The more intimately one knows a creature, the more perfectly one can design a snare to trap it.
The enemy dragons fled into the north – west. Carnelian watched Osidian’s approaching in a ragged line, signals blinking between them, their chimneys beginning to smoke. He was trying to identify which one was Heart-of-Thunder when his Lefthand spoke.
‘Master, our lookout claims the third tower to the north has sent an acknowledgement signal.’
For a moment Carnelian was distracted by the strange quality of the man’s voice. He realized every sound was coming to him as if he had his fingers in his ears. He focused on what the man had said. ‘Which tower?’ he asked, his voice sounding muffled so that it did not seem his own.
The legionary explained he had been referring to the tower to the north of the one whose gate they had broken down. Carnelian realized the implication. Only a signal it was sending south would have been visible to the lookout. Thus it was an acknowledgement to the tower to its south. The watch-tower he had failed to make secure had finally sent a message northwards. Already it was speeding towards Osrakum faster than an aquar could run and so beyond all catching. Before the end of that day the Wise would know everything that had happened.
One of Osidian’s dragons was heading straight for Earth-is-Strong. He was certain it was Heart-of-Thunder. He was composing a confession of his failure for transmission when Osidian’s tower began to wink. Carnelian stared at his Lefthand, impatient for the mirrorman above to relay his interpretation of the message. At last his Lefthand spoke. ‘From Heart-of-Thunder, Master. The Legate would like you to meet him for a conference on the ground.’
Carnelian had Earth-is-Strong brought to a halt. For some moments he watched Heart-of-Thunder easing towards them like a baran. Then, with a glance past the burning dragon to assure himself the enemy was still moving away, Carnelian bade his Righthand dowse the flame-pipes, then he rose and moved towards the ladder.
A dark figure appeared beneath the arch of Heart-of-Thunder’s belly accompanied by two men who seemed, by comparison, to be children. Carnelian recognized Osidian’s gait. ‘Are we safe from those huimur, my Lord?’
Osidian came closer before he answered. ‘I believe our friend the Great Lord is in full retreat.’
Carnelian knew to whom he referred and realized Osidian did not want to use his name. Their marumaga officers might not understand Quya, but the name Aurum was the same in both their languages.
‘Are you sure it is he?’
Osidian gestured for his officers to wait for him, then indicated the smouldering mound of the fallen dragon to Carnelian and, together, they walked towards it. ‘Who else could it be?’ he said, not turning his head.
Carnelian had no alternative to offer, but he found this flight untypical of the Lord he knew. ‘Why does he retreat?’
Osidian swirled his hand. ‘Possibly he seeks to regroup. Your attack must have come as a nasty surprise to him.’
Carnelian was unconvinced. ‘Still, he had your whole line at the mercy of his pipes.’
Osidian half turned to him, then away. ‘A reaction to the shock of the explosion, perhaps…’
Carnelian eyed the dragon corpse. The smell of its charring flesh was drifting on the air. ‘Perhaps…’ Doubt nagged him.
‘You failed to take your tower.’
‘I saw Aurum bearing down on you. Would you rather I had let him torch you?’
Osidian turned, lifting his hands in a gesture of appeasement. ‘I am not accusing you, Carnelian. Even with your intervention, I had only just managed to turn my huimur. Less than half had managed to light their pipes. Even those were not ready to fire.’ He paused and his head sank a little. ‘Had you not slowed him with your attack, I would have been overwhelmed…’
Carnelian sensed how hard it had been for Osidian to admit his debt to him. It was as close as Osidian would come to saying thank you. The nagging doubt emerged into Carnelian’s mind as a clear realization. ‘He was slowing before he knew I was there.’
Osidian stopped in mid stride. ‘You cannot be sure he did not see you.’
‘His whole line stopped.’
Osidian began a protest, but then understood. ‘He sent no signals.’
‘Though he may have seen me approaching, do you believe it possible his whole line should have done so and at one and the same time?’
‘What other explanation do you have?’
‘It was prearranged.’
‘To what end?’
Carnelian squinted at the burning dragon. He was shaking his head. It came to him. ‘He wished to give you time to light your pipes. So that-’
‘So that I could repulse him! But why? Why set an ambush, then allow yourself to be defeated?’
Carnelian tried, but failed to work it out. This behaviour, though still uncharacteristic of Aurum, was now more believable. ‘The trap he has set for us must be more subtle.’
Both pondered this further as they came as close as they could bear to the dragon corpse. That burning hill seemed too vast to have ever been a living being. Rather it seemed an outgrowing of the earth itself, an abscess ripe to bursting. Carnelian was not sure whether it was this sight, the stench of cooking meat and blood, or unease that was making him queasy. ‘There is something else I do not understand.’
Osidian turned to him, his mask reflecting the gory mess. For a moment Carnelian was mesmerized by that strange and lurid face that once again seemed to have come from his dreams.
‘What?’ the apparition said.
The sound of Osidian’s voice jolted Carnelian. He marshalled his thoughts. ‘Before sending a message north the tower made several attempts to communicate south.’
‘You are certain it did not first send one to Osrakum?’
Carnelian could hear the unease in Osidian’s voice. ‘Quite certain.’
Both turned to look at where Makar was an encrustation on the edge of the land.
‘What could be there?’ muttered Osidian almost inaudibly.
‘Or who?’ said Carnelian.
Osidian dismissed the city with a gesture as if he was trying to wipe it from the earth. ‘Perhaps the tower was responding to some earlier command of Aurum’s.’ He indicated the nearest tower with a contemptuous hand. ‘The creatures who operate these are slavish to their instructions.’
Carnelian sensed Osidian’s conviction was hollow. A drumming in the ground alerted them to a rider approaching. An Oracle, by his robes. The man pulled the aquar up and quickly dismounted. By his movements it was recognizably Morunasa.
‘Why have you come?’ Osidian demanded. ‘I commanded you to hold the tower.’
‘I thought my Master would want to know that the tower further to the north-’ Morunasa glanced at Carnelian as if to accuse him. ‘It sent an alert to us, not once, but four times.’
‘We knew this,’ Osidian said in a cold voice. ‘I hope you have come to tell me what the message said.’
Morunasa frowned. ‘There were none in the tower who could tell me.’
Osidian angled his head in irritation.
‘When we arrived there we found all the silver masks already dead.’
‘Dead?’ Osidian sounded increasingly exasperated.
‘How did they die, Morunasa?’ Carnelian asked.
The Oracle turned on him his baleful eyes. ‘I don’t know, Master.’
‘Were their bodies marked?’
Morunasa glared at him, then, slowly, shook his head. Carnelian and Osidian turned to each other. Carnelian knew they were both thinking of the quaestor in Qunoth. For some reason, rather than be captured, it seemed probable the ammonites had taken their own lives with poison. Both turned the sequence of events over in their minds. At last Carnelian admitted he was at a loss. Osidian did not seem any more enlightened.
‘What now?’ Carnelian asked.
‘With him out there we dare not leave ourselves unprotected. I shall have to remain here with the legion.’
Carnelian noticed Osidian glancing towards the nearest tower. ‘I will help you find out what has been going on in the towers.’
Osidian shook his head. ‘I need you to secure the city.’ He must have sensed Carnelian’s reluctance because he added: ‘We need its fortress as a base.’
‘What force shall I take with me?’
‘Your own huimur and as many Marula as I can spare.’
Carnelian considered protesting that they did not know what awaited him in Makar, but realized they dare not further diminish Osidian’s strength in case Aurum should return.
‘Take Morunasa,’ Osidian said. He turned to the Oracle. ‘Obey Master Carnelian as you do me.’
