'Well, yes,' he said, grimacing at his clumsiness.
They wafted his skin with the fans.
'I might have given up my fleshy eyes at birth, Seraph,' said Left-Quentha, 'and have always been in darkness, but ears and skin are their own sight.'
'Besides, Seraph,' said Right-Quentha, 'we share much more than just our body. I have access to many of my sister's sensations and she to mine.'
When Carnelian's skin was dry, they carefully held his mask over his face while at the same time tying it on. Right-Quentha removed her copper mask and then they began to dress him in undergarments of pale padded silk that Carnelian recognized as similar to the ones his father had been wearing when he visited.
'But why is it necessary? The blinding, I mean?'
'Mortal eyes would be blasted if they looked on the face of They,' said Left-Quentha. She clinked her stone eyes with her nail. These can behold Them unblinking.' Her face was proud.
Then you are handmaidens to the Gods?'
'Mostly to Their sons.'
'Nephron and Molochite?'
Right-Quentha smiled warmly. 'Most recently, to the Jade Lord Nephron.' 'But also Molochite?'
The sisters became expressionless. 'He also was our master,' said Left-Quentha, smoothing the leggings over his thigh.
'We prefer the Lord Nephron,' said her sister.
Left-Quentha swung round. 'Hush! You will ruin us.'
'Nonsense! This Seraph is son to the Regent who supports our Lord.'
Left-Quentha turned her face away from her sister as if her stone eyes were searching the silk on his leg for wrinkles.
Carnelian grinned behind his mask. He liked these syblings. 'And what of their mother, the Empress?'
The girls' faces froze together. His hand made a fist. He congratulated himself on his subtlety. They moved away to the chest and came back holding either end of an elaborate belt from which dangled bony hooks and loops. There was a hardness in their faces that did not invite any more of his questions. They asked him to raise his arms, and when he did they wrapped the belt round his waist, let it slip down to his hips and secured it.
'Does the Seraph find that comfortable?' asked Left-Quentha.
Carnelian looked down at his body, puzzled. He ran his finger round inside the belt. 'I suppose so.'
They brought straps and rods of brass and attached these to his belt. They returned to the chest and each pair of arms pulled out something looking like a leg, with many straps and hollows and human articulation. The girls carried them like logs and, kneeling, placed them carefully on end, a little apart, on the floor before Carnelian. He watched their long fingers fiddling with them.
'If the Seraph would please climb onto the ranga?' Carnelian could see no shoes.
Left-Quentha pointed at the wooden contraptions. The court ranga, Seraph.'
Carnelian stepped forward and lifted his foot. Two of their hands fed his toes into a gap halfway up the shoe. The smooth, comfortable hollow swallowed his foot. Then the girls rose and braced his arms to allow him to step up. His other foot was guided into the hollow in the second shoe. Putting his weight onto it he found that he was standing, well balanced. The syblings knelt below him and began clicking levers, tightening ivory screws. At first there was slack in the hollows but soon they fitted his feet as tighdy as gloves.
'I feel ridiculous.'
Left-Quentha's stone eyes looked up at him. 'If the Seraph would please try walking.'
Right-Quentha gave him a wink. Carnelian laughed aloud, surprising her sister. He lifted a leg, expecting the shoe to be heavy, but it was so light his knee came up too fast and he overbalanced. The syblings managed to catch him and prop him back up. He took another more careful step. The shoe put down first a ridge of toes then a heel as it settled to the ground. Soon he was walking comfortably around the chamber. He stopped and beamed down at them. 'What next?'
'Would the Seraph please kneel.'
Carnelian looked at Right-Quentha. She nodded. Gingerly, he bent his knees. The shoes folded in half and for a moment he felt he was falling, but they locked, leaving him kneeling, his shins supported in long ivory grooves. He tried to straighten his knees and found the shoes slid him back to standing.
Carnelian turned to the syblings. 'Why…?'
Left-Quentha looked startled. 'Surely, Seraph-'
Her sister turned to her. 'He has been away in exile all his life. How do you expect him to-'
'Sister!' Left-Quentha stared, appalled. Her sister's hand flew to her mouth.
