The homunculi whispered, the quiver of their lips hidden by their masks. Each held before it a staff, like a silver tree upon which flowered the cypher of its master's Domain.
'If my Lords would please leave me a while. I have need of rest,' his father, said. 'Grand Sapients Gates, Cities and Tribute, I would ask that you keep yourselves ready for my summons. We must complete the arrangements for admitting the tributaries into Osrakum.'
The muttering continued a little longer and then, eerily, stopped. Carnelian became convinced the Grand Sapients were surveying him with the black malice of their eyes. Their hands unwound from the necks of their homunculi. They put on their cloven gloves, their tearful masks. They took back their staves, then bowed. Each Sapient took his homunculus by the hand and, in a column, slowly, they came drifting towards Carnelian. He was trapped, staring up into the mirror of their leader's face as he came on relentlessly, pulling his homunculus like a child. Its unslitted silver mask made the creature as eyeless as its master. The blind leading the blind, thought Carnelian. Just in time he leapt out of their way and watched the beaded slopes of the Sapients gliding past and disappearing one by one into the darkness.
A clatter whisked him round. He cried out and rushed to where his father had fallen on the steps. The whole gleaming length of him, struggling like a fish, his elbows digging back, rasping their brocades, trying to find a grip. Carnelian pushed through the blind syblings, causing the staves they carried to waver erratically. They made noises of panic that he could hear spreading down the hall.
Carnelian ignored everything but his father. He grabbed him, enduring the snagging on his hands and arms, and managed to wrestle him into sitting. He made sure his father was steady before he himself stood up, smeared the blood from his palms down his hri-fibre robe, then pushed in to sit some steps higher, reaching over his father's crowns to free him of his mask.
His father's eyes rolled red and confused in their sockets. His yellow lips opened and closed. Carnelian gaped, appalled, not knowing what to do. 'Are you hurt, Father?'
His father's eyes anchored themselves upon his face. 'My son.' His hand clawed up to Carnelian's shoulder and pulled him close. 'Reassure them,' his father said almost in his ear. A strange odour staled his breath.
Carnelian became aware of the commotion the syblings were making. 'Celestial, celestial...' they were saying, evidently distressed.
Carnelian stood to face them. 'Calm yourselves. The Regent has merely fallen.'
'Is he hurt?' It was the Hanuses. The syblings opened their ranks to let them through.
'I think he slipped upon the steps.'
'We should help him rise,' they said.
Carnelian looked from one face to the other. 'I think it better that he rest awhile, my Lords.'
The right face narrowed its eyes. 'As you wish.' The creature turned and began to herd the syblings away.
Carnelian turned back to his father, who lifted a hand. It shook down, and jammed as the crusted volume of its golden sleeve caught. Carnelian lunged forward to free the sleeve from the angle of the step, and taking his father's hand, he stroked it as he sat down beside him. Its limpness made him search his father's face in fear. The eyes were still open in the yellow sagging face. Carnelian dropped his eyes, not wanting to stare. He felt the need to say something. 'Why do the dragons need awakening?'
His father tore his hand free. Carnelian saw the veins like sapphire cords. His father looked malevolently out from under his brows. 'Do not call them that,' he hissed. 'You are not a barbarian.'
Carnelian's heart stopped. Suddenly, he did not recognize the vast broken creature hunching there. The creation window beat on him like a migraine. The black tunnel of the Thronehall was contracting. The syblings ambling away looked like colourless crabs in a cave.
Suth saw his son shrinking and found the strength to inflate himself up, to put on a smile, to talk. He put his hand on his son's head. 'Forgive me. I am so weary.'
Carnelian rewarded him with a watery smile.
The huimur of my Ichorian Legion ... of the Pomegranate and the Lily ... they must be made ready for the Rebirth.' He went back to staring, then with a visible effort came alive again. The Wise feed them a drug ... it makes them sleep ... while they dream we cheat time, preserve them ... they live long beyond the years of their kind.'
'Is this the kind of drug the Wise have given you, Father?'
No, No, his father signed with a fluttering hand, and quickly, Time is everything. Soon the Legates will be recalled, leaving the gates open in the Ringwall.'
