The Chosen sdotc-1

by Ricardo Pinto

  He ran back to join Tain. Dozens of lines were stitching the ship to the quay. She was being pulled in. More lines were thrown over and secured. Men slid down them like oil drops on a string. There was a constant milling on the deck. Then it stopped. Suddenly. Two or three huge figures had appeared and were moving to the bow. Everything else was still, save for the ship's rise and fall. Even the wind had dropped.

  'Masters,' said Tain, flickering uneasy eyes at Carnelian.

  They can't be,' Carnelian said, though he had been thinking the same.

  'But look, Carnie, all those around them,' Tain pointed, 'they're making the prostration. And look at them, look how huge they are. Only Masters are so big.'

  Even in the twilight, at that distance, the shapes had some quality of grace that suggested they were indeed of the Masters.

  'What would Masters be doing coming here?' Carnelian muttered, but his words were snatched away by the wind.

  Carnelian and Tain had watched the tall figures leave the ship and move along the quay, towering amidst the smaller men who carried torches. The procession had climbed the road round to the Holdgate and out of sight. Then, nothing. The brothers were left to sit waiting by the fire, each wrapped in his own thoughts.

  The sound of the door opening made them both jump up. Two guardsmen appeared carrying a white chest between them. Carnelian pointed to where they could put it down.

  Another man had come in behind them. His eyes were stitched closed. The Master bade me say to the Lord his son that he should be attired as if he were in Osrakum.' The blindman spoke in accented Quya. Tain looked round. The words were just sounds to him. Only a few people of the household understood the mysterious tongue of the Masters.

  'He said that… you're certain he said that?' Carnelian asked, shifting the conversation into Vulgate. 'I'm sure, Master.'

  Carnelian mused, now certain beyond any doubt that the visitors were Masters. He went over to the chest. With customary unease he noted how the eyeless man followed his movement. The creature came towards him, held out his hand and opened it to reveal two packets. These the Master bade me put into his son's own hand. I'm to say that, once he's properly dressed, his son should attend the Master in his hall.'

  Carnelian took the windings of soft leather. He unwound one. Inside was a long narrow piece of exquisitely worked jade pierced by three finger holes.

  He gaped at it. 'A Great-Ring.'

  He turned the ring till its carving held the light. It had been his mother's. He unwound the other package. It contained a second ring. Worn together, they were a sign of his blood-rank. His mother's blood had been so pure, she had been entitled to wear a third. He slipped the rings on. His hand had not grown into them yet. He hooked his fingers to make sure that the rings would not fall off and lifted them. They gashed his hand.

  Tain was kneeling before the chest, sighing his hands over the smooth ivory. It was worked all over with a writhing of chameleons whose eyes were the rivets of copper that held the chest together.

  For a moment they looked at each other, brimming over with excitement.

  'Come on, Tain, we must hurry,' said Carnelian.

  They pushed back the lid, then gasped. Inside the chest wondrous garments were dulled like butterflies in chrysalises of waxed parchment. As they drew them out the room filled with the scent of lilies. They marvelled at them. Tain stripped Carnelian and then one by one he put them on him. The first few were tissues so fine they floated on the air. The ones further down in the chest were heavier and interwoven with precious stones. The garments fitted over each other like the pieces of a puzzle. The final robe was of grey samite: stiff silk brocaded with coral pins. It hung as heavily as chains and was a little too long.

  At the bottom of the chest Tain found a box holding a circlet of black-grained silver wreathed with turquoises and jades. Carnelian had to put this on his head himself because Tain could not reach.

  Tain stepped back, wide-eyed. 'You're transformed into a Master, Carnie.'

  'I've always been a Master, Tain,' snapped Carnelian. He felt vaguely silly, weighed down, overdressed. 'I suppose I should go.'

  'But you must see for yourself,' his brother cried. He ran over to the copper mirror. As he struggled to set it up against the wall, it shot glimmers through the rafters.

  Carnelian allowed his head to droop under the weight of the circlet. He scowled, but when he lifted his head again he drew back. 'By the Two…' A strange being was lurking in the copper. Carnelian had to move from side to side to convince himself it was his own watery reflection.

