At last they reached a narrow clearing which terminated at a pitchy rising mass of rock. Looking up
Carnelian saw the head of the Crag glowering in the sky's starless indigo and discovered an ivory house nestling halfway up.
Hearing Fern and Ravan arguing in whispers, Carnelian drew closer.
'I want to stay,' Ravan was pleading.
'I said, go to the hearth and see mother before she comes up here,' said Fern.
The youth seemed to be waiting for some intervention from Osidian, but the Master seemed unaware of him and so he trudged off along a path that hugged the Crag. There were stirrings among the cedars on either side. Carnelian could hear a clink of earthenware, some voices, a lazy drawn-out yawn.
Fern urged them forward. The night still lingering at the foot of the Crag engulfed them. Carnelian felt the presence of others. A light came to life and showed them three Ochre standing guard at the bottom of steps cut into the rock.
'Are we to go straight up?' Fern asked.
Their eyes wholly on the Standing Dead, the guards nodded. Fern beckoned Carnelian to follow him. The steps were steep and uneven. Taking care not to lose his footing, Carnelian managed to catch glimpses, past Fern, of the pale house they were approaching. He followed him onto a porch on which guards stood to either side of a doorway. Peering, Carnelian realized with a shudder that the guards were huskmen. Fern was staring at the doorway, gathering his resolve. He pushed its leather curtain aside and led the Standing Dead into the blackness within.
Falling back into place, the curtain shut out the light so that Carnelian had to put a hand up to feel his way. His fingers found Fern motionless. Carnelian moved round to stand to his left. The floor felt strangely uneven under his makeshift shoes. The dullness of the scuffing echoes made him aware of how small the room was. His head brushed the ceiling. Reaching up, he touched cold, smooth ridging interlocking in some complex pattern. He let his fingers slide along one ridge and felt it swell into a double knob. His hand recoiled. 'Bones.'
This is our Ancestor House,' said Fern's voice in a reverential tone.
Carnelian became convinced he could detect a faint mustiness of death. 'Your people?' he breathed.
'Under our feet, what remains of the Tribe's mothers, grandmothers, aunts and sisters after the tree roots have eaten their flesh, drunk their blood. Between us and the sky, the ceiling is formed from what the ravens have left behind of our fathers and grandfathers, our uncles, our brothers.'
'A tomb, then,' Osidian said, contemptuously.
'Not so,' said Fern, outraged. 'Our ancestors inhabit the earth and sky. These are nothing more than the bone cages that once held their souls.'
'A house of death,' whispered Carnelian.
'Rather, one where we, the living, commune with our dead. Their discarded bones make this place familiar to the souls of those who have gone before. They seep in here like the scent of the magnolias so that the Elders might breathe in their wisdom.'
'Wisdom, you say?' said Osidian. Then -'
'Hush, bow your heads, they're here.'
The curtain lifting let in enough light to spill the three men's shadows across the floor. Carnelian registered the tracery of the design before resolving one into the roundel of a woman's pelvis. Up through the opening the skull of a baby was squeezing, its bony face upturned, its eye-sockets welling red earth. More oozed everywhere into the cracks of the mosaic so that it seemed to Carnelian he stood upon a raft afloat on blood. The floor swept up into a wainscot of ribs. Bony buttresses reinforced a wall that was an undulating gleaming mass of femurs jointed into each other. Halfway up, more tiny skulls patterned a band with their eye and nose holes. From this band a dense leg-bone arabesque rose to a ceiling of shoulder-blades and arm-bones knitted together in a swirling spiral. Carnelian imagined this must be what it would be like to be in the hold of one of the kharon bone boats that ferried the Masters across the lake in Osrakum. Darkness suddenly returned and he was left blinking a fading, ghostly impression of the scene.
Thin morning light entered again while, at the same time, something was shuffling past so close Carnelian could feel its clothing brush against his leg. He became aware of the shape's odour of sweat and ferns; of the smell of hair. The light pulsed with each lift and drop of the curtain. The women rustling past were bent forward, swathed in blankets so that he could not glimpse even a sliver of their faces. Among them, uncovered, men revealed their matted hair all pebbled with salt and tangled with feathers. A clinking drew Carnelian's eyes down. Above their brown and calloused feet, the ankles of the women were swollen white by carcanets of salt.
