into the saddle-chair. They ignored Vermel's question about his health. Carnelian took the reins and held them as he and the others mounted. He tied them to his chair.
Outside, it was cold. Lazy sounds came up from the encampment. Carnelian felt the unease around him. Vennel's mask could not decide whether it wanted to look at his father or at the Marula. Jaspar's maintained a constant oblique angle to the Marula. The barbarians were clumped a little way off, already mounted. Their heads hung as if they slept in their chairs. They had turned their backs on the road ahead as if by not seeing it they could make it go away. Behind them, beneath an indigo sky, Osrakum's wall was a gloomy island rising from the sea of mist that submerged the city.
Carnelian looked for Tain among the Marula. Wearied almost to tears, already grieving for his father, Carnelian knew he must find the energy to buy back his brother's eyes.
Mist fingered the grim sleeping face of the land as they rode. It reached into Carnelian's cloak to chill his skin. Its breath smelled damp and mouldy. The vague shapes of the Masters floated near him. The scratch of claws on the road seemed far away. Ahead, the Marula were wading through the twilight.
The sky paled, the blur cleared a little and Carnelian saw that they were riding along a causeway through a land of folded mud. Tarnished silver mirrors lay along the folds across which furtive creatures were spreading rings. Ridges bristled with reeds. Cranes lifted languidly into the air and flapped their angled silhouettes off, trailing their legs.
Ahead on a rutted mud shelf moored to the road like a raft another encampment was coming alive. Air fuzzed blue with smoke. Muffled voices worried the silence. The edges of a watch-tower contrasted with the liquid curves all around it. It grew huge and so solid that it made the fen look like a painted backcloth.
Then it was dropping behind and for a while Carnelian dozed away his misery only vaguely aware of the mottled dull-mirroring rush on either side. Mounds began curving up from the mud like the humps of huge fish, some with hovels on their backs, others caught in patches of netting. Carnelian sat up. Runs of grey water slipped around the mounds. Huts stood everywhere on legs. Boats lay half out of water, hiding like children behind tarpaulin skirts. Then he saw the edge of the city ahead. A mud bank textured with houses and shrubby trees. The carcass of some immense monster rotting on the marsh. A stench was floating on the wind. Their aquar drummed along the leftway. The buildings ahead were rising higher. Soft-edged canals branched off into the marsh patinated with scum, littered with boats like dead leaves. Here and there pimpling the mud in the distance little citadels of trees hid houses.
The stench of the city was wafting stronger. The channels Carnelian could see were matted with filth. Two towers with sagging walls formed a kind of gateway through which the city received the road. They flashed between them and in among the mess of tenements. The angles of walls and alleys jagged his eyes. He could not make out a pattern. It was like a termite mound cut open and exposed to a rain that had melted everything together. Now and then he would see a flight of steps winding down to a canal hemmed in by rickety warehouses, along which long punts were sliding.
Then they came to a more prosperous region where the tenements wore blistered whitewash. The stench was ever changing like music. The mud walls heaved closer, riddled with passages, spined with the ends of beams that betrayed the anatomy of floors within. Dusty gardens crammed into corners. A single fig tree roofed a courtyard with its branches. In the midst of all this riot another watch-tower rose like a woman wading through rubbish up to her waist.
As they slowed, the city's perfume thickened: mouldering mud, frying, the tang of slimed alleys, the dull odour of stagnant water, the vinegar reek of men.
Aurum had reached the monolith guarding the watch-tower door. Their aquar swung their heads from side to side as they slowed from their run. Aurum commanded the Marula to dismount. He herded them with his aquar behind the monolith and disappeared. Carnelian was intent on the saddle-chair holding the huddle that was his father. He leaned close, desperate for some sign of life. His father's aquar adjusted its feet and the huddle gave a groan that let Carnelian breathe again. 'My Lord?' he whispered but there was no reply. He looked round at the others.
'Where has Aurum gone?' He did not even attempt to mask the anger in his voice.
Jaspar motioned with his head.
Carnelian turned his aquar and saw that Aurum was there, his gold face peering from his hood.
'Why do we stop, my Lord?' Carnelian demanded.
To leave the leftway and descend to the road.'
Jaspar's hands expressed surprise. 'Into the herd?'
'We cannot do that,' said Carnelian.
There is no choice, my Lord,' said Aurum.
There must be. The delay – not to mention the commotion – it will kill my father.'
Aurum rode up to him. 'Last night I sent a messenger to the gates to announce our coming along this leftway. For that very reason we must leave it. This road leads only into peril.'
'You anticipate another attack, Aurum?' asked Jaspar.
Carnelian noticed that the Master's voice lacked its usual note of amused detachment. 'Surely we do not know for certain there will be another attack.'
There will be another attack,' Aurum said darkly.
'Even if there is, how can my Lord be certain where it will occur?'
The messenger, my Lord, the messenger,' snapped Vennel.
Carnelian turned on him. 'Does my Lord not think it possible that his mistress will see through Lord Aurum's subterfuge?'
'You are impertinent, my Lord.'
'Nevertheless, Vennel, my cousin makes a reasonable point,' said Jaspar.
Aurum lifted his hands. 'I have taken all this into consideration. Our enemies will see in the messenger our attempt to hide our intention to leave this leftway. It would be unlike them not to see through this deception. Thus, they will expect us on the leftway. We shall thus do the unexpected by in fact leaving the leftway.'
'In other words, my Lord, you have no idea whatsoever where our enemies are looking for us,' Carnelian said. 'For all we know they will be waiting for us on either route. Since this is possible it behoves us to take whichever route will more quickly bring my father to his healing by the Wise.'
Vennel gave him a nod. 'On the contrary, if there is danger both ways we would be better in the marketplace of the Wheel where we would be as invisible as fish in the sea.'
Jaspar squeezed his hands together. 'Let us not forget the filthy Marula. It would be prudent, cousin, if we were to find them work to do. The crowds will distract them.'
Carnelian felt that the situation was slipping away from him. 'Since when are the Chosen fearful of such animals?'
'Since, my Lord,' sneered Vennel, 'they are poisoned near unto death and know that we slew one of their number and, no doubt, will soon find a way to slay them all.'
'If we move down to the road a greater distance will be put between them and their antidote. This will endanger them as much as it does my father. Surely they will know this and so become more dangerous.'
They will know nothing,' Vennel said scornfully. 'Did you not yourself say that they are animals?'
Carnelian cast around him. 'My father still has his vote.'
'Would you use up his last strength?' said Aurum. Carnelian hesitated and looked from one mask to the next.
'Lord Suth should form no part in our calculations,' said Jaspar. 'It is unlikely he will live.'
Aurum's hand darted up to cut short Carnelian's outrage. Enough. 'If we three vote together we will carry the decision.'
Vennel and Jaspar nodded.
'It is decided then. We will descend to the road.' Vennel made no attempt to conceal the note of triumph in his voice.
Carnelian went cold with anger. 'If my father should die…' he said through gritted teeth.
'You will be elevated to Ruling Lord.'
'A privilege rare in one so young,' said Jaspar and turned his aquar away.
As the others filed into the watch-tower, Carnelian gazed down the leftway that narrowed off into a hazy
