Contemplating this bleak scenario, he was slow to notice that it was Morunasa now speaking, not Osidian. The Oracle, realizing that Aurum’s threat was receding and having witnessed the desertion of the Plainsmen, clearly felt confident enough to voice his own demands. He was describing a vision of the theocracy Osidian could build in the south. How he could bring the Marula up from the failing ruin of the Lower Reach. How he could build a new power centred on the Isle of Flies. A new power with which he could conquer the Earthsky and bring all under the sway of the god they both served.
As Morunasa fell silent Carnelian focused on Osidian. His thinned lips began distorting. ‘You believe, Morunasa, that, offered a way back to the heart of the world, I would be content to bury myself in the squalor of this wilderness?’
Morunasa looked for a moment as if he had been slapped, then quickly hooded his amber glare.
‘Your Lower Reach is dead,’ Osidian said. ‘Be thankful you have your lives and, if you follow me, I will make a place for you and your god at the heart of the world.’
As Morunasa seemed to ponder this a while, Carnelian sensed how desperate the man was in spite of all his bravado.
Morunasa fixed Osidian with baleful eyes. ‘That is not enough, Master.’ He indicated the receding Plainsmen. ‘Now that they reject you, all the power that remains to you are our Marula.’ He glanced at the other Oracles. ‘And we are the key to them.’
Osidian gazed northwards as if he were seeing all the way to Osrakum. Morunasa watched him. Perhaps it was doubt bringing a twitch to the corner of his mouth. ‘The Marula here will not follow you much longer. They must be told what’s befallen their people, their kin. Then you must give them a reason to follow you.’
Carnelian saw it was Morunasa who most needed a reason. The other Oracles fretted, not understanding what was being said, but sensing the tension. At last Osidian turned. ‘What reason would suffice?’
‘An obvious one: you must promise to save our people.’
Osidian smiled. ‘You believe I can?’
Morunasa nodded. ‘The Masters know how to wed bronze to rock. You can build a new, imperishable ladder between the Upper and Lower Reaches.’
And there it was, Carnelian thought. Morunasa had had no choice but to reveal how dependent he was on Osidian, who clearly had known this already. His smile seemed carved upon his bony face. ‘We couldn’t permit your salt to disrupt our economy.’
Morunasa frowned.
‘Further, the Isle of Flies would have to become a vassal of the Labyrinth.’
Morunasa’s frown deepened as he looked at his knees. He raised his yellow eyes. ‘We must have freedom to run our affairs as we wish.’
‘We’ll allow you enough salt to meet the needs of the Lower Reach and to hire enough Plainsmen to defend the Upper Reach.’
‘Is there more?’
‘You will send me a tithe of Marula children.’ Osidian smiled. ‘I have a whim to make myself a guard of black men.’
Slowly, Morunasa gave a nod of defeat.
Carnelian approached Osidian. ‘I will go with you, my Lord.’
Osidian glared at him. ‘From whence comes such unexpected loyalty?’
Carnelian shrugged. ‘To remain here would serve only to bring down more disaster upon these people. Besides, it was the Ochre that I loved.’ He could see the Tribe in the battlefield dead.
Morunasa was arguing with the other Oracles.
‘I had hoped to free you from this unseemly… attachment.’
Carnelian saw Osidian was ready for a fight, but he would not allow himself to be goaded. ‘I have motives of my own, Osidian. I wish harm to come to my Lord Aurum.’
Osidian’s eyebrows rose. ‘Indeed?’
‘I do not believe you will regain your throne, but there is a chance that we shall reach the Guarded Land.’ He smiled. ‘I imagine that, were news to reach Osrakum that the Lord Nephron has been sighted, it might cause some consternation, some realignment of the Powers.’
Osidian looked suddenly serious. ‘Not only would my mother be discomfited but, most likely, Aurum would fall victim to the wrath of the Wise.’
Carnelian nodded. ‘Be aware I seek to bring as much mayhem as I can to Osrakum.’