Carnelian realized he was staring. Looking sideways he could make out that Fern had his head bowed. Carnelian turned enough the other way so that, the next time the room lit up, he was able to see Osidian, his chin up, striving to put imperiousness in his eyes. Seeing that struggle to deny humiliation, Carnelian chose from love to emulate Osidian's powerless defiance and, lifting his head, stared out fiercely.
More and more Elders were crowding in. Women were helping each other to sink to the floor. Their wrists were knobbed, their gnarled fingers ringed with more salt.
In the niches sunk between the wall buttresses of bone, the men were seating themselves cross-legged on platforms and removing their shoes.
A nudge from Fern urged Carnelian to shuffle to the left. He reached his hand up to Osidian's arm and gently urged him to move. Leaning forward, Carnelian looked past Fern and saw Loskai had joined the end of their line.
The curtain behind them fell closed and did not lift again. Cradling fire, flickering-faced girls stepped carefully among the sitting women touching to life lamps that hung around the walls. When the girls flitted away, Carnelian was faced with the aged, perhaps thirty of them, the lamplight trembling shadows in the folds of their robes and skin, glinting their wealth of adorning salt, pricking points of light into their eyes. He itched under their silent scrutiny. Without releasing him, their heads drew together setting off a rustling of talk. Many pointed and there was much shaking of heads that set the salt discs in their ears tinkling.
Carnelian could feel the rage swelling up in Osidian and sought to release its pressure by turning to Fern for help.
'Please give us…' he began whispering to his friend. The room fell silent.
'… their words,' said Carnelian, excruciatingly aware everyone was listening.
An old woman directed a mutter at Loskai, to which he replied before turning to Carnelian, barely concealing a smile. The Elders forbid you to speak to Fern for he stands before them accused.'
'I've no doubt who did the accusing,' said Carnelian, and was pleased to see the man's face sour.
A woman rattled out angry words Carnelian struggled to understand. Something about keeping silent.
Loskai gave a nod and looked first to one then the other of the Standing Dead. 'Here you'll speak only if you're spoken to.'
Carnelian tried to keep from his face any sign he had understood anything of what the woman had said. A glance reassured him Osidian was managing to contain his anger.
A woman Carnelian recognized as Harth fixed Fern with bird-bright eyes. 'Why have you endangered the Tribe by bringing us these Standing Dead?'
She spoke slowly, with emphasis, so that Carnelian found her words easier to decipher.
'Have you nothing to say, child? Have you no explanation for why you have betrayed us?'
Fern curved as if the woman were piling stones on his back.
'Why?' she barked, jerking her chin up when he hesitated.
Fern answered her in a low voice. 'I'm no longer sure, my mother.'
Carnelian knew that last word well enough for, as a child, it was what he had called Ebeny.
'You're no longer sure?' said Harth, mimicking his tone. She looked round at a woman, Fern's mother, head bowed, hands clasped in her lap. 'Do you hear, Akaisha? Your son's not sure why he's brought the Tribe to the brink of disaster.'
; Harth pointed here and there among the Elders. 'Ginkga and Mossie, Galewing and Kyte all waited for you in Makar until they could wait no longer. You realize they were forced to come through the Leper Valleys without protection?'
As many of the Elders pursed their lips with disapproval, Fern and Loskai hung their heads.
Ginkga spoke up. Tell us what happened, children, so that we might not judge you unfairly.' Her fierce eyes belied her gentle words.
The Elders cocked their heads to listen as, hesitantly, Fern and Loskai took it in turns, sometimes interrupting each other, to tell their tale of robbery all the way down the road from the City at the Gates.
'We were moving along the high road,' said Fern, sliding his hand through the air as if it were in a groove. 'We'd no reason to suppose there was any special danger.'
Loskai stabbed a finger at him. 'It was his brother, Ravan, who saw the Bloodguard and Fern himself who found the Standing Dead among the sartlar.'
