The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01

by Ricardo Pinto

  The wall was close now, so close Carnelian could see it was a scree. Little avalanches clinked down and he realized the whole slope was made up from fragments of ammonite shell.

  He felt a change in his aquar's footfalls. Each impact was sharper. Peering down into the water he saw the channel was now lined with stone. Two buttresses rose up to hold back the hills of shells. Between them was a gap out from which the stream flowed. Soon masonry had risen on either side. The other Masters were in the noisy space with him, being carried along by the sartlar tide whose burdens formed a mosaic that hid them from view. Carnelian saw a leathery hand fumble up to steady a basket. One of the sartlar became entangled in the legs of Jaspar's aquar and was knocked down. Its shellfish load pattered into the water like stones. Other sartlar bleated and tried to get out of the way. The aquar's plumes flared. It trumpeted. Its claws churned the sartlar's body into the stream as it tried to keep its footing. There was a gurgling shriek, some crunching sounds that might have been crushing shells. Jaspar pulled his aquar back into control, then moved on.

  Carnelian's aquar stepped around the floating mess. He glimpsed a face into which a spiral had been branded so deeply, the nose was in several chunks. He could not look away, even though he had to lean out dangerously to keep the corpse in sight. The baskets meshed and it was gone. He looked ahead, troubled, to find that they had come through the gap into a valley that was carved and gouged into a complex honeycomb awrithe with sartlar.

  Jaspar affected a cough. 'It is unusual to find oneself in a drain.'

  The channel swelled into a great sink whose walls were streaked abattoir-brown and pierced by many dribbling mouths. Gutter lips wedged into the top of the wall were disgorging thick dark jets. Meaty chunks made them spit and splutter. Carnelian watched a hunched sartlar using a paddle as if it were a broom to brush a sodden lump over the edge so that it splashed into the pool below. That pool poured its bloody mixture past their aquars' feet. Carnelian felt as if he were choking.

  Sartlar were hauling their baskets up a stairway that rose out of the channel. The Marula were sent to clear a way. With the other Masters, Carnelian urged his aquar up the steps.

  As his aquar neared the top, Carnelian emerged into a red world, an amphitheatre with tiers of cisterns, walkways, channels. The air hazed with flies. Everywhere there were piles of ammonite shells. As each sartlar emptied its basket on a pile it caused a rattling avalanche. Sartlar sat surrounded by baskets like women at a market. They cracked the ammonites open on rocks, used their claws to scratch out the creatures inside and then discarded the empty shells. These were gathered by other sartlar who shuffled off towards the rubbish wall. There, amidst a frenzy of gull wings and screeches, the shells were thrown away.

  'Filthy industry,' Jaspar cried above the clatter.

  The Marula were trying to wave away the flies. As these spat against him, Carnelian became thankful for his mask and cloak.

  A brown man was battering his way towards them through the sartlar using the handle of a bladed whip. He made his hands into a tube and shouted through it, 'You've come the wrong way.'

  The lances of the Marula pricked him out of their path. They started moving through scattering sartlar, spilling baskets. Other overseers confronted them, shaking their whips, slapping the lance heads away from their faces. 'Wrong way,' they cried. 'Wrong way.'

  'We should return,' shrilled Vennel in Vulgate. 'Clearly there's no road through here.'

  Suth said something to one of the Marula. The man advanced and lifted his lance to point up the valley. ‘Show the way to upper land.'

  The overseers shook their heads and showed grimaces of brown teeth. Any sartlar that bumped into them they cracked upon the head.

  Aurum pushed his way through the Marula. 'Show me the route.' His voice carried even over the noise.

  They waved their whips and scowled at him. A whip handle clacked against Aurum's saddle-chair, causing his aquar's eye-plumes to flutter. The Master lunged forward past its neck. The men drew back, loosening their lashes ready to strike, but the beginnings of fear distorted their faces. Aurum slipped back his cowl to reveal his gold face. They hid behind their arms as if that face were brighter than the sun. They cringed back, dropping their whips, tripping over baskets and sartlar. Aurum straightened, hid his face within the shadow of his cowl. The overseers cowered till he commanded them to approach. Then they fawned on him and strained to hear his every word.

