‘We shall grant you this boon, Suth Carnelian,’ said Law’s homunculus. The little man turned his gaze on the homunculus of the Third. ‘Process not only the Ruling Lord Suth, but also his slaves, though only after all the Great. We do not wish to needlessly provoke their ire.’
Carnelian had got what he wanted, but at what cost?
Standing against the cabin screen, Carnelian watched his people embarking onto a bone boat. After taking his leave of Grand Sapient Law, he had summoned the Quenthas and asked them to shepherd his people through the cleansing. Then he had climbed back to his dragon tower, from where he could see down to the water’s edge.
He sighed with relief when the bone boat pulled away from the steps. The mirror of the lake was being opaqued by the wakes of dozens of the pale boats rowing the Great back to their coombs all along the outer shore. He limped back and sank heavily into the command chair. While he waited for the chariots of the Wise to move aside, he gazed down the causeway towards the brooding Yden. At last the way was clear. When his Lefthand confirmed that the funerary procession was ready, Carnelian gave the command to begin the crossing.
Thunder reverberated around the crater. The rain was giving the Skymere the look of knapped obsidian. It was drumming on the roof above his head. The mirrorman up there was surely nearly drowned, but still Carnelian could almost envy him and, even more, the lookout, exposed to the raw energies of the sky, washed by the elemental downpour. Osrakum could be seen only dimly through the rain. He could just make out the looming shadow of the Pillar of Heaven. At its feet, the lagoons of the Yden had swollen into a single, murky mere. Its verdant glories lived only in his heart, illuminated by the summer light of childhood. The actual world was dark and forbidding.
Even above the hissing rain he could hear the Yden’s black water roaring under the road to gush out, furious, down the channels to froth the edge of the Skymere below. Paths of marble wound down beside the streams; flights of pale steps and landings cascaded down to quays. Carnelian imagined the Masters would soon be disembarking there from bone boats, climbing up to the road on their way to the Plain of Thrones and the Labyrinth. Then he noticed the narrow house, end on to the Skymere shore. A kharon boathouse like the one in which he and Osidian had been kept prisoners after their kidnapping. He remembered again the sybling Hanuses, minions of their mistress Ykoriana. The woman who, after everything that had happened, still had the power over him of life or death.
It seemed an age since they had reached the hill that held within its summit the Plain of Thrones. Gradually the road had been winding up its flank. Hunched in his chair, Carnelian was shivering, listening to the rain. The rough stuff of his father’s cloak was in his grip. Lifting his head he peered westwards seeking to glimpse Coomb Suth but, through the rain, he could see nothing except for the shadowy Sacred Wall, which seemed a far, leaden horizon.
His Left muttered something at Carnelian’s feet, then Earth-is-Strong began to turn. Sliding off towards his left, steps swooped down in many flights. He recognized them as the same he and Jaspar had climbed from the Quays of the Dead. Then the view of the rain-filled void was snuffed out by a wall of stone. The command chair pushed hard into his back even as the deck tilted up. They were climbing into a ravine by means of long shallow steps. Everything shuddered and rattled as the tower began to swing heavily first to one side, then the other. His grip tight on the arms of the chair, he watched with alarm as a ravine wall would lurch towards them, then away. After a while, he relaxed his grip, reassured that Earth-is-Strong’s gait would not dash her tower to pieces against the rock.
As they climbed, Carnelian fell to wondering what had happened to Jaspar. He hoped the man was dead: even considering his sins, he had suffered enough.
At last the deck tilted forward, even as the ravine gave them up into the vast and airy cliff-walled Plain of Thrones. Carnelian had eyes for nothing except the black trunk that rose from behind that wall. The Pillar of Heaven was a tree whose storm-sky canopy cast all the world beneath into shadow.
They were approaching the centre of the plain when the rain stopped, suddenly. The sky gave one last shudder, then eerie silence reigned. Before them lay a ring within a ring. Carnelian had seen this thing before, but not from above. The outer ring swept round like a cothon. From this a mosaic of ridges of fiendish complexity converged on the inner ring. His gaze became enmeshed in the radial branching tendrils that seemed like the iris of some vast eye. Escape lay only in the double inner ring that enclosed the dark pupil. For a moment he was possessed by an uneasy conviction this was an opening to a well, a smooth sinkhole into which he might tumble.
