Back in the sleeping chamber, Carnelian discovered shutters and folded them back. Warm green-scented air seeped in. The purple vein-oranged sky made his eyes water. He fitted his face into his mask and stepped out onto the balcony. The balustrade was still warm but he dropped the mask when he found that the balcony was deep in shadow. It was an eyrie looking south. Half in shadow, the valley he had seen from the sea stepped its green terraces down from blue distance. Nearer, limes faded into dusty brown. Nearer still, a swathe of mudflats ran to a crisp edge of indigo sea. A causeway curving like the wingbone of a bird crossed the lagoon and wound the road it carried up into the terraces. Here it was already spring.
A sound from the chamber made him go back in. Tain stood by the door, panting, leaning back under the weight of a trunk his arms barely managed to embrace. Ointment boxes hung from cords around his neck. Clothes tubes were strapped to his back like quivers. He gave a thin smile, then looked alarmed, bent sharply over as a tube slipped from his shoulder. He managed to catch its strap in the hook of his elbow as Carnelian rushed forward.
‘Let me take some of those. Couldn’t you have asked for some help?’
‘I didn’t want any.’
Together they wrestled everything to the floor, then stood not looking at each other.
‘Isn’t this place enormous?’ said Carnelian, trying to make conversation.
‘Too big,’ his brother muttered.
Carnelian nodded. ‘There’d be room enough in just these apartments for much of the household.’
That was a mistake. Thoughts of the Hold soaked them both with misery.
Carnelian punched his brother’s arm. ‘Come on, I want to wash.’ Tain started rummaging amongst the stuff on the floor. ‘What’re you doing?’
‘Finding the pads.’
‘There’s no need for those,’ said Carnelian and began throwing off his clothes. Tain came to help. ‘I’ll undress myself. The way you smell you’d better strip as well.’
Tain looked puzzled but did as he was told.
Carnelian’s painted skin was mouldering like old whitewash. He pulled the Little Mother amulet over his head, coiled the strap and put her down carefully. He went off to the chamber he had seen earlier with its channel of water, Tain following with awkward steps.
With some experimenting and many accidents, Carnelian found out how to operate the various little bronze sluices. Soon he had created a number of criss-crossing waterfalls. Tain gaped. Carnelian crept behind him and shoved him in. Soon they were splashing round, screaming with the cold, letting the water spin rivulets through their hair. They gave themselves over to the delight. Both played with the sluices, pushing each other into any new deluge that erupted from above. They marvelled at the way the runnels in the floor kept the surface underfoot free from puddling. Tain rubbed the paint from Carnelian’s skin. When they were both shivering clean, he ran out and found towels. While he waited, Carnelian turned all the water flow back into the channel running along the wall. Tain came up to dry him. Carnelian squeezed his hand when it came near and made Tain smile. It was good to see that.
Carnelian asked him to shave his head.
‘Like the Master?’
‘Like the Master.’
‘But what if I cut you?’
‘Well then, do it carefully.’
So Carnelian knelt at his feet while Tain first cut his hair almost to the roots with a knife and then scraped his scalp with a copper razor. Carnelian watched his brother working, his tongue held between his teeth. ‘How are our people?’
Tain stopped, brushed a lock of black hair onto the floor, then gave him a sidelong glance. ‘They’re afraid.’
‘Of what?’
‘What’s going to happen. And . . .’
Carnelian waited, looking down and playing with the hair that lay everywhere on the floor. He wanted to make it easy for Tain to say anything he wanted.
‘The killings . . . the killings on the boat. Everyone’s rattled.’
‘You as well?’
‘What do you think?’
Carnelian relived the horror in his mind. The boy saw him pale and began nibbling the edge of his hand. ‘It was my fault, Tain.’
‘Maybe so. But there’s other stuff. On the ship the lads heard things, sounds coming from the other cabins.’
‘What sort of sounds?’
