The Standing Dead - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 02 (108 page)

Carnelian did not want to reveal how right Ravan had been. If Fern knew what chaos the Lower Reach was in, it might encourage him to go through with the ruinous attack on the Marula. The failure would be bad enough; far worse would be Osidian's reprisals.

Fern looked at Carnelian with pleading eyes. 'We must do something, Carnie.'

'We can stay alive. As long as we live, there is hope.'

Fern became suddenly weary. 'At least tomorrow we'll be leaving this accursed place.'

Something about Carnelian's silence made Fern regard him with narrowed eyes. 'You're staying behind.'

Carnelian had to nod. 'He wants me here.'

Fern's eyes grew fierce. Then I'll stay with you.'

'No. You must go. Together we are a danger to each other: apart we will still have a chance.'

The screaming from the Isle of Flies made it impossible to sleep. Intermittendy, it would come trembling through the blackness. Each stuttering, tortured sound forced Carnelian to imagine what was being done on the island. The silence following was almost worse; a long suspense of waiting for the next scream. Pressing his hands to his ears made no difference. He rose and paced about. Others were suffering too, with moans, turning, sitting up. Someone stirred a fire to blazing life. Carnelian huddled round it with others seeking blind oblivion in the flames. Attempts were made to tell stories, but it was impossible to listen to anything other than the cries. 'Accursed,' groaned Fern.

Ravan turned on Krow. 'Do you still adore your precious Master?'

Krow
drew his knees more tightl
y to his chest.

Ravan turned his rage on Carnelian and Fern. 'If you'd listened to me, none of this would have happened.'

Carnelian felt ashamed. There was a wild look in Fern's eyes he could not bear. He sank his head between his knees as he had done in the funeral urn, pressing them hard against his ears, trying not to hear his inner voice telling him that all this was his doing.

Eyes kept turning from the fire to peer past the utter blackness of the island, yearning for dawn. Ravan was the first to see the trail of light snaking across the river to the shore. Soon everyone was staring, possessed by the fear that the Oracles were coming for them.

They're ... they're on the riverpath,' said Ravan.

Men were rising all around him and Carnelian joined them.

'Let's go now,' someone pleaded. 'Let's not wait for morning.'

'We'd lose our way in the darkness,' said Fern.

'Our spears . ..' said a voice edging on hysteria.

Sparks began appearing at the corner of the baobab forest. As more and more torches came from the river-path, their glow became bright enough to cast monstrous shadows from the trees towards the knoll.

The impaled man,' groaned Ravan.

They watched tall shapes weave in among the torches and then the screaming began again, but this time it was nearby, coming from the heart of the torchlight. That close, the Plainsmen could hear every ragged note. Some began to whimper. Horror gripped Carnelian's mind. The shrieking took on a panting, shrill, animal sound and they saw, lit from below, something twitching being hoisted up. Then one by one the torches snuffed out, leaving the animal noises to carry from the thing they had lifted aloft.

Men around Carnelian were crying. 'Make it stop,' someone prayed. 'Dear Father, make it stop.'

Carnelian snatched a spear and ran down the knoll towards the sounds. As he drew nearer, his legs weakened so that he had to slow to a walk. He felt each shriek like a cut. Coming nearer he fought for the courage to raise his eyes. Against the stars he saw a man impaled, his transfixed body shaking, his head beating against the tip of the idol's tongue erupting from his shoulder.

Quickly, Carnelian blinked his eyes clear, trembled the spear blade over the thin and quivering chest and, praying it should find the man's heart, he thrust. The blade caught and, snarling, he twisted it hard through the ribs. The impaled man let out a hacking sigh and then, silence.

Carnelian fell, adding his vomit into the filth. Blind and deaf, he was barely conscious when the Plainsmen came to carry him back up to their camp.

A black man with pits for eyes having his throat cut. The blade in Aurum's hand slowly slicing round. The Master's white face had the same bored expression it had had when he had burned the ant nest in the Naralan. Carnelian hated those misty blue eyes. A licking at his toes made him look down, then jump back in horror from the spreading blood. He reached out to touch Aurum, pleading that he stop the cutting lest they drown. The eyes that turned to look at him were the old Master's but they were peering from Kor's branded face.

Carnelian wrenched awake. Sweat congealed on his skin. A face swam into his vision. Fern.
Carnelian
grabbed him into an embrace and would not let him go. On the journey to Osrakum, he had tried to save a Maruli who had looked upon his face only to have the man make an attempt upon his life. Which was when Aurum had slit his throat.

