The Chosen sdotc-1

by Ricardo Pinto

  (extract from the Law-that-must-be-obeyed)

  The word fell like a stone into the water and rippled its black mirror. The sky was up there, far, far away, its bright disc like the moon in the night. Another word dropped into the well, cleaving deep into the water, trailing a churn and froth.

  'Land.' A muffled word. Carnelian came vaguely awake. 'Land.' He could hear the word clearly above the creaking of the ship, distinct from the dull thudding drum.

  He sat up in the blackness. The land, the land.'

  The words caused him to breathe again. Land. He fumbled blindly for clothes. He fought his way into something. His hands wandered till they touched feathers. He grabbed them, pulled them to his nose, smiling at the smell and feel of his feather cloak. It fell around him, comfortable, familiar. He opened the door. Land. They had reached land at last. He stumbled up the stairway, throwing his arm up to shade his eyes from the high sun. He reached the deck, saw faces, walked round the mast. There, beyond the prow, was a blue horizon. His heart pounded against his ribs.

  His ears came alive as if he were coming up out of water. There were fearful cries and shouting. There was a man kneeling off to one side, staring at him, his mouth hanging open, his eyes unblinking. It was the captain. Carnelian could not understand that horrified stare. He looked round and saw sailors flattening on the deck. Aurum was there like a pillar of tar smoke, his face impassive gold. Guardsmen stood around him holding forked spears, their eyes hidden in the crooks of their arms.

  'Carnelian,' his father's voice called out.

  Carnelian was turning to find him when he heard Aurum say, 'Cover the Master.' He looked back and for an instant saw the face glowing white. Eyes like the heads of nails. Mouth a razor edge. Then it was gone as Aurum's slaves hid him with screens. The Master shifted behind their membranes like a god in a shadow play. A guardsman who knelt watching this, turned round with horror staring from his eyes. He held Aurum's mask out with stiff arms as if it were slaked with poison. Carnelian reached up to his face. His fingers found his cheeks, his nose, uncovered, naked. He masked himself with his hands and stared through the bars of his fingers as the guardsman crept towards him with the mask. Carnelian took its weight and put it quickly over his face. It was still warm and smelled of stale perfume. It was too long for him. He slid it down to peer through the eyeslits and held it there.

  'Carnelian,' said his father behind him. But Carnelian did not turn. Trapped behind the screens Aurum's shadow was scanning the deck. He lifted his arms.

  'Attend me,' he said over the sounds of fear. His guardsmen were reluctant to pull their heads from their hiding places. 'Attend me, I say.' A hint of impatience was in his voice. His men looked up, timid, hesitating. Through the screens their Master's hands were like cleavers, making chopping motions. The guardsmen turned where they pointed, lowering their spears. They looked as frightened as everyone else. Carnelian was surrounded by shaking bodies sobbing like children.

  'Spare only the captain,' said Aurum.

  A shriek became a gurgle as one of the sailors was suddenly impaled. Carnelian twitched as each body was skewered. Blood ran along the deck's grating and dribbled into the space below. Bleating broke out under their feet. The sweet smell of blood clotted the air. The guardsmen unstuck the sailors from the deck with kicks and threats. They forced them to drag the bleeding bodies to the gaps in the rail and throw them into the sea. Then they were ordered to kneel. Red to the elbows, with tears coursing down their faces, they urinated down their legs. Forked spears shoved into them making a sound of slicing cabbages. The guardsmen yanked the blades out then kicked their victims over the edge. They came back grim, the redness running down their spears to stain their hands. One slipped on the deck and fell. They clustered round the man who was still on his knees before Carnelian.

  'Stand back, my son,' his father said quietly beside him.

  Carnelian backed away. The man looked round at his companions as they closed on him. He looked up into the face of one of them: a youth, eyes bleary with tears. Carnelian could see the similarity in their faces. The man gave the youth a nod then bowed his head. The youth unsheathed a sword, his eyes huge and white, then he brought it down through the neck. It caught. He had to jerk the blade out. He seemed to be choking, but he managed to chop again. The head came loose and rolled drunkenly towards Carnelian's feet. The trunk sagged over onto one side, showing its meaty neck, spraying blood everywhere. The youth edged towards Carnelian with the dripping sword hanging from his hand. Carnelian prepared himself for the blow, almost welcoming it. He flinched as the youth looked up at him. Grief had cut stripes in the spatter of gore that was his face. It was a boy's face but hatred gave him the eyes of a man. He stooped, laid the sword on the deck, then lifted the head and cradled it as he moved away.

