Carnelian nodded, smiling, but his smile crumbled as he watched his father's painful walk across the floor. Turquoises and iridescent blues streaked across the opening door. For a moment Carnelian glimpsed the two half-black men standing guard outside wearing the lictors' golden fish-scales, then the door closed. As he lay back, it felt as if his head were being nailed to the bed.
Carnelian found that if he paced about, the pain in his head became more bearable. The shutters drew him with their fevered shaking. He ran his fingers up the bright crack where they met. The smooth wood led his touch up to a cold mechanism. Bringing his fingertips to his nose, he could smell bronze. He brought a lamp to see the handles, then yanked them down. The lock clicked and the shutters slapped against his hands. As he opened his arms, air and light broke over him like a wave. For moments he was blind and blinking but then a round shape formed in the glare: the Plain of Thrones. Beyond lay the Skymere's fading blue. The looser curve of the Sacred Wall hardened up from its edge. Over it, the Guarded Land was a patchy lilac layer squeezing away under a colourless sky. He was so high that he imagined his outstretched arms were wings lifting him soaring above the crater of Osrakum.
Next day, Carnelian was fretting. He had thrown the last of the sickness off as he slept. With his vigour fully returned, he regretted the promise he had made his father. The chamber felt like a cage. He climbed out of bed and was putting more wood on the fire when there was a knocking at the door. Eagerly he grabbed his mask, hid his face and bade whoever was outside to enter.
A two-headed monster came into the chamber. Carnelian backed away, looking round for something to use as a weapon. The monster kneeled on its three legs and bowed its heads. 'Seraph,' two voices chorused in Quya.
Carnelian pressed his mask to his face to see the creature better through the eyeslits. His head jerked up as another of the creatures came into the chamber. This was four-legged and its two abdomens each had its own head. It was carrying a long box with the outermost of its four arms.
'Seraph?' said the monster still kneeling in front of him.
Carnelian looked down. It was offering him a letter in its tattooed hand. He reached behind his head to tie on his mask and then he took the letter gingerly, as if the hand offering it were fanged. Keeping an eye on the creature he turned the letter and saw that it was sealed with his father's Ruling Ring. He broke it open and read:
Carnelian. Hopefully, you will have recovered. I have sent syblings to prepare you and then to convey you to me.
He heard the door closing and looked up to see that the second monster had disappeared. The box was in the middle of the floor. He looked again at the first monster, still kneeling. 'Please ... please rise.'
As the creature rose up onto its three legs it looked up at him and in the firelight he saw it had a pair of beautiful girls' heads. One was tattooed and had eyes of jet like wet tar; the other was unmarked marumaga honey with living eyes that caught the light. They might have been two girls of heated wax pushed together so that their waists and touching legs had melted into one. The left of the pair was all tattooed. Tiny glyphs poured their ink down from her head, swirled her shoulders and arms, one leg and half the one she shared with her sister. Under her gleaming tattoos the continuation of her sister's golden skin showed like cracks in a glaze. The eyes of the unmarked girl moving down his body made him aware of his nakedness.
He blushed behind his mask. 'You .. . you are syblings?'
Their heads inclined together. The living-eyed one flashed her pearl teeth in a grin. Her jet-eyed sister frowned. 'Why yes, Seraph.'
'I had heard of you ... in fairytales, but...'
'Fairytales?' The living-eyed sybling giggled.
Her sister hesitatingly touched his hand with hers. 'See, we are flesh and blood, Seraph.'
'You are ... ?' said Carnelian, still feeling the fading warmth of her touch.
'We are the Quenthas.'
'Both of you?'
'I am Right-Quentha,' said the living-eyed sybling. She slipped an arm around her sister's shoulders. 'And this is Left-Quentha, my better half.'
Left-Quentha gently slipped her torso free of her sister's arm. 'Will the Seraph allow himself to be prepared?'
Carnelian managed a nod.
The syblings walked round their middle leg to turn to face the chest. They knelt. Their outer arms pushed back its lid while the inner ones began fishing inside. Carnelian gaped as all four arms began taking objects out, laying them in a crescent on the floor. Their movements reminded him of spiders walking. They stood up and turned. Right-Quentha had a smile on her lips. 'Would the Seraph be so kind as to stand here?'
