Truth is written in the fabric of the world
If only one has the eyes to read it.
A vast bloated corpse floats on a dark sea.Flesh awrithe with maggots. Sartlar consuming each other? Blood and render licking up his body. Sucking at his armpits so that he is forced to raise his arms as branches. His hands and face are dry, caked earth. Dry earth everywhere. Catching in his throat so that he is racked by coughing. Carnelian scratches at his eyes so as to see her clearly. A woman clothed in plates and clods of blood-red earth, shedding it in flakes and dust away on the wind. He grips her hand as a child would his mother’s. Smug, he gazes up at her, but the face she turns down to him is a grinning skull.
Carnelian jerked awake, hugging the black cloak around him. It was a while before he fully surfaced from the dream. Morning was slipping in through high windows. He sat up, swinging his legs out so he could perch on the edge of the niche he had slept in. Lifted the pits of his knees away from the chill stone lip. He saw the wound in his thigh and was surprised how little he felt it. He looked towards the vast bed, bare of its silk and feather coverlets. Even from this distance he could smell its aura of lilies. Away across the chamber the hearth was now grey and cold because he had forbidden anyone to come to tend it while he slept.
He stared blindly, filled with dread. Was the dream a foretelling of the famine that was coming? A flash of anger. He had felt so certain he could work against it, but was it already too late? Was he fated to return to the outer world to do nothing more than witness the sartlar, driven by unbearable hunger, devouring each other? Fear rose in him. Was Ykoriana the woman with the skull face? In trusting her, had he committed a fatal error?
Submerged in a deluge, he stood trying to wash away the taint of the dream. The warm water was caressing life back into his body. He raised his arm against the pressure into the air space in the shelter of his bowed head. He looked at his hand as if he hoped to see some mark left by the dream woman’s clasp. Thinking of her brought Ebeny into his mind, made him yearn like a child to go to her. There was another pressing reason he must cross the Skymere: he needed to talk to his father before the revelation of his birth became common knowledge throughout Osrakum.
He emerged from the waterfall, dripping, onto the icy jade floor. The whole chamber was carved from the mossy stone into the appearance of rushes. The fall frothed into a pool, that cascaded into another into which more water poured. By means of steps, he ascended to a chamber of mirrors. Obsidian polished to the consistency of a midnight pool. Panels of silver and of gold. All held his ghosts as if in other places, other seasons. Ridges of white jade around the walls supported jars hollowed from jewels, vessels carved from stone like swirling smoke, racks of strigils and brushes made of feather filaments.
Unnerved by the crowd of himself, he left. Back in the bedchamber he moved towards the outer portals. There, on the floor, were the robes Marula had brought in when he had forbidden entry to the slaves sent to tend him. The folded bundles had in places come apart. Exquisite fabrics interwoven with metal threads, subtly patterned like lichens, like ripples on water, like high, feathery clouds. He stooped because his fingers were drawn to touch them. As smooth as lips or the moist-skin texture of petals. Then he saw the parchment sitting incongruously on a boulder of cloth. He plucked the letter up and turned it into the light. It had been sealed with a blood-ring. The double face of the House of the Masks. He peered at the name glyph. ‘Nephron,’ he said, surprised. He counted the blood-taint zeros. ‘Four.’ He frowned, remembering the last time he had seen a letter sealed thus. That ill-fated day when he had persuaded Osidian to go down into the Yden. It made him suspicious. Osidian’s blood-ring had been taken from him during the kidnapping. Could there have been time to make another? It was more likely to be one of Ykoriana’s tricks. Still. He broke open the letter and read. Come, break your fast with me on sweet pomegranates as we did long ago.
Surely only Osidian possessed that knowledge? Carnelian turned the parchment to look upon the broken seal. It was Osidian’s ring so perhaps Ykoriana had sent it to him. Carnelian pondered the import of this. Surely such an act was to invite incrimination? So, done deliberately, it could be a sign of peace. There was hope in Ykoriana making herself so vulnerable. He sank his head, wondering if he dared believe in the proposals he had made the night before in the Pyramid Hollow, but still he could not wholly rid himself of the omen of his dream. He read the letter again, becoming uneasy at what expectations Osidian might be nurturing with that reference to their lovemaking in the Forbidden Garden.
Carnelian glanced at the seductive beauty of the robes. His skin longed for their touch, but he turned his back on them. Even if they had not been too complicated to put on without servants, they would encumber him on his journey. He wandered back to where he had left the green spiralled robe the ammonites had dressed him in. He slipped it on, put on his father’s mask and military cloak.