'No harm done,' said Carnelian and he held up his fingers in a smiling sign.
Still frowning, Left-Quentha turned to him. 'Kneeling on the ranga allows the Seraph to make the robe support its own weight.'
'What robe?'
Right-Quentha gave him a sheepish grin. 'We shall have it brought in, Seraph.'
The syblings walked to the doors and drew them open.
At first Carnelian thought it was a Master who was coming glittering in to fill the chamber, but then he saw the figure had no head and that several syblings, half hidden in its skirts, were carrying it. As the suit came into the light it seemed to ignite. It was a column of brocade densely woven from gold in which a tall and narrow panel running from neck to floor was set like a window into some heavenly realm. A verdant garden blossomed, each leaf a cut peridot or emerald. Roses petalled with spinel rubies. Orchids, opals. Creatures ran among the foliage, the mottle of their hides blemished bloodstone. Sapphire rivers foamed diamond spray. Jade trees filtered the light from iolitic skies. Rainbows brighter than parrots formed ladders up to a storm among black coral and moonstone clouds in which fire topaz lightning flashed. As the robe came closer he put his hand out to touch the miraculous mosaic.
'But this looks like Earth and Sky, the heraldry of the Masks.'
The Regent petitioned the House to have his son adorned thus,' said Right-Quentha.
The robe has been adjusted for the lower ranga the Seraph is entitled to,' said her sister.
The suit began to spin slowly round until his fingertips were grazing metallic threads. He was surprised they did not give sound off like a harp. The suit opened like a fist. Its innards were filled with scaffolding.
'Please, Seraph, would you walk into the robe and then kneel,' said Left-Quentha.
Carnelian did so. Its hinged ivory collar was at his throat. He fumbled blindly at the scaffolding.
The bones of birds and the smaller saurians, for lightness,' said Right-Quentha, who must have seen his fingers move. She coaxed his arms down into the sleeves. He felt the robe closing behind him.
'With care, would the Seraph please slowly stand to carry the burden of the robe?'
Carnelian tried to straighten his knees and at first met so much resistance he could not. More adjustments were made and at last he found he could stand, supporting the robe, which felt like a shell of bronze.
He knelt again and they began to build a crown upon his head. First a diadem of misty jade from which fell tresses of beaded tourmalines. Over this they set a helmet of jewel-ribbed leather that flared from his neck like the hood of a cobra. Above this they placed a final coronet that spread a jewelled halo behind his head, upon whose summit sat side by side a face of jade and one of obsidian.
They produced two Great-Rings. 'My own?' he asked, surprised.
'Come from the Three Gates,' they answered and urged him to rise again.
When he did so he felt as if he were wearing a house. He took a few tentative steps and was amazed that the whole mass moved with him. The syblings scurried around below, clearing obstacles from his path. Before Carnelian left, Right-Quentha bullied her sister into setting up a mirror, angling it so that the Seraph might see how he had been transformed into a towering, glimmering apparition.
The syblings formed a ring at whose centre Carnelian paced slowly along the curving corridor, pumping his knees open and closed in slow rhythm. His breathing roared inside his mask. The court robe swung l
anguidly like a huge bell in which he was the clapper. He felt mountainously tall. A precipice of gold fell away towards the floor, casting glimmers on the faces of the syblings so that it seemed as if an open furnace were being carried in their midst.
The corridor opened into a sun blaze. Carnelian narrowed his eyes and walked into the glare. He tried to rotate his head but the crown's neck flares resisted him. He discovered it was easier to turn his whole frame to look. A sky of flame was pulsing in time to the Gods' heartbeat. Against this, the syblings seemed to be made from charred sticks. It took Carnelian a while to realize that he stood before a mosaic of amber rising to such heights it made the window appear narrow. 'Is that the sun?' he gasped.
'Does the Seraph refer to the door?' asked Right-Quentha.
The door? What door?' He followed her eyes and saw to the right of the window, smouldering in its lurid glow, a door in whose gold the sun's rayed eye was wrought.
'No, I meant, is it the living sun shining through that window?'
