‘The lookouts,’ he cried, jumping up. They stared at each other. It was what they had been waiting for for days. He pointed at the ceiling. ‘I’ll go up and find out what it is. Can you please go down and tell Lily I’ll come to see her the moment I know?’
Poppy ducked a nod and made for the door. Carnelian put on his mask, took his leave of the homunculus, trusting him, then followed her out. As he scrambled up the ladder to the roof, the anticipation of what he would see up there was like lead in his stomach. He climbed the staples. Even as he crested the platform edge, he could see the Leper lookouts gathered, agitated, pointing. He clambered up onto the platform, blind to everything but the hazy north. A flash. He waited. A double flash. His heart, racing, measured the time to the next flashing. Three in a row. The prearranged signal. It meant Fern had sighted dragons coming along the road. Carnelian ignored the repeat as he peered into the vague north, straining to see the Ichorian. Dread arched over him like the wave in his dream: not just anticipation of the coming trial, but the acceptance that the time had come to wake Osidian.
Carnelian glanced back to where he had left Poppy with Lily and then he began the descent into the stables. He had had no need to go down there for days. The drain stench seemed worse, but he could detect no flies. He held a lantern out before him. He angled his mask so that its eyeslits would shield him from the glare. Reaching the first level, he saw the doors along one wall were all still closed. Transferring the lantern to his other hand, he reached out and touched the nearest. It gave under the pressure. Standing near its hinge, he pushed it open and swung the light in. A body came into view. It had the look of an Ochre corpse bitumened for sky burial. Leaning as close as he could stomach, and angling the light, he saw some twitching in the Oracle’s face. Squinting, he could make out the pink wounds pocking his skin. He retreated. So many doors with more Oracles behind them and two more levels beneath this one. His heart quailed at the thought he might have to look in all of them before he found Osidian.
Something moving at the edge of his vision caused him to spin round, his heart in his throat. He could see nothing beyond the circle of his lantern light. He shuttered the light to a narrow beam. His hackles rose. Someone was there. A pair of eyes appearing suddenly made him gasp. A ravener grin curved into being beneath the eyes.
‘The Master is startled,’ rumbled a voice Carnelian knew.
‘Morunasa.’
The grin whitened, feral in the darkness. Carnelian opened the shutter and flooded Morunasa with light. The man recoiled, an arm up before his face. He was naked, his skin free of its customary covering of ash so that Carnelian could detect the subtle curling currents of his tattoos. He kept a wary eye on Morunasa’s teeth. He would not allow Morunasa to bite him as he had in the Isle of Flies. ‘Where’s the Master?’
‘Why?’
Carnelian felt his fear turning to anger. ‘I need to see him.’
‘The cries?’
Carnelian knew Morunasa would find out everything soon enough. ‘Dragons are coming here from the north.’
Morunasa’s eyes narrowed to slits, then he passed close enough for Carnelian to be able to smell the blood oozing from his open sores. He followed him down a level, then into a stable wider than the others, in the back of which lurked counterweights and cables. There was a pale thing lying on the ground. For a moment he had the impression it was one of the Sapients, but the flesh, though starved, was firmer. He looked and recognized Osidian’s face, as thin as it had been when he had had the fever. He stooped to touch him and recoiled from the marble cold of death.
‘He lives,’ slurred Morunasa. His eyes rolled up as if he had just been stabbed. The dark irises descended. ‘He is with our Lord.’
Unmasked, Carnelian knew his face must be betraying what he thought of Morunasa’s god. He reached out again and, taking Osidian’s arm, shook him. Osidian released a groan, but did not wake. Carnelian felt the wetness on his fingers and turned to see them dark. He wiped the blood on his robe, fearing, irrationally, that he might have touched not only a wound, but also one of the maggots.
‘He shouldn’t be woken.’
Carnelian glanced up. ‘I’ve no choice. Will you help me carry him up out of here?’
Morunasa regarded him with a glazed expression, so that Carnelian had to repeat his question. The second time, Morunasa nodded.
Carnelian watched Poppy as she gazed, frowning, on Osidian’s skeletal face. He and Morunasa had laid him out upon the cobbles within the shelter of the leftway monolith, round to one side of the entrance so that his face could be seen neither from the leftway nor from within the watch-tower. Carnelian had left him unmasked because he feared his mask might smother him. For what Poppy was doing, the Law demanded death, but he imagined only Aurum would dare attempt to enforce it. If Aurum did, Carnelian would immediately hand him over to the justice of the Lepers.
Waiting for Osidian to wake, they had watched the shadows lengthen across the camp below. Now, beyond the monolith, everything was bathed in the reddening gold of the dying day. Carnelian had concealed Osidian’s bony body and its wounds beneath a blanket. The mask he had used to hide Osidian’s cadaverous face from Lily was lying on the ground beside him. The gold face seemed to have been flayed from what was little more than a skull. Seeing how Osidian had suffered stirred feelings in Carnelian of guilt, of loss, of rage. He glanced into the shadows of the cistern chamber where Lily was waiting with her Lepers. Against the objections of her people, she had given in to his plea that they should be patient at least until the morning. A tiny twitching in Osidian’s thin lips gave the impression he might be talking to someone in his dreams. Carnelian had tried many times already to wake him, without success. This sleep was the brother of death.
Morunasa had reacted with anger when he discovered his Marula had abandoned their posts to the Lepers. Carnelian had told him that they had done so in obedience to his command and that, besides, the warriors could not have withstood the Leper numbers. He suspected that Morunasa was not appeased but had bade him return below to wake the Oracles. Both knew that they might well play some pivotal part in the next day’s events.
Everyone was waiting for Osidian to wake, but there was no certainty he would choose to climb up from the depths in which he wandered, lost. Even if he did, what hope was there he would have found what he sought?
Hearing voices, Carnelian started awake. Night had fallen. He must have dozed. A muttering was coming out from the cistern chamber that was punctuated now and then by a raised voice. Listening, he was sure he could hear the rumble of Fern’s voice. Carnelian sat up and reached for his mask, instinctively knowing Fern must soon appear. He paused with it in his hand and glanced at Osidian’s, smouldering darkly on the ground. He put his mask down and leaned back against the monolith. Fern had the right to see them both.
A dark shape appeared in the doorway beneath the toothed edge of the raised portcullis. Poppy rose and moved towards Fern as if to give him a hug of welcome, but she halted and let her arms fall. ‘What news?’
Fern gave no answer and, though his face was in shadow, Carnelian sensed his gaze was on Osidian. ‘Has he revealed how we might win the battle?’
‘We’ve not yet been able to wake him,’ Carnelian said.
‘He has the worms in him?’
‘He does.’
Silence.
‘Will he wake in time?’ Fern asked at last.
Carnelian was only too aware of what Osidian had done the last time he had awoken from such a sleep. ‘I don’t know.’ He peered into Fern’s shadow face, yearning to see him clearly. ‘Tell us what you’ve seen.’
The shadowy figure shifted. ‘Mid afternoon we saw dragons approaching from the north. After sending you word, we rode south to the next tower. We climbed it and waited there until nightfall. When I was certain they’d formed a camp around the forward tower, we returned here.’