The Chosen sdotc-1 Read online

  The Chosen

  ( Stone dance of the chameleon - 1 )

  Ricardo Pinto

  The Chosen

  Ricardo Pinto

  Flesh, knit bone to bone

  Your withered earth

  Ancient Mother

  Scorched tearless You await

  The Sky Lord come to thunder

  Rumbling His stormy belly

  Withholding His urgent seed

  Till He shall pierce You with His shafts

  Quench the burning air

  Rill and pool Your dusts

  Fill Your wounds with spiralling jades

  Till Your flesh swells up

  In the midst of breaking waters

  Clenching for release

  Thrust forth the Green Child

  Ten thousand times reborn

  Squeeze Him into the air

  Enjewelled by the morning

  To take sweet nurture

  At Your breasts That

  He might dance again

  And once more blow

  His scents Beneath the skies.

  Part of the 'Song to the Earth' from the Book of the Sorcerers translated into English.

  VISITORS

  Ice winds strike a flint-edged sea

  Splintering (lakes that scatter like birds.

  There, trees turn to gold then die

  As does all that is born of the sun.

  (origin unknown)

  All that day the wind had rattled the shutters and slanted the sky with snow, but in the warm heart of the Hold Carnelian sat with some of his people around a fire, listening to their talk. They were telling stories, the stories that those who could still remember told of their lives before the child-gatherers came for them. The words bleached his mind with the light of summers far away. He settled back into the chair dreaming, his eyes narrowed against the leaping dazzle of the flames. The tale rumbled on amid the whisper of women weaving, the remote clink and clatter of the kitchens, someone humming a song. Behind all this was the keening wind which made him shiver, then sink deeper into the comfort of the chair.

  A child's voice cried out, muffled, outside somewhere. The spell broke. Reddened faces turned from the fire. They looked down the hall, between the pillars. The great door opened and a girl slipped in. A gust of snow-spotted air lifted some of the tapestries. Carnelian rose with the others and drew his blanket round him.

  The girl ran towards them, all eyes, breathless. 'A boat.' Her lips shaped the word with exaggerated care. She made sure she saw the disbelief on every face. She grinned, delighted to be the centre of all their staring.

  Carnelian frowned. 'A ship?'

  The girl looked up at him and gave a hard nod. 'A ship, Carnie, I swear, a ship. It's there, on the sea. I saw it.'

  Carnelian gave his blanket to someone, strode away to pick up his cloak, threw it on, came back to the girl and offered his hand. 'Come, show me.'

  The girl reached up for it, sinking her chin into her chest, blushing. Her own fingers were very small and dark in Carnelian's milk-white hand. Together, they led a procession out from the hall. The cold hit them. Carnelian sent the old people back into the warmth. There's no need for you to come. I'll send word back if it's true.'

  Then he was letting the girl pull him off across the slushy courtyard. Some youngsters followed. They all huddled together against the wind but it slipped between them, ballooning up their blankets, ruffling the feathers on Carnelian's cloak.

  They had to cross two courtyards to reach the halls that looked east across the sea. Pavilions, slender-columned, in summer cooled with tiles and water. Now they were abandoned to the frost, but then they caught the breezes and were filled with sun and laughter.

  Their ear tips were burning when they reached the door to the tower. A stairway lay beyond down which the wind came screaming. They fought their way against it up the steps treacherous with ice. Slits let in spear-thrusts from the storm. They reached the top, girded themselves and staggered out into a raging roar.

  Turmoiled greys and blacks. Flurrying snow spitting at them, furring their eyes. Faces began aching. Carnelian went with the pull of the girl's hand, leaning into the gale. They reached the parapet and clung to it with numbing fingers. The girl gripped Carnelian for support. They both squinted. The sea was rolling its glass towards them all scratched with white. They felt the thunder as each wave detonated on the shore. Carnelian had to wipe his eyes. The girl was grimacing up at him shouting something. Her hand shook, pointing. Carnelian shielded his face with a cross of his arms and stared out. The disappointment was crushing. There was only the mounding terror of the sea. He was about to turn away, but then his heart quickened. He saw it, a sliver, a ship with sails stretched open like fingered wings, a ship flying towards them on the wrath of the storm.

