When he reached one of the cedars bordering the ditch, he crushed his back against it and closed his eyes. It was a while before he could hear anything over the beating of his heart. Then eerie silence. Carefully he turned and, clamping his chest to the trunk, he edged round. Every crack and channel in the tree’s russet skin was starkly visible. Every tendril of moss, each molten glowing drip of resin. At last one eye was able to look out over the Poisoned Field.
The Tribe were formed up on the other side of the Homeditch, with their backs to it. Looking out over them were creatures from another world, with faces of pure sunlight from behind whom rose a billowing cloud of purple speared through with poles that were shafts of light topped with spiralling fire. Carnelian tried to still the beating heart of his terror. Ammonites, they were only ammonites catching the sun on their silver masks. His eye was drawn squinting to the centre of their glaring line. Some giant stood there, an alarming monster with two heads, masks; no, it was just the green and the black face standards of the God Emperor, rising up behind a chair that seemed to be made of shimmering water.
It was his heart that made him search for Poppy. He was forced to move around the tree and peer out the other side. She must be there beneath the Crying Tree, in among the massing of rosy brown skin that was the naked children of the Tribe. When Carnelian glimpsed the face of a mother or father, he saw it wore a strange passivity. Even the youngest looked old. Only their eyes moved, furtively, as if they feared they were being watched.
A throaty fanfare broke out, so harsh, so terrifying, Carnelian clapped his hands to his ears. He located the source of the sound: three ammonites, the lips of their fiery masks fixed to the mouthpieces of curving trumpets whose bellies were sunk into the dead and ashen earth. His attention was arrested by an apparition rising up from behind the platform like a sun, its perfect face, of metal, flashing. Dragging its purple brocades, accompanied by a staff of ammonites, the Gatherer came to the edge of the platform and looked out over the assembled Tribe. Wherever he looked, light moved over the crowd of covered heads, as if sunrays were leaping from his eyes.
‘We are come from the paradise that lies within the Mountain at the centre of the world.’ The clear Vulgate rang the silver of the Gatherer’s face. ‘Come as the emissary of the God and their angels to speak to you their commands. Obey them as you have always done. The tribute you give to them of your flesh should be a thing of joy to you. Those of your children chosen here today will at the proper time be given to them. They are to be considered fortunate indeed whom the God and his angels consider worthy to be their slaves. Shall you obey them?’
Carnelian broke free of the compulsion to gape and glanced at the sullen faces of the Tribe, knowing that few of them could have understood. But then, as one, the crowd rumbled: ‘As they command so shall it be done.’ A response in Vulgate many could only have learned as sounds.
The Gatherer waited for them to fall silent and then sat himself down upon the silver chair. At a lifting of his hand, one of the ammonites nearby let drop a length of glimmering string Carnelian knew must be a beadcord record.
‘At the last audit, how many of the male-gender?’ the Gatherer asked.
The ammonite felt a portion of the cord. ‘Eighteen twenties, and eleven, my master.’
‘How many of the female-gender?’
‘One four-hundred and three, my master.’
‘How many creatures in this tribe?’
‘One four-hundred, eighteen twenties and fourteen, my master.’
‘How many live offspring are projected by the Wise for this octad?’
‘Eighteen twenties and twelve.’
‘How many were not delivered to the Mountain?’
‘Six, my master.’
‘The number to be chosen is therefore …?’
‘A twenty and eighteen.’
‘Ignoring the fractional part?’
‘Precisely so, my master.’
The Gatherer turned his polished face towards the Plainsmen and cocked it slightly to one side. ‘Are we not generous then in this calculation of your flesh tithe?’
The Tribe seemed to have been turned to stone. Mouths were lines. Eyes shadowed by hatred did not move their narrow stare from the mirror of the Gatherer’s face.
As he threw up his hands, their honey-gold betrayed him to be a marumaga in whose veins some tiny portion of the blood of the Masters ran.
‘You may petition us now.’
