Terrible.' Jaspar's hand went to a chain at his throat and drew a Ruling Ring out from his robe. He dangled it. 'But still, there are compensations, even for such a loss. Long have I coveted this… to wield its power…' He sighed in a kind of ecstasy. 'I cannot count how many times I have wished him dead.'
'Dead? But… I thought…'
'What did you think, my Lord?' said Jaspar, as he fed the ring and its chain back into his robe. The crucifixions…'
'You thought I did that from sentiment?' He laughed, shaking his cowled head. 'How rich. Really, you are too peculiar, cousin dear. It was done for revenge, but, even more, for future security. Could you have conceived a better way to inaugurate one's reign? Admittedly, it is a profligate waste of flesh wealth, but exactly because of that the lesson will live long in the memory of my slaves. If fortune is not unkind to me, it will never have to be repeated.'
Carnelian was glad of the mask that hid his distaste.
Jaspar made a gesture of dismissal. 'Enough. This is neither the place nor the time for social banter. I have a gift for you, cousin.' Jaspar held out his hand and waited for Carnelian's to move under his before he dropped something into it.
Carnelian looked at it. 'A blood-ring?'
'Hush! Put your hand down.' He turned until one of his mask's eyeslits could see the procession that was already moving down the north-western road in the wake of the Sapients.
Carnelian obeyed him, concealing the ring in his fist. 'Whose is it?'
Jaspar grabbed his shoulder. 'Come, my Lord, let us proceed. The sun begins to grow oppressive and we still have a long walk to the Forbidden Door.'
They journeyed round the circle of monoliths, and as they passed the kneeling guardsmen and retainers Jaspar motioned for them to follow.
'One would have thought it obvious that the blood-ring in your hand is from a Lord of one of my lesser lineages. Khrusos, to be precise,' Jaspar said in a low voice. 'You must wear it instead of your own.'
Carnelian's hands lifted in protest but Jaspar swatted them down.
'You asked that I take you with me, my Lord, as one of my kinsmen. That is exactly what I am doing.'
Carnelian's eyes wandered between the outer monoliths to the inner ring. After some thought, he carefully removed his own ring and replaced it with the one that Jaspar had given him.
'Good. Now you are my inferior,' said Jaspar.
Carnelian could hear that he was speaking through a smile. Carnelian was not happy. The new ring felt unnatural on his finger. He distracted himself by counting the monoliths. He noticed that the red inner ring was completed with two green and two black stones.
'What are these stones, my Lord?'
The Dance of the Chameleon.'
'A calendar?' said Carnelian, since that was the only meaning the words had for him.
'In a manner of speaking. Does my Lord see the innermost ring? Well, he will also see that there are twelve stones of the same colours as the months.'
'Your inferior still does not understand.'
Jaspar's mask flicked towards him. 'It is a machine, a sorcerous engine that the Wise use to predict the coming of the Rains and all other temporal matters that provide impetus for the actions of the world.'
'I see,' said Carnelian, seeing nothing but stones. He waved his hand. 'But these others?'
The calendrical stones also have inscribed on them the Law-that-must-be-obeyed.'
Carnelian realized he had known this but still he gaped in wonder. The Law itself!'
Jaspar nodded, taking his utterance as a question. 'And these other stones are commentaries and amendments. The markings on the floor link the whole corpus in some manner unfathomable to any but the Wise.'
Carnelian was walking blind, stroking his new blood-ring, working through what he would say to his father if they should actually meet An acrid charcoal tang made him see again. The road ended at an edge of sooty stone. Looking up he saw the blackness stretching off towards the wall of the plain.
'Why do you linger, my Lord?' said Jaspar.
This burning…?' said Carnelian, pointing.
'Yes, it has been burned,' Jaspar said impatiently. He waited but Carnelian did not move. He sighed. 'It is here at the ceremony of the Rebirth that our tributaries kneel to worship us' – he pointed up at the pyramid hollow – 'up there.'
Carnelian surveyed the black field and tried to imagine it covered by a vast and grovelling throng. 'But the burn-ing…?'
'Carnelian!' Jaspar sounded aggrieved. 'Do you really think that we could allow their pollution to go uncleansed, here…' He lifted his arms, turned round in a circle.'… here at the very centre of our hidden realm? The flame-pipes of the Ichorian Legion sweep this whole space like brooms and then…' He pointed the blade of his hand back the way they had come. '… all the way along that road, down to the quays, round the Ydenrim, over the causeway, through the Valley of the Gate and all the way up to the Black Gate.'
Carnelian saw the dragonflied faces round them hanging miserably and lost his curiosity. This is all the burning I have seen.'
'Sometimes, Carnelian, you are like a child. Do you really believe that the Chosen would choose to allow even their servants to walk around leaving black footprints all over Osrakum?'
'A vast labour,' said Carnelian gloomily.
There is a sky full of rain to help them.'
Carnelian looked at the blackness. 'How do we cross?'
Jaspar made a sign of exasperation. That way, my Lord.' The Master was talking through gritted teeth. That way, past the Cages of the Tithe.'
Carnelian saw that the road went round the edge of the black field and that along its south-eastern side there ran a fence.
When they had reached the bronze fence, Carnelian walked slowly along it gazing through the bars. He realized that, through Ebeny's words, he had seen this place before. He looked over to the other side of the road, at the black field. She had told him about a hearth, wide enough to cover half the world. There it was. It was into this plain that Ebeny's people had brought her to pay their flesh tithe. She had told him of the walls that were like the blue mountains she had seen on the migrations of her people. The sky had been filled with thunder. Its blackness had been dragged down to the earth in a monstrous funnel. At its base a jewelled fire burned. He could see her hands making the triangle. He looked at the pyramid hollow and felt the tears aching under his eyes. Her words were making him a boy again, a homesick boy. He recalled the look of terror in her face as she told him of the whimpering, of her people unmanned, gaping at the jewel triangle that was the angry core of the sky. She had talked of giants hemming them in and, most terrible of all, the dragons. A wall of them on either side. Like the glorious creatures the Sky Father had made to thunder as free as a storm over her people's plains. But these dragons were muzzled, their thunder caught in chains, their backs profaned by the terrible machines of the Masters they were forced to carry. It was this that had broken Ebeny's bravery. She had admitted pleading with her people. A few of them had clung to her but others had torn her from their embrace and shoved her towards the dragons. She was carried off in a tide of children. The reek of magic fire tainted the dragons' animal scent. There beneath their mountainous bellies she had been examined by a purple demon that had the same mirror face as the child-gatherer that had chosen her. The demon had prised open her fist to read the picture tattooed on her palm. Its talons had squeezed her skull and probed her mouth with a bronze thorn. It had torn her clothes and touched her everywhere. Even on the island Ebeny would never look in a mirror from choice and she loathed the colour purple.
When it was done, she was herded into a cage. Carnelian looked through the bars. He recalled Ebeny's descriptions of her life in the cage. The misery. The endless mouldering rain. The feeding. The cruelties the children visited on each other. Carnelian could almost smell the fear behind the bars. He saw stains on the clay floor and had some notion about what might have made them.
'I loathe this flesh tithe,' Carnelian said. 'Why so?' said Jaspar.
'It is not just.'
