The air was cooler than it had been below. He drank it in so deeply that he felt his lungs were dragging him forward into flight. He turned his back on the sky and its beckoning fall and took some steps into the shelter of the columned hall. His train was lifted without need of his command. He reached out to touch one of the columns. His hand slid up and round the twist of its cabled stone, which was of a piece with the ceiling and floor.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he began to make out the guardsmen and the door that lay between them, which had moulded upon each of its leaves the womb glyph. He walked towards it and the guardsmen knelt. The door was of silver flecked with red and was stitched down the middle with several enormous locks. One guardsman rose and struck the door three times and then returned to his knees. Carnelian tried to lift them to their feet with a sign of command, but it only put more strain into their backs, and set their heads to ducking in apology, muttering, 'It's forbidden, Master, forbidden…'
Carnelian looked to the door. Its silver was a white garden, sinuous with flowers, pendulous with fruit, into whose riotous growth embedded rubies and amethysts drizzled their blood rain. He looked down the hall to where its last columns framed the glaring sky. He fiddled with his ring.
'How long will I have to wait?' he asked at last.
The guardsmen shrugged, hunching.
The door was struck from its other side and then Carnelian heard mechanisms operating. The guardsmen rose and a few of them lifted keys like fish bones and began to open the locks on this side. As the door began to open it breathed out an odour of mummified roses.
Carnelian walked through. More guardsmen awaited him but these seemed to have had their chameleons painted on their faces with blood. Though as tall as men, they had the shape of boys. It had never occurred to Carnelian that eunuchs might wear his cypher. The silver face of an ammonite came through them, and then another, both of whom were wearing purple. They bowed.
You were expected, one signed while the other lifted his hand shaping the sign, Close.
Carnelian felt the shudder in the air as the door shut behind him. On its other side, the guardsmen were resecuring the locks.
Seraph, all the standard procedures are to be observed.
Carnelian lifted his hands. I do not know the standard procedures.
The ammonites moved aside and indicated the wall behind them. In the stone, glyphs burning with jewel fire read:
The Wise certify this house appropriate to the sequestering of fertile women of the Chosen. To ensure blood line integrity, all creatures who are fully male are forbidden entry. Chosen males are permitted visits to the sequestered under the following, specific conditions:
First, before the visitor is admitted to this house, the sequestered shall be placed in a chamber of audience to which the visitor shall then be admitted accompanied by two ammonites;
Second, the visitor must submit throughout to supervision by the ammonites;
Third, the visitor must not touch the sequestered unless such touch is sanctioned by conjugal rite;
Fourth and concurrently, the visitor and the sequestered may make no exchange of any kind unless that exchange has been declared legal by the observing ammonites and recorded, said record to be submitted to the Wise;
Fifth, before the sequestered is removed from the chamber of audience, the visitor must have quit this house; all this by order of the Law-that-must-be-obeyed.
The words chilled Carnelian to the bone. One of the silver masks angled to one side. Shall we proceed, Seraph?
Carnelian broke his immobility with a nod. The slicking of bolts made him look to see them locking the door behind him.
'Seraph?' said one of the ammonites in a strange voice.
He turned to follow the creature's narrow back into the gloom. He could feel the other padding behind him carrying his train. He climbed a stair. On his right side, tunnelling slits were glazed at their further end with the brilliant colours of the crater. On his left, the stone was pierced to form screens behind which was a world of shadows.
They came to a door inlaid with red stone. The ammonite ahead of Carnelian scratched it. A woman's voice gave them leave to enter and the ammonite crept in.
The Lady Urquentha was the first Chosen woman Carnelian had ever seen. Her beauty lit the chamber like a lamp. A jewelled halo that framed her face took all its glimmer from her skin. The rest of the chamber was dark.
'You are not my son.' Urquentha's face thinned to fragile alabaster.
'Lady,' said Carnelian and made a clumsy bow. 'Did they not tell you?'
She gazed at him. 'Who would tell me? It has been my fate to know of the world only as much of it as I can see through windows. Rumours are the only communication to penetrate this house.'
'But your letter, my Lady, it came so swiftly.'
She frowned a little. That was delivered by my keeper ammonites. But how came it into your hand, my Lord?'
'I am the son of your son.'
Urquentha's face loosened but quickly tightened again.
Her hand began sending a series of quick signs to the ammonites which Carnelian could not read. He turned to see the creatures nodding, and when he looked back
Urquentha was gently beckoning him. He went as a moth to her flame. When he was in range, she asked permission with her eyes before reaching out to catch his chin. Her fingers were warm. He returned her gaze. Her eyes were peepholes on to a violet sea. She turned his face with her hand as if it were a vase she was checking for imperfections.
The hand released him and receded into a pearl-crusted sleeve. She looked sad. 'I can see nothing of my son in your face.'
Carnelian blushed.
She smiled. 'That at least is his. The rest is wholly your mother's. I should have recognized her beauty when you came through that door. Who else could you be but Azurea's son?' Her smile warmed him. 'Have you been made comfortable?'
'Yes, my Lady.'
'You may call me Grandmother, child.' Her eyes darkened to purple. 'You have spoken with the second lineage?'
'Lord Spinel came down to meet me, Grandmother.'
'Did he indeed,' she said, souring, showing the cracks in her marble face. She chuckled without humour. 'I would very much have liked to witness that fish floundering in the net he knotted for himself.'
A movement caught the corner of Carnelian's eye. He glanced round at the watching ammonites. With their numbers and fixed expression, their yellow faces could have been cast tallow.
'Where is my son?'
Leaning close to his grandmother, Carnelian whispered, 'Could we not be alone?'
'You wish to be free of my chaperons?' She turned a thin smile towards the little men.
Carnelian nodded.
She laughed like a girl. 'I more than you have wished to be free of those jaundiced faces, but it is forbidden by the purdah. But do not worry about them, Carnelian; they may have eyes but they have no ears.' She smiled at him. 'We were talking about your father.'
'My father, Lady… Grandmother…'
His grandmother used her hands to tease out his words as if they were a ribbon he had stuffed in his mouth.
'He has gone to the Halls of Thunder.'
Her lips narrowed as they pressed together. The jewelled structure around her head rustled and glimmered like a flight of beetles. She sighed. 'It seems it is always to be thus?' She looked through him as if her eyes were seeking the edge of the sky. 'Always it is the Masks that win the greater part of his affection.'
'He was hurt.'
Fear washed across her face.
'Wounded.' The word squeezed out of his mouth like a pebble.
'Will he die?' The words were flat and lifeless.
Carnelian could see the pain in her violet eyes. The Lord Aurum is confident the Wise will save him.'