The Standing Dead - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 02

by Ricardo Pinto

  Akaisha watched her move away, then glanced at Carnelian. 'You two should be better friends.'

  Carnelian would have asked Akaisha what she meant but saw she had more important matters to attend to. He accompanied her as she toured the hearth. They checked each sleeping hollow to see nothing had been left behind. Then they moved towards the mother tree and made sure everything had been properly stowed among its trunks. As she strummed ropes and tucked in the corner of a blanket Akaisha mumbled at him. 'We don't want to come home and find this stuff all rotted by the rain.'

  The Master . . . ?' he began, but the stare she gave him struck him mute.

  'My care is more for the lads he has with him.'

  He thought of protesting but saw her mind was only half with him and could not bring himself to speak. Instead, he waited while she busied herself checking what she had already checked before.

  She turned to look at him. 'Will he bring them in?'

  Carnelian grew excited. 'Did he say he would?'

  'My son...' Her brows creased. 'Ravan said the Master would on the condition that we should vow not to raise a hand against him. We swore on our mothers' and our fathers' bones.'

  'When will they come in?'

  Akaisha shrugged.

  'Will we wait for them?'

  Akaisha flared to anger. 'We cannot. We dare not consume another day's water here.'

  Carnelian caught her eyes and saw how powerless she felt. So Osidian had won. He saw Akaisha's need for reassurance.

  'He will come. Even he cannot survive here without water.' Then, as an afterthought, 'You have all the water there is.'

  She put a warm hand upon his arm. 'Stay with me.'

  They came round the tree and found the women already gone. All that was left was Carnelian's djada pack with their blankets that Poppy was trying to pick up.

  'What are you doing?' Carnelian said, walking up to her.

  'I just thought I'd carry it for a bit.'

  He laughed. 'It's nearly as big as you are.' He kissed her and hoisted the pack up onto his shoulder, then, giving her his hand, the three of them began walking off towards the rootstair.

  Carnelian touched Akaisha's shoulder. 'I've forgotten something, my mother.'

  She raised an eyebrow. 'We'll wait.'

  'You may as well go on, I'll soon catch you up.'

  Akaisha shrugged, took Poppy's hand and they set off. Carnelian ran back to his sleeping hollow. Certain they were now well out of sight, he began digging where he and Poppy had buried her mother tree seed. He was despairing of finding it when he felt it in the earth. He lifted it carefully. Though its wing was black and tattered, the seed was still whole. Perhaps one day Poppy might be allowed to grow her mother tree in some garden in Osrakum. He slipped the seed carefully into an inner pocket and then ran towards the rootstair.

  Carnelian and Poppy stood with Akaisha by the Lagoongate, watching the aquar go by pulling drag-cradles that sagged under their loads of swollen waterskins.

  'You two can go ahead,' Akaisha told them. 'I'm just waiting to seal this gate.'

  'We'll wait with you if we may, my mother,' said Carnelian.

  He had already counted sixty drag-cradles and he could see an apparently endless line of them stretching off round the Homing under the cedar trees. It was strange to see aquar allowed into the Grove. Even though the morning was still cool, he savoured the comfort of having the canopy over his head.

  Carnelian gazed out over the golden plain. 'No doubt we'll soon miss this shade.'

  'Be sure of it,' said Akaisha.

  Eventually the last drag-cradle scraped past and they were followed by a party of Elders led by Harth. She gave Carnelian a look of disapproval before addressing Akaisha. 'What's he doing here?'

  'Keeping me company.'

  Harth looked up at Carnelian. 'So you believe you've beaten us?'

  Carnelian did not know what to say.

  'How many times have I told you, Harth: Carnie is on our side.'

  Harth gave a snort and moved away. Carnelian saw the other Elders were carrying two jars and, on a drag-cradle, something covered with a blanket. They came through the gate and put everything on the ground. Akaisha closed the gate and then one of the old men dipped his hand in one of the jars and brought it out black and reeking of charcoal. Reaching up, he drew his hand across the gate leaving shiny black daubs on its wicker. Harth did the same with red chalky ochre.

