The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 (46 page)

'But we're all of one House
...
I'm Suth Carnelian.' He realized that the woman might find his face no proof at all. Suddenly he made a fist and cried, 'Look.' He thrust out his hand so that the woman could see the Ruling Ring on his hand.

Fey leaned forward, choked a cry and crumpled into the pebbles. 'Master,' she said from Carnelian's feet, 'oh, Master.'

Carnelian crouched down and putting his hands round Fey's shoulders lifted her
gently
. It was only then he saw the tears striping her face.

'Are you so happy, Fey?'

'Of course happy, Master, but also I grieve for our Master, your father.'

Carnelian shook the woman. 'When did the news come? When did it come?'

'News
...
news?' spluttered Fey. The ring, Master, the ring.'

Carnelian let her go. He looked at the Ruling Ring on his finger. Would that finger soon be its proper place? He held his head at his stupidity. There had been no time for any news. 'I'm a fool,' he said aloud.

Fey was dabbing tears from her eyes. The guardsmen looked miserable. These strangers were also his people. He was forgetting his duty to them.

'I'm sorry, Fey. You misunderstood me.' He removed the Ruling Ring. 'I don't have the right to wear it. It's a long story. My father was ill when I parted from him in the Valley of the Gate. The Wise'll heal him and then we'll have him back here with us.'

His confidence visibly cheered the guardsmen. Fey looked uncertain.

'I hope I didn't hurt you? When I shook you? I forgot myself
..
.'

Fey stared.

Carnelian put his hands up to his mask. 'Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to remove this thing.' 'Master, your will's our will.'

Carnelian removed the mask, rubbed at the grooves in his skin, smiling at Fey, allowing her to search his face. 'You see my father?'

Fey looked hard at him then nodded unconvincingly, giving a thin smile. 'Yes, Master.'

'I'd rather you cut that out, Fey. My name's Carnelian.'

Fey frowned, shook her head. 'It's forbidden me to soil a Master's name with my tongue.'

It was Carnelian's turn to frown. The thought of his next question made him grimmer still.

Fey spoke first. 'My Master, your robe's wet.'

'Never mind that. Where're the other Masters, my kin?'

'In the Eyries, Master.' Carnelian must have looked uncertain because Fey turned to point up the Sacred Wall.

Carnelian scanned the craggy heights. It took him a while before he saw what looked like scratches halfway up to the sky.

'More than fifty days ago our Masters went up there to avoid this heat. I'll make immediate preparations for you to join them, Master.'

Carnelian was still looking up. 'Perhaps tomorrow, Fey. Tonight I'd like to stay down here.'

Fey looked aghast. That's impossible, Master.'

'Why?'

These halls have become unsuitable for a Master. Workmen're everywhere
...
the Master must understand that we always carry out restoration work when the Masters go up to the Eyries
...
furniture's been stored away
...
Master, there's no accommodation suiting of your rank.'

'You'll find me easy to please, Fey.' He silenced any more of her protests with his hand and eventually, accepting that she was not going to change this strange young Master's mind, Fey led him off into the palace with the escort of the guardsmen, some of whom carried his soaking train.

Carnelian and the escort were a thread pulled by Fey's needle. There was a hall that was like a wood, its sultry air nuanced with odours. The day was only a glowing band in the distance. He felt more than saw the eyes in the mosaics. Murals had the colours of concealed jewels. Wisps of voices ribboned between the columns. A door closing seemed an echo still lingering from the day before. Floors rainbowed like oil on water. Sometimes he glimpsed courts whose colours were more vibrant than any dream. Awe infected him like a fever so that, when he saw the eye and dancing chameleon ward on the lintels of a door, he sighed his relief that they were leaving the echoing grandeur of the public chambers.

At Carnelian's request, they left the guardsmen behind. Against Fey's protests, Carnelian insisted on carrying his wet train in the crook of his arm. Steps took them down into a courtyard carpeted with the petals that were drizzling down from the trees. They kicked their way through the drifts, walking round the urns that held the trees. At the edge of the courtyard there rose a gate of white wood warded with eyes.