Many of the Elders recoiled at those last few words.
'All the bloodshed stemmed from that,' said Loskai, looking eagerly into their faces.
'Among the sartlar, you say?' a woman asked, her eyes wide with disbelief.
Fern joined his nod to Loskai's. Carnelian could see as well as they that the Elders did not believe them.
Fern leaned close to hold a finger up to Carnelian's neck, asking him permission with his eyes.
Carnelian gave the slightest nod and bit his lip when he felt Fern's touch upon his scar. As his friend described how he had found them among the slaves bent by ropes and smeared with bitumen, the Elders shook their heads and began arguing among themselves. A couple of the old men, one of whom was the man Harth had said was named Galewing, fumbled on shoes and came to see for themselves. Osidian impaled them with a glare so that they did not dare approach him. One remained transfixed looking sidelong at Osidian but the other, Galewing, came to peer up at Carnelian's neck. Carnelian could smell the man and see the light catching the carving in the salt beads threaded on his hair. They clinked as he turned to the Assembly and confirmed Fern's claim to general amazement.
Harth rose and took a few steps towards the Standing Dead, her face moving in and out of shadow. Her bird eyes fixing on Osidian and, then, Carnelian.
She turned to Loskai. 'Ask the Standing Dead why they were among slaves.'
'My mother wants to know why you were hiding among slaves,' said Loskai.
His mother, Carnelian thought. He could tell by the way Loskai kept his eyes on Harth, how much he was in awe of her.
'We weren't hiding. We were being taken to be sold as trophies.'
Startled, Loskai translated this and as his mother understood, her mouth fell open.
'How could this happen?' Loskai asked for her.
Carnelian grimaced, fearing that at any time Osidian's apparent passivity might crack. 'It's complicated… politics… the Masters
…'
Harth interrupted him. 'Ask them if it was others of the Standing Dead who did this to them?'
Loskai asked, Carnelian gave a nod and the Assembly burst into a fevered discussion which took a while to abate. Harth leaned close enough for Carnelian to see his own reflection in her eyes.
'We never imagined the Standing Dead might fight amongst themselves.'
Carnelian saw she was fascinated by his scar and so he leaned his head to stretch his neck for her. Her eyes narrowed as she reached up. He felt her dry touch. She pulled away frowning.
As she returned to her place, an old man encouraged Fern to continue. Resigned, he began describing what had happened on the road. He persevered through all Loskai's interruptions. Carnelian watched the effect Fern's report was having on the Elders. At the end of each statement they would give a nod and when Fern made a gesture like a spear thrust, they flinched. They lived the skirmish through his words.
Whenever Loskai took over, Fern's anxious glances kept finding his mother, so that Carnelian began to wonder what his friend was expecting from her.
Loskai was describing how, after they had fled, they had found Fern's brother and uncle dead in their saddle-chairs.
'Sacrilege,' cried several of the Elders.
The old men clasped their hands over their heads in horror; the women traced circles over their bellies, their heads bowed.
Fern's mother, Akaisha, looked up. Tell me something, Loskai. When you were riding away were you yourself aware that my eldest son and my husband's brother were actually dead, not merely wounded?'
Loskai tried to find an answer that would deny her what she sought, but he could find none and scowled. Akaisha cut through her son's look of gratitude by urging him to continue his story. It took Fern some moments to regain his composure, but then he began to talk about the council the raiders had held.
An old man interrupted. 'So it was my son who took over the leadership?' He did not bother to hide his pride as he looked around at his peers.
'Yes, Father Crowrane, Ranegale took over,' said Fern, bitterly. Though only because my uncle and brother had died and my father had taken a mortal wound.'
'Cloud Twostone seems to have deferred to our son, child, even though he was an Elder,' grated Harth with a nod to her husband.
Fern shrugged and only resumed his story when voices cried out demanding he continue. He proceeded to describe the long trek with the drag-cradles and, as he spoke, Carnelian relived each weary day.
Suddenly, Fern was pointing at him. 'It was this one here who chose to give up his drag-cradle for my father.'
They looked at each other.
'You mean he'd recovered his strength?' Akaisha asked.
