The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon)

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘Trouble comes often to those who are too cunning,’ said Vennel.

  ‘It comes always to those who show no cunning at all,’ said Suth.

  Aurum had his back to them. ‘The straightest road is not always the fastest.’ He had made the Marula put the enclosure up around an ant’s nest. He had opened its belly with a knife, dropped in a firebrand and was using another to crisp the ants that sallied out.

  ‘Blood burns brighter than oil,’ said Jaspar.

  Suth and Vennel both turned on him.

  He lifted his hands in apology. ‘I thought we were listing proverbs.’

  ‘I fail to see, my Lords, how our objectives were served by what happened today,’ said Vennel.

  ‘What happened today is irrelevant,’ snapped Suth. Carnelian saw his father looking at him as if he were an apple just out of reach.

  ‘If we remained undiscovered it is due to fortune and not to any skill in planning on your part, my Lords,’ said Vennel. ‘I would hazard that the commotion and the violence of our escort did little to turn attention away from us.’

  ‘Violence is not uncommon on this road,’ said Suth.

  ‘So you say, my Lord, so you say. But I do not think that creatures of the kind we mimic would show such élan for slaughter.’

  Carnelian searched his father’s eyes. It was as if he were trying to say something to him. Carnelian rose and moved towards him.

  Suth immediately stood up and looked down at Vennel. ‘My patience with this discussion is at an end, my Lord.’ He put on his mask, hid it with his cowl and left the enclosure.

  Vennel looked at the other Masters as if surprised. Jaspar smiled enigmatically. Aurum looked bored as he lit the ants one by one like candle wicks.

  On the thirteenth day after they had left the sea Carnelian noticed a darker southern horizon: a crack between earth and sky that could only be the rim of the Guarded Land. Next morning it looked closer, a ribbon of liquid blue dividing the world. That day and for the next two it was lost in the blinding white burning of the Naralan, but the day after that it formed a permanent smudging lilac layer in the haze. It crisped and browned, bubbling up so that when they camped that night it had solidified into a heavy banding of the darkening sky.

  The eighteenth day dawned. That day the cliffs of the Guarded Land wavered up from the simmering plains as a dark forbidding wall.

  The road climbed into a cutting in the cliff. Its gradient was so gentle that when it reached its first turn and doubled back, its corbelled edge was obscured by the flags of the chariots passing beneath. Its scar zigzagged up the rock seemingly all the way to the clouds.

  ‘The road climbs to the very top?’ Carnelian asked, incredulous.

  ‘More accurately it descends it,’ Vennel replied.

  ‘We had it built down from the Guarded Land so that we might reach the sea,’ said Jaspar.

  ‘The city of Nothnaralan waits for us up there,’ said Jaspar.

  Carnelian pushed his head back against his saddle-chair to try to see the sky city. ‘With what sorcery was all this wonder wrought?’

  ‘Not sorcery but sartlar,’ said Suth.

  Carnelian could hardly believe that his father was talking to him. ‘It must have cost many lives,’ he said, trying to nurse this little spark of intimacy.

  ‘It is said that this hill is the knitted mounding of their bones.’

  Carnelian glanced back down the slope that carried the road to the plain. ‘So much death.’

  ‘The sartlar are a limitless resource.’

  ‘The world is as verminous with such creatures as slaves are with lice,’ sneered Vennel.

  ‘Are they all enslaved?’ asked Carnelian, resenting the Master’s intrusion, aiming his question at his father.

  Vennel turned his hood towards Carnelian. ‘Is that not what their name means?’

  ‘Yet once they were free,’ said Suth, ‘When our Quyan forefathers scaled this cliff to the land above, they found the sartlar already there and—’

  ‘And domesticated them,’ snapped Aurum.

  Carnelian could have cursed him. His father would say nothing more.

  ‘Come, my Lords,’ the old Master continued. ‘We are not at some elegant reception.’ His hand lifting caused the Marula to rise up from where they had been huddled round them in a ring. ‘It is time that we rejoin the road and begin the ascent. Several days must pass before we reach the land above.’

  ‘One might forgive the creature’s sin,’ purred Jaspar.