  When they were done, the Elders all stood back and began a grumbling incantation. The blanket was pulled back to reveal a bony cadaver of a man, leathery brown, with holes for eyes, his papery lips pulled back from a yellow grin. Carnelian was reminded of nothing as much as one of the Wise he had seen unmasked, which made him shudder. He felt Poppy clutch his arm and slip her body round behind his leg.

  'He can't harm you,' he said, gently.

  Harth whisked round. 'He has more power than you might imagine against our enemies.'

  Between them, the Elders raised the huskman and propped him up against the gate. Drawing back they began shouting at him, arraigning him with the crimes he had committed against the Tribe, promising him that if he should fulfil his duty well and protect their home, one day they would expose him on the summit of the Crag tower and allow his soul to be carried up to Father Sky.

  Leaving that wizened sentinel, they wandered under the trees along the Lagooning, walking in the ruts the laden drag-cradles had gouged in the rusty earth. Fern and Sil, with Leaf strapped to her back, were waiting for them by the final gate. All together, they walked across the earthbridge into a world drenched by the gold of the sun. The Tribe and the aquar with their drag-cradles were dark motes beneath a copper sky.

  Akaisha and the other Elders moved in among the people dictating the order of their march. Slowly, the aquar were formed up around the people with their burdens. Riders floated in dust clouds further out. With thin warbling cries the Tribe stirred into movement, fading Carnelian's view of the world behind their dust.

  A weaving of withered ferns held the parched earth in thrall. Trees waved flags of scorched leaves at the Ochre as they passed. The herds were gone. Dust spat at them on the torrid breath of the wind. The heat was terrible. With a leaden heart, Carnelian had given up looking for Osidian. Making sure Poppy was well protected, he wrapped the cloth of his uba around his face and bowed his head to protect his eyes from the grit and glare. Blind, he trusted to the feeling in his feet, using the burn of the sun upon his forehead to tell him in which direction their path lay.

  The lagoon,' said Fern.

  Carnelian looked at the handful of cloudy water-holes. Pointing, Fern undulated his hand and Carnelian saw the faint curves printed on the earth that were the ghosts of the vanished water. He lifted his eyes up to the featureless heat-grey sky and could not believe it would ever rain again. Around him the Tribe were marching across the cracked lagoon bed. Carnelian watched with curiosity as some women brushed the ground with their feet. Youths hung around them keenly waiting.

  'What are they doing?' he asked Sil.

  'We'll show you.'

  Sil felt the earth with her calloused foot, she smiled and tapped the sand with her heel. Fern fell on his knees and dug where she indicated. Carnelian joined him. The earth had been baked so hard that at first it was like clawing stone. Then it began to soften, grow moist. Fern sat back to watch him. 'Go on,' he encouraged.

  Carnelian felt something cold and slimy and yanked his hands out of the hole.

  'I'll do it then,' said Fern, pushing him out of the way. He slipped his hands in and fetched something out that glinted in the sun. A fish. Carnelian was too astounded to say anything.

  'Dreaming,' said Fern, giving it to Sil, then turned his back so she could tuck it into his pack.

  'Even in the Withering, Carnie, the Mother provides for us,' she said, grinning.

  The dark mass of the march had crested a ridge ahead.

  'Come on,' said Sil, breaking into a lope. Carnelian scooped
Poppy into his arms and ran to catch up. On the way they passed some boys dancing around a murky puddle jiggling their spears. One after another they plunged them in then, together, drew out a struggling dwarf-crocodile. They held it up as a trophy and Sil touched it to bless it for them.

  'Kill it mercifully,' she said.

  'And quickly,' said Fern. 'Or else you'll be left behind.'

  Carnelian put Poppy down as they came over the crest of the slope and saw the soft circular outlines and eggshells scattered everywhere half filled with sand.

  The remains of the bellower rookery,' Carnelian muttered. For some reason, the site reminded him of the ruins of the Quyan city he had seen from the leftway on his way to Osrakum.

