He became aware that an Ichorian was kneeling before him. ‘Does the Celestial wish to relieve himself?’
‘No, rise.’
The man obeyed him.
‘Does this happen every year?’
The Ichorian looked confused. ‘Celestial…?’
‘This unmasking?’
‘Only at an Apotheosis, Celestial.’
Carnelian frowned behind his mask. Behind this the cunning of the Wise. How better to ensure the loyalty of servants, than by linking their sight and limbs directly to the continued life of the God Emperor whom they served.
‘Come, unmask me and remove this confounded weight from my head.’
The man grimaced, arresting a shake in his head. ‘There are Seraphim present, Celestial, to whom it is forbidden to look upon your face.’
Carnelian saw how, beyond the promontory of the Great, stretched a crowd of smaller Masters, the ‘barefoot’. Lesser Chosen, most of whom were not entitled to wear court ranga and who, newly enfranchised, had been invited for the first time to a coronation masque. A sign of the new political balance, that, if the reaction of the Great was anything to go by, the new God Emperor was going to have a struggle making them accept. If the new order was to have any chance, the barriers between the Lesser Chosen and the Great must be cast down. It might be that he would have to spend much of the rest of his life behind a mask, but he did not want to have to wear it in the presence of the Lesser Chosen, many of whom would soon be serving him in the outer world.
‘Nevertheless, unmask me.’
Looking scared, the Ichorian did as he was told.
Carnelian’s act of defiance against the Law did not go unnoticed among the Great. It drew them to him as wasps to honey. He was finding their attention unbearable when trumpets and shawms began braying. He sighed with relief at the temporary respite. More Ichorians appeared, swinging censers high on poles. The serpents of smoke they loosed soon dissipated into acrid fog. Breathing it, Carnelian could feel it catching at his throat and knew it to be drugged. Even as he felt his thoughts fraying, there came a rustling like autumn leaves stirred to fury by a gust. A dense cloud of butterflies had taken flight. A symbol of rebirth, of sacred transformation. At their core, the God Emperor, upon a long dais, drifting among the Grand Sapients with their cloven hands and staves, their skull faces. The Twins on Earth: a glittering, gorgeous apparition, like an idol carried in procession.
A surge among the Great carried Carnelian into a chamber of sardonyx dadoed with brown mottled turtle shell. Amber globes cast down a late evening light. More Ichorians circulated, carrying delicacies on plates of creamy jade. Gold beakers frothing over with bitter chocolate. Hollowed jewels holding exquisite liqueurs. Meats cooked and perfumed with flowers. Fruits like cut gems. Beasts, some entire, some still marginally alive, others dissected to form enticing symmetries with their organs, bones and plumage.
Carnelian found himself increasingly besieged by the Great. As he gazed on their porcelain faces, he struggled to order his thoughts. Perhaps it was the effects of the narcotic smoke that were dulling the brilliance of their conversation. He tried to listen, but was distracted by the flash of their eyes, the flutter of their hands. He feared the drug the ammonite had given him was failing; that at any moment his body, drained of so much blood, would collapse. He rallied sufficiently to begin deflecting their elegant flattery, their delicate enquiries about what the intentions of the new God Emperor might be. He could not tell them how the new political arrangements were to be enshrined in law. He could give them no insight into how much the God Emperor expected them to acquiesce in the erosion of their ancient privileges. He grew angry with them when they expressed anxiety about how the enfranchisement of the Lesser Chosen might affect the division of the flesh tithe.
He found himself in a chamber of beaten gold. Here the Masters were accompanied by vague reflections that made him feel he was watching murky, barely remembered scenes from his childhood. Pale summer light from citrine lamps shone down upon Masters dancing duelling pavanes with double-headed halberds. In time to stately music their ritual combat evolved with ponderous grace. Several young Lords invited Carnelian to demonstrate his puissance with them in a measure, but he declined, dizzied even by just watching the elegant gyrations.
