The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 (77 page)

'Heaven?' suggested Carnelian.

Tain gazed on as if he had not heard. Carnelian felt that if he were only to look close enough he would see a vision of the crater reflected on the boy's eyes. 'I felt that wonder too.'

Tain's face turned to him the eye holes in his skull. 'I was sure I had died.'

Carnelian felt the cold seeping up from the stone upon which he sat.

The beating soon taught me otherwise. They took us up a stair to a cave floored with water. They demanded the names of our Masters. They put me on a boat, under its deck, where one-eyed monsters rowed. We arrived at Coomb Suth. They fished me out and put me on the quay. They rang a bell. I had the feeling I was in a story. The blue lake was not real. The island with its mountain. The vast, vast fencing wall. And there, at its foot, the coomb. So beautiful with its stepped gardens and gleaming palaces. Crail told me about it but I hadn't believed.'

For a moment Carnelian thought Tain might smile. He waited for it like the dawn after a night of despair.

'A man came down for me. The chameleon on his face fooled me at first. He wasn't one of our people. He was a stranger and spoke to me as a stranger. As I followed him he rattled off my duties, warned me that I should forget the ways I was used to. The coomb was ruled by the Master's mother and she wasn't a Mistress to be trifled with. Then I saw the hanging woman.'

Carnelian felt a twinge of nausea. 'Hanging
...
?'

‘
Sagging off a frame
...
arms wire cut
...
above the path to one side
...
stinking.'

'A crucifixion,' said Carnelian.

The wall behind her was stained with blood and shit. Her knees were like sea-logged wood. What was left of her arms looked barely in their shoulders. Her belly was red and swollen—'

'Enough!' said Carnelian. He felt he was on the verge of remembering something. He was panting. Water was oozing in his mouth. 'Did
...'
He swallowed. 'Did he tell you her name?'

'Her name was Fey.'

The sound of her name punched the vomit from Carnelian's stomach all over the floor.

Carnelian helped Tain clean up. He felt the need to give him an explanation. 'She was Brin's sister.'

Tain seemed to age a little more. Carnelian ducked his head, cursing, scrubbing the floor so hard he made his fingers raw. When they were finished he looked at Tain. 'I must know
...'
Tain's face was a blank. 'What else did you see happening in the coomb?'

'I left shortly after arriving to come here.'

'Were there any other signs of slaughter?'

'I didn't see any more
...
crucifixions.'

Carnelian bit his hand, looking at his brother.

There was an atmosphere of fear.'

Carnelian's eyes went out of focus. 'It seems to be the way the Masters celebrate their assumption of power.'

Tain gazed at him.

Carnelian still felt queasy. 'I must go and make Father aware of what I have done.'

Carnelian quickly found that Tain was unable to dress him in his court robe and so he had to summon servants. When he was ready he went immediately to see his father. The Ichorians guarding the entrance to the Sun in Splendour would not let him pass. Towering over them he used all his powers of coercion but this only served to reduce them to quivering. One of the cohort commanders came to see what was happening.

Carnelian swung round to look down at the man. They refuse to let me pass.'

'He-who-goes-before himself barred this gate, Master.'

'I've urgent need to speak to him.'

'Our father's in conclave with the Jade Master Nephron.'

Carnelian calmed his anger. 'Please tell him as soon as you can that I must talk to him.'

He began the journey back to his chamber. The storm he had unleashed upon Coomb Suth, only his father could abate. No doubt he would conclave well into the night and then return to his chambers exhausted. Even if the commander managed to get his message through, there was no assurance that his father would pay it any attention.

A plan occurred to him. Carnelian turned slowly on his ranga and returned to the door of his father's chambers. After some discussion, the Ichorians there allowed him to enter. The Suth guardsmen in the atrium greeted him with surprise. He ignored the questions in their eyes and passed through into the chamber beyond where he had them remove him from his court robe and ranga. When they were finished, he sent them away. For a moment, he stood gazing at the walls with their wheels and eyes and pomegranates, but then he crossed the stone-wood f
loor to a couch on which he settl
ed down to wait.

A movement of air woke him. Carnelian opened his eyes and was transfixed. An angel was coming across the floor in an aura of gold. Two mortals walked beside it. It seemed miraculous that its furnace robe did not consume them with its fire. The angel lifted a hand and the men fled towards the door and were soon gone.

The angel slid towards the wall. It wavered a white hand out to touch the gold. Its whole shimmering bulk leaned forward, its fiery head clinking against the ruby seeds of a graven pomegranate.

Thus propped up, the angel raised both hands to its face. The fingers disappeared trembling into the fiery crowns. The gold mask detached like a lid to reveal a pallid face beneath. His father. The next moment

Carnelian was jarred as the pale fingers lost hold of the mask and it fell flashing, like a skystone, clattering, then screeching along the floor.

Carnelian's gaze had been pulled after it but when it stopped making sound or movement he looked back in time to see his father raising an object to his face. He watched him sink his nose into the square spoon. Two sharp snorts, a groan and then breath hissing out through his mouth's gape, the spoon dangling from his fingers. Even as Carnelian watched, it was as if his father was a withered tree drawing young sap up from its roots. He slowly straightened, his shoulders broadened, his face grew brighter. His eyes opened and he saw Carnelian.

'My Lord,' he said, appalled. His face jumped into fury. 'You spy on me?'

Anger disappeared as his father's face sagged. Carnelian stood up, stooped to pick up the fallen mask, went to him. He could see the mucus running down from his father's nostrils and the head hanging with shame.

'You knew
...
the Wise
...
their drugs sustain me.'

