THE FLOOD
Birth is preceded by a flood.
(a Plainsman proverb)
The dirty, pale pyramids the sartlar were dragging, with their baroque hollows, were dragon heads stripped of flesh. Gouged-out eyes had left caves a child could curl up in. These skulls pebbled the slurry of sartlar creeping along the Canyon floor. Enough skulls to account for all the dragons of all the legions. Carnelian felt a pang at the loss of those colossal creatures, which, in spite of the terror they had brought, were just more victims of the Masters’ lust for dominion. The feeling passed and he became eerily calm. The power of the Masters was broken and, somehow, he had known this was going to happen. The sartlar had wanted the legions summoned. Starving, unable to reach food, they had had the greatest store of living flesh in the Commonwealth come to them. With chilly certainty, he knew the pale standards the sartlar bore must be Masters, on frames, crucified. The commanders who had sat aloft, imperious, upon their ivory thrones, were now spreadeagled naked, alive or dead. He wondered whether the sartlar were carrying them in the hope the Masters would not hurl fire down upon them. More likely it was a terrible sign of their defiance.
Consternation was spreading like flames across the summits of the Blood Gate towers. Carnelian turned from the sartlar victory procession to the Masters round him. Hands, frozen in gestures of disbelief and outrage, had lost their capacity for shaping words. Masks turning from the spectacle below gazed upon each other, as if hoping to deny the truth, or to return things to their proper compass: a time already receding when it had been the right of the Chosen to determine all things. Elegant voices strained like strings on an instrument overstretched. A strangely remote observer, Carnelian wondered if it was the silent ones in the midst of the cacophony that were causing his hackles to rise; for among the gathered Chosen were some who seemed turned to stone. No, it was something else that was scaring him. He identified it. The smell of fear; that familiar, sweaty odour that emanated as an aura from slaves in the presence of Masters. Except, this time, the smell was almost masked by attar of lilies. It was the Masters who were afraid. That realization shocked him awake. Always, they were dangerous, but Masters cornered, terrified – he would rather confront raveners.
He became aware of a homunculus staring at him; they all were. He felt a surge of hope: the Wise would know what to do. Then he saw how their fingers hung around the throats of their homunculi like the discarded moult of their living hands. Legions’ fingers had let go entirely and were kneading each other in a slow, rolling motion. Carnelian shook his head to free himself of any hold the pleading eyes of the homunculi had on him. He backed away, turned and made for one of the openings that gave access to the strata below. In his mind there was but a single, beacon thought: he must find Fern.
On the balcony, Fern’s body was stopping light from entering their cell. He turned as Carnelian approached. ‘It’s the end.’
Carnelian squeezed through to stand beside him. As they gazed down at the sartlar, he became aware of a gurgling sound rising from the blackness of the Cloaca. He thought he could see faint flecks of reflected light down there where that dark river ran, almost beyond the gaze of the living, as if it were in the Underworld. Snatches of his dreams seeping into his mind caused an idea to coalesce.
‘There is nothing that can be done,’ said Fern.
Carnelian raised his attention from the depths. It was hard to focus on something as close, as alive as Fern’s face. Fern clearly was hoping to be contradicted. The idea was a seed of hope. ‘We need to get to my father’s house.’
‘To die?’
Carnelian regarded Fern and, again, hope stirred within him, but it was yet too small a thing to admit into the light. ‘To be with our loved ones, but we must move fast.’ He threw his head up to indicate the tower roof. ‘Soon the Masters will be flooding back into the Mountain.’
Fern’s grim nod made Carnelian sure they both understood the danger. ‘Let’s go then. If we’re going to die, I’d rather do it with other Plainsmen.’
Fern slipped back into the shadowy cell. Carnelian glanced down into the Cloaca, then followed him.
