From death shall they awake who cross the water to the Shadow Isle.
A gouged eye, the sun hung low above the reddened earth.
Carnelian was standing on the porch of the Ancestor House. Once again he had spared Osidian, had listened to that butcher even in the midst of the slaughtered Ochre. Those dear people who had overcome their terror of the Masters to offer him and Osidian sanctuary were now all hanging down there from their sacred mother trees, not even a child spared.
Behind him like his own shadow, he could feel Osidian’s malign presence in the Ancestor House. Carnelian glared at the bloodshot sun. Threads of smoke rose tethered to the circling horizon. Osidian claimed these to be a Plainsman sign a thousand years old warning that the Masters had come down to ravage their Earthsky. Carnelian strained his eyes northwards. Was he even certain Aurum was really coming? What of Osidian’s claim that only he could defeat him? Carnelian recalled Aurum setting ants alight. As casually would the Master torch men. Carnelian regarded the spear in his hand with which he had intended to take Osidian’s life. He slumped. It seemed he was destined always to listen to Osidian’s arguments, though their logic always concealed poison.
He looked once more upon the mother trees. He must go down there and submit to the gaze of the dead. He must face Fern’s grief though Fern had the right to kill him. Was it only that morning they had been so close? Their friendship was dead with everything else. He moved to the steps that led down to the clearing. First he must return to where he had left Poppy, though he had no idea what he might say to her. Then he would go to Fern and begin making whatever atonement he could.
The Oracle Morunasa was at the foot of the steps with some other Marula. Uncertainty was in his amber eyes as he regarded the spear in Carnelian’s fist – the spear he had given him to kill Osidian. Morunasa was desperate to be free of Osidian, but after the profound visions he believed his god had shown him, he dared not do it himself.
Carnelian offered him the spear. ‘Where are the hostage children?’
Morunasa registered that its blade was unbloodied. ‘Not here, Master.’
Carnelian surveyed the warriors standing round. They would not look at him and seemed afraid. He dismissed a twinge of empathy. Though forced to it by Osidian and the Oracles, it was their hands had strung up the Ochre.
He turned back to Morunasa. ‘I don’t know what part you played in what happened here, but I do believe that you and your people will suffer for it.’
As he offered the spear again, Morunasa glanced up to the Ancestor House uneasily, then back, penetratingly, at Carnelian, so that he was left feeling they were making some agreement. It was only then the Oracle took back his spear.
At the edge of the clearing, Carnelian hesitated. The horror of what the gloom concealed made his heart pound.
‘Poppy,’ he whispered to himself, setting her up as a beacon to guide him through the nightmare. He edged into the shadows, afraid to make a sound. Fetor wafted, thick, sickening-sweet. He blessed the slope that rose up to meet the pendant branches, so concealing what lay further down the hill. He crept forward, his right hand sliding and crawling along the Crag rock. He heard furtive splashing up ahead. A figure came into sight, washing at the cistern. Carnelian watched it scoop water then trickle it over its head. As the hands fell the figure saw him; it was Krow. The youth’s eyes bulged. He reached down to pluck up some clothing, as if ashamed of his nakedness.
Carnelian moved forward and recognition lit Krow’s face with hope.
‘Carnie…’
Carnelian noticed the dark stains on the clothing he was clutching and frowned. Krow began to tremble. His chin fell. Water dripped from his hair into the dust. Carnelian pushed past him. Just then, he could not bear to know what had caused those stains.
As he passed Akaisha’s mother tree, Carnelian averted his gaze. Nevertheless, at the edge of his vision, a corpse seemed to be standing in the gloom. One of his hearthmates. The stench of its rotting smothered him. He doubled up, vomiting, then lurched down the rootstair, his eyes half closed and his feet finding the hollow steps.
