The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon)

by Ricardo Pinto

  He blushed.

  ‘You’re upset.’

  ‘They have slaughtered the laying flock.’

  Her lips pressed together, then she forced them into a smile. ‘There’s been much destroyed. But you can’t make mosaic without breaking stone.’

  ‘If it were only the stones of the Hold.’

  She nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘And yet you won’t come with us?’

  ‘The Master told you?’

  ‘Why won’t you come?’

  ‘Because, little one, I’m too old to travel on that sea.’ She waved her tiny hand vaguely. It was the colour of sun-dried leaves and marked with the green of a childgatherer’s tattoos. Those tattoos had been among the first glyphs he had ever read. Eight Nuhuron. The God Emperor’s name and the reign year when she had been compelled to come to Osrakum as part of that year’s flesh tithe. He reached out, took it, covered the tattoos. Her hands were always warm.

  ‘You are not so very old.’

  She gave him a quizzical look. ‘But I am so very afraid of the sea.’

  He laughed, too loudly. ‘You? When have you ever feared anything? You don’t even fear the Master.’

  ‘But still I’ll not go. Your father came here before you and I gave him the same answer.’

  He almost asked her what encouragements Suth had offered, what threats, but he did not. She had never broken his father’s confidences.

  ‘What’s the real reason you won’t come with us?’

  She lifted up his chin and looked into his eyes. ‘What I have become here, I cannot be in the Mountain. There, I will be nothing but a faded concubine to be thrown away like a worn shoe.’ She made a throwing gesture. ‘Would you hasten me to that?’

  ‘My father’ll protect you.’

  ‘Even he must bow to the customs of your House. No. The journey’ll be hard and your father’s been long away. There might be problems and I don’t want to be a burden to him.’

  He drew her hand to his lips. ‘But I might never see you again.’

  ‘Fie,’ she cried. ‘It’ll take a lot more than a little famine to rid you of me.’

  He laughed though his eyes were filling with tears. He leant forward again. The coral pins of his robe rasped along the floor. He nestled his head into her lap. ‘I can’t leave you behind,’ he mumbled into her thigh.

  She ran her hand through his hair like a comb. ‘Sush, sush, little one. You must do your duty to your father and your blood. You’re a Master and can’t allow yourself to get upset over an old barbarian woman.’ She lifted his face up with both her hands. ‘Do you remember when your father took you and Tain from me to live with the tyadra?’

  He nodded his head in her hands.

  ‘Then you were leaving me to become a man. Now you’ll leave me to go off and become a Master, one of the Skyborn. Would you waste your life out here so far from the centre of the world?’

  He stood up. While she adjusted the stiff folds of his robe, he looked around her room, a room of treasures. He counted the plain waxed chests where she kept her robes and the ochre blankets that she made herself with their blue embroidery. He still slept with the blankets she had made for him though he had far finer. Even in the depths of winter something of the summer seemed to linger in their folds.

  He turned round to look down at her. ‘Will you give me one of your blankets to take with me?’

  ‘You’ve several already.’

  ‘But they’ve lost their smell of this room . . . of you.’

  She smiled and kissed him and together they chose one. She pressed it into his hands. It was dull and crude against the beauty of his Master’s robe. He pressed his nose into the blanket and breathed in. It gave him a chance to wipe away the tears. ‘This’ll do, old woman.’ Once she would have boxed his ears. He realized now that even if she had wanted to she could not reach. He lifted her in his arms and kissed her neck. He left it wet with more tears. She was crying too. He put her down.

  He made to leave but then her hand clasped his. ‘Will you do something for me, Carnie?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Take care of my Tain.’

  Tain was her youngest child. Carnelian nodded. ‘I swear on my blood, Ebeny, that I’ll keep him by me and look out for him as best I can. Have you forgotten Keal?’

  ‘He’s a man now. He can take care of himself. One last thing.’ She reached her hands behind her neck. They undid a thong and drew an amulet out from her robe.

  ‘Your Little Mother?’ Carnelian looked at her uncertainly.

  She held it out for him. ‘Wear her for me.’

  ‘But she’s all you’ve left of your mother.’

  ‘As she gave her to me, now I give her to you.’

  ‘Why do you not give her to Tain, Keal, one of your sons?’

