The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 (66 page)

Osidian showed surprise. 'I thought you did not like history.'

There is more to history than conquests.' He racked his mind for a topic. For some reason he recalled the Masters arguing theology that night on the watch-tower roof.

The beginning.'

The creation?'

The beginning of the Commonwealth. The Quyans. The Great Death. Does the library contain reels going that far back?'

Osidian's brow creased. 'I have never sought such antiquity. What you speak of is more religion than history. Still
...'

Carnelian grew calm watching Osidian thinking. There was so much he wanted to know about this strange boy but he feared to make even the smallest enquiry.

There is one place to find out if such a reel exists.'

'Let us go there, then.'

Osidian made his hand into a barrier sign. 'Less haste. We will have to be careful of the Wise. Most of them are busy calculating the Rains' arrival, arranging the Rebirth; that is why we have seen nothing of them. But what you seek lies at the library's heart, the very centre of their web. Many will still be there and they will detect the slightest vibration. We must be as silent as shadows.'

Carnelian nodded, his pulse quickening again.

Carnelian crept into the library after Osidian, who was holding the lantern up to light their way. After a few chambers, Carnelian reached out to touch Osidian's shoulder. The boy turned round, raising his eyebrows.

The lantern?
Carnelian signed.

Osidian grinned.
Yes, it is one.

Carnelian made a face at him.
It is very bright.

Here the only eyes are ours,
replied Osidian, constructing complicated signs with his free hand.
The light will help you amid bumping into anything.

Carnelian gave a snort and they went on.

He soon lost count of the chambers. They were moving between the benches of another when he almost ran into
Osidian who had come to a sudden halt. Carnelian followed the direction of his gaze and saw a Sapient with his pleated waxy noseless face, the black almonds of his eyes alive with malice. He came round the bench towards them. When he was between two benches, he stretched the four fingers of each hand out to either side. The fingertips settled on the benches like feathers failing from the air. The hands tensioned like exquisite traps. The Sapient stood motionless, a spider waiting.

From the corner of his eye,
Carnelian
caught a tiny white movement. He turned his head slowly, keeping an eye on the Sapient. Osidian, his eyes round, signed with his free hand,
Not a blink. His fingers feel everything.

The Sapient's hands jumped up from the benches. Carnelian focused fully on the creature as he came treading towards them, his long white feet sucking to the floor like mouths, his fingers swimming, sensing currents in the air.

Carnelian looked desperately for an escape. The coldness of the floor was making his feet ache but he dared not move. Sweat was trickling down the gutter of his spine. Some was oozing down his nose. He feared that it might collect in a drop and fall, betraying them. He drew his shoulders back, his head further still, drawing away from the four-fingered hands. The Sapient stopped between two new benches. Again, he deployed his hands then froze. Carnelian looked from the cages of fingers to the black insect eyes. He could smell the Sapient's musty odour.

The hands lifted and Carnelian turned his head away. He suppressed a shudder, anticipating the touch of those moist fingers. He might have fled, save that just then the Sapient turned and swiftly returned to where he had been. Carnelian watched him reach down to a bench's bronze ring and pull at the tail of beadcord hanging from it. The beads slipped through his fingers. Then both his hands rose to lift the topmost reel off the spindle above. This was swiftly transferred to the empty spindle beside it. The hands returned to pluck up the second reel. Cradling this in his arms, the Sapient slid through a door and disappeared.

Carnelian gulped in a breath, another. He found that Osidian was grinning at him. Crookedly, Carnelian grinned back.

Do you want to go on?
signed Osidian.

Carnelian's nod was rewarded with a look of approval.

They encountered more Sapients. Mostly they were folded into the niches on spinning-wheel chairs, caressing words from beadcord. Sometimes Osidian would lift the lantern high and pull its hem of light up the dark, brocaded robe to find the leather of a Sapient's face and put a fierce glint in the jet eyes. Each time Carnelian recoiled, distrusting the blindness, certain that the Sapient must feel the light tickling over his flesh. But the Sapient would continue reading undisturbed, looking as if he were busy spinning jewelled thread.

They came at last into a chamber in which their light flashed among tall screens that seemed hung with coloured water. Osidian entered boldly. Carnelian was reluctant to follow but did not want to appear afraid. He looked back. The way they had come was utterly black. He shuddered, imagining returning blind through the darkness infested with the Wise.

He caught up with Osidian whose hand was playing through the jewelled shrouds.

He must have heard Carnelian for he turned.
Hold this,
he signed and pushed the lantern onto Carnelian, then continued reading.

Carnelian saw the screens were like huge folding books whose pages were like harps strung with beadcord. As he watched Osidian's fingers stroking across the strings, Carnelian almost expected to hear music. Osidian shook his head and padded away. Carnelian followed him, holding the light of the lantern over them as if he were carrying a parasol. He tapped Osidian on the shoulder.

What is this place?
he signed, having to resort to difficult one-handed signs.

The Master Index,
signed Osidian.

Carnelian followed him deeper into the bead partition maze of indices. Sometimes through one crystalled wall Carnelian would see a Sapient moving past or racing his hands over the surface of an index.

Suddenly, Osidian shot him a grin and made a triumph gesture. After he had read down a beadcord he signed,
Come, I know where to go now.

Carnelian touched the cord he thought Osidian had been reading. There were words, numbers, but he could make no sense of them.

He was glad to leave the Chamber of the Master Index, following Osidian back into the smaller rooms of the library proper. They had to creep through a fearful region filled with the Wise. Gradually the chambers became free of them and Carnelian relaxed enough to risk more solid footfalls. Exhaustion sapped him as he released the tension in his muscles.