‘In the hope that thus you might make the Wise forget to punish your precious Plainsmen?’
Carnelian let the question hang unanswered as he watched the Oracles riding among the Marula. Where they passed, there rose a wailing. Many of the warriors turned to glare at the two Masters. Carnelian was glad of their hatred. It was well deserved. He found no consolation from knowing that the Marula were now suffering something like the same loss they had inflicted on others.
He turned to Osidian, making no attempt to hide his feelings. ‘Surely the massacre of the Ochre is punishment enough?’ Osidian’s face was unreadable. Carnelian turned away again to watch the Plainsmen gathering their dead. ‘Their fate will become a myth of horror and warning among all the tribes,’ he said.
He felt a touch on his arm and found that Osidian was regarding him with something like hope in his eyes. ‘Then we are once more on the same side?’
Carnelian suppressed revulsion; he had to play the game. ‘Fern, Poppy and Krow are coming with me. In the unlikely circumstance that we win I intend to induct them safely into my House.’
Anger and sadness mingled in Osidian’s expression, but he lifted his hand in acquiescence.
They became aware Morunasa was approaching. He looked grim. ‘They’ll follow you, Master. But, be warned, we’ll hold you to our agreement.’
Osidian controlled anger at being addressed thus. ‘Make ready to ride north.’
Morunasa almost smiled as he shook his head. ‘They’ll not leave until they’ve burned their dead.’
He was demonstrating to them both that they were not going to command unquestioning obedience. The Marula might need Osidian, but he was in their power.
As they watched him ride off, Osidian said: ‘I wish there were a way to communicate with the creatures other than through that man.’
Carnelian glanced at Osidian, uneasy. Marching north with the Marula it was not only Osidian and he who would be in their power, but also his loved ones. And Osidian was right: it was not the warriors who were the real danger, but their masters, the Oracles. It must surely be possible to find a way to speak to the warriors direct.
Marula corpses being thrown on pyres were pumping smoke up into a sky choked with scavengers. The Plainsmen were loading their dead onto drag-cradles they had improvised from the battlefield debris. Tending to the dead seemed such familiar work that Carnelian was drawn to help. What held him back was his reluctance to diminish the Masters any further in Marula eyes.
His thoughts turned to the auxiliaries, and what their beliefs might have been. That their bodies should be left for the scavengers would doubtless be as abhorrent to them as to the Plainsmen or the Marula. Eventually he sent for Kor and her sartlar and set them to piling the auxiliary dead upon blazing saddle-chairs. Soon they were adding their smoke to that of the Marula.
Weary, burdened by loss, as night approached men collapsed among the smouldering pyres. The reek of smoke, of roasting flesh was close enough to the smell of food to bring nausea. At least the fires kept the raveners at bay.
Carnelian rose. Overnight the horror of the battlefield seemed to have seeped into his bones. Raveners nosing round had haunted his half-waking dreams. He peered at the smoke-choked dawn. Huddled in twos and threes the Marula were grimacing at the bony grins of their charring dead. He wandered among them, but could not find the one he sought.
Osidian had the Marula scour the battlefield for the bronze-bladed lances of the auxiliaries with which to replace their flint-headed spears. After that it was a drawn-out struggle to gather them and get them mounted. As the Oracles marshalled them, Carnelian watched Osidian ride up. Osidian indicated the Mother’s Backbone with his spear. ‘There lies the road my Father made for us.’
&n
bsp; Carnelian said nothing as Osidian rode ahead, but glanced to where drag-cradles were pulling away into the south. Gazing at the hunched Plainsmen he knew he would never see any of them again. He looked for Poppy and Fern and Krow. When he found them, his feelings of love for them conflicted with his conviction that they were all riding to certain ruin.
Mangled ferns formed the wake left by the passage of Aurum’s dragons. Dung rose in hills along that route. Poppy complained about how much they stank. ‘Like ravener shit,’ she said, her face twisting.
‘By feeding them render,’ Fern said, ‘the Standing Dead make them akin to raveners.’