The Elders of the Tribe were let through, each accompanied by a youngster. Carnelian looked for but could not discern which of them was Akaisha. The Elders seemed suddenly very old as they leant on the youngsters and climbed the few steps to a shelf that lay below the Gatherer’s feet. Slowly, painfully, they slid down to sitting. The wealth of salt in their hair seemed dull and mean in comparison with the flashing silver of the Gatherer’s face.
‘Petition me,’ he said again, impatiently.
For an age the Gatherer and the Elders negotiated, the process made necessarily slow by those among the Elders who spoke Vulgate having to translate for those who did not. At last, one of the Elders stood to face the Tribe. Carnelian saw it was Harth.
‘They asked for thirty-eight, which takes into account the marked children who died before they were taken to the Mountain.’ She paused. Her posture spoke of defeat. ‘We’ve managed to reduce their demand by three.’
It was a small victory but Carnelian could see how much hope it gave the Tribe.
‘Begin,’ said the Gatherer.
Everyone craned to see the children creep forwards towards the ammonites. Those who could not yet walk were carried by those who could. Carnelian watched the first few being clasped in the hands of the ammonites, shrinking from their instruments and the reflections of themselves they could see distorted in their masks.
In ones and twos, the rejected were forced to plunge their hands into jars of black paint and then were released, coming tottering back into the arms of their families. Others, however, were driven up the steps to the Gatherer. One at a time they were given to him. He took their heads and squeezed, felt their bones, his fingers controlling their squirming as if they were nothing more than fish. He forced their mouths to gape by putting pressure on the hinges of their jaws and peered inside. He prised their eyelids open. Watching this, the faces of those waiting in line creased with terror. One little boy looked out across the Tribe screaming for his mother. Breaking, a woman’s voice answered him. At the sound the children on the platform began whimpering. More women shrilled names, encouragements. The Tribe began to lose their sullen composure as their agony began bleeding out of them in a wailing. Carnelian felt himself being unmanned by the sound. He lived again the day he was forced to abandon his people on the island to famine. It was only the hard faces of some of the men that helped him retain control. He chewed his tongue like them and ground his teeth and clenched his fists against the lust for violence.
And so it continued as the sun rose high and scorched them and then began sinking. Carnelian’s legs ached from standing too long, but he would not even allow himself to seek the relief of crouching when he saw how the Tribe were bearing their pain.
The Gatherer examined one child after another, sending some down to the tattooists with their needles, releasing the rest to have their hands blackened. The mothers of these rejected children would push through the press and grab them, shrieking with joy. The other mothers looked on these scenes with a kind of hatred, before resuming their bleak vigil.
Carnelian could not see the selected children among the tattooists, but could hear their moaning, their cries for their fathers and mothers as the glyphs were pricked into their palms. These too would find release at last into their mother’s arms. Many stumbled as they ran, dropping the small pieces of cloth they had been given to staunch the bleeding. The bloody palms would be stared at in the vain attempt to read there how much time they had before they must be sent away.
Wearied by the heartac
he, nevertheless, Carnelian kept searching the snivelling line of children being fed up the steps for examination. At last he saw what he had feared to see. Poppy, her tiny face looking for him. He willed her to see him though he knew that if she did, so might others and that would bring disaster down upon the Tribe. As she drew closer and closer to the silver chair, he wrung his hands until they hurt. The moment came that Carnelian had been dreading: Poppy was pushed into the Gatherer’s hands. He forgot to breathe as her little shaved head was turned this way and that. The Gatherer pressed it with his fingers as if he were determining the ripeness of a melon. Carnelian gulped air again when the Gatherer seemed to have detected some fault. He clamped the girl as his face of silver leant close to one of the scribes. The mask flashed as he nodded and then Carnelian fought nausea as he watched Poppy being shoved off to be tattooed. She was crying as she looked back, hopeless, distraught at not seeing him among the crowd. As he imagined his little girl gritting her teeth against the needle’s pain, Carnelian cursed himself bitterly he had not thought to disfigure her.
DEADLOCK
The deadlock common to all two player games is rarely found in Three.
