The Chosen sdotc-1

by Ricardo Pinto

  The bone boat rippled the shadowy reflection of the Sacred Wall. Far above, its edge caught fire in the dawn. Sunlight burned quickly down the buttresses and deep into the coombs. Carnelian watched it reveal palaces and the jewelled colours of the gardens.

  They rounded a promontory, into a coomb bay that gouged deep into the wall. He looked along the blazing deck, wondering where the ferryman was taking him. He could see no palaces, no gardens. One more outcrop swung past the starboard bow, allowing him to look into an inlet whose upper reaches were filled with a dazzling avalanche of sculpted stone. Terrace piled on terrace. Spires and towers frowned and stared with faces. Giants stood impaled, disembowelling balconies, their skin riddled with windows. Where terraces came out over the water they were held up by buttresses shaped like men up to their waists in the lake.

  The boat was nearing a white caryatid colonnade. The figured columns looked down, their faces desperate, enraged as they bent under a mountainous piling of balconied halls. As the boat came to rest, Carnelian squinted into the cavernous atrium framed by their shins. He used the bone post to swing himself onto the quay, and swivelled round into the blinding sun. He could feel his mask aflame. His sight was slow to return. Like an Ichorian, the crater was half in shadow, half in light. The division of the two vibrated along the ridge of the Labyrinth mound and up the flank of the Pillar of Heaven. Into this vision the kharon's bone-patchwork stern was shimmering away.

  Carnelian turned to peer into the atrium. He walked round a lichened foot and column leg. For a time there was nothing but blackness. Then from the gloom there emerged a wall of crowding Masters, tall as trees. He discovered in their midst a doorway that even they could have entered without stooping. It opened onto a flight of steps flanked by oily mosaics. He ran his hand over the amber and jade. Hearing footfalls, he looked up the endless stair. Men were coming down looking smaller than his hand, their faces crossed with dragonflies.

  He waited till they were close before he stepped out into the light. 'I've come to visit your Master.'

  His words produced a hunching commotion on the stair. He moved back to give them space to kneel. Their faces were so tight with fear it narrowed their eyes and made them unable to close their mouths. He was lifting his hands in reassurance but they were throwing glances back the way they had come. Carnelian looked up the stair expecting to see the horror that stalked them.

  'Your Master…?' he asked gently.

  They shook their bowed heads erratically. 'Sorrow, sorrow…' one of them began.

  Another looked up, eyes popping from between the wings of his dragonfly tattoo, brown blood smearing his forehead. 'Expected?'

  'Well,' Carnelian began, but stopped when the guardsmen started squashing themselves against the stone. Carnelian could feel their shaking. Silk was sighing down the stair. A Master was descending, wrapped in the flame of a scarlet cloak, his mask smouldering in his cowl. The guardsmen backed away as if the Master were on fire, and as he planted his bright foot among them they began to thud their heads bloodily on the stone.

  Carnelian lost his voice watching that reddening.

  'You trespass,' said the Master with Jaspar's voice.

  Carnelian gestured appeasement, found words. 'You know I have some understanding of your grief, Jaspar.'

  'You are mistaken, my Lord, I am not he,' said the scarlet Master. Then who…?'

  'You are the stranger here, my Lord. It seems hardly appropriate that you should question me. Who are you that dare intrude upon our grief?'

  'I regret the intrusion, my Lord, but I am come as a friend… a friend of Imago Jaspar.'

  'Even at a normal time your demeanour, my Lord, would invoke suspicion. Is it your habit to appear naked like a beggar at the door of a Great House? What is your rank, my Lord?'

  'As high as yours,' snapped Carnelian, feeling he was twisting in a trap.

  Up in the palace somewhere, a shapeless voice swelled a moaning song then faded away.

  'I see,' said the Master. He inclined his head and his mask rushed with reflections. Tell me what it is you have come to say and I will make sure my brother hears your words.'

  'Your brother? Then we are cousins.' Jaspar's brother's head straightened and he gave a humourless laugh. 'You are Suth Carnelian?' 'I am.'

  'My brother has told me all about you.' The Master's mask sneered at him but Carnelian stood his ground.

  'Very well, my Lord, I shall accede to your request though I cannot imagine what you want here.' He turned and began to climb the stair. He stopped, turned, chuckled. 'Be warned. My brother is grown dangerous with grief.'