  Cringing guides led them up the valley. They wound through a maze of vats and channels. Carnelian watched sartlar stir a rot of shelled ammonites. Each stir gave off a stench and oozed out more yellow liquid that darkened as it flowed. Sluices let water in from above or allowed the liquid to filter down from one tank to the next. With each descent the colour deepened. In one tank he saw it had become almost black but that its edges were the colour of blood. He understood and looked around with wonder. The whole valley was a dyeworks for extracting fabled, precious purple.

  A whole run of tanks was flushed clean by a flood released from higher up. Red to their waists, sartlar leaned against the current as they scraped at the rotting matter that was sticking to the sides. Carnelian knew this sewage would be channelled down to the sink from where it would stream red off to the sea.

  'Do my Lords think it reasonable that I should now be given explanations?' Vennel said over the scrabbling of aquar claws.

  Carnelian was exhausted by the effort of keeping in his seat. During the long, hard climb his saddle-chair had been giving him a constant bruising batter. He would be glad to stop even for a short time.

  Aurum looked up at the sun. 'We must be far from here before we camp tonight.'

  'Camp ... ?' said Vennel.

  'Aurum, we have almost reached the land above,' said Suth. Carnelian saw his father turning round to look for him. 'And it might profit us to rest our beasts before we go much further.'

  'As my Lords wish,' said Aurum with a tone of resignation. 'I will seek out a suitable place to stop.'

  They continued to climb up the valley side. Carnelian strained to look over the juddering back of the saddle-chair and glimpsed the shimmer of the sea.

  He was crossing a weir when he saw Aurum on the other side bringing his aquar to a stop. The Master set five Marula aside and divided the rest into two groups. The first he sent back down the way they had come. The second was sent ahead to spy out the land. Aurum made his aquar kneel, fastened on his ranga shoes and then climbed out of his saddle-chair. Carnelian bound on his own shoes. Aurum towered over the Maruli to whom he was handing his aquar's reins.

  The river formed a lake below the level of the path. The aquar stooped to drink and the Marula bent down beside them lapping like beasts. Tain and the other slaves stood apart from the Masters who were like a copse of trees.

  Jaspar struck a pose. 'One is certainly relieved to have escaped that foul factory. Though not without cost.' He pinched up his robe as if it were dung. 'In civilized circumstances one would insist on having this immediately torched. This rag could not be sweetened by all the perfumes of Osrakum.'

  The wind will cleanse it well enough,' snapped Vennel.

  'One fears the smell of those putrid molluscs will remain forever in one's nostrils.'

  Suth looked at Jaspar. The road's perfume will make my Lord soon enough forget his putrid molluscs.'

  'At last,' said Vennel.

  'At last, my Lord?' said Jaspar.

  Vermel's mask regarded him disdainfully. 'We come at last to knowledge of our destination.'

  'Our destination has always been the same, my Lord,' said Suth.

  'But not the means by which we might reach it, my Lord.'

  'We all agreed we should proceed along the road disguised.'

  'I recall a mention of palanquins, of the Legate's banners.'

  'It has become necessary, my Lord, that we should adopt a different disguise,' said Aurum.

  'Why did the palanquins fall out of favour?'

 
'We can no longer risk using the leftway,' said Suth.

  'Why by the Two can we not, my Lord?'

  'We have reasons to believe that were we to do so we should be attacked,' said Aurum.

  These reasons were no doubt contained in the Clave's letter?' Vennel waited for confirmation but received none. 'Do these reasons justify this preposterous choice of route?'

  'Many eyes would have seen us leaving the tower if we had joined the road, there,' said Suth.

  Vennel pointed up the valley. This will bring us up onto the road, no doubt?'

  'It will, my Lord.'

  Carnelian could see Vermel's fury in the cast of his shoulders.

  'What is this new disguise, my Lords, this wonderful concealment that will draw a veil of shadow over the eyes of our enemies?'

  Aurum indicated the Marula. 'We will hide ourselves among these barbarians.'