He wandered into a more sombre chamber, violently striped with malachite and floored with speckled jade. Emerald columns filtered light like a forest canopy. In pits sunk into the floor frantic creatures, maws brimming with needle teeth, claws sheathed in bronze and obsidian, tore at each other, their screeching seeming to counterpoint the fierce symphony of horns and cymbals. Around these pits, Masters in a fury brought on by consuming juices harvested from glands being offered by Ichorian slaves demonstrated their wealth by gambling with each other on the bouts, using double-eyed iron coins.
He escaped to a dismal chamber in which sapphire rays lit contortionists undulating like denizens of the deep, coupling improbably while, around the walls, men sat with silver bowls upon their laps, running pestles round and round within their rims, producing pulsing, throbbing notes that sliced through Carnelian’s head.
Here Masters were drinking potions Carnelian shunned for he did not wish to join their preying upon the sylphs who leaned here and there – languorous, half-asleep, it seemed – their skins of many shades, some patterned, tattooed, some with glimmering jewel eyes, others with their own half-lidded brown animal eyes. Sinuous, graceful creatures of different sexes, of none, giving themselves libidinously to the caresses of the Masters, sometimes until they bled.
He fled into an infernal chamber of midnight lapis lazuli. Mirrors of obsidian hung everywhere in which he glimpsed even more terrible shadow worlds. A haunting interplay of inhuman voices wove the misty air. Smoke curling in the voids was taking on the shapes of men, of monsters, of bizarre landscapes. He tried to shake his head free of these apparitions and managed to focus enough to see, in the shadows, figures completely sheathed in black, who were working the smoke rising everywhere in wavering streams. Stirring it, shaping it with strigils, blowing through tubes, sucking, as they conjured up their evanescent puppetry.
Carnelian could not long stop his mind from splintering and soon was lost in the chimeric visions. At first he was seduced by the shadows of what had been, then unease flared to terror as he saw what was to come. In full flight, he ruptured a slowly evolving nightmare.
In an amethystine chamber he found the hope of what seemed a silver dawn. Walls and floors writhed with nacreous loops and spirals. He started as the shadows coalesced into the shapes of men. Darkly clothed were they, with faces like a winter sky. They put his mask upon his face and doors opened for him and he staggered out onto a hillside aflame. A warm hand took his. Its clench anchored him. A familiar voice made him burst into tears. When the hand tugged, he followed like a child.
When Carnelian awoke, he felt his head was glass shattering. In the dim light he recognized a face. ‘Fern,’ he cried, drawing him into a desperate embrace.
Fern pulled free. Carnelian could see his mouth was moving, heard his voice, but could grasp no words. It was the sharp fear in Fern’s face that brought his voice into focus. ‘Can you walk?’
Carnelian stared at him.
‘The Marula have come for you.’
OVERRUN
Ants fighting on the sand
Even as the tide comes in.
(Pre-Quyan fragment)
‘ What?’ Carnelian was confused.
Fern’s eyes were sharp with anxiety. ‘Morunasa’s trying to fight his way through to you.’
‘To me?’
‘Your people are even now fighting to hold him back. The Quenthas know a back way-’
‘I don’t understand.’ Carnelian could not focus his mind. He felt so very weary.
A glistening, ebony face filled his vision: Sthax. ‘Oracle come get you.’
A two-headed shape loomed up: the sybling sisters. ‘This Maruli came to warn us.’
The pieces came together in Carnelian’s mind. ‘He has betrayed me.’
They were staring at him, waiting.
‘I have to give myself up to him. To avoid bloodshed.’
Fern threw his head back, grimacing. ‘You know how much that man hates you.’
‘There may still be time to get you to safety, Celestial,’ said Right-Quentha, pointing towards a dark corner of the chamber.
‘Into the depths of the Labyrinth where none will find you,’ her sister added.
Carnelian regarded the sisters. ‘You do realize it is the God Emperor Themselves you are intending to defy?’
Both faces set; indomitable. ‘It is you we serve now, Celestial.’
That touched Carnelian, but he shook his head. ‘How long could we hope to evade Their power? And to what end?’
A scuffing of footfalls in the outer chamber jerked their eyes towards the door. Fern and the sisters turned their gaze upon Carnelian in desperation. He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. ‘I need time to think.’
