Truly the Gods savour sacrifice
But swell not too much Their holocausts
Lest you wake Their greed
And They devour the world.
First light found Carnelian bleary – eyed. He had hardly slept. At first he had been haunted by the maggot births, then he became possessed by the fear that, at any moment, Aurum would fall on them with his dragons. He was exhausted from the continuous effort of listening for the first tremor of an attack. He rose, knuckled his forehead, rubbed his eyes. A gleam from Osidian’s body could just be seen through the huddle of the Oracles. Where he had failed to work out Aurum’s intentions, Osidian might succeed. As he approached, Morunasa rose to bar his way.
‘I must talk to him.’
The Oracle shook his head. ‘It’s our Lord who must wake him from within his dreams.’
‘But we’re still in danger. The dragons could be upon us at any time.’
Morunasa frowned. ‘What I fear is more terrible than dragons.’ He leaned close. ‘Can you not feel the presence of our Lord?’
The odour of the Isle of Flies was coming off his ashen skin. Carnelian shuddered, swayed by Morunasa’s certainty, finding it easy to sense the Darkness-under-the-Trees pulsing in the gloom. It drove the last fragment of fight out of him. He became too weary to withstand his doubts. The edifices he had constructed with his reason crumbled. An old fear returned. What if Osidian’s power revived? What if victory over the auxiliaries were to give him back ascendancy over the Plainsmen?
‘The men intend to return to their homes today.’ It was Fern approaching.
Carnelian glanced back towards where Osidian lay.
‘He can do nothing to stop it.’
‘You’re so sure?’
Fern gave a solid nod, but Carnelian thought he saw a glimmer of uncertainty in his eyes. Rising commotion and an impression of movement made him notice the whole hillside in motion. In the twilight it was hard to make out individuals.
‘First they’ll return to the battlefield,’ Fern said.
Carnelian nodded. It was good that they should save what they could of their dead.
‘I fear Hookfork will be waiting for them,’ said Fern.
‘I too,’ said Carnelian, glad to be able to share his fear with someone. ‘But that leaves us with the mystery of what caused the thunder in the night.’
Fern grimaced. ‘Could Hookfork have gone north, hoping to trap us?’
‘If so why has he allowed us to destroy his auxiliaries?’
‘Perhaps he felt it all-important to protect his render supply.’
Carnelian shook his head. ‘A few dragons would have sufficed for that.’
Fern’s eyes flashed. ‘What then?’
Carnelian had an answer, but dared not voice it until he was sure it was not desperation overthrowing reason. Fern’s pained frustration drew it out of him. ‘Perhaps he’s fled back to the Guarded Land.’
‘Why would he do that? You told us the Master’s the entire focus of his schemes.’
‘He is, but Hookfork might fear the Master reaching the Guarded Land before him.’
With effort, Carnelian strove to analyse matters as a Master might. Barbarians were unimportant; even the loss of so many auxiliaries. What mattered was how all this would be perceived in Osrakum. This war was merely the shadow cast by the game being played there between the Powers. The Wise had risked much in attempting to retrieve Osidian: Aurum had risked everything. If Osidian were to make his appearance unfettered, the alignments of the forces would be disrupted. The Wise might be able to regain control, but Aurum would be lucky to salvage anything at all.
Carnelian became aware of Fern’s exasperation. He sought to find an end to untie the knot of his analysis for him, then gave up the attempt. ‘Politics.’
Seeing Fern grow angry, Carnelian was about to retreat from his Chosen vantage point, when a thought occurred to him. Such an appearance by Osidian might disrupt the nexus of power in Osrakum enough to cause the whole business in the Earthsky, even the sins of the Plainsmen, to be forgotten. He was stunned, certain he was seeing a move in the game. He found himself trying to remember the few things his father had said about how it was played. Why had his father taught him so little?
He focused on Fern’s angry frustration. The desire to save him, to save Poppy and the Plainsmen, to atone for the annihilation of the Ochre, all this meant he must learn to play the Masters’ game.
He reached out to touch Fern. ‘I’m sorry.’