'It lends the window its fire, Seraph.'
Carnelian began a nod but stopped when he imagined his crowns toppling from his head. He carefully turned his back on the light. 'Which way?'
Both Quenthas pointed. 'Down the nave, Seraph.'
The incandescence flooding over his shoulders could not reach the end of that cavernous space. There, dimly, a mossy column rose like the rotted trunk of some immense tree. It was from this that the beating of the God Emperor's heart seemed to come. The pulsing drew him. The syblings followed in a cordon round him. There was something flickering in the corner of his eye. He peered sidelong through his mask's slits. It was one of the lictors, his armour set alight by the window. Carnelian had forgotten them. He watched the uneasy glance the man cast over the syblings. He himself was surprised how quickly he had accepted their strangeness. He looked around him. One pair were barely joined. Another were melted so close they had only two legs between them and but a single, wizened arm squeezing out from where their shoulders were. Every pair seemed to have two living eyes and two of stone. Their bronze armour looked as if it had been cast directly onto their flesh: the left half baroqued with spiral inlays, the right smoothly imitating the contours of the skin beneath. Several dragged green and black tessellated cloaks. As his eyes fell on one of their halberds, they widened behind his mask. Its black blade could only be iron. He looked and saw that all their weapons were made of iron. It was a display of fabulous wealth.
This discovery made Carnelian hungry for more wonder. As the light from the window waned, he found his eyes could see better. The Quenthas walked in front with a fluid three-legged gait, arms about each other's shoulders. A breeze laced with strange perfumes was blowing. Away up ahead, the gold spindle of a Master was moving amidst a retinue of guardsmen. Carnelian felt more than heard a strange flapping like birds in a dream. He peered into the gloomy stillness of the colonnades that flanked them on either side. More columns marched off as far as he could see. The slow continuous beating of immense wings was unnerving him. He searched above the colonnades where the carved stone rose sheer like the wall of a ravine. When his head was angled back he saw the furtive movement of shadowy banners wafting like unbrailed sails.
His crowns wearied his neck and forced his head down. They entered an even wider cavern where the Gods' heartbeat was tremoring the air and floor. What had seemed the trunk of some vast tree was a curving wall of green rusted bronze almost filling the centre of the cavern and ringed by a mirror moat. A bridge crossed over to a gate that he saw was part of the wall's dense interweaving of branches. For a moment, he was convinced that he was peering into a forest's dark, secret core. He shuddered, remembering the Labyrinth.
He leaned towards the sybling sisters and pointed across the bridge, whispering, 'Is the God Emperor in there?'
Right-Quentha smiled up at him. 'Only Their heart.'
'Within lies the Chamber of the Three Lands, Seraph,' her sister added, 'where the Seraphim cast their votes in divine election.'
Carnelian turned to look back towards where the window was glowing its tall oblong flame. 'And this vast hall?' he whispered, his eyes catching in the languid movements of the banners high above.
The Encampment of the Seraphim.'
Right-Quentha reached up to take his hand and the sisters led him along the edge of the mirror moat. They passed two more bridges that crossed to gates in the bronze wall. Opposite a third, a crowd of guardsmen spread. All were turned to an opening in the cavern's outer wall into which climbed a flight of steps that might have been the foothills of a mountain. Carnelian gazed up over the heads of the guardsmen. The steps were hewn from the Pillar's heart-stone but these were jammed between two rows of giants, on one side of translucent leaf-green stone, on the other of black glass. All were avatars of the Two Gods, their heads vague in the high shadows. This then was the inspiration for the stair in Jaspar's palace, though in comparison that seemed fit only for servants. A glinting on the slope caught Carnelian's eye. He focused and saw a filament of gold, a Master halfway up the stair..
'You must climb, Seraph,' said Left-Quentha.
