Carnelian was left frozen where he stood, watching Osidian become one with the darkness. He could not rid himself of the conviction that the Master who had massacred the Ochre had returned. Were things sliding towards the abyss as they had done before? Osidian had had no further use for the Tribe; they had been in his power too. Lily and her Lepers had become at least as much of an affront to his vision of himself as had been the Ochre. Carnelian felt his fear fraying into panic. How much had this to do with him letting the Lepers take Osidian prisoner? Even without the maggots gnawing at his flesh, this was not the kind of humiliation Osidian left unrepaid. Suspicion arose in him. Had Osidian really lost control in the battle? Had he really been unable to steer Jaspar’s rout away from their left wing? The wing commanded by the woman to whom he had sworn his oath.
Carnelian centred himself. Osidian had not yet moved against the Lepers, though he could have done so easily. There was some hope in that. It seemed his oath still bound him to some extent, but for how long? The Lepers must leave immediately.
The Marula had resumed their guarding of the watch-tower. As he moved through them, they abased themselves. He took his time and was rewarded by a black face momentarily glancing up at him: Sthax showing he had survived.
From the road, Carnelian descended a ramp made from compacted rubble. Larger fragments of the demolished section of leftway formed a boulder field on either side, from which he emerged on the edge of the new Leper camp. Their multitude seemed a colony of gulls. He lingered, gazing at them, wondering if Lily was there and, if she was, how he might find her without exciting a riot. Near the edge of the crowd, a figure rose and must have noticed him, for it came directly towards him. As he recognized it was Fern, Carnelian’s heart misgave. He knew that what he had come to say could only serve to tear open yet again the wound of Fern’s grief. However, it was Fern who would understand better than anyone else what terrible danger the Lepers were in and Carnelian needed all the help he could get to persuade them to leave.
‘Is Lily there?’ he said as Fern came near.
Fern nodded grimly, so that Carnelian became afraid for her. ‘Has she recovered?’
‘As much as can be expected. Wait here and I’ll bring her to you.’
Carnelian watched Fern as he returned to the crowd. When he came back, there was a smaller shrouded figure with him. Carnelian led them both into the shadow of a boulder and there unmasked. The others responded by freeing their heads from their shrouds. Carnelian regarded Lily, saw how aged she looked, how fragile.
‘You’re going to have to leave now.’
Lily looked up at him, haunted. ‘Give us Au-rum and we shall go.’
Carnelian regarded her bleakly. ‘The Master’s not ready to give him to you.’
‘He’s not going to keep his promise?’
‘He’ll send him to you once he has no further need of him.’
Lily, frowning, looked close to angry tears. ‘When?’
He rejoiced at the return of some of her spirit. ‘I don’t know.’
Her frown deepened. ‘He’s not going to give him to us at all, is he?’
Carnelian wanted to contradict her pessimism, but when he imagined Osidian far away, imagined him having achieved his aims, then he could not see him sending Aurum back to the Lepers. ‘You must leave while you still can.’
‘Do as he says,’ Fern said, the pain raw in his voice.
Lily looked at the Plainsman, bewildered. ‘We can’t return empty-handed, we simply can’t…’
A look of shame came over Fern: ‘We can still sack the city?’
Carnelian did not feel he was in any position to lecture them and was trying not to judge them. ‘As long as you don’t interfere with his supplies, I don’t imagine the Master will care what happens to Makar.’
Lily was shaking her head, staring. ‘This makes a mockery of all we’ve suffered. How can we add this defeat to that which destroyed so many of my people? If we return defeated, we will fade, slowly, broken. We may as well die here.’ Her pale lips formed a thin smile. ‘And wait here in hope that we’ll remind you and the Master of your honour.’
Carnelian could think of nothing to say.
Lily set her face. ‘Besides, too many of the wounded are not ready to be moved.’
Carnelian nodded, feeling hollow. ‘Once he has his supplies we’ll be marching north.’
Lily nodded absent-mindedly and, then, pulling her shrouds back over her head, began walking away. Carnelian and Fern caught each other’s look of despair. Fern grunted something, then followed Lily.
