The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01

by Ricardo Pinto

  Master voices crying out in wrath made Carnelian look up. They were revealing themselves, huge and golden-faced. He pushed his own hood back. Instantly most of the hands released their grip as if his mask were shooting flames at them. His chair righted a little, but fingers still gripped like grappling hooks. The faces over the rim showed doubt as round them the crowd was falling to its knees. Still they pulled, gnashing their teeth as he struck repeatedly. His chair's lean was increasing. Soon he would fall out. He could see enraged men waiting below with their flint knives.

  A voice boomed so loud it made the crowd seem quiet. 'Brothers of the Wheel.' The assassins looking up at Carnelian faltered. He was jolted to one side as his saddle-chair was released. He looked round and saw the gold-faced figure sitting tall in his father's saddle-chair. 'I am the voice of the Masters.'

  Carnelian stopped breathing. His father had come back to life. The crowd stilled.

  The Mountain knows who you are, Oh Brothers of the Wheel, and what ... you do here ... today. Slip ... slip . . .' His father crumpled.

  A voice could be heard giving commands in thin Quya but Carnelian could see the blood lust returning to the eyes below. Fingers curled slowly over his chair's rim. Carnelian watched them, his ranga shoe held high. He allowed his arm to sink and put the shoe across his knees. He lengthened his back, lifted his chin. He moistened his lips. 'Slip away.' He felt his mask quivering with the words. 'Slip away, Oh Brothers of the Wheel.' His voice

  was finding its strength. 'Slip away now and this sin'll be forgiven you.' He felt the power. He was a spindle of iron. He raised his hand to point up at the sky. 'Persist and you may be certain that as surely as that sun'll set tonight, so shall the vengeance of the Masters find you to exterminate you root and branch even to the remotest of your kin.'

  His words had turned the crowd to stone. A lone voice warbled a command. Carnelian saw his attackers fleeing, chasing the ripple of prostration that was spreading away through the crowd. Around him the marketplace might have been a plain of ferns flattened by a whirlwind. A murmur came from those distant parts of the Wheel that the silence had not reached. As Carnelian looked round he felt the power drain away. An aquar was wandering with what was left of his father crumpled in its saddle-chair. The moaning of the crucified was a wind through winter trees.

  The THREE GATES

  Three lands

  Three gates

  And three tall crowns

  (nursery rhyme)

  'Suth has killed himself,' shrilled Vennel.

  Jaspar's mask was surveying the further reaches of the crowd. 'I had thought him already dead.'

  Aurum rode to stoop towards Suth's cloak.

  Vennel looked at Carnelian. 'Grieve not, my Lord, your father's death was not in vain. He saved us and now you are the Ruling Lord Suth.'

  The reins sagged in Carnelian's hand. His aquar began ambling.

  Jaspar looked round. 'We must haste to the gates. This is no place to linger.'

  Carnelian felt as if he were bobbing in icy water.

  'He yet lives.'

  They all turned to Aurum.

  'He lives, you say?' cried Vennel. 'Are you sure?' Aurum straightened. Though his blood grows cold.' Carnelian yanked his aquar back into control and

  moved to his father's side. He reached over to touch him. His father's cloak could have been stuffed with clay. No sound of breathing came from behind his mask. Carnelian rummaged among the cloak's folds for a hand. He lifted the lank flesh and placed his finger to the blue cord bridging the wrist. There was a flutter like a taper flame. He sighed and stroked it, before replacing it in the folds. He felt a shadow fall on him and looked up. It was Jaspar.

  'Are we safe?'

  Aurum's mask seemed to melt and flame as he nodded. The danger has passed for now. Her web is torn a second time.'

  'And the Marula?'

  The crowd's tide had crept away, stranding the corpses of three of the black men in their puddling blood. Aurum ignored the question and began barking commands at those still alive. Carnelian's eyes lingered on their pinched faces. They seemed not to have heard. Their red eyes slid sidelong to their fallen comrades.

  'On, I say, on!' cried Aurum.

  Marula eyes glanced off the mirror of the Master's face to stare up to the faces of the Gods sneering down at them from the canyon's throat.

  Aurum swept his hand around his head like a blade to indicate the encircling crucifixions. 'If you don't want to end this day hanging on a cross, you'll move on.'