Carnelian regarded the crowds that lay between him and the first step. Both Quenthas lifted their chins and swept forward. The crowds parted, and as Carnelian paced between them they knelt. He saw they clumped according to the cyphers on their faces. Each retinue had its uniform: feathered cuirasses, bronze-banded armour and chainmail, breastplates of striped or spotted leathers; he saw spears, tridents, swords curved and straight. A familiar heraldry drew his eyes. Chameleoned faces. His escort followed as he opened a path to them. When he was close enough to cast yellow light on them with his robe, Carnelian could see their eyes darting looks of horror at the syblings. When closer still, the Suth people fell to their knees and Carnelian was forced to look down at them from on high. The familiarity of their tattoos cheered him. 'Fey sent you lot up here?' he asked, using the Vulgate.
'Master,' they muttered, nodding, trembling, not lifting their eyes.
He remembered what he had looked like in the mirror. He turned to the Quenthas. 'My father will be glad to have his own tyadra again.'
'Seraph, they cannot mount the Approach,' said Right-Quentha.
Though Seraphim may climb, the seeing must not follow them,' said her sister.
Carnelian looked round, counting the different kinds of guardsmen. 'So many Houses, so many Ruling Lords.' He looked uneasily up the steps between the glassy colossi. The Master had almost reached the summit. Carnelian regarded his people. He wanted to please them and his father by giving them to each other. 'Could they not be blindfolded?'
The syblings looked identically shocked. 'Seraph, the Stairs of the Approach lead up to the Thronehall of the Gods Themselves.'
He looked over at the grim lictors. They stay here too?'
The Quenthas nodded and walked to the stairs. Reluctantly, Carnelian told his people to wait for him, then followed the Quenthas. When he reached them, they showed him the handles that allowed him to pull up the skirts of his robe, and, lifting one of his court ranga onto the first step, he began the climb.
It was a relief to be nearing the summit. His head rose high enough to see a landing aglow with Masters. A few more steps and he was standing on its edge. He paused to regain his breath and his composure. At the feet of the looming avatars, the landing was a bloody swirl of red and purple mosaic upon which dozens of Masters stood in their court robes, their backs to him, motionless gold towers. Beyond them Carnelian was surprised to see rising another slope of steps. On both sides, from the edges of the landing, other narrow stairs ran up between the column legs of the avatars.
Left-Quentha's stone eyes looked at him. 'You must discard your pomp, Seraph. The Law of Audience requires it.'
'But they…' Carnelian stared, seeing that the Masters were all headless. The court robes could have been the discarded moults of angels. He gazed up the next stairway, almost expecting to see ethereal beings floating up
them.
A mass of ammonites came weaving their way through the court robes towards him. Soon they were all around him, reflecting him in their eyeless faces of silver, touching him, guiding him. When they found a clearing among the robes he was asked to kneel. He obeyed, sighing with pleasure as the yoking weight of his robe lifted off his shoulders. His head seemed to float free as they removed his crowns. He rolled it to release the tension in his neck. Ammonites carrying screens began to build an enclosure round him. Right-Quentha threw him a smile before the screen wall shut her out.
The ammonites trapped inside with him removed his mask and prised his court robe open. He walked free of the robe. When he climbed down from the ranga, he felt smaller than a child. They stripped his hands of everything save his blood-ring. They put a new robe of unbleached hri fibre over his padded underclothes. Feeling its coarse weave, he could hardly believe they had meant to dress him in it. He looked for a samite robe but they were already dismantling the screen wall. He made a sound, nearly crying out, his hands almost over his face, but then he saw that his sybling escort had all donned blinding masks.
Puzzled by the crudeness of his dress, feeling cold, he allowed the Quenthas to lead him through the maze of empty robes to the next stairway. Framed against the legs of an avatar, another Master attired like him was climbing with a staff. Carnelian turned to the steps. Free of the encumbrances of court robe and ranga, the ascent was easier. Two Masters passed him, coming down, talking, each with a staff topped with his House cypher, each wearing a robe of unbleached fibre. They stopped to look at him, their eyes haughty sapphires. The beauty of their faces and limbs was made even brighter in contrast to their coarse-weave. He realized he was staring, gave them a bow and climbed on.
The second landing was paved with jade. Throne-daises enclosed it, behind which standards spiked up like irises. Masters in coarse-weave robes were gathered, all Ruling Lords, all facing something Carnelian could not see.
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