He leaned towards Right-Quentha's copper mask. 'Is this the Thronehall?'
The sisters shook their heads. That lies at the top of the final stair.'
He looked and saw at the landing's end a third stair rising up into darkness. On his right, flanked by oily black, winged avatars, steps led up to a flinty door in whose centre was a tearful eye. Carnelian stared for a moment, remembering the opium box. The sisters touched his hands and walked towards the Ruling Lords with sure steps, though they were both blind. The Lords did not seem to notice them. Some were in groups talking with their hands, but Carnelian noticed that most seemed focused off to where another stair ran up between two quartz colossal youths. At their feet he could see something like a narrow window opening onto a bright meadow. Carnelian kept walking, glancing at the oblong of emerald light, seeing its luminous Chosen face.
'My Lord.'
The Master approaching had a familiar voice. He turned. 'Vennel!' The Master's eyes were like water welling on a cake of salt. They looked at each other. Vennel tried a little nod of his head. Carnelian said nothing.
The Jade Lord has requested that you approach him.' Vennel curled a hand back to indicate the emerald figure.
Tell my Lord that I hasten to a meeting with the Regent.'
Vennel gave him a frosty smile. 'I had forgotten how little you know. When a Jade Lord makes a request it is really a command.'
'Perhaps, Vennel, you have also forgotten that the Regent outranks your Master.'
Vennel smiled. 'I will be pleased to convey your refusal to the Jade Lord.'
Another Master joined them. Jaspar. He looked at Carnelian and indicated Vennel. 'Is this creature bothering you, my Lord?'
Vennel moved forward. The Jade Lord-'
'Has sent me to correct yet another of your mistakes.'
Vennel’s face seemed brittle enough to shatter.
'You might as well return to your place beneath his feet.' Jaspar used a sign of dismissal whose shape was close to that used for servants.
Vennel hesitated, then struggled to free himself from his frozen stance. They watched him walk off with ungainly steps.
That one has been reduced to his rightful size.' Jaspar gave one of his cold smiles. 'You have seen your father, cousin?'
Carnelian made a nod, hearing in his mind the word, Patricide!
'I trust that he has fully recovered from the little unpleasantness on the road.'
Carnelian jerked another nod.
The Jade Lord Molochite wishes to meet you.'
'Well, I do not wish to meet him.'
Jaspar's eyebrows lifted. 'He is not a person to be slighted casually, Carnelian. Nothing raises him more than the whim to wreak revenge.'
'I do not fear him.'
Jaspar shrugged. 'Why give him one more reason to hate your father?'
Carnelian frowned. Jaspar flourished his hand to offer Carnelian the lead. He took it, walking through the Ruling Lords, ignoring their stares, his eyes fixed on Molochite who was framed between two staves held by his entourage of syblings. Carnelian stopped as the Jade Lord pulled himself up on the staves, and only then realized the Lord had been kneeling. As his green flame came burning towards Carnelian, the Great bowed out of his way. Carnelian waited, clearing his face of expression, his view filling with Molochite's wall of faceted emerald. His eye was level with the Jade Lord's waist.
'Why, cousin, will you not let us see your eyes?'
Carnelian looked up fiercely, refusing to be appalled by the Jade Lord's height, but when he saw the white face he forgot himself and gaped. It was the most beautiful being he had ever seen that was gazing down at him. Molochite's eyes were spring, the smile on his lips was summer. Carnelian felt the light going out as Molochite turned away, replacing the radiance of his face with the smoulder of his green-jewelled crowns.
'Imago, you spoke truth, he has the beauty of the Masks. Our blood breeds true however it is tainted.' Molochite's eyes turned their depths back on Carnelian. It was like looking into the Yden. 'Son of Azurea, you are welcome to our court.'
Carnelian bowed to take his eyes away. 'My Lord.' He tried to find a shred of composure, then looked up.
'Would you then like to stay with us a while?' Molochite swept an exquisite hand round loaded with four Great-Rings. 'However worthy, these Lords weary us with the endless business of the election.' His smile opened like a window allowing sunlight into a dark chamber.
Carnelian struggled to unhook his eyes from the glorious face. 'My
… my Lord is very kind, but I must go… to see my father.'