  He thought of the tall men drifting along the quay. Masters. The Chosen, he corrected himself, using the Quya name they called themselves. His stomach churned. In all the world there were only three kinds of men: the Chosen, the half-caste marumaga and the rest, the barbarians. He realized Tain was looking at him, and could see that his own unease was spreading to that marumaga face. Carnelian remembered who he was and the duty he had to the boy. He dragged up some confidence and put it in his voice. 'It's time for me to go, Tain. Please fetch my mask,'

  His brother went off to find it. When he came back, he offered the mask to Carnelian in both hands, with reverence. Carnelian took the hollow face and held it up so that it looked back at him. Flamelight poured over the gold and put hidden life into its eye-slits. Its straps hung like thick tresses. It had a cold, unhuman beauty. Carnelian fitted it over his face. It chilled his cheeks and forehead. He held it there while Tain went round behind him and reached to do up the straps. He breathed slow and deep through the mask's nostrils as his father had taught him and fought down the feeling of being trapped. He had never liked wearing it. Many times his father had insisted that he must, so that he might get used to it, even though Masking Law required only a Ruling Lord to conceal his face from his household.

  The mask's slits shielded Carnelian's eyes from the fire glare. He found that he could see into the room's dark corners. He distracted himself with this till Tain was finished with the straps.

  'I will go now.' His voice sounded very close to him, flat, dead. 'You may as well be off and join the rest of the household, Tain.'

  His brother's face was half turned away, looking at him obliquely with a strange expression Carnelian had never seen before. Tain bowed. 'As you say… Master.'

  Tain's look was also there on the guardsmen's faces. Carnelian disliked this new reverence, and the way they kept calling him 'Master'. It made him feel as if they were setting him up in his father's place. This was not his only unease as they walked through the barracks. He could see his escort were sensing something too. He tried to locate its source. Silence. It was the silence. The barracks were never silent. It was unnatural. He shivered. The air was dank. When they passed along the arcade it was all he could do to stop himself escaping through the door into the familiar warmth of the Great Hall.

  He noticed his men stiffen and then he straightened too as he saw the strangers. They were ranged in groups up the steps, men whose faces bore the marks of other Houses. He stared. Until then, every adult face he had ever seen, other than his father's, had had its chameleon. The strangers' faces were different. Some were bisected from hairline to chin by a horned-ring staff. Others were marked with the cross of dragonfly wings. A third group had the disc and crescent of the evening star tattooed like manic smiles. As these faces were variously marked, so did they differ in other ways. The. bisected ones were round and yellow. The dragonflied ones were oval, with almond eyes that peeped out from between the wings of their tattoos. Those who wore painted smiles were swarthier than any people Carnelian had seen before. All the strangers were swathed in stained brown travelling cloaks. While some had two-pronged spears, others had their hands on sheathed sickles or four-bladed cross-swords. All this Carnelian saw in the instant before the strangers fell with a clatter before him into the prostration.

  He froze and his escort halted round him. The only men still standing had chameleoned faces. Two of these were h
is brothers: Grane, grim commander of the tyadra, and handsome Keal. Carnelian saw the uncertainty in the guardsmen's faces as they looked at him. He watched them glance at Grane, anxious, looking for an order. The commander ignored them. Instead, he gave Carnelian an almost imperceptible nod. Carnelian watched his own hand rise up before him. It shaped the sign, Kneel. In twos and threes they went down. Proud Grane, the eldest of his brothers, was last of all to kneel. He pressed his brown hands together and pushed them out, as the others had done, as if offering himself to be tied up like a slave. Carnelian went cold, disliking their abasement. He stood alone as if in a field he had just reaped. His hand was there before him, the sign still locked into it. It looked like his father's hand, for only he used such a command gesture. Carnelian forced himself to ascend the stairway. The doors of sea-ivory opened before him and he passed between them into his father's hall.

  Four masks turned towards him. Carnelian faltered under their gaze, awed by the serene, unearthly beauty of those faces of gold. Four giants stood there beside the circular hearth. One he knew: his father in his jewelled robe. The other three, though much like him, were enveloped in great black hooded cloaks greyed with brine. In all his life Carnelian had seen no other Master save for his father. He realized that in spite of all he had been told, until that moment he had believed his father a being without peer.