  The Marula hunched reluctant, then first one and then the rest urged their aquar forward towards the prostrate edge of the crowd. Their lances stiffened as they coughed battle cries and began to pick up speed. There was a screaming scramble as people splashed out of their way like water at a ford.

  Aurum looked over at Carnelian. 'Come, my Lord.'

  Carnelian tied his father's aquar to his saddle-chair, then, with a lash of his reins, he crashed after the Marula, pulling his father and the other Masters in his wake.

  The feet of the colossus appalled the Marula. Great wedges of scabrous stone. Toenails like the roofs of houses. An instep that was a cave. Each foot narrowed up several storeys to an ankle thicker than the gatehouses of the Wheel. The legs barrelled up their leprous towers, leaning towards each other, swelling towards the knees that were bending the mountainous thighs towards them. They shuddered imagining the kneeling avalanche of so much stone. The waist and belly seemed a more remote and solid part of the mountain. A fist supported an arm that in turn buttressed the slab of a shoulder. Strangely, the head looked no bigger than a human head. The head of the other colossus leaned close as if they might be talking together, oblivious of the ant world milling at their feet. The eyes of the Marula were forced to scale further up the Sacred Wall. Crag piled on crag up the slope. The whole skyful of rock leaned out as the canyon walls came together. The black men stared unblinking at the narrow ribbon of blue nipped between them. It was like tottering on the edge of an abyss in whose remote depths a brilliant river ran. They could imagine falling. They screwed their eyes closed, dropped their heads, dizzy, their nails gouging a grip on the rims of their saddle-chairs.

  Wind acrid with smoke blew hard against Carnelian's mask. He felt his aquar slowing. He could make out that the ramp he had been riding up from the canyon floor ended abruptly in a promontory. His aquar's narrow head angled up and back, flaring plumes, as he yanked it to a halt. The plume fans folded and he saw the gloomy nave of the canyon. Its slope milled with traffic. Far above, the sky was an improbable painted ceiling.

  The scrape of claws made him turn to see the Masters sweeping up with Aurum at their head.

  'I will take responsibility for the Lord Suth.'

  'You will not,' Carnelian said.

  Aurum came very close to tower over him. Carnelian straightened his back and faced him. Aurum flicked the air in anger and turned his aquar, bellowing commands that sent the Marula hurtling past onto the road grooving off along the left-hand canyon wall.

  Jaspar came up. 'Why have we stopped, my Lords?'

  The Marula are the danger now,' said Aurum, the eye-slits of his mask following the black men as they grew smaller and smaller in the groove road.

  Carnelian glanced up the length of the canyon. The sound of water made him look down to see the canal. 'A river,' his voice said.

  Jaspar snorted. The vermin in the city below call it the River of Paradise. We call it the Cloaca. It is the sewer of our hidden land.'

  'We ride to the Green Gate.' Aurum left the words behind as he launched into motion, leaving Carnelian and the other Masters to chase after him.

  Rock was hurtling past his head. The canyon narrowed into the distance where, in a gloomy haze, it turned abruptly southwards. All the way to this bend, the floor was a dusky swirl of wagons and people divided in two by the groove of the Cloaca. A scraping scuffling shook up the canyon walls and set Carnelian's teeth to grinding. In the wind, his cloak became li
ke a trapped bird struggling to escape. Up ahead Carnelian glimpsed the bladed edges of the canyon reaching high enough to graze the sun. It seemed impossible that any light should ever find its way down to the floor.

  As they sped round the canyon's bend, Carnelian watched the next stretch coming into view. Billows of smoke rolling towards them engulfed the Marula, then broke over Carnelian till he was riding blind. He choked on the grey air. The clouds thinned enough to show the insect crowds below. Coughing, eyes welling, he tried to peer through the murk. He swam out spluttering as the smoke dispersed like morning mist. They had come to the prickling edge of what seemed to be an impenetrable forest.

  The Green Gate, at last,' cried Jaspar.

  Staring at the forest, Carnelian realized it was made of bronze, a bladed hedge shaped into a fortress wall that filled the canyon from side to side. The canyon floor was striped and chevroned with wagons covering these patterns in ordered files. Along its centre, the Cloaca had sunk into a chasm spanned by bridges.

