The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 (39 page)

As they slowed, the city's perfume thickened: mouldering mud, frying, the tang of slimed alleys, the dull odour of stagnant water, the vinegar reek of men.

Aurum had reached the monolith guarding the watch-tower door. Their aquar swung their heads from side to side as they slowed from their run. Aurum commanded the
Marula
to dismount. He herded them with his aquar behind the monolith and disappeared. Carnelian was intent on the saddle-chair holding the huddle that was his father. He leaned close, desperate for some sign of life. His father's aquar adjusted its feet and the huddle gave a groan that let Carnelian breathe again. 'My Lord?' he whispered but there was no reply. He looked round at the others.

'Where has Aurum gone?' He did not even attempt to mask the anger in his voice.

Jaspar motioned with his head.

Carnelian turned his aquar and saw that Aurum was there, his gold face peering from his hood.

'Why do we stop, my Lord?' Carnelian demanded.

To leave the leftway and descend to the road.'

Jaspar's hands expressed surprise. 'Into the herd?'

'We cannot do that,' said Carnelian.

There is no choice, my Lord,' said Aurum.

There must be. The delay — not to mention the commotion — it will kill my father.'

Aurum rode up to him. 'Last night I sent a messenger to the gates to announce our coming along this leftway. For that very reason we must leave it. This road leads only into peril.'

'You anticipate another attack, Aurum?' asked Jaspar.

Carnelian noticed that the Master's voice lacked its usual note of amused detachment. 'Surely we do not know for certain there will be another attack.'

There will be another attack,' Aurum said darkly.

'Even if there is, how can my Lord be certain where it will occur?'

The messenger, my Lord, the messenger,' snapped Vennel.

Carnelian turned on him. 'Does my Lord not think it possible that his mistress will see through Lord Aurum's subterfuge?'

'You are impertinent, my Lord.'

'Nevertheless, Vennel, my cousin makes a reasonable point,' said Jaspar.

Aurum lifted his hands. 'I have taken all this into consideration. Our enemies will see in the messenger our attempt to hide our intention to leave this leftway. It would be unlike them not to see through this deception. Thus, they will expect us on the leftway. We shall thus do the unexpected by in fact leaving the leftway.'

'In other words, my Lord, you have no idea whatsoever where our enemies are looking for us,' Carnelian said. 'For all we know they will be waiting for us on either route. Since this is possible it behoves us to take whichever route will more quickly bring my father to his healing by the Wise.'

Vennel gave him a nod. 'On the contrary, if there is danger both ways we would be better in the marketplace of the Wheel where we would be as invisible as fish in the sea.'

Jaspar squeezed his hands together. 'Let us not forget the filthy Marula. It would be prudent, cousin, if we were to find them work to do. The crowds will distract them.'

Carnelian felt that the situation was slipping away from him. 'Since when are the Chosen fearful of such animals?'

'Since, my Lord,' sneered Vennel, 'they are poisoned near unto death and know that we slew one of their number and, no doubt, will soon find a way to slay them all.'

'If we move down to the road a greater distance will be put between them and their antidote. This will endanger them as much as it does my father. Surely they will know this and so become more dangerous.'

They will know nothing,' Vennel said scornfully. 'Did you not yourself say that they are animals?'

Carnelian cast around him. 'My father still has his vote.'

'Would you use up his last strength?' said Aurum. Carnelian hesitated and looked from one mask to the next.

'Lord Suth should form no part in our calculations,' said Jaspar. 'It is unlikely he will live.'

Aurum's hand darted up to cut short Carnelian's outrage.
Enough.
'If we three vote together we will carry the decision.'

Vennel and Jaspar nodded.

'It is decided then. We will descend to the road.' Vennel made no attempt to conceal the note of triumph in his voice.

Carnelian went cold with anger. 'If my father should die .
..'
he said through gritted teeth.

'You will be elevated to Ruling Lord.'

'A privilege rare in one so young,' said Jaspar and turned his aquar away.