When he emerged from his chambers, his Marula guards rose, discarding the resplendent covers he had given them from his bed. Seeing him, their faces lit up as if he were come to save them. Their red eyes spoke of a fearful night. He saw one among them who had not been there the night before. Though he looked different with his head shaved, it was unmistakably Sthax. Carnelian was about to address him when a voice came rumbling from various directions at once. The Marula all jerked round to search the cavernous hall spreading off behind them. As the rumbling died away, though Carnelian knew it must be thunder sounding through the palace from the sky, he could not help fearing that the source of that voice was lurking somewhere close by. He was sure the Marula must feel – as he did – that they were intruders deep in the lair of some monstrosity that might at any time return.
He refocused on Sthax and was going to speak when the Maruli indicated a man half black, half white, kneeling, waiting. Carnelian approached him. ‘Have you come to guide me to the Jade Lord Nephron?’
‘I have, my Lord,’ said the Ichorian.
Carnelian saw that the questions he had for Sthax were going to have to wait. ‘Then lead on.’
Through immense spaces they wound their way. Rustling echoes made it seem they were being followed. Movements glimpsed from the corner of his eye, when looked at, revealed nothing but shadows looming in the penumbral gloom. Ghostly reflections accompanied them. Strange odours moistened the air. In some places they had to pass beneath the gaze of giants, whose faces could only be guessed at in the overarching darkness. Every surface was pierced with openings that gave shifting views of other, eerily lit worlds. Carnelian began to feel they were creeping through the carcass of some vast being that had been gnawed by the passage of massive worms.
At first, when he saw the procession approaching, he thought it nothing more than his own party reflected. But the Master who processed amidst a naked escort rose taller than did he. Besides, his robes were so massive they threatened to eclipse his mask of gold. Even as this apparition approached him, Carnelian knew by the heraldry of its crowns this must be Osidian.
The apparition brandished a pair of pale hands. ‘Ravenous, despairing that you would ever appear, my Lord, I came to meet you. I would eat before attending what is bound to be a dreary conclave with the Wise.’
Carnelian had to look up at him. Osidian’s new mask was the face of a beautiful boy, entranced. He wore ranga beneath his robes, the outer one of which seemed flowing naphtha. As he half turned away, its lustrous black sheened with iridescence. ‘I have brought a feast with me,’ Osidian said, pointing to the tail of his procession, where syblings bore a great variety of burdens. He made a vague gesture. ‘There is a spot not far from here where we might consume it in some comfort and seclusion.’
Carnelian regarded Osidian’s towering form with misgivings. He seemed a puppet being worked from a distance. Laughter coming from behind the puppet’s mask sounded forced. ‘Really, my Lord, you will have to get used to being Chosen again.’ He took in Carnelian’s green robe and rough military cloak with a mocking hand. ‘Why did you choose these rags in place of the gorgeous robes I sent you?’
Watching this performance, Carnelian became increasingly glad of the decision he had made. ‘Though you are kind to have thought of bringing breakfast, Celestial, time is pressing. The sooner I reach Coomb Suth, the sooner I can return.’
‘That would be inadvisable,’ said Osidian.
Carnelian could hear the tightness of anger in his voice. Almost he reminded Osidian of the oath he had sworn upon his blood, but first chose to give thought to what reasons Osidian might have for feeling angry. Beyond the emotional ones, Carnelian saw others more politic. ‘You fear my crossing the Skymere could antagonize the Great?’
‘Considering the coming revelations, it would be better, my Lord, were we to observe the accepted forms at least until I am invested with divine authority.’
With a sinking heart, Carnelian saw the logic in that. Nevertheless, he had to find a secure way to contact his father and was, besides, desperate to escape the Halls of Rebirth. He focused his mind on the politics and thought he could see a way out. ‘Be that as it may, Celestial, for reasons of safety it is incumbent upon us that we should maintain a separation between us.’
Osidian took some moments to answer. ‘I take your point, my Lord.’
‘Perhaps I could assume command of the huimur as they perform the functions that once were the Red Ichorians’.’ Carnelian paused here, realizing he was not entirely sure what those functions might be.
‘You are not even painted.’
Carnelian glanced at his hands. ‘I shall be careful to stay out of the sun.’ A solution to his other problem suggested itself. He took in Sthax and his escort. ‘With your leave, Celestial, I shall take these for my protection until some of my household tyadra have time to reach me from my coomb.’
‘You are now of the Masks, Carnelian.’
Carnelian thought it best to say nothing to that.
‘Where will you sleep?’
Carnelian shrugged. ‘Somewhere in the Plain of Thrones, I imagine.’
There was a long pause. ‘You will attend my Apotheosis?’
‘Of course.’
‘I will send you notification of the day on which the ceremony shall be held.’ Osidian extended an open hand. Upon his palm lay an iron ring. ‘You may as well have this.’
