Carnelian removed his mask, then, a phrase at a time, he explained how he was to be given power over the outer world and, with some difficulty, about the Apotheosis that was its only precondition. This last concept caused them both a lot of difficulty, for Sthax knew nothing of the Rebirth, never mind the politics of the Masters.
When Carnelian was done, he gave Sthax time to digest it all, then asked him: ‘Will you do something for me?’
For some moments, Sthax examined Carnelian’s eyes, then gave a nod of agreement, and Carnelian began to coach him in the message he wanted him to carry.
Gazing down into the Labyrinth, Carnelian’s heart misgave. With the Shimmering Stair unlit, the columned cavern of the Labyrinth had become a haunt for shadows. The Marula were huddling together, averting their eyes from the view. Carnelian asked Sthax to reassure them he was going to lead them back to the light. The hope Sthax gave them unbowed their backs. Carnelian nodded in satisfaction, then began the descent into the gloom.
After an interminable shuffling through the tunnel, Carnelian’s lantern light found some feet in the darkness ahead. Jerking its beam up, he saw a Sapient waiting with his homunculus. Behind them he could see the closed portals of the Forbidden Door.
‘I am Carnelian-’ It was unlikely the Wise knew about his true birth yet. He must avoid causing unnecessary confusion. ‘Suth Carnelian… and you, Sapient?’
‘A Fifth of Labyrinth, Seraph,’ sang the homunculus in such an unhuman voice that the Marula around Carnelian began to tremble. ‘We were not informed of your coming,’ said the little man, as he cast sharp eyes upon the black men.
‘The Lord Nephron has sent me to oversee the preparations for receiving those who must attend his Apotheosis.’
‘Still, it is my masters who have set me to guard this portal, Seraph. They must be consulted.’ Though the Fifth’s fingers continued to work at the neck of the homunculus, he said no more. Disengaging from his master, he disappeared into an opening in the wall.
As Carnelian waited, he gazed past the Sapient at the Forbidden Door, hungry for the daylight that lay beyond. When the homunculus returned, he drew his master’s hands up to his throat, murmured something, then fell silent. Carnelian waited for the little man to speak, but he stood, eyes downcast, as still as his master. At last Carnelian could bear it no longer. ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’
The homunculus echoed him, then the Fifth’s fingers began to flex. ‘Instructions from my masters, Seraph.’
Carnelian felt choked with frustration. No doubt the Grand Sapients were already deep in conclave with Osidian. ‘Open the door or else I shall have it opened myself.’
The homunculus was soon voicing his master’s protests, but Carnelian made it clear he would not be defied. Eventually, the Sapient bowed to his will, and stepped aside as the doors opened, releasing a flood of light. Blind, Carnelian walked out into the day, the Marula stumbling in their eagerness to follow him.
Carnelian sat upon rugs that ammonites had rolled out on ground first purified with their blue fire. He had chosen to wait there because he did not wish to subject himself or the Marula to another cleansing when they returned to the Labyrinth. He was watching more ammonites laving Earth-is-Strong. The dragon rose from their midst like a sea stack. She was being prepared to purify a path all the way to the Great Causeway with her flame-pipes. Carnelian had decided not to command her himself. Instead he had summoned his Lefthand and instructed him to do so.
When the sun burned its way through the clouds, in spite of the assurances he had given Osidian Carnelian was glad to feel its warmth upon his skin. The shadows cast by the flesh-tithe cages had almost entirely shrunk away. Dragons formed lines down either side of the Black Field, which now looked like just another military camp, but it was to the centre of the plain beyond that his eyes kept being drawn.
He gazed between the gate stones, through the outer fence of commentary stones, across the inlaid, cobbled floor to the inner, double ring of the Dance. There, almost completely hidden by the outer stones, he could just glimpse the edge of one of the green stones of the innermost ring.
He had approached the Stone Dance of the Chameleon along a road burnt black by Earth-is-Strong’s flame-pipes and still warm beneath his feet. The Fifth had been scandalized at his insistence on proceeding barefoot, but had failed to persuade him to use a palanquin. When he had reached the place where the road divided around the Dance, he had waited for the dragon’s thunder to fade away and for the boiling clouds of naphtha smoke to subside. The rings of stones had emerged as if from a mist. Fascinated, he had approached the pair that stood guard upon the road running from the Forbidden Door into the Dance. He had seen that, there, entry to its heart was between a red and a black stone. For some reason he had felt he did not want to enter that way. Instead he had led Sthax and the other Marula round until they had arrived at where the road spoked off towards the House of Immortality.
He glanced in that direction, straining to make out any details that might show where it lay in the cliff wall of the Plain of Thrones. He could see nothing. To the north-east, the pall of smoke being produced by Earth-is-Strong’s pipes was trailing its fraying banner round the outer edge of the Dance. Sthax’s tiny figure was following the dragon and her fire. Carnelian frowned, feeling the message Sthax was carrying was a poor substitution for a visit. Among other things, he had sent for some of his people. While he waited for them he wanted to explore. Motioning the Marula to stand guard upon the gate stones, he passed between them and entered the Dance.
Between two commentary stones, Carnelian stood gazing across the cobbled ground to the inner rings. The pale mosaic confused his eyes. He was reminded of the bone traceries of an Ancestor House, but this work was more subtle. Tendrils of stone snaked across the floor, crossing and recrossing each other like seaweed abandoned by a tide. Nodules studded the design and it was embedded with rings of smoothed stone and small panels. At first he had taken it all to be marble, but he began to see the grain and shades of different stones and how portions and paths were tinted variously by lichens.
He stepped onto the design. It felt subtly textured. Closing his eyes, he could feel his feet on a path that he followed. Opening them, he looked back at the meandering trail his sooty feet had left. Not a path he could have easily located by sight. He remembered how the Wise used such paths in their library in the Halls of Thunder.
He became aware of the beautiful and complex inner faces of the commentary stones. Returning to them he reached up to touch one. Its swirling patterns were bewildering, but under his fingers they seemed a pebbled beach. Again he closed his eyes. As he glided his fingers slowly across the surface the nodules seemed to whisper in his mind. He reopened his eyes. ‘Like beadcord,’ he muttered. He noted how tendrils of the floor mosaic lapped at the stone. The nodules were divided into registers, the higher of which could be reached by climbing up onto taller cobbles. Glancing round the whole curve of commentary stones, he saw how, with the floor, they formed a delicate web of meaning emanating from the double ring.
As he approached the inner stones, he saw that their outer faces were patterned in the same way as the commentary stones. Then he became aware that these stones stood each like a ghost behind what appeared to be huge figures. Cracked and round-shouldered, hunching now, but once they had been tall and straight. Entering between a pair of ghost stones, he was confronted by two immense slabs of jade, fissured and veined by pale lichens. As he passed between these, he noticed their inner edges were spotted with round projections. Reaching out to touch one, his finger found its spiralling groove. The same ammonite shells were embroidered into his green robe. Turning, he saw the clear path leading back across the mosaic, through the commentary stones, between the gate stones and on towards the House of Immortality.