Текст книги "The Chosen"

Автор книги: Ricardo Pinto

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Endless night. Swimming in a coruscating sea of dreams. Sometimes, when he came up for breath, he surfaced in the cabin, each time with surprise. The silver box was the tearful eye of the moon. He would smother its light in his hand, dip his fingers in, let the others drink, then dive back. There was no him, there was no where, there was no passing time, his unblinking eyes saw only the endless undulating vision of now.

STORMS AT SEA

Down the dark roads of the sea

We fled Before a driving squall

(extract from The Voyage of the Suncutter')

Sharp gull cries superimposing over each other like their angles in the sky. Not gulls, men jabbering. A shout. Answers spaced by distance. Carnelian felt heavy, muffled by the dark. Stillness. No, his body was nudging up and down. It was as if he lay on someone's breathing chest. He did not open his eyes. He knew that he would see nothing. His limbs had been replaced by new ones cast in lead. His head was a stone. Something was different. It was the voices alone that defined space. He searched for the difference. The tempest. His hearing went out past the voices. The tempest was not there. Under him the ship seemed almost still. Unbelievably, she had survived his dreams.

When he decided to rise he found that every hinge in his body had seized up. He propped himself onto his legs and drew them together like a pair of compasses. He tottered on his feet. No amount of fumbling would find the lantern. His fingers tried to locate the door, the cabin's shape forgotten. He opened it gingerly and let in the merest crack of dazzling light. It was like water to a thirsty man. He opened the door wider and sprayed the dazzle across half the cabin. The sheer beauty of it left him gasping for breath.

He found the lantern and lit it. It ignited into a sun. He smiled through his squint and looked around. Tain was there like a bone carving abandoned in a wrapping of blankets. He stooped and carefully woke him. He gave him time. He watched the life seep back into the little face. There was something unfamiliar about his brother, but what? He turned to Crail. His skin looked empty, as if the old man had squeezed out of it and left it behind.

A while later Tain was sitting up and Carnelian was staring at him. Carnelian's first attempts at speech sighed away to nothing. He swallowed several times and waited for his tongue to be wet enough to move. 'You're… so thin,' he managed to rasp. Tain looked up at him. Carnelian saw that his brother had aged. His face had narrowed. His eyes seemed huge. They grew larger. He tried to speak but managed only a croak. His thin arm rose and pointed shakily at Carnelian. He nodded several times. Carnelian took his meaning and reached up. He stopped when he saw a stranger's bony hands. He put them to his face. It felt like someone else's.

'You'd better get me cleaned up,' he croaked. 'I want to go…' He jerked his finger up at the ceiling.

They went through the cleansing like old men. The pads were so cold. The smell of the unguent pricked their noses.

Tain's hand brushed the stone dangling at his chest. He peered at it, looked up. 'My mother?'

Carnelian blinked down. 'She… for us… protection for all of us.'

As they continued with the cleaning Carnelian felt some strength returning. 'Like butterfly birth… un-crumpling its wings.' He chuckled. He almost asked Tain to shave his head but thought better of it. Tain's hand looked none too steady as he unpacked some clean clothes. Putting them on was a long, exhausting process. At last Carnelian edged into his cloak. He adjusted his face into his mask. It felt very loose. He turned to Tain. 'Do you want to come with me?'

Tain shook his head. 'Maybe… later.' He slumped to the floor.

Carnelian stepped out into the corridor as if his feet were raw with blisters. His body still felt as if it might shake itself apart. Each step up to the deck was an effort. His eyes were almost closed against the glare. He reached the deck and stood for a few moments getting used to the rolling and the light. He looked round. His neck was as stiff as an old door. Sea and sky were calm and grey. A breeze threatened to push him over. He closed his eyes and sucked its saltiness through the nostrils of his mask. He almost swooned, as much from delight as from the burn in his lungs.

