‘But they’re not leaving us enough,’ someone said.
Carnelian nodded. He was trying to hold in his tears but they could see by the way the paint was smeared around his eyes that he had been crying. ‘It’s the Masters who’ve demanded it, and their needs are greater than ours.’ He felt the hollow betrayal in his words. Their heads sank as the fight went out of them. He almost let his pain out in a wail.
‘And you’ll be leaving us too, Carnie?’ asked Mari.
He could not bear to look at her. ‘Yes . . . yes, I must go with them,’ he looked up, said fiercely, ‘but before I go I promise I’ll do all I can.’
He stood up and rehid his face behind the golden mask. They made way for him. It was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other.
Carnelian went to the storerooms and saw that it was as they had said. Fish were being sealed into jars. Dried fowl were being baled in woven seaweed. The walls were blank with naked hooks, the shelves empty. He opened one of the stone flour bins and had to lean over to see its level. Behind him on the floor, stacked and packaged, was by far the greater part of what the room had held. The faces that had gathered at the door told the story. Children frightened by their mother’s looks. An old woman gnawing her hand. Even with rationing he knew she would not see another summer.
Carnelian pushed through them and stormed back through the kitchens, where lavish dishes were being prepared for their guests. The sight of all those riches patterning the plates made him rage. He stumbled into the shambles of the Great Hall. Among the columns there lay a clearing with its stumps. He walked into it. Most of the roof had come down. Capitals for so long hidden in the ceiling’s dusk showed their colours. It was already difficult to remember the way it had been.
Of the doors to the Long Court only the splintered wooden hinges remained. Beyond was another scene of devastation, like a view onto a battlefield where the camp women were despoiling the dead. He moved into the shadow of the archway. He watched the women shredding covers, blankets, clothing. The tattered ribbons they produced were being twisted into ropes. Others he saw with waxy faces, painting tar over the jewelled colours of the tapestries they themselves had woven. One woman paused to wipe her eyes with the back of the hand that held a brush. She scanned the pattern under her hand then with a jerk she turned it black.
Carnelian wanted to close his eyes, clap his hands over his ears. He passed through the arch and almost ran along the alleyway. The arcade had lost its roof, and its row of columns down one side. He ignored the women. He would not turn his head even as they cried out to him. When he reached the covered way it was as if he had found shade from blazing sun. He passed the Masters’ three doors, and at each guards fell to their knees upon the ridged floor. He ignored them, reached the steps, climbed them into sight of his father’s door. His own men stood to one side of it but on the other there was a contingent of Aurum’s yellow-faced guardsmen. All knelt. He bade one of his men announce him to the Master. The sea-ivory doors sounded as the man struck them. There was a mutter of voices. The man came back with a strange expression on his face. It took some moments for Carnelian to recognize it. Fear. The man was afraid of him. He fell before Carnelian and bowed his head. ‘The Master says he can’t see you’ – his head nodded – ‘my Master. When the time’s right he’ll send for you.’
Carnelian looked up at his father’s doors with hatred. He wished to throw them down. To erupt in among the gathered Masters. To drive them like vultures from the carcass of his home. To send them winging back across the sea to the vaunted glory of their roosts in Osrakum. But he could not. His father’s words lay across those doors like the seal on a tomb. His shoulders fell. The man was still there at his feet. He wanted to lift the fear from him. He put his hand out to touch him. Its shaking betrayed him. Carnelian snatched it back, turned and walked away.
The BLOOD-RING
Apotheosis transubstantiates the blood of the elected candidate into ichor. The fractions of this holy blood that run in the veins of the Chosen derive ultimately from consanguinity with a God Emperor. Blood-rings are worn as symbol and proof of this relation. Each ring is inscribed with a blood-taint that can be found tabulated in the Books of Blood. Entries will be found arranged according to the Houses. The blood-taint of an offspring is derived by averaging the blood-taints of its procreators.