  Vennel looked at the Marula as if he were counting them. These creatures are of a type rare within the borders of the Commonwealth. Do my Lords think it wise that we should attempt to conceal ourselves in such a conspicuous hiding place?'

  'Marula are rare, my Lord,' said Aurum, 'but here, by the sea, black men from round the coast are not unknown. We shall masquerade as chieftains making a trade pilgrimage to the Guarded Land.'

  'One had understood the coastal blacks to be far more diminutive than these Marula.'

  Suth broadened his shoulders. 'My Lord is not listening. Black men are uncommon on the road and thus few will know enough to make a distinction between their kinds.'

  Vennel nodded. 'My Lords seem to have woven their schemes with some care. I can only wonder why I was excluded.'

  'I too,' said Jaspar, but Carnelian noted that his voice held no edge of resentment.

  Vennel’s mask turned its imperious gaze on him. 'You seem not much concerned, my Lord.'

  'We are here now. It would seem foolish, not to say unpleasant, to return down this valley.'

  The Ruling Lord Suth and I thought it more prudent that we should keep our own counsel,' said Aurum.

  Vennel made a gesture of exasperation. This prudence was not, it seems, extended to the Legate of the Tower in the Sea.'

  'We needed his assistance,' said Suth.

  'A great quantity of it, my Lord, judging by our collar-less and poisoned escort and these starvelings with their grimy chairs, not to mention the cut-down ranga. Tell me, Aurum, how did you persuade our dear Legate to give you so much assistance? Did you perhaps bind him to your cause with the promise of one of your blood-high daughters?'

  Aurum opened his hands in a threat gesture. 'Perhaps my Lord should consider choosing his accusations with more care.'

  Vennel turned away to look at Suth. 'What of the much-vaunted need for haste, My-Lord-who-goes before?'

  There is still time enough to reach Osrakum before the election,' said Suth.

  'One more question, my Lord.' Vennel leaned towards Suth. 'Who are these enemies so terrible that they can force Lords of the Great to hide like thieves?'

  'A conspiracy among the Lesser Chosen.'

  To which, no doubt, our friend the Legate is totally immune?'

  'Do you think we apprised him of all our plans?'

  'And from all this caution can one conclude that these conspirators might dare to breach the Blood Convention?'

  Aurum moved closer to Vennel. 'It seems that they might indeed attempt our lives, Lord Vennel, and so it behoves us all to show great care. These are evidently very desperate people. You do understand, my Lord?'

  Their two masks reflected each other's for a moment.

  'Only too well, Ruling Lord Aurum,' said Vennel.

  Looking from one to the other, Carnelian could almost see the anger passing between them. He was sure more had been said than had been in the words.

  Something touched his shoulder. It was his father. Follow me, his hand signed. Carnelian clacked after him though he was reluctant to be alone with him. Crail's blood flooded between them like a river.

  Carnelian and his father stood on the weir and looked down the valley to the sea.

  'Behold Thuyakalrul,' said Suth.

  There it lay, beguiling like a ring: the Grand Harbour a paler region of the sea within its circle; the inner harbour of the tower a tiny winking jewel.

  This sea is a strange wealth,' his father said.

  Carnelian wrinkled his nose as he thought of the stinking purple dye.

  Suth pointed to where the coast, curving round into hazy distance, was inlaid with tiny mirrors. There lie the pans in which the yellow-salt is made with which we buy soldiers from the Lower Lands. The sun's ardour distils it from the sea and the Chosen use its currency to buy barbarian blood. Is it not a paradox that a few holes in the ground should yield up such conquest?'

  Carnelian played with his fingers.

  The Quyans came to these lands across that sea,' his father said. The Wise maintain it was the sea that was the mother of the Quyan race. They claim for evidence the colours of our Chosen eyes that constantly reflect her.'

  Behind them there was a mutter of voices. The aquar were fidgeting.

  His father looked back at the other Masters. 'We cannot risk being divided, you and I.'

  Carnelian stared seawards but saw nothing. His eyes were searching inwards, seeking a way out of the prison of his anger.

  'I did all I could to save Crail,' Suth said quietly.

