Carnelian thought he understood. Like the Masters, the Oracles did not really see their subjects, did not imagine they had any volition of their own. He regarded Sthax. Of course, he could be playing some cunning double game of his own but, in his heart, Carnelian trusted him and believed Sthax sought nothing but the salvation of his people.
Carnelian removed his mask, then, a phrase at a time, he explained how he was to be given power over the outer world and, with some difficulty, about the Apotheosis that was its only precondition. This last concept caused them both a lot of difficulty, for Sthax knew nothing of the Rebirth, never mind the politics of the Masters.
When Carnelian was done, he gave Sthax time to digest it all, then asked him: ‘Will you do something for me?’
For some moments, Sthax examined Carnelian’s eyes, then gave a nod of agreement, and Carnelian began to coach him in the message he wanted him to carry.
Gazing down into the Labyrinth, Carnelian’s heart misgave. With the Shimmering Stair unlit, the columned cavern of the Labyrinth had become a haunt for shadows. The Marula were huddling together, averting their eyes from the view. Carnelian asked Sthax to reassure them he was going to lead them back to the light. The hope Sthax gave them unbowed their backs. Carnelian nodded in satisfaction, then began the descent into the gloom.
After an interminable shuffling through the tunnel, Carnelian’s lantern light found some feet in the darkness ahead. Jerking its beam up, he saw a Sapient waiting with his homunculus. Behind them he could see the closed portals of the Forbidden Door.
‘I am Carnelian—’ It was unlikely the Wise knew about his true birth yet. He must avoid causing unnecessary confusion. ‘Suth Carnelian . . . and you, Sapient?’
‘A Fifth of Labyrinth, Seraph,’ sang the homunculus in such an unhuman voice that the Marula around Carnelian began to tremble. ‘We were not informed of your coming,’ said the little man, as he cast sharp eyes upon the black men.
‘The Lord Nephron has sent me to oversee the preparations for receiving those who must attend his Apotheosis.’
‘Still, it is my masters who have set me to guard this portal, Seraph. They must be consulted.’ Though the Fifth’s fingers continued to work at the neck of the homunculus, he said no more. Disengaging from his master, he disappeared into an opening in the wall.
As Carnelian waited, he gazed past the Sapient at the Forbidden Door, hungry for the daylight that lay beyond. When the homunculus returned, he drew his master’s hands up to his throat, murmured something, then fell silent. Carnelian waited for the little man to speak, but he stood, eyes downcast, as still as his master. At last Carnelian could bear it no longer. ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’
The homunculus echoed him, then the Fifth’s fingers began to flex. ‘Instructions from my masters, Seraph.’
Carnelian felt choked with frustration. No doubt the Grand Sapients were already deep in conclave with Osidian. ‘Open the door or else I shall have it opened myself.’
The homunculus was soon voicing his master’s protests, but Carnelian made it clear he would not be defied. Eventually, the Sapient bowed to his will, and stepped aside as the doors opened, releasing a flood of light. Blind, Carnelian walked out into the day, the Marula stumbling in their eagerness to follow him.
Carnelian sat upon rugs that ammonites had rolled out on ground first purified with their blue fire. He had chosen to wait there because he did not wish to subject himself or the Marula to another cleansing when they returned to the Labyrinth. He was watching more ammonites laving Earth-is-Strong. The dragon rose from their midst like a sea stack. She was being prepared to purify a path all the way to the Great Causeway with her flame-pipes. Carnelian had decided not to command her himself. Instead he had summoned his Lefthand and instructed him to do so.
When the sun burned its way through the clouds, in spite of the assurances he had given Osidian Carnelian was glad to feel its warmth upon his skin. The shadows cast by the flesh-tithe cages had almost entirely shrunk away. Dragons formed lines down either side of the Black Field, which now looked like just another military camp, but it was to the centre of the plain beyond that his eyes kept being drawn.
He gazed between the gate stones, through the outer fence of commentary stones, across the inlaid, cobbled floor to the inner, double ring of the Dance. There, almost completely hidden by the outer stones, he could just glimpse the edge of one of the green stones of the innermost ring.