His friend’s face collapsed into an expression of confusion. He watched Carnelian’s hand withdrawing. ‘I’ve no wish to understand what the Standing Dead might mean by “politics”,’ he said, his mouth curling with disgust.
Carnelian marshalled his thoughts. ‘Nevertheless I’m now convinced Hookfork is leaving or has left the Earthsky.’ Though he could not really believe it, he still felt relieved. Something else occurred to him. ‘This could provide us with a way to rid the Earthsky of Morunasa and the Marula.’
Fern looked uncertain, but he was watching Carnelian with hope.
‘If the Plainsmen knew that Hookfork was gone would they continue to listen to the Master?’
Fern shook his head. ‘But why should they believe your conjectures?’
Carnelian saw how impossible it would be to explain his reasoning to the Plainsmen. If Fern was accepting this at all it was from some vestige of faith that he still had in him. Carnelian felt ashamed, humbled that any should still linger in his friend’s heart.
He waited for him to speak. Fern looked up. ‘You hope the Master will take the Marula with him in pursuit of Hookfork?’
Carnelian pondered this. It was a fair question. ‘I believe the faith he and Morunasa have in the Marula god could be enough to make them attempt it.’
Fern stared blindly. ‘Most likely they’d be going to their destruction.’ He regarded Carnelian. ‘And you’ll go with him?’
‘I must.’
‘Then I’ll go with you.’
Carnelian wondered what lay behind this decision. He wanted it to be because Fern still felt something for him. The look in Fern’s face suggested he might have bleaker motivations.
He smiled grimly. ‘And what if you don’t die in battle?’
‘I’m sure I’ll die some other way.’
Their gazes locked; Fern was first to break contact.
‘What about Poppy?’ Carnelian said, as much as anything else to cover up a feeling of embarrassment.
Fern chewed his lip. ‘I believe Krow would want to take care of her… be capable even…’
‘She wouldn’t go willingly,’ Carnelian said.
Fern shook his head. ‘We couldn’t force her.’
Carnelian smiled ruefully. ‘The last time I tried that she triggered a battle.’
Fern nodded. ‘She’s earned the right to choose for herself.’
They found Poppy and Krow together watching the Plainsmen stream down through the mother trees towards their aquar. Carnelian studied the two of them as Fern explained the conclusions they had come to. Krow had eyes only for Poppy’s face as she nodded, listening. When Fern was done she looked up at Carnelian. She indicated the deserting Plainsmen. ‘You’re going to tell me I have to leave with them.’
Carnelian exchanged a glance with Fern, whose look of encouragement prompted a shaking of Carnelian’s head.
Poppy looked from one to the other and frowned. ‘I don’t understand what’s going on here.’
Fern answered: ‘If you choose to go with us it’ll almost certainly be to your death.’
She blushed. ‘The Mother will protect us.’ She looked hard into Carnelian’s eyes. ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘Then I’m coming too,’ said Krow.
When they all looked at him his face too changed colour.
‘Many tribes would take you in,’ Carnelian said.
Krow glanced at Poppy, slowly shaking his head. ‘I’ll never again be a stranger in a strange tribe.’
Poppy looked at Fern then Carnelian. ‘He’s right. You’re my tribe now.’ She turned to Krow. ‘You too.’
Krow coloured again and Poppy smiled. ‘Well, that’s settled then.’
While Carnelian had been sitting on a rock waiting for Osidian to wake, the grove had emptied of Plainsmen. The sound of them riding away had echoed up through the cedars, then silence had fallen. Brooding mostly over Poppy’s decision, he had watched the sun chase shadows from under the trees.
When the Oracles stirred he leapt up. They yielded to him when he pushed through them. Osidian, blinking, shaded his sunken eyes with an emaciated arm. Morunasa leaned down and began interrogating him in a tense whisper. The Oracles craned forward, struggling to listen. Osidian shook his head, pushed Morunasa away and, with a groan, sat up.
His face lit up as he saw Carnelian. ‘Where…?’
Looking for a moment like the boy in the Yden, though so wasted, he caused Carnelian’s heart to trip. ‘Do you remember the battle?’
Osidian went blind, looking within himself. ‘My Father was there. ..’ He frowned. ‘Everywhere…’
‘The Darkness-under-the-Trees?’ Morunasa asked, his eyes like flames.