Carnelian took the ring, noticing that Osidian wore one on his own hand. ‘Your mother sent them both to you?’
Osidian made a gesture of affirmation. ‘It seems she really does intend to keep our bargain.’
Carnelian examined the edge of his ring. It was indeed his, the same Aurum had brought to their island.
‘Of course, that ring is a lie. We shall have to get a new one made.’
Carnelian considered that. ‘But, for the moment, I shall wear this one.’ He put it on. Its weight upon his little finger brought back a time long past.
At the edge of some immense hall, where their shuffling produced the faintest echoes, Carnelian called a halt and drew Sthax into some shadows to talk to him. ‘Why did you appear this morning?’
‘Oracle trust I.’
‘Morunasa?’
Sthax nodded.
‘Why?’
Sthax opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, looked to the floor as if he might find the words there. His face came up bright-eyed. He brandished his spear. ‘We is this for Oracle.’
Carnelian thought he understood. Like the Masters, the Oracles did not really see their subjects, did not imagine they had any volition of their own. He regarded Sthax. Of course, he could be playing some cunning double game of his own but, in his heart, Carnelian trusted him and believed Sthax sought nothing but the salvation of his people.
Carnelian removed his mask, then, a phrase at a time, he explained how he was to be given power over the outer world and, with some difficulty, about the Apotheosis that was its only precondition. This last concept caused them both a lot of difficulty, for Sthax knew nothing of the Rebirth, never mind the politics of the Masters.
When Carnelian was done, he gave Sthax time to digest it all, then asked him: ‘Will you do something for me?’
For some moments, Sthax examined Carnelian’s eyes, then gave a nod of agreement, and Carnelian began to coach him in the message he wanted him to carry.
Gazing down into the Labyrinth, Carnelian’s heart misgave. With the Shimmering Stair unlit, the columned cavern of the Labyrinth had become a haunt for shadows. The Marula were huddling together, averting their eyes from the view. Carnelian asked Sthax to reassure them he was going to lead them back to the light. The hope Sthax gave them unbowed their backs. Carnelian nodded in satisfaction, then began the descent into the gloom.
After an interminable shuffling through the tunnel, Carnelian’s lantern light found some feet in the darkness ahead. Jerking its beam up, he saw a Sapient waiting with his homunculus. Behind them he could see the closed portals of the Forbidden Door.
‘I am Carnelian-’ It was unlikely the Wise knew about his true birth yet. He must avoid causing unnecessary confusion. ‘Suth Carnelian… and you, Sapient?’
‘A Fifth of Labyrinth, Seraph,’ sang the homunculus in such an unhuman voice that the Marula around Carnelian began to tremble. ‘We were not informed of your coming,’ said the little man, as he cast sharp eyes upon the black men.
‘The Lord Nephron has sent me to oversee the preparations for receiving those who must attend his Apotheosis.’
‘Still, it is my masters who have set me to guard this portal, Seraph. They must be consulted.’ Though the Fifth’s fingers continued to work at the neck of the homunculus, he said no more. Disengaging from his master, he disappeared into an opening in the wall.
As Carnelian waited, he gazed past the Sapient at the Forbidden Door, hungry for the daylight that lay beyond. When the homunculus returned, he drew his master’s hands up to his throat, murmured something, then fell silent. Carnelian waited for the little man to speak, but he stood, eyes downcast, as still as his master. At last Carnelian could bear it no longer. ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’
The homunculus echoed him, then the Fifth’s fingers began to flex. ‘Instructions from my masters, Seraph.’
Carnelian felt choked with frustration. No doubt the Grand Sapients were already deep in conclave with Osidian. ‘Open the door or else I shall have it opened myself.’
The homunculus was soon voicing his master’s protests, but Carnelian made it clear he would not be defied. Eventually, the Sapient bowed to his will, and stepped aside as the doors opened, releasing a flood of light. Blind, Carnelian walked out into the day, the Marula stumbling in their eagerness to follow him.
Carnelian sat upon rugs that ammonites had rolled out on ground first purified with their blue fire. He had chosen to wait there because he did not wish to subject himself or the Marula to another cleansing when they returned to the Labyrinth. He was watching more ammonites laving Earth-is-Strong. The dragon rose from their midst like a sea stack. She was being prepared to purify a path all the way to the Great Causeway with her flame-pipes. Carnelian had decided not to command her himself. Instead he had summoned his Lefthand and instructed him to do so.
When the sun burned its way through the clouds, in spite of the assurances he had given Osidian Carnelian was glad to feel its warmth upon his skin. The shadows cast by the flesh-tithe cages had almost entirely shrunk away. Dragons formed lines down either side of the Black Field, which now looked like just another military camp, but it was to the centre of the plain beyond that his eyes kept being drawn.
