homunculi. They put on their cloven gloves, their tearful masks. They took back their staves, then bowed. Each Sapient took his homunculus by the hand and, in a column, slowly, they came drifting towards Carnelian. He was trapped, staring up into the mirror of their leader's face as he came on relentlessly, pulling his homunculus like a child. Its unslitted silver mask made the creature as eyeless as its master. The blind leading the blind, thought Carnelian. Just in time he leapt out of their way and watched the beaded slopes of the Sapients gliding past and disappearing one by one into the darkness.
A clatter whisked him round. He cried out and rushed to where his father had fallen on the steps. The whole gleaming length of him, struggling like a fish, his elbows digging back, rasping their brocades, trying to find a grip. Carnelian pushed through the blind syblings, causing the staves they carried to waver erratically. They made noises of panic that he could hear spreading down the hall.
Carnelian ignored everything but his father. He grabbed him, enduring the snagging on his hands and arms, and managed to wrestle him into sitting. He made sure his father was steady before he himself stood up, smeared the blood from his palms down his hri-fibre robe, then pushed in to sit some steps higher, reaching over his father's crowns to free him of his mask.
His father's eyes rolled red and confused in their sockets. His yellow lips opened and closed. Carnelian gaped, appalled, not knowing what to do. 'Are you hurt, Father?'
His father's eyes anchored themselves upon his face. 'My son.' His hand clawed up to Carnelian's shoulder and pulled him close. 'Reassure them,' his father said almost in his ear. A strange odour staled his breath.
Carnelian became aware of the commotion the syblings were making. 'Celestial, celestial…' they were saying, evidently distressed.
Carnelian stood to face them. 'Calm yourselves. The Regent has merely fallen.'
'Is he hurt?' It was the Hanuses. The syblings opened their ranks to let them through.
'I think he slipped upon the steps.'
'We should help him rise,' they said.
Carnelian looked from one face to the other. 'I think it better that he rest awhile, my Lords.'
The right face narrowed its eyes. 'As you wish.' The creature turned and began to herd the syblings away.
Carnelian turned back to his father, who lifted a hand. It shook down, and jammed as the crusted volume of its golden sleeve caught. Carnelian lunged forward to free the sleeve from the angle of the step, and taking his father's hand, he stroked it as he sat down beside him. Its limpness made him search his father's face in fear. The eyes were still open in the yellow sagging face. Carnelian dropped his eyes, not wanting to stare. He felt the need to say something. 'Why do the dragons need awakening?'
His father tore his hand free. Carnelian saw the veins like sapphire cords. His father looked malevolently out from under his brows. 'Do not call them that,' he hissed. 'You are not a barbarian.'
Carnelian's heart stopped. Suddenly, he did not recognize the vast broken creature hunching there. The creation window beat on him like a migraine. The black tunnel of the Thronehall was contracting. The syblings ambling away looked like colourless crabs in a cave.
Suth saw his son shrinking and found the strength to inflate himself up, to put on a smile, to talk. He put his hand on his son's head. 'Forgive me. I am so weary.'
Carnelian rewarded him with a watery smile.
The huimur of my Ichorian Legion… of the Pomegranate and the Lily… they must be made ready for the Rebirth.' He went back to staring, then with a visible effort came alive again. The Wise feed them a drug… it makes them sleep… while they dream we cheat time, preserve them… they live long beyond the years of their kind.'
'Is this the kind of drug the Wise have given you, Father?'
No, No, his father signed with a fluttering hand, and quickly, Time is everything. Soon the Legates will be recalled, leaving the gates open in the Ringwall.'
Carnelian could see that his father did not want to discuss his condition and was just glad that he had become recognizably himself. '… so that the barbarians might plunder the Commonwealth.'
'It is essential.' Carnelian could see the strength flowing back into him as if a cloud that had moved its shadow over him was passing on. The sun already burns the Guarded Land. If the God Emperor is not reborn, the Rains will not come and the Commonwealth will perish with the old year. The tributaries are massing outside our gates with thousands of wagons carrying the coined taxes from the cities. When the time is right, we will bring them into holy Osrakum. The tributaries must all be there, in the Plain of Thrones, when the Rains come.'
'When will that be?' said Carnelian, wanting to feed his father's resurrection.
The Wise will soon know.'
'What sorcery do they use to reveal the very intentions of the sky?'
'It is a sorcery of sorts. Daily they gather reports from all their watch-towers. In a chamber far from here they receive the flashes of light that have come from the furthest edges of the Commonwealth. They collate the reports and compare the results with their almanacs. Eventually, by this procedure, their collective mind determines the day upon which the storm clouds will dash their water against this mountain. On that day the world will be reborn.'
Carnelian looked up as if his eyes might pierce the shadow and massing rock to behold the distant sky.
The Rebirth is in itself a mighty labour to arrange,' his father said. 'But combined with Apotheosis…?' He raised his hands. Carnelian thought he could see light filtering through their parchment but at least they were steady. 'Soon the Chosen will gather here for the sacred election. Their coming cannot be sullied by the tributaries, and yet they too must be there.' His father inclined his massively crowned head. There is so little time.'
Carnelian frowned. 'How can you be so sure there will be need for an election before the coming of the Rains?'
The Wise are sure.' His father motioned. 'Make them bring the staves.'
Carnelian understood his father's meaning. He manoeuvred the syblings to prop their staves in front of his father. They were really standards. One carried the wheelmap of the Commonwealth he had seen before in one of his father's books: a black disc within a red within a green, the whole jewelled roundel surmounted by the horned-ring of divinity. The other staff bore the jade and obsidian faces of the Gods, also crowned with the horned-ring.
His father groaned as he tried to push himself up and failed. Carnelian leaned in to shoulder one of his father's arms like a yoke. He hoisted it till his father had grasped one of the staves and then did the same for the other hand. Holding on to him they rocked him back up onto his ranga. He was suddenly as tall as Molochite had been. Carnelian saw that the woven metals of his court robe were dented as his father, holding on to the staves, came down the steps. Once he had reached the floor, he tentatively let go of the staves and took a few steps without their help. He dismissed the syblings and they and the staves retreated.
'Come, Carnelian, lend me your strength.'
Carnelian gave his father his shoulder to lean on. The warm, heavy pressure filled Carnelian with a love for his father that stung his eyes. Suth pointed out the way he wished to go, and they set off.
'Are you, as Regent, responsible for all this?' asked Carnelian, ignoring his father's weight.
'For this purpose, the Regent is, in everything but name, God Emperor.'
Then who now is He-who-goes-before? Who speaks for the Clave? Aurum?'
The shaking of his father's crowned head vibrated them both. He opened his hand to reveal the red eye of the Pomegranate Ring.
'Surely then, Father, you direct two of the Three Powers?'
'Yes.'
There must be those who object to this concentration of might?'
He felt his father's mirth trembling down his arm. 'Oh, yes. Indeed yes.'
'She of whom we must not speak?'
'She most of all. The God Emperor made me Regent and while They live I am secure.'
'And then…?'
The Regency will pass to her until a candidate is elected.'
'Still, she will be safely locked away in her forbidden house.'
