What kind of society survives turning to cannibalism?
Carnelian slumped beside the fire stirring the still warm ashes with his foot. He was weary of waiting. Morunasa had said Osidian would wake in five days. It had already been eight, perhaps nine: he had lost count. It seemed a long time since he had suspended manoeuvres. Neither he nor their host had left the camp for days. He had hardly ventured away from their fire. Poppy and Krow went to fetch food for them and water. Fern went out periodically to walk around the camp. Sometimes Krow went with him; sometimes he remained behind, his head hanging, as miserable and worn out as everyone else. No one wanted to look upon the famine stalking the land beyond the dragon wall. They could not avoid hearing the moaning. Night and day it lent a desolate, bleak voice to the choking wind that blew ever more fiercely from the red desert the land had become. Hearing that sound of suffering, Carnelian feared that, if they did not soon march, all that would be left of the sartlar was bones. He glanced up and saw the great crag of towered Heart-of-Thunder looming up in the gloom, against the leftway wall. He had had him moved there so that they could march north the moment Osidian awoke. A fantasy of green land and clear air possessed him. There the sartlar would find food.
He trailed his gloved hand along a crack between two flagstones, heaping red dust. He took some in his palm and prayed Osidian would soon wake.
‘Master?’
The voice made him jump. It was Morunasa’s gravel tone. ‘He’s woken.’ The Oracle was there and gave him a grim nod.
Carnelian put on his mask and sprang to his feet. He gazed out over the auxiliaries huddling against the duststorm, their aquar like rocks in a bloody tide. He saw Fern coming towards him and cried out: ‘Get the legions ready. Send messengers among the sartlar. We’re marching north.’
Relief flooded into Fern’s face even as the news began spreading through the camp, waking men from their lethargy so suddenly that, everywhere, aquar heads were popping up, eye-plume fans half opening. Carnelian lingered for a moment watching the camp come alive like the Earthsky after the rains. Then, as he saw Morunasa turn towards the base of the tower, he grew grim and prepared himself for what lay within.
The red light of the outer world snuffed out and the moans of the starving multitude faded as Carnelian followed Morunasa into the tower. As the portcullis was raised in the mouth of the stables a stench flowed out that made Carnelian flinch. Morunasa stooped and entered. Gathering his courage, Carnelian followed. Doughy shapes formed a pale frieze about the walls. Quick dusk as the portcullis fell, then darkness. He refused to give in to the fear that he was trapped. The sickening fetor thickened as he drew nearer to one of the pale shapes. It must once have been a man. A Master hung on hooks, his flesh sagging away from his bones. A beam of light sprang out to illuminate the corpse. Carnelian glimpsed Morunasa behind him holding aloft a narrowly shuttered lantern. He turned back to what it was the Oracle wanted him to see: a dead body not so unlike how his would be were it hanging there. A half-melted tallow doll. Sallow skin spotted with twisted black wounds like the eyeslits on a mask. Feet and hands dark bloated clubs. He had seen this kind of thing before. He looked up at a face frozen in pantomime surprise. He scanned along the walls and as he did so, the light followed his gaze. The commanders were all there, all surprised, all riddled with the Oracles’ holy vermin. Carnelian steeled himself against guilt. Though he had offered up these Masters as victims, it had been to save the Lepers. Besides, it was Osidian who had carried out this abomination. He might claim his god demanded victims, but what had really killed these Masters was Osidian’s injured pride.
Seeing the way Morunasa was gazing at him, Carnelian was overcome with revulsion. ‘I’m not afraid of you, Oracle. Enjoy this, because you know you will never dare visit your vengeance on him.’
Snarling, Morunasa began climbing the ramp to the next level. When they reached the top level of the stables Morunasa halted outside a stall and cast his lantern light into it. Carnelian’s head eclipsed the light as he peered in. He crouched, seeing two prone figures: another Master, this one laid out upon the floor, muttering, and beside him a skeleton. Carnelian gasped with horror and fell to his knees. ‘Osidian,’ he murmured, his voice breaking towards a sob. He gulped it back, knowing Morunasa was watching. He removed his mask and put it on the floor, then leaned close. The skeleton was indeed Osidian, all his flesh drained away, leaving only bones, and skin marred by many recent wounds. Carnelian grew angry that he should be seen like that. He unfastened his cloak and covered him. Blearily, this almost dead thing opened its eyes. Bright jewels among the ruins of his beauty. Carnelian’s tears were blinding him. He leaned closer, whispering: ‘What have you done to yourself? What have you done?’
