The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon)

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘But look how much damage they did to us. They killed Nar, and Pleyr, and roughed the rest of us up. They’re too big to be just men, too beautiful.’

  Carnelian could see the fear lurking in Rud’s eyes.

  ‘You’ll envy your dead friends once I get free,’ said Osidian.

  Rud bent towards them and whipped a slap across Osidian’s face. Carnelian jumped as Osidian’s head lashed round. He saw the disbelief in Osidian’s face. Neither of them could believe the sacrilege.

  ‘You shut up, OK. Shut your mouth!’ spat Rud.

  Carnelian could see the second man staring and that his spine had regained some stiffness.

  ‘They don’t look all that godlike now. He takes a slap like a woman, he does.’ Rud pushed out his chest. ‘Come to think of it, he looks a bit like a woman. Maybe I should take a knife across his face and then we’d see how beautiful he’d look.’ He nodded gluttonously. ‘Maybe I’ll just cut something off him, a bit of his milky flesh, a finger, an ear, a little memento of our visit to “paradise”.’ Rud pulled out a flint-bladed knife and took pleasure in showing them its scalloped edge. As he leaned forward, Carnelian tried to shove his body in the way. With a thump, two more feet landed in front of him.

  ‘You know they’re not to be touched,’ said the newcomer.

  ‘But, boss, we could hurt them where it doesn’t show,’ said the second man, grinning his stump-rimmed mouth.

  The boss turned on him. ‘Do you want to die here? Well, do you? Who’s going to get us out if we don’t keep our end of the bargain?’

  ‘I say we cut them,’ said Rud, with a filthy grin.

  The boss slammed into Rud, who hit the rib like a sack of sand. He straightened up shakily.

  ‘We were just trying to get them to keep quiet,’ said the second man.

  ‘Well gag them then,’ said the boss.

  Carnelian saw the venomous look that Rud shot Osidian as he moved off.

  The sun heated the boathouse like an oven. Through the holes gaping in the hide roof, fire poured down over the earth floor, caught in the rib curves and bleached the ruined bone boat. An edge of heat reached slowly towards their feet. They tried to move out of its way but could not. Carnelian felt it begin to roast his feet. He looked over and saw Osidian’s face. The gag gaped his mouth. His eyes were screwed closed. Sweat beading on his face made his birthmark glisten. Carnelian forced himself to look at that battered face, making its silent scream. Osidian had not opened his eyes since Rud had struck him.

  The water down there at the boathouse’s end was white-hot silver. A breeze belched up a stench of mud that told of the lowering level of the Skymere. But there was another smell. The reek of rotting flesh that he was sure was coming from their reddening feet.

  Heavy footfalls woke Carnelian. He groaned, adjusting his painful spine.

  ‘Put it there,’ said a voice in Vulgate. By its timbre, it was a voice accustomed to speaking Quya.

  A lantern settled brilliant as a star in front of him. One of their captors’ shapes moved away from it. Carnelian squinted sight into his eyes and saw the ranga, the jewel-brocaded hem of a Master’s cloak. The ranga shoes walked to stand beside the bronze lantern. Carnelian looked up at the huge shrouded figure.

  ‘No doubt my Lords never expected to find themselves in such squalid surroundings?’ said two beautiful voices together in Quya. Two white hands, each blood-ringed, opened the shroud to reveal a double mask of gold.

  ‘. . . an . . . yus,’ blurred Carnelian through his gag. He strained to see Osidian staring out from his bruised, gagged face.

  The double mask turned on the boss. ‘You were told not to spill blood.’ The syblings’ voices were deadly flat.

  The boss hunched. ‘They fought like demons.’

  The double mask lingered a while and the boss seemed to grow smaller. The mask turned back. ‘No greeting from you, Celestial?’ said one of the syblings. ‘Aaah, but I see they have stopped up your divine mouth.’ Their hand made a lean, smiling gesture. ‘We would remove it ourselves but no doubt you have been fingered by the hired brutes . . . and they are thoroughly unclean.’

