Suth Lords. 'He will treat you as you treat him.'
'I see,' said Spinel. 'So on the basis that your father is a 'fair man' you would have me declare myself apostate before all the gathered Great and make the new Gods and Their mother my foes.' He shook his crowned head. 'I think not. I shall honour the agreement I have made with Molochite and we shall see what transpires.'
A Ruling Lord appeared towering at the edge of their group. Carnelian saw the House Imago dragonflies on his robe.
'Internecine conflict within the House Suth, tsk, tsk,' said Jaspar. 'Not that one can own to much surprise, to judge from the lack of care with which its Ruling Lord is wont to treat its interests.'
'My father's interests are his own, Jaspar.'
Looking at Jaspar, Spinel pointed at Carnelian. 'Lord Imago, my kinsman here was attempting to detach me from my agreements.'
'Indeed. That would be foolish, Suth Spinel. One should not lightly abandon one's commitments.'
'Spare us your threats, my Lord,' said Carnelian. 'My kinsman is already determined in his act of treachery. He had better only hope that when this election is over, Ykoriana will be able to protect him from my father's wrath.'
'Carnelian, you should not concern yourself overmuch with that. Once Molochite wears the Masks he will reward his friends and, no doubt, become an inconvenience to those whose lack of foresight led them to become his enemies.'
'We are not afraid-'
Carnelian was interrupted by a chime that shook the air all the way from the Chamber of the Three Lands.
'Aaah, cousin dear, we must discuss your fears some other time. You are summoned into the chamber.'
Another chime rang out. Carnelian waited for its reverberations to dull. 'In spite of all your treacheries, Jaspar, the victory will be ours.'
Jaspar laughed at him through his mask and walked off, dragging a train like a sunset sky.
Carnelian stood rigid, feeling set about with enemies as the bell's pealing shuddered over him. He felt a pulling at his sleeve. He looked up to see his own mask reflected in that of one of the third lineage Lords.
'Come, cousin, we must obey the call of the Turtle's Voice.'
Leading the Suth Lords, Carnelian made his way along the nave as the pealing gusted like a gale. The nave was filling with the processions of the Great like an armada of sails. The bronze trees of the chamber wall rose menacingly ahead. The moat caught their sinister reflection. The Great did not sail across the bridge, for the north-eastern gate was shut. They tacked round towards the south-east, making the gloomy journey to where Carnelian eventually could see the eastern doors were opening like sluice gates, releasing a flickering flood of light. The jewelled oblongs of the Great began bunching as they crossed the bridge accompanied by a shadowy reflected host moving in the moat's black depths. As they passed into the doorway they smouldered and then caught fire.
Carnelian slowed with the others, feeling the dazzle falling on him. A chime hit him with its wave. He began crossing the bridge and saw before him the interior of the chamber filled with a ring of the Lesser Chosen like a lake from which there rose an island fenced about with lantern posts. A wall feathered with fire hedged the Lesser Chosen in. Its whole flickering circuit was breached only where he saw a door open in the north and by the eastern door through which he was entering. Naphtha dragon odour wafted in the swell of the pealing bell.
He looked for the source of all that sound. A mound rose on the low island lying in the midst of the Lesser Chosen. Above this something floated like a summer moon. As he walked towards it down the avenue between the throng, he saw a hammer wielded by syblings hit this moon. It gave out a ripple of sound as if at that moment it had fallen from the sky into the sea. As the vibration rolled over him he faltered and, re-establishing the rhythm of his steps, he became aware of the void above his head. The chamber was open to the night sky. Looking upwards, his eyes could find nothing to see. Fathomless darkness, a dead sky unpricked with stars. He felt its emptiness pouring into his mind through the holes of his eyes and, dropping his gaze, he reminded himself how deep inside the Pillar's rock he was.
