Ants fighting on the sand
Even as the tide comes in.
‘ What?’ Carnelian was confused.
Fern’s eyes were sharp with anxiety. ‘Morunasa’s trying to fight his way through to you.’
‘To me?’
‘Your people are even now fighting to hold him back. The Quenthas know a back way-’
‘I don’t understand.’ Carnelian could not focus his mind. He felt so very weary.
A glistening, ebony face filled his vision: Sthax. ‘Oracle come get you.’
A two-headed shape loomed up: the sybling sisters. ‘This Maruli came to warn us.’
The pieces came together in Carnelian’s mind. ‘He has betrayed me.’
They were staring at him, waiting.
‘I have to give myself up to him. To avoid bloodshed.’
Fern threw his head back, grimacing. ‘You know how much that man hates you.’
‘There may still be time to get you to safety, Celestial,’ said Right-Quentha, pointing towards a dark corner of the chamber.
‘Into the depths of the Labyrinth where none will find you,’ her sister added.
Carnelian regarded the sisters. ‘You do realize it is the God Emperor Themselves you are intending to defy?’
Both faces set; indomitable. ‘It is you we serve now, Celestial.’
That touched Carnelian, but he shook his head. ‘How long could we hope to evade Their power? And to what end?’
A scuffing of footfalls in the outer chamber jerked their eyes towards the door. Fern and the sisters turned their gaze upon Carnelian in desperation. He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. ‘I need time to think.’
Fern gave a resigned nod. Sthax grimaced, his yellow eye following the Quenthas to the door. Carnelian turned, agonized, to the Maruli. ‘The Oracle said nothing about who sent him?’
Sthax shook his head violently. Carnelian tried to pull apart the threads of the power play, but there was no way he could reweave them into anything that made sense. He groaned, desperate for clarity. Then he remembered walking hand in hand with Osidian along the Path of Blood and felt suddenly calm.
‘He’s not behind this,’ he announced.
At that moment the Quenthas moved aside and Tain pushed into the chamber, eyes wild, blood spattered across his face. ‘Carnie, they’ll soon have the outer door down.’
‘Get everyone in here,’ Carnelian said. Tain stared, jerked a nod, then disappeared.
Carnelian rose from his bed, gripping Fern’s arm when it reached out to steady him. He found the strength to stand on his own and indicated the bronze doors of the chamber. ‘How long will those hold?’
Right-Quentha glanced at them. ‘Long enough, Celestial.’
Carnelian had them bring him his green robe, his military cloak. He was already dressed when men crashed into the chamber, skittering on the polished paving, their chameleoned faces glazed with sweat and blood. Seeing him, they began to fall on their knees. Carnelian surged forward and plucked one up. ‘Get up, you fools.’
Tain came in last of all.
‘Anyone left behind?’ Carnelian demanded. When his brother shook his head, Carnelian commanded they engage the door locks. Turning away, he saw a menacing shape looming against the wall: the glimmering carcass of his court robe. Glinting on the floor before it, cushioned in his neatly folded undergarments, a gold face, his mask.
Right-Quentha, catching the focus of his gaze, made her sister follow her as she went to scoop it up.
‘No, leave it,’ Carnelian said. The sisters frowned as they looked at him.
A thunderous clatter reverberated from beyond the locked gate. The patter of many feet. Something massive struck the bronze doors making them boom, but the locks held. Carnelian grinned grimly at the sisters, his blood up. ‘Get us out of here.’
He did not breathe easily until they had finished the crossing of the Encampment of the Seraphim. Urging his people past him, he looked back. The column sarcophagi stood in sombre rows wreathed in a mist of smoke. The fires were now banked throughout the camp that lay sleeping at the feet of those hollow gods. He and his people had found a way through the camp in the golden twilight cast by the Shimmering Stair. Heads had risen as guardsmen had watched them pass, but it was not their place to challenge a party led by sybling guides.
Fern approached, bringing up the rear of the line.
‘Is that all of them?’ Carnelian asked, almost in a whisper. When Fern nodded, he put his arm round his shoulders and they set off after their people, into the forest of stone trees.
Openings in the high vaults let in the first grey light of dawn. They followed the sisters down winding stairs beneath the gaze of frowning colossi. For a while they moved along ravines flanked by their legs. Here, Carnelian managed well enough, only a few times having to lean on Fern, but when they began to climb countless steps, he found his legs leaden and they had to stop often to let him rest.
Fern gazed with knitted brows at Carnelian, who was wheezing, pain sawing his head in two. ‘What did they do to you?’
‘They bled me,’ Carnelian said and his heart warmed when he saw anger burning in Fern’s eyes.
As they climbed higher, he became aware the columns, though still massive, were more slender. Pausing to regain his breath, he gazed up into the shadows and saw that the stone stems swelled into pods that clung to the underside of the roof like the eggs of some monstrous moth.
At last they came up onto a road whose paving was raised here and there as if something had been burrowing beneath it. The vaults seemed a low stormy sky. Light slanting down revealed that the columns had the form of gigantic poppyheads upon whose spiked crowns the ceiling sat. Small as ants they moved off through this deathly, penumbral meadow. Here and there Carnelian could see the stems were graven with faces worn down to sketches of eyes and mouths. Glyphs that tattooed the stone were soft-edged, unreadable. Walking beside the Quenthas, he eyed these effigies, finding them familiar in a way he could not catch hold of. ‘How do you know of this place?’ he whispered.
‘We used to come here as children, Celestial,’ the sisters replied. Right-Quentha swept a hand round. ‘This place was our playground.’
Such a name seemed to Carnelian incongruous for such a sombre place. ‘The Labyrinth?’
‘It is where we were born, Celestial,’ said Left-Quentha.
‘Our world,’ her sister added.