Standing on the northern edge of the heliograph platform, Carnelian gazed down into the camp. On his right the chaos of the new Leper camp; on his left, the far greater expanse of the auxiliary camp that faced the Lepers through the gap in the leftway wall.
He glanced round to where Osidian was sitting in the shadow of the heliograph. Beside him was the homunculus, ready to operate the device. When Carnelian had come up onto the platform he had hidden nothing from Osidian. He had said that, justifiably, the Lepers were reluctant to leave without that which they had been promised. He had tried to make light of this, saying, What does it matter? Osidian had growled that he would starve them, refuse them water. Carnelian had pointed out that their wounded needed time to build up the strength to make the move. In a few days’ time the supplies would have arrived from Makar and they would leave the Lepers behind, who would then have no choice but to return to their valleys. Osidian had made a loose gesture that Carnelian chose to see as agreement.
He focused on their camp. What would they be returning to? He could only hope Lily was wrong, that her people would manage to rebuild their lives even without Aurum as a symbol of justice. He grew grim at the thought that in a few days he would have to part from Fern once more, for ever. He wondered if he should attempt to send Poppy and Krow back to the Valleys with him.
He squinted north along the road, as if hoping to see the future and Osrakum. All there was to see was the road narrowing away to a thread from which, far away, there rose the peg of the next watch-tower. He willed it to begin flashing. His feelings were too much in turmoil for him to know how he would react to seeing Jaspar again, but at least he would provide some distraction, though not necessarily a pleasant one. Osidian seemed to be awaiting Jaspar’s arrival with the predatory patience of a spider sitting at the heart of its web.
The Master approaching seemed enveloped in red flame. With his vast cloak he could have been the sandstorm made flesh. Two figures flanked him, glimmering as if they were clothed in sunlit water. Behind came slaves with dragonfly tattoos upon their faces. They had descended from a dragon, all sweeping slopes of rouged hide, sickle-horned, bearing upon its back a castle of bone from which rose a mast that held aloft a rayed sun gleaming in the dusty air. Behind the monster stretched a field of lances that flickered scarlet pennants north along the road as far as Carnelian could see. Drifts of aquar plumes, the long volumes of their beaked heads, the casques of their riders, spired and feathered, gold collars at their necks, their half-black faces: everything combined to make an ever-varying tessellation that confused the eye. This spectacle was flanked by an avenue of Osidian’s dragons that stretched down the side of the road to hazy distance.
Though Carnelian wanted to glance round to see the reassuring bulk of Earth-is-Strong and Heart-of-Thunder, he could not take his eyes from the advancing scarlet apparition. He had had a notion of remaining aloft in his command chair in case Jaspar should be planning some treachery, but Osidian had insisted they must confront their enemy together. The scarlet apparition raised its hand to show the emberous red jewel of the Pomegranate Ring like a wound through its palm. From the right eyeslit of its mask rays radiated across the golden skin. The last time he had seen that perfect face, it was his father who had been behind it. For a moment he expected it to be his father who spoke.
‘I have come, Celestial, as we arranged. Are you prepared to make the same oath to me now
that you made by means of the heliograph?’
Carnelian knew that voice, but it was not his father’s.
‘On my blood I swear I shall not harm you, Imago,’ said Osidian.
Carnelian flinched, shocked, but said nothing.
‘Honour now your part of our agreement, my Lord.’
Jaspar hesitated a moment, then glanced to one of his lictors and made an elegant sign with a gloved hand. The lictor bowed. ‘As you command, my father.’
The lictor turned to the massed Ichorians and, raising his standard, he angled it down until it nearly touched the road. The nearest aquar ranks sank first, this movement sweeping back along the road. In their thousands they climbed out from their saddle-chairs. The striking of their feet upon the road was like a sudden hailstorm. Jaspar, who had turned to watch, waited until the sound was faint in the distance, then turned back. For moments that perfect face gazed imperiously upon them. The only sound a creaking as one of the monsters behind them caused the tower on its back to shift. Carnelian was trying to grasp what he was feeling when, suddenly, Jaspar fell to one knee. His cloak floated for a moment then settled. He offered up something that glimmered in his hand. ‘I give the Ichorians to you, Celestial, with myself.’
