The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Read online

  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 corner 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 body-paint. 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.’

  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?

  He ran back to join Tain. Dozens of lines were stitching the ship to the quay. She was being pulled in. More lines were thrown over and secured. Men slid down them like oil drops on a string. There was a constant milling on the deck. Then it stopped. Suddenly. Two or three huge figures had appeared and were moving to the bow. Everything else was still, save for the ship’s rise and fall. Even the wind had dropped.

  ‘Masters,’ said Tain, flickering uneasy eyes at Carnelian.

  ‘They can’t be,’ Carnelian said, though he had been thinking the same.

  ‘But look, Carnie, all those around them,’ Tain pointed, ‘they’re doing the prostration. And look at them, look how huge they are. Only Masters are so big.’

  Even in the twilight, at that distance, the shapes had some quality of grace that suggested they were indeed of the Masters.

  ‘What would Masters be doing coming here?’ Carnelian muttered, but his words were snatched away by the wind.

  Carnelian and Tain had watched the tall figures leave the ship and move along the quay, towering amidst the smaller men who carried torches. The procession had climbed the road round to the Holdgate and out of sight. Then, nothing. The brothers were left to sit waiting by the fire, each wrapped in his own thoughts.

  The sound of the door opening made them both jump up. Two guardsmen appeared carrying a white chest between them. Carnelian
pointed to where they could put it down.

  Another man had come in behind them. His eyes were stitched closed. ‘The Master bade me say to the Lord his son that he should be attired as if he were in Osrakum.’ The blindman spoke in accented Quya. Tain looked round. The words were just sounds to him. Only a few people of the household understood the mysterious tongue of the Masters.

  ‘He said that . . . you’re certain he said that?’ Carnelian asked, shifting the conversation into Vulgate.

  ‘I’m sure, Master.’

  Carnelian mused, now certain beyond any doubt that the visitors were Masters. He went over to the chest. With customary unease he noted how the eyeless man followed his movement. The creature came towards him, held out his hand and opened it to reveal two packets. ‘These the Master bade me put into his son’s own hand. I’m to say that, once he’s properly dressed, his son should attend the Master in his hall.’

  Carnelian took the windings of soft leather. He unwound one. Inside was a long narrow piece of exquisitely worked jade pierced by three finger holes.

  He gaped at it. ‘A Great-Ring.’

  He turned the ring till its carving held the light. It had been his mother’s. He unwound the other package. It contained a second ring. Worn together, they were a sign of his blood-rank. His mother’s blood had been so pure, she had been entitled to wear a third. He slipped the rings on. His hand had not grown into them yet. He hooked his fingers to make sure that the rings would not fall off and lifted them. They gashed his hand like cuts.

  Tain was kneeling before the chest, sighing his hands over the smooth ivory. It was worked all over with a writhing of chameleons whose eyes were the rivets of copper that held the chest together.

  For a moment they looked at each other, overbrimming with excitement.

  ‘Come on, Tain, we must hurry,’ said Carnelian.

  They pushed back the lid, then gasped. Inside the chest wondrous garments were dulled like butterflies in chrysalises of waxed parchment. As they drew them out the room filled with the scent of lilies. They marvelled at them. Tain stripped Carnelian and then one by one he put them on him. The first few were tissues so fine they floated on the air. The ones further down in the chest were heavier and interwoven with precious stones. The garments fitted over each other like the pieces of a puzzle. The final robe was of grey samite: stiff silk brocaded with coral pins. It hung as heavily as chains and was a little too long.

  At the bottom of the chest Tain found a box holding a circlet of black-grained silver wreathed with turquoises and jades. Carnelian had to put this on his head himself because Tain could not reach.

  Tain stepped back, wide-eyed. ‘You’re transformed into a Master, Carnie.’

  ‘I’ve always been a Master, Tain,’ snapped Carnelian. He felt vaguely silly, weighed down, overdressed. ‘I suppose I should go.’

  ‘But you must see for yourself,’ his brother cried. He ran over to the copper mirror. As he struggled to set it up against the wall, it shot glimmers through the rafters.

  Carnelian allowed his head to droop under the weight of the circlet. He scowled, but when he lifted his head again he drew back. ‘By the Two . . .’ A strange being was lurking in the copper. Carnelian had to move from side to side to convince himself it was his own watery reflection.

  He thought of the tall men drifting along the quay. Masters. The Chosen, he corrected himself, using the Quya name they called themselves. His stomach churned. In all the world there were only three kinds of men: the Chosen, the half-caste marumaga and the rest, the barbarians. He realized Tain was looking at him, and could see that his own unease was spreading to that marumaga face. Carnelian remembered who he was and the duty he had to the boy. He dragged up some confidence and put it in his voice. ‘It’s time for me to go, Tain. Please fetch my mask.’

  His brother went off to find it. When he came back, he offered the mask to Carnelian in both hands, with reverence. Carnelian took the hollow face and held it up so that it looked back at him. Flamelight poured over the gold and put hidden life into its eyeslits. Its straps hung like thick tresses. It had a cold, unhuman beauty. Carnelian fitted it over his face. It chilled his cheeks and forehead. He held it there while Tain went round behind him and reached to do up the straps. He breathed slow and deep through the mask’s nostrils as his father had taught him and fought down the feeling of being trapped. He had never liked wearing it. Many times his father had insisted that he must, so that he might get used to it, even though Masking Law required only a Ruling Lord to conceal his face from his household.