He took some steps away from the funnel, round one of the brass posts, and leaned against the mast. He looked at his unfamiliar bony hand and recognized the colours under it. It was sad to see them there. A fragment of his old life: a column from the Hold's Great Hall. He caressed it.

'Carnelian.'

The voice carried across the deck. Carnelian looked for its source. He saw a pitchy mass against the sky. It was Aurum unmasked, his face outshining everything else, like a hole into a world of light.

The Master lifted his hand, Greetings.

Carnelian responded, struggling with his fingers to make the sign.

Lord Aurum's black mass swept towards him. His face was glazed with white paint. Suddenly he stiffened, shooting his eyes' misty stare past Carnelian's shoulder. The menace was so palpable that Carnelian took some steps back. Something grabbed him round the waist. He folded forward, almost falling. He looked down. It was Crail, haggard, confused, blinking, his arm up to ward off the glare.

Carnelian turned back in time to see Aurum's whitened lips bending into an unpleasant smile. Bone fingers were drawing his mask out from his robe. With one smooth languid movement he put it on. The cruel gold face drifted towards them. Aurum's shadow falling across Crail allowed the old man to drop his arm. His eyes cleared. Then he saw the Master and jumped.

Aurum's mask looked down at the old man, who crumpled to his knees.

'Unfortunate creature,' said the Master in Vulgate. 'It's too late for that' He looked at Carnelian. The creature saw my face unmasked,' he said in Quya.

Carnelian stared with horror at the Master's mask. In its exquisite polished surface he saw his own mask, the ship and all the world were trapped in reflection. The slave could not have seen your face, my Lord, he was dazzled.'

'It was looking straight at me.'

'But you must have seen, my Lord, that he was shielding his eyes. It was your own shadow that allowed him to see.'

'Sophistry. Is the slave blind?' 'No…'

Then he has broken the Law of Concealment.'

'But it was not his intention…'

'Do you really think the creature's intentions form any part of the Law?'

'But the slave is weak, delirious. He suffers still from the after-effects of the poppy.'

'Who gave the slave poppy?'

'Well, I did…'

'You see the result?'

The fault is mine, my Lord.'

'Assuredly that is so, but of course it is the slave that shall be punished.'

'Be merciful, my Lord. He is weak. The blinding would surely kill him.'

'Do you deliberately belittle me?'

'What? I am sorry… I do not understand.'

'Even you must know that as a Ruling Lord of the Great my prerogative is the second Order of Concealment. The Category of Punishment is thus also the second and not the first.'

Carnelian closed his eyes, then opened them quickly when he started to feel dizzy.

'Not only blinding but mutilation shall be this creature's fate.'

Carnelian looked down at Crail, feeling nausea. He coughed. 'He is old… witless. Lord Aurum, please show mercy.'

'Neither its age nor its wits are pertinent, but only its sin. Even if I wished to do so, it is not for me to show clemency. The Law is precise. It does not concern itself with mercy. You have been careless, Carnelian. Suth Sardian has shown too much licence and this is the result. You should take this as a salutary lesson. Thank the Twins that your life in Osrakum will not be what it has been.'

The mask looked down at Crail. 'Let us forgo the formalities of the proper punishment. I shall summon my guards and they shall dispose of the creature here and now.'

Carnelian could taste vomit. He used his anger to keep it down. 'If you insist on pursuing this matter of the Law to the full, then I must insist that the forms be adhered to. This slave is mine and thus his punishment is my affair not yours.'

Aurum straightened. He loomed over Carnelian. 'So be it. At least for now.' A strange dry sound came from his mask. Carnelian drew back. Aurum was laughing. It seemed the most dreadful thing of all. The Master lifted one of his huge hands and locked it round Carnelian's arm. Truly you are your father's son.' He laughed again. Then the golden mirror of his face came down close to Carnelian's. 'However, it would irk me if I were to find that my Lord had forgotten the creature's sin. My Lord will not forget, will he?'