As they walked away from the gate Carnelian reached out to touch Fey's shoulder. The halls of a subsidiary lineage?'

The woman blushed. The halls of the first lineage.' 'But then why
...
?'

Fey bowed her head. They've long been occupied by the secondary lineage. There've been changes, Master.'

Carnelian looked up at the white doors. 'Have there?' he said, and not wanting to make trouble for her, he allowed her to lead him away.

Several more gates and courtyards brought them to a door in a wall. Fey pushed against it and Carnelian leaned over her to help. They walked into a small courtyard around which ran raised porticoes. Water slid round its edge in a shallow channel. In one place its lip had crumbled and water oozed down, greening the marble, running into a puddle. Some dull bronze troughs held dry, brown-leafed trees whose parched earth had pulled away from the sides. Dust greyed the precious inlay walls.

This quarter hasn't been used in a while,' said Carnelian, trying to hide his disappointment. He would not let Fey kneel.

Fey grimaced as she looked round her. These were some of the halls of the third lineage, Master. They now occupy the quarter traditionally belonging to the second, who—'

'Who now occupy my father's halls,' said Carnelian heavily.

Fey cringed a little, as if she were expecting a blow.

'As you said, Fey, there've been changes.'

Fey went over to one of the withered trees, touched its plug of soil, shook her head. This shouldn't have been allowed.' She looked back at Carnelian. 'You must believe that I did everything I could, Master.'

Carnelian walked up to Fey and put his arm round her shoulders. The woman went so stiff that Carnelian immediately pulled his arm away. 'I do believe you. Now come on, show me where I can wash away this paint.'

They walked together round several more courtyards till they came to an echoing suite of chambers whose lofty vermilion walls were mosaiced with slender waving lilies and soaring birds.

'For one night, perhaps, these chambers'll be adequate for the Master,' said Fey, opening tall blue rectangles of sky in a faraway wall.

Narrowing his eyes against the glare, Carnelian crossed the marble mirror floor. He stood beside Fey in the flooding sunlight. Below, a pebbled cove smeared its green into the azure of the Skymere. Further off was the fiery emerald vision of the Yden and the Pillar of Heaven towering up from its heart. Carnelian closed his eyes and drew in the perfume of Osrakum. 'Miraculous,' he sighed.

When he opened his eyes Fey was smiling at him. 'You
are
like your father, Master.'

Carnelian felt a twinge of guilt as he looked at the barrow of the Labyrinth mounding up from the Yden. How could he feel joy when his father might be there, somewhere, dead?

Fey saw his frown. To wash you'll need slaves, Master. I'll send them to attend you, and to clean up this mess. If the Master'd allow me to guide him
...'
She w
aited to see him move, then bustl
ed out through another door.

Carnelian followed her on a long walk to a chamber of yellow marble. One whole wall was so thin that it glowed as it filtered daylight.

'It's like being inside a sea shell,' Carnelian said in delight.

Fey walked to the door. 'I'll go and fetch body slaves.' Carnelian touched her arm. 'I'd rather be alone.' Fey looked startled. 'But who'll
wash you, Master?' The Master'll
wash himself.'

Fey's eyebrows lifted and creased her brow. 'As the Master wishes, so shall it be done.'

As Carnelian slipped the damp robe off, something cracked to the floor. Crouching, he picked it up. It was the jade pebble. He frowned when he saw that its spiral had cracked in two. He put the pieces inside the hollow of his mask and put that face down on the robe. He went to the water wall and fiddled with the golden sluices set into its channels. At last he managed to braid the
water into a single splashing waterfall. He gasped as he slid into its envelope, tensing in the cold. It roared over his head. The paint leached away down his legs. The water pooling round his feet was like milk, but soon ran clear.