  The words made no impression on Carnelian’s mind. He was already exhausted from the climb and still they were only halfway up to the Guarded Land.

  ‘You would of course have to pay me recompense,’ said Jaspar in a low voice. ‘For such a one to go unpunished . . .’

  Carnelian turned blindly to the cowled figure.

  ‘Do you toy with me, my Lord?’ said Jaspar, warming to anger.

  ‘My Lord?’

  ‘What price will you pay to save his eyes?’

  Jaspar came into hard focus. ‘You speak of my brother?’ said Carnelian.

  ‘Your slave, my Lord.’

  Carnelian frowned. He must not let his fury wake, nor his hope. ‘What price would my Lord ask for this act of mercy?’ he asked coldly.

  Jaspar turned away, gazing out into airy space. ‘If I were to forget that the creature had looked upon my face it would be more than an act of mercy, Carnelian.’ He turned back. His cowl framed an oval of blackness. ‘There is but one price, cousin.’

  Carnelian stared at him as the anger bubbled up in him. ‘Well?’ he cried, boiling over.

  ‘Hush, Carnelian. We would not want the others to learn of our negotiations, would we? It is a simple boon I desire from you, namely, I would know what hold Aurum has over your father.’

  ‘You would have me betray my own father . . . for a slave?’

  Jaspar chuckled. ‘Come now, Carnelian, look how quickly your brother has become your slave.’

  ‘It is unthinkable,’ gasped Carnelian.

  ‘Perhaps . . . and yet I think you would like your brother to keep his bright, animal eyes.’

  Carnelian shook his head. ‘I cannot do it.’

  Jaspar opened his hands. ‘Perhaps my Lord will change his mind. Think on it, but do not take too long. The day the boy sees the outermost gate of Osrakum could well be the last day he sees anything at all.’

  Jaspar pulled his cloak round him and hunched before slipping through the screens.

  Carnelian watched him go, trying to see through his hatred the slim hope that lay in the offer. Some pennants jiggled like butterflies above the screens. The next push up the road was beginning. Carnelian turned for one last look out across the vast pale wash of the Naralan spread out below, then he left the parapet.

  They were climbing into purple sky. The edge of the cliff above was jagged with tottering tenements, streaked green with the filth that ran down their walls. A sewage stench wafted on the torrid air. They walked their aquar up onto the lip of the Guarded Land. The end of the climb at last. The throng fanned out to carpet the level field that had been gouged into the edge of the plateau. It was like half a bowl sunk into the cliff’s stone. Its sides merged up into the towered mud ramparts of Nothnaralan, whose dusty sunset-rouged face was drilled with countless windows. The whole smooth curve was unbroken except at one place in the east where stony towers intruded to offer up a pair of doors, bloodied gates upon which the sun embossed the twin faces of the Commonwealth in flaming gold.

  ‘Thus does the Commonwealth attempt to close her doors against the night,’ said Suth in a melancholy tone.

  The road had spread its tapestry all around them. They had managed to reach the eastern edge of the field near the gates. Aurum had not allowed them their enclosure, judging that it would not hide them from the windows in the walls above. The other Masters had all been too weary to protest.

  Carnelian looked past the cordon of the Marula, out over the squatting masse
s, over the clumps of wagons and huimur, to where the city walls had already been claimed by darkness.

  ‘I think I will retire, my Lords,’ said Vennel. The shadow in the loop of his cowl scanned them as if he expected some retort. When the Masters said nothing, he rose, hunched as they always did to conceal their height, and shuffled off towards the tents.

  Carnelian glanced at his father’s inanimate form and turned back to his vigil. He watched the city’s shadow creep over the camp, lighting fires as it went. Its blackness washed over him, lapped at the foot of the gates, then scaled them to the very top. The sky gave one last violent blush, then indigoed. With its windows now lit up, Nothnaralan formed a hem to the starry night.

  Carnelian struggled to sleep in the clinging myrrhy heat. The bandages were restricting his breathing. Sweat crawled beneath the cloth. His heart would not quieten. Memories of his island home flashed into his mind. Every image had acquired a warm aura. He ached with the longing for friendly faces, familiar smells, a single lungful of cold clean wind that spoke with the voices of the sea. There were other darker visions. Tain eyeless, the empty sockets accusing him. He had made a promise to Ebeny to protect him. The thought of Jaspar’s offer caused a rushing in his stomach. Carnelian fixed his mind’s eye on the memory of the double-headed gate and felt a sweat of excitement. What wonders lay beyond?