  Carnelian followed Jaspar's brother through a multitude of sombre halls, his footsteps echoing among the scuffling of their escort. Several times the inhuman wailing broke out far away. Each time shivers ran up Carnelian's back.

  At last they came to where a door opened into a chamber walled and floored with shifting rainbows. As Jaspar's brother passed through, yellow filaments moved across him edged with orange and turquoise. The chamber was cool and damp. From somewhere there came a continuous hissing. Carnelian located the sound, a waterfall windowing the chamber, made brilliant diamond by the risen sun.

  'He is there, my Lord, if you have the courage to approach him,' Jaspar's brother said beside him.

  Turning, Carnelian saw an immense and shadowy stair climbing with many landings up to remote heights. Each landing was flanked by a pair of idols around whose feet puddled light. On the first landing stood a being like a column of blood.

  Carnelian began to ascend the steps. Sensing he was alone, he looked round to see Jaspar's brother below him. 'You will not come with me, my Lord?'

  The Master's mask smeared colour as he shook it.

  Carnelian resumed his climb, keeping the blood-red giant in the centre of his sight. The figure shifted and Carnelian saw Jaspar's face, a shell cameo imbedded in the welter of mourning red. He was holding to his nose a pale mottled orchid. Carnelian saw a frown begin to crease the perfect face.

  'It is Carnelian, cousin,' he called up to Jaspar, giving him a little bow. Although the air was laced with incense, Carnelian's nostrils caught an incongruous whiff of foulness.

  Jaspar moved back to give him space to come up onto the landing. The orchid's trumpet drooped away from his nose. 'Has the smell of holy blood drawn you, dear cousin? One little expected that you would be the first of my father's scavengers.'

  'I came in sympathy.'

  'Another of your curiously barbaric emotions?' 'I know what it is to fear one's father dead.' 'Suth has recovered, then?'

  'Well, yes… at least, I have a letter from him in which he claims recovery.'

  'So. Your sympathy then does not seem well grounded. Your father is not dead; nor, if one recalls correctly, was he struck down by one of his own filthy slaves, neh?'

  Carnelian looked round and saw the fragile look of the attendants, the queasy guardsmen leaning on their blade-winged dragonfly halberds, some painted boys huddling together and a woman playing the lute, its neck against her chest where a breast had been cut off.

  'Was it really one of your own people that slew your father?' asked Carnelian.

  'I will not rest until I have bled this murderous conspiracy out of them.'

  Carnelian followed Jaspar's eyes. In front of a horned altar stood a cross in the form of a youth with legs and arms outstretched. A living man of flesh was spread-eagled on its bronze, his dragonfly tattoo creasing into the agony of a face that seemed frozen in hysterical laughter. Carnelian looked along one arm and saw its yellowing extremity. Wire creasing into the elbow was hung with weights shaped like apples. The end of his other arm was also being slowly pruned. Nausea almost buckled Carnelian's knees.

  Jaspar clapped his hand on Carnelian's shoulder. 'Come, cousin, one must show you the craftsmanship in these frames.'

  Carnelian yielded to the pressure from Jaspar's arm. The Master lifted up an icy hand and ran it down the green-brown thigh of the metal you
th. These are exquisite pieces. Can you see, it is a single casting?' He reached above the crucified man's agony to the metal face hovering over him. 'Have you ever seen such a beatific expression? Scandalously, the whole set has not been used for years.' Jaspar ran his finger along under the man's bloodless forearm. He held his finger up to show Carnelian its red. 'See, the channel carries the blood away so that there is no spillage…' He pointed to where a bowl was set into the bronze youth's foot. '… and collects it there. From whence it may be fed to the avatar.'

  Jaspar pointed to the altar on which Carnelian could see many such bowls. Carnelian turned his back on it all but was unable to free himself from the odours of blood and excrement and sweaty fear that the incense could not mask. He saw the people kneeling, staring at the crucifixion, the cross of their dragonfly tattoos a sinister reflection of its shape, their eyes like wounds dribbling tears, the noses of the children painting mucus down to their quivering lips.

  'Why do they watch this?' Carnelian said, horrified.

