The Standing Dead - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 02 (5 page)

Carnelian's reverie was disturbed by a shudder of excitement passing through the creatures. As they lifted their faces, his eyes flitted from one to another, appalled by their fearful ugliness. Some slavers were approaching.

They carried baskets into which they dug their hands and, coming out with hunks of something, they sowed these among the sartlar. One fell nearby and, straining, Carnelian managed to get his hands to it.

At first he thought it wood, but it was too soft, one edge sodden and muddy where it had touched the ground. He brought it to his face and smelled hri. 'Bread,' he murmured, his lips curling with distaste as he saw the weevils crawling through it.

'You will eat.'

Carnelian looked up and discovered that the Ichorian was standing over him. The man slapped the bread out of his hand.

'Here, I've kept the best for you.' He shoved a hunk of the black bread into Carnelian's lap. Carnelian worked it up his legs with his elbows and managed to get it into his hands. It looked much the same as the discarded piece.

The Ichorian leaned in close. 'Let's take this off.'

Carnelian held still as the man fumbled with the knots of his gag.

'From now on,' the man mumbled almost in his ear, 'you'll not be needing these. This far from the road, be certain no one will hear your cries.'

Carnelian endured the gag pulling tighter, his eyes following the black tattoo spirals on the Ichorian's face as he held onto the thought of escape. Scabs tore from the corners of his mouth as the gag came free. As the Ichorian moved over to Osidian, Carnelian practised gingerly opening and closing his mouth.

'Now look what you've done. Soiled or not, you'll eat it.'

The Ichorian was looking down at Osidian. He leaned to scoop a piece of bread from the mud and then rubbed it on his jerkin before forcing it on Osidian. The Ichorian removed his gag, then stood back.

'Eat. You'll both need your strength tomorrow.'

Carnelian peered at the bread. Rubbing away as many weevils as he could, he took a bite, gave it a chew, then swallowed as quickly as he could. 'Eat!'

Carnelian saw the Ichorian flinch as Osidian looked up at him. The untattoed half of his face darkened.

'You'll have that bread even if I have to force it down your throat.' It was costing the Ichorian dear to hold Osidian's glare.

‘I’l
l see he eats it,' Carnelian said, quickly.

Relieved to have an excuse to disengage from the contest, the Ichorian turned to Carnelian. 'Make sure he does.'

As the man walked away, Carnelian leaned forward to look into Osidian's face. His eyes were windows giving into an empty house. Carnelian tried to formulate questions. He had so many, wanted to know so much, but Osidian seemed so far away that all Carnelian managed to say was: 'You must eat.'

Osidian made no sign he had heard. The bread lay in his lap ignored. Carnelian took his own piece and tried to manoeuvre it into Osidian's hands. Carnelian had to close the lifeless fingers round the bread. He stroked them. 'Please
...
please eat.'

The rain running down Osidian's face could have been tears. Carnelian frowned back his own.

'Eat.'

The word seemed spoken by another's tongue. Osidian became aware he had something in his hand. He seemed a puppet moving his mouth to it. Carnelian watched him take a bite and chew, his lips stroking the bread, the weevils running down his fingers. Carnelian watched him, waiting until Osidian had finished before he reached to take the other piece that was wedged between Osidian's stomach and his thigh.

As he ate, Carnelian licked rain from his lips to lubricate the stale mass.

'I almost escaped today,' he said in a low voice. He looked for a sign of recognition in Osidian's eye, but there was nothing. This time I failed but not the next. We'll be free soon, I promise.'

Osidian turned to him, vaguely frowning, his lips making shapes. Carnelian was forced to lean his ear close enough to hear Osidian's words.

'Go if you can. Leave me. I am already dead.'