It began to drizzle. Drawing back into himself, he gazed at the Stone Dance of the Chameleon, ostensibly a calendrical device. At its centre, the twelve month stones. Eight red, two black, two green. Upon these twelve was carved the Law-that-must-be-obeyed. The stones had a round-shouldered look as if they were hunched against the rain, or against the too-vast sky. Still square and young, another twelve stood behind like ghosts. It was from these that ridges flowed, branching, meshing, intertwining to connect with the outer ring of, as he recalled, commentary stones. The twelve innermost stones were the least imposing of the Dance and yet they were clearly the jewel for which all the others were nothing more than a setting. He could see how time had softened them. His gut told him that even when Legions had been a child, these had been ancient and once had stood there on their own.
As Earth-is-Strong carried him round the rings of stones, Carnelian gazed for a moment, sombrely, upon the road running off south-west, along which the funerary procession would soon go. At the end of that road were the caves in the wall of the plain, where the Wise embalmed the dead. As the wall continued to slide past, he discerned, in a long row with their backs to it, a line of what seemed pale homunculi. Except that he knew these were not tiny men, but the colossi who stood each astride the entrance to a tomb. These it was who, gazing down upon the Plainsmen tributaries, had given them the name for the Chosen, ‘the Standing Dead’. The view continued to swing round and he saw the terraces and galleries of the lower palace carved into the cliff above those tomb guardians. He frowned, desolate. There, penetrating deep into the cliff like a nasal cavity into a skull, was the hollow pyramid in which the Masters would stand in tiers as bright as angels as they gazed down upon their tributaries. Earth-is-Strong was heading straight towards this now. Before her a black rectangle stretched out over the floor of the Plain. Upon this tens of thousands would cower. Soon they would be there, gazing up to watch Osidian made God. Perhaps they would see Carnelian sacrificed.
His Left gave the command to turn the dragon onto the road that skirted the black field.
‘Belay that order,’ Carnelian said. ‘Steady as she goes.’
On the ground, his back to the Forbidden Door, Carnelian looked back the way they had come. Grand Sapient Labyrinth was there behind him with one of his Thirds and a gang of their ammonites. They had offered him an immediate cleansing so that he might enter the Labyrinth, but when Grand Sapient Law on arrival had declared he would wait for Osidian, Carnelian had said he would wait with him.
The funerary procession had already reached the caves of the embalmers. There the palanquins seemed a nest of tiny beetles. He could just make out a thread of people returning along the road towards the standing stones. He guessed these must be the bearers being driven to the cages of the quarantine.
He squinted back towards the ravine through which he had entered the Plain. Watching the minuscule movement on the floor of the slot in the cliff, he became certain it was a towered dragon entering the Plain. It had to be Heart-of-Thunder. Grumbling, the sky was beginning to blacken in the east. Carnelian’s spirits sank even further. Night would fall before Osidian reached him. He had hoped they would confront Ykoriana in the light. He gazed up at the galleries scaling the cliff like some vast ladder to the sky. Rock everywhere riddled with holes. From any one of those myriad cavities she could be s
crutinizing him with borrowed eyes.
Starless night. A tremor in the ground made Carnelian relive the horrors of the battle. Many dragons were approaching. The massing shadow of the leading monster was growing larger, carrying the lantern of its tower. The world quaked as light filtering down from the honeycombed cliff began to sketch Heart-of-Thunder’s mountainous form.
Carnelian met Osidian as he descended from his tower. ‘I had expected you sooner.’
There was only shadow in the loop of Osidian’s cowl. ‘I had to take the submission of the Sinistrals at the Blood Gate then wait while they gathered supplies.’
Render, thought Carnelian, almost tasting it. Then he gave a start as the night dewed into flesh: the ash-misted faces of the Oracles. Their grim expressions could have been fear. Whatever they were feeling, Carnelian was filled with unease. At that moment Osidian angled his head back. Some of the light coming from the terraces above found the sinister mirror of his mask. ‘Come.’
Together they advanced upon the Wise, who were framed by the pale silver faces of their ammonites. They halted beneath the jewelled gaze of the two Grand Sapients.
‘Welcome, Celestial,’ said Labyrinth’s homunculus. ‘We have brought the means by which you shall be cleansed of the taint of the outer world.’
