The Standing Dead (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Read online

  ‘Be silent,’ the homunculi chanted in unison.

  Suth stared at the Sapients, startled that they should address him thus.

  ‘Alive or dead, we shall find Osidian Nephron,’ said Tribute. ‘If you had not delayed us we might have found him in time. Now, it is he that will be sacrificed in place of his brother. The Jade Lord Molochite shall assume the Masks and we will transform him into the Twin Gods when the Rains begin the renewal of the earth in two days’ time.’

  ‘A propitious date mirroring the elevation of his grandfather, Nuhuron, on the same intercalating day at the beginning of the last forty-eight-year cycle,’ said Rain.

  Law leaned forward and made his homunculus speak. ‘As for you, Seraph Suth, for the part you have played in this both you and your House shall be punished.’

  Suth was chilled by the certainty of that statement. The Wise were speaking as if the Great were directly subject to their will. It was his heart that urged him to speak to them about Carnelian. He considered whether it would serve only to draw down on him their wrath, but in the end, he had to know.

  ‘And my son?’

  ‘If he is found, we shall examine his part in this affair so that he may receive punishment according to the Law.’

  Suth commanded the ammonite guide not to take him back to his halls in the wall of the Plain of Thrones, but instead south-west towards the Forbidden Garden. Soon they were lost among the winding ways. Though the faces of the sepulchres were hidden in the darkness of the ceiling, Suth could feel their gaze on him. A paleness far away showed that the world outside was feeling the dawn. As they neared the edge of the Labyrinth, he could see some rays of sun catching on the Sacred Wall. The sky was clotted with angry cloud. The Wise had declared that the downpour would begin in two days’ time. The Skymere was still in dusk. The brilliance of the terraces was still subdued, but he could see how they cascaded down the slope towards the sombre lagoons of the Yden. He searched them, hoping for some quick, pale movement that might have been Carnelian. Suth could not remember when his life had not been dominated by his passion to save his son. Now, at the very brink of victory, he had lost him and with him, everything.

  FALLEN ANGELS

  I have only tears

  To water my face

  Until the black sky comes

  (Quyan fragment)

  MUFFLED CROWS FLUTTERING ROUND MADE HIM WONDER VAGUELY IF IT was their beaks he could feel stabbing all the way up his back. His mind cleared enough for him to know he was curled up in the dark. Not crows but men were speaking beyond the wall that was coiling him tighter. Elbows were thrusting their blades into his ribs. Thighs were squeezing his belly. His knees were coated with a moist itchy and stinking skin of vomit. He could feel every tremor in the wall through his wedged-back toes. They were rubbing raw but his ankles would not bend enough to allow his heels to take the strain. Trying to drag his skull free from the jaw-clamp of his knees only grated the knobs of his spine down the wall like gear teeth. The scuffing burn forced him to groan out all the breath he had in his chest. His flesh crowded in to smother him. He managed to inflate his lungs a little before his legs closed like the handles of bellows. His heart pumped him against the wall as he choked on a soundless scream.

  Suddenly, light flooded from above. A breeze coated his scalp with chill sweat. Jerking breaths, Carnelian worked his head free from between his knees, then hinged it back against the cramp in his neck, slitting his eyes against the dazzle. He was slow to realize someone was looking down at him. When he did, it was hard to focus. A grey bearded face, one half blacked by tattoos.

  ‘Ichorian,’ he breathed.

  The man’s halved face had the roundest eyes and gape, the most ashen pallor. That it was the right hand side that was tattooed proclaimed him to be one of the Red Ichorians that guarded the canyon entry into Osrakum. Carnelian let out a sigh of relief that he had been rescued, only remotely aware that his face was naked to the man’s stare. The effort of holding his head up became too great, so that he had to drop it back into the cradle of his knees.

  ‘Please,’ he mumbled, ‘help me … out of this … thing.’ Silence made him find the strength to lift his head again. ‘Release me.’

  Still staring, the man shook his head.

  ‘Now!’ barked Carnelian, the eruption disrupting his breathing into a gulping cough.

  The Ichorian’s clammy hands trembled towards him. ‘Master … can I …? What can I …?’ The man made several attempts to touch him, but each time pulled back as if Carnelian were simmering plague.