They came into a green clearing where the vault between four poppyheads had collapsed. There a single tree reached up to the morning. From every crack fresh ferns sprang, uncurling their fronds all the way up the glyphed shafts of the columns. One of these had a verdant beard that showed where water trickled down to fill a pool nestling in some masonry tumbled at its feet. After the sterile wilderness of the Labyrinth, Carnelian was struck by unlooked-for joy at this haven of life. Beside him Right-Quentha smiled, half turning to her sister. ‘It’s still here.’ She turned to him. ‘This was our most secret place, Celestial.’
They formed a ring around the clearing. Carnelian had invited everyone, including the Suth guardsmen, who crouched, heads bowed. When one of them dared to glance up, Carnelian gave him a smile of encouragement, causing the man to blush and duck his head. He did not blame the man for being nervous in his presence and before his strange collection of friends, but the guardsmen had risked everything for him and he felt they had a right to be there.
‘I’ve asked you all to sit with me because the decisions we’re going to make will affect us all.’
There were nods around the ring; Tain and Fern fixed him with fierce attention. Carnelian began by asking Sthax what he knew about Morunasa’s attack.
The man shrugged. ‘I say.’
Tain shot the Maruli an angry glance, before returning his gaze to Carnelian. ‘How can we trust him?’
‘Didn’t he just save us, Tain?’
Tain frowned. ‘It could be part of their trap.’
Carnelian shook his head and, deliberately, looked Sthax in the eye. ‘I trust him.’
Fern seemed to share Tain’s anger. ‘What need is there to ask what’s behind it? We all know the Marula are the Master’s creatures.’
Carnelian re-examined his feelings, then shook his head again. ‘In my bones I’m now sure the Master’s not behind this.’ He could see Fern was still not convinced. He turned back to Sthax. ‘How much do you wish to go home?’
Sthax ducked a bow. ‘You know.’ There was both sadness and hope in his eyes.
‘Why have you come over to me? What help could this possibly be to your people?’
Sthax’s glistening forehead creased. His hands lifted as if trying to grab hold of the words. ‘You know I follow Oracle. We follows Oracle. Oracle promise we peoples saves, Marula saves.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘We follows brings deaths. We peoples, Marula, in homes, suffers and we here’ – he touched the silver collar forged around his neck – ‘what we?’
Carnelian sensed how Fern, regarding the Maruli, was softening. Perhaps he was remembering he too wore a collar.
Carnelian turned his attention back to Sthax. ‘The Oracle wears a collar identical to yours, Sthax. Is he a stupid man?’ None around the circle believed that. ‘Is he a coward?’ Carnelian saw Fern’s frown deepen and gaze fall. ‘His promise to you, Sthax, was built on the promise the Master gave him. The Master told me himself he has no intention to honour that promise.’
Sthax’s eyes narrowed further. ‘You believe Oracle against Master?’
Carnelian nodded. ‘Morunasa has taken the fate of your people into his own hands.’
Sthax looked incredulous. ‘What good Oracle do?’ He glanced round at the stone forest and shuddered. ‘How Oracle control Masters?’
‘There’s another, greater power he might believe will give him the strength to conquer the Masters.’
Sthax’s eyes widened with horror. ‘Darkness under trees.’
Just as disturbed, Carnelian gazed into the gloom. ‘This place is very like the Isle of Flies.’
Fern looked sick. Right-Quentha was registering the look on their faces. Her unease spread to her sister’s face. ‘We are not sure to what you refer, Celestial, but let us raise the Ichorians against this demon.’
‘Would your brethren directly defy a command from the God Emperor?’
The sisters looked appalled. ‘Impossible.’
‘Well, the Ichorians have grown accustomed to seeing Marula around the Lord Nephron. If now, as a fully consecrated God Emperor, They choose to seclude Themselves behind these same Marula, who among the Ichorians would dare challenge this?’
From far away a murmurous sound came filtering through the Labyrinth.
‘The Encampment of the Seraphim is waking, Celestial,’ said Left-Quentha. ‘Though they are much further away than the sound suggests.’
‘So how…?’
Her shrug spread to her sister’s side of their body. ‘Sound moves strangely through the Labyrinth, Celestial.’
‘In one place, someone you can see directly,’ said Right-Quentha, ‘you cannot hear at all.’
‘While in other places one can hear a faraway voice as if the speaker were close enough to touch,’ said her sister, reaching out with her tattooed hand.
Right-Quentha smiled. ‘For us, this was one of the chief attractions of this place. Several times we were alerted by the sound of the court preparing to migrate up to the sky.’
Both sisters nodded.
‘Carnie…’
Carnelian turned to Tain.
‘Why can’t you raise the Masters against these-’ He glanced at Sthax. ‘They’re all still there with their guardsmen.’
Carnelian looked at the Quenthas. ‘Could that work?’
The sisters shook their heads. ‘The Halls of Rebirth are a fortress, Celestial. Even with most of the Ichorians away garrisoning the Gates, our cohorts – the sybling cohorts – should easily hold off any assault.’
Carnelian nodded. ‘At the very least there would be much blood spilled; at worst, it could ignite civil war.’ A shadow passed over his heart. ‘Besides, Osidian might be killed.’
‘What of it?’ said Fern. ‘He deserves to die.’
There were gasps round the circle and wide-eyed fear at such sacrilege.
‘If he dies now, most likely I would become the next God Emperor,’ said Carnelian. He sensed more than saw the hope that entered many around the circle. ‘Were that to happen, I’d be locked behind the Masks for ever.’ He was aware of Fern’s horror at this. ‘Imprisoned here.’ He extended his hands to take in the Labyrinth. ‘Meanwhile, the world outside would sink into strife and famine.’ He looked into Sthax’s eyes. ‘I don’t know if I’d be able even then to save your people.’ He shook his head, imagining it. ‘The best I might manage would be to attempt to hold the balance of power here.’ He glanced around the ring of faces. ‘Be certain of this. If the Masters fall into fighting each other, they may destroy themselves, but they would take the world down with them.’
