The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon)

by Ricardo Pinto

  With a jerk he snatched his thoughts back into the cabin. His body was shaking. His body was levelling. The floor was bringing his head up. He pressed back against it. He ground his teeth, then gave a gasp as the ship began to fall. Down, the angle so steep he had to brace his feet against the bulkhead. Down. Down into the well until he was almost standing on the bulkhead. He tried to smother his fear with memories. The Hold. He thought of the Hold. Of Ebeny. Her gift. The Little Mother was there against his chest. He clutched her for warmth but the stone stayed cold. We are the lucky ones, he told himself. At least we have food. He squeezed the Little Mother. In truth, he envied those left behind their solid ground far from the abyss. The abyss. He scrunched up his ears in his hands to shut out the baying of the wind. Then before he could use his fingers as a muzzle, the scream came up from his stomach and he vomited it out.

  Endless night. Swimming in a coruscating sea of dreams. Sometimes, when he came up for breath, he surfaced in the cabin, each time with surprise. The silver box was the tearful eye of the moon. He would smother its light in his hand, dip his fingers in, let the others drink, then dive back. There was no him, there was no where, there was no passing time, his unblinking eyes saw only the endless undulating vision of now.

  STORMS at SEA

  Down the dark roads of the sea

  We fled

  Before a driving squall

  (extract from ‘The Voyage of the Suncutter’)

  SHARP GULL CRIES SUPERIMPOSING OVER EACH OTHER LIKE THEIR ANGLES in the sky. Not gulls, men jabbering. A shout. Answers spaced by distance. Carnelian felt heavy, muffled by the dark. Stillness. No, his body was nudging up and down. It was as if he lay on someone’s breathing chest. He did not open his eyes. He knew that he would see nothing. His limbs had been replaced by new ones cast in lead. His head was a stone. Something was different. It was the voices alone that defined space. He searched for the difference. The tempest. His hearing went out past the voices. The tempest was not there. Under him the ship seemed almost still. Unbelievably, she had survived his dreams.

  When he decided to rise he found that every hinge in his body had seized up. He propped himself onto his legs and drew them together like a pair of compasses. He tottered on his feet. No amount of fumbling would find the lantern. His fingers tried to locate the door, the cabin’s shape forgotten. He opened it gingerly and let in the merest crack of dazzling light. It was like water to a thirsty man. He opened the door wider and sprayed the dazzle across half the cabin. The sheer beauty of it left him gasping for breath.

  He found the lantern and lit it. It ignited into a sun. He smiled through his squint and looked around. Tain was there like a bone carving abandoned in a wrapping of blankets. He stooped and carefully woke him. He gave him time. He watched the life seep back into the little face. There was something unfamiliar about his brother, but what? He turned to Crail. His skin looked empty, as if the old man had squeezed out of it and left it behind.

  A while later Tain was sitting up and Carnelian was staring at him. Carnelian’s first attempts at speech sighed away to nothing. He swallowed several times and waited for his tongue to be wet enough to move. ‘You’re . . . so thin,’ he managed to rasp. Tain looked up at him. Carnelian saw that his brother had aged. His face had narrowed. His eyes seemed huge. They grew larger. He tried to speak but managed only a croak. His thin arm rose and pointed shakily at Carnelian. He nodded several times. Carnelian took his meaning and reached up. He stopped when he saw a stranger’s bony hands. He put them to his face. It felt like someone else’s.

  ‘You’d better get me cleaned up,’ he croaked. ‘I want to go . . .’ He jerked his finger up at the ceiling.

  They went through the cleansing like old men. The pads were so cold. The smell of the unguent pricked their noses.

  Tain’s hand brushed the stone dangling at his chest. He peered at it, looked up. ‘My mother?’

  Carnelian blinked down. ‘She . . . for us . . . protection for all of us.’

  As they continued with the cleaning Carnelian felt some strength returning. ‘Like butterfly birth . . . uncrumpling its wings.’ He chuckled. He almost asked Tain to shave his head but thought better of it. Tain’s hand looked none too steady as he unpacked some clean clothes. Putting them on was a long, exhausting process. At last Carnelian edged into his cloak. He adjusted his face into his mask. It felt very loose. He turned to Tain. ‘Do you want to come with me?’