'You mean, they keep you alive,' Carnelian snapped. His father was a man trapped in a slab of gold. Carnelian could not be angry with him. 'Please, Father, let me remove some of this
...'
His hand pointed up at the sunburst crown, the stiff slopes of the court robe.

His father frowned and Carnelian could see the protest forming on his lips, so he reached up, fitting his fingers up into the elaborate metallic folds. 'Not there,' his father sighed. 'Round the back .
..'

Carnelian skirted him and stood on his toes to reach, felt around, found the catches, pressed and was thrown back as the sunburst fell into his arms. He walked with it and leaned its disc against the wall. He returned to lift down the upper crown, the lower, the sunstone circlet with its jewelled beadcords, the ear flanges, until the long dome of his father's head was revealed. His father moved it from side to side, grimacing, releasing the tension in his neck.

'Aaah! That does feel better
...
thank you, my son.'

'Let me remove the robe.' Before his father could forbid him Carnelian had unhitched the shoulder pole with its cloaks. He unhooked the robe from the floor up. As its carapace came apart it released an odour of myrrhed sweat. Carnelian prised the suit open like two doors. His father's long narrow body was revealed in its underclothes, kneeling high upon enormous ranga that were attached to heavy belts. Carnelian squeezed into the robe, stooped and began to undo the shoes. As he worked he was bothered by a fetid, familiar smell. As he helped his father climb down he saw a raised area blushing red through the silk. When Carnelian leaned closer he could smell the rot of old blood. He groaned. 'It has not healed.'

The drug gives me strength but at a price. The wound remains open but it hardly bleeds at all.'

'And pain?'

His father shrugged. 'A
little
.' He smiled. 'From long companionship, it has become a friend.'

Carnelian felt a trembling of anger. 'The Wise
...
they are embalming you alive.'

'It was my choice. Without their drugs I would have become an invalid long ago.'

The wound will heal, then?'

His father rolled his hand. 'When I have time.' His face grew immeasurably sad. 'After the election.'

Carnelian tried not to see how much his father was resembling Crad. 'Something has happened.'

His father's yellowed eyes fell on him. 'I suppose the news will soon be widely known.'

Carnelian watched him, urging him to speak. 'Jaspar has betrayed us.' 'Jaspar
...
?'

'He has gone over to Ykoriana.' 'With his faction?'

'It is too early to tell
...
some will follow him.' He affected cheerfulness. 'I did not ask why you came here, my son.'

Carnelian looked up, saw his father's bleary look. It was the fear of continuing massacre in the coomb that made him speak. Tain is here.'

'Good, good. Has he come through the ordeals of the road and quarantine unscathed?'

'We are none of us unscathed, Father.'

'No, I suppose not.'

Tain brought with him terrible news.'

His father's eyebrows squeezed wrinkles into the top of his nose.

'Fey is dead.'

His father blinked at him, not understanding. 'Dead?'

'Your mother had her crucified.' Carnelian watched his father's face crumpling. He saw the tears oozing out. 'Father, don't,' he stuttered in Vulgate, horrified. He rushed to catch him in his arms and held him, feeling the racking in his body. 'Don't, don't cry,' he mumbled, touching with his lips the dry skin of his father's neck. 'I
...
was
...
a fool.'

Carnelian could feel the words begin to rattle up from his father's chest. He squeezed harder but the words still escaped. 'We should never have returned. I have lost. I have lost it all.'

Carnelian pushed him away so that he could see his face. He forced himself to look on all the evidence of its ruin. 'It was my fault,' he said. 'My fault.'

His father looked at him with flickering red eyes. Carnelian stared back. His father's trembling had stopped. He seemed suddenly of stone. 'Your fault?' His voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else in the chamber.

'I killed her. I gave the Lady Urquentha the Seal.'

His father became flesh again. The Seal?' He looked as if it was the first time he had ever heard the word.

The coomb was not as you left it. Spinel had taken the Seal and forced the Lady Urquentha into the forbidden house.'

His father gave a slow nod and narrowed his eyes.

'She was trapped there like an animal.'

'And so you gave her the Seal to set her free?'

Carnelian grimaced. 'It was done as much from a dislike of Spinel.'

His father opened his hand. 'And so? It was your right, you are higher than he.'

'But Fey was crucified.'

His father looked down, his eyes unfocused. 'Why did my mother do this?'

'She believed that Fey had conspired against her with the second lineage.'

'And had she?'

'In a manner of speaking.'

Then my mother did what she had to.'

Carnelian gaped. 'Had to?'

'What Fey did was unforgivable.'

'But she did it for you, for us.'

'Nevertheless.'

'You mean she was only a slave.' His father's eyes flashed. 'She was my favourite sister. I trusted her
...
I loved her, even.' Carnelian slumped. Then why . . . ?'

His father put his hand on Carnelian's shoulder. 'My son, when I chose exile, I knew that I was choosing suffering for many others apart from myself. I could not take all the household with me. Fey asked to be left behind. Even if her actions were carried out from love of me, she betrayed my mother. No servant, however loved, can be allowed to live after betraying one of the Chosen.'

'She knew,' said Carnelian, holding back tears. 'She knew and yet she said nothing. I made her put the Seal in the Lady's hands.'

'She was always brave.'

Carnelian felt a tear dribble down his face. 'She asked me to tell you that she had always loved you. I had forgotten.'

They stood for a long while sharing their misery. It occurred to Carnelian that it was not the news of Fey's death that had made his father cry. What then? The election. 'You believe the election lost,' he said at last.