Everyone stared, consumed by their own vision of that calamity.
‘What hope, then, is there?’ asked Tain at last.
Carnelian felt some faint belief rising within him. He turned to Sthax. ‘Do your brethren feel as you do?’
‘We desperate.’
The Maruli looked at Carnelian as if he was a spar floating in a stormy sea. Carnelian would not refuse his hope. ‘We’ll do nothing to interfere with the Masters returning to their palaces. When Morunasa comes into the Labyrinth, we’ll move against him.’
He did not reveal his relief when none there questioned this. At that point, what he had stated was all the plan he had.
‘How will we know when that happens?’ asked Left-Quentha.
It was Fern who answered her. ‘We’ll know.’
The tree that inhabited the clearing was a pomegranate. Though laden with fruit, these were all still green. Right-Quentha had regarded them, disappointed, saying that she and her sister had hoped that the tree would be able to feed them at least for one night. On their previous visits, the fruit had been ripe, but then they had always come later in the year.
Even before they had thought to find some firewood, the sisters cautioned them against lighting a fire. Its smoke might betray their location to anyone searching for them. They made what camp they could within reach of the light. Fern made a bed for Carnelian from the fern fronds, but though they yearned for each other, they chose to sleep apart.
What little food they had was divided equally. As the day waned, they sought sleep as an escape from the darkness encroaching from the Labyrinth. Wrapped in his cloak, Carnelian lay listening to the murmur of the Masters’ camp. Soon they would return to their coombs. What of Coomb Suth? Matters there were still unresolved. If anything were to happen to him or to his father, Poppy and the rest would be at the mercy of Opalid.
Another day of waiting, listening to the Masters’ camp. When Fern went with the Quenthas and some of the Suth guardsmen to find some food, Carnelian remained behind with Tain. When the others returned, they had a couple of fish and a small saurian. Fern prepared them and they ate them raw.
Carnelian and Fern wandered off together. They had told the others that they would not be long and would stay within earshot of both their camp and that of the Masters.
‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ Fern asked.
Carnelian smiled at him. ‘I feel much better.’
They walked along the road beneath the poppyhead columns, the silence deepening between them, until neither could find a way to words. It was Carnelian who spotted another clearing and headed towards it, though it took them away from the path. Even before he reached the clearing he realized it was much larger than the one around which they had camped. A column had collapsed, cracking others as it fell. A ragged hole had been left in the vaulting, through which light was flooding. The head of the fallen column lay half in light, half in shadow. Approaching the great bulb of stone, Carnelian reached out to touch it. Under his hand was the remains of the red with which it had once been painted. Like dried blood. He frowned, reminded of the funerary urns into which he and Osidian had been squeezed. His fingers found branching channels eroded into the stone. He gazed up into the light. This column had once stood naked against the elements. Long ago, perhaps, before the Labyrinth had been roofed in. He walked round to look at its spiky, poppy crown and saw the pod was cracked. A gash as if it had been slit to bleed its opium. He leaned towards it and detected a faint smell of ancient myrrh. He slipped his hand into the gash.
‘What’re you doing?’
Carnelian saw the anger in Fern’s face. ‘I just want to take a peek inside.’ And, with that, he squeezed into the pod.
Inside, the air was musty. He stepped aside to allow light to filter in through the crack. It fell upon a sort of stalagmite angling up from the floor. But, of course, the whole pod had rolled over, so it was emerging not from the floor, but from what had been the ceiling. He reached out and touched it. It swelled into a spiral. Intuition made him reach out to the wall. His fingers found the buds, the seeds with which it was carved. As much as he was inside a huge poppyhead, it was also a pomegranate. He could make out shapes piled up beyond the spindle. Cautiously he crossed the curving floor, using the spindle as a support. A mound of rubbish, of shards, a glimmer of metals and stones, among mouldering flakes and fibres of something else. He jumped when he saw the grin: a row of teeth in a skull skinned with thin, scabrous leather; a mummy, curled up as if in a womb, wrapped in brown cloth. There were others in among the heap. Bones held together by scraps of dried flesh. He grew uneasy, remembering the pygmy dead in their baobabs. He could hear again the crackle as they had burned. Caught by the stare of a dark socket, he shuddered, recalling the render the sartlar had made from pygmies they had killed. His eyes were drawn to a glinting profile. A beautiful face among the corpses. He leaned closer and saw it was a mask. Touching it, he found it was stone. The mummy to which it belonged was larger than the others, its wrappings paler bands of half-perished linen. Among these bands, the glint of gold. He stared, disturbed. This could be one of his fathers, his mothers. There was no sign here of an after-life, of resurrection. His thumb found the edge of the mask. The rest of his hand gripped across the bridge of the nose, into an eyeslit. He tugged and it snapped open like the lid of a rusted box. The face below had darkened, the eyes withered, the lips thinned, riding up the teeth, but it was still a Master’s face. An adult face, but not much larger than a Chosen child’s. Carnelian saw the hands crossed upon the chest, wedged behind the knees. He put the mask down and reached out to compare his hand with the mummy’s. The mummy’s was so much smaller. Perhaps embalming had shrunk it. Carnelian shook his head. The skull could not shrink.
At that moment the light was snuffed out. Carnelian turned, felt the tomb shudder, then a release of light dazzled him. ‘Fern? Look here, this is a Master, but for some reason much smaller than I am.’
‘Haven’t you had enough of the dead?’
An edge to Fern’s voice made Carnelian rise, shuffle back towards him. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said, reaching out to touch him.
His hand was slapped away, stinging him to anger.
‘What’s going to happen?’
The almost childlike tone in Fern’s voice cooled Carnelian’s anger to sadness. ‘I don’t know, Fern, I don’t know.’
‘You must have a plan?’
‘We wait for Morunasa and then-’
‘You mean we wait for the screaming!’