Carnelian registered the look of horror on the half-black faces of the lictors. One took a step back, staring at their kneeling master. Carnelian was not sure whether it was the statement or the action of kneeling that had shocked them. For He-who-goes-before to offer himself to one of the House of the Masks was inconceivable. But then, so was such an act of abasement before one who was only a Jade Lord. After all, Jaspar had been elected to incarnate the majesty of the Great. Such a being should kneel before none but a fully consecrated God Emperor.
Movement made him glance round to see Osidian accepting from Jaspar what Carnelian saw was the Pomegranate Ring. Osidian seemed to be examining it even as he raised his hand. Carnelian was trying to read its shape when twined voices of brass from behind him blared so thunderously he was bent by their gale. Heart-of-Thunder’s trumpets. A signal, then.
He sensed Osidian’s expectation. His masked face was fixed towards the road before them. With increasing alarm, Carnelian followed its gaze and, at first, he could see nothing but a swirling consternation among the Ichorians. Then he saw the pall drifting up from the dragon towers all down the road. Their pipes were being lit. His gaze darted to the road, where men were running, trying to mount their aquar, crying out. He moaned with horror as a whining almost beyond hearing swelled into a choking scream and the first pipe spat fire. All down the line, flame jets ignited. He inclined his head so that the slits of his mask shielded his eyes from the glare. The space between the dragons and the leftway wall began to fill with rolling black smoke that, as it frothed and boiled, allowed glimpses of the furnace in which the Ichorians and their aquar were burning like tinder.
The flame-pipes guttered, spitting a few last gobbets of liquid flame, then, silence. Stunned, Carnelian watched the smoke lift from the road, ripping, thinning as it rose. The road was black, but covered with lumps, riddled with threads of smoke that unravelled into mist. Flames sprinted through the crusted mess. Red-rimmed gold fissures gaped, puffing steam sprinkled with sparks. The tar tide washed all the way up the leftway wall.
Redness swelling near him made him jerk round to see Jaspar rising. At the same time the lictors dropped, releasing their standards with a clatter onto the road. Tears and phlegm glazed the nearest half-black face. The man’s mouth released a moan as if he were deflating. His unblinking stare of loss made revulsion rise in Carnelian like vomit. He turned on Osidian. ‘Why?’
Osidian’s hands framed appeasement. ‘They would have harried us all the way to Osrakum. Besides, they had lost their use.’
‘But we could have brought them over to our side,’ Carnelian nearly screamed.
Osidian shook his head. ‘They were the creatures of the Great, brought up since childhood to adore them. Nothing would have persuaded them to take up our cause.’
Jaspar’s mask was gazing at the massacre impassively. Carnelian wanted to understand. ‘You brought them here for this?’
Jaspar turned to him his rayed eye. His hand rolled an elegant gesture, as if he were about to pronounce on some dance he had just watched that was skilled, but not quite perfect. ‘They failed me, cousin, neh?’
Staring at that hand, Carnelian became blind with rage.
‘Carnelian. Carnelian?’
He turned to Osidian. ‘I give Imago to you. Do with him as you will.’
Jaspar’s voice: ‘Surely you jest, Celestial… your oath…’
Osidian’s voice: ‘I swore an oath to you. The Lord Suth Carnelian did not. I am sure you have not forgotten the part you played in our fall. You did not realize we knew? As much as you have wronged me, my Lord, you have wronged him.’
Carnelian saw Jaspar haloed by blood. For a moment he savoured tearing that mask off like a shell, rending the face beneath. He feasted on fantasies of furious tortures. He felt his passion ebbing. It was not just Jaspar who was a monster, but all the Masters.
Carnelian extended his hand. ‘Give me your mask, Jaspar.’
The sun-rayed gold face turned to Osidian, but there was no help there. It turned back to Carnelian. ‘You cannot-’
‘I will not ask again.’
Jaspar pushed back his hood, then fumbled behind his head. The mask came away to reveal a joweled, glistening, pasty face. He put his mask in Carnelian’s hand then shrank away, fear putting a curve into his shoulders and back, his eyes fixed on Carnelian as a bird might regard a serpent arching above it.