The ferngarden was an emerald framed in the gateway. The bright air beckoned him as if he were struggling up through water to breathe it. Stumbling over the earthbridge, he gulped the breeze. Arid musk of fernland laced with acacia and magnolia. He gaped at the sun making a gory end to the day. Turning away, with each blink he printed its turquoise ghost on the ferns.
Poppy? He spun round, checking to see where he was relative to the earthbridge. This was the Bloodgate. He was certain it was here he had made her promise to wait for him. There was no movement but the swaying ferns. What if some Marula had found her? Panic choked him. He had abandoned not only Poppy, but also Fern. What if Osidian had commanded the Marula to leave no one in the Koppie alive?
He took the roots of the stair three at a time, desperate to find Poppy and Fern. Akaisha’s mother tree was caging twilight. He came to a halt when he realized her branches were now bare. Squinting, he managed to make out a shape lying in a root hollow like a seed in a pod. Edging closer he first smelled then saw, in its green marbled face, that it was a corpse. He circled it; saw another, then another. Then he spotted one still hanging. His heart jumped when it moved. It was changing shape like a chrysalis erupting. Then it began to fall so that he almost cried out, but it halted, sagging, before reaching the ground and he saw that it was being held; saw it was Fern holding it. He was cutting down the dead.
A smaller shape rose from a crouch. Poppy. She wandered a little, then crouched again. Drawing closer, Carnelian saw she was straightening the body of a child that lay within a root hollow as if asleep. He was grateful the gloom did not allow him to see which one it was of the hearth’s children. He watched Poppy’s tender movements, unsure what to do, unable to speak. Already she had had to endure the massacre of her own tribe; now this. He wished he could see her face. Surely she must be aware of his presence. She rose. He reached out to touch her, but she pushed his fingers away. A chill spread over his chest. Did she hate him too? Then he felt a hesitant touch, a tiny squeeze, before she moved away to another corpse. The one Fern had been carrying was laid out on the ground. Already he was embracing another. Carnelian, determined to help, found an occupied hollow, crouched, then leaned forward into the sickening aura of decay, feeling for something he could grab hold of.
From the direction of the rootstair a figure emerged: Morunasa in his pale Oracle ashes. Carnelian reacted with instinctive outrage when Morunasa set foot upon the hearth’s rootearth. The reality sank in of how terribly it had already been violated. He glanced round, expecting Fern to launch himself at the Maruli, but he was laying a body out along a hollow and seemed unaware of Morunasa’s presence.
‘The Master’s sent me to bring you to him.’
That Fern showed no reaction to Morunasa’s voice left Carnelian desolate. He would have preferred rage, violence, anything but passivity.
Following Morunasa away from the hearth, he noticed with some alarm a shape skulking. Too squat to be Marula, it could only be Krow. Carnelian did not want to believe that the youth had taken any part in the atrocity, but there was his bloodstained robe, his guilty looks, and so he said nothing as he passed him.
When they reached the stair, he gripped Morunasa’s shoulder. As the Maruli came to a halt, Carnelian remembered that what caked the skin of an Oracle was the burnt remains of their human victims. He wiped his hand down his robe, then indicated Fern and Poppy. ‘If they’re harmed, I’ll kill you.’
Morunasa shrugged, and resumed their journey to the Crag.
Osidian sat upon the floor of the Ancestor House that was a mosaic of the bones of Ochre grandmothers. Tiny fetal skulls grinned under his feet. Behind him crouched two Marula warriors with stone blades in their fists. Carnelian noted the shadow welling around Osidian’s sunken eyes and at the corners of his thinned lips. His sweat-sheathed, pale skin was spotted with festering wounds. In the firelight, his grin flickered as the maggots inside him feasted: an infestation the Oracles claimed brought communion with their god and that made Osidian one of them. It was only his hunger to annihilate the Ochre that had drawn him from the Isle of Flies before the maggots had had time to pupate.
Morunasa’s face showed fear and hatred as he gazed upon Osidian. Carnelian had already determined not to reveal the Maruli’s betrayal.
