face.
'So you've returned,' said Osidian, making both Carnelian and Ravan jump.
As Fern came closer, he scowled at his brother. 'I might have guessed this is where you've been hiding.'
Ravan scowled. 'I'm not hiding.'
'Do you even care how much mother's worried about you?'
'How did she take…?' Ravan's voice tailed away as he frowned back tears.
Fern sunk his head, swung a leather sack down from his shoulder then, kneeling, opened it and thrust a hand inside. He pulled out a mat and spread it on the ground and began to lay over it the rest of the contents of the sack. There were cubes of meat wrapped in leaves, some floury cakes, bundles of delicate fresh fiddleheads. He produced some skewers.
'Well?' Ravan demanded.
'How do you think she took it?' said Fern, with the fire burning the tears in his eyes. Ravan lost his defiance and slumped down, his arms clasped about his body. Carnelian turned away, desiring to comfort the brothers but fearing to intrude upon their grief.
Fern speared the meat onto the skewers and propped them in the fire. He watched it dribble blood that hissed to steam. When it began charring he spoke.
'You may as well know that my mother told me the Elders will, most likely, want to have you killed.'
'Does she also wish our deaths?' said Carnelian.
Fern turned to look at Carnelian. 'I told her what I believe; what I know about you. She might even try to save you, but I can't see how
… I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought you here.' Squinting deep into the fire, he shook his head. 'I don't know what possessed me to let you come.'
They're burning,' said Ravan. Fern plucked the skewers out from the fire. When he distributed the food, Osidian refused any.
The Elders won't kill us.'
Ravan looked at him sharply. 'How can you be so certain, Master?'
Osidian ignored the youth's question and looked instead at Fern. They want to see us before they make their decision, don't they?'
The Plainsman narrowed his eyes and then dipped a nod.
Carnelian watched Osidian, who seemed to be looking through Fern, seeing something beyond him in the night. Carnelian worked out arguments that suggested it would be perilous for the Plainsmen to kill a Master, but nothing he could come up with was anything more than an argument.
'When?' Osidian asked at last.
'In the morning,' said Fern.
Carnelian disliked seeing the way in which his friend was obviously awed by Osidian's manner.
Carnelian was shaken awake by Fern. Fronds hung over' him, black against a starry sky. He sat up. Ravan was rolling up the blankets he had slept in.
'It's still dark,' Carnelian said, in a low voice.
Crouched over the embers of their fire, carefully dabbing them out, Fern spoke without turning. The Elders wish to avoid us causing more unrest in the Tribe.'
Carnelian nodded and rolled his bedding. Soon the four of them were walking towards the corner of the fern-garden. They opened the gate and crossed the crumbling earthbridge. Their guards were lying on the ground asleep and grumbled as Fern roused them.
As they waited, Carnelian approached Osidian.
'Have you an idea what we shall do?' he whispered.
Osidian turned a shadow head. They are barbarians,' he said in Quya. They will not dare to raise their hands against us.'
Fern led them back along the path they had taken the day before. They reached the place where the crowd had stood and found a wider, more solid earthbridge which they crossed to a gate. Once through this, they were looking across a starlit meadow towards the mass of the koppie hill.
The path took them straight across the meadow. A faint blue was appearing in the east as they came under the first branches of the cedars. Carnelian peered into the blackness that hid their trunks. Looking up he saw stars winking through the canopy. Fern led them into the night the trees were still nursing and soon the bodies of two cedars emerged standing sentinel upon a high wicker gate. Carnelian breathed their resin perfume and felt more than saw the heavy rafters of their branches hanging above him. The gate rose on the other side of another earthbridge and was set into a rampart. A ditch curving away on either side moated the hill with darkness.
Fern was the first to cross. He approached the gate and Carnelian heard the murmur of his voice, which was quickly followed by the creaking of the gate opening. As he passed through, Carnelian saw the shapes of the gate wardens and, though he could not see their eyes, he could feel them watching him.
In the near darkness, Carnelian could just make out the hill rising before him pillared with the black trunks of trees. Fern made sure they were still following him and led them up an irregular stair that Carnelian discovered with much stumbling to be formed by tree roots clinging to the slope. The Plainsmen, who even in the twilight seemed to know each step, slowed to let the Standing Dead feel their way up with their feet.
At last they reached a narrow clearing which terminated at a pitchy rising mass of rock. Looking up
Carnelian saw the head of the Crag glowering in the sky's starless indigo and discovered an ivory house nestling halfway up.
Hearing Fern and Ravan arguing in whispers, Carnelian drew closer.
'I want to stay,' Ravan was pleading.
'I said, go to the hearth and see mother before she comes up here,' said Fern.
The youth seemed to be waiting for some intervention from Osidian, but the Master seemed unaware of him and so he trudged off along a path that hugged the Crag. There were stirrings among the cedars on either side. Carnelian could hear a clink of earthenware, some voices, a lazy drawn-out yawn.
Fern urged them forward. The night still lingering at the foot of the Crag engulfed them. Carnelian felt the presence of others. A light came to life and showed them three Ochre standing guard at the bottom of steps cut into the rock.
'Are we to go straight up?' Fern asked.
Their eyes wholly on the Standing Dead, the guards nodded. Fern beckoned Carnelian to follow him. The steps were steep and uneven. Taking care not to lose his footing, Carnelian managed to catch glimpses, past Fern, of the pale house they were approaching. He followed him onto a porch on which guards stood to either side of a doorway. Peering, Carnelian realized with a shudder that the guards were huskmen. Fern was staring at the doorway, gathering his resolve. He pushed its leather curtain aside and led the Standing Dead into the blackness within.
Falling back into place, the curtain shut out the light so that Carnelian had to put a hand up to feel his way. His fingers found Fern motionless. Carnelian moved round to stand to his left. The floor felt strangely uneven under his makeshift shoes. The dullness of the scuffing echoes made him aware of how small the room was. His head brushed the ceiling. Reaching up, he touched cold, smooth ridging interlocking in some complex pattern. He let his fingers slide along one ridge and felt it swell into a double knob. His hand recoiled. 'Bones.'
This is our Ancestor House,' said Fern's voice in a reverential tone.
Carnelian became convinced he could detect a faint mustiness of death. 'Your people?' he breathed.
'Under our feet, what remains of the Tribe's mothers, grandmothers, aunts and sisters after the tree roots have eaten their flesh, drunk their blood. Between us and the sky, the ceiling is formed from what the ravens have left behind of our fathers and grandfathers, our uncles, our brothers.'
'A tomb, then,' Osidian said, contemptuously.
'Not so,' said Fern, outraged. 'Our ancestors inhabit the earth and sky. These are nothing more than the bone cages that once held their souls.'
'A house of death,' whispered Carnelian.
'Rather, one where we, the living, commune with our dead. Their discarded bones make this place familiar to the souls of those who have gone before. They seep in here like the scent of the magnolias so that the Elders