Osidian glanced at him, confused.
Carnelian caught Osidian’s gaze with his. ‘The auxiliaries were destroyed, my Lord.’
Osidian frowned. ‘And Aurum?’
Carnelian ignored Morunasa, who was baring his teeth at their Quya. He felt this was an opportunity to make a move in the game. Carefully he began describing their flight north; Aurum’s disappearance; the thunder in the night. He watched with fascination as Osidian’s eyes betrayed his struggle to make sense of it all. He fought to suppress a thrill of excitement as he saw the pattern settle in Osidian’s mind, certain he was drawing the same conclusions as he had himself. Osidian was now alight with confidence, evident in the smile that he turned on the Oracles. ‘Consider the confluence of events. Can you not see the hand of our Lord behind these developments? Is battle…’ – his eyes burned – ‘not one of the clearest instruments of divination?’
As he rose, the Oracles stepped back, awe in their faces. The birthmark on Osidian’s forehead creased as the light dimmed in his eyes. ‘He was with me and in me and about me.’ He looked into the shadow still lingering around the nearest cedar trunk.
‘We must return south before the dragons come,’ Morunasa declared, but the way he searched Osidian’s face belied his tone of confidence.
Osidian seemed not to hear him. He looked at Carnelian. ‘Where are the Plainsmen now?’
Morunasa narrowed his yellow eyes. ‘They’ve deserted you.’
Osidian ignored the Oracle and waited for Carnelian to answer him.
‘They’ve gone to gather their dead from the battlefield,’ Carnelian said. ‘And then, I believe, they’ll go home.’
Osidian frowned. ‘I need them to come with me.’
‘Go where, my Lord?’ Carnelian said, playing the game and then striving to forget that he knew the answer, to keep his face from betraying him.
Osidian looked around him. ‘Where are the aquar?’
Carnelian knew he could say nothing more without revealing himself. He looked to Morunasa, urging him to say what he could not. Almost as if under his control the man obliged. ‘With our Lord behind you what need have we of the Plainsmen? We’re still yours, my Master.’
Osidian would not be deflected. ‘We ride to the battlefield.’
Carnelian nodded and followed him as he strode off to the nearest rootstair. When Fern joined them, Carnelian dared not look him in the eye and clung on to Fern’s belief that the Plainsmen would not be swayed by Osidian’s words.
Carnelian covered his mouth and nose against the fetid air. The ground was foul with corpses. Everywhere ferns were trampled, clotted with dried blood. Dense, swirling mats of flies gave twitching life to the dead. The sky was darkened by wheeling clouds of ravens, by sky-saurians gliding in arcs. The raveners had left, perhaps having eaten their fill. However other, smaller scavengers swarmed the battlefield. Against such numbers the attempts the Plainsmen were making with their whirling bullroarers to drive them from their feast were futile.
As he rode Carnelian’s gaze snagged on a glint here, another there. His eyes found the brass of a service collar bright among the dun and rusty carnage. Its familiar gleam and colour made him turn to see its like around Fern’s throat. He regarded the vastness of the slaughter. He had so easily fallen into thinking of the auxiliaries as merely an extension of Aurum’s malice. Now he was seeing them as men. Each had been recruited from some tribe that was probably not so different from those of the Earthsky. The next Plainsman he passed he stared at. Hunched, the man was picking his way through the mesh of arms and legs, searching. Carnelian scrutinized his face. Its sadness and the misery in the darting eyes was not restricted to his own people. So close, the man could not help seeing that the rage he had sought to turn against the Standing Dead had fallen on men like himself. Carnelian felt the confidence he had drawn from his plotting leak away. This was another massacre: a slaughter of brother by brother. All his defences crumbled. He drank in the horror unmediated by excuses, by judgement, by any consideration of context. A sort of wonder rose in him, a bleak, surprised contemplation of how it was that he and his kind could wreak so much horror, but pass through it unscathed.
Voices raised in anger broke through his trauma. Morunasa was shouting and other Oracles were joining their commands to his. At first Carnelian could not understand their anger, but then he saw the Marula streaming across the battlefield, defiantly gathering up their own dead.