‘My Lord,’ he said to Osidian and waited for him to focus a frown on him. ‘We must cut down the dead.’
Osidian’s frown deepened. ‘The Ochre shall hang on their trees as a lesson to the other tribes.’
Carnelian grew cold with fear for Fern and Poppy and what he had left them doing. He must save them. Osidian must have chosen the mode of death deliberately, for he knew what Plainsmen believed. His intention was that no Ochre soul should find release through the proper rites, but, perhaps, there was a contradiction in Osidian’s goals that could be exploited.
‘What lesson do you intend the other tribes to learn, my Lord?’
Osidian grimaced. ‘I would have thought that clear enough.’
‘That they will be destroyed if they oppose you? You have gone to some lengths to justify this massacre in their eyes.’
‘I merely administer the Law-that-must-be-obeyed.’ Osidian regarded him balefully. ‘It allows no exceptions.’
The implied threat struck Carnelian hard. Whatever transgressions against the Law of the Masters the Ochre might be guilty of, so were Poppy, Fern and all the other Plainsmen of Osidian’s tribes. He focused on the moment. ‘The Law demands only that they should die; it says nothing about how their bodies are to be disposed of. We have seen how they keep their enemies as huskmen, using them as guards.. .’ He still had Osidian’s attention. ‘But eventually even they are released…’
The maggots were gnawing at Osidian’s patience. ‘I said, they will see them hanging.’
‘You have summoned them?’
‘They will be here tomorrow if they value their lives.’
‘Then they will see your justice but, after, if you were to allow the proper funerary rites, you would only serve to force the lesson deeper by framing it in a show of respect for their ways.’
‘When they come, I march north. There will be no time for burials.’
That statement seemed an unscalable wall. Then a way over occurred to Carnelian. ‘Fern and I will do it.’
The labour required to save all the souls of his people must surely force Fern to put off any attempt at retribution. It would also provide them all with a channel down which to pour their grief.
Osidian sneered. ‘Do you not feel already unclean enough? Besides, surely the barbarian would rather join his tribe in death.’
Fear for Fern overcame Carnelian’s distress. ‘Would it not be better to force him to live as a permanent reminder to the other tribes of the lesson that you have taught them?’
Osidian considered this a moment, then gave a slight nod. ‘We shall let your barbarian boy live until he next defies us.’
The smile that followed showed how certain Osidian was that such a time would come. Carnelian could not let that go unchallenged. ‘Do you really want to have his corpse join the others lying between you and me?’
Pain closed Osidian’s eyes before he could respond. Carnelian had time to calm himself, to realize he did not want to throw away what he might have gained, but there was another anxiety he could not ignore. He waited for Osidian’s attack to subside.
‘You really believe you can stop Aurum’s legion?’
The shadows in Osidian’s face deepened. ‘If that becomes necessary …’
At first Carnelian did not understand, could see no alternative, then he remembered that Aurum had been, with his father Suth, the prime supporter of Osidian’s election. ‘You hope he might come over to you?’
‘If he becomes convinced I have a chance to regain the Masks.’
Aurum had once before risked all on a not dissimilar gamble. Dread reared in Carnelian at the thought of Osidian in control of a legion. Horrors flashed through his mind, but from these a thought emerged. Possessed of such power, could Osidian resist striking directly at Osrakum before the Wise had a chance to muster a sufficient defence? With the Masters’ focus shifted to the Guarded Land, the Plainsmen must surely become a peripheral concern. Then, perhaps, when the gaze of the Wise turned back towards the Earthsky, they might take more measured retribution.
Carnelian made his way back to the hearth nursing the hope that his plan would save Fern. The stench from the dead snuffed this out. He could bear the nausea better than their pendular swing among the creaking cedars.
