Osidian made a gesture of exasperation. ‘Oh, very well!’
They rode Heart-of-Thunder directly towards the flaming sunset. Below, the Marula spread before them in a fan, aquar and riders almost invisible because they seemed beaten from the same copper as the land. It was the shadows they trailed that allowed Carnelian to make out where they were.
He looked around him. The cabin seemed soaked in blood. Every surface glistened and glowed. An apparition, Osidian, stood gazing out, steadying himself against the dragon’s gait by gripping the right arm of his command chair. Carnelian was holding onto the left. The two officers had to manage kneeling behind them.
‘What did you see, Osidian?’
The apparition turned to Carnelian and began speaking, but he heard nothing. All he could do was stare at the reflection of his own mask in Osidian’s. It seemed the same lurid red face that had been haunting his dreams. To the drone of Osidian’s voice the red face thinned and twisted like a slow flame. It resembled Akaisha’s face warning him, but Carnelian also recognized it as his own. He turned away, nursing his beating heart.
‘What ails you, Carnelian?’
Carnelian breathed deep and hard, still haunted. As his heart slowed, he felt as if he was coming awake. Osidian’s hand was on his shoulder. ‘Just a momentary dizziness.’
‘Sit in the chair.’
Carnelian glanced at it reddening further in the deepening dusk and shook his head. ‘I am recovering; please begin again with what you were saying. Tell me everything.’
Osidian paused a moment. ‘Very well. All day and all night we rode west then, before dawn, we found an abandoned kraal. We slept in its tower until dusk and then set off again, but this time turning south towards the Ringwall. We crept into a stopping place and as the sun rose we hid ourselves among the rabble. All day we endured moving among them on the road.’
‘No one wondered at your height?’
Osidian made a gesture of annoyance. ‘I hunched… Morunasa made sure they saw his face while I was careful to hide mine. They thought me one of his kind.’
Carnelian nodded, then motioned him to continue.
‘We approached the city in late afternoon. When we reached a market outside its walls we found a place to hide until nightfall. Before the moon rose we passed through the city and found what we needed. That was last night. Before dawn we slipped away into the open fields. East we rode, then north, searching for your trail. Finding it, we rode along it until we reached you.’
‘And?’
‘We learned much from overhearing travellers talking. Morunasa got more from questioning others.’
‘Is Aurum there?’
Osidian shook his head. ‘I believe he is down in the Leper Valleys.’
‘What?’ Carnelian said. His shocked tone awoke concern in the officers. He calmed himself.
‘He must be searching for me,’ Osidian said. ‘Though rumour suggests he is even now on his way back to the Guarded Land.’
Carnelian heard the glee in his voice and understood. ‘You believe we shall arrive in Makar before him and trap him in the Valleys.’
Osidian was nodding. ‘Put in such an untenable position, I have hopes my Lord Aurum will realize he has no choice but to negotiate with me.’
Carnelian could not deny the nausea he felt. He slipped round and slumped into the chair. He had thought he was leaving Poppy and Fern in relative safety. His mind was lit by nightmarish dragonfire. He lifted his head and let the darkness that was falling outside quench the flames. To save whatever remained of the Leper Valleys, Aurum must be drawn back to the Guarded Land. Carnelian turned to look up at Osidian, in whose metal face lurked disturbing, murky reflections. ‘We must make a plan to take Makar.’
They halted so that Carnelian could transfer to Earth-is-Strong. Standing astride the head of Heart-of-Thunder’s brassman, Carnelian paused, stunned by the immensity of the night sky. The earth’s lightless sea snuffed out the stars along the southern horizon. He noticed two burning on the boundary between earth and sky. He scanned east. There, though much fainter, was a third. Each beacon marked the presence of a watch-tower on the Ringwall. He gazed into the south-west and for a moment thought he could see the dull glow of Makar. His certainty wavered. He gazed further west, in the direction they were heading. He searched the horizon there for more fallen stars, but could find none. His vantage point was too low. He began the descent to the ground.
Reaching the earth he was struck by how separated he was from it by the ranga calluses of his suit and felt a powerful urge to stand upon it barefoot. Heart-of-Thunder was a cliff of blackness. His mast speared the infinite sky.
Escorted by Osidian’s Lefthand, Carnelian made his way back along the dragon line. It was a long way. The monsters snuffled. Their rich musk permeated the night. Glancing up he caught a gleam running along a flame-pipe. Then the faint glow of a Master enthroned in his tower. He wondered if it came to battle whether the commanders would really obey Osidian. Would they really be prepared to make war upon the Commonwealth?
When they reached Earth-is-Strong the Lefthand cried up to her tower. The brassman was lowered, then a ladder rustled down to meet him. He climbed it, feeling he was ascending to the stars. One of his crew was waiting on the brassman to guide him in. Entering the tower Carnelian was cheered by its warmth, by the now familiar smell. He ascended to the upper deck. As he sat down in the command chair, he glanced to either side. His Lefthand and Righthand were there, kneeling in their places. ‘Tell Heart-of-Thunder we’re ready to go.’
His Lefthand gave a nod and bent to mutter into his voice fork. While Carnelian waited, he peered out through his bone screen. Directly ahead a dragon and its tower formed an indivisible shadow mass. He stroked the smooth arms of his chair as he considered the plan he and Osidian had come up with.
A sudden spark hovering in the night made him start. It was a signal coming back down the line. The dragon in front lurched into movement. Carnelian felt the tremors it was sending into the earth. He had no need to have the signal deciphered. He whispered his command to his Lefthand. The familiar rocking of the cabin once Earth-is-Strong had found her gait soon lulled him to sleep.
Some time later he woke and, peering, noticed two lights twinkling on the western horizon. He knew they must be the southernmost watch-towers on the Great South Road. Osidian had set them on a course that led directly between them as they had planned.
A whisper made Carnelian sit up. It was his Lefthand. ‘Master, a signal-’
‘From Heart-of-Thunder?’
‘Yes, Master.’
‘A command?’
The Lefthand shook his shadowy head. ‘Wishing you good luck, Master.’
‘Bring the dragon to a halt.’
The man did as he was told. Carnelian watched the mountainous shadow of the dragon in front slowly merge with the night. Osidian was making for the southernmost tower. Carnelian raised his hand to indicate the tiny beacon of its neighbour to the north and his Lefthand set a course for it. As they began to move, he could just make out the small body of Marula below that had been assigned to him to make sure the ground before him could hold Earth-is-Strong’s weight.
Carnelian had hoped for steady progress. It was essential to their plan that he should reach his tower before Osidian reached his. His recollections of the land around Makar had made him confident it was Osidian who would have to navigate around the most ravines and fissures, but this was the second massive sinkhole his Marula had had to lead him round. Carnelian could smell the fear from his men as they waited for the next thump to vibrate the cabin and show that Earth-is-Strong had made another solid footfall.
The moon was rising behind them when Carnelian sent his dragon crashing through the stopping place. He had done what he could to align her on the track that led from the fields directly towards the watch-tower and its gate in the hope it would give her a clear passage. He could not risk giving any overt warning of his coming lest he should alert the tower. He had hoped there would be enough people awake in the stopping place to feel the thunder of his approach, to see Earth-is-Strong’s monstrous shape looming up out of the night towards them and then sound a general alarm that would send people fleeing from her path. Even so, he could hear screaming thinned by the cold air. The command chair transferred a judder up his spine each time Earth-is-Strong crushed something beneath one of her massive feet. However hard he focused on his objective, he could not stop imagining what it was he was leaving flattened behind him.