The Chosen sdotc-1

by Ricardo Pinto

  … to… break… free.'

  Carnelian rocked back as he was released.

  'Your oath, my Lord.'

  Seeing his father locked into those weak, drug-ravaged remains, Carnelian spoke, 'On my blood.'

  His father closed his eyes, nodding, breathing heavily. Carnelian had not forgotten his duty to his people but waited until he saw his father had regained some strength.

  'My Lord has threatened my guardsmen with crucifixion.'

  His father smiled at him. 'Fear for you made me wrathful. Rest assured they will suffer no further punishment.' His face lost colour. 'You and I will go and have some words with your aunt, now Dowager Empress and Regent.'

  'Me?'

  'I need your strength. Besides, now that I have you back I find myself reluctant to let you out of my sight.' He looked away down the length of the hall to its doors, growing older as he did so. 'I do not relish wading through that sea outside, so I shall take a boat.' He turned to look down at Carnelian. 'I am afraid you will have to swim in its wake.'

  Carnelian did not understand.

  'Put on your mask,' his father said. Carnelian obeyed. His father masked himself with some difficulty and then motioned with his hand towards one of the staves. 'Lift this thrice and each time bring it down hard.'

  Carnelian shuffled closer and then, with both hands, lifted the staff with its sun-eye and its pomegranate and cracked it down. A ringing tone reverberated round the hall. Twice more he lifted the staff and twice more brought it down. His father's lictors dewed out from the shadows.

  Summon the forty-eight, his father's hand signed.

  The lictors went off into the dark and then came back with more Ichorians, in groups carrying poles like battering rams, their half-black bodies concealed only by the golden rings of their collars. Carnelian took some steps back as they collected round the sides of his father's dais. A pole was lowered almost to the ground and then pushed into a hole in the dais's edge. Carnelian watched the pole feed in and its head appear at the other side. Other poles were being pushed through the dais like yarn through a needle's eye. When the poles were all in place, the Ichorians moved in between them. They bent as one like rowers to their oars, strained, and the dais and his father rose slowly into the air.

  The dais was a raft drifting through the gloom towards the doors. The lictors walked ahead of it carrying the two staves of He-who-goes-before. Carnelian walked behind between files of Ichorians. On his right their shoulders and faces had the hues of barbarian skin. On his left these hues were clothed in swirling black tattoos. His father was a pillar of gold from whose apex rayed the sun disc that hid fully a third of his height. Carnelian watched the doors ahead opening. The elegant hubbub of the Great wafted through with their lily perfumes and the shimmer of their court robes. Around Carnelian, the Ichorians lifted shawms to their lips and began a ragged braying. Floating on this, the dais carrying his father slipped burning into the light, parting the Great before it. Carnelian angled his head so that his mask would shield his eyes from the glare as he too came into the nave. More Ichorians appeared pumping more volume into the pulsating fanfare of the shawms. The Great loomed like towers in a fortress wall hung with the mirror shields of their masks. Carnelian narrowed his eyes further against their dazzle. Incense puffed up in clouds into a region where lanterns larger than men hung ablaze. Higher than these flapped banners like sails that carried all the heraldry of the Houses of the Chosen. The weight of his crowns forced Carnelian's eyes down to look along the avenue of the Great. Between flashes he caught glimpses of his father in their faces like an idol being carried aloft. The music shrilled on. The Great spoke with flickering hands. Trying to read the signs made him dizzy. He locked his eyes to the ambered rubied edge of the dais and concentrated on the opening and closing of his knees.

  The wall of the radiant Great fell suddenly away as they came among the Lesser Chosen. On his taller ranga, Carnelian overtopped even their Ruling Lords by a head. He could see a river of them running all the way down the nave between the dingy colonnades.