(extract from a beadcord manual used in the training of the Wise)
CARNELIAN WENT TO SEEK SOLITUDE AMONG THE SUMMER PAVILIONS. The courtyards he crossed were empty, unmarred, familiar. He entered one of the pavilions where a blush of frost dulled the tiles. He wandered maskless, blowing his cloudy breath. He warmed a tile with a puff. Rubbed away the cold traceries to reveal the poppies beneath. He broke the pane of ice that filled the fountain bowl. He sat on a stone bench and recalled summers there but refused to indulge himself with tears.
At last he put on his mask and slipped back through the ruins, a shadow with a gleaming face. He passed scenes of torchlit industry that showed his world being destroyed. When he reached his room he closed the door and slumped back against it. The ache around his eyes had spread to make his face as stiff as the gold of his mask.
He waited, blinded by the flames. Tain came at last. They saw each other’s pain. Before Tain had a chance to say anything, Carnelian sent him off to find Keal, and they came back together.
Carnelian looked at Keal. ‘You look drained.’
Keal was sure Carnelian looked worse than he did, but he just nodded. ‘I’ve been overseeing our work on the ship.’ He hung his head. ‘It’s a nasty business.’
‘Our stores?’
He looked up. ‘That as well, but I was thinking of the ship. It’s strange to wander in the warrens beneath her decks. You can feel the floor moving under your feet and hear her creaking all round you. It’s brought back memories of coming here . . . when I was a child. And locked away in her sunless depths,’ his frown creased the head of his chameleon tattoo, ‘there are men, or something like men.’ He shook his head, as if he were trying to dislodge the image in his mind. ‘There was only enough light to make out the merest outlines, but they were there all right, you could smell them.’
‘Sartlar,’ said Carnelian.
Tain’s eyes opened wide. ‘They brought those monsters here?’
‘Not monsters, Tain, half-men. Don’t judge them too harshly. If it wasn’t for them the Commonwealth’d starve. They work all her fields. Their labour is used everywhere by the Masters. They’re not monsters but beasts of burden.’
‘Monsters or not, I pity them there in that ship,’ said Keal.
Carnelian looked at him. He imagined living out his life in the belly of the black ship, and he grimaced. ‘You’ve been to see the Master?’
Keal nodded. ‘He and the visiting Master, the gigantic one, check on everything we do. Grane reports back to them about the work in the Hold and I tell them about the ship.’
‘Work . . . ?’ snorted Tain.
They both looked round at him.
‘When will she be ready, Keal?’ said Carnelian.
‘Three days, maybe four.’
‘Who’s to go?’
Keal glanced at Tain. He began to list the names of guardsmen. Carnelian nodded at each name, considering the choices, asking questions. He stopped his brother when he began to list those not of the tyadra. ‘You’ve not spoken your name, Keal.’
‘I’m to go, and as commander. Grane’s to remain here in the Master’s place.’
‘You don’t seem overjoyed by your promotion.’
‘I feel the honour, Carnie, really I do. It’s just . . .’
‘I know.’
‘We’re leaving them to die,’ said Keal, close to tears. Tain’s eyes were already wet. Carnelian would not allow himself to share their despair.
‘Come, let’s not give up yet. I’ve brought you here, Keal, to ask you if you’d do something for me.’
‘Anything.’
‘You’ve a
ccess to the Master.’
Keal paled.
‘Are the other Masters always with him?’
‘Not all of them, just the terrible giant.’
‘He frightens me as well, Keal, but if I’m to do anything I must speak with the Master. Will you ask him if he’ll give me audience?’
‘You ask when you could command.’
‘There’ll be no commanding between us.’
‘Of course I’ll do it, but don’t count on it, Carnie. The Master’s been stony since they came.’
While they waited, Carnelian had Tain clean off his bodypaint. He was ready when Keal came back to say that the Master would see him. Keal had brought an escort with him.
As Carnelian walked through the Hold with Keal, he prepared in his mind what he would say. Along the length of the Long Court he looked straight ahead. He knew his father did not appreciate fevered argument. He must stay calm.