At first Carnelian thought Osidian delirious, fevered, but then he understood and pulled away. He leaned the ache of his back against the wicker fence, exposing his face to the needling rain. The words ran round and round in his head. Osidian could not return. The moment his brother Molochite had been made God Emperor, Osidian's life was forfeit. Osrakum held only death for him. Carnelian tried to imagine a life for them in the outer world. It would have to be somewhere beyond the Commonwealth. A vision of his island home blossomed warm and inviting in his mind. It withered as he remembered the snow falling into the ruins Aurum and the other Masters had made of it when they had come to summon his father back from exile. Besides, there would be the sea to cross, not to mention the vast journey to reach its shore. Where else was there in the world in which the Masters were not hated? Even if he and Osidian found a haven, how could they live without wealth, without servants? The Ichorian needed to take the terrible risk of selling Masters so as to buy himself another life, though he could more easily hide his tattoos than Carnelian and Osidian could their height and pallid skin.

Lightning brought Carnelian a blinding realization. He could return alone to Osrakum. He saw his father's and his people's joy on the day of his return. He clung to the warmth of that vision but then, quietly, let it grow cold and dark. He opened his eyes to look at Osidian. It was hard to see in this battered creature the boy in the Yden. His love for that boy had been so fierce. Though it still burned, it had become as small in him as the slavers' fire was in the rumbling night:

Then it is hopeless,' he said, aloud. He would rather tear his heart out than abandon Osidian. Whatever might come, he was determined to share his lover's fate.

Carnelian lost count of the days as he ran obedient to the rain's relentless rhythm. It drove his heart, his rasping breath, even the blinking of his eyes that saw nothing but two pale feet churning mud the colour of old blood. When he fell, he was up again before the leash pulling his wrists tugged taut. Once he saw stone and, for a moment, recalled the feet were his from the cold, and the impact shuddering up into his head.

Night would return him to a kraal. As the numbness of the running faded, he would be delivered to the torture of his ropes. Worse was the sight of Osidian suffering. The crusted weal around his neck drew Carnelian's eyes however hard he tried to look away. Even swollen by blood and rain, the rope had worn so deep it had become flush with the ruptured flesh. Waking feverish with agony, Carnelian would find Osidian twitching as he ran on in nightmare.

But it was Osidian's eyes Carnelian dreaded most. Once he saw a stirring in their depths and fear possessed him that some darkness had climbed down into Osidian's soul and was peering out.

When something crept across his flesh, Carnelian awoke. He saw the glimmer of the sartlar's eyes and jerked back from the hand it was extending. The rope biting into his flesh squeezed out a moan that closed his eyes. When he opened them again he saw the sartlar open a maw rimmed by rotten teeth.

'Blood?'

The word grated from nowhere. Carnelian wondered if he had spoken without knowing it. His eyes fixed on the sartlar, he tried the word but his tongue was leather in his mouth. The creature lifted its hand again, a gnarled wooden thing straying up, extending a finger. He shuddered as it touched his wound, then watched the sartlar draw it back and taste the fingertip. The lips moved.

'Blood.'

Carnelian stared. The word had come from the sartlar. He was certain of it. He peered at the creature and saw the empty sags of skin hanging on the chest. Breasts. A female then. A woman even. He saw through her lank hair that her eyes were watching him.

'But dead,' she said.

Carnelian tried to soften his tongue by chewing some moisture into it. His first word was just a groan. The second worked. 'Dead?' Perhaps the woman was only parroting words she had heard from an overseer.

She regarded him for a while, fearful, perhaps a little puzzled. 'Painful?'

She made a grimace that might have been a smile and touched the rope inquiringly.

'Yes, it is painful,' he said.

The woman poked among her rags and fetched out a package that she laid on his stomach. As she leaned forward the hair fell away from her face. He looked with distaste on the twin holes where her nose should have been. A scar channel ran over the holes climbing to her brow, there dividing, cutting deep into the flesh over her eye ridges, round to catch the edges of her eyes, down through her cheeks to meet again on her chin. He winced, imagining the agony of such a branding.

The bone of her wrist was moving against his thigh. Her crippled hands were opening the package on his stomach. The odour rising from it almost made Carnelian wriggle away. It was fear of the rope that kept him where he was. She poked a finger into the package and, raising it, showed him the ti
p swollen with pungent fat. " ‘ll
sting.'

