Ricardo Pinto - The Chosen

At last they came to a lofty wall. Its massive blocks were irregularly shaped but fitted together with remarkable precision.

'What now?' asked Carnelian, exasperated.

'We climb over,' Osidian replied and slipped sideways along the wall, going down the gradient, in the wedge of space that was free of thorns.

Carnelian followed. Osidian found something like a ladder whose footholds were the edges of blocks. Carnelian watched him climb higher and higher and then, with a vault, he was sitting astride the wall, waving him up-Muttering, Carnelian began the climb. Some handholds he had to stretch for. He missed one, slipped and grazed his arm. Osidian offered him his hand and grinned when it was refused. Carnelian insisted on scrambling his own way up. He made sure he was secure, then turned to Osidian.

'You are-' He fell silent, gaping at the view. Below them was a terrace of black earth divided neatly into plots. Further down the slope there was another terrace and further down from there, another and another, until he had counted almost twenty in all, the most distant of which looked like chequered cloth. Beyond, a forest stretched for a great distance, turning at last into polished jade and then the purpling turquoise of the Skymere.

Osidian touched his shoulder. 'It gets better.'

They slithered down, dropping the last bit into a thick bed of giant cabbages that squeaked and snapped as they fell in among them. The musk of wet earth and the green bruising smell of the leaves filled the air. They clambered out onto a path and wandered along a maze of them, each walled by vegetables. Here and there Carnelian glimpsed a glitter of water running in stone channels. They crossed several by means of little bridges. Every so often the vista would open out and he would see the terraces again.

'A kitchen garden?' he asked at last.

'For the court,' Osidian answered him, pointing at the black craggy cliffs of the Pillar.

As they strolled, Carnelian was filled with wonder. He asked Osidian the names of everything. Osidian always had an answer and even added what he knew of their uses or plucked some for Carnelian to smell or taste.

Carnelian glimpsed movement and found himself scrabbling for his mask. Osidian's hand restrained him.

There is no need, he signed. Here there are no eyes but ours.

They walked out into a clearing in which a number of creatures were harvesting leaves with sickles, or turning the rich black earth with hoes. Carnelian tried to see what kind of beings they were. Nut-brown, with hands and feet like spades, but not tall enough to come up to his knee.

They move as if they had eyes.

The sylven have keen ears and well-honed touch.

They look like little men.

Animals. 'Let me show you,' said Osidian. As he spoke the sylven stopped their work and turned their wizened heads. Osidian clapped his hands. 'Attend me.'

The sylven came, forming round them, their heads bowed, their huge ears sticking up like horns.

Osidian crouched and took one in his hands. The little wizened creature flinched and whimpered. Carnelian began protesting even as Osidian cooed and said, gently, 'You will not be hurt.'

He held the creature's little brown head carefully like a ripe fruit. Carnelian crouched, to stroke it. Osidian angled it back to reveal a tiny face. A wide gashed mouth, a nose flat and splayed. Osidian squeezed apart the wrinkles that closed its eyes. At the bottom of the pit was a colourless bead like the raisin of a pale grape. Osidian let the creature go.

'It seems very much like a tiny man,' said Carnelian.

Osidian shrugged. The world is filled with man-like creatures. What is a man? Are these men? Are the sartlar?'

The barbarians are men.'

'Perhaps, but if so, not like you or me.'

'I suppose, then, that you would claim that we are angels.'

'Is that not what the Wise teach?'

As they wandered further into the garden they saw sylven everywhere like clods of earth. The sun began to pour its fire into the day. They came to a region where each tree was inside the square of a low wall.

'Ahaa,' said Osidian. He leapt onto one of the walls, and reaching up into the branches of its tree he plucked a fruit. He turned and offered Carnelian its red-streaked gold. 'Smell it.'

Carnelian obeyed and closed his eyes as he drew in its perfume. He bit into it. Its flesh was creamier than a peach, filled with seeds that had the flavour of almonds. Osidian beamed at his reaction. Carnelian took another succulent bite. 'Why the wall?'

'It reserves the fruit for those of the House of the Masks.'

Carnelian stared at the forbidden fruit. His sin was there, cut into its flesh. He felt its juices dripping down his chin.

'Who will know?' said Osidian. He took a bite of his own fruit. 'Come on, finish it. Have you ever had a better breakfast?'

Carnelian ate it, quickly, swallowing every last bit of it.

Osidian dramatically widened his eyes. 'Maybe we should consume the whole tree. It might be perilous to leave any evidence.'

Carnelian made a face at him and they both laughed.

The terrace took them round the Pillar until they came at last to another wall in which there was a gate. Through its frame lay another wonder. In the morning shadow of the Pillar of Heaven there were as many terraces but these were arranged in a design so complex that it confused the eye. It seemed to move, rotate, like some fantastic mechanism. The patterns were bewildering and on every scale. The whole glinted darkly, chinked and shimmered.

Osidian was smiling at him, reading his face. He jabbed his thumb back in the direction of the gate. 'My Lord thought that was the Forbidden Garden of the Yden, did he not?'

Carnelian had to admit that he had.

'Well, let me show you the real one,' said Osidian and strode through the gate.

Carnelian joined him, walking by his side. He fingered his mask hanging at his hip. 'Will we come across anyone?'

'Perhaps more sylven but none of the Chosen. This late in the year, we will have the garden to ourselves.'

Carnelian allowed himself to be carried along by the gleaming, iridescing pavements. They wandered down avenues of dragon-blood trees, like upturned brooms, their trunks striped with bands of jasper and carnelian. They dangled their hands in pools in whose green water white, gold-patched carp slid, each larger than a man.

Osidian pointed out their mouths and fins all pierced with silver rings. Other pools had tiny fish that glistened hither and thither like sun flecks on the sea. The pools poured into each other through great spouts, sometimes arching water over their path so that they could feel its flash and mist on their skins. Everywhere the walls were carved into grotesques, grimacing or pouting gargoyles spitting fountains or bristling with trees. A pavilion of salmon-striped green marble tempted them into its murmuring recesses. Steps banistered with cascades led down to the next terrace. They dallied in other pavilions. Those of heart-stone, quarried from the Pillar of Heaven itself, Osidian told him, were rainhalls, their roofs and pillars contrived to convert rain to music. Others had walls so thin they could make out the vague languorous shapes of the trees beyond. In places the air darted with parrots more brilliant than butterflies. Quetzals shuttled emerald between trees. Sawing their cries, peacocks pulled trains of staring feathers.

It was the vast and sombre pillared hill of the Labyrinth that brought them back to earth. Its mound ran along the edge of the terraces, tumbling its frowning facade down into the distance. Where the Labyrinth and the Pillar met, the latter folded into a crevasse that rifled all the way up to its dark and brooding summit. Carnelian searched there and found the jagged line. The Rainbow Stair,' he said.