  Behind him the doors closed and the giants dropped their masks into the cradles of their hands, revealing white faces, long, finely boned, with eyes the colours of winter. Carnelian remembered that the Law commanded he must unmask when those higher than him did so. When he had fumbled the thing off he felt like a snail teased from its shell. He clutched the mask as he approached. Their skin was like light passing through ice. It took strength to keep his eyes up looking back at them. He found it. He would not bring shame on his father or himself.

  'Great Lords, behold my son, Suth Carnelian,' his father said, looking at him. Emotions were shifting in his eyes like fish in a pool.

  ‘So, Lord Suth, this is the son whom you have been hiding from us all these many, long years.' The voice came as from a bronze throat. Its owner was even larger than his father. He was also older, much older, though unlike any old man Carnelian had ever seen. His skin had not wrinkled, rather it had thinned to alabaster. His eyes' intense blue searched Carnelian's face. The voice sounded again. 'He has the jade-eyed beauty, this son of yours.'

  Suth frowned. 'You flatter him, Lord Aurum.' Their eyes locked together. Though their lips did not move, nor their hands, Carnelian was convinced they were speaking to each other. He saw the other two Masters were also watching them.

  Flames spluttered, hissed. Sparks seeded the air.

  'Perhaps I do,' the old Master said finally, breaking off from the contest. He smiled but only with his lips. Suth turned back to his son. Carnelian could see he was controlling anger.

  'My son, let me make known to you our blood-pure visitors.' His father opened a fist and lifted the hand to indicate the old Master. 'Aurum, the Ruling Lord of that House. Your uncle.' The old Master gave a slow nod but his glassy eyes never left Carnelian's face.

  Carnelian stared back. He came back to the sound of his father's voice.'… Ruling Lord of House Vennel.' The Master who bowed was more slender than the others, younger, paler-eyed. His hand unsheathed from a sleeve like a sword and melted into the sign, Charmed.

  Suth turned to the last Master, who wore the serene smile of an idol. This is your second cousin, Jaspar of House Imago, who one day, if the Two will it, shall be its Ruling Lord.'

  'As you say, cousin, if They will it,' said the smiling Master and inclined his head elegantly.

  Carnelian tried to return the smile.

  'Now that the introductions have been made, my Lords, I might suggest that we retire,' said Vennel. He had a woman's voice and his Quya was like singing. 'One must confess to a certain weariness.'

  'What resources we have here are at your disposal, my Lords,' Suth said. 'Apartments have been made ready. I hope my Lords will forgive the little comfort we can provide. If we had been advised that you were coming…'

  'We have come in haste, my Lord,' said Aurum. There was neither the time nor the opportunity to herald our arrival.'

  Jaspar smiled again. 'A little comfort will be rendered great by comparison with our recent accommodation.'

  'Shall we then tomorrow meet in formal conclave?' asked Vennel with his woman's voice.

  The others lifted their hands in assent.

  Till the morrow then.'

  Vennel began to move towards the door. Aurum did not move. Vennel turned. 'You are not accompanying us, my Lord?'

  'Not immediately. I shall remain here and reminisce with the Lord Suth. Nostalgic nothings can resurrect the past.'

  Jaspar raised an eyebrow then dropped it again. Vennel's expression froze for a moment.

  Carnelian saw the sag in his father's face. He went up to him. 'You are weary, my Lord.'

  His father smiled a bleak smile. 'Perhaps I will find refreshment in reliving the past with the Lord Aurum. Go now, my Lord, and see that our guests are well looked after.'

  Carnelian bowed. Aurum was looking at him with gleaming eyes. Carnelian blushed. As he led Jaspar and Vennel to the sea-ivory doors, blinded slaves appeared. Carnelian stared at their puckered eyelids then, copying the others, he held his mask up before his face and a blindman bound it on. As the doors opened, he looked back. His new uncle, Lord Aurum, had stretched a long arm across his father's shoulders like a yoke and was moving him off into the shadows.

  THE CONCLAVE

  A child can oft more fates decide

  Than can a meeting of kings.