He realized the brand on her face was the womb glyph for earth. She opened her eyes wider, asking for permission. He gave her the merest nod and she reached out to touch her finger to his wound. He trembled with agony as she rubbed it round under the rope. As she returned for more ointment, his flesh, where she had touched it, ignited. His clenched teeth chattered with the burning while she smeared more on. As the fire died, he realized he could no longer feel the rope. He allowed her to treat his ankle wounds. When she was done, she rewrapped the salve and took it back.

'Bless you,' he sighed, euphoric from a lack of pain.

Her hair once more hid her eyes, but he could still feel her stare. She hobbled off into the night, releasing snorts among the sartlar as she pushed into their doughy mass. It was only then Carnelian groaned, cursing that he had not thought to have her treat Osidian's wounds..

Carnelian came suddenly awake, staring blindly. The air had died. It took him a while before he realized what had happened. The rain had stopped. It was as if he had spent all his life dancing to a drum and then, without warning, it had fallen silent. He held his breath, yearning for the next beat. The silence stretched, swelling louder, unbearable. Silence so deafening he tried to shout to fill it, but nothing came but a rattling cough far away in his lungs.

When the slavers came, Carnelian found he had forgotten how to move his body. As the sartlar funnelled through the kraal gate, he struggled to make his legs obey him. He lifted his head as much as he could bear, grating his eyes up in their sockets to be able to look further. Hunched, Osidian was already stumbling after the last few sartlar through the gate. That sight blinded Carnelian with tears. Grimacing, putting one foot before the other, he followed.

The gate gave out onto a narrow bridge that crossed a ditch to where four tracks met in the mud. Every kraal had its ditch and crossroads. Before the slavers beat him into the midst of the sartlar herd he craned round. The reflection of the kraal wall was twisting in the moat. Towards the horizon stood the prong of a watch-tower.

It was a struggle to stay on his feet as they ambled away. Without the rain, he had to make his own rhythm. Bowed beneath the tyranny of the brooding sky, he prayed for the dullness his mind had lost. The pace was merciless; his back, an arch of pain. The rope threatened to prune his feet off at the ankles and his head off at the neck. He was a running crucifixion.

His misery seemed to have already stretched for days when they came suddenly to a halt. Carnelian felt his heart give a flutter and almost go out. The mud and his feet were melting together. He crumpled to his knees thirsting for death. The hunger for it had set like concrete in his stomach. He could feel the sartlar settling to the ground. He was seeing the world through a window of water. A flicker of green caught at the centre of his vision. The colour was a salve for his eyes. He blinked his vision clear. A shoot was pulling its curled leaves out from the rusty earth. Fresh, reborn, it sought the sky. Its freedom mocked him. He dribbled as he cursed it for giving him just enough hope not to let him die.

They came to the edge of a lake of curdled blood. Carnelian caught glimpses of it as they were herded along its shore and up onto a road. He ran with the sartlar upon its stone.

When they began slowing, he stumbled, but was immediately pulled back onto his feet. The groan his lungs expelled brought a blow crashing into his head.

'Shut up!'

Through surging pain, he became aware of a commotion up ahead. His leash went slack and a long, dirty flint was shoved before his eyes.

'If you make as much as a whisper,' a voice hissed in his ear, 'I'll gut you with this.'

Eyeing the flint, Carnelian began building the strength to cry out. He longed for the relief of having that knife in his body.

A clamour of young voices, followed by the sound of the Ichorian answering them, made Carnelian listen.

'You're a half-black, a Bloodguard of the Masters.' A young voice speaking in thick-tongued Vulgate.

'Nothing
...'
Carnelian heard the Ichorian say.

'Not even a bronze blade?' This time the accented voice was a man's.

The paving brightened around Carnelian's feet as the sartlar shuffled away. He was gathering the courage to lift his head against the rope, when a huge, taloned foot settled onto the stone. He watched it spread as it took the weight of its leg. Another came down in front of it as the aquar came walking towards him.