Текст книги "The Chosen"

Автор книги: Ricardo Pinto

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YKORIANA

Often I heard her speak

With a voice of angels

Words barbed and dripping poison

(extract from 'The Voyage of the Suncutter')

The grand-cohort commander was standing with other Ichorians at the entrance to the Sun in Splendour. He looked at the heraldry on Carnelian's court robe and let him pass. The hall was smouldering gold, its walls and pillars catching their light from somewhere round the dais. The pillars did not allow Carnelian to see the dais itself. He stopped, closed his eyes to find composure, then opened them and left the shelter of the columns. He moved in to the centre of the hall and turned to face the dais. On it and beside it were two Masters; three more faced them like frozen flames. These three rose slowly, pivoting round, the skirts of their robes slightly rising. Each face seemed transfused by a beam of light. They could have been angels caught in the act of forming from fire.

Carnelian walked towards them, timing the placing of each ranga to the robe's heavy swing. He could feel their eyes watching him and was aware of the shining ovals of their faces, but his eyes were focused on the enthroned being rising behind them, haloed by a corona of flickering flames. The halo's hub was a Chosen face, his father's, alarmingly gaunt. The eyes were as sunk under the brows as if they were the heads of nails hammered deep into the skull. A hand, drifting up, lifted a sleeve that was a slab of mosaiced gold. Is that you?

The question brought Carnelian to a halt. He watched the hand fall. His father glanced at the other Lords. Carnelian saw it was Aurum beside him and that Imago Jaspar was one of the three, standing with two Masters Carnelian did not know. Each nodded to him and he responded vaguely, his eyes already returning to his father's wary hope.

'I am come, my Lord, at your summons,' his own voice said and almost choked on the words when he saw the bright relief fill his father's face.

'Your father is glad to see you, my Lord son.'

Carnelian remembered to unmask, and when the metal face was off they exchanged tiny smiles.

Please wait for me there, his father's hand signed and pointed to a place near Aurum. Carnelian paced to the spot, turned to face the dais and sank to his knees as he saw the other Masters doing.

'Excuse the disturbance, my Lords. Shall we continue?' his father said.

The Masters all bowed and began to speak with hands. Carnelian made a point of ignoring Aurum. Jaspar's fixed, cold-eyed smile forced a twitch of recognition from Carnelian before he focused on his father's face. The hollow cheeks and recessed eyes appalled him. His father had become an aged man. His hands, when they were not signing, tended to stray to the staves that were planted on either side of him for support. Carnelian watched his father's bone fingers trace the carved lids of the staves' sun-rayed eyes that stared through the Masters down the hall, left hand and sun-eye both smeared with the bloody light that filtered down through the emberous pomegranate finial. Carnelian noticed some ammonites squatting on the floor. Three more were in the shadows before the dais, Aurum and himself. He watched them but they sat hunched, doing nothing.

Once or twice his father glanced at him. Anticipation of the coming conflict was grinding in Carnelian's stomach. He tried to distract himself by following the Masters' talk but it was all of blood transactions, bride-prices and iron eyes. Carnelian gave up and let their talk flow over him while he lost himself in dreams of the Yden.

Dapples of gold flickering round him made it seem he was among breeze-ruffled trees. Carnelian lifted his head and saw the crusted masses of the Masters grow taller and then turn towards the distant doors, like sails into a wind. One of them remained. The Ruling Lord Aurum. He raised his hand. There is now no need for you to go and see her?

Carnelian looked at his father's eyes that seemed unaware of Aurum's signs.

If you go, I want to go with you.

Suth's hand stirred into motion. If I go, I will go alone.

Aurum's face became stiff with anger. He stabbed Carnelian with his eyes before glimmering away.

Carnelian felt the opening of the doors as a change of pressure in his ears. They let in a perfume wind and the roar of the throng. Carnelian watched his father. The doors came ponderously together and, with a clunk,

Carnelian was left with his father in the glowing golden gloom.

'Leave us,' said Suth.

Carnelian's eyes were drawn downwards by a scurrying. The ammonites were creeping over the floor and slipping down into a hole over which a lid closed silendy. Something like tumbling fire jerked Carnelian's head up. His father's head had fallen forward. He looked like a golden puppet. Alarmed, Carnelian opened the angles of his knees and lurched towards the dais. The sunburst crown presented its teeth to him so that Carnelian could not see his father's face.

'Father.' The word came strangled from his throat.