Carnelian hardly recognized the man he had once known. He no longer felt rage, just contempt. ‘You two, lictors, bind your betrayer.’
The two men looked up, blearily, their faces blank.
Carnelian was patient with their shock. ‘He brought you all here to die…’ He pointed at the smoking charnel field. ‘To die like that. You no longer owe him service. Look into his face, see what kind of man he is.’
A hungry gleam came into the eyes of first one, then both as they fixed upon him whom they had so recently called father.
Jaspar, trying to stand his ground, shrieked: ‘You shall not lay your unclean hands upon me!’
Everyone could smell his sweaty terror. Taking hold of Jaspar’s cloak Carnelian yanked at it, over and over, pulling the Master off-balance, until the silk came away in his hands. Finding an edge he began tearing it into strips. He gave these scarlet ribbons to the lictors. ‘Bind him with these. For what he’s done, we’ll have to determine a fitting punishment.’
When they had finished, Carnelian forced the sun-rayed mask into the hand of one of the lictors. ‘Use this to buy yourselves new lives.’
The last of the Red Ichorians glanced at the metal face they had spent so much of their lives in awe of, before gazing back at their dead with empty eyes.
‘His consciousness rises,’ said the homunculus.
He released his grip from behind the Grand Sapient’s heel, rose from his knees, backed away. Strapped in, Legions stood in the open capsule that was propped up against the wall, his skeletal arms crossed over his chest, his skin like bleached leather, his face concealed behind his one-eyed mask.
Carnelian found it hard to believe this was anything more than a huskman. A tiny movement made him peer through the myrrh smoke uncurling in languid spirals. Legions’ left fist was opening its pale flower a petal at a time. The four fingers splayed, then recurled. The right hand, blossoming, was joined by the first opening again. Soon both were opening and closing, opening and closing. Then the wrists slipped a twist into this motion, turning the hands into the wings of a bird in flight. Then the hinges of the elbow opened and closed, moving this flight away from, then towards, the chest. Crossing, recrossing the arms several times. The motion slowed and died. The arms crossed, the elbows began rising, falling. This turned into a sinuous opening of the arms as if they were seeking
to embrace someone. Closing, opening, closing, opening like seaweed in a tide. At last the hands came to rest, open, slightly apart, their heels resting on the bands wrapping round the Grand Sapient’s stomach.
Carnelian’s trance was broken by the homunculus, now wearing his blinding mask, backing towards the capsule. Reaching behind him to grip one of the bands, he raised his heel and placed it next to one of the Grand Sapient’s cadaverous, yellow feet. With a grunt, the little man pulled himself back and up to stand within the capsule. As he nestled his neck into the waiting hands, the fingers meshed about his throat and immediately began to flex.
When they stopped, the child mask of the homunculus murmured: ‘Lord Nephron has it.’
The fingers moved again.
‘A cell, fourth storey, sun-ninety-three. Ten, ten, three.’
Osidian advanced, removing his mask, revealing a sweaty face and eyes bright with anticipation. Unsettled by that expression, Carnelian hesitated before he in turn unmasked.
Osidian addressed the capsule. ‘Sapience, contrary to your expectations, I have won a great victory.’
The homunculus, repeating Osidian’s words, was momentarily interrupted by a convulsion of the Grand Sapient’s fingers that must have hurt the little man, for he flinched. ‘Nephron,’ he said, then resumed his echoing of Osidian’s words.
‘With two legions of the line I have annihilated the Ichorian.’
Carnelian was watching Osidian. He looked so strange: eyes open wide, mouth open too, lips holding a smile. He looked so young. Carnelian realized, with shock, that he had forgotten that Osidian really was not much more than a youth.
‘Has Osrakum been informed?’
The new, strong voice made Carnelian jump. Almost he looked around for some being unexpectedly arrived within the cell. It was the homunculus who had spoken, now nothing but a conduit for his master.
Osidian answered that he had sent the collars of the Ichorian huimur commanders to Osrakum by courier.
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