He gazed between the gate stones, through the outer fence of commentary stones, across the inlaid, cobbled floor to the inner, double ring of the Dance. There, almost completely hidden by the outer stones, he could just glimpse the edge of one of the green stones of the innermost ring.
He had approached the Stone Dance of the Chameleon along a road burnt black by Earth-is-Strong’s flame-pipes and still warm beneath his feet. The Fifth had been scandalized at his insistence on proceeding barefoot, but had failed to persuade him to use a palanquin. When he had reached the place where the road divided around the Dance, he had waited for the dragon’s thunder to fade away and for the boiling clouds of naphtha smoke to subside. The rings of stones had emerged as if from a mist. Fascinated, he had approached the pair that stood guard upon the road running from the Forbidden Door into the Dance. He had seen that, there, entry to its heart was between a red and a black stone. For some reason he had felt he did not want to enter that way. Instead he had led Sthax and the other Marula round until they had arrived at where the road spoked off towards the House of Immortality.
He glanced in that direction, straining to make out any details that might show where it lay in the cliff wall of the Plain of Thrones. He could see nothing. To the north-east, the pall of smoke being produced by Earth-is-Strong’s pipes was trailing its fraying banner round the outer edge of the Dance. Sthax’s tiny figure was following the dragon and her fire. Carnelian frowned, feeling the message Sthax was carrying was a poor substitution for a visit. Among other things, he had sent for some of his people. While he waited for them he wanted to explore. Motioning the Marula to stand guard upon the gate stones, he passed between them and entered the Dance.
Between two commentary stones, Carnelian stood gazing across the cobbled ground to the inner rings. The pale mosaic confused his eyes. He was reminded of the bone traceries of an Ancestor House, but this work was more subtle. Tendrils of stone snaked across the floor, crossing and recrossing each other like seaweed abandoned by a tide. Nodules studded the design and it was embedded with rings of smoothed stone and small panels. At first he had taken it all to be marble, but he began to see the grain and shades of different stones and how portions and paths were tinted variously by lichens.
He stepped onto the design. It felt subtly textured. Closing his eyes, he could feel his feet on a path that he followed. Opening them, he looked back at the meandering trail his sooty feet had left. Not a path he could have easily located by sight. He remembered how the Wise used such paths in their library in the Halls of Thunder.
He became aware of the beautiful and complex inner faces of the commentary stones. Returning to them he reached up to touch one. Its swirling patterns were bewildering, but under his fingers they seemed a pebbled beach. Again he closed his eyes. As he glided his fingers slowly across the surface the nodules seemed to whisper in his mind. He reopened his eyes. ‘Like beadcord,’ he muttered. He noted how tendrils of the floor mosaic lapped at the stone. The nodules were divided into registers, the higher of which could be reached by climbing up onto taller cobbles. Glancing round the whole curve of commentary stones, he saw how, with the floor, they formed a delicate web of meaning emanating from the double ring.
As he approached the inner stones, he saw that their outer faces were patterned in the same way as the commentary stones. Then he became aware that these stones stood each like a ghost behind what appeared to be huge figures. Cracked and round-shouldered, hunching now, but once they had been tall and straight. Entering between a pair of ghost stones, he was confronted by two immense slabs of jade, fissured and veined by pale lichens. As he passed between these, he noticed their inner edges were spotted with round projections. Reaching out to touch one, his finger found its spiralling groove. The same ammonite shells were embroidered into his green robe. Turning, he saw the clear path leading back across the mosaic, through the commentary stones, between the gate stones and on towards the House of Immortality.
He entered the heart of the Dance. Round the mossy space stood the coven of twelve worn stones: two green, two black, eight red. He sensed he was in the presence of something ancient and holy. The inner face of each stone had been cut into. Moving to stand in front of one of these depressions, he realized it was a hollow man, arms and legs outstretched. The hollow was just large enough that he could have climbed into it. From each foot, each hand, a channel ran down to the earth. The channels made the hollow man seem a puppet with rods to move his arms and legs. It did not seem likely their purpose was to drain the hollow of rain water. He sought distraction in the columns of glyphs, worn almost smooth, that covered the surface of the stone. This must be the Law-that-must-be-obeyed. He frowned. Why did it feel like a disfigurement? The glyphs followed the contours of the stone as if they were tattoos or brandings. The Law had been carved into the stone when it was already ancient.