  Carnelian looked down at his cloak. He remembered he had given it to Tain. Its feathers were darkly matted with blood. His father walked past him towards the captain who was a huddle on the deck. He nudged the man with his foot. 'Clear the deck.' The huddle flinched. 'Now!'

  The man rose mumbling as he stared at the bloody deck.

  'You can have that cleaned later,' said Suth.

  The man stumbled off with horror printed on his face. Carnelian watched him mouthing orders. There was a taste of acid in his mouth. The stink of the blood mixed with the mask's. He gagged. All he could hear was the wind, the drum's relentless beat, the hiss of the oars.

  Carnelian watched Aurum come out from behind the screens. He had expected anger but there was only contempt on the Master's face. 'You stupid boy.' Aurum reached out and snatched his mask from Carnelian's grip. It had been like a shell. Carnelian blinked, exposed. The smell of death and Aurum's sneer were all the world. 'Look at this mess.'

  'Do not be too hard on the boy, my Lord,' his father said. Carnelian heard something like pleading in his father's voice.

  'I have lost one of my tyadra, Sardian,' said Aurum.

  'I shall give you his worth or a replacement.'

  'And can you also replace the sailors upon which this vessel so much depends?'

  Carnelian watched his father's head drop a little. Then Aurum turned on him. 'How do you explain this, boy?'

  Carnelian shook his head.

  'I knew you were provincial, callow, but I did not think to add stupid.'

  'You will leave him be,' Suth said.

  'And what will you do, Sardian, if I do not?'

  Carnelian waited for his father to confront the old Master in his defence, but once more his father dropped his head and said nothing.

  Aurum stood with his legs planted wide like a conqueror. 'I shall go now to ready what people I have left. See if you can find a way to keep your son under some measure of control.' He put his mask up and strode away.

  Carnelian turned to his father, red with shame. 'My Lord-'

  'It is my fault, Carnelian. I had thought you better trained. I blame myself.' 'But-'

  'You will stay here, my Lord, until Tain shall come with your mask. After that you will return to your cabin and remain there until I give you leave to come out.'

  Carnelian hung his head. 'Yes, my Lord.'

  He heard his father move away. Feathers were sticking to his chin. Their smell was sweetened by the crusting blood. Carnelian lurched to the rail from where his stomach pumped vomit out over the threshing oars.

  Tain came up with the mask. Carnelian watched his brother eye the bloody deck. 'We heard the noises… below.' His face was pale. 'Why did it happen?' he whispered.

  Carnelian looked down at his hands. 'It was my fault, Tain. I forgot to wear my mask.' He could feel his brother's eyes. He looked up but could not read their expression. Was it pity? He took the mask from him and put it on. He was glad to have it to hide behind. Through the eyeslits, he watched Tain regard the deck as if it were something dangerous.

  'Look, there's the land,' Carnelian said, to wrench his brother's eyes from the blood. He took some steps towards the prow. His
foot slipped. 'You'll see it better from here,' he called back. He felt that Tain had not moved. He turned. Tain was still there, looking very small.

  'I can see it well enough from here, Carnie.'

  Carnelian nodded, returned defeated.

  In the cabin they stripped him to the skin. Carnelian bundled everything into the feathered cloak, thrust it into Tain's hands and told him to go and throw it in the sea.

  Tain packed quietly. They had said nothing to each other since he had returned without the bloody bundle. Carnelian woke Crail and told him that he would have to start thinking of getting ready. Then he tried to help Tain. Each time their hands touched Tain flinched as if he were being burned.

  There was a knock on the door. It was Keal, grim, haggard. The Master's sent me to escort you up on deck. He wants to talk to you.'

  Carnelian's stomach churned. ‘I’ll be ready in a moment.' He asked Tain to touch up the paint on his face and hands. He shook out his black cloak and put it on. He took the mask from Tain's hands, thanking him, and grimaced. The smell of blood was still on his fingers.

