'Is it cool up there?' Carnelian asked.
Jaspar shook his head. The Clave is a bowl in which we meet only when the sun is behind the Sacred Wall or sometimes at night. Now, it will be incandescent.'
They passed several more stairs before they reached the shadow's end. 'One longs to linger here, but alas we must go on… it should be cooler by the lake.'
Carnelian watched Jaspar stand there for some moments as if he were gathering up his courage, then the Master pushed forward and was burned up in the glare.
Jaspar swung the bronze clapper on its ropes. Then the heart-stone bell seemed the only stillness in a trembling world. Carnelian did not hear it peal. He had lost every sense but sight. The Pillar of Heaven was there, a filament from the Singing Turtle's heart, where it had been since the creation, a mountain holding up the immense weight of the sky. The Sacred Wall was set about its axle like the rim of a wheel. Around the Pillar spread the terraces and water meadows of the Yden, the Gods' own Forbidden Garden floating in the midst of the Skymere.
They come,' a voice said remotely in his ear, waking him.
Carnelian followed Jaspar's pointing finger and saw a needle detach itself from the Yden's rim and darn a white stitch into the perfect sapphire of the lake.
'We shall wait up here in the shade,' said Jaspar.
Carnelian looked down the flight of steps that fell precipitously to the water's edge. Carvings of stone flanked it all the way. He put his hand out to touch the nearest one, in whose shadow they sheltered. The flow of years had smoothed it but still he could see it was a turtle. He looked out across the lake, daring to be possessed again. He ran his eyes round the outer wall of the crater like a finger round a bowl. All along its purpling length it pleated like cloth and in the folds jewelled fragments lodged, the coombs of the Chosen.
Carnelian's eyes settled back to the mirrors of the Yden and the strip of earth that moored it to the cliff upon which he stood. There along that causeway a fleck of light caught in his eye. It glinted again like a signal. He lifted his hand out as if he would pluck it from the distance.
The Grand Sapient's chariot,' said Jaspar even as Carnelian had guessed what it was.
'My father…'
'With Aurum fretting,' said Jaspar and Carnelian could hear the smile in his voice. 'And our dear Lord Vennel.' He chuckled. 'One does not envy him the meeting with his mistress.'
Thoughts of his father brought back Carnelian's headache. He waited for each tiny flicker as if he could read some message in it. He narrowed his eyes to examine the causeway. It looked like nothing much except that it was a road across the Skymere, a lake deeper than the sky. Mountains had been crumbled and fed into that lake so that chariots could roll their wheels across its water. 'Sartlar numberless as leaves…'
'My Lord?' said Jaspar.
Carnelian looked at him. 'Something my father once told me about the building of that road.'
Jaspar looked off towards the causeway. 'It is said that its stones were mortared with sartlar blood.'
Then it is another of their tombs.'
'Hardly, cousin. The Law insists their carcasses be removed from Osrakum. It is true that when we need labour we bring them in from the outer world. But then, those that do not die in the work are slain. The Law forbids that they should return alive from paradise. But be assured, my Lord, that what is left of them is returned. This holy land must not be polluted by the impious dead.'
Carnelian's wonder was souring. He had looked altogether too often on death's black face. The boat was nearing the quay below and so he left the shadow of the turtle and went down to meet her.
The ferryman's robe confused his eyes. Whether it was a white pattern on a black ground or a black pattern on a white, Carnelian could not tell. He stared at the man's ivory mask, the face of a dead Master locked into a right profile. Half a face with a single eye staring out of it. It was like those ill-omened faces in the glyphs that encoded sinister words. Carnelian stopped his head turning in unconscious mimicry. The ferryman wore a crown in which the turtleshell sky glyph was the body of a nest of bony limbs that could have been the remains of a crab bleaching on a shore.
The pattern on the ferryman's robe moved, entangling Carnelian's eyes so that it took him a while to notice the outstretched whitewashed hand. Carnelian looked at it, not knowing what to do.
'The kharon asks for his fee,' said Jaspar.
Carnelian watched the Master pull off a ring that he dropped onto the ferryman's hand. The man did not close his hand but brought it back to Carnelian who looked at his own hands. All he had was his rusty blood-ring. He turned to Jaspar. 'Can my Lord lend me some gold?'
The kharon take only jade.' Jaspar twisted another ring from his finger and handed it to Carnelian, who took it and made to give it to the ferryman.
The other hand, my Lord, the other hand.'
Carnelian did not understand what he meant.
'If the jade is given with the left hand the kharon will only take you across to the Isle. Put the jade in your right hand.'
Carnelian did as he was told. The ferryman's whitened hand closed around the rings as he moved back from the bow. Jaspar reached out to clasp one of the posts rising from the gunnel and pulled himself aboard. Other than Jaspar and the ferryman there was no-one the length of the deck. The whole boat was yellow-white, patched together from rods and roundels. An ivory boat. Carnelian reached out to grasp the post. Its knobbed shaft slipped smoothly into his hand. Its carving was picked out in brown. He realized what it was. Quickly, he heaved himself onto the deck and let go of it in disgust.
'Is anything the matter, cousin?' said Jaspar.
Carnelian stared at the cobbled deck that narrowed up at either end to posts as pale and slender as beech saplings.
'Come, sit here, cousin.' Jaspar rested his hand on the back of a chair. There were three of them under a dark canopy.
Carnelian walked across the cobbles as carefully as if they had been eggshells. 'Bones… there are bones everywhere.'
'Of course,' said Jaspar. This is a bone boat.'
Carnelian looked round, aghast. 'But human bones…?'
'Sit down, cousin.'
Carnelian walked round and sat in a chair beside Jaspar. He craned his neck round. The ferryman was there, his ivory face looking as if it were a carved part of the stern post. He held the handle of a steering oar in each hand. The boat began to turn away from the quay. Soundlessly the oar heads spooned the water on either side.
'I thought it a fairytale.'
Jaspar chuckled. He tapped the arms of the chair. 'If you look under your arm, cousin, you will see that even these chairs are made of bones.'
Carnelian lifted his arms, saw the chair was a mosaic of finger bones. Here and there was the tell-tale green pinprick of a copper rivet.
This deck,' Jaspar was tapping his foot, 'skulls.'
Carnelian could see how the cobbles were of ovals of different sizes, fissured brown. He gave up trying to estimate how many had been used to make the deck. 'Generations…'
'Since the Twins raised up the Sacred Wall,' said Jaspar. 'Our dear ferryman,' he glanced back at the stern, 'and all his brethren rowing beneath our feet, will one day add their own bones to this very vessel. These boats are the tombs of their race.'
Tombs,' muttered Carnelian. His head ached. He rested it against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. Tombs. And what of his House tomb? He imagined consigning his father to its everlasting night.
He opened his eyes. Beyond the sapphire water the Yden spread its meres as a floor of varied jades. Something winked on the thread of road that ran along its stony margin. At that signal the crystal air shattered as flamingos rose in a red blizzard. Carnelian watched for the sparking on the road that showed where the silver chariot was making its progress beneath their cloud. He closed his eyes to trap their tears and choked down the voice that was telling him he would never see his father again.