‘On that dais, your father will kneel to give audience to the Seraphim.’
Across from where they stood, down the long side of the hall, ran a series of tall and narrow amber windows. Carnelian walked towards one. He touched its mosaic of molten gold. The window formed the image of an angel like a man in flames; only the eyes of watery grey diamond suggested this might be a representation of a Master. Carnelian walked along the line of windows. In the terrible burning beauty of their faces, their eyes were such cruel winter.
Carnelian’s foot stubbed against something on the floor. He turned to look down at it. ‘A trapdoor?’
‘It is nothing, Seraph,’ said Left-Quentha.
‘Surely it must lead somewhere?’
‘A flight of steps down to ancient halls.’ Right-Quentha made a gesture to take in their surroundings. ‘Precursors to these. Ruined now a thousand years.’
Carnelian imagined these ancient dusty wonders. ‘Could we not go and see them?’
‘They are decayed, Seraph,’ said Left-Quentha.
‘Lightless,’ her sister added.
‘Filthy.’
Carnelian made a smiling sign with his hand. ‘Just a peek?’
Right-Quentha could not help a smile.
‘We must not,’ her sister whispered to her.
‘Just a peek,’ said Right-Quentha. ‘Where would the harm be in that?’
Left-Quentha turned away, blinking her stone eyes, pursing her tattooed lips. Her sister forced her to bend when she herself bent down to lift a handle in the trapdoor. Left-Quentha gave in. They crouched, took the handle with all four hands and pulled. The cover stone grated open, spilling light down the steps.
‘The Seraph should send his guardsmen ahead,’ said Left-Quentha.
Carnelian turned to his men and saw with what terror they were peering down into the depths.
‘What’s the matter with you lot?’ asked Carnelian in Vulgate.
They began to kneel. He focused on one and grabbed his shoulder to stop him. ‘Well?’
‘Master . . . it’s said this whole mountain’s hollow.’ The man stared, slack-eyed.
‘And so?’
‘The Gods and the Masters walk the higher levels but in the lower they keep . . . you keep . . .’ The man’s voice tailed off, then he whispered, ‘. . . monsters.’
Carnelian threw his head back and laughed. He turned to the syblings. ‘It seems they are afraid.’
Left-Quentha regarded them imperiously with her stone eyes. ‘Slaves are always afraid. Soon enough we will have them trotting down those steps.’ The syblings rose, both stone eyes and living fixed menacingly on the guardsmen.
Carnelian lifted his hands. ‘There is no point in forcing them. I do not want to be deafened by the chattering of their teeth. We will go alone.’
The syblings frowned. ‘As the Seraph commands.’ They walked round Carnelian, scattering his guardsmen. Each sister demanded a sword.
‘I will go first,’ said Carnelian.
‘We will go first, Seraph,’ they said together, showing the swords the guardsmen had given them.
Carnelian could see that they would brook no argument and stepped aside to let them lead the descent into the darkness.
Left-Quentha carried the lantern and Carnelian followed behind, peering between their shoulders at the steps revealed by its jiggling beam. Although the steps were smoothly cut, the walls were roughly hewn. The stair wound from side to side, and several times passed places where a porthole fed in a ray of daylight.
At last they reached the bottom and the Quenthas moved out into black echoing space. They lifted the lantern and spread its light across the floor to find the further wall.
‘Behold the first Hall of the Sun in Splendour. No He-who-goes-before has stood here for a thousand years,’ they whispered together.
Carnelian turned. The stair was a ragged rupture in the corner. ‘Where is the gold?’ he whispered.
It grew brighter as the Quenthas came up to him. Left-Quentha slid her hand over the wall and found something. Her sister caught Carnelian’s hand and drew it to replace Left-Quentha’s. He could feel a hole deep enough to stick his finger in.
‘The plates that were attached here were carried up there.’ Left-Quentha pointed at the ceiling.