  He followed Keal up the stairway. When he reached the top, he closed his eyes, sucked some deep breaths through the mouth of his mask, then stepped out onto the deck.

  Slaves were scrubbing the grating. A path through the blood had already been cleaned from the stairway to the prow. There Carnelian saw the huge rectangle of his father's back among the smaller shapes of their guardsmen. Carnelian followed Keal along the path. His father turned as they approached. His mask lent him a cruel look. He moved to one side and the guardsmen cleared a way. 'Come, stand beside me, my Lord.'

  Carnelian moved into the space and immediately their men formed a wall of screens that separated them from the rest of the ship. His father reached up to unfasten his mask. Carnelian's hand shook as he was forced by protocol to do the same.

  His father's grey eyes fell on him. 'How are you feeling, my son?'

  Carnelian forced back the tears. He was no longer a child.

  Suth reached out and touched Carnelian's cheek. 'You will have to get used to death. Perhaps I have erred to keep you so shielded from it these long years. The Chosen are great dealers in death. You would have found this out in Osrakum had you been raised there. I fear you have acquired an unnatural sensitivity to it.'

  Suth looked out across the sea. Carnelian followed his gaze. He let the strain out and it saddened his face. A blue wall of cliffs had risen before them that edged the whole horizon. The wind washed him. It squeezed some tears out of the corners of his eyes and ran them back along his head to his ears.

  'Behold,' said Suth. He was careful not to look at his son lest he should weaken the boy's self-control. 'Behold the shore of the province of Naralan, the edge of the Three Lands.' He shook his head slowly as if he did not believe what he saw. 'Once you set foot upon her brim, Carnelian, your life will be forever changed. You cannot know, my son, who and what you are. It is not your fault. It will come slowly at first. You will see such beauty, and such terror, but the wonders.' He sighed the last word. 'Such wonders as not even your mind's eye has beheld.'

  He dared to look at his son. He had sensed that his words were soothing the boy. 'But though you shall acquire the freedom and the thrill of power you shall always be restricted by the Law-that-must-be-obeyed. Today's bloody lesson you will not soon forget.'

  He waited for a reaction but his son merely nodded. He continued, 'Duality is the essence of creation. As certainly as night follows day, all gain is balanced with loss.

  'Now, listen. There is a perilous game. The Law forms the matrix in which it is played. The Emperor, the Great and the Wise are its players. We must all play. I have almost forgotten how to. My moves are unsure, but it is coming back to me. You too must learn to play. There are such forces ranged against us…'

  Carnelian had at first been glad of the distraction of politics but now he felt as if a shadow was being cast over them.

  His father made a sign of dismissal. 'Still, by the grace of the Two we shall yet prevail. Remember the warnings I have given you. All is not always as it seems. A knife is often concealed behind a smile.' He looked back towards the cliffs. Suddenly he lunged forward, bracing himself on one of the curving horns of the prow figurehead. He was searching the sea before them. 'Look,' he cried and pointed.

  Carnelian leant out and saw the shadow in the sea moving ahead of them. 'A turtle,' he said. The creature must have been as big as the ship. Its vast oval wavered just under the water. Its paddles rowed like huge oars. The Wise taught that the world had been made from the dismembering of the Lord Turtle. His eyes had become the sun and moon. His carapace formed into the firmament of the sky. His flesh was the earth that floated on the sea. All life had sprung from his blood. Now, that ran pure only in the veins of the God Emperor, and in Carnelian's own veins, as in those of the other Chosen, tainted by mortality.

  They watched the turtle veer away. 'For a moment it was guiding us home. Creation through sacrifice,' his father said. The best of omens.'

  Creation through blood sacrifice. Behind him, Carnelian could hear the slaves' brushes rasping at the deck. Was it not also an omen that his first sight of the Three Lands should be an occasion of massacre?

