Ricardo Pinto - The Chosen

'I've had enough,' he whispered. He had forgotten Osidian. Convinced suddenly that he was alone, Carnelian felt around. His hand found him.

'I am here, Carnelian. Where else do you think I would be?'

'Looking up your own bloodline.' There was a long silence. 'I know my blood,' Osidian said. 'I did not mean-'

'It does not matter,' whispered Osidian. 'Can you find your own way back?' 'Well, yes

'Farewell then,' said Osidian and with a waft of air was gone.

Later, in his chamber in the Sunhold, Carnelian was wondering for the hundredth time if he would ever see Osidian again. He had replayed those last few words endlessly in his mind. Each time he had felt a stabbing in his guts. Why had he so carelessly offended him? His stomach ached as the words circled round in his head like carrion crows.

He went to bed early and ate nothing. Sleep would not come. When it did, it brought dreams. All night he fumbled blindly over a stony beach seeking the pebble that would whisper to him its answer.

Carnelian awoke feeling tired. Sullenly, he determined he would not go to the moon-eyed door. He told himself that he did not want to. Eventually he had to confess he was reluctant to go in case Osidian should not be there. He turned his anger on himself until fear of never seeing Osidian again made him leap up. He rushed through his dressing, cursing. It was already morning.

He took less care going to the trapdoor than usual. Halfway down the steps he found that he was counting them, swore and stopped, though each footfall was like a bead slipping through his fingers. He thought he had prepared himself for the disappointment but when he reached the moon-eyed door he found its blank gaze withering. Osidian was not in his usual place. That was the end of it. Still, he could not bring himself to turn away. He heard the clink and saw it opening. Osidian walked out and Carnelian lurched a few steps towards him then stopped. 'Osidian.' Relief thinned his voice.

The boy's eyes were like summer sea. He twitched a smile. 'What shall it be today, my Lord?'

Carnelian tried to think through the blood pulsing in his head. He ran through what he remembered Osidian had said the day before. 'History?' he suggested.

Osidian showed surprise. 'I thought you did not like history.'

There is more to history than conquests.' He racked his mind for a topic. For some reason he recalled the Masters arguing theology that night on the watch-tower roof.

The beginning.'

The creation?'

The beginning of the Commonwealth. The Quyans. The Great Death. Does the library contain reels going that far back?'

Osidian's brow creased. 'I have never sought such antiquity. What you speak of is more religion than history. Still…'

Carnelian grew calm watching Osidian thinking. There was so much he wanted to know about this strange boy but he feared to make even the smallest enquiry.

There is one place to find out if such a reel exists.'

'Let us go there, then.'

Osidian made his hand into a barrier sign. 'Less haste. We will have to be careful of the Wise. Most of them are busy calculating the Rains' arrival, arranging the Rebirth; that is why we have seen nothing of them. But what you seek lies at the library's heart, the very centre of their web. Many will still be there and they will detect the slightest vibration. We must be as silent as shadows.'

Carnelian nodded, his pulse quickening again.

Carnelian crept into the library after Osidian, who was holding the lantern up to light their way. After a few chambers, Carnelian reached out to touch Osidian's shoulder. The boy turned round, raising his eyebrows.

The lantern? Carnelian signed.

Osidian grinned. Yes, it is one.

Carnelian made a face at him. It is very bright.

Here the only eyes are ours, replied Osidian, constructing complicated signs with his free hand. The light will help you amid bumping into anything.

Carnelian gave a snort and they went on.

He soon lost count of the chambers. They were moving between the benches of another when he almost ran into Osidian who had come to a sudden halt. Carnelian followed the direction of his gaze and saw a Sapient with his pleated waxy noseless face, the black almonds of his eyes alive with malice. He came round the bench towards them. When he was between two benches, he stretched the four fingers of each hand out to either side. The fingertips settled on the benches like feathers failing from the air. The hands tensioned like exquisite traps. The Sapient stood motionless, a spider waiting.

From the corner of his eye, Carnelian caught a tiny white movement. He turned his head slowly, keeping an eye on the Sapient. Osidian, his eyes round, signed with his free hand, Not a blink. His fingers feel everything.

The Sapient's hands jumped up from the benches. Carnelian focused fully on the creature as he came treading towards them, his long white feet sucking to the floor like mouths, his fingers swimming, sensing currents in the air.

Carnelian looked desperately for an escape. The coldness of the floor was making his feet ache but he dared not move. Sweat was trickling down the gutter of his spine. Some was oozing down his nose. He feared that it might collect in a drop and fall, betraying them. He drew his shoulders back, his head further still, drawing away from the four-fingered hands. The Sapient stopped between two new benches. Again, he deployed his hands then froze. Carnelian looked from the cages of fingers to the black insect eyes. He could smell the Sapient's musty odour.

The hands lifted and Carnelian turned his head away. He suppressed a shudder, anticipating the touch of those moist fingers. He might have fled, save that just then the Sapient turned and swiftly returned to where he had been. Carnelian watched him reach down to a bench's bronze ring and pull at the tail of beadcord hanging from it. The beads slipped through his fingers. Then both his hands rose to lift the topmost reel off the spindle above. This was swiftly transferred to the empty spindle beside it. The hands returned to pluck up the second reel. Cradling this in his arms, the Sapient slid through a door and disappeared.

Carnelian gulped in a breath, another. He found that Osidian was grinning at him. Crookedly, Carnelian grinned back.

Do you want to go on? signed Osidian.

Carnelian's nod was rewarded with a look of approval.

They encountered more Sapients. Mostly they were folded into the niches on spinning-wheel chairs, caressing words from beadcord. Sometimes Osidian would lift the lantern high and pull its hem of light up the dark, brocaded robe to find the leather of a Sapient's face and put a fierce glint in the jet eyes. Each time Carnelian recoiled, distrusting the blindness, certain that the Sapient must feel the light tickling over his flesh. But the Sapient would continue reading undisturbed, looking as if he were busy spinning jewelled thread.

They came at last into a chamber in which their light flashed among tall screens that seemed hung with coloured water. Osidian entered boldly. Carnelian was reluctant to follow but did not want to appear afraid. He looked back. The way they had come was utterly black. He shuddered, imagining returning blind through the darkness infested with the Wise.

He caught up with Osidian whose hand was playing through the jewelled shrouds.

He must have heard Carnelian for he turned. Hold this, he signed and pushed the lantern onto Carnelian, then continued reading.

Carnelian saw the screens were like huge folding books whose pages were like harps strung with beadcord. As he watched Osidian's fingers stroking across the strings, Carnelian almost expected to hear music. Osidian shook his head and padded away. Carnelian followed him, holding the light of the lantern over them as if he were carrying a parasol. He tapped Osidian on the shoulder.