Then he became aware of the twilight illuminating the turn up ahead. He knew what he would see when they rounded it, but even so, as it came into sight it shocked him. The vast hedge of bronze that filled the Canyon from side to side was holding back a glow of morning light but, in one place, this sombre dam was breached. Perhaps as much as a third of it had been torn down.
When Earth-is-Strong moved into the breach in the Green Gate there was more than enough space to spare. The ripped edges of the bronze thicket loomed, its blades and thorns like frayed threads. On their passage through what had been the first of three gates, chambers were exposed on either side like the hollows of a crushed snail shell. Torn floors hung in shreds. Doorways opening like wounds at various heights funnelled away into dark, still-secret recesses of the fortress. Propped up against these ruins were the gates themselves, two slabs of bronze rising higher than they could see. Carnelian had been told to expect this, but still he was appalled that Molochite had been prepared to demolish a part of Osrakum’s defences merely to indulge his whim to go to battle in the ancient relic of the Iron House. Was it his certainty of victory or, perhaps, his concern to maintain his majesty in comfort that had led him to this vandalism?
Once they were through the Gate, the Canyon opened up before them, its smooth floor running off towards the next turn. Carnelian looked for and found the Lords’ Way running in its groove in the cliff along which he had travelled in a chariot with his father. The roar of the Cloaca had become more remote as it had widened into a black chasm. He knew the shelves of the quarantine were down there somewhere. Remembering Tain’s description of his ordeal in that darkness, Carnelian resisted turning to look at him. Each day being moved to the next shelf down the Canyon before passing under the Blood Gate. His brother had thought the chasm a way down to the Underworld. At least, this time, neither Tain nor the rest of his people were going to have to endure that. Molochite’s breach in the Green Gate had already allowed the pollution of the outer world to reach deep into the Canyon. It was strange they had him to thank for their deliverance. Carnelian watched the next turn approaching and longed to reach the light flooding from it. What he really wanted was to save his people from quarantine altogether. He desired them to go immediately to their coomb with his father. He wanted to have them all as far away as possible from what was going to happen.
With each sway of the cabin, a tower had been solidifying in the twilight ahead, like the blade of some immense axe half embedded in the Canyon floor and splitting the Cloaca in two. The closer they came, the deeper Carnelian could see the roots of the tower going down into the fork of the chasm. As the tower reared above them, the spikes in its crown which he had taken for the ends of joists glimmered. He saw they were brass, these structures, shaped like the calyxes of lilies swelling their trumpet mouths down towards him. They were the throats of massive flame-pipes; passing under their gape, Carnelian imagined with horror what would happen to them should these weapons begin vomiting fire.
A lurching shift in the monster’s gait made him drop his gaze and see her turning to move onto a slab that spanned the nearest branch of the forking chasm. Under the looming flame-pipe tower, they crossed to the great oval space that lay within the embrace of the chasm branches and that was in the deep shadow of a vast rampart rising at its further end. A massive fortress, gloomy against the morning. Carnelian felt the hackles rising on his neck. He had seen this place before, though then, so close up, he had not fully appreciated its scale. This was the Blood Gate whose portals, he judged, would overtop a watch-tower of the Guarded Land as much as a Master did a sartlar. Gate-towers on either side rose loftier still. Disturbed, he remembered the instructions the Wise had given him before setting off. ‘Is there enough light?’
His Lefthand murmured into his voice fork, then, nodding a few times, turned to Carnelian. ‘Just enough, apparently, Seraph.’
‘Send the signal.’
As the man relayed the command to the mirrorman on the roof, Carnelian became aware of a glimmering coming as if from the sky. He rose from his chair and advanced towards the screen. Gripping it against the cabin sway he looked up. The towers swooped so high, he could not see their summits, but he saw they grew gills in which clusters of flame-pipes nested like worms. Together with the pipes on the tower behind them, the space upon which Earth-is-Strong was walking was a plain of death. Molochite had not, after all, left Osrakum undefended. In comparison to these structures, the Green Gate was nothing but a flimsy fence. Legions’ boast had not been vainglorious. Had Molochite chosen to remain behind these defences, he would have been invulnerable. Had Osidian dared bring his dragons in so far, they would have been incinerated.