  Carnelian reached the looming bronze wall of the Chamber of the Three Lands in a dream. His eyes took a while adjusting to the lack of summer gold. The Emperor's heart no longer trembled the massive doors. The shawms frayed with echoes as they left the nave to follow the bronze wall round. When the Approach came into sight, Carnelian saw that syblings were crowding its lower steps. Something was coming down that looked like water seen at the bottom of a well. The dais broke through the sybling tide and washed up onto the first step. Carnelian walked round it watching his father for signs of life. Syblings took the staves from the lictors and held them upright before his father, whose gold mass flickered and flamed as he rose. His sleeves hinged up like doors, his hands caught hold of the staves and he seemed to be pulled by them onto the first step.

  The Ichorians stopped Carnelian pushing through to his father's side. Arms outstretched, his father seemed crucified between the staves. One hand uncurled to beckon Carnelian through the half-coloured men.

  Now I will, the hand flickered. It recurled itself around the stave, and slid down to rest upon its sun-eye. Carnelian saw it move. He wanted it to speak again. It detached and began signing, Stay close. I will have to find the strength to climb these steps.

  Looking up, Carnelian saw the vast black Lord was almost upon them. Syblings covered the steps around him like an extension of his raven-jewelled court robe. Others carried a pair of court staves before him bearing the jade and the obsidian masks. His gold mask shone high above like the sun peering through a pillar of smoke. His crowns threatened an eclipse. A porcelain hand appeared.

  Sardian, I was coming to see you.

  'I must meet with your mother, Celestial.'

  The black Lord turned his vast head a little as if he could hear someone calling for him down the stairs. She will not welcome you, my Lord.

  'Nevertheless.'

  Have you strength enough to climb these steps? 'I will find it, Celestial.'

  / shall wait for you in the Sun in Splendour. The black Lord made a gesture to hook Carnelian's eyes. Take good care of him, my Lord.

  Carnelian stared, then inclined his head as the Lord swept past and began to move off towards the bronze wall.

  'Molochite?' Carnelian asked, puzzled.

  'His brother, Nephron,' his father replied. 'Now, let us begin the climb.'

  For father and son, the climb was an ordeal. At first Suth managed to keep up a reasonable pace but after a while it was obvious that he was spent. They stopped. Carnelian could hear his father's laboured breathing. Looking down the steps, the floor seemed far away. Above them, the summit seemed further. 'Can you not be carried?'

  His father stretched open his hand. The Sun cannot be carried. It would be as much as admitting that I am unfit to wear the Pomegranate Ring.

  'But Father, why must you do this at all?'

  His father's hand trembled, ‘ I must.

  They resumed the climb a step at a time. Even for

  Carnelian, lifting his ranga was an effort. He could imagine what it was costing his father, whose ranga were besides much taller. He leaned close and tried to help push him up. In front of them, the syblings carried the staves that his father clung to as if they were walking sticks. Carnelian waited for the clack of each shoe, chewing his tongue, fearing that one would not find its step. The last few steps, when they could look onto the landing, were the worst. Rasping each breath, his father climbed them. When he reached the top he sank down in among the empty court robes that forested the landing. As the disrobing syblings came, Carnelian tried to mask his father's breathing with his voice as he told them to attend to his father first.

  'He-who-goes-before is the embodiment of the celestial nature of the Seraphim and as such is permitted to retain his pomp.'

  Carnelian looked with horror at his father, whose robe seemed as empty as the others standing round. He looked to the next flight, a hill of steps, and higher up h
e knew there was another. He drew as close as he could to his father and whispered to him, This ascent will kill you.'

  'No,' said the mass of gold. 'By the time… you are disrobed… I shall have found more strength.'

  Carnelian allowed himself to be taken off by the syblings who removed his court robe and attired him in coarse fibre. His father had risen when Carnelian returned. Without his ranga, Carnelian hardly reached his father's waist. They walked together to the next stair. Neither of them looked up it but just began to climb.

  Somehow, his father managed to reach the second landing, which swarmed with Masters in their supplicant robes. Cries went up of, 'He-who-goes-before.' As they flocked towards them, Carnelian commanded their sybling entourage to form a cordon. Within this protection, his father slid on seemingly unaware.

  The third and final stair was almost more pain than Carnelian could bear. More of the Great wandered up and down on either side, and for appearance's sake his father seemed to dig deep and moved up the steps steadily. Tears of bitter anger squeezed down behind Carnelian's mask. He knew the climb was consuming his father's life.

