When Osidian came alive again, he declared he would walk. Carnelian saw that nothing he might say would change his mind. Fern received the news without surprise. From the wreckage of the stretcher, he salvaged the bundle he had put there the day of the aquar slaughter. As he unfolded the cloth it gave off a stale odour of decay. Inside was a mass of grey hair beaded with salt that Carnelian recognized as being Stormrane's. Fern surveyed it for a while before lifting it with both hands and, reverently, rolling it into an uba which he then bound around his waist.
At first Osidian refused to wear the dead man's clothes, but Carnelian pleaded with him that without protection, the flies would eat him alive and Osidian relented. His face twisted with disgust as Carnelian helped him into the robe and cloak, then wound the dead man's uba round his head.
Ravens and sky saurians had already descended to feast upon the corpses when at last they all set off. Carnelian was only too glad to be leaving the bloody clearing behind.
'Where are we exactly?' asked Osidian, his Quya ringing round another makeshift camp.
Carnelian was not sure what answer to give. The encroaching night was bringing with it a fear Osidian alone did not seem to share. He looked frail, but his eyes revealed the fire that had driven his body to keep the pace all day.
'Where did we leave the Guarded Land?'
'Somewhere west of a city called Makar,' Carnelian replied, in Vulgate.
Speak in Quya, Osidian signed using the hand speech of the Masters. 'I had seen the sky but not believed.'
The sky?'
The movement of the clouds suggested the deep south; their speed and opacity, that we are nearing the end of the second month of the Rains.'
Carnelian nodded. For a moment he was puzzled by this act of divination until he remembered how familiar
Osidian was with the beadcord records of the Wise. It was in their Library that Carnelian, exploring, had come across him. Their first days together had been spent there as Osidian, secretly, taught him to read the strung beads, as the Wise did, by touch.
Osidian was frowning. 'What I have been wholly unable to unravel is what part me being here could possibly play in my mother's schemes.'
'It is likely she knows nothing of where we are,' said Carnelian.
Osidian fixed him with a stare. 'How so?' Carrielian explained what the Ichorian had intended to do with them.
Osidian looked incredulous. Trophies?' His eyebrows rose. 'I would not have believed a minion would dare such sacrilege.'
The Ichorian did not know who you were.' 'You did not tell him?'
'It did not seem to me he would have believed me.'
Osidian nodded, but his mind was already lost in calculation. To Carnelian, he seemed to have aged a dozen years. His skin had dulled, his carriage no longer seemed to hold his head among the clouds; even his neck had lost its graceful line. Seeing this, guilt churned Carnelian's stomach and a question formed in his mind which was an agony to utter.
'Do you blame me?'
Osidian's gaze came back into focus, emotion softening his face. For a moment Carnelian recognized the boy in the Yden and almost let out a mingled cry of joy and grief, but as suddenly as it had come, the vision passed away, leaving a coldness in Osidian's eyes as he smiled.
'How like you, Carnelian, to crave absolution. Tell me, have your recent experiences not hardened your heart even a little?'
Osidian reached out and Carnelian allowed himself to be taken by the chin. Osidian shook his head indulgently. 'Your beauty has weathered our adversity well.'
His hand fell. Tell me how we came to be here. Leave nothing out.'
Carnelian would have clung to that discussion, but Osidian had become limestone and so Carnelian saw no other path but to tell the story from the beginning. He had barely taken them in their urns through the City at the Gates, when Osidian began to look morose and Carnelian fell silent. Osidian's hand strayed up to the angry scar the rope had left around his neck. His voice was flat when he spoke.
'Of what follows I have memories enough.' He looked around in the gloom to where the Plainsmen sat away from them. 'Recommence from the time when we were captured by these barbarians.'
Carnelian poured the story out and as he did, lived in that time again. When he reached the morning when the raiders were intending to let them be found by the legion, he ran dry.
'I had to choose,' he said.
Osidian seemed startled. 'And you chose to come here?'
Carnelian gazed at him. ‘I could not bear that you should die.'
Osidian's laughter wounded Carnelian.
'One has to keep reminding oneself that you really are everything you appear to be. It is inconceivable any other of the Chosen could have made such a decision: to willingly consign oneself to this life of savagery for another… Incredible.'
Now Carnelian wanted to hurt him. 'Perhaps, in truth, I was intent on saving myself. I cannot imagine your mother would welcome my return.'
'You would have no call to fear her. It is beyond doubt that if I had returned, my blood would have anointed my brother's Masks, but be sure I would have dragged my mother into the tomb after me.' 'And your brother?'
'Once a God Emperor is made, They cannot be unmade, but the revealing of Their plot would unite the Great against Them. Even They could not have harmed you then.'
Carnelian's anger ebbed away.
Osidian reached out to touch him. 'It was a kindness, Carnelian, I will do my best to repay.'
Carnelian burned up. 'It was no kindness, but an act of love.'
It had grown so dark they could no longer see each other, but Carnelian sensed Osidian had become as ensnared as he in uncomfortable emotion.
'And I had feared you would hate me for bringing you here,' he said almost to himself.
'I might have if it had not been revealed to be my manifest destiny.'
Carnelian felt the swamp smothering him.
'But tell me, why did the barbarians accede to your request? Surely even they must be aware of how dangerous we are.'
Though it felt selfish, Carnelian did not wish to dwell on what danger his choice might have brought upon the Plainsmen.
'I appealed to one of them. Fern.'
'Fern,' said Osidian.
'I had shown consideration for his father when he was close to death.'
'I can see how such condescension might be impressive to such as they.'
Osidian's hauteur irritated Carnelian. They have seen us as we are, my Lord. Do you really believe we still appear to them as angels?'
'What we appear to be matters less than what we are,'
Osidian said in ominous tones. 'But I sense there is something else that caused this Fern to take us with him.'
Something deep inside urged Carnelian to hide the truth, but he was certain Osidian would see through any lie.
'You watched them blacken the bodies of their dead? Well, we appeared to them thus, clothed in bitumen.'
'And my birthmark?' Osidian asked in a strange voice Carnelian felt compelled to answer.
That played a part.'
'If I read it right, then it must have been this Fern who found us among the sartlar.'
