Carnelian watched the wagons snare each other as they hurried to get out of the way. He did not want to look back at the destruction they had left behind them and so distracted himself by examining a huge tower that rose up behind the wagons. It stood back from the marketplace behind a thick stone wall that came to just below its waist. At its foot a road left the marketplace leading westwards. Half the height of the tower that could be seen above the wall was a truncated pyramid pricked with windows. Growing up from that were spars, as if some ship had run aground and rotted away leaving only its ribs; three on each side resembling the prongs of a fork. The middle prong of the closest carried a plaque. When Carnelian screwed up his eyes he could make out the ring glyph and below it the two spots and three bars of the number seventeen. From the tower the wall ran further round the marketplace to two more identical towers.
Carnelian's survey was interrupted by one of the wagons rolling free. The Marula were already streaming through the gap and the Masters fell in behind them.
Tower seventeen rose on the intersection of the marketplace and the western road. At its foot stood a monolith not much taller than a man. As soldiers appeared from behind this, Suth formed the Marula into a cordon to keep back the throng. Aurum rode into the soldiers as they were trying to kneel. Carnelian edged his aquar closer. He could see that their bright auxiliary collars were inscribed at the throat with the ring glyph on either side of which were the service and rank rings.
'… bear a pass,' Aurum was saying to one of the soldiers, who was a marumaga. He passed down a jade tablet ridged with spirals into the marumaga's hand.
This pass allows what you demand, Master, but I have my instructions from the legate of this city.' He pointed across the marketplace to the black rampart.
'It is you who are the keeper of this watch-tower and must obey the pass unconditionally,' Aurum rumbled.
The marumaga keeper faltered, chewed his quivering lip. This watch-tower, although part of the Ringwall, still lies within the jurisdiction of the Legate, my Master.'
'Enough,' cried Suth, who had joined Aurum.
The keeper took a nervous step back as this second Master brought his aquar towards him.
'Keeper, you've seen our pass. Now you've a simple choice: either you let us through or else you delay us. If you choose the latter I'll have a chair upholstered with the skin from your back.'
The keeper looked ill. His watery eyes flicked from one mask to the other. His head nodded in an uneven rhythm. 'Of course, Master, of course… the pass is entirely valid.'
Jogging, looking Lack many times, he led them to the monolith where the Masters dismounted. Carnelian handed his aquar's reins to one of the auxiliaries as he saw the others do. Although the monolith lay very close to the watch-tower, a passage angled behind it with space enough for the aquar to pass through in single file. Behind, a doorway led into dank gloom.
In lantern light, Carnelian saw the doors that ran along one wall. A ramp angled up against another. As they began to climb he was deafened by the scrape of aquar claws and the clatter of their ranga shoes. The ramp brought them up to another level whose flagstones were smothered with straw. The place stank of the aquar that could be seen in stalls.
Several more ramps took them up through the watch-tower. Carnelian glimpsed machinery and the counterweights that spoke of other doors. Skeletal men with large eyes hid as they passed. Their thin fear reminded him of the massacre of the sailors on the baran. He disliked their cringing even more than the rings and seventeens branded into their faces.
At last they came up into a lofty hall, cheered by purling water. Squat columns held up a weave of heavy beams. Shafts let some light in from the floors above. Ladders hung on the walls. One whole side of the hall was a cistern filling from a spout. Men climbed on either side of a portcullis to release the counterweights that allowed others to lift it. Carnelian led his aquar into the archway, out past another monolith into the bright morning.
He walked to a parapet to see the market's roaring seethe laid out below him.
'A leftway, at last a leftway,' said Jaspar.
Carnelian turned. It was only then that he realized they were standing on a road. In one direction it crossed the west road by means of a narrow bridge. In the other, it curved off to the next watch-tower.
As their aquar loped round above the marketplace, Carnelian saw that the tower ahead bore the number eighteen high in its ribs. He made a broad scan from the west, where the Guarded Land fell away into the sky, to the south where it ran flat to the horizon. Nothnaralan's half-circle seemed scorched into the land's rusty painted edge. He could see a wall running alongside the western road the top of which carried the continuation of the left-way along which he rode. If instead of coming this way they had turned to cross the bridge beside watch-tower seventeen they could have ridden its pale thread through the city and out beyond it to fade into the hazy western sky.
They slowed as they drew closer to watch-tower eighteen where the leftway forked. One way crossed to the watch-tower over a narrow bridge that spanned the southern road. The other turned south.
'Here we leave the Ringwall,' Aurum boomed as the Marula made the turn.
Carnelian looked up at the plaque, suddenly understanding the ring glyph. He stared in wonder at the leftway that continued over the bridge and past the watch-tower into the east. Should he ride that way, in months or maybe years he would have made a complete circuit of the wall that enclosed the Guarded Land. He looked over the back of his saddle-chair. He would come from the west riding the top of the Ringwall round to that very spot. Giving the market and the fortress one last look, he turned his aquar's head south to follow the others.
They sped above a mouldering chaos of mud walls, flat roofs, views down into alleys, stairways, balconies. Below them, a river of people rumbled along the southern road. They passed earth ramparts that were crumbling into a moat. The poorer outskirts of Nothnaralan spread their shambling messy browns. Tumbled hovels squashed together into neighbourhoods. Dust choked crooked lanes. They reached the city's border ditch with its torn palisades. Beyond stretched a limitless rusty plain bisected by the line of the road.
Aurum shouted something into the scorching wind and the Marula surged ahead, black cloaks flapping. The Master lifted his hand, signing. A dove's wing flap.
Windspeed, read Carnelian. It was not difficult to guess the meaning. The aquar ahead were already slipping away. His chair's rocking quickened as his mount leapt after them. He was thrown from side to side, each swing smaller than the last, then there was his robe snapping up around him, the chair vibrating, the parapets pouring past. The wind dissolved the din of the road, pressed him back into the chair, slipped his hood off then streaked his ears with half-heard cries.
The Guarded Land was tiled with brown squares that faded shrinking to every horizon. Its monotony was only relieved by wheels that dotted the fields, turning constantly. A heavy sky pressed the whole scene flat. It was only when he listened to the wind and watched the rushing parapet that Carnelian knew he was flying.
At some point he felt his mount's motion faltering. Its head trembled and the milky inner lids flickered across its eyes. Fatigue shuddered up from its flanks as its speed slackened. He disliked forcing the creature on, but had to make sure of keeping up with the others.
Ahead a watch-tower stood like a woman holding her arms up high in a dance. Carnelian was relieved as Aurum began to slow. The tower became a giant. He eased his aquar to a walk. The chair began jerking. His cloak fell lifeless. Clamour swelled up from the road. The air was pungent with a peculiar odour. His aquar lifted its heron head and opened the fans of its eye-plumes. Every movement had become ponderous, heavy. Every step the creature took jarred him to the bone. Carnelian felt like a bird plucked suddenly from the sky.