The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 (42 page)

'Give the slave to us, Seraph,' one of the ammonites said in Quya.

Carnelian clutched Tain.

Ranga shoes clacked towards them.

'You must give them the boy, my Lord.'

Carnelian turned on Jaspar. 'Curse you, I paid your price.'

Jaspar backed away. 'Calm yourself, cousin.' He looked round to see if any of the other Masters were paying attention. The boy's eyes are safe, but he must pass through the quarantine with the others.' He pointed. 'Look, my Lord, we are all handing them over.'

Carnelian looked and saw Jaspar's pallid blood-smeared boy creeping into the waiting hands of an ammonite. He turned back to Jaspar. 'How long?'

'Before he is returned to you?'

Carnelian nodded.

Thirty-three days.'

'A month,' Carnelian cried in disbelief.

Twenty cells lie between here and the Blood Gate and there are another thirteen beyond. He will have to spend a day in each before he is allowed to pass through the Black Gate.'

'Promise me on your blood that he will not be harmed.'

Jaspar shrugged. 'My Lord cannot expect one to vouch for everything. If the child is found to have plague . . .' The Master put his wrists together in a sign of powerless-ness.

'He does not,' said Carnelian, more emphatically than he felt. He nudged Tain. 'Come on, we must talk,' he said in Vulgate.

Tain clambered over the edge of the saddle-chair. Carnelian fumbled on his ranga shoes and then climbed out beside him. He waved the ammonites back and walked a
little
way from the others, beckoning Tain to follow.

He looked down at his brother. Carnelian could see his own bloody hand-print on his brother's face. He touched his mask. 'I wish I could remove this thing.'

Tain looked back at him with huge bruise-rimmed eyes.

Tain, you'll have to go with them.' His brother looked fearfully back at the ammonites. 'Will they let me come back
..
. back to you and the
Master once
...
once
...
once they've blinded me?'

Carnelian threw his head back and moaned. 'Oh, no, no, Tain, it's not that. It's been sorted out. It's not that.'

Tain was still gazing at him.

'No, really, I promise, I swear on my blood, your eyes are in no danger, but
...'
'But...?'

'You must be kept apart from us for a month until they're' - Carnelian indicated the ammonites — 'sure that you're clean of plague.'

'Plague,' nodded Tain.

Carnelian noticed the ammonites gathering around one of the kneeling aquar. 'Please go with them. I must see to Father. Trust me, Tain.'

'At the end of it, they'll send me to where you are, Carnie?'

'I promise.' Carnelian gave his brother's arm a squeeze. There was nothing to grip but bone. Tain looked stuck to the ground. Carnelian pushed him gently away. 'Go on, pull yourself together, endure it, you're strong enough.' He remembered something. He fished out the
Little
Mother from a pocket and pressed her into Tain's hand. 'She'll look after you.'

Tain gave a watery smile and hid her in his fist. Carnelian watched him turn, hesitate looking at the ammonites with their sinister silver faces, then pace towards them. Carnelian turned away and strode off towards his father.

Ammonites were crowding him. Aurum was standing looking in over their heads. Carnelian heard the tearing sound. He pushed through them and saw they were ripping through his father's cloak like a crab's shell to expose the yellow-white body inside. One of the silver masks leant so close that it caught a twisting reflection of the wound-stained bandages.

The creature straightened up and looked round at the gold masks. 'Seraphim, these bandages have been tampered with.'

Aurum leaned over to see. 'Perhaps his slave . ..'

The ammonite whisked round, looking off towards the boys who were undressing. 'Which is he? He must be destroyed.'

'It is too late for that; he was one of the Lord Aurum's numerous victims,' said Carnelian bitterly.

Aurum's mask looked down at him from a height.

'Besides,' Carnelian continued, 'it was I who cut the bandages.'

'Indeed, my Lord,' said Aurum. 'Now we see why he is dying.'

Carnelian flared up. 'How dare you accuse me of that? I did it with his agreement. The bandages were rotting
...'

The Law—'

'Does my Lord speak of the same Law which he has seen fit to break at his every whim?'

Aurum's mask angled a
little
to one side. This impertinence—'

'Are you then, my Lord, He-who-goes-before? You must be since you wear his ring.'

The boy makes a hit, my Lord, a palpable hit,' said Vennel gleefully.

'I think, Lord Aurum,' said Carnelian, 'it would be better if the ring was returned to him to whom it legally belongs.'

Aurum seemed to grow taller, more menacing. The Law must be obeyed,' said the ammonite. 'I merely borrowed it to protect He-who-goes-before when he could not protect himself,' grated Aurum. He put his hand out and opened it to reveal the muted flame of the Pomegranate Ring.

Carnelian reached out and took it. The ammonite began to protest, but stopped when Carnelian lifted his father's hand, threaded the heavy ring onto the middle finger and closed the hand around the gem.

Vennel turned to the ammonite. This matter will have to be reported to your masters.'

'Perhaps, before he does that, he should first attempt to save the Ruling Lord Suth's life, or would you both rather have him die,' said Aurum icily.

Vennel pulled back like a snake ready to strike.

The ammonite lifted his hands. 'Seraphim, this behaviour is unworthy of your blood.'

'His life, ammonite
...'
hissed Aurum.

'It
...
this wound, it is beyond my skill, Seraph. Only my masters can save him.'

Then, ammonite, do you not agree that we had better make haste to get him to your masters? I promise you, your skin will not long remain your own if they find that you have let him die.'

Ammonites led them up a flight of stairs to a hall where the Masters were divested of their riding cloaks. Their long slim bodies were revealed wrapped in bandages sweat-stained yellow. New ranga were brought and jade-green robes spiralled with ferns. Their old cloaks and ranga shoes were gathered up with tongs and burned in a brazier.