(from ‘The Three Coloured Game’ by the Ruling Lord, Kirinya Prase)
UNDER AKAISHA’S CEDAR, CARNELIAN WAS PACING BACK AND FORTH, every so often looking towards the rootstair for any sign of the Tribe returning. Unable to be among the crowd as a comfort to Poppy, fearing he might witness Fern’s punishment, Carnelian had fled in misery. All his life, he had known about the childgatherer. Once, when he had pushed Ebeny until her reticence broke, she had described the miserable day she had been selected for the Mountain. He had had nightmares for a long time afterwards. Now he had seen it for himself, he was soaked through with such heartache and shame that he wanted to creep away and hide. He glanced back up the slope, desperate to see Poppy. An irrational fear possessed him that the childgatherer might have already taken her away. Then he became filled with dread at the thought of seeing her and, for a moment, seriously considered fleeing the Koppie. He allowed his gaze to be burned by the incandescence of the plain. Out there was an unwelcoming world and Osidian; a Master who would have nothing but shrivelling contempt for such feelings.
The sound of footfalls was coming from the direction of the Crag. He resisted the temptation to hide, though he backed towards the comfort of the mother tree. As the first people appeared upon the stair, Carnelian held on to her bark as if it were a hand. It was not long before they noticed him. Their descent faltered as they stared with red eyes that seemed to have sunk into their faces. Their scrutiny soon forced him to lower his gaze. A woman’s voice urged them on. More and more of the Tribe were coming into sight. Carnelian stood where he was, enduring their terrible, silent hatred. He would gladly have set aside his height, his white skin, his burning blood to become one of them. As it was he would not allow himself to deny it was his kind who had just raped them.
When he sensed someone approaching, he lifted his gaze, holding his arms stiffly by his sides ready to take whatever was said, whatever pain inflicted, even death, but when he saw it was Fern, his knees threatened to buckle. His friend simply stared and Carnelian fought panic. Fern’s face was unreadable, though his red eyes showed he had been crying.
Carnelian searched his friend’s body for any sign of mutilation. ‘You are unhurt?’
Fern looked as if he did not know the answer to that. After a while, he said: ‘They did not call for me.’
‘Then you are saved,’ Carnelian said, clutching at the hope there was in that; some joy on such a joyless day. Instinct urged Carnelian to keep his pain to himself, but he was weak enough to want to share it.
‘I should have disfigured her. That’s what I’ve been thinking.’
Fern looked at Carnelian as if he were seeing him for the first time. ‘What?’
‘I should have disfigured Poppy. The Gatherer wouldn’t have chosen an imperfect child for the Standing Dead.’
Carnelian recoiled from the rage that sprang into Fern’s face.
‘You were there? You knew the danger to the Tribe and, still, you were there?’
Carnelian wanted to back away but the mother tree was a wall against his back.
‘I promised Poppy …’
Fern gaped at him. Even to Carnelian’s ears, his words sounded absurd.
Fern grew suddenly tired and his curly head fell against the cedar.
‘Disfigure her. Don’t you think we might have thought of that? She’d grow up carrying on her face the proof that another child had been sent to the Mountain in her place.’ His voice was unsteady. ‘All the hearths who had lost a child would hate her.’
Fern lifted his head and Carnelian saw he was crying.
‘Perhaps it’s the best thing for her. What kind of life would she have had here.’ Fern became distraught. ‘He’s taken my baby.’
Carnelian stared dumbfounded. At the examination he had been so focused on Poppy he had not even remembered to look for Leaf. He saw his friend’s anguish and could think of nothing to say.
*
As they approached, hearthmates gazed at Carnelian as if he were a ghost of the children the Tribe had lost. Sil’s eyes accused him, her mother’s were trying not to. Whin was pulling Poppy by the hand. The little girl was looking at her feet, the fist of her left hand wedged into her armpit. Carnelian forgot everyone else, praying that when she would look up at him it would not be with hatred. Whin brought her up close.
‘Look at Carnie, child. You mustn’t blame him.’
