouded figures broke through, pulling behind him a ragged entourage. Carnelian recognized it was Osidian by his rangy stride, and had to move sideways to keep him in sight as he wove up through the trees.

  'My Lord,' Carnelian said when Osidian was almost upon him.

  'Carnelian,' said Osidian, his face wholly concealed in the shadow of his uba.

  Carnelian noticed for the first time the tall man coming up behind him. The curled hair told him it was Fern, though it was difficult to see him in the man looking at him with a white face. As their eyes met, Carnelian became almost distraught enough to ask Fern if that covering of ash meant that he had become a disciple of the Master.

  'I would speak to you, my Lord,' Osidian said.

  Confronted with the menace of his voice, his great height, the Master drove thoughts of Fern from Carnelian's mind.

  'Here?'

  'Anywhere else but here.'

  Carnelian looked up at his tree and remembered Poppy. He feared the consequences for her if she and Osidian should meet.

  Osidian cut through Carnelian's indecision. 'We'll walk together in the baobab forest.'

  He turned to Fern. 'Make sure no one follows us.'

  Carnelian sensed that Fern was making an effort not to look at him. His friend bowed his head.

  'As you command, Master.'

  Carnelian and Osidian stood among the baobabs alone. Carnelian looked back the way they had come. Across the bare rock of the clearing, the knoll appeared to be a many-masted ship, becalmed. 'Come,' said Osidian.

  His gentle tone made Carnelian feel more uneasy than if Osidian had used his customary, imperious manner.

  'Are you not afraid to be with me alone?'

  'I have made the Ochre the hated masters of more than thirty tribes. I do not believe you would threaten their only protector.'

  Osidian's sadness produced in Carnelian something like shame. They walked on, Osidian looking blindly before him, Carnelian reluctantly crushing the reborn green spirals of the ferns beneath his feet. As they penetrated deeper into the forest, brooding baobabs rose ever more massive on either hand. Glancing up, Carnelian expected to see a face in the wood, but the trunk was smooth right up to the branches that held a bowl of blue sky.

  Carnelian spoke to dispel the smothering silence. 'Why have you returned?'

  Osidian sighed. 'My host is grown weary of conquests.'

  'And bloodshed?'

  Osidian glanced at him but made no answer, instead leading them into the cool shadow of a baobab.

  Their edge is blunted, I will resharpen it by letting them return to their homes.'

  'I see,' said Carnelian, unable to grasp the nature of Osidian's mood.

  Unwinding his uba, Osidian revealed a face thinner than Carnelian remembered. The green eyes were seeing him but there was something distracting them, a haunting presence of pain.

  'You are changed, my Lord.'

  Osidian smiled bleakly. 'All the world is changed.'

  Carnelian. registered Osidian's vulnerability with disbelief. 'I had thought everything was progressing as you would wish.'

  'All moves according to my will, but…'

  Carnelian waited, searching Osidian's face. In some ways it was a stranger's but in the eyes there stirred something of the boy in the Yden.

  Osidian looked deep into Carnelian. 'I've lost faith in my destiny and without it I am empty.'

  Carnelian's body began responding to the plea in Osidian's voice and eyes, but when Osidian made to embrace him, he recoiled. He expected rage but Osidian merely dropped his arms and sank to the ground. When he looked up his face was lined with misery.

  'Will you at least stay beside me tonight?'

  In spite of everything, Carnelian's heart could not refuse him.

  They lay on their backs in a hollow between the roots of a baobab, watching clouds flow westwards. Osidian began to speak in Vulgate.

  'My faith has grown weaker than Morunasa's, though I'm certain he worships the same god as I. Without faith there's no certainty; without certainty, one is enslaved by doubt.'

  Carnelian propped himself up on his elbow. 'W
hat is it that you doubt?'

  Osidian frowned. That I can defeat the legions with a rabble of savages.'

  Carnelian denied himself the hope of reprieve there was in that. 'Is that all?'

  Osidian's frown deepened. 'I have been too long in the company of barbarians. My blood no longer burns.' He grew sad.*Sometimes, I feel pity.'

  Shame made Osidian beautiful. Carnelian ached for him, but he would rather cut off his arm than reach out to him.

  Osidian pierced Carnelian with his eyes. 'Have you felt how much the Maruli is with his god?'

  Carnelian was struggling for an answer when he saw Osidian's eyes had gone opaque. Pain suffused into his face.

  'I need that certainty. I must know what he knows. I must feel what he has felt. I must hear the Darkness-under-the-Trees speak.'

  'What are you talking about?'

  ‘I intend to submit myself to the ritual of initiation of an Oracle.'

  Carnelian jerked to his feet. He paced away, then came back to glare down at Osidian. 'Have you lost your mind?' 'Haven't you been listening?'

  Carnelian dropped his head, exasperated. 'You came to tell me this?'

  'I came to prepare you.'

  'For what?'

  'My possible death.'

  Carnelian slumped to the earth. He had spent so much time desiring Osidian dead and now the thought filled him with nothing but dread. 'What does this initiation involve?'

  Carnelian saw how pale Osidian had become. His head was shaking as if he were seeing something too horrible to describe. His eyes closed.

  Carnelian could not help fearing for him. 'What is it you're going to allow them to do to you?'

  Osidian's eyes widened like a child's. 'All you need know is that I may die.'

  Carnelian resisted an urge to violence.

  'If on the twelfth day, I've not returned, you must go back to Osrakum. It won't be safe for you here.'

  'Oh, it's as simple as that, is it? You die and then I'll just saunter back to Osrakum.'

  Osidian's shoulders slumped. He raised his eyebrows and gazed at the ground. 'I don't know why I'm surprised. If you insist on not returning, then you must survive here.'