Osidian stared at Carnelian as if he were mad. ‘So you would break the Balance altogether?’
‘What of it?’
Carnelian watched as Osidian’s eyes dulled. Was he considering the inconceivable?
‘At one stroke you would undermine any confidence the Wise have in the legions. It might sow havoc among them. It must surely weaken Aurum’s ability to resist you. Certainly it would give the commanders here a real reason to risk following you.’
He could feel Osidian’s resistance weakening. ‘This one act could bring the Masks within your grasp, without need of the Wise, or the Great. You would tear her most powerful weapon from your mother’s hand. You might even be able to wield all the power of the Chosen yourself.’
Osidian looked at him. ‘Except the Ichorian Legion.’
What of it? Carnelian signed. He made a gesture of encompassment. ‘In the last resort, you could lay siege to Osrakum herself.’
The moment he said that he realized he had gone too far. Osidian’s disbelief returned. Carnelian tried to retrieve the initiative. ‘It will not come to that, Osidian. The Wise will negotiate with you, but with their power diminished.’
Uncertainty returned to Osidian’s face. ‘Once broken the Balance might be impossible to rebuild.’
‘Why would you wish to resume the chains that have bound your House for millennia?’
Osidian spoke distractedly: ‘Not millennia. It has been only seven hundred years since my House lost the Civil War…’
Carnelian had only a vague awareness of this. It had happened so long ago.
Osidian began shaking his head. ‘Your scheme is flawed, Carnelian. The Lesser Chosen that are not beyond my reach within Osrakum are scattered among the cities of the Guarded Land.’
‘Surely you can get messages to them by heliograph or by sending couriers along the leftways?’
Osidian shook his head. ‘Even if I had a seal, the watch-towers would not relay a message from me unless it was vouched for by the Wise.’
Carnelian sank into disappointment. It had all seemed so easy. He had made the mistake of underestimating the systems of the Wise.
‘The Lesser Chosen know their place. They shall bow down to me,’ Osidian said, frowning. ‘You and I must return to all the traditional usages. We must resume the wearing of masks. The more we run our power along the usual channels the stronger the grip we will maintain upon their loyalty.’
He looked around him at the chamber, at its furnishings, and seemed saddened by what he saw. ‘There is nothing to be gained by remaining here.’ His gaze fell on Carnelian. ‘It would be best if we were to relocate to somewhere closer to the cothon; that has now become the heart of our venture.’ He looked away. ‘We must begin to adhere to the Laws of Purity.’
Carnelian felt as if he was being threatened with imprisonment. ‘Do you mean the full ritual protection?’
‘I do, my Lord.’
‘I have experienced it and it was extremely uncomfortable.’
‘Nevertheless.’
‘But what is the point in it? For years we have been exposed to the outer world and we are still intact.’
Osidian scowled and touched the scar about his neck. ‘I do not think, my Lord, that we are wholly untouched by its filth and humiliations.’
Carnelian was in no mood to back down. ‘If you felt like this why then did you pollute the purity of this place?’
‘I desired to make the commanders share something of our degradation. There, does that please you, Carnelian?’
It was the pain in his eyes that made Carnelian falter. When he opened his mouth to say something more, Osidian chopped: Enough! ‘We are returned to the Commonwealth. Here none dare disobey her Laws.’
Twelve masks looked back at Carnelian and Osidian. They had been donated, at Osidian’s demand, by the Legate and his commanders. He picked one up and turned it into the light. His lips curled. ‘Surely this is the work of an apprentice maskmaker. Look how thick the bridge of the nose is, how crude the nostril flare. And as for the eyes.. .’ He shook his head and picked up another.
Carnelian’s fingers strayed to one that was reminding him of someone. He lifted it. It took him a while to see who it was. The mask had something about the mouth that made it resemble Fern’s. Carnelian was about to put it down, not wanting such a painful reminder; instead he placed it over his face. It seemed to fit well enough, though he knew that wearing it for any length of time would soon reveal where it did not perfectly fit his face. He turned to regard the ammonites kneeling, waiting with the strips of linen, the unguents and all the apparatus they had brought from the purgatory at Osidian’s command. The masks they wore had solid spirals for eyes. They had tried pleading excuses: that only the quaestor was qualified to administer the ritual protection; that the purity of everything in the sanctum had been contaminated when it had been breached by the black barbarians. Osidian had dismissed all their objections with contempt.
Carnelian approached the prostrate men. ‘Here, I have chosen.’ He offered the mask and one of the ammonites reached out blindly. He put the mask with Fern’s lips into the trembling hands.
When Osidian had selected a mask he commanded the ammonites to begin the procedure. Reluctantly, one of them rose to his feet, a length of beadcord in his hand. Reading it with his fingers he began to intone in Quya: ‘You who are Chosen shall now make ready to leave this place. You who are Chosen must take all precaution before leaving the sanctity of this place.’
As the blind spiral eyes regarded him Carnelian recalled the time so long ago when he had endured this ritual in the Tower in the Sea. ‘We are supposed to give a response.’
‘A response?’ Osidian said.
‘Something about the obeying of the Law.’
Osidian threw his hand up in irritation. ‘Ammonite, dispense with the catechism. Limit yourself to what is essential.’
‘Essential, Celestial?’
‘The practical elements,’ Osidian said, his voice rising dangerously.
As the ammonite fell to the ground the forehead of his mask struck a dull clang on the floor.
‘The ranga, Celestial, the filtered mask, the embalming.’
‘Well, get on with it.’
Carnelian glanced at Osidian, unsure why he was so angry. With surprise, he sensed Osidian was apprehensive. He had to admit he felt the same.
Under the direction of the ammonite, the others began the procedure. Ranga shoes were produced, raised upon a green, a black and a red support. Osidian refused to anoint them himself and so it was the ammonites who applied the unguent. They stripped them and cleansed them with chill menthol. Climbing onto the ranga, Carnelian bore the tickle of their styluses as they painted warding symbols and designs upon his skin. When they had wafted the ink dry they submerged its itch beneath a glaze of myrrh. The odour reminded him first of Aurum, then of his wounded father, then once again, unexpectedly, of the scent of the mother trees. That brought tears.
They began winding him in linen, the first layer sticking to the glaze. As more and more strips wound round him they tightened as they dried. The feeling of being trapped swelled in him almost to panic. He felt they were preparing him for his tomb. At last they brought the mask they had prepared. He regarded the hollow thing with horror. He shuddered as they fitted it to his face. His breathing hard and fast was restricted by the gold. It became a roaring in his ears as he forced the air in through the narrow mouth of the mask. The nostril pads smothered his nose. Ill-fitting, the mask squeezed out some liquid from the pads that dribbled down his lip into his mouth. Bitter, bitter taste and its numbing reek pushing cold needles up into the root of his nose to sting his eyes. Forced tears blinded him to what little he could see through the eyeslits.
‘We hide our faces from the world like lepers,’ Osidian was saying, but Carnelian barely registered the words as he struggled to choke back the horror that he was buried alive.