As Carnelian came back down, he clenched and unclenched his hands that were sticky with
Marula
blood. He watched his father being moved to a bier and then covered with one of the green robes. Tain was a little way off, naked with the other boys, just skin stretched over bones. His head was in the grip of an ammonite being turned this way and that as the ammonite's silver mask peered at him. His shoulders and back were painfully bruised. Carnelian could guess by whom. Another boy whimpered as he was folded for examination. Carnelian turned away, knowing he had to let his brother go.

As a bright rectangle opened in the further wall, Carnelian strode after his father's bier. The green silk was heavy as he lifted it with his knees. The new ranga were taller than the old ones. He had to swing his feet. It was like walking on stilts.

He clacked out onto the road with the other Masters. The air had grown hot. Amid kneeling rows of Ichorians were chariots like jewel boxes. His father was being carried to one whose wheel rims rose above the heads of the people round it. Carnelian followed. The back of the chariot was a dull mirror of gold from which a Master was surfacing as if from a bath. Ammonites reached up to the handles with hooks and halved the Master by pulling open the doors. Others lifted the bier, rested its edge on the chariot floor, then, careful to touch nothing, fed his father in feet first.

Carnelian watched Jaspar climbing into another chariot nearby. He saw that it was yoked to a pair of pale-skinned aquar. Naked half-coloured men held their halters.

'Fetch riders,' Aurum said to an Ichorian.

Three ammonites converged on him, protesting.

'.. . too slow,' Carnelian heard Aurum say, and, 'The Law
..
.' one of the ammonites responding.

Aurum muted the man with an angry gesture and flowed towards Carnelian like a column of green water. He pointed over Carnelian's shoulder. 'Your chariot awaits.'

'I will travel with my father, Lord Aurum.'

The Master said nothing though a slight curling in his fingers betrayed his anger as he strode past Carnelian.

One of the chariots was already being led off at a jog by an Ichorian as Carnelian climbed the steps into his father's chariot. There were three chairs set side by side. His father lay on the floor between two of them. Carnelian chose a chair next to the wall. He had hardly sat down before the doors closed him into the perfumed glimmering gloom. With a lurch they were off. Carnelian leant over the chair's arm, slipped his hand under the robe covering his father like a shroud, found his hand and held it.

His father's hand was so like wax, Carnelian feared he might melt it with his grip. On the floor, his father looked like a corpse wearing its death mask. The chariot seemed hardly to be moving. Carnelian could hear the wheels sighing and the clink of harness. Leaning close, he could detect no sound of breathing coming through the metal face. He sat up and rested his head against the chariot's quivering wall. He was alone. They had taken everything from him and left him entombed in this gold box with his father. He wanted to cry, to rage, to bellow. His grief threatened to overbrim to tears. He centred himself. This was not the time for such indulgence. He looked back down at his father's body. If the Lord of the Underworld was not there he was very close; Carnelian could smell his myrrhy breath. To survive, he must free himself from Aurum's hope. He reminded himself that all the Master wanted was a puppet. At least in death his father would be free. Carnelian could do nothing for him. His duty there was ended. He stretched his hand down to his father's chest.

'Forgive me,' he said, and felt the water begin to spill from his eyes. 'Duty,' he growled and clenched his eyes to dam the tears. He still owed his people duty. That was something to cling to. He had promised Tain that he would be there waiting for him and there were the others making the long journey up from the sea. There would be no more Crails. He must make the Suth palaces in Osrakum safe for them. Besides, his father had told him to go there. He looked down again. It was one of the last commands he had given. Carnelian would go to Coomb Suth and alone. Whether his father was alive or dead, Aurum would not allow Carnelian to take him home. The thought of leaving him in the old Master's hands was sickening. Even dead, Aurum would find some political use for him. With thoughts of Aurum came false hope. Were there limits to the sorceries of the Wise? What if by some miracle his father did survive? Then he would have to go to the Labyrinth to play his part in the election.

Carnelian crushed his ear against the wall and let its panels cut his mask into his skin. It was a distraction. He spotted the catch, lifted it and found that he could slide a panel back. He peered through the window out into the canyon twilight. Its wide empty floor was cracked in two by the Cloaca's chasm. He narrowed his eyes when he noticed the red square. Marching Ichorians. He could smell blood in the colour of their cloaks. He slapped the panel back over the window and reached down to squeeze out what comfort there was left in his father's hand. Metal edges bit into his fingers. He lifted the hand to look at them. The Pomegranate Ring on the middle finger. On the
little
finger, above the blood-ring, sat the Ruling Ring of House Suth. Carnelian chewed his lip staring at it, then worked it off with his free hand. He would not give Aurum the chance to defile his fa
mily ring as he had the ring of
He-who-goes-before, even if this meant despoiling the dead.

The chariot stopped. He waited for it to move off again. The Ruling Ring was the warm heart of his fist.

'Seraph?' said a voice muffled by the chariot's doors.

Carnelian adjusted his father's mask, then found the handles on the doors and opened them. He glimpsed the ammonites' silver masks as they bowed their heads and knelt. Then he saw behind them a tidal wave of bronze that made him flinch. He searched the bronze for an edge and found one, a bloody tower to one side. As he put his ranga shoe out onto the first step he saw the sister tower on the other side.

He hovered round the ammonites as they pulled his father out.

Aurum swept up. 'Hurry, hurry.'

'You make them clumsy, my—' Carnelian stopped, looking past him, feeling vertigo as the world began to shift. Dull thunder rumbled the air. At first Carnelian thought it was an earthquake and braced himself against the bier, but then he realized it was not he but the wall of bronze that moved. A crack appeared in its green-blurred firmament. He narrowed his eyes anticipating its titanic collapse. Then he saw tiny figures walking into the crack. It was only then that he realized it was a gate.