He had approached the Stone Dance of the Chameleon along a road burnt black by Earth-is-Strong’s flame-pipes and still warm beneath his feet. The Fifth had been scandalized at his insistence on proceeding barefoot, but had failed to persuade him to use a palanquin. When he had reached the place where the road divided around the Dance, he had waited for the dragon’s thunder to fade away and for the boiling clouds of naphtha smoke to subside. The rings of stones had emerged as if from a mist. Fascinated, he had approached the pair that stood guard upon the road running from the Forbidden Door into the Dance. He had seen that, there, entry to its heart was between a red and a black stone. For some reason he had felt he did not want to enter that way. Instead he had led Sthax and the other Marula round until they had arrived at where the road spoked off towards the House of Immortality.
He glanced in that direction, straining to make out any details that might show where it lay in the cliff wall of the Plain of Thrones. He could see nothing. To the north-east, the pall of smoke being produced by Earth-is-Strong’s pipes was trailing its fraying banner round the outer edge of the Dance. Sthax’s tiny figure was following the dragon and her fire. Carnelian frowned, feeling the message Sthax was carrying was a poor substitution for a visit. Among other things, he had sent for some of his people. While he waited for them he wanted to explore. Motioning the Marula to stand guard upon the gate stones, he passed between them and entered the Dance.
Between two commentary stones, Carnelian stood gazing across the cobbled ground to the inner rings. The pale mosaic confused his eyes. He was reminded of the bone traceries of an Ancestor House, but this work was more subtle. Tendrils of stone snaked across the floor, crossing and recrossing each other like seaweed abandoned by a tide. Nodules studded the design and it was embedded with rings of smoothed stone and small panels. At first he had taken it all to be marble, but he began to see the grain and shades of different stones and how portions and paths were tinted variously by lichens.
He stepped onto the design. It felt subtly textured. Closing his eyes, he could feel his feet on a path that he followed. Opening them, he looked back at the meandering trail his sooty feet had left. Not a path he could have easily located by sight. He remembered how the Wise used such paths in their library in the Halls of Thunder.
He became aware of the beautiful and complex inner faces of the commentary stones. Returning to them he reached up to touch one. Its swirling patterns were bewildering, but under his fingers they seemed a pebbled beach. Again he closed his eyes. As he glided his fingers slowly across the surface the nodules seemed to whisper in his mind. He reopened his eyes. ‘Like beadcord,’ he muttered. He noted how tendrils of the floor mosaic lapped at the stone. The nodules were divided into registers, the higher of which could be reached by climbing up onto taller cobbles. Glancing round the whole curve of commentary stones, he saw how, with the floor, they formed a delicate web of meaning emanating from the double ring.
As he approached the inner stones, he saw that their outer faces were patterned in the same way as the commentary stones. Then he became aware that these stones stood each like a ghost behind what appeared to be huge figures. Cracked and round-shouldered, hunching now, but once they had been tall and straight. Entering between a pair of ghost stones, he was confronted by two immense slabs of jade, fissured and veined by pale lichens. As he passed between these, he noticed their inner edges were spotted with round projections. Reaching out to touch one, his finger found its spiralling groove. The same ammonite shells were embroidered into his
green robe. Turning, he saw the clear path leading back across the mosaic, through the commentary stones, between the gate stones and on towards the House of Immortality.
He entered the heart of the Dance. Round the mossy space stood the coven of twelve worn stones: two green, two black, eight red. He sensed he was in the presence of something ancient and holy. The inner face of each stone had been cut into. Moving to stand in front of one of these depressions, he realized it was a hollow man, arms and legs outstretched. The hollow was just large enough that he could have climbed into it. From each foot, each hand, a channel ran down to the earth. The channels made the hollow man seem a puppet with rods to move his arms and legs. It did not seem likely their purpose was to drain the hollow of rain water. He sought distraction in the columns of glyphs, worn almost smooth, that covered the surface of the stone. This must be the Law-that-must-be-obeyed. He frowned. Why did it feel like a disfigurement? The glyphs followed the contours of the stone as if they were tattoos or brandings. The Law had been carved into the stone when it was already ancient.