The black man glared at him.
‘Do you understand?’ Osidian said, an edge in his voice.
Morunasa gave a reluctant nod. ‘As you command.’
Carnelian gazed in the direction of the city, then back at Osidian. ‘What shall I do once I have the fortress?’
‘Send me enough render to feed my huimur.’
‘Very well,’ Carnelian said. He began walking back towards Earth-is-Strong. He stopped and turned. ‘Be careful.’
Osidian gave a nod. Carnelian resumed his journey towards his dragon and could hear Morunasa’s footfalls following him.
An umber stain on the horizon, Makar lay at the convergence of many gullies as if a fist, punching down from the sky, had shattered the land around it as if it were glass. In Earth-is-Strong’s tower Carnelian felt that, vast as she was, even she was too small a thing to take on such a city. From his vantage point he was able to see the cobbles of the leftway slipping by and kept expecting to see a courier flash past to warn the city. Earlier he had stood looking back through the smoke his chimneys were trailing. He had quickly lost sight of Osidian and their legion. Only a haze indicated where the fallen dragon still smouldered. Of Aurum there was no sign. He was Osidian’s problem now. In his bones Carnelian had a feeling he would soon have problems of his own to deal with.
From where the road crossed the outer ditch of the city, flat roofs of beaten mud spread away on either side like scales. Those close enough for him to see were crowded with jars and earthenware pots planted with small trees and shrubs. Washing fluttering on lines seemed drab flags. Crude tables and chests sat upon burnished earth floors spread with rugs woven from rushes. Each roof was a small world, giving down into chambers where people lived. He tried to imagine what those lives were like. Simple, no doubt, but though he would not pretend to know anything about such people, a part of him envied them.
The empty road before him was headache bright. Dry, pale, peeling walls banked its gleaming river, pierced here and there by the tributaries of alleyways. Doors and windows were shuttered closed as if against a storm. He searched away from the road across the rooftops and there, at last, he saw some people. They were peering at him over wicker partitions, round urns and leather curtains. Seeing those few enabled him to spot more. Everywhere there were small dark heads. Shocked, he became aware a multitude was watching him pass. He felt an urge to wave, to show he meant them no harm. He could see himself doing that. He imagined them coming into the open and waving back. Foolishness. He was a Master concealed within a dragon tower. The naphtha smoke twisting its black banners into the breeze was a sign of the fiery holocaust at his command. Any glimpse of him could bring only terror. He gave a snort that caused his officers’ faces to turn up to him. Waiting for his commands they did not blink. What did he want? For all of these poor creatures to like him? For them to be warmed by his condescension?
They came to where the road forked around a watch-tower. One tine continued on through the city, the other passed through the open gate the watch-tower guarded. Carnelian knew they must have reached the Ringwall, the border of the Guarded Land. Staying on the main road they came into a narrow marketplace that ran off a great distance south-west. At its other end stood a second watch-tower guarding a huge closed gate. Something about its size and the way the worn stone sloped a little down to it made Carnelian believe this must be the head of the Pass. The same Pass Makar guarded and that they had tried to climb, only to be driven back by Aurum’s fire.
As he turned Earth-is-Strong into the market his spirits sank further. Stalls in rows, water troughs. Cobbles, though smeared and caked with filth trodden into mush, had cleaner patches where normally a multitude laid out their wares. His arrival had caused all to flee. Emptied of its throngs, its hawkers, the place was dead.
Halfway across the marketplace, a crumbly worn pair of stumpy towers pushed their way through the leftway wall. Between them ragged gates patched with bronze gave the impression something ancient lay behind them.
They left the marketplace by means of a stone span across a gully choked with filth and entered another, smaller square where a third watch-tower stood guard upon a military gate. As they approached this it began to open. Carnelian regarded it with suspicion, feeling he was being welcomed into a trap. Still, he had his flame-pipes and so he murmured a command to his Lefthand and Earth-is-Strong turned to enter.
As they moved into the fortress he was surprised. No stables or barracks for auxiliaries confronted him, but only squat buildings. To starboard the curving wall of a cothon. To port the ground fell into a ravine whose other side rose as a cliff. Steps and terraces scaled this to towers crenellating its edge. Bone-white that cliff, striated, rotten with age, perforated with windows. Alleys squeezed out through gaps from which staining spilled down into the ravine. It seemed a half-ruined anthill, but also an ancient city, gently sculpted, smiling, delicate. This was a living cousin to the dead ruins Carnelian had seen on his way to the election. A Quyan city, then. Southwards the low buildings of the fortress curved away, following the bend of the ravine. There at the very tip rose a tower. He squinted. It had the look of a watch-tower.
‘The gate, Master,’ said his Lefthand. The man was pointing to where there was an opening in the cothon wall.
‘It seems we are expected,’ Carnelian said, to cover the return of his anxiety that they were entering a trap. He was determined to face it head on. He gave the command and Earth-is-Strong approached the gateway. As they passed through it, he glanced at his Righthand to make sure the man was ready to relay a command to fire their pipes. They came into the immense circular space all hedged about with piers. Carnelian sent his Lefthand round the portholes to look for dragons.
‘Nothing but a few towers, Master. Spares, I think.’
Carnelian could see the tiny figures waiting for him in the open centre of the cothon. He leaned forward in his chair. They did not look threatening. He rose and peered through the bone screen. The cothon did indeed seem empty, innocuous. He returned to his chair to ponder, while Earth-is-Strong continued advancing on the welcoming committee, Marula pouring past on either side. At last he commanded his dragon to come to a halt. He glanced round one last time, then gave his Righthand the command to dowse the furnaces. He did not want any accidents.
Soon Carnelian was on the ground. Marula riders were swirling round to envelop the marumaga, who were wearing the cyphers of Aurum’s legion. Carnelian bade his officers accompany him and went to meet the legionaries. As he walked he surveyed the cothon. The piers were almost entirely empty. The flame-pipe racks held but two of the weapons. Once far enough away from Earth-is-Strong, he snuffled the air. It was hard to be certain through the nostril pads of his mask and so he asked his officers. They confirmed that the air seemed free of naphtha and the musk of dragons.
As he approached the legionaries they fell prostrate before him. He bade them rise even as he scrutinized their collars for their ranks. As he had hoped, one was the Quartermaster General. He began questioning him. Soon he had discovered that their Legate, the Master Aurum, had returned the previous day from the lands below, but he had passed through the city, marching north. He judged the man was hiding nothing from him. ‘And the quaestor of this city?’
‘He’s in the Legate’s tower, Master.’ The man half turned, his hand rising tentatively to point southwards.
Carnelian gazed in that direction, but could see nothing over the cothon wall. ‘The watch-tower at the edge of the city?’
‘Just so, Master,’ the man said, looking at the ground.
Carnelian was aware Morunasa had dismounted and was approaching. He focused on the Quartermaster. ‘My dragon is to be fed, as are these men, who are my auxiliaries.’ He indicated the Marula.
The legionary bent almost double. ‘As the Master commands.’
Carnelian was distracted by spotting Sthax among the Marula. Could he get close enough to talk to him? He was a little startled to find Morunasa nearly upon him. He refocused on the Quartermaster. ‘Also, you will gather render sufficient to feed a legion of dragons for three days and you will send this out of the city and north along the Great South Road.’
The man bent again. ‘If it please the Master, to whom shall we deliver it?’