  ‘Tish! You’re as much my son as they are. Besides, if she protects you, you’ll be able to take care of my boys. Take her. She has power over water.’

  ‘My father will disapprove of her.’

  ‘Well then, wear her where he won’t see her.’

  Ebeny kissed the Little Mother and put it in his hand. The carved stone was all belly and breasts with stump limbs and head. Carnelian closed his fingers over her.

  The next day he went off into the pavilions but found no solace. He climbed up into the East Tower to survey the leaden sea. There, where he had first seen the ship, he spat curses into the wind that she had ever come. He longed for the old comforts, the old certainties. Yet, although he tried to deny it, Osrakum was drawing him with her siren call.

  Masked, he returned to the pillage to see it all: the fallen halls, the gaping windows, the blood-rusted cobbles. He went out from the Holdgate and stood against the parapet. Handcarts creaked down to the ship, his people strained under barrels and boxes. He wanted to rail at them that they were collaborating with their own rape. The compulsion froze him to that spot for fear of what he might do. The ship became the entire focus of his vision. She wallowed down there, gorging herself on the general misery.

  At some point he became aware of an ache in his knees. He looked down. Brackish water had soaked up from the hem of his samite robe. The silk was discoloured, spoilt. He remembered what Grane had said. His people had had shame enough. As he turned away the robe swung against his legs like an apron of lead.

  He went back to his room. He lit neither fire nor lamp but chose to brood in the blackness, his robes and mask discarded, staring sightless, letting the misery torrent through him.

  When Tain crept into the room, he raked the ashes but there was no glow left to find. He fumbled for a lantern that they kept in a corner. It fluttered into life. He jumped back startled. Carnelian was sitting cross-legged, black eyes narrowed against the glare.

  ‘I’ll not go,’ Tain cried at his ghostly brother. ‘I’ll not leave my mother here, nor all the others. I’d rather die with them.’

  Through the glare Carnelian could vaguely see that Tain’s eyes were red and swollen. ‘If I go, you’ll go,’ he said. He had neither love nor energy left to put any caring in his voice.

  Tain stared at him blankly for a while and then ran away. Carnelian felt nothing. It was as if the winter had numbed him to the heart.

  Later, a blindman brought him a casket of leather, ribbed and water-stained, which he put into Carnelian’s hands. ‘The Master bade me tell his son that he should attend him in his hall attired in the robe that has now been given to him.’

  Carnelian asked him to leave one of his escort behind and then sent the man off to find Tain. When he looked round, the blindman had gone. Carnelian took the casket near the window to look at it. Outside, the twilight seemed to be sucking its darkening up from the sea.

  When Tain arrived, Carnelian had already pulled the cloth out from the casket. It was the colour of spring leaves. It did not seem a robe at all, even though it had the hollow tubes for arms. The central band was plainly woven silk. The edges were brocaded in panels and fringed with eye
s and hooks of copper. Carnelian ran his fingers over one of the panels. He peered close, feeling the beads. Rows of them. Jade, minutely carved.

  Carnelian heard the door closing. He looked up and saw Tain’s sullen face. His brother stared back at him. Neither spoke during the cleaning. At first they tried to put the robe on so that the panels were to the front. With much cursing they found that only when they put them to his back could Carnelian put his arms into the sleeves. Tain hooked the robe closed from top to bottom. It fitted well enough, though it was not sufficiently thick to keep out the cold. Carnelian did not allow his body to shiver. He took his mask from Tain’s hands and put it on. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  ‘As the Master commands,’ Tain said, a cold fire in his eyes.

  Carnelian had finally made up his mind. The destruction he saw everywhere strengthened his resolution. He reminded himself of the empty storerooms and the gluttony of the ship. He catalogued all the desperate looks he had seen on the faces of his people. But when he reached his father’s door all he felt was the shivering cold.

  Through the doors he saw a huge shape standing before the fire. It lifted up a hand in a sign of welcome. Carnelian crossed the floor to it. Its face was a shadow.

  ‘The Ruling Lord Aurum has brought you this,’ said his father’s voice.

