‘What’re you doing?’
Carnelian saw the anger in Fern’s face. ‘I just want to take a peek inside.’ And, with that, he squeezed into the pod.
Inside, the air was musty. He stepped aside to allow light to filter in through the crack. It fell upon a sort of stalagmite angling up from the floor. But, of course, the whole pod had rolled over, so it was emerging not from the floor, but from what had been the ceiling. He reached out and touched it. It swelled into a spiral. Intuition made him reach out to the wall. His fingers found the buds, the seeds with which it was carved. As much as he was inside a huge poppyhead, it was also a pomegranate. He could make out shapes piled up beyond the spindle. Cautiously he crossed the curving floor, using the spindle as a support. A mound of rubbish, of shards, a glimmer of metals and stones, among mouldering flakes and fibres of something else. He jumped when he saw the grin: a row of teeth in a skull skinned with thin, scabrous leather; a mummy, curled up as if in a womb, wrapped in brown cloth. There were others in among the heap. Bones held together by scraps of dried flesh. He grew uneasy, remembering the pygmy dead in their baobabs. He could hear again the crackle as they had burned. Caught by the stare of a dark socket, he shuddered, recalling the render the sartlar had made from pygmies they had killed. His eyes were drawn to a glinting profile. A beautiful face among the corpses. He leaned closer and saw it was a mask. Touching it, he found it was stone. The mummy to which it belonged was larger than the others, its wrappings paler bands of half-perished linen. Among these bands, the glint of gold. He stared, disturbed. This could be one of his fathers, his mothers. There was no sign here of an after-life, of resurrection. His thumb found the edge of the mask. The rest of his hand gripped across the bridge of the nose, into an eyeslit. He tugged and it snapped open like the lid of a rusted box. The face below had darkened, the eyes withered, the lips thinned, riding up the teeth, but it was still a Master’s face. An adult face, but not much larger than a Chosen child’s. Carnelian saw the hands crossed upon the chest, wedged behind the knees. He put the mask down and reached out to compare his hand with the mummy’s. The mummy’s was so much smaller. Perhaps embalming had shrunk it. Carnelian shook his head. The skull could not shrink.
At that moment the light was snuffed out. Carnelian turned, felt the tomb shudder, then a release of light dazzled him. ‘Fern? Look here, this is a Master, but for some reason much smaller than I am.’
‘Haven’t you had enough of the dead?’
An edge to Fern’s voice made Carnelian rise, shuffle back towards him. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said, reaching out to touch him.
His hand was slapped away, stinging him to anger.
‘What’s going to happen?’
The almost childlike tone in Fern’s voice cooled Carnelian’s anger to sadness. ‘I don’t know, Fern, I don’t know.’
‘You must have a plan?’
‘We wait for Morunasa and then-’
‘You mean we wait for the screaming!’
Carnelian felt the grief leaching out of Fern connecting to his own. He remembered the nightmare in the Upper Reach. ‘Yes, the screaming.’
‘I can’t bear it again.’ The words a skin of ice over tears. Fern was reliving not the Upper Reach, but the massacre of his people. Carnelian felt panic rising in him. The memory of that horror came alive in him from where he had thought it buried.
‘Tell me this time it will be different,’ Fern sobbed.
Carnelian reached out, desperate to touch him, wanting to promise, but not daring to lest his promise should turn into a lie. ‘I can’t, Fern, but this time we’ll fight to save what can be saved. This time, together.’
His hands reached Fern’s face, felt his warm tears, his skin. They melted together, seeking life in the midst of death. Skin finding skin. Their mouths. Their hard flesh. Making love, at first violently, but then tenderly.
When they emerged from the tomb, they stood close enough to feel each other’s breath. Eerie silence. Their cheeks grazed as they turned to look at each other. The Masters had left the Labyrinth.
The screaming began the following evening. Thin, bleak, harrowing sounds scratching the sepulchral gloom. Blood drained from the faces edging the clearing.
‘What is it?’ Tain asked in a whisper.
Fern closed his eyes as if he hoped that would close his ears. ‘Morunasa feeding victims to his filthy god.’
Carnelian felt sick. ‘Putting maggots in children.’ As they all turned to him, he cursed himself for having said that aloud.
Heads angled as people listened to the pitch of the screaming. Fern licked his lips, looking queasy. ‘The flesh tithe.’
Carnelian nodded. Tain jumped up. ‘We must go now!’
Carnelian saw in Tain’s face he was being haunted by what he had endured as a child.
The Quenthas shook their heads together, frowning, grim. ‘It’ll soon be night. If we attempt to find our way in the dark, we’ll become lost.’
Carnelian, who had known that before the sisters said it, still felt angry at them for having taken from him any hope of action. ‘Then we must sleep as best we can.’
He caught Fern’s look of despair. How could they all endure such a night?
The first grey light found them awake, bleary-eyed, haggard. The screaming had kept them from sleep, or else mired in helpless nightmares. Carnelian glanced at Fern, saw how aged he seemed, as if it had been night for years. Memory weighed down on both of them. They had good reason to know the horror Morunasa had brought into the Labyrinth. Yet another scream sounded, a sort of lightning shrilling through their nerves. Carnelian had had enough. ‘Let’s go and end this.’
Everyone looked to him with hope; everyone save Fern, who did not look away fast enough to prevent Carnelian seeing his doubt.
Rain began to fall as they set off. They followed the sisters through the twilit Labyrinth. Above their heads the vaults hung like stormclouds. Water pouring in through openings hissed as it sprayed down.
They used one of the column sarcophagi as cover. Carnelian glanced back at the Shimmering Stair. No sign of life there. Dull, its cascade of steps seemed an approach to an immense tomb. Before it the moat was being turned opaque by water falling into it from the shadows above. Litter and mess was all that remained of the Encampment of the Seraphim. On higher ground, between two great pillars, stretched a line of sybling Ichorians. Beyond them, higher still, a darker cordon of Marula from within whose circle rose a particularly massive colossus shouldering flying arches and the high, shadowy ceiling. It was clear why Morunasa had chosen this vast sarcophagus, for it reminded Carnelian of the central trunk of the banyan of the Isle of Flies.
Somewhere near this colossus, a shriek rent the air, causing a shiver to ripple along the rings of Marula and syblings. All were fixedly turned outwards, no doubt fearing even to glimpse what was going on behind them.
Carnelian glanced round at his flint-eyed people awaiting his command. An attempt had to be made to stop that torture even if it should cost their lives.