  (proverb – origin unknown)

  He came up from a murky dream, the mist of memory thinning into vague uneasy recollection then fading to nothing. Cold. Cold darkness. Carnelian sensed it was not long till sunrise. The shutters were rattling. Sleet volleyed against them like arrows. Perhaps he had dreamed the visitors with their long black ship. His heart beat hard. He did not know which was worse: that they had come or that they might not have come at all. He put his feet onto the floor, fumbled a blanket round him and walked over to the shutters. When he swung them back, the wind ran iced fingers through his hair. Its kissing snow set him trembling. In the morning twilight the waves swayed their sickening surge. The ship was there in the anchorage, black as a hole.

  He did not bother to wake Tain. His brother's breathing was fitful. Carnelian had returned to find him sleeping there on a makeshift bed and had not had the heart to send him back to his own room. In truth, he drew some comfort from having him there. He would just have to do without paint.

  He hunted around in the half-light. He found an under-robe and slipped into its icy grip. He threw on more layers until he began to feel warm. His gull-feather cloak went over everything. He walked towards the outer door and stopped. 'Gods' blood,' he hissed. He returned for his mask. He had no intention of running into the visitors but it was safer to be cautious. He hitched the cold thing by its straps to his belt and returned to the door.

  He should have expected the guardsmen outside. They eyed his cloak. One of them stepped forward. 'You know you're not supposed to leave your room, Carnie, not till the Master sends for you.'

  'If there's anything you want we'll go and fetch it,' piped up another.

  'Who told you this?'

  'Grane,' said the first.

  Carnelian glared at the man, who flinched. For a moment he considered putting on his mask and commanding them to let him pass. Grane's granite face appeared in his mind. It was one thing to play the Master in front of the visitors, quite another to do so in front of his people. He nodded and bit his lip. One of the guardsmen sighed the general relief as Carnelian retreated back through the door.

  His hand kneaded the door handle. With the arrival of the visitors his life had changed, and not for the better. His father had warned him of the restrictions of life in Osrakum but Carnelian ha
d never expected these to come to the island. All his life he had heard his father say that life in the Hold was very lax. Still, he burned with questions and would have them answered before the conclave.

  He considered his options and made up his mind. He strode back to the window and let in the grey sky.

  'What are you doing?' a voice said behind him.

  Carnelian turned to look at Tain. He was propped up on one elbow squinting past a hand. 'I'm going to find out what's happening. If you could bear it, Tain, I'd appreciate it if you'd hold the fort till I come back. You know, pretend I'm still here.'

  'What…?'

  Carnelian was not in the mood for long explanations. He climbed into the window space, braced himself against the wind and looked down at the swelling anger of the sea as it foamed and mouthed the rock below. He mastered his fear and peered just below the sill. The ledge was there, slushy, slick with spume.

  There was a tugging at his cloak. 'By the horns,' he heard Tain spluttering, 'are you trying to get yourself killed?'

  Carnelian craned round. There're guardsmen at the door and this is the only other way.' 'But you'll kill yourself!'

  'Rubbish. We've both done this a hundred times.' 'When we were little, Carnie, and even then, never in winter.'

  'Let go, Tain,' Carnelian cried and pulled away.

  Tain let go, afraid Carnelian might pull so hard he would lose his balance. Tain knew well enough how obstinate his brother could be. 'Yesterday, when he wasn't going out, he needed to be painted,' Tain grumbled. Today, he's prepared to go out on ledges with naked skin.'

  Carnelian ignored his brother, stooped down to remove his shoes and tied them to his belt beside the mask. It was better to feel the ledge. He lowered a foot down to it, ground his heel into the slush and bore the stab of cold that went up his leg. The other foot joined the first. He turned to face into the room and walked his fingers over the stone of the wall outside looking for the once familiar handholds. He had to search a bit. The last time he had done this he had needed to stretch for them, now he actually had to bend his arms. Below him the sea was a beast ravening at the cliff. He edged along. His foot slipped, thumping his heart up through his throat. He made a shuffle to the side, another, one more and he had reached the next window. It would not open. Shoving it, he almost pushed himself out into space. He did it again, with more care. The catch gave way and the shutters snapped into the room. He looked back to his own window. Tain's face was there, sick with fear. Carnelian winked at him then disappeared.