  Tain shook his head. ‘May be . . . later.’ He slumped to the floor.

  Carnelian stepped out into the corridor as if his feet were raw with blisters. His body still felt as if it might shake itself apart. Each step up to the deck was an effort. His eyes were almost closed against the glare. He reached the deck and stood for a few moments getting used to the rolling and the light. He looked round. His head was as stiff as an old door. Sea and sky were calm and grey. A breeze threatened to push him over. He closed his eyes and sucked its saltiness through the nostrils of his mask. He almost swooned, as much from delight as from the burn in his lungs.

  He took some steps away from the funnel, round one of the brass posts, and leaned against the mast. He looked at his unfamiliar bony hand and recognised the colours under it. It was sad to see them there. A fragment of his old life: a column from the Hold’s Great Hall. He caressed it.

  ‘Carnelian.’

  The voice carried across the deck. Carnelian looked for its source. He saw a pitchy mass against the sky. It was Aurum unmasked, his face outshining everything else, like a hole into a world of light.

  The Master lifted his hand, Greetings.

  Carnelian responded, struggling with his fingers to make the sign.

  Lord Aurum’s black mass swept towards him. His face was glazed with white paint. Suddenly he stiffened, shooting his eyes’ misty stare past Carnelian’s shoulder. The menace was so palpable that Carnelian took some steps back. Something grabbed him round the waist. He folded forward, almost falling. He looked down. It was Crail, haggard, confused, blinking, his arm up to ward off the glare.

  Carnelian turned back in time to see Aurum’s whitened lips bending into an unpleasant smile. Bone fingers were drawing his mask out from his robe. With one smooth languid movement he put it on. The cruel gold face drifted towards them. Aurum’s shadow falling across Crail allowed the old man to drop his arm. His eyes cleared. Then he saw the Master and jumped.

  Aurum’s mask looked down at the old man, who crumpled to his knees.

  ‘Unfortunate creature,’ said the Master in Vulgate. ‘It’s too late for that.’ He looked at Carnelian. ‘The creature saw my face unmasked,’ he said in Quya.

  Carnelian stared with horror at the Master’s mask. In its exquisite polished surface he saw his own mask, the ship and all the world were trapped in reflection. ‘The slave could not have seen your face, my Lord, he was dazzled.’

  ‘It was looking straight at me.’

  ‘But you must have seen, my Lord, that he was shielding his eyes. It was your own shadow that allowed him to see.’

  ‘Sophistry. Is the slave blind?’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘Then he has broken the Law of Concealment.’

  ‘But it was not his intention . . .’

  ‘Do you really think the creature’s intentions form any part of the Law?’

  ‘But the slave is weak, delirious. He suffers still from the after-effects of the poppy.’

  ‘Who gave the slave poppy?’

  ‘Well, I did . . .’

  ‘You see the result?’

  ‘The fault is mine, my Lord.’

  ‘Assuredly that is so, but of course it is the slave that shall be punished.’

  ‘Be merciful, my Lord. He is weak. The blinding would surely kill him.’

  ‘Do you deliberately belittle me?’

  ‘What? I am sorry . . . I do not understand.’

  ‘Even you must know that as a Ruling Lord of the Great my prerogative is the second Order of Concealment
. The Category of Punishment is thus also the second and not the first.’

  Carnelian closed his eyes, then opened them quickly when he started to feel dizzy.

  ‘Not only blinding but mutilation shall be this creature’s fate.’

  Carnelian looked down at Crail, feeling nausea. He coughed. ‘He is old . . . witless. Lord Aurum, please show mercy.’

  ‘Neither its age nor its wits are pertinent, but only its sin. Even if I wished to do so it is not for me to show clemency. The Law is precise. It does not concern itself with mercy. You have been careless, Carnelian. Suth Sardian has shown too much licence and this is the result. You should take this as a salutary lesson. Thank the Twins that your life in Osrakum will not be what it has been.’ The mask looked down at Crail. ‘Let us forgo the formalities of the proper punishment. I shall summon my guards and they shall dispose of the creature here and now.’