He walked slowly round the Dance, withershins, giving in to his need to understand it. The two green stones led him to the two black. Then began the sequence of eight red stones. Where the black met the red, their inner flanks were carved with circular motifs now almost flush with the stone. Gazing out between these stones, he was looking directly towards the Forbidden Door. The Pillar of Heaven lifted its tornado of stone into a frowning sky. Carnelian looked again at the flank of the black stone, certain the circular carvings had been sky glyphs. Starting with this stone which lay to the sunward of the Rain Axis, the Dance followed the sequence of the months so that the red stone ended the year.
He followed the Dance further round, caressing the time-worn porphyry of the red stones, but when he came to a pair between which Earth-is-Strong’s column of smoke was visible, moving away towards the entrance to the Plain of Thrones, he saw their inner flanks bore more of the faint discs. He ran his fingers over them and found one that had within its slightly raised edge a number of pips. His fingers remembered the red stone coin he had received the first time he had passed through the Blood Gate. That had borne a pomegranate. He saw how the gateway formed by the red stones would give direct access to the Dance to anyone entering the Plain of Thrones. He surveyed the Dance, now certain it must be far more ancient than anything else in Osrakum. More ancient even than the Law. More ancient by far than Grand Sapient Legions had been or his Great Balance. Thinking of that ancient, now dead, Carnelian gazed across the Dance at the black stone opposite. Twelve in all. It was as if the Grand Sapients were the living embodiment of these ancient stones.
At that moment the clouds parted, slanting a ray of light into the centre of the Dance. He was drawn to stand in it, turning his face up to allow the sun to bleach the unease from his heart. He sank to the mossy earth and stretched himself out as he gazed through the opening in the stormclouds into perfect, blue heaven.
Swaying beneath a vast, smiling sky. Memories of his mother, of her smell, of the comfort in her hands. Cedars net the blue in their branches. Clean, resinous perfume of her mother tree. Sifting sand, his hand dries up like a fig. Not the breath of the mother trees, but myrrh. Breathing out and out and out as he wizens into a huskman. He is Legions turning to stone. Trapped in an ivory sarcophagus like a brain in a skull. Seed in a pod. A tickle in him, an itch; the heartbeat of the baby inside him. Carried, sleeping, into the ring of twelve. Entering through the still weeping edges of a freshly cut wound. Singing, so mournful. Then swaying out of the clearing watching clouds streak the sky. Out of the clearing into the ferns. Their croziers knock, knock, knocking their heads together. To whose rhythm the sun bleeds away into the earth. Away, into the earth. Absorbed into it with the blood and the dying light. Something’s burning. He has to become the worm eating his escape through the bread, but then, confused, he is scrabbling into a cradle of bones. His hand drags the nets of his fingers. Dragged down by the weight of fish in his net. Rope burning his hands, running deep in a channel of flesh, as it pulls free of the hooks of his hands, but he holds on, the waters rising.
Carnelian came awake, disorientated. The silhouettes of heads moving back. He rose, aware of giants standing round. It was night. Human-scale figures near him were partially lit. Others were holding the dim stars of lanterns. He recognized the giants behind them as the monoliths of the Dance, their looming shadows the incarnation of the foreboding he had brought with him out of his dream.
‘Master?’
It was Tain offering him a sinister face. Carnelian took the mask. ‘I must’ve fallen asleep.’
Sthax, a shadow with human eyes. Beside him a shrouded figure whose dear face grounded Carnelian. He approached him, embraced him. ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Fern.’ He turned to Tain, to Sthax. ‘So glad you’re all here.’
Still haunted, Carnelian stared deep into the fire. He was reluctant to sleep. One dream and all his hope had turned to despair. He turned the Ruling Ring of House Suth upon his finger. Fern had brought it for him from his father. A proof, if he needed one, that his father still considered him his son.
He turned, sensing someone behind him. Rising above the sentinel monoliths, higher than the glimmering gashes the terraces of the Halls of Rebirth made in the wall of the plain, the Pillar of Heaven loomed a deeper black against the blackness.
He returned his gaze to the flames. Why had he not allowed his people to erect the pavilion they had brought for him? He hungered for the oblivion that, in its privacy, he could have found in Fern’s arms.
