Akaisha gave her bowl to Whin, pulled a blanket up over her head and made her way round the fire to join the visitors. When Akaisha glanced back at Carnelian, the other Elders did so too and then, they moved into the darkness.
Unable to sleep, Carnelian whispered her name in Poppy’s ear. Certain she was asleep, he crept from his hollow round to the hearth. Fumbling around, he found a stick lying in Akaisha’s root fork and used it to stir some light from the embers. In the soft glow he huddled on the men’s bench, slowly edging round to get nearer the heat until he found the warmest place was in the fork itself. He sat there listening to the susurration of the cedars, drawing what contentment he could from knowing the Tribe were sleeping peacefully all around him. He fell asleep waiting for Akaisha to return.
Shaken awake, Carnelian let out a cry that was snuffed out by a hand closing over his mouth.
‘Hush,’ a voice hissed, in his ear. ‘Do you want to wake the whole Tribe?’
Carnelian knew it was Akaisha by her scent. ‘Move round from there,’ she whispered, giving him a nudge in the ribs. Still only half awake, he slid round on to the men’s bench. She groaned as she fell to her knees facing the elbow of the fork. He heard the mutter of some prayer she was addressing to the mother tree, then she sat herself in her usual place.
‘Only on his wedding day is a man permitted to sit here.’
‘I’m sorry, my mother, I didn’t know.’
‘Nevertheless, you should be punished.’
They sat side by side for a while until her breathing slowed enough to weave into the sighing of the mother tree.
At last Carnelian could bear to be silent no longer. ‘My mother –’
‘What did you tell the Master?’
‘Tell?’
Akaisha peered at his face as if searching for something. ‘He sent us word that, should we attempt to harm either of you in any way, he’d reveal your presence among us to the Bluedancing.’
That Osidian was fighting for his life, even that he might have done this for his sake, did not leave Carnelian feeling anything but shame. Like any other Master, Osidian had resorted to extortion. Akaisha was still watching him, waiting for his answer. Had she not confided in him that this was what the Elders most feared? He spoke not in his own defence, but to reassure her.
‘I told him nothing.’
‘How then did he guess?’
‘The Master was once intimate with those who sent the Gatherer.’
She frowned. ‘Who else but the Standing Dead sent the Gatherer?’
Carnelian realized that even if he should manage to make her believe in the existence of the Wise, he would find it impossible to explain Osidian’s access to their world without revealing who he had been. ‘Did the Master not guess the Gatherer had come searching for us?’
‘You told us that much.’
‘My mother, did I not tell you this before it was confirmed by the Gatherer himself?’
’ She nodded.
‘Is it then too hard to believe the Master guessed the rest?’
‘Would he really betray us to the Bluedancing?’
‘It is not difficult to deduce that, given the immediate danger we pose to the Tribe, the Elders would wish to have us killed.’
‘If the Master had wanted you to be found, he could have revealed himself to the Gatherer. His threat is empty.’
Carnelian grimaced. ‘Don’t underestimate the appetite the Standing Dead have for vengeance.’
Akaisha bowed her head in thought.
Carnelian could see no way out of the dilemma that would allow the Tribe to escape harm. The whole, long, weary journey from his northern isle to Osrakum had been slaked in the blood of massacres; the wounding of his father; the intrigues of the election; the escape from slavery and his decision to go with Fern, all had led finally to this moment. He could see no other way.
‘You must kill us both.’
Akaisha lifted her head. ‘How might we do that safely? Earlier, you told me he had influence among the young. I’d go further, since he slew the ravener, there’re many in the Tribe who idolize him.’
She peered into the night. ‘Even now he has them with him out there somewhere. We daren’t risk making the attempt.’
Carnelian’s heart raced. He could see the path of hope she was showing him. ‘I could go out and convince him we are in no danger.’
‘I might let you go, but the other Elders wouldn’t. By threatening you they hope to bring him in.’
Hopelessness returned. ‘He’ll not come.’
