‘Go on,’ he encouraged.
Carnelian felt something cold and slimy and yanked his hands out of the hole.
‘I’ll do it then,’ said Fern, pushing him out of the way. He slipped his hands in and fetched something out that glinted in the sun. A fish. Carnelian was too astounded to say anything.
‘Dreaming,’ said Fern, giving it to Sil, then turned his back so she could tuck it into his pack.
‘Even in the Withering, Carnie, the Mother provides for us,’ she said, grinning.
The dark mass of the march had crested a ridge ahead.
‘Come on,’ said Sil, breaking into a lope. Carnelian scooped Poppy into his arms and ran to catch up. On the way they passed some boys dancing around a murky puddle jiggling their spears. One after another they plunged them in then, together, drew out a struggling dwarf-crocodile. They held it up as a trophy and Sil touched it to bless it for them.
‘Kill it mercifully,’ she said.
‘And quickly,’ said Fern. ‘Or else you’ll be left behind.’
Carnelian put Poppy down as they came over the crest of the slope and saw the soft circular outlines and egg-shells scattered everywhere half filled with sand.
‘The remains of the bellower rookery,’ Carnelian muttered. For some reason, the site reminded him of the ruins of the Quyan city he had seen from the leftway on his way to Osrakum.
The Tribe plodded on until the sun fell behind them, spindling their shadows off in the direction of their march. As the women of each hearth made a ring of blankets, the men cleared a great space among the brown and brittle ferns. They piled great armfuls of the stuff in the centre of the blanket rings and lit fierce fires. Carnelian saw Akaisha and others gazing off back the way they had come until it became too dark to see anything. It grew quickly cold. Carnelian huddled round their fire with the rest of his hearthmates as they all tried to recapture something of the comfort of their home. He sensed that much of the sombre mood was due to worry about the missing youths. As a djada rope was passed around, Fern produced the fish he had dug from the ground and buried it in a cooler corner of the fire. When it was cooked, he distributed pieces of its charred flesh, which were delicious. A waterskin came round from which sips were taken to help lubricate the chewing of the djada. Whin was telling a story about animals who spoke with human speech, in which her sisters and Akaisha had roles and the children joined in gleefully with the choruses.
As the sky frosted with stars, they quietened so that Carnelian began to notice the muttering, a rare laugh drifting from the other hearths. People grew drowsy in the warm flicker of their fires.
‘We are so naked here,’ Carnelian whispered to Fern.
‘Our mother trees are already far away,’ said Sil.
‘And the tribute bearers and the children too,’ said Whin.
In the firelight Carnelian saw Fern looking over to Leaf, sleeping in her mother’s arms, and drew Poppy to him and stroked her head encouraging her to sleep.
Commotion broke suddenly around them. Carnelian leapt to his feet even as the whole Tribe did so, obscuring the light of their fires with their bodies, everyone jabbering.
‘Is it raveners?’ he asked.
‘Silence,’ cried Akaisha. Other Elders all across the camp could be heard echoing her cry. The people quietened, calmed. Carnelian could see vague shapes moving in the dark.
‘Riders,’ Fern breathed.
‘We are returned,’ said a voice in the night.
Carnelian knew it was Ravan. Those who hoped their sons were returning to them began to call out the names of their hearths. It was a while before Akaisha began to speak her name into the darkness. The calls subsided and still she called: ‘Akaisha, Akaisha.’
A black mass looming up out of the night silenced her. It divided into the shapes of two riders. Their aquar knelt and two men dismounted. One was vast beside the other. Silence.
‘Make them welcome,’ Akaisha hissed.
At her command, Carnelian and the others moved round the fire so that its light poured out to illumine the figures. They strode in to close the ring and then sat down. They were offered djada and water.
‘It’s good to have you back, son,’ Akaisha said.
When Ravan did not even turn to look at her, Fern grew incensed. ‘Didn’t you hear your mother?’
The younger people were sneaking glances at each other. Whin was regarding the Master with unconcealed loathing. Akaisha was struggling for composure.
It was Poppy who pointed out the shape standing watching them in the night.