The window closed. 'Well, run along then. We must not keep the Regent waiting, must we?'
The emerald angel moved away. Carnelian rose and walked off feeling like a child being sent to his room.
Halfway up the third stair, Carnelian began to frown. He could not believe what he was seeing coming into sight.
The top half of a massive gate entirely wrought from iron. 'A gate
… a skymetal gate.'
The Iron Door, Seraph,' said Left-Quentha.
'Inconceivable… riches.' He was breathing heavily.
Right-Quentha fumbled a hand out to steady him. The Seraph should rest.' He was touched by the concern in her voice.
‘You seem to be right,' Carnelian said, squeezing her hand. Her sister's stone eyes looked at his hand as if she could feel its touch.
'It must be the sky sickness still diminishing my strength.'
While he caught his breath, he turned to look back down the steps. The Great were there like pieces of torn parchment. Molochite was a narrow prism of emerald. At that distance Carnelian found it hard to understand the power the Jade Lord had had over him.
He resumed the climb, his eyes fixed on the Iron Door. He stroked his blood-ring. He knew that iron hailed from the sky in nuggets, but surely, so much iron must have fallen as a mountain.
As he came up over the brow of the stair he glimpsed Masters standing with their staves and as he surveyed them he found himself looking into Aurum's face. The old Master stared as if he were seeing Carnelian rising from the tomb. He pointed the horned-ring finial of his staff at Carnelian. 'What are you doing here?'
Carnelian lost his speech. He had forgotten the compulsion of those misty blue eyes. Aurum repeated his question. Carnelian found his tongue. 'My father, I have come to see my father.'
'Do you know this boy, Aurum?' one of the other Masters demanded. All the cold blues and greys of their eyes settled on Carnelian. Aurum's stare had moved to the syblings spilling up round Carnelian from the stair.
Aurum impaled him with his eyes. 'Does your father know you are here?'
Carnelian grew angry. He had had enough of being treated like a child. 'Are you blind, my Lord? Does it seem likely I would have such an escort if the Regent himself had not summoned me?'
Aurum flinched and looked from the corner of his eye at the other Masters, who were showing a certain amusement at his discomfiture.
'You will have to wait your turn, my Lord,' said a voice Carnelian recognized as Cumulus'. 'All here seek audience with the Regent.'
'If it please the Seraphs,' said Left-Quentha, 'the Regent commanded us to bring Suth Carnelian to him without delay.'
The Masters looked shocked. Aurum was the first to move aside, a smile carved on his marble face. Reluctantly, the others opened a way through to the Iron Door. Carnelian ignored Aurum's eyes and the comments the others made as he walked between them. 'Who does he think he is?' and, The arrogance!'
The door was like a frozen pall of smoke. He dared to reach out, to touch its dull iron. It was cold. He brought back his fingers and smelled the bloody rust. Left-Quentha lifted one of her tattooed arms, struck the door and knelt. All the syblings began kneeling round him, bowing their heads. Carnelian's robe pulled taut across his chest and flapped behind him like wings as the Iron Door breathed open.
GODS' TEARS
These are the four substances of a god: Flesh that is earth, Ichor
that is fire, Seed that is rain, Spirit that is the breathing sky. But there is a fifth substance, tears, And that is a memory of the first sea.
(from the 'Ilkaya', part of the holy scriptures of the Chosen)
'And my Lord is…?'
Carnelian stared at the two faces side by side, Masters' faces, joined so that when one spoke its jaw dragged down the corner of the other's mouth. One face regarded him with grey eyes and seemed to be trying to determine what manner of creature Carnelian might be; the other had black diamonds for eyes. Eyebrows on the face that had spoken rose expectandy as the other face frowned.
Carnelian cleared his throat, unable to stop staring. 'Lord, Carnelian… Suth Carnelian.'
'I see,' said the blind face.
'If the Lord Carnelian would follow us,' said the frowning face. The creatures lifted their right hand, beckoning, and Carnelian noticed the two blood-rings, one above the other. As they turned away he saw their double-lobed head. He watched them walk off towards a jewel fire, a window blazing far away in the gloom.
