He stepped onto the design. It felt subtly textured. Closing his eyes, he could feel his feet on a path that he followed. Opening them, he looked back at the meandering trail his sooty feet had left. Not a path he could have easily located by sight. He remembered how the Wise used such paths in their library in the Halls of Thunder.
He became aware of the beautiful and complex inner faces of the commentary stones. Returning to them he reached up to touch one. Its swirling patterns were bewildering, but under his fingers they seemed a pebbled beach. Again he closed his eyes. As he glided his fingers slowly across the surface the nodules seemed to whisper in his mind. He reopened his eyes. ‘Like beadcord,’ he muttered. He noted how tendrils of the floor mosaic lapped at the stone. The nodules were divided into registers, the higher of which could be reached by climbing up onto taller cobbles. Glancing round the whole curve of commentary stones, he saw how, with the floor, they formed a delicate web of meaning emanating from the double ring.
As he approached the inner stones, he saw that their outer faces were patterned in the same way as the commentary stones. Then he became aware that these stones stood each like a ghost behind what appeared to be huge figures. Cracked and round-shouldered, hunching now, but once they had been tall and straight. Entering between a pair of ghost stones, he was confronted by two immense slabs of jade, fissured and veined by pale lichens. As he passed between these, he noticed their inner edges were spotted with round projections. Reaching out to touch one, his finger found its spiralling groove. The same ammonite shells were embroidered into his green robe. Turning, he saw the clear path leading back across the mosaic, through the commentary stones, between the gate stones and on towards the House of Immortality.
He entered the heart of the Dance. Round the mossy space stood the coven of twelve worn stones: two green, two black, eight red. He sensed he was in the presence of something ancient and holy. The inner face of each stone had been cut into. Moving to stand in front of one of these depressions, he realized it was a hollow man, arms and legs outstretched. The hollow was just large enough that he could have climbed into it. From each foot, each hand, a channel ran down to the earth. The channels made the hollow man seem a puppet with rods to move his arms and legs. It did not seem likely their purpose was to drain the hollow of rain water. He sought distraction in the columns of glyphs, worn almost smooth, that covered the surface of the stone. This must be the Law-that-must-be-obeyed. He frowned. Why did it feel like a disfigurement? The glyphs followed the contours of the stone as if they were tattoos or brandings. The Law had been carved into the stone when it was already ancient.
He walked slowly round the Dance, withershins, giving in to his need to understand it. The two green stones led him to the two black. Then began the sequence of eight red stones. Where the black met the red, their inner flanks were carved with circular motifs now almost flush with the stone. Gazing out between these stones, he was looking directly towards the Forbidden Door. The Pillar of Heaven lifted its tornado of stone into a frowning sky. Carnelian looked again at the flank of the black stone, certain the circular carvings had been sky glyphs. Starting with this stone which lay to the sunward of the Rain Axis, the Dance followed the sequence of the months so that the red stone ended the year.
He followed the Dance further round, caressing the time-worn porphyry of the red stones, but when he came to a pair between which Earth-is-Strong’s column of smoke was visible, moving away towards the entrance to the Plain of Thrones, he saw their inner flanks bore more of the faint discs. He ran his fingers over them and found one that had within its slightly raised edge a number of pips. His fingers remembered the red stone coin he had received the first time he had passed through the Blood Gate. That had borne a pomegranate. He saw how the gateway formed by the red stones would give direct access to the Dance to anyone entering the Plain of Thrones. He surveyed the Dance, now certain it must be far more ancient than anything else in Osrakum. More ancient even than the Law. More ancient by far than Grand Sapient Legions had been or his Great Balance. Thinking of that ancient, now dead, Carnelian gazed across the Dance at the black stone opposite. Twelve in all. It was as if the Grand Sapients were the living embodiment of these ancient stones.
At that moment the clouds parted, slanting a ray of light into the centre of the Dance. He was drawn to stand in it, turning his face up to allow the sun to bleach the unease from his heart. He sank to the mossy earth and stretched himself out as he gazed through the opening in the stormclouds into perfect, blue heaven.