Carnelian saw his own serene reflection looking back.

'Punish the creature, Carnelian. If you do not have the stomach for the blinding and the amputation then give it to the sea. What loss will it be to you? Replace it in whatever function it performs with a younger creature.' Aurum nudged Crail with his foot. 'It is long past its best use. Aaagh! It fouls the deck.' He wiped his foot on Crail's back, released Carnelian's shoulder, then walked away.

Carnelian stood there with Crail at his feet until all his anger shook away and nothing was left but a paralysing chill.

Carnelian took Crail back to the cabin. Tain and he cleaned him up. Then he made the old man lie on the bunk and sat with him stroking his forehead until he fell asleep. He told Tain that in no circumstances should Crail be allowed to leave the cabin. Tain nodded and Carnelian went off to find his father. When he knocked on his father's door a blinded slave opened it. He said that the Master had gone up on deck. Carnelian went to find him there.

Sailors were calling to each other from mast to mast. Up there all the sails were open and taut with wind. The enormous hooded figure of a Master was off near the stem with smaller men beside him. Carnelian saw it was Keal and some others of the tyadra. As he walked up to them the Master turned and he recognized his father's mask inside the hood.

'Carnelian?'

'I have urgent need to speak to you, my Lord.' 'What about?'

'A matter of one of your servants and the Law.'

'Very well.' His father looked around the deck and then up at one of the masts. 'I would speak to you face to face but it would not be advisable to send the crew below.' He looked towards the prow. 'We shall speak there.' He gave some commands with his hands to Keal, then turned back to Carnelian. 'Come.'

Together they walked up the deck. 'I see that you have found your sea legs, Carnelian.'

The sea is calm, Father.'

They both looked out over the undulating flint-green sea. 'It will not remain so for long,' his father said.

'I had hoped we were through the tempest.'

'We merely pass through its eye.' His father pointed ahead. The prow stem formed a cross with the bar of stormy sky that ran behind it.

As they came near, the prow stem curved above them like a tree. Carnelian traced its trunk down and saw the face. A green face surfacing through the wood as if swimming up through water. Below it was set a trough of stone.

'A representation of our divine Emperor,' said his father. His lips curled. 'Primitive superstition.'

'Why are They here, my Lord?'

'Not only the Commonwealth but also the legions worship the God Emperor as the riving Twins and this is a legionary vessel.' He pointed at the number eight carved high on the prow stem.

'An altar, then?'

His father lifted his hand in the affirmative. 'Where is the other Twin?'

'He is on the other side of the prow stem. Even now He and the tempest glare at each other.'

Carnelian realized that the bronze bars curving on either side of the stem were not, as he had thought, cleats for fixing lines, but rather the four horns of the Black God. 'So the Green Face oversees the baran while the Black looks out over the sea.'

'Quite so.'

At that moment Keal appeared with the others, carrying tall screens. They formed these into a wall around Carnelian and his father.

'Now we can take these off.' His father removed his mask. His eyes were red-edged holes in his painted face.

Carnelian unmasked.

'By the Essences, what ails you?' his father cried. His hand came up to touch Carnelian's face.

'My Lord?' Carnelian said, alarmed.

'You are so thin. Your eyes…' His father's eyes narrowed. 'You have been taking the poppy that I gave you?'

Carnelian nodded.

'Have you also been taking regular sustenance?'

Carnelian thought back. He had vague memories of dreams, vaguer ones of waking. He realized that he could hardly remember eating at all.

'And Tain let this happen.' His father's voice was cold with anger.

'Do not blame him, Father. He was as drugged as I.' 'But-'

'You yourself told me that he should have some.'

Some, a little, and not through all these many days. Did I not tell you that you would feel no hunger?'

'I do not think you did, my Lord.'

Then it is I who am at fault. Come. Put on your mask. You must go and eat immediately.'

Carnelian put his hand up to stay him. 'Before I do there is the matter I need to bring before my Lord.'