  Carnelian could see no way through the bronze hedge. Tall banners burned red among the thorns. Other flames appeared and became figures shrouded in vermilion. Some were as small as children. All were enveloped in cloaks that brushed the ground.

  As Aurum's mask looked back, Carnelian followed its gaze. The Master was studying the Marula who had fallen behind them in close escort. Their faces were wooden with fear. Mouths hung open as if they were panting. Their eyes fixed on their hands. Tain was there between the legs of a Maruli, slight, unblinking, like a doll.

  Dread began stirring in the pit of Carnelian's stomach as he watched the vermilion figures forming into a crescent. He looked at their faces. Each was the same, each divided, half skin, half black. He drew back into his chair as they threw back their cloaks. All wore gold legionary collars. Their leather armour was baroquely textured on the same side as their faces were black and on the other side as smooth as their skin. On each chest was a red flower like a flame. Each man's right side look charred, the left of each was barbarian brown.

  'Ichorians,' he breathed. All his life, he had heard tales about these half-tattooed men. The Red Ichorians, guardians of the Three Gates.

  One of them stepped forward lightly, like a dancer. He stood smiling before Aurum's aquar and then performed an elegant prostration.

  'Surely you are Masters,' the man said, rising to his knees, 'though you wear no cyphers, no banners, nor are you guarded by tyadra. And those,' the Ichorian stabbed his black-tattooed hand towards the Marula, 'those creatures defile this road.'

  Aurum pulled back his cowl to reveal the mask beneath and as he did so all the Ichorians knelt except the one in front of him who rose, still smiling.

  'You're correct, Ichorian, in all you say,' Aurum said. 'We've come far through many perils and have had need of these disguises. Now we'll happily discard them.'

  'We've heard that a party such as this accompanies the Master, Our-father-who-goes-before?'

  Aurum lifted his hand in the affirmative and the Ichorian searched eagerly among the shrouded Masters. 'We expected you on the leftway, my Masters. Are you desirous to pass swiftly through the Three?'

  Aurum repeated the affirming gesture. 'But first there's one matter you must attend to, centurion of the Red Lily.'

  There was a clack as two Marula chairs struck together. Aurum's mask turned slightly to one side as if he were listening for more collisions.

  'We aren't yours to command, my Master, unless you wear the Pomegranate Ring.'

  In answer Aurum pushed his white hand out of his sleeve and splayed it. The ring was a huge wound in the heart of his palm.

  'Father,' the Ichorian cried and fell before him onto the pavement. The cry was taken up by the other Ichorians. The centurion rose up again to his knees. 'Forgive the children that didn't know their father.'

  Aurum turned his aquar so that he was looking back at the Marula. Carnelian followed his lead. Hunched in their saddle-chairs, the black men were huddling their beasts together. One of them who dared to look up had the shy look of a child expecting punishment.

  Aurum lifted his hand and pointed. 'Destroy those animals.'

  'Destroy them,' chorused Vennel and Jaspar.

  As one, the crescent of Ichorians swept forward, passing quickly between the Masters to face the Marula. The black men's faces creased with panic. One of the guardsmen lifted his tattooed hand. In his grip was a bird of bronze winged with blades. He released it into whistling flight around his hand. As he let out its leash its blurring circle widened with the eyes of the Marula. Their lances wavered out in front of them as they backed their beasts away. The bladed bird began to keen. Other Ichorian arms were whirling similar weapons. Their keening modulated together into an eerie discordant chorus. The Marula began raggedly wailing as the first blade hurtled through the air. A Maruli slapped into the back of his chair, the blade deep in his throat. His lance angled lifeless. The line that held the blade yanked back and the Maruli's head lolled forward, bounced on the dead man's knees and thudded to the ground arcing blood. The air was sliced by more blade flights. The Marula ducked frantically but there was no place to hide. The aquar made cries like tearing metal, their flaring plumes were scythed like flowers. A hand flew off that was being held up as a shield. Screams were choked to gurgling. Carnelian looked down with horror and saw heads thudding to the ground like overripe fruit, rolling red trails. When he looked up, the headless trunks were jerking as the aquar milled bleating, blood welling in their saddle-chairs and spilling down their flanks.