  'If you did, my Lord, it was evidently not enough,' said Carnelian. The words were out before he could recall them. He felt his face burning against the metal of his mask. He could taste his words' venom. He felt his father turn towards him.

  'Henceforth, my Lord, always wear your gloves. A single pale, symboled hand could betray us all.'

  As his father strode off to join the others, Carnelian lingered frozen by the coldness in his voice. He knew it was unfair to blame him but he could not help it. The bile rose in him as he told himself that it was his father's weakness that had consigned Crail to his terrible death.

  The Marula had returned and were standing in the deepest shade. Apart from their outlines all that could be seen of them was their amber sliver eyes. Carnelian watched his father move towards them. He could not hear his words but saw the way the black men quaked. They scurried out among the aquar and began to unbale baggage from one of them.

  Carnelian walked carefully back on his ranga shoes, avoiding his father. The Marula were tying all kinds of shoddy objects to the saddle-chairs. Carnelian came up to his chair and fingered the gourds, the filthy feathered bags, coils of rope, a wood harpoon.

  The barbarian has such a childish liking for clutter and whimsy,' said Jaspar as he gingerly poked the objects hanging round his chair. Carnelian watched him wipe his gloved hand against his cloak. Vennel was standing looking up the valley. His mask gave him a look of contemptuous detachment.

  Carnelian managed a better vault into his saddle-chair than he had before. He cursed when he found that he had trapped a corner of his cloak under him. Some contortions were needed to release it before, at his signal, his aquar rocked him back into the air. He made sure to see Tain scrambling back up into his place amongst the baggage.

  As they set off Carnelian took a good look at the bracelets that covered the forearms of the Marula. After what his father had said, he decided that they were not bone but bitter salt.

  The GREAT SEA ROAD

  A hundred days to the sea

  Along the high white road

  But I shall fly there with the wind

  To leave behind this land of dusts.

  (extract from the 'Lay of the Lord of the Sea')

  Shoals of people slipping past, scraping, scuffling. Dense rafts of bales, of poles and palanquins, floated in the flow. Wheels taller than men drove irresistibly round like mill stones. At a command, the Marula scrabbled down the slope, making the throng a shadow procession behind their kicked-up dust.

  'Conceal yourselves,' cried Aurum, 'sit low in your chairs to di
sguise your height.' Then his aquar was stumbling down into the rolling ochre air. In front of Carnelian, a cloud billowed up. He pulled his cowl forwards as it broke over him. His aquar's plumes rustled as he urged it down into the haze. Every step jarred the saddle-chair. The grind and creaking grew louder with the babble of voices and the clatter of stone bells.

  He broke through the dust and pulled his aquar up. The river had faces. He peered from one to another. Some were dark, some painted, some cried, some laughed. Across the eddy of heads something floated like a broken ship: a wreckage of wood and canvas held together with ropes. He watched it totter back and forth, waving above it a tatter of flags.

  'Hey, you! Get on or get out of the way,' came a cry from behind him.

  Carnelian peered round the edge of his saddle-chair but could make no sense of what he saw. A huge wedge of bone swayed ponderously from side to side, tapering down to a cruel beak. Horn stumps curved out from the four corners of the wedge. Behind all this more bone fanned out into a fluted crest.

  'Out of the way, barbarian, or by the horns I'll run you down.'

  A small man was creasing his belly against the crest's mottled edge. A tarpaulined mound rose behind him, criss-crossed with thongs. The man was piercing-eyed and grimacing as he shook his hooked goad at Carnelian.

  Something impacted the side of his saddle-chair. Carnelian whisked round. The reins were snatched from his hand. He saw the cowled figure of one of the Masters lean back into his seat to yank them taut. Carnelian's aquar went with the tugging.

  Try and be more careful,' his father said angrily in Vulgate.

  The rebuke stung Carnelian. A smell like malt distracted him from any outburst. He turned to see bronzed hide flexing. His chair shook as he watched the monster lumber by. A wagon pole juddered past like a battering ram. Then the edge of a solid wheel of wood rolled into view, its splintered rim turning slowly. It lurched into a rut, causing Carnelian's aquar to flare its eye-plumes. He was shaken around in his chair as the creature recoiled.