He walked slowly round the Dance, withershins, giving in to his need to understand it. The two green stones led him to the two black. Then began the sequence of eight red stones. Where the black met the red, their inner flanks were carved with circular motifs now almost flush with the stone. Gazing out between these stones, he was looking directly towards the Forbidden Door. The Pillar of Heaven lifted its tornado of stone into a frowning sky. Carnelian looked again at the flank of the black stone, certain the circular carvings had been sky glyphs. Starting with this stone which lay to the sunward of the Rain Axis, the Dance followed the sequence of the months so that the red stone ended the year.
He followed the Dance further round, caressing the time-worn porphyry of the red stones, but when he came to a pair between which Earth-is-Strong’s column of smoke was visible, moving away towards the entrance to the Plain of Thrones, he saw their inner flanks bore more of the faint discs. He ran his fingers over them and found one that had within its slightly raised edge a number of pips. His fingers remembered the red stone coin he had received the first time he had passed through the Blood Gate. That had borne a pomegranate. He saw how the gateway formed by the red stones would give direct access to the Dance to anyone entering the Plain of Thrones. He surveyed the Dance, now certain it must be far more ancient than anything else in Osrakum. More ancient even than the Law. More ancient by far than Grand Sapient Legions had been or his Great Balance. Thinking of that ancient, now dead, Carnelian gazed across the Dance at the black stone opposite. Twelve in all. It was as if the Grand Sapients were the living embodiment of these ancient stones.
At that moment the clouds parted, slanting a ray of light into the centre of the Dance. He was drawn to stand in it, turning his face up to allow the sun to bleach the unease from his heart. He sank to the mossy earth and stretched himself out as he gazed through the opening in the stormclouds into perfect, blue heaven.
Swaying beneath a vast, smiling sky. Memories of his mother, of her smell, of the comfort in her hands. Cedars net the blue in their branches. Clean, resinous perfume of her mother tree. Sifting sand, his hand dries up like a fig. Not the breath of the mother trees, but myrrh. Breathing out and out and out as he wizens into a huskman. He is Legions turning to stone. Trapped in an ivory sarcophagus like a brain in a skull. Seed in a pod. A tickle in him, an itch; the heartbeat of the baby inside him. Carried, sleeping, into the ring of twelve. Entering through the still weeping edges of a freshly cut wound. Singing, so mournful. Then swaying out of the clearing watching clouds streak the sky. Out of the clearing into the ferns. Their croziers knock, knock, knocking their heads together. To whose rhythm the sun bleeds away into the earth. Away, into the earth. Absorbed into it with the blood and the dying light. Something’s burning. He has to become the worm eating his escape through the bread, but then, confused, he is scrabbling into a cradle of bones. His hand drags the nets of his fingers. Dragged down by the weight of fish in his net. Rope burning his hands, running deep in a channel of flesh, as it pulls free of the hooks of his hands, but he holds on, the waters rising.
Carnelian came awake, disorientated. The silhouettes of heads moving back. He rose, aware of giants standing round. It was night. Human-scale figures near him were partially lit. Others were holding the dim stars of lanterns. He recognized the giants behind them as the monoliths of the Dance, their looming shadows the incarnation of the foreboding he had brought with him out of his dream.
‘Master?’
It was Tain offering him a sinister face. Carnelian took the mask. ‘I must’ve fallen asleep.’
Sthax, a shadow with human eyes. Beside him a shrouded figure whose dear face grounded Carnelian. He approached him, embraced him. ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Fern.’ He turned to Tain, to Sthax. ‘So glad you’re all here.’
Still haunted, Carnelian stared deep into the fire. He was reluctant to sleep. One dream and all his hope had turned to despair. He turned the Ruling Ring of House Suth upon his finger. Fern had brought it for him from his father. A proof, if he needed one, that his father still considered him his son.
He turned, sensing someone behind him. Rising above the sentinel monoliths, higher than the glimmering gashes the terraces of the Halls of Rebirth made in the wall of the plain, the Pillar of Heaven loomed a deeper black against the blackness.
He returned his gaze to the flames. Why had he not allowed his people to erect the pavilion they had brought for him? He hungered for the oblivion that, in its privacy, he could have found in Fern’s arms.
He sat up, woken by something. Bells were beating out a funereal dirge. Light throbbed, filtering through the three rings of the Dance. A procession of the Chosen making their way to the Forbidden Door. He recalled the time he had seen another such moving distantly upon the Ydenrim. Then he had been in the Yden with Osidian.
‘What is it?’ whispered a voice in Ochre.
In the faint light oozing from the embers of their fire, Carnelian could just make out Fern’s shape.
‘Some Standing Dead,’ he replied in Ochre, feeling a furtive delight in uttering that barbarian tongue in that place. Then a rumble ponderously shook the sky. A sudden breeze set him shivering. ‘I’m cold.’ Fern opened his blanket. Carnelian crept in beside him. They snuggled together. Comfort quickly gave way to passion.