  Carnelian was close to retching. He used his anger to keep it down. ‘If you insist on pursuing this matter of the Law to the full, then I must insist that the forms be adhered to. This slave is mine and thus his punishment is my affair not yours.’

  Aurum straightened. He loomed over Carnelian. ‘So be it. At least for now.’ A strange dry sound came from his mask. Carnelian drew back. Aurum was laughing. It seemed the most dreadful thing of all. The Master lifted one of his huge hands and locked it round Carnelian’s arm. ‘Truly you are your father’s son.’ He laughed again. Then the golden mirror of his face came down close to Carnelian’s. ‘However, it would irk me if I were to find that my Lord had forgotten the creature’s sin. My Lord will not forget, will he?’

  Carnelian saw his own serene reflection looking back.

  ‘Punish the creature, Carnelian. If you do not have the stomach for the blinding and the amputation then give it to the sea. What loss will it be to you? Replace it in whatever function it performs with a younger creature.’ Aurum nudged Crail with his foot. ‘It is long past its best use. Aaagh! It fouls the deck.’ He wiped his foot on Crail’s back, released Carnelian’s shoulder, then walked away.

  Carnelian stood there with Crail at his feet until all his anger shook away and nothing was left but a paralysing chill.

  Carnelian took Crail back to the cabin. Tain and he cleaned him up. Then he made the old man lie on the bunk and sat with him stroking his forehead until he fell asleep. He told Tain that in no circumstances should Crail be allowed to leave the cabin. Tain nodded and Carnelian went off to find his father. When he knocked on his father’s door a blinded slave opened it. He said that the Master had gone up on deck. Carnelian went to find him there.

  Sailors were calling to each other from mast to mast. Up there all the sails were open and taut with wind. The enormous hooded figure of a Master was off near the stern with smaller men beside him. Carnelian saw it was Keal and some others of the tyadra. As he walked up to them the Master turned and he recognized his father’s mask inside the hood.

  ‘Carnelian?’

  ‘I have urgent need to speak to you, my Lord.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘A matter of one of your servants and the Law.’

  ‘Very well.’ His father looked around the deck and then up at one of the masts. ‘I would speak to you face to face but it would not be advisable to send the crew below.’ He looked towards the prow. ‘We shall speak there.’ He gave some commands with his hands to Keal, then turned back to Carnelian. ‘Come.’

  Together they walked up the deck. ‘I see that you have found your sea legs, Carnelian.’

  ‘The sea is calm, father.’

  They both looked out over the undulating flint-green sea. ‘It will not remain so for long,’ his father said.

  ‘I had hoped we were through the tempest.’

  ‘We merely pass through its eye.’ His father pointed ahead. The prow stem formed a cross with the bar of stormy sky that ran behind it.

  As they came near, the prow stem curved above them like a tree. Carnelian traced its trunk down and saw the face. A green face surfacing through the wood as if swimming up through water. Below it was set a trough of stone.

  ‘A representation of our divine Emperor,’ said his father. His lips curled. ‘Primitive superstition.’

  ‘Why are They here, my Lord?’

  ‘Not only the Commonwealth but also the legions worship the God Emperor as the living Twins and this is a legionary vessel.’ He pointed at the number eight carved high on the prow stem.

  ‘An altar, then?’

  His father lifted his hand in the affirmative.

  ‘Where is the other Twin?’

  ‘He is on the other side of the prow stem. Even now He and the tempest glare at each other.’

  Carnelian realized that the bronze bars curving on either side of the stem were not, as he had thought, cleats for fixing lines, but rather the four horns of the Black God. ‘So the Green Face oversees the baran while the Black looks out over the sea.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  At that moment Keal appeared with the others, carrying tall screens. They formed these into a wall around Carnelian and his father.

  ‘Now we can take these off.’ His father removed his mask. His eyes were red-edged holes in his painted face.

  Carnelian unmasked.

  ‘By the Essences, what ails you?’ his father cried. His hand came up to touch Carnelian’s face.

  ‘My Lord?’ Carnelian said, alarmed.

  ‘You are so thin. Your eyes . . .’ His father’s eyes narrowed. ‘You have been taking the poppy that I gave you?’

