The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 (61 page)

'.
..
you must save my true son,' the Gods were saying.

Carnelian tasted his thumb. It seemed miraculous that Their tears should be as salty as mortal blood.

The
MOON-EYED DOOR

Without wings

He soared the sky

But when he fell

He fell like a star

(from the myth The Tale of the Three Gods')

His father had Carnelian move with his household deep into the Sunhold. From the nave of the Encampment of the Seraphim, they passed into a guardroom between bastions that lay to the right of the sun-eyed door. They traversed passages lined with loopholes and several double sets of portcullises before they reached his new chamber with its ambered walls.

It was there that he sat hunched, squinting at his thumb, hardly believing that it could be whole. He was outraged that its whiteness bore not the least stain to show where the divine tears had touched it. He remembered the gaunt yellow hands of the Gods: he had expected starlight diffusing through a membrane of adamantine. He remembered the weary voice from behind the Mask: he had expected it to shake the Dreamchamber as thunder shook the vaulting sky. The air had not thrilled with
the ozone tang of lightning, but had been wreathed heavy with funereal myrrh. Inside the withered body, the divine blood had at best fluttered, a candle flame in a pavilion of stained parchment.

Was that a scratching at the door?

'Enter,' he said, then had to repeat the word more loudly.

The door trembled open to show a man holding a box. The familiarity of the chameleon on his face made Carnelian smile. The face froze, making its tattoo look like a gecko startled on a wall.

'Well, come in then,' said Carnelian. He had sent for one of his new household to clean him. It was a pretext. In truth, what he desired was to build a bridge over which he might cross to his new people. He needed friends.

The man was standing there as if the floor between them were strewn with blades.

'Come on, I don't bite. Are you intending to clean me from the other side of the room?' He intended this as a joke, but it only made the man more frightened. The wretch shuffled nearer, his shoulders curved, and, with maddening care, made sure to place the box soundlessly on a rug.

Carnelian stood up.

The man flinched.

Carnelian tried to smooth the frown from his face by smiling.

The man crouched and began to unpack the box onto the rug. Carnelian watched his short brown fingers with increasing irritation. He waited until the man had stood up with a pad, looking at Carnelian's skin as if it were some tower wall he had to whitewash.

'How're the lads?' Carnelian said.

The man stared at him.

Carnelian nodded, sculling his hand, trying to scoop some words out of the man's mouth.

'Master?' the man said, as yellow as a corpse.

The tyadra, the guardsmen, you know, the people out
side with the
weapons?'

They're
...
doing their job, Master.'

Carnelian was afraid that if he pushed for more the man might vomit. 'I see,' he said, and tried to stand perfectly still as the pad crossed the distance between them. It settled on his skin like a butterfly. Carnelian fought a grimace as the pad tickled lightly over his skin. Though he tried to suppress it, at last the laughter came like a gale.

The man stepped back gaping.

Carnelian struck himself repeatedly in the chest to quell the laughter. He pointed at the man. 'Gods' fiery blood, man, what
...
are
...
you doing?' The man's knees struck the ground with a crack that made Carnelian wince, and then he hunched forward in a clumsy prostration. Carnelian stared, shaking his head. 'Get out. Come on, leave me. I'll clean myself.'

The man began to shuffle backwards.

'Stand up, and get out,' said Carnelian, not managing to keep the anger from his voice.

He watched the man leave, the door close, then sat heavily on the bed still staring at the door, shaking his head. He felt like crying or smashing furniture. They would all have to change. 'I couldn't bear it if they didn't,' he muttered. He imagined himself in Coomb Suth surrounded by fawning slaves. The chameleons on their faces seemed counterfeit. He nodded. His own people would bring change. He felt himself lighting up as he thought of them. Ebeny, Keal, Brin. 'Even Grane,' he sighed. At that moment he would have given anything for one of his scoldings. Tain.

Tain would soon be through the quarantine. The light dimmed. The first image of his brother that had come into his mind was of a vague face with blood running down it like lank hair.

'No,' he cried, stood up and walked about. There was no point in thinking about that yet. Time would come soon enough to count the cost. For now, he would allow himself to believe that his people would bring something of the warmth of the Hold back into his life.

The arrival of the Quenthas was announced to give him time to put his mask on. The syblings walked into the chamber and knelt. He strode over to them, pulled them up, easily managing to span both their shoulders. 'I cannot tell you how happy I am to see you.' He stood back to look at them. Left-Quentha had her head bowed but Right-Quentha was grinning at him all bright-eyed. He gave them both a bow. 'What brings my Ladies to this humble prison?'

Left-Quentha raised her stone eyes. 'Prison, Seraph?'

The Regent has sent us to amuse you,' her sister said.

'He did?' Carnelian frowned.

Right-Quentha shook her head. 'Oh, not like that, Seraph.' Then she smiled coyly. Though
...
?'

Her sister turned to her, frowning, then back to him. 'We have some skill with instruments, we sing and play a fair game of Three.'

Carnelian noticed the sword hilts appearing above their shoulders. He pointed at them. 'And can protect me?'

That also, Seraph,' they said together. 'I will allow you to stay on one condition.' Left-Quentha angled her head back, a little anxious.

'And what is that, Seraph?' That you call me
Carnelian
.'

For several days the sybling sisters strove to amuse him. They produced an instrument that had many strings, and frets and a gilded gourd at either end, and squatted with it on the floor. Their outer legs would have been called crossed if they had not been so far apart. Their middle leg folded under them. The instrument sat across their thighs. Two arms were under the neck, two over the strings. Their long fingers plucked and strummed all at once, coaxing cascades of sound, arpeggios, complex percussion. Sometimes they interwove their voices into the melodies, singing harmoniously, one voice sometimes chasing, sometimes shadowing the other. They could also play reed flutes made from hollowed saurian bones. As one blew a continuous drone, the other would waft over it rich, heart-rending melodies.