He woke into a world suffused by a faint dawn light, feeling groggy. The sound of bells seemed to have followed him out of his dreams. Sitting up, he saw, to the east and south-east, movement in the gaps between the monoliths. Fern stirring against his belly made him glance down. He watched him come awake and smiled. Fern grimaced and took some moments to register him.
‘You didn’t sleep well either?’
Fern shook his head. He propped himself up on his elbow, watching the procession of the Masters. ‘It’s been going on all night?’
Carnelian nodded, remembering snatches of dream in which the world was carried away in a terrible and irresistible flood.
Sitting with Fern and Tain, Carnelian watched servants with chameleon-tattooed faces laying dishes of jade and silver upon a rug. He offered Tain some food. ‘How’re things with Father?’
His brother dipped his head to one side and looked down, then glanced up at Carnelian. ‘Well enough to send you that,’ he said, indicating with his chin the Ruling Ring on Carnelian’s finger.
Carnelian saw a grimmer truth in his brother’s eyes, but he kept silent. What use was it to know more? He could not go to his father’s side. He glanced at the Ruling Ring. That was its own message. His father expected soon to die. Carnelian was not sure his father had believed the assurances in his message that his adopted son would, in time, rule House Suth. He might only have sent him the ring in the hope that it would give him enough power to affect the succession in their coomb. Certainly it should make it possible for him to get his people out of there, but bring them where? Into safekeeping in the House of the Masks? Glancing at Tain’s face tattoo, he wondered how people wearing that could possibly reside in the Labyrinth. For a moment he became possessed by a fantasy of taking them all with him into the outer world. That possibility seemed even more unreal. He became aware Fern was watching him. He smiled, but only the corners of Fern’s lips twitched in response.
‘What about Poppy and Krow?’
Fern grimaced. ‘You can imagine how she reacted when I told her she would have to stay behind.’
Carnelian smiled grimly. ‘We can’t have her here.’ Fern and Tain’s faces stiffened, as they sensed the threat underlying his words. Carnelian wanted to lighten things a little. ‘Even now she’s probably trying to swim the lake to get here.’
Fern smiled and even Tain who, in his short acquaintance with Poppy, already had some notion of what she was like.
After they had finished eating, he took Fern and Tain with him out through the two inner rings and across the mosaicked stone to the outermost ring. There, with Carnelian in his mask and military cloak, they watched the Masters pass by. Their palanquins were carried by slaves whose faces bore the same heraldry as the standards that glowed like jewels under the sombre skies. Banners streamed rainbows. Feathered parasols fluttered like birds. Bells rang, of dull stone or sharp bright silver. Chariots were pulled among the processions by pale aquar, each led by a Sinistral Ichorian.
Carnelian retired with Fern into the pavilion his people had erected. In the gloom they fed off each other’s bodies. They slept, they woke to more passion and drowsed afterwards, exhausted. They were vaguely aware of the day fading. They lit no lamps. Dawn found them drugged by ecstasy and joy, Carnelian’s tainted by the dregs of dreams.
Carnelian lay half wake, waiting for Fern to return with some food. The pavilion smelled of sex. A movement in a dark corner brought him fully awake. A shadowy form was looming there. He sat up with a jerk, fearing this to be something supernatural, but still casting round for some weapon. A beautiful voice stilled a cry of alarm in his throat. ‘Calm yourself, Seraph.’
Carnelian’s gaze found a child’s face frozen in the shadows. Above floated the murky mirror of its master’s mask. Carnelian saw the emberous finial the homunculus held before it, but could not make out its cypher. ‘Who are you?’ he said, shocked that his people had given him no warning of this visitor.
‘Tribute,’ sang the exquisite voice. ‘I am come to bid you give entry tomorrow to the tributaries.’
Carnelian nodded as the homunculus relayed to him details of how it should be done. Only vaguely did he note the instructions, unease worrying at his concentration. At last, when the homunculus fell silent, Carnelian spoke. ‘Why had you need to come yourself, my Lord? Could you not as easily have sent a letter, or one of your Sapients?’
Tribute’s fingers were a furtive movement at the throat of his homunculus. ‘I have come as the voice of the Twelve.’
‘Does my Lord Nephron know of this?’
‘It is unlikely, Carnelian… of the Masks.’
Carnelian tensed. ‘He has told you then.’
‘The Law demands you be slain at his Apotheosis.’
Carnelian heard the finality of those words reverberate long after silence had returned. ‘And yet the Lord Nephron has seen fit to defy the Law.’
In the further silence that fell after the homunculus finished echoing his words, Carnelian’s heart misgave. He listened out for any evidence of slaughter going on beyond the silken walls of the pavilion. Perhaps Osidian had betrayed him. Perhaps this Grand Sapient had come with Ichorians to take Carnelian captive.
