'I shall vote with my father,' said Carnelian.

'One is not surprised, my Lord,' said Jaspar, 'but a little disappointed. Now that you have come of age one did not think that you would so blindly follow your father's lead.'

Carnelian started at the emphasized word. As they rode back into the crowds, he wondered if there was anything Jaspar would take in exchange for Tain's eyes.

They left the road within sight of Maga-Naralante's black gate. Rolling dust broke over them. Wheels rattled violently as they jolted into the ditches that criss-crossed the track. Foul stenches rose with the flies. Hovels all sticks and wattle leant over into their path. When the air cleared a little Carnelian saw more of this debris sloping up towards the city's mud rampart like a scree. There were too many vehicles squeezing along the track. A chariot snagged a hovel and tore it down. Its wheel collapsed, swerving the chariot into the path of a huimur. Bleating, the monster swung away, crushing into a crowd of travellers. The wagon it pulled tipped over. Bundles rolled into the gutters. Filthy urchins appeared and swarmed the wreck. The traffic built up behind. Annoyance swelled to anger then burst into riot. It was easy for Carnelian to imagine assassins in the crowd. Aurum must have shared his fears for he ordered the Marula to slay a path through the mob. People were cut down screaming. Carnelian stared into a face foaming blood, then he leapt his aquar over the wagon pole and loped off along the track after his father.

Trouble comes often to those who are too cunning,' said Vennel.

'It comes always to those who show no cunning at all,' said Suth.

Aurum had his back to them. The straightest road is not always the fastest.' He had made the Marula put the enclosure up around an ants' nest. He had opened its belly with a knife, dropped in a firebrand and was using another to crisp the ants that sallied out.

'Blood burns brighter than oil,' said Jaspar.

Suth and Vennel both turned on him.

He lifted his hands in apology. 'I thought we were listing proverbs.'

'I fail to see, my Lords, how our objectives were served by what happened today,' said Vennel.

'What happened today is irrelevant,' snapped Suth. Carnelian saw his father looking at him as if he were an apple just out of reach.

'If we remained undiscovered it is due to fortune and not to any skill in planning on your part, my Lords,' said Vennel. 'I would hazard that the commotion and the violence of our escort did little to turn attention away from us.'

'Violence is not uncommon on this road,' said Suth.

'So you say, my Lord, so you say. But I do not think that creatures of the kind we mimic would show such elan for slaughter.'

Carnelian searched his father's eyes. It was as if he were trying to say something to him. Carnelian rose and moved towards him.

Suth immediately stood up and looked down at Vennel. 'My patience with this discussion is at an end, my Lord.'

He put on his mask, hid it with his cowl and left the enclosure.

Vennel looked at the other Masters as if surprised. Jaspar smiled enigmatically. Aurum looked bored as he lit the ants one by one like candle wicks.

On the thirteenth day after they had left the sea Carnelian noticed a darker southern horizon: a crack between earth and sky that could only be the rim of the Guarded Land. Next morning it looked closer, a ribbon of liquid blue dividing the world. That day and for the next two it was lost in the blinding white burning of the Naralan, but the day after that it formed a permanent smudging lilac layer in the haze. It crisped and browned, bubbling up so that when they camped that night it had solidified into a heavy banding of the darkening sky.

The eighteenth day dawned. That day the cliffs of the Guarded Land wavered up from the simmering plains as a dark forbidding wall.

The road climbed into a cutting in the cliff. Its gradient was so gentle that when it reached its first turn and doubled back, its corbelled edge was obscured by the flags of the chariots passing beneath. Its scar zigzagged up the rock seemingly all the way to the clouds.

The road climbs to the very top?' Carnelian asked, incredulous.

'More accurately it descends it,' Vennel replied.

'We had it built down from the Guarded Land so that we might reach the sea,' said Jaspar.

The city of Nothnaralan waits for us up there,' said Jaspar.

Carnelian pushed his head back against his saddle-chair to try to see the sky city. 'With what sorcery was all this wonder wrought?'

'Not sorcery but sartlar,' said Suth.

Carnelian could hardly believe that his father was talking to him. 'It must have cost many lives,' he said, trying to nurse this little spark of intimacy.

'It is said that this hill is the knitted mounding of their bones.'

Carnelian glanced back down the slope that carried the road to the plain. 'So much death.'

The sartlar are a limitless resource.'

The world is as verminous with such creatures as slaves are with lice,' sneered Vennel.

'Are they all enslaved?' asked Carnelian, resenting the Master's intrusion, aiming his question at his father.

Vennel turned his hood towards Carnelian. 'Is that not what their name means?'

'Yet once they were free,' said Suth. 'When our Quyan forefathers scaled this cliff to the land above, they found the sartlar already there and-'

'And domesticated them,' snapped Aurum.

Carnelian could have cursed him. His father would say nothing more.

'Come, my Lords,' the old Master continued. 'We are not at some elegant reception.' His hand lifting caused the Marula to rise up from where they had been huddled round them in a ring. 'It is time that we rejoin the road and begin the ascent. Several days must pass before we reach the land above.'

'One might forgive the creature's sin,' pureed Jaspar.

The words made no impression on Carnelian's mind. He was already exhausted from the climb and still they were only halfway up to the Guarded Land.

'You would of course have to pay me recompense,' said Jaspar in a low voice. 'For such a one to go unpunished…'

Carnelian turned blindly to the cowled figure.

'Do you toy with me, my Lord?' said Jaspar, warming to anger.

'My Lord?'

'What price will you pay to save his eyes?' Jaspar came into hard focus. 'You speak of my brother?' said Carnelian. 'Your slave, my Lord.'

Carnelian frowned. He must not let his fury wake, nor his hope. 'What price would my Lord ask for this act of mercy?' he asked coldly.

Jaspar turned away, gazing out into airy space. 'If I were to forget that the creature had looked upon my face it would be more than an act of mercy, Carnelian.' He turned back. His cowl framed an oval of blackness. There is but one price, cousin.'

Carnelian stared at him as the anger bubbled up in him. 'Well?' he cried, boiling over.

'Hush, Carnelian. We would not want the others to learn of our negotiations, would we? It is a simple boon I desire from you, namely, I would know what hold Aurum has over your father.'

'You would have me betray my own father… for a slave?'

Jaspar chuckled. 'Come now, Carnelian, look how quickly your brother has become your slave.'

'It is unthinkable,' gasped Carnelian.

'Perhaps… and yet I think you would like your brother to keep his bright, animal eyes.'

Carnelian shook his head. 'I cannot do it.'

Jaspar opened his hands. 'Perhaps my Lord will change his mind. Think on it, but do not take too long.

The day the boy sees the outermost gate of Osrakum could well be the last day he sees anything at all.’

Jaspar pulled his cloak round him and hunched before slipping through the screens.

Carnelian watched him go, trying to see through his hatred the slim hope that lay in the offer. Some pennants jiggled like butterflies above the screens. The next push up the road was beginning. Carnelian turned for one last look out across the vast pale wash of the Naralan spread out below, then he left the parapet.