  Leaving the others to make their way back to the Great Hall at their own speed, he leapt down the steps, almost soaring on the wind. He slipped a few times and fell once, scraping his elbow against stone. Then he was up again and running. He splattered his way back along the trail they had made. He reached the hall door, paused a moment breathing like a dragon, indecisive, heard the chatter and turned aside. Too many questions lay in that direction. Let the others spread the news.

  He used another smaller door, wound through some storerooms, passed along a corridor flickering with doorways. He could smell the spiced stew. Through clouds of steam he glimpsed people working in the kitchens. Nobody saw him. He reached the covered alleyway that snaked off northwards towards the Holdgate. A vague brightening down there showed where the alleyway opened into the Long Court. He went the other way, jogging along the ridged floor. He came to some steps and took them two at a time. The guardsmen of the tyadra were up there muffled in blankets, playing dice around a brazier. Their faces came up, each identically marked with his House tattoo: the chameleon, its goggle-eyes at the centre of their foreheads, its back swelling down their noses, the tail curling on their chins. A leg splayed out over each brow, each cheek. Glad to see him, they smiled, making the chameleons dance on their faces. They began to make a space for him, thinking he had come to share their watch.

  'It's not you lot I've come to see. Naith, there's news for the Master. Please announce me.'

  The man grinned crookedly. The Master said-'

  'I know, Naith. I'll take the responsibility.'

  Naith shrugged. He walked off to the end of the passage where a pair of sea-ivory doors caught his shadow. Standing before them the man seemed as small as a child. He hid his eyes in the crook of his arm and thumped the sea-ivory three times with the palm of his hand. His shadow shifted as it opened a crack. A mutter of voices. The door closed. Naith came back stiff-faced. 'I hope you know what you're doing.'

  Carnelian squeezed the man's arm, jerked a nod, then walked past him. The door jambs were painted with the warding eye: a warning to all that none must enter save at the express invitation of the Master. The paint had faded many times and as many times had been repainted. Waiting before the door, Carnelian ran his finger around the lip of a face that grimaced out of the sea-ivory. Only a year back he had been unable to reach so high. He felt the surface move away as the door opened. Through the gap he could see the fire that was the centre of the hall and off, beyond, in the half-light, loomed the shape of the Master of the Hold, the Ruling Lord Suth, his father.

  His father's beautiful face hung above Carnelian like the moon. 'Why do you disturb my meditations?'

  'I have seen a ship coming here,' said Carnelian in the same tongue, court Quya.

  His father's eyes narrowed. 'A dream?'

  'No, Father, I have come here straight from the East Tower. From its brow I saw the ship.'

  Suth noticed the water
that beaded the feathers of his son's cloak. 'A ship, you say?' He did not allow himself to smile, not wanting to hurt the boy's feelings.

  'It looked black and was in size and shape like my finger and had many sails spread to catch the gale.'

  His father frowned. 'A long black ship, with sails set, in this storm?'

  'Upon my blood, Lord.'

  'A baran,' his father muttered.

  The word was unknown to Carnelian and he did not like the pale expression that washed across his father's face as he spoke it.

  His father turned away. Opals woven into his robe blinked like the eyes of birds. He turned back looking severe. 'If your eyes have seen true, then we must make preparations to receive our visitors with proper state. Please go you to your chamber and make ready. You will not leave it until I send you summons and then only to come directly here. There shall be no deviation from that path.'

  His father's hand clamped his shoulder but it was more the grey eyes that held Carnelian fast. 'You do understand me?'

  'I do, my Lord,' said Carnelian and wondered at his father's manner.

  Then go, and do as you are bid.'

  Carnelian set off back to the sea-ivory doors. He was halfway round the fire when his father spoke again.

  'It is Naith who commands without, is it not?'

  'It is so, my Lord.'

  'Please send him in.'