She nodded. ‘He will have to when the Withering forces us to go to the mountains. Until then, as long as we have you, he’ll not put us in the hands of the Bluedancing.’
‘How can you be so sure of that, my mother?’
‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you.’
‘And will the Tribe be able to live with this?’
‘If they found out about the Master’s threat, there are those who might act and so bring disaster.’ She fixed him with a glare. ‘You understand?’
Carnelian nodded, not blaming them.
‘Harth demanded that you should be bound but I argued that might give the Master enough of a pretext to betray us. I told the Assembly you could be bound by an oath. Promise me you’ll make no attempt to join him.’
‘Is my word guarantee enough?’
She took his hand and placed it firmly down on the root he was sitting on. ‘Swear on my mother tree who is a part of the Mother.’
‘I swear on her and also on my blood that I’ll remain within the Koppie as your hostage.’
She gave his hand a squeeze. ‘Well then, it seems that, for the moment at least, we have ourselves a deadlock.’
‘You’ll send Ravan to tell him this?’
‘My treacherous son,’ she said, bitterly. ‘Yes, we’ll send him back to his master in the morning.’ She kissed him upon the cheek. ‘At this moment, Carnie, you seem more Ochre to me than does my own son.’
‘Don’t blame him too much.’ Carnelian remembered how, when he had thought his father dead from his wound, he had become involved in the intrigues of House Suth and so brought about the crucifixion of Fey, one of his father’s marumaga half-sisters. Grief could blind those it struck.
He smiled at Akaisha. ‘For the moment your son is in the Master’s thrall, but I believe, in time, he will see what the Master is and then he’ll return to his people.’
THE WITHERING
Death is the mother of life.
(a precept of the Plainsmen)
THE NEXT MORNING AT BREAKFAST, PEOPLE ASKED WHERE RAVAN WAS and Akaisha informed them he had returned to join the Master. They looked at each other, knowing that Ravan and the others were meant to be warding with Father Crowrane.
‘Why do you tolerate this affront to our ways?’ asked Fern.
‘It is every man’s right to choose with whom he hunts,’ retorted Akaisha, and no one dared to ask her anything more.
Carnelian listened to Sil and others whispering to each other the story going around about how the Master, with only a handful of their men, had not only managed to bring their earther home but had, besides, protected it all night from ravener attacks.
A few days later when they did not return to take their place in the ditches, their hearths began to worry. Father Crowrane and the few older men who were all that remained of his hunt worked as best they could, but when three days later they were supposed to go and fetch water, there was not enough of them and the rotas had to be readjusted, which caused a general anger.
During the day, Carnelian could suppress his fretting in his toil under the Bloodwood Tree, but in the evenings, by the hearth, he could not avoid seeing Akaisha’s thinning face.
When Ravan appeared at the Horngate with Krow and others, the women at their butchery dropped everything and rushed to meet them. Carnelian and Fern lifted their heads and saw the hunters, their aquar hitched to a construction upon which there lay an earther so im
mense that for a moment it seemed they would not be able to get it across the earthbridge. With a glance at each other they hurried after the women.
As the aquar came towards them through the ferngarden dragging the earther, children ran out from the drying racks to swarm the hunters and their catch. Carnelian watched one tiny pair clamber up on to its head, run along it, then scale the slope of its crest to reach the hill of its back. Carnelian did not like the childish shrieks of excitement nor the swagger of the hunters. Osidian did not seem to be among them.
Carnelian slowed to a walk as he overtook the women. As the procession drew nearer he grimaced, recognizing one of the children sitting astride the monster’s back as Poppy. Ginkga, the Elder in charge, gave him a glare, warning him not to try to escape. The youths were boasting of the hunt, running their hands up the great sweep of the bull’s horns, pointing out the hawser tendons beneath his smooth young hide, while all the time, the children frolicked, or drank in the glory of the hunt, wide-eyed.
Ravan called a halt and strutted out accompanied by Krow, who was beaming. At the head of the women, Ginkga confronted the youths.