Carnelian felt the grief leaching out of Fern connecting to his own. He remembered the nightmare in the Upper Reach. ‘Yes, the screaming.’
‘I can’t bear it again.’ The words a skin of ice over tears. Fern was reliving not the Upper Reach, but the massacre of his people. Carnelian felt panic rising in him. The memory of that horror came alive in him from where he had thought it buried.
‘Tell me this time it will be different,’ Fern sobbed.
Carnelian reached out, desperate to touch him, wanting to promise, but not daring to lest his promise should turn into a lie. ‘I can’t, Fern, but this time we’ll fight to save what can be saved. This time, together.’
His hands reached Fern’s face, felt his warm tears, his skin. They melted together, seeking life in the midst of death. Skin finding skin. Their mouths. Their hard flesh. Making love, at first violently, but then tenderly.
When they emerged from the tomb, they stood close enough to feel each other’s breath. Eerie silence. Their cheeks grazed as they turned to look at each other. The Masters had left the Labyrinth.
The screaming began the following evening. Thin, bleak, harrowing sounds scratching the sepulchral gloom. Blood drained from the faces edging the clearing.
‘What is it?’ Tain asked in a whisper.
Fern closed his eyes as if he hoped that would close his ears. ‘Morunasa feeding victims to his filthy god.’
Carnelian felt sick. ‘Putting maggots in children.’ As they all turned to him, he cursed himself for having said that aloud.
Heads angled as people listened to the pitch of the screaming. Fern licked his lips, looking queasy. ‘The flesh tithe.’
Carnelian nodded. Tain jumped up. ‘We must go now!’
Carnelian saw in Tain’s face he was being haunted by what he had endured as a child.
The Quenthas shook their heads together, frowning, grim. ‘It’ll soon be night. If we attempt to find our way in the dark, we’ll become lost.’
Carnelian, who had known that before the sisters said it, still felt angry at them for having taken from him any hope of action. ‘Then we must sleep as best we can.’
He caught Fern’s look of despair. How could they all endure such a night?
The first grey light found them awake, bleary-eyed, haggard. The screaming had kept them from sleep, or else mired in helpless nightmares. Carnelian glanced at Fern, saw how aged he seemed, as if it had been night for years. Memory weighed down on both of them. They had good reason to know the horror Morunasa had brought into the Labyrinth. Yet another scream sounded, a sort of lightning shrilling through their nerves. Carnelian had had enough. ‘Let’s go and end this.’
Everyone looked to him with hope; everyone save Fern, who did not look away fast enough to prevent Carnelian seeing his doubt.
Rain began to fall as they set off. They followed the sisters through the twilit Labyrinth. Above their heads the vaults hung like stormclouds. Water pouring in through openings hissed as it sprayed down.
They used one of the column sarcophagi as cover. Carnelian glanced back at the Shimmering Stair. No sign of life there. Dull, its cascade of steps seemed an approach to an immense tomb. Before it the moat was being turned opaque by water falling into it from the shadows above. Litter and mess was all that remained of the Encampment of the Seraphim. On higher ground, between two great pillars, stretched a line of sybling Ichorians. Beyond them, higher still, a darker cordon of Marula from within whose circle rose a particularly massive colossus shouldering flying arches and the high, shadowy ceiling. It was clear why Morunasa had chosen this vast sarcophagus, for it reminded Carnelian of the central trunk of the banyan of the Isle of Flies.
Somewhere near this colossus, a shriek rent the air, causing a shiver to ripple along the rings of Marula and syblings. All were fixedly turned outwards, no doubt fearing even to glimpse what was going on behind them.
Carnelian glanced round at his flint-eyed people awaiting his command. An attempt had to be made to stop that torture even if it should cost their lives.
As Carnelian strode towards the Sinistrals, he saw a party of Sapients addressing them. Fern, the Quenthas and Sthax were at his back. He had left Tain behind with the Suth tyadra.
The Sapients turned as their homunculi, muttering, watched Carnelian approach. Heart racing, he announced who he was.
One of the Sapients advanced. ‘Celestial, please command these creatures to let us pass.’
It was as Carnelian had surmised: the Wise had lost control. The Sapient betrayed his agitation by the way he gripped the throat of his homunculus. The finial of his staff showed two faces turned to each other wrought in red stone. ‘You are of Gates?’ he guessed.
‘The first Third of that Domain, Celestial.’
Carnelian scanned the finials of the other Sapients and it seemed to him that, quite probably, all twelve Domains were there represented. He would test his hypothesis. ‘Is it your masters, my Lord, have sent you hither?’
It was another homunculus who answered him, whose cypher of a cross Carnelian knew well enough was that of the Domain Legions. ‘It is our masters, Celestial, we need to communicate with, urgently.’
An animal scream issued from up the slope. Carnelian fought to calm himself, to think. It seemed Morunasa had been cunning enough to realize he must control the Wise. ‘Are all the Twelve within this cordon?’
Several four-fingered hands rose, making gestures of affirmation. It was as Carnelian had feared. Not only had Morunasa taken Osidian, but also the Twelve, thus decapitating the Wise. That only served to prove he was not dealing with a fool. He advanced on the Sapients, and they and their homunculi moved aside. Before him stood Ichorians armed with iron halberds, encased in armour and casques of the same precious substance. He threw back his hood and fixed one untattooed face with a glare. ‘Do you not know who I am, Ichorian?’
The man ducked his head, even as his blind brother turned to him in consternation. His seeing half pulled them both down to kneel upon two of their three knees. ‘Celestial,’ he muttered. Raking their line, Carnelian caused them all to kneel, acknowledging him.
‘Let me pass,’ he said in an imperious tone.
Two heads rose from a forked neck. ‘We cannot, Celestial.’ The lips that spoke were baroqued with swirling black tattoos. Eyes in the darkened face were ovals of glassy obsidian. ‘We have been commanded to let none through except at Their express instruction.’