'No, my mother, he was still weak and in so much pain he could barely walk.'
Some of the Elders discussed this, others stared at Carnelian, but it was Akaisha's gaze that made him most uncomfortable. He was glad Fern drew all their eyes away, as he began relating the days that followed until he came to the night when they had seen dragonfire reflecting in the sky. A look of fierce attention leapt into the faces of those of the men whose missing ears or four-fingered hands proclaimed legionary veterans. They swelled up as they fired one question after another, wanting to know in excessive detail everything they could about the dragon line and its dispositions. Fern obliged them as best he could. With one hand he traced a wall into the air and pierced it with the other to show them Ranegale's plan. Crowrane looked around him, his pride returned.
Loskai drew angry looks when he said loudly, 'Let him tell you how once more the dead rode in saddle-chairs. This time he can't say he didn't know. They stank.'
Fern raised a fist. 'I knew well enough but believed the Mother would forgive me so that I might save their souls for her husband, the sky.'
There were gasps of outrage and more genuflections, but Carnelian was relieved to see some of the women looking with sympathy at Akaisha. For her part, if she was suffering, she hid it well.
'Did you do this by yourself, my son?' she asked.
Fern looked at Carnelian. 'Again, my mother, this one helped me. I couldn't have done it without him.'
Harth surged to her feet glaring first at the mother and then the son. Her face turned into shadow as she gazed over the Assembly. 'Whatever the mitigating circumstances, dare we allow sacrilege to go unpunished?'
Rising, Akaisha moved to her son's side and then set herself before him as a shield. She raked the Assembly with her eyes. 'Punish him? Don't you think he's been punished enough already? He's lost his brother, not to mention his father and his uncle, both of whom sat here among you.' Tears softened her glare.
Scowling, Harth sat down as women came to comfort Akaisha. As they mumbled kindnesses, her fierceness deserted her altogether and she let herself be guided back to her place. Harth, meanwhile, had become the heart of an angry conference. The men looked on, uncertain.
'Come, Fern,' said one of the veterans. 'You might as well show us how you escaped the dragons.'
Tearing his gaze from his m
other, Fern shakily redrew in the air the dragon line and the raider's trajectory. As he showed the veterans what had happened, they nodded sagely and argued among themselves whether some better stratagem could not have been devised.
'And after that?' asked Galewing.
Fern described the struggle through the rugged land beyond the Ringwall.
'We decided then…' said Loskai.
'You and Ranegale decided,' interjected Fern and they scowled at each other.
Loskai fumbled in his robe and brought out a length of cord which he lifted up for all to see. Carnelian recognized it by its knots.
'My brother argued rightly we'd not make the meeting in time,' said Loskai triumphantly.
'He wasn't necessarily right,' said Galewing. 'We ourselves were delayed on the road and were late for the meeting by three days. It was because we thought you must've gone on without us that we hurried down to the Leper Valleys hoping to overtake you.'
Loskai lowered the cord, crestfallen.
'So what did you and Ranegale decide?' asked Galewing.
Loskai's hands hesitated on the verge of making some shape in the air.
To take us down into the swamp,' said Fern.
This produced consternation. Questions were thrown at Loskai which he did his best to answer. Clearly, he was enjoying this less than he had expected. When Fern came to Loskai's rescue with answers of his own, the Plainsman regarded him with surprise.
It was Fern who described the descent to the edge of the abyss. He made his hands into the shape of the cave they had sheltered in for the night.
He stopped and looked at Loskai. 'Do you mind?'
The man's slow head shake allowed Fern to proceed. There was an audible sucking in of breath as he began describing the slaughter of the aquar. Many faces went pale, but Fern talked on and, when he faltered, Loskai began to add his own comments, until, whenever one was uncertain, he would look to the other for support.
Fern addressed his mother as his hands showed how they had hoisted the dead up onto the rock face. His mother nodded at him through her tears and much of the Assembly murmured their approval.
Then began the story of the descent into the abyss. Halfway down, Fern addressed himself to one of the women. His hands showed the fall of the youths and the woman asked him the details with a shaky voice.
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