The Standing Dead - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 02 (116 page)

Three days ago I sent scouts into the north. When they returned, they brought with them a rumour. A name. An ancient name that is a terror to the Plainsmen. Hookfork.'

'What are you talking about?' Carnelian hissed through his grinding teeth, drawing back the spear for the strike.

Osidian lifted his hands and shaped a sign like a long stalked lily.

The spear trembled in Carnelian's grip as he spoke the name to whom such heraldry belonged. 'Aurum.'

The name cleared his mind like the pealing of a bell. How could Aurum be coming with a legion when it was forbidden for any of the Great to have such a command? Only the Wise could have given him such terrible power.

Contemplating cruel Aurum having at his whim the terror of the dragons and their flame, Carnelian threw back his head and let forth a cry of anguish that made the bone walls tremble.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ricardo Pinto is Portuguese, but has lived and studied in Scotland since he was a child. Previously he designed and programmed computer games. This is his second novel. He lives in Edinburgh where he is currently working on the final volume in this trilogy. The first volume of
The Stone Dance of the Chameleon, The Chosen,
is also published by Bantam Books.

THE CHOSEN

Stone Dance of the Chameleon by Ricardo Pinto

'Pinto writes with an almost Donaldsonian/Feistian grip' Anne McCaffrey

Carnelian is of the Masters, cruel beings who rule their kingdom from an earthly paradise hidden in a crater that is the navel of the world. Soon after he is bom, Carnelian's father takes him across the sea to an island in the colourless north. Far from the Crater's rituals and pomp, their household is allowed to become a family to the boy and the world of the Masters fades to alluring fairy tale.

In deepest winter, years later, a ship comes riding before the gales, three Masters her only cargo. As these giants remove their masks of gold, Carnelian is awed by the light that seems to radiate from their skin. In formal conclave they ask
Carnelian
's father to end his exile and return with them to oversee the election of a new God Emperor. His father's agreement feeds Carnelian's longing for the world beyond the sea, but as the days pass
Carnelian
watches with growing horror as the ship's needs devour his home. The Masters are indifferent, imperious, concerned only with their blood politics, their majesty. As his father becomes strangely powerless,
Carnelian
strives to save his people, but when the ship turns her prow towards the stormy sea he knows that he is abandoning them to famine among the ruins of his former home.

This is the beginning of
Carnelian
's journey. The terror of the tempest yields to the weary grind along the road, the climb up the forbidding cliff wall to the Guarded Land and then the frantic rush into the deep south.
Carnelian
's education, which began with the starving of his people, proceeds with bitter lessons in bloodshed, intrigue and betrayal. When they finally reach the Canyon of the Three Gates, which leads into the Crater,
Carnelian
finds both love and treachery, but it is here within the Heaven Wall that he will set in motion the concluding events in a story already ten thousand years old.

'Boldly conceived and intelligently written .. . Lingers in the memory

like a strange and disturbing dream'

Interzone

A Bantam Paperback

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