  He motioned to the shadow behind him. ‘Ungag them.’

  The man came, the boss. His thick, grubby fingers worried at the knots and the gag came away from Carnelian’s mouth.

  ‘The other, the other,’ said the syblings, jabbing their finger.

  Carnelian watched the boss leaning over Osidian. The man stood up, gave the double mask a fearful look. The syblings made a gesture of dismissal.

  The boss jerked a bow. ‘Your assurances, Master . . . ?’

  ‘Do not provoke us. Bring in the urns. Take care that neither you nor any of your filthy band look upon our faces.’

  The boss hesitated, narrowing his eyes, then ducked a bow and lurched away.

  ‘Repulsive creature.’ The Hanuses reached up and carefully, slowly, removed their mask. Freed, their alabaster faces looked around. ‘We will have to arrange a fiery accident for this noisome shed.’ The living eyes looked down on Osidian and then Carnelian. The blind left face smiled bleakly.

  ‘My Lords are wondering what has brought us all to this less than salubrious spot, eh?’ said Right-Hanus. ‘Your silence denies nothing. I can see the curiosity in your eyes.’ He looked at Osidian. ‘Your divine mother sends you greetings, Celestial.’

  ‘You think I did not know she was behind this?’ said Osidian.

  The Hanuses gave a little bow.

  ‘But this is sacrilege,’ cried Carnelian.

  ‘Let us not concern ourselves with niceties of terminology,’ said Right-Hanus.

  ‘It is merely political necessity,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘You have lifted your hand against the Gods,’ Osidian said.

  ‘The almost-Gods, to be precise, and when Jade Lord Nephron does not appear the burden of the candidature will fall inevitably on his brother.’

  The rib rattled as Osidian struggled to free himself. The Hanuses stepped back, left face looking alarmed, the other glancing towards the door. Their hands lifted their mask almost to their faces. As Osidian stopped struggling, oily smiles oozed back over both.

  ‘The Empress assured us that her hirelings were dependable,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘One is gratified to see that this is true,’ said Right-Hanus.

  ‘They are of the Brotherhood of the Wheel?’ asked Carnelian.

  The Hanuses’ faces looked surprised. ‘Why, yes, my Lord,’ they replied.

  ‘Why would the Brotherhood risk so much?’ asked Osidian. ‘If they are discovered, not only they but all their kind will be exterminated even if it became necessary to lay the city waste.’

  ‘The price they asked was the City at the Gates,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘She cannot intend to give it to them.’ Osidian was incredulous.

  ‘She would pay any price.’

  ‘But you distract us, Celestial,’ said Right-Hanus. ‘Now, where was I? Aaah, yes, the Empress bade me say to her son that she bears you no more malice than you do her. She knows that if she allowed your accession you would move against her.’

  ‘She prefers that the son who wears the Masks should be her creature,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘And what place has she made for you?’ asked Carnelian.

  The Hanuses both beamed. ‘We have been promised power,’ they chorused.

  ‘You think you can trust her? She has killed her own daughter and now . . .’

  ‘Her son?’ suggested Left-Hanus.

  ‘It is said that there are carnivorous saurians that when caged will devour even their offspring. Yet these same creatures will allow tiny birds to pick ticks from their hide,’ his brother said.

  ‘She will swat you like a gnat.’

  ‘We have taken precautions,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘The very act of making us her instrument has made her vulnerable to us,’ said Right-Hanus. ‘If news of this crime were ever to reach the Great and the Wise, b
oth powers would rise against her.’

  ‘Against them both not even she could prevail,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘So now you come to spill our blood yourselves?’

  The Hanuses looked shocked. ‘Not so, my Lord, not so,’ said Right-Hanus.

  ‘We merely came . . . to gloat,’ said Left-Hanus.

  They brought their faces very close to Carnelian. ‘We have waited long for our revenge,’ they said together.

  ‘Revenge? Revenge on us? On me?’