Carnelian became addicted to the strange game they called Three. It was played on a circular board with a black centre within two concentric bands of red and green. The three sets of pieces each took one of the colours. The sisters always chose the jade and the obsidian sets, smiling conspiratorially, saying the colours of the House of the Masks were naturally theirs. He acquiesced. After all, the red pieces were made of his name stone. He assumed they would ally against him, but instead he was ignored as they fought each other to destruction. He became tired of winning. Losing his temper, he insisted that they fight the game fairly and try to defeat him. They shrugged, grinned, and in the games that followed overwhelmed him. He rejected their offer that they should begin the game with fewer pieces. Slowly, he began to learn strategy from his defeats. The
games became tortuous, subtle, merciless wars in which his red pieces began more and more to triumph.

Often, as they played, he would try to talk to the Quenthas about the election, the candidates, their factions. They met his questions with elegant deflections. They grew positively sullen if he ever strayed close to mentioning Ykoriana.

'No more music,' said
Carnelian
, adding quickly, 'though you play like the rain.'

Left-Quentha reached for the Three board.

'Not that either.' He stood up, stretched, groaned. 'My body aches from inactivity.' He frowned, locked his hands together and tried to tug them apart. 'I know,' he said bri
ghtl
y, looking at the syblings. Right-Quentha was wearing her green copper mask. At his insistence, she and
Carnelian
took turns at being masked. 'You girls can give me a tour of these Halls of Thunder.'

They both made evasive gestures with their hands. 'We would have to put you in your court robe,
Carnelian
,' said Left-Quentha. She glanced at it, an intruder gleaming in the comer.

'You might well come across other Seraphs,' said Right-Quentha.

'And then again, it might not be wise that we three should be seen together,' said her sister.

'It certainly would look strange,' said Right-Quentha.

'Strange,' echoed her sister.

Carnelian
sank cross-legged to the floor. He propped his face up with his arm. 'You confirm what I have suspected. My father has sent you to keep me imprisoned here, in the Sunhold.'

The sybling sisters looked blindly at each other. There is nothing to stop us giving you a tour of the
Sunhold.'

Carnelian brightened, leapt up, grabbed his mask. 'Come on then.'

They sallied out into the passage where they gathered up an escort of his tyadra. In the chamber set around with doors, the Quenthas pointed out the portcullises that they told him led off down long passageways to various gates giving into the Encampment. Between these were other doors which they said led into barracks. At his insistence they opened one and lighting a lantern they all went in.

'Soon this warren will be filled with a cohort of Red Ichorians,' said Left-Quentha and both sisters frowned.

'Apart from the side on which they are tattooed, how do they differ from the Sinistrals?' he asked them.

'In every way, Carnelian,' Right-Quentha replied indignantly. They belong to the Great and we to the House of the Masks. We live in different worlds.'

'Worlds
...
?'

Left-Quentha caught him in her stony gaze. 'We can no more be in the same world than my sister and I can be on the same side of the mirror as our reflection.'

Right-Quentha chuckled. 'Ours is a dark, looking-glass world.' She made them both dance a little.

The Halls of Thunder and the Labyrinth,' added her sister, forcing their three feet firmly to the floor.

Theirs is the world of the sun, across the Skymere.'

'And yet, on occasion, you permit them to come here into your world?' Carnelian said.

They both looked at him. 'It is a concession the House of the Masks makes to the Great,' Left-Quentha began.

'And only during such dark days as these,' her sister continued.

'And even then they have to lock themselves in here, within this fortress, from fear of us,' said the other, fiercely.

Carnelian smiled indulgently. They had taken on a poise that he could see was making an impression on the nervous faces of his guardsmen.

With a grin, Right-Quentha became a girl again. 'And would our dear like to see the chambers that will be his father's?'

Carnelian nodded and they led him back into the chamber of doors and across it to a golden mirror that showed the sybling sisters to themselves. This was a door that brought them into an atrium where the sisters said the tyadra of He-who-goes-before could defend their Lord. The guardsmen peered into the quarters leading off it that their fellows would occupy. Another gold mirror door was opened and Carnelian's eyes widened as he looked in. He followed the syblings into the chamber. The thick gold of the walls was moulded into wheels, rayed eyes and huge ruby-seeded pomegranates. The floor was fossilled stone-wood ribbed and lozenged with carnelian. Gorgeous apartments opened off on either side, every wall and door and ceiling a piece of jewellery.

When Carnelian had marvelled at everything, the Quenthas announced that it was time to see the Hall of the Sun in Splendour. They returned to the chamber of doors whose marbles seemed to Carnelian suddenly drab. A double portcullis was opened allowing them to walk down a tunnel into a vast columned hall. This too was panelled entirely with gold. Carnelian saw they had entered it through a side door. At the hall's far end, with their sun-eye, were the huge bolted doors that opened into the nave. Opposite them, behind a dais at the other end, the wall held a glowing mosaic of rosy gems that Right-Quentha called the Window of the Dawn.

'On that dais, your father will kneel to give audience to the Seraphim.'

Across from where they stood, down the long side of the hall, ran a series of tall and narrow amber windows. Carnelian walked towards one. He touched its mosaic of molten gold. The window formed the image of an angel like a man in flames; only the eyes of watery grey diamond suggested this might be a representation of a Master. Carnelian walked along the line of windows. In the terrible burning beauty of their faces, their eyes were such cruel winter.