  Carnelian strode down the alleyway with the memory of his father's face nagging him. He dismissed it by turning his thoughts to the visitors. What kind of people would be brave enough or, he corrected himself, foolhardy enough to be upon the sea in winter?

  He reached the arcade bordering the Long Court. Through its wooden colonnade he could see the air thickly feathered with snow. It drifted down into the rectangle of the court, dulling all familiar detail. In the wall opposite, orange light chinked out through closed doors and shutters. He squinted up to the eaves. The sky had an angry look. Night was nearing.

  He went to the back of the arcade and fumbled for the ring that opened another door into the Great Hall. He slipped into the warmth with its smell of spice and bodies and burning wood. Between the pillars people huddled gossiping.

  'Camie,' cried many voices as people rushed up, ‘what news? Can it really be true? A ship?'

  'I have seen it with my own eyes.' They clamoured round him. He rifted his hands and they quietened. 'Look, I've no time to talk. The Master'll be sending his commands to you soon enough. We must make ready for the visitors.' He pulled up the edge of his cloak. 'Even I'm to be made ready.'

  There was much grinning.

  ‘I’ll be off then. Someone please find Tain and ask him to come to my room.'

  Carnelian went back out into the cold and continued off down the alleyway into a tunnel. At its end an arch gave into the Sword Court Before he reached that he turned left onto a stairway. It took him up into the noisy warren of the barracks. He had slept here since he was five and had long ceased to notice the musky smell of men, though it made him feel safe.

  When he reached his room, he lifted the catch on the shutters, yanked them back, opened the parchment pane and craned out. Churning roaring sea and wind. Snow flocking in the air like gulls. His hair whipped his face. He saw the shoreline fading off to the western tip of the island. The road curved down from the Holdgate out onto the quay. Its long rectangle was a stillness amidst the undulating sea. He looked out along the rocky edge of the Hold. The cliff rose up to the bone-smooth masonry of his father's hall on its southern promontory. The blizzard blurred the view. Out there, beyond the shelter of the cliff, the sea lifted in a mountain that avalanched, foaming, into the bay. There was no sign of the ship.

  He closed the window and the shutters. It was a relief to shut out the storm. In the sudden quiet he unfastened his cloak and hung it up. He went over to the fireplace, stooped down, raked away the mantle of ash and began to wiggle sticks into the embers.

  When his half-brother Tain arrived, flames were shaking shadows up and down the walls.

  Carnelian jumped up. 'Gods' blood! I thought you'd never come.'

  ‘I didn't realize you were in such a hurry, Carnie, it's just-'

  'Never mind the justs. Come on, Tain, I need to get dressed.'

  Tain peeled the sodden layers off until Carnelian's body was revealed dull white, lean, shivering. Tain touched his skin. 'You should've stripped, Carnie, you're corpse-cold.' He coaxed Carnelian closer to the fire. 'Do you know what's going on?' he asked as he faded off into a comer of the room.

  'You mean you don't know about the ship?' said Carnelian after him.

  His brother came back with a stone flask, a bowl and a handful of pads. He made a face. 'Of course I do. I meant with the tyadra.'

  The tyadra?'

  Tain was pouring smoking liquid from the flask into the bowl. He looked up. His face was still too young to have the House tattoo. They're arming themselves and I just saw the Master sweeping past. He not only had Grane with him, but also Keal and several of the other commanders.'

  Carnelian felt uneasy. Their father rarely came out of his hall. In the past, he had been known to go to the Sword Court to supervise the training of the tyadra. When the spring came, he took them all hunting outside the Hold. On those occasions the tyadra bore weapons but at other times only those guarding his father were armed and even that was ceremonial. What threat could there be on their remote island?

  Carnelian had a hunch. 'Hold on a moment.' He went to the door and opened it. Sure enough, there were guardsmen in the corridor outside. 'What're you doing here?'

  The Master sent us to protect you, Carnie,' one of them said.

  'From what, Krib?'

  The man shrugged. The visitors?'

  'What's up with the tyadra?'