Osidian began a smile that his lips were too tight to finish. He tried to raise one withered arm, but had not the strength. He smiled again. ‘I have been to the Shadow Isle and have returned.’
His breath was stale. His eyes seemed to sink back into his skull. Carnelian had no problem believing Osidian had returned from death.
Osidian’s soul seemed to rise up again from the depths. ‘I found peace there,’ he sighed, but his eyes were haunted by some recollection. Then they ignited. ‘I bring back a promise of victory.’
Carnelian drew back a little. Those eyes had in them the mercilessness of a raven’s. The light subsided and Osidian stared madly as if he were seeing some horror. Carnelian reached under the cloak and found his hand. He winced at its frailty, like the remains of a bird’s wing. He dared not squeeze it lest all its bones snap. ‘Famine threatens to destroy our forces. We must move to where they can feed or else there will be nothing to follow you to victory except the dead.’
Osidian frowned, but showed no comprehension. His brow smoothed. ‘My Father promised me victory and peace thereafter.’
Carnelian knew he would gain nothing by further speech and so he told him he was going to carry him up to Heart-of-Thunder.
‘Jaspar too.’
On the point of asking what he meant, Carnelian became aware once more of the other body, and its muttering as constant as the babbling of a stream. He leaned over to see the face. A narrow face that at first he could not recognize as Jaspar’s, so wasted it might rather have been Jaspar’s aged father. His white flesh looked as if he had been the victim of a frenzied stabbing. Carnelian noticed some movement. A pale tongue was poking out from one of these wounds. Carnelian bent double, retching.
‘The God has entered him and speaks to me through him.’
Carnelian glared at Osidian.
‘He seeds my dreams.’
Carnelian regarded Jaspar with disgust. He was giving birth to his maggots. ‘Will he die?’
‘Oh no, he will suffer long.’
Carnelian turned back to Osidian.
‘He shall be tended well so that I may use him as an instrument of divination.’ Osidian must have misunderstood Carnelian’s look of horror, for he added: ‘Worry not, we shall make sure he shall be fully aware of the God devouring him.’
Carnelian rose, trying to overcome his disgust, his loathing for Osidian and his filthy obsessions by instructing Morunasa how the two Masters were to be carried up out of the stables.
Carnelian emerged from behind the monolith onto the leftway and gulped fresh air through his mask. Heart-of-Thunder seemed insubstantial against the vast world beyond, which Carnelian felt he was seeing through a film of blood. A sea of sartlar stretched away to a murky horizon. Shock made the moment silent and eternal: he had stepped into one of his dreams. He forced his head to move, his eyes to focus on something with a human scale. Osidian lying masked upon a bier borne by Oracles, Jaspar upon another. The Marula stared as if they were seeing their deaths rolling towards them. Carnelian could not resist the pressure of their gaze and once more turned to look upon the multitude.
‘Millions…’ he breathed. His feet carried him closer to the edge as he sought to take in the vastness of such numbers. A great disturbance struck the shoreline of that sea where it came close to the dragons. For a moment Carnelian feared the dragons were attacking them, but there was no smoke, no fire, and the monsters seemed as motionless as rocks. The disturbance surged out across the masses, rushing towards the horizon like some vast wave sucking back from the shore. As he watched it race away, Carnelian understood what it was he was seeing. They were kneeling. An oceanic act of abasement. Was he its cause?
‘The brutes feel the presence of my Father.’
Carnelian turned and saw Morunasa had lifted Osidian’s head enough so that he could look out. The dark hands reverentially let Osidian’s head down. He was too weak to lift it himself, Carnelian could see that. Then Carnelian noticed Heart-of-Thunder’s Hands kneeling a little way off along the leftway. He summoned them and they came. ‘Dispatch a message to Earth-is-Strong. Her Lefthand is to command her until I return.’