‘Did They communicate this command to you Themselves?’
Both syblings shook their heads.
‘The Maruli, then?’
‘It is not for us, Celestial, to question the choices of the Gods on Earth.’
‘Celestial, may I address this centurion?’
Carnelian glanced round at the Quenthas and was glad to let them do what they could.
The sisters confronted the kneeling centurion. ‘You know this is the brother of the Gods?’ As the syblings nodded, the Quenthas continued relentlessly: ‘From love of whom They changed the Law-that-must-be-obeyed. Do you imagine They will easily forgive this insult to Their beloved?’
‘But the command-?’ said the centurion.
‘This command cannot apply to the Lord Carnelian,’ said the Quenthas with steely authority.
The centurion ducked a bow. ‘We dare not disobey divine command.’
‘Was it given you in the angelic tongue?’
The syblings had to admit it had not been.
‘How then can you be so certain of the precise nature of Their command?’
Carnelian could see the resolve of the centurion weakening and so could the Quenthas. ‘Was it not delivered to you by a barbarian who traduced the holy will into a lesser tongue?’
Carnelian gazed down with haughty condescension. ‘I shall vouch for you.’ He scanned their ranks. ‘For you all.’
The heads of the centurion turned inwards so that each caught the eye of the other. The syblings rose and, at their command, the line opened for Carnelian. Through the gap, he saw the darker ranks of the Marula. They would not be so easily cowed. He raised his voice to summon the Sapients to follow him, then he strode through the sybling cordon and on towards the Marula.
The Marula lowered their lances, their line buckling a little, bristling. They stared at Carnelian with yellow, feral eyes. He shortened his steps. Sweat trickled down his back. He was only too aware of the danger he was in, of the danger he was taking his people into. Earlier, the Quenthas had argued hard against this. Their counsel had been to subvert their brethren; to turn the Sinistrals against the Marula and slaughter them. It had been Fern’s silence that had steadied Carnelian’s resolve. Fern, who had reason to wish the killers of his people dead.
Carnelian glanced round at Sthax. They had made promises to each other. Hope lay in the trust between them. Sthax addressed the Marula. His voice carried with the clicks and throaty syllables of their speech. The Marula listened to him, their eyes flashing from Sthax to Carnelian, gripping and regripping their lances. When Sthax fell silent, Carnelian watched the Marula whispering among themselves. He recognized some of them. He remembered training them in the Upper Reach to fight in the formation they now used against him; he remembered fighting on the ground at their side against Osidian’s mounted charges. Perhaps they too remembered this, because their lances began to rise as they moved aside.
Passing through the Marula Carnelian gazed up at the shadowy colossus to which they had been barring access. It was just another column of the Labyrinth, just another sarcophagus, in which lay the mummy of a God Emperor. It had the shape of a man, though one upon whose brow sat vaulting that seemed a stormy sky. It could have been the Black God incarnating as a column of smoke. Or was it the Darkness-under-the-Trees? The face of the colossus was hidden in the shadows of the roof, but Carnelian had the distinct impression he was gazing down with eyeless wrath. His arms crossed upon his chest reminded Carnelian of Legions in his capsule. The Standing Dead.
As he advanced, his gaze slid down the stone torso, the thighs each as mighty as a great tree. Between the ankles stretched what appeared to be a net upon which many fish were caught. His stomach clenched as he remembered the men hung up in the Isle of Flies.
Figures were emerging from between the feet of the colossus. Pallid creatures that seemed a mockery of the Chosen. He glanced to either side and saw with what terror the Marula warriors regarded the approach of these ashen men. Sthax said something to them in a soothing tone. He gave Carnelian a nod. The Oracles were close enough for him to see their ghostly faces. He wondered from where the ashes had come which they had rubbed upon their skin. They bared their sharpened teeth, eyes red with rage. They hissed at the warriors, spittle running down their chins. Carnelian felt the warriors begin to cower. Then, as a blur, someone sped past him, arm drawn back, and plunged the lance it held into one of the Oracles so violently the spearhead erupted out of his back. A look of surprise on the man’s face as he plucked at the shaft jutting from his belly. Surprise too on the faces of his peers. Their ashen faces blanked with fear. Carnelian felt the warriors round him tensing. Their nostrils were distending as if they were smelling blood. They sprang. Soon the Oracles were encompassed by gleaming black flesh. Elbows made sharp angles and straightened as if, within their circle, they were pounding flour.
Carnelian moved on, the iron odour of fresh blood wafting in the air. The Quenthas were at his left, Fern at his right. At the feet of the colossus, more eerie figures were rising. Hanging on the netting above them, children pocked with wounds. Closer, Carnelian saw Oracles lying along the hollows between the toes of the colossus. Hearing the slap of pursuing feet, he turned to see Marula rushing up. His eyes found Sthax’s. ‘Can you control them?’
Sthax barked an order and Carnelian was reassured when the warriors slowed, though their eyes kept questing, hungry for more bloodshed. The Oracles confronting them looked terrified.
Carnelian half turned. ‘Tell them their lives will be spared if they submit to me.’
Sthax stepped forward to harangue the Oracles. Glancing back with shame, the ashen men crept forward and fell on their knees before Carnelian.
‘Take care of them, Sthax,’ Carnelian said, then stepped round the prone men, for, in the cave between the legs of the colossus, he had seen a single, pallid figure rising. He knew Morunasa by his proud bearing. As he neared the Oracle, Carnelian saw the ghostly shape of a Master lying naked on a bier at his feet. Even though the face was shadow, Carnelian knew it was Osidian.
Morunasa fixed him with crazed eyes. ‘Come closer and I’ll slay him.’
Carnelian glanced quickly to either side to make sure his companions knew to halt. He turned back to Morunasa. ‘If you harm him, your people will surely die.’
