It was the wall of the Iron House, sheer and forbidding, that showed the greatest damage. The same long line of windows through which Carnelian, crucified, had seen the sartlar approaching that morning – had it really only been that morning? – those windows were now nothing more than a ragged slit from whose fissured upper lip wisps of smoke were still hazing up. Above, the wall had blackened and thinned. Through the surviving sooty filigree, Carnelian and Fern could glimpse hideous cavities the colour of charcoal. The whole smouldering mass rose mountainously before them, its cliffs and clefts, its mounds and gullies running with sheets and streams and rivulets from the rain that glazed it.
Overwhelmed, they almost fell to their knees, overcome by weariness and horror, weighed down by the immensity of death they had already witnessed that day.
Carnelian took Fern’s shoulder and drew him away to where something lay embedded in the mud. A black bowl that either of them could have lain outstretched in, strangely contoured, filled up with water. Carnelian bent to touch it and brought his fingers to his nose. Iron. He unbent and regarded it, thinking it had a look of Osrakum with its lake. Then he realized it was Osrakum, or at least a representation of it. The iron hollow was, in form, a turtle. Looking round, he saw the wheel from which this hub cap had fallen. They approached it together, gazing up to see where the green arch of its bronze tyre had come loose. The ruin of the Iron House loomed over them. Their eyes fixed on the wheel. The end of the axle showed the cracks and rings of the vast tree it had once been. The red spokes radiating up from it were whole, but many of those below had shattered. The massive rim had cracked in two places so that it now folded in like lips of a mouth in which the spoke stumps were uneven teeth. Gold discs studded the rim, which Carnelian knew must represent the cities of the Ringwall. Gazing at this immense, broken wheelmap, then glancing back at the Osrakum hub thrown away, half-buried in the red mud, he could not help feeling this was some kind of omen for the Commonwealth.
As if speaking to him, another of the spokes snapped, causing the wheel to fold in on itself a little more. Fern pulled him away as, with a hideous grating, the chariot slid towards them, shedding panels of iron. Stumbling, Fern fell with Carnelian almost on top of him. They gaped up. They flinched as panels clattered to the ground, right and left. Then the sombre stillness of the scene returned and the rain hiss. They rose, still gazing up uncertainly at the Iron House.
Fern was the first to walk away. Carnelian followed him, glancing at the bloody sky over the pale horizon formed by the edge of the road. Night was nearing: they needed to find a place to sleep. Fern was heading towards a strangely textured green ramp leaning up against the road. As Carnelian neared it, he became aware of the huge upside-down face embossed into the verdigrised slope of copper. The face smiled up at the black sky, surrounded by a halo of curls and spirals. He knew this thing. It was the Twins’ fallen standard. He remembered the hope it had given him that morning. He watched Fern reach up to touch its spiralled edge and, though he could not see his face, Carnelian saw the slump in the shoulders and dread rose in him that Fern was remembering the ferngardens of the Koppie. Fern ducked under the standard and disappeared into the gloom beneath it. Carnelian stood for a while, unable to focus his emotions. He glanced west, where the sun was making a bloody end to a bloody day, then he followed his friend.
In the cavern beneath the standard, Carnelian could hear Fern struggling for breath. Rain drummed upon the copper roof and some dim red light oozed in, but they were in a place separate from the world; safe from it. Listening to Fern’s struggle for air, Carnelian at first chose to believe it a reaction to all the death outside. He told himself he was too numb to care, but the sound was stirring up panic in him. He moved towards Fern’s barely defined shape, wanting, fearing to touch him. As he came closer, the sound Fern was making was like a cough, as if he were trying to rid his lungs of smoke. The strained wheezing was pulling Carnelian apart. He reached out. At his touch, Fern began sobbing. The grief in that sound sent cracks through Carnelian’s frozen heart. Each shudder in Fern’s body brought them closer. Carnelian felt his own grief spilling out, racking his whole frame. They collided and clung to each other as the grief overflowed. They sobbed for all their mothers, for all their fathers, for the children, for the Tribe and for love lost and the suffering of the world that was their own and for the dead forming the hills of the earth. Clutching each other so hard helped to squeeze out the poison and the tears. In the pressure of Fern’s arms, Carnelian felt he was being forgiven and he abandoned himself to forgiveness; forgiving all those others, forgiving himself. He was not the sky, nor the earth. He was nothing more consequential than a blown leaf. He was too small a thing to be responsible for all the suffering, to be the reason for it. The forces of the world shaped him; were not shaped by him. Carnelian drew Fern against him, wanting him to feel that too; feel the pain drain away. The heat in their bodies awoke a fire in them. Amidst so much death there was a need to assert the flame of their lives. For them both, it was a miracle to explore each other’s body by touch. The warmed brass around Fern’s neck. The scar about Carnelian’s. Fern’s fire scars. His four-fingered hands upon Carnelian. Warm tears on cheeks lubricated the turning of their faces to each other. Lips guiding them to that first kiss. The world forgotten. Breathing love names. Though Carnelian was the younger, it was Fern who was like a boy. They fell into their own joined flesh, both lost and found.
MURDEROUS GRIEF
Which mother can forgive the killing of her children?
Carnelian woke suddenly and, for a moment, struggled in the riptide of the wave that was about to engulf him. Breath in his ear made him aware of Fern, warm in his arms. Thin grey light leaking in under the eaves of the fallen standard allowed Carnelian to see him. He gazed in wonder, remembering the night’s frantic lovemaking. With his eyes closed, Fern was as beautiful as a child and Carnelian was loath to wake him. He lay back, adjusting his spine, feeling the ache from having lain all night upon the unforgiving earth, his shoulder numb under Fern, but he did not care about the discomfort, only the delicious weight pressing down on him.
He became aware of the barrelling python of the Black God’s lower lip curving its grimace away off towards the eaves. He could see the curling rim of the upper lip, the nostrils, a suggestion of the glaring eyes. On the outer surface of the roof, rain was drumming on the Green God’s copper face. Carnelian reached his hand up to touch the metal. Its delicate vibrations transferred through his arm to his back, setting off the first shivers of the feeling from the sound of rain.
Reality seeped into his thoughts. A harsh reality. Osidian had survived the battle. Such a victory could only serve to engorge his mad devotion to his god. There was no hiding from him, nor could he hope to hide from him what Fern and he had become. Not that he would have tried to do so. The rippling shivering down his back became trembling for a moment as he feared what Osidian might do to his beloved. Carnelian wished he was confident he could protect him. Crazed notions of flight flitted through his mind. He dismissed them all as fantasy. In all the wide world, there was no place he and Fern could hide. Osidian would have to be confronted. Carnelian ground his teeth, feeling how deeply anchored in him was his determination to protect his lover, or die trying.