When he reached Akaisha’s rootearth, his eyes could not pierce the darkness beneath the cedar. He yearned for the light that once had radiated from the hearth; its warmth filtering out through the huddle of his hearthmates to welcome him. He remembered how it had illuminated the embracing branches of their mother tree like the rafters of his old room in the Hold. Anger rose in him. All such comforts were now dead. What remained to him was to make amends. He wanted to call out, but it felt to him that his voice would be a desecration. Was it possible Fern and Poppy were sleeping in their hollows among the corpses? Trusting to his feet, he crept forward. It was only when he became aware he was listening out for breathing that he realized this had always been an unconscious part of his navigation. Now the only human sound was his heart, louder even than the creak of the mother tree.
When at last he reached his hollow, he crouched and inched his hand into it. His fingers, touching flesh, recoiled.
‘Carnie?’ Poppy’s terrified whisper.
He slipped in beside her. She clung to him and wept, but he could not weep with her, though he wanted to.
Floating, warm. Soft shapes kiss his outline. Liquid, lapping thick-tongued, coats his skin like honey. Reek of iron, taste of salt. Sinking, he flails. Strikes the logs of tiny limbs bloating sodden. His desperate fingers gouge into children’s heads as soft as rotten melons, into tooth-rimmed holes, eye sockets. His grip slips free from slimy flesh. Gasping, he drinks, drowning in a surge of clotting blood .
He woke gulping. Cedar branches formed black veins against a fleshy sky. Render. He had been swimming in render. He remembered the briny soup of pygmy flesh the sartlar had kept in a hollow baobab. His tongue scoured the inside of his mouth anticipating the taste of blood. But in his dream they were children, not pygmies. It felt like an omen. He thought about the children Osidian had taken hostage from his vassal tribes. Morunasa had told him they were not here when he had come with Osidian. Then where were they? The answer was obvious and yet he was surprised. The Ochre had given them back in the hope of winning over the other tribes to their rebellion. Why should that surprise him? Because, like any other Master, he had assumed the Plainsmen incapable of strategy. His shame deepened. Had he helped bring about so much disaster because he had seen everything that was happening as a quarrel between him and Osidian, or as a game?
The dream still saturated his mind. The last time he had had such a nightmare was in the Upper Reach. He remembered a tree with strange, overripe fruit. He heard again the creaking of its burdened branches. Disbelief came with a certainty that that dream had predicted the massacre. Shock that he had not seen its warning gave way to disgust. A warning from where? From whom? A god? He felt polluted. Was he now going to allow himself to become as possessed by dreams as Osidian?
He became aware Poppy was gone. Sitting up, he saw the things occupying the hollows round him with their swollen purple faces veined with green and black: monstrous, familiar strangers. He rose into the aura of their putrefaction. Nauseous, he cast around for Poppy. A scraping was coming from beyond the trunk of the mother tree. He hurried to find someone else alive, but not fast enough to avoid recognizing Koney and Hirane with their greenish baby between them.
With a mattock, Fern was clawing at the black earth of the hearth, revealing red beneath. Poppy was crouched over a corpse. She turned up a blank face as Carnelian approached. He saw who it was she was rouging with ochre: Akaisha, her wrinkles stretched smooth by her ballooning cheeks and forehead. Her face had already been painted the colour of fresh blood. Her belly had a green cast as if she were pregnant with jade. Whin, near her, looked fat, though in life she had been so thin. Fern’s wife Sil was there too, her beauty distorted in a net of purple-black veins, their daughter Leaf beside her, a discarded doll. All three had livid collars cut into the flesh of their necks and throats by the ubas that had been used to hang them. Carnelian’s hand strayed up to the scar the slavers’ ropes had left around his own neck. Osidian was similarly marked. That he might have chosen hanging because of what he himself had suffered numbed Carnelian with hatred.