'Seraph,' said Left-Quentha as she and her sister rose from their knees. 'You must follow the Seraphic Hanuses.'
Carnelian started a bow, remembered their blindness, reached out to touch both their shoulders and thanked them. The sisters inclined their heads together. Left-Quentha smiled as they bowed. Two coughs made him turn to see the Masters, the Hanuses, waiting for him, both faces now frowning. Carnelian went towards them and they led the way.
The hall was a black tunnel gouged through the rock to the sky. It was so vast that he could see nothing of the walls or ceiling. He glimpsed syblings standing in faraway rows on either side, three and four legs astride, holding halberds and billhooks, crusted in black armour, tracking him with their stone eyes.
As he drew nearer the window, its hues erupted visions in his mind. Light through new leaves. Cobalt blue. Red like blood splattered on glass. The topaz of an eagle's iris. The whole was a rainbow shattered then reassembled to show the creation. The Turtle's tearing, its shell forming earth and sky, its eyes the sun and moon, its tears the stars. There were the Twins rising in the blood rain, there the creatures that they shivered into being with Their ecstasy at the first rain-music. At the heart of this design was shown the raising of the Sacred Wall, the flooding of Osrakum and, in culmination, the making of the Chosen. Carnelian marvelled. It was as if the world's jewels had been fused into a single lens through which was pouring the light of every sky.
The Hanuses bowed, revealing the window's dark centre. A black throne upon a pyramid. Eight figures were ranged below, Sapients, narrow posts squeezed narrower still by the colours coruscating round them. Above, framed by the throne pyramid, a bar of gold was set on end, a Lord in a court robe seemingly crucified between two staves held upright by crouching syblings. The arms detached themselves. White hands framed the sign, Wait. The sign had a flavour of his father's hand speech.
The Hanuses walked past Carnelian. Their right face gave Carnelian a look from the corners of its eyes that made him feel like prey.
His father was speaking. '… when the collations are complete, Rain.'
As he drew closer, Carnelian began to hear the mutterings of homunculi. Although their masters had their backs to him, Carnelian could see they were unmasked. A morbid curiosity made him creep round until he could see their faces. White leather, pleated tight to a mean, lipless mouth. They had neither ears nor nose, only a nostrilled hole. Jet almonds gleamed for eyes. The foreheads were a fan of creases as if the skin had been upholstered tight to the nose hole's rim. Between their eyes, the horned-ring of divinity had been branded deep. All eight stood in robes of moonless night, each apparently strangling a silver-faced child.
Carnelian became aware again of his father's voice. '… are correct, Gates, it is better that we should wake the huimur.'
The homunculi whispered, the quiver of their lips hidden by their masks. Each held before it a staff, like a silver tree upon which flowered the cypher of its master's Domain.
'If my Lords would please leave me a while. I have need of rest,' his father, said. 'Grand Sapients Gates, Cities and Tribute, I would ask that you keep yourselves ready for my summons. We must complete the arrangements for admitting the tributaries into Osrakum.'
The muttering continued a little longer and then, eerily, stopped. Carnelian became convinced the Grand Sapients were surveying him with the black malice of their eyes. Their hands unwound from the necks of their homunculi. They put on their cloven gloves, their tearful masks. They took back their staves, then bowed. Each Sapient took his homunculus by the hand and, in a column, slowly, they came drifting towards Carnelian. He was trapped, staring up into the mirror of their leader's face as he came on relentlessly, pulling his homunculus like a child. Its unslitted silver mask made the creature as eyeless as its master. The blind leading the blind, thought Carnelian. Just in time he leapt out of their way and watched the beaded slopes of the Sapients gliding past and disappearing one by one into the darkness.
A clatter whisked him round. He cried out and rushed to where his father had fallen on the steps. The whole gleaming length of him, struggling like a fish, his elbows digging back, rasping their brocades, trying to find a grip. Carnelian pushed through the blind syblings, causing the staves they carried to waver erratically. They made noises of panic that he could hear spreading down the hall.
Carnelian ignored everything but his father. He grabbed him, enduring the snagging on his hands and arms, and managed to wrestle him into sitting. He made sure his father was steady before he himself stood up, smeared the blood from his palms down his hri-fibre robe, then pushed in to sit some steps higher, reaching over his father's crowns to free him of his mask.