Obediendy, Carnelian moved to the spot her golden hand suggested. She produced a copper mask green with verdigris and carefully placed it over her face. One of her sister's hands helped her tie it on. As all their arms rose up to remove his mask, Carnelian was relieved to see the copper mask had no eyeslits. He looked from one to the other as they cleaned him. It would have been difficult to believe they were anything other than two girls standing close together, except that their arms moved with such a confounding, cuttlefish co-ordination.
'Are there many... people like you, here?' He blushed again.
Left-Quentha jerked her hand back from his cheek as if she had felt its burning. 'Does the Seraph mean Ichorians?'
Her sister's copper mask turned to her. 'I think he means syblings.'
The other frowned. 'You must not speak about the Seraph as if he were not here.'
'I was asking about syblings,' Carnelian said quickly to demonstrate he had taken no offence.
Left-Quentha unstoppered a jar that exhaled sickly myrrh.
Carnelian groaned. 'Do we have to use that?' The Law demands it, Seraph.'
Carnelian submitted and they began painting him with the gum.
'We form four cohorts, Seraph,' said Right-Quentha. 'Of attendants?'
'Of blood guards, Seraph. We also are Ichorians,' said Left-Quentha, touching the silver collar at her neck.
Carnelian looked at their delicate melded body showing the first sweet swellings of womanhood. 'But... you are women, and ... and ...'
'And one of us is blind, Seraph?' said Right-Quentha, as they bent together to pick fans up from a cloth they had laid out on the floor.
'Well, yes,' he said, grimacing at his clumsiness.
They wafted his skin with the fans.
'I might have given up my fleshy eyes at birth, Seraph,' said Left-Quentha, 'and have always been in darkness, but ears and skin are their own sight.'
'Besides, Seraph,' said Right-Quentha, 'we share much more than just our body. I have access to many of my sister's sensations and she to mine.'
When Carnelian's skin was dry, they carefully held his mask over his face while at the same time tying it on. Right-Quentha removed her copper mask and then they began to dress him in undergarments of pale padded silk that Carnelian recognized as similar to the ones his father had been wearing when he visited.
'But why is it necessary? The blinding, I mean?'
'Mortal eyes would be blasted if they looked on the face of They,' said Left-Quentha. She clinked her stone eyes with her nail. These can behold Them unblinking.' Her face was proud.
Then you are handmaidens to the Gods?'
'Mostly to Their sons.'
'Nephron and Molochite?'
Right-Quentha smiled warmly. 'Most recently, to the Jade Lord Nephron.' 'But also Molochite?'
The sisters became expressionless. 'He also was our master,' said Left-Quentha, smoothing the leggings over his thigh.
'We prefer the Lord Nephron,' said her sister.
Left-Quentha swung round. 'Hush! You will ruin us.'
'Nonsense! This Seraph is son to the Regent who supports our Lord.'
Left-Quentha turned her face away from her sister as if her stone eyes were searching the silk on his leg for wrinkles.
Carnelian grinned behind his mask. He liked these syblings. 'And
what of their mother, the Empress?'
The girls' faces froze together. His hand made a fist. He congratulated himself on his subtlety. They moved away to the chest and came back holding either end of an elaborate belt from which dangled bony hooks and loops. There was a hardness in their faces that did not invite any more of his questions. They asked him to raise his arms, and when he did they wrapped the belt round his waist, let it slip down to his hips and secured it.
'Does the Seraph find that comfortable?' asked Left-Quentha.
Carnelian looked down at his body, puzzled. He ran his finger round inside the belt. 'I suppose so.'
They brought straps and rods of brass and attached these to his belt. They returned to the chest and each pair of arms pulled out something looking like a leg, with many straps and hollows and human articulation. The girls carried them like logs and, kneeling, placed them carefully on end, a little apart, on the floor before Carnelian. He watched their long fingers fiddling with them.
'If the Seraph would please climb onto the ranga?' Carnelian could see no shoes.