Morunasa gave a dry laugh, his lips curling up to reveal his needle teeth. His head jerked up. ‘What do I care for these traitors?’
‘ All your people will die.’
The cold grin died on Morunasa’s face to be replaced by a haunted look. Carnelian felt his heart stirring for this man at bay. ‘I’ve already promised him-’ He glanced round at Sthax, who was approaching. ‘Promised them all,’ he said, with a gesture taking in all the Marula warriors, ‘that I’ll do everything I can to save those in the Lower Reach.’
He held Morunasa’s gaze as the man tried to see into his heart. Morunasa seemed to find what he sought, for his head dropped and the tension left his limbs. He looked down at Osidian, who Carnelian realized was wearing the oily Obsidian Mask. Morunasa lifted his head, smiling defiantly, but Carnelian could see the man had little fight left in him. Morunasa raised his arms, bared his ravener teeth, then, with a lunge and a vicious twist of his head, he tore first one of his wrists open, then the other. His arms dropped, blood glistening in cords down his pale palms, to pour in skeins from his fingers. Instinctively Carnelian brought his own scabbed wrists together as if he were feeling Morunasa’s pain. He stepped forward, his foot slipping on the blood pooling around Morunasa’s feet. He held the man’s gaze once more, then knelt beside Osidian. His scrutiny took in the new wounds they had cut to put in the maggots, patterning the white flesh between the shadows of the old scars. He gazed at the gleaming, perfect black face that made it seem as if Osidian was one with the colossus towering above them. He reached forward to remove it, wanting to throw it away, to look upon Osidian’s face.
‘No! It is forbidden!’ cried an unhuman voice.
Carnelian turned and saw a homunculus watching him, the figure of his master rising behind with his long silver mask. He considered for a moment defying the Sapient even as he questioned his fear at giving them back their power. He answered himself: Enough of the world is already broken. He became aware other homunculi were moving past him into the shadows beyond. Then he saw the frieze of what seemed skulls beneath the colossus. Grand Sapients. The Twelve slumped against the stone of the column, the odour of excrement and urine coming off them.
‘Let’s get him out of here.’
Carnelian saw it was Fern. They lifted Osidian between them and carried him out of the gloom. As they laid him down, Fern put an ear to his chest. He looked up. ‘He lives.’
Carnelian nodded, but was watching the Grand Sapients being helped up by their homunculi. The ancients leaned upon them like infirm parents. But even as they rose, their hands quested for their children’s throats. The homunculi began to make sounds, half-words, mutterings, as if their masters, drowning, through them were coming up gulping for air.
Carnelian looked up at the small bodies on the netting. They were covered with the fresh wounds into which maggots had been introduced. Some of them had their eyes open, glassy with terror. He left Osidian to Fern, called for Sthax and soon Marula were swarming up to free the children. Carnelian watched, agonized, as one by one they were released, passed down from hand to hand. As he caught a little girl, he winced at how cold and clammy she was; at the tremor in her tiny body.
Even as he helped, his attention was more and more being drawn to the Wise. They had regained their composure. The Twelve, in a line, were confronted by another line of Sapients. Between them, a double interface of homunculi. The Grand Sapients were reconnecting to their Domains. As Carnelian approached them, still reviewing his decision, he heard the rattling vocalizations of the homunculi. A constant, frantic stream of apparently meaningless syllables interspersed with the muttering of the Grand Sapients’ receptive homunculi, through whose throats their masters were receiving who knew what volume of data. Carnelian glanced back at Osidian, lying inert. He refocused on the Wise. It was up to him. Should he try to take control of them? If he did not, how might they take advantage of the situation?
Suddenly, one of the Grand Sapients choked his homunculus silent and began prodding instructions into its neck. Soon others, terminating the receptive mode, were turning their homunculi to transmission. The homunculi that had been speaking fell silent and were soon murmuring an echo to the questions the Grand Sapients were voicing through their homunculi. There was a tension in the fingers of the Grand Sapients as they worked their voices’ necks. Questions and answers shuttled back and forth, homunculi speaking all at once, so that Carnelian was amazed that anything coherent could be being communicated by means of such cacophony. Yet its frantic tone was infecting him with an increasing foreboding. The flow quietened to a murmur, then silence. The Twelve turned their empty eye sockets towards Carnelian. They nodded.
‘Celestial?’ sang one of their homunculi.
For a moment Carnelian could find no words, unnerved by their corpse stares. ‘What news?’
‘The City at the Gates is overrun by sartlar.’
Carnelian’s stomach clenched. Some part of him had known this was what they were going to say.
‘What happened to the legions dispatched to disperse them?’
The Twelve realigned in a row, facing him. Examining their staves, he deduced it was Tribute who now spoke to him.
‘It appears, Celestial, contact with them has been lost.’
‘This certainly seems to be the case,’ said another homunculus at one end of their line. The staff it held bore a smouldering red cross. For a moment, Carnelian was shocked, then realized this was not Legions returned from the dead, but merely his successor.
‘… we shall have to verify the integrity of our systems, Celestial.’
‘Some degradation in their functioning is to be expected in this disorder,’ Tribute said.
Carnelian fought his rising dread. ‘What does “overrun” mean?’
The twelve homunculi echoed his words, murmurously.
‘Sartlar are vermin,’ said Tribute.
Carnelian did not consider this much of an answer. If they were still in the vicinity of Osrakum, the creatures must be desperately hungry.
‘Additionally, these instruments of chaos must be destroyed.’
Carnelian wished they would shut up and let him think. ‘Do you mean the Marula?’
‘They have put unclean hands upon the God Emperor, upon us.’
Carnelian knew he must not give way to anger. He must think. Who knew how long it would be before Osidian regained consciousness? If Ykoriana discovered his condition, could she resist seizing power in the Labyrinth? He looked at the Wise. Dare he let them deal with the sartlar? No, he knew too well how pitiless were their methods. He must assume the agreement he had made with Osidian and Ykoriana would hold. The outer world was his responsibility. His father too would have to wait.