When they reached the sea-ivory door, Carnelian was relieved that only men of their tyadra stood outside. He squeezed Keal’s arm. The doors opened before him and he went in.
‘Perhaps you could help me choose which of these to take, Carnelian,’ said Suth. He held up a folding-screen book whose binding was twisted with jewels. Many more books glimmered on the table beside him.
Reluctantly, Carnelian picked one up, smoother than skin, eyed with leather-lidded watery tourmalines. With care, he opened the first panel. Tracing his finger down the parchment, he unravelled the first two pictures into words.
‘Books are doors,’ his father muttered.
‘And the glyphs are the keys that open them,’ said Carnelian.
His father smiled at him. ‘You remember that . . .?’ His eyes fell again on the book he held, then looked up. ‘Do you remember the lessons we had here?’
In this hall, his father had taught him the art of reading, and guided his hand as he scribbled his first thoughts on parchment with wavering lines.
‘Thoughts are like butterflies,’ he said.
‘Take care when capturing them lest you crush their wings,’ his father responded. ‘You know, it was necessity that drove me.’ He shook his head. ‘A Ruling Lord . . . teaching a child his glyphs . . .’
‘And the crabbed, lifeless merchants’ script . . .’
‘. . . with which they trap wealth in their ledgers.’ His father’s lips always curled when he spoke of the merchants. Like all Masters he found commerce distasteful.
‘But wealth is power . . .’ said Carnelian.
‘It is a fool who covets wealth, but he also is a fool who discards the way to power,’ his father said. He saw Carnelian’s expression. ‘Have I said that many times?’
‘I have it by heart. You showed me that my hands could’ speak. The last word was a sign. Fingers are the lips and tongue of the silent speech. Their poetry of movement betrays the emotion behind the words. The words themselves are spoken without breath or sound by forming signs.
‘You have a strong, clear hand.’
His father lifted up a book paler than his skin though not as radiant. ‘As we have travelled together through these, so shall we travel through the greater world of which they are only impressions.’
‘But what shall we be leaving behind, my Lord?’ asked Carnelian.
‘Famine,’ his father replied. His lips compressed to a line.
‘Is there no way, my Lord, we might ameliorate its harshness by reducing the amount that is taken by the baran?’
‘Everything that can be done, my Lord, has been done.’ Suth watched his son’s face harden with pain. ‘You will have to face the situation as it is. The sharper blade leaves cleaner wounds.’
‘Will the baran not accommodate more of our people? It is so large.’
His father shook his head. ‘For all her bulk it really has very little space, Carnelian.’
‘But the children, the elderly.’
‘The voyage would be as dangerous for them as staying here.’
‘Father, are you not desolated by such loss?’
The marble of his father’s skin was stained around the eyes. ‘When we came here this place was a perfect mirror to my mood. That first winter was terrible. Many died. When they did not think I heard them, our people whispered that I had brought them across the black water to the Isle of the Dead. I think I almost shared their belief. As bleak and colourless as the Underworld is said to be, this island was worse. Perhaps if you had not been there swaddled in Ebeny’s arms I might have let it remain always so. For your sake I let the household work upon the Hold. So far from Osrakum my hopes were ailing and wont to die. And yet in the years that have passed this desolation has become my home. It sits deep in my affection, perhaps more even than our palaces in Osrakum, of which all this’ – he curved his arms out and round as if he were embracing the Hold – ‘is not even a reflection in dull brass.’ His father shook his head again. ‘If my memory gives me true recollection.’ He frowned and muttered, ‘Sometimes that other life I had seems an impossible dream. Strange transformations have come upon me in this shrinking compass of my world. You know, my son, I have played roles that not even a Lord of the Lesser Chosen would stoop to. I have been brought closer to our barbarian children than I would have thought possible. So, in spite of all I am, all I know and all that I have been taught to feel, I must say, yes, I am desolated by this loss.’
They looked at each other, drawing a pale comfort from sharing their misery.
‘Will Crail go with us?’ asked Carnelian.
His father nodded.
‘Tain?’