Left-Quentha pointed at the wooden contraptions. The court ranga, Seraph.'
Carnelian stepped forward and lifted his foot. Two of their hands fed his toes into a gap halfway up the shoe. The smooth, comfortable hollow swallowed his foot. Then the girls rose and braced his arms to allow him to step up. His other foot was guided into the hollow in the second shoe. Putting his weight onto it he found that he was standing, well balanced. The syblings knelt below him and began clicking levers, tightening ivory screws. At first there was slack in the hollows but soon they fitted his feet as tighdy as gloves.
'I feel ridiculous.'
Left-Quentha's stone eyes looked up at him. 'If the Seraph would please try walking.'
Right-Quentha gave him a wink. Carnelian laughed aloud, surprising her sister. He lifted a leg, expecting the shoe to be heavy, but it was so light his knee came up too fast and he overbalanced. The syblings managed to catch him and prop him back up. He took another more careful step. The shoe put down first a ridge of toes then a heel as it settled to the ground. Soon he was walking comfortably around the chamber. He stopped and beamed down at them. 'What next?'
'Would the Seraph please kneel.'
Carnelian looked at Right-Quentha. She nodded. Gingerly, he bent his knees. The shoes folded in half and for a moment he felt he was falling, but they locked, leaving him kneeling, his shins supported in long ivory grooves. He tried to straighten his knees and found the shoes slid him back to standing.
Carnelian turned to the syblings. 'Why . .. ?'
Left-Quentha looked startled. 'Surely, Seraph—'
Her sister turned to her. 'He has been away in exile all his life. How do you expect him to—'
'Sister!' Left-Quentha stared, appalled. Her sister's hand flew to her mouth.
'No harm done,' said Carnelian and he held up his fingers in a smiling sign.
Still frowning, Left-Quentha turned to him. 'Kneeling on the ranga allows the Seraph to make the robe support its own weight.'
'What robe?'
Right-Quentha gave him a sheepish grin. 'We shall have it brought in, Seraph.'
The syblings walked to the doors and drew them open.
At first Carnelian thought it was a Master who was coming glittering in to fill the chamber, but then he saw the figure had no head and that several syblings, half hidden in its skirts, were carrying it. As the suit came into the light it seemed to ignite. It was a column of brocade densely woven from gold in which a tall and narrow panel running from neck to floor was set like a window into some heavenly realm. A verdant garden blossomed, each leaf a cut peridot or emerald. Roses petalled with spinel rubies. Orchids, opals. Creatures ran among the foliage, the mottle of their hides blemished bloodstone. Sapphire rivers foamed diamond spray. Jade trees filtered the light from iolitic skies. Rainbows brighter than parrots formed ladders up to a storm among black coral and moonstone clouds in which fire topaz lightning flashed. As the robe came closer he put his hand out to touch the miraculous mosaic.
'But this looks like Earth and Sky, the heraldry of the Masks.'
The Regent petitioned the House to have his son adorned thus,' said Right-Quentha.
The robe has been adjusted for the lower ranga the Seraph is entitled to,' said her sister.
The suit began to spin slowly round until his fingertips were grazing metallic threads. He was surprised they did not give sound off like a harp. The suit opened like a fist. Its innards were filled with scaffolding.
'Please, Seraph, would you walk into the robe and then kneel,' said Left-Quentha.
Carnelian did so. Its hinged ivory collar was at his throat. He fumbled blindly at the scaffolding.
The bones of birds and the smaller saurians, for lightness,' said Right-Quentha, who must have seen his fingers move. She coaxed his arms down into the sleeves. He felt the robe closing behind him.
'With care, would the Seraph please slowly stand to carry the burden of the robe?'
Carnelian tried to straighten his knees and at first met so much resistance he could not. More adjustments were made and at last he found he could stand, supporting the robe, which felt like a shell of bronze.
He knelt again and they began to build a crown upon his head. First a diadem of misty jade from which fell tresses of beaded tourmalines. Over this they set a helmet of jewel-ribbed leather that flared from his neck like the hood of a cobra. Above this they placed a final coronet that spread a jewelled halo behind his head, upon whose summit sat side by side a face of jade and one of obsidian.