At
HOME

A rose watched withering

Waits forgotten In this forbidden house

Youth's blush frowned grey

Perfume faded Left only her thorns

(from the poem 'Beyond the Siltter Door' by the Lady Akaya)

Although the pillar of heaven was already crowned with gold, the twilight was only thinning at its feet. Osrakum still slept. The narrow arc of the crater's faraway wall was still black. Only its glowing edge showed where the sun was beginning to set the sky alight. The lake was cataracted with mist. The Yden was grey. Carnelian inhaled sweet vaporous morning. He rubbed his cheek on the blanket. Its humming-bird feathers bristled and changed colour along the folds. He had climbed out onto the roof. His sleep had been troubled and that first gleam on the Pillar and the paling sky had drawn him with the hope of a new day.

The indigo above was growing blue. Carnelian looked

south-west to where a mountainous buttress of the Sacred Wall hid the next coomb. He followed the wall's sweep round to the Valley of the Gate. There he watched turquoise begin to seep into the edge of the lake as if the colour were flooding out from the valley. The brightening crept across the lake to the Ydenrim and then up to reveal emeralds sparked with amber. Sunrise now lit the Pillar to its foot and speared its shadow back across the lake. Fire spread over the Labyrinth mound, caught on the flank of the Plain of Thrones. The sun's disc melting up from the Sacred Wall forced him to quit the roof for fear of it tainting his skin with its gold.

Carnelian grew solemn as he climbed back into the chamber. Today he would have to face his kin. The smell of sleep was coming off his body, but he did not feel like braving a shivering waterfall. Besides, the day's meetings were bound to require a formal cleansing and that required servants. He looked round for something to throw on. He wandered through several chambers but they were empty of everything but the echoes of his footfalls. Eventually he was forced to return to the small chamber in which he had slept in preference to the vast bedchamber Fey had given him. He removed the broken pieces of the jade spiral from inside his mask. When he lifted the hollow face he saw the letter that had been put un
der it. He stared at the perfectl
y folded, creamy rectangle. He picked it up and smelled its rich waft of attar of roses. Its wax seal bore the circular impression of a blood-ring. He broke it open. The parchment had only two panels. At first the glyphs looked strange. They were unlike the ones he or his father would make. He used the faces to gauge the differences in the style as his father had taught him. Soon the pictures were forming the sounds in his mind.

Sardian, you are returned. Your mother's eyes are impatient to behold
you though they have so patientl
y waited out the years. Come, mount the steps. There is much that you must know.

He looked again at the ring of glyphs and numbers in the wax. It was as he had thought. There beside the Suth chameleon was the glyph 'Urquentha', his grandmother's name. He frowned. What had made her think that he was his father? He read it again then, folding it carefully, tucked it into the mask. He picked up the green robe. Its odour of lilies made him hurl it into a corner. Instead, he secured the feather blanket round his waist, picked up the mask and walked off to open the outer door.

A procession of pillars held back the shadow from an avenue that led off to a vague archway. He stopped to listen. Only birdsong embroidered the silence. He stepped into the hall, spreading his foot down over cool stone. He walked towards the grey courtyard.

When he reached its edge he looked across its fish-scale cobbles to the distant gates. The raised portico running round it was still in darkness. A flight of steps that led down to the cobbles was flanked by tripod urns of mossy bronze. He noticed a figure hunched on the end of one of the steps and padded towards it. When he was near he stretched out and touched it lightly on the shoulder.

The figure jumped to its feet and whisked round.

'Master ...' it gulped. It was Fey, eyes wide, her hand pressed over her chest.

'Forgive me, I didn't mean to startle you,' said Carnelian.

Fey shook her head, panting, made uncomfortable by the apology and the glare of so much white skin. 'Master, I was waiting for you. I've taken the liberty of having some breakfast prepared.' She indicated a low table set between two columns, overlooking the courtyard. 'I've also sent for servants of all the different kinds so that the Master might choose a household for himself.'