  Carnelian remembered Tain with a gasp. Quickly untying his father's reins from his saddle-chair, he threw them over to Jaspar and then forced his aquar into the maelstrom. Warning cries from the other Masters seemed remote. Everything was moving as slowly as curling smoke. As he ground his eyes round, Carnelian saw one of the Ichorians, only a boy, tugging twice on a line; it bellied back dragging its blade. Blood flicking off it across Carnelian's hand was pleasantly warm. His aquar's steps pumped him lazily up and down. He saw Tain sitting stiff and bloody, eyes screwed shut, clamped in the arms of a headless black and red man. An Ichorian placed himself in Carnelian's path mouthing something. Carnelian urged his aquar on and watched the man jump out of his way. He lifted his gaze, saw Tain, leaned precariously out and prised him from the corpse. As he fell back into his saddle-chair, his brother's weight crushed out a grunt.

  'My Lord! Carnelian!' Aurum's outrage blared.

  Carnelian looked down into his brother's face, felt him for wounds, prised a reddened eyelid open. His brother's dark eye rolled to white. 'Carnie,' he gulped and burrowed his head into Carnelian's armpit.

  Carnelian turned his aquar to face Aurum and the others.

  'What in the thousand names of They do you think you are doing?' Aurum boomed. 'You could have been slain.'

  The golden frieze of the Masters' faces were judging him. He ignored them, hugged Tain tighter and pushed his aquar through their line. He rode towards the hedge's thick twisting thicket of thrusting bronze. A vinegar odour reeked off its mossy rust. Carnelian's eyes became trapped in all that curving and wandered lost. He found he was looking up through its bristling where his gaze had found the top. A vast height of canyon wall rose to a faraway sky.

  He dropped his head into Tain's warmth, rocking him, crooning so that neither of them heard the hedge clank its thorns as it began to open up in front of them.

  When Carnelian lifted his head, he saw silver faces floating in the gloom. Lamps glowing like stars lent vague substance to the walls. Masters' masks streaked with their reflections. Looking round, Carnelian could not locate the doorway they had come through. Tain stirred against his chest as if awaking. Carnelian felt him stiffen as ammonites drifted near. Carnelian tried to make his aquar back away but one of them touched a hand to the creature's neck and it sank down.

  'Give the slave to us, Seraph,' one of the ammonites said in Quya.

  Carnelian clutched Tain.

  Ranga
shoes clacked towards them.

  'You must give them the boy, my Lord.'

  Carnelian turned on Jaspar. 'Curse you, I paid your price.'

  Jaspar backed away. 'Calm yourself, cousin.' He looked round to see if any of the other Masters were paying attention. The boy's eyes are safe, but he must pass through the quarantine with the others.' He pointed. 'Look, my Lord, we are all handing them over.'

  Carnelian looked and saw Jaspar's pallid blood-smeared boy creeping into the waiting hands of an ammonite. He turned back to Jaspar. 'How long?'

  'Before he is returned to you?'

  Carnelian nodded.

  Thirty-three days.'

  'A month,' Carnelian cried in disbelief.

  Twenty cells lie between here and the Blood Gate and there are another thirteen beyond. He will have to spend a day in each before he is allowed to pass through the Black Gate.'

  'Promise me on your blood that he will not be harmed.'

  Jaspar shrugged. 'My Lord cannot expect one to vouch for everything. If the child is found to have plague . . .' The Master put his wrists together in a sign of powerless-ness.

  'He does not,' said Carnelian, more emphatically than he felt. He nudged Tain. 'Come on, we must talk,' he said in Vulgate.

  Tain clambered over the edge of the saddle-chair. Carnelian fumbled on his ranga shoes and then climbed out beside him. He waved the ammonites back and walked a little way from the others, beckoning Tain to follow.

  He looked down at his brother. Carnelian could see his own bloody hand-print on his brother's face. He touched his mask. 'I wish I could remove this thing.'

  Tain looked back at him with huge bruise-rimmed eyes.

  Tain, you'll have to go with them.' His brother looked fearfully back at the ammonites. 'Will they let me come back .. . back to you and the Master once ... once ... once they've blinded me?'

  Carnelian threw his head back and moaned. 'Oh, no, no, Tain, it's not that. It's been sorted out. It's not that.'

  Tain was still gazing at him.