The Hands touched their foreheads to the stone, so that when they came up they were bloodied by the dust. Carnelian gazed out once more and saw the wave of kneeling was still receding towards the horizon. He brought his gaze back to the edge of the camp. The dragons were beginning to swing round towards the ramp that would lead them up onto the road. Beneath him, the auxiliaries were already mounted. He gave the sartlar one more glance, then led the procession of Oracles and biers towards the dragon tower.
Moving along the open road, Heart-of-Thunder was easily outpacing the sartlar, who were pouring like oil across the murky land. Carnelian’s heart leapt when he noticed the miasma ahead wavering. He held his breath as the haze slipped to the ground in undulating thinning veils to reveal a vision of clear air, of a land running green to a far horizon. He let out a sigh that mixed relief with wonder. He felt free and had to fight a desire to tear the mask from his face so that he could enjoy the clean air unfiltered. Even through its nosepads he could detect the rich pungency of hri. He scanned the land and saw its greens were duller than they had seemed at first. These fields were tinged with brown. The rising heat was already turning the morning sky to enamel. He scanned round to the west. There the red haze formed a vague cliff fading away into the south-west, from whose base shapes were emerging like ants. He watched them slowly darkening the earth, turning the fields a dunnish red.
‘It is nearly harvest time,’ said the homunculus.
Carnelian turned to the little man, a question on his lips, but he forgot this and everything else as a shadow rose up at the edge of his vision.
‘Like locusts.’
Carnelian gazed at Osidian and wished he could see beneath his mask. Though his voice sounded sane enough, only looking into his eyes would make Carnelian certain. Still, he rose, steadied himself against the motion of the deck and offered the command chair to Osidian who, moving like an old man, slumped into it. For a long while he hung forward watching the sartlar devouring the land.
‘Numberless,’ he said, almost in a whisper.
He half turned so that Carnelian could see the gleam of an eye behind the mask. ‘Why did you gather them?’
‘I too was promised victory in a dream,’ Carnelian answered. He expected more questions, a dismissal, but at that moment a long, vibrating stream of Quyan syllables began pouring out from behind them. Carnelian saw Jaspar’s shadowy form laid out against the cabin wall.
‘The Lord speaks,’ said Osidian, in deep tones, as he nodded ponderously. He watched the sartlar stripping the land of its green to leave it red. ‘They consume the land as the worms did my own flesh.’
As dragons pushed the sartlar back to make space for a camp, Carnelian descended to the road from Heart-of-Thunder, glad to escape Jaspar’s incessant babbling. Auxiliaries were pouring off the road, fanning out over the cleared land. Their torrent veered away from him as he approached the ramp. Once he had reached the earth he set off in search of Fern. All around him men were choosing spots upon which to light fires, dismounting, unhitching packs from their saddle-chairs, sacs, waterskins that some were carrying off to fill at the stopping-place cisterns. Carnelian was glad of his mask that filtered the air. Even so, he realized he would be lucky to spot Fern through the churned-up dust. It occurred to him to ask one of the auxiliaries whether he knew Fern’s whereabouts, but his instincts were against the abasement such an enquiry would produce. Already there was a region around him into which none dare stray.
At last his wanderings brought him to the margins of the camp, where the dragons rose as a forbidding rampart, black against the westering sun. As he came closer he noticed men scrabbling up a rope girdle and walked round to get a better view. One man had clambered onto the monster’s haunch and was daubing something on what Carnelian saw was a wound that a leg of the tower had worn into its hide. That disturbed him; clearly the creature had already worn its tower too long.
