Carnelian looked up.
'Yours might at least preserve some of his uses while mine ...' Jaspar took his slave's chin in a gloved hand, lifted it. The boy's enormous dark, bruise-lidded eyes closed and trembled. 'Without his eyes, this one will be of very little use.' He pouted his lips, lapsed into Vulgate. 'Isn't that so, little one?' The boy produced a tearful grimace that attempted to be a smile. Jaspar released the slave's chin and turned to Carnelian. 'Feel at liberty to remove your mask, and then we shall be equally responsible for the damage of each other's property.'
Carnelian shook his head slowly, seeing nothing. Everything was drenched with decay. His father must have expected this would happen and had done nothing to stop it.
Jaspar was all joviality. 'You really will have to forget these peculiar sensibilities, Carnelian. They are so unbecoming in one of the Chosen.'
Only in the dark did Carnelian remove his mask. Then he lay down, rubbing the edges of his face where the mask had dug in. He clasped his left hand over his blood-ring, the sign of his manhood. It was not a charm. He felt like a lonely child. Tain was somewhere outside. Jaspar had insisted it was not fitting that a Lord should sleep in the same place as another's slave. Carnelian had said nothing to Tain. What comfort could he have given him even if Jaspar had not been there? His brother could not have understood the Quya, but he knew well enough what punishment would be his for looking on a Master's face.
Carnelian could hear Jasper's slow breathing. He wondered why he felt no anger towards him. It was a terrible betrayal to feel no anger. With a peculiar detachment he considered the conversation he had had with the Master. He knew now that Jaspar's motives for talking to him had not been any attempt at friendship. Jaspar was no different from the other Masters. In that, at least, his father had been right.
Outside a voice was singing. Its sad sound failed to touch Carnelian. Everything seemed to be shut outside him. He wanted to die. What point was there to a life in which one felt nothing? His fingers found the mattress edge. They dangled over. Then, daring sacrilege, they pushed down to touch the unhallowed, corrupted earth. Carnelian expected something, a shock, a sting but there was nothing, nothing but his fingers stirring dust.
Carnelian was woken by aquar song welcoming the dawn. He sat up. He could hear the murmur of the camp. His body ached all over. Jaspar was gone. Squatting in a corner, Tain was staring at the ground. As Carnelian stood up, his brother came over to help him dress. They adjusted Carnelian's riding cloak avoiding each other's eyes. Carnelian felt that if he were to stretch out his hand he would stub his fingers on the wall that had risen between them.
'I bet you thought those four-horned monsters on the road were dragons, eh, Tain?' He could hear the flat emptiness of his words.
His brother shrugged, bit his lip and continued to adjust the riding cloak.
Carnelian drooped as if his bones had been removed. He put his hand on his brother's chest. 'How are you feeling, Tain?'
His brother looked up, furious. 'How do you think?'
Carnelian looked at those bright angry eyes and imagined them replaced with dead stone. 'It's not my fault,' he shouted. 'It's not.' The last word tailed off. He could see that Tain was close to tears.
'I'm sorry, Tain,' he said gently. His legs felt too weak to hold him up. Reassurances were on his tongue but he remembered Crail and swallowed them. He reached out to touch Tain, but his brother drew away.
'A Master might see us.'
Tain held out his mask. Carnelian took it, put it on, drew the cowl over his head then walked out into the morning.
A dewy fragrance overlaid the smoky stink. Clinks and voices sounded sharp, seeming nearer than they were. The throng was fidgeting into motion.
Soon Carnelian was mounted with the other Masters and filing back through the camp. Tain sitting on the baggage found a smile for him. It hurt Carnelian as much as if his brother had thrown a stone. Men levered wagon wheels into turning. Pots clacked as they were stowed. Urine dribbled on embers, hissing steam. Laughter and the shrilling of babies pierced the swelling hubbub.
The Marula jogged their aquar onto the road. Mist hid the animals' bird feet. Another of the way-forts lay a little distance back along the road with its sinister fence of punishment posts. Carnelian looked out over the stopping place. Its brown flood of travellers was leaching towards them. A diamond-bright gash had torn between earth and sky. Chattering clouds of starlings flashed down from the trees. Then he turned as he felt the Masters moving and they were off: amidst the trundling chariots, the creaking axles, the chatter of the women, they were off into the south, to where the Naralan met the Guarded Land.
For days they rode the road's relentless rhythm, pounding into endless dusty distance. Night brought hri cake, incense, weary hope. Carnelian looked across a chasm at his father. The other Masters were quick to anger. The Marula cordon beat away the hucksters and the curious. Tain's eyes dulled as if they were already stone. Carnelian hid in his cowl, blood pulsing in his head. The thud and thump of huimur feet. Sandals scuffing, scraping. Wheel rims always rising always falling. Litters rocking. People dragging squalling infants. Hand-carts hard pushed to keep in chariot shadow. Swaying horned saurian heads. To kill time, people quarrelled over trifles. Heat. Unbearable heat desiccating everything to chalk. Out from the haze far behind them the road's procession bubbled. Up ahead, it simmered away to nothing. Carnelian sagged dozing, sometimes sucking furtive gulps of water in the shadow of his cowl, brooding, licking without caring the stone of salt that had been pressed on him as protection from sun madness. His legs, his back, his neck nagged aching. His head nodded bobbing, keeping time with the rhythm of the road.
