Carnelian watched Osidian drift into a troubled sleep, thinking how easy it would be to kill him. The same logic as before would have been enough to stay his hand, but there was added poignancy in how much Osidian, glazed with sweat, twitching, resembled the fevered boy Carnelian and Fern had nursed down from the Guarded Land. Carnelian bore a share in all his crimes. He was glad he had that logic to lean on, to justify him avoiding an act he had no stomach for – not now, nor ever before when it might have saved the Tribe. He was glad he had not been lying to Osidian: it would be easier to face what had to be done in the morning. He had a focus. He had to nurse Osidian’s rage against his brother enough to get them all – dragons, Masters, auxiliaries, Morunasa and Marula – north and safely away from the Lepers before anyone else learned what had happened in Osrakum.
He turned away from Osidian, exhausted. Something was crouching in a corner. The homunculus.
‘Master, my masters have not yet been drugged.’
Carnelian hung his head and wondered if he cared. What if Legions and the other Sapients should awake? For a moment that thought brought hope. The Grand Sapient might know something that could be done. Had he not asked to return to Osrakum? At the very least he would be someone to whom he could talk, someone who would understand. He shook his head. This was not some friendly uncle. This was a creature soaked through with guile and unfathomable motives. Carnelian’s only remaining hope was that he would be able to contain and guide Osidian. An intervention by the Grand Sapient could send the whole situation careering even further out of control.
Heavily, he rose. ‘Let’s do it, then.’
He took the homunculus’ hand to guide him out of the cell. Once they came into that of the Sapients Carnelian masked, to allow the homunculus to see. He leaned against a wall watching the little man advance upon the Grand Sapient’s capsule. He broke the seal and pulled the lid open. He reached up to coax a yellow bead into his hand and climbed up, reaching for the chin of the long silver mask.
Legions’ hands struck like snakes. Carnelian let out a cry of shock even as the homunculus pulled himself free and fell to the floor. The pale, bony fingers combed the air and then, slowly, came back to settle their heels upon the Grand Sapient’s ribs, open, facing each other.
The homunculus turned to stare at Carnelian, a rictus of horror fixed deep into the wrinkles of his face. ‘Master?’
Carnelian willed his heart to slow, tried to list all the dangers, but it was a desire to talk to someone, anyone, that made him nod. The homunculus frowned, jerked a bow, then backed towards the capsule, clambered up and settled his neck into the waiting hands. Immediately they snapped closed around his throat with such force the homunculus let out a choked cry, his hands jumping up as if to tear the fingers away. The grip loosened and the homunculus relaxed and gave out a long gasp that did not seem his own. The sound a man might make reaching air after a desperate struggle in drowning depths.
‘What has happened?’ the homunculus said.
Still alarmed, Carnelian was trying to make sense of this. ‘Have you just woken?’
Legions’ hands jerked instructions. ‘For three days I have been awake, listening for the vibration of your tread, Suth Carnelian.’
The homunculus’ eyes had a spider gleam that seemed to belong to his master. Carnelian’s mind raced, trying to understand. ‘Homunculus, is it possible he could avoid swallowing the drug?’
The homunculus began an answer, but Legions strangled it. ‘What has happened?’ he demanded.
Carnelian tried to work out what to do, but his thoughts slipped and fell against each other. He was too tired to think properly. In the end, he began to relate the content of the letter. As he did so, he watched a tremor creep into Legions’ pallid fingers. The homunculus’ echoing murmur ceased and he looked confused. He raised a hand to ask Carnelian to wait. Then he lost focus as he listened to the play of fingers upon his neck. He began murmuring again, then indicated for Carnelian to continue.
When he reached the end of what he had to relate, he fell silent. The murmuring continued for a while, then abruptly ceased. The Grand Sapient’s grip released. His hands and arms fell away, to dangle lifelessly.
The hopelessness in that gesture struck Carnelian in the chest. He had not realized until that moment how much his view of things depended upon the unshakeable certainties of the Wise. Without that it seemed the very foundations of the earth must soften and fail.