Carnelian saw an opportunity in this. He waved the Quartermaster and the other legionaries away and, when he judged them beyond hearing distance, he turned to Morunasa. ‘I shall take twenty of your men. While you wait, form the rest in a cordon round my dragon. Let no one approach other than to feed and water her.’ He indicated the Quartermaster. ‘When that man has gathered the supplies, take enough of your people to control the entrance-gate watch-tower and to form a decent escort, then guide the supplies to the Master. Tell him the fortress has been abandoned. Tell him that Aurum-’
Morunasa was frowning. ‘The Master commanded me to remain with you.’
‘Well, I am commanding you to return to him.’ Carnelian examined Morunasa’s face, unsure he would obey him. ‘Tell the Master that Aurum returned yesterday from the Leper Valleys and that he’s not had the time to replenish his naphtha tanks. You understand?’
Morunasa glared at the ground. ‘Yes, Master.’
‘Then go.’
Carnelian had two of his twenty Marula give up their mounts. One aquar went to the local legionary he had chosen to act as guide. Then he approached the other empty saddle-chair. He removed his cloak and gave it to Sthax, who was holding the aquar’s reins. As Carnelian had hoped, the Maruli had managed to include himself in the twenty Morunasa had left behind. He thanked him, then clambered aboard.
After a Plainsman chair this one felt too loose. There was a problem with his feet. Instinctively, he had been trying to get them in contact with the aquar’s back, but the shape of the chair would not allow this. Besides, he could feel nothing through his ranga soles. He was growing increasingly irritated. He recalled that auxiliaries used stirrups and he managed to find them, then slip his leathered toes into them. It felt unnatural. As he tried to make the aquar rise all that happened was that his feet pushed ineffectually into the stirrups. Then he remembered the reins, which he found wrapped around the pommel of the saddle-chair. He unwound them, then pulled. Startled, the aquar threw back its head, flaring its eye-plumes. Cursing under his breath, Carnelian pulled more gently and the creature finally lifted him into the air. He checked to see Sthax was mounted, then he gave the command for the legionary guide to ride ahead.
As they left the cothon, Carnelian glanced back at Earth-is-Strong. He was reluctant to leave her, but had confidence in his Hands. On reaching the road their legionary guide turned right and Carnelian sped after him. His exhilaration at feeling the familiar rhythm of an aquar’s gait was diminished only by the difficulty of directing the creature with the reins. He worried that the bit in its mouth was hurting it. He disliked not having his feet on its pulsing warmth. He realized with surprise how much he had relied on this contact to sense how the creature was feeling.
Passing through a gateway they came upon the barracks and stables of auxiliaries. Everything looked in order, but empty. The men who had been lodged here he had left as carrion in the Earthsky.
Soon they were leaving the buildings behind. Loping along the edge of the ravine they came to where a branch of it was crossed by a bridge to a wall pierced by a single bronze door that was studded with silver ammonite shells. As he brought his aquar to a halt, he regarded the door, knowing it was the entry to a sanctum. It would probably be as empty as the rest of the fortress save, perhaps, for the households of Aurum and his commanders. Over the sanctum wall he could see, rising in the distance, the tower of the Legate of Makar and, thus, Aurum’s tower. No doubt it had a heliograph on its roof and he could not rid himself of the nagging worry that it was to this tower that the watch-towers on the road had sent a message. He dismounted and, reluctantly, crossed the bridge.
The bronze gate opened before he reached it and a figure appeared in its shadow. It performed a prostration as Carnelian approached. Its head, rising, revealed the silver mirror of an ammonite blinding mask with its solid spiral eyes.
‘Welcome, Seraph,’ the dead silver lips said in pure Quya.
‘On whose behalf do you welcome me, ammonite?’ Carnelian replied, in the same tongue.
The man made an expansive gesture cramped by uncertainty. ‘Makar, the fortress, Seraph… my Lord the Legate is not in residence.’
Carnelian had an intuition. ‘You are the quaestor here?’
‘Just so, Seraph.’
Carnelian wondered that the man had come himself, but then he considered that this quaestor might well suspect something of what had transpired to the north. Perhaps he had even observed it from the Legate’s tower. Carnelian gazed down at the quaestor. The man would have as many questions as he did. Carnelian corrected himself. Not curiosity, but necessity had brought the quaestor here. His duty was to be the eyes and ears for his masters, the Wise. He had much to gain from any information he could send to them; everything to lose if he failed them in any way. Carnelian felt a stab of sympathy for him. ‘How many Chosen lie within this sanctum?’
The blinding mask cocking to one side seemed a pantomime of surprise. ‘Why, none, Seraph. All left some time ago with my Lord Aurum. None have returned.’
‘What instructions did he leave you?’
‘None, Seraph, save that we should await his return.’
Carnelian considered his next question carefully. ‘And you have received none from your masters in Osrakum?’
The mask retreated a little as if Carnelian had threatened him. ‘As the Seraph must know, such information is vouched inviolable by the Protocol of the Three Powers.’
‘I was merely wondering why a watch-tower would seek to send an alert here before even considering sending one to Osrakum.’
The quaestor retracted his hands into the sleeves of his robe as if he feared they were about to betray him. In reply all he managed was an uneven shrug. Carnelian saw in this behaviour confirmation of his suspicions. He peered over his head into the dark recesses beyond. There was a suggestion of lazy curlings in the air. He could smell the narcotic smoke. ‘I will enter.’
‘As the Seraph wishes,’ said the quaestor. He rose to his feet, stooping as he moved aside.
Carnelian beckoned the Marula, who held back, snatching furtive glances into the dark opening. Even Sthax seemed reluctant to obey him. Carnelian had to motion more insistently before he and the other Marula began to approach. He had taken one step towards the threshold of the sanctum when the quaestor’s hand jerked up to loosen his mask. One eye was revealed and a sliver of his sallow, tattooed face. He fixed the Marula with a glare that stopped them in mid stride. They regarded him as if he were a serpent who had sprung up in their path.
Slipping the mask back over his face, he turned to Carnelian. ‘These unclean animals cannot enter here.’
‘I intend that they should,’ said Carnelian.
The quaestor pointed vaguely to where Carnelian could see some steps cut up the sanctum wall. ‘They must first pass through the quarantine.’
‘Nevertheless, I am determined they will enter with me.’
The quaestor raised his hands as clutching claws. ‘This cannot be, Seraph, the Law forbids it!’
Carnelian sensed the man’s distress was genuine enough. ‘This place is destitute of Seraphim. I myself have no time to be cleansed and no wish to suffer the delay of subjecting myself to fresh ritual protection when I leave. I shall keep the one I wear. If by thus entering the sanctum it shall become polluted, then so be it.’
The quaestor was shaking his head erratically, his hands trembling as if he were having a fit. Carnelian reached out to calm him. At his touch the man jerked back, colliding with the jamb. He wrapped his arms around his chest. ‘At least, Seraph, I beg you, allow yourself. .. and these others…’ His hand trembled out, then quickly returned to grip his shoulder. ‘To be purified as best we can with smoke.’
Carnelian could see no harm in that. ‘Very well.’
As Carnelian edged into the gloom, Sthax and the other Marula followed. Smoke curled thick tendrils round them. The quaestor fussed, muttering instructions. Carnelian felt his face swelling into his mask as if it were the shell of a sprouting seed. Sweet myrrh crept into him with every breath, jellying his bones. When his legs faltered, hands appeared from the darkness to steady him. Censers, swinging, layered the air with thicker smoke that had a peculiar, stale odour he had not smelled before. Needles pierced his temples. He heard his voice far away cry out as he spun down into darkness.
