Osidian did not move.
Carnelian whisked round and grabbed him. 'Get up!' he cried, yanking Osidian to his feet. He put his back to Osidian's. He glared at the little men. He felt the stickiness in his hand. He brought it to his mouth, tasted it. 'Blood…' He felt the rage surge in him. Osidian's blood.
After that he could see nothing. He was clawing through their flesh. He was smashing his head into their faces. Their rancid smell was smearing on his skin with their blood. Their grappling-hook hands dug into him.
Blows fell on his back, his arms. They were hanging off him. He swung, dislodging some. He was weakening. They were slowing him with their weight, with pain. A wall crashed into his head and their cries thinned to blackness.
FUNERARY URNS
To achieve Doubling the poison must be administered not later than ten days from conception. The initial dosage should be the size of a pigeon's eye. Thereafter this should be increased daily by an additional dose, this regime to be followed for at least sixteen days. The poison may lead to various levels of morbidity in the mother but rarely to death. One in three offspring will be lost. The level of separation of the product sybling cannot be predicted.
A knife was stabbing into Carnelian's head, over and over again. His body was a piece of meat. He tried to move his hand up to his head but it would not budge. His eyelids felt as thick as his tongue as he opened them. He saw a glare that spasmed with each throbbing in his head. He screwed his eyes closed, breathing carefully till the pain lost its ragged edge.
A flapping like birds. He carefully reopened his eyes. Shape-changing light patches seared. He swivelled his head to angle the hammering and his sight into a dark corner. He found he was able to open his eyes wider. The shadows found their hard edges, straightened, became lines and curves.
When he tried to move his body, waves of nausea surged up from his stomach. He tried to pant away the need to vomit. His ears were hearing a linking counterpoint of lifting rising Vulgate in different voices. He turned his head gingerly to look at the light shapes. Bones of light, twisting. Water, undulating morning in its dimples far off, down a tunnel through ribbing. Wooden ribs. A sequence of them seeming to rock the water in their cradle. The ribs held something long and sleek and tooth-yellow, like a huge discarded arm. He focused his eyes on its skin. A curving surface of linked ivory shards. Bones. It was a bone boat leaning towards him, her prow post like a tree over their heads, her bow swelling off in the wooden cradle of ribs.
Men were growling Vulgate. Carnelian recalled the attack. Their blows were still playing his skull like a drum. He walked his eyes back from the water, a rib at a time. He ground his head round carefully as if he were afraid to dislodge the ache balancing on top. He saw Osidian, the marble of his face ruptured red near his eye. His lip as livid and bloated as an earthworm, twitching. Bruises like ink infusing alabaster. The eyes opened and they saw each other. Carnelian saw Osidian rising to the surface, shared his pain, bewilderment, watched the firming brightness of realization in his eye. Osidian opened his mouth as if to speak, but obviously became aware of the men talking behind him and narrowed his eyes as he listened.
'Hey…' he groaned.
Carnelian tensed as he heard the conversation stop.
'Hey, you, come here,' Osidian said in an imperious tone that made Carnelian scrunch up wanting to close Osidian's mouth, that made the pain twist its blade in his head.
'Shut up,' said a voice.
'Come here’ said Osidian, his swollen lips slurring his voice.
Carnelian could hear them getting up. He fought the ropes but they only burned his wrists. The rib he leaned against shuddered under someone's weight, then a foot came down beside him. He looked up the dark leg to the leather skirt. He could not see any more of the man but could certainly smell him. The man crouched. His face was like raw meat. Carnelian found the tiny eyes, the grey stumped teeth. He recoiled from the stench of the man's breath, from the animal intensity of the eyes looking at his unmasked face.
'How dare you look at me?' Osidian cried in outrage.
'How will you stop me looking, Master?' the man said.
His words sprayed saliva onto Carnelian's cheek. The rib shuddered again and as it released another man jumped down. Both men stood back. They were monstrously alike. Carnelian saw that the new one refused to look at him and was trembling.
'Do you know what'll be done to you for walking here, on holy ground, for laying your hands on a Master, for seeing our faces?' Osidian said.
Carnelian could see both men flinch. The second man's shoulders were beginning to hunch.
'You filth came in with the tributaries, didn't you?'
The second man's chin dug deeper into his chest as he nodded.
'You do know that you won't be able to sneak out that way, don't you?'
'Our employer's made arrangements to get us out,' sneered the first man.
'Your employer'll not be able to protect you from my wrath. I'll find you and all your kin. Each death'll entertain me for twenty days.'
'You'll not be finding anyone where you're going,' said the first man.
'And you think your 'employer' will let you live after what you've seen, what you've done?'
The second man was trembling so much he was shaking against the first.
'What're you afraid of?'
They're Masters, Rud. We oughtn't ever to have looked at their faces. We oughtn't to have come here… this place isn't meant for us. They have powers… we're-'
'Look at them!' said Rud, stabbing his finger. 'Can't you see they bleed blood, not fire?'
'But look how much damage they did to us. They killed Nar, and Pleyr, and roughed the rest of us up. They're too big to be just men, too beautiful.'
Carnelian could see the fear lurking in Rud's eyes.
'You'll envy your dead friends once I get free,' said Osidian.
Rud bent towards them and whipped a slap across Osidian's face. Carnelian jumped as Osidian's head lashed round. He saw the disbelief in Osidian's face. Neither of them could believe the sacrilege.
'You shut up, OK? Shut your mouth!' spat Rud.
Carnelian could see the second man staring and that his spine had regained some stiffness.
They don't look all that godlike now. He takes a slap like a woman, he does.' Rud pushed out his chest. 'Come to think of it, he looks a bit like a woman. Maybe I should take a knife across his face and then we'd see how beautiful he'd look.' He nodded gluttonously. 'Maybe I'll just cut something off him, a bit of his milky flesh, a finger, an ear, a little memento of our visit to 'paradise'.' Rud pulled out a flint-bladed knife and took pleasure in showing them its scalloped edge. As he leaned forward, Carnelian tried to shove his body in the way. With a thump, two more feet landed in front of him.
'You know they're not to be touched,' said the newcomer.
'But, boss, we could hurt them where it doesn't show,' said the second man, grinning his stump-rimmed mouth.
The boss turned on him. 'Do you want to die here? Well, do you? Who's going to get us out if we don't keep our end of the bargain?'
'I say we cut them,' said Rud, with a fithy grin.
The boss slammed into Rud, who hit the rib like a sack of sand. He straightened up shakily.
'We were just trying to get them to keep quiet,' said the second man.
'Well gag them then,' said the boss.
