‘I don’t imagine the marumaga would be happy to obey a Maruli.’
‘They will do as they are told!’
Carnelian was shocked at Osidian’s vehemence. He could not understand why this should be so important to him. ‘Surely it is obvious that we must take all precautions? These huimur have been purchased at a heavy price.’
Osidian lowered his head as he crushed one hand with the other. ‘I really want you to come with me, Carnelian.’ His anger had gone. ‘Please.’
Carnelian gazed at Osidian in disbelief, then turned to look at Heart-of-Thunder lurking in his vault. ‘Very well.’
The Legate and his companions had journeyed to the cothon in palanquins. Osidian commandeered one for himself and another for Carnelian. Two of the Lesser Chosen commanders were going to have to walk. As Osidian replaced his bearers and Carnelian’s with Marula, Carnelian looked among them for Sthax, but could not see him there. He dismissed anxiety: there were more immediate things to worry about. As he watched the changeover Carnelian was surprised how much the bearers appeared disfigured by their Masters’ heraldic tattoos. He wondered that he had ever thought it natural that men should be thus marked to show to whom they belonged. Once it had even seemed elegant; now it appeared hardly different from the branding on a sartlar’s face.
When the palanquin was ready he folded himself into it reluctantly. In contrast with the samite brocades, the inlays of tortoiseshell and pearl, his rough-woven marumaga robe appeared to be little more than sackcloth. An Oracle slid closed the lacquered door and the Marula lifted the palanquin. Inside, Carnelian felt imprisoned. Each breath he took was cloyed with the perfume of lilies, the taint of myrrh. Finding a grille he slid it back to let in some air. Framed by its gold filigree, the machines and geometries of the cothon appeared more brutal. The southern gates of the cothon gulped open. He glimpsed gate chains, toothed wheels, then he was being carried through a garden. Trunks showed they were passing down an avenue of gigantic trees. Framed between them, verdant vistas. Shield leaves thrust up fiery flower-spikes. Paths wound among rocks, quaintly carved, banded and spiralled with cultivated lichens. Here and there he managed to snatch glimpses of the sky, but these only served to make the palanquin feel more like a prison. He was uneasy. Perhaps the feeling had been caused by Osidian’s uncharacteristic gentleness towards him back in the cothon. Carnelian hoped he would not regret having agreed to join him. Perhaps his anxiety was about returning to the world of the Masters. Perhaps he was afraid he might be changed back into what he had been.
The palanquin was set down amidst muttering. Carnelian covered his lower face with a fold of his robe before carefully sliding open the door. He cried in Vulgate: ‘Look away, we are unmasked.’
Climbing out he was confronted by a gate that glared at him with a single, tearful eye. Wrought in the bronze, it was surrounded by a silver frieze of ammonite shells. These wards proclaimed whatever lay beyond to be under the jurisdiction of the Wise. Unsanctioned entry was forbidden under penalty of the Law-that-must-be-obeyed.
The gate opened a little and, from behind it, a silver face emerged with solid spiral eyes. ‘Please enter this purgatory, Seraphim. The procedures of purification await you.’
As Carnelian and Osidian approached, more ammonites appeared, hunched as each gripped with both hands the handle of a ladle in which blue fire burned. At a command it was poured over the ground before them. Flames ran across the earth. Carnelian and Osidian were urged forward onto the now purified ground. Fingers fumbled at their feet, trying to free them of their polluted footwear. A hissing made Carnelian turn to see more arcs of blue flame being ladled over the ground on which he and Osidian had walked. The palanquins they had come in were already aflame. The Marula were backing away, eyes bulging.
‘Enough! I have no patience for this,’ boomed Osidian, chasing ammonites from his path. ‘Morunasa, come with me. Bring your people.’
The Oracle gathered up the Marula and they swarmed after him. Ammonites flung themselves in their way, screeching, forbidding entry, but the Marula beat them aside. Some of the ammonites lost their blinding-masks and fell, grovelling, on the still burning earth. Carnelian glanced at the Legate and his commanders, who were watching in stiff disbelief, then followed after the Marula, who were pouring through the gate Osidian had thrown open.
Drugged smoke unfurled like ferns in the gloomy halls beyond. Carnelian felt a languor settle about his shoulders. His face began to swell, his bones to liquefy. He recognized the feeling from his entry into Osrakum. The drug was meant to encourage their submission to intrusive cleansing. A deafening clatter brought his eyes back into focus. Swaying, the Marula were knocking smoking brass bowls from their tripods. Carnelian squinted against the undulating surface of a pool in which mouths and tongues of light were kissing, separating. Backing away into the shadows were metal faces distorting reflections of their whole drunken procession. He saw a rectangle of daylight opening far away and did what he could to herd the Marula towards it. At last he was stumbling out with them into eddying daylight.
He found himself with Morunasa and the Marula in a gully between limestone walls pierced with gates. The place was already in afternoon shadow. Only the crest of the eastern wall still caught the sun. Bronze hoops held poles whose banners were swimming in a breeze. Guardsman niches were empty. A gate opened a crack. For a moment he glimpsed an eye widening with horror. Then the gate slammed closed and a voice beyond it began keening an alarm. Bolts were shot home. Commotion spread beyond the walls and a scurrying, so that Carnelian felt he was invading a termite city. Faces peered down from the battlements above. Carnelian felt as shunned as a leper.
He located Osidian, a shadowy shape striding away along the gully towards where a tower rose, tier on sculptured tier. Morunasa asked for instructions, but Carnelian ignored him and set off after Osidian. The Marula opened a path through their midst to let him through. Carnelian was only vaguely aware of their faces. He was concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. As the effect of the drug faded, each footfall felt more solid than the last. When he caught up with Osidian, he spoke: ‘Why… why break through?’
‘I had my reasons,’ Osidian growled.
Carnelian saw no point in pressing him further and fell in step with him. Behind them came scuffling Marula.
The gully terminated at a gate from which the two faces of the Commonwealth sneered down. Carnelian and Osidian threw their weight against the bronze and the gate opened, exhaling a waft of lilies. Penetrating the gloomy hall beyond, Carnelian noticed figures flitting away through openings all along its rim. Members of the Legate’s household, no doubt. He glanced round anxiously to make sure the Marula were keeping close; he did not want any massacres. Huddled hesitantly on the threshold, they came when he beckoned them.
They crossed the hall among the echoes of their creeping footfalls. Carnelian did not blame the Marula for their wariness. Even to him this place felt like a tomb. The pillars on either side seemed guardians. Figures writhing in the pavement beneath his feet might have been a view down into the Underworld.
Their route took them within sight of archways that opened into the gold of late afternoon. Carnelian longed to escape through them, but Osidian always turned away into the shadows. The cold grandeur seeped into Carnelian’s heart until he began to shiver. The polished floor seemed frozen meat whose veins had turned to stone. Columns might have been the corpses of trees. As he walked he became aware he was clutching his marumaga robe. Its coarse but honest weave brought him some little comfort.
They skirted one last court by means of a cloister. Walking close to its edge Carnelian was able to see they were nearing the tower whose tiers were borne upon the curved backs of humbled men. The cloister curved to deliver them to a stair that they began ascending. They passed chambers panelled with malachite and purple porphyry whose sterile beauty Osidian declared to be that of reception chambers. ‘It is the Legate’s private halls we seek.’