His father looked hard at him.

'It is Crail.'

One of his father's brows arched.

'Lord Aurum is insisting that he looked upon his face.'

His father frowned.

'I gave him poppy too. I am sure that is why it happened. He followed me up on deck in a delirium. The Ruling Lord was unmasked. He is insisting on the punishment the Law demands. But Crail could not have seen his face. He was blinded by the glare of the sky.'

'What exactly did Aurum demand?'

'Blinding and amputation.'

His father closed his eyes as if he had been struck. He opened them. 'How did you leave this matter?'

'I told him that Crail was ours and that if he insisted on it we would carry out the punishment. But you can speak to him, Father, you can do something…'

His father looked ashen. 'You put me in a difficult position, more difficult than you can know.' 'You will save him?'

'I will do what I can.' His father slid his mask back over his face. 'Go now, eat, and for the sake of your blood, henceforth, be sparing with the poppy.'

Before he ate, Carnelian made the round of all their cabins to see that his guardsmen were bearing up. He asked Keal how their people were coping between the decks. Nothing to worry about, Keal said. Carnelian knew he was lying and made him tell him the truth. One had been washed into the sea. Several were burning with fever. Carnelian had expected worse.

Back in his cabin he made sure that Crail ate something first. The old man was confused. He was recounting a nightmare he had had of a Master and a deck. Carnelian showed him a smile. When he ate with Tain, it surprised him how hungry he was. He gulped the food down though his stomach ached. He made jokes with Tain. They talked about dragons and the Three Lands, but all the time he was listening. Steadily the wind's moan had become a keening. He eyed the silver box with its promise of dreams. There was a crack so loud he thought a mast had snapped. Snatches of voices screeched over the gale. Then the storm front hit them like a hammer. The ship spun round to one side, and then was walloped round the other way. She leaned over. The lantern smashed against the ceiling. Crail was tipped onto the floor. Cries erupted on every side. The ship juddered once, twice; each time it seemed she had struck a rock. Tain's eyes were as round as his mouth. She righted herself, rocking.

For an age they clung to her as she rode the tempest. Each time her hull broke a wave, there was a thud that shook them to their bones. This would be followed by a hiss running over their heads to the stern. In the lulls they could hear the running in the corridor, the cries, the lamentations, the slam of doors. Once Carnelian looked out to see the corridor awash with foam.

Tain's eyes kept straying to the silver box. Carnelian only knew this because his eyes were there too. He relented and nipped pellets from the honey.

He was despairing that it had lost its potency until he felt the flames of comfort licking up his body. Fear burned away. The rocking seemed gentle.

The three of them sagged back into poppy dreams. Carnelian took care when he woke to send Tain out to bring them food. They forced it down. Stale water lubricated tedious chewing. Every shudder of the ship was mimicked by their bodies. Even before the bowls were clean their eyes turned greedily to the silver box.

On a day when there was a lull in the storm, Tain and Carnelian were sitting eating though they felt no hunger. Both had noticed that the cabin floor had acquired a permanent slope down towards the door. Neither had said anything. There was a knocking that they ignored. They had grown used to ignoring every sound. The door opened and a Master's mask came into the cabin. They both recoiled. The poppy still lingered in the folds of their minds and so it seemed to them that this was some terrible being arisen from the sea.

'Carnelian, why do you stare so?' It was his father.

'You… you startled me, my Lord.'

The Master crowded into the cabin and hunched forward. Tain found a space in which to perform the prostration. The door slammed open in a draught. Suth's cloak billowed up so that it filled the cabin. His gold face turned to look at the bunk where Crail was a crumple among the sheets. It lingered, then turned its eyeslits back to Carnelian. 'We are to have a conclave,' it said. Carnelian could hear a nuance of emotion in his father's voice 'When you are called you must attend. You are required to do nothing, save that, should it be required, you will vote with me.'