Osidian drove them hard through the blistering day. His eyes, revealed in the slit of his indigo swathings, were always fixed on the wavering horizon. It was a race, but not one that Carnelian or the others were certain they wanted to win.
As dusk fell the pace slackened. Eventually they came to a halt and found a place up among the Backbone rocks to make a camp. People sat round their fires in morbid silence.
Even before dawn Osidian had them mounted and trudging northwards. It was around midday when they began to see the horizon ahead, banded with shimmering white. With each passing moment this mirage solidified. As they looked for a spot to make camp, Carnelian watched the band turn pink then bloody purple. Gazing thus on the cliff edge of the Guarded Land he could not help feeling a yearning to see his father and his family again.
In the still morning air the Guarded Land was solid, undeniable. Its cliff formed the pale foundations of the sky. As everyone packed up, Carnelian spotted some sartlar and wondered what those creatures must be feeling at seeing again the land of their bondage. He watched Fern and Poppy and Krow frown as they stole glances at the cliff. In their faces and those of the Marula he saw his own doubts and fears reflected. Only Osidian’s eyes burned as if gazing upon some long-lost lover. Soon he had them mounted and coursing northwards again, their shadows spindling away towards the vertebrae of the Backbone. As the shadows shortened, the sun began to melt the Guarded Land into a shimmering vision that rose ever higher as they rode.
Cresting a ridge Carnelian lifted his feet from his aquar’s back. As she slowed he stared. The slope plunged down into a land veined with rivers. These braided eastwards into a single channel: a torrent that issued from a canyon where the cliffs of the Guarded Land closed upon the slopes of the Earthsky. Westwards the land fanned out, undulating, sparkling with water, spreading to hazy distance. On the edge of delight he felt unease. The greens should have been more vibrant. There was a greying, like mould tainting the skin of a lime. Blackened patches. Scars disfigured the canopies. Everywhere he could see signs of fire. Of flame-pipes.
They wound down a wide gully. Trees towered on either side. Gouged scree showed where the dragons had gone before them. Soon they were riding into a deepening twilight. Sky was banished to shifting diamond cracks high among the branches. The air moistened like breath. Moss carpeted the slopes and boulders. Lichens furred trunks and twigs. They followed a tunnel, edged with splintered branches, that had been ripped through the forest by something massive. The only sounds were aquar footfalls muffled in the moss. Carnelian could not rid himself of a feeling of impending doom.
At last it began growing brighter up ahead. The air was acid with a reek of charcoal. His eyes took some moments adjusting to the light. He became aware that a sinister autumn had come to these forests. The ground was scattered with the ghosts of leaves. Trees were skeletal and black. The feet of the aquar were churning up a mist of ash. This was a world so wan it felt as if the capacity to see colour had drained from his sight.
They came to a river soapy with ash. After crossing it they climbed a path lined with posts. As they neared this fence Carnelian’s dread flared into full horror. Melted, grinning, to each post was what was left of a human being.
That was only the first avenue of charred bodies. In that ashen land such fences were common. Villages were thickets of charcoal stumps on the edges of black fields. Drifts of ash like grey snow banked here and there. The cliff of the Guarded Land was a vague, leprous wall. Even the sky seemed bone. The Oracles with their ash-rubbed skin seemed natural inhabitants of that sere land. Soon pale powder floating on the air had turned their march into a procession of wraiths. Terribly white, Osidian urged them on, driven by an inner vision that seemed to make him blind to the devastation. Hope leached from Carnelian’s heart. Anything beyond this dead world must be an illusion. Life and vigour were a fantasy; atrocity the only truth.
Darkness found them on a hill overlooking the ruins of a village edging a black stream. The gold of the fires they lit seemed counterfeit. That dead world drew Carnelian away from the warmth. He drifted down the hill. Burnt trees had become the roots of the encroaching night. His footsteps faltered as his nostrils caught a whiff of cooked meat, of decay. Passing down an avenue of charred corpses, he could feel their eyeless sockets watching him. Despair claimed him. Would he never escape the Isle of Flies? Was he doomed to witness its malice infecting the world? Was he, perhaps, a carrier of its contagion?