They wandered off across the chamber. The floor was mouldy with dust. The Quenthas showed him the dais and the blocked-up hole where the ancient jewelled Window of the Dawn had been. Carnelian walked down between the grim pillars to the door. Through its gaping maw was utter darkness. He called the syblings to his side. All three of them hung together in the door mouth casting the light out into a nave. Although this was on a smaller scale than the one above, it still ran off further than their light could reach.
Carnelian looked round him. ‘Was this then the original sun-eyed door?’
In answer the Quenthas stood on tiptoe and reached up to touch half a hinge of twisted dull bronze.
‘Please, let us go a little further,’ Carnelian whispered.
The sisters turned to each other as if they were having a silent conference. Brandishing their swords, they took some steps into the nave. Carved columns ran off on either side. All together, they walked on, and however far they went their lantern found more columns.
At last their light showed a narrowing end to the nave, another doorway, its gates long ago torn from its jaws. Beyond more darkness spread without apparent limit. They crept into this.
‘The ancient Chamber of the Three Lands,’ whispered Left-Quentha.
‘See,’ her sister hissed as she tapped the floor with her foot.
Carnelian leant over but could see nothing but an age-pitted floor. He shook his head.
‘Walk with us, Carnelian,’ said Left-Quentha.
However lightly they put down their feet, their footsteps produced echoes. The syblings were feeling their way with the lantern beam as if it were a stick.
‘There,’ muttered Right-Quentha and they rushed forward, keeping the beam anchored to a spot on the floor. They crouched and he joined them. He could see that the floor had two different tones divided by a black line. ‘You see?’ Right-Quentha tapped the nearest zone, ‘Green,’ and then the further zone, ‘Red.’
Carnelian stood up, whistling his breath out. They cast the light round for him to see the curve. ‘A wheelmap,’ he hissed. They both nodded. They took him to the centre of the design where there was a third zone, a black disc like a hole into which was inscribed a turtle. They stood at the centre of the Commonwealth, in Osrakum. The syblings slipped the lantern shutter round to produce a narrower, brighter beam. They played it about to show him the faraway curve of the chamber’s outer wall, and stopped at a gap. ‘The House of the Masks’ door.’ Round to another. ‘The Gods’ door.’ Round one more time. The beam sparked on an oblong of ice. Carnelian narrowed his eyes. Not ice, silver. As he made to walk towards it, they touched his arm.
He looked at their stiff spider-like silhouette. ‘I only want to see it close up.’ He could feel their anger but he went anyway and they followed, afraid to lose him in the darkness.
As he approached he saw it was a door of silver in the centre of which stared a huge crying eye. ‘A moon-eyed door,’ he muttered and remembered the other he had seen on the Approach.
‘It is here as it has always been. The entrance to the labyrinthine chambers of the Wise,’ the syblings whispered.
‘Can we just take a look?’
They became like statues. ‘It is forbidden, Seraph.’
He considered wheedling but decided he had pushed them far enough already. ‘The other doorways?’
‘Lead to the forbidden house.’ They had gone cold on him.
‘Shall we go back?’ he said gently.
‘That would be advisable, Seraph.’
As they walked away, Carnelian snatched a regretful look back at the moon-eyed door, already a fading glimmer in the night.
*
When they r
eturned to his chamber, they played a game of Three, but Carnelian’s attention wandered. After two disastrous games, he told the syblings that he was tired and wished to retire early to bed.
He lay in the darkness, his mind’s eye bewitched by a ghostly image of the moon-eyed door. It haunted his dreams so that when he awoke he was still tired. For breakfast, the Quenthas brought him peaches, fluffy hri bread and an aromatic paste made from honey and the tongues of hummingbirds. They played their flutes, they sang. He brooded.
It was afternoon when one of his tyadra came knocking at the door. The Quenthas answered it. There was muttering and then the syblings both turned to him and said, ‘The Red Ichorians are come.’
They dressed him and together they went out to meet the new arrivals in the chamber of doors beyond the double portcullis that protected the access to his chambers.
