The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 (37 page)

'My uncle.'

'We shared love.'

Carnelian's eyes grew round.

'His sister, Ykoriana
...
coveting all his love, resented me. When their sister
...'
Suth closed his eyes. 'My mother
...'
suggested Carnelian. Suth nodded.

Carnelian resumed the cleaning, waiting for his father to muster enough strength to continue.

Suth went on. 'When she died .
..
Ykoriana's resentment turned to hatred. At the last election
...
she threatened to use her votes against Kumatuya unless
...
unless I swore on my blood to quit Osrakum.'

Carnelian frowned.
‘
She blackmailed you.'

'Without her eight thousand votes .
..
Kumatuya would have died.' There was a long pause. His father stared at the ceiling. 'By the time that I was released from my oath
.
..
other factors.'

'And these other factors lie behind Aurum's influence?'

Suth nodded, then seeing the doubt returning to his son's face, he added, They are not shameful
...
but cannot be discussed. Will you trust me, my son?'

Carnelian looked into his father's eyes and was moved by their appeal. He jerked a nod.

'Good,' his father sighed.

Carnelian resumed the cleaning. He had found the wound's slack mouth. He cleaned carefully around its swollen lips as his father trembled with the agony of it. Carnelian stopped and wiped away the sweat that threatened to blind him. Then he looked round, thought for a moment, checked to see his father was not looking, bent down and began to release the bandage from around one of his ankles. It gave and he unwound a length up to his knee and cut it off, as quiedy as he could. He took another length from his other leg and then began to wind them round his father's body to cover the wound.

'And Aurum?' he said as a distraction.

'He thinks me weak
...
I let him believe it
...
but I will cheat him yet,' he looked at Carnelian, 'with your help, my son.

'You see how they have exploited
...
our disunity
...
cleave to me. When we
...
enter Osrakum, I will be taken into the Labyrinth
...
but you must go to our coomb
...
will write letter
...
trouble there
...
too long away
...
if I die
...'

Carnelian began an emotional protest but his father's hand raised to stay him.

'...
find Fey
...
let her advise you
...'
'Aunt Fey? Brin's sister?'

His father gave a nod. 'Beware of the other lineage
...
and my mother
...
she knows nothing of reasons for exile
..
.' The last words were sighs.

Carnelian could not bear to look at his father's pain-scrunched face. He busied himself with his handiwork. The bandages over the wound were already blushing. 'We
...'

'You are squandering your strength, Father.'

'We must save Tain's eyes.'

Carnelian looked at him with hope.

'If Jaspar wants you
...
betray me, then betray
...'
His fingers hooked in spasm. Tell him of the oath
...
blood oath, I swore to Ykoriana
...
best to stay close to truth
...
oath kept me in exile
...'

'Will he know nothing of its rescinding?'

'He might know of oath
...
but not of
...'

'Rescinding.'

Suth lifted his hand. Take it
...'

Carnelian gripped his father's hand. He could feel the pain in its trembling. 'But—'

His father's hand squeezed. There is more.' He took some ragged breaths. 'God Emperor and Aurum found a loophole
...
in Law. Oath made as Suth
...
not as He-who-goes-before. As long as I hold
...
post, I am free
...
to return
...
but
...'

'But Aurum controls the Clave and thus your appointment to that post and can at any point strip you of it and force you back into exile.'

Carnelian felt his father squeeze his hand.

'I understand, Father. Please rest now.'

Suth gave another squeeze. Carnelian carefully laid his father's hand down on the bed and disengaged his grip. He scooped up the filthy bandages and turned to leave. His father's hand grazed his. Carnelian looked round at him.

'Make sure
...
bind him with blood oath.'

Carnelian leaned forward to kiss his father's forehead. 'Sleep, father, I will do everything as you say.'

The next day his father put on a show of strength. Carnelian rode beside him and helped him make the changeovers. At first he was surprised when Aurum did not challenge his new place. Then he realized how fearful the Master was that his most important piece might yet be snatched from the game.

'My father will die.' Carnelian hoped to cheat his fear by speaking it.

'If we can get him there in time, the Wise will heal him,' said Aurum.

They hurtled down the channel that centuries of couriers had worn in the leftway. Although they maintained a furious pace, it seemed to Carnelian they were not moving at all. Each time they stopped they were in the same place: a watch-tower amidst a simmering plain.

That night his father began to burn with fever and had to be carried up to his cell. Carnelian tended him and made a bed on the floor beside him. He hardly slept. He cooled his father by smearing water on his face and sprinkling it over his bandaged body. The wound had already stained the new bandaging. Carnelian dabbed the blood with water to soften the crust. His father moaned and whistled like a wind among trees. Carnelian looked down at him bleak with fear. He could not understand how quickly the Master of the Hold had been stripped of all his granite strength.

Morning found them already slicing through the wind. Another long, long day melted past. Carnelian nodded in a stupor, trying to snatch some sleep. He had still found no chance to be alone with Jaspar.

The horizon had been thickening for a while before he noticed it. His mask's eyeslits reduced the glare enough to see there was a definite smudging along the lower sky. His stomach tightened. Although he knew what it was he dared not name it, but watched it grow as they rode a few more stages down the road.

When next they stopped he saw all eyes looking in that direction.

'My palaces, my treasures, my slaves,' said Jaspar with greedy delight.

