'Even our servants?' asked Carnelian, alarmed that there would be no-one to tend to his father.

'Especially our body slaves,' Aurum replied. They threaten our ritual protection with every touch.'

Vennel looked like a column of iron. 'Has it finally come to this? Are we now, my Lords, to be stripped of these last shreds of comfort and of state?'

He looked round but none there gave him answer.

Tain and Jaspar's boy seemed to have hardly the strength to hold their little packs. In among the Marula they could have been infants with uncaring parents. Aurum waved them all away with a gesture of dismissal. The Marula looked uncertain, sickly. Aurura made the gesture again with a harsher hand. The Marula began to shuffle off, back the way they had come, over the bridge. Carnelian did not see the malicious glance one of them gave him. He was watching Tain walking off, head drooping as if his thin neck had snapped under its weight. Carnelian hated himself. What use was his impotent wrath?

They ate on the platform held aloft by the watch-tower's six ribs. It was cooler and the air was free of the staleness of the cells. The Masters had dismissed the lookouts from their deadmen's chairs and even the ammonites who tended the signal flare. With their own hands the Masters had laid out the circle of incense bowls. Once they were lit they could for the first time that day remove their masks. There were sighs of relief all round. Fingers rubbed at mask-grooved skin. Suth's face was sallow; his eyepits looked kohled. He had used what little strength he had climbing the ladders. He breathed in, making a hacking sound. 'Aaah, the beauty and comfort of the night,' he sighed.

Vennel still wore his mask. 'Are we certain that it is safe up here?'

Aurum looked north. The plague rages far away from here, my Lord. The creatures who might carry it are down on the road and forbidden to come near us on pain of death. There is a reasonable margin of safety.' As he looked at Suth, worry creased his face.

Vennel unmasked.

Carnelian was nibbling crumbs from his hri cake. He was sick of purified food. The Masters were just so much animated marble. Only his father's sweat-glazed face betrayed the possibility of Chosen mortality. His mouth twitched as if a needle were darning his flesh. He was seated a little away from the others, leaning against one of the turning-handles of the strange mechanism that stood in the middle of the platform. Carnelian had examined its square mirror of louvred silver strips attached to pivots at each end; the long handles to turn and dull the strips; the toothed arcs that allowed the whole mirror to tilt; the turning board that allowed the machine to swivel round. A heliograph, Aurum had called it, the means by which the ammonites turned the rays of the sun and sent them glancing to the neighbouring towers carrying messages.

Carnelian looked at his father bleakly. Perfume could not entirely smother the rot of his bloodied bandages. The continuing discomfort had been forced on him by Aurum's invoking the support of ammonites against his father's plea to be washed. The old Master had insisted that, however unpleasant, the bandages were necessary to give Suth protection against the plague. His father had been too weak to fight him.

Thoughts of the treachery he was planning made Carnelian turn away, but also fear, and embarrassment that he should witness his father thus. Out past the rising bars of myrrh smoke, past the empty hoop of the dead-man's chair, out beyond the glimmers of the stopping place, the night was patterned with lozenges, patchy ovals, a suggestion of lines.

'What are all those tumbled walls?' Carnelian said at last, just to say something.

'Ruins,' said Aurum.

'One of the Quyan cities,' said Jaspar.

There are many such… many… scattered across the land,' his father said in a throaty voice.

'All ruined?' said Carnelian, keen to encourage any life in his father.

'All. The last book of the Ilkaya tells of their fall.'

"The Breaking of the Perfect Mirror,’ said Carnelian, naming the book.

Teh! Children's stories with which the Wise seek to cow the Great,' said Aurum.

'Stories? Perhaps… though even a pearl… needs a grain around which to grow,' said Suth.

'By the blood! My Lords, you speak lightly of holy scripture,' scolded Vennel.

'… do not deny spirituality… but… even Wise hold its truths metaphorical,' said Suth.

There is nothing metaphorical about those ruins there,' said Jaspar, 'and they have a look of hoary age.'

'… city was there ruined… long before this road built,' said Suth.

Carnelian turned to him, remembering the faces in the wall of his cell. Those ruins were plundered in the making of this road.'

His father nodded.

'Such antiquity commands awe if not reverence,' said Vennel.

'I see no reason why the living should revere the dead,' said Aurum.

'Is it not reason enough that the dead have built the world into which we were born?'

'Did the Gods have no part in that, my Lord?' asked Carnelian.

'I meant… of course, initial creation… but the latter part

… also of course under divine…' As Vennel closed his mouth, Carnelian resisted the temptation to smile.

'Certainly, gratitude is due the Quyans for bequeathing us their treasures. One possesses many perfectly exquisite pieces from the period of the Perfect Mirror,' said Jaspar.

‘So do all but the meanest Houses,' snapped Vennel. 'And, my Lord, you would know all about the meanest Houses,' returned Jaspar. 'I dislike your imp-'

'What does my Lord think is the grain lying at the core of the scriptures?' said Carnelian quickly to his father. The heat of the arguments was wilting Suth. Carnelian sought for him the healing there is in telling stories.

'Conjectural, but…' Suth grimaced and held his side.

Carnelian became alarmed that he had coaxed his father into wasting his dwindling strength.

Suth closed his eyes and then opened them, smiling crookedly, his eyes as brilliant as jewels. '… previous book describes long period during which Quyans prospered.' He breathed in heavily. They achieved harmonious balance…'

Carnelian had heard his father speak thus before. 'Between the Two Essences?'

The bright eyes regarded him for a while, making him uneasy, until his father nodded.

'I thought that esoteric doctrine defunct,' said Jaspar.

'Its precepts… foundation of all the creeds,' said Suth.'… merely a matter of emphasis.'

'An emphasis that once caused schisms among the Great,' said Vennel coldly.

'You prefer the literal interpretation in which their lords fell into evil ways and so led their people into the worship of false gods?' said Aurum.

'It is what is written.'

'If one stands on the wording of the texts then one should apprehend it exactly as written,' said Jaspar. 'It is written "false avatars".'

Vennel stared. 'You are a fundamentalist?'

'I believe that the Lord Suth's Two Essences form the matrix of creation and that each has a number of centres of divine sentience that form distinct avataric manifestations.'

'Avataric manifestations…?' said Carnelian.

'Jaspar believes… not single united pair of twins… but many. .. like reflections in facing mirrors.' His father stopped, showing gritted teeth between his parted lips.

Carnelian flinched. 'If this is too painful…?'

'Perhaps you should heed your son, my Lord,' said Aurum.

His father waved his hand in negation. He looked at Jaspar. 'How does my Lord interpret… the choosing of the Chosen?'

'Divine favour. As it says in scripture, the Twins came to Osrakum in dreams to certain of its lords, to show the shape Their wrath would wear. Osrakum was commanded to close her gates lest Their wrath find its way into her hidden land.'