It seemed to Carnelian it would take more than unguents to do that.
‘I shall submit to the cleansing, my Lords,’ said Osidian, ‘but I give warning I intend to bring these barbarians in with me.’ He turned enough to take in the Oracles and the Marula warriors behind them.
As soon as the homunculi finished repeating his words, Labyrinth’s homunculus began to speak, but was interrupted by Law’s. ‘We cannot allow this, Celestial. The Law-that-must-be-obeyed is unequivocal. These barbarians may be infested with corruption that external examination will not reveal. To bring them onto holy ground is to endanger its very sanctity.’
‘Whatever danger they pose, my Lord, I am no less a threat. You will clean them as you clean me.’
‘It is perilous, Celestial, to let these animals pass through the Forbidden Door untamed,’ said Labyrinth. ‘You may have fought your way back into Paradise, but you must not force your way into Heaven.’
‘Lecture me not, my Lords, about peril. Only last night was my own life endangered. I will not leave myself thus exposed again.’
‘Celestial, the Sinistral Ichorians are the proper guardians of your life.’
‘Who then will guard the Gates?’
The Grand Sapients absorbed his words through the throats of their homunculi. For a moment, it seemed they would respond, but their fingers faltered.
‘I intend to breed from these creatures a new caste of Ichorians that shall be in their person a joining of the two previous castes. Their skin shall symbolize the unity of my rule.’
Carnelian’s unease rose in unspoken protest: Have you forgotten the promise you made to save their Lower Reach? He found among the Oracles Morunasa’s sombre face. Was he aware of Osidian’s plans for them? He bit his tongue when it would have warned that the wealth of Osrakum would corrupt these barbarians. He had enough problems of his own. Behind the Grand Sapients, he could see the Forbidden Door. What dangers might lie beyond that portal? If he were to be slain before he had a chance to put in place the necessary arrangements, his people would suffer. He focused upon the long, blind masks floating above. The fingers of the Grand Sapients formed collars of ice around the throats of their homunculi. Carnelian wondered what thoughts, what calculations were flashing through their masters’ minds.
It was Osidian’s voice that broke his reverie. ‘If needs be I will blast my way through to the Labyrinth.’
Carnelian remembered the thunder in the ground. He knew what power Osidian had brought with him and was not surprised when the Wise capitulated.
IN THE UNDERWORLD
Does a dreamer walk in the Underworld?
(Quyan fragment)
Arrayed in a robe of vibrant green, Osidian reminded Carnelian of Jaspar’s father on his bier of ice. Save for the lances they had had returned to them after purification, the Marula warriors were naked. Morunasa had commanded them to submit to the ammonites as he and the Oracles were doing. Enraged with fear, the Marula had nevertheless allowed their leather armour to be cut from them and burned. Lotus smoke relaxed them enough to allow the ammonites to wash them, to rasp the curls from their heads. Even their mouths were invaded. Every part of them strigils could reach was scraped until, in places, they bled. The ammonites had been more gentle with Carnelian and Osidian, but no less thorough. Something had been put on Carnelian’s wound so that now he hardly felt it. He had insisted on keeping his father’s cloak, but it had had to be thoroughly cleansed before he was allowed to wrap it over the green robe provided by the ammonites. As they were ushered into the tunnel that lay behind the Forbidden Door, the familiar drugged remoteness gave way to dread.
Tomb shelves on either side cramped their stumbling march. The lanterns the ammonites carried lit their masks from beneath, making them seem to be the vengeful dead. Carnelian tried to find Sthax among the warriors, but they could all have passed for shadows were it not for their staring eyes. The fear in the Marula soon took root in Carnelian as they crept down into the Underworld.
Around him the Marula collapsed suddenly to the ground. Shocked, Carnelian came to a halt. The tunnel walls had disappeared. Unawares, he had strayed into a vast forest of the night. The girth of the trunks implied monstrous height. He focused on the green flame he had been following: Osidian once again leading them to the hoped-for light of the Earthsky. Carnelian’s eyes filled with tears of longing to look upon those he loved among the Tribe. Only his breath separated him from the dead. He reached out and touched one of the trunks. Cold stone, not bark. This was the Labyrinth. He gazed up and saw the stone, baroqued with glyphs, rising up beyond the reach of the lantern light and knew it to be a sarcophagus whose pith was the mummy of a God Emperor long deceased. For a moment he was haunted by a memory of the pygmies buried in their baobabs. Then he was gazing about him. Dimly, he could see more of the columns marching off in every direction.
