‘Celestial?’
Carnelian sought the origin of the voice. It was a blinded ammonite offering him a square spoon heaped with a brown powder. He remembered watching his father inhaling a drug from such an implement.
‘You are to draw it up into your nostrils, Celestial.’
Carnelian regarded the powder. He did not want to take it. It seemed the same his father had taken to gain a false strength when he had been wounded. It had broken his health.
This ammonite was an agent of the Wise. What if this were poison? Carnelian knew that, if anything were to happen to him, Osidian would slay the ammonite, but had not the creatures often proved they were prepared to die for their masters? He felt his consciousness wavering. He had made his decision. What else was there to do, but to trust to the new balance of power? He lifted a trembling hand, took the spoon, raised it beneath his nose and inhaled. The powder stabbed numbness deep into his head. Mucus dripped from his nose and down his throat, releasing a bitter, acrid taste. Vitality surged in. When it reached his head, it filled him with a merciless clarity.
Ahead. Carnelian had an impression of golden giants crowding in. Lamps like stars, like moons reflected in pools. He glanced back to get his bearings. The triangle of blazing daylight branded a headache into his forehead. It was the sudden blossoming odour of old myrrh that alerted him. He stopped just in time to avoid colliding with one of the Grand Sapients. They stood like a copse of blasted trees. He moved round them until he could find a gap, through which he could see a ring of pale kneeling youths with eyes that seemed freshly gouged. Between their legs a slitted scar where their genitals had been. In their midst a figure encrusted with blood jewels and possessed of a girl’s face of gold so achingly innocent Carnelian’s breath caught in his throat. Yet this mask clung to a woman’s head, shaved as perfect as an egg. A halo of rubies spread behind as if the head, cracked open upon a floor, had oozed a pool of blood. Pale hands, each bearing two Great Rings, confirmed what he already knew.
‘I pay homage to thee, Deus, my son,’ said Ykoriana, her syllables perfectly shaped. ‘Where is my Lord Carnelian of the Masks?’
The golden girl mask searched for him, even though the eyes behind were stone. The Grand Sapients moved aside for him and he approached her.
Celestial, she gestured. Then the long fingers travelled round to her hidden, left side and drew out from behind her a porcelain doll. White as a lily, emerald-eyed, her ebony hair entwined around a nest of white jade pins. Her robe, leaf-green samite embroidered with olive peridots, buttoned down one side with watermelon tourmalines.
‘The Lady Ykorenthe of the Masks,’ Ykoriana declared. Her mask, gazing down, was frozen gold, but there was love in the hand that touched the child. ‘Only the God Emperor has purer blood,’ she said, pride lifting her Quya almost into song. ‘Pay homage to your brother, little one.’
Ykorenthe knelt upon the stone. Carnelian glanced from her to Osidian, for he saw something of him in her face, but Osidian was not there, merely a looming idol, head aflame with greens and reds.
Ykoriana’s hand urged the child to rise and then she caught hold of little Ykorenthe and held her close. ‘We witnessed the ritual with the other Ladies of our House.’
‘She watched it too?’ Carnelian said, horrified.
Ykoriana’s mask turned towards him. ‘Why should she not? She has more right than any other.’
Carnelian’s anxious gaze fell upon the little girl. Perhaps her innocence could not be spared. Was she not destined to become empress and the mother of Gods? His heart rebelled against this complacency. ‘She is only a child.’
Ykoriana’s hand tightened on Ykorenthe, who flinched. ‘Do you question my role as her mother, Celestial?’
Carnelian was stung by the frost in her voice.
The God Emperor speaking turned all heads towards Them. ‘Until she comes of age, the child is your concern.’
Carnelian looked at Them, wondering if it was the obsidian of Their mask that had deepened Osidian’s voice or if he were truly possessed by the Gods.
Ykoriana shifted, her robe so stiff with garnets it clinked and formed prismatic folds and planes. It was hard to believe there was a human body in there, never mind the curves of a woman.
‘We shall retire now to the Forbidden House, Deus.’ She reached down and Ykorenthe stretched up to take hold of one of her fingers.
‘I too must retire… Deus,’ said Carnelian.
‘You cannot, Celestial,’ said Ykoriana. ‘As Their viceroy you must show yourself at the coronation masque.’
Carnelian did not trust the crystalline strength the drug had given him, but saw there was political logic in what she said. Nevertheless, he shook his head. He raised his blood-stripped arms showing the meagre, slashed silk in which he was clothed. ‘I am hardly dressed for the occasion.’
The God Emperor spoke. ‘A robe has been made ready for you, Celestial.’
Carnelian acquiesced. This was the beginning of the life of duty he had chosen for himself.
After the ammonites had stripped him, he endured a cleansing that stung his wounds. They dressed him in undergarments of padded silk. They helped him climb onto ranga shoes higher than any he had seen. After many adjustments, they opened for him the chrysalis of a huge court robe. Of woven gold and bearing down its front his new heraldry of earth and sky. He walked into it and knelt. His fingers brushed against delicate bonework scaffolding as his arms found their way out through the sleeves. While they built the crown upon his head, muscles in his neck took the strain in a way that threw his mind back to a time that seemed several lifetimes ago. When they were finished, he rose and assumed the burden of the robe. He took a few steps, relearning the swinging rhythm of robe and ranga. Finally they produced three Great-Rings that they slipped onto his hand. His fingers, all but gloved by the three bars of jade, brought home the truth of his new, high blood-rank almost for the first time.
Emerging from the confines of the stairs into open space, he clutched at his court staves, reeling. Below was a drop spanned at many levels by bridges and staircases all alive with a glittering flow of the Chosen pouring from the Pyramid Hollow into this honeycomb behind.
An Oracle escort preceded him as he made to join the glimmering throng. With each ponderous step, the sibilant cacophony of chatter grew louder. His eyes were bewildered by the flash of their masks, the gleaming of their robes, the flutter and flap of their jewelled fingers as they accentuated their chatter with gesture.
They became aware of him, as of a stone dropping into their pool. Excitement rippled outwards, as they turned to greet him, speaking all at once, fawning on him. He looked down at them from the eminence of his ranga, unable to untangle their questions, aware of an odour undermining their attar of lilies. It was coming from the blood that had spattered their splendour.
They entered a chamber whose fleshy marble was banded with seams and filaments of coral. Ruby chandeliers filtered a bloody radiance over the Masters. Servants swarmed to meet them, their left sides dense with swirling tattoos. These Ichorians raised the skirts of some court robes to crawl under with bowls, while other Masters knelt on their ranga to allow their crowns to be disassembled and their faces to be unmasked. At the unexpected winter of their eyes, the snowy volumes of their naked heads, Carnelian almost cried out, but it was already too late. Throughout the chamber a blizzard of faces was already exposed to the gaze of the Ichorians. He tensed, anticipating massacre. When none came, he focused on the face of a nearby Ichorian, seeing how thin his lips were, how shadow ringed his untattooed eye. He glanced at another and another. All bore the same bleak expression. Carnelian was sickened, knowing in his bones that the prescribed punishment for this infringement of Masking Law was only being deferred. These Ichorians knew they were destined to lose their eyes and suffer other mutilations. As he watched them move among the towering Masters, Carnelian felt complicit, certain this was his House, the House of the Masks, choosing to display profligate extravagance.