Lily grimaced, not understanding. ‘How?’
Carnelian lifted his hand to point back at the watch-tower. ‘Move your camp around the foot of the tower. We shall then all be your prisoners. I’ll make it impossible for any of us to give commands save by your leave.’
He waited, keeping his mind and heart numb, feeling pain around his eyes, but seeing nothing but Lily’s bowed head. At last she raised it. ‘We’ll discuss it and let you know. Now leave us.’
Carnelian felt a twinge of anger at being dismissed thus, but he gave her a nod, left the homunculus with Poppy, then began the journey back towards the watch-tower.
Up on the road, more and more Marula were rising to gaze in his direction. At first Carnelian felt, uncomfortably, that they were responding to his approach, but then he realized they were looking past him. Glancing round, he saw Lepers were pouring towards him through gaps in the dragon line. He turned back to the Marula with a sense of urgency. If he did not manage to make them quit their posts quickly there could well be bloodshed. Without help this might prove beyond him. They had been set to guard the watch-tower not only by their Oracles, but also Osidian. He searched along the ranks of faces, and breathed relief when he found the one he was looking for. He made straight for him.
‘Sthax,’ he called out.
The Maruli glanced nervously towards the watch-tower foundation wall, behind which the Oracles lay communing with their god. As Carnelian climbed the ramp up to the road, the other Marula made space for him to approach Sthax. ‘I feared you lost.’
Sthax regarded him with what seemed to be suspicion.
‘You have to move your people away. I’ve given the tower to the Lepers.’
Sthax’s face hardened and Carnelian felt the Marula round them sensing his anger. ‘You have no choice.’ Carnelian glanced round at the approaching Leper tide to reinforce his point. The light his mask was reflecting into Sthax’s eyes was making him squint. Again Carnelian’s instinct was to talk to him face to face, but what was the point in pretending he was other than he was? ‘Tell the Oracles you were forced to obey my command.’
Sthax, unappeased, stood his ground. ‘What happen?’
Carnelian felt rage rising in him against this man, but knew he was not being fair. His disgust at the Oracles and their god and his obsession with the Lepers had made him treat these people shabbily. They had every right to an explanation and so he began to give Sthax one.
‘Battle?’ Sthax said, nodding wearily. His eyes seemed to be seeking Carnelian’s face through the mask. ‘We wins?’
Carnelian felt drained at having to trot out the same fragile reasons he had had to give to the Lepers, but as he explained they were waiting for Osidian’s dreams, Sthax’s back stiffened. Of course, Osidian’s god was the god of all the Marula.
Carnelian opened his arm to take in the warriors behind Sthax. ‘In a battle, many will die.’
Sthax’s smile was like unexpected sun. ‘We warriors. We fears no die.’ Light left his face. ‘We fears for loves. We fears for homes.’
This man was no fool. Sthax knew how narrow was the hope upon which his land and people hung. Carnelian explained why he had given the tower to the Lepers. ‘If they do not believe the Master will give them victory, there will be no battle. The Lepers will go home. The Marula will go home.’
He could tell from Sthax’s face that he saw even less hope in that. Grimly, the Maruli took leave of him as he began the work of persuading his fellows to quit their posts.
The Marula yielded to the Lepers. Lily left Fern behind to organize a new camp and then picked some of her people to accompany her. With a glance back at Fern, Carnelian led her and her people into the watch-tower. He climbed the ramps, keeping his gaze fixed always ahead, and was relieved when they reached the cistern level without mishap. Lily’s shrouded head turned as she surveyed the chamber with its shafts and ladder rising up into the tower. She gave a nod of acceptance, then assigned some of her people to stand guard upon the ladder, while to others she gave the duty of controlling the ramps they had just climbed.
As Carnelian walked out onto the leftway, he glanced over to where three of Aurum’s guardsmen rose to deny him access to their master’s dragon tower. Regarding their sallow, bisected faces, he judged they were unlikely to cause any trouble. It was not their job to react to changes in the camp, but only to protect their master. He busied himself with supervising the raising of the drawbridge that connected the watch-tower to the long run south to Makar. As the device was ratcheting up, he noticed anxiously that Lily had appeared and was gazing at the guardsmen and the dragon tower. As he approached her she turned. ‘Is Au-rum in there?’
Carnelian admitted that he was, then thought it best to explain that, without its crew, the Master had no means of operating the dragon, nor any way to communicate with the rest of his forces. When he was certain she was not going to make an attempt to seize Aurum, a need arose in him to have her answer some questions. ‘Do you really intend to sack Makar?’
‘Do you think it selfish of us that, after what we’ve suffered, we should seek the means to rebuild our lives?’
‘Would you heal your own wounds by wounding others?’
A furious glint came into her eyes. ‘You forget how badly the Clean have always treated us.’
‘They fear you… and it is, besides, a fear you’ve encouraged.’
Lily bowed her head. ‘Even if I wanted to pull back from it,’ she said, in a quiet voice, ‘it’s too late.’
Carnelian felt sympathy for her. He was certain she had used that promise to persuade her people to follow her here. ‘You’re not the first he’s trapped by turning your desires against you.’
She nodded.
‘If only you had come to me with this at the time…’ He paused. ‘Why didn’t you?’
Lily shook her head, then moved away to the edge of the leftway and gazed down. Carnelian was aware of the barrier between them. He moved to her side. Her people were occupying the whole breadth of the road below and, spilling down the ramp, covered much of the ground there too. ‘You have us all in your power, Lily.’
She did not turn. ‘It would appear so.’
Lily permitted Carnelian to continue residing in his cell with Poppy and the homunculus. He encouraged her to place a guard upon the tower heliograph and her people replaced the Marula as lookouts in the deadman’s chairs. He had discussed the situation with her and she had allowed Poppy to go down to see Fern and ask him if he would be prepared to go north to the watch-tower beyond the next and to remain there, keeping an eye out for Jaspar’s approach. When Fern agreed to do this, Carnelian sent him a mirrorman as a heliograph operator.
Days passed during which the breeze from the north-east gradually became the merest breath before failing completely. Without it the heat rose so that, even though the nights were chill, the stone of the watch-tower stayed warm to the touch. Carnelian lingered in his cell with Poppy during the worst of it, then, under cover of night, they would climb to the high platform where beneath a star-studded sky they often sat, hardly saying a word.
Then one afternoon a servant emerged from Aurum’s tower seeking Osidian. Lily allowed Carnelian to talk to the man. Cowering, sallow-faced, he was at first reluctant to divulge his message, but he could not long resist the imperious glare of Carnelian’s mask. It seemed that Aurum wanted to know if the Ichorian had been sighted. As Carnelian watched the man skulk back to the tower with a negative answer, he felt an increased level of anxiety. Jaspar must be close. He spent the rest of the day upon the watch-tower summit gazing north.
The following morning, Carnelian came awake certain he could hear gulls screaming above a gale. Poppy was there, staring at him. ‘Is this it?’
Carnelian sat up, hunched against the vast wave that was about to engulf them. The fear in Poppy’s face freed him from his dream. A muffled cry was coming from somewhere above them.