The funereal pealing and moaning was pulsing round the plain. Remembering his father's stories, Carnelian snatched his eyes back, searching. There, beneath the pyramid hollow, he found a space wedged between two of the stone men and knew that it must hold the Forbidden Door, the entrance to the Labyrinth.

Carnelian was walking along a road that ran as straight as a shadow towards the Forbidden Door. For a while, he had been noticing something like a clump of people conclaving in the centre of the plain. Heat shimmer had lent them movement but as he came closer Carnelian saw they were stone monoliths set in a ring.

'My Lord,' said Jaspar, in the silence vibrating between two peals.

Carnelian turned to him and saw the Master's hands begin to sign.

Soon I will leave this procession and go into the Labyrinth. If you still wish to accompany me you must do as I say, agreed?

Carnelian agreed and they continued on their way.

Inside the outer ring of monoliths, close to its centre, were two more rings, one within the other. Most of the monoliths were the colour of a stormy sky but those forming the innermost ring looked as if they had been painted with blood. All the ground within the outermost ring was slabbed, mosaiced, ridged, or spotted with cobbles. The road they were on divided to curve round the flanks of the stone circle, then joined up again upon the other side. Along the left fork Carnelian could see another procession moving with banners. The Sapients took the embalming procession along the right. A quarter of the way round, a new road branched off towards the northwestern edge of the plain. At this junction the procession came to a halt and Jaspar and his kin began to argue with their hands. Carnelian looked away, not wishing to intrude further. The Sapients stood near a pair of monoliths that lay a little distance out from the circle. Although only half their height, the Sapients bore some resemblance to them. Jaspar glanced over, then chopped an angry sign that caused his kin to bow and move away.

Carnelian watched Jaspar walk to his father's bier and kneel beside it, then rise and come towards him. His heart warmed to see such filial affection.

'It must be very hard to lose a father,' he said when Jaspar returned.

Terrible.' Jaspar's hand went to a chain at his throat and drew a Ruling Ring out from his robe. He dangled it. 'But still, there are compensations, even for such a loss. Long have I coveted this… to wield its power…' He sighed in a kind of ecstasy. 'I cannot count how many times I have wished him dead.'

'Dead? But… I thought…'

'What did you think, my Lord?' said Jaspar, as he fed the ring and its chain back into his robe. The crucifixions…'

'You thought I did that from sentiment?' He laughed, shaking his cowled head. 'How rich. Really, you are too peculiar, cousin dear. It was done for revenge, but, even more, for future security. Could you have conceived a better way to inaugurate one's reign? Admittedly, it is a profligate waste of flesh wealth, but exactly because of that the lesson will live long in the memory of my slaves. If fortune is not unkind to me, it will never have to be repeated.'

Carnelian was glad of the mask that hid his distaste.

Jaspar made a gesture of dismissal. 'Enough. This is neither the place nor the time for social banter. I have a gift for you, cousin.' Jaspar held out his hand and waited for Carnelian's to move under his before he dropped something into it.

Carnelian looked at it. 'A blood-ring?'

'Hush! Put your hand down.' He turned until one of his mask's eyeslits could see the procession that was already moving down the north-western road in the wake of the Sapients.

Carnelian obeyed him, concealing the ring in his fist. 'Whose is it?'

Jaspar grabbed his shoulder. 'Come, my Lord, let us proceed. The sun begins to grow oppressive and we still have a long walk to the Forbidden Door.'

They journeyed round the circle of monoliths, and as they passed the kneeling guardsmen and retainers Jaspar motioned for them to follow.

'One would have thought it obvious that the blood-ring in your hand is from a Lord of one of my lesser lineages. Khrusos, to be precise,' Jaspar said in a low voice. 'You must wear it instead of your own.'

Carnelian's hands lifted in protest but Jaspar swatted them down.

'You asked that I take you with me, my Lord, as one of my kinsmen. That is exactly what I am doing.'

Carnelian's eyes wandered between the outer monoliths to the inner ring. After some thought, he carefully removed his own ring and replaced it with the one that Jaspar had given him.

'Good. Now you are my inferior,' said Jaspar.

Carnelian could hear that he was speaking through a smile. Carnelian was not happy. The new ring felt unnatural on his finger. He distracted himself by counting the monoliths. He noticed that the red inner ring was completed with two green and two black stones.

'What are these stones, my Lord?'

The Dance of the Chameleon.'

'A calendar?' said Carnelian, since that was the only meaning the words had for him.

'In a manner of speaking. Does my Lord see the innermost ring? Well, he will also see that there are twelve stones of the same colours as the months.'

'Your inferior still does not understand.'

Jaspar's mask flicked towards him. 'It is a machine, a sorcerous engine that the Wise use to predict the coming of the Rains and all other temporal matters that provide impetus for the actions of the world.'

'I see,' said Carnelian, seeing nothing but stones. He waved his hand. 'But these others?'

The calendrical stones also have inscribed on them the Law-that-must-be-obeyed.'

Carnelian realized he had known this but still he gaped in wonder. The Law itself!'

Jaspar nodded, taking his utterance as a question. 'And these other stones are commentaries and amendments. The markings on the floor link the whole corpus in some manner unfathomable to any but the Wise.'

Carnelian was walking