He clapped his hands to get the attention of the homunculus, who was craning round, slack-jawed, to gaze up at its master. As the little man looked at him, Carnelian instructed him with gestures. The homunculus gave a nod and then reached out to take first one of his master’s hands, then the other, shaping the fingers around his neck.
‘Can nothing be done?’ Carnelian asked. As the homunculus murmured, Carnelian watched anxiously as if he were petitioning an oracle.
The homunculus fell silent and they both waited. Slowly, Legions’ fingers began to work. ‘Nothing,’ said the homunculus.
It became important to Carnelian to do for the Grand Sapient’s spirit what he had asked the homunculus to do for his hands. ‘Surely Molochite can still be defeated?’
The pallid fingers did not move.
‘What if you could have access to the heliograph here on the roof?’
No movement.
‘What if I made arrangements for you to return to Osrakum tonight?’
The fingers came alive. ‘So many legions could not be gathered effectively without the coordination of the Domain Legions and that is nothing more than an extension of the mind of its Grand Sapient. My brethren have had no choice but to elect a new Legions. I am dead. The living heed not the dead.’
Carnelian persisted, needing words to fill the void deepening within him. ‘We could get there before most of the legions reach Osrakum. Use the hollow crescent.’
‘Enough huimur would have reached there to confront you with a double line.’ The homunculus continued to speak, cutting off any questions. ‘Resign yourself. I have. Nothing can be done.’
A bleak silence fell.
‘Even Kakanxahe with all his legions failed to take Osrakum. What I did then, none could do again.’
Carnelian frowned. ‘What you did then?’
The fingers continued to work the throat of the homunculus. ‘You fought for eighteen years and nearly brought the Three Lands to waste. If I had not acted, the Commonwealth could have fallen. It was I who bound your passions with the bonds of reason. It was I who wrought the Balance of the Powers and, in so doing, ended the Civil War.’
Carnelian felt giddy. ‘But- What-? That is impossible. That would make you hundreds of years old.’
‘Child, I was born in Osrakum more than thirteen hundred years ago.’
Carnelian gaped, wondering if the strain of defeat and catastrophe had broken the Grand Sapient’s reason.
‘I have witnessed time like a tree. How ephemeral have seemed to me the lives of men. Almost forty Emperors I have made, have watched die, have buried in the Labyrinth and still have I endured.’
Carnelian’s mind was reeling. Could this possibly be true? He felt he was losing his grasp on reality. ‘How is it possible that the Chosen have forgotten who you are?’
The chin of the long silver mask began nodding as a choking sound came from behind it. Carnelian watched this new sign with a foreboding that turned to horror as he realized the Grand Sapient was laughing. ‘Do you imagine that mortals have the continuity of memory that do the Wise? Your short spans ensure that the passing down of the past is a fragile process, a process we have manipulated. It is the least of our skills. It is not difficult to encourage men to forget that which they would rather not know.’
Legions’ fingers stilled. Then they began flexing again, though more languidly. ‘But now that my great work is undone, was it worth the sacrifice I made? For my reward was to be put into lightless silence. A reward I bequeathed to all my kind. A gift that a
llowed our minds to span centuries.’
The homunculus paused, frowning.
‘I was first to be put into the darkness and though, for you, it was so long ago, for me it seems not so very long. I have not forgotten the blueness of those skies. The sweetness of the pomegranates of the Yden. And now that death is close, I want more life. For my years seem short to me. Without my senses to anchor me in the now, I have moved swiftly through my own, inner time. A life measured by thought and not the senses is exceeding short. And yet, a paradox: with my death, the ancient world that lives now solely in my mind will perish utterly.’
Silence fell, a silence in which Carnelian could hear only the subtle pulsing of his blood, his mind ensnared in the wonder and the melancholy of this oldest of men. At last Carnelian could no longer bear his sadness, his heavy heart. He left, hardly aware what he was doing, finding himself in his cell, sinking into the longed-for oblivion of sleep.
THE DREAM
Some say dreams are sent by the Gods
Others that they arise from within.
But surely what matters is whether they are true?
