At last they reached the fissure, from which the sewage spilled like guts from a slit belly. Their Leper guide stood in what appeared to be an opening. As he saw Carnelian approaching, he ducked in. Carnelian peered into the tunnel, glanced round to see the Marula crawling up the hill like cockroaches, then crept into the darkness.
The Leper led him deep into the fissure. In the blackness he had to feel his way with feet and hands. The wall on his right was rock, upon which he scraped his hands as clean as he could manage. On his left was a barrier webbed with struts like the wings of a sky saurian. Their smooth curves suggested they might be bone. A leather membrane stretched over this framework was greasy with the noisome liquids it was holding back. Warm to the touch, it seemed the hide of some living monster. One mercy was that, in the tunnel, the stench was less violent.
Fumbling his way Carnelian ran into something that clutched at him. He fought down his horror, knowing it was the Leper guide.
‘Do we have to do this in the dark?’
‘Flame here turns the air to fire, Master.’
When the tunnel reached the crease of the fissure, it turned up to climb the rock. Carnelian clambered after the Leper, clutching at handholds, hooking his toes into steps made for smaller feet than his. They reached a ledge beyond which was another slippery climb. The Leper scuffing above him was a beacon in the blackness. Sometimes the sound would stop as the Leper waited for him. The first time, Carnelian froze. From below came a rustling as if a swarm of immense insects were following him. Something touched his foot and he jerked it free and moved on. It grew hotter and the air so stinking that, with each breath, he felt he was accumulating a disgusting paste in his lungs. Up and up he climbed until, faint from nausea, dizzy, he started to imagine himself nothing more than a maggot crawling through the cavities of a corpse.
At last he began to be able to make out above him the shape of the climbing Leper. Then Carnelian was pushing his fingers up into light. His arm followed, streaked with filth. A final few rungs, then a ledge. Squinting, he emerged into the open on the Leper’s heels.
He and the Leper were standing on a cascade of rubbish dammed by a wall pierced with arches. The lower ones were buried up to their keystones, but the ones above were free and open. Piled one upon the other they carried a parapet of stone upon their backs.
The Leper saw where he was looking. ‘The leftway, Master.’ He made a gesture to show how it ran over their heads. ‘This way.’
He began to scale the slope. Carnelian followed him, climbing through the muck. Rinds of fruit, mouldering gourds, pumpkins, carcasses, down and feathers. Everything was smeared with excrement, clotted with pastes, dripping cloudy fluids. The whole mass shuddered under each footfall. He tried to hoist his robe up, but it was already soaked through. Flies gummed his eyes. The impact of their bodies was like hail. A mat of them swarming everything. The stench was choking him. He stumbled as his foot broke through a saurian ribcage that snapped like twigs. He retched as his hand slid down into soft manure. He rose sobbing with disgust, flinging the stuff off him in dollops. Then he was up again, slipping and sliding. The morning swelled brighter as he came up over the brow of the slope.
‘The Midden,’ the Leper announced.
Carnelian saw they were on the edge of a hillocked expanse of rubbish hemmed in on either side by mudbrick walls, and running off towards a road already crowded with people.
Osidian strode past him. ‘Come on,’ he bellowed. He broke into a run and Carnelian chased after him.
Osidian sped ahead along a gully. Carnelian was relieved to have a firm, dry footing. Hovels gouged into the rubbish lined their route. Screeching with alarm, Lepers sprang from their path. Other trails joined theirs as it widened. The hovels rose higher, pierced with windows. Mudbrick walls reared higher still on either side. The hubbub of the road ahead was swelling louder. Soon he could see its bristling multitude. Along its edge men were emptying baskets of rubbish into the Midden. Here and there a cart sagged under a mound of filth. Men wearing sacks over their heads were shovelling it down to where Lepers were waiting to receive it. Faces were turning to gape as Osidian ran towards them. People began pulling at each other and pointing. Close behind Osidian, Carnelian leapt onto the road. Smooth cobbles under his feet. The crowd recoiled from their filthiness as Carnelian and Osidian ran at them. Their height allowed them to see over the sea of heads to where the road ended at a watch-tower that seemed no bigger than their thumbs.