‘Come forward,’ said Whin.
Moving into the light the shape revealed itself to be Krow.
‘Well?’ Whin demanded.
Krow’s black hunter’s face glanced at the Master for guidance but he seemed unaware of him.
‘Krow has nowhere else to go,’ said Carnelian, at last.
Akaisha found a smile for the youth. She beckoned. ‘Join us.’
Krow muttered his thanks to Akaisha and shot Carnelian a grateful look. After that, people spoke in whispers, giving the Master anxious glances, while he sat, a massive shadow gazing unblinking into the fire. Once he did look at Carnelian, who saw in his eyes fierce triumph.
In the morning the Tribe flung the embers of their hearths into the wind. Where fire caught, smoke leapt quickly westwards. They turned their backs on the flames and trudged into the sepia east. The Master walked in their midst as if he were alone. Observing him, Carnelian feared what he might be feeling. He needed to probe him, but Osidian never spoke. What little he ate he passed through the folds of his uba so that only the pale mouth in the blackened face was revealed. His eyes seemed to have no more sight in them than glass. Poppy shunned him as if he were a stranger. Ravan served him like a slave so that his own people turned away, not wishing to see his humiliation. Krow might have been the Master’s shadow.
As the days passed, Carnelian gave up waiting for Osidian to speak. He strove to bear the weariness of the march as well as he saw the Elders and the children do. Still, each day was like a fever to which only the cool repose of night brought some relief.
One day, feeling a tremor of thunder coming from the west, Carnelian asked Fern with eager delight whether it might be some rain.
Fern’s eyes peered out between the folds of his uba. ‘There’ll be no rain for several rebirths of the moon. Until then, the Withering will tighten its grasp on the land, relentlessly.’
Carnelian waited for more, but Fern only said, ‘I fear we may soon enough see what is following us with thunder.’
Carnelian did not have the energy to pursue it. The sun was turning the world to molten gold. Their store of water was the very heart of their march. Over the first few days they had come across water-holes, puddles, which they drained down to the mud and even that they did not waste, but plastered it on the aquar to cool the burning in their hides. Eventually the land had nothing to offer them but dust.
The thunder following them became a shuddering in the ground. Looking back, Carnelian saw a sandstorm bearing down on them. The Elders began shouting orders. The arc the Tribe made across the plain began coalescing around groups of Elders. The children huddling in beside them were walled in by the kneeling aquar. On the outside men swung their bull-roarers while women gathered stones.
Carnelian stood with Osidian, Ravan and Krow on one side, Fern on the other whirling the blade of a bull-roarer around his head, dizzying Carnelian with its strobing, moaning cry. The women had built a cairn of stones in front of them. Sil pushed herself between Carnelian and Fern. She glanced anxiously back to see Leaf in Akaisha’s arms. Poppy was there too. Carnelian gave her a smile and she returned it nervously. He turned back to watch the storm roll mountainously towards them.
‘Their heads,’ a voice screamed and many arms pointed up into the clouds that were billowing up and obscuring the sun.
Carnelian looked and saw dark shapes floating high among the veils of dust; the necks that h
eld them there, then emerging through the murk, their chests and the column legs that were churning the earth.
Carnelian fell back against Sil. ‘Heaveners,’ he gasped in fear and awe, as every eye was locked to the oncoming giants.
‘Such power,’ exclaimed a voice in Quya. Looking out of the corner of his eyes Carnelian saw Osidian’s, fierce and staring. But the shaking of the ground forced him to think about himself. He ignored the stones tumbling at his feet. He caught one glimpse of the nearest Ochre clump before all vision was blasted away by a tidal wave of grit.
Madness took them all. Carnelian shouted and screamed with the rest as he cast stones up at the lumbering, sky-filling shapes. Cliffs of hide slid past on either side. Each footfall shook the ground. Grey with dust, the mouths of the Tribe choked and bellowed. Coughing mixed with screams and the rattle of stones glancing off hide. Then the heaveners were gone, rumbling away into the east. Carnelian sagged exhausted among the ashen crowd, feeling the thunder slowly recede even as the sand stopped hailing.
