‘If the men from the conquered tribes fight well for us, then they'll be given salt and their children will be returned to them.'
To be replaced by those from the newly conquered?' The youth grinned and nodded. Carnelian turned away to hide his disgust. 'Have I offended you?' the youth asked, in a fearful tone.
Carnelian reassured him. 'Did the Master send any message for me?'
The youth was clearly still frightened. 'None came from him.'
'Came from…? Did you not come from him?' 'No, Master, our commander is Ochre Fern.' Carnelian regarded the youth with disbelief. 'He commands you?'
The youth gave a slow, fearful nod.
'Are there other commanders?'
Twostone.'
Twostone Krow?'
Skaifether nodded.
'And Ochre Ravan?'
The youth frowned, shaking his head as if he had never heard the name before.
'What did Ochre Fern bid you do?'
To bring the supplies here and to return with all the salt you have collected for us.'
'Nothing else?'
'Nothing, Master.'
Two days of brooding later, a cry brought Carnelian to the opening to his hollow. One of his Plainsmen, Cloudy, was shouting something up at him that was lost in the gusting rain. The man pointed east. There beneath the frowning wall of the Backbone, Carnelian saw shrouded Oracles riding down the escarpment, dragging behind their aquar a stumbling string of captives alongside which jogged Marula spearmen. Even through the rain, Carnelian could see the captives were Plainsmen and that the Marula were driving them towards the riverpath. When he saw many of his own men streaming down the knoll to intercept the party, he threw a blanket about his shoulders.
‘I’ll come with you,' said Poppy.
'No. Stay here. Wait for me.'
At first, startled by his tone, the girl was soon protesting, but he did not have the time to argue with her. He abandoned the dryness of their hollow and swung out to descend to the ground. Once there, Cloudy confronted him, soaked, looking sick.
'What shall we do, Master?'
'Whatever we can,' cried Carnelian and bounded down the slope, quickly leaving the man behind.
As he reached the open ground beyond the wooden wall, he saw the Marula had levelled their spears at the approaching Plainsmen. He coursed towards them bellowing, desperate to avoid bloodshed. Hearing him, his men turned, backing away from the Marula as they waited for him. Out of breath, he saw in their eyes their confidence that he would do something to save the captives. Carnelian moved in among them, glancing up at the Oracles sitting haughty in their saddle-chairs. Bound naked one to the other, the captives were mostly men past their prime. He saw how their ribcages were pumping for breath, how they hung their heads. Strangely, what shocked him most was their bloody feet. They had been forced against their most deeply held belief to run barefoot across the Earthsky.
His own Plainsmen began crying out to him. They made many pleas, demands. Though he could make none out clearly, he did not need to. He could see and feel their pity and their outrage that men should be treated thus. Many of the captives had lifted their heads and, as their eyes fell on Carnelian, they ignited with a hatred that struck him hard. He knew who it was they thought they saw or, as likely, they did not care. He was as much of the Standing Dead as the conqueror who had delivered them into misery.
Carnelian looked to either side of him and saw how numerous were his men; how few Manila the Oracles commanded. He was desperate to free the captives.
A voice carried through the hissing rain as one of the Oracles addressed him. Even had there been silence, Carnelian would have not understood a word. He considered approaching them, negotiating in Vulgate. The realization sank in that even if he could make himself understood to the Oracles there would be no pity in their hearts. One of them lifted an arm swathed in indigo cloth and pointed. Carnelian did not turn his head to look, always aware in which direction lay the malign presence of the Isle of Flies.
He turned to his own people. With the accent of the Ochre, he told them the captives had been condemned by the Master himself and that his commands none could gainsay without bringing his wrath down upon themselves and their kin. His speech was hardly finished before they erupted into rage. He caught their feeling and threw it back at them. He told them that if he could, he would set the captives free. He could see they did not believe him and had to resort to commanding them back to the knoll. They railed against him, they even dared to threaten him, but then their resolve cracked and, unable to look the captives in the face, they turned like punished children and began the slog back to the camp.
Carnelian remained behind to watch the Oracles resume their march. He threw away the sodden weight of the blanket and turned his face up towards the glowering sky and prayed the rain would wash him clean. When absolution did not come, he forced himself to stand there long enough to watch the captives being ferried across the swollen river in narrow boats.
When night fell, the screaming began. Carnelian had prayed the storm would drown it out. His first thought was to reassure Poppy, to comfort her, but the look of accusation in her eyes was a wall of thorns between them. He cursed the weakness that had made him keep her in the Upper Reach. He tried to hide away in sleep. The rain lessened. Exposed by the silence, the sounds of agony formed an infernal harmony with the roaring Thunderfalls. Poppy joined her whimpering to the nightmare until Carnelian could bear it no longer and crushed her in his arms. Rocking together, they tried as best they could to survive sane until the dawn.
For many nights, the horror was repeated. Then it stopped. The rainfall began to ease. Carnelian descended with Poppy and they found a salve for their nightmares in lighting fires upon the crown of the knoll. Huddling round them with Plainsmen, they exchanged stories of their peoples, yearning to return home.
Often, Carnelian would find Poppy staring at the Isle of Flies. He would try to draw her away, but the girl always returned as if she had some need to keep a watch upon that awful place. She was the first to observe the shapes slipping from the Isle of Flies into the flood. As he watched them tumble amidst white fury down into the chasm, Carnelian tried to pretend they were logs, but Poppy turned to him and bleakly said, 'No, Carnie, they're the corpses of our tortured dead.'
The sky cleared to an infinite blue. Rain, when it fell, was diamond bright from clouds as pale as wood smoke. As the Thunderfalls lost their fury, they became sheathed in rainbows. The days sank into a pregnant murmuring in which, stealthily, the world came back to life. Even the ridges of earth that were all that was left upon the scoured rock of the clearing began to uncurl ferns. With his back to the Isle of
Flies, in the clean sunlight, Carnelian found it hard to deny hope and a fragile joy. He summoned Kor and had her bring the sartlar blinking up from their caves and begin the vast ' labour of lifting the Ladder from the chasm floor. He and Kor together supervised the lowering of the first sartlar down into the chasm. Soon they were drawing the Ladder up from where it had fallen, unrolling it up the cliff face, pegging it with new posts they carved from the fallen baobabs.
The busy rhythm of their lives allowed them momentarily to forget the Isle of Flies. It was an illusory reprieve. Every twenty days or so, convoys of Plainsmen would appear with supplies. Carnelian's men would welcome them up onto the knoll and there the visitors would tell of the battles they had fought; of the tribes they had conquered. Carnelian would sit among them concealed, his back to the sun so as to hide his alien green eyes. The visitors would speak of the Master as if he were a god. The following day, they would leave with the slabs of salt the sartlar brought up from the caves. Sickly anticipation would come as a fever in the succeeding days. When the next batch of captives were spotted coming down from the Earthsky, people became busy with the tasks they had reserved for the occasion. None would look up in case they saw the new victims being ferried across to the Isle of Flies. Carnelian might have shared their cowardice, except that Poppy seemed compelled to witness the
