The Chosen sdotc-1

by Ricardo Pinto

  They came down into the alleyway. Carts lay angled among a scatter of debris in the Sword Court. Brown snow was carved by wheel-ruts, littered with straw. The place already looked as if it had been a hundred years abandoned.

  The bearers were staggering down the alleyway to the Holdgate. They came into the court before the gate towers. The sky beyond them was paling grey. The wall all around the court was black. Carnelian could see the gate was open. When he and Tain reached it they stopped. The cobbled road curving down to the quay was lined with a long line of their tyadra. Each man held a torch aloft. Behind them were all their people. The ship was down at the end amongst a dense fluttering of torches.

  They've been gathered to see us off,' said Tain, his voice breaking.

  Carnelian reached out to steady him, then together they lurched forward towards the wall of grey faces. At first the people bowed, but soon they just nodded so that they could follow the two of them with their eyes. Carnelian's mask felt to him like cowardice. He took it off so that they could see his face. It cost him dear. Their eyes were like wounds. He forced himself to look from face to tattooed face. He counted them like beads. Swollen-eyed, stressed tight, lips just holding the narrowest of smiles, all but the youngest having the winding tattoo, the mark of the chameleon, his mark, his servants, his people.

  He moved down that avenue of faces sideways, a step at a time. He nodded at each face. He knew most of them. Children stared from between the guardsmen. They could feel the tension but did not really understand it. He smiled at them, and some smiled back but others had already begun to cry. Pain ran up and down the line and was wafting on the morning air. At first he thought a wind had come up from the far distance. But then it swelled into human keening. The women's mouths were holes in their faces. The guardsmen looked back over their shoulders, embarrassed, telling them to hush. But the noise was catching the throats of the men in the crowd and soon they were adding their feelings to the dirge. The guardsmen could not resist for long. Their torches wavered as they too began to groan.

  The wailing cut Carnelian to the bone. His tears distorted the hands they held out to him. He could not deny their grief and went to touch them. Their moaning enfolded him. He stretched into the crowd as far as he could reach. The guardsmen who had not kissed him since he was a child did so and were left white-lipped by his paint.

  He noticed that their cries were fading all around him. Everybody was drawing away until he was left behind like a rock by the tide. A clink of armour made him shove his mask up before his face. The people were falling down into the prostration. The act of abasement ran down the road and out along the quay. Carnelian turned and saw with consternation the Masters sweeping down from the Holdgate like narrow black flames. He felt Tain brush against his leg as the boy knelt. A glance showed that he was pressing himself down against the cobbles.

  The Masters were upon him. Chinks in their hoods showed slivers of gold. Carnelian knew his hand must look obvious against the rim of his mask. He expected reproach but they ignored him.

  '… so many aged,' he heard Aurum say.

  'And where does my Lord think I could obtain replacements?' Suth replied with a tightness in his voice.

  'Famine will winnow the aged from the young,' said Vennel's woman-voice.

  Jaspar had thrown back his hood to reveal the long, painted volume of his head. He was looking out into the bay where the clouds hung like smoke above the mounding sea. 'It seems we shall indeed depart today.' His mask lent him an air of divine indifference.

  The Masters avoided Tain's body as if he might soil their feet. Carnelian saw Grane and Brin walking behind them with more of the tyadra. Brin's eyes were red. They paused to gaze at him. His free hand rose, hesitating between several gestures of farewell. Brin clamped her hand over her nose and mouth. Carnelian's hand gave up, fell to indicate Tain. He waited for Grane's nod, then reached behind his head to tie his mask, and followed after the other Masters.

  In the spluttering torchlight the ship's wall of tarred wood slid up and down. She was huge. Carnelian had not imagined how large she was. He looked down her curving flank. Hawsers strained to hold her and with each gentle lunge she pulled the stone rings up and, after, let them fall with a clatter. The sea gargled in the murky squeeze between her and the quay.