Carnelian said that he understood and his father backed out of the cabin. For a few moments, Carnelian remained slumped where he sat and then found the will to stand. Tain cleansed him. They stood there, Carnelian bowed by the ceiling, Tain bracing himself by holding on to his arm. An eternity later they were finished. Carnelian was like some dead thing that had been wedged between the ceiling and the floor.

It was Keal who came to get him. Carnelian was alarmed when he saw how much life had gone out of his brother. Keal rasped some words that Carnelian could not make out, then pointed down the corridor. Massing round the mast column were several immense shapes. As he came towards them Carnelian saw that all three Masters were there with his father: each masked, each shrouded in his travelling cloak, each a being of a power that the wooden bulkheads looked too flimsy to contain. In their midst the mast shuddered and the bronze shoe that held it squealed.

'Now that we are all gathered, my Lords, I would beg your patience to hear first the evidence of the baran's captain,' said Vennel. His voice played above the ship's creaking like an oboe. 'Captain, make your report,' it said in Vulgate.

The Twins Themselves are against us, my Masters.' The voice spoke from the ground. Carnelian searched among their feet and saw the captain grovelling there.

'You were asked for a report, not a theological conjecture.'

'Apologies, Master.' A glint curved around his neck as the captain thumped his forehead against the floor. The sliders on his collar chinked.

The ship, my Masters, has been blown far off course. For nigh on twenty days we have struggled south against the westerlies.'

Twenty days, thought Carnelian, startled. Twenty days already.

'We've lost several sails and one of the steering oars is close to breaking. The ship's been taking on water. Because of the storm we couldn't go down there. I must regretfully report that two starboard bulkheads have been breached and that sixteen oars of sartlar've been drowned.'

'Have the affected bulkheads been sealed off?' asked Suth.

'Yes, Master.'

'And they can be bailed out?' asked Aurum. 'We attempt it even now, Master.' 'So there's no immediate danger?' said Jaspar. 'If we're hit by another storm we could sink, my Master.'

'You appreciate the risk, my Lords?' Vennel said in Quya and then, in Vulgate, 'What's our current position, captain?'

'According to the lodestone and what reckonings I can make, Master, we should be somewhere near the Woadshore's southern reaches.'

'And how far from Thuyakalrul?'

'Under the right conditions, depending on our real position, taking into account-'

'How many days?'

'Perhaps three or four, Master. But against the wind?' He peered up with a twitch in one eye. 'I just can't say.' Vennel turned his mask on them. 'My Lords, it seems to me the height of folly to keep to our present course.'

'And what then is your proposal, Vermel?' asked Jaspar.

'It seems, my Lord, that our captain knows of some anchorage that should not be too far from here.'

'And this anchorage, I presume, is in the swamps?' said Aurum.

'And what will we do if we should miss it?' said Suth.

The winds will take us there,' said Vennel. 'We would be sailing before the tempest rather than against it. We would hug the shore. If there is some error in the captain's calculations, no matter. There are countless trading posts all the way up this coast.'

'And what does my Lord suggest that we should do once we find this salubrious spot?' asked Jaspar.

'We should carry out what repairs we can and wait until the tempest has blown itself out. From there we would need only a few days of clear weather to make a crossing to Thuyakalrul across the open sea.'

'I can see that you have given this matter much thought, Vermel,' said Aurum. 'But you seem to have neglected one factor.'

'And what, pray, is that, Great Lord?'

Time.'

'What matter time if we should end up among the fish?'

'You well know, my Lord, that time in this matter is everything,' said Aurum with an edge to his voice.

'You heard the captain's words. He said that we will founder if we pursue our present course.'

'He said that we might founder.'

'You also forget, Vermel,' said Suth, 'that it was not one of the Chosen who spoke those words. So, the creature fears. What of it? It is a condition of its state.'

'Valour will not make this vessel move against the wind,' said Vennel.