Some doorpost stumps tempted him to enter the circle of a hovel. Ash buried his feet with each step. His toe struck something. He crouched, tentatively feeling for it though he feared it might be some gruesome remains. Something smooth. A lump with small wheels at the corners. A toy, then. He searched the twilight, hearing the echoes of children playing. Ghostly memories of life. He put the toy down carefully and left the house.
As he approached the black water the path sank into mud churned deep by the crossing of the dragons. Warped boards stretched between posts formed a fragile causeway zigzagging out through the reeds. The gurgle of the stream seemed unnaturally remote. A heron lifting heavily into the air flapped away, pale, along the stream.
He felt a tremor in the boards beneath his feet. Turning, he could just make out a small figure approaching.
‘Carnie,’ it breathed.
‘Poppy.’
She came to nestle into his hip. He caressed the warm, stubbly swelling of her head.
‘Why?’ she murmured.
‘This destruction?’ He contemplated all the death he had seen, all the suffering and wasted lives. ‘The Standing Dead need no more reason than does a plague.’
‘It must end,’ she said, an edge of pleading in her voice.
Carnelian desperately wanted it to end, wanted desperately to make it end, but he was powerless. Resistance was self-indulgence. Every act of defiance led only to more victims. He was so weary he could not believe his heart still beat. His knees wanted to buckle. He would fall into the reeds. Slip into the dark water, drown. But release would not be so easily found. It seemed that his atonement was to be doomed to watch everything he loved die.
Poppy, starting, awakened his senses. Reeds were parting. A sighing as something pushed through them. A shadow growing solid. Carnelian, reliving the night he and Osidian were captured in the Yden, scoured the twilight. The causeway was too narrow for them both to run back along it. He crouched to put his mouth to her ear. ‘Run,’ he growled.
She clung to him, but he prised her off. He shoved her away. ‘Run!’ Poppy’s face was a blur, then disappeared. He felt her footfalls thumping off and turned to face the shadow. A black boat. He backed away, feeling for the boards behind him with his heels. The causeway gave a judder as the boat struck it. Figures swarmed off it. Carnelian gritted his teeth. His fists flashed as he struck at them. Hard contact skinning knuckles. An outline crumpling. A cry. A splash. He threw them off as they came at him. Shapeless creatures hissing, growling. Despair became rage. He strode forward clubbing at them. Poppy’s voice rose keening far away. Then something smashed into his head. He was on his knees, hands pale against the rough wood, receding.
THE LEPER
Purity abhors pollution.
Control of the boundary where these meet
Is control over those who wish to cross it.
(a precept of the Wise of the Domai
n Immortality)
Slipping through glooms roofed with fronds. Each peeping star a needle in his eye. The dull ache in his head threading each fleeting awakening like a bead. Curves rubbing raw his ear, shoulder, hip, ankle. Was he still curled in the womb of the funerary urn? Unhuman heads dipped over him. Murmuring voices. Repeating rhythm of a ferryman poling. Drifting into the harbours of the dead. A woman’s voice. The sky’s first blush of dawn turned bloody. Suddenly all was a blue so bright it burned him like ice. Carnelian lost his grip on consciousness, slipping back into a darkness haunted by the recent passing of some horror.
Feeling her leaning over him, he opened his eyes. A shape pulled back, oil light flickering over the slopes of its shrouds. It had a head of sorts, a glint of eyes. Carnelian’s attention wandered off over rock surfaces that sagged into columns. Moving, the shape drew his gaze back to it. He tried to make sense of what it might be. ‘Where…?’ he managed.
‘Deep in the caves of my people,’ the shape said with a husky, female voice. ‘In the heart of our camp, far from help.’
Carnelian’s head was throbbing. He tried to lift a hand, but it was tethered.
The shape shambled forward, eyes like distant flames. ‘You’ll not escape us.’
‘Who?’
‘What does that matter? One of your victims.’
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