The Marula had returned and were standing in the deepest shade. Apart from their outlines all that could be seen of them was their amber sliver eyes. Carnelian watched his father move towards them. He could not hear his words but saw the way the black men quaked. They scurried out among the aquar and began to unbale baggage from one of them.

Carnelian walked carefully back on his ranga shoes, avoiding his father. The Marula were tying all kinds of shoddy objects to the saddle-chairs. Carnelian came up to his chair and fingered the gourds, the filthy feathered bags, coils of rope, a wood harpoon.

The barbarian has such a childish liking for clutter and whimsy,' said Jaspar as he gingerly poked the objects hanging round his chair. Carnelian watched him wipe his gloved hand against his cloak. Vennel was standing looking up the valley. His mask gave him a look of contemptuous detachment.

Carnelian managed a better vault into his saddle-chair than he had before. He cursed when he found that he had trapped a corner of his cloak under him. Some contortions were needed to release it before, at his signal, his aquar rocked him back into the air. He made sure to see Tain scrambling back up into his place amongst the baggage.

As they set off Carnelian took a good look at the bracelets that covered the forearms of the Marula. After what his father had said, he decided that they were not bone but bitter salt.

Shoals of people slipping past, scraping, scuffling. Dense rafts of bales, of poles and palanquins, floated in the flow. Wheels taller than men drove irresistibly round like mill stones. At a command, the Marula scrabbled down the slope, making the throng a shadow procession behind their kicked-up dust.

'Conceal yourselves,' cried Aurum, 'sit low in your chairs to disguise your height.' Then his aquar was stumbling down into the rolling ochre air. In front of Carnelian, a cloud billowed up. He pulled his cowl forwards as it broke over him. His aquar's plumes rustled as he urged it down into the haze. Every step jarred the saddle-chair. The grind and creaking grew louder with the babble of voices and the clatter of stone bells.

He broke through the dust and pulled his aquar up. The river had faces. He peered from one to another. Some were dark, some painted, some cried, some laughed. Across the eddy of heads something floated like a broken ship: a wreckage of wood and canvas held together with ropes. He watched it totter back and forth, waving above it a tatter of flags.

'Hey, you! Get on or get out of the way,' came a cry from behind him.

Carnelian peered round the edge of his saddle-chair but could make no sense of what he saw. A huge wedge of bone swayed ponderously from side to side, tapering down to a cruel beak. Horn stumps curved out from the four corners of the wedge. Behind all this more bone fanned out into a fluted crest.

'Out of the way, barbarian, or by the horns I'll run you down.'

A small man was creasing his belly against the crest's mottled edge. A tarpaulined mound rose behind him, criss-crossed with thongs. The man was piercing-eyed and grimacing as he shook his hooked goad at Carnelian.

Something impacted the side of his saddle-chair. Carnelian whisked round. The reins were snatched from his hand. He saw the cowled figure of one of the Masters lean back into his seat to yank them taut. Carnelian's aquar went with the tugging.

Try and be more careful,' his father said angrily in Vulgate.

The rebuke stung Carnelian. A smell like malt distracted him from any outburst. He turned to see bronzed hide flexing. His chair shook as he watched the monster lumber by. A wagon pole juddered past like a battering ram. Then the edge of a solid wheel of wood rolled into view, its splintered rim turning slowly. It lurched into a rut, causing Carnelian's aquar to flare its eye-plumes. He was shaken around in his chair as the creature recoiled.

Carnelian saw the other Masters nearby, waiting for the wagon to pass. He moved towards them, recognized Jaspar by his gloves and drew close to him. 'Was that a dragon?' he shouted in Vulgate over the noise.

'What?' the Master shouted back. 'No, no, only one of its smaller cousins.'

The movements of their aquar separated them. Suth was making the party form up. Carnelian was directed into place with curt gestures. Resentment burned up in him. His father was treating him like a child.

The Marula sculled a way into the throng with the hafts of their lances. The Masters and baggage animals waded in after them. The Marula dug a space in the middle of the road then fell back to shield the Masters with their bodies. The inexorable march swept them all in its tide off into the south.

Drab drifts of barbarians jabbered like birds. Chariots studded with shell buttons snaked streamers. Strings of smaller half-feathered aquar carried nests of clutter. Sawn-horned huimur clacked stone bells, their backs like upturned boats. Some had howdahs, some were snail-shelled with trussed goods, some pulled carts or painted wagons. Carnelian's mood brightened. He indulged his curiosity and looked at everything. It surprised him that the road's two streams slid so smoothly past each other. One was going to the sea, the other coming from it, penetrating deeper into the Naralan. He peered to front and back to see their march swallowed at both ends by hazing horizons. Swarthy hawkers clamoured at the edges of the road waving their meagre wares. Children threw stones, stared, pointed laughing. The sun-baked land behind was patterned with spaced trees. Boulder-bordered tracks scratched off into the hinterland. The land folded distantly into vague hills or crusted here and there into clusterings of hovels.

Carnelian wondered at the narrow track that ran alongside the road beyond a ditch. In some places this was paved but he saw nothing move along it. He deduced it to be the much-vaunted leftway. It did not impress him much until he saw a tower up ahead with its stiff banners. As it came closer he realized it was a fort standing by the road. The banners turned out to be gibbets hung with the tatters of flesh and bone the birds had left. Behind the fort, churned earth spread as far as he could see. Charred spots and litter showed that the land had held a huge encampment.

The heat made him drowsy. He had grown used to the rocking of the saddle-chair and even found a comfortable way of sitting. The crowd noise became a rushing of water. The road flowed ever on, eating up all time, all distance.

At last the sky began darkening in the east. People began streaming off the road onto a field of trampled earth. A few dust-greyed trees stood here and there among the ruts. A rush was on for the better sites in the stopping place. People were being absorbed into the hazy hem of the sky. Aurum passed back a message that they would press on. They would make better speed on the emptier road.

The air cooled. Nightfall slowed their progress. Wagons lit feeble flickering lanterns. These winking flecks sparked off into the distance, showing the windings of the road. On they went until the moon rose to silver everything. Carnelian drifted in and out of sleep.

He woke suddenly. The rhythm of his chair had changed. The stars covering the earth all round him outshone those in the sky. Wafts of roasting meat. Songs, night-thinned, nasal-voiced. He realized they had left the road. His reins were hanging loose but his aquar was following the others.