Swaying beneath a vast, smiling sky. Memories of his mother, of her smell, of the comfort in her hands. Cedars net the blue in their branches. Clean, resinous perfume of her mother tree. Sifting sand, his hand dries up like a fig. Not the breath of the mother trees, but myrrh. Breathing out and out and out as he wizens into a huskman. He is Legions turning to stone. Trapped in an ivory sarcophagus like a brain in a skull. Seed in a pod. A tickle in him, an itch; the heartbeat of the baby inside him. Carried, sleeping, into the ring of twelve. Entering through the still weeping edges of a freshly cut wound. Singing, so mournful. Then swaying out of the clearing watching clouds streak the sky. Out of the clearing into the ferns. Their croziers knock, knock, knocking their heads together. To whose rhythm the sun bleeds away into the earth. Away, into the earth. Absorbed into it with the blood and the dying light. Something’s burning. He has to become the worm eating his escape through the bread, but then, confused, he is scrabbling into a cradle of bones. His hand drags the nets of his fingers. Dragged down by the weight of fish in his net. Rope burning his hands, running deep in a channel of flesh, as it pulls free of the hooks of his hands, but he holds on, the waters rising.
Carnelian came awake, disorientated. The silhouettes of heads moving back. He rose, aware of giants standing round. It was night. Human-scale figures near him were partially lit. Others were holding the dim stars of lanterns. He recognized the giants behind them as the monoliths of the Dance, their looming shadows the incarnation of the foreboding he had brought with him out of his dream.
‘Master?’
It was Tain offering him a sinister face. Carnelian took the mask. ‘I must’ve fallen asleep.’
Sthax, a shadow with human eyes. Beside him a shrouded figure whose dear face grounded Carnelian. He approached him, embraced him. ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Fern.’ He turned to Tain, to Sthax. ‘So glad you’re all here.’
Still haunted, Carnelian stared deep into the fire. He was reluctant to sleep. One dream and all his hope had turned to despair. He turned the Ruling Ring of House Suth upon his finger. Fern had brought it for him from his father. A proof, if he needed one, that his father still considered him his son.
He turned, sensing someone behind him. Rising above the sentinel monoliths, higher than the glimmering gashes the terraces of the Halls of Rebirth made in the wall of the plain, the Pillar of Heaven loomed a deeper black against the blackness.
He returned his gaze to the flames. Why had he not allowed his people to erect the pavilion they had brought for him? He hungered for the oblivion that, in its privacy, he could have found in Fern’s arms.
He sat up, woken by something. Bells were beating out a funereal dirge. Light throbbed, filtering through the three rings of the Dance. A procession of the Chosen making their way to the Forbidden Door. He recalled the time he had seen another such moving distantly upon the Ydenrim. Then he had been in the Yden with Osidian.
‘What is it?’ whispered a voice in Ochre.
In the faint light oozing from the embers of their fire, Carnelian could just make out Fern’s shape.
‘Some Standing Dead,’ he replied in Ochre, feeling a furtive delight in uttering that barbarian tongue in that place. Then a rumble ponderously shook the sky. A sudden breeze set him shivering. ‘I’m cold.’ Fern opened his blanket. Carnelian crept in beside him. They snuggled together. Comfort quickly gave way to passion.
He woke into a world suffused by a faint dawn li
ght, feeling groggy. The sound of bells seemed to have followed him out of his dreams. Sitting up, he saw, to the east and south-east, movement in the gaps between the monoliths. Fern stirring against his belly made him glance down. He watched him come awake and smiled. Fern grimaced and took some moments to register him.
‘You didn’t sleep well either?’
Fern shook his head. He propped himself up on his elbow, watching the procession of the Masters. ‘It’s been going on all night?’
Carnelian nodded, remembering snatches of dream in which the world was carried away in a terrible and irresistible flood.
Sitting with Fern and Tain, Carnelian watched servants with chameleon-tattooed faces laying dishes of jade and silver upon a rug. He offered Tain some food. ‘How’re things with Father?’