  The Tribe plodded on until the sun fell behind them, spindling their shadows off in the direction of their march. As the women of each hearth made a ring of blankets, the men cleared a great space among the brown and brittle ferns. They piled great armfuls of the stuff in the centre of the blanket rings and lit fierce fires. Carnelian saw Akaisha and others gazing off back the way they had come until it became too dark to see anything. It grew quickly cold. Carnelian huddled round their fire with the rest of his hearthmates as they all tried to recapture something of the comfort of their home. He sensed that much of the sombre mood was due to worry about the missing youths. As a djada rope was passed around, Fern produced the fish he had dug from the ground and buried it in a cooler corner of the fire. When it was cooked, he distributed pieces of its charred flesh, which were delicious. A waterskin came round from which sips were taken to help lubricate the chewing of the djada. Whin was telling a story about animals who spoke with human speech, in which her sisters and Akaisha had roles and the children joined in gleefully with the choruses.

  As the sky frosted with stars, they quietened so that Carnelian began to notice the muttering, a rare laugh drifting from the other hearths. People grew drowsy in the warm flicker of their fires.

  'We are so naked here,' Carnelian whispered to Fern.

  'Our mother trees are already far away,' said Sil.

  'And the tribute bearers and the children too,' said Whin.

  In the firelight Carnelian saw Fern looking over to Leaf, sleeping in her mother's arms, and drew Poppy to him and stroked her head encouraging her to sleep.

  Commotion broke suddenly around them. Carnelian leapt to his feet even as the whole Tribe did so, obscuring the light of their fires with their bodies, everyone jabbering.

  'Is it raveners?' he asked.

  'Silence,' cried Akaisha. Other Elders all across the camp could be heard echoing her cry. The people quietened, calmed. Carnelian could see vague shapes moving in the dark.

  'Riders,' Fern breathed.

  'We are returned,' said a voice in the night.

  Carnelian knew it was Ravan. Those who hoped their sons were returning to them began to call out the names of their hearths. It was a while before Akaisha began to speak her name into the darkness. The calls subsided and still she called: 'Akaisha, Akaisha.'

  A black mass looming up out of the night silenced her. It divided into the shapes of two riders. Their aquar knelt and two men dismounted. One was vast beside the other. Silence.

  'Make them welcome,' Akaisha hissed.

  At her command, Carnelian and the others moved round the fire so that its light poured out to illumine the figures. They strode in to close the ring and then sat down. They were offered djada and water.

  'It's good to have you back, son,' Akaisha said.

  When Ravan did not even turn to look at her, Fern grew incensed. 'Didn't you hear your mother?'

  The younger people were sneaking glances at each other. Whin was regarding the Master with unconcealed loathing. Akaisha was struggling for composure.

  It was Poppy who pointed out the shape standing watching them in the night.

  'Come forward,' said Whin.

  Moving into the light the shape revealed itself to be Krow.

  'Well?' Whin demanded.

  Krow's black hunter's face glanced at the Master for guidance but he seemed unaware of him.

  'Krow has nowhere else to go,' said Carnelian, at last.

  Akaisha found a smile for the youth. She beckoned. 'Join us.'

  Krow muttered his thanks to Akaisha and shot Carnelian a grateful look. After that, people spoke in whispers, giving the Master anxious glances, while he sat, a massive shadow gazing unblinking into the fire. Once he did look at Carnelian, who saw in his eyes fierce triumph.

  In the morning the Tribe flung the embers of their hearths into the wind. Where fire caught, smoke leapt quickly westwards. They turned their backs on the flames and trudged into the sepia east. The Master walked in their midst as if he were alone. Observing him, Carnelian feared what he might be feeling. He needed to probe him, but Osidian never spoke. What little he ate he passed through the folds of his uba so that only the pale mouth in the blackened face was revealed. His eyes seemed to have no more sight in them than glass. Poppy shunned him as if he were a stranger. Ravan served him like a slave so that his own people turned away, not wishing to see his humiliation. Krow might have been the Master's shadow.

  As the days passed, Carnelian gave up waiting for Osidian to speak. He strove to bear the weariness of the march as well as he saw the Elders and the children were doing. Still, each day was like a fever to which only the cool repose of night brought some relief.

  One day, feeling a tremor of thunder coming from the west, Carnelian asked Fern with eager delight whether it might be some rain.