  Grane and Brin were kneeling before his father receiving some last instructions. Beyond, his people formed a mat of flesh that clothed half the quay. Carnelian followed its swathe up to the Holdgate. So many people. He looked at the Hold to stop seeing them. He surveyed those dear grey walls. He knew which of the tiny holes was his own window, which Ebeny's. There, on the southern promontory, was the finer masonry of his father's hall. Only a single scratch of smoke slanted up. There had once been so many.

  'We must embark,' a voice said near him. It was Jaspar. His mask turned to look up at the Hold. 'My Lord surveys his old dominions?'

  Carnelian wondered if mockery was intended. 'It has been the only home I have known.'

  'My Lord should not worry himself with that. The glory of Osrakum will soon dim all this deprivation into grey memory.'

  'And what of my people, Lord Jaspar, shall they also be dimmed into grey memory?' Carnelian said bitterly.

  Jaspar's gold face inclined to one side. Its aloof expression made the gesture seem almost comical. 'Your people, my Lord? This is no cause for great concern. Your palaces in Osrakum will have many and better slaves. Perhaps my Lord is unaware of how much those here have been degenerated by the… climate.'

  'And has my Lord detected perhaps such degeneration in myself?'

  ‘Tut, cousin, the Chosen are made of finer clay.'

  Carnelian thought that if he spoke any longer to the Lord Jaspar he would say something he might regret. He turned towards the ship. 'I think my Lord was suggesting that we should embark.'

  Through seeing her so close, Carnelian had almost forgotten how much he hated her. Jaspar showed him where staples of bone made a ladder up her side. The Master leant out to one and jumped across. He rose and fell with her as he climbed. Carnelian wondered how his people could possibly have reached over to the staples. He looked down. He watched the water rush up and then suck down again. There was no point in thinking about it. He waited until the ship moved towards him, snatched at a staple and pulled himself across. He hit the hull with a thud. His foot struck something and he managed to stand on it. He adjusted his mask. The ship's black hide was before his face, reeking of tar. The hull lifted him as if he were a wasp on a bobbing apple. He looked up and grasped the next staple. Its bone had weathered yellow and showed its grain. He went up one at a time. Before he reached the deck, the hull cut away to show a wide deep space under it, with supporting uprights like the trunks in a thicket, shapes under tarpaulins, more solid massings of shadow sprinkled with faces. The whole space was roofed with the grating of the deck. There, even his people would have to bend double.

  He climbed higher, was looking down to place his foot when hands took hold of him and he was pulled up to be greeted by Keal's grave face. 'Welcome aboard, Master,' he said and tried a wink. Other guardsmen knelt around Carnelian. He looked over their heads and saw the whole length of the ship stretching off to the rise of her prow. Here and there were capstans, openings in the deck and peculiar bronze engines clustered in threes on platforms extending beyond her bows. Before him, from a collar of brass and a ring of posts topped with pulleys, a mast rose higher than a tree and was taut with rigging to which tiny figures clung. The deck shifted under his feet like something alive. He saw his men's faces still turned up to him and gave them the sign to rise. Before he left them he asked that they ensure Tain made it safely aboard.

  The Masters stood a short way off by the prow, wrapped in the flutterings of their cloaks and speaking with their hands. Carnelian was glad they had not invited him to join them. He walked towards one of the engines. It had a huge bow, a greased track, release hooks, and beside it a stock of barbed harpoons each as long a
s he was tall. One was ready, threaded like a needle with a coil of oily rope. He leant against the bow rail and gazed down forlornly at his people who stood there looking back.

  A rasping caused him to peer over the edge and see the mushroom-headed poles pushing out towards the quay. One after the other they clunked against its stone. The ship's rocking lessened as she was pushed away. Sailors on the quay untied the hawsers and, in twos and threes, they strained against them. The poles continued to push. The ship moved further from the quay and dragged the hawsers and their sailors closer to its edge. Carnelian watched with disbelief as they plunged into the sea like stones. On board more of their fellows drew the hawsers in. The heads of the sailors bobbed up and soon they were being dragged out of the water. Their feet had barely touched the deck when there was a sudden rattling on either side, rude cries, a scraping. The ship sprouted wings of wood as oars were pushed out from the hull into the water. Under his feet a heart began beating. Driven by its rhythm the oars ploughed the sea. The banks rose and fell churning the slate sea white. The ship began edging backwards into the bay.