  Jaspar groaned in his sleep. Carnelian sat up. The camp was murmuring outside. With slow care he rose. He fumbled for his travelling cloak, found it, gathered it in. He tucked his ranga shoes under his arm, crept to the opening, put the shoes outside, stepped up onto them, covered himself, then pushed his masked face out into the night.

  The moon was setting into a smoke-scratched blue darkness in which a hundred campfires flickered. The smells and sounds of beasts and men were gently settling. He looked over to the gate glimmered by moonlight.

  He was searching for Tain when he noticed some moving shapes. A coalescing of the night. Lifting up, moving, merging, dropping down, disappearing. He waited. They rose again, came closer. He wondered if they might be Marula. The shapes were too furtive. To see better, Carnelian dared to remove his mask. He turned it sideways so that he could still breathe through the nose-pad. Over its rim he scoured the night. The Marula were still round them like a ring of stones. Again the shadows slid into motion. Again they stopped and vanished. Cold sweat, fear and his eyes searching. He bit his lip, looked round and made his decision. He dropped down from his shoes. Half in crouch, half crawling, he moved forward, touching the earth now and then for balance. He reached one of the Marula and crept into the man’s aura of stale sweat. His fingers touched the man’s warm skin. As it jerked under his touch, Carnelian hugged the man hard against his chest and stifled a cry with his hand. He pushed his mouth into an ear. ‘I’m a Master,’ he whispered, and felt the bur of the man’s hair and an earring moving against his lip. The Maruli tensed hard as wood. ‘Silence. You understand?’ The woolly head nodded against his face. Carnelian released him. Saw the yellow eyes. Watched them widen. The man scrunched into a ball against his knees.

  Carnelian grimaced as he understood. ‘My face,’ he muttered. He sighed, looked around desperately. He put the mask on again, bent down and prising the man up, forced him to look at the mask. There was more yellow-eyed terror before he forced the man’s head round. At first there was nothing to see but then the shadows moved again, very close. The Maruli clutched his lance. Carnelian released his head so that the man’s frightened eyes swivelled back to his mask. Carnelian indicated the other Marula. The man struck his forehead on the ground then slipped into the night.

  Carnelian retraced his steps. He was near the mounds of the tents. Cries broke out, so loud they stopped his breathing. He whisked round and saw a shadow dance. Screams. The swish of blades muffling into flesh. Growls. Two shapes broke from the fight and catapulted towards him. One fell forwards coughing with a tall shape on it working a lance out of its back. The other veered away.

  Carnelian saw where it was heading. ‘The tents!’ he cried and sprang after it. Uproar was spreading. Through the eyeslits of his mask he could just make out the figure. There was the stuttering rasp of canvas rending. Carnelian stooped as he ran, grazing his fingers along the ground, scooped up a stone, then charged howling. His father’s voice cried out in alarm. Carnelian crashed into the invader, clawing and hammering with both fists. He was enraged, keening, fearing for his father’s life. The body slumped against him. He let it slide off him to the ground.

  A light. Carnelian stared frozen. On the ground, his father was pathetically stretching out his fingers trying to reach his mask; hands, face, bandaged body, black with blood.

  WINDSPEED

  Right-hand, left-hand

  Past and future

  The green and the black

  Earth and Sky

  Two faces and the Mirror

  But truly there is only one

  (fragment)

  ‘DOUSE THAT LIGHT.’ AURUM WAS A TOWER OF BLACKNESS IN THE NIGHT. The boy holding the lantern turned to stare at him, his eyes growing impossibly wide. The Master surged forward, snatched the lantern from the boy and dashed it to the ground.

  The sudden disappearance of his father’s bloody face brought Carnelian back to life. His eyes slowly adjusted to the dark.

  Angry questions carried through the night with complaints about the noise, the lateness.

  One of the Maruli appeared and fell at Aurum’s feet.