People burst into song and laughter, with wonder at witnessing such sacred power and majesty; hugging and kissing each other in delight at their survival. Carnelian was pulled into a dance by Sil and Fern, tears smudging the dust around their eyes. It took Carnelian a while to notice Osidian emotionless, gazing off after the cloud-shrouded giants.
They tramped eastwards along the wide roads driven through the dead fernland by the herds. Carnelian was grateful the load of djada he carried had been reduced by consumption, to match the depletion in his strength.
One morning he saw, rising with the sun, mountains liquid blue in the dawn.
‘Drink deep of that sight, Carnie,’ Fern said. ‘Though we’ve still more than half our journey before us, it’s a promise of cool air and crystal water.’
Until the sun rose to its full fiery strength, the sight of the mountains was enough to put smiles back on to the dust-bleached faces of the Tribe. Soon the glare had turned the sky opaque so that it appeared the mountains had been nothing but a mirage.
Often in the morning and in the quick dusk of evening, they could gaze with longing at the mountains that grew day by day more solid. At last the morning came when Akaisha promised her hearth they would soon be climbing up out of the burning plain. They chewed knotted djada, their eyes grit-reddened and weeping, but they made better speed drawn on by the sight of journey’s end.
The land began to fold, and here and there a leaf missed by the passing herds, or a still green fern crozier, gave them hope. They wound up into the hills along ever-steepening paths. The mountains formed a distant turquoise wall across the lower sky from which noisy rivers poured their colour down into the valleys.
As the day was waning they reached a land of verdant valleys curled with delicious mist. They kept to the paths that wound around the slopes. In the valley bottoms, the ferny pastures were filled with the creatures of the plain.
By a narrow defile, they entered the valley which, Fern told Carnelian, the Tribe considered its own. Men that had been sent ahead waved down from the craggy heights to indicate the place was free of danger. Once through that gateway, the aquar fanned out and Carnelian found he was walking into a long and narrow valley, green-walled and watered by a stream.
People all around him sighed their relief, kicking their hot feet through the coolness of the ferns lining its banks. Eastwards, the mountains rose dipped in the cool blue of the fading afternoon. For Carnelian it was a sacrament to kneel before the glimmering stream. He bent to scoop a tiny pool into his cupped hands and, blinded by its dazzle, drank. He winced as the water drove its iciness through his teeth and deep into the bones of his face, then laughed with the sheer pleasure of it. When he had drunk his fill, with Poppy holding his hand, they went to luxuriate in the shadow of a tree.
IN THE MOUNTAINS
Height sees further
further sight brings knowing
so, is it not fitting
that our Father should choose to live in the sky?
(a precept of the Plainsmen)
THE BLUE OF THE MOUNTAINS SUFFUSED THE STREAM. AIR SO FRESH IT almost hurt to breathe it; so clear it seemed to Carnelian that should he stretch out his hand he might cut his fingers on the peaks.
‘Up there, each breath must be as pure as light,’ he said to Fern.
‘It’s where we believe the Skyfather rests after the effort of making rain.’
As they walked back to the camp, Carnelian delighted in the wash of emerald ferns against his legs. The people were ranged along the margin of the stream, watching the children scattering diamond spray as they gambolled in the shallows. Mothers were pleating their daughters’ hair. Fathers were showing their sons how to knap flint into blades. Here and there Carnelian saw billows of steam rising from pots stewing djada and fiddleheads. Under the water near the bank, bowls were filled with dried berries swelling. The Elders lay under the still-flowering trees talking, smiling as they watched the children play. Lovers lay together, playing with each other’s hair, smiling, nuzzling each other with whispers.
Fear clutched Carnelian that such peace should be threatened by Osidian’s discontent. Taking his leave of Fern, he went searching for him, determined to force whatever plans he had out into the open. He found him standing away from the Tribe, alone save for Ravan. Carnelian saw how much they resembled a Sapient with his homunculus and shuddered. He decided he would try to talk to Osidian later, when he might hope to find him alone, but just then Osidian turned and looked his way. He still had not washed the hornblack from his face. Carnelian suspected he wore the colour as a mask. It made his eyes so bright and compelling. Carnelian approached and was relieved when Osidian dismissed Ravan. Carnelian glimpsed the youth’s envy before, with a nod that was almost a bow, he moved away. Carnelian watched him go, not ready to confront Osidian. He marshalled his arguments, then faced him.
