‘What you want we dos?’
Carnelian felt he was being tested. He explained that he and Fern were going to his coomb. ‘Will you come with us?’
‘You plan?’
Carnelian could no more answer him than he had been able to answer Fern. What he had was less than a plan, merely a course of action suggested to him by a dream. He was reluctant to even voice it yet. ‘We’re all trapped.’
Sthax nodded again, but distractedly, gazing intensely at Carnelian, who felt the man was trying to penetrate to what was in his heart. Sthax nodded, seeming satisfied. He consulted the other warriors, then turned back. ‘We comes you.’
Carnelian was touched by Sthax’s trust and reached out to grip his shoulder. Then he passed by him, through the rest of the Marula, making for the first flight of steps.
Approaching the dark cliff of the eastern gate, Carnelian came to a halt when an Ichorian challenged him. He pulled open his cowl so that they could see his face.
‘Celestial,’ they whispered as they knelt.
Carnelian regarded the obeisance with a kind of regret, sensing it had already become a courtesy from a lost world. He raised them with his hand. ‘Have other Seraphim been here before me?’
As they shook their heads, Carnelian looked at them. He could sense nothing in their demeanour that would suggest the news had reached them. As, at his bidding, they opened a door in the gate, he considered giving them a command to let none pass: neither Chosen, nor of the Wise. He decided against it. These poor bastards would soon have enough to contend with. Why make them, unnecessarily, objects of wrath? He would have liked to have taken them with him, but it was already going to be nigh impossible to save the few he hoped to save. As he focused on who those were, he perceived his new identity to be no more than a disguise. His heart beat faster: he was going home, to see his father and Ebeny who were, in every way that counted, his parents.
They passed through the door into the vastness of the Canyon throat beyond, which was in shadow halfway to the Black Gate. The hidden valley of Osrakum seemed a bright, unattainable vision outwith the cares of the world.
As they walked away from the door, Carnelian focused on the solid reality of the camp that clothed the wedge of the Blood Gate rock as far as the two bridges. Though to call it a camp was to flatter it. Clumps of men huddling together among the pathetic shelters they had managed to improvise with their spears and cloaks. Their Masters had left them there without even a few sticks to make a fire. Anger flared in him against the mighty who had so thoughtlessly abandoned their own. He quenched his compassion: he could no more save these men than he could the Ichorians. They watched him and the Marula pass, with eyes that peered out between the bars and strokes of the tattoos that showed who owned them. Their world was ending just as much as was their Masters’. His blood ran cold when he thought what cruelties their Masters might inflict on them to assuage their own fear. Then he saw how numerous they were, that they had swords and fanblades, helmets and armour, and a different dread swelled in him. What kept these men subservient to their Masters’ whims, other than terror of their power? He made an effort to keep his pace steady, his posture erect, imperious. All the time his mind raced: what now the power of the Masters was broken?
He was relieved to reach the left bridge without incident. Fear of what might happen in his coomb once the news reached there lent his pace urgency. They crossed, then hurried on. He could not help casting glances at the wall of the Canyon rising on his left. The stone red as if in token of some great slaughter. He glanced up to the barracks galleries. After that he could not rid himself of the feeling that the dead were gazing down from the countless windows, reproachfully. Almost he heard their voices: what has all this blood been shed for? He focused on the racks that now held erect his two legions’ trumpet pipes that had screamed out so much fiery death. Behind them the dragon towers, smoke-blackened, battle-stained. Beneath and further back, the caves where Earth-is-Strong and Heart-of-Thunder lay wounded with the other dragons, all now the remnants of another vanishing race.
All the way he was aware of the gurgle of the Cloaca rising up from the abyss along whose rim they hurried. The Black Gate raised its wall before them. Beyond, the Hidden Land, soon to become a land of the dead.
Suddenly, their shadows leapt away in front of them as a great, flickering light sprang alive at their backs. As they turned, the air was strained, then shredded by the shrilling screams of the Blood Gate’s flame-pipes. Coruscating energies reflected up the cliffs that flanked the towers. On the killing field was a boiling incandescence they had to squint at to endure. Carnelian turned away, printing blue images of that holocaust upon the blackness in front of him. Bitterness in his heart, in his mouth. How typical of the Masters that they should seek to salve their fear with senseless slaughter.
Judging it unlikely the immense dragon gates would open for him, Carnelian led Fern and the Marula towards the central portion of the black wall. There, a single door stood in the cliff of masonry: a door of oiled, precious iron. They came to a halt before it. He was reluctant to go this way: he remembered his previous passage; that first time he had entered Osrakum with his father. He was going to have problems with the ammonites that kept this purgatory. As he waited for the gate to open, the harsh ululating of the flame-pipes came echoing down the Canyon. Surely their approach had been noted? He caught Fern’s eye and, glancing round, Sthax’s and those of the leading files of the Marula. All bright, intense. Carnelian asked Sthax for his halberd. Its pole was crowned by an elaborate nest of iron blades and hooks. Striking iron on iron caused the door to give off a sonorous clang. Moments later it parted into two leaves that swung silently into the blackness within. Moist air swept out over them, intoxicating with myrrh. Carnelian shared the reluctance of his people to enter. The Marula recoiled as ghostly faces coalesced in the gloom. Carnelian held his ground, knowing them to be nothing more than ammonite masks.
‘You must be cleansed, Celestial,’ they sighed.
Uneasily, Carnelian eyed the dark behind the silver faces. Other odours wafting towards him made him recall the drugged smoke with which Legions had captured him in Makar. Even if it was nothing more than the standard narcotics employed during purification, he did not want his mind dulled. He wanted to see things as they were; to be entirely himself. Half turning away, he extended his arm to take in the Marula. ‘I wish to pass through with these.’
‘Impossible, Celestial. They must go through the quarantine. Would you bring death into the Land of the Everliving?’
Carnelian almost laughed, mirthlessly, and wondered if they could really be so ignorant of the irony. He peered past the disembodied faces, trying to determine how far there was to go and if he could find his way to the other side without their guidance. ‘You know I am brother to the new God Emperor and that these men are his new Ichorians.’
‘The Law does not bow even to Them.’
Carnelian lowered the halberd. ‘But it will bow to me.’ He advanced and the faces melted away into the darkness. He was glad to hear the shuffle of the Marula following him. Voices round him rose in a keening that had soon drowned out the Blood Gate flame-pipes. Even as he became aware of subtle revolvings in the air above him, he realized his focus was slipping. Gaps in the uncoiling smoke revealed the position of figures surrounding them. As he moved forward, apparitions slid towards him. He traced circles before him in the smoke with the halberd head to clear a path for them. It struck something with a sharp clap, even as one of the apparitions disappeared in a tinkle of shards. A mirror of glass as perfect as water. He was aware of the ammonites drawing back. He swung the halberd into another mirror and another and the ammonites faded, whispering, away.