Carnelian fought vertigo as, with a dull shudder, the gates began to open, making it seem the whole world was collapsing. Soon they were moving in between the receding cliffs of bronze. A spindle of grey light widened up ahead as the second pair of portals began to open. The walls of the fortress, its doors and tiers, grew increasingly substantial as their edges caught the light. Rows of tiny figures lined the avenue between the gates. Half-black they were, but not girded with the blood-red cloaks of the Ichorians who had once manned these gates. Instead their garments were green and black and their collars wintry in the gloom.
Carnelian had agreed to lead the funerary procession. Osidian wanted to bring up the rear in case he should have need to linger at the Blood Gate to ensure the Ichorians there swore fealty to him. He had no wish to become imprisoned in Osrakum as had been his fathers for centuries.
The second set of portals parting gave them access to the Canyon beyond. Its walls had been reddened up to a great height as if by a tide of blood. As Earth-is-Strong crossed over the lefthand chasm branch on another span, Carnelian’s gaze descended the barracks’ galleries to the colonnades below, with their machines and piers and counterweights. When he, long ago, had seen these structures, he had not known what they were. Now he recognized them as the mechanisms of a cothon. Arches and berths upon which the Red Ichorian dragon towers had rested disassembled. Racks where their flame-pipes had been stowed. Behind, the shadows must conceal the openings to the stable caves in which the dragons of the Red Legion had slept. All empty now, all smashed and broken and dead at Makar. He brooded over this as they continued down the Canyon; how much had already been lost, how much destroyed.
Ahead, running from cliff to cliff, the final fortress reared its sombre wall. Behind was the Hidden Land of Osrakum. Carnelian’s heart began to beat so loudly he was amazed none in the cabin seemed to hear it. Even as they moved into the shadow of the Black Gate, the leftmost of two portals began to open. Poppy and Krow were standing against the screen, though Carnelian had not noticed them moving forward. He rose, a childlike enthusiasm rising in him to watch the wonder on their faces. Bells began bruising the air. Not a single bell to announce his blood-rank as had happened when he last entered, but a multitude of them, their pealing building echo upon echo until he became sure the Black Gate and the walls of the Canyon must shatter from the reverberation. He did not care, for he had reached the screen and, with a quick glance at Poppy and Krow, he fixed his gaze upon the opening gate.
A landscape wrought from flint. Not blue and smiling, the Skymere, but dark, opaque. Certainly no mirror to heaven. Carnelian looked for the Yden, but its emerald had lost its fire. Dull, it looked, lifeless, its once verdant riot seeming to have been smothered by mould. From its faded heart the Pillar of Heaven rose, a black thorn that seemed to be pricking the brooding sky. The Labyrinth mound seemed no less forbidding than the Isle of Flies. Osrakum’s sacred mountain wall, the curving grin of a greying corpse. The coombs, rotted pockets in which palaces lodged their grey moraine.
Carnelian’s elation drained away. His memory of Osrakum’s beauty died. He was reluctant to look at Poppy’s face, but he could not help himself. It reflected the grey crater. Her expression was very far from wonder. Krow had his arm around her and together they looked, stone-faced, up
on what was to be their home. Almost Carnelian said to them that it could be glorious in the sun, but he remembered how dangerous a place this was. Could any amount of beauty compensate for such danger? As he gazed upon the Hidden Land, it occurred to him, grimly, that the face she was showing them now might be her true one.
Down through the Valley of the Gate they went, between the thickets of polygonal columns whose tips bore the shape of men. Not angels, as they had appeared to him the previous time he had seen them; instead a miserable near-faceless multitude, seeming to watch them pass. He brooded on the accepted belief that they were the Quyan host turned to stone.