His father in a chair, his back to him, while their hands down his spine find him wanting. He calls out, but his voice is the cry of a gull. Carnelian feels thunder coming. Through the window a cliff of water rolls black towards them. Seaweed smell, so like blood. Dripping red from his father’s fist as it opens offering twin pearls to a charnel mouth. Angling hand, they begin to roll. Carnelian screams: don’t let them go! It is his hand, he tries to close it, but the pearls melt into tears that dribble between his fingers. Watering a hole in the ground. Two pits side by side. His father gazes at him, eyeless.
Carnelian came awake struggling against the undertow of his dreams. He saw a young boy with a face halved by a thread tattoo. On either side an amethyst almond for an eye, a blushing cheek. Split by the tattoo, the boy’s lips were moving. A grim tide was sucking Carnelian back into sleep. He heard the words ‘quaestor’… ‘letter’. He tried to move to break his nightmare’s hold on him. The hollow stone of his head surged with pain. The spasm subsided enough for him to open his eyes. The boy was gone. Carnelian tried to make sense of where he was; to resolve the fractured symmetries of the chamber. Guttering flambeaux gave twisting life to peculiar machines of brass and ivory and glass. Floors and walls meeting at strange angles seemed covered with tapestries and carpets of crusted blood. The boy returned holding a vessel of white jade so thin it looked like ice. Within its milky membrane water swayed. Drinking it quenched the fire in Carnelian’s head and lungs. Straining to resolve the impossible symmetries of the chamber, he realized it was full of mirrors. Contorted surfaces of silver, of gold polished to the consistency of torrid air. Slopes of glass that gave reflections so perfect he could only discern them by their frames. There were far fewer machines than he had imagined. Frameworks of bone slid and turned in subtle, repetitive movement. Discs and pivots. Brass and copper twitching. Liquid silver pouring with a strange inner radiance. He could not understand what anything was.
The blinded boy spoke again. ‘Master, the quaestor is without. He bears a letter addressed to you.’
Carnelian recognized something about the boy’s face. The blue filament that divided his face in two split near his hairline into the broken circle of a horned-ring. A horned-ring staff. Aurum’s cypher. Carnelian gazed around the chamber. The red samite hangings were flecked with the same forked-needle cypher. He glanced down. His eyes confirmed what his skin felt: his body had been freed from the bindings of the ritual protection. His skin felt so clean he imagined he could breathe through it if he chose. ‘This is the tower of the Legate of Makar?’
‘It is, my Master,’ the boy said.
‘How long have I been here?’
‘Less than a day, Master.’
‘And how did I get here?’
The boy hesitated and Carnelian noticed his shivering, which was not from cold. He realized he could smell the boy, smell his fear. There was another odour so pervasive Carnelian had been breathing it in unnoticed. Attar of lilies. A sharp heavy blanketing of it that he was only aware of through its contrast with the odour from the boy.
‘I have no memory of coming here,’ he said as gently as he could, but this only served to terrify the boy more. ‘Whatever you tell me,’ Carnelian said, ‘no harm will come to you.’
The boy was struggling for composure. ‘The quaestor brought you, Master. His ammonites bore you here on a litter.’
Carnelian remembered entering the purgatory. The smoke was still so heavy in his lungs he was momentarily surprised it did not curl out on his breath. ‘And he is here with a letter for me?’
‘He is, Master.’
The boy took some steps back as Carnelian, gingerly, swung his legs out from under the feather blanket. The boy stooped to slipper his feet before they settled on the stone floor. Carnelian considered sending him to fetch the letter, but decided he would like to talk to the quaestor. ‘I must dress.’
‘How does my Master wish to be adorned?’
Carnelian could see how the prospect of fulfilling what was clearly one of his functions calmed the boy. He looked for his cloak and robe, but could see nothing as drab as those among the fleshy tones that Aurum favoured, the glowing golds. ‘Something plain?’
The boy frowned a little, then edged away. As he did so, other boys appeared, each moving to one of a row of lapis lazuli chests the colour of predawn sky. Lifting the lids with willowy arms they drew up robes and turned to display them: thickly embossed samite encrusted with jewels, mosaicked with iridescent feathers. Carnelian rose to his feet swaying, even as the pain abated in his head. He walked among them and they bowed a little, turning their heads as if they were detecting his movement from eddies in the air. Appalled by the awful magnificence of the garments, he settled for a relatively sombre robe that glimmered with rubies so dark they seemed almost jet and that, more importantly, seemed to be the least impregnated with Aurum’s odour.
The boys guided him to a place encompassed by mirrors of gold. There they worked on him, their amethyst eyes turning black, pulling strigils from racks, wielding brushes and pads, glazing his skin with pigments, floating undergarments over him that might have been stitched together from the wings of dragonflies. He submitted to them and was several times fooled into thinking they could see him when their stone eyes caught a flake of light. He disliked how tall he looked among them when reflected in the mirrors, above which rose the quivering limbs of the machines.
Finally they masked him, then slipped away. Startled, Carnelian glanced round, but was too slow to see them disappear. He was alone, but for the other sinister versions of himself inhabiting all those other mirror worlds. He was wondering why it was Aurum had so much need to see himself, when there was a rapping at a distant door.
‘Enter,’ he said, echoes rippling some of the mirror worlds.
The door gasped open and guardsmen entered with the faces he remembered, round and yellow and bisected by Aurum’s tattoo. So familiar were they that, when a dark figure approached, he drew back, alarmed, certain it must be Aurum himself. Then he saw the figure was far too diminutive and, as its mask caught the light, its metal was too wintry to be gold. The guardsmen knelt to form an avenue flanked by their forked spears, down which the quaestor approached him. The man came close enough for Carnelian to smell the myrrh that wafted off his dark brocades as he knelt and bowed his head. ‘Seraph,’ he breathed, offering up a folded parchment.
Carnelian took the letter and turned its seal to the light. It was not bright enough for him to read the impressions in the purple wax. Besides, at that moment, he was anxious to find out what had happened to him. A sudden thought caused him to glance up at Aurum’s guardsmen. ‘Where are my Marula?’
The quaestor curled so tight the forehead of his mask clinked against the floor. ‘They were sent back to the cothon, Seraph. It is not permitted that they should enter here save through quarantine.’
Carnelian was trying to remember what he could about the moment he had entered the purgatory with them, but he could recall almost nothing. He sensed the quaestor’s unease. ‘Unmask.’
The man lifted his head from the floor, but not enough for the light to reveal his metal face. ‘Seraph?’
‘Remove your mask.’
Another clink as the man abased himself. He reached behind his head and fumbled his mask loose, then laid it upon the floor as if it were made of the thinnest glass.
‘Look at me, ammonite.’
The quaestor hesitated, but then his pale face came up all written over with numbers. His eyes were still cast down.
‘How did I end up here?’
The quaestor suppressed a shrug, licked his lips. ‘My Lord the Seraph reacted badly to one of the purifying drugs. We are mortified, but-’
‘I have been through many such purifications and never before have been affected thus…’
Numbers folded into the wrinkles of his grimace. ‘The creatures that entered the purgatory on the insistence of the Seraph panicked like animals. They overthrew censers. They spilled fluids. Because of this, prodigious quantities of the drugs were released…’ The quaestor cracked his forehead against the stone floor. ‘Your servants did what they could for the Seraph. Forgive them for what they could not do.’
Carnelian did not feel it likely he would get much more out of him. It could wait. Curiosity over the letter now took precedence in his mind. He felt the seal. The wax was smooth. At first he did not understand, but then it occurred to him. It must be from Osidian, who had no seal to use. He broke it open and saw with some excitement that the glyphs were indeed drawn in Osidian’s hand. He read it.
Expect visitors in the cothon. Equip them as best you can.