Another nod.
‘And Ebeny?’
‘She has asked not to go and I will not command her.’
Carnelian considered this. She was more mother to him than nurse and, besides, his father’s favoured concubine. He knew his father had feelings for her. ‘I shall speak to her myself.’
‘As you wish,’ his father said and there was something like hope in his eyes. ‘Now let us return to the problem of selecting which of these worlds we shall take as an accompaniment to our journey.’
Carnelian turned to the books. He looked sidelong at his father. The beautiful, tired face seemed intent upon the jewelled oblongs. A wave of dread washed its ice over Carnelian. His father was powerless. The Master, powerless. The Hold seemed suddenly precarious, as if a single wave might wash it into the sea.
That night, Carnelian slept hardly at all. Tain was having difficulty too. They played dice so as not to have to talk. They both played badly. Neither dared confess his dreams.
With first light Carnelian woke. He had left the shutters open just a chink and set a table against them to keep them from flying open. A thin light slipped into the room. Tain had turned away from it. In the corner, his blankets held him in their tight knot. Carnelian lay for a moment thinking. Noise carried up from the ship. Hammering. Voices. He rose and woke Tain to help him dress in his Master’s robes.
From the alleyway, the Long Court looked like the carcass of one of the sea monsters that sometimes washed up in the bay that the gulls soon turned into a basket of bones. The remains of his home stood as stark against the colourless sky.
There was a sickening smell. Cauldrons had been set up from which palls of steam were spiralling into the air. Beyond, the cobbles were red with slaughter. Dread drew Carnelian to look closer. One cauldron was filled with bird-like heads and three-fingered hands jiggling in the boil. The long narrow saurian heads quivered white-eyed on pillows of pink-brown scum. He looked across to where they were skinning them, hacking the flesh free from the bones. Red hunks were being wrapped in leaves, and pushed into jars, and the spaces between were packed with icicles. Carnelian was horrified. He surveyed everything with pain-ringed eyes. All around him the mottled bodies lay, their gashed necks bleeding puddles over the stone, their arms and legs and tails curled stiff. This flock had been one of their chief treasures, the only source of eggs. He had loved to feed them from his hand. He recalled their b
ustle and their chatter.
He snatched at someone walking past. ‘This was done for the meat?’
The man was all fear. He tried to fall to his knees but Carnelian held him up by one shoulder. ‘And for glue, Master.’ The man pointed crookedly at another of the cauldrons.
Carnelian let him go and went to look. Bones, and skin, the few feathers, all boiling up in a thick translucent broth. He recoiled from the stench. Through the steam he could see parchment laid out on the ground being glued up into sails.
He turned away, disgusted. Once more he plunged past the visitors’ doors and onwards, but before he reached his father’s steps he turned right. A small door gave onto a passage lit by a slit in the end wall. Once this had been his way to and from the Hold. It led to his old room overlooking the sea. Ebeny would be there. She had always been there.
He rapped on the door in the special way so that she would know it was him, then opened it gently. The room was large, frescoed with squid-headed ammonites and saurians with paddle limbs. The floor was scented greywood. This was his room. It would always be his room. Her room was off to the left. He took off his shoes to feel the whorls of the greywood with his toes. He unmasked and drank in the smell of the place. He walked across to the window. Through its panes of cuttlefish cartilage he could see the sea and the familiar curve of the bay. He frowned when he saw the ship there, sucking onto the quay like a slug.
She called out. He went through the doorway. ‘Carnie, it is you.’ Her brown, chameleoned face was filled by her bright smiling eyes. She stood up. She was less than half his height and had been beautiful. With a pang he remembered something his father had said about a barbarian’s beauty being but a spring flower and quick to wither. He went forward and knelt before her.
‘Come, come. You mustn’t kneel to me, and certainly not in your Master’s robes.’
He stiffened, stood up and moved to sit on a low stool beside her.
Ebeny looked at him, her eyes large and round. She reached out and touched the samite of his robe. ‘You carry it well, Carnie.’
The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Page 6