A bellow drew all attention to its source. Osidian rode in among them brandishing a spear. In stentorian tones he summoned the leaders of the Plainsmen to attend him. For a moment everyone stared, as stunned as Carnelian, but then his heart died as he saw men, from all across the plain, disengage from what they were doing and begin trudging towards the Master. Morose, Carnelian urged his aquar forward.
Even before anyone had reached him Osidian began haranguing them. ‘There’s no time to gather the dead!’
Carnelian was appalled by the depth and volume of his voice. He was transfixed by the wasted beauty of his face so bright against a halo of flies. Enringed by Plainsmen Osidian raked their ranks with his emerald gaze. ‘We must fly north.’
Carnelian tore his eyes away from him, expecting to see awe in the faces round him. Instead there were only frowns of confusion. He noticed that not a single face was painted. He realized he could not remember the last time he had seen a whitened face among the Plainsmen. Osidian continued to explain that Hookfork was fleeing north. That if they reached the Leper Valleys before him they would achieve victory. That the victory they had won the day before was as nothing to that which awaited them should they obey him now. Carnelian watched the Plainsman faces sour. His heart leapt as they began to turn away. Osidian, confident of triumph, was blind to his audience. Carnelian almost felt sorry for him. When Osidian became aware, with a look of surprise, that he was losing them, the pitch of his voice rose and he tried to buy them with promises. Shriller and shriller it grew as more and more of them turned their backs on him. Even his wrath when it came was not enough to turn their tide. His threats indeed produced some sour laughter. The joy that had burned up into Carnelian’s chest quickly turned to ice. The Plainsmen had ceased to fear the Standing Dead. They had seen behind their mask, had seen them weak, had seen they were just men. At that moment their power seemed fallible, broken at their feet. Carnelian recognized with chill horror that this was what the Wise feared most. Before the cancer of such a liberation from fear should spread through the body of the Commonwealth, the Wise would strike to eradicate it, to cut out even the memory of such freedom.
Contemplating this bleak scenario, he was slow to notice that it was Morunasa now speaking, not Osidian. The Oracle, realizing that Aurum’s threat was receding and having witnessed the desertion of the Plainsmen, clearly felt confident enough to voice his own demands. He was describing a vision of the theocracy Osidian could build in the south. How he could bring the Marula up from the failing ruin of the Lower Reach. How he could build a new power centred on the Isle of Flies. A new power with which he could conquer the Earthsky and bring all under the sway of the god they both served.
As Morunasa fell silent Carnelian focused on Osidian. His thinned lips began distorting. ‘You believe, Morunasa, that, offered a way back to the heart of the world, I would be content to bury myself in the squalor of this wilderness?’
Morunasa looked for a moment as if he had been slapped, then quickly hooded his amber glare.
‘Your Lower Reach is dead,’ Osidian said. ‘Be thankful you have your lives and, if you follow me, I will make a place for you and your god at the heart of the world.’
As Morunasa seemed to ponder this a while, Carnelian sensed how desperate the man was in spite of all his bravado.
Morunasa fixed Osidian with baleful eyes. ‘That is not enough, Master.’ He indicated the receding Plainsmen. ‘Now that they reject you, all the power that remains to you are our Marula.’ He glanced at the other Oracles. ‘And we are the key to them.’
Osidian gazed northwards as if he were seeing all the way to Osrakum. Morunasa watched him. Perhaps it was doubt bringing a twitch to the corner of his mouth. ‘The Marula here will not follow you much longer. They must be told what’s befallen their people, their kin. Then you must give them a reason to follow you.’
Carnelian saw it was Morunasa who most needed a reason. The other Oracles fretted, not understanding what was being said, but sensing the tension. At last Osidian turned. ‘What reason would suffice?’
‘An obvious one: you must promise to save our people.’
Osidian smiled. ‘You believe I can?’
Morunasa nodded. ‘The Masters know how to wed bronze to rock. You can build a new, imperishable ladder between the Upper and Lower Reaches.’