  Jaspar sniffed his orchid. 'Because if they do not, they themselves shall end up on the frame.'

  'How could all these poor creatures be responsible?'

  Malice cooled Jaspar's eyes to ice. They are all responsible. How can my House make claim to leadership among the Great when it cannot control its own slaves? Before any of their filthy hands should be raised against me, I would nip all their arms off at the shoulder.'

  Carnelian took a deep breath. 'My father too was struck with a knife, Jaspar, but was it really the barbarian's hand wielding it?'

  Jaspar turned to stone. 'What you suggest… is inconceivable.'

  That is what you said on the road, and yet my father bled.'

  'But here… within the Sacred Wall… it is simply inconceivable.'

  'My Lord seems to have forgotten to whom he attributed the death of the Lady Flama Ykoria, who died not only within the wall, but in the Labyrinth itself.'

  Jaspar crushed the orchid and let it drop from his hand like a broken butterfly.

  'How many of your people have you crucified?'

  'Many,' Jaspar waved his hand, 'notwithstanding the cost.'

  'And have you found even a whisper of a conspiracy or of rebellion?'

  Jaspar regarded him. 'Under excruciation they confess to all the fanciful plots their animal minds can conceive, but none have rung true… so far.'

  'What will you believe once you are left only with limbless slaves, my Lord?'

  'Is this all you came to tell me, my Lord?' Jaspar's voice sounded flat, emotionless.

  'I had hoped that you might intend to take your father's pre-eminent place among the Great.'

  And if I did? signed Jaspar.

  Then you would be going to the Labyrinth?

  All the other Ruling Lords are there.

  Could you take me with you?

  To join your father?' asked Jaspar.

  Carnelian nodded.

  'You ask me to break the Law, my Lord.'

  'It is not so great a sin, cousin. You could pass me off as one of your kin.'

  'An outrageous request, Carnelian, although one is heartened that at last your machinations are acquiring a Chosen hue.' Jaspar looked away, thinking. Carnelian could hear the blood dripping into the bowls. 'Perhaps I will accede to your request, although one can hardly see why you felt the need to manufacture these elaborate notions of conspiracy.'

  'But I believe-' Carnelian began, but was distracted by a clamour of bells and moaning that came wafting down the stair. Jaspar looked up towards it.

  'One will give the matter some thought. But now my father begins his journey to the Plain of Thrones. One's decisions will be made there. If my cousin wishes, he could form part of the sombre procession.'

  'I would be honoured to attend the funeral,' Carnelian said.

  Jaspar turned back to look at him. 'Funeral?' 'I thought…'

  'Do you really imagine that the entombment of a Ruling Lord of the Great is an occasion that can be organized in a few days? The Houses have to be invited, the grave goods prepared, and' – he gave Carnelian a patronizing smile – 'it is customary to have the body embalmed. You would not have the vessel of my father's blood drying to dust like the cadaver of some slave, would you?'

  Carnelian lifted his hands in apology. 'I meant no offence.'

  Jaspar made a dismissive gesture. Before he could turn away, Carnelian reached out and touched his arm. 'Perhaps in view of what I have said, cousin, you might consider putting an end to this torture.'

  Jaspar jerked his arm free. 'You presume too much, my Lord. This is a lesson that I will brand deep into the memory of my slaves. Since his guardsmen did not care to die to save his life, they will die so that my father's ghost might sup on their blood as he descends into the Underworld.'

  The moans and pealing grew deafening. Carnelian fidgeted as he looked up the steps. The idols of the avatars leered down at the crucifixion frames standing beside their altars. A procession was coming down the steps between them. Sapients, horned and wearing the moon's face, drifted hand in hand with their homunculi. Behind came ammonites chiming heart-stone bells or waving moaning silver mouths aloft on poles.

  Carnelian was forced to move aside, to draw closer to the tortured man. Water oozing in his mouth anticipated vomit. He closed his eyes and prayed that he would not retch. His mask was a gag, but if he threw it off it would bring even more death and mutilation to the household Imago.

  A heavy waft of stale incense made him open his eyes. The Sapients were upon him, their bead-crusted purple samite swinging like plates of armour. Each carried a staff capped with a manikin of green-rusted copper crowned with a scything crescent moon.

  My Lords of the Domain Immortality, Jaspar signed, then bowed.

  The Sapients worked their staves backwards and forwards like levers as they slid past. The moaning was like a peopled gale. Carnelian saw the silver-faced ammonites striking their stone bells, compelling his heart to their dirgeful rhythm. Floating between them was a slab of ice like smoky quartz. Upon this a Master lay, reeking of myrrh, encased in a green robe as stiff as a box, the cloth darkening where it sucked up meltwater. The robe was spangled with tiny spirals that might have been the heads of nails hammered through into the flesh. On the chest lay an annulus of mirror obsidian in token of the Dark Water over which the dead cross to the Underworld. The gold mask was a face in which the world slid reflected, like the memories of the dead man's life. The ammonites leaned in towards each other gripping their burden with blue hands.

  Jaspar moved in to Carnelian and forced him to retreat until he could feel the cross's arm digging into his back. He shuddered, feeling the pain tremoring the frame. A Chosen woman, her face sagging yellowed marble, stopped to allow Jaspar his place behind his father's bier. Carnelian was glad she did not look to question his own presence there. More than a dozen scarlet Masters followed, some throwing frowns at him as they passed.

  Carnelian was hoping for a place at the end of the procession but the Imago guardsmen bringing up the rear, resplendent in azure-feathered cuirasses, heads hanging, waited for him to join the other Masters. As he hesitated, one of the guardsmen looked up as if waking from sleep. Gashes that had been cut down from each of his eyes were weeping tears of blood.

  Several kharon boats were waiting at the quay, the sun gleaming on their bony curves. Guardsmen knelt and cried their blood onto the stone. Jaspar's brother came towards them, his hands signing, Why does he come with us?

  'Because I will it,' said Jaspar and motioned for Carnelian to stand beside him.

  The eyeslits of Jaspar's brother's mask turned to stare at Carnelian, who looked away to see the bier being presented like a table to a ferryman standing in one of the boats. The creature did not look like a man at all as he inclined his bone-crowned head, arms extending to lift the dead Master's huge and pallid hand. He removed a ring from a finger, returned the hand to the bier, then stepped aside. The Sapients and their homunculi were alr
eady standing on the deck. Under their instruction, the bier was loaded onto the boat.

  First Jaspar and then his brother gave rings to the ferryman and stepped aboard. Carnelian pulled a jade ring from his finger, remembered to offer it with his left hand and stepped onto the cobbled deck. The other Masters of House Imago followed him. Feeling out of place, Carnelian watched the other boats being loaded with the people and baggage streaming out from the palace.

  His own boat was the first to turn her prow towards the lake and slide off. Carnelian felt sad for the old Chosen woman left standing off to one side, alone on the quay. Swinging more freely on their poles, the silver mouths summoned up for them a wind of keening that seemed to carry the bone boats across the water with only the merest effort from their oars.

  Jaspar sat on the middle chair with his brother on his right. Carnelian had been set on his left. The other Imago Lords stood behind them. Carnelian kept his back as stiff as the chair's and tried to shut out the bells and moaning. Before him the corpse of Jaspar's father lay on the ice like a fish in a kitchen waiting to be gutted. Although the ammonites held a canopy over the body, the sun was still low enough to slip under it. Rivulets ran down the ice, sparkling indigo, puddling the skull-cobbled deck.

  The corpse looked so much like Carnelian's father in the Ichorian chariot that Carnelian warmed with sympathy for Jaspar and for his brother. But his stomach reminded him of the crucifixions and he grew cold.

  On the water, the bone boats turned towards the slope behind which lay the Plain of Thrones. Carnelian saw a cleft in its green that came slicing down to the water's edge.

  The Quays of the Dead,' murmured Jaspar's brother. Carnelian was sure he could hear grief catching at his throat.

  The boats began nestling into the quay. Ammonites carefully unloaded the corpse as the other boats began disgorging their passengers. Carnelian watched each Sapient disembark leaning his bulk on his homunculus. The little creatures stooped among the purple skirts of their masters' robes, reached inside behind the cloth and came out with ranga. Descending, the Sapients seemed to be sinking into the quay. Carnelian looked back across the Skymere to where the circling cliff of the Sacred Wall crimped with coombs and realized that even there the ground was too profane for the Wise to walk without ranga.