Closer and closer came the mess of boats. The baran swung slowly round to starboard. All the time his father recited a litany of names, of places, of the rare and costly goods that were bartered all along the edges of the sea. Strange scents of spice, rotting fish and wood and tar mixed with the underlying stink of the town. Though Carnelian curled up his nose, delight was in his eyes. Looking above the forest of masts and rigging, up at the town's mud-tower tenements, he saw the purpling haze of the valley beyond. He was sure that he could see the thread that was the road winding up into the interior. Everything was gleamed by the sun, making the- town seem a trinket fashioned for a Master. Carnelian turned and saw that the sun was already melting its yoke down behind the cliff ahead where the rock swelled into a buttress. The town leached towards it but only a few buildings and some roads clung to its black flank. The rest of its body was naked rock.

The marble of his father's face had sagged a little. He was looking up the valley as if his eyes could see all the way into the far south, to Osrakum. His thoughts had retired somewhere deep inside him.

'Do we not go to the town, my Lord?' Carnelian said, trying to reach in.

His father did not respond for some time. He seemed not to have heard, but then his head began moving from side to side as if he were trying to rid himself of a dream. 'No. We shall disembark in the Tower in the Sea.'

Carnelian looked at the swollen cliff ahead. 'If that is a tower, then it was not one made by mortal hand.'

'Men often use what the Gods have made for them,' his father said.

The cliff and its tower were daubed with birds. Specks wheeled in the sky making screams like tearing copper.

His father tore his gaze at last away from the valley. 'I must take counsel with the other Lords.' He put his mask up over his face. 'Remember what I have said about the game, my Lord.'

Carnelian stiffened at the return of formality. He masked. The metal face made it hard for him to breathe. The wall of screens came apart and his father walked away trailing guardsmen after him. Carnelian sent off one of the two men who had been left with him to fetch Tain. He wanted to please his brother with the view but, more than that, he needed a friend.

Tain looked uneasy when he came up. The masts ran their logs the length of the ship. The deck was clean but his brother picked his way across it as if it had just been painted. He knelt before Carnelian.

'Come on, get up. I thought you'd like to see all this,' Carnelian said, opening his arms wide. He was desperate to make everything as normal as possible between them.

Tain stood up, fished inside his tunic and came out with something that he offered furtively. 'I thought you might want this.'

Carnelian took the silver box. Its tearful eye looked up at him. He could taste its bittersweet memory of dreams, the dreams that had led him to slaughter. His hand closed. He was glad of the mask that concealed his desire. He drew back his arm and hurled the box in a glinting arc into the sea. He clenched his fingers into a fist, trying to squeeze out the feel of the solid shape.

Nothing more was said. Tain found a place beside his brother. Together they watched the tower rising from the sea bulge out to meet them. Its head was lost in the sky's deepening blue. It made a sombre sight.

The drum beat dolefully under their feet. The two wings of obedient oars plunged into the sea and then flew out sowing curves of foam. The ship carried them into the tower's cold shadow. At its base gaped a blacker mouth. Only the curving of its high arch bore witness to men's work. Above them flickered a screeching shroud of birds. The sky began to disappear as the ship passed under the pot-bellied rocky swelling. They could smell wet rock. Grey-blue stone rose around them from the sea and made the ship seem as fragile as a poppy.

'If she touches the sides she'll shatter to driftwood,' whispered Tain.

The tunnel arched above them. Bird excrement streaked its walls. A pair of sky-saurians flapped screaming out from the blackness. Dank shadow swallowed the ship and made the boys stand closer together.

The drum fell suddenly silent. Its last beat echoed away to nothing. There was a terrible scraping. Carnelian felt the pull of Tain's hand on his cloak. He dared to look over the rail. He watched the bend then splinter of a shadowy oar that had not been drawn into the hull quickly enough. Behind them the captain was shuttling from side to side, shouting orders, guiding them through. Slaves thrust bronze-shod poles against the rock. Straining, leaning against them, with sparks, cursing, they coaxed her down the narrow channel.

Ahead, surprising daylight glowed. There was a shock of impact and a gasp from Tain. The ship scraped herself along the rock. Panic-edged cries echoed as, laboriously, she moved out of the tunnel. Carnelian and Tain, their eyes already accustomed to the dark, were dazzled by the light. Carnelian squinted past his hand. The Tower in the Sea was hollow. The ship was drifting in yet another wide, almost circular harbour enclosed by stone. Its wall was pierced all around the water's edge with archways in which he could see other ships lurking half drawn out of the waves.

Like rattling spears, the oars thrust out, then hung limp in the water. The drum sounded a dull thud that vibrated through the deck and then rose up echoing round the walls. The ship came alive again.

The rhythm was dismally slow as she swam across the inner harbour. The further wall drew nearer. The captain gave a cry and she swung towards the cavern of a ship-house where some faint lanterns burned like eyes. Carnelian felt her ail, her heartbeat slow. At least half her oars rasped back into her hull. She slid ponderously forward towards the shiphouse. As she passed the gateposts many of the crew flung themselves over her edge onto the netting that covered the inner walls. There was a sudden lurch. She juddered still. Carnelian and Tain held each other up. The crew swarmed along the netting into the darkness further in. They returned struggling with two enormous hooks of bronze. Behind them hawsers snaked out from the dark. The hooks bit somewhere into the ship's hull. A grinding came from the shiphouse depths. The hawsers tautened and then, with a shudder, the ship was dragged screaming into the blackness.

Her deck began to slope upwards at an angle. Carnelian held on to a rail. She bellowed as her hull scraped against the ramp. The captain struck the right-hand hawser with a billhook and made it sing. He scrabbled across the leaning deck and did the same to the other. Its voice was slightly higher. 'Starboard!' he shouted into the darkness. The ship was coming up out of the water. The captain lumbered back and forth. Each time he sounded the hawser like a bell. Each time he flung a command into the darkness.

When the dragging stopped at last, Carnelian was able to hear the mutter of voices. Torches came alive all along the walls. The crew flung ropes from the ship's sides that others on the netting caught and looped round the mooring knobs studding the wall. She settled, gave one last stuttering groan and then fell silent. With an ache, Carnelian remembered her flying wild and free across the waves. Now she was tethered like a slave, deprived of the water that gave her life.

THE TOWER IN THE SEA

Characteristics required of a legionary tower are:

Firstly, that its personnel shall be segregated according to their kind: the marumaga shall not be quartered with the Chosen; the barbarian shall not be quartered with the marumaga; the barbarian shall be maintained in isolation from the huimur.

Secondly, the manner of this segregation shall be, if possible, in descending strata, otherwise in wall-separated courts.