He raised his eyes to the Twelve. ‘You will not touch the Marula. I shall take them away with me.’
‘Away, Celestial?’
‘To the City at the Gates. I shall also take the huimur in the Plain of Thrones.’
Tribute took Carnelian’s words from the throat of his homunculus and then made it speak in the same garbled manner that they had been using before. Sound and murmuring interwove as the Twelve conclaved. At last they fell silent and Tribute’s homunculus alone spoke. ‘Will you accept our aid, Celestial?’
Carnelian considered this. At last he raised his hand in affirmation. He would feel better if at least some of the Twelve were where he could watch them. In truth, he was grateful for any help.
‘Then Legions, Lands and Cities will accompany you, Celestial.’
Carnelian nodded, looking at Osidian lying on his bier.
‘We shall take care of Them.’
Carnelian saw the children, Morunasa’s victims, being carried by the Marula. ‘I shall take these children with me too.’
The Wise voiced no objection. Carnelian remembered the thousands more out in tithe cages. ‘Henceforth, you will consider all of the flesh tithe to be under my protection.’
Even as he spoke Carnelian realized these were the preserve of the Domain of Tribute. It could not help but be understood by all the Wise as a challenge to their leader’s authority. So be it; on this issue, Carnelian would not back down.
‘Your property, Celestial?’
‘If that is what it takes.’
‘Very well,’ Tribute said, at last. ‘We shall accept this. For now.’
Carnelian watched the children being led or carried off by syblings towards the cages of the flesh tithe. Other syblings, armed, escorted the few surviving Oracles, who had promised to oversee the children through their period of infestation. Carnelian had felt no need to threaten them; for, after all, most of what survived of their god was now contained in the tiny bodies of those children.
He frowned, remembering the long weary journey through the darkness. It had taken the fight out of him. The whimpering of the children had frayed his compassion, until it was replaced by disgust for what they harboured in their flesh. By the end, however unfairly, he was angry with them. He shook his head. They were just a place to put his anger. He glanced back at the Forbidden Door, uncertain what he was leaving behind. The Twelve were free. Osidian would, most likely, recover. Carnelian was glad that, when he had asked them, the Quenthas had agreed to remain behind to protect him.
He gazed at the Plain of Thrones. Flanking the edges of the Black Field the dragons remained in the positions they had held since the Apotheosis. The multitude they had menaced had all been driven out of Osrakum, leaving the Black Field a mired and stinking plain. He scanned the towered monsters. It would be best to lead them out on Heart-of-Thunder, from whose tower they were wont to take their commands.
Coming up through the floor onto the command deck, he was aware that the cloying, sickly smell pervading the tower was stronger here. As he stepped away to let Fern up, Carnelian became aware the air was being sewn by buzzing flights. Flies. His heart began pounding, his throat grew dry, as he searched the shadows at the back of the cabin. Somehow, Morunasa’s god had found his way here. A bundle lay against a wall. Soft and tapering at both ends like some monstrous chrysalis. As he approached it, he became quickly aware it was the source of the sweet odour. A smell of meat near rotting. He stood over it. Fluids it had oozed had stained the deck. Creeping horror claimed him as he realized the chrysalis had something very like a head. A bloated, leaking, swollen face. He stared with shock as he recognized it. He jumped when it moved. It was alive. Of course he was. Carnelian had seen enough corpses, had smelled enough, to know he was not yet dead.
‘What is it?’
Carnelian looked into Tain’s anxious face. He tried some kind of explanation. His brother’s face twisted strangely when he heard the name. He did not seem to be listening to Carnelian’s explanation of why this thing was there. As Tain gaped at what was left of Jaspar, Carnelian remembered what that Master had done to Tain when he was a boy. Carnelian wondered if the expression on his brother’s face was the satisfaction of revenge. Disturbed, he looked away. There was a shape in the shadows he had not noticed before. Something like a child in a tight knot.
‘You there.’
The knot tightened.
‘I can see you there.’
The shape unbent and Carnelian saw its face and recognized it. ‘You!’
Legions’ homunculus cowered.
‘What are you doing here?’
The little man indicated Jaspar with a shaking hand. ‘Taking care of the Seraph.’ Carnelian’s frown of incomprehension forced more words out of him. ‘Giving the Seraph water. Chewing his food for him.’
Carnelian stared at the homunculus, unable to understand why he should have chosen to prolong Jaspar’s agony. Anger rose in him at the cruelty.
Then Tain cried out: ‘He’s looking at me.’
He stared in horror at Jaspar, whose eyes had squeezed into view between the bloated lids. Carnelian imagined how riddled Jaspar’s body must be with worms. How long had he lain here? Tended by the homunculus just enough to keep him alive. Just alive.
Tain grabbed at Carnelian’s arm, dug his fingers in. ‘For the gods’ sake kill him.’
Carnelian looked at him, not wanting to ask him, asking him: ‘Do you want to do it?’
His brother stared at him as if he thought him mad. Tain shook his head, frowning, backing away. Carnelian became aware Fern was there, watching. He put his hand out, and Fern understood, for he unsheathed a blade and put its hilt in Carnelian’s hand, who turned, crouched, then insinuated its point under the dewlap chins and, finding the root of an ear, punctured the flesh and sliced down. Then, rising, he watched a dark pool widening around Jaspar’s head.
From Heart-of-Thunder’s command chair, Carnelian gazed out to starboard, through the rain, at the ring of standing stones. Though he had had Jaspar’s body removed, the deck scrubbed, the flies driven away, killed, the smell still lingered. He could still see the stains Jaspar had left in the deck. He looked round to the other side of the cabin to where Fern and Tain were sitting against the wall; Fern staring, frowning, grim; Tain still in shock, haunted. Further back, in the shadows, the homunculus. Carnelian felt like punishing the little man for his cruelty. Empathy quenched this impulse. How long had the homunculus been there, tending Jaspar’s near-corpse? Abandoned without hope of rescue. Perhaps he had been cruel, perhaps merely lonely and terrified. Carnelian had to accept that it was he most of all who had abandoned the little man, had forgotten him.