(a Quyan fragment)
Red so dark it could be black. Tastes salt. Floats, anchored at the centre of the world. Its tiny sea pulsed by a slow, gentle drumbeat. Speeding up. The walls crush him. Impossible pressure. Squeezing, squeezing. Rolling out, gasping, into sudden lurid light. The world stoops beneath the glowering sky. Thunder’s monstrous heartbeat. Lightning veins the tar-black clouds. Wet iron. Looking down he sees his hands gloved with sticky blood. Is he wounded? Guilty, the colour of slaughter itching his skin. The pallid land weeps blood. Ruby pebbles strew a plain that is matrixed bone. Blood dews into limbs. Limbs knit to form men. Not men, sartlar? Bestial brows conceal animal eyes. So numerous, their footfalls could be every wave detonating on every shore. A rumble swells to a thunderclap. Lightning flash. Two cedars, struck, burst into flames like banners in a gale. Fury high as mountains. Screaming incandescence connects earth and sky. It is possessed of sentience. Its face is brighter than the sun. Beauty so intense it impales his mind. Such power! God incarnate. Fearing blindness, his eyes veer away. They find a rim to that perfect face. Not a face, but a fiery mask that conceals a twisting face of smoke and rage. Revulsion boils his blood. The god, brow in the heavens, is drawing his spiralling substance from a pyre of burning men. Snapping like twigs, shrieking sparks, their suffering feeds the holy grandeur. Horror is pounding in his ears. Is it his own blood washing him away in its tide? He struggles to swim, but his body is a stone. To drink is to drown. His ears, trumpets, feed the roaring into him. The sea! The sea! From the oceanic red, an iron wall lofts high. Vast odour of liquid rust as it advances, combing the stars with its froth, to collapse its thunder into the pillar of fire and smoke. Reek of charring, screaming flesh. The pillared flame seems invincible, but there is too much blood. Light falters, gives way to black naphtha smoke, then is consumed in the tide. He sinks beneath the surface, too weary to fight any more. A warm hook of a hand pulls him out. He is in a pale boat that Fern is steering. Upon his face a smile that is all comfort, all peace, all love. They fish the clotting surge for Poppy and Krow and Lily and the Lepers and Sthax and his Marula and a multitude too numerous to count. Rowing the bone boat upon a red billow even as the sea hisses to dust; a sporestorm; a spitting plague of flies that wipe day to night, but seeing a narrow diamond light, he turns, pointing, then leads them up out of the blackness onto a fresh fernland. He gulps the perfumed breeze rippling through the spiralled green beneath a smiling sky.
Carnelian came awake, gasping, only slowly aware there were others in the cell with him. Three identical dolls were kneeling by the door: homunculi wearing blinding masks. He sat up, confused. ‘What…?’
The central figure came to life. ‘Seraph, Legions, my master, bade me give three beads of the elixir to him and to each of his Seconds and two to each of us.’
The homunculus, by his voice the one Carnelian knew, gave a slight nod to either side. ‘I chose to save myself and my brethren. Though my master considered the continuance of himself and his Seconds futile, I felt we three might still be of use to you, Seraph.’
Carnelian came fully awake. ‘Grand Sapient Legions is dead?’
The homunculus gave a deep nod. Carnelian was stunned by the enormity of the news. That such an ancient being should have ceased to live. The extinction of a memory that reached back to a world now completely lost. Was it Legions whom, towering like a god, the wave had quenched? Was that wave then death? Carnelian did not believe his dream so simply read. Its threat seemed to be filling the cell, indeed the whole world. Its dread made the three homunculi appear sinister. Had they murdered Legions and their other masters, even as they slept? As if sensing his loathing, the homunculus fell forward so that his face clinked against the floor. ‘We offer ourselves to you, Seraph.’
The emotion in that unhuman voice touched Carnelian’s heart. He had come to know him; Poppy had grown to like him. Who was he to judge these men? What did he know of their lives?
‘What normally happens to a homunculus when his master dies?’ he asked, already certain of the answer.
‘He is terminated, Seraph,’ said the homunculus, his voice causing his mask to reverberate against the floor.