A number of Ichorians were there waiting for him. As they removed their scarlet-feathered helmets and tucked them under their arms, Carnelian could see by the number of rank rings on their gold collars that they were all officers. One of them came forward, and as he knelt before Carnelian the others knelt behind him. The Ichorian touched the two zero rings and three bars on his collar.
‘Master, I’m the commander of the third grand-cohort of the Pomegranates. I’ve come at the bidding of our father with a detachment of its third cohort to garrison this hold.’
Carnelian could see the fruit jewelled into his armour. ‘I’m here by order of He-who-goes-before.’
‘We’ve been instructed to protect you, Master.’
Carnelian watched the commander narrow his eyes at the Quenthas and said quickly, ‘They too are here at his command.’
The commander and his officers were all shaking their heads in disagreement.
The Quenthas looked at Carnelian. ‘Seraph, if they are here we cannot be.’
Carnelian could see it would be pointless arguing; the sisters had taken on their warrior stance. The Ichorians were squaring their shoulders in response.
‘We shall leave now, Seraph,’ the sisters said. They both smiled. ‘We would not want to have to hurt them.’
‘You must not forget your flutes,’ he said.
Left-Quentha frowned a little but her sister allowed herself the slightest curving smile. Carnelian followed them back to his chamber and closed the door behind him, watching them pick up their instruments.
‘I will see you again,’ he stated.
They both looked up, expressionless. Right-Quentha shook her head. ‘Perhaps, Carnelian,’ her sister said.
Carnelian had a stone in his throat. ‘I’m sick to my stomach of losing friends,’ he said, in Vulgate. His words put sad expressions on the sisters’ faces. ‘Right-Quentha, please close your eyes. I am going to unmask.’
The sybling reached for the mask hanging around her waist.
‘No, just close your eyes.’
They obeyed him. He went over to them, held the shoulders of each in turn and kissed her. They left him, Left-Quentha wearing a murderous frown that scattered the Suth guardsmen, her sister dabbing at her eyes.
For a while, Carnelian moped, missing the sisters. He went out to see the Ichorians, but the chamber of doors was empty. Only one pair of portcullises was lifted. He went to look through into the curving passage beyond. He remembered the guardhouse that was at its end, the same one he had passed through when he had come into the Sunhold. Its gates were near the sun-eyed door. Remembering that golden door put him in mind of its silver sister in the shadow world somewhere beneath his feet.
What did he have to say to the Ichorians anyway? He returned to his chamber. He made patterns with the pieces of Three. He wrapped himself in blankets and went out onto the balcony. He watched indigo soak into the sky until the colour had grown so deep it was freckled with stars. His eyes became mirrors. The image of the moon-eyed door seemed to be hanging over the crater. He shivered. It was imbued with a longing that reminded him of the opium box.
He made his decision and came back into the warmth. He had his men bring him a sword, a lantern and a tinder-box. He made sure the lantern was well filled with oil and that its shutter opened and closed smoothly, and spent time honing the sword’s bronze blade.
He rose with the moon, clothed himself, then left the chamber quietly. He silenced the question of the three guardsmen outside with an imperious hand and told them that they should not worry about him. If anyone came to see him, he commanded them to say that their Master was sleeping and refused to be disturbed. The eyes of one caught on the hilt of the sword. They could all see the lantern.
He left them to their conjectures and crept into the darkness of the chamber of doors. It was silent, with only a trickle of light and conversation coming from the Ichorians in their guardhouse. In front of the first portcullis that led to the Sun in Splendour, Carnelian carefully put down the sword and lantern. He slid the restraints from under the counterweights, braced himself against the bronze grille and, using the strength in his back and legs, lifted it a little. He pushed the sword and lantern under it and slipped through himself. He pushed the portcullis down and then opened and closed the second one in the same way.
The Sun in Splendour was pale with the moon that was a vague red eye in the Window of the Dawn. He stole across to the trapdoor. When he ground its cover back, he winced at the noise. He listened for Ichorians but they did not come. He crouched to light the lantern, shuttered it to produce a narrow beam, played this over the steps, then down he went.
