Carnelian threw his head back and laughed. He turned to the syblings. 'It seems they are afraid.'

Left-Quentha regarded them imperiously with her stone eyes. 'Slaves are always afraid. Soon enough we will have them trotting down those steps.' The syblings rose, both stone eyes and living fixed menacingly on the guardsmen.

Carnelian lifted his hands. There is no point in forcing them. I do not want to be deafened by the chattering of their teeth. We will go alone.'

The syblings frowned. 'As the Seraph commands.' They walked round Carnelian, scattering his guardsmen. Each sister demanded a sword.

'I will go first,' said Carnelian.

'We will go first, Seraph,' they said together, showing the swords the guardsmen had given them.

Carnelian could see that they would brook no argument and stepped aside to let them lead the descent into the darkness.

Left-Quentha carried the lantern and Carnelian followed behind, peering between their shoulders at the steps revealed by its jiggling beam. Although the steps were smoothly cut, the walls were roughly hewn. The stair wound from side to side, and several times passed places where a porthole fed in a ray of daylight.

At last they reached the bottom and the Quenthas moved out into black echoing space. They lifted the lantern and spread its light across the floor to find the further wall.

'Behold the first Hall of the Sun in Splendour. No He-who-goes-before has stood here for a thousand years,' they whispered together.

Carnelian turned. The stair was a ragged rupture in the corner. 'Where is the gold?' he whispered.

It grew brighter as the Quenthas came up to him. Left-Quentha slid her hand over the wall and found something. Her sister caught Carnelian's hand and drew it to replace Left-Quentha's. He could feel a hole deep enough to stick his finger in.

The plates that were attached here were carried up there.' Left-Quentha pointed at the ceiling.

They wandered off across the chamber. The floor was mouldy with dust. The Quenthas showed him the dais and the blocked-up hole where the ancient jewelled Window of the Dawn had been. Carnelian walked down between the grim pillars to the door. Through its gaping maw was utter darkness. He called the syblings to his side. All three of them hung together in the door mouth casting the light out into a nave. Although this was on a smaller scale than the one above, it still ran off further than their light could reach.

Carnelian looked round him. 'Was this then the original sun-eyed door?'

In answer the Quenthas stood on tiptoe and reached up to touch half a hinge of twisted dull bronze.

'Please, let us go a little further,' Carnelian whispered.

The sisters turned to each other as if they were having a silent conference. Brandishing their swords, they took some steps into the nave. Carved columns ran off on either side. All together, they walked on, and however far they went their lantern found more columns.

At last their light showed a narrowing end to the nave, another doorway, its gates long ago torn from its jaws. Beyond more darkness spread without apparent limit. They crept into this.

'The ancient Chamber of the Three Lands,' whispered Left-Quentha.

'See,' her sister hissed as she tapped the floor with her foot.

Carnelian leant over but could see nothing but an age-pitted floor. He shook his head.

'Walk with us, Carnelian,' said Left-Quentha.

However lightly they put down their feet, their footsteps produced echoes. The syblings were feeling their way with the lantern beam as if it were a stick.

There,' muttered Right-Quentha and they rushed forward, keeping the beam anchored to a spot on the floor. They crouched and he joined them. He could see that the floor had two different zones divided by a black line. 'You see?' Right-Quentha tapped the nearest zone, 'Green,' and then the further zone, 'Red.'

Carnelian stood up, whistling his breath out. They cast the light round for him to see the curve. 'A wheelmap,' he hissed. They both nodded. They took him to the centre of the design where there was a third zone, a black disc like a hole into which was inscribed a turtle. They stood at the centre of the Commonwealth, in Osrakum. The syblings slipped the lantern shutter round to produce a narrower, brighter beam. They played it about to show him the faraway curve of the chamber's outer wall, and stopped at a gap. The House of the Masks' door.' Round to another. The Gods' door.' Round one more time. The beam sparked on an oblong of ice. Carnelian narrowed his eyes. Not ice, silver. As he made to walk towards it, they touched his arm.

He looked at their stiff spider-like silhouette. 'I only want to see it close up.' He could feel their anger but he went anyway and they followed, afraid to lose him in the darkness.

As he approached he saw it was a door of silver in the centre of which stared a huge crying eye. 'A moon-eyed door,' he muttered and remembered the other he had seen on the Approach.

'It is here as it has always been. The entrance to the labyrinthine chambers of the Wise,' the syblings whispered.

'Can we just take a look?'

They became like statues. 'It is forbidden, Seraph.'

He considered wheedling but decided he had pushed them far enough already. The other doorways?'

'Lead to the forbidden house.' They had gone cold on him.

'Shall we go back?' he said gently.

That would be advisable, Seraph.'

As they walked away, Carnelian snatched a regretful look back at the moon-eyed door, already a fading glimmer in the night.

When they returned to his chamber, they played a game of Three, but Carnelian's attention wandered. After two disastrous games, he told the syblings that he was tired and wished to retire early to bed.

He lay in the darkness, his mind's eye bewitched by a ghostly image of the moon-eyed door. It haunted his dreams so that when he awoke he was still tired. For breakfast, the Quenthas brought him peaches, fluffy hri bread and an aromatic paste made from honey and the tongues of hummingbirds. They played their flutes, they sang. He brooded.

It was afternoon when one of his tyadra came knocking at the door. The Quenthas answered it. There was muttering and then the syblings both turned to him and said, The Red Ichorians are come.'

They dressed him and together they went out to meet the new arrivals in the chamber of doors beyond the double portcullis that protected the access to his chambers.

A number of Ichorians were there waiting for him. As they removed their scarlet-feathered helmets and tucked them under their arms, Carnelian could see by the number of rank rings on their gold collars that they were all officers. One of them came forward, and as he knelt before Carnelian the others knelt behind him. The Ichorian touched the two zero rings and three bars on his collar.

'Master, I'm the commander of the third grand-cohort of the Pomegranates. I've come at the bidding of our father with a detachment of its third cohort to garrison this hold.'

Carnelian could see the fruit jewelled into his armour. 'I'm here by order of He-who-goes-before.'

'We've been instructed to protect you, Master.'

Carnelian watched the commander narrow his eyes at the Quenthas and said quickly, They too are here at his command.'

The commander and his officers were all shaking their heads in disagreement.

The Quenthas looked at Carnelian. 'Seraph, if they are here we cannot be.'

Carnelian could see it would be pointless arguing; the sisters had taken on their warrior stance. The Ichorians were squaring their shoulders in response.

'We shall leave now, Seraph,' the sisters said. They both smiled. 'We would not want to have to hurt them.'

'You must not forget your flutes,' he said.

Left-Quentha frowned a little but her sister allowed herself the slightest curving smile. Carnelian followed them back to his chamber and closed the door behind him, watching them pick up their instruments.