heads of the people round it. Carnelian followed. The back of the chariot was a dull mirror of gold from which a Master was surfacing as if from a bath. Ammonites reached up to the handles with hooks and halved the Master by pulling open the doors. Others lifted the bier, rested its edge on the chariot floor, then, careful to touch nothing, fed his father in feet first.
Carnelian watched Jaspar climbing into another chariot nearby. He saw that it was yoked to a pair of pale- skinned aquar. Naked half-coloured men held their halters.
'Fetch riders,' Aurum said to an Ichorian.
Three ammonites converged on him, protesting.
'… too slow,' Carnelian heard Aurum say, and, 'The Law…' one of the ammonites responding.
Aurum muted the man with an angry gesture and flowed towards Carnelian like a column of green water. He pointed over Carnelian's shoulder. 'Your chariot awaits.'
'I will travel with my father, Lord Aurum.'
The Master said nothing though a slight curling in his fingers betrayed his anger as he strode past Carnelian.
One of the chariots was already being led off at a jog by an Ichorian as Carnelian climbed the steps into his father's chariot. There were three chairs set side by side. His father lay on the floor between two of them. Carnelian chose a chair next to the wall. He had hardly sat down before the doors closed him into the perfumed glimmering gloom. With a lurch they were off. Carnelian leant over the chair's arm, slipped his hand under the robe covering his father like a shroud, found his hand and held it.
His father's hand was so like wax, Carnelian feared he might melt it with his grip. On the floor, his father looked like a corpse wearing its death mask. The chariot seemed hardly to be moving. Carnelian could hear the wheels sighing and the clink of harness. Leaning close, he could detect no sound of breathing coming through the metal face. He sat up and rested his head against the chariot's quivering wall. He was alone. They had taken everything from him and left him entombed in this gold box with his father. He wanted to cry, to rage, to bellow. His grief threatened to overbrim to tears. He centred himself. This was not the time for such indulgence. He looked back down at his father's body. If the Lord of the Underworld was not there he was very close; Carnelian could smell his myrrhy breath. To survive, he must free himself from Aurum's hope. He reminded himself that all the Master wanted was a puppet. At least in death his father would be free. Carnelian could do nothing for him. His duty there was ended. He stretched his hand down to his father's chest.
'Forgive me,' he said, and felt the water begin to spill from his eyes. 'Duty,' he growled and clenched his eyes to dam the tears. He still owed his people duty. That was something to cling to. He had promised Tain that he would be there waiting for him and there were the others making the long journey up from the sea. There would be no more Crails. He must make the Suth palaces in Osrakum safe for them. Besides, his father had told him to go there. He looked down again. It was one of the last commands he had given. Carnelian would go to Coomb Suth and alone. Whether his father was alive or dead, Aurum would not allow Carnelian to take him home. The thought of leaving him in the old Master's hands was sickening. Even dead, Aurum would find some political use for him. With thoughts of Aurum came false hope. Were there limits to the sorceries of the Wise? What if by some miracle his father did survive? Then he would have to go to the Labyrinth to play his part in the election.
Carnelian crushed his ear against the wall and let its panels cut his mask into his skin. It was a distraction. He spotted the catch, lifted it and found that he could slide a panel back. He peered through the window out into the canyon twilight. Its wide empty floor was cracked in two by the Cloaca's chasm. He narrowed his eyes when he noticed the red square. Marching Ichorians. He could smell blood in the colour of their cloaks. He slapped the panel back over the window and reached down to squeeze out what comfort there was left in his father's hand. Metal edges bit into his fingers. He lifted the hand to look at them. The Pomegranate Ring on the middle finger. On the little finger, above the blood-ring, sat the Ruling Ring of House Suth. Carnelian chewed his lip staring at it, then worked it off with his free hand. He would not give Aurum the chance to defile his family ring as he had the ring of He-who-goes-before, even if this meant despoiling the dead.
The chariot stopped. He waited for it to move off again. The Ruling Ring was the warm heart of his fist.
'Seraph?' said a voice muffled by the chariot's doors.
