Enduring the blinding starkness of the fully risen sun, he began to worry about what it was they were riding into.
Ahead, the scrubby, rusty land was columned by strange trees. Smooth trunks rose to a great height from which nests of branches splayed as leafless as roots. These were not the trees they had expected.
'Baobabs,' declared Morunasa, 'a sure sign we draw near to the Upper Reach.'
Carnelian saw the anxiety the Maruli was failing to conceal and wondered what kind of place this Upper Reach might be. These conjectures were forgotten as they came in among the baobabs. Soon, with the others, he was filing towards one along the shady road of the shadow that it cast. As they drew closer, Carnelian squinted up to see the tree looming vast, its branches startling black against the bronze sky. He became possessed by a feeling he was in the presence of a watching giant.
When they found a break in the Backbone, Morunasa led them clambering over it to the other side and, once they had reached flat ground again, Osidian and the Maruli drew them away into the south-west. Climbing the sky, the sun heated the world into trembling incandescence. Feeding on their own shadows, the baobabs grew ever more massive. Hunched against the migraine day, Carnelian was slow to become aware they were plodding down a gentle slope.
The chasm?' croaked Osidian.
Lifting his head, Carnelian saw Morunasa give a heavy nod while his eyes were scouring the bleached, hazy forest to the east where the Backbone ran along the horizon like a storm. Osidian said something to Krow and the youth turned his aquar and rode among them, rasping out: 'Unhitch your spears. Prepare to fight.'
At first the Plainsmen stared at him, stupefied, but then with tremulous hands they began loosing their weapons. Soon their march was bristling with bladed flint.
Carnelian saw Osidian beckoning him and rode forward.
Take the right wing, I shall take the left,' he said. 'Battle then?'
Osidian terminated the interview by making his aquar swing away. Morunasa and Krow followed him, stretching the left flank of their march after them.
Fern rode up to Carnelian. They squinted at each other through the glare. 'Battle? In this heat?'
'I am to command the right.'
Fern gave a grim nod. 'I'll fight beside you?'
The offer revived him. 'Like we did against the Bluedancing.'
Their eyes met and Fern twitched a smile.
They were riding side by side when they saw the ground before them fall away.
'A cliff?' asked Fern, startled.
The gulf opening up before them caused their aquar to flare their eye-plumes in alarm. Carnelian gaped at the opposite green cliff and, far below, the shimmer of water.
'A river?' cried Fern, amazed.
'You didn't know it was here?'
Fern turned, his mouth still hanging open. 'We knew the lands of the Manila lay somewhere in the south.'
'But this is so close to the Koppie.'
This land is waterless, shunned by saurians, besides, we have always feared the Manila.'
Fern looked down into the chasm. 'Do you think they live down there?'
Carnelian narrowed his eyes. The river traced a narrow ribbon down in the chasm floor, reminding him of the Cloaca that came out of the crater of Osrakum and ran in the Canyon of the Three Gates. The chasm was all barren sand and rock.
'Perhaps further downstream,' he muttered.
'We're holding the line back,' said Fern.
Carnelian turned from the chasm and saw the battle-line was tearing apart as he and Fern anchored its end.
'Come on,' he said, and together they rode upstream along the chasm edge to pull the battleline taut.
Carnelian's head lolled. He felt sick from the long, churning anticipation of battle. The slow uneven judder of his aquar's stride betrayed how much she was suffering from the heat. The shadows of the baobabs had grown long as they rode along the chasm edge.
A whisper like the distant sea jerked his head up. The windings of his uba gave him a narrow window into the outer world. He was startled to see the wall of the Backbone rising before him. Its black rock ran unbroken to the chasm edge, dipped into it, then rose again upon the other side. Where it dipped, it formed the threshold to a wide and shallow valley that brought the river from the east in many channels. These braided into two feathery falls that had gouged into the Backbone, leaving a single buttress and island between them. This island tottering on the edge of the chasm was clothed by a dense grove of trees. Of an army of Marula, there was no sign.
The baobabs here were not as lofty as before. What they had lost in height they made up for in girth. Some particularly massive specimens squatted upon a knoll which lay beneath the frowning Backbone cliff.
At the edge of his vision, Carnelian registered the line of aquar buckling. Turning, he watched Osidian with Morunasa and Krow riding towards the knoll. He saw no further need to keep his station.
'No battle then,' said Fern expressing the general relief.
Carnelian looked to where Osidian was climbing the knoll.
'You follow him,' said Fern. 'I'd better stay with the men.'
Carnelian thanked him and coaxed his aquar towards the knoll. As they wound up its slope, the shade from the baobabs revived her a little. Breaching a ring of them that crowned the summit, Carnelian smelled charcoal and saw the trunks were fire-blackened. Round their roots the earth was littered with burnt wood. Morunasa was peering up at the baobabs and Carnelian saw openings high in the trunks.
'Where are the Manila we were meant to fight?' Carnelian asked.
Morunasa glanced at him, irritated. 'Manila? Pygmies.'
Carnelian was startled. Pygmies? He looked around uneasily, fearful of why Osidian had brought them there with a lie.
The Master was peering among the trees. 'Could they be hiding?'
The Maruli raised his head and his nostrils distended. He shook his head and frowned. 'I can smell nothing but the burning.'
'Perhaps they tried to set these trees alight before they fled.'
Morunasa shook his head. They worship baobabs, which is why we used these,' he indicated the charred trees, 'as fernroot granaries.'
Osidian let his aquar wander as he leaned over the edge of his saddle-chair examining the ground. Morunasa straightened in his chair and made his aquar turn slowly on the spot, searching for something.
'It seems your problem, Maruli, has solved itself,' said Osidian.
Morunasa continued to search as if he had not heard. Krow was watching the man through slitted eyes, perhaps considering that he was the only Manila left to kill.
'Come,' Osidian said with an edge in his voice, 'fulfil the oath you made to me.'
For a moment Morunasa regarded him with a look of barely suppressed rage, then, frowning, he led them down from the knoll. When they reached the edge of the chasm, the Maruli sat, motionless, gazing at the waterfalls. He waited until Osidian was at his side before he announced: 'Behold the Voice of God.'
Emotion snagged Morunasa's voice and Carnelian was close enough to see the light of reverence in his amber eyes.
'At the moment our Lord whispers,' Morunasa said without turning, 'but soon enough you'll hear Him roar.'
Something in his tone sent a shiver down Carnelian's spine.
Morunasa turned to Osidian with a fierce intensity. 'We must cross immediately to the Isle.' 'What isle?' asked Krow.
The Maruli looked at the youth in irritation. His ashy finger pointed to the tree-capped rock which Carnelian could now see stretched upstream above the level of the waterfalls to split the river and its many streams in two.
'Can't you see it there before your eyes?' Morunasa gave the youth a feral grin. 'Pray, boy, you never have cause to see it closer.'
Krow's failure to control his unease turned to anger. He looked to Osidian for support, but the Master, unaware, was gazing at the island. The youth ducked his head so that his uba fell over his face.