As the others filed into the watch-tower, Carnelian gazed down the leftway that narrowed off into a hazy crush of towers dwarfed by the dark mountain wall. The entrance to the Canyon of the Three Gates had widened into a narrow valley. Standing guard on either side of it were manikins almost hidden in its shadow. The mass of the city between served to cut them off at the knees. Carnelian shook his head, making no sense of their scale. What was certain, however, was that there was still a long ride to the gates and through the crowds it would take much, much longer.

He rode into the tower in despair, pulling his father's aquar after him, muttering under his breath, over and over again, 'He'll hang on. He'll hang on.'

In the gloom he could make out the immense shapes of the Masters on their aquar. In his anguish he had almost forgotten Tain. He tied the reins of his father's aquar to his own saddle-chair and then joined the Masters' line. When his turn came he turned his aquar onto the first ramp and his father's followed after. Halfway down one of the ramps he managed to get close to Jaspar. He forced his pain aside, his anger, his hatred and reached out to pull the Master's sleeve.

We must talk,
he signed when he had Jaspar's eyes. The Master pointed inquiringly at Suth. Carnelian shook his head. They let the others move round the landing and begin descending the next ramp. Carnelian moved his hands into the light of a lantern.

If I pay your price,
he signed,
you will forget my brothers sin?

Your slave will keep his eyes,
signed Jaspar with eager fingers.

'Swear on your blood.' 'You challenge my honour?' 'Swear!'

Jaspar protested but swore the oath.

Carnelian signed the lie his father had given him. He hoped that Jaspar would interpret the tremble in his signs as guilt at the betrayal.

As they moved out onto the road, it was like walking into a crowded room. Carnelian resisted putting his hands over his ears lest their brightness should betray them. He ground his teeth. All around, people were packing up and getting ready to move on. Feet were smudging fires to smoke. Uneven walls shoved in on every side, echoing the clatter.

Aurum ordered the
Marula
forward through the encampment. They sat in their saddle-chairs like dummies. Carnelian's aquar was disturbed by all the commotion. He looked round to see his father's shy away from some children and almost cried out when his father slumped over. More and more people were gathering to look at them. Soon they would be revealed as Masters. The news would pass all along the road and choke it. Their attackers would know where they were. Seeing the danger, Aurum moved into the Marula and woke them with his anger. Their uncurling seemed as slow as ferns. The Master's hand flashed a jab into the ribs of one of them. The man jerked up into a grimace and threatened the Master with his lance. Aurum grew larger in his chair. The man withstood his menace for a moment before bowing his head and going to join the others.

The Marula began pummelling their way through the crowd. Their stiff arms rose and fell as they cleared a path for the Masters. People grumbled out of their way. Some fell, losing their bundles to be trampled by the aquar. Others were pushed onto those behind and came to blows. Anger rippled out into the crowd. Carnelian could see the Marula were wasting what little strength they had left. Their hands lifted less frequently, less high. In one place a Maruli was driving some men back against a huimur whose driver struck at their backs with his goad. One man turned to fight. Another was shoved forward by the stump of the huimur's horn as it tossed its head. His companions turned on the Maruli, shouting, threatening him with sticks. The black man's aquar shied back, plumes jittering, as he struggled to control it. Two of his brothers raised a baying in which Carnelian could hear weary desperation. Their mouths stretched in a fixed gape. They gleamed with sweat and pain and anger. They began a feverish stabbing. Throats in the crowd pumped out cries of panic. People tried to escape. Carnelian watched one of the Marula breaking his lance in a woman's body. Her face registered surprise as she plucked at the wood poking from her breast before slumping into the arms of the people around her.

They are out of control,' Vennel cried over the roar.

Jaspar backed away and his posture suggested he was looking for some direction in which to flee.

It was Aurum who rode forward into the carnage, his shrouded figure serene in the midst of fury. His huge hands pulled the Marula back. Carnelian looked on nervously as the Marula mobbed him. Aurum's cowled head looked around at them. The Marula hesitated and their mouths' rictus slacked. When Aurum came back through the roar the Marula were about him, obedient, menacing only those who came too close.