He watched Fern gouging the earth. Each stroke tore a grunt from his throat. His eyes seemed stones. Carnelian knew where the mattocks were kept and fetched one. Returning, he leapt down into the hole with Fern and began to take out his rage on the earth. A shove threw him out of the hole onto the ground. Carnelian surged to his feet, but Fern’s hopeless face cooled his anger. He watched the man who had been his friend return to his digging. ‘These were my hearthmates too.’
Fern turned cold eyes on him. ‘You’re not the first to claim that.’
Carnelian struggled to understand what he meant. ‘Krow?’
Fern snorted sour laughter. ‘He came here claiming that my mother had sent me a message through him.’
Carnelian could make no sense of this.
‘I asked him how it could be that, coming here with the Master, he’d had time to talk to my mother.’
Carnelian could not help glancing towards dead Akaisha.
Another snort from Fern, ‘Yes, he helped murder her.’
‘He told you this?’
‘He didn’t need to. Guilt reeked off him.’
Carnelian gazed at Fern, not knowing what to say.
‘I told him that, once I’ve saved the souls of my kin, I’m going to kill him.’ Fern’s lips curled contemptuously. ‘He ran away.’ He raised his mattock, then brought it down murderously.
In the clear morning light, Carnelian remembered the hope he had had the night before. ‘We must save the souls not only of your kin, but of all the Ochre.’
Fern lost the rhythm of his strokes.
‘Please let me help.’
The mattock bit again into the red earth.
‘Me too,’ said Poppy.
Carnelian looked into her face and saw her need. His gaze caught on Akaisha’s face, disfigured by the way she had died. She had become merely a thing. He felt the pain of grief rising and forced it down. Anything she might have said to Krow now had more of her in it than her body.
He put his arm around Poppy and drew her away. They stumbled towards the stair. Morning was revealing the grotesquely laden trees. Lime flames were lit along the branches. Drawn to the nearest, he saw it was a fresh young cone. It gave off a green fragrance that cut through the charnel air. It kindled a little hope in his heart.
Poppy grabbed his arm to draw his attention to her. He looked down into her face so thinned with grief she seemed old. Misery threatened to imprison them. He stroked some of her hair from her mouth and asked her what Krow had said.
‘Something about forgiveness.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t hear it properly.’ She glanced back at Fern and watched the mattock rise and fall. ‘He didn’t really listen to him.’ Her eyes ignited. ‘Why should he? Krow’s clearly a murderer.’
Carnelian felt there was something unjust in her fierce anger. ‘Whatever he did, the Master was behind it.’
She turned her fury on him. ‘He could have said no. Even now he does the Master’s bidding.’ She must have sensed Carnelian’s confusion because she added: ‘He rides today to the Upper Reach.’
‘He told you that?’
‘He told Fern, when Fern threatened him.’
Carnelian felt suddenly an urgent need to hear what Akaisha had said. He glanced up at the sky. There might still be time to catch Krow.
Remembering his own expedition to the Upper Reach, Carnelian went to the Southgate. The Westgarden, still in the shadow of the Grove hill, had been turned into a camp. A smoky haze suggested that many fires had recently been dowsed. A few Marula warriors hunched here and there like boulders, but his gaze was drawn down the Southing to where another contingent of Marula were gathered at the Near Southbridge. Thinking this might have something to do with Krow, he set off towards them.
Several of the Marula came to meet him as he approached. He could feel their eyes on him, but any man he looked at turned away. At first he imagined it was that they thought him Osidian, whom they feared. Then he began to sense they were displaying not fear but shame. Their apparent leader was almost as tall as Carnelian, but more slender. The prominent ribs of his beaded corselet made him seem as if he were suffering from famine. His head was bowed. His fellows had drawn away from him. His fingers gripped his spear tighter. Carnelian stood for a moment, trying to work out his feelings towards the man. Pity perhaps. If that, why? Kinship? Carnelian’s head jerked back in surprise. He remembered how he had helped teach these warriors how to form a wall of spears that was proof against mounted attack. These men had come up from their Lower Reach to fight for Osidian in obedience to one of their princes. Carnelian could feel the Grove with its atrocities staring at his back. These warriors had murdered his people, but had they had any choice except to do Osidian’s bidding?