Then he forgot everything else as he became aware he could hear the sea. At least it seemed the sea, though he knew it to be the murmuring of the sartlar multitude. He was drawn to gaze upon them and slipped into the shadow under the monster’s belly. He saw the silhouette of a beastmaster hefting up a sac to feed the monster. Pulling his cowl over his head, he crept behind its right front leg, making sure the massive column was firmly tethered to the ground. He just wanted a peep, but feared his mask might reflect some ray of the sun. Imagining the panic of the sartlar, he removed it. The tumult swelled as he slipped out of the shadow. Their stench wafted like the miasma from a midden. Squinting against the sun’s orb, at first he could see nothing but swirling currents. Then he began to make out the individual creatures on the margin of the host. Ragged, hunched, they crouched huddling in groups. Some limped among these clumps on stick legs. Everywhere his gaze snagged on filthy, bony limbs. Then he began noticing that some had stomachs swollen like render sacs, above legs that seemed far too brittle to bear them. Pregnant females? Difficult to tell, but then he saw some so small they had to be whelps. Children, he thought. Matted hair, hideous profiles. So many faces made monstrous by the earth glyph burned deep into nose and skin. He saw an old woman with one eye milky from a careless branding. He became aware of a pair of eyes gazing towards him. One of their young. The face already melted by the brand, but such bright eyes. The realization sank in that he was being watched. It was the child who broke their link first. It ran, screeching, into the body of the multitude. Carnelian darted back behind the dragon’s leg, fumbled his mask on even as he heard behind him the commotion building to a roar. Without glancing back he returned to the camp.
Later, when Osidian insisted they must sleep high in the watch-tower, Carnelian gave in, hardly heeding his arguments. Something about the need to maintain the awe with which their men regarded them; how else could they expect their obedience in a battle against his brother, the Gods on Earth?
Morose, Carnelian shared some render with him on the heliograph platform. There was nothing else left to eat. He hardly looked up at all at the dark mass of the sartlar clothing the land. He returned to his cell and gave one-word answers to Poppy’s questions. As he lay trying to sleep all he could see was the sartlar child’s bright, human eyes.
For the next two days they marched along the road. Carnelian was relieved to be back in the tower of Earth-is-Strong with Poppy near him and away from Jaspar. Always, as far north as he could see, sartlar were streaming from the west along the tracks between the hri fields towards the road, concentrating along its margin as if they were sightseers coming to watch a procession pass by. He could not understand how they found their way, for he had summoned them to come to a watch-tower now away in the south.
The hri in the fields ahead turned brown, then yellow, then white as if the land itself was ageing before his eyes. As the green in the world faded, the hope it had brought faded in his heart and memory. Everywhere water-wheels were still. The rain wind picked up steadily. Wafts of dust came dancing from the south-west, cavorting and gyrating in spirals that thinned as they reached for the dead white sky. Then, as they passed a watch-tower near the middle of the third day, the wind angered to a gale that made Earth-is-Strong’s mast rattle in the cabin. A great front like a frothing wave came rolling towards them, eating up the sky.
‘A sporestorm,’ Poppy said, eyeing it with alarm.
‘Just the earth turning to dust,’ Carnelian said, but as it broke over them the day turned to red dusk.
Each day they woke to a thin violet light oozing from the east. The mosaic of the camp came apart even as the dragon rampart broke into its cohorts and loomed up towards the road to follow Heart-of-Thunder north. Dozing in his command chair, Carnelian rarely saw the auxiliaries pouring after them in their column. The nearest dragon seemed like some rock rising up out of the sea. The leftway, a seawall slipping slowly past, faded away into the murk ahead. All sound was muffled, only the nearest murmurous swell of sartlar noticeable.
As the midday sun diffused orange in the haze above, they could look forward to reaching another watch-tower. Like some vast and lonely tree it would loom ever more distinct until its grim bulk was threatening to topple onto them. There, upon the leftway, leading a squadron of riders, Fern would meet them and confirm the land ahead was clear. This done, he would hurtle off with his escort, heading for the tower beyond the next, which he would occupy, spying out the way ahead as best he could until their rendezvous at the same time the next day.
The march would leave the midday tower and soon they would once again be adrift in the ghostly land. Well before nightfall another tower would begin to solidify ahead. Though weary of sitting in his chair, Carnelian would still eye it with some dread. For there, just below its branches, he would have to spend another night of dreams.
When they reached it, while Earth-is-Strong and Heart-of-Thunder remained on the road beside the watch-tower, the other dragons would descend to the earth, fanning out across it to form the margin of a new camp, pushing deep enough into the sartlar to bring the stopping-place cisterns within their curve.