  Carnelian nodded.

  ‘Have you also been taking regular sustenance?’

  Carnelian thought back. He had vague memories of dreams, vaguer ones of waking. He realized that he could hardly remember eating at all.

  ‘And Tain let this happen.’ His father’s voice was cold with anger.

  ‘Do not blame him, Father. He was as drugged as I.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You yourself told me that he should have some.’

  ‘Some, a little, and not through all these many days. Did I not tell you that you would feel no hunger?’

  ‘I do not think you did, my Lord.’

  ‘Then it is I who am at fault. Come. Put on your mask. You must go and eat immediately.’

  Carnelian put his hand up to stay him. ‘Before I do there is the matter I need to bring before my Lord.’

  His father looked hard at him.

  ‘It is Crail.’

  One of his father’s brows arched.

  ‘Lord Aurum is insisting that he looked upon his face.’

  His father frowned.

  ‘I gave him poppy too. I am sure that is why it happened. He followed me up on deck in a delirium. The Ruling Lord was unmasked. He is insisting on the punishment the Law demands. But Crail could not have seen his face. He was blinded by the glare of the sky.’

  ‘What exactly did Aurum demand?’

  ‘Blinding and amputation.’

  His father closed his eyes as if he had been struck. He opened them. ‘How did you leave this matter?’

  ‘I told him that Crail was ours and that if he insisted on it we would carry out the punishment. But you can speak to him, Father, you can do something . . .’

  His father looked ashen. ‘You put me in a difficult position, more difficult than you can know.’

  ‘You will save him?’

  ‘I will do what I can.’ His father slid his mask back over his face. ‘Go now, eat, and for the sake of your blood, henceforth, be sparing with the poppy.’

  Before he ate, Carnelian made the round of all their cabins to see that his guardsmen were bearing up. He asked Keal how their people were coping between the decks. Nothing to worry about, Keal said. Carnelian knew he was lying and made him tell him the truth. One had been washed into the sea. Several were burning with fever. Carnelian had expected worse.

  Back in his cabin he made sure that Crail ate something first. The old man was confuse
d. He was recounting a nightmare he had had of a Master and a deck. Carnelian showed him a smile. When he ate with Tain, it surprised him how hungry he was. He gulped the food down though his stomach ached. He made jokes with Tain. They talked about dragons and the Three Lands, but all the time he was listening. Steadily the wind’s moan had become a keening. He eyed the silver box with its promise of dreams. There was a crack so loud he thought a mast had snapped. Snatches of voices screeched over the gale. Then the storm front hit them like a hammer. The ship spun round to one side, and then was walloped round the other way. She leaned over. The lantern smashed against the ceiling. Crail was tipped onto the floor. Cries erupted on every side. The ship juddered once, twice; each time it seemed she had struck a rock. Tain’s eyes were as round as his mouth. She righted herself, rocking.

  For an age they clung to her as she rode the tempest. Each time her hull broke a wave, there was a thud that shook them to their bones. This would be followed by a hiss running over their heads to the stern. In the lulls they could hear the running in the corridor, the cries, the lamentations, the slam of doors. Once Carnelian looked out to see the corridor awash with foam.

  Tain’s eyes kept straying to the silver box. Carnelian only knew this because his eyes were there too. He relented and nipped pellets from the honey.

  He was despairing that it had lost its potency until he felt the flames of comfort licking up his body. Fear burned away. The rocking seemed gentle.

  The three of them sagged back into poppy dreams. Carnelian took care when he woke to send Tain out to bring them food. They forced it down. Stale water lubricated tedious chewing. Every shudder of the ship was mimicked by their bodies. Even before the bowls were clean their eyes turned greedily to the silver box.

  On a day when there was a lull in the storm, Tain and Carnelian were sitting eating though they felt no hunger. Both had noticed that the cabin floor had acquired a permanent slope down towards the door. Neither had said anything. There was a knocking that they ignored. They had grown used to ignoring every sound. The door opened and a Master’s mask came into the cabin. They both recoiled. The poppy still lingered in the folds of their minds and so it seemed to them that this was some terrible being arisen from the sea.