He sat up, woken by something. Bells were beating out a funereal dirge. Light throbbed, filtering through the three rings of the Dance. A procession of the Chosen making their way to the Forbidden Door. He recalled the time he had seen another such moving distantly upon the Ydenrim. Then he had been in the Yden with Osidian.
‘What is it?’ whispered a voice in Ochre.
In the faint light oozing from the embers of their fire, Carnelian could just make out Fern’s shape.
‘Some Standing Dead,’ he replied in Ochre, feeling a furtive delight in uttering that barbarian tongue in that place. Then a rumble ponderously shook the sky. A sudden breeze set him shivering. ‘I’m cold.’ Fern opened his blanket. Carnelian crept in beside him. They snuggled together. Comfort quickly gave way to passion.
He woke into a world suffused by a faint dawn light, feeling groggy. The sound of bells seemed to have followed him out of his dreams. Sitting up, he saw, to the east and south-east, movement in the gaps between the monoliths. Fern stirring against his belly made him glance down. He watched him come awake and smiled. Fern grimaced and took some moments to register him.
‘You didn’t sleep well either?’
Fern shook his head. He propped himself up on his elbow, watching the procession of the Masters. ‘It’s been going on all night?’
Carnelian nodded, remembering snatches of dream in which the world was carried away in a terrible and irresistible flood.
Sitting with Fern and Tain, Carnelian watched servants with chameleon-tattooed faces laying dishes of jade and silver upon a rug. He offered Tain some food. ‘How’re things with Father?’
His brother dipped his head to one side and looked down, then glanced up at Carnelian. ‘Well enough to send you that,’ he said, indicating with his chin the Ruling Ring on Carnelian’s finger.
Carnelian saw a grimmer truth in his brother’s eyes, but he kept silent. What use was it to know more? He could not go to his father’s side. He glanced at the Ruling Ring. That was its own message. His father expected soon to die. Carnelian was not sure his father had believed the assurances in his message that his adopted son would, in time, rule House Suth. He might only have sent him the ring in the hope that it would give him enough power to affect the succession in their coomb. Certainly it should make it possible for him to get his people out of there, but bring them where? Into safekeeping in the House of the Masks? Glancing
at Tain’s face tattoo, he wondered how people wearing that could possibly reside in the Labyrinth. For a moment he became possessed by a fantasy of taking them all with him into the outer world. That possibility seemed even more unreal. He became aware Fern was watching him. He smiled, but only the corners of Fern’s lips twitched in response.
‘What about Poppy and Krow?’
Fern grimaced. ‘You can imagine how she reacted when I told her she would have to stay behind.’
Carnelian smiled grimly. ‘We can’t have her here.’ Fern and Tain’s faces stiffened, as they sensed the threat underlying his words. Carnelian wanted to lighten things a little. ‘Even now she’s probably trying to swim the lake to get here.’
Fern smiled and even Tain who, in his short acquaintance with Poppy, already had some notion of what she was like.
After they had finished eating, he took Fern and Tain with him out through the two inner rings and across the mosaicked stone to the outermost ring. There, with Carnelian in his mask and military cloak, they watched the Masters pass by. Their palanquins were carried by slaves whose faces bore the same heraldry as the standards that glowed like jewels under the sombre skies. Banners streamed rainbows. Feathered parasols fluttered like birds. Bells rang, of dull stone or sharp bright silver. Chariots were pulled among the processions by pale aquar, each led by a Sinistral Ichorian.
Carnelian retired with Fern into the pavilion his people had erected. In the gloom they fed off each other’s bodies. They slept, they woke to more passion and drowsed afterwards, exhausted. They were vaguely aware of the day fading. They lit no lamps. Dawn found them drugged by ecstasy and joy, Carnelian’s tainted by the dregs of dreams.
Carnelian lay half wake, waiting for Fern to return with some food. The pavilion smelled of sex. A movement in a dark corner brought him fully awake. A shadowy form was looming there. He sat up with a jerk, fearing this to be something supernatural, but still casting round for some weapon. A beautiful voice stilled a cry of alarm in his throat. ‘Calm yourself, Seraph.’
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