Screams and chaos greeted the Marula as they flooded up from the Midden. Carnelian surfed the wave of hysteria along the road, his gaze fixed on the watch-tower, looking for the flashes that would betray them to the Wise. He saw none, even as the tower lifted its crown of wooden ribs up to the sky. It stood guard upon a gateway murky in the shadows. Nearing this, he was dismayed to see it closed. Ramparts on either side were unscalable stone. He saw the lookout suspended above them in his deadman’s chair and slowed. Osidian came to a halt, then turned; though his face was hidden, Carnelian could sense his incredulity. To have come so far and to be thwarted by a gate!
A grinding sound made Osidian spin round. Incredibly, the gate was opening; sliding up diagonally into the wall. Through the gap erupted riders. The gleam of brass at their throats showed them to be some kind of auxiliaries. Osidian and Carnelian leapt from their path. Swerving past them, the aquar crashed into the Marula, who were so densely packed they could not get out of the way. Some were hurled aside, one screamed as he was trampled, but those further back were spreading out. As they circled, something about their smell or their appearance spooked the aquar. Their riders were in confusion.
‘The gate,’ cried Osidian.
Morunasa was there and understood him. He barked commands and Oracles appeared, their indigo robes streaked with filth. Carnelian saw auxiliaries being pulled down from their aquar. Blood greased the cobbles as the Marula stabbed them. Then he was running after Osidian towards the gate as it began to close. They were soon inside the fortress. Carnelian spotted a monolith guarding the stables entrance to the watch-tower that stood sentinel upon the gate. He caught Osidian’s eye. ‘I’ll secure the tower.’ Osidian jerked a nod.
Carnelian tried to detect any movement up among the wooden ribs of the watch-tower. Oracles and warriors were pouring past him, chasing after Osidian, who was running up a paved road between walls of jointed stone. Carnelian, grabbing at some Marula, saw Sthax and gestured towards the tower. They exchanged grins, then Sthax began issuing swift orders to the warriors.
Carnelian slipped round behind the monolith. The portcullis behind it was raised as he had expected. He crept in, waiting for his eyes to adapt to the gloom. The place stank of aquar and render. Movement. It was only stable hands, cowering. There was no time to save them. He rushed up the first ramp, feeling the grip of its ridges. Oily, sour smell of machinery. Another ramp. Up into a chamber rocking with ripple reflections. He was aware of a tank against the opposite wall, but his focus was on the wall upon which his right hand rested. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the first ladder was down. He crept towards it and peered up into the heart of the tower. No sign of life. He glanced round to see Sthax, grimly determined, and behind him the bright eyes of his warriors as they took in their surroundings. Carnelian pointed up the ladder and began to climb. When he emerged into the first barracks level, he scanned it quickly. Detecting neither sound nor movement he clambered rapidly to the next level. It too seemed empty and so, swiftly, he climbed up to the top storey.
He arrived in a chamber lit only by the light filtering up through the shafts that opened in the corners of the floor. Doors were set into the walls. It was all so familiar; he felt as if he had been there in a dream. He gazed at the door across the chamber with anxious longing, possessed by the belief that, should he open it, he would find his father lying wounded in the room beyond.
Sthax’s anxious expression made him remember why he was there. Carnelian stepped onto a ladder bolted to the
edge of one of the shafts. Reaching up he opened a hatch in the ceiling and squeezed through it out onto the roof. Sthax clambered out after him. Six ribs curved up to hold a platform over their heads. Carnelian found the one that was laddered with staples. He crossed to it, stepping over naphtha pipes. Climbing the curve of the rib took him out beyond the tower. Its stone walls fell sheer to the world below. A patchwork of flat roofs spread away from the fortress wall. He reached the platform. A heliograph was there at its centre. Purple-robed figures huddled around its brass were aligning its mirrors to the sun. One ammonite was directing the signal not outwards towards the Guarded Land, but inwards into the fortress.
Carnelian advanced on these ammonites, bellowing in Quya: ‘Attend me.’
Their faces of silver, turning to him, showed grey reflections of the sky. Their hands clutched the machine. ‘You cannot be Chosen,’ said one in the same tongue.