  ‘Take your brethren and silence those voices with fear,’ the Master rumbled.

  The man punched the ground with his head, rose and was about to go when Aurum spoke again.

  ‘Take this thing,’ he said, lifting the boy squealing into the air. ‘Destroy it.’

  There was a coughing behind him. ‘He is . . . my body . . . slave,’ said Suth.

  Aurum shoved the boy at the Maruli who received him with a grunt and loped off. The Master crouched down beside Suth. ‘Are you wounded, my Lord?’

  Suth trembled his hand in the air. ‘The boy . . .’

  ‘He saw your face, Sardian. You will have to make do without him. Are you wounded?’

  Suth gritted his teeth as he held his side. ‘A cut in my belly.’

  Carnelian stared. ‘He is covered in blood.’

  Suth smiled up at his son. ‘Most of it is the assassin’s.’

  Aurum peeled Suth’s hand away from the wound and peered at it. He stood up. ‘It is quite deep but bleeds cleanly. The bandages resisted the blade. Do you think you can walk, my Lord?’

  Suth jerked a nod. Aurum helped him up. Carnelian felt his father’s wince like a stab. Suth pressed on the wound to keep it closed. A swathe of his bandages was black with blood.

  ‘Why are you just standing there, my Lord?’ said Aurum to Carnelian with a flash of anger. Carnelian stumbled round to support his father’s other side. ‘This wounding is unfortunate but at least it has drawn Ykoriana’s sting. Now we must abandon secrecy.’

  In Carnelian’s grip, the stone still nestled warm and sticky.

  They gathered in the enclosure that Aurum had commanded the Marula put up around the corpse and shredded tent. He waved away Vennel’s comment about the eyes from above and, by unmasking, forced the Master to remove his mask with the others. The light had gone out of Vennel’s face. His colourless eyes turned reluctantly to Suth sitting stiff-backed on a stool. ‘These robbers have spilled your precious blood, my Lord. They would not have dared had they known you to be Chosen.’

  ‘These were no robbers,’ said Aurum.

  With his foot he rolled the corpse’s head to one side and drew its tunic down with his toe. A lantern on the ground revealed the red ruin of its face. Carnelian stared, clenching and unclenching the fingers from which Tain had prised the stone.

  Aurum indicated the six-spoked wheel tattooed just above the corpse’s clavicle. ‘It would be strange indeed if the Brotherhood of the Wheel were to send their men so far merely to rob some mer
chants.’

  Vennel was mesmerized by the tattoo. ‘What else?’

  ‘Assassination.’

  Carnelian tore his eyes away from the tattoo to look at Aurum. Vennel also looked round. Carnelian saw his eyes avoiding contact.

  Aurum looked down. ‘These creatures meant to slay us all.’

  ‘All?’ Vennel examined the old Master’s face. ‘How so?’

  ‘They are hired killers. They came at night. They could not know which tent was which. To murder one they had to slay us all.’

  ‘Which . . . which of the Chosen however desperate would thus dare breach the Blood Convention?’ breathed Vennel.

  Jaspar gave Vennel a filthy look. ‘Your pretences begin to wear parchment-thin, my Lord.’

  Vennel sneaked glimpses at the other Masters as if their sleeves might conceal daggers. ‘Even Ykoriana would not dare . . .’ he said at last.

  Aurum rounded on him. ‘You think not? Even after she murdered her own daughter within the very precincts of the Labyrinth?’

  ‘That is an ugly rumour.’

  Suth had his stormy eyes on Vennel. ‘Believe what you will, my Lord, but do not try to deny that your mistress lies behind this outrage. You should perhaps consider that your own blood would have soaked this ground had my son not raised the alarm.’

  Suth looked at his son. The warm pride Carnelian saw in his father’s eyes melted him a little.

  Vennel’s face was ice. ‘Even the Empress could not hope to wash her hands of such blood as ours.’

  Suth indicated the corpse. ‘She wore these creatures like gloves that could easily be discarded. Who would dare accuse her as she pointed to her own emissary found among the dead?’

  Jaspar nodded grimly. ‘Our disguise would allow the Wise to give interminable sermons on the price that must be paid by those who disregard the Law.’