Fern gave a resigned nod. Sthax grimaced, his yellow eye following the Quenthas to the door. Carnelian turned, agonized, to the Maruli. ‘The Oracle said nothing about who sent him?’
Sthax shook his head violently. Carnelian tried to pull apart the threads of the power play, but there was no way he could reweave them into anything that made sense. He groaned, desperate for clarity. Then he remembered walking hand in hand with Osidian along the Path of Blood and felt suddenly calm.
‘He’s not behind this,’ he announced.
At that moment the Quenthas moved aside and Tain pushed into the chamber, eyes wild, blood spattered across his face. ‘Carnie, they’ll soon have the outer door down.’
‘Get everyone in here,’ Carnelian said. Tain stared, jerked a nod, then disappeared.
Carnelian rose from his bed, gripping Fern’s arm when it reached out to steady him. He found the strength to stand on his own and indicated the bronze doors of the chamber. ‘How long will those hold?’
Right-Quentha glanced at them. ‘Long enough, Celestial.’
Carnelian had them bring him his green robe, his military cloak. He was already dressed when men crashed into the chamber, skittering on the polished paving, their chameleoned faces glazed with sweat and blood. Seeing him, they began to fall on their knees. Carnelian surged forward and plucked one up. ‘Get up, you fools.’
Tain came in last of all.
‘Anyone left behind?’ Carnelian demanded. When his brother shook his head, Carnelian commanded they engage the door locks. Turning away, he saw a menacing shape looming against the wall: the glimmering carcass of his court robe. Glinting on the floor before it, cushioned in his neatly folded undergarments, a gold face, his mask.
Right-Quentha, catching the focus of his gaze, made her sister follow her as she went to scoop it up.
‘No, leave it,’ Carnelian said. The sisters frowned as they looked at him.
A thunderous clatter reverberated from beyond the locked gate. The patter of many feet. Something massive struck the bronze doors making them boom, but the locks held. Carnelian grinned grimly at the sisters, his blood up. ‘Get us out of here.’
He did not breathe easily until they had finished the crossing of the Encampment of the Seraphim. Urging his people past him, he looked back. The column sarcophagi stood in sombre rows wreathed in a mist of smoke. The fires were now banked throughout the camp that lay sleeping at the feet of those hollow gods. He and his people had found a way through the camp in the golden twilight cast by the Shimmering Stair. Heads had risen as guardsmen had watched them pass, but it was not their place to challenge a party led by sybling guides.
Fern approached, bringing up the rear of the line.
‘Is that all of them?’ Carnelian asked, almost in a whisper. When Fern nodded, he put his arm round his shoulders and they set off after their people, into the forest of stone trees.
Openings in the high vaults let in the first grey light of dawn. They followed the sisters down winding stairs beneath the gaze of frowning colossi. For a while they moved along ravines flanked by their legs. Here, Carnelian managed well enough, only a few times having to lean on Fern, but when they began to climb countless steps, he found his legs leaden and they had to stop often to let him rest.
Fern gazed with knitted brows at Carnelian, who was wheezing, pain sawing his head in two. ‘What did they do to you?’
‘They bled me,’ Carnelian said and his heart warmed when he saw anger burning in Fern’s eyes.
As they climbed higher, he became aware the columns, though still massive, were more slender. Pausing to regain his breath, he gazed up into the shadows and saw that the stone stems swelled into pods that clung to the underside of the roof like the eggs of some monstrous moth.
At last they came up onto a road whose paving was raised here and there as if something had been burrowing beneath it. The vaults seemed a low stormy sky. Light slanting down revealed that the columns had the form of gigantic poppyheads upon whose spiked crowns the ceiling sat. Small as ants they moved off through this deathly, penumbral meadow. Here and there Carnelian could see the stems were graven with faces worn down to sketches of eyes and mouths. Glyphs that tattooed the stone were soft-edged, unreadable. Walking beside the Quenthas, he eyed these effigies, finding them familiar in a way he could not catch hold of. ‘How do you know of this place?’ he whispered.
‘We used to come here as children, Celestial,’ the sisters replied. Right-Quentha swept a hand round. ‘This place was our playground.’