They produced two Great-Rings. 'My own?' he asked, surprised.
'Come from the Three Gates,' they answered and urged him to rise again.
When he did so he felt as if he were wearing a house. He took a few tentative steps and was amazed that the whole mass moved with him. The syblings scurried around below, clearing obstacles from his path. Before Carnelian left, Right-Quentha bullied her sister into setting up a mirror, angling it so that the Seraph might see how he had been transformed into a towering, glimmering apparition.
The syblings formed a ring at whose centre Carnelian paced slowly along the curving corridor, pumping his knees open and closed in slow rhythm. His breathing roared inside his mask. The court robe swung languidly like a huge bell in which he was the clapper. He felt mountainously tall. A precipice of gold fell away towards the floor, casting glimmers on the faces of the syblings so that it seemed as if an open furnace were being carried in their midst.
The corridor opened into a sun blaze. Carnelian narrowed his eyes and walked into the glare. He tried to rotate his head but the crown's neck flares resisted him. He discovered it was easier to turn his whole frame to look. A sky of flame was pulsing in time to the Gods' heartbeat. Against this, the syblings seemed to be made from charred sticks. It took Carnelian a while to realize that he stood before a mosaic of amber rising to such heights it made the window appear narrow. 'Is that the sun?' he gasped.
'Does the Seraph refer to the door?' asked Right-Quentha.
The door? What door?' He followed her eyes and saw to the right of the window, smouldering in its lurid glow, a door in whose gold the sun's rayed eye was wrought.
'No, I meant, is it the living sun shining through that window?'
'It lends the window its fire, Seraph.'
Carnelian began a nod but stopped when he imagined his crowns toppling from his head. He carefully turned his back on the light. 'Which way?'
Both Quenthas pointed. 'Down the nave, Seraph.'
The incandescence flooding over his shoulders could not reach the end of that cavernous space. There, dimly, a mossy column rose like the rotted trunk of some immense tree. It was from this that the beating of the God Emperor's heart seemed to come. The pulsing drew him. The syblings followed in a cordon round him. There was something flickering in the corner of his eye. He peered sidelong through his mask's slits. It was one of the lictors, his armour set al
ight by the window. Carnelian had forgotten them. He watched the uneasy glance the man cast over the syblings. He himself was surprised how quickly he had accepted their strangeness. He looked around him. One pair were barely joined. Another were melted so close they had only two legs between them and but a single, wizened arm squeezing out from where their shoulders were. Every pair seemed to have two living eyes and two of stone. Their bronze armour looked as if it had been cast directly onto their flesh: the left half baroqued with spiral inlays, the right smoothly imitating the contours of the skin beneath. Several dragged green and black tessellated cloaks. As his eyes fell on one of their halberds, they widened behind his mask. Its black blade could only be iron. He looked and saw that all their weapons were made of iron. It was a display of fabulous wealth.
This discovery made Carnelian hungry for more wonder. As the light from the window waned, he found his eyes could see better. The Quenthas walked in front with a fluid three-legged gait, arms about each other's shoulders. A breeze laced with strange perfumes was blowing. Away up ahead, the gold spindle of a Master was moving amidst a retinue of guardsmen. Carnelian felt more than heard a strange flapping like birds in a dream. He peered into the gloomy stillness of the colonnades that flanked them on either side. More columns marched off as far as he could see. The slow continuous beating of immense wings was unnerving him. He searched above the colonnades where the carved stone rose sheer like the wall of a ravine. When his head was angled back he saw the furtive movement of shadowy banners wafting like unbrailed sails.
His crowns wearied his neck and forced his head down. They entered an even wider cavern where the Gods' heartbeat was tremoring the air and floor. What had seemed the trunk of some vast tree was a curving wall of green rusted bronze almost filling the centre of the cavern and ringed by a mirror moat. A bridge crossed over to a gate that he saw was part of the wall's dense interweaving of branches. For a moment, he was convinced that he was peering into a forest's dark, secret core. He shuddered, remembering the Labyrinth.
The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 Page 40