He regarded the man before him. ‘Maruli.’
The man’s handsome face came up. They looked at each other. Carnelian wanted to believe it was regret he could see in those bloodshot eyes. ‘Where is Krow?’ he asked in Vulgate.
The Maruli’s brow creased. Carnelian remembered that they spoke no tongue but their own, but he also remembered that Krow, as one of Osidian’s commanders, was known by the name of his tribe. ‘Twostone?’
The Maruli gave half a nod, then raised a hand to point towards the earthbridge. Carnelian saw a commotion there. Marula with lowered spears were confronting a mass of angry Plainsmen.
He pushed into the back of the Marula hornwall, shoving men from his path, slapping their spears up. As he appeared on the bridge, the Plainsmen began falling to their knees. ‘Keep that show of subservience for the Master.’
Confused, the Plainsmen rose and stumbled back across the bridge to let him cross. Looking into their faces he recognized they were Darkcloud; also, they were afraid of him. That cooled his anger, which really had been fear of more bloodshed. ‘Who will tell me what’s going on here?’
The Plainsmen looked at each other, then some youths stepped forward. Each had his face painted white to demonstrate his devotion to Osidian. ‘We’ve come as the Master commanded,’ said one, indicating the press of aquar and drag-cradles filling up the Southing almost to the Newditch. ‘Twostone claims we’re to set off immediately.’ He indicated Krow, who was there among the older men. ‘But we won’t go anywhere until we hear this from the Master himself.’ He pointed accusingly at the Marula. ‘And they won’t let us pass.’ An angry murmur of agreement rose from the Darkcloud behind him.
Carnelian saw the need for answers on every face except Krow’s. Their eyes met. Clearly the youth had told them nothing about the massacre. Carnelian wondered again what part Krow had played in that. Perhaps Krow had reason to fear their reaction. At the news they must surely experience the terror Osidian wanted them to, but also anger. They would not dare turn this against the Master. The Marula they hated already, but could do nothing about. But, if they suspected that one of their own had been involved, had turned against the people who had taken him in, who knew what they might do? Carnelian’s heart leapt to Krow’s defence.
He would satisfy the curiosity of the Plainsmen, but first there were some things he needed to know. ‘Where are the hostage children?’
Glances of fear flitted among them.
‘I only want to know they’re safe.’
The youth who had spoken before spoke again: ‘The Ochre gave them back, Master.’
It occurred to Carnelian that the Darkcloud, being an ‘ally’ tribe, had had no children hostage in the Koppie. ‘How do you know this?’
The youth looked at his hands.
‘They asked you to join their revolt, didn’t they?’
The youth grimaced. He glanced at his fellows, seeking permission, then gave a slow nod. Wide-eyed, he gazed at Carnelian. ‘But the Darkcloud sent them away. Every last one of us is loyal to the Master.’
Carnelian saw behind the youth how many heads were bowed. They were not telling the truth. He could well imagine the consternation the Ochre emissaries had produced. A desire for freedom would have set the old against the young, women against men. Ultimately, it would have been fear and uncertainty that had dictated their answer to the Ochre. How could they be sure the other tribes would rise with them and not leave them exposed to Osidian’s wrath? Then there were the hatreds his conquests had sown among them. As one of the resented Ally tribes the position of the Darkcloud would have been particularly perilous. Carnelian found it hard to blame them. Osidian had had good reason to be confident that, when he marched against the Ochre, no other tribe would come to their aid.
‘What does the smoke rising from every koppie across the Earthsky mean to you?’
The white-faced youth looked at Carnelian as if trying to find out what answer he wanted. He gave up. ‘Our old people claim, Master, it means the Standing Dead have invaded the Earthsky.’