Carnelian adjusted his father's mask, then found the handles on the doors and opened them. He glimpsed the ammonites' silver masks as they bowed their heads and knelt. Then he saw behind them a tidal wave of bronze that made him flinch. He searched the bronze for an edge and found one, a bloody tower to one side. As he put his ranga shoe out onto the first step he saw the sister tower on the other side.
He hovered round the ammonites as they pulled his father out.
Aurum swept up. 'Hurry, hurry.'
'You make them clumsy, my-' Carnelian stopped, looking past him, feeling vertigo as the world began to shift. Dull thunder rumbled the air. At first Carnelian thought it was an earthquake and braced himself against the bier, but then he realized it was not he but the wall of bronze that moved. A crack appeared in its green-blurred firmament. He narrowed his eyes anticipating its titanic collapse. Then he saw tiny figures walking into the crack. It was only then that he realized it was a gate.
He followed the bier and trailed his hand along the thickness of the gate's edge as he walked through it. Peering behind it he saw its thick wheels taller than the chariot's and the metalled ruts curving in the ground in which these ran. There were chains and pulleys and the engines that made the gate open and close. At no great distance rose another gate as massive as the first. The walls on either side were filled with doors, tunnel mouths, with galleries growing brighter as they climbed. Far above, the canyon walls held a river of sky.
Ichorians stood everywhere in the shadows. More ammonites crowded round his father's bier. 'Seraph Suth,' they whispered, 'returning for the election.'
'Where are the Wise?' said Aurum and his voice played the gates like mountainous gongs.
The ammonites lifted their hands in mute apology. 'They could not come so far, Seraph. Purity. During divine election, the court needs them all.'
'Paagh!' cried Aurum, flinging up his arms, scattering the ammonites into kneeling clumps.
'Shall we then proceed to the Halls of Returning?' said Jaspar. 'It might be pleasant to have these stinking bandages removed, neh? But perhaps my Lord Aurum would prefer to remain here terrorizing ammonites?'
Portcullises lifted to let them into one of the tunnels. Carnelian kept close to his father. A hissing made him turn to see ammonites ladling blue fire over the path upon which they had just walked. He watched the flames sprint and die across the floor. More fire was being poured in front of them, and when it had gone out Carnelian removed his ranga as he saw the others do and walked across the still-warm stone. As he came into the hall he lifted his foot and saw its sole was black.
Arches gave into other halls whose floors were spangled with pools. Ammonites carried lanterns aloft on poles. Some swung feathers of thick smoke into the air from censers.
'Come with us,' they sighed. 'Come with us.'
Carnelian protested as he felt his father's bier slip away under his hand. He struggled to think. Another wreath of smoke swagged down from a censer. He did not understand what was happening. His head was swelling. They took his hands. They led him down into the water. Fingers fluttered at his ears and he felt the pressure in his head relaxing. He sighed with relief as the mask peeled away from his face. Smoke curled round him like acrobats in a dream. He touched his face in alarm at what harm its nakedness might do. Their stone-blind eyes reassured him. The soaked weight of his robes pulled away from him, leaving him light and bobbing in the water. He sighed as he felt their hands on him, unwinding. Strip by strip his body was released. Aaah, the sensuous arousing pleasure. Their hands were everywhere caressing him, pressing, exploring his openings with their fingers.
At last, they drew him from the pool and dried him. He looked at their faces, confused. Tain? Was that Tain shaving his head? Sharp menthol swabbed cool tracks over him. Once it stung and he told Tain off. He tried to snare the sinuous smoke in his fingers but his hands were caught like butterflies. His skin was aglide with silk. When he looked down his body was ridged with brocade scars. They put him on low ranga, placed the sweetened mask over his face and pressed something into his hand. They coaxed him along passages out into the morning, slowly, so that his eyes would become accustomed to the glare.
He saw a vast ravine, smooth-floored, into one edge of which the Cloaca cut its chasm. The walls rose near vertical, scarlet, ridged with galleries up to impossible heights on either side. Their skirts were filigreed with brass