His brother dipped his head to one side and looked down, then glanced up at Carnelian. ‘Well enough to send you that,’ he said, indicating with his chin the Ruling Ring on Carnelian’s finger.
Carnelian saw a grimmer truth in his brother’s eyes, but he kept silent. What use was it to know more? He could not go to his father’s side. He glanced at the Ruling Ring. That was its own message. His father expected soon to die. Carnelian was not sure his father had believed the assurances in his message that his adopted son would, in time, rule House Suth. He might only have sent him the ring in the hope that it would give him enough power to affect the succession in their coomb. Certainly it should make it possible for him to get his people out of there, but bring them where? Into safekeeping in the House of the Masks? Glancing at Tain’s face tattoo, he wondered how people wearing that could possibly reside in the Labyrinth. For a moment he became possessed by a fantasy of taking them all with him into the outer world. That possibility seemed even more unreal. He became aware Fern was watching him. He smiled, but only the corners of Fern’s lips twitched in response.
‘What about Poppy and Krow?’
Fern grimaced. ‘You can imagine how she reacted when I told her she would have to stay behind.’
Carnelian smiled grimly. ‘We can’t have her here.’ Fern and Tain’s faces stiffened, as they sensed the threat underlying his words. Carnelian wanted to lighten things a little. ‘Even now she’s probably trying to swim the lake to get here.’
Fern smiled and even Tain who, in his short acquaintance with Poppy, already had some notion of what she was like.
After they had finished eating, he took Fern and Tain with him out through the two inner rings and across the mosaicked stone to the outermost ring. There, with Carnelian in his mask and military cloak, they watched the Masters pass by. Their palanquins were carried by slaves whose faces bore the same heraldry as the standards that glowed like jewels under the sombre skies. Banners streamed rainbows. Feathered parasols fluttered like birds. Bells rang, of dull stone or sharp bright silver. Chariots were pulled among the processions by pale aquar, each led by a Sinistral Ichorian.
Carnelian retired with Fern into the pavilion his people had erected. In the gloom they fed off each other’s bodies. They slept, they woke to more passion and drowsed afterwards, exhausted. They were vaguely aware of the day fading. They lit no lamps. Dawn found them drugged by ecstasy and joy, Carnelian’s tainted by the dregs of dreams.
Carnelian lay half wake, waiting for Fern to return with some food. The pavilion smelled of sex. A movement in a dark corner brought him fully awake. A shadowy form was looming there. He sat up with a jerk, fearing this to be something supernatural, but still casting round for some weapon. A beautiful voice stilled a cry of alarm in his throat. ‘Calm yourself, Seraph.’
Carnelian’s gaze found a child’s face frozen in the shadows. Above floated the murky mirror of its master’s mask. Carnelian saw the emberous finial the homunculus held before it, but could not make out its cypher. ‘Who are you?’ he said, shocked that his people had given him no warning of this visitor.
‘Tribute,’ sang the exquisite voice. ‘I am come to bid you give entry tomorrow to the tributaries.’
Carnelian nodded as the homunculus relayed to him details of how it should be done. Only vaguely did he note the instructions, unease worrying at his concentration. At last, when the homunculus fell silent, Carnelian spoke. ‘Why had you need to come yourself, my Lord? Could you not as easily have sent a letter, or one of your Sapients?’
Tribute’s fingers were a furtive movement at the throat of his homunculus. ‘I have come as the voice of the Twelve.’
‘Does my Lord Nephron know of this?’
‘It is unlikely, Carnelian… of the Masks.’
Carnelian tensed. ‘He has told you then.’
‘The Law demands you be slain at his Apotheosis.’
Carnelian heard the finality of those words reverberate long after silence had returned. ‘And yet the Lord Nephron has seen fit to defy the Law.’
In the further silence that fell after the homunculus finished echoing his words, Carnelian’s heart misgave. He listened out for any evidence of slaughter going on beyond the silken walls of the pavilion. Perhaps Osidian had betrayed him. Perhaps this Grand Sapient had come with Ichorians to take Carnelian captive.