The spiked halo rose, lifting the limestone of his father's face after it, sighing, 'Where have you been?'

That close, Carnelian could not avoid seeing the sallow skin, the thinned lips, the eyes deep in their pits all shot with red. Those eyes were on him. He sought their familiar stormy grey but found only pale drizzle. 'Exploring,' he said.

'For… five… days?'

Carnelian could admit nothing without admitting it all.

'You were alone saw no-one?'

Carnelian blushed. There was someone with me.' He withstood the probing of his father's eyes.

Surprise dawned in his father's face. 'So it is that way. The sybling Quenthas?'

'A sybling but a divided one.' He watched his father's yellow forehead creasing. 'He wears a blood-ring.'

'Does he?'

Carnelian thought his father looked like a man walking on a rope. 'His House?'

The Masks.' Carnelian watched the red eyes close.

Sepia welled in the eye pits and round the corners of the mouth. Looking at that yellow mask, Carnelian could hardly believe to whom it belonged. 'You look tired, Father.'

The eyes opened, brightened. His father gave a chuckle and his lips wore something like a smile. 'You could say that.'

'Your wound?'

His father gave the merest shrug with his eyebrows. This is no time for convalescence.'

'Does your wound still bleed?' Carnelian took a step forward.

His father's face made the slightest movement side to side. The Wise know ways to preserve life, to hold corruption at bay, even to extend a creature's natural span of years.'

'And strength?'

'What I have comes from their potions.' He looked into Carnelian's face. 'Be not concerned. Once this matter is resolved… I will abdicate to Aurum the power that he craves, then I will have all the time I need to rest.'

He went deathly sallow. They who were the mirror to divinity are no more. We are left to live through these broken mirror days. The Commonwealth must be given a new heart lest she should perish.'

Carnelian remembered what the dead Emperor had once been to his father. The need to tell his father of the Yden was burning him but he kept silent.

The gates in the Ringwall are open. The barbarians will be coming in, riddling the Commonwealth with their cancer.'

'And the election?'

'In five days.'

'Goes it well?'

'Very well.' His father smiled raggedly. The new Imago, our friend Jaspar, has brought his faction behind Aurum's. At every conclave I buy more votes with imperial blood and iron. The towers of the major blocks are all in place, we merely need to build the curtain walls between them. Barring some unforeseen intervention, Ykoriana and Molochite will be defeated.'

'She is quite given to interventions, Father.'

The cores of his father's eyes showed indomitably. Carnelian felt something of their usual power as they settled on him. That is why you must promise me that until the election you will not leave the Sunhold save with me.'

Carnelian felt a yearning for Osidian. If he made this promise he would have no way of letting him know about it. He groaned, imagining that they would never again touch.

His father's hand jumped to his shoulder like a grappling hook and drew him in. Carnelian stared into the yellow red-veined eyes. His father's words began with a hiss in which Carnelian could smell the illness and the sickly odour of the drugs sustaining him. The tighter she is caught in my trap… the more desperate will be her efforts

… to… break… free.'

Carnelian rocked back as he was released.

'Your oath, my Lord.'

Seeing his father locked into those weak, drug-ravaged remains, Carnelian spoke, 'On my blood.'

His father closed his eyes, nodding, breathing heavily. Carnelian had not forgotten his duty to his people but waited until he saw his father had regained some strength.

'My Lord has threatened my guardsmen with crucifixion.'

His father smiled at him. 'Fear for you made me wrathful. Rest assured they will suffer no further punishment.' His face lost colour. 'You and I will go and have some words with your aunt, now Dowager Empress and Regent.'

'Me?'

'I need your strength. Besides, now that I have you back I find myself reluctant to let you out of my sight.' He looked away down the length of the hall to its doors, growing older as he did so. 'I do not relish wading through that sea outside, so I shall take a boat.' He turned to look down at Carnelian. 'I am afraid you will have to swim in its wake.'

Carnelian did not understand.

'Put on your mask,' his father said. Carnelian obeyed. His father masked himself with some difficulty and then motioned with his hand towards one of the staves. 'Lift this thrice and each time bring it down hard.'

Carnelian shuffled closer and then, with both hands, lifted the staff with its sun-eye and its pomegranate and cracked it down. A ringing tone reverberated round the hall. Twice more he lifted the staff and twice more brought it down. His father's lictors dewed out from the shadows.

Summon the forty-eight, his father's hand signed.