  The syblings made vague gestures. ‘The Chosen, the House of the Masks . . .’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘. . . even the Empress,’ said Right-Hanus.

  ‘Look at us . . . we are an abomination,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘You cannot imagine the unending horror of our lives,’ said his brother.

  ‘But this was done to you by the Wise.’

  ‘Haaagh! They are machines,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘Blind instruments wielded by Chosen hands,’ said Right-Hanus.

  ‘You too are Chosen. Look, you wear a blood-ring.’

  The faces sneered and spoke together. ‘We are freaks, merely symbols of the Twin Gods created as a decoration for the court, nothing more.’

  ‘I have always treated you with respect,’ said Osidian.

  ‘Aaagh, certainly you have talked to us . . .’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘. . . but with respect?’ said Right-Hanus.

  They shook their head, lips pursed up to their noses. ‘Not respect . . . most certainly not respect.’

  ‘Now, condescension . . . ?’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘But we prattle on. We must have your blood-rings.’ The syblings gathered up their cloak and robes and, crouching, tucked them into their lap. Their faces grimaced with the effort, causing the flesh joining them to ruck. ‘You are very bloody, my Lords,’ said Right-Hanus. They both looked frightened. ‘The barbarians have played with you?’

  ‘They did not cut you, remove any flesh?’ demanded Left-Hanus.

  ‘No matter. We will just have to have you examined.’ They frowned, and came close enough for Carnelian to see the pores in their white skin. He felt them fumbling his fingers. His ring was tugged off.

  ‘Aaah,’ sighed the syblings, as they sat back holding the ring.

  ‘My father will punish you,’ said Carnelian.

  ‘Even now, He-who-goes-before searches frantically,’ said Right-Hanus.

  ‘He will find nothing,’ said Left-Hanus. ‘Then it will be he that will be punished.’

  Carnelian remembered Molochite’s threat and shuddered.

  ‘And now yours, Celestial,’ said the syblings as their bulk engulfed Osidian. When they had Osidian’s ring, they sat back. They put the rings carefully away. ‘The Empress demands proof.’ They were about to heave themselves up.

  ‘One last matter, Celestial,’ said Left-Hanus.

  The syblings brought their faces close to Osidian, who strained to turn away. Both spat. Right-Hanus watched the spittle running down the side of Osidian’s face with a sigh of pleasure that was almost sexual. They stood up.

  Osidian’s eyes came up dark fire.

  ‘Put away your oh so terrible glare, nephew. Your days of power are over,’ sneered Right-Hanus.

  ‘We do not fear you now. Soon you will be dead,’ said his brother.

  ‘Your body’s destruction will leave nothing to be put inside a tomb,’ said Right-Hanus.

  They snapped their fingers.

  ‘It will be as if you had never been at all,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘Alas, you will be quickly forgotten,’ his brother said.

  ‘You would not dare spill his blood,’ cried Carnelian. ‘The very earth of the Isle would cry out.’

  ‘It will not be done here. The Empress was most insistent on that.’

  ‘You will both be taken out beyond the Sacred Wall and there, in the polluted outer world, you will die,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘How can you hope to get us through the Three Gates unseen?’ Carnelian asked.

  There was a grinding sound behind him. The syblings looked up and covered their faces with the mask. ‘Soon my Lord will see.’ They stood up and walked out of sight.

  Carnelian could hear one of the syblings’ voices speaking Vulgate. He heard many feet coming back. He saw the boss, Rud and others of the Brotherhood. They crowded him and lifted him.

  ‘By the horns, they’re heavy,’ said one.

  Carnelian was half lifted, half dragged round the wooden rib he had been leaning against. The Hanuses stood, a shrouded immensity. On either side of the syblings stood two huge earthenware pots as round as pomegranates, daubed with red ochre, eared with many handles. Both pots were tall enough to come up to the syblings’ waist.

  ‘Your palanquins await you, my Lords,’ chorused the Hanuses’ voices.