  When they reached the final landing they found many of the Great waiting before the glowering Iron Door. Carnelian expected his father to sink and rest but instead he commanded the syblings to take away the support of his staves and strike them both against the door, crying, 'He-who-goes-before seeks audience with the Regent of the Twins.'

  Once the dull thunder reverberated to silence the door opened to show the Hanuses, who bowed.

  'I have come with the Regent's nephew to speak to her.'

  The syblings lowered their double head in a deeper bow and the door closed. Carnelian felt the gleaming mass of his father rum to look back down the stairs and he went to stand beside him.

  'Do you remember standing on the weir gazing down at the sea?' he asked in a low voice.

  His father's sun-haloed head shot with fire as he nodded. To both that morning was already a lifetime away.

  The Iron Door rumbled open and a Ruling Lord came out walking with a staff, followed by other Masters of his House. He gave Suth an angry look before he and his companions inclined their crowns and stood to one side.

  Carnelian's eyes were drawn away to where the Hanuses had one face turned obliquely to him, the other hidden.

  The syblings' hand beckoned them to follow. Preceded by his staves, Suth slid glimmering into the Thronehall and Carnelian followed. After a few steps he moved to one side to allow him to see past his father's brocaded trunk. Red braziers painted a bloody road across the night to a bonfire in whose heart something like a blade was standing.

  They followed the syblings down the road between the braziers, in whose lurid light Carnelian could just make out the sybling guardsmen on either side. Moonlight pierced the Creation Window and fell around the throne. A black fence edged the lamplit clearing below its pyramid. The palings turned and Carnelian saw they were Sapients with their hole eyes and scar mouths.

  Suth took hold of his staves and the syblings that had been carrying them walked away. 'My Lords of the Wise,' he said, with a nod.

  The Sapients bowed and turned back to strangle their homunculi, gazing blindly up into the light towards a welter of red like a blooded sword. This scarlet figure stood between two court staves. Curled at its foot was an exquisite carving of white jade, a youth crouching.

  Carnelian felt as much as saw the rustle of his father's robe settling. Even kneeling, Suth's chest was at Carnelian's eye level. Carnelian stood uncertain, only falling to his knees when his father touched his shoulder.

  The red figure lifted a slim long-fingered hand that had two Great-Rings on it and released a veil. The gold angel face appeared like the sun at dawn. When the other hand rose Carnelian saw that it too had a pair of Great-Rings and then he knew without doubt he was in the presence of the Dowager Empress, Ykoriana. The hand kept rising and pulled a chain that in turn uncurled the white youth to his feet. By his height, his blue eyes and the perfect pallor of his skin he might have been Chosen. The youth's nakedness, however, displayed his mutilation and when Carnelian looked more carefully he saw his eyes were sapphires.

  The scarlet mass slid down a little as Ykoriana knelt on her ranga. Her gold face bent towards the youth's ear.

  'Sardian, have you become so decrepit that you must needs use your own son as a stick?' The youth's voice was smooth as honey but more sweet. Homunculi mutterings echoed it.

  The Regent must know how long and perilous a journey I have had returning to Osrakum,' said Suth.

  'We have heard something of it,' said the melodious voice. 'Do you come here as He-who-goes-before or as Suth Sardian?'

  That is in your choice, Celestial.'

  Every word was repeated by the homunculi.

  'I would talk without the Wise.'

  The Empress flicked open a hand like a fan in a gesture of dismissal. The Sapients released the muttering throats of their homunculi who hand in hand fled away into the darkness.

  'Must their masters stay?' asked Suth.

  'You forget, my Lord, that though I am Regent the rigour of my purdah must still be observed,' said the melodious voice.

  'It is not only you, Celestial, who have suffered seclusion.'

  'Did you then suffer much those long years you spent in the wilderness?' purred the youth. 'Do you mock me, Madam?' 'Perhaps a little. We have led parallel lives.' 'You chose the suffering for us both.' Thwarted love is the charioteer of vengeful deeds.'