Carnelian could see that his father did not want to discuss his condition and was just glad that he had become recognizably himself. '... so that the barbarians might plunder the Commonwealth.'
'It is essential.' Carnelian could see the strength flowing back into him as if a cloud that had moved its shadow over him was passing on. The sun already burns the Guarded Land. If the God Emperor is not reborn, the Rains will not come and the Commonwealth will perish with the old year. The tributaries are massing outside our gates with thousands of wagons carrying the coined taxes from the cities. When the time is right, we will bring them into holy Osrakum. The tributaries must all be there, in the Plain of Thrones, when the Rains come.'
'When will that be?' said Carnelian, wanting to feed his father's resurrection.
The Wise will soon know.'
'What sorcery do they use to reveal the very intentions of the sky?'
'It is a sorcery of sorts. Daily they gather reports from all their watch-towers. In a chamber far from here they receive the flashes of light that have come from the furthest edges of the Commonwealth. They collate the reports and compare the results with their almanacs. Eventually, by this procedure, their collective mind determines the day upon which the storm clouds will dash their water against this mountain. On that day the world will be reborn.'
Carnelian looked up as if his eyes might pierce the shadow and massing rock to behold the distant sky.
The Rebirth is in itself a mighty labour to arrange,' his father said. 'But combined with Apotheosis... ?' He raised his hands. Carnelian thought he could see light filtering through their parchment but at least they were steady. 'Soon the Chosen will gather here for the sacred election. Their coming cannot be sullied by the tributaries, and yet they too must be there.' His father inclined his massively crowned head. There is so little time.'
Carnelian frowned. 'How can you be so sure there will be need for an election before the coming of the Rains?'
The Wise are sure.' His father motioned. 'Make them bring the staves.'
Carnelian understood his father's meaning. He manoeuvred the syblings to prop their staves in front of his father. They were really standards. One carried the wheelmap of the Commonwealth he had seen before in one of his father's books: a black disc within a red within a green, the whole jewelled roundel surmounted by the horned-ring of divinity. The other staff bore the jade and obsidian faces of the Gods, also crowned with the horned-ring.
His father groaned as he tried to push himself up and failed. Carnelian leaned in to shoulder one of his father's arms like a yoke. He hoisted it till his father had grasped one of the staves and then did the same for the other hand. Holding on to him they rocked him back up onto his ranga. He was suddenly as tall as Molochite had been. Carnelian saw that the woven metals of his court robe were dented as his father, holding on to the staves, came down the steps. Once he had reached the floor, he tentatively let go of the staves and took a few steps without their help. He dismissed the syblings and they and the staves retreated.
'Come, Carnelian, lend me your strength.'
Carnelian gave his father his shoulder to lean on. The warm, heavy pressure filled Carnelian with a love for his father that stung his eyes. Suth pointed out the way he wished to go, and they set off.
'Are you, as Regent, responsible for all this?' asked Carnelian, ignoring his father's weight.
'For this purpose, the Regent
is, in everything but name, God Emperor.'
Then who now is He-who-goes-before? Who speaks for the Clave? Aurum?'
The shaking of his father's crowned head vibrated them both. He opened his hand to reveal the red eye of the Pomegranate Ring.
'Surely then, Father, you direct two of the Three Powers?'
'Yes.'
There must be those who object to this concentration of might?'
He felt his father's mirth trembling down his arm. 'Oh, yes. Indeed yes.'
'She of whom we must not speak?'
'She most of all. The God Emperor made me Regent and while They live I am secure.'
'And then...?'
The Regency will pass to her until a candidate is elected.'
'Still, she will be safely locked away in her forbidden house.'
'Not so. She will be let out, brought here to wield the power of the Masks.'
'Will that not endanger us?'
He felt the shaking again. 'Why should it?'
'Why then did you set your lictors upon my door?'
They cannot enter here. I had no other use for them.'
'And the escort of syblings, today?'
To give you state. You are a Lord of the Great, Carnelian, and my son. I would not have you appear before the other Ruling Lords like a beggar.'