Sthax and some Marula were outside the door. Carnelian had been so focused on Fern that he had passed through them almost without seeing them. He realized how much he might have need of them. Besides, he had not forgotten the promise he had made to Sthax. If he commanded them to come with him, they might obey, though he could not imagine they would be eager to return deeper into the Mountain. But he would give no command: in what was coming they must have the freedom to determine their own fate. So he began explaining to Sthax what he knew. Describing the disaster made it rise more terrible before him.
Carnelian became aware of the lack of surprise in Sthax’s face. ‘You already knew this?’
The Maruli nodded heavily, his bright eyes never leaving Carnelian’s face. Carnelian felt a thrill of cold fear. If Sthax knew, the Ichorians must know too. How far had the news spread its cancer through the fortress? He focused on Sthax. ‘What will you do?’
‘What you want we dos?’
Carnelian felt he was being tested. He explained that he and Fern were going to his coomb. ‘Will you come with us?’
‘You plan?’
Carnelian could no more answer him than he had been able to answer Fern. What he had was less than a plan, merely a course of action suggested to him by a dream. He was reluctant to even voice it yet. ‘We’re all trapped.’
Sthax nodded again, but distractedly, gazing intensely at Carnelian, who felt the man was trying to penetrate to what was in his heart. Sthax nodded, seeming satisfied. He consulted the other warriors, then turned back. ‘We comes you.’
Carnelian was touched by Sthax’s trust and reached out to grip his shoulder. Then he passed by him, through the rest of the Marula, making for the first flight of steps.
Approaching the dark cliff of the eastern gate, Carnelian came to a halt when an Ichorian challenged him. He pulled open his cowl so that they could see his face.
‘Celestial,’ they whispered as they knelt.
Carnelian regarded the obeisance with a kind of regret, sensing it had already become a courtesy from a lost world. He raised them with his hand. ‘Have other Seraphim been here before me?’
As they shook their heads, Carnelian looked at them. He could sense nothing in their demeanour that would suggest the news had reached them. As, at his bidding, they opened a door in the gate, he considered giving them a command to let none pass: neither Chosen, nor of the Wise. He decided against it. These poor bastards would soon have enough to contend with. Why make them, unnecessarily, objects of wrath? He would have liked to have taken them with him, but it was already going to be nigh impossible to save the few he hoped to save. As he focused on who those were, he perceived his new identity to be no more than a disguise. His heart beat faster: he was going home, to see his father and Ebeny who were, in every way that counted, his parents.
They passed through the door into the vastness of the Canyon throat beyond, which was in shadow halfway to the Black Gate. The hidden valley of Osrakum seemed a bright, unattainable vision outwith the cares of the world.
As they walked away from the door, Carnelian focused on the solid reality of the camp that clothed the wedge of the Blood Gate rock as far as the two bridges. Though to call it a camp was to flatter it. Clumps of men huddling together among the pathetic shelters they had managed to improvise with their spears and cloaks. Their Masters had left them there without even a few sticks to make a fire. Anger flared in him against the mighty who had so thoughtlessly abandoned their own. He quenched his compassion: he could no more save these men than he could the Ichorians. They watched him and the Marula pass, with eyes that peered out between the bars and strokes of the tattoos that showed who owned them. Their world was ending just as much as was their Masters’. His blood ran cold when he thought what cruelties their Masters might inflict on them to assuage their own fear. Then he saw how n
umerous they were, that they had swords and fanblades, helmets and armour, and a different dread swelled in him. What kept these men subservient to their Masters’ whims, other than terror of their power? He made an effort to keep his pace steady, his posture erect, imperious. All the time his mind raced: what now the power of the Masters was broken?
