He became aware Fern was gazing upwards and looked up himself. They were standing astride the ridge where two sides of the tower met. Above them, a thicket of flame-pipes ran in a triple band like a nest of snakes. Carnelian let his gaze fall, frowning. Below, two other balconies; a row of six more beneath those, many more in the next row and more and more, like the cliff-ledges gulls nest on; balconies erupting from the stone in a rash that widened then narrowed down the walls. He sensed this reflected the military hierarchy of the officers who occupied the cells below. The rash ran out as tiny blisters in the smooth masonry. This was rooted in rougher stone that went down and further down. His grip tightened on Fern’s arm. They were high in an eyrie teetering on the edge of an abyss. There was a black gleam in the depths of the Cloaca.
‘What is it?’ Fern asked.
Carnelian silenced him with a touch to the lips. Just before Fern spoke he had become aware of a murmur that brought back the horror of his dream. He looked down the Canyon to where a vast bridge emerged from the gloom to touch the circular plain that stretched before the outer gates. It seemed covered with rust rough enough, he felt, to abrade his hand should he reach out to touch it. Subtle motion on that plain so far below made it clear the rust was a teeming multitude. ‘Numberless as leaves,’ he murmured in Quya.
‘What?’
Carnelian turned to Fern, who had worry in his eyes. ‘Something my father once said to me. It’s not important.’ He nodded towards the sartlar. ‘I’d hoped I had dreamed them too.’ He wondered if it was hunger that had driven the poor creatures this far. How difficult was it going to be to herd them back towards the City at the Gates?
Fern focused on their multitude. ‘As placid as earthers cropping ferns.’
Carnelian remembered how violently earthers stampeded when they were spooked and foreboding sent a shiver through him.
Fern reacted to his shudder. ‘Let’s go back in.’
Carnelian was glad to follow him. The light revealed a design upon the wall. A grid, its boxes filled with red, black and green dabs forming diagonals across it. He did not need the colours running along the top and the twelve columns to know these were the months. Down the side of the six rows, pomegranates alternated with lilies, each having a number beside it. The six grand-cohorts of the Red Ichorians. The coloured dabs showed the month on which each grand-cohort was to garrison which of the three gates. It made him sad, this duty rota for men almost all now dead.
He looked away. He had his own duty. The previous night, as he and Fern had gazed down upon the sartlar, an ammonite had appeared, saying their masters had arrived at the Blood Gate and that they insisted he should attend a conclave with them immediately. He had been too weary, too disconsolate, to face them then, but he had promised that, at first light, he would meet with them.
Following the ammonite up into the open air, Carnelian was overwhelmed. All around him the Canyon walls rose up to challenge the majesty of the sky. Such vast space was a shock after the confinement of the military strata, whose spaces, though cavernous, were inhabited by engines of war, reeking of naphtha, around whose bloated brass Ichorians crept like ants around their queen.
Carnelian could see no threat and asked Sthax and his Marula escort to wait for him. His ammonite guide led him off across a plain that was the roof and summit of the Blood Gate tower in which he lodged and that was covered with a sparse forest of chimneys. They were heading for a promontory that curved up from a corner of the tower to a platform crowded with machines. As Carnelian climbed towards it he recognized some as heliographs, though larger than any he had seen before. As for the rest, he could not even guess their function. Sapients stood here and there, directing ammonites working the mechanisms. As he wound his way through the thicket of brass and bone, of lenses and louvred mirrors, he saw three taller figures at the platform edge and knew, from their staves, they must be Grand Sapients.
‘Celestial.’ It was the central homunculus of three who greeted him. Carnelian read the cypher of the staff he held. ‘My Lord Lands,’ he said, then reading the others, ‘My Lords Cities, Legions.’
Their long masks gleamed as they slightly inclined their heads.
‘Our link to the outer world is severed, Celestial,’ said Cities’ homunculus.
Carnelian could not see past them to the sartlar below. At first he thought Cities was referring to them, but then knew he was speaking of their heliographs.
‘It is imperative we re-establish our link to the outer world,’ said Lands. ‘Without it, we are blind.’
‘The huimur you brought hither, Celestial,’ said Legions, ‘must be sent to the Green Gate to restore the relay there.’
Carnelian was about to ask how they could know that there was where the problem lay – after all the City at the Gates was overrun by sartlar – but then he understood. ‘The Green Gate is not responding to your diagnostics.’
‘Just so,’ said Cities.
‘Can you be sure the watch-towers in the City at the Gates are still intact?’
‘Even to a determined foe they would be nigh on impregnable,’ said Cities. ‘Besides, Celestial, a single link to the network is all we require to restore our vision of the Guarded Land.’
‘A single link will allow our voice to be heard across the Three Lands,’ said Legions.
Carnelian felt uneasy at the thought of the Wise reacquiring such power before the new political balance was in place to restrain them. This situation would have to be played carefully. He took a step towards them. Their homunculi were muttering even as they stood aside. He moved through the Sapients, aware of the dull, resinous odour of their crusted robes. Then he forgot everything except the vision that opened up at his feet. Though still in shadow, it was clear the Canyon floor was clothed with sartlar right up to the turn and beyond. He imagined the solid tentacle of flesh winding through the Canyon and out, spreading over the Wheel, to fray into the alleyways and causeways of the City. ‘What of the sartlar?’
‘They shall return to the Land.’
Carnelian turned to Lands. ‘How do you envisage that this be done?’
It was Legions’ homunculus who answered him. ‘No doubt it is hunger that has driven them into the Canyon. That they have penetrated so far is only because of the breach made in the Green Gate by the previous God Emperor. With fire we shall quickly drive them back from Osrakum.’
Carnelian eyed the multitude below. ‘Do they pose a danger to us?’
The Grand Sapient and his homunculus came to stand beside him. His master’s fingers working at his neck, the homunculus raised a thin arm and pointed at the triangular tower across the circular plain below. ‘That tower there, the Prow, has the firepower of three full legions.’ Legions tapped the floor with his foot. ‘This fortress has the puissance of another three. And, delved into the bedrock upon which these structures stand, there are tanks holding, under pressure, quantities of naphtha seventy-six times that which is held within a legionary fortress of the second class. Even were all our legions to rise up against us, they could not hope to overcome the power here. We are invulnerable.
‘Fire will tame the sartlar brutes as it has always done. We advise that a firestorm should be unleashed from here to clear them from the approaches to the fortress. Issuing forth, the huimur will complete their rout. Be assured, my Lords, the link shall be restored before nightfall.’
Carnelian glanced round at the Grand Sapients, feeling as if he was beneath their notice. Were they attempting to assert their ancient authority? As much could their motives be focused on the internal struggle among them. Under his predecessor’s rule, Domain Legions had been pre-eminent. Perhaps the new Grand Sapient was merely trying to regain something of that lost standing. Carnelian gazed down at the sartlar. He remembered Fern comparing them to earthers. He remembered too the careful way the Ochre sent to fetch water had crept through the earther herds to the lagoons.