Carnelian sensed their terror. He recalled Legions declaring himself already dead. Why should his homunculus have to die with him? It counted in the little man’s favour that he had chosen to save the other two of his kind. Now he had brought them to Carnelian knowing, truly, that he was their only hope. Compassion stirred in Carnelian. He could not deny them his help. Besides, he had a feeling that, in what was coming, they might prove useful. He wished to look upon the faces of these two strangers. As he reached for his mask, his fingers came to rest upon its gold forehead. His heart was urging him to an act he was not sure was rational. He attempted to work out where their best chances of survival lay, but soon gave up. There were too many unknowns. He decided to trust his feelings. ‘You want to serve me?’
‘We do, Seraph,’ said his homunculus, not lifting his face from the floor.
‘Will you then join my House?’
The homunculus raised his masked face a little. ‘Your House, Seraph?’
‘I am asking all three of you to enter my household.’
The other two heads came up even as his homunculus sat up completely. ‘Your household, Seraph?’
Carnelian smiled at the tone of incredulity. ‘Come. Decide now.’
The three of them drew together, muttering. When they fell silent, his homunculus turned to Carnelian. ‘All three of us shall willingly become your slaves.’
‘Well, then, look upon my face.’
Clumsily, they loosed their masks. They leaned forward to cradle their silver faces in their hands. His homunculus was the first to look up. As his eyes met Carnelian’s, the little man flinched, but held his gaze. The other two lifted their heads only enough to glimpse him from under their brows. Wonder lit their wizened faces so brightly, they forgot their fear and squinted at him through tears as if he were dazzling them.
At first Carnelian thought them identical, but soon he saw they had faces of their own. He became uncomfortable with their gaze, but was reluctant to scold them.
‘They have never beheld an angel,’ said his homunculus. ‘Compared to the scarred moon of the Wise, your beauty, Seraph, is the sun.’
Embarrassed, Carnelian told them to leave him for now. As they went out he turned in on himself. His dream was an ache he felt the need to nurse.
Osidian grabbed Carnelian’s arm as he leant over him. ‘I was foolish to imagine I could triumph on my own.’
Carnelian prised himself free, took some steps back, uneasy about Osidian’s stare, his sweat-glazed face. ‘You’re not alone. I’m with you.’
Osidian looked somewhere else. He released a sigh, closed his eyes. ‘All night I have felt him tearing at me.’ His eyes snapped open. ‘He has shown me the way b
efore and will do so again, but first I must buy back his favour by feeding him.’
Carnelian had seen this before, in the Isle of Flies. It made him queasy. He knew only too well what Osidian’s god liked to be fed. Carnelian’s skin itched as if flies were crawling over him. In his gut he knew it was to the Lepers Osidian would turn for victims.
Osidian’s eyes rolled up in his head. ‘He has been here with us all along. I have been wilfully deaf to his whispering.’
Carnelian refused to believe in any malign presence in the dark corners of the cell. If Osidian was again possessed, it was his madness Carnelian must fight. ‘Legions killed himself.’
Osidian stared at him. ‘He is dead?’
Carnelian nodded, seeing how grief seemed to be making Osidian sane. ‘All three Sapients are dead.’
Osidian’s eyes clouded in a face bleak with misery as he fell into a nodding that could have been trembling. Carnelian could sense the madness returning. ‘Use their corpses.’
Osidian shook his head. ‘My Father prefers to sup upon the living, for in their agony does he find a voice.’
Carnelian cast around desperately for other victims. His mind fixed on some, though almost he turned away from such a solution. It was true they were dangerous and could easily become his enemies, but to deliver them to the Darkness-under-the-Trees? He hardened his heart. Was he not, after all, making war upon the Masters?
‘The commanders.’
Osidian’s reddened eyes looked up at him. ‘Chosen?’
‘Sooner or later they will learn about the edict. Do you imagine they would still obey you then?’
Osidian smiled predaciously. ‘They would indeed make a rare offering.’
‘Why not?’ said Carnelian. ‘Have you not offered up your own flesh?’
Osidian nodded and a wicked grin lit his face. ‘And there are those higher still the Lord could feast on.’
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