Carnelian nodded heavily. It was confirmation of what he had hoped they would deny. No doubt this too had played a part in their decision not to join the Ochre. It was time to tell them about the massacre. As he described what had happened, he watched blood drain from their faces.
The youth’s eyes were popping. ‘All of them?’
‘All save Fern, Twostone Poppy… and Twostone Krow.’
Deliberately, Carnelian did not turn, but everyone else did, to stare at Krow.
After hearing his news, the Darkcloud were only too glad to flee the Koppie. Carnelian left them to make their preparations while he took Krow aside. The youth would not return his gaze. Carnelian felt no anger towards him, only sad disappointment. ‘Akaisha gave you words for Fern?’
Krow glanced up. ‘And for you.’
Carnelian heard that with a jolt.
‘She called you sister’s son.’
Carnelian squinted against tears.
‘She committed Fern into your care.’
Krow’s voice was as empty of emotion as his face. Carnelian felt the same confusion he had among the Marula. Anger rose in him that he was being denied the release of straightforward hatred. ‘What else did she say?’
Krow’s brows knitted. ‘What she could…’
Carnelian could hear in Krow’s voice how close to her death she must have been when she had spoken to him.
‘Tell me it as she told it to you.’
Krow regarded him, as if he was having difficulty remembering. ‘“Should you wish to atone for the part you’ve played in the destruction of the Tribe, then save my son, care for him, protect him from his bitterness, from his lust for revenge.”’
‘You told Fern this?’
Krow nodded.
Carnelian sensed that the youth had more to say. He waited. Krow seemed to consider something, then decide against it.
‘Was there more?’ Carnelian asked at last.
Krow shook his head.
Carnelian resisted his urge to judge him. Krow was not the first Plainsman Osidian had corrupted. Carnelian gazed out, seeking some solace in the emerald plain, in the vast blue dome of the sky. ‘Why do you go to the Upper Reach?’
‘To fetch the salt stored there from the sartlar.’
Their eyes met. Both had grim memories of the place. He thought of asking Krow why he still chose to serve the Master, but decided against it. That might provoke a confession Carnelian was in no position to handle well.
He took his leave, then walked back through the Darkcloud towards the Marula-guarded bridge. Krow’s mention of the sartlar had plunged him back into his render nightmare.
A smell like burning hair grew stronger as Carnelian approached the hearth. Poppy was standing with her back to him. When he had come close enough, he saw she was looking down into the graves Fern had dug. Women so red they seemed freshly peeled nestled among the snake roots of the mother tree. Fern was gently scooping earth over Koney as if he was washing her. Carnelian felt he was intruding on private intimacy. A thin current of smoke was curling up from a curve of horn charring in some embers: hornblack for the corpses of the men. He returned to watching Fern. He had to prepare him for the coming of the vassal tribes. ‘The Master’s levies are coming here on their way north.’
‘North?’ Poppy said.
Her expression of bafflement confused him, until he realized with shock he had not told them of the invasion. It was so deeply branded in his mind, he had assumed everyone knew. He explained to Poppy the meaning of the smoke columns they had seen as they rode towards the Koppie from the Upper Reach.
Poppy gaped. ‘Dragons, coming here?’
Carnelian wanted to confess to her this was the reason he had spared Osidian’s life, but his eyes were drawn to Fern, who was stroking earth over Koney’s face. She sank from sight like the pygmy in the render. Carnelian’s confusion became distress.
‘Why?’ Poppy said.
‘Aurum,’ said Carnelian, still trying to resolve his feelings.
He felt stupid gazing at Poppy’s incomprehension. He could not remember the name the Plainsmen gave him. He shaped the Master’s cypher with his hand. ‘Hookfork.’
Blood drained from Poppy’s face. ‘Hookfork?’
It had a cruel sound when she said it. She was seeing something in her mind. ‘I grew up fearing him.’ Her sight returned. She saw Carnelian. ‘Long ago it was he who came with fire to make us slaves. A ravener in a man’s shape.’