He was relieved to reach the left bridge without incident. Fear of what might happen in his coomb once the news reached there lent his pace urgency. They crossed, then hurried on. He could not help casting glances at the wall of the Canyon rising on his left. The stone red as if in token of some great slaughter. He glanced up to the barracks galleries. After that he could not rid himself of the feeling that the dead were gazing down from the countless windows, reproachfully. Almost he heard their voices: what has all this blood been shed for? He focused on the racks that now held erect his two legions’ trumpet pipes that had screamed out so much fiery death. Behind them the dragon towers, smoke-blackened, battle-stained. Beneath and further back, the caves where Earth-is-Strong and Heart-of-Thunder lay wounded with the other dragons, all now the remnants of another vanishing race.
All the way he was aware of the gurgle of the Cloaca rising up from the abyss along whose rim they hurried. The Black Gate raised its wall before them. Beyond, the Hidden Land, soon to become a land of the dead.
Suddenly, their shadows leapt away in front of them as a great, flickering light sprang alive at their backs. As they turned, the air was strained, then shredded by the shrilling screams of the Blood Gate’s flame-pipes. Coruscating energies reflected up the cliffs that flanked the towers. On the killing field was a boiling incandescence they had to squint at to endure. Carnelian turned away, printing blue images of that holocaust upon the blackness in front of him. Bitterness in his heart, in his mouth. How typical of the Masters that they should seek to salve their fear with senseless slaughter.
Judging it unlikely the immense dragon gates would open for him, Carnelian led Fern and the Marula towards the central portion of the black wall. There, a single door stood in the cliff of masonry: a door of oiled, precious iron. They came to a halt before it. He was reluctant to go this way: he remembered his previous passage; that first time he had entered Osrakum with his father. He was going to have problems with the ammonites that kept this purgatory. As he waited for the gate to open, the harsh ululating of the flame-pipes came echoing down the Canyon. Surely their approach had been noted? He caught Fern’s eye and, glancing round, Sthax’s and those of the leading files of the Marula. All bright, intense. Carnelian asked Sthax for his halberd. Its pole was crowned by an elaborate nest of iron blades and hooks. Striking iron on iron caused the door to give off a sonorous clang. Moments later it parted into two leaves that swung silently into the blackness within. Moist air swept out over them, intoxicating with myrrh. Carnelian shared the reluctance of his people to enter. The Marula recoiled as ghostly faces coalesced in the gloom. Carnelian held his ground, knowing them to be nothing more than ammonite masks.
‘You must be cleansed, Celestial,’ they sighed.
Uneasily, Carnelian eyed the dark behind the silver faces. Other odours wafting towards him made him recall the drugged smoke with which Legions had captured him in Makar. Even if it was nothing more than the standard narcotics employed during purification, he did not want his mind dulled. He wanted to see things as they were; to be entirely himself. Half turning away, he extended his arm to take in the Marula. ‘I wish to pass through with these.’
‘Impossible, Celestial. They must go through the quarantine. Would you bring death into the Land of the Everliving?’
Carnelian almost laughed, mirthlessly, and wondered if they could really be so ignorant of the irony. He peered past the disembodied faces, trying to determine how far there was to go and if he could find his way to the other side without their guidance. ‘You know I am brother to the new God Emperor and that these men are his new Ichorians.’
‘The Law does not bow even to Them.’
Carnelian lowered the halberd. ‘But it will bow to me.’ He advanced and the faces melted away into the darkness. He was glad to hear the shuffle of the Marula following him. Voices round him rose in a keening that had soon drowned out the Blood Gate flame-pipes. Even as he became aware of subtle revolvings in the air above him, he realized his focus was slipping. Gaps in the uncoiling smoke revealed the position of figures surrounding them. As he moved forward, apparitions slid towards him. He traced circles before him in the smoke with the halberd head to clear a path for them. It struck something with a sharp clap, even as one of the apparitions disappeared in a tinkle of shards. A mirror of glass as perfect as water. He was aware of the ammonites drawing back. He swung the halberd into another mirror and another and the ammonites faded, whispering, away.