Carnelian raised his hands to his cowl. ‘Do you wish to look upon my face as proof of what I am?’
The ammonites lost hold of the machine and abased themselves before him in terror. Their pates, not covered by their masks, betrayed them to be nothing more than men. Carnelian commanded them to move away from the heliograph and motioned Sthax and his warriors to stand guard on them. The Marula stared nervously at the mirror faces of the ammonites, but did as they were told.
Carnelian turned to look out over the fortress, trying to locate the target of their communication. His gaze skimmed over its roofs to an open, green expanse, beyond which a wedge of masonry sprang up, narrowing to a tower at the very edge of the sky. Its top was flat and he could imagine a sister machine set there. He strained to see if there were figures on the summit, but could not be sure. The tower appeared to be more massive than the one he stood on. It must be the seat of the Legate of Qunoth.
He strode towards the heliograph. Sun flashed off the strips that made up its mirror. Dazzled, he stooped to take hold of one of its curving handles and swung the machine round to put it out of alignment. He crossed to the opposite edge of the platform to look down at the city. The riot they had caused was still eddying along the main street. He returned to gaze down into the fortress. Its dense symmetries and stillness presented a sobering contrast to the chaos of the city. It seemed a ship becalmed. He lifted his eyes towards the prow of the other tower. Beyond that was hazy space. Carnelian’s heart stopped as he realized what he was seeing could be nothing other than the Earthsky. He tried to penetrate its far horizon, then cursed, angry with himself. Was he really hoping he might see as far as the Koppie? Even if he could, what would he see? A cemetery. The memory of the massacre ached in him.
Glancing round, he watched Sthax and his people trying not to catch their own reflections in the metal faces of the cowering ammonites. Grim, miserable, he gazed out over the fortress again. His eyes were drawn to its heart where an immense circular hole sank into its masonry. That had to be a dragon cothon. Tracing its spiked rim he brooded on what he and Osidian were attempting to do. He searched for him or any sign of his Marula, but the alleys were too deep to see into. The deathly stillness of the place made him despair. How could they ever have hoped to take this with their paltry force?
‘Master?’
The voice had come from the tower roof below. Carnelian craned over the platform edge, knowing it was Morunasa.
‘What news?’
Morunasa’s eyes appeared to be bulging out of his face. ‘The dragons are his.’
CHOSEN AGAIN
Blood of the Chosen
O fiery river
You will never run into the sea.
(Chosen rhyme)
Leaving Sthax and the other warriors to guard the ammonites Carnelian followed Morunasa down the ladders through the watch-tower. He was struggling to overcome shock. He was also angry with himself. He had known they were coming to Qunoth to take its dragons. Clearly, he had never really believed they would do it. He remembered the dragons advancing on the Koppie amidst their firestorm. The power of a legion was his and Osidian’s to wield. He watched his pale hands gripping rungs and was filled with foreboding. He was deluding himself. They might have taken this power together, but it would be wielded by Osidian alone.
Walls on either side were pierced with doors to which ridged aquar ramps climbed. Rising before them, above the roofs, was a curving rampart whose upper rim was catching the sun. Deeply recessed into this was a gate banded with green bronze. From his survey aloft, Carnelian knew this must give access to the dragon cothon. A narrow blade of light running down the middle of the gate showed it was open. When he reached the gap he peered through, but inside it was too bright to see anything. The air was sharp with the tang of naphtha. Underlying this was a duller odour that he could not identify.
Hearing Morunasa coming up behind him, Carnelian slipped through. Four stone piers formed an avenue leading to open space ablaze with light. He gazed up at the piers. They carried beams and bore tall structures like upright fists, between the knuckles of which ran ropes. Some kind of framework was up there, machinery, tensioned ropes crisscrossing like rigging and an immense mast. As Morunasa strode past him, Carnelian turned. Vaults were cut deep into the cothon wall on either side of the gate. He walked back to investigate and saw more vaults piercing the wall all along its inner curve, as far round as he could see, like shiphouses around a harbour.
‘Master?’
