There was no spare water in the cistern with which to wash and Osidian had seen fit to maroon them without aquar to fetch more. Their skins became so grimed with putrid matter they began to look and smell like the corpses. The charnel stench tainted everything. They took to sleeping as far apart as possible.
Their work grew harder as the corpses began slipping off their skin. There came a time when Poppy had no need to make the women red. Later, all the dead turned greenish-black and they stopped making hornblack. Ritual faded. Laments ran dry in their throats. By the end, corpses with living eyes, they laboured mindless in a new Isle of Flies Osidian had consecrated for his Marula god with his holocaust.
Osidian’s face, burial black. Pits for eyes. The tree burning. Her screaming is the flames, is the branches piercing him like spears. He falls before the swelter of her approach. Ebeny aflame, wild-eyed, masked with blood. No, it is Akaisha mouthing words, her hair, flames beaded with iron. Bloated ochre face mouthing words he cannot, will not hear. Horror of her corpse breath. Her dead lips kiss him, suck him into her. Struggling against her fiery walls squeezing him to blood.
Carnelian woke transfixed by the moon. Osidian dead in the dream, the fire; both seemed omens of defeat. Plainsmen against dragons: he could hear again the mocking laughter of the men who had served in the legions. Such futile defiance would only provoke Aurum’s terrible retribution. Only the Wise could have given him a legion. Why else but because they wanted Osidian, alive so that he could accuse his mother. Carnelian was another witness to her crime. The bright stare of the moon possessed him. Cypher of the Wise. The same cool clarity that characterized their thought. Left to them, just enough would be done to restore order in the Earthsky and nothing more. Aurum was the real danger.
The moon was as colourless as the Marula salt Krow was bringing from the Upper Reach. If such a treasure were to fall into Plainsman hands they would cease to provide military service to the Masters. That the Wise would not allow. Greed for its possession would enflame the tribes to wars amongst themselves. It had to be destroyed. But what of the mine it came from?
As his nostrils filled with the reek of death, Carnelian felt his resolve fraying. Who was he to find a way through such a labyrinth? Merely another victim of the forces he had helped unleash.
The corpse they were lugging up to the summit of the Crag was so putrid they had had to wrap it in a blanket to keep it intact. The blanket was soaked through with the fluids weeping from the decomposing flesh. Carnelian and Fern struggled up the last step onto the summit and paused, panting through ubas wound several times over mouth and nose. The glare squeezed their eyes to slits. Ravens hopped, screeching, among the charnel heaps. Even through the layers of cloth the stench was overpowering. They dragged the corpse with a bandy-legged waddle to avoid treading in the dark trail it oozed over the brown-crusted rock. When they found a space they gripped the blanket edge then rolled the corpse free. They averted their eyes, but could still feel the sodden release of weight; were still enveloped in the aura released by its moist collapse. Carnelian let go the blanket as dry retching racked him like a cough. Ravens rushed in to fight over this new feast. Flies eddied like smoke. The dream had stripped his mind of the dullness that had protected him. Under the repeated stabbings of their beaks the corpse was releasing its rot-soft meat. Jet eyes blinked their beads at the root of gore-clotted plumage.
He tore free of that horrid fascination and sent his gaze soaring up into the clean sky. That blue so pure above the corruption of the world restored him to his centre. When he returned his gaze to earth he looked south and west, searching for Krow. That morning he had been doing that every time he came up to the summit. Fernland spread to incandescent lagoons. Acacias, spaced like the towers of the overseers in the Guarded Land, danced languidly in the haze. The only other movement was the slight creeping of the herds along the edge of the lagoons. He saw Fern was gazing northwards and sought the focus of his attention. Carnelian’s heart leapt. Riders. The omen of his dream, of his conjectures overwhelmed him with dread. ‘Plainsmen…’ he murmured.
‘Marula,’ said Fern in a flat tone, looking as if he was barely managing to stay on his feet.
Carnelian almost asked him how he knew, before seeing for himself that they lacked the easy grace of Plainsman riders. Too few to be a rout, they had to be bringing a message from Osidian. If this were verbal, then most likely it would be Morunasa who was the messenger. It was strange that the thought it might be this man he loathed should kindle hope. What would Fern do? Turning, Carnelian saw he was moving away, crouched, towards the steps, dragging the blanket after him. He followed him. Reaching the edge he watched him descend. When Fern reached the clearing below, he turned west. Carnelian sighed relief. They had just carried the last of Mossie’s hearth up and the next one they had meant to clear was further down the Westing. It seemed that Fern was intent on ignoring the visitors. If Poppy remained with him, Carnelian might have a chance to tackle Morunasa alone.
He quit the shade to cross the earthbridge. The withering heat was preferable to the region he had just come through. Being the furthest from Akaisha’s tree, they had left the Northing and Sorrowing hearths for last. The cedars there were still laden with dead. The air choked with flies.
Unwinding his uba he breathed deep, not caring about the scorch of the clean air, his gaze fixed on the riders ambling up the Northing in the shade of its magnolias. As they drew closer he could see by the indigo robes that most of them were Oracles. Their leader pulled the cloth down from his nose and mouth.
‘We must have water.’
The voice was so hoarse, the face so gaunt, that Carnelian did not at first recognize it was Morunasa.
Ribbons of light writhed up the Crag rock when they pulled back the cistern cover. Morunasa was the first to drink. He downed one bowl and then another, exposing his sharpened teeth in a grimace of relief. He handed the bowl to one of his fellows and looked off among the trees. ‘This place feels something like our sacred grove.’
As they had climbed the rootstair from where they had left the aquar and Morunasa’s warrior escort, Carnelian had noticed with what frowns of recognition the Oracles had regarded the corpses and the swarming flies.
Morunasa looked at him. ‘And you have the look… and odour of an offering to our Lord.’
Carnelian glanced down at his body encrusted with filth, but it was the awe in Morunasa’s face that made him feel most polluted.
‘Perhaps our God has followed us here,’ Morunasa said, voicing one of Carnelian’s fears.
Another Oracle, reaching awkwardly for the bowl, winced as his sleeves slid down his arms revealing seared flesh, crusted and weeping. Morunasa saw what Carnelian was looking at. ‘Dragonfire.’
Turning, Carnelian almost believed he could see flames reflecting in Morunasa’s eyes. Dread seeped into him. ‘Defeat then?’
‘Hookfork invited the Master to negotiate, then betrayed the truce. Many were lost to the firestorm as we covered his escape.’
Remote from Morunasa’s voice, Carnelian stood stunned by an outcome even worse than any he had feared. ‘How many dead?’
Morunasa’s eyes burned. ‘Among the Flatlanders?’
‘I know the Marula are mortal too.’
Morunasa’s glare softened. ‘The Flatlanders suffered worse.’
‘He’s protecting the Marula?’
Morunasa snorted. ‘Not from love.’
Carnelian understood. ‘He believes you are more fully under his control.’
Morunasa nodded. ‘The Flatlanders now have one worse to fear than him.’
‘But they still follow him?’