  'See there,' his father said. He pointed off across the starboard bow to where a narrow feather of smoke seemed pinned to the cliff wall. That is the Jamb Rock where a fire burns night and day to guide ships into the Grand Harbour of Thuyakalrul. Do you see that lower, darker band of cliff that spreads on either side of the beacon? Well, that is the outer wall of the harbour. Thuyakalrul is well named; she is indeed a ring of blue stone lying in the sea. Within her circle lies the harbour. It has but a single door, a breach in the northern curve of the ring. The town itself is set into a depression in the southern wall. From there a causeway crosses a lagoon to the mainland and the road climbs a valley up to join the Great Sea Road.'

  'And that road leads eventually to Osrakum,' said Carnelian.

  Suth almost sighed with relief as he saw the colour come back into his son's face.

  'But if all this is so, my Lord, why then do we not sail directly towards the beacon?'

  Suth smiled. 'Because, my son, Thuyakalrul is ringed about by another yet greater wall and even now we seek one of its gates.'

  'My Lord speaks in riddles.'

  From the stern they heard the captain barking commands.

  'You shall see soon enough, but first we should remask.'

  They did so, and then his father dissolved the wall of screens. Keal was there with the others. He shot Carnelian a look of sympathy. In the rigging slaves were closing up the fan-sails. Under the curving fish-tail of the stern, the captain stood between the two steersmen with their oars. He said something to the man standing behind him. The man operated one of the levers set into the stern post, and in response the pounding of the drum slowed to breathing pace. The threshing of the oars slowed. The wind fell and with it their cloaks which had been surfing on it. The captain spoke to another man and pointed up the ship. There was an argument as the other man refused to do what he was told. The captain shoved him out of his way and then came forward himself. 'Now you shall see,' said Suth.

  The captain came closer. Carnelian saw the twitch in the man's eyes, his mouth pinching into a quivering smile. The man fell to his knees and did not move.

  'Up, man, up. Get on with your business.'

  The captain's face came up gaunt. He rubbed his mouth with his hand. Muttering something he crept past them, nodded unconsciously to the altar of the Gods and then went to the starboard bow. He scanned the water ahead. Carnelian leant on the rail to see what it was he sought. He noticed a darkening in the sea in front of them. The captain looked back anxiously and shouted something. The steersmen leaned on their oars. The ship turned her head slowly in response. The bruising in the water rushed towards them.

  'A wall under the sea,' gasped Carnelian.

  'Even when it is submerged, few ch
annels lead through it and only one is deep enough to allow the passage of a baran,' his father said.

  The captain kept whisking round to shout frantic commands. Then the black water was upon them. The ship jolted as if she had hit something and then the blackness was pouring past them.

  'How do they find it?' Carnelian asked, amazed.

  His father pointed to where Carnelian could see a tiny spine jutting up from the cliff. Then he pointed back the way they had come. A crooked bronze post rose out of the sea. The post and the cliff tower in a line will bring a baran safely through the reef.'

  Other posts went past like green men standing on the waves, pointing out the way. In some places the reef came up almost into the air. Sinuous filaments of light quivered over it. At the captain's cries the steersmen nudged the ship first one way then the other. At last she was through into the green water beyond. The captain passed them and jerked a bow before rushing back to the stern.

  Carnelian chewed his lip. 'He is terrified of us.'

  'With good reason,' his father said grimly. 'But come, let us resume our places at the prow. I would share this homecoming with you, my son.'

  Keal and the others remade the wall of screens, allowing Carnelian and his father once more to unmask. Carnelian rubbed at the side of his face where his mask had pressed into his skin. 'I will never get used to this thing.'

  His father took the mask from Carnelian's hand and looked at its edge. This is poorly made. In Osrakum we shall have our craftsmen fashion you better ones.' He handed back the mask. 'A well-crafted mask should fit its wearer as comfortably as an eyelid does its eye.'

  The drum beat faster and with it Carnelian's heart. The banks of oars hissed the sea. The cliff loomed up. From far away, it had seemed mottled white. Closer, Carnelian could see that its corrugated face was peppered with birds. They wove the air with their flight and pierced it with cries. High above, sky-saurians described wide arcs in the sky. Carnelian took a step back as one fell towards them like a dart. Its dive veered and it seemed that it would crumple into the sea. At the last moment it pulled up and its huge grey-feathered anvil-headed shape flashed past as it skimmed the surface on its fingered wings.