‘Where’ve you lot been? Do you know your hearths are half mad with worry?’
Smiles were fading all around her. Krow held on to his, but looked uneasy.
Ginkga pointed at the earther. ‘What do you expect us to do with that monstrosity?’
Ravan frowned as if he was finding himself unexpectedly among strangers. He peered past the women to where a smaller earther lay half dismembered under the branches of the Bloodwood Tree. ‘Get rid of that scrawny carcass. It’s clear ours has far more and better meat.’
Ginkga scowled. She walked past Ravan and several of the women followed her. She pointed at the sled of roughly hewn wood upon which the bull lay.
‘Where did that come from?’
‘We made it,’ said Ravan.
The Elder raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s made of wood.’
Ravan frowned more deeply. ‘So, we cut down two or three acacias. There’s plenty more where they came from.’
His comment produced a catching of breath among the women. Ginkga addressed her words to the youths standing behind Ravan. ‘Are any of you here unaware that every tree is holy to the Mother?’
Many of the hunters blushed; looked away; let their eyes fall.
The Elder approached the saurian, nodding as she appraised him. ‘I can’t deny that he’s magnificent.’
The youths lifted their heads desperate for her approval.
‘But you’ve cut him down in the full flowering of his strength. He should be out there fathering more of his kind. Didn’t that occur to any of you? Did you also forget his herd will need him to defend them against raveners?’
The hunters withered under her disapproval.
‘We’ve brought meat for the Tribe,’ said Krow, aggrieved.
‘Meat?’ Ginkga demanded. ‘Can’t you see that even if we were ready for him, he’s got more on him than we could possibly process before he begins to rot? Not to mention that we’re expecting Kyte’s hunt in tomorrow.’
‘So some’ll be wasted.’
Ginkga regarded Ravan as if he were speaking a foreign tongue. ‘All flesh is a gift from the Mother.’
Ravan gave her a sneer as he pointed at the young bull. ‘We weren’t given that. We took it,’ he said, snatching a handful of air.
People gaped in shock. Fern strode forward, his skin and hair stiff with blood.
‘Have you lost every last bit of sense you had? How can you say such things?’
Ravan’s smile chilled Carnelian. ‘The Master has taught me to be a man.’
Ignoring Ginkga’s glare, Ravan turned on his heel and, accompanied reluctantly by Krow, strode towards his aquar.
‘You come back here,’ she bellowed, but Ravan was deaf to her as he unhitched his aquar from the sled.
‘Child, I command you to return with me to the Ancestor House.’
’ Ravan vaulted into his saddle-chair, made his aquar rise and sent it striding away towards the Horngate. The other youths looked, some apologetic, some angry, but they too were unhitching their aquar. They ignored Ginkga, who was in their midst pulling at them; berating them. Carnelian moved forward with Fern, but neither was sure what to do.
Raising a choking cloud of red dust, the hunters flew after Ravan. The women pulled their ubas over their noses and mouths, all the time staring at the Elder. She was coughing, squinting at the veiled shapes of the riders as they rode out on to the plain. A movement above her drew her eye. Poppy and a boy were still astride the bull.
‘Have you no respect? Get down from there!’
The children slithered to the ground and fled with the others back to the racks.
Ginkga turned on Carnelian. ‘Are you satisfied, Master?’ Then she rounded on the women.
‘Well? Don’t you think we’d better get on with it or shall we just stand here all day watching the poor bastard rot?’
News of Ravan’s defiance spread quickly through the Koppie. Carnelian saw how keenly Akaisha and Fern felt the hearth’s shame. At first rumours abounded of the punishment that would certainly be meted out upon the errant youths, but as time passed it became clear the Elders were not going to act. People looked at their old people and wondered at their powerlessness.
Ravan did not return, but the youths who returned periodically with their kills upon other sleds confirmed he was hunting with the Master.
