'Perhaps, cousin, you would explain to me how my slaves might have been prompted into committing murder?' said Jaspar.
'Have you had visitors? A message from court?'
'Some Lords came to conclave. From court…?' Jaspar shrugged a no.
'Perhaps their entourages…?'
'My Lord's arguments tend towards a certain circularity, neh?'
Carnelian had to agree. He used his foot to scrape earth from a ring shape on the ground. 'Are you sure that no person whatever came from court?'
Jaspar's mask regarded him as if from a great height. 'I suppose there is always the regular traffic in ammonites.'
'Ammonites?'
Jaspar fluttered a gesture of disbelief in the air. 'If you draw ammonites into your fantasy then their masters are sure to be close behind.'
'Why should the Wise not conspire with Ykoriana?'
'Enough! You would have me believe that two powers work in concert against the third.' He shook his head. 'If that were so, first the Balance and then the Commonwealth would be destroyed.'
Jaspar dropped his cowled head as if he were deep in thought. So as not to interrupt him, Carnelian looked down at the ring his foot had uncovered. It was of bronze and had a hinge at one end, like a mooring ring. He looked out over the blue waters spread out below. He glanced from side to side along the landing and wondered if in some ancient time it could have been a quay. He felt Jaspar move away. 'Well?'
Jaspar turned. 'I must follow my father this one last time.' He sighed. 'And, as Funereal Law demands, on foot.'
Carnelian followed Jaspar, sensing victory. He noticed that the steps had several times been recut deeper into the rock. The dirgeful bells came echoing distantly from above. Striped walls of stone rose up on either side. As they climbed, Carnelian became uneasy, convinced he was being watched. The walls had in them an impression of a crowd. When he squinted, he could make out their faces, vague from uncountable years of rain, furrow-mouthed, scratch-browed, noseless, with pits for eyes.
The Plain of Thrones,' said Jaspar.
Carnelian gazed at the walled plain, widening round then narrowing again in the distance to where the wall looked no higher man the thickness of his arm. Behind it rose an immense blackness that overwhelmed him. As the bells' pealing struck him with its hammer blows, Carnelian was again clinging to the deck of the baran. His mind's eye widened looking down into the gyring horror of the well. He blinked. Before him was the plug that would have filled that pit in the sea. It was only motionless rock, he told himself, the flank of the Pillar of Heaven, narrower from this side. The pressure of the bells was fading. He let his eyes slip down to an arrowhead, a hollow pyramid cut into the plain's wall, a buckle in its belt. He realized the stone on either side of it was pricked with windows, ribbed with balconies, striped with colonnades. Below stood a line of shadowy men. He turned to follow them round. Standing one beside the other, they hemmed the wall for fully half its circle. In the west they stood revealed by the sun as solemn stone.
The funereal pealing and moaning was pulsing round the plain. Remembering his father's stories, Carnelian snatched his eyes back, searching. There, beneath the pyramid hollow, he found a space wedged between two of the stone men and knew that it must hold the Forbidden Door, the entrance to the Labyrinth.
Carnelian was walking along a road that ran as straight as a shadow towards the Forbidden Door. For a while, he had been noticing something like a clump of people conclaving in the centre of the plain. Heat shimmer had lent them movement but as he came closer Carnelian saw they were stone monoliths set in a ring.
'My Lord,' said Jaspar, in the silence vibrating between two peals.
Carnelian turned to him and saw the Master's hands begin to sign.
Soon I will leave this procession and go into the Labyrinth. If you still wish to accompany me you must do as I say, agreed?
Carnelian agreed and they continued on their way.
Inside the outer ring of monoliths, close to its centre, were two more rings, one within the other. Most of the monoliths were the colour of a stormy sky but those forming the innermost ring looked as if they had been painted with blood. All the ground within the outermost ring was slabbed, mosaiced, ridged, or spotted with cobbles. The road they were on divided to curve round the flanks of the stone circle, then joined up again upon the other side. Along the left fork Carnelian could see another procession moving with banners. The Sapients took the embalming procession along the right. A quarter of the way round, a new road branched off towards the northwestern edge of the plain. At this junction the procession came to a halt and Jaspar and his kin began to argue with their hands. Carnelian looked away, not wishing to intrude further. The Sapients stood near a pair of monoliths that lay a little distance out from the circle. Although only half their height, the Sapients bore some resemblance to them. Jaspar glanced over, then chopped an angry sign that caused his kin to bow and move away.
Carnelian watched Jaspar walk to his father's bier and kneel beside it, then rise and come towards him. His heart warmed to see such filial affection.
'It must be very hard to lose a father,' he said when Jaspar returned.
Terrible.' Jaspar's hand went to a chain at his throat and drew a Ruling Ring out from his robe. He dangled it. 'But still, there are compensations, even for such a loss. Long have I coveted this… to wield its power…' He sighed in a kind of ecstasy. 'I cannot count how many times I have wished him dead.'
'Dead? But… I thought…'
'What did you think, my Lord?' said Jaspar, as he fed the ring and its chain back into his robe. The crucifixions…'
'You thought I did that from sentiment?' He laughed, shaking his cowled head. 'How rich. Really, you are too peculiar, cousin dear. It was done for revenge, but, even more, for future security. Could you have conceived a better way to inaugurate one's reign? Admittedly, it is a profligate waste of flesh wealth, but exactly because of that the lesson will live long in the memory of my slaves. If fortune is not unkind to me, it will never have to be repeated.'
Carnelian was glad of the mask that hid his distaste.
Jaspar made a gesture of dismissal. 'Enough. This is neither the place nor the time for social banter. I have a gift for you, cousin.' Jaspar held out his hand and waited for Carnelian's to move under his before he dropped something into it.
Carnelian looked at it. 'A blood-ring?'
'Hush! Put your hand down.' He turned until one of his mask's eyeslits could see the procession that was already moving down the north-western road in the wake of the Sapients.
Carnelian obeyed him, concealing the ring in his fist. 'Whose is it?'
Jaspar grabbed his shoulder. 'Come, my Lord, let us proceed. The sun begins to grow oppressive and we still have a long walk to the Forbidden Door.'
They journeyed round the circle of monoliths, and as they passed the kneeling guardsmen and retainers Jaspar motioned for them to follow.
'One would have thought it obvious that the blood-ring in your hand is from a Lord of one of my lesser lineages. Khrusos, to be precise,' Jaspar said in a low voice. 'You must wear it instead of your own.'
Carnelian's hands lifted in protest but Jaspar swatted them down.
'You asked that I take you with me, my Lord, as one of my kinsmen. That is exactly what I am doing.'
Carnelian's eyes wandered between the outer monoliths to the inner ring. After some thought, he carefully removed his own ring and replaced it with the one that Jaspar had given him.
'Good. Now you are my inferior,' said Jaspar.
Carnelian could hear that he was speaking through a smile. Carnelian was not happy. The new ring felt unnatural on his finger. He distracted himself by counting the monoliths. He noticed that the red inner ring was completed with two green and two black stones.