Ricardo Pinto - The Chosen

What is this place? he signed, having to resort to difficult one-handed signs.

The Master Index, signed Osidian.

Carnelian followed him deeper into the bead partition maze of indices. Sometimes through one crystalled wall Carnelian would see a Sapient moving past or racing his hands over the surface of an index.

Suddenly, Osidian shot him a grin and made a triumph gesture. After he had read down a beadcord he signed, Come, I know where to go now.

Carnelian touched the cord he thought Osidian had been reading. There were words, numbers, but he could make no sense of them.

He was glad to leave the Chamber of the Master Index, following Osidian back into the smaller rooms of the library proper. They had to creep through a fearful region filled with the Wise. Gradually the chambers became free of them and Carnelian relaxed enough to risk more solid footfalls. Exhaustion sapped him as he released the tension in his muscles.

Osidian stopped at a door. This should be the place.' He was fingering something to one side of the door. Carnelian played some light on it. Beadcord hung on the wall like a tapestry. Osidian muttered something and nodded. The reels are here as the index said.' The chamber seemed much the same as any other. Tut the lantern on a bench and help me look.'

'What are we looking for?'

'I am not sure. The index did not give the names of the works, only that they were written Pre-Commonwealth.'

Carnelian moved to the nearest bench. His fingers found a bronze ring with its title beadcord. He began to feel his way down the beads. They were smooth and of no distinctive shape. He moved to the next cord. It was the same. And the next. As he held the first bead, he concentrated all his mind on his fingertips. He took the weight of the cord with his other hand so that he could lighten his touch on the bead. It was not smooth. There was the faintest ridge, but he could not hear what it said. It was like the most delicate whisper. He let the cord go. He looked up and saw Osidian's shadow body away off across the chamber. He picked up the lantern and went to join him. Osidian had a beadcord title clenched in his fist.

'What are you doing?' Carnelian whispered. 'Heating the beads.' Carnelian blinked.

'Sometimes, heating them makes them speak. Paagh.' 'Nothing?'

'Not enough.' Osidian reached up to the nearest reel. He found its end, rubbed a few beads between his fingers. He shook his head.

'Perhaps time has worn them smooth,' said Carnelian.

'No.' He took in the chamber with a sweep of his hand. 'It is just that the Wise have made sure that the beadcord here shall only be read by their fingers.'

'I see,' said Carnelian, disappointed, looking at the reels.

Osidian grinned at him. 'I know a thing or two. We shall return.' He saw the question on Carnelian's face. 'You will find out what I am talking about, but only tomorrow.'

'What is it?' whispered Carnelian.

Earlier, when he had found Osidian waiting for him by the moon-eyed door, the boy had given him an enigmatic smile and then led him to the chamber they had been in the day before.

Carnelian looked at the phial Osidian was holding up. It was a helix of quartz with a hinged silver cap. Within its murky worm-like body he could see a yellow liquid.

Osidian smirked. 'It is something the Wise drink. It has… let us say, some useful effects.'

Carnelian looked at Osidian's green eyes. He did not like the idea of acquiring any habit from the Wise. He wondered at Osidian's mood. Carnelian almost asked him to drink first, but he did not want Osidian to think that he thought it poison.

'How much?'

'A sip will do.'

Carnelian flipped open the cap and sniffed it cautiously. Its iodous smell nipped his nose. He looked at Osidian who gave him an encouraging nod.

'Do you think I would try to poison you?'

Carnelian answered him by putting the phial to his lips and letting some of its liquid trickle onto his tongue. Its bitterness forced a grimace. He swallowed quickly, sucked his tongue, then licked his teeth to try to rid his mouth of the taste.

Osidian took the phial from his hand and drank. Carnelian was pleased to see his face scrunch up. 'It really is foul,' said Osidian, glaring at the phial.

'And now?' whispered Carnelian.

'Now, we wait.' Osidian shuttered the lantern. In the darkness, Carnelian felt the bench shudder as Osidian, sitting down, threw his back against it. Carnelian slid down beside him. He tried to make conversation, to ask what they were waiting for, but Osidian answered every question with an irritating, 'Wait and see.'

The tingling grew as if coming from far away. Carnelian adjusted his position. Against his back the bench seemed to have become the trunk of some vast tree. His back ran up it for a great length. Carnelian found himself wondering if the yellow potion had made him grow like a giant. His legs had stretched so much they must have pushed his feet into the next chamber. He lifted his hand and it swung up like a crane. He fingered the air, half believing that he would find the ceiling of the chamber just above his head.

'Do you feel it?' asked Osidian's breath. Carnelian could feel its wet heat catching in the folds of his ear. He turned his head and was momentarily disorientated by the thick currents of air that he ruddered into motion. His lungs seemed as large as the sky. He breathed in all the winds.

'My lungs are the turtle's shell,' he said.

Osidian's chuckle was like a shunting of machinery. 'You feel it all right.'

Carnelian felt the earthquake of Osidian rising.

'Stand up,' came Osidian's words, tumbling down from above. Carnelian felt fingers fumble into his like an avalanche of pillars. They kept sliding round and through his until they locked closed. Even lying naked on a rock, Carnelian had never felt such a vast expanse of his skin touching the world. Their hands were a jumble of warm stones in whose crevices lay thrilling moisture.

Suddenly the whole meshed mass of fingers were flying skywards. Carnelian's forearm followed, then his elbow, then his upper arm, all straightening like the links in some monumental chain. The whole mass of him unfolded up and up, faraway joints opening until he found himself standing.

'We should release each other's hand,' rumbled Osidian.

Carnelian struggled. Their flesh seemed wedded together at the hands. When they managed to wrestle their fingers apart, Carnelian was left feeling as if part of him had been cut away. It was all he could do to not flail the night to recover it.

Take some beadcord in your hands.'

Carnelian had to wait for the loss to fade before he ran a finger along the wooden wall of the bench. It had been smooth before. Now it was pitted, gnarled, scored with ruts. His finger ran into something that at first he though must be a skull. He felt the heat radiating from Osidian's fingers touching the other side of the curving ball of bone.

'Can you read it now?' asked Osidian.

Carnelian was startled when he realized he was only touching a bead. He allowed his fingers to explore its landscape. They found the ridges, the sensuous curves. Cool regions, warm strips his mind told him must be narrower than a hair. 'I do not recognize it,' he said.

'Let me.'

Osidian's fingers resumed contact. Carnelian felt as if his skin was drinking from Osidian's. He let his hand climb down from one bead to another until it was a safe distance away.

'Untouchables,' said Osidian.

Carnelian could feel the vibration in the cord. Something was coming down it. His hand escaped further down, bead by bead.

'Removing the Blood… no, the Liver,' said Osidian.

A whole earthful of flesh brushed past Carnelian and set his entire skin quivering like a bell's.

Osidian had moved to the next title cord. 'Preserving the Viscera in Canopic Jars.'