  ‘You are going to put us in those,’ said Carnelian in horror, staring.

  The double mask inclined its rightmost eyeslit to one of the pots. ‘I need hardly tell you how difficult it was to procure two funerary urns large enough.’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Oh yes, my Lord, very much alive,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘You cannot hope to gag us so that no sound will be heard,’ Carnelian said in quick desperation.

  ‘My Lord should not worry about that. He will be drugged,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘In his urn, my Lord will dream like a foetus in a womb,’ his brother said.

  Carnelian was set on the edge of the urn. They leaned him back. The urn’s lip bit into his spine and thighs. Supporting his weight, they took his ankles and folded his legs up against his chest so that his chin jammed between his kneecaps. They squeezed him closed then packed him into the urn. Its glazed cavity pressed tight over more and more of his skin. The feeling of being trapped was squeezing a scream out. The cruel satisfaction already in their eyes made him swallow it like a knife.

  His buttocks touched the bottom. His spine pressed into the urn’s curve. His knees speared into his chest. He could just manage to see over the urn’s lip. He strained against the urn but it was as if he had been built into a wall. He took swift shallow little breaths, trying to control the panic.

  The Hanuses hovered above him like a thundercloud. The curtains of their cloak parted and their gleaming double mask descended, coming close enough to almost lean its two chins on the rim of the urn. Right-Hanus’ whisper came from behind the gold. ‘The Empress bade us tell you that even if you had not been involved in the destruction of the Lord Nephron, she would still have found a way to encompass your ruin.’

  ‘This she has done for your mother’s sake,’ whispered Left-Hanus.

  ‘The flame of your life was lit from hers before you blew it out. The loss of freedom, the colours of this world, were as nothing to losing her sister.’

  As the mask began to rise like a double sun, Carnelian found enough breath to say, ‘How . . . ?’

  The mask paused in its ascent. Its two eyeslits turned to look down at him. ‘How . . . ?’ said the gold. ‘How were you taken?’

  Carnelian closed his eyes and opened them again instead of a nod.

  ‘It was you yourself that gave us victory. Once Imago brought you to us . . .’ The syblings made a grabbing gesture, the sign for capture.

  ‘Jaspar?’ Carnelian gasped, and dizzied, struggling to suck in breath.

  ‘Imago Jaspar, yes, it was he. He told the Empress that you might bear watching, that you were the Lord Suth’s fatal weakness. We saw you in the library, we saw you in the Yden.’

  The syblings’ hands made an obscene gesture.

  ‘We saw everything,’ said Left-Hanus.

  ‘It was the most inconceivable folly that you should both come down here again, but she had hoped for that and you did not disappoint her.’ The mask began pulling away. ‘Pleasant dreams, my Lord.’

  ‘Tomorrow you die,’ his brother said.

  The syblings receded, their hands remaining behind only long
enough to make a summoning.

  One of the Brotherhood appeared. He brought a cane over the rim, a spear questing for Carnelian’s face. Carnelian tried to move his head but his knees held it like a clamp. The cane impaled his lips. He tasted blood resisting it. The man’s palm struck the other end. It tore through his lip, clunked against his teeth and then twisted into his tongue. Blood welled its metal taste. The cane was a nail through his face. He vibrated with terror as the man put his mouth to the other end of it. He watched the cheeks inflate. The man spat out and Carnelian choked and gagged as something like a fruit stone punched into his throat. He tried to vomit it out but the cane was in the way. It melted down into him. The cane rasping out of his mouth allowed him to rack out some coughs.

  He gulped, trying to bail the blood from his mouth with his tongue. His hands flailed for the urn’s lip, as he tried to drag himself out of its maw. Voices were barking remotely. The light was as sharp as spears. His head was a stone sinking up to the ears between his knees. His hands folded and tucked into the urn. His body was a deadman’s. He felt the darkness coming. A night sky pressing down upon his head and then a grinding that locked him into a world crammed full with his dead flesh in which the only sound was breathing.