Such a name seemed to Carnelian incongruous for such a sombre place. ‘The Labyrinth?’
‘It is where we were born, Celestial,’ said Left-Quentha.
‘Our world,’ her sister added.
They came into a green clearing where the vault between four poppyheads had collapsed. There a single tree reached up to the morning. From every crack fresh ferns sprang, uncurling their fronds all the way up the glyphed shafts of the columns. One of these had a verdant beard that showed where water trickled down to fill a pool nestling in some masonry tumbled at its feet. After the sterile wilderness of the Labyrinth, Carnelian was struck by unlooked-for joy at this haven of life. Beside him Right-Quentha smiled, half turning to her sister. ‘It’s still here.’ She turned to him. ‘This was our most secret place, Celestial.’
They formed a ring around the clearing. Carnelian had invited everyone, including the Suth guardsmen, who crouched, heads bowed. When one of them dared to glance up, Carnelian gave him a smile of encouragement, causing the man to blush and duck his head. He did not blame the man for being nervous in his presence and before his strange collection of friends, but the guardsmen had risked everything for him and he felt they had a right to be there.
‘I’ve asked you all to sit with me because the decisions we’re going to make will affect us all.’
There were nods around the ring; Tain and Fern fixed him with fierce attention. Carnelian began by asking Sthax what he knew about Morunasa’s attack.
The man shrugged. ‘I say.’
Tain shot the Maruli an angry glance, before returning his gaze to Carnelian. ‘How can we trust him?’
‘Didn’t he just save us, Tain?’
Tain frowned. ‘It could be part of their trap.’
Carnelian shook his head and, deliberately, looked Sthax in the eye. ‘I trust him.’
Fern seemed to share Tain’s anger. ‘What need is there to ask what’s behind it? We all know the Marula are the Master’s creatures.’
Carnelian re-examined his feelings, then shook his head again. ‘In my bones I’m now sure the Master’s not behind this.’ He could see Fern was still not convinced. He turned back to Sthax. ‘How much do you wish to go home?’
Sthax ducked a bow. ‘You know.’ There was both sadness and hope in his eyes.
‘Why have you come over to me? What help could this possibly be to your people?’
; Sthax’s glistening forehead creased. His hands lifted as if trying to grab hold of the words. ‘You know I follow Oracle. We follows Oracle. Oracle promise we peoples saves, Marula saves.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘We follows brings deaths. We peoples, Marula, in homes, suffers and we here’ – he touched the silver collar forged around his neck – ‘what we?’
Carnelian sensed how Fern, regarding the Maruli, was softening. Perhaps he was remembering he too wore a collar.
Carnelian turned his attention back to Sthax. ‘The Oracle wears a collar identical to yours, Sthax. Is he a stupid man?’ None around the circle believed that. ‘Is he a coward?’ Carnelian saw Fern’s frown deepen and gaze fall. ‘His promise to you, Sthax, was built on the promise the Master gave him. The Master told me himself he has no intention to honour that promise.’
Sthax’s eyes narrowed further. ‘You believe Oracle against Master?’
Carnelian nodded. ‘Morunasa has taken the fate of your people into his own hands.’
Sthax looked incredulous. ‘What good Oracle do?’ He glanced round at the stone forest and shuddered. ‘How Oracle control Masters?’
‘There’s another, greater power he might believe will give him the strength to conquer the Masters.’
Sthax’s eyes widened with horror. ‘Darkness under trees.’
Just as disturbed, Carnelian gazed into the gloom. ‘This place is very like the Isle of Flies.’
Fern looked sick. Right-Quentha was registering the look on their faces. Her unease spread to her sister’s face. ‘We are not sure to what you refer, Celestial, but let us raise the Ichorians against this demon.’
‘Would your brethren directly defy a command from the God Emperor?’
The sisters looked appalled. ‘Impossible.’
‘Well, the Ichorians have grown accustomed to seeing Marula around the Lord Nephron. If now, as a fully consecrated God Emperor, They choose to seclude Themselves behind these same Marula, who among the Ichorians would dare challenge this?’
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