Grimly, Carnelian considered that. ‘As are all the Standing Dead, but still, he’s just a man like me.’
Poppy looked incredulous.
‘Really. I knew him. He’s an old man.’
‘A kindly one, no doubt,’ said Fern, whom grief seemed to have made old too. ‘Is this all you came to say?’
Carnelian hesitated.
Fern frowned.
‘The Master means to display the Tribe as a lesson to the others.’
With a trembling hand, Fern returned to scooping earth, cold fury in his eyes.
When the charred horn had cooled enough, Fern began crumbling it into a bowl, then ground it with a mortar. As Carnelian watched him, he listened to the rumble of aquar moving along the Homing. It seemed that the procession of riders would never end.
Earlier, leaving Fern burying his women, Carnelian had climbed to the Crag summit and watched Osidian’s vassals arriving from the south and east. Marula at the Outditch bridges had dammed their flood until they had been forced to spill into the ferngardens. At Osidian’s command, the Marula had retired with him to the Poisoned Field and the Plainsmen had flowed into the Grove. Seeing how numerous was Osidian’s host, Carnelian had begun to believe it possible Aurum could be defeated. He had also reached another, grimmer conclusion: if all had joined the Ochre in revolt, Osidian and his Marula would have been overwhelmed.
Carnelian had returned to Akaisha’s mother tree fearing Fern’s reaction to this further desecration, all those strangers staring up into the hearths of his tribe, gawping at his people hanging like meat, but Fern had just continued labouring on the rituals, apparently oblivious.
He was now adding fat to the bowl to make a black paste. Carnelian watched him carry the bowl to where the males of their hearth were laid out naked on blankets. Carefully, Fern began to daub his brother Ravan black; the colour of the Skyfather’s rain-filled sky. This scene made Carnelian recall another, seemingly so long ago it might have been merely the memory of a dream, when Fern’s father and uncle had been laid out similarly. From the moment Fern had set eyes upon Carnelian, his kin had begun to die. None now were left.
Carnelian gazed down the slope and caught glimpses of the riders and aquar rumbling by. Turning back, he edged closer to Fern. The desire to help him was an ache in his chest, but he dare not break his trance, not until Osidian and his host were gone.
Fern did not pause when he was done; he leaned his shoulder into his brother’s corpse, working it onto his back. He rose, unsteady under the bloated burden, then staggered off to the rootstair and began climbing it towards the Crag.
‘He goes to expose him,’ Poppy whispered and Carnelian gave a nod. Itching to help, his hands squeezed each other. Hard as it had been to watch Fern work, it was worse being left there with no distraction but the swing of corpses hanging from the other mother trees. Carnelian crouched over the bowl of hornblack. Its acrid smell was a clean relief from the miasma of decay that clung to the whole hillside.
‘I’ll be back…’ Poppy said, then was off after Fern.
Carnelian gazed at the hornblack, trying to work out how Fern might react if he were to return to find him blackening the dead. He looked towards the mother tree and thought how much he now loathed her shade with its aura of death. A patter of feet made him turn to see Poppy running towards him. The look on her face made him run to meet her. She grabbed hold of him, tears smearing the dirt on her face. ‘He can’t do it…’
‘Can’t do what?’
But she was shaking her head, too distressed to make sense. They rushed up to the clearing under the Ancestor House. Carnelian saw Ravan’s corpse draped over the lower steps. Seeing Fern prostrate, his shoulders shuddering, Carnelian ran up to him, reached out, but could not bring himself to touch him, to comfort him. ‘I’ll take his legs, you take his arms.’
Fern fumbled under Ravan’s head, lifting it so that Carnelian could not help looking upon the bloated face, twisted in its death grimace. Black tears had formed in the corners of the sunken eyes. They struggled up the steps. So close, the stench was overpowering. Sick with horror and grief, he longed to reach out to Fern, but he did not know how.