Tain’s face creased up. ‘Punishment sounds . . . other things . . . they’re . . . we’re afraid of the other Masters. And the Master, our Master, he’s been behaving very strangely. The lads have even grown a little afraid of him.’
Carnelian felt a twinge of anger that they should dare judge his father. ‘What can I do?’
‘Keep an eye on them. You know they only live to serve you and the Master?’
The pleading in Tain’s eyes melted Carnelian’s anger. ‘I know they do. Tell them that I’ll do all I can.’
Tain beamed. ‘I told them you would, Carnie.’ He made to kiss his hand, but Carnelian grabbed him instead and gave him a hug. They let go of each other.
‘Now get on with my head.’
Together, they had stood on the balcony watching the sparks light up in the black valley all the way up the road. ‘Like a river of stars,’ said Tain in wonder. He turned to Carnelian who stood like an ivory carving beside him. ‘Did you see the Master of this place, Carnie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he have a legion?’
‘I’m not sure. Perhaps . . .’
Tain’s eyes opened very wide. He reached out to touch Carnelian’s arm. ‘Do you think there’re dragons here?’
Carnelian shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ It made him wonder himself.
Tain went inside and drew back the feathered blankets to sprinkle perfume on the linen sheets. Then he took a blanket and began to make himself a bed with it on the floor. Carnelian told him he could sleep with him in the bed. ‘The floor’s of stone. You’ll have frozen to death by the morning and then what use will you be?’
In the darkness Carnelian nestled into his brother’s warm back. He could feel the bumps down his spine. They had not slept in the same bed since they were infants.
‘Do you think we’ll see dragons?’ whispered Tain.
‘I’m sure we will,’ Carnelian replied. ‘Now go to sleep.’
RANGA SHOES
The Chosen shall not set foot on earth, nor stone, nor any other ground outside Osrakum that has not first been purified in the manner prescribed.
(extract from the Law-that-must-be-obeyed)
‘CARNIE. CARNIE.’
Carnelian woke and had no idea where he was.
‘The Master has sent for you.’
It was Tain with an intense dark gaze. Carnelian sat up and swung his feet onto the floor. He rubbed his face, knuckled his gummy eyes, then stood up shakily. He lifted his arms out to the sides and screwed up his face in anticipation of the cold touch of the pad.
Tain pushed Carnelian’s arms down gently. ‘I was told not to clean you.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You are to go as you are.’
Carnelian stared at his brother, confused.
Tain chuckled. ‘Well, not exactly as you are. You’re to wear this.’ His chin nudged a black garment draped between his outstretched arms.
Carnelian bent forward to allow Tain to feed it over his arms and head. Tain stroked it smooth then did up its spine of hooks. Carnelian yawned. He ran his palms down over the crusty brocades. ‘What sort of robe is this?’
Tain shrugged. Annoyance pushed its way through Carnelian’s sleepiness. He lifted up some of the black cloth, peered at it, traced its patterns of glassy beads with a finger. He felt he should be able to read them. He could not. He shook his head and let the cloth drop.
Tain led him out from his chambers. Carnelian felt unwashed, naked without his paint as he walked out into the great hall where the blue canopies were billowing. Doors were open, leading off in a long succession to the predawn sky
. His people were face down on the mosaic. Tain joined them there. A door hissed open with an exhalation of lily. His father appeared, narrow, tall, his face fearfully white, clad in an identical black robe. Someone with eyes averted handed his father his mask and he hid his face like the moon behind a golden cloud.
‘See,’ his father commanded.
Their people looked up and then rose to their knees. Keal and the other guardsmen began rising to their feet.
We go alone, his father signed, using the Lordly ‘we’. He paced towards the outer door. Carnelian fell in behind him, scratching an itch on his head, startled when he touched stubbled scalp. He had forgotten the shaving. The hard edge of his mask pushed into his hand. He smiled his gratitude at Tain, put it on, then followed his father’s back, watching the black samite bunch and loosen with each pace. The doors rumbled open and they passed into the gloomy hall beyond.