A whimpering around his feet made him look down and see the Marula warriors curled up, cowering, their hands clasped over their smooth heads, their quivering shoulders, muffling their ears. Perhaps they believed they had been brought to the Isle of Flies. Were they wrong? Panic rising, Carnelian glanced up, feeling hunted. The Oracles gaped, staring with wonder. Among them Morunasa, a stranger without his ashen pallor, in whose yellow eyes Carnelian saw what he most feared. Morunasa knew his god was here. Carnelian did not care whether the Darkness-under-the-Trees had come in with them, or if he had always dwelled here. Morunasa cocked his head, his eyes closed. Carnelian listened too. A strange rumbling was pounding the air. His breath caught in his throat. It was so like the sound the Blackwater made as it forked round the Isle of Flies to tumble, roaring, into the Lower Reach. The sound the Oracles maintained was the voice of their god.
Monsters surrounded them. Sybling Ichorians, two-headed, many-limbed like crabs. Carapaced with bronze, cloaked with darkness. Osidian barked a command that confirmed Carnelian’s fear this was an ambush. Morunasa and the other Oracles reacted by shouting at the Marula, rushing back among them, kicking them, so that the warriors scrambled to their feet, scrabbling for their lances. Beyond this chaos, the sybling Sinistrals fell some on one knee, some on two, lowering their casqued heads, both tattooed and not, their cloaks subsiding like billows of tar smoke. ‘Celestial,’ they murmured.
Osidian was still tense as he surveyed the guardsmen. The Marula warriors had formed up with their lances. Carnelian saw their eyes and knew that, at a word, they would fall upon the syblings, releasing their fear as bloody rage.
It was Osidian relaxing a little that calmed everyone. ‘Have the Halls of Rebirth been made ready to receive me?’
The syblings kneeling in front of Osidian bowed their two heads further. ‘As
much as could be done in the time available, Celestial.’
Osidian extended a hand to raise the guardsmen from their knees. ‘Lead on.’
The commander of the Sinistral Ichorians looked uncertainly at the Marula. It seemed to Carnelian the syblings were reluctant to cede their place at the Jade Lord’s side to these barbarians, but when Osidian gestured more insistently, they obeyed. At Osidian’s command Morunasa and some of his Oracles put themselves between him and the Sinistrals, then they all set off.
As he walked, Carnelian listened again for that distant roar. It had to be rain being drained by gutters from the vast canopy of stone above their heads. Still, glancing into the crowding blackness all around, he felt a creeping unease that, in such a place, Osidian should choose to put so much faith in the Oracles of the Darkness-under-the-Trees.
Then, through the columns, Carnelian glimpsed a trembling spire of light. They moved towards its beacon. With every step it widened, but also it grew taller until it seemed to him the path of the sun lay twinkling across a brooding sea. They were entering a world that appeared lit by the melancholy, slanting amber of a northern late afternoon. The columns of the sarcophagi soared in the reflected glow, until the soft wavering light had reached up to reveal the faces surmounting them and the lofty arches that flew from one to the other upon which sat the distant ceiling. He realized that the reason everything was bathed in glimmering light was because the columns and vaults were all skinned with gold.
‘The Shimmering Stair,’ Osidian breathed and Carnelian saw the source of light was a flight of steps of mirror gold climbing a hill flanked by sarcophagus columns and banistered by walls in which fluttered countless flames. Dark mouths, in pairs, opened all the way up the stair, culminating in a single gape.
As they continued to advance, a vast moat opened up before their feet whose mirror doubled the glowing golden vision. Crossing this on a causeway, squinting against the coruscating air, Carnelian only slowly became aware of a dark figure standing at the foot of the stair, haloed by its shimmer. The hackles rose on his neck. Was this Morunasa’s god in human form? The closer they approached this apparition, the more mortal it appeared to be. It had a strange globular head, a crown, perhaps, except that Carnelian had a nagging feeling he had seen it before. A few more steps and he knew who it was. He looked for and found upon its dark head the glimmer of its double mask: two gold Master’s faces set side by side.
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