  Carnelian could see the tear trail bright on the man’s tattooed cheek. ‘But you … are sworn … to our service,’ he hacked out between breaths.

  The man’s unmarked hand strayed to his throat where the collar he had worn had left its ghost. The hand fell and splayed itself before Carnelian’s eyes so that he was able to read the tattoos of the man’s service record: the number thirty-nine; a pomegranate and a curved diagonal cross above a zero ring beneath two bars.

  ‘You see, Master, I achieved the rank of Righthand in a tower of the pomegranate dragons.’ The old soldier looked worn out, used up.

  Carnelian was confused. Each snatch of breath squeezed a tear stinging from his bruised eye. ‘Please …’

  ‘How did …? Who has dared put you in this urn, Master?’

  The man glanced away, focusing on something else nearby. Guilt stabbed Carnelian in the guts. Osidian. He had forgotten his beloved. ‘Another urn … is there another urn?’

  The Ichorian looked down, startled, dipped a nod before gazing away again. ‘… Another Master?’ he whispered.

  ‘Open it …’ Carnelian hissed. ‘He might be … smothering.’

  The Ichorian’s head moving away revealed rafters sagging under yellow, mouldering plaster. Where were they? Desperation to see Osidian convulsed Carnelian. He became an animal in a trap and would have gnawed away half his body to break free.

  Shadow fell across him. ‘Calm yourself … Master. He’s dead.’

  Despair clamped Carnelian’s body still, making his urn shudder audibly. His breathing stopped and it was a fight to regain its rhythm. Ringing in his ears. ‘Drugged …’ he said, as forcefully as he could.

  ‘Drugged? Oh, I see …’ The Ichorian disappeared again.

  To keep the panic at bay, the grief, Carnelian forced himself to count his breaths. Eleven had passed before the Ichorian spoke again.

  ‘You’re right, Master, it’s deep sleep, not death.’

  Relief flooded through Carnelian.

  The light dimmed again. ‘You were to be buried alive then?’

  ‘Alive …?’

  ‘The Masters send me their servants dead in urns. I bury them.’ The man’s eyes opaqued. ‘They don’t know I open them.’

  Under its tattoos, his face greyed. ‘I’m dead.’

  ‘Release me,’ hissed Carnelian, ‘and I’ll protect you.’

  The man’s eyes came back into focus. ‘But I’ve seen your face.’

  ‘I’ll … deny it.’ Carnelian drew hope from the Ichorian’s confused expression.

  ‘Master, who dared strike you; dared put you in these urns?’

  Carnelian was loath to name the Dowager Empress lest the Ichorian become terrorized. ‘My enemies.’

  ‘Masters, no doubt and more powerful than you or else you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘They … trapped us.’

  ‘And me with you, Master.’ With a fixed grimace the Ichorian looked round as if he were searching for somewhere to hide. His head shook.

  ‘Even not knowing I’ve seen you, they’re bound to have me killed.’

  ‘Trust me … I’m the son of … He-who-goes-before.’

  The Ichorian gave him an idiot stare. He licked his half-black lips. ‘If that’s true, Master, that only makes it worse for me.’ His eyes were twitching. ‘I must run … find a hole to hide in.’

  ‘Where could … you go? Your face betrays you.’


  The Ichorian’s face went blank. ‘True … true … I must go far … bury myself away from prying eyes … maybe in a house in one of the more remote Ringwall cities … never go out … keep a servant to do for me … perhaps a blind slave … might need more than one … wealth … much wealth to buy this new life. Much, much wealth. A chest overflowing with bronze coins wouldn’t be enough.’ The Ichorian’s greedy eyes made Carnelian flinch. ‘Yes, a vast sum is needed … vast.’

  ‘Sum?’

  The Ichorian smiled uncertainly, but when he spoke, his voice had calmed. ‘There’s a man, in the south, in the city of Makar. I sell him relics.’

  Carnelian went cold.

  ‘Why else do you think I’d force open a funerary urn?’

  Carnelian did not want to hear any more.