Krow was always there on the road to greet them, having set off at dawn to keep watch from that tower. Sometimes, he and Carnelian would exchange a few words but, mostly, he left Krow and Poppy to each other. He would climb to the summit of the tower as if ascending to his execution. Often he would reach the heliograph platform in time to watch the disturbance the dragons made ripple away to the vague margins of the sartlar multitude. Sometimes he would imagine the tower and camp had just that moment risen up from the depths of the sea. He would sit there watching the auxiliaries pouring off the road into the camp until the dusk bruised the murk purple. Only then would Osidian appear upon the platform and they would share some render. Carnelian loathed the stuff, but there was nothing else and so he ate just enough to sustain his strength.
At last, beneath a starless sky, the time would come he most dreaded. He would descend and the world would close around him to become nothing more than his cell. Every night it seemed to be the same cell. He had tried to catalogue their differences, but it was their similarity that dominated his mind. It was hard to believe he had ever left that cell. As if the journey of that day had been merely a recurring dream. When Poppy appeared he was pleasant enough, but always claimed exhaustion so that he would not have to talk to her. He feared he might pass on his misery to her and so lay down and faced the same stone wall and tried to stay awake until morning. He dreaded the ambiguities of his dreams for they cheated him of certainty about that which he had set in motion.
In the neighbouring cell the three homunculi slept together. He had long ago put aside his fear that they might betray them. The duststorms made it impossible to use the heliograph or the flares. Besides, what could they tell the Wise that they did not already know?
Through the other wall Osidian and Jaspar shared a cell. A near-dead thing, Jaspar was carried up and down each watch-tower locked within a Sapient capsule that had belonged to one of Legions’ Seconds. Sometimes, through its ivory skin, Carnelian could hear mumbling. The same mumbling he could hear now, though he pressed his hands against his ears. Those mumblings that fed not only Osidian’s dreams, but his own. He pulled his hands free and tried to listen instead to the murmuring of the sartlar, or the squealing water-wheels with which they were drawing up water to quench their oceanic thirst. While at the same time he clung to the edge of his own black well into which he knew he must eventually fall.
Blearily, through his bone screen, Carnelian watched the tiny figure grow more distinct beneath the bulk of another midday tower. When that figure became two, he narrowed his eyes, thinking he was mistaken. Soon he saw it was not only Fern waiting for them, but, beside him, a smaller figure that seemed in comparison a child. It could only be Krow. What news had he brought from the next tower?
As Earth-is-Strong came to a halt behind Heart-of-Thunder, Carnelian could just make out Osidian’s voice emanating from his dragon tower as he questioned Krow, who was on the leftway looking up at him. Strain as he might, Carnelian could make out nothing of the youth’s answer. Osidian said something that caused Krow to bow and fall back. A while later, Heart-of-Thunder’s mirrorman began signalling with his arms. Carnelian watched his Lefthand reading the signals. At last he turned. ‘Master, you’re to assume command of the host.’
Carnelian began relaying a reply, but then he saw Heart-of-Thunder’s brassman falling and Osidian walking out upon it. Soon he had descended to the road. Frustrated, Carnelian waited. Osidian appeared from behind the monolith onto the leftway, a flood of Marula and aquar pouring out after him. Soon, riding away, they were fading into the haze.
Carnelian moved Earth-is-Strong past Heart-of-Thunder, then led their army along the road. All that long afternoon he kept his gaze fixed on the leftway, waiting for Osidian’s return or, at least, some messenger, but all in vain. So it was that, when he saw the world ahead darkening, for a moment he thought it was approaching dusk. Except that the west was still glowing orange. As they drew nearer, he saw the earth crusted with shanties and realized they had reached the outskirts of some vast and gloomy city. The sartlar slowed as they poured into ditches and along alleys like a wave infiltrating a pebble beach. Carnelian searched for signs of anything living, but the hovels seemed abandoned. Even though they were now leaving the sartlar behind, he did not slow Earth-is-Strong and led the army deeper into the city. A region solidified ahead from which rose several spires. He shuddered, having the impression they were approaching the eaves of some murky forest. It occurred to him that, perhaps, he should order the flame-pipes of the leading dragons lit, but the city seemed dead. The two nearest spires grew branches and slowly resolved into watch-towers, one on either side of the road and each rising from a dark rampart. He detected movement there, upon the leftway, beneath the rightmost tower. He breathed a sigh of relief, certain they must be his people. He gained confidence in that feeling with each lumbering step his dragon took. At last they came close enough to see a figure waving.