The Masters and Marula percolated through the crowds. Campfires and wagons forced wide detours. The Marula angled their lances up and the gore ran down the shafts. Carnelian turned his face just enough to see their eyes darting and the way their faces twitched as if under their cloaks something were eating into them. When they scowled and showed their teeth
they looked like demons but mostl
y they looked like old men.

Each slow step made Carnelian despair. His father's time was running out. He was letting go of what
little
hope he had left when a clamouring of bells drifted from somewhere up ahead. Like ice on a spring river the crowd broke into chunks and began to drift forward along the road. Their exhalations overpowered the stench of the city. Wheel-creak, footfalls and chatter drowned the bells. They picked up speed. Hope returned like an ache. Carnelian searched ahead for the dawn. The sky above the dark wall of Osrakum was already blue but the sun still hid behind her rampart. The light that filtered down into the canyon only served to reveal the contempt with which its guardians were looking down on the toy towers of the city.

Visions of the termite city interwove his weary vigilance. Yellow walls mottled like the flanks of lizards. The tunnel of an alleyway; glimpsed shadowy doors; a brilliant flutter of doves; light slicking on a scum-fringed canal. Bridges swagged everywhere and the faded bunting of clotheslines. Tenements rose higher, opened shuttered mouths and breathed out the perfume of a thousand rooms. Carnelian glimpsed the face of a girl looking down at them. A child swung on a beam end. People melted off into alleyways. Once the dirty curtain of tenements parted and he saw the long mound of another road rising faintly off across the hut-pebbled mirrored fen, angling towards them so that he guessed that they converged somewhere up ahead like the spokes of some gigantic wheel.

He was startled by a swell of sound, as if a door had opened nearby. A width of steps cascaded the crowd down to a harbour jostling with punts. Water lapped the lower steps where barefoot, half-naked people were unloading barges. He darted his gaze over the bobbing heads on the road about him, looking for assassins. He peered round past the mesmerizing circling of spokes, the pendulum palanquins, to see his father's chair. The body sagging in its curve looked already dead.

Barbarian voices babbling made Carnelian raise his eyes, see fingers pointing ahead and follow them to a pale rectangle flanked by two massings of shadow. As he drifted closer he began to hear a sound like swarming bees. The carpet of their march dragged slowly on. The shadows solidified into two gatehouses like sentinels standing guard upon the road. The buzzing had become a distant roar. He passed the last tenement whose sharp edge defined the beginning of airy space. Voices broke out around him in excited exclamation. From the babble he gleaned the single word, 'Wheel.'

Carnelian's eyes widened with wonder as he reached the threshold of a moat canal. A bridge carried the road across to the gatehouses looming to receive it. These gave entrance to a plain; a vast roaring marketplace; a
seething mass grained with countl
ess heads whose sluggish currents carried toy-like palanquins and the stalks of aquar heads. Skinned with crowds, the Wheel stretched off to vague distance half-darkened by the shadow of the Sacred Wall.

As he drifted slowly across the bridge, Carnelian could not help drinking in the thrill bubbling up around him. His eyes flitted from one bright face to another until they stumbled on some that looked sick and grim. In that carnival, the Marula had the faces of mummies. Only their eyes showed any life as they scrutinized the wall of Osrakum. Carnelian followed them there and he too grew troubled. Its slope filled the lower sky like a storm. The sun rising above was burning a halo round the head of the leftmost gatehouse, making its shadow fall across the bridge as a cold diagonal. Light bathed the other inner flank and spilled out onto the bridge and along the wall that carried the leftway up to the gatehouse. Its face was studded with the cypher of the five-spot quincunx. Carnelian wondered what the device might mean. His eyes slid down to where the gatehouse tenoned into the rock of the Wheel's plateau. The plateau's edge curving away in each direction was fringed with cranes that leaned over to dangle their lines into the moat. Down on its water, a barge was being poled while others were moored receiving goods from above. The moat's outer wall rose to support a cliff jigsawed together from the buildings of the city that crowded up to its edge. This cliff followed the curve of the Wheel and was boned with wood, quoined and buttressed with brick. Mouths opened here and there where sewer throats and alleys broke through to vomit their rubbish into the moat. The fil
th streaking down from the countl
ess windows made them look like weeping sores.