‘His obsession with you eats at him like a canker.’
Osidian shrugged as if at some pleasantry. He lifted his perfect eyes to survey the mountains.
‘They are wondrous tall …’ Carnelian said.
Osidian gave a slow nod. ‘They remind me of the Sacred Wall.’
For a moment he seemed again the boy in the Yden, and Carnelian discovered from the hammering of his heart that he still felt love for him. Shocked, he reached out but stopped short of touching, afraid he might cause the moment to vanish like a reflection in water. Osidian noticed the movement. Carnelian could see the mask of indifference slipping back over Osidian’s face and blurted out the first thing that came into his mind.
‘We … we could climb them together.’
Seeing Osidian poised between who he had been and who he had become, Carnelian added, quickly: ‘The two of us … alone … in air untainted by mortal breathing. They claim their sky god lives there.’
Osidian frowned, considering it. For a moment Carnelian was certain he had pushed him too hard, but then the boy in Osidian looked him in the eyes and nodded.
Carnelian was rolling some djada to take with them. ‘Are you sure I won’t need to ask your mother for permission?’
Fern shook his head. ‘There’s no escape up there.’
Carnelian packed the djada. ‘Will you tell Poppy and keep her with you? If I tell her she’ll hate it; perhaps even follow me.’
Fern nodded, frowning. ‘Are you sure you want to go, alone, with him?’
‘We need to talk and down here he’ll not open up.’
Carnelian saw the depths of Fern’s feelings. ‘He’d never harm me.’
The answer seemed to confuse Fern. He reached for a waterskin. ‘I’ll fetch you some water.’
‘That would weigh us down too much,’ said Carnelian. He looked at Fern, trying to work him out. Could it be jealousy? ‘We’ll take what we need from the stream. We’ll not be away more than a day or two.’
He hoisted the pack and went off to meet Osidian. When he glanced back, he saw Fern watching him. There wa
s a part of Carnelian that took pleasure at seeing Fern annoyed.
Carnelian ignored the look of indolence on Osidian’s painted face. Part of him was already regretting the expedition. ‘Come, my Lord,’ he said in Quya and made off along the bank.
The stream filled the air with its babble. Birds screamed as they knifed through the air. The valley funnelled up into a twilit gorge where the stream quickened, its deeper voice vibrating the air. Their path narrowed so that they had to go one behind the other, their skin dampened by the spray. Light began filtering brighter through the ferns and soon they were coming up into cool, open land. They drew the pure wind into their lungs. Seeing how alive Osidian’s eyes had become, how lustily he climbed, Carnelian allowed himself to believe he was seeing the boy he had loved.
‘There is something in this of the climb we made back up to the Halls of Thunder.’
Carnelian knew immediately he had made a mistake. Osidian grew morose. ‘My dear mother and her son will be up there now ruling in my place.’
It was nearing the middle of the day when, already high up a shoulder of the mountains, they came to where the stream foamed in steps into a deep, clear pool. Small trees grew around it, and arching ferns. Carnelian unrolled a blanket he had brought upon a narrow shelf of rock and they sat on it, lowering their feet into the spray, listening to the gurgle of the stream.
Carnelian saw Osidian was blind to the place; deaf to it. He followed the drop of his forehead, the jutting of his nose, the paler lips set in the black face.
‘Here I might even forget Osrakum,’ he tried, tentatively.
‘Never,’ said Osidian without turning.
His bitterness made Carnelian angry. ‘Can you not even here allow yourself some peace?’
Osidian turned to look at him. ‘Have you truly found peace?’
Carnelian gazed up at the mountains and then back into Osidian’s eyes, greener than the sun through the ferns. ‘It is beautiful and we are alone together as we have not been since the Yden.’
The Standing Dead (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Page 37