  Fern's eyes peered out between the folds of his uba. There'll be no rain for several rebirths of the moon. Until then, the Withering will tighten its grasp on the land, relentlessly.'

  Carnelian waited for more, but Fern only said, 'I fear we may soon enough see what is following us with thunder.'

  Carnelian did not have the energy to pursue it. The sun was turning the world to molten gold. Their store of water was the very heart of their march. Over the first few days they had come across water-holes, puddles, which they drained down to the mud and even that they did not waste, but plastered it on the aquar to cool the burning in their hides. Eventually the land had nothing to offer them but dust.

  The thunder following them became a shuddering in the ground. Looking back, Carnelian saw a sandstorm bearing down on them. The Elders began shouting orders. The arc the Tribe made across the plain began coalescing around groups of Elders. The children huddling in beside them were walled in by the kneeling aquar. On the outside men swung their bull-roarers while women gathered stones.

  Carnelian stood with Osidian, Ravan and Krow on one side, Fern on the other whirling the blade of a bull-roarer around his head, dizzying Carnelian with its strobing, moaning cry. The women had built a cairn of stones in front of them. Sil pushed herself between Carnelian and Fern. She glanced back anxiously to see Leaf in Akaisha's arms. Poppy was there too. Carnelian gave her a smile and she returned it nervously. He turned back to watch the storm roll mountainously towards them.

  Their heads,' a voice screamed and many arms pointed up into the clouds that were billowing up and obscuring the sun.

  Carnelian looked and saw dark shapes floating high among the veils of dust, the necks that held them there, then emerging through the murk their chests and the column legs that were churning the earth.

  Carnelian fell back against Sil. 'Heaveners,' he gasped in fear and awe, as every eye was locked to the oncoming giants.

  'Such power,' exclaimed a voice in Quya. Looking out of the corner of his eyes Carnelian saw Osidian's, fierce and staring. But the shaking of the ground forced him to think about himself. He ignored the stones tumbling at his feet. He caught one glimpse of the nearest Ochre clump before all vision was blasted away by a tidal wave of grit.

  Madness took them all. Carnelian shouted and screamed with the rest as he cast stones up at the lumbering, sky-filling shapes. Cliffs of hide slid past on either side. Each footfall shook the ground. Grey with d
ust, the mouths of the Tribe choked and bellowed. Coughing mixed with screams and the rattle of stones glancing off hide. Then the heaveners were gone, rumbling away into the east. Carnelian sagged exhausted among the ashen crowd, feeling the thunder slowly recede even as the sand stopped hailing.

  People burst into song and laughter, with wonder at witnessing such sacred power and majesty; hugging and kissing each other in delight at their survival. Carnelian was pulled into a dance by Sil and Fern, tears smudging the dust around their eyes. It took Carnelian a while to notice Osidian emotionless, gazing off after the cloud-shrouded giants.

  They tramped eastwards along the wide roads driven through the dead fernland by the herds. Carnelian was grateful the load of djada he carried had been reduced by consumption, to match the depletion in his strength.

  One morning he saw, rising with the sun, mountains liquid blue in the dawn.

  'Drink deep of that sight, Carnie,' Fern said. Though we've still more than half our journey before us, it's a promise of cool air and crystal water.'

  Until the sun rose to its full fiery strength, the sight of the mountains was enough to put smiles back onto the dust-bleached faces of the Tribe. Soon the glare had turned the sky opaque so that it appeared the mountains had been nothing but a mirage.

  Often in the morning and in the quick dusk of evening, they could gaze with longing at the mountains that grew day by day more solid. At last the morning came when Akaisha promised her hearth they would soon be climbing up out of the burning plain. They chewed knotted djada, their eyes grit-reddened and weeping, but they made better speed drawn on by the sight of journey's end.

  The land began to fold, and here and there a leaf missed by the passing herds, or a still green fern crozier, gave them hope. They wound up into the hills along ever-steepening paths. The mountains formed a distant turquoise wall across the lower sky from which noisy rivers poured their colour down into the valleys.

  As the day was waning they reached a land of verdant valleys curled with delicious mist. They kept to the paths that wound around the slopes. In the valley bottoms, the ferny pastures were filled with the creatures of the plain.