They walked down the centre of the hall. At the end was a tall door before which flames leaping in braziers were the only guards. Silver ammonites embossed the door like startled eyes.
‘My Lord, why would the Legates use their legions against Osrakum?’ asked Carnelian, feeling the need to almost whisper.
His father did not turn his head but kept his eyes fixed upon the door. ‘The Legates and the commanders under them are all, naturally, of the Lesser Chosen. The God Emperor appoints them all. They serve the House of the Masks. It is their only source of wealth.’
‘Because they are excluded from the division of the flesh tithe as well as the taxes from the cities?’ said Carnelian.
His father nodded. ‘Although they form no part of the Balance of the Powers, they hold in their hands almost all the military might of the Commonwealth.’
‘And it is feared that they will take with force what the Three Powers would keep wholly for themselves?’
They had reached the door. Flames flapped like hands in spasm. Carnelian glanced up. Flickers of their light were trapped in each tarnished spiral.
‘Quite so. We have taken many precautions against them, chief of these being that we hold all they possess and care for within the Sacred Wall of Osrakum.’
‘But if they have the legions . . .?’
‘The Great have the double-strength legion, the Ichorian, and with this we hold the Three Gates into Osrakum.’
‘Would it not be safer to include the Lesser Chosen within the franchise of the Great?’
His father looked down at him. ‘Then the legions would be ours and the Balance would be broken.’
‘Could Legates not be appointed from the House of the Masks itself?’
‘None of the Imperial Power can ever be permitted even to cross the Skymere to its outer shore. If ever that happened, and they managed to escape Osrakum, they could use the legions to overthrow us and again the Balance would be broken.’
Carnelian gaped. ‘What you are saying, Father, is that those of the House of the Masks are prisoners of the Great.’
His father was eyeing the gloomy length of the hall. ‘Say, rather, hostages.’
‘The Great hold the God Emperor Themselves hostage?’
‘As They in turn use their legions to hold us hostage in Osrakum. That is the Balance.’
‘And how do the Wise form part of this Balance?’
‘They are the Law made flesh. Inside Osrakum they constrain the freedoms of all the Chosen. Outside, they maintain the roads with their watch-towers and the leftways with their couriers. Though blind, there is nothing in the Three Lands they do not see. Additionally, it is their ammonites that form a seal across the Three Gates. They keep the inner and the outer worlds apart and form the only bridge across the divide. It is only at their sufferance that we ourselves are permitted to be here, outside Osrakum.’
‘The Balance must restrict their power?’
‘In terrible ways, but essentially the God Emperor’s guardsmen, the Sinistral Ichorians, hold them hostage.’
‘And we, in turn, hold them all hostage.’
‘Rings, within rings, like the ripples on a pond.’
‘Moving outwards from the God Emperor, a leaf dropped from the sky.’
‘Just so.’
‘Father, are these quaestors then the Wise?’
His father’s hand flicked a dismissive gesture. ‘Of the Wise, Carnelian, but not the Wise themselves. Surely, if you noticed nothing else, you could see the quaestor still had eyes?’
‘Of course . . . I was careless. What manner of . . .?’
‘A failed candidate for the Wise, though he came so close that I marvel that he kept his eyes. I was not able to examine his face fully but it seemed to me that he had passed many of the higher examinations.’
‘The numbers?’
‘Their positions relate to the different lores, levels, domains.’
‘And what is the Privilege of the Three Powers?’
‘It is a law that allows each power the right to exclude either or both of the other two from any matter that it considers internal to its affairs, unless this exclusion should be precluded by another law of higher rank.’
‘And so you included the Legate as the representative of the God Emperor while excluding the quaestor who is a representative of the Wise because you intended to overrule a law?’
Suth made a gesture of impatience. ‘You ask too many questions, my Lord.’
‘Knowledge is the best armour,’ said Carnelian with a flush of anger.
Suth looked down at his son, recognizing his own words. ‘There is something I must tell you.’
