Carnelian looked at Tain. ‘Everyone?’
His brother nodded with satisfaction. ‘The Masters too. Even himself.’
Carnelian saw the pain tensing Tain’s face, but turned away. He did not want to learn more about their father just then. ‘How tight?’
Tain made a face. ‘For more than ten days we’ve had nothing to eat but that stuff from the “bellies”.’
‘Render,’ Carnelian said and saw in Fern’s face he was sharing their disgust. ‘What about the mood of our people?’
Tain leaned closer. ‘There’s unease among the tyadra and between the households.’
Carnelian remembered Opalid’s animosity. ‘How secure are our people?’
Tain eyed him cautiously. ‘From the others?’ Then, when Carnelian nodded, ‘Keal keeps guards on all the gates between our halls and theirs. We’ve turned ours into a fortress.’
‘Ebeny? Poppy?’
Tain smiled. ‘As safe as worms in an apple.’
As they walked on in silence, the warmth that came from the thought of seeing Poppy and Ebeny again was slow to fade. Their scuffling footfalls echoing back from distant walls made it seem they were creeping through vast caverns.
Carnelian jumped when Tain spoke. ‘Why’s the lake rising?’
‘It’s already falling.’
Tain nodded as if Carnelian had given him an extensive explanation. Carnelian sensed his brother was building up to something.
‘More than a month ago smoke started drifting out from the Canyon right out over the water. A few days later we heard you’d taken control of the Blood Gate.’
‘Who told you that?’ Carnelian said, anxious that news of the disaster might have reached Coomb Suth already.
‘Some Masters came to visit Father. We talked to their tyadra.’
Carnelian judged they must have come to ask his father to attend the Clave. What had they told him about what was going on?
Tain broke into his musing. ‘The second time they came, Master Opalid left with them.’
‘What happened when he returned?’
‘He went straight to Father.’
Carnelian nodded. His heart sank. His father would know about the summoning of the legions, then, but it was he who was going to have to tell him about their destruction. And about the part he had played in all of this.
‘How is he?’
Tain’s face tensed again. ‘Weak and spending most of his time alone.’
Carnelian nodded, sad. ‘That’s him all right.’
‘Even Keal hardly sees him.’
‘Ebeny?’
‘Mother tends to him when he lets her.’ Tain glanced at him. ‘She’d love to see you.’
‘I’ll go to her after I’ve seen Father. And Poppy?’
Tain lit up. ‘She’ll be with Mother. It’s as if they’ve known each other all their lives.’
Carnelian drew some much-needed comfort from that.
‘Of course, if she’s heard you’re here, we might all be seeing her much sooner than we think.’
Carnelian saw the wry grin on his brother’s face, then on Fern’s, and all three burst into laughter that soon came swooping back from all directions out of the blackness as if the whole world was laughing with them.
They came to a guarded door where carved warding eyes gave warning they were about to enter the halls of the first lineage. The guardsmen looked uncertain, but began to kneel. He stopped them with his hand and advanced on one whom he recognized as Naith, who grew tearful recognizing his Master’s son and kissed his hand.
The chambers beyond were warmed by light and a smell of home that brought tears to Carnelian’s eyes. When far from prying ears, Tain asked him, bluntly, why he had come now and with the black barbarians.
That reminded Carnelian. ‘Is the homunculus safe?’
‘The little man? Safe enough.’
Carnelian saw his brother wanted his question answered. ‘Difficult times are coming, Tain. I’ve a plan to save us all, but before I can speak of it, I must talk to Father.’
‘Of course, Carnie,’ Tain said, leaving Carnelian troubled by the trust in his brother’s face, but also more determined.
At last they reached immense white doors. Carnelian saw Keal among some guards, and rushed forward to catch him by the arms to stop him kneeling. He kissed him. ‘My brother.’
Keal blushed. ‘He’s expecting you,’ he whispered, as if he wished not to wake some invalid beyond the doors. Carnelian eyed them with some faltering of his purpose. They looked so much like the doors of his father’s hall in the Hold. Of course, he realized, it was the other ones that were a copy. His child’s eyes had made those seem massive; these doors really were.
‘Keal, are we secure from any outside attack?’
‘We are, Master.’
There was a certain look in his brother’s face, the same in Tain’s, in that of the other guardsmen. All there were relating what was happening to what had happened on the island. Then the danger had come from Aurum and the other Masters arriving on their black ship. Though his people did not know it yet, the situation now was even more perilous.
Carnelian turned to Fern. ‘Please wait here.’
Fern looked unhappy, but nodded. Carnelian cleared his mind and turned to the doors. They were an ivory mosaic of chameleons whose eyes were rusty iron rivets. He struck one of the doors three times with the heel of his hand. As the doors opened, through the gap between them he saw a fire. Beyond it, sculpted by its light, the shape of a Master. For a moment Carnelian felt the weight of time falling from him. He was a boy again, coming to tell his father of the approach of a black ship.
‘Celestial.’
Carnelian hated his father greeting him thus. It was another barrier between them. As the old man removed his mask, his gaze alighted on him, before flicking away to take in the shadowy limits of the hall. Carnelian was sure he had seen in those grey eyes the love that his father found too difficult to express.
His father’s frown crumpled further his lined face. ‘You must find these palaces cold, unwelcoming, but as you surely know, Celestial, resources are at the moment restricted.’
He seemed very old, then. Coming alive again, he fixed Carnelian with his gaze. ‘If only you had sent us warning of your visit.’
Carnelian grew angry. ‘This is a lot more than a visit!’ The anger left him. His father looked so vulnerable, but he had to know the truth. ‘The legions have all been destroyed.’
His father’s bones seemed suddenly to soften. He collapsed into a chair that the silk slopes of his robe had concealed.
‘Father,’ Carnelian cried, moving forward, but then was stayed by his father flinging up his hand in a barrier gesture. ‘All?’
‘All.’
His father sagged. ‘Then it is over.’
Carnelian felt sick at heart with the need to help him, to touch him, to be touched by him. ‘It is I who have brought this thing to pass.’
His father raised his eyes as if trying to make him out at some vast distance. ‘You? Have you forgotten my warnings to you about the Chosen? How dangerous we are? It was only the Balance of the Powers that kept us caged. Without it, it was always fated we should fall upon each other like beasts. The Balance was the only thing keeping us from another internecine war that would lay the whole world waste.’
Carnelian was afraid that his father had lost his mind. ‘That war was fought and, seemingly, won, but now the world is destined to fall into famine and ruin.’
His father lifted a bony hand shaping a contemptuous sign of negation. ‘The Great will never submit to domination by the House of the Masks.’ His gaze fell raptor-like on Carnelian, who desperately wanted him to make sense. ‘You think you’ve seen a civil war, my Lord? You’ve seen nothing! If the Chosen are given the means to wage war upon each other, they will do so to the death.’ His father’s hand wavered in more negation. ‘The Balance, bought at the price of the previous war, is our only hope to maintain the harmony of the Commonwealth. It is we, all of us, who have conspired to shatter its mirror.’ His eyes dulled. ‘But perhaps it is foolish to hope that the Balance should stand for ever. Who can hope to build a rampart proof against the sea?’