Carnelian turned the parchment, looking for more, but the rest of it was blank. Osidian had written nothing that could not be read by anyone. Carnelian read the letter again. Visitors? The quaestor, fidgeting, drew his eyes. Carnelian’s mask hid a bitter smile. It was fully possible the wax had been broken, the letter read, then resealed. What did it matter? Its import seemed innocuous enough. His mind turned again to what had happened when he had entered the purgatory. The quaestor’s explanation did not ring true. Carnelian regarded the letter. Visitors? What visitors? Obliqueness from Osidian was always a reason to worry. Carnelian tried to gather his thoughts. How could he think with all these people grovelling before him? His gaze fell on the face of one of the guardsmen. Aurum’s mark there on that round face filled him with disgust. He shaped a gesture of dismissal and turned his back on them. As he waited, listening to them creep away, he became aware that, at the far end of the chamber, there was the merest diamond-bright crack. The promise of clean daylight drew him and a lust for unperfumed air to breathe. To his delight, as he approached, a waft sliced fresh through the stale lily odour of the chamber. He had to squint against the glare leaking through the crack like first light on a horizon. Shadows appeared; their litheness suggested they were the amethyst-eyed boys.
‘I wish to gaze upon the day,’ he rumbled.
They released a blinding flood of light that brought back his headache. He paused until the spasm had subsided, then strode into the blaze. He turned his face up towards the sun, waiting until he could feel its heat seeping through the gold of his mask. The scene began emerging round him. More of Aurum’s guards kneeling. Stretching away behind them, a garden. Commanding the guardsmen to remain where they were, he wandered out along a path, delighting in the open space, in the dappled shade. Magnolia perfume soaking the air for a moment took him back to the Koppie. Disturbed, he pushed on. At last he reached a ragged wall, broken down here and there by dragon-blood trees. Moving into the shade of one he gripped its trunk. At his feet yawned a canyon. This could be nothing else than the same Pass they had tried to fight their way up, only to be repulsed by Aurum’s fire. He pondered this, feeling again the agony of separation from his friends. So much had happened since, it seemed an age ago. He peered down that chasm, his heart yearning to carry him on wings down to the green land below. In his melancholy, it was some time before he noticed the dust hazing up from the canyon. At first he thought it smoke until he saw its pallidness was mixed with rust. He had seen enough such clouds to know that only a saurian herd could lift so much, or dragons, or perhaps a great body of riders. He tensed. Osidian had told him to expect visitors. Visitors! His eyes tried to pierce the hazy canyon below. He fought down panic. He had suspected Osidian had some hidden reason to take Makar. Those he had believed safe were now returning into the very heart of danger. A seedling of joy grew up through the dread. He turned his back on the canyon and returned to the tower. He must go to the cothon to see what could be done to avoid what he now most feared.
The outer doors opened as he approached them, revealing a staircase descending into gloom and shadows. As he reached the top of the stair, a rushing sound rose up from the vast hall so that he imagined some waterfall had been released, perhaps to cool the air, but then the disturbance ceased as quickly as it had begun. When he searched the gloom on either side of the steps, he could just make out figures in serried ranks. What he had heard was their obeisance. Another figure was ascending the steps towards him. As it looked up at him its mask caught the light and he knew it must be the quaestor. He descended to meet him.
The quaestor knelt on the steps. ‘What is the Seraph’s desire?’
Carnelian looked over the edge of the stair to the floor with its retainers. They must all be of Aurum’s household. He spotted some distant doors. ‘Is that the way out of the sanctum?’
The quaestor’s mask came up. ‘It is, Seraph.’
Continuing his descent, Carnelian heard the quaestor creeping after him. When he reached the ground, he moved off along an avenue flanked by kneeling guardsmen. Beyond them he glimpsed small shapes in the shadows. He was halfway to the door when he realized they must all be children. He became uneasy, feeling as if half the flesh tithe was prostrate around him. Was it possible Aurum’s household consisted almost entirely of children?
As he reached the doors, they clanked apart. Through them he saw the structures of the fortress wavering in the haze. He could make out the high wall of the cothon and the city itself, looking as if it were made of sand, verminous with windows, spired, tottering-towered. A hot breeze bore upon it scents, none of which lingered long enough for him to identify. A smell of life, though, that he longed to breathe free of the prison of his mask.
A shrill cry made him turn. The quaestor came scurrying towards him. ‘The Seraph cannot mean to walk?’
‘Can I not?’
Carnelian followed a paved gully. Ribbed limestone rose up on either side, pierced with gates and slits. The echoes of his footsteps combined with those of the quaestor’s. No tyadra stood guard upon the gates. The rings on either side held no heraldic banner poles. The place felt desolate, abandoned, but he was certain that beyond those pale walls must lurk the households the Masters had left behind when they went on campaign with Aurum. He had the uncanny feeling that, through each slit, eyes were watching his progress.
The quaestor several times attempted to lecture him about the Law and its demands. Carnelian knew that, however much he resented these, it had too often been others who had had to pay for his defiance. Moreover, it would be foolish to ignore its edicts, however distasteful, where doing so might diminish his status and thus weaken what little power he had. So, by the time they reached the purgatory door, he was ready to submit to the full ritual protection. As ammonites disrobed him and began inscribing his skin, he told himself that whosoever the visitors might turn out to be, he was determined he would not return to Aurum’s tower with its household of children. If there were no alternative, he would quit the fortress and return to the dragons and Osidian.
He had agreed to be carried to the cothon in a palanquin. First the quaestor had told him that there were no aquar for him to ride, then he had pointed out that it was too far to go wearing ranga. He wished he had not given in. The palanquin was turning out to be no faster than walking. All he had done was trade the exhaustion of tottering along on his ranga for imprisonment in this box, where there was nothing to do but fret about who the visitors might be, and why they had come. From time to time he peered out through a grille in the hope of seeing that they had arrived but each time he was presented with what seemed an identical view of the crumbling city. Attempts to resolve its pale intricacies wearied his eyes. Depressingly, the only difference between one scene and the next was the shadows, which had lengthened so that he became anxious that it would be nightfall before he reached the cothon.
At last he began hearing a sound like distant sea. Straining, he managed to distinguish in the hubbub countless voices ghosted by echoes. As a hush descended he was able to hear the snuffling of aquar. His heart pounding, he put an eye to the grille. All there was to see was a wall of bronze that had to be one leaf of an open cothon gate. He could no longer bear to travel blind and tapped on the palanquin wall. As it settled to the ground he put on his mask and readied himself to confront whatever might lie outside.
Sliding open the door, he saw his bearers kneeling. Two ammonites placed his ranga on the cobbles, then, gathering his robe, he climbed out onto them. Cries shrilled around him as the ammonites gave commands. Rising to his full height, he turned. A shrouded crowd confronted him. Lepers. Though these were the visitors he had expected, he was still shocked. He had been so convinced he would never see them again. A forbidding bulk looming behind their tide turned his shock to alarm. A dragon, the bright, uneven cross of her horns turned on the Lepers. Earth-is-Strong, like a ship upon a grey sea. Almost he surged forward, shouting frantic commands to her crew that they must not open fire. The realization that her pipes were unlit brought a debilitating relief. The ammonites were still shrilling, motioning marumaga to advance on the Lepers. Tentatively, the legionaries approached the crowd who were, it seemed, determined to stand their ground.
‘They must abase themselves before the Master,’ one of the ammonites called out.