As a more human assemblage came into sight, at first he felt relief. A rising pyramid of gilded, perfect Masters that enringed the bowl in which the Great were wont to hold their Clave. When last he had gazed upon them, he had been wandering at their feet. From this height, however finely wrought, they seemed mere carvings. The furious fire the sun had lent them then had died. As they slipped past, he watched the bulk of Earth-is-Strong reflected in their gold, fragmented into a many-scaled shadow. It made him shudder. He could not help feeling it was a glimpse of the Darkness-under-the-Trees creeping into Osrakum.
The Valley columns bristled to a sudden end where they reached the Skymere shore. To either side, as far as Carnelian could see, flights of steps cascaded down to the water. Only the road they were on continued, borne out over the lake on the back of a vast causeway. Sartlar numberless as sand grains had built it and mortared it with their blood. For a moment, Carnelian brooded on the mounds of their dead he and Fern had wandered among upon the battlefield. It seemed that, whatever happened, it was the flesh of the brutes, their blood, that was the matter from which all else was built.
He was woken from his musings by noticing what appeared to be leaden blocks forming a neat barricade across the mouth of the Great Causeway. Not of lead, but silver: the many-wheeled chariots of the Wise. Cordons of dark figures formed a barrier before the steps from amongst whom tendrils of smoke were beginning to rise. Here and there along their line, some furtive glimmers. He leaned forward, squinting through the slits of his mask. Ammonites, crowds of them spilling down the steps, amongst them all manner of structures.
He sat back, thinking. What had to be said would be better said unmasked, even though his face might betray his doubts. ‘Be blind.’
Immediately his Left and Right clasped their hands to their faces and bent forward to touch the backs of their hands to the deck. Carnelian removed his mask and looked at Fern, then Poppy, then Krow. ‘You must leave me and accompany my father and brothers to our…’ He tried to find an Ochre word for coomb, but failed. He half pointed in the direction where he knew Coomb Suth lay. ‘Across the water.’
‘Why can’t we stay with you, Carnie?’
‘I need to go on alone, Poppy. Where I’m going, you’d only get in the way. I need to know you’re all safe. And I want you to take care of my father.’
‘What is it you need to do?’ asked Fern, sensing his fear.
‘It’s something dangerous, but something I have to do. Do you trust me?’
Fern, slowly, gave a nod.
‘When will we see you again?’
Carnelian saw how scared Poppy was. ‘Whatever happens, in a day, two at the most, I’ll cross the water to you.’ He buried deep his dread that, on that day, he might be coming to say goodbye to them for ever. He saw Fern’s misery. As their eyes met, Carnelian was sure Fern guessed something of what he was trying to hide.
‘We need to descend to the ground now,’ he said, hoping Fern would accept this. When his lover gave an imperceptible nod, Carnelian felt a lightening of his burden. Whatever happened, he convinced himself that Fern would survive and would take care of Poppy and Krow. He managed a smile for the two youngsters. ‘You must take as much care as if the people on the ground were raveners.’ He was glad to see the colour draining from their faces. He remasked and bade his officers see again. The marumaga sneaked glances at Fern and the others. Carnelian could see their shock and appreciated how strange it must seem to them, in spite of not understanding a word, the intimate way he talked to his people.
As he rose painfully from the command chair, he raised his hand to stop Fern coming to help him. Putting weight on his wounded leg, he was sure it would carry him. He pulled the Suth Ruling Ring from his finger and thrust it into Fern’s hand. ‘Give it to the eldest of my brothers.’ He considered urging all kinds of advice on him, but the handing over of the ring would have to be enough to show his brothers how important Fern was to him. ‘Tell my father everything that you know.’
Fern raised his eyebrows, but then nodded and closed his hand around the ring. Carnelian sent him ahead, then Poppy and Krow after him. When they had disappeared through the hole in the deck, he turned to his officers. ‘Hold her here until I return. You will take commands from none but me.’
The two men jerked their heads. ‘As you command, Master.’
Satisfied, Carnelian turned to the ladder.