  The mask’s slits shielded Carnelian’s eyes from the fire glare. He found that he could see into the room’s dark corners. He distracted himself with this till Tain was finished with the straps.

  ‘I will go now.’ His voice sounded very close to him, flat, dead. ‘You may as well be off and join the rest of the household, Tain.’

  His brother’s face was half turned away, looking at him obliquely with a strange expression Carnelian had never seen before. Tain bowed. ‘As you say . . . Master.’

  Tain’s look was also there on the guardsmen’s faces. Carnelian disliked this new reverence, and the way they kept calling him ‘Master’. It made him feel as if they were setting him up in his father’s place. This was not his only unease as they walked through the barracks. He could see his escort were sensing something too. He tried to locate its source. Silence. It was the silence. The barracks were never silent. It was unnatural. He shivered. The air was dank. When they passed along the arcade it was all he could do to stop himself escaping through the door into the familiar warmth of the Great Hall.

  He noticed his men stiffen and then he straightened too as he saw the strangers. They were ranged in groups up the steps, men whose faces bore the marks of other Houses. He stared. Until then, every adult face he had ever seen, other than his father’s, had had its chameleon. The strangers’ faces were different. Some were bisected from hairline to chin by a horned-ring staff. Others were marked with the cross of dragonfly wings. A third group had the disc and crescent of the morning star tattooed like manic smiles. As these faces were variously marked, so did they differ in other ways. The bisected ones were round and yellow. The dragonflied ones were oval, with almond eyes that peeped out from between the wings of their tattoos. Those who wore painted smiles were swarthier than any people Carnelian had seen before. All the strangers were swathed in stained brown travelling cloaks. While some had two-pronged spears, others had their hands on sheathed sickles or four-bladed cross-swords. All this Carnelian saw in the instant before the strangers fell with a clatter before him into the prostration.

  He froze and his escort halted round him. The only men still standing had chameleoned faces. Two of these were his brothers: Grane, grim commander of the tyadra, and handsome Keal. Carnelian saw the uncertainty in the guardsmen’s faces as they looked at him. He watched them glance at Grane, anxious, looking for an order. The commander ignored them. Instead, he gave Carnelian an almost imperceptible nod. Carnelian watched his own hand rise up before him. It shaped the sign, Kneel. In twos and threes they went down. Proud Grane, the eldest of his brothers, was last of all to kneel. He pressed his brown hands together and pushed them out, as the others had done, as if offering himself to be tied up like a slave. Carnelian went cold, disliking their abasement. He stood alone as if in a field he had just reaped. His hand was there before him, the sign still locked into it. It looked like his father’s hand, for only he used such a command gesture. Carnelian forced himself to ascend the stairway. The doors of sea-ivory opened before him and he passed between them into his father’s hall.

  Four masks turned towards him. Carnelian faltered under their gaze, awed by the serene, unearthly beauty of those faces of gold. Four giants stood there beside the circular hearth. One he knew: his father in his jewelled robe. The other three, though much like him, were enveloped in great black hooded cloaks greyed with brine. In all his life Carnelian had seen no other Master
save for his father. He realized that in spite of all he had been told, until that moment he had believed his father a being without peer.

  Behind him the doors closed and the giants dropped their masks into the cradles of their hands, revealing white faces, long, finely boned, with eyes the colours of winter. Carnelian remembered that the Law commanded he must unmask when those higher than him did so. When he had fumbled the thing off he felt like a snail teased from its shell. He clutched the mask as he approached. Their skin was like light passing through ice. It took strength to keep his eyes up looking back at them. He found it. He would not bring shame on his father or himself.

  ‘Great Lords, behold my son, Suth Carnelian,’ his father said, looking at his son. Emotions were shifting in his eyes like fish in a pool.

  ‘So, Lord Suth, this is the son whom you have been hiding from us all these many, long years.’ The voice came as from a bronze throat. Its owner was even larger than his father. He was also older, much older, though unlike any old man Carnelian had ever seen. His skin had not wrinkled, rather it had thinned to alabaster. His eyes’ intense blue searched Carnelian’s face. The voice sounded again. ‘He has the jade-eyed beauty, this son of yours.’

  Suth frowned. ‘You flatter him, Lord Aurum.’ Their eyes locked together. Though their lips did not move, nor their hands, Carnelian was convinced they were speaking to each other. He saw the other two Masters were also watching them.

  Flames spluttered, hissed. Sparks seeded the air.

  ‘Perhaps I do,’ the old Master said finally, breaking off from the contest. He smiled but only with his lips. Suth turned back to his son. Carnelian could see he was controlling anger.

  ‘My son, let me make known to you our blood-pure visitors.’ His father opened a fist and lifted the hand to indicate the old Master. ‘Aurum, the Ruling Lord of that House. Your uncle.’ The old Master gave a slow nod but his glassy eyes never left Carnelian’s face.