The legionaries menaced the Lepers, but their shrouded mass seemed uncowed. Fearing bloodshed Carnelian strode forward, commanding the legionaries to desist, making gestures towards the ammonites that silenced their haranguing. As the legionaries retreated, he saw it was only the first few ranks of the Lepers that had confronted them; the rest and major part of the crowd were mostly turned to face Earth-is-Strong – many of them still mounted. He glanced up to make sure the dragon’s pipes were still not lit. Then he noticed, with pleasure and relief, Sthax and the rest of his Marula to one side. He decided it was better not to get them involved, so located among the legionaries those whose stance emanated authority. ‘Attend me,’ he said, motioning them to approach. He scanned their collars and found the one he had hoped among them. ‘Quartermaster, send a command to that dragon that she is to withdraw to the other side of the cothon.’
‘As you command, Master.’ The Quartermaster bowed and sent one of his men hurrying away to do Carnelian’s bidding, then approached him, eyes cast down. Carnelian sensed he was about to be petitioned to make a decision as to what to do with this invasion. Uncertain, he turned away from the man and approached the Lepers, who recoiled from him. He put his hands up to stay them. ‘I would speak with your leaders.’
He could see no faces in their cowls, but sensed their fear. A few glanced back towards Earth-is-Strong. ‘I’ve given instructions that the dragon is to retreat. She’ll not harm you.’
The people before him stayed as they were, uneasy, afraid of the dragon, afraid of him. He wished he could remove his mask, climb down from his ranga, walk among them. There must be some there who would know him. Of course, such actions would be madness. Any who saw his naked face the Law would have destroyed.
It was only once Earth-is-Strong started moving away that the whole crowd began turning towards him. He noticed an eddying in their midst as someone came through them. The front ranks parted and two figures emerged. Carnelian’s heart leapt into his throat. Even shrouded as a Leper, he could tell by her size, by her gait, that one of them was Poppy. Both seemed very small as they came to stand before him. Carnelian gazed down at Poppy. When she looked up, her face appeared in the shadow of her cowl. He yearned for a smile of recognition, but her mouth was a line in a face tight with fear. It took a moment for him to realize it was not his face she was seeing, but an unhuman one wrought from gold. He felt trapped behind it. Everyone was waiting for him but, anxious about what effect his voice might have on Poppy, he was reluctant to speak. He turned his mask enough to see, on either side, ammonites, keepers of a merciless Law, as well as marumaga legionaries with cruelly hooked poles. The Lepers greatly outnumbered them, but they were, effectively, unarmed. Besides, if there were a riot, he might lose control of Earth-is-Strong. Still, he had to say something. ‘Why have you come?’
Poppy’s eyes widened as she stared up at him but, thankfully, she showed no other sign that she had recognized his voice.
It was the shrouded figure beside her who spoke. ‘We’ve come to honour the agreement we made with the Master Osidian.’ It was Lily.
‘I had understood that agreement fulfilled.’
‘There are things you don’t know.’
Her tone convinced Carnelian she knew to whom she was talking. Its lack of reverence was causing agitation among the legionaries. Carnelian glanced round and saw, anxiously, how closely the silver masks of the ammonites were watching Lily and Poppy.
‘You must leave the way you came.’
‘We must honour our agreement.’
Even through her shroud Carnelian could see the stubborn angle of Lily’s head and it made him angry. He had trusted her to protect Poppy. ‘What possessed you to agree to anything that would bring you and all these others into the jaws of your enemies?’
When Poppy took a step forward and fixed burning eyes on his mask, marumaga moved to intercept her, but Carnelian jerked his hand in a gesture of command that made them retreat.
‘We’re free people,’ said Poppy. ‘Free to decide what risks we take.’
Lily’s bandaged hand clasped Poppy’s shoulder. Carnelian was glad when he saw Poppy accepting its restraint.
‘Everyone here’ – Lily swept her free hand round to take in the crowd – ‘has suffered terrible loss. All are here moved by an implacable hatred of the one who has inflicted those losses upon us.’
Carnelian saw how resolutely the Lepers stood, while the legionaries, who had less to fear from him, cowered in his presence. He could not help feeling proud of these outcasts. If there were to be any hope of reversing this disaster he must know what further agreement they had made with Osidian, but this was neither the time nor the place to ask such questions. There was one question, however, his heart would not be denied. ‘And the Ochre?’
Carnelian followed Poppy’s gaze back into the crowd to where a Leper stood taller than the rest. Seeing him, Carnelian’s heart beat faster.
‘He’s become a commander among us,’ said Lily.
Carnelian regarded Fern’s shrouded form, rejoicing, though wondering how he had so quickly recovered from his burns. Poppy was looking away, a frown on her face. He knew her well enough to tell what passion and anger that bland expression concealed. Had he really believed he could persuade them to merely ride away? How could he have imagined Osidian had not bound them to him with chains not easily broken? He calmed himself. They were here now and if there was nothing else left to him he must do what he could to keep them safe. He thrust from his mind any consideration of the immensity of the forces ranged against them all. He knew there was no place for him here, though he yearned to be with them. To return to Osidian’s side would be to abandon them to the ammonites and the Law. His heart sank as he faced up to his only option. He must return to Aurum’s tower, for it was from there that he could best protect them.
Having made his decision he wanted to tell Poppy and Lily about it. He glanced up, his gaze lingering on Fern’s form among the Lepers. How deeply he desired to approach him. Instead, he raised a hand and summoned the Quartermaster. The man came to kneel before him. ‘Take these people into the barracks of the auxiliaries. Settle them there. Give them food and water.’
Carnelian saw dusk was encroaching. ‘In the morning, equip them with armour, arm them, mount them.’
The legionary glanced round as if counting the Lepers. ‘We have nothing like enough, Master, for all of these.’
‘Then give them everything you have,’ Carnelian said, his voice edged with irritation.
The man punched the cobbles with his forehead. ‘As you command, Master.’
Carnelian turned to leave.
‘Carnie.’
He froze. It was Poppy addressing him. It was unthinkable to address a Master by name and such an intimate contraction betrayed a fatal familiarity. He looked to the ammonites and convinced himself they could not have heard her clearly. Weighing his words he addressed one of them. ‘Make these creatures join the others, silently. Any harm that comes to them shall be visited on you all.’
The ammonites touched their foreheads to the cobbles. Carnelian did not wait to see his commands obeyed lest Poppy attempt to speak to him again. He strode back towards the palanquin. Only when he reached it did he dare to turn. The legionaries had closed ranks behind him and the Lepers were already being herded away. He looked for Poppy, for anyone he knew, but they were an unindividuated mass. The dregs of his hope draining away allowed his fears, his agony of doubt to sicken him so that he felt unable even to lift his head. He glimpsed the palanquin out of the corner of his eye and felt a sudden revulsion at the thought of climbing into its prison. He returned to the legionaries and demanded they bring him an aquar. While he waited he beckoned Sthax and the Marula to approach him and made them understand, remembering to use only gestures, that he wanted them to accompany him. When he was brought a mount, he climbed into its saddle-chair, then, glancing back only to make sure Sthax was following him, he tore out of the cothon with furious speed.
It seemed no time at all before they reached the sanctum bridge. In the failing sun, the gate into the sanctum seemed painted with blood. Carnelian was determined to take Sthax and his Marula through with him. Motioning them to follow, he rode his aquar across the bridge. Loosing a lance from its scabbard, he hefted it and struck against the bronze. As the door opened a crack he urged his aquar forward. It coiled its head back and its delicate hands retracted as if in surprise as its chest shoved the door open. He was forced to duck as they passed into the purgatory. Shrill cries issued from mirror faces that were reflecting the hazy light of flames. Carnelian held his breath against the wreathing smoke. A sinuous lash in his aquar’s neck, a shudder running through its body, made him fear that the narcotic smoke might make it collapse.