  ‘In the cities of the Guarded Land, there are rich merchants to whom nothing’s more precious than things that have belonged to a Master. By such charms they keep at bay their fear of you. Before today, all I’ve had to sell were flays of pale skin, some sky-coloured eyes; all from marumaga, naturally, but from those choice marumaga in the Mountain close to you whose whiteness the barbarians have no way of knowing is mere amber to your snow. Don’t flinch. Now that I have you, I’d be a fool to cut, to deface a living Master … such a trophy must be worth at least a wagonload of bronze. If only I can find a way to take you south …’

  As the Ichorian walked away, Carnelian concentrated on his breathing.

  ‘Here, drink … I might be gone some time.’

  Carnelian turned his face up as the Ichorian tipped water. Most of it found his mouth, though some trickled into the hot crevices of his flesh. It was Carnelian’s choking that made the Ichorian stop and look down with fear.

  ‘You mustn’t die.’

  ‘The other …’ Carnelian managed to say.

  ‘Why wake him from his drugged sleep?’ He leaned closer, scrunched up his nose. ‘You’re only awake because you threw up.’

  ‘Please … bind us … with ropes if you have to … free from these …’

  The Ichorian frowned then shook his head. ‘I prefer to keep my angels safe in their bottles.’

  ‘But …’ blurted Carnelian, choking on his anger, but the Ichorian was already eclipsing the light with the lid. Its weight squeezed Carnelian’s head back between his knees.

  In the outer world he heard the Ichorian say: ‘Bide your time, Master, I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  His thighs compressing his lungs denied Carnelian a roar of rage. A part of him knew that he must calm himself, lest he should shut off the narrow passage of his breathing, but panic made him lose control. Pressure roared in his ears; his muscles strained against the earthenware wall. Even through his convulsions, he felt the urn rock. Suffocating, he clutched at this tiny power over his world and he made his prison tip. The urn, lifting a little off the ground, punched his whole body as it settled back. He tried this repeatedly. At last, the toppling continued, seemingly forever. He tensed hungry for the smash of freedom, but there was only an earthquake then blackness.

  He came to in darkness. His aching flesh was still packed into the urn but the pressure its wall exerted was now greater down his left side. Air cooled his shaved scalp. He unhooked his neck. That freedom told him that the lid must have been knocked out. Craning, he saw faint cracks of light; a vague uneven floor. Remotely, he was sure he could hear a murmuring of crowds. It came as a shock to realize he must be in the City at the Gates and so out of Osrakum. He listened to the city, remembering his journey through it. A yearning to be among its people made his heart pound. He hinged his head back against the rough earthenware lip as if that might pull his windpipe out of the urn and after it his lungs. He craved just one, deep chestful of air. It was no good. He calmed himself, concentrating on the quick throbbing of his blood. It occurred to him rescuers might be within earshot. He lifted his thighs with his expanding chest, then collapsing, let out a long, ragged wailing. With short, fast snatches of breath, he raced to another cry, then subsided, exhausted, hungry for some response. None came.

  A thunderclap shook the room. The first gustings of a gale were catching in the angles of the walls and roofs outside. Carnelian rolled his eyes up to search for the black massing of Osidian’s urn, but no shadow had a belly curve. With a cold flush, he began to fear that his cries might have woken him into the same suffering. Surely if Osidian were awake he would have made some response. The rattlings and whistling of the gathering storm were merging into a single voice.

  Osidian hears you but is keeping silent.

  Why does he keep silent? He’s not dead! Carnelian sounded the words over and over again in his mind. Angry then? Yes, better that he should be angry. But not with me, not angry with me. Why should he be angry with me?

  Why not? the storm said, wasn’t it you who put him in the urn, who cheated him of his life, his destiny?

  The venom of what the sybling Hanuses had said to him infused into his heart. Their two faces swayed sneering down at him from their single head. He tried to squeeze the poison out by blaming the Dowager Empress, Ykoriana, whose creatures the syblings were; by blaming the Lord Jaspar who had conspired with her, but it did not appease the nagging of the storm. You persuaded Osidian against his judgement down into the wilds of the Yden far from all protection. Ykoriana’s henchmen only had to follow you to capture him. You have betrayed not only your beloved, but your father and all your people. It was always thus. All whom you have loved, you have betrayed.

