Free The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 by Ricardo Pinto

are like butterflies,' he said.
    Take care when capturing them lest you crush their wings,' his father responded. 'You know, it was necessity that drove me.' He shook his head. 'A Ruling Lord . . . teaching a child his glyphs ...'
    'And the crabbed, lifeless merchants' script ...'
    '... with which they trap wealth in their ledgers.' His father's lips always curled when he spoke of the merchants. Like all Masters he found commerce distasteful.
    'But wealth is power ...' said Carnelian.
    'It is a fool who covets wealth, but he also is a fool who discards the way to power,' his father said. He saw Carnelian's expression. 'Have I said that many times?'
    'I have it by heart. You showed me that my hands could' speak. The last word was a sign. Fingers are the lips and tongue of the silent speech. Their poetry of movement betrays the emotion behind the words. The words themselves are spoken without breath or sound by forming signs.
    'You have a strong, clear hand.'
    His father lifted up a book paler than his skin though not as radiant. 'As we have travelled together through these, so shall we travel through the greater world of which they are only impressions.'
    'But what shall we be leaving behind, my Lord?' asked Carnelian.
    'Famine,' his father replied. His lips compressed to a line.
    'Is there no way, my Lord, we might ameliorate its harshness by reducing the amount that is taken by the bara n?'
    'Everything that can be done, my Lord, has been done.'
    Suth watched his son's face harden with pain. 'You will have to face the situation as it is. The sharper blade leaves cleaner wounds.'
    'Will the baran not accommodate more of our people? It is so large.'
    His father shook his head. 'For all her bulk she really has very little space, Carnelian.' 'But the children, the elderly.'
    The voyage would be as dangerous for them as staying here.'
    'Father, are you not desolated by such loss?'
    The marble of his father's skin was stained around the eyes. 'When we came here this place was a perfect mirror to my mood. That first winter was terrible. Many died. When they did not think I heard them, our people whispered that I had brought them across the black water to the Isle of the Dead. I think I almost shared their belief. As bleak and colourless as the Underworld is said to be, this island was worse. Perhaps if you had not been there swaddled in Ebeny's arms I might have let it remain always so. For your sake I let the household work upon the Hold. So far from Osrakum my hopes were ailing and wont to die. And yet in the years that have passed this desolation has become my home. It sits deep in my affection, perhaps more even than our palaces in Osrakum, of which all this' - he curved his arms out and round as if he were embracing the Hold - 'is not even a reflection in dull brass.' His father shook his head again. 'If my memory gives me true recollection.' He frowned and muttered, 'Sometimes that other life I had seems an impossible dream. Strange transformations have come upon me in this shrinking compass of my world. You know, my son, I have played roles that not even a Lord of the Lesser Chosen would stoop to. I have been brought closer to our barbarian children than I would have thought possible. So, in spite of all I am, all I know and all that I have been taught to feel, I must say, yes, I am desolated by this loss.'
    They looked at each other, drawing a pale comfort from sharing their misery.
    'Will Crail go with us?' asked Carnelian.
    His father nodded.
    Tain?'
    Another nod.
    'And Ebeny?'
    'She has asked not to go and I will not command her.'
    Carnelian considered this. She was more mother to him than nurse and, besides, his father's favoured concubine. He knew his father had feelings for her. 'I shall speak to her myself.'
    'As you wish,' his father said and there was something like hope in his eyes. 'Now let us return to the problem of selecting which of these worlds we shall take as an accompaniment to our journey.'
    Carnelian