And there it was, Carnelian thought. Morunasa had had no choice but to reveal how dependent he was on Osidian, who clearly had known this already. His smile seemed carved upon his bony face. ‘We couldn’t permit your salt to disrupt our economy.’
Morunasa frowned.
‘Further, the Isle of Flies would have to become a vassal of the Labyrinth.’
Morunasa’s frown deepened as he looked at his knees. He raised his yellow eyes. ‘We must have freedom to run our affairs as we wish.’
‘We’ll allow you enough salt to meet the needs of the Lower Reach and to hire enough Plainsmen to defend the Upper Reach.’
‘Is there more?’
‘You will send me a tithe of Marula children.’ Osidian smiled. ‘I have a whim to make myself a guard of black men.’
Slowly, Morunasa gave a nod of defeat.
Carnelian approached Osidian. ‘I will go with you, my Lord.’
Osidian glared at him. ‘From whence comes such unexpected loyalty?’
Carnelian shrugged. ‘To remain here would serve only to bring down more disaster upon these people. Besides, it was the Ochre that I loved.’ He could see the Tribe in the battlefield dead.
Morunasa was arguing with the other Oracles.
‘I had hoped to free you from this unseemly… attachment.’
Carnelian saw Osidian was ready for a fight, but he would not allow himself to be goaded. ‘I have motives of my own, Osidian. I wish harm to come to my Lord Aurum.’
Osidian’s eyebrows rose. ‘Indeed?’
‘I do not believe you will regain your throne, but there is a chance that we shall reach the Guarded Land.’ He smiled. ‘I imagine that, were news to reach Osrakum that the Lord Nephron has been sighted, it might cause some consternation, some realignment of the Powers.’
Osidian looked suddenly serious. ‘Not only would my mother be discomfited but, most likely, Aurum would fall victim to the wrath of the Wise.’
Carnelian nodded. ‘Be aware I seek to bring as much mayhem as I can to Osrakum.’
‘In the hope that thus you might make the Wise forget to punish your precious Plainsmen?’
Carnelian let the question hang unanswered as he watched the Oracles riding among the Marula. Where they passed, there rose a wailing. Many of the warriors turned to glare at the two Masters. Carnelian was glad of their hatred. It was well deserved. He found no consolation from knowing that the Marula were now suffering something like the same loss they had inflicted on others.
He turned to Osidian, making no attempt to hide his feelings. ‘Surely the massacre of the Ochre is punishment enough?’ Osidian’s face was unreadable. Carnelian turned away again to watch the Plainsmen gathering their dead. ‘Their fate will become a myth of horror and warning among all the tribes,’ he said.
He felt a touch on his arm and found that Osidian was regarding him with something like hope in his eyes. ‘Then we are once more on the same side?’
Carnelian suppressed revulsion; he had to play the game. ‘Fern, Poppy and Krow are coming with me. In the unlikely circumstance that we win I intend to induct them safely into my House.’
Anger and sadness mingled in Osidian’s expression, but he lifted his hand in acquiescence.
They became aware Morunasa was approaching. He looked grim. ‘They’ll follow you, Master. But, be warned, we’ll hold you to our agreement.’
Osidian controlled anger at being addressed thus. ‘Make ready to ride north.’
Morunasa almost smiled as he shook his head. ‘They’ll not leave until they’ve burned their dead.’
He was demonstrating to them both that they were not going to command unquestioning obedience. The Marula might need Osidian, but he was in their power.
As they watched him ride off, Osidian said: ‘I wish there were a way to communicate with the creatures other than through that man.’
Carnelian glanced at Osidian, uneasy. Marching north with the Marula it was not only Osidian and he who would be in their power, but also his loved ones. And Osidian was right: it was not the warriors who were the real danger, but their masters, the Oracles. It must surely be possible to find a way to speak to the warriors direct.
Marula corpses being thrown on pyres were pumping smoke up into a sky choked with scavengers. The Plainsmen were loading their dead onto drag-cradles they had improvised from the battlefield debris. Tending to the dead seemed such familiar work that Carnelian was drawn to help. What held him back was his reluctance to diminish the Masters any further in Marula eyes.
