whole sickening business and he could not bear that she should do so alone. In the nights that would follow, unable to sleep, it became their habit to join the men around the fire trying to drown out the screaming with their talk.
Marula poured down the escarpment following a host of riders. The rumble, their slipping movement, recalled for Carnelian the night of the landslide. In their midst, any of the shrouded Oracles might have been the Master.
Carnelian turned to Poppy somewhere in the darkness behind him. 'Our people have returned.'
She gave no reply, though he knew she was there. He looked down again from their tree at where the massed aquar were sinking into their own dust. He would have to go and meet the host, however reluctant he might be to see Osidian.
'I'll return as soon as I can,' he said over his shoulder and then descended to the ground.
His appearance among his Plainsmen produced a clamour as they asked him what they should do. He shook his head, watching the black tide breaking against the baobab wall. One of the shrouded figures broke through, pulling behind him a ragged entourage. Carnelian recognized it was Osidian by his rangy stride, and had to move sideways to keep him in sight as he wove up through the trees.
'My Lord,' Carnelian said when Osidian was almost upon him.
'Carnelian,' said Osidian, his face wholly concealed in the shadow of his uba.
Carnelian noticed for the first time the tall man coming up behind him. The curled hair told him it was Fern, though it was difficult to see him in the man looking at him with a white face. As their eyes met, Carnelian became almost distraught enough to ask Fern if that covering of ash meant that he had become a disciple of the Master.
'I would speak to you, my Lord,' Osidian said.
Confronted with the menace of his voice, his great height, the Master drove thoughts of Fern from Carnelian's mind.
'Here?'
'Anywhere else but here.'
Carnelian looked up at his tree and remembered Poppy. He feared the consequences for her if she and Osidian should meet.
Osidian cut through Carnelian's indecision. 'We'll walk together in the baobab forest.'
He turned to Fern. 'Make sure no one follows us.'
Carnelian sensed that Fern was making an effort not to look at him. His friend bowed his head.
'As you command, Master.'
Carnelian and Osidian stood among the baobabs alone. Carnelian looked back the way they had come. Across the bare rock of the clearing, the knoll appeared to be a many-masted ship, becalmed. 'Come,' said Osidian.
His gentle tone made Carnelian feel more uneasy than if Osidian had used his customary, imperious manner.
'Are you not afraid to be with me alone?'
'I have made the Ochre the hated masters of more than thirty tribes. I do not believe you would threaten their only protector.'
Osidian's sadness produced in Carnelian something like shame. They walked on, Osidian looking blindly before him, Carnelian reluctantly crushing the reborn green spirals of the ferns beneath his feet. As they penetrated deeper into the forest, brooding baobabs rose ever more massive on either hand. Glancing up, Carnelian expected to see a face in the wood, but the trunk was smooth right up to the branches that held a bowl of blue sky.
Carnelian spoke to dispel the smothering silence. 'Why have you returned?'
Osidian sighed. 'My host is grown weary of conquests.'
'And bloodshed?'
Osidian glanced at him but made no answer, instead leading them into the cool shadow of a baobab.
Their edge is blunted, I will resharpen it by letting them return to their homes.'
'I see,' said Carnelian, unable to grasp the nature of Osidian's mood.
Unwinding his uba, Osidian revealed a face thinner than Carnelian remembered. The green eyes were seeing him but there was something distracting them, a haunting presence of pain.
'You are changed, my Lord.'
Osidian smiled bleakly. 'All the world is changed.'
Carnelian. registered Osidian's vulnerability with disbelief. 'I had thought everything was progressing as you would wish.'
'All moves according to my will, but…'
Carnelian waited, searching Osidian's face. In some ways it was a stranger's but in the eyes there stirred something of the boy in the Yden.
Osidian looked deep into Carnelian. 'I've lost faith in my destiny and without it I am empty.'
Carnelian's body began responding to the plea in Osidian's voice and eyes, but when Osidian made to embrace him, he recoiled. He expected rage but Osidian merely dropped his arms and sank to the ground. When he looked up his face was lined with misery.
'Will you at least stay beside me tonight?'
In spite of everything, Carnelian's heart could not refuse him.
They lay on their backs in a hollow between the roots of a baobab, watching clouds flow westwards. Osidian began to speak in Vulgate.
'My faith has grown weaker than Morunasa's, though I'm certain he worships the same god as I. Without faith there's no certainty; without certainty, one is enslaved by doubt.'
Carnelian propped himself up on his elbow. 'What is it that you doubt?'
Osidian frowned. That I can defeat the legions with a rabble of savages.'
Carnelian denied himself the hope of reprieve there was in that. 'Is that all?'
Osidian's frown deepened. 'I have been too long in the company of barbarians. My blood no longer burns.' He grew sad.*Sometimes, I feel pity.'
Shame made Osidian beautiful. Carnelian ached for him, but he would rather cut off his arm than reach out to him.
Osidian pierced Carnelian with his eyes. 'Have you felt how much the Maruli is with his god?'
Carnelian was struggling for an answer when he saw Osidian's eyes had gone opaque. Pain suffused into his face.
'I need that certainty. I must know what he knows. I must feel what he has felt. I must hear the Darkness- under-the-Trees speak.'
'What are you talking about?'
‘I intend to submit myself to the ritual of initiation of an Oracle.'
Carnelian jerked to his feet. He paced away, then came back to glare down at Osidian. 'Have you lost your mind?' 'Haven't you been listening?'
Carnelian dropped his head, exasperated. 'You came to tell me this?'
'I came to prepare you.'
'For what?'
'My possible death.'
Carnelian slumped to the earth. He had spent so much time desiring Osidian dead and now the thought filled him with nothing but dread. 'What does this initiation involve?'
Carnelian saw how pale Osidian had become. His head was shaking as if he were seeing something too horrible to describe. His eyes closed.
Carnelian could not help fearing for him. 'What is it you're going to allow them to do to you?'
Osidian's eyes widened like a child's. 'All you need know is that I may die.'
Carnelian resisted an urge to violence.
'If on the twelfth day, I've not returned, you must go back to Osrakum. It won't be safe for you here.'
'Oh, it's as simple as that, is it? You die and then I'll just saunter back to Osrakum.'