‘He did so even when we told him his transformation into the Gods could not be complete without your blood.’
The homunculus put on those last words an edge that he might, inadvertently, have picked up from some change in pressure in his master’s fingers. Carnelian’s instinct told him that, whatever they might claim, what the Wise sought most of all was his death. He recalled the trap they had set for him that they had baited with his father. With a shudder he remembered their inquisition. The pieces of the mosaic fell into place. ‘It was I whom you tried to assassinate.’
‘We were desperate.’
Carnelian became aware how he was naked, exposed to this cold apparition. ‘Have you come to kill me?’
‘That route is now closed to us, child. Even to you it must by now be clear that you are the agent of a god.’
Carnelian’s mind tried to deflect that, but his heart was ready to believe it. ‘The dreams.’
‘It is through dreams the Gods choose to guide us. Believing you the agent of a god, it would be foolish for us to attempt to slay you, especially in this holy place in which you have taken refuge.’
Carnelian almost protested that he had sought no refuge and yet he wondered if some part of him had.
‘To slay you might precipitate the very cataclysm we dread.’
Carnelian felt that dread soaking into his bones. ‘What, then, do you want from me?’
‘That you should submit yourself, willingly, to sacrifice.’
Stripped of any requisitive or necessitive modes, the words were all the more chilling. ‘Why should I do that?’
‘Because you are possessed of that quality that we have lost and have for so long striven to drive from the hearts of the Chosen: compassion.’
The homunculus must have communicated Carnelian’s shaking head to its master for he had it say: ‘If you do not, the world may die.’
‘Die?’ Carnelian said, feeling defenceless against the Grand Sapient’s bleak certainty.
‘Consider, child, how inconsequential, how fleeting a thing you appear to be and yet how great is the destruction you have already wrought. For too long we had no clear understanding from whence this disruption was emanating. In you we have found its source.’
Carnelian shook his head again, as if these accusations were clogging his mind. He struggled to understand. ‘My birth?’
‘When the Lord Nephron informed us of it, we were certain, without need of computation, that this was the missing factor we have sought so desperately. Subsequent calculations have confirmed it absolutely.
‘When the birth of Nephron and Molochite spanned the transition between the black months and the green, the astrological implications were clear enough, but still we had hope of restricting the depth of the cleaving. We aided the return of Suth with the expectation that the consequent election
would fulfil the omens of conflict. The blood rituals of the subsequent Apotheosis would have closed the fissure by reunifying the twins in a new God Emperor. We first became aware of a missing factor when Nephron disappeared. We searched frantically for him. When we detected his presence upon the Southern Plain, we devised careful counter actions. But, to our surprise, the perturbations, rather than diminishing, grew. We checked and rechecked our calculations and found no error. Exasperated, Legions decided to go himself to the locus of the disturbance to try to find the elusive missing factor. It was then we became aware of you. We began to wonder if it was possible that, somehow, your contribution had not been properly determined. Though we could hardly believe you important enough, we decided to eliminate you. Under examination, you revealed some suggestive aspects, but there were enough among us who did not believe these significant. We delivered you to Molochite. In spite of the imprecise analysis of trends, we were certain we had done enough to ensure Nephron’s forces would be destroyed. His defeat would have truncated the amplitude of the disturbance. The system would settle down into a steady state that patient manipulation would, in some few centuries, restore to a stable equilibrium. His victory, we had not even considered. The probabilities of that were infinitesimal…’
Freed for a moment from the exposition, Carnelian regarded the Grand Sapient. Even through the conduit of the homunculus, Carnelian could clearly sense how deep had been the incomprehension of the Wise. He remembered the ancients they had lost in the Iron House. He had glimpsed the trauma of their loss.
Tribute’s fingers came back to life around the neck of the homunculus. ‘When you survived, we realized that, in spite of what our calculations insisted, you must be, somehow, the key disturbing factor. It was at that juncture we panicked and made the clumsy attempt on your life.’
Carnelian sensed how much this Grand Sapient recoiled from that action, but only because it was such an inelegant, unconsidered impulse.
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