His thoughts turned to the auxiliaries, and what their beliefs might have been. That their bodies should be left for the scavengers would doubtless be as abhorrent to them as to the Plainsmen or the Marula. Eventually he sent for Kor and her sartlar and set them to piling the auxiliary dead upon blazing saddle-chairs. Soon they were adding their smoke to that of the Marula.
Weary, burdened by loss, as night approached men collapsed among the smouldering pyres. The reek of smoke, of roasting flesh was close enough to the smell of food to bring nausea. At least the fires kept the raveners at bay.
Carnelian rose. Overnight the horror of the battlefield seemed to have seeped into his bones. Raveners nosing round had haunted his half-waking dreams. He peered at the smoke-choked dawn. Huddled in twos and threes the Marula were grimacing at the bony grins of their charring dead. He wandered among them, but could not find the one he sought.
Osidian had the Marula scour the battlefield for the bronze-bladed lances of the auxiliaries with which to replace their flint-headed spears. After that it was a drawn-out struggle to gather them and get them mounted. As the Oracles marshalled them, Carnelian watched Osidian ride up. Osidian indicated the Mother’s Backbone with his spear. ‘There lies the road my Father made for us.’
Carnelian said nothing as Osidian rode ahead, but glanced to where drag-cradles were pulling away into the south. Gazing at the hunched Plainsmen he knew he would never see any of them again. He looked for Poppy and Fern and Krow. When he found them, his feelings of love for them conflicted with his conviction that they were all riding to certain ruin.
Mangled ferns formed the wake left by the passage of Aurum’s dragons. Dung rose in hills along that route. Poppy complained about how much they stank. ‘Like ravener shit,’ she said, her face twisting.
‘By feeding them render,’ Fern said, ‘the Standing Dead make them akin to raveners.’
Osidian drove them hard through the blistering day. His eyes, revealed in the slit of his indigo swathings, were always fixed on the wavering horizon. It was a race, but not one that Carnelian or the others were certain they wanted to win.
As dusk fell the pace slackened. Eventually they came to a halt and found a place up among the Backbone rocks to make a camp. People sat round their fires in morbid silence.
Even before dawn Osidian had them mounted and trudging northwards. It was around midday when they began to see the horizon ahead, banded with shimmering white. With each passing moment this mirage solidified. As they looked for a spot to make camp, Carnelian watched the band turn pink then bloody purple. Gazing thus on the cliff edge of the Guarded Land he could not help feeling a yearning to see his father and his family again.
In the still morning air the Guarded Land was solid, undeniable. Its cliff formed the pale foundations of the sky. As everyone packed up, Carnelian spotted some sartlar and wondered what those creatures must be feeling at seeing again the land of their bondage. He watched Fern and Poppy and Krow frown as they stole glances at the cliff. In their faces and those of the Marula he saw his own doubts and fears reflected. Only Osidian’s eyes burned as if gazing upon some long-lost lover. Soon he had them mounted and coursing northwards again, their shadows spindling away towards the vertebrae of the Backbone. As the shadows shortened, the sun began to melt the Guarded Land into a shimmering vision that rose ever higher as they rode.
Cresting a ridge Carnelian lifted his feet from his aquar’s back. As she slowed he stared. The slope plunged down into a land veined with rivers. These braided eastwards into a single channel: a torrent that issued from a canyon where the cliffs of the Guarded Land closed upon the slopes of the Earthsky. Westwards the land fanned out, undulating, sparkling with water, spreading to hazy distance. On the edge of delight he felt unease. The greens should have been more vibrant. There was a greying, like mould tainting the skin of a lime. Blackened patches. Scars disfigured the canopies. Everywhere he could see signs of fire. Of flame-pipes.
They wound down a wide gully. Trees towered on either side. Gouged scree showed where the dragons had gone before them. Soon they were riding into a deepening twilight. Sky was banished to shifting diamond cracks high among the branches. The air moistened like breath. Moss carpeted the slopes and boulders. Lichens furred trunks and twigs. They followed a tunnel, edged with splintered branches, that had been ripped through the forest by something massive. The only sounds were aquar footfalls muffled in the moss. Carnelian could not rid himself of a feeling of impending doom.