One time, Krow came with others boasting of a brawl in which they had triumphed over some Bluedancing. Around the hearths it was difficult not to greet this news with approval. For as long as anyone could remember, the Bluedancing had been provoking the Ochre. It was high time those bullies were shown there were men prepared to stand up to them. Whin was clearly unimpressed by the assurances that the Master had remained concealed throughout the brawl. Carnelian and Akaisha exchanged glances, both wondering if Osidian was sending them a warning.
The increasing glamour of hunting with the Master made more and more of the Tribe’s young men desert their hunts for his. Forced to defend them, their kin declared that all they were doing was risking their lives daily beyond the safety of the ditches for the good of the Tribe, for its pride. Others were not so forgiving. They were resentful so many of the young men should refuse to fetch water or to work in the ditches, but they did not feel they could protest too much in case people should believe they spoke out of envy at the evident success of the Master’s hunt. These malcontents carried their anger to the Elders, who once more showed themselves unwilling or unable to act.
There were other concerns. The mother trees declared the beginning of the Withering by producing cones while, beneath a high pearlescent sky, the sun was burning the world to dust.
*
One day, struggling against smothering heat, Carnelian became aware that every fern frond he could see was brown. Gazing out past the Newditch, he saw the world beyond was sepia to the horizon.
‘How can anyone possibly survive out there in that shadeless world?’ he rasped through his parched throat.
Fern had a sombre look. ‘The lagoons will soon dry up and then the herds will begin their migration to the mountains. We must follow them or else die.’
Carnelian smiled. ‘At least we’ll be free of this,’ he said, lifting up his brown, blood-stained arms. He watched Fern return to his work miserable, frowning, and only then remembered it would also be time to send children to Osrakum.
‘Smoke,’ Carnelian cried, pointing at a mass of it rising well above the crowns of the magnolias, bending its back as it leaned towards the west.
Not hearing other cries joining to his own, he turned and saw that only a few people had even bothered to lift their heads. He pulled at Fern.
‘Fire.’
His friend seemed infuriatingly unconcerned.
‘There’s fire spreading within the Newditch,’ said Carnelian.
Fern gave a nod. ‘We must burn
the ferngardens now while they still have the memory of green life in them.’
Carnelian watched the edge of the pall fraying in the breeze and understood. Soon the ferngardens would be tinder-dry.
Fern spoke again. ‘If we burn them now, any fire that comes across the plain will find nothing here to consume and so turn aside.’
Carnelian gazed out over the plain and his breathing stilled as he contemplated how easily it could all turn to flame.
Every day after that, a ferngarden was set alight, beginning with the westernmost and moving progressively closer to the Grove. Soon, while at his work, Carnelian was able to watch the neighbouring field being sown with fire. Starting at its western margin, gradually retreating with the breeze at their backs, people wrapped in soaked blankets beat smoke from the flames as they steered the smoulder over the land.
The day that they burned the Eastgarden, Carnelian and Fern were spared their labours. From the safety of the Homeditch they stood and watched the Bloodwood Tree sifting clots of smoke through its branches. That evening and for many after, they had to quit the Grove, for the breeze carried the smoke in among the mother trees. Carnelian took his turn at moving along the eastern run of the Homewalk, his mouth and nose smothered beneath his soaked uba, his eyes stinging, making sure that, though serpents of blue smoke might be curling among their trunks, no spark would live long enough to harm the mother trees.
At last, men returning from the lagoon announced it had shrunk to brackish pools. What water they had managed to bring back they distributed directly among the hearths. Standing round with Akaisha, Whin and the others, Carnelian saw their allowance was not even enough to fill their water jar halfway.
Akaisha tasted it and, grimacing, spat it out. ‘This isn’t good enough to drink.’ She smiled grimly round at her hearthkin, then pointed at the jar. ‘Wash yourselves as best you can with that. There’ll be no more washing until we reach the mountains. I’m going to meet with the other Elders.’
Sil touched her emaciated arm. ‘My mother, can we take water from the cistern to drink?’
‘A little,’ Akaisha said and walked away.
The Standing Dead (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Page 35