  The mass of his body swung round and Carnelian could see the hand held out in the firelight. He approached it. On the palm there was something like a hole. He reached out and took it. It was hard and warm. A ring of iron. A blood-ring that entitled him to cast votes in the elections of the Masters. He turned it in the firelight. Around the band’s edge were the raised glyphs for his names and the spots and bars of numbers.

  ‘He was given it by the Wise who had it set aside for you.’ He gave his son a tender look that Carnelian did not see. The ring had him wholly in its spell. Its symbols were in mirrored form so that it could be used as a seal with both ink and wax. The eleven numbers confirmed the fractional tainting of his blood. He knew that it should be put on the smallest finger of the right hand. As the right hand signified the world of light so its smallest finger signified purity. It was too big.

  ‘There is no time for proper ritual. Even the preliminaries take many days. But there is much that is not essential. It is the Examination and the Rite of Blood that are the very nub and core of it.’

  Carnelian looked up warmly at his father, then froze when he saw Aurum’s face floating beyond his father’s shoulder. Turning round he saw that Vennel was there too, his pupils the merest spots, and Jaspar with his idolic smile. Carnelian felt betrayed, as if his father had led him into an ambush.

  Suth saw the change come across his son’s face and said quickly, ‘Witnesses are essential.’

  The Masters circled Carnelian like sleek predators.

  ‘Shall we begin?’ said Aurum. His voice reverberated round the chamber. ‘Lord Jaspar, it might please you to read the rings.’

  Jaspar gave a little bow and accepted something from Aurum’s hand.

  ‘The blood-rings of the Lord Suth and of his Lady wife, now long expired,’ said Aurum. He turned to Vennel. ‘Perhaps, my Lord, you would care to read the scars.’

  ‘My hands do not have the seeing of the Wise.’

  ‘Nevertheless, my Lord, we wish to be certain of impartiality, is that not so?’

  ‘Oh, very well!’

  Vennel began to move round behind Carnelian who, alarmed, turned to keep the Master in sight.

  ‘Keep still, my son,’ his father said.

  Carnelian stopped turning and felt Vennel come up behind him.

  ‘The robe must be opened for your taint scars to be read as proof of your parentage.’

  Carnelian fought a grimace as he felt the robe begin to slip off as Vennel undid the hooks down his back. He hunched his shoulders so that the robe would not fall to the ground.

  ‘Exquisite,’ he heard Jaspar say.

  He closed his eyes. His perception was all in the skin of his back. He could not suppress a shudder when he felt Vennel’s hands on him. Fingers sliding down the right of his spine, feeling the bumps and ridges that had been put there by the Wise at his birth, with a scarring comb.

  ‘Zero, zero . . . three, aaah . . .’ Vennel was reading out his father’s blood-taint, ‘fifteen, ahhm . . . nineteen, another fifteen . . . ten . . . two, no, three, now two, a final ten.’

  ‘Is that what is inscribed on Lord Suth’s ring?’ asked Aurum.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Jaspar.

  Carnelian felt the fingers lift away. He waited, grimacing. Vennel’s hand was there again, to the left of his spine.

  ‘Zero, zero, zero, two, one . . . three . . . nineteen, aaah . . . nine, six . . . teen, aaah . . . seventeen and a final . . . ten.’

  The eleven fractions of his mother’s taint.

  ‘Confirmed,’ said Jaspar.

  ‘You can do the boy up, Vennel.’

  ‘I certainly shall not. Am I now to become a body slave?’

  ‘I will do it, my Lords,’ said Suth.

  Carnelian’s shoulder was squeezed and the robe quickly hooked up. He turned and glared at the other Masters. Vennel was rubbing his hands as if he had touched something unclean. Jaspar was smiling. Aurum was as impassive as marble.

  ‘The Rite of Blood,’ he said.

  He came towards him until Carnelian was enveloped in his odour of lilies. He held out a vast leaf of a hand. An oval bowl lay along the palm, of jade so thin it might have been water.

  ‘This is the edge of the night,’ intoned his father. Carnelian saw that his left hand held a razor of obsidian like a mussel shell. It sliced into the palm of his other hand. The cut beaded blood all along its length. The bowl in Aurum’s hand was there to catch each drop.