Leaning a little on Fern, Carnelian watched ammonites swarming the palanquins. Masters emerging from them were coaxed by the silver-masked ammonites towards the ragged wall of smoke that was rising at the head of the Turtle Steps. There, from among the ranks of purple figures, rose the taller shapes of their masters the Wise, who, though motionless, seemed to be overseeing the reception of the Chosen. Like ants the ammonites clipped the finery from the Masters. Robes as bright as butterfly wings were cast into braziers, where their iridescent colours soon turned black. Divested of their gorgeous carapaces, the Masters grew thinner, paler. Stripped of their distinguishing heraldry, they were revealed as being very much alike as they approached the wall of smoke. Next they were flayed of their ritual protection. The windings came away like dead skin, revealing the white beneath. Painfully thin they seemed, in their icicle nakedness. Vulnerable. Wearing nothing but their masks they disappeared into the smoke.
The ache in Carnelian’s leg stung him into motion towards a nearby clump of Sapients. Closer, he became aware of the figure at the heart of their conclave. The stone surmounting his staff was emberous whilst all the rest were emerald. The murmuring of the homunculi faltered. Carnelian recognized the red finial with a sinking heart. It was too late to retreat. The eyes of the homunculi indicated the awareness of their masters to his approach.
‘My Lord Law,’ he said, dismayed that the Grand Sapient had reached the cleansing cordon before him. It was going to be harder to get what he wanted.
‘Suth Carnelian,’ said Law’s homunculus. Neither had turned towards him.
Before Carnelian had time to marshal his thoughts, the eyes of the homunculi released him to fix upon another Sapient approaching. The staff with which he walked gave off a ruby glint above his pale fist. A homunculus was holding his other hand. When close, the little man took the staff with one hand, while guiding his master’s fingers to his throat. ‘Greater Third of Gates,’ he announced.
The other homunculi murmured an echo. The Third’s homunculus locked his gaze to that of Law’s. ‘Does my Lord wish to pass through the cleansing system now?’
‘I shall be cleansed in Thrones,’ said Law’s homunculus. ‘Another system is being prepared at the Forbidden.’
‘And my Lord’s ammonites?’
‘Through the cages.’
‘I too wish to pass my servants through the cleansing,’ said Carnelian. He could not help glancing back to where he had left Fern and the others with his father’s palanquin. His brothers were there. The Quenthas. He was relieved to see they were all still kneeling with their heads bowed. He had asked them to do that so as to make them invisible to the Masters processing past them. He fingered the roughness of the military cloak he was wearing, that he had found in his father’s tent. Certain he had heard his name in the muttering of the Third’s homunculus, he turned back.
‘… come to petition me,’ Law was saying. His homunculus turned on Carnelian. ‘Why do you want
this, Suth Carnelian?’
The Sapients crowded round him like crows, but he sensed their wariness. It occurred to him they might think he spoke on Osidian’s behalf. His mind focused on his need to get his people through this safely. It could be dangerous to show any concern for them. ‘My father ails.’
‘And would have died long ago were it not for our ministrations.’
Anger rose in Carnelian. Rather than saving him, just then he felt they had poisoned him. There was also the part they had played in his deposal and the recent use they had made of him. He felt no gratitude. ‘Still, I fear for him should he be long delayed here.’
‘The Ruling Lord Suth is high among the Great and so will naturally be among the first to be processed.’
Carnelian clenched his teeth. He had played badly and was now trapped. He could see no way except the truth. ‘My Lord, I want our servants to be processed with him because they know how to tend to his needs.’
‘Is House Suth possessed of no other servants?’
Carnelian felt the trap pressing in on him. He had already all but confessed he had some special interest in these servants. Fear rose in him lest he had made them pieces the Wise could use in their struggle against Osidian. If so, that was too late to undo. Now even less did he dare trust them to the quarantine. ‘Nevertheless, I wish it.’
‘What you ask directly contravenes the Law.’
‘Much is already out of balance,’ Carnelian said, with stress. ‘This does not seem to me a great sin.’
The homunculi muttered an echo of his words then fell silent. Carnelian became aware of the bustle all around him. He resisted an urge to turn and look at his people again.
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