The lictors went off into the dark and then came back with more Ichorians, in groups carrying poles like battering rams, their half-black bodies concealed only by the golden rings of their collars. Carnelian took some steps back as they collected round the sides of his father's dais. A pole was lowered almost to the ground and then pushed into a hole in the dais's edge. Carnelian watched the pole feed in and its head appear at the other side. Other poles were being pushed through the dais like yarn through a needle's eye. When the poles were all in place, the Ichorians moved in between them. They bent as one like rowers to their oars, strained, and the dais and his father rose slowly into the air.

The dais was a raft drifting through the gloom towards the doors. The lictors walked ahead of it carrying the two staves of He-who-goes-before. Carnelian walked behind between files of Ichorians. On his right their shoulders and faces had the hues of barbarian skin. On his left these hues were clothed in swirling black tattoos. His father was a pillar of gold from whose apex rayed the sun disc that hid fully a third of his height. Carnelian watched the doors ahead opening. The elegant hubbub of the Great wafted through with their lily perfumes and the shimmer of their court robes. Around Carnelian, the Ichorians lifted shawms to their lips and began a ragged braying. Floating on this, the dais carrying his father slipped burning into the light, parting the Great before it. Carnelian angled his head so that his mask would shield his eyes from the glare as he too came into the nave. More Ichorians appeared pumping more volume into the pulsating fanfare of the shawms. The Great loomed like towers in a fortress wall hung with the mirror shields of their masks. Carnelian narrowed his eyes further against their dazzle. Incense puffed up in clouds into a region where lanterns larger than men hung ablaze. Higher than these flapped banners like sails that carried all the heraldry of the Houses of the Chosen. The weight of his crowns forced Carnelian's eyes down to look along the avenue of the Great. Between flashes he caught glimpses of his father in their faces like an idol being carried aloft. The music shrilled on. The Great spoke with flickering hands. Trying to read the signs made him dizzy. He locked his eyes to the ambered rubied edge of the dais and concentrated on the opening and closing of his knees.

The wall of the radiant Great fell suddenly away as they came among the Lesser Chosen. On his taller ranga, Carnelian overtopped even their Ruling Lords by a head. He could see a river of them running all the way down the nave between the dingy colonnades.

Carnelian reached the looming bronze wall of the Chamber of the Three Lands in a dream. His eyes took a while adjusting to the lack of summer gold. The Emperor's heart no longer trembled the massive doors. The shawms frayed with echoes as they left the nave to follow the bronze wall round. When the Approach came into sight, Carnelian saw that syblings were crowding its lower steps. Something was coming down that looked like water seen at the bottom of a well. The dais broke through the sybling tide and washed up onto the first step. Carnelian walked round it watching his father for signs of life. Syblings took the staves from the lictors and held them upright before his father, whose gold mass flickered and flamed as he rose. His sleeves hinged up like doors, his hands caught hold of the staves and he seemed to be pulled by them onto the first step.

The Ichorians stopped Carnelian pushing through to his father's side. Arms outstretched, his father seemed crucified between the staves. One hand uncurled to beckon Carnelian through the half-coloured men.

Now I will, the hand flickered. It recurled itself around the stave, and slid down to rest upon its sun-eye. Carnelian saw it move. He wanted it to speak again. It detached and began signing, Stay close. I will have to find the strength to climb these steps.

Looking up, Carnelian saw the vast black Lord was almost upon them. Syblings covered the steps around him like an extension of his raven-jewelled court robe. Others carried a pair of court staves before him bearing the jade and the obsidian masks. His gold mask shone high above like the sun peering through a pillar of smoke. His crowns threatened an eclipse. A porcelain hand appeared.

Sardian, I was coming to see you.

'I must meet with your mother, Celestial.'

The black Lord turned his vast head a little as if he could hear someone calling for him down the stairs. She will not welcome you, my Lord.

'Nevertheless.'

Have you strength enough to climb these steps? 'I will find it, Celestial.'

/ shall wait for you in the Sun in Splendour. The black Lord made a gesture to hook Carnelian's eyes. Take good care of him, my Lord.

Carnelian stared, then inclined his head as the Lord swept past and began to move off towards the bronze wall.

'Molochite?' Carnelian asked, puzzled.

'His brother, Nephron,' his father replied. 'Now, let us begin the climb.'