  ‘Thou art my son, dewed from my flesh, Chosen. The ichor of the Two will burn thy veins; the same that once gushed from the Turtle’s rending.’ His father dipped his finger in the bowl. ‘With this fire I anoint thee. In the names of He-whose-face-is-spiralling-jade.’ He daubed a vertical stroke upon Carnelian’s forehead. ‘In the unspoken names of He-whose-face-is-the-mirror-in-the-night.’ Dipping his finger once more, his father applied a second stroke beside the first.

  Then Aurum’s hand offered Carnelian the bowl. He stared at it, not knowing what it was he was supposed to do.

  ‘Drink now thy father’s blood that its fire might ignite thine to its own . . . fierce . . . burning,’ said Aurum.

  When Carnelian took the bowl he could not avoid touching the Master’s stone skin. He looked up at his face. It seemed fashioned from dead bone with only two points of living light. Carnelian resisted its menace and drained the bowl with a single gulp, grimacing at the metal taste.

  ‘On this day thou art come of age,’ his father said.

  ‘Truly thou art chosen a Lord of the Hidden Land,’ the others chanted, then they glimmered away like a tide on a moonless night leaving Carnelian angry, amazed, uneasy that he was now fully one of them.

  ‘Soon the fire will begin its burning in your veins,’ sang Vennel.

  ‘Some days it will course like naphtha in a flame-pipe,’ Aurum growled.

  ‘It is one of the myriad burdens that we bear,’ said Jaspar.

  ‘The price that must be paid for near divinity,’ said Aurum.

  ‘Nothing is without cost,’ said Vennel.

  Suth allowed his hand to brush Carnelian’s. ‘Yet, for many years, I have felt no burning.’

  ‘How so?’ said Vennel, his eyes frost.

  Suth shrugged. ‘Perhaps so far from its source its vigour fades.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Aurum. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Tell me, my Lord Suth . . .’ said Vennel.

  Suth raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Why did you have us perform this ritual here and now?’

  ‘My son was past his time, and we had the ring here . . .’

  ‘Aaah, the ring. My Lord Aurum was so thoughtful to remember to bring the ring. But s
till, are you sure that the Wise will consider it valid?’

  ‘The ritual had my Lords as witness,’ said Suth.

  ‘Are we qualified?’

  ‘Our journey will be perilous. The awakening of his blood might afford my son some protection.’

  Vennel nodded sagely. ‘I see. And I suppose this coming of age could have nothing to do with the fact that the Lord Carnelian is now entitled to cast his twenty votes.’

  ‘I do not entirely comprehend your meaning, my Lord.’

  ‘My meaning, Great Lord, is that with your son and one other of us,’ he glanced at Aurum, ‘you can henceforth determine every decision that we make in formal conclave.’

  ‘That presupposes that my son will always choose to vote with me.’

  ‘My Lord,’ Carnelian said. His stomach knotted when his father turned towards him. ‘My Lord, this conflict is unnecessary since I have decided that I shall stay with our household and follow after. It is for the best. I could be nothing but an encumbrance to you.’

  His father’s face hardened. He turned to the others. ‘Great Lords, it would seem that I have need to talk with my son. It would be unforgivable that we should presume so much upon your patience, my Lords, as to expect you to stand by while we resolve a matter internal to our House. The baran is ready now. If the wind be not against us we shall depart on the morrow. I am sure my Lords must have numerous arrangements to make.’

  Vennel looked amused. Jaspar looked uncharacteristically serious. He stepped forward. ‘Lord Suth, your rings.’ Carnelian watched his father take them.

  ‘Perhaps, Sardian, I should stay,’ said Aurum, his eyes like evening sky.

  Carnelian stared, startled by the use of his father’s personal name.

  ‘I would rather you did not, my Lord.’ He was threading his blood-ring back onto his finger.

  Aurum stood for a moment, then turned away. He and the other Masters drifted off towards the door like tall ships. Carnelian watched them to put off facing his father’s anger. He could feel it beating upon his back like a scorching wind. The last of the Masters disappeared through the door. It closed.

  Round the circuit of the chamber the shutters rattled. Twigs snapped in the fire and jiggled up a spray of sparks. Carnelian’s forehead itched. He was determined to brave the heat of his father’s fury. He turned. His father’s face seemed cut from polished stone.