Slicing the dark mirror of the Skymere, the prow creased its water, mixing the lights from the coombs as sparks into the ripples. Carnelian watched Fern gaze at the palaces, entranced. Vague sweeps and outlines, heavy hanging masses all lit with what seemed countless burning jewels. As their eyes tried to grasp shape and form, Carnelian wondered what miracles of art and beauty lay behind those soaring facades. In his heart there was an ache for how much was going to be lost. For a moment, he perceived each of the myriad lights as a human life that must be soon snuffed out. His mind veered away from thoughts of atrocities in paradise.
The eerie silence was broken only by the sculling oars, the bow wave silkily slipping. He glanced back over his shoulder. Though the glory of the Yden was now muffled beneath a pall of shadow, the longer he looked, the more he saw the lagoons were still reflecting something of the blue sky, which its mirrors transformed into infinite, mysterious depths. Tearing up through the blackness, the double spire of the Pillar of Heaven. There at its summit, which was bathed in the last light of the sun, were the hollows where the glorious Chosen had gathered for sacred election. Beneath, the caverns in which the Wise had lodged the spooled beadcord of their library. He could not imagine all of that gone. Was beauty and wisdom then to perish from the earth?
His gaze followed the long back of the Labyrinth and climbed the slope of the cone that wore a crown upon its summit of molten gold as if to mark the place where, below, Osidian, the Gods on Earth, was camped at the heart of the Plain of Thrones. In spite of everything, some compassion rose in him for his once lover, now brother, imagining his despair. In seeking to possess Osrakum, Osidian had only brought it to utter destruction.
Carnelian was musing melancholically on these and other losses when he glanced up. They were sliding past a vast hollow in the Sacred Wall filled with a twinkling scree, among which he could discern a shadowy gathering of colossi. He recognized Coomb Imago and recalled his visit there; the tortured innocents dying on crosses. Other memories began to seep into his mind. The eyeless slaves living their life out in the dark like maggots, turning the wheels that lifted water up to cool the echoing palaces of his own coomb eyries. Then, in riotous recall, the death and maiming that was the lot of most in the outer world; the misery and fear. It was upon such suffering this paradise was built.
Shadow had now reached across the crater to turn the whole Skymere into an obsidian mirror. All around its rim the lit coombs formed a necklace of stars. Carnelian’s hand rose, his fingers finding the scar that the slave rope had left around his neck. No less was this collar of palaces a scar about the neck of the peoples of the earth. Wonder died in him. Let the Masters and all their works perish.
FAREWELLS
What then do we make of an atrocity in Paradise?
Coomb Suth was so much murkier than the other coombs they had passed that, as they slid towards it, fear gnawed at Carnelian that it had already become a tomb. A flickering thread of pinprick lights winding down towards the lake revived his spirits: people were coming to the visitors’ quay to meet them. He searched within the arc of moving lamps for the carved pebble beach upon which he had landed on that first visit so long ago. He recalled a jade pebble, its spiral cracked in two. He could not remember if, then, he had seen it as an omen. A lurid red glimmer reflected from the sky showed the beach submerged. It seemed that, after all, news of a sort from the Blood Gate had reached here before him.
As the bone boat curved a course to present her port bow to the quay, Carnelian and Fern pushed through the Marula. Reaching the bow, he saw lamp-lit faces watching the boat nuzzle into the quay. He felt a burst of love. These were his people, and not only because they wore the chameleon that made him feel a child again, but because the faces beneath those tattoos were Plainsman.
He watched Fern’s eyes and wondered if his frown meant he was seeing his own, lost Tribe. Feeling the first touch of grief, Carnelian turned away from it, put on a smile, threw his hood back so the people on the quay could see his face. As they recoiled, he gasped, for an instant fearing he had done something wrong; realizing he had not, even as a familiar voice spoke up. ‘Can’t you see it’s the Master’s son?’
Carnelian located his brother among the guardsmen and relaxed as Tain led them to kneel upon the stone. The bone boat juddered as it touched the quay. Carnelian was surprised to see how far below the level of the deck it was, but thinking no further on it, swung himself round one of the mooring posts and jumped down onto the quay. As he landed, he realized that, of course, it was the lake that was higher. The corpse dam had raised its level further than he had supposed. He was going to have longer to wait for it to drain to the level he needed. On the other hand it might give him more time to sort matters out in the coomb.
He straightened, approached his brother and, stooping, drew him close and, to Tain’s surprise, kissed him.
Tain, at first flustered by this breach of decorum, was soon grinning. ‘Carnie.’
‘Brother.’ Carnelian told them all to get up and Tain’s grin spread among them as he greeted those he recognized by name. Tain shocked them all by barking a command that brought everyone back into formal order. Though startled, Carnelian regained his smile: Tain had acquired something of the manner of their eldest brother, Grane.
‘You’ll be wanting to see the Master.’
Carnelian nodded, feeling a grimness come upon him, glad now that Tain had tamed the informality. Fern landed with a thump on the quay. Carnelian urged the Suth tyadra to move back from the boat, then motioned the Marula to disembark. He noticed Tain sending a messenger back up to the palaces. Further along the quay, the rest of the warriors were disembarking from the second bone boat. Carnelian asked Sthax to leave ten of his men, then to take the rest and go with the guardsmen. ‘Make sure you keep them under control. I’ll send for you as soon as I can.’
The man gave him a sober nod. Carnelian put the ten selected warriors under Fern’s command. He felt perfectly safe among the tyadra, but he wanted to make sure Sthax did not feel he and his people had been forgotten. No more did he want Fern to feel ignored, a barbarian, among the guardsmen. These arrangements made, he followed Tain away from the quay.
‘When will we be receiving more food, Master?’ said Tain.
Carnelian did not know how to answer that. ‘How much hunger is there here?’
His brother shrugged. ‘We’ve known for more than a month that resupply was likely to be delayed. Since then we’ve been rationing the stores. Still, things are getting tight.’ He grinned, wanly. ‘Those who suffered hunger in the Hold after we left keep saying this is nothing. The Master’s made sure everyone’s given a share appropriate to their need.’