For father and son, the climb was an ordeal. At first Suth managed to keep up a reasonable pace but after a while it was obvious that he was spent. They stopped. Carnelian could hear his father's laboured breathing. Looking down the steps, the floor seemed far away. Above them, the summit seemed further. 'Can you not be carried?'

His father stretched open his hand. The Sun cannot be carried. It would be as much as admitting that I am unfit to wear the Pomegranate Ring.

'But Father, why must you do this at all?'

His father's hand trembled, ‘ I must.

They resumed the climb a step at a time. Even for

Carnelian, lifting his ranga was an effort. He could imagine what it was costing his father, whose ranga were besides much taller. He leaned close and tried to help push him up. In front of them, the syblings carried the staves that his father clung to as if they were walking sticks. Carnelian waited for the clack of each shoe, chewing his tongue, fearing that one would not find its step. The last few steps, when they could look onto the landing, were the worst. Rasping each breath, his father climbed them. When he reached the top he sank down in among the empty court robes that forested the landing. As the disrobing syblings came, Carnelian tried to mask his father's breathing with his voice as he told them to attend to his father first.

'He-who-goes-before is the embodiment of the celestial nature of the Seraphim and as such is permitted to retain his pomp.'

Carnelian looked with horror at his father, whose robe seemed as empty as the others standing round. He looked to the next flight, a hill of steps, and higher up he knew there was another. He drew as close as he could to his father and whispered to him, This ascent will kill you.'

'No,' said the mass of gold. 'By the time… you are disrobed… I shall have found more strength.'

Carnelian allowed himself to be taken off by the syblings who removed his court robe and attired him in coarse fibre. His father had risen when Carnelian returned. Without his ranga, Carnelian hardly reached his father's waist. They walked together to the next stair. Neither of them looked up it but just began to climb.

Somehow, his father managed to reach the second landing, which swarmed with Masters in their supplicant robes. Cries went up of, 'He-who-goes-before.' As they flocked towards them, Carnelian commanded their sybling entourage to form a cordon. Within this protection, his father slid on seemingly unaware.

The third and final stair was almost more pain than Carnelian could bear. More of the Great wandered up and down on either side, and for appearance's sake his father seemed to dig deep and moved up the steps steadily. Tears of bitter anger squeezed down behind Carnelian's mask. He knew the climb was consuming his father's life.

When they reached the final landing they found many of the Great waiting before the glowering Iron Door. Carnelian expected his father to sink and rest but instead he commanded the syblings to take away the support of his staves and strike them both against the door, crying, 'He-who-goes-before seeks audience with the Regent of the Twins.'

Once the dull thunder reverberated to silence the door opened to show the Hanuses, who bowed.

'I have come with the Regent's nephew to speak to her.'

The syblings lowered their double head in a deeper bow and the door closed. Carnelian felt the gleaming mass of his father rum to look back down the stairs and he went to stand beside him.

'Do you remember standing on the weir gazing down at the sea?' he asked in a low voice.

His father's sun-haloed head shot with fire as he nodded. To both that morning was already a lifetime away.

The Iron Door rumbled open and a Ruling Lord came out walking with a staff, followed by other Masters of his House. He gave Suth an angry look before he and his companions inclined their crowns and stood to one side.

Carnelian's eyes were drawn away to where the Hanuses had one face turned obliquely to him, the other hidden.

The syblings' hand beckoned them to follow. Preceded by his staves, Suth slid glimmering into the Thronehall and Carnelian followed. After a few steps he moved to one side to allow him to see past his father's brocaded trunk. Red braziers painted a bloody road across the night to a bonfire in whose heart something like a blade was standing.

They followed the syblings down the road between the braziers, in whose lurid light Carnelian could just make out the sybling guardsmen on either side. Moonlight pierced the Creation Window and fell around the throne. A black fence edged the lamplit clearing below its pyramid. The palings turned and Carnelian saw they were Sapients with their hole eyes and scar mouths.

Suth took hold of his staves and the syblings that had been carrying them walked away. 'My Lords of the Wise,' he said, with a nod.

The Sapients bowed and turned back to strangle their homunculi, gazing blindly up into the light towards a welter of red like a blooded sword. This scarlet figure stood between two court staves. Curled at its foot was an exquisite carving of white jade, a youth crouching.

Carnelian felt as much as saw the rustle of his father's robe settling. Even kneeling, Suth's chest was at Carnelian's eye level. Carnelian stood uncertain, only falling to his knees when his father touched his shoulder.