A mutter at his feet made him turn, feeling the dragon beneath responding to his Left’s whispered command. The view through the screen began sliding right until the narrow entrance to the Plain of Thrones came into view. He focused grimly on the task he had before him and wondered what he was taking them all into.
As they came off the Great Causeway, the downpour abated. On either side, the Turtle Steps cascaded down to the lake. Ahead, something smouldered. Staring at it, Carnelian felt a heaviness descend upon him. Though he knew it was the gilded Clave, it reminded him of the Iron House burning in the midst of a landscape of sartlar dead. Grimly, he contemplated that he was on a mission to inflict more carnage on the poor brutes.
When Fern coughed, Carnelian turned and saw him indicating Tain. His brother had the look of a terrified child, listening. Carnelian listened too. Beneath the shudder and rattle of the cabin there was a dull roaring. He glanced at Tain, then ordered Heart-of-Thunder onto the Cloaca Road. As the monster turned, a canal came into view, cut into the Valley floor, a spillway. Only a dyke separated it from the lake shore, through whose immense stone comb the Skymere poured into the spillway in many waterfalls. Carnelian recalled that Tain’s ordeal in the quarantine had terminated somewhere near those falls. He glanced round at him. Clearly, the encounter with Jaspar had left Tain shaken. A solution occurred to him, not only for Tain – and for the homunculus as well, whom Carnelian knew he could not bring before the Wise – but for relieving another worry.
‘Tain, you must carry a message to Father for me.’
Tain frowned, seeming to have difficulty in bringing Carnelian into focus. ‘He’d not forgive me for leaving you unprotected.’
Carnelian indicated the homunculus. ‘I also need him taken to safety.’
His brother gave a reluctant nod.
‘Tell Father everything you’ve witnessed. Tell him I’m going to the City at the Gates to sort out some problems.’ Carnelian could add no more. How long would it be before he was free to return to Osrakum?
Once Tain and the homunculus had disembarked, Heart-of-Thunder proceeded along the lip of the Cloaca, in whose depths storm waters roared.
The grey afternoon was waning when they reached the Black Gate. It opened for them and Heart-of-Thunder carried them into the Canyon. Nearby it was twilight, but further away, where the Canyon turned south, night seemed to have arrived already. Carnelian could only just discern the blacker clot of the Blood Gate. If they pushed on, he hoped they could reach the City at the Gates before nightfall.
‘I wish to send a message ahead,’ he said.
‘A signal flare will have to be lit, Master,’ said his Left.
As Carnelian waited he watched the cliffs on either side swaying in time to the cabin. The air trembled to a constant roar. It seemed a more dreadful sound than merely the rushing waters of the Cloaca reverberating along the Canyon. His Left announced the mirrorman was ready.
‘Bid them open the gates, we’re passing straight through.’
As his Left repeated his words into the command tube, Carnelian hoped this act of foresight would avoid any delays. He became aware of a blinking light that could only be coming from one of the towers of the Blood Gate.
‘The outer gate cannot be opened, Master,’ his Left said.
‘Ask them why.’ Carnelian waited impatiently as his message was transmitted. The Blood Gate signal resumed its blinking.
The Left turned to look up at Carnelian. ‘They claim it is forbidden, Master.’
Unease stirred in him. He would have liked more information, but he was reluctant to carry out any further interrogation by signal flare.
A man-sized door opened in the cliff that was the closed inner portal of the Blood Gate. Several lanterns swung out, carried by a number of figures, each of whom seemed to have but half a face. These Sinistrals could not help glancing fearfully over Carnelian’s head. He knew how menacing was the shape that loomed up behind him, for he had just descended from the monster’s tower. The Sinistrals knelt, touching their foreheads to the stone. ‘Seraph.’
‘I am Carnelian of the Masks. Why have you closed this gate against me?’
They struck the stone with their heads. ‘Forgive us, Celestial, we merely obey the Law.’
Carnelian could make no sense of this. ‘The Wise have sent commands?’
As their eyes came up, he could See how confused the Sinistrals were. He did not want to terrorize them. ‘Is there some kind of emergency?’
‘Perhaps, Celestial, you might deign to see the cause for yourself?’
Carnelian almost barked: See what? Turning, he regarded the mountainous shadows that formed a line from the Blood Gate rock off across the massive bridge and down the Canyon. ‘Fern, will you come with me?’ he asked in Ochre. He waited for Fern’s nod, then turned to his Lefthand. ‘Please take my place in the command chair. Pass a message down the line. You are to wait for me.’
Carnelian turned to the Sinistrals. ‘Show me this “cause”.’
Carnelian was breathing hard. He had lost count of the levels they had climbed. Stair after stair past military gates, warrens and military engines of gigantic size. The chill on his face as a breeze caught his sweat was a relief. They had come out into the open at last. He became aware of the night, then, almost immediately, of a dull glowing on the underside of the clouds that capped the sky to the west.
‘Dragonfire?’ said Fern.
Carnelian shook his head, grimly. ‘There’re no flashes. The City burns.’ He turned to the Sinistral commander. ‘Is that what you wanted me to witness?’
‘Not so, Celestial.’
Carnelian and Fern followed him to a parapet where the Sinistral pointed down. Carnelian sensed the vast spread of emptiness below. ‘Can you see anything?’
Fern traced some vague outlines in the darkness. Carnelian was trying to work out where their eyrie was located, when he became aware of a murmur distinct from the throbbing of the Cloaca. The hackles rose on his neck. He knew that sound. Fern breathed the word that had formed in Carnelian’s mind. ‘Sartlar.’