The descent seemed to take much longer than before to reach the first chamber. He raked the blackness with the light. ‘This is madness,’ he hissed, frightening himself with his own echoes. For a moment he considered going back, then steeled himself and made for the gaping doorway.
The timbre of his steps changed as he moved into the vast sepulchral void of the ancient Encampment. He stopped several times along its nave, waited till the echoes fluttered away and listened.
At last he reached the chamber with its moon-eyed door. Only when he was halfway across it did he dare to lift the beam of light. A huge eye flared, irised with white fire. It was cut down the middle. For a silly moment, he thought that his light beam had sliced through it. He chided himself. The door was slightly ajar. He drew closer, close enough at last to touch its cold silver. He reached up to run his hand along the rim of the eye’s lower lid to where it overbrimmed to spill tears the size of fists down the door.
He closed the lantern shutter a little more, took a deep breath and threaded its narrowed light into the gap between the leaves. The chamber beyond was filled with jewelled people and the ghost of other lights. He snatched his head back, trying to still the betraying hammering of his heart. He waited for footfalls, a challenge. The only sounds were his heart, his breathing. He smothered the lantern in the lurid blood-red of his robe and dared to put his head through again. Perfect silent darkness. He uncovered the lantern to release its light. He let it impale one head. There was another beside it and another, as regular as sentinels. With a jerk, he realized a light was moving on the other side of the chamber. He lifted the lantern and it lifted too.
‘Only reflection,’ he breathed.
He squeezed through the door, trying to keep the light fixed on one of the heads, and reassured himself that its apparent movement came from his own wobbling. A bench, friezed with silver spirals, was the foundation for the glittering stumps he had thought were people. He stepped closer. Each stump was like three heads set one above the other. He reached out to touch the glittering surface. It was cold and knobbled like lizard’s skin. He peered closer. Beads. A bead necklace wound onto wooden reels. He reached up to touch the spindle that came up through their centres. Three reels impaled like pumpkins on a spear. He moved to the next three. Then there was an empty spindle followed by two more reel stacks. He walked round the bench and saw there was a second row of spindles behind the first. He stepped back and played light over the bench. On its side were four bronz
e loops from which hung short lengths of rope. He scooped one up, ran its beads through his hand.
He stood back, opened the lantern a little more, then held it up to look around the chamber. Twenty benches spaced out in a grid. The walls were the burnished heart-stone of the Pillar itself. He walked towards an archway. To one side hung a tapestry of glass, that he found was made of beaded ropes fixed to a row of loops set into the wall. He fingered one of the ropes, wondering what its function might be.
He shone light through the archway, then crept into the next chamber. This was very much like the first. It too had twenty benches with their spindles and reels, its near-mirror walls, its bead-rope tapestries. He wandered through another archway, another chamber, more arches, more chambers, each with its complement of benches. He wanted to find something that might make sense of it all.
He turned in the middle of a chamber. An archway opened in the centre of each wall. He could not remember which one he had come through. He closed his eyes, turning, trying to feel for the direction he had been facing. He opened his eyes and walked back to an archway. The next chamber looked much like all the others. So did the next, and the next. He grimaced. ‘Fool, fool, fool.’ He shook himself. Why had he not taken some precaution? He was utterly lost.
Thus began Carnelian’s search for the moon-eyed door. Only the pulsing of the blood in his ears and his scuffling steps gave time shape. His path threaded the chambers as the cords did their beads. Neither made sense to him.
Huge whiteness reared up in front of him. His lantern clattered to the ground. He cried out and swatted at something with his sword.
‘Gods’ blood!’ exploded a voice.
A blow made him drop the sword with a clatter. Falling to a crouch nursing his wrist, Carnelian stretched for the lantern that was angling its beam up to the ceiling. He felt the lantern being snatched away. Its beam fenced the air like a sword, then steadied to come down to run him through.
The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Page 45