‘Krow,’ said Poppy, and so it was. Carnelian gazed at the dead city and made his decision. He ordered the army to a halt, then, leaving Poppy in the care of his Righthand and Earth-is-Strong in the care of his Left, he bade the homunculus follow him and together they climbed down to the road. Before them the two watch-towers faced each other, each rising from a forbidding rampart, each standing guard upon a massive gate. His heart misgave. These were surely legionary fortresses. He listened for the enemy, but the only sound was thunder fading back along the road as his dragons drew to a standstill. He set off to meet Osidian.
Osidian was there on the edge of the heliograph platform with Morunasa. As Carnelian approached them he became aware of the city stretching off in all directions.
Osidian acknowledged him. ‘Behold the city of Magayon.’
A charred, ruined labyrinth lay directly below, another on the other side of the road. At the heart of each the circles of cothon wells. Fortresses, then, torched by their legions before they left, no doubt to deny Osidian equipment and supplies. More watch-towers clustered where the road reached a junction with another running off into the west. Duststorms had already begun to bury Magayon. Carnelian recalled with melancholy the ruins he and his father had seen on their way to the election. He searched along the northern road for enemy legions or any other sign of life. The horizon there seemed to be sucking ink up from the land. ‘Burn-off?’ he said, wondering.
‘If so, Seraph,’ said the homunculus, in a low voice, ‘it would be unusually early. Generally the stubble is not burned until the Rains approach for fear the earth, unfettered, will turn to dust.’
Carnelian glanced down at the little man, wondering if he was being ironic, but his face was grave. Carnelian returned his gaze to the north. There was an obvious conclusion. ‘They intend to starve not only us, but our sartlar.’
Osidian came alive and half turned to him. ‘A sign of weakness.’
Carnelian gazed at the profile of his mask. ‘What do you mean?’
The mask turned to him. ‘If my brother has commanded the earth be burned before us, does it not suggest he fears us? You should be happy, Carnelian. It seems your sartlar strategy has disconcerted him.’
Carnelian could see no cause for happiness. ‘Whatever Molochite may be feeling, surely he has succeeded-?’
Osidian’s mask jutted towards him. ‘In what?’
Carnelian could hear in Osidian’s voice the madness rising. ‘How far are we from Osrakum, my Lord?’
Osidian’s hands tensed. ‘More than twenty days.’
‘How do you imagine we could cross a charred wasteland for more than twenty days with millions?’
Osidian became a motionless doll. ‘I’ve faith our Lord will provide,’ he said in Vulgate.
Morose beside them, frowning as he gazed blindly out over the abandoned city, Morunasa gave a slow nod.
Carnelian lolled in his command chair. He had slept even worse than usual. Haunted by the dead city, he had wandered lost in nightmare labyrinths. Waking, he had led the army through a gate, past the junction with the western road and north between the mudbrick tenements with their blind windows and the alleys between them choked with the red dust that made them seem to be running with blood. The screams of Osidian’s flame-pipes had echoed through Magayon. He had joined Poppy to watch the leftway wall crumble under the fiery onslaught. Like a collapsing seawall it had released a torrent of sartlar. They had watched them infest the city even as their flow caused the gap in the wall to widen.
Tenements gave way to hovels, then the whole termite architecture gave way to middens. Through the haze, the city boundary ditch was approaching. Beyond its neat edge the land ran charred and dismal as far as he could see.
It was Poppy who pointed out how the world seemed to have been turned upside down. Red sky above; black earth below. As the sartlar riptide crept across the land, their feet became blackened, then their legs right up to their bellies, so that they were transformed into creatures divided equally between the new earth and sky.
As the days passed, Carnelian watched the sartlar, waiting for them to weaken, watching for those that would fall behind, searching for signs that famine was winnowing their millions, but each day they maintained their tidal surge.
At last he was driven to pay another visit to the dragon wall. Again he spied on them from the shelter of a dragon. Slumped on the ground, their heads hung weary, but he could see no stick-like limbs, no bellies pregnant with hunger. He retreated back into the camp and wondered if the blackened hri was still capable of providing sustenance. He found a bush and reached out a gloved hand to its fruiting head. At his touch it crumbled to a charred chaff that blew its powder away on the breeze. He tried to take hold of a leaf, a stalk, but, at his touch, each became just a brief stain upon the air. The hri was nothing more than a black ghost.
