The Chosen

He rode into the tower in despair, pulling his father's aquar after him, muttering under his breath, over and over again, 'He'll hang on. He'll hang on.'

In the gloom he could make out the immense shapes of the Masters on their aquar. In his anguish he had almost forgotten Tain. He tied the reins of his father's aquar to his own saddle-chair and then joined the Masters' line. When his turn came he turned his aquar onto the first ramp and his father's followed after. Halfway down one of the ramps he managed to get close to Jaspar. He forced his pain aside, his anger, his hatred and reached out to pull the Master's sleeve.

We must talk, he signed when he had Jaspar's eyes. The Master pointed inquiringly at Suth. Carnelian shook his head. They let the others move round the landing and begin descending the next ramp. Carnelian moved his hands into the light of a lantern.

If I pay your price, he signed, you will forget my brothers sin?

Your slave will keep his eyes, signed Jaspar with eager fingers.

'Swear on your blood.' 'You challenge my honour?' 'Swear!'

Jaspar protested but swore the oath.

Carnelian signed the lie his father had given him. He hoped that Jaspar would interpret the tremble in his signs as guilt at the betrayal.

As they moved out onto the road, it was like walking into a crowded room. Carnelian resisted putting his hands over his ears lest their brightness should betray them. He ground his teeth. All around, people were packing up and getting ready to move on. Feet were smudging fires to smoke. Uneven walls shoved in on every side, echoing the clatter.

Aurum ordered the Marula forward through the encampment. They sat in their saddle-chairs like dummies. Carnelian's aquar was disturbed by all the commotion. He looked round to see his father's shy away from some children and almost cried out when his father slumped over. More and more people were gathering to look at them. Soon they would be revealed as Masters. The news would pass all along the road and choke it. Their attackers would know where they were. Seeing the danger, Aurum moved into the Marula and woke them with his anger. Their uncurling seemed as slow as ferns. The Master's hand flashed a jab into the ribs of one of them. The man jerked up into a grimace and threatened the Master with his lance. Aurum grew larger in his chair. The man withstood his menace for a moment before bowing his head and going to join the others.

The Marula began pummelling their way through the crowd. Their stiff arms rose and fell as they cleared a path for the Masters. People grumbled out of their way. Some fell, losing their bundles to be trampled by the aquar. Others were pushed onto those behind and came to blows. Anger rippled out into the crowd. Carnelian could see the Marula were wasting what little strength they had left. Their hands lifted less frequently, less high. In one place a Maruli was driving some men back against a huimur whose driver struck at their backs with his goad. One man turned to fight. Another was shoved forward by the stump of the huimur's horn as it tossed its head. His companions turned on the Maruli, shouting, threatening him with sticks. The black man's aquar shied back, plumes jittering, as he struggled to control it. Two of his brothers raised a baying in which Carnelian could hear weary desperation. Their mouths stretched in a fixed gape. They gleamed with sweat and pain and anger. They began a feverish stabbing. Throats in the crowd pumped out cries of panic. People tried to escape. Carnelian watched one of the Marula breaking his lance in a woman's body. Her face registered surprise as she plucked at the wood poking from her breast before slumping into the arms of the people around her.

They are out of control,' Ve

Jaspar backed away and his posture suggested he was looking for some direction in which to flee.

It was Aurum who rode forward into the carnage, his shrouded figure serene in the midst of fury. His huge hands pulled the Marula back. Carnelian looked on nervously as the Marula mobbed him. Aurum's cowled head looked around at them. The Marula hesitated and their mouths' rictus slacked. When Aurum came back through the roar the Marula were about him, obedient, menacing only those who came too close.

The Masters and Marula percolated through the crowds. Campfires and wagons forced wide detours. The Marula angled their lances up and the gore ran down the shafts. Carnelian turned his face just enough to see their eyes darting and the way their faces twitched as if under their cloaks something were eating into them. When they scowled and showed their teeth they looked like demons but mostly they looked like old men.

Each slow step made Carnelian despair. His father's time was ru

Visions of the termite city interwove his weary vigilance. Yellow walls mottled like the flanks of lizards. The tu

He was startled by a swell of sound, as if a door had opened nearby. A width of steps cascaded the crowd down to a harbour jostling with punts. Water lapped the lower steps where barefoot, half-naked people were unloading barges. He darted his gaze over the bobbing heads on the road about him, looking for assassins. He peered round past the mesmerizing circling of spokes, the pendulum palanquins, to see his father's chair. The body sagging in its curve looked already dead.

Barbarian voices babbling made Carnelian raise his eyes, see fingers pointing ahead and follow them to a pale rectangle flanked by two massings of shadow. As he drifted closer he began to hear a sound like swarming bees. The carpet of their march dragged slowly on. The shadows solidified into two gatehouses like sentinels standing guard upon the road. The buzzing had become a distant roar. He passed the last tenement whose sharp edge defined the begi

Carnelian's eyes widened with wonder as he reached the threshold of a moat canal. A bridge carried the road across to the gatehouses looming to receive it. These gave entrance to a plain; a vast roaring marketplace; a seething mass grained with countless heads whose sluggish currents carried toy-like palanquins and the stalks of aquar heads. Ski

As he drifted slowly across the bridge, Carnelian could not help drinking in the thrill bubbling up around him. His eyes flitted from one bright face to another until they stumbled on some that looked sick and grim. In that carnival, the Marula had the faces of mummies. Only their eyes showed any life as they scrutinized the wall of Osrakum. Carnelian followed them there and he too grew troubled. Its slope filled the lower sky like a storm. The sun rising above was burning a halo round the head of the leftmost gatehouse, making its shadow fall across the bridge as a cold diagonal. Light bathed the other i