‘He did so even when we told him his transformation into the Gods could not be complete without your blood.’
The homunculus put on those last words an edge that he might, inadvertently, have picked up from some change in pressure in his master’s fingers. Carnelian’s instinct told him that, whatever they might claim, what the Wise sought most of all was his death. He recalled the trap they had set for him that they had baited with his father. With a shudder he remembered their inquisition. The pieces of the mosaic fell into place. ‘It was I whom you tried to assassinate.’
‘We were desperate.’
Carnelian became aware how he was naked, exposed to this cold apparition. ‘Have you come to kill me?’
‘That route is now closed to us, child. Even to you it must by now be clear that you are the agent of a god.’
Carnelian’s mind tried to deflect that, but his heart was ready to believe it. ‘The dreams.’
‘It is through dreams the Gods choose to guide us. Believing you the agent of a god, it would be foolish for us to attempt to slay you, especially in this holy place in which you have taken refuge.’
Carnelian almost protested that he had sought no refuge and yet he wondered if some part of him had.
‘To slay you might precipitate the very cataclysm we dread.’
Carnelian felt that dread soaking into his bones. ‘What, then, do you want from me?’
‘That you should submit yourself, willingly, to sacrifice.’
Stripped of any requisitive or necessitive modes, the words were all the more chilling. ‘Why should I do that?’
‘Because you are possessed of that quality that we have lost and have for so long striven to drive from the hearts of the Chosen: compassion.’
The homunculus must have communicated Carnelian’s shaking head to its master for he had it say: ‘If you do not, the world may die.’
‘Die?’ Carnelian said, feeling defenceless against the Grand Sapient’s bleak certainty.
‘Consider, child, how inconsequential, how fleeting a thing you appear to be and yet how great is the destruction you have already wrought. For too long we had no clear understanding from whence this disruption was emanating. In you we have found its source.’
Carnelian shook his head again, as if these accusations were clogging his mind. He struggled to understand. ‘My birth?’
‘When the Lord Nephron informed us of it, we were certain, without need of computation, that this was the missing factor we have sought so desperately. Subsequent calculations have confirmed it absolutely.
‘When the birth of Nephron and Molochite spanned the transition between the black months and the green, the astrological implications were clear enough, but still we had hope of restricting the depth of the cleaving. We aided the return of Suth with the expectation that the consequent election would fulfil the omens of conflict. The blood rituals of the subsequent Apotheosis would have closed the fissure by reunifying the twins in a new God Emperor. We first became aware of a missing factor when Nephron disappeared. We searched frantically for him. When we detected his presence upon the Southern Plain, we devised careful counter actions. But, to our surprise, the perturbations, rather than diminishing, grew. We checked and rechecked our calculations and found no error. Exasperated, Legions decided to go himself to the locus of the disturbance to try to find the elusive missing factor. It was then we became aware of you. We began to wonder if it was possible that, somehow, your contribution had not been properly determined. Though we could hardly believe you important enough, we decided to eliminate you. Under examination, you revealed some suggestive aspects, but there were enough among us who did not believe these significant. We delivered you to Molochite. In spite of the imprecise analysis of trends, we were certain we had done enough to ensure Nephron’s forces would be destroyed. His defeat would have truncated the amplitude of the disturbance. The system would settle down into a steady state that patient manipulation would, in some few centuries, restore to a stable equilibrium. His victory, we had not even considered. The probabilities of that were infinitesimal…’
Freed for a moment from the exposition, Carnelian regarded the Grand Sapient. Even through the conduit of the homunculus, Carnelian could clearly sense how deep had been the incomprehension of the Wise. He remembered the ancients they had lost in the Iron House. He had glimpsed the trauma of their loss.
Tribute’s fingers came back to life around the neck of the homunculus. ‘When you survived, we realized that, in spite of what our calculations insisted, you must be, somehow, the key disturbing factor. It was at that juncture we panicked and made the clumsy attempt on your life.’
Carnelian sensed how much this Grand Sapient recoiled from that action, but only because it was such an inelegant, unconsidered impulse.
‘Having recast our calculations, taking into account your true birth, everything at last makes sense. High-blood birth on the chaotic cusp incident on a God Emperor’s death is a powerful enough input, but when combined with that of twins spanning a fault line, the consequences are catastrophic. Even then, had we known, had we had time to prepare, we could have avoided the abyss. We could have arranged it so that you would have succeeded your father and, with the sacrifice of the twins at your Apotheosis, we should have certainly healed the rift with minimal perturbation to the Balance.’