The tone of his father’s voice made Carnelian’s stomach clench. At that moment there was an echoing sound of doors closing. Father and son turned to look down the hall. The other Masters were walking towards them, hands and feet pale as the dead’s. Three of them, shrouded in the same black robes, coming as for an entombing.
‘What did you want to tell me, Father?’ whispered Carnelian anxiously.
Not now, his father signed.
Carnelian was forced to stand silent at his father’s side as they watched the Masters approach. Aurum moved out in front of the others. Carnelian and his father made way for him. The old Master moved between them to strike the door. Each blow was answered by a deep vibration. ‘We are come because the Law must be obeyed,’ Aurum boomed.
Exhaling camphor, the door sighed open just a body’s width. One by one they rustled through. A vapouring milky pool lay on the other side. Carnelian watched his father wade through, the hem of his black robe floating round him like a slick of oil. Already past the pool’s white lip, Aurum was moving off leaving a glistening track.
Vapours spread chill up into Carnelian’s nose. He lowered his right foot into the liquid. Biting cold washed over it. He put in the left foot, then he dragged his train across. As he splashed out the other side, he saw that his father was ahead of him, talking with his hands to Jaspar. Carnelian turned to see Vennel walk across, his narrow hands hitching up the skirt of his robe, revealing long marble legs, so white they made the pool look yellow.
Tall bronze lamps lit benches of stone, upon one of which Aurum had sat down. Sallow creatures appeared and fussed round him. Carnelian found a place beside his father. As he pulled up his soak-heavy robe it gave off a reek of camphor. Jaspar and Vennel were settling on other benches.
‘You who are Chosen shall now make ready to leave this place.’ The words were spoken in Quya but did not have the rich timbre of a Master’s voice. Carnelian located their source to be the quaestor in his purple samite. His face of polished silver had a mouth but only solid spirals for eyes. In his hands he held a cord like a necklace of beads.
‘You who are Chosen must take all precaution before crossing the Naralan and the Guarded Land,’ said the quaestor, counting the beads through his fingers as if he were using them for prayer.
Carnelian heard the other Masters answer him, ‘As it has been done, so shall it be done, for ever, because it is commanded to be done by the Law-that-must-be-obeye
d.’
‘The covenant you made with Him, the Dark One honours. In the hidden land of Osrakum He will not incarnate though His anima share the inhabiting of the God Emperor with His brother. Beyond the Sacred Wall, all other earth unto the sea He has soaked with pestilence and plague. In these His domains you shall walk under the restriction of His Law as your fathers have done before you. This is His Law as it has been written in the Plain of Thrones.’
Carnelian felt his father’s warm hand stray over his own.
‘The Chosen shall not stand within two fingers’ breadth of unhallowed ground,’ chanted the quaestor.
All the Masters made the same response as before and Carnelian mumbled along with them. He turned his hand palm up to grasp his father’s as one of the slaves knelt before him holding a casket. Bones pushed through tallow skin like blades. Another slave leant over to open the casket. Her torso was a basket of ribs. In place of an ear a hook-rimmed mechanism of brass snagged into her face. She drew out the ranga shoes and placed them in Carnelian’s lap with more care than if they had been painted with poison. Each was of wood lacquered black: a long and narrow platform for the foot, securing straps and, set transversally on its underside, three supports a few fingers’ width deep: one painted black, one red, one green, presumably in token of the Three Lands.
‘My shoes have been tampered with,’ said Vennel sharply.
Carnelian looked up. His father and the other Masters had also been given shoes. All were turned towards Vennel.
The Master held up a shoe. ‘The supports have been trimmed.’ He displayed it for all to see.
‘The modification was carried out at my command,’ said Aurum.
‘One cannot—’
‘The full height would encumber us on our journey, my Lord. Quaestor, do they still meet the requirement of the Law?’
‘They do, Seraph,’ said the silver mask.
Aurum turned back to Vennel. ‘Might we be allowed to proceed?’
The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Page 16