  Tell me, Ykoriana, have your acts of vengeance brought you joy?'

  'Vengeance is a pale creature in comparison to joy, but still, Sardian, she is brighter than darkness.'

  'A darkness of your own making.'

  Laughter rang out from behind the golden mask making the youth turn round and gaze up at it.

  'Sardian, I do think you could take a little more pride in your handiwork,' said the Empress in her own, rich voice.

  This was no work of mine,' he said in outrage.

  'How not? My husband, now sadly deceased, told me I could buy my eyes with your release.'

  Suth shook his head. 'I was horrified when I heard what had been done to you.'

  'Spare me your pity.'

  'Outrage rather than pity, Ykoriana. Such mutilation was without precedent.'

  The Wise found that it was not, my Lord. When I would not bend to my husband's will, he asked them to enforce an ancient form of purdah. Oh, they put me into the dark gladly enough. They envy others the life of sensation that is denied to them.'

  'You cannot hate all the world, Ykoriana.'

  'Do not presume to lecture me, my Lord, on hatred. On that subject I am as learned as the Wise.'

  'Let go your bitterness, Ykoriana, lest it should consume you with its fire.'

  She chuckled. 'Do you know he never stopped loving you? All I achieved by sending you away was to make you even more permanent in his heart. The Wise claim that embalming makes the dead live for ever. I thought if I brought you back from your tomb in the sea, your faded beauty, your bitterness would poison the memory of the youth he clung to. It was this that made me release you from your blood oath. But you cheated me even of that small hope. Tell me, Sardian, why did you not return when once more you could?'

  'I feared what you might do to my son.'

  The Empress braced herself on the youth. Her head fell. 'You know how much I loved Azurea. How could I ever harm her son?'

  'You really think you did not harm him, forcing him to grow up outside in the wilderness’

  Ykoriana sat back. 'Have you forgotten the offer I made you long ago? My quarrel was never with the child.'

  'Perhaps I misjudged you.'

  'It is too late for apologies, Sardian, too late for regrets.'

  'Is it too late for him to know his mother's sister?'

  Ykoriana turned her mask away. 'Have him speak that I might hear his voice.'

  Suth urged his son forward. Carnelian obeyed him and found hims
elf staring up at the Dowager Empress in her widow's robes.

  ‘Speak then… nephew,' she said.

  Carnelian licked his lips. 'Celestial… I do not know what it is that you wish me to say.'

  The Dowager Empress's mask nodded. 'Perhaps there is something of her in your voice. Sardian, does he look like Azurea?'

  'Very much.'

  A sound of footfalls was coming up behind them. Carnelian turned to see a pillar of green jewel fire sweeping towards them from out of the dark. He saw the mask floating high above and the horned crowns.

  'Celestial, I did not expect…' he heard his father say, then Suth bowed his sun-crowned head as the Jade Lord swept past trailing a quetzal-feathered cloak.

  Carnelian knelt watching the cloak slide past. The faces of the Sapients had turned towards the Jade Lord. With his staff, one of them ratded out a rhythm on the floor. The Jade Lord loomed above the Sapient. Carnelian imagined he could feel his hot anger. The homunculi were streaming back. As they folded into their masters' embraces, they began to mutter, first one then another until all had murmured the word 'Molochite'. The Sapients bowed and then opened their fence to let the Jade Lord through. He climbed the steps towards the Dowager Empress, who put out a hand that he caught and folded in his own. Carnelian watched their hands flow in each other's lasciviously and saw that the homunculi were watching too, murmuring, relaying every touch back to the hands at their throats.

  'Jade Lord Molochite, I was talking to the Regent,' his father said.

  'Well, now you can talk to us both who shall soon be wed.'

  'Does the Regent wish that I should speak before her son and the Wise? What I came to say would be better said to her alone.'

  Ykoriana leaned towards the youth who said, 'It matters naught to me. Say what you came to say in the hearing of my son, and of the Wise too.'

  Suth glanced down at Carnelian. He lifted both his staves and brought them down again with a clack.