The homunculus showed the Marula how to secure each capsule to its carriage, in a near-vertical position. When all was ready, Carnelian climbed into his saddle-chair. He noticed the homunculus standing as awkwardly as an abandoned child. ‘You do not know how to ride, do you?’
‘No, Seraph.’
Carnelian beckoned him to approach, then helped him clamber into his saddle-chair, settling him between his legs. When he reckoned they were as comfortable as was possible, Carnelian made the aquar rise. He asked Morunasa to ride ahead with his men, leaving only three of them to lead the aquar hitched to the carriages. He eyed the maggot-pale capsules as they lurched into movement. The sun was bright enough to find the dark spindles at their core.
‘The Standing Dead,’ he murmured.
The homunculus stirred a little, tense as ice.
Soon they were loping along the leftway, Carnelian bringing up the rear of their cortege. They rode above the market, passed under two more watch-towers, then increased speed on the clear run north.
Even before they reached it, Carnelian could see the disc of Osidian’s camp disfiguring the earth around the watch-tower. Ahead the leftway came to a sudden, ragged end. Some distance further on it rose again, continuing north. In between, it had been reduced to rubble. Surveying the land round about, he understood why Osidian had torn down the leftway: so that he could meet any attack, whether it came from the east or west, with his whole legion.
Morunasa and the Marula were dismounting. Carnelian made his own mount kneel. He helped the homunculus clamber out, then climbed out himself.
The little man looked around. ‘Where are the ammonites of this tower, Seraph? They should be here to greet us.’
Carnelian gazed up into the watch-tower branches. It was Marula that sat as lookouts in the deadman’s chairs. This tower was Osidian’s and any ammonites could only compromise its security. ‘The Celestial dismissed them.’
The homunculus’ child mask glanced towards their Marula escort. ‘Then, Seraph, we must make do with these creatures.’
Under his instructions the Marula unloaded the capsules and carried them into the tower. Inside, the homunculus climbed the ladder that was set against the back wall. As he disappeared up into the shadows, Carnelian and Sthax exchanged a glance. Carnelian was trying to work out a way to keep the Maruli close when the homunculus returned, pulling a rope from which hung a hook. Carnelian helped him remove the carrying poles from Legions’ capsule and then watched him attach the hook to one of the freed rings. After the homunculus had fetched and attached a second hook, he showed the Marula some ropes and, at his command, they began to heave on them. As the capsule came slowly upright, the homunculus wrestled it against the wall, then clambered aboard. The Marula continued to pull upon the ropes and the capsule rose up into the gloom of the tower, with the homunculus clinging to it like a child to its mother.
Carnelian followed Legions’ capsule up through the tower. When it reached the uppermost storey, he helped the homunculus drag it into one of the cells. The capsule was much lighter than he had expected. They propped it up against one wall. Carnelian looked around the chamber. It was so like the many he had seen on his journey to Osrakum that, for a moment, the time that had passed since then seemed an illusion.
‘I shall descend for the others, Seraph,’ said the homunculus.
Soon, he was out of sight, taking with him the hooks and ropes. While Carnelian waited, he opened the doors to the other chambers. All the cells save one looked as if they had not been used for a while. One smelled of sweat, but this odour was cut through by another, myrrh. The same smell that he was just aware of rising from his own, bandaged body. This must be Osidian’s cell, then. He walked around it as if he expected Osidian to return at any moment. He felt that he was intruding; these cells were far more territorial than had ever been the hearth or the sleeping hollows. He backed out of the cell and closed its door. He really would prefer to sleep somewhere out in the open, but even if this had been advisable, he felt a need to stay close to the capsules. He chose the cell furthest from Osidian’s, then returned to the landing to wait for the homunculus to appear with the next capsule.
After he had helped the homunculus stow the other two capsules, Carnelian climbed the ladder to the roof and had soon reached the platform, at the centre of which gleamed a heliograph. Movement drew his eyes to a Maruli spreadeagled in a deadman’s chair. Carnelian looked west. Far away, red clouds hung like mist over the land. In their midst, he saw flashes. Motes moved, veiled by the rolling dust: Osidian’s dragons on manoeuvres.
He let his gaze return to wander across the mottled semicircle of the camp below. A glint caught his eye. There was a hole in the ground ringed with silver. Cisterns, perhaps, but it was the hole that drew his attention. It plunged into deep blackness. Pallid creatures were writhing up its sides. Sartlar, like maggots crawling out of a wound.
When he descended the tower, he took the homunculus with him, down through the stables to the bottom gate. As grooms raised this for him he became aware of the hubbub of the road. He slipped out behind the monolith that screened them from the traffic. He watched the multitude thronging past, and bathed in its ever-shifting odours. He feasted on the faces, the smiles and flashing eyes of so much raw humanity. The beasts, the heaped wagons with their slowly turning wheels.
‘We must cross,’ he said quietly to the homunculus.
He sensed the little man’s fear and offered him his hand. Hesitantly, the homunculus took it and together they emerged onto the road. At first the shadow of the leftway wall concealed them, but then someone saw his mask, his looming height. Cries of ‘Master’ spread panic through the crowd. Pulling the homunculus after him, Carnelian began to cross the road. Everywhere people were falling to their knees. Carnelian did not turn his mask, for its gaze was terrifying to them, but restricted his attention to the bare stone before his feet. When they reached a ramp, they went down its slope to the red earth beyond. Each step thereafter, Carnelian made sure to scuff the earth to churn up dust to hide them.
He gave up counting the black hearths burnt into the land. Hazed with flies, hills of dragon dung gave off their stench. The glitter of the cisterns drew him and the promise of breathable air. Besides, he had a notion to take a look at the hole in the ground.
As they drew nearer, they saw the cistern was a trough, its lip gouged and cracked. Bright water rocked in its curve, which was the rim of an immense pit plunging down into blackness. The circling wall of the pit was pale limestone rotten with caves and rusted by the land’s red earth. The closer he drew, the further he could peer down into the gloom. Sartlar infested the caves. Others were clambering up out of the blackness using handholds gouged into the soft walls. Each was burdened with a waterskin. As he watched, one of the creatures struggled up from the well and emptied its skin into the cistern. Free for a moment, it rested its gnarled hands on its knees, hacking breath. Suddenly, sensing him, it glanced up. It cowered as it caught sight of the mirror gold of his face. Disliking the creature’s fear, Carnelian turned his back on it and, with the homunculus, he made his way back to the watch-tower. Weary of the world, he climbed to his cell and, as the homunculus hunched down against the wall, he lay down to await Osidian’s return.
She is Akaisha and Ebeny, though looks like neither. Carnelian feels the itching of her wounds as if they are his own. Scratching, she picks out maggots that writhe over her fingers like drops of oil. She licks them off. Her nails return to dig the wounds. They widen like mouths to devour him. He loses hold and tumbles in and falls and falls and falls.