His father's eyes rolled red and confused in their sockets. His yellow lips opened and closed. Carnelian gaped, appalled, not knowing what to do. 'Are you hurt, Father?'
His father's eyes anchored themselves upon his face. 'My son.' His hand clawed up to Carnelian's shoulder and pulled him close. 'Reassure them,' his father said almost in his ear. A strange odour staled his breath.
Carnelian became aware of the commotion the syblings were making. 'Celestial, celestial…' they were saying, evidently distressed.
Carnelian stood to face them. 'Calm yourselves. The Regent has merely fallen.'
'Is he hurt?' It was the Hanuses. The syblings opened their ranks to let them through.
'I think he slipped upon the steps.'
'We should help him rise,' they said.
Carnelian looked from one face to the other. 'I think it better that he rest awhile, my Lords.'
The right face narrowed its eyes. 'As you wish.' The creature turned and began to herd the syblings away.
Carnelian turned back to his father, who lifted a hand. It shook down, and jammed as the crusted volume of its golden sleeve caught. Carnelian lunged forward to free the sleeve from the angle of the step, and taking his father's hand, he stroked it as he sat down beside him. Its limpness made him search his father's face in fear. The eyes were still open in the yellow sagging face. Carnelian dropped his eyes, not wanting to stare. He felt the need to say something. 'Why do the dragons need awakening?'
His father tore his hand free. Carnelian saw the veins like sapphire cords. His father looked malevolently out from under his brows. 'Do not call them that,' he hissed. 'You are not a barbarian.'
Carnelian's heart stopped. Suddenly, he did not recognize the vast broken creature hunching there. The creation window beat on him like a migraine. The black tunnel of the Thronehall was contracting. The syblings ambling away looked like colourless crabs in a cave.
Suth saw his son shrinking and found the strength to inflate himself up, to put on a smile, to talk. He put his hand on his son's head. 'Forgive me. I am so weary.'
Carnelian rewarded him with a watery smile.
The huimur of my Ichorian Legion… of the Pomegranate and the Lily… they must be made ready for the Rebirth.' He went back to
staring, then with a visible effort came alive again. The Wise feed them a drug… it makes them sleep… while they dream we cheat time, preserve them… they live long beyond the years of their kind.'
'Is this the kind of drug the Wise have given you, Father?'
No, No, his father signed with a fluttering hand, and quickly, Time is everything. Soon the Legates will be recalled, leaving the gates open in the Ringwall.'
Carnelian could see that his father did not want to discuss his condition and was just glad that he had become recognizably himself. '… so that the barbarians might plunder the Commonwealth.'
'It is essential.' Carnelian could see the strength flowing back into him as if a cloud that had moved its shadow over him was passing on. The sun already burns the Guarded Land. If the God Emperor is not reborn, the Rains will not come and the Commonwealth will perish with the old year. The tributaries are massing outside our gates with thousands of wagons carrying the coined taxes from the cities. When the time is right, we will bring them into holy Osrakum. The tributaries must all be there, in the Plain of Thrones, when the Rains come.'
'When will that be?' said Carnelian, wanting to feed his father's resurrection.
The Wise will soon know.'
'What sorcery do they use to reveal the very intentions of the sky?'
'It is a sorcery of sorts. Daily they gather reports from all their watch-towers. In a chamber far from here they receive the flashes of light that have come from the furthest edges of the Commonwealth. They collate the reports and compare the results with their almanacs. Eventually, by this procedure, their collective mind determines the day upon which the storm clouds will dash their water against this mountain. On that day the world will be reborn.'
Carnelian looked up as if his eyes might pierce the shadow and massing rock to behold the distant sky.
The Rebirth is in itself a mighty labour to arrange,' his father said. 'But combined with Apotheosis…?' He raised his hands. Carnelian thought he could see light filtering through their parchment but at least they were steady. 'Soon the Chosen will gather here for the sacred election. Their coming cannot be sullied by the tributaries, and yet they too must be there.' His father inclined his massively crowned head. There is so little time.'
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