There is no danger, then?'
'Not now.'
Then, my Lord, your worry is at an end.' Carnelian glanced off towards the Iron Door. 'Out there...' He stopped. The Hanuses' two faces were gazing down the length of the hall at them.
'Yes?'
Carnelian screwed his head round to look up at his father. 'I saw some of our people ... and the Jade Lord Molochite. He spoke to me.'
'Did he? What about?'
'Nothing ... he saw my mother in my face.'
'She is there, in your face, in your eyes.'
'He is the most beautiful creature I have ever beheld.'
'Even in a House that breeds so much beauty, Molochite is an emerald among jades.'
'He was amiable enough.'
'Is that not what you once said about Jaspar?'
Carnelian thought about this. 'Where is the other Jade Lord?'
'Nephron? With Aurum to espouse his cause, he has no need to show himself. Only Molochite is forced to bend his pride to canvas for his own votes.'
Their mother is locked away?'
'In the full purdah, although even if she were free I do not think she would stoop to going out among the Great. She has none in her party whose blood the Ruling Lords would respect enough to deal with. So she resorts to sending her own son to negotiate for their block votes.'
'Of course,' Carnelian said, thinking aloud, remembering his lessons on the island. Into a ballot, a Ruling Lord could cast all the rings in his House save for those worn by adult males. This explained why they were come up to court alone. Their block votes would play the major part in the election.
Carnelian looked up and saw that they had reached a door. It was barred by huge billhooks, each held by the four hands of the sybling pairs on either side. His father's weight on him grew lighter as he straightened up. Carnelian let him go reluctantly. They took some steps towards the syblings. The billhooks clinked as they uncrossed.
Carnelian stopped. 'My Lord.' He waited for his father to look down at him. 'Did you know that there are many Lords waiting outside your door?'
His father gave a nod.
Carnelian looked at the syblings and saw that they were either blind or wearing eyeless masks. Aurum among them, he signed. Let him wait.
He was angry seeing me here. So, he is always angry. I was rude to him.
His father made a dismissive wave and beckoned Carnelian to follow him through the door. The hall beyond was walled with opals so that as they moved through it, iridescing waves followed them. The floor was a mosaic of different-hued pearls. Feather rugs changed colours like flitting hummingbirds. The furniture was all spired ebony and jade.
As they passed another sybling-guarded door, Carnelian asked, 'Is the Lord Hanus of the Chosen?'
The Lords Hanus. They are two beings, and yes, they are Chosen.'
'But they are syblings.'
The Wise teach that the Chosen are all conceived as twins. The rarity of twin births they put down to fratricidal conflict in the womb. They use this to explain our predatory spirit and even the love yearnings that we sometimes feel for one another.'
These syblings are then the natural offspring of the Chosen?'
'Of the God Emperor, Their sons and Their Lesser Chosen brides.'
'Is that perhaps because the Twin Essence is so hot in imperial blood?'
'Perhaps, though I suspect the drugs the Wise feed their mothers might make some contribution.'
Carnelian considered this. 'Still, they are two in one, just like the Gods.'
Their joining is imperfect, demonstrating all the ways in which a man can be wedded to his reflection in a mirror. Unlike the Twins they are not complementary beings. Even when they are born entirely unjoined, they are merely a reflection of each other.'
They reached a door and passed into another chamber that was mosaiced with clouds of amethyst. His father stopped him there. He turned to him and stooped to hold Carnelian's face in his hands, then kissed him on the forehead. 'Did you think your father had forgotten your birthday?'
'I had forgotten it myself, Father,' Carnelian said in surprise. 'Is it already the thirty-third day of Jalod?' Suth nodded.
They had left the island in the last few days of the ninth month and here they were at the end of the eleventh. Perhaps seventy days in all. Those seventy days seemed a memory of years.
His father smiled at him. 'You are fifteen, a ripe old age.' He straightened up, looking away off into his memory, regaining for a moment something of his familiar beauty. 'I have never told you before that the day of your birth was also the day when the last God Emperor died. Birth during the broken mirror days of an imperial interregnum has momentous astrological implications. The first such day has particular significance. The Wise prophesied that fateful consequences accrued to your birth.' His eyes focused back on his son. 'At least your birthday has come before another such interregnum.' He frowned. 'What are those stains upon your supplication robe?'