His shadow died as he moved away from the light that was streaming through the open door behind them. He glanced round to make sure Fern and the others were still following him. By the time they reached an arch standing all alone, his eyes had adjusted to the gloom. He remembered seeing it before and put his hand out to touch it as he had then. Faces as vague under his fingers as they were to his eyes. The faces of corpses submerged in water. His hand recoiled. He could smell the blood rust on his fingertips and wiped them down his cloak. The ghost of an inscription ran around the iron curve. Unreadable beyond a vague whispering in his mind. He stood back. It was not an arch, but a ring partially embedded in the ground. If it were a glyph it would read as ‘death’. He frowned. In Vulgate, his people referred to this fortress as Death’s Gate. Reluctant to walk through it, he moved round it, gesturing to Fern, Sthax and the others to do the same.
They came at last to a barrier Carnelian knew must be the door that gave entry into Osrakum. As he placed his hand upon its cold surface, the whole world gave a shudder as if it had been struck by some immense hammer. Again, the sound shook the air and ground. A massive bell was tolling, that was soon joined by more, until it seemed to Carnelian the world must convulse itself to pieces. Clamping his hands over his ears, he sought some explanation why the ammonites were ringing the Black Gate bells in this cacophonous manner. Were they sending an alarum to warn of the imminent breach of Osrakum’s sanctity? Or perhaps the warning was for their masters, the Wise. He shuddered as the feeling rose in him that the bells were announcing the ending of the world. Panic welled up in him, he felt trapped, buried alive. His hands fell from his ears and began feverishly scrabbling across the wall in front of him. Shapes stubbed his fingers, grazed his skin, but he kept on pulling, pushing, twisting, seeking anything that would free them from this tomb. His hand alighted on a wheel that turned under pressure. He forced it round and was rewarded by the quivering of some mechanism stirring into life. Several percussive shudders made him imagine counterweights rising, falling. A hairline crack divided the blackness to his left. It widened blindingly.
When his sight returned, he gasped. He heard other gasps around him. He forgot the bells. The Valley of the Gate fell away from them in a shadow that spilled out across the Skymere and the causeway to lap at the edge of a vision. Emerald shimmer and dance. An achingly beautiful dream – the Yden. For a moment Carnelian was lost again in that garden where he and Osidian had played as innocently as children. It seemed his heart had stopped at the beginning of the world. He dared not breathe out lest that should be enough to eddy that vision like smoke. His lungs forced the air out. The vision remained, but seemed changed. His gaze took in the whole vast lotus of Osrakum. Exquisite bloom that fed upon the life of millions. A flower whose roots had turned so many into corpses that soon it too must wilt and die.
The vision lost its hold on him. Fern at his side was real and solid. Carnelian reached out and felt the living warmth in him. His touch released Fern from enchantment.
Carnelian smiled and spoke, in a low voice. ‘There’s still much to do before the darkness comes.’
He led them onto the road that ran along the Cloaca rim. As they marched on, the c
lamour of the bells slowly dulled enough for them to hear the water rushing below. He stopped once to look over, but could see nothing other than a blackness that made it seem bottomless. Still, the sediment of his dreams stirred in him.
The roaring had been growing louder for some time when, on their right, the ground fell away into the immense spillway, upon which everything depended. He scrutinized its further edge where the dyke rose that held back the waters of the Skymere. The dyke was cut with many slots, from each of which tumbled a waterfall. In those slots were the sluices that were controlling the overflow of the lake into the swirling, threshing surface of the spillway. What Carnelian was interested in was the difference in height between that surface and that of the lake. He heaved a sigh of relief as he judged that at least part of his plan was possible.
Ammonites came to greet Carnelian as he walked onto the dyke. Most fell to their knees, but a few were brave enough to approach him, ducking bows. One spoke up, telling him, apologetically, that he must have come the wrong way; indicating with vague gestures where, behind him, flights of steps led down to the lake and the bone boats, but not daring the impertinence to tell him this, that all the Seraphim knew. ‘This way, Seraph, lie only the sluices.’
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