Carnelian released Fern. His friend stared as Carnelian grasped his own throat and felt the scar of the rope. Was the dream a warning that he must not conceal Ravan's mutiny from Osidian?

'It's over now,' whispered Fern.

Carnelian could not understand.

Thank you,' said Fern.

'For what?'

'For ending that poor bastard's suffering and ours.' Carnelian remembered killing the impaled pygmy.

Dawn was creeping from the east, its birth finding silver in the streams that fell around the island. The morning was still too thin to dispel the horror.

'Leave with me,' pleaded Fern.

Carnelian stared at him.

The sky blushed. The Plainsmen were rising, whispering as they got ready to leave.

Fern's face was filled with concern.

Wan-faced, the Plainsmen crept around as if there were people in the camp they were reluctant to wake.
Carnelian
saw with what bright hope and yearning they glanced up the escarpment towards the Earthsky.

He rose searching for Ravan and found him harnessing his aquar, fumbling with the girths and straps. The youth became aware of
Carnelian
and returned his gaze.

'What's the matter?' said
Fern
.

Carnelian
broke the link with Ravan to look at his friend. 'Go without me. Take your brother with you.'

Fern
frowned, upset, confused.
Carnelian
reached for his hand and squeezed it. 'Go now.'

A while later the Plainsmen were all mounted and, with a rush, they were coursing away down the knoll and up the escarpment.
Fern
gave
Carnelian
one last look and then his aquar ran to join the others who were fading into a great rising of red dust.

Carnelian
stood watching until the cloud thinned enough for him to see they had gone. The nightmare lingered like an ache, bringing doubt. He dismissed it. He had made his decision.

One year sown, six years fallow lest the earth should lose her fertility.

(Quyan fragment)

Two Manila came to summon Carnelian. His heart sank when he saw where they were taking him. Still, he followed them. Krow came running to join him. Carnelian had forgotten Osidian had given the youth permission to remain behind. Neither was in the mood for conversation. Carnelian found distraction in counting the beads of bone and wood making up the corselet of the Maruli leading the way.

Carnelian's nose told him they were nearing the idol. It was impossible not to smell the rot rising from the blood-soaked earth upon which Osidian and Morunasa were standing waiting.

'Morunasa wishes to ask you something, my Lord,' Osidian said.

'Do we have to speak breathing this miasma?'

Manila showed Carnelian a spear.

'It's a spear,' Carnelian said, in Vulgate.

'A Flatlander spear,' Morunasa said, displaying it.

Carnelian was aware of nothing but the corpse of the man he had killed above him weighing the air with its fetor.

'Well?' demanded Morunasa.

'If you've something to say, Maruli, just say it!'

Morunasa regarded Carnelian with slitted eyes. 'We found this here, Master. It has blood on it.'

'Everything here has blood on it.'

Morunasa pointed up to the post where Carnelian did not want to look. 'See there.'

The Maruli pointed emphatically until Carnelian was forced to lift his eyes. At first he saw hanging above him only something like a scavenging bird utterly dark against the sepia sky. It resolved into the remains of the skewered man, his head pushed to one side by the idol's impaling tongue.

There. The wound,' insisted Morunasa.

Carnelian saw the hole torn through the pygmy's chest.

'It was made by this spear,' the Maruli said.

'I know.'

Morunasa turned to Osidian. 'He confirms what I said. One of the Flatlanders took what belonged to our Lord. You, Master, know how important it is such sins should not go unpunished.'

Osidian sighed. 'When the Plainsmen return I shall find whoever it was and give him to you.'

Morunasa fixed Krow with an amber stare. 'Who did this, Flatlander?'

'It was me,' said Carnelian.

Morunasa turned on him, opening greedy jaws. Carnelian remembered how those teeth had been used to tear out throats, but he did not care: all he wanted was to get as far as he could from the impaled man.

Osidian regarded Carnelian with a frown. 'Why did you do this, Carnelian?'

'If you need to ask that, Osidian, then no answer I can give would make it any clearer to you.'

Osidian grew angry. 'You have nothing more to say, my Lord?'

Waves of nausea began surging through Carnelian. He clutched at the air for words. 'I could no longer bear the noise. I was trying to sleep.'

Osidian stared, then laughed.

Morunasa looked at him appalled. 'You must give him to me.'

Osidian turned on the Maruli, incomprehension on his face. 'Give him to
you?’

Morunasa shrank away. 'He took what was the Lord's. His blood now belongs to Him.'

Osidian regarded the Maruli as if he were a stupid child. 'If you so much as touch him, I shall burn you and your precious banyan to ashes.'