At last it began growing brighter up ahead. The air was acid with a reek of charcoal. His eyes took some moments adjusting to the light. He became aware that a sinister autumn had come to these forests. The ground was scattered with the ghosts of leaves. Trees were skeletal and black. The feet of the aquar were churning up a mist of ash. This was a world so wan it felt as if the capacity to see colour had drained from his sight.
They came to a river soapy with ash. After crossing it they climbed a path lined with posts. As they neared this fence Carnelian’s dread flared into full horror. Melted, grinning, to each post was what was left of a human being.
That was only the first avenue of charred bodies. In that ashen land such fences were common. Villages were thickets of charcoal stumps on the edges of black fields. Drifts of ash like grey snow banked here and there. The cliff of the Guarded Land was a vague, leprous wall. Even the sky seemed bone. The Oracles with their ash-rubbed skin seemed natural inhabitants of that sere land. Soon pale powder floating on the air had turned their march into a procession of wraiths. Terribly white, Osidian urged them on, driven by an inner vision that seemed to make him blind to the devastation. Hope leached from Carnelian’s heart. Anything beyond this dead world must be an illusion. Life and vigour were a fantasy; atrocity the only truth.
Darkness found them on a hill overlooking the ruins of a village edging a black stream. The gold of the fires they lit seemed counterfeit. That dead world drew Carnelian away from the warmth. He drifted down the hill. Burnt trees had become the roots of the encroaching night. His footsteps faltered as his nostrils caught a whiff of cooked meat, of decay. Passing down an avenue of charred corpses, he could feel their eyeless sockets watching him. Despair claimed him. Would he never escape the Isle of Flies? Was he doomed to witness its malice infecting the world? Was he, perhaps, a carrier of its contagion?
Some doorpost stumps tempted him to enter the circle of a hovel. Ash buried his feet with each step. His toe struck something. He crouched, tentatively feeling for it though he feared it might be some gruesome remains. Something smooth. A lump with small wheels at the corners. A toy, then. He searched the twilight, hearing the echoes of children playing. Ghostly memories of life. He put the toy down carefully and left the house.
As he approached the black water the path sank into mud churned deep by the crossing of the dragons. Warped boards stretched between posts formed a fragile causeway zigzagging out through the reeds. The gurgle of the stream seemed unnaturally remote. A heron lifting heavily into the air flapped away, pale, along the stream.
He felt a tremor in the boards beneath his feet. Turning, he could just make out a small figure approaching.
‘Carnie,’ it breathed.
‘Poppy.’
She came to nestle into his hip. He caressed the warm, stubbly swelling of her head.
‘Why?’ she murmured.
‘This destruction?’ He contemplated all the death he had seen, all the suffering and wasted lives. ‘The Standing Dead need no more reason than does a plague.’
‘It must end,’ she said, an edge of pleading in her voice.
Carnelian desperately wanted it to end, wanted desperately to make it end, but he was powerless. Resistance was self-indulgence. Every act of defiance led only to more victims. He was so weary he could not believe his heart still beat. His knees wanted to buckle. He would fall into the reeds. Slip into the dark water, drown. But release would not be so easily found. It seemed that his atonement was to be doomed to watch everything he loved die.
Poppy, starting, awakened his senses. Reeds were parting. A sighing as something pushed through them. A shadow growing solid. Carnelian, reliving the night he and Osidian were captured in the Yden, scoured the twilight. The causeway was too narrow for them both to run back along it. He crouched to put his mouth to her ear. ‘Run,’ he growled.
She clung to him, but he prised her off. He shoved her away. ‘Run!’ Poppy’s face was a blur, then disappeared. He felt her footfalls thumping off and turned to face the shadow. A black boat. He backed away, feeling for the boards behind him with his heels. The causeway gave a judder as the boat struck it. Figures swarmed off it. Carnelian gritted his teeth. His fists flashed as he struck at them. Hard contact skinning knuckles. An outline crumpling. A cry. A splash. He threw them off as they came at him. Shapeless creatures hissing, growling. Despair became rage. He strode forward clubbing at them. Poppy’s voice rose keening far away. Then something smashed into his head. He was on his knees, hands pale against the rough wood, receding.