Carnelian gave Whin a smile of gratitude, muttered something of his regret about her own loss, then squatted down and reached out for Poppy’s face. He almost pulled away when he felt the skin wet with tears. Gently he lifted the little face, waiting for her eyes to see him. He stopped breathing when he felt her stare, then gave out a sigh of relief when he did not see hatred in her eyes but only pain and fear. He folded her into his arms, put his lips to her neck, lifted her from the ground. He rocked her, humming, feeling her sobbing, her fist a stone against his heart.
‘Carnie.’ It was Fern’s voice.
Carnelian turned with Poppy still wrapped in his embrace and looked round. Fern was tearful, looking at him, leaning close to Sil, their baby nestled between them. Carnelian saw the tears in Sil’s eyes, everyone’s eyes and almost let out a wail. He wanted to make it better, to take away their pain.
Fern released his daughter’s tiny hand from her swaddling, peeled the pad from her palm and let it fall red to the ground.
‘I can’t wait until the Gatherer gives the Elders a picture of the tithe. Tell us how long we’ll have her.’
Carnelian feared Sil’s eyes, but felt that beyond Fern’s need to know, he was trying to make things right between the three of them. Carnelian drew close enough to see. He adjusted Poppy and, gingerly, took the baby’s bloody hand and peered at it.
The green patterns of the date tattoo were smeared red and swollen in the tiny palm but he could still read the number eight and the hated name of Osidian’s brother, Molochite.
He looked up at Fern and Sil, waiting in dreadful suspense. ‘Not counting this year, seven more.’ They would have her for the longest possible time allowed a marked child.
When Fern thanked him, Sil held Carnelian’s eyes, searching them. She must have found there what she sought, for she reached out and took his hand. ‘We have all lost today.’
Relief brought more tears. He lifted her hand in his and kissed it.
Carnelian became aware of Poppy’s stony fist wedged between them. A part of him did not want to read what was written there. He realized he had not seen Akaisha. He searched for her.
‘She’s with the other Elders talking to the childgatherer,’ said Sil.
‘Does that always happen?’
Sil grew pale as she glanced at Fern and then looked back up the slope the way they had come. Carnelian realized with a jolt his friend was still in danger.
Poppy shifted against him and when Carnelian looked down it was directly into her eyes. He took his leave of Sil and Fern and carried Poppy to their hollow. He laid her down upon a blanket. They sat looking at each other while she clutched her left fist in her other hand. She released it and opened it for him. He stared at the cloth blushing blood. It was obvious what she wanted. He took her hand in his and carefully peeled off the cloth. He used it to wipe away the blood. He saw the two tattooed spots and his heart stopped.
She saw the colour leave his face and drew back terrified. ‘This year?’
‘No,’ he cried, shaking his head.
‘The next then?’
It was unnecessary for him to nod; she saw her fate in his eyes.
Akaisha’s face was gaunt when she appeared beside Carnelian’s hollow. He disengaged from Poppy who had been sleeping in his arms and rose to face Akaisha.
‘I don’t know what to say, my mother, about your loss.’
She glanced at Poppy. ‘All have suffered loss.’
Carnelian was withered by shame.
‘Come with me,’ she said.
He followed her. When they reached the deepest shade of the mother tree, she fixed wild eyes on him. ‘Where is the Master?’
‘On the plain.’
‘But where?’
He half shook his head. ‘Perhaps returned to the earther we were bringing here when we saw the signal.’
She frowned, looking at the ground, her eyes moving in thought, her hand gently stroking the bark. She looked up.
‘The Master was right. The Gatherers are looking for you.’
Carnelian swallowed hard. ‘They asked about us specifically?’
‘The Gatherer claimed to be seeking two white marumaga renegades. He told us that any tribe handing them over or giving information resulting in their successful live capture will have their tithe rescinded for a full eight years.’
Carnelian could see the desire for such a prize was a passion in her which she was having difficulty suppressing. It promised the salvation of her granddaughter.
The Standing Dead (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Page 33