Morunasa became a wooden man. He pointed at Carnelian. The Darkness-under-the-Trees must have his blood.'

Osidian slapped Morunasa's arm down. 'I'll feed your god enough blood to sate even his thirst.'

He put his arm around
Carnelian
's shoulders. 'Come, let us leave this place, it is beginning to turn my stomach.'

Letting himself be led away, Carnelian was feeling too sick to care about Morunasa's look of hatred.

Carnelian pulled himself free of Osidian as they walked deep into the baobab forest. He was glad Osidian was happy to walk in silence. The only sound was the footfalls of their Marula guards and Krow, who had followed them.

Carnelian became aware Osidian was measuring up the trees.

'We will have to cut them down all the way from the knoll to here. And from the edge of the chasm to perhaps up there.' Osidian pointed halfway up the escarpment.

'Why?' Carnelian asked.

'I need a training ground.'

Carnelian surveyed the whole wide sweep among the leafless giants. 'But these trees are sepulchres.'

Then empty them of their dead.' 'And do what with them?'

Osidian shrugged. 'Did you not tell me they were desiccated?'

Carnelian nodded. 'Well, burn them.'

Carnelian grew uneasy. 'Perhaps you should oversee this yourself, my Lord.'

Osidian looked away towards the island. 'Would you then take my place negotiating with the Oracles?'

Carnelian glanced at Krow.

Osidian shook his head. 'I want that one with me.' He motioned more than half his escort to attend to
Carnelian
. ‘I
shall send you more.'

Accustomed as
Carnelian
had become to towering over everyone, the long-limbed Manila in their bead corselets were unnerving. They stood avoiding his gaze, several with axes hanging from their hands.

'Do any of you understand Vulgate?'

The Manila gave no answer but only stared at him with their yellow eyes. He pointed at the baobab under whose branches they stood. While they looked on, he made a pantomime of cutting it down. After he was done he saw they were regarding him with the same blank faces. He grew exasperated. When he moved into their ranks, they ebbed away from him. Lunging, he snatched an axe from one of them and returned with it to the tree. He gazed at the monster. Stark it was, menacing, but the Plainsmen had taught him to revere all trees. Besides, he was reluctant to desecrate any pygmy dead that it might hold. Such arguments were nothing to Osidian. The baobabs would die.
Carnelian
put aside his feelings and swung the axe. Its flint bit deeper than he had expected. He was pulling back for another stroke when he became aware of the murmuring. Looking round, he saw the Manila were all staring at the ground. It was clear he was getting nowhere and so he went in search of Osidian.

He found him with Morunasa and Krow upon the crown of the knoll now deserted by the Plainsmen. Osidian was crouching in an opening high in one of the trees. Morunasa and Krow were on the ground looking up at him.

'What do you want, Master?' the Maruli asked, malice in his eyes and teeth.

'I've come to speak to the Master.' Carnelian called out in Quya: 'My Lord?' Osidian looked down at him. The Marula -'

'Speak in Vulgate so that Morunasa might understand you.'

The Marula,' he said, in Vulgate, resenting Morunasa even more, 'seem reluctant to cut down the trees.'

'Which trees?' Morunasa demanded.

Carnelian stretched his hand out indicating the forest lying below.

Morunasa smiled. 'But of course they'll not cut them down.'

'Because they're sacred?'

Morunasa raised his eyes to the sky. 'A childish belief of the pygmies, but the Lower Reachers are superstitious.'

'You must force them to comply, Morunasa,' Osidian called down.

Carnelian did not want to force anyone and besides, wanted to have nothing to do with Morunasa. 'It might be easier if I use the sartlar,' he called up.

'It would reduce salt production,' said Osidian.

'It should take only a few days to clear the area you want.'

Osidian considered it some moments and then gave a nod before turning back to Morunasa. This tree is as empty as the others.'

'So are all the granaries,' said the Maruli. The pygmies must have taken all the fernroot when they fled.'

What had really happened to the pygmies, Carnelian would maintain as his secret. He would not hand over more victims to the Oracles.

The sartlar swarmed the baobabs plucking the pygmy mummies from their tombs. Carnelian winced as he saw another fall to the ground, bones cracking like twigs. Other sartlar were gathering the mummies and heaping them in a mound.