He returned to the watch-tower, brooding on the miracle of how the sartlar found food in a dead land. His mood darkened further as he passed through the Marula, at whose heart many Oracles lay in the fevered birthing sleep. At least upon the tower summit he could unmask, though he and Osidian had to turn their backs upon the west with its dust-pelting wind. Fishing within his render sac, he drew up a gobbet of meat. Reluctantly he put it in his mouth. Its saltiness stung his tongue. The gelatinous mass came apart under the pressure of his teeth. He jerked forward, spitting out the chewed meat. It was disgusting.
‘You’re right. This stuff is sickening,’ grumbled Osidian, though he continued to eat. He needed to; he was still cadaverous.
Carnelian rose, putting his mask up as a barrier against the sandblast of the wind, and surveyed the scarlet multitude. ‘They’re consuming each other,’ he said, the taste of the render still in his mouth.
‘What?’
Carnelian turned to Osidian. He let the mask fall. ‘That’s how they’re surviving. They’re eating each other.’
Osidian frowned, then began nodding. ‘The Lord provides.’
Carnelian was outraged. ‘Doesn’t it appall you?’
Osidian shrugged. ‘They’re beasts.’
Carnelian was feeling queasy and wanted to be alone. He began walking to the platform edge.
‘You haven’t eaten anything,’ Osidian called after him.
Carnelian kept walking. He wondered if he would ever be able to eat render again.
Waking, it took him some moments to realize he was not in the cabin of the baran. The sound of the sea. The swaying. The sandy wind lashing the dragon tower like spray. Disappointment tore at him. His father was not there to make things right.
He cast a jaded eye out through the bone screen at the blood-red world. The sartlar swarmed the earth like cockroaches. He felt lightheaded. He had not eaten anything for days. Even the hunger pangs had faded. His body ached so that he wondered whether this was, at last, the burning in his blood that was proper to one of the Chosen. There was a dark pinnacle ahead, vague in the ruddy twilight. A watch-tower he would sleep in. He would be initially dizzy when he rose from his command chair. The climb up through a tower now exhausted him. His fear of nightmares was now balanced by a horror of lying awake. Sometimes, in the night, he was sure he could hear the wet sounds of the sartlar feeding.
In his cell, Carnelian woke sensing something had changed. The world seemed brighter so that, for a moment, he almost could believe the long days of red twilight and dust had been nothing more than a nightmare. He rose. A window in the stone wall gave out into clear blue. He was drawn to the freshness of that colour. Below, the camp was in the shadow of the watch-tower. Only the dragon towers reached high enough to catch the first gold of the sun. Beyond stretched the sartlar: an indigo sea. Their murmur reached him.
‘The wind has fallen,’ he muttered, lost in wonder.
‘What is it?’ said a voice.
He turned to see Poppy. ‘Come and see for yourself.’
She rushed to the slit and pushed her head into it to breathe the cool, clear air. He left her there, put on his hooded cloak and picked up his mask.
‘Where’re you going?’ she said.
Carnelian pointed upwards.
‘I’ll come with you.’
Together they left the cell, climbed the ladder to the tower roof, then the staples up onto the platform. As Carnelian stood up he gasped. His mask forgotten, he gaped, turning slowly on the spot to take it all in.
‘So many!’ Poppy exclaimed.
Carnelian’s attention was drawn to the south-west. There, the hem of the sky was steeped in ink. At first he thought the darkness was because the sun was still low – so low it spilled the legs of their shadows over the platform edge – but though the indigo west was brightening fast, the stained horizon stayed obstinately black.
‘The Rains,’ said Poppy.
Her look of wonder suggested she had not imagined that rain ever fell upon the Guarded Land. In truth, he had forgotten how late it was in the year. He looked back at the angry horizon.
‘Look there.’ Poppy was pointing northwards. Another band, but this one was of gold. Carnelian forgot to breathe.
‘What is it?’ Poppy said.