  The quay was receding. His people stood in uneven ranks. They neither waved nor cried out. Their swarthy faces grew more indistinct with each thump of the drum. When they had become a single grey mass he turned away. His face was stiff with pain under his mask.

  The shuddering of the deck changed its rhythm. The sea was threshed to spume as the ship's prow was brought about. He watched the cliff and the Hold slip off slowly to the left, until, past the prow stem, he saw the hills of the sea sliding towards them. The drumming changed again, quickening with his heart. They moved forward. He looked with horror as a smooth glassy slope came rushing on. The world lifted until it seemed the ship was going to fall back upon herself. Then the deck lunged forward and down taking his stomach with it. Up, up, up, then rushing down so that the next wave rose high enough to wash away the sky.

  There was a snapping and a rustling above his head like giant birds taking to the air. He looked up to see the fan-sails stretching open their hands. He watched them punch forward as they caught the wind. They seemed as fragile as autumn leaves but they held. He looked up the deck again as his grip tightened on the rail. The prow was knifing into another wall of water. It cut a widening white gash that sent a wind of foam hissing back. He felt the cold splatter on his robe and smelt the salty terror of the open sea.

  Alternately he was climbing and then descending the deck. He bent his knees to keep his balance. Every so often spume would lash his back. There was a constant roaring; everything clattered and shook around him.

  He saw Keal ahead hanging on to some rigging. He looked as if he were coming to help him. Carnelian put up his hand and commanded him to stay where he was.

  'Down there, Master,' Keal cried above the wind. He was pointing into the mouth of a large funnel that opened behind the mast. Carnelian thanked him but his words were lost in the roar. He staggered up to Keal, nodded his thanks, and then passed him. Behind the mast there was some respite from the wind. He lunged towards the funnel, swayed at its lip and peered in. A narrow stairway led down into blackness. He had to duck his head to enter. He fumbled for the balustrade and went down.

  With each step the sea noise lessened and the creaking of the ship's timbers grew. He reached a dim corridor that had small doors all the way down on both sides. As his eyes adjusted he saw that the bulkhead on the left had been daubed with crude representations of House Aurum's horned-ring staff. The right bulkhead bore Carnelian's own chameleons. He almost felt like kissing them. He walked down the corridor and had to bend his head down because the ceiling was so low. He knocked on one of the doors. It opened. A familiar face. 'Naith,' he cried in delight.

  The man knelt. Over his head Carnelian could see the cabin with its inset bunks. It had a faint smell of home. His pain was almost released in tears. 'Get up, man,' he said, remembering Naith. 'Just get up.'

  The guardsman looked at him.

  'Where's my cabin?' asked Carnelian.

  The man leant out, grasping the threshold lip, and pointed down the corridor.

  'The door beside the stairway?'

  He nodded.

  Carnelian stepped back and let Naith shut the door. The corridor angled up then down. He edged along it to the door that had been pointed out. He tried to listen at it, opened it, lifted his foot over the threshold and then stepped into the tiny cabin beyond. Tain was there.

  Thank the Gods, Carnie. I thought you washed into the sea.'

  'Apparently I'm made of finer clay.' Tain looked puzzled.

  Carnelian looked around the cabin. The floor curved up to form the bulkheads and then further round to form the ceiling. A single bunk was set into the bulkhead opposite the door. A tiny lantern swinging from a hook in the ceiling easily lit the place.

  There's not much of it, I'm afraid,' said Tain.

  'I've worn bigger robes,' said Carnelian.

  'Can I stay here with you, Carnie?'

  'Where are you going to sleep?'

  The corners of Tain's mouth turned down.

  'Of course you can, but you're having the floor.'

  Tain managed a grin. He moved aside to reveal a bed already made on the floor. Carnelian saw that some of their clothes had been unpacked. He took two steps across the cabin, turned and wedged himself back into the bunk.

  ‘I’d like to see one of the other Masters getting into one of these.'