  As the storm tore the world apart, Carnelian could not wedge his head deeply enough between his knees to shut it out.

  A tremor of footfalls jerked Carnelian free of a gnawing half-slumber. Some rays of light, a cry of surprise, the wind of something rushing up. He caught a glimpse of the Ichorian’s tattoo-shadowed face, then felt the judder of the man’s fists clamping to the rim of the urn. As Carnelian was lifted upright, it seemed to him the plaster ceiling was falling.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ the Ichorian said.

  Carnelian was grateful for the human tones that stripped the storm of its voice.

  The Ichorian moved away, then Carnelian heard the grinding as a lid was slid off another urn.

  ‘M-Master …’ the Ichorian’s voice trembled. His face returned to hover above Carnelian. The man seemed shaken. His gaze fell on Carnelian.

  ‘I’ve arranged passage for us. It was hard, dangerous, but what’s to come will be more dangerous still. I’m going to have to bind the lid closed.’

  He stood back.

  ‘Don’t either of you even think of making a sound,’ he said, shrilly. ‘I’ve hired deaf mutes as porters. Be certain of this: if I hear even a sigh, I’ll tip you both from the boat. You’ll drop to the lake bottom and be drowned.’

  He grunted as he hoisted the lid and perched it on the lip of Carnelian’s urn.

  ‘I’ll be going with you all the way.’

  The lid forced Carnelian’s head down. As the Ichorian secured the lid with ropes, he kept up a chatter, his voice muffled: ‘I’ve nothing to lose now. I’m leaving everything behind, even my slave. That way, no one will think I’m going away, not if I leave everything behind. It’s the best thing to do. It’s the only thing to do.’

  A kick on the urn wall caused Carnelian’s back to spasm.

  ‘I only need one of you to sell, so don’t imagine that I won’t drown the other if I have to.’

  *

  Curled in the stinking dark, Carnelian felt the poles rasp by his head as they slid through the carrying handles. As he was swung into the air, the earthenware ground the raw meat of his back and feet. Bouncing on the flex of the carrying poles, he chewed his tongue until his mouth filled with the iron taste of blood.

  At last, the urn was put down. When the agony had abated, he became aware of the swaying of a boat. With a judder, they set off. He tried to ignore the itch, the aching, his skinned flesh squelching in his own filth. Cries skimmed over hi
m like gulls. Sometimes there would be a clamorous buzzing and his mind’s eye would be assaulted by a vision of people climbing steps from the water up into the tenements of the city. Hubbubs vibrated past. When the boat clunked into others there were singing curses, or threats, once, a greeting.

  Even through the earthenware, he began to feel the dawn. As they slipped in and out of shadow, the sun warmed and cooled the urn wall. Gradually, his world grew so hot that he began to hope he might die cooked in its oven. He was cheated even of that. With a rustling something covered the urn and the heat soon ebbed away.

  Carnelian’s world shattered, tumbling him into dust. The air was screaming. Men were quarrelling. It took time for him to realize he was free. He sucked at the wind with a gasp that relaxed every joint in his body. His spine uncoiling sent a knife filleting all the way up his back. His eyes tore open. Even as he saw the roiling sky, he was dazzled blind.

  A voice shrieked: ‘You didn’t tell us what they were.’

  Caught between gulping at the air and the rub of grit into his raw back, Carnelian flopped on to his belly. After the urn wall, the ground was kind.

  ‘Masters! You’ve killed us all! They’re Masters!’

  Carnelian lifted his head and it became a keel in the flowing air. The world was rolling blackness. Dust pelted him. A lightning flash fixed a scene of more than a dozen men standing round him and, against the sky’s torment, a broken youth glowing white.

  ‘Osidian.’ The word had hardly vibrated Carnelian’s throat before the wind snatched it away. The dark fence of men recoiled as he rolled on to his knees. He sensed their cowering but it was Osidian who was the heart of his gaze. Carnelian rose, tottered unused to his legs, stumbled a few steps, then fell kneeling at Osidian’s side. He reached up to touch an icy shoulder. More lightning showed him the wounds up his lover’s back.

  ‘Osidian,’ he moaned and reached out to lift him. ‘Beloved.’ He pulled at his shoulders but Osidian refused even to lift his head.