The fear in her voice wrenched the answer from him, though he could not look away. ‘Osrakum,’ he said, in Quya, then, in Vulgate: ‘the Mountain.’
He stared at the Heaven Wall. He could not quite believe he was seeing it. A part of him had been convinced he would never do so again. It was like the longed-for face of a lost lover but, if so, it was a lover who had betrayed him.
‘Osrakum.’ Voiced behind them almost as a groan of pain.
They both turned to see Osidian there. Half his mask blazing in the sun; the other half in murky, glimmering shadow. Carnelian felt compassion for him, but he could not long resist the siren fascination of Osrakum. He turned back to feast his eyes upon her wall.
It was a diamond flash somewhere near the earth that woke them from their trance. Another and another, pulsing in a repeating pattern. A heliograph.
Carnelian turned to Osidian, but realized he was equally unable to read the signal. So he sent Poppy to fetch one of the homunculi. Watching the diamond flicker, something occurred to him. ‘If that’s the next tower…’ Fern was supposed to have been there. Carnelian’s heart faltered from fear of what might have befallen him. Who could be operating the device there?
‘Not the next one, but the one beyond it,’ said Osidian.
Carnelian saw that, indeed, the spine of Fern’s tower rose to the right of and slightly higher than the flashing. ‘What does it mean? Are the Wise trying to contact us?’
Osidian’s mirror face gleamed sinuously as he shook his head. ‘The pattern is too repetitive to carry any complex communication.’ He became stone. ‘My brother is close.’
Carnelian shielded his eyes and scanned the northern horizon. With all the excitement he had forgotten Molochite must be nearby, waiting for them.
The sounds of someone climbing up onto the platform made him put his mask in front of his face before he turned, to see it was Poppy approaching followed by the homunculus. The little man stopped to peer at the flashing.
‘Well?’ barked Osidian at last.
The homunculus flinched and sketched a gesture of apology. ‘I cannot read it, Celestial. The signal is faint, but I have the impression it carries no words.’
‘What then?’ Carnelian said.
The homunculus gestured again. ‘Perhaps some diagnostic.’
‘To check the integrity of the system?’
‘The sandstorms have been blinding the mirrors, Seraph.’
Osidian shifted his weight. ‘Perhaps it seeks to detect any discontinuity.’
Carnelian tensed. ‘They are looking for us.’
‘Homunculus, could we answer it from here?’
The little man knitted his brows. ‘At this distance, Celestial, lucid communication might be difficult.’
Osidian gave a nod. ‘As I thought.’ He turned to Carnelian. ‘My Lord, I will ride to the next tower. Will you bring the army there?’
‘But it could be a trap.’
‘If so then we must scout as far forward into the enemy position as we can. It is critical that it is we who decide when and where we are to give battle.’
Osidian’s mask regarded Carnelian until, reluctantly, he agreed. He made a gesture of thanks and, then, taking the homunculus with him, left the platform. Carnelian lingered, brooding, until he saw, below, Osidian hurtling northwards along the leftway, a clot of Marula flying after him. Carnelian’s heart was heavy with foreboding. He glanced round at the black smudge of the approaching Rains, the ocean of sartlar, and then fixed his gaze upon the glowing Heaven Wall, wondering if this was the calm before the storm.
Rolling with Earth-is-Strong’s ponderous gait, Carnelian sat in his command chair, gazing at Osrakum. As the sun rose higher, it seemed to heat the Sacred Wall into a bar of white-hot gold that branded his vision so that he blinked its ghost whenever he turned away.
At some point the heliograph began to signal again, but this time its beat was complex. He watched the flickering, silent voice and knew Osidian must be holding a conversation, but with whom? The Wise? Molochite? Carnelian feared Osidian might make some mistake. There was even a part of him that feared he might be betraying them all.
‘We shall go no further today, but make a camp here.’
Upon the leftway, Osidian was half in the shadow of a monolith. Dragon towers formed a battlement running back along the road. Carnelian had come up to meet him the moment he had arrived. He had climbed up through the stable levels frowning. This was watch-tower sun-nine. There were only eight more between them and Osrakum.
‘What has happened?’
‘Under my promise of safe passage, the Wise are coming here to conclave with us.’