A grinding grumble drew his eyes away to where a crack was widening down the centre of the gate. The faces on the doors swung inwards to look at each other. The crowd murmur rose in pitch. Everything began to shuffle forward. A slow rhythm of huimur bells, axles and wheel trundle answered the steady ringing from the towers. Fully opened, the gates released a river of travellers coming out from the city. The two flows sheared against each other with a continuous protest. Consternation spread outwards from their meeting. Something fearful. The uproar hissed towards the Masters like flames across a parched fernland. Carnelian snatched the single, chilling word 'plague' again and again from the chatter.

Aurum barked an order and the Marula dismounted round them to form a ring of spear points. It looked to Carnelian a frail defence. Still, when he looked for Tain, he was relieved to see him with the baggage inside the ring.

Carnelian watched Aurum's hunch lean down to one of the Marula. As the old Master sat back his action seemed to jerk the man up into his saddle-chair. The Maruli strode his aquar off into the crowd. For a moment he was consumed by it, his head bobbing in the boil. Then he came back and spoke to Aurum, pointing his arm towards the gate.

Aurum turned to shout something at the other Masters. Carnelian strained to hear.

‘… mere rumour carried here from… south. If plague exists… far away… might… burn itself out before… reach it. We go on.'

Vennel straightened up. ‘Should we not consider remaining in Nothnaralan?' His high voice carried more clearly than the old Master's. 'We could wait it out. Surely it would be foolish to ignore the peril.'

'We shall go on,' shouted Aurum. 'If it is your wish… remain here.'

Carnelian saw his father and Jaspar lift their hands in agreement.

Aurum nodded, then commanded the Marula to remount. Their saddle-chairs rocked as they clambered up. Aurum's hand punched more commands into the air. The Marula reversed their lances and began to bludgeon a path with the hafts. Their aquar cleaved into the flow like boats. Carnelian could see the animals' distress. Their heads flicked from side to side, plume fans quivering open and closed. The Marula jerked tight their reins and continued hacking into the crowd. Carnelian's chair jolted as he rode after his father into their wake. One hand struggled with the reins while the other clenched the chair.

The crowd surged in waves against him. He grew tired. When he looked up, the gate seemed further away. The tide was against them. More and more people were pouring out from the gateway into the field. Their stench maddened him. More impacts shook him to anger.

This is unbearable!'

For a moment Carnelian fancied it was his own voice crying out, but his teeth were clenched, his lips pressed closed.

'Digging a ditch in water.'

His father's voice rang clear above the turmoil. Carnelian saw his shrouded mass unfolding to betray his height. His huge hand appeared, like a spotted dove, floating, alighting on his head. Then, with a sudden motion, it pulled the hood back. The bandaged head was revealed and the mask that was a piece of sun. Carnelian was transfixed. His father's golden face was the serene centre of the storm. Carnelian's gaze followed its lunging forward. He watched his father's saddle-chair collide with one of the Marula, watched him grab the man's salt-bangled arm. The Maruli turned, lifting his lance in menace, stared wide-eyed at the mask, then down at the white Master's hand that held him. Suth shouted something before he let go. The Maruli bowed so low his head disappeared between his thighs. When he came up he was bellowing and holding his arm out as if he were cooling it from the Master's touch. The other Marula craned round, saw the Master's terrible mirror face, slitted their eyes and brayed battle cries as they turned their lance blades on the crowd.

'We are revealed Lords of the Hidden Land,' boomed Aurum as he too pushed back his hood. The crowd slid distorted across his mask as he scanned it. Take care, this riot might conceal our enemies.'

Jaspar gave a fierce cry and straightened in his chair as he revealed himself. Vennel unbent more slowly. Carnelian watched his hand waver but then the Master followed the others. Reluctant to give up his hold on the chair, Carnelian was last of all. He glanced uneasily at the throng but realized it was futile to search it for assassins.

The Marula's aquar were striding forward. The crowd was giving way grudgingly, snarling. Faces were turning to look, then a chorus of voices struck up. 'Masters! Masters!'

The word spread panic more rapidly than had the rumour of plague. Swathes of people were collapsing to their knees. The Marula trampled ahead regardless, scything their lance blades before them. Carnelian watched the crowd, in flight, yawn a corridor all the way to the gate. The Masters rushed down it and he was drawn after them. On either side the gates flung up their walls of wood. He glimpsed the bronze sneers of the faces high above. The space between the gates swirled with people. He was clattering up a ramp into a screaming, echoing canyon. A continuous mass of beasts and men was slipping by. His aquar loped on, dodging between wagons. A mudbrick wall coursed past on his right. Women flattened against it open-mouthed. Buttresses pulsed past. Shrilling children dashed from his path.

Ahead the road forked round a tower. It loomed up as he rode into its shadow. He could make out windows, a parapet. There was a rush of noise. At the edge of his vision the Masters and the Marula were rearing back. Plumes flared as Carnelian's own aquar juddered to a stop. As he toppled to one side he yanked the reins in panic. The world swept before his eyes.

Toll, toll,' coarse voices cried in Vulgate above the roar.

Carnelian's aquar struck something. There was a clatter of many things hitting the ground. His world steadied. He saw a tinker's angry face. The woman behind him went bloodless. Her look leapt to the other faces looking up. People began bending, grovelling, moaning.

Carnelian's hand strayed up to his mask. After so long hiding he had felt naked when they looked at him. Over their heads, he could see the toll-gatherers. Their high conical caps bore the city's cypher of the ladder and the sea. For a moment their faces showed fierce defiance but then the moaning spread to them. Their mouths fell open as they let out the sound of fear. Slimed teeth. Mouths gaping so wide they squeezed tears from the slitted eyes above them. Their billhooks toppled like scythed reeds.

'Make way,' Aurum cried in Vulgate as he hung above them, vast and menacing.

People shuffled aside bleating. A wagon was rolling out of the way. All around, the road seemed carpeted with dead. The Marula moved forward between the toll posts and the Masters followed. The party picked up speed. Echoes flattened as they came into the open, into a marketplace, that swelled wide then narrowed in the distance almost to a point. Like an almond, Carnelian thought, an almond they were entering by one corner. The road was a loop raised around its edge upon which crowds were slowly circling the sunken centre with its mess of stalls. As they rode nearer, chariots rolled their man-high wheels left to right across Carnelian's vision. Among their arches people ambled and the heads of saurians bobbed floating. It seemed an impenetrable flow.

Carnelian felt the rising anger of the Masters. Sitting tall and terrible in their midst, his father lifted his arm and with it sent the Marula crashing headlong. Their chevron cut into the crowd. The Masters followed them, clinging to their chairs as if they were riding small boats down rapids. They were picking up speed as they drove everything before them. Carnelian felt the power pistoning up through his saddle-chair as they blew along the road like a gale. A woman scrambled screaming from Carnelian's path. His aquar swung round a wagon that was turning ponderously out of his way. He felt the shatter of each dropped pot. Gourds rolled like heads. Someone slipped, tumbling scrunched into a ball. Carnelian gritted his teeth as his aquar kicked and stumbled through the obstruction. The buildings on his right were wearing the first lurid colours of the sun. He had dizzy glimpses of the mudbrick facade with its porticoes and tiers in which cracks led down into alleyways. From the corner of his eye he had a persistent impression that a storm was rising in the east. He looked off between the jumbled stalls and saw the gloomy rampart that defined the other side of the marketplace. His aquar's slowing to a walk caused him to turn back to see that their route was being choked by a convoy of wagons. The rest of the road had been cleared by the Masters' aura of terror.