Carnelian looked round, saw Morunasa waiting and went to join him. Squinting against the glare, they passed the second set of piers. A cobbled expanse opened before them, at its hub what appeared to be a spiked tower of bronze. The open space was ringed about by some three dozen of the stone piers as regular as the spokes of a wheel. Between each pair stretched beams upon which sat an ivory pyramid from which there rose a mast. The last time he had seen such structures they had been on the backs of dragons.
‘The Master,’ said Morunasa, pointing.
Tiny figures stood beneath one of these dragon towers. As he and Morunasa crossed the cothon floor, Carnelian felt they were a sort of insect crawling across the face of some infernal mechanism that, should it grind into motion, would smear them over the cobbles.
Nearing the figures he grew increasingly alarmed at how precariously the pyramid hung above them. The sagging beams did not look strong enough to hold it, nor the cradle of ropes. The figures were now coming to meet him. Osidian was not among them and they were not Marula. These men were honey-skinned and encased in ribbed cuirasses of black leather. Their skin, and the glint of brass at their throats, showed them to be marumaga legionaries. Instinct made Carnelian shroud his face. When still at some distance they fell to their knees and touched their foreheads to the cobbles. ‘Master.’
Carnelian hesitated. No one had made obeisance to him for years. It felt wrong, unnatural. Yet a second impression warred with the first. He became aware of how tall he was, how powerfully he stood upon the earth. Their abasement elevated him. Though he stank from the passage of the sewer, though he was clothed in rags, their posture seemed to demand from him elegant condescension, which found expression in his lifted hand: Rise.
They responded to the gesture as if the only life they possessed came from strings dangling from his fingers.
‘The other Master?’
Rising, they backed away, keeping their eyes averted. Making a barrier gesture, Carnelian stopped Morunasa from accompanying him and set off after the legionaries. As he passed under the dragon tower he glanced up. Tubes and sockets issuing from its murky base oozed a stench of naphtha. He could not imagine how this device could sit comfortably upon a dragon’s back. Emerging from its shadow, he saw his guides were moving under the second ring of piers, upon whose beams rested a squatter structure, like a table that was narrower at one end and had, at each corner, a stump foot. He realized this must be the base of the tower of which the pyramid was only the upper part.
As he passed under this second platform, a saurian musk began to overpower the naphtha
reek. Wariness that he was approaching an earther, or even a heavener, made Carnelian slow. It was the hair rising on his neck that alerted him to this being a creature even more dangerous. Further, the air was tainted by something like the carrion stench that raveners gave off. He peered into the darkness that yawned before him. They were approaching one of the vaults cut into the cothon wall. Framed in its dark mouth was Osidian’s slender figure in his Leper shrouds, but Carnelian only had time to glance at him before he froze. Something vast lurked in the gloom. He began to make out a beak hanging high above Osidian’s head. From this, vast curves swept back to the swelling bows of a cranium that branched on either side into backward-curving sickle horns. There before him, vast as a baran, was a dragon.
‘He sleeps,’ murmured Osidian without turning.
Carnelian gaped at the monster. He could have believed it only a colossus carved from a cliff had it not been for the warm odour it was giving off.
‘Do you hear his heart?’
Struggling with dark memories Carnelian sought some reassurance in Osidian’s face, but could not see past his cowl. It was a tremor like distant thunder that made him gaze back at the monster. He waited. From deep in its flesh another tremor reverberated. It seemed less a heartbeat than how the pulse of sap might sound in a cedar. Deceptively peaceful that slow drumbeat, but he had seen what such a monster became when fully armed. Such stillness was the eerie calm before a storm.
Doubt gnawed at him. He leaned forward enough so that he could peer into Osidian’s cowl. How greedily his eyes were fixed upon the dragon. How bright they were. The same intensity no doubt as when he had overseen the murder of the Ochre. Carnelian pulled back, fighting panic. What had he done? How could he have helped put this terror in the hands of a murderer? He counted out the familiar arguments like beads. His breathing slowed as, grimly, he remembered what the Lepers had chosen to endure a second time so as to give him and Osidian a chance to take these dragons. Even now Poppy, Fern and Krow as well as Lily could be fighting Aurum for their lives. He had had a choice then, but now had none. He had to play the game to the end.
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