Tain was wasting as thin as Jaspar's boy. Carnelian had tried to make him eat, to comfort him. All this had to be done in snatches, for at night Jaspar was always there and in the day Tain was lost amongst the baggage.
Carnelian wore a face of patience over his anguish. He kept Tain away from the tent when Jaspar was there, hoping that the sin might be forgotten. Sometimes, when Carnelian had to undress himself, Jaspar would give him his indulgent idol smile. It was then that Carnelian's self-control wore thinnest.
Jaspar persisted in finding fault with his own slave. It had been agreed that there were to be no punishments on the road and so instead the Master amused himself by describing to the boy those that were waiting for him in Osrakum. Carnelian turned from the slave's sweaty trembling, bit his tongue, struggled for deafness. Their tent stank of the boy's fear.
Pulsing cicadas, buzzing flies, the sounds of the road, all were muffled by the lazy heat. Even in the cedar's shade the air was stifling, but Carnelian was thankful for the tree. The throng shimmered along the road. Away towards the melting horizon the towers of Maga-Naralante danced their dark flames. The city was like a mirage. Vennel pointed towards it.
'My Lords, there we could find discreet comfort: a welcome respite from the road. We would resume our journey refreshed.'
'Sometimes legionaries collect the tolls,' said Aurum. They might see through our disguise.'
The markets, the narrow streets,' said Suth, 'all would be inimical to secrecy.'
Vennel muttered his discontent. His aquar echoed him with a rumble in its throat.
The shadow-dapple fused each Master and aquar into a single fantastical creature. Carnelian chewed his lip. Even though their saddle-chairs were almost touching, his father was beyond his reach.
'However much we may share your desires, Vennel, the risk must be avoided,' said Suth.
Carnelian fixed his eyes back on the road. He was always on the lookout for Ykoriana's assassins.
'Again I am overruled,' said Vennel, 'and again I think the diversion will prove the more delaying choice.'
'Does my Lord wish to have the matter put to the vote?' said Jaspar.
Vennel turned to him. 'Would there be any point?'
'I would vote with you, Vennel. I have a notion to spend a night in something like comfort.'
He turned to Suth. 'Whatever the risk.'
'So be it,' Aurum said sharply. 'My ring I set against yours, Jaspar.'
'And mine against Lord Vermel's,' said Suth.
Jaspar looked at Carnelian. 'It seems then that it is you, cousin, who is to decide the matter.'
Even muffled by his cowl and mask, Carnelian could tell the Master was smiling his damned, self-satisfied smile. He surveyed the four Masters in their saddle-chairs. It occurred to him that if he voted with Jaspar it might help the Master forget Tain's sin. There would also be the pleasure of voting against Aurum. The most important consideration, though, was that he would be voting against his father. His father was to be pitied. Every day he showed more clearly the power Aurum had over him.
'Carnelian,' Suth said. 'How shall your ring fall?'
It was the first time that his father had said anything to him for days. Carnelian looked at him, wishing he could see his face.
'Why do you delay?' said Aurum, as if he were talking to a boy.
'I shall vote with my father,' said Carnelian.
'One is not surprised, my Lord,' said Jaspar, 'but a little disappointed. Now that you have come of age one did not think that you would so blindly follow your father's lead.'
Carnelian started at the emphasized word. As they rode back into the crowds, he wondered if there was anything Jaspar would take in exchange for Tain's eyes.
They left the road within sight of Maga-Naralante's black gate. Rolling dust broke over them. Wheels rattled violently as they jolted into the ditches that criss-crossed the track. Foul stenches rose with the flies. Hovels all sticks and wattle leant over into their path. When the air cleared a little Carnelian saw more of this debris sloping up towards the city's mud rampart like a scree. There were too many vehicles squeezing along the track. A chariot snagged a hovel and tore it down. Its wheel collapsed, swerving the chariot into the path of a huimur. Bleating, the monster swung away, crushing into a crowd of travellers. The wagon it pulled tipped over. Bundles rolled into the gutters. Filthy urchins appeared and swarmed the wreck. The traffic built up behind. Annoyance swelled to anger then burst into riot. It was easy for Carnelian to imagine assassins in the crowd. Aurum must have shared his fears for he ordered the Marula to slay a path through the mob. People were cut down screaming. Carnelian stared into a face foaming blood, then he leapt his aquar over the wagon pole and loped off along the track after his father.
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 ants' 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 elan 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,' pureed 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 wou
ld 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.
The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 Page 21