He was glad to reach the island's blood-red stone. He had disliked seeing himself twisted in the metal faces of the Lesser Chosen. Steps climbed between the lantern posts, which were tall and slender and grew six branches, each holding aloft a light. He saw the resemblance they bore to the watch-towers he had seen on the road and as he climbed past them he had a notion. The island he had come up onto was a perfect red circle inlaid with a network of silver lines. This was the Guarded Land with its roads. The lantern posts were set around its edge in the positions of the Ringwall cities. The floor of jade and malachite the Lesser Chosen were thronging represented with its greens the encircling lands of the barbarians. The platform that rose at the centre of the chamber seemingly of black glass was fenced by posts carrying the horned-ring of divinity. That was surely Osrakum with its Sacred Wall. The carved stone bell that hung above it in the black air was the Turtle's Voice, and, like the Pillar of Heaven, a connection between earth and sky. The chamber was a wheelmap made stone, the Commonwealth become geometry, the Three Lands captured within a ring of fire.
As the Great began to cover the platform of the Guarded Land, Carnelian led the Suth Lords along its rim, until he found the post in the north-west that represented Nothnaralan. From this the silver line of the Great Sea Road ran towards the Osrakum platform. Carnelian leaned on the lantern post and saw the road run down to be lost among the Lesser Chosen. He found Maga-Naralante, a spire rising in their midst, and against the chamber's flaming wall, Thuyakalrul's post.
'What are you doing, my Lord?' asked Tapaz.
Carnelian had forgotten the other Lords. 'I was looking for my past,' he said. Around them the Great were obscuring the red stone with their gold. Already he could not see over their heads to the avenue he had come along but only the upper part of the eastern door.
The Turtle's Voice fell silent. A muttering seemed to be coming from the Chosen but as Carnelian listened it grew into an insistent modulating grumble. It was the firewall singing a slow, sonorous song. It soaked into him. The rumble of the chanting slid up to a peak, down and up again and took his heart with it.
When the other sound started he gasped with shock. A whining at first that tore into a braying, ululating cry. More shawms joined their voices to it, interweaving, fraying into great vibrating surfaces of sound. He saw the mirror faces round him turning to the north-east to where a black doorway was opening in the firewall. Out from the darkness came a light, a flaming apparition. A green path opened up in front of him. The shawms slid in a shrilling pitch, shredding the air as He-who-goes-before came coruscating, towering through the Lesser Chosen. His lictors walked before him, holding up his standards like glowing coals. Carnelian worried that their support was out of his father's reach, but his progress seemed as relentless as a comet's through the sky as he pulled a flaming tail of the Ruling Lords of the Great with their lightning crowns.
Then his father was hidden. Carnelian could still follow the red eyes of his standards above the heads of the Great. As his father climbed onto the Guarded Land, the opaque pulsing brilliance of the shawms swelled louder. The sunburst of his father's head rose into sight and slid across Carnelian's vision and then, preceded by his lictors, moved up and through the horned-ring fence to stand facing the Turtle's Voice.
Carnelian felt the Great turning around him. He followed their gaze and saw the Ruling Lords were moving along the edge of the Osrakum platform. A ripple of bowing accompanied them. One of the Ruling Lords was being bowed to by the Great. A stone grew heavy in Carnelian's stomach. He knew it was Jaspar to whom they were already paying the homage due a victor.
A myriad crashes of breaking glass made Carnelian imagine for a moment that around him the Chosen were splintering into shards. His father stood as motionless as an idol. Behind him, in the south, a door was opening. Among a hailstorm of cymbals and crotala, Carnelian noticed the Chosen turning to look into the west. There too a door was opening and in it a pale pageant was appearing, of creatures far taller than the Lesser Chosen who moved back to let them through. The Grand Sapients' row of icy pinnacles slid along a curve withershins through the Chosen. Each wore the horns of the crescent moon and an icicle crown. Each was preceded by a pair of glittering standards that seemed to move of their own volition. All were clothed in a flash and fold of moonlight. Carnelian counted all twelve Grand Sapients and saw that like snails they were leaving behind them a gleaming track of smaller Sapients. He watched their pavane move into the south-east until all he could see of them over the