  Tain was staring into space. In his eyes, Carnelian could almost see a reflection of his people on the quay. He busied himself tracing the graffiti carved into the bulkhead. Obscene pictures. Strokes in rows as if someone had been counting days. All the way up his back, he could feel the sway and shudder of the ship.

  Carnelian was curled up in the dark, rocking as his stomach turned inside him. He was exhausted. The ship was pressing in. She was whispering. He forced himself fully awake to listen. It was just her body creaking all around him. The bunk was too short for him to straighten his legs. He swung them out and hunched on the edge. He imagined her decks above his head, her tree masts, her bronze machines. Up there against the leaden sky her sails like fans. He made their shape with his hands, stretching his fingers till the skin between them hurt. He slid his feet out until they found the warmth of Tain's body. Below them the belly of the baran swelled into limitless sea. Carnelian recalled what Keal had told him about the sartlar oarsmen. A vision of them writhing in her bowels like worms made him snatch his feet up from the floor.

  DREAMING

  Sweet lady let me taste

  Your bitter kiss, Mother my forgetting,

  Bind me with dreams.

  (extract from 'Slave Dreaming')

  It was too much bother to have himself cleaned. Besides, Tain was all clammy misery and found it hard to stand up. Carnelian asked only that his brother touch up his body paint where it had rubbed off in the night. When Tain was done he sank back to the floor. Carnelian wriggled into his robes, put on his mask and, shrouded in his travelling cloak, opened the cabin door.

  The corridor smelled of men, urine and brine. The swilling sounds of the sea coming down the stairway almost made him retch into his mask. He stepped out of the cabin, closed the door so that Tain would not be disturbed, then padded along the corridor. The faint scent of lilies suggested that one of the Masters had walked there not so long ago. He knocked on Naith's door, and when the man showed himself Carnelian asked if he could take him to Keal. Naith said that he had been forbidden to leave the cabin but that Keal was quartered further down the passage, beside the Master's cabin.

  Carnelian followed the directions. The corridor grew gloomier with each step, but his eyes adjusted well enough. He reached a round space with a central column. A yoke of bronze as thick as a man's waist gripped its base. It could only be the shaft of the central mast. Peering round it he saw that the corridor continued on to another stairway down which daylight was filtering. Four doors led off the mast-columned hall. Each had been p
ainted with the warding eye and one of the cyphers of the Masters' Houses.

  Carnelian retraced his steps, found the door he thought Naith must have meant and knocked on it. It was opened by a guardsman he knew. The man began to kneel but Carnelian stopped him with a command sign. 'Rale, is Keal here?'

  'Yes, Carnie,' the man said and stepped aside to let him in.

  Carnelian squeezed into the cabin. It was perhaps twice the size of his own. Men were sitting on the floor playing dice. The six bunks hedged them in. One man lying on his bunk looked green. The others looked sickly, uncomfortable. They smiled, avoiding looking at his mask.

  'Get on with your game,' he said more gruffly than he intended. ‘I’d speak with you, Keal.'

  Keal stood up from among them. 'I'm sorry, Carnie, but I'm not allowed to leave this room unless the Master sends for me.'

  'You can leave with me and tell him if he asks that it was I who commanded you.'

  Carnelian squeezed back out into the corridor. He still had to stoop but it was less constricting than the cabin.

  His head scraped against the ceiling as he turned to look at Keal. He wondered that his brother could stand unbent. 'Let's go up there,' he said, pointing.

  He walked up the steps and coming out of the funnel straightened up to his full height and stretched. He groaned. The luxury of a straight back,' he said into the freezing wind. His cloak lifted around him. The deck grating gleamed with water up to the rails. The foremast blocked his view of the prow. Beyond the narrow solid limits of the ship was the vast blinding sky, mottled and melded into a foamy silver sea.

  He turned to his brother. 'How're things?'

  Keal was gazing blank-faced at the world. He focused on Carnelian and gave a nod towards the stairway. The lads are well enough down there, but those that are here under our feet…' He tapped the deck grating with his foot, then pursed his lips and shook his head.