‘Open the inner doors,’ he bellowed.
Cries warned that that would breach the purity of the sanctum.
His head was already swimming, but anger kept his focus sharp. ‘Obey me!’
A paler rectangle opened ahead and he urged his aquar towards it. She stumbled, sending censers clattering across the floor, then they erupted into the light. Glancing round to make sure Sthax was still following him, he let his aquar carry him none too steadily down the limestone gully, across the second bridge and up the steps to Aurum’s tower. He felt her tread stabilizing even as his head cleared.
At the tower gate he had no need to issue commands for it opened before him as he approached. He sent his aquar through the gap and, soon, they were loping down the spine of Aurum’s hall of audience. Lanterns were lit here and there like stars. Their glow revealed guardsmen rushing to attend him. In the shadows, figures were rising, approaching him. He felt only loathing for their tattooed faces. He advanced on them and they fell prostrate so that there was a danger they would be trampled by his aquar. Rage rose in him and overflowed. ‘Get you from my sight!’
The way they tried to crawl away disgusted him. An instinct to send his Marula against them rose in his throat like vomit. Then one painted face caught the light and he saw it was only a child. A child in terror. He saw others: girls leading amethyst-eyed boys stumbling from his path. Appalled, he watched them fleeing.
He reined back his mount, ashamed that he was inflicting such terror on slaves. He made the aquar sink and stepped out onto the floor. ‘Stay where you are.’
Everyone fell as if scythed at the knees.
‘There will be no punishment. My wrath is done. You were not the cause of it, merely its victims.’
He approached a guardsman. ‘Are there any chambers here I could use other than those of your Master?’
The man mumbled something. Carnelian urged him to speak more clearly. The man dared to glance up, squinting against the glare of Carnelian’s mask. Carnelian turned his head so that the reflected light moved away from the man’s face.
‘There are none, Master.’
Carnelian nodded and glanced up the steps, resigned. He looked back at the guardsmen, then round at the cowering children. It was clear this was not the first time they had known terror. ‘Send to the purgatory for myrrh and censers. The sanctity of this place is breached. I must purify the chambers above.’
The guardsman punched his forehead into the floor. ‘As the Master commands.’
Carnelian gave a nod, then advanced towards the stairs, morose.
A wheel divided in two by a horizontal russet bar. Wide-rimmed, its ratcheted hub meshed with a long brass pawl that was rooted in a float within a vessel of jade carved in the form of meshing chameleons. As a child, he had discovered a water clock like this discarded, and had tried to make it work. He slid a finger lightly around the wheel rim, of gold with a delicately chased arabesque of flames. His had been gilded copper. He touched the rays of the sun-eye showing above the russet bar, which was a solid piece of precious iron, unoiled so that it would rust to the colour of earth. On his clock the land had been merely carnelian. The sun on Aurum’s clock had fallen beneath the iron horizon. The arc of rim following it represented the firmament of night. Squatting above this was a figure wrought from obsidian: the Black God, Lord of Mirrors. Carnelian reached up and caressed each of His four horns in turn, remembering Osidian and the legion they had stolen and the war they were making upon the Masters. His own clock had been crowned merely with a crude turtle shell. The God’s empty eyepits glared down at him. He sought distraction in the finer points of the mechanism. The reservoir of such thin jade made the liquid it held seem blood in a bruise. A scale ran up its side, numbered from zero to nineteen. The liquid was above fifteen. He glanced up at the hidden sun-eye. This clock seemed to be keeping time, but there was no sound of water dripping. Peering above the jade, he saw a siphon. No drops were falling from it, but there was a glint like spider thread stretching between the siphon and the jade. He put his finger out to break it and was amazed when dribbles of light flashed across his skin. Upon his finger pad there rested a tiny bead. He touched his fingernail to the lip of the jade and let the bead roll off. Standing back he admired the clock. The liquid silver made it seem sorcerous, as if it were measuring time with moonbeams. He had always assumed the clock he had found at home had once been his father’s. That was why he had repaired it, then taken it to him. Now he realized it had been no Master’s device. In comparison with Aurum’s it was less than a crude toy. His father had dismissed the gift saying he had no desire to measure time; it passed slowly enough already.
Anger rose in Carnelian, the same he had unleashed in the hall below. Almost he smashed Aurum’s clock, but he knew that destroying its beauty would achieve nothing. His anger had its roots in fear: fear for Poppy, for Fern, for Lily, for all those innocents he and Osidian had brought into danger. He feared for Sthax, whom he had left outside, without a word, when the Maruli had risen with his fellows, clearly hoping for some reassurance Carnelian had not felt he could give them. His fear was like the first twinges of a recurring fever made worse because he had let himself believe he was cured of it. As it burned more strongly it was heating to panic. It was actually worse here in Makar. At least in the lands below it had been Osidian who had made the Law, who, though monstrous, was a man – and a man could be pleaded with, persuaded, killed even. Here, though he might defy ammonites, he knew that, ultimately, the Law was unassailable. He coughed a laugh. Had it come to this? That he was nostalgic for Osidian’s murderous tyranny?
He grew more morose. What hope was there for his friends, his loved ones? He turned away from the liquid-silver clock. As he passed a mirror of polished gold he gazed sidelong at himself. All he could see was a shadowy Master. A fabulous creature: beautiful, but deadly. He stroked his hand down a pyramid of crystal standing on its point upon the point of another. Through the narrow waist of their meeting poured green sand. Powdered jade, no doubt. Perhaps malachite. Tiny emeralds, even. One emptying slowly into the other a few grains at a time. To contemplate this was to slow time. For a moment he fantasized that, should he invert them, he might be able to make time run backwards. Reaching back he might seek to unmake the past.
‘Pathetic,’ he said. Today they had been within reach, but he had not dared touch them. A wall stood between them, more impenetrable than bronze: his mask, his caste and the Law-that-must-be-obeyed. It was a barrier he could not breach.
A tiny hope flickered. Surely a door could be opened through which they could come to him. He could adopt them into his House. Poppy would come, even Fern. He imagined their faces disfigured by his chameleon tattoo. Poppy perhaps might accept it, but would Fern welcome becoming his servant, his slave? Carnelian’s anger flared again as he felt trapped. His hands, reaching up, found the hard metal of his face. Even were he to manage somehow to bring them into his House, would he be achieving anything other than assuaging his loneliness at the cost of bringing others in to share his prison?
He glared at a copper disc on spindly ivory legs. An arc of numbers seemed to be grinning at him in derision. It had delicate arms holding sighting lenses, a fin. Some kind of sundial, no doubt.
Even his House was not a certain refuge against what might come. Besides, there was no assurance he would survive. Nor that, whether he did or not, the Wise would sanctify any adoptions he made. Nor, for that matter, even that his father would. Would his father see them as anything but barbarians?
Carnelian wrung his hands. What he really wanted was for them never to have come at all. There must be some way to persuade them to return to the Leper Valleys. He let out a grunt. To hope for this was foolish. Osidian had bound them to him with some accursed agreement. Carnelian tried to imagine what this could be. Promises of wealth? Power? Perhaps it was nothing more than revenge that brought them up to fight against Aurum, whom they hated. So was there anything he could do to save them?
He had been noticing a clicking sound for quite a while. Something was swinging, glinting back and forth in an arc. A stone chameleon swinging by its tail from a hive of wheels. Of brass and gold and silver. Toothed and meshing with each other, in convoluted, furtive movement. This mechanism had a face very like the liquid-silver clock, and had not only a sun-wheel but also another wheel for the moon, whose tearful eye hung just above the last rays of the westering sun. And there were other rings. One for the morning star and many more, concentric, stars and planets revolving round a silver ammonite shell. If this was a clock, it was surely one that had been made for the Wise. Carnelian backed away from it, glancing round the chamber. Why was this place filled with clocks? Unease descended upon him. He felt like a child lost in a place where there was nothing he could understand.