When all the trees had been emptied, Carnelian walked around the pyramid of mummies. He gave the order and sartlar ambled in with torches. Carnelian heard the pyre ignite but the flames were invisible in the sunlight. Rustling like dry ferns, the dead folded tighter into foetus curls. Every so often one would pop, exploding into flakes that turned almost instantly to ash. The cadavers shrank, grew reddish brown, then began to singe black. Carnelian turned away when their skulls began to push grinning out through the charring leather of their flesh. He fled from the stench of their burning hair.

The next day he gathered the sartlar and told them they must cut down the trees they had emptied of the dead. Their reaction was to stand so still, he might have been standing in a ring of stones. 'What's the matter?' he said.

'Kor,' he called and was relieved when she emerged from among the sartlar and came to fall before him. He waited for her to look up at him.

'Master, the earth will rebel.'

'What do you mean?' he asked, but for an answer the woman only flattened herself to the ground. He stared, wanting to speak to her, to explain, but he had nothing in his heart but unease.

'It has to be done,' he said, at last. Kor rose.

Her silence goaded Carnelian to anger. 'You will do it now.'

'As the Master commands, so shall it be done.'

With flint axes the sartlar chopped into the soft wood of the baobabs. There was something eerie in the way each blow set the naked branches far above to trembling. Carnelian became convinced the trees were feeling pain. The first one to topple gave out a stuttering cracking and then fell, gracefully, as if it were merely lying down, but when it struck the ground Carnelian was shaken by the impact and drew back from the slow mist of dust that rose and took so long to settle. The giant lay stretched out slain upon the earth. Another two were heeling over in the background. Watching this brought back a memory of the destruction of the Great Hall in the Hold; the first step on the path that had brought him so far. As the feelings of loss for his father, Ebeny, his brothers, his people, flooded into him, he had to turn his back on the felling and go away to stand upon the edge of the chasm. He stared blind into its depths, rethreading the whole improbable sequence of events that separated him from that time. He wondered, as he had not done for a shameful length of time, whether his people had made it safely up from the sea and were now with his father in Osrakum.

Carnelian, Osidian and Krow stood among a Marula guard surveying the clearing the sartlar had gouged from the baobab forest. For Carnelian the sight was punishment enough. With ropes, with levers cut from the branches of the fallen trees themselves, the sartlar had dragged and rolled the vast trunks towards the knoll so that they now enclosed it with a rampart of wood. This operation had ripped dark swathes through the meshing of dead ferns. All that was left of the baobabs in the clearing were the livid eruptions of their stumps.

Osidian pronounced himself satisfied. 'All that remains to be done is to excise those roots and then we shall burn the ferns and it will all be as smooth as a legionary parade ground.'

Carnelian could not believe Osidian was blind to the desecration. 'How do you propose we remove the stumps?'

'Dig them out, burn them.' Osidian shrugged. 'Do whatever works. I want them all removed.'

'Yes, my Lord,' said Carnelian, enough anger leaking into his voice to make Osidian raise an eyebrow.

Then I shall return to my wood-walled citadel,' he said, and smiled as if he had made some great jest. Carnelian was glad his moroseness caused the smile to slip from Osidian's face. He watched him, Krow and the guards until they reached the dwarfing wall of trunks. Beyond, towering over the clearing, baobabs stood like Masters on the knoll.

Smoke from the burning stumps was choking the air when new arrivals clambered up out of the chasm in a dark and oily flood of flesh. Hundreds more Marula warriors and, in among them, a swarm of pygmies laden with baskets.

Carnelian had been supervising the gouging out of a stump. He had grown weary of the obstinate grip which the roots maintained upon the earth. Over the two days they had been working at it, he had grown to hate the stumps, oozing water as if they wept, each root having to be dug out, prised one by one like the fingers of a frantic hand until the mutilated tree was forced to release its grip on the earth.

Watching the Marula pour up onto the ravaged escarpment, Carnelian saw with what horror they surveyed his work. He did not like the looks they gave him and threw himself with redoubled fury into his work of destruction.

It was growing dark when the last stump was torn free. They rolled it so that its roots pointed up into the air in a grotesque mockery of the trees that had once stood there. Carnelian could not bear to wait until morning to order the burning.

As night fell, the stumps became infernal heads with fiery hair. Carnelian himself helped the sartlar spread fire across the ground they had cleared. Soon flames were crackling and popping on every side, lighting up the sartlar in an ungainly shadow dance. Eventually, the heat and the choking drifts of smoke drove them all to the safety of the knoll. From behind its wall of cut-down trees, Carnelian could see the whole escarpment luridly ablaze. Fire spread from the clearing to the ragged edge of the baobab forest and licked at the trunks, making Carnelian fear all the forest might be consumed.