To be rid of these filthy wrappings,' said Vennel. Carnelian watched the Master's mask move round just enough to bring his father within reach of its eyeslits.

The
Marula
were gazing at Osrakum as if
she were their hated mother. All
day they had lolled in their saddle-chairs. At the changeovers they moved with the slow, careful deliberation of the aged. Like his father, they were dying. He could see what Osrakum meant to them but what did she mean to him? The end of this cursed journey? Tain's blinding? He looked over at his father, slumped lifeless. For the hundredth time, Carnelian reassured himself that his father was only asleep behind his mask.

'We shall not enter her crater today,' said Aurum.

Carnelian swung round. 'In the thousand names of the Twins why not, my Lord?'

'Because it is too far.'

'What is that there?' Carnelian pointed a stiff finger down the road at the umber burnt into the edge of the opalescent sky.

'Can you not see how low is the sun, my Lord? There is still a long ride to the City at the Gates.'

'But my father—'

'We would not reach the gates themselves before nightfall. We would be forced to lodge in the city. It would do the Lord Suth little good to spend a night breathing the vapours of the Gatemarsh. In the morning, we can finish the journey refreshed.'

'We must think of the Lord Suth,' said Vennel. He waved a hand. The vapours
...'

'It is hard to see, my Lord Aurum,' said Jaspar, 'how one could find spending a night in another stinking shed at all refreshing. But, no doubt, anticipation will make the reaching of one's coomb all the more delightful.' He turned to Carnelian. 'One finds that pleasure is so often enhanced by the delay in its consummation, neh?'

It was all Carnelian could do to stop himself ripping away the Master's mask to punch the dirty smirk off his face.

Watch-tower sea three rose near the edge of the Gatemarsh: a vast mirror scribbled over with mud calligraphy. The City at the Gates was like a half-rotted golden starfish. Causeway threads pulling out through the marsh formed its arms. A gilded mould grew in the angles. Behind lifted the Sacred Wall of Osrakum, as if the sun had been hammered flat to make a frieze for the darkening sky.

Carnelian stood stirred by fear and hope for his father, for his brother, but also he felt a yearning that had the taste of the silver box. The starfish's head seemed to have cracked a fissure in the golden frieze. His heart was like a bird trapped in his ribcage. That fissure could be nothing other than the beginning of the canyon that led up into Osrakum. He would walk in her crater before the next setting of the sun. It was easier to imagine entering the Underworld.

Carnelian struggled under his father's weight to the watch-tower door. While he was getting his breath back, his eyes were drawn back to Osrakum. Aurum was a black spindle around which the Sacred Wall vibrated its gold. He was talking to a Maruli from whom he kept his distance. He threw something that landed on the ground between them. The man bent down, grimacing from the pain, hesitated a bow, crawled into a saddle-chair and sped off. Carnelian watched him shimmer away to nothing against the gold, then heaved his father into the watch-tower.

The Masters had locked themselves away and so Jaspar was out of reach. Carnelian knuckled patterns of light into his eyelids.
Beside him, his father was restl
ess, hot, stuttering half-words, sighing. He was the voice of Carnelian's despair.

The babble stopped. Carnelian came awake. He stood up and saw the moonlight catching his father's open eyes. His lips moved. 'Forgive me.'

Carnelian
took his hand. It was cold and heavy. He laid his lips against his father's brow and felt that he was kissing underwater stone. He prayed to the Twins, Their avatars, the Two Essences, but all were deaf. He kneaded the
Little
Mother in his hand and promised her anything if she would save his father. He found the bundle with his clothes and rummaging in it felt the roughness of Ebeny's blanket. He tugged it out and burrowed his face into it. For a moment he could believe that she was there with them. He pressed it harder to muffle his sobs. When he had done, he stood up and spread it over his father, pulling its edge up so that his father could smell her too.

'Sleep now,' he whispered and his father obeyed him. Carnelian felt for his hand through the blanket and squeezed it and then lay down.

He jerked awake breathing hard. His blanket was soaked with sweat. Above him, his father was muttering some fevered incantation. A scent of horror smoked around the edges of the cell. He was reluctant to return to the red face smiling in his dreams. Standing, he swayed a little and stared at the thing muttering on the bed. He did not recognize it. It was something malevolent he had to escape.

Robe. Mask. Cold stone under his foot. He went out into the silent hall. All the other doors were closed. Moonlight fell in columns round him. He climbed the ladder to the roof.

Through the copse of the ribs he glimpsed a wonder of stars. He edged across to the inverted arch between the northernmost ribs. The keel-beam ran out from the edge of the roof to the lookout in his deadman's chair. He walked out towards him. The man turned. Imagining his stare, Carnelian wobbled. He walked further out. Below, the leftway ran its dim canal.

'Master?' said a fearful voice ahead.

'I will take your watch for a while,' Carnelian said.

The man hesitated, then swung himself up onto the beam into a crouch.

'Wait on the roof.'

The man ducked past with a waft of stale sweat.

Carnelian took a few more steps forward. A cylinder pushed out from the end of the beam. The hoop formed a halo around this. He reached out, grasped the hoop then swung down onto the cylinder. It rotated, almost throwing him out into space. Trembling, he used the hoop to pull himself back into balance. He was panting hard. Now he understood why it was called a deadman's chair. At least the fright had brought him some relief from the foreboding. He looked out.