Carnelian looked and saw the blood streaks. He looked up at his father and showed him the grazes on his palms. His father grimaced, glancing down his own gold brocades, and made a sign of apology.
There is no pain, Father.'
Suth jerked a nod. 'Come, let us hurry. I cannot afford to be long away from my responsibilities.' 'Where are we going?'
His father's sad face managed a smile. 'You shall see soon enough, my son.'
The echoing apartments grew colder and gloomier. Their wall mosaics became dark shifting nightmares. Everywhere there were doors and more doors, each guarded by its complement of syblings.
'Is it safe, my Lord, to wander thus unmasked?' Carnelian asked his father.
'Here there are no seeing eyes but ours,' Suth replied.
Carnelian longed to reach up and grasp his father's hand, but he was no longer a child.
At last they came to a door beside which a Sapient stood among a brood of homunculi. Their silver faces could have been snatched from sleeping children.
As Carnelian and his father came closer, one of the homunculi moved into the Sapient's cloven embrace.
'Who comes to the door of the Dreamchamber?' it said, eerily, a dead child speaking.
The Regent,' said Suth.
The Sapient reached out and tweaked the necks of the homunculi one by one. Carnelian recoiled as they crept forward feeling for his father with their hands. He watched them pull the crowns one by one from his head, then peel him free of his court robe. He stepped out of it, pale, narrow, like a worm cut from an apple. He climbed down from his ranga and was a man again. He turned and offered his hand. Carnelian could not read the strange, sad expression on his father's face but took it.
The Sapient turned and with his fist stroked the lintel of the door. It rang with a sound like a cymbal and after some moments began to open.
Myrrh misted the chamber. Ferns frothed up from the floor, curling, pushing up a giant sleeping. Sagging down towards them from the ceiling was a huge figure, like a man hanging face down in a hammock of spider's silk. Apple-green jade formed the circular floor that sloped up to the sleeping giant. Sapients squatted around the walls, their bleached skin tight as a drum's, their jet eyes staring, their lipless mouths valving open and closed. A dirge was oozing from them, a grating, grumbling chant that rose and fell as wordless as a wind. Somewhere a bell was being struck with a rhythm slower than Carnelian's breathing.
He followed his father towards the sleeping giant and saw that it was formed of the same jade as the floor. His father released Carnelian's hand. He felt the ceiling pressing down ominously and looked up at its black turmoil. It was like a man stuck to a ceiling with thick tar who gradually, under his weight, was dragging the whole sticky mass down.
Busy with this obsession, Carnelian did not at first register the feeling against his side. Then he gave in to its nagging, its brushing against his leg. He turned to see someone prostrate on the floor. For a moment he thought it one of the Wise who had slipped by him as quietly as a shadow, but when he looked anxiously for the comfort of his father Carnelian found it was him on the ground. Staring at him making the prostration, the hackles rose on Carnelian's neck. He looked up at the jade giant and felt a chill understanding seep into his head.
It was his father's grip on his coarse-weave robe that pulled him down to the floor and then a while later back onto his feet. Together they crept forward and began to climb the sloping jade. Carnelian's heart was louder than the chanting. As his eyes rose higher he saw that the jade giant was a kind of bed and that lying on it was a man, or something shaped like a man, a man whose face was mirror-black obsidian.
'Deus,' said his father, his head bowing. 'I have brought my son at Your bidding.'
Carnelian gaped at the Gods. Horror floated on the chanting of the Sapients. He saw one standing behind the giant's head that was a pillow for They. The Sapient leaned forward so that his fingers were touching the Gods' throat. He saw the thin yellow arm laid out along the giant's arm. Another Sapient, kneeling, had his cloven hands pressing on a vein running down the yellow arm. It looked as if he were preparing to play it like a flute. Yet another of the Wise, who held the wrist, was also striking the heart-stone bell. Carnelian's heart slavishly followed its peal.
The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 Page 42