'But oars will, my Lord.'

'Even a full complement of oarsmen could not maintain such an effort. How much less can we depend on the animals we have below?'

That is true, and that is why we must needs bend our own servants to the task.'

'My votes and my slaves are yours, my Lord,' said Aurum.

'I too will throw my ring in with Lord Suth's,' said Jaspar.

'In that case it is decided,' said Aurum. 'We shall continue on to Thuyakalrul.'

The drum beat its dirge in the ship's rotting belly. In his cabin, Carnelian clapped his hands over his ears. It was a long time since it had started and its insistent pounding was driving him mad. He stroked the eye on the silver box. It was a door he was reluctant to pass through even though it promised escape. Twenty days. The captain had said that they had been at sea for twenty days. Truly it had seemed like an eternity. He could hardly remember when his life had not consisted of dreaming in this cabin. Tain was snoring. Crail seemed less alive than something carved into the bulkhead. Those twenty days were all lost time. A single unending night. The wooden bulkheads pressed in on him. Carnelian wanted to stretch, to stand tall. He rose and curved up against the ceiling. He shuffled on his cloak, put on his mask and left the cabin.

The drumbeat pulsed louder in the corridor. He climbed the stairway and passed through the door onto the deck. The sky was striped with cloud. The moon hid its silver eye behind some tatters. A voice cried from the deck. Others answered from above. He looked up the mast. Only a few sails were unfurled, great hands running their fingers through the sky. The ship's heart beat on and on. The deck leaned off to starboard. He walked down it to the rail, leant over and saw the oar heads fly out into the air like fish. The drum thumped and they plunged back in. His people were down there on the end of those oars, in the stinking dark, pickling in brine with the sartlar half-men. He slid his hand along the rail. Where the harpoon engine had been there was nothing, a gap and the torn deck where the bolts had pulled through. The moonlight suddenly brightened and sketched an eddying silver inlay over the sea.

The melodies of Master voices fluttered his heart. He turned and saw the two apparitions come up out of the ship and drift off towards the prow. Carnelian was sure that they would see him but they kept right on. They stood under the stem. He could hear the lilt of their Quya but could understand nothing of what they said. The moonlight dimmed. Carnelian looked up and saw that the moon now passed mysterious behind a veil of cloud. He looked to the prow and saw that one of the Masters was looking up at the moon. His mask caught a rill of its light. He stooped and ignited the Gods' fire on Their altar. Carnelian was uneasy under the Green Face's lurid stare. The Masters turned so that the firelight fell on their hands and then began to make signs.

Carnelian looked up again. He estimated the length of the cloud behind which the moon was sliding and decided to take the chance. He lifted his bright hands up into the sleeves of his cloak, then crept towards the prow trusting to the darkness. He came close enough to see the signing hands.

… her eyes are not only here. The signs were shot through with a jewel glimmer that spoke of Aurum's hands.

… even she would not dare. Those signs had his father's familiar framing.

Do you forget what she has already dared? made with strong, bold gesture. Aurum.

If she should even for a moment suspect. His father with a certain nervous slurring between the signs.

Aurum made a sign of reassurance.

His father's hands began signing again. Her arm has grown long indeed if she can stretch it even to the sea.

Her arm has grown long, the signs precise with emphasis.

Carnelian sensed more than saw the moon waxing. It was as if he felt its colour on his back. He turned, hoping that the Masters were focused on their conversation. When he reached the mast, he moved behind it and from there went down the steps two at a time.

When he had closed the door of his cabin Carnelian stood for some moments listening. Wind. Timbers creaking. He removed his mask, threw off his cloak, and shrugged off the various robes. He lay down and slowed his breathing to match Tain's. His heart quietened till it seemed to Carnelian that the ship's pulse was his own. His feet managed to find their way to Tain's warm back. Tain moaned a protest but did not move away.

It could only be the Empress Ykoriana that they spoke of with such dread.