Then he saw the pool. It seemed water except that it was set vertically up a wall. A miraculous thing. As he came before it, he saw a Master in its depths. His heart jumped a beat. It was a doorway through which another Master was gazing at him. Then he moved and the other Master mimicked him. The illusion was broken. He approached his reflection, amazed. When close enough, he reached out to touch his reflection’s fingers. It was cold. Glass perhaps. He pulled his fingers from its surface and watched the ghost of his touch slowly disappear. It was a mirror, but one more perfect than water. He leaned closer, seeing his eyes behind the mask. He seemed a man peering through a prison window. The longing to escape from that hated shell suddenly overwhelmed him. Glancing round to make certain he was alone, he freed his face. It appeared like the moon from behind a cloud. He jumped. It seemed he was seeing Osidian. He cursed softly. It was clearly not Osidian’s face, but it had the same green eyes. Uncannily the same. The face frowned and that too seemed Osidian, though there was no birthmark folding into the wrinkles. The eyes again. That same intense look. He looked at himself in a new way. Why was it always Osidian who led and he who followed?
‘I can play the game as well as he,’ he said, though he only half believed it.
He turned his head from side to side. How unwhite he had become. He decided that he liked it. It made him look a little bit more like a Plainsman. The face in the mirror smiled. He looked into its eyes and felt as if he was understanding something for the first time. He leaned closer still, fascinated by his face. He realized he had never really seen it properly before. There were wrinkles in his skin, especially around his eyes. He looked older than he remembered. Not as old as his father. Nothing like as old as Lord Aurum. Lord Aurum. He looked round the room, then back at the mirror. Why did the Master surround himself with mirrors, clocks? And children? Carnelian felt repulsed by what these things suggested about the man, but at the same time he began feeling something else. This was surely a man who feared death. Carnelian regarded his face in the mirror. Though he had every reason to fear death himself, he realized he did not. He feared it more for others than himself. Lord Aurum was old even when he came to their island. Carnelian remembered how much Aurum had appeared to want a son. He remembered how much he himself had grown to despise the secondary lineage in his own House. Who knew what it was that Aurum feared? What would exile from Osrakum be like for such a man?
A scratching at the outer door made him jerk his mask up so fast he grazed his nose and chin. Quickly he secured it and approached the door. He gave leave to enter and ammonites appeared bearing censers that they began setting up around the chamber. Soon they were lighting them. Smoke began uncurling into the air. The odour of myrrh made Carnelian notice again the stale tang of attar of lilies that pervaded the room. Aurum’s smell. He reminded himself this was the man who had had his uncle killed, who had inflicted atrocities upon the Lepers. Whatever his suffering, Aurum was a monster.
When Carnelian had dismissed the ammonites he began to feel drowsy. It had been a difficult day. He could do nothing more. He would resume the fight in the morning. He removed his robes until he was standing in nothing but the cocoon of the ritual protection. Weary beyond measure he slipped under the feather blankets and was instantly asleep.
Keeping the spider in a crystal box. Its legs moving, like hair in his eyes. He wants to look away, but fears if he does it will escape. Creeping, creeping, always creeping, seeking a way out. The horror of its thought as it watches him through the obscene cluster of its eyes .
Carnelian came awake, gasping. A child at the foot of his bed was looking at him. Not a child, but the metal facsimile of a child’s face. A homunculus. The eyes, ears and voice of a Sapient of the Wise. Carnelian stared, petrified. Fading into the darkness, its child smile became the moon’s crescent gleaming in a pond. Then it was not there.
When an amethyst-eyed boy woke him, Carnelian frowned, remembering the same thing happening before. His nightmares clung to him like a wet cloak. He closed his eyes. Pain was curled dormant in his head and he did not want to move lest he should wake it. He squinted at the ceiling.
‘Would you break your fast, Master?’ said the boy. His stone eyes seemed bruises.
‘Please,’ Carnelian said and was relieved when the face went away. He moved an arm and felt the bandages that clung to his skin like scabs. He had not imagined the previous day, then. His dreams would not let go of him. He shuddered, remembering the spider’s eyes, then recalled the homunculus with its borrowed face. That part of his dreams had seemed so real.
As he sat up, the pain stirring in his head sent needles into the bones of his face. He wondered at that pain, but his eyes were already seeking the corner where the homunculus had disappeared. Try as he might, he could not pierce the shadows there.
More amethyst-eyed boys brought him food and served him as he ate. Taste seemed remote, as if he were reading about someone eating. He was aware he was sitting with his back to the corner. At last he could bear it no longer. He told them to take the plates away and disappear. Thankfully, the headache was fading. He rose, gazing into the corner. An inner voice was telling him it was just a dark corner, that it was dangerous to blur the boundary between dreams and waking life. Still he went in search of a lamp, but all he could find were the bronze flambeaux and they were too heavy. He edged towards the corner. It seemed to grow brighter as he came closer. Bright enough for him to see the tapestry of featherwork that hung there upon the wall. He could make out something of its writhing designs, but nothing of its colours. When he was close enough he put out his hand. It was silky smooth beneath his touch. So fine he could feel the texture of the wall beneath. A crack. A vertical groove running up the stone. He stroked the tapestry aside. A door. He ran his hand over it and found a catch. It clicked. The door sighed open. The air beyond was cold and laced with a strong, disturbing odour. The spider in his dreams touched his face and he recoiled and the door clicked closed. He stood with his fingers on it, listening with his fingers for vibrations. He pulled away, allowing the tapestry to fall back, and retreated to the centre of the chamber, but kept glancing back at the corner. He summoned the boys and, when they came, he bade them bring him a lamp. When they had returned with it he lit it, but approached the corner only when they were gone.
Figures danced in the tapestry. Feathers that were green and black and red, so tiny they could have been brushstrokes. Once again he stroked the tapestry aside, saw the door, located the catch, opened it. Beyond, steps curved down into darkness. He put his head in, lifted the lamp and spilled light down a few more steps. Desiring to see more of them, he began descending. Round and round, spiralling down into the darkness.
He emerged into a pillared vault. Lifting the lamp, he saw, leaning against pillars, two cocoons, each taller than a man. He regarded them with horror, expecting at any moment to see within them some jerking, unhuman movement. What monsters could such things pupate? Once certain that nothing within them lived, he dared to approach. Ivory as translucent as wet parchment. Their narrow height had a suggestion of sarcophagi. Within, some darker masses that might have been bodies. He reached out and touched one. It had a skin-smooth surface, though he could feel swirls under his fingers. He lifted the lantern and peered close, but could not make out what lay inside. In the corner of his vision, he saw something that almost made him drop his lantern. A third cocoon not far away, but this one was open. In it he could see four feet side by side. He raised the light, trembling, up the legs. The outermost and larger pair were bound with pale leather bands. Between the legs, a smaller figure. He moved the edge of light up to see its face. It dazzled him. He angled the lamp and the dazzle abated to reveal a face like the moon. The face of a child near slumber. Carnelian gaped at the homunculus. Then he noticed what it was holding before it. A staff topped by a cross or what might have been a spider. This cypher was crowned by a crescent moon. His eyes darted to the creature’s throat, where long fingers meshed around it in a stranglehold. He played the light up above the homunculus’ head and found shadow welling in the hollows of a living skull face.