Tain would soon be through the quarantine. The light dimmed. The first image of his brother that had come into his mind was of a vague face with blood running down it like lank hair.
'No,' he cried, stood up and walked about. There was no point in thinking about that yet. Time would come soon enough to count the cost. For now, he would allow himself to believe that his people would bring something of the warmth of the Hold back into his life.
The arrival of the Quenthas was announced to give him time to put his mask on. The syblings walked into the chamber and knelt. He strode over to them, pulled them up, easily managing to span both their shoulders. 'I cannot tell you how happy I am to see you.' He stood back to look at them. Left-Quentha had her head bowed but Right-Quentha was grinning at him all bright-eyed. He gave them both a bow. 'What brings my Ladies to this humble prison?'
Left-Quentha raised her stone eyes. 'Prison, Seraph?'
The Regent has sent us to amuse you,' her sister said.
'He did?' Carnelian frowned.
Right-Quentha shook her head. 'Oh, not like that, Seraph.' Then she smiled coyly. Though…?'
Her sister turned to her, frowning, then back to him. 'We have some skill with instruments, we sing and play a fair game of Three.'
Carnelian noticed the sword hilts appearing above their shoulders. He pointed at them. 'And can protect me?'
That also, Seraph,' they said together. 'I will allow you to stay on one condition.' Left-Quentha angled her head back, a little anxious.
'And what is that, Seraph?' That you call me Carnelian.'
For several days the sybling sisters strove to amuse him. They produced an instrument that had many strings, and frets and a gilded gourd at either end, and squatted with it on the floor. Their outer legs would have been called crossed if they had not been so far apart. Their middle leg folded under them. The instrument sat across their thighs. Two arms were under the neck, two over the strings. Their long fingers plucked and strummed all at once, coaxing cascades of sound, arpeggios, complex percussion. Sometimes they interwove their voices into the melodies, singing harmoniously, one voice sometimes chasing, sometimes shadowing the other. They could also play reed flutes made from hollowed saurian bones. As one blew a continuous drone, the other would waft over it rich, heart-rending melodies.
Carnelian became addicted to the strange game they called Three. It was played on a circular board with a black centre within two concentric bands of red and green. The three sets of pieces each took one of the colours. The sisters always chose the jade and the obsidian sets, smiling conspiratorially, saying the colours of the House of the Masks were naturally theirs. He acquiesced. After all, the red pieces were made of his name stone. He assumed they would ally against him, but instead he was ignored as they fought each other to destruction. He became tired of winning. Losing his temper, he insisted that they fight the game fairly and try to defeat him. They shrugged, grinned, and in the games that followed overwhelmed him. He rejected their offer that they should begin the game with fewer pieces. Slowly, he began to learn strategy from his defeats. The games became tortuous, subtle, merciless wars in which his red pieces began more and more to triumph.
Often, as they played, he would try to talk to the Quenthas about the election, the candidates, their factions. They met his questions with elegant deflections. They grew positively sullen if he ever strayed close to mentioning Ykoriana.
'No more music,' said Carnelian, adding quickly, 'though you play like the rain.'
Left-Quentha reached for the Three board.
'Not that either.' He stood up, stretched, groaned. 'My body aches from inactivity.' He frowned, locked his hands together and tried to tug them apart. 'I know,' he said brightly, looking at the syblings. Right-Quentha was wearing her green copper mask. At his insistence, she and Carnelian took turns at being masked. 'You girls can give me a tour of these Halls of Thunder.'
They both made evasive gestures with their hands. 'We would have to put you in your court robe, Carnelian,' said Left-Quentha. She glanced at it, an intruder gleaming in the comer.
'You might well come across other Seraphs,' said Right-Quentha.
'And then again, it might not be wise that we three should be seen together,' said her sister.
'It certainly would look strange,' said Right-Quentha.
'Strange,' echoed her sister.
Carnelian sank cross-legged to the floor. He propped his face up with his arm. 'You confirm what I have suspected. My father has sent you to keep me imprisoned here, in the Sunhold.'
The sybling sisters looked blindly at each other. There is nothing to stop us giving you a tour of the Sunhold.'
Carnelian brightened, leapt up, grabbed his mask. 'Come on then.'
They sallied out into the passage where they gathered up an escort of his tyadra. In the chamber set around with doors, the Quenthas pointed out the portcullises that they told him led off down long passageways to various gates giving into the Encampment. Between these were other doors which they said led into barracks. At his insistence they opened one and lighting a lantern they all went in.
'Soon this warren will be filled with a cohort of Red Ichorians,' said Left-Quentha and both sisters frowned.
'Apart from the side on which they are tattooed, how do they differ from the Sinistrals?' he asked them.
'In every way, Carnelian,' Right-Quentha replied indignantly. They belong to the Great and we to the House of the Masks. We live in different worlds.'
'Worlds…?'
Left-Quentha caught him in her stony gaze. 'We can no more be in the same world than my sister and I can be on the same side of the mirror as our reflection.'
Right-Quentha chuckled. 'Ours is a dark, looking-glass world.' She made them both dance a little.
The Halls of Thunder and the Labyrinth,' added her sister, forcing their three feet firmly to the floor.
Theirs is the world of the sun, across the Skymere.'
'And yet, on occasion, you permit them to come here into your world?' Carnelian said.
They both looked at him. 'It is a concession the House of the Masks makes to the Great,' Left-Quentha began.
'And only during such dark days as these,' her sister continued.
'And even then they have to lock themselves in here, within this fortress, from fear of us,' said the other, fiercely.
Carnelian smiled indulgently. They had taken on a poise that he could see was making an impression on the nervous faces of his guardsmen.
With a grin, Right-Quentha became a girl again. 'And would our dear like to see the chambers that will be his father's?'
Carnelian nodded and they led him back into the chamber of doors and across it to a golden mirror that showed the sybling sisters to themselves. This was a door that brought them into an atrium where the sisters said the tyadra of He-who-goes-before could defend their Lord. The guardsmen peered into the quarters leading off it that their fellows would occupy. Another gold mirror door was opened and Carnelian's eyes widened as he looked in. He followed the syblings into the chamber. The thick gold of the walls was moulded into wheels, rayed eyes and huge ruby-seeded pomegranates. The floor was fossilled stone-wood ribbed and lozenged with carnelian. Gorgeous apartments opened off on either side, every wall and door and ceiling a piece of jewellery.
When Carnelian had marvelled at everything, the Quenthas announced that it was time to see the Hall of the Sun in Splendour. They returned to the chamber of doors whose marbles seemed to Carnelian suddenly drab. A double portcullis was opened allowing them to walk down a tunnel into a vast columned hall. This too was panelled entirely with gold. Carnelian saw they had entered it through a side door. At the hall's far end, with their sun-eye, were the huge bolted doors that opened into the nave. Opposite them, behind a dais at the other end, the wall held a glowing mosaic of rosy gems that Right-Quentha called the Window of the Dawn.