Osidian stopped at a door. This should be the place.' He was fingering something to one side of the door. Carnelian played some light on it. Beadcord hung on the wall like a tapestry. Osidian muttered something and nodded. The reels are here as the index said.' The chamber seemed much the same as any other. Tut the lantern on a bench and help me look.'

'What are we looking for?'

'I am not sure. The index did not give the names of the works, only that they were written Pre-Commonwealth.'

Carnelian moved to the nearest bench. His fingers
found a bronze ring with its titl
e beadcord. He began to feel his way down the beads. They were smooth and of no distinctive shape. He moved to the next cord. It was the same. And the next. As he held the first bead, he concentrated all his mind on his fingertips. He took the weight of the cord with his other hand so that he could lighten his touch on the bead. It was not smooth. There was the faintest ridge, but he could not hear what it said. It was like the most delicate whisper. He let the cord go. He looked up and saw Osidian's shadow body away off across the chamber. He picked up the lantern and went to join him. Osidian had a be
adcord titl
e clenched in his fist.

'What are you doing?' Carnelian whispered. 'Heating the beads.' Carnelian blinked.

'Sometimes, heating them makes them speak. Paagh.' 'Nothing?'

'Not enough.' Osidian reached up to the nearest reel. He found its end, rubbed a few beads between his fingers. He shook his head.

'Perhaps time has worn them smooth,' said Carnelian.

'No.' He took in the chamber with a sweep of his hand. 'It is just that the Wise have made sure that the beadcord here shall only be read by their fingers.'

'I see,' said Carnelian, disappointed, looking at the reels.

Osidian grinned at him. 'I know a thing or two. We shall return.' He saw the question on Carnelian's face. 'You will find out what I am talking about, but only tomorrow.'

'What is it?' whispered Carnelian.

Earlier, when he had found Osidian waiting for him by the moon-eyed door, the boy had given him an enigmatic smile and then led him to the chamber they had been in the day before.

Carnelian looked at the phial Osidian was holding up. It was a helix of quartz with a hinged silver cap. Within its murky worm-like body he could see a yellow liquid.

Osidian smirked. 'It is something the Wise drink. It has
...
let us say, some useful effects.'

Carnelian looked at Osidian's green eyes. He did not like the idea of acquiring any habit from the Wise. He wondered at Osidian's mood. Carnelian almost asked him to drink first, but he did not want Osidian to think that he thought it poison.

'How much?'

'A sip will do.'

Carnelian flipped open the cap and sniffed it cautiously. Its iodous smell nipped his nose. He looked at Osidian who gave him an encouraging nod.

'Do you think I would try to poison you?'

Carnelian answered him by putting the phial to his lips and letting some of its liquid trickle onto his tongue. Its bitterness forced a grimace. He swallowed quickly, sucked his tongue, then licked his teeth to try to rid his mouth of the taste.

Osidian took the phial from his hand and drank. Carnelian was pleased to see his face scrunch up. 'It really is foul,' said Osidian, glaring at the phial.

'And now?' whispered Carnelian.

'Now, we wait.' Osidian shuttered the lantern. In the darkness, Carnelian felt the bench shudder as Osidian, sitting down, threw his back against it. Carnelian slid down beside him. He tried to make conversation, to ask what they were waiting for, but Osidian answered every question with an irritating, 'Wait and see.'

The tingling grew as if coming from far away. Carnelian adjusted his position. Against his back the bench seemed to have become the trunk of some vast tree. His back ran up it for a great length. Carnelian found himself wondering if the yellow potion had made him grow like a giant. His legs had stretched so much they must have pushed his feet into the next chamber. He lifted his hand and it swung up like a crane. He fingered the air, half believing that he would find the ceiling of the chamber just above his head.

'Do you feel it?' asked Osidian's breath. Carnelian could feel its wet heat catching in the folds of his ear. He turned his head and was momentarily disorientated by the thick currents of air that he ruddered into motion. His lungs seemed as large as the sky. He breathed in all the winds.

'My lungs are the turtle's shell,' he said.

Osidian's chuckle was like a shunting of machinery. 'You feel it all right.'

Carnelian
felt the earthquake of Osidian rising.

'Stand up,' came Osidian's words, tumbling down from above.
Carnelian
felt fingers fumble into his like an avalanche of pillars. They kept sliding round and through his until they locked closed. Even lying naked on a rock,
Carnelian
had never felt such a vast expanse of his skin touching the world. Their hands were a jumble of warm stones in whose crevices lay thrilling moisture.

Suddenly the whole meshed mass of fingers were flying skywards. Carnelian's forearm followed, then his elbow, then his upper arm, all straightening like the links in some monumental chain. The whole mass of him unfolded up and up, faraway joints opening until he found himself standing.

'We should release each other's hand,' rumbled Osidian.

Carnelian struggled. Their flesh seemed wedded together at the h
ands. When they managed to wrestl
e their fingers apart, Carnelian was left feeling as if part of him had been cut away. It was all he could do to not flail the night to recover it.

Take some beadcord in your hands.'

Carnelian had to wait for the loss to fade before he ran a finger along the wooden wall of the bench. It had been smooth before. Now it was pitted, gnarled, scored with ruts. His finger ran into something that at first he though must be a skull. He felt the heat radiating from Osidian's fingers touching the other side of the curving ball of bone.

'Can you read it now?' asked Osidian.

Carnelian was startled when he realized he was only touching a bead. He allowed his fingers to explore its landscape. They found the ridges, the sensuous curves. Cool regions, warm strips his mind told him must be narrower than a hair. 'I do not recognize it,' he said.