Carnelian floundered in this glimpse of timelines and how the past might have been rewoven to so profoundly change the present.
‘But we believe, child, it is not too late. Though he whom the Gods protect none can harm, he has the power to harm himself if he wills it.’
Carnelian pondered this, his mind warring with his heart. He flinched when Tribute’s homunculus came towards him and put out his hand, upon which sat an orb. Reaching out, Carnelian took it. Felt its leathery skin, gazed at its crown of spikes. He brought the pomegranate up to his nose. With inhalation came memories of being a boy in a fabulous, forbidden garden. For a moment he was lost in that miraculous vision. When he looked up, the Grand Sapient and his homunculus had gone.
‘What’s happened?’ said Fern, alarmed. ‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Is everything all right outside?’ said Carnelian.
‘Shouldn’t it be?’
Carnelian could hardly believe that Tribute could have made it through his camp unseen. Though he remembered how easily the Wise could find their way through the perfect darkness of their Library and this place was as familiar to them.
The pomegranate was heavy in his hand. If it were not for that he could well imagine he had dreamed the visitation. Why had Tribute brought it? Perhaps, with its red juice, it was a symbol of sacrifice.
Morose, he stood between two commentary stones, his cowl pulled down as much against the rain as to hide his face, as he watched the barbarian tributaries pass. Earlier, it had been huimur caravans, their domed backs rising above leather panniers, each larger than a man, which Carnelian had known must be stuffed with the bronze coins that were the taxes from the cities of the Commonwealth. Among the plodding beasts had walked deputations from the cities, their skins painted in imitation of the Masters, wearing elaborate, garishly dyed weaves, bearing upon their heads hats of outlandish design. This finery aped the pomp of the Masters, but was, in comparison, pathetic pantomime.
He had spent another night disturbed by dreams. Whatever they had to tell him, he was no longer prepared to listen. He had woken enraged at the notion that he might be the plaything of some god. Which god?
A hand clasping his shoulder made him jerk round with shock at being touched; at being caught unmasked. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw it was only Fern.
‘I’ve done everything as you asked.’
Carnelian had delegated to him the task of bringing in the tributaries. Not only had he been in no mood to do it himself, but also he had thought it a good opportunity to let Fern sit in a command chair. In the outer world, Fern was going to be his lieutenant.
‘Everyone’s in.’ Fern waved his hand in the direction of the Forbidden Door, though it and the Black Field were hidden behind the standing stones. ‘The dragons are arranged down both sides. I left them with clear instructions that under no circumstances whatsoever are they to light their pipes, nor move their dragons out of position.’
Carnelian thanked him, then both turned to watch the people filing past. Sodden, dragging their feet, women and old men, faces set against suffering, leading by the hands or carrying countless numbers of miserable, scared flesh-tithe children.
They stood watching the children until night fell, then they returned to their camp. Carnelian’s voice sounded very loud when he ordered his people to stow everything for the journey into the Labyrinth. They set to it as if at a funeral. Through the darkness came the endless scuffling of the marching tributaries.
As Carnelian led them south-west, out of the Dance, he lifted his hand to touch the lefthand stone. Cold under his fingers, he stroked a worn pomegranate as if for luck. He frowned, remembering the fruit Tribute had brought him, his thoughts tinged by the dread in his dreams.
When they reached the outer ring, he gazed out. The terraces and windows of the Halls of Rebirth formed gashes and spots of jewelled light making the wall of the Plain there seem a window into a starry sky. Below lay the Black Field, its front edge twinkling with fires like a stopping place, its rear two-thirds in dense darkness. Shuffling towards this was a flood of shadowy heads.
With his back to the Forbidden Door, Carnelian gazed over the Black Field. Its nearest portion, lit by thousands of campfires, was made to appear a vast pebbled beach by the backs of the huimur. Beyond, squatting in the darkness, were the barbarians and their children spending one last night together without even the cheer of a fire. How long had he and Fern and his people had to wait for them to scuffle past? Long enough for hearts to grow heavy as stones, and legs to grow unsteady. Carnelian had made an attempt to have his people sit and wait it out but when he and Fern stayed standing so did they. When, at last, that miserable procession had ceased, they had followed the stragglers round, walking on the carpet of blue flames ammonites laid before them. They had skirted the Black Field with its sea of heads walled in by dragons, had endured the murmurous fear, the cries of the children, the weeping, the moaning bleak comfort of their mothers. Down the whole long side of that crowd they had walked, between the dragons and the Cages of the Tithe until, at last, beneath the malevolent gaze of the colossi, they had reached the Forbidden Door.
Carnelian turned from the outer darkness to regard the black maw of the Labyrinth tunnel with loathing, then, taking Fern’s hand, he led his people into its throat.