  'I think we're being readied for a fight, Carnie.' Krib glanced at the other guardsmen for support.

  Carnelian saw their long faces. He frowned. 'And you're stuck here having to look after me, is that it?'

  They looked down at their feet.

  Carnelian went back to his fire. He stopped in front of Tain, and did not see the question on his face. The bowl lay on the floor between them. Carnelian was remembering his father's look. Clearly, the Master thought the ship was bringing danger to the Hold.

  Tain stooped to the bowl and dipped a pad in it. Carnelian's head fell automatically. Tain stretched up to swab his forehead. The dullness came away to reveal the white gleam of skin beneath.

  Carnelian was only faintly aware of the cold then burn, and of the smell of camphor. He stood stone-still as Tain wiped off his bodypaint. He grunted when the pad stung his grazed elbow.

  'It's your own fault, Carnie,' said Tain. 'I don't know why you felt you needed your paint today. There's not enough of the sun to make a shadow, never mind taint your skin.'

  When Tain had finished the cleaning, he insisted on combing the tangle of Carnelian's black hair. Carnelian bore each yank in silence. His brother brought his best robes and put them on him one after the other. They were cut so that each layer beneath was partially revealed.

  'Do you want to wear jewels, Carnie?'

  Carnelian looked down and saw that his brother was offering him an open casket. He stirred the contents with a finger and fished out a brooch of apple-jade and ivory. He gave it to Tain. 'Do I look presentable?'

  Tain had heard the guardsmen discuss Carnie's beauty. Towering there he looked as if he might be fashioned from snow. The brooch matches the colour of your eyes and shows off the whiteness of your skin.'

  Carnelian threw a punch at his brother, thinking that he was being teased.

  Tain ducked away, chuckling. 'What now?'

  'Now I get to sit and wait,' said Carnelian, affecting cheerfulness.

  'You mean, we get to sit and wait.' Tain did not even try to hide his gloom. He had hoped to run off and find out what was happening, but he would not desert Carnelian. He brightened. 'We'll be able to see the ship coming in from here.'

&nb
sp; Carnelian leapt up. 'You're right.'

  They ran over to the shutters. Tain caught Carnelian's hand as it reached up to the catch. ‘I’d better do this, Carnie. You might dirty your robes.'

  Carnelian scowled but gave in. As the parchment window flew back, snow gusted in. Everything in the room flapped. They both peered out into the twilight. The blizzard had thinned. 'Can you see anything?'

  Tain shook his head, then reached back to tug on his brother's robe. 'Look!' he cried, pointing with the other hand.

  Carnelian leaned over him and saw the huge shape creeping towards the quay. She rocked slow and heavy. Lights flickered here and there across her deck. Her sails had been furled, leaving only the trunks of the masts.

  'She's going to smash herself to pieces,' cried Tain. And sure enough there was a terrible grinding that they could hear even over the wind. The ship grated along the quay but she did not founder. Carnelian watched, chewing his hand. He was not sure whether he wanted her safe. Flames flared as torches moved across the deck to collect on the ship's landward side. Their pulsing line defined the curve of her hull. Suddenly, the torches were sparking from the ship to the quay. Most snuffed out as they hit but others splashed spluttering light. Soon after, figures began flinging themselves over the side, trailing ropes. Some landed on the stone, others fell short and dropped into the sea. Carnelian watched with horror as the ship lunged away. Ropes tautened. Some of the men were pulled off the quay to disappear into the narrow channel of sea lying between the hull and the wall. When the ship came crushing back more men jumped off regardless. Those still on the quay were leaning back on their heels, straining against the ropes, struggling to tame her.

  Carnelian left Tain at the window and rushed to look into the corridor. The guardsmen were still there. 'No message come for me, no news?'

  'None, Carnie.' They were shaking their heads, looking worried.

  Carnelian tried to send one off to get news but he was refused with, 'The Master must be obeyed.' He knew that whenever one of his people said that it would take all his power of command to press further. He let it go. Why make trouble for the man?