The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) by Ricardo Pinto

Author:Ricardo Pinto [Pinto, Ricardo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781409009887
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2010-09-30T06:00:00+00:00

At HOME

A rose watched withering

Waits forgotten

In this forbidden house

Youth’s blush frowned grey

Perfume faded

Left only her thorns

(from the poem ‘Beyond the Silver Door’ by the Lady Akaya)

ALTHOUGH THE PILLAR OF HEAVEN WAS ALREADY CROWNED WITH GOLD, the twilight was only thinning at its feet. Osrakum still slept. The narrow arc of the crater’s faraway wall was still black. Only its glowing edge showed where the sun was beginning to set the sky alight. The lake was cataracted with mist. The Yden was grey. Carnelian inhaled sweet vaporous morning. He rubbed his cheek on the blanket. Its humming-bird feathers bristled and changed colour along the folds. He had climbed out onto the roof. His sleep had been troubled and that first gleam on the Pillar and the paling sky had drawn him with the hope of a new day.

The indigo above was growing blue. Carnelian looked south-west to where a mountainous buttress of the Sacred Wall hid the next coomb. He followed the wall’s sweep round to the Valley of the Gate. There he watched turquoise begin to seep into the edge of the lake as if the colour were flooding out from the valley. The brightening crept across the lake to the Ydenrim and then up to reveal emeralds sparked with amber. Sunrise now lit the Pillar to its foot and speared its shadow back across the lake. Fire spread over the Labyrinth mound, caught on the flank of the Plain of Thrones. The sun’s disc melting up from the Sacred Wall forced him to quit the roof for fear of it tainting his skin with its gold.

Carnelian grew solemn as he climbed back into the chamber. Today he would have to face his kin. The smell of sleep was coming off his body, but he did not feel like braving a shivering waterfall. Besides, the day’s meetings were bound to require a formal cleansing and that required servants. He looked round for something to throw on. He wandered through several chambers but they were empty of everything but the echoes of his footfalls. Eventually he was forced to return to the small chamber in which he had slept in preference to the vast bedchamber Fey had given him. He removed the broken pieces of the jade spiral from inside his mask. When he lifted the hollow face he saw the letter that had been put under it. He stared at the perfectly folded, creamy rectangle. He picked it up and smelled its rich waft of attar of roses. Its wax seal bore the circular impression of a blood-ring. He broke it open. The parchment had only two panels. At first the glyphs looked strange. They were unlike the ones he or his father would make. He used the faces to gauge the differences in the style as his father had taught him. Soon the pictures were forming the sounds in his mind.

Sardian, you are returned. Your mother’s eyes are impatient to behold you though they have so patiently waited out the years.

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