The red figure lifted a slim long-fingered hand that had two Great-Rings on it and released a veil. The gold angel face appeared like the sun at dawn. When the other hand rose Carnelian saw that it too had a pair of Great-Rings and then he knew without doubt he was in the presence of the Dowager Empress, Ykoriana. The hand kept rising and pulled a chain that in turn uncurled the white youth to his feet. By his height, his blue eyes and the perfect pallor of his skin he might have been Chosen. The youth's nakedness, however, displayed his mutilation and when Carnelian looked more carefully he saw his eyes were sapphires.

The scarlet mass slid down a little as Ykoriana knelt on her ranga. Her gold face bent towards the youth's ear.

'Sardian, have you become so decrepit that you must needs use your own son as a stick?' The youth's voice was smooth as honey but more sweet. Homunculi mutterings echoed it.

The Regent must know how long and perilous a journey I have had returning to Osrakum,' said Suth.

'We have heard something of it,' said the melodious voice. 'Do you come here as He-who-goes-before or as Suth Sardian?'

That is in your choice, Celestial.'

Every word was repeated by the homunculi.

'I would talk without the Wise.'

The Empress flicked open a hand like a fan in a gesture of dismissal. The Sapients released the muttering throats of their homunculi who hand in hand fled away into the darkness.

'Must their masters stay?' asked Suth.

'You forget, my Lord, that though I am Regent the rigour of my purdah must still be observed,' said the melodious voice.

'It is not only you, Celestial, who have suffered seclusion.'

'Did you then suffer much those long years you spent in the wilderness?' purred the youth. 'Do you mock me, Madam?' 'Perhaps a little. We have led parallel lives.' 'You chose the suffering for us both.' Thwarted love is the charioteer of vengeful deeds.'

Tell me, Ykoriana, have your acts of vengeance brought you joy?'

'Vengeance is a pale creature in comparison to joy, but still, Sardian, she is brighter than darkness.'

'A darkness of your own making.'

Laughter rang out from behind the golden mask making the youth turn round and gaze up at it.

'Sardian, I do think you could take a little more pride in your handiwork,' said the Empress in her own, rich voice.

This was no work of mine,' he said in outrage.

'How not? My husband, now sadly deceased, told me I could buy my eyes with your release.'

Suth shook his head. 'I was horrified when I heard what had been done to you.'

'Spare me your pity.'

'Outrage rather than pity, Ykoriana. Such mutilation was without precedent.'

The Wise found that it was not, my Lord. When I would not bend to my husband's will, he asked them to enforce an ancient form of purdah. Oh, they put me into the dark gladly enough. They envy others the life of sensation that is denied to them.'

'You cannot hate all the world, Ykoriana.'

'Do not presume to lecture me, my Lord, on hatred. On that subject I am as learned as the Wise.'

'Let go your bitterness, Ykoriana, lest it should consume you with its fire.'

She chuckled. 'Do you know he never stopped loving you? All I achieved by sending you away was to make you even more permanent in his heart. The Wise claim that embalming makes the dead live for ever. I thought if I brought you back from your tomb in the sea, your faded beauty, your bitterness would poison the memory of the youth he clung to. It was this that made me release you from your blood oath. But you cheated me even of that small hope. Tell me, Sardian, why did you not return when once more you could?'

'I feared what you might do to my son.'

The Empress braced herself on the youth. Her head fell. 'You know how much I loved Azurea. How could I ever harm her son?'

'You really think you did not harm him, forcing him to grow up outside in the wilderness’

Ykoriana sat back. 'Have you forgotten the offer I made you long ago? My quarrel was never with the child.'

'Perhaps I misjudged you.'

'It is too late for apologies, Sardian, too late for regrets.'

'Is it too late for him to know his mother's sister?'

Ykoriana turned her mask away. 'Have him speak that I might hear his voice.'

Suth urged his son forward. Carnelian obeyed him and found himself staring up at the Dowager Empress in her widow's robes.

‘Speak then… nephew,' she said.

Carnelian licked his lips. 'Celestial… I do not know what it is that you wish me to say.'

The Dowager Empress's mask nodded. 'Perhaps there is something of her in your voice. Sardian, does he look like Azurea?'

'Very much.'

A sound of footfalls was coming up behind them. Carnelian turned to see a pillar of green jewel fire sweeping towards them from out of the dark. He saw the mask floating high above and the horned crowns.

'Celestial, I did not expect…' he heard his father say, then Suth bowed his sun-crowned head as the Jade Lord swept past trailing a quetzal-feathered cloak.

Carnelian knelt watching the cloak slide past. The faces of the Sapients had turned towards the Jade Lord. With his staff, one of them ratded out a rhythm on the floor. The Jade Lord loomed above the Sapient. Carnelian imagined he could feel his hot anger. The homunculi were streaming back. As they folded into their masters' embraces, they began to mutter, first one then another until all had murmured the word 'Molochite'. The Sapients bowed and then opened their fence to let the Jade Lord through. He climbed the steps towards the Dowager Empress, who put out a hand that he caught and folded in his own. Carnelian watched their hands flow in each other's lasciviously and saw that the homunculi were watching too, murmuring, relaying every touch back to the hands at their throats.

'Jade Lord Molochite, I was talking to the Regent,' his father said.

'Well, now you can talk to us both who shall soon be wed.'

'Does the Regent wish that I should speak before her son and the Wise? What I came to say would be better said to her alone.'

Ykoriana leaned towards the youth who said, 'It matters naught to me. Say what you came to say in the hearing of my son, and of the Wise too.'

Suth glanced down at Carnelian. He lifted both his staves and brought them down again with a clack.

Then, Celestial, you force me to speak as He-who-goes-before.'

Molochite stood beside his mother, holding her hand like a child. 'Well, get on with it.'

'When I wear the Pomegranate Ring I am become merely the lens through which the Clave focuses its will. I am acting in a similar capacity for your other son.

Nephron bade me say to you that should you cease your opposition to his election he would give you thereafter such freedoms as you have been deprived of. I stand here witness to his blood oath.'

Again the Dowager Empress threw back her crowned head and laughed like a girl. 'What gift is it to a bird to open its cage once it has forgotten the freedom of the sky? Besides, even the Twins cannot give me back my sight.'

‘Sacrilege, Celestial, you come close to sacrilege,' shrilled one of the homunculi.

She laughed again, then looked at Suth. 'Still, you and Aurum have built about me a wall of votes that I can see no way to breach.'

Molochite tore his hand out of hers and came to the edge of the dais to look down. 'By my burning blood, Suth, I swear that when I become God Emperor, I shall bend all my power to pursuing your House to ruin.'

Carnelian felt his hackles rising.

Ykoriana's hand let go of the youth's chain and reached up to tug upon Molochite's sleeve. He turned the malice of his eyeslits on her. For moments, Carnelian was convinced that he would strike his mother, but then he moved back to stand by her side. She stroked his hand.

'It is Aurum who is its architect. Once the election is over I intend to retire to my coomb to live in quiet retreat with my son. I am not your enemy.'

'Perhaps that is so, Sardian.'

Carnelian watched the three masks looking at each other.

Ykoriana's was the first to turn away. 'But I will not abandon my beloved. Several days have yet to pass before the House of the Masks and the Great meet in the Chamber of the Three Lands, and only then will this be decided. Until that time, my son and I are content enough to leave our fates entirely in the hands of the Chosen.'

'I will take this answer back to Nephron. Be certain, Celestial, I shall do what can be done in urging him to free you, notwithstanding your response.'

'Until the election, then. But lest your faction should become too proud, My-Lord-who-goes-before, remember that even the sun is bound by earth and sky.'

Suth's mask looked at her a while. 'I shall remember.'

Ykoriana terminated the audience with her hand.

Suth bowed his sunburst head. Syblings appeared to relieve him of his staves and he turned away. Carnelian walked beside him all the way back to the Iron Door where the Hanuses awaited them. The syblings bowed but when their head came up their eyes, living and stone, lingered gluttonously on Carnelian's face. It was only with the closing of the door that Carnelian was free of them.

In the gloom of the Sun in Splendour the Ichorians lowered his father's dull fire to the ground. Carnelian stared at him. The journey back down the Approach had been even harder than the climb. Somehow his father had avoided falling. Somehow he had managed each one of the myriad steps. But when they reached the waiting Ichorians and the dais, his father stopped and would move no more till Carnelian had begun to think that he had died and only the stiff robe kept him upright still. At last, he had had to have him carried onto the dais. There, the knees of his ranga had bent, though Carnelian had no way of knowing whether it was his father who had knelt or simply that his ranga had collapsed. All the way back, blinded by the throng, deafened by the storming shawms, Carnelian had had to follow fearing that at any moment his father would topple to the ground.