The Chosen sdotc-1

by Ricardo Pinto

  Carnelian scowled at him. I see the handholds, he jerked with his fingers. Osidian shook a puzzled face. Carnelian repeated the signs more slowly, sketching them larger, then added, You go down first, I will follow.

  He ducked back and crammed his body into a cleft that was furthest from the edge. Eyes closed, he pressed his head back against the rock until it hurt. He rasped breaths in and out, his heart rattling his chest. At last he forced his eyes open. The cold wind on them made him blink. He looked up the steps, yearning to go back. In front of him was the terrifying edge. Sky brink.

  'Gods' blood,' he grumbled. 'Gods' flaming, fiery blood.'

  Osidian was down there. What would he think of him? He was behaving slavishly. Jerking his head, spitting curses, Carnelian scraped his way on hands and knees to the edge. For a moment he saw nothing but a whirling drop. Then his eyes focused on a tiny shape floating on the air below. A bird, not Osidian falling. Carnelian felt he was tying his friend to safety by making his eyes follow the line of the ladder down. Osidian was waving.

  Before the terror could overpower him, Carnelian turned and let himself over the edge, feeling the sheer face with a desperate foot. It found a crack. He wriggled his toes into it as if it were a shoe. He released some of his weight onto it to allow his other foot to feel down. He touched another fissure like the corner of a mouth. He slipped it in. Slowly he trusted his weight to the cracks. He felt for the next one and saw another near his face. Slowly, one hold at a time, he descended, always pressing his cheek against the cracked stone, never looking down. He stiffened when he felt Osidian's hands on him.

  'It is very hard, the first time.' Carnelian could only growl at him.

  It was as if his life had become trapped in a falling dream. Ledges led to flights of steps, then handhold ladders, then to more steps, in an unending, gruelling succession. They had been cursed like serpents to squeeze along on their bellies with the sun always burning its stare into their backs. Carnelian's longing for the next rest stop was like a thirsty man's for water. But, every time they stopped, he found the waiting for the next leg a torture and would hurry Osidian on. Here and there a cave had been cut back into the jointing between two slabs. He feared their coolness more than anything else. Each time they crammed in, he was not sure he would find the courage to come back out.

  'Halfway… down…' said Osidian, panting.

  Carnelian fanned himself. He tried to loosen the tension in his throat enough to speak. 'Have you… done this… many times before?'

  Osidian lifted his hand up to perhaps the height of a man's waist. 'Since I was that tall.'

  Carnelian gaped. 'You dared… as a child? Who… showed you the way?'

  'I found it for myself,' Osidian's eyes were sun through leaves, 'and always, before, alone.' He closed his eyes and rested his head back on the rock.

  Carnelian smiled at the compliment. His eye traced the curve of Osidian's throat up to his chin, over his lips up to the beautiful jutting of his nose. In the gloom his birthmark was like an open eye.

  The sun was rifling down its rays, wilting Carnelian with the onslaught. He craved release from his tunic, lusting after the wind's cold caress. But he did not even loosen it, fearing for his skin.

  His head and shoulders cooled. He looked up, through his fingers, expecting to see some cloud momentarily blinding the sun. Instead, the burning eye was impaling itself on the Pillar's black spear. As Carnelian watched, the sun melted away till there was only a smouldering rind, then that too went out and the Pillar was holding up a smooth blue sky.

  'Look,' cried Osidian below him.

  Clinging hard, Carnelian dared to look down the Pillar's craggy narrowing plunge into the ground. Its shadow was beginning to creep out over the Yden. He closed his eyes, hugged the rock, rejoicing at their deliverance from the burning tyranny of the sun.

  His rejoicing was short-lived. The wind blowing up from the Yden abated until it became a gentle breeze. It grew steadily colder until he was pressing himself against the rock to suck up what he could of its fading heat.

  Down they climbed and ever down, the passage of time measured by the Pillar's shadow-creep over the Yden.

  Carnelian felt it coming like a tidal wave. He looked south and saw the black horn of its crescent. He stopped for a moment watching as shadow engulfed the Sacred Wall, a coomb at a time.

  Osidian came scrabbling up towards him. 'I have miscalculated.' His eyes squeezed almost closed with each pant. He shook his head, swallowed. 'We will not make the Yden.'

  Garnelian looked down. The Yden had become an immense garment of trees. Its air clung to him like sweat. Its further edge tattered into glimmering emerald water that was eventually hemmed by Skymere blue. Strange buildings were sewn here and there like buttons. It did not seem that far away.

  'It is,' said Osidian, as if he had heard his thoughts. He looked up, judging whether they could make the climb back to the last cave.

  There must be some place further down,' said Carnelian.

  Osidian made a face. There is, but it will not be to your taste.'

  'Why not?'

  Osidian shook his head. There is no time for discussion. You will see.' In the east, the Pillar shadow was already fumbling at the Sacred Wall. 'If we do not get to where we are going before nightfall, we shall either have to spend the night here,' he indicated the windswept wall of stone, 'or risk stumbling down, blind.'

  They hurried on, Osidian leading them down into the thickening humid air. The shadow of the Sacred Wall washed over them and began rippling off towards the east. It seemed no time at all before it had covered the Yden and was pouring its ink into the lake. Carnelian reached the bottom of one long ladder to see the shadow lapping against the faraway wall, then fill the crater up to the very brim with darkness. All the light they had then came from the sky. As flames engulfed it, Carnelian began to notice movements out of the corner of his eye. Monstrous shapes lurked here and there in the crevicing Pillar rock. He saw a pickaxe head lifting and, hearing a flapping, turned to see enormous bat-wings opening and folding back.

  He caught up with Osidian and grabbed his arm.

  'Gods' blood,' cried Osidian.

  The air rustled and squealed. The monsters shifted round them. Carnelian came to a halt as Osidian hugged him back against the stone.

  'If we raise them they might knock us off the Ladder,' Osidian hissed in his ear.

  'What…?'

  'A sky-saurian roost.'

  Carnelian scrunched up his nose. 'It stinks of fish.'

  'Just be glad there are no saurians nesting in here,' snapped Osidian.

  'Ugh!' grimaced Carnelian. The floor was oozing, sticky.

  Osidian's hand grabbed his arm and dragged Carnelian after him, deeper into the cave.

  'Do you have a light?' asked Carnelian, wincing at each moist footfall. There was no answer. 'I said, do you-'

  'I have not grown suddenly deaf. The answer is no.'

  'But-'

  'I did not think we would need it. We could have brought a bed as well, if I had thought of it, but perhaps my Lord might have also complained at having to carry that down the Ladder.'

  Carnelian decided it might be better to say nothing more.

  The noisome walk ended at something like a low smooth wall.

  'Jump up,' said Osidian.

  Carnelian felt him lurch past. He slid his hands up the wall, over the edge. The ledge above it was damp. He brought his fingers near his nose. They smelled of nothing worse than must. He pulled himself up and found that he was sitting on a narrow flat space. He could feel a column backing it, an ankle of stone, with another beside it. He slid his hand up to the knees.

  'Will you stop fidgeting around! Lie down and sleep,' said Osidian.

  Carnelian lay down. His tunic and trousers clung to him. The air around him was as moist as breath. 'What is this place?'

  There was no answer, just the sound of Osidian breathing. He supposed there was no point in telling
him that, fishy stench or no fishy stench, he was hungry. Carnelian waited until he could hear Osidian's breathing slow and then he shifted closer to him, buried his nose in the sweaty-smelling cloth of his back and quickly fell asleep.

  FORBIDDEN FRUIT

  Clutch my warmth

  Until day comes

  For then we must part

  (from the poem The Bird in the Cage'by the Lady Akaya)

  The raven hopped into the air, flicking open its fan-feather wings. Carnelian tried to catch it, his fingers shredding the air like its black pinions. The other distinct half of him was there without a face, touching the whole surface of his skin. He clenched the anchor grip of their hands but its fingers were squeezing to blood. The raven's eye stared white as an egg. A red tear leaked from the corner with each blink.

  'Flee with me away from here,' the raven screeched. Its beak was the pin holding everything together.

  But Carnelian would not abandon the faceless half of him. Looking round, he tumbled falling. The red earth caught him. Grit in his eye. Sinking. He struggled to stay perfectly still. Every movement trembled pebbles and scratched his skin deeper in.

  'Away from Her.'

  The earth brimmed over him like honey round a stone.

  Warm pulsing red darkness beating him like a heart. Buried alive. Opening his mouth to scream let dust pour into his stomach, into his lungs. Drop by drop, moisture sucked out of his husk till his organs rattled inside him like seeds.

  Carnelian jerked awake to see a creature hovering over him, its wings splayed like hands to grab him.

  'What is wrong?' said the creature. Carnelian recognized Osidian. As his friend crouched, Carnelian saw the idol of stone behind him, a winged man, looking as if he had only at that very moment descended from the heavens.

  The Black God,' he breathed.

  As Osidian looked up, his shoulders relaxed. The Wind Lord.'

  Carnelian could not stop staring. The idol's empty eye sockets were terrible. From the left eye, tears dribbled down the stony cheek. 'An avatar of the Black God.'

  Osidian shook his head. 'A false Quyan deity. The only true gods are the Twins.' He smiled. 'Besides, our friend here poses no threat. Has he not given us the comfort of his hospitality?'

  The comfort…?' Carnelian said, stretching the stiffness from his arms, arching his back. Osidian was gazing towards the light. The narrow shrine with its corbelled vault ended in a triangle of morning so bright it hurt his eyes. Its sloping walls were stiff with the carved wings of wind creatures. Rubbish clotted the floor. 'Do we have to wade back through that?'

  'Unless, in the night, my Lord has been gifted with a sprouting of wings,' said Osidian. He made a pantomime of looking for them.

  Carnelian slapped the hands away from his shoulders.

  Osidian grinned. Carnelian was embarrassed by the look in his eyes.

  As they slid down to the floor, the filth oozed up between their toes till it seemed they stood on the stumps of their legs. They exchanged looks of disgust and began to squelch off to the entrance.

  When they reached it Carnelian glanced back. The winged god looked like a great raven. He realized something. 'His altar was our bed.'

  'You would agree that it was better than the floor,' said Osidian. 'Do you think he begrudged us it?' He did not wait for an answer but walked out into the morning.

  Remembering his nightmare, Carnelian looked back into the shrine uneasily, then followed him.

  He stopped. At their feet was a tangling, as if a net had been cast over a skyful of birds leaving only their bones and tattered green feathers. Thorn trees,' he said, his voice loud with disappointment. He had expected the Yden to be more lush.

  The air tore with screams and something like a shaking of many blankets as the cliff of the Pillar came to pieces round them. He ducked with Osidian as a vast shape wafted over them. He glanced up to see the air screeching with leather kites.

  'It seems you have woken our fishy friends,' cried Osidian. 'Come on.'

  Half crouching they fled, laughing, down the wide steps crusted white, through a shimmering stink of ammonia and rotted fish. Above them, the creatures circled on fingered wings, slicing the air with their pickaxe heads. Soon the white on the steps was only a splatter, the air cleared, cracks became jagged with weeds.

  The trees formed a wall of thorns. Through their knotting branches, the sky was a mosaic of blues. Looking back, Carnelian could see nothing of the steps. Up the cliffs he found the nodules of the sky-saurian nests and perhaps, though he could not really be sure, the Ladder's zigzag. The Pillar soared up to fill the sky. Somewhere up there were the Halls of Thunder.

  Carnelian's gaze came back down to earth. Osidian was walking off clothed to the waist in dust clouds. Carnelian followed him, frowning. Here and there an angled paving stone showed where a road lay under the dark earth. Peering into the thorns he saw the cracked carvings running along its edge. The road curved off to the north but Osidian turned off it and ducked into the thicket.

  'Hold on,' Carnelian shouted after him.

  Osidian's head poked out from the thicket as if from a hut.

  Carnelian pointed. The road goes this way.'

  Osidian smiled. 'So it does, into the Labyrinth. We, however, go this way.' He pointed into the thicket. 'Be careful of the thorns,' he said with a grin and disappeared again.

  Carnelian frowned when he reached the place where he judged Osidian had gone into the thicket. After much squinting, he managed to see him there, moving away through the tangle along something like a tunnel. Carnelian gave the road one last envious glance before ducking in among the thorns.

  The tunnel forced Carnelian to bend his back. Thorns snagged his clothes so that he often had to stop to unhitch the cloth. Several times, mockingly, he muttered, 'Be careful of the thorns,' and then growled.

  He struggled to catch up with Osidian, wanting to berate him, but when he began Osidian turned and lifted up his hands to show his own red scratches and Carnelian had to give him a grudging smile and close his mouth.

  At last they came to a lofty wall. Its massive blocks were irregularly shaped but fitted together with remarkable precision.

  'What now?' asked Carnelian, exasperated.

  'We climb over,' Osidian replied and slipped sideways along the wall, going down the gradient, in the wedge of space that was free of thorns.

  Carnelian followed. Osidian found something like a ladder whose footholds were the edges of blocks. Carnelian watched him climb higher and higher and then, with a vault, he was sitting astride the wall, waving him up-Muttering, Carnelian began the climb. Some handholds he had to stretch for. He missed one, slipped and grazed his arm. Osidian offered him his hand and grinned when it was refused. Carnelian insisted on scrambling his own way up. He made sure he was secure, then turned to Osidian.

  'You are-' He fell silent, gaping at the view. Below them was a terrace of black earth divided neatly into plots. Further down the slope there was another terrace and further down from there, another and another, until he had counted almost twenty in all, the most distant of which looked like chequered cloth. Beyond, a forest stretched for a great distance, turning at last into polished jade and then the purpling turquoise of the Skymere.

  Osidian touched his shoulder. 'It gets better.'

  They slithered down, dropping the last bit into a thick bed of giant cabbages that squeaked and snapped as they fell in among them. The musk of wet earth and the green bruising smell of the leaves filled the air. They clambered out onto a path and wandered along a maze of them, each walled by vegetables. Here and there Carnelian glimpsed a glitter of water running in stone channels. They crossed several by means of little bridges. Every so often the vista would open out and he would see the terraces again.

  'A kitchen garden?' he asked at last.

  'For the court,' Osidian answered him, pointing at the black craggy cliffs of the Pillar.

  As they strolled, Carnelian was filled with wonder. He as
ked Osidian the names of everything. Osidian always had an answer and even added what he knew of their uses or plucked some for Carnelian to smell or taste.

  Carnelian glimpsed movement and found himself scrabbling for his mask. Osidian's hand restrained him.

  There is no need, he signed. Here there are no eyes but ours.

  They walked out into a clearing in which a number of creatures were harvesting leaves with sickles, or turning the rich black earth with hoes. Carnelian tried to see what kind of beings they were. Nut-brown, with hands and feet like spades, but not tall enough to come up to his knee.

  They move as if they had eyes.

  The sylven have keen ears and well-honed touch.

  They look like little men.

  Animals. 'Let me show you,' said Osidian. As he spoke the sylven stopped their work and turned their wizened heads. Osidian clapped his hands. 'Attend me.'

  The sylven came, forming round them, their heads bowed, their huge ears sticking up like horns.

  Osidian crouched and took one in his hands. The little wizened creature flinched and whimpered. Carnelian began protesting even as Osidian cooed and said, gently, 'You will not be hurt.'

  He held the creature's little brown head carefully like a ripe fruit. Carnelian crouched, to stroke it. Osidian angled it back to reveal a tiny face. A wide gashed mouth, a nose flat and splayed. Osidian squeezed apart the wrinkles that closed its eyes. At the bottom of the pit was a colourless bead like the raisin of a pale grape. Osidian let the creature go.

  'It seems very much like a tiny man,' said Carnelian.

  Osidian shrugged. The world is filled with man-like creatures. What is a man? Are these men? Are the sartlar?'

  The barbarians are men.'

  'Perhaps, but if so, not like you or me.'

  'I suppose, then, that you would claim that we are angels.'

  'Is that not what the Wise teach?'

  As they wandered further into the garden they saw sylven everywhere like clods of earth. The sun began to pour its fire into the day. They came to a region where each tree was inside the square of a low wall.