The hopelessness in that gesture struck Carnelian in the chest. He had not realized until that moment how much his view of things depended upon the unshakeable certainties of the Wise. Without that it seemed the very foundations of the earth must soften and fail.
He clapped his hands to get the attention of the homunculus, who was craning round, slack-jawed, to gaze up at its master. As the little man looked at him, Carnelian instructed him with gestures. The homunculus gave a nod and then reached out to take first one of his master’s hands, then the other, shaping the fingers around his neck.
‘Can nothing be done?’ Carnelian asked. As the homunculus murmured, Carnelian watched anxiously as if he were petitioning an oracle.
The homunculus fell silent and they both waited. Slowly, Legions’ fingers began to work. ‘Nothing,’ said the homunculus.
It became important to Carnelian to do for the Grand Sapient’s spirit what he had asked the homunculus to do for his hands. ‘Surely Molochite can still be defeated?’
The pallid fingers did not move.
‘What if you could have access to the heliograph here on the roof?’
No movement.
‘What if I made arrangements for you to return to Osrakum tonight?’
The fingers came alive. ‘So many legions could not be gathered effectively without the coordination of the Domain Legions and that is nothing more than an extension of the mind of its Grand Sapient. My brethren have had no choice but to elect a new Legions. I am dead. The living heed not the dead.’
Carnelian persisted, needing words to fill the void deepening within him. ‘We could get there before most of the legions reach Osrakum. Use the hollow crescent.’
‘Enough huimur would have reached there to confront you with a double line.’ The homunculus continued to speak, cutting off any questions. ‘Resign yourself. I have. Nothing can be done.’
A bleak silence fell.
‘Even Kakanxahe with all his legions failed to take Osrakum. What I did then, none could do again.’
Carnelian frowned. ‘What you did then?’
The fingers continued to work the throat of the homunculus. ‘You fought for eighteen years and nearly brought the Three Lands to waste. If I had not acted, the Commonwealth could have fallen. It was I who bound your passions with the bonds of reason. It was I who wrought the Balance of the Powers and, in so doing, ended the Civil War.’
Carnelian felt giddy. ‘But- What-? That is impossible. That would make you hundreds of years old.’
‘Child, I was born in Osrakum more than thirteen hundred years ago.’
Carnelian gaped, wondering if the strain of defeat and catastrophe had broken the Grand Sapient’s reason.
‘I have witnessed time like a tree. How ephemeral have seemed to me the lives of men. Almost forty Emperors I have made, have watched die, have buried in the Labyrinth and still have I endured.’
Carnelian’s mind was reeling. Could this possibly be true? He felt he was losing his grasp on reality. ‘How is it possible that the Chosen have forgotten who you are?’
The chin of the long silver mask began nodding as a choking sound came from behind it. Carnelian watched this new sign with a foreboding that turned to horror as he realized the Grand Sapient was laughing. ‘Do you imagine that mortals have the continuity of memory that do the Wise? Your short spans ensure that the passing down of the past is a fragile process, a process we have manipulated. It is the least of our skills. It is not difficult to encourage men to forget that which they would rather not know.’
Legions’ fingers stilled. Then they began flexing again, though more languidly. ‘But now that my great work is undone, was it worth the sacrifice I made? For my reward was to be put into lightless silence. A reward I bequeathed to all my kind. A gift that allowed our minds to span centuries.’
The homunculus paused, frowning.
‘I was first to be put into the darkness and though, for you, it was so long ago, for me it seems not so very long. I have not forgotten the blueness of those skies. The sweetness of the pomegranates of the Yden. And now that death is close, I want more life. For my years seem short to me. Without my senses to anchor me in the now, I have moved swiftly through my own, inner time. A life measured by thought and not the senses is exceeding short. And yet, a paradox: with my death, the ancient world that lives now solely in my mind will perish utterly.’
Silence fell, a silence in which Carnelian could hear only the subtle pulsing of his blood, his mind ensnared in the wonder and the melancholy of this oldest of men. At last Carnelian could no longer bear his sadness, his heavy heart. He left, hardly aware what he was doing, finding himself in his cell, sinking into the longed-for oblivion of sleep.
THE DREAM
Some say dreams are sent by the Gods
Others that they arise from within.
But surely what matters is whether they are true?
Red so dark it could be black. Tastes salt. Floats, anchored at the centre of the world. Its tiny sea pulsed by a slow, gentle drumbeat. Speeding up. The walls crush him. Impossible pressure. Squeezing, squeezing. Rolling out, gasping, into sudden lurid light. The world stoops beneath the glowering sky. Thunder’s monstrous heartbeat. Lightning veins the tar-black clouds. Wet iron. Looking down he sees his hands gloved with sticky blood. Is he wounded? Guilty, the colour of slaughter itching his skin. The pallid land weeps blood. Ruby pebbles strew a plain that is matrixed bone. Blood dews into limbs. Limbs knit to form men. Not men, sartlar? Bestial brows conceal animal eyes. So numerous, their footfalls could be every wave detonating on every shore. A rumble swells to a thunderclap. Lightning flash. Two cedars, struck, burst into flames like banners in a gale. Fury high as mountains. Screaming incandescence connects earth and sky. It is possessed of sentience. Its face is brighter than the sun. Beauty so intense it impales his mind. Such power! God incarnate. Fearing blindness, his eyes veer away. They find a rim to that perfect face. Not a face, but a fiery mask that conceals a twisting face of smoke and rage. Revulsion boils his blood. The god, brow in the heavens, is drawing his spiralling substance from a pyre of burning men. Snapping like twigs, shrieking sparks, their suffering feeds the holy grandeur. Horror is pounding in his ears. Is it his own blood washing him away in its tide? He struggles to swim, but his body is a stone. To drink is to drown. His ears, trumpets, feed the roaring into him. The sea! The sea! From the oceanic red, an iron wall lofts high. Vast odour of liquid rust as it advances, combing the stars with its froth, to collapse its thunder into the pillar of fire and smoke. Reek of charring, screaming flesh. The pillared flame seems invincible, but there is too much blood. Light falters, gives way to black naphtha smoke, then is consumed in the tide. He sinks beneath the surface, too weary to fight any more. A warm hook of a hand pulls him out. He is in a pale boat that Fern is steering. Upon his face a smile that is all comfort, all peace, all love. They fish the clotting surge for Poppy and Krow and Lily and the Lepers and Sthax and his Marula and a multitude too numerous to count. Rowing the bone boat upon a red billow even as the sea hisses to dust; a sporestorm; a spitting plague of flies that wipe day to night, but seeing a narrow diamond light, he turns, pointing, then leads them up out of the blackness onto a fresh fernland. He gulps the perfumed breeze rippling through the spiralled green beneath a smiling sky.
Carnelian came awake, gasping, only slowly aware there were others in the cell with him. Three identical dolls were kneeling by the door: homunculi wearing blinding masks. He sat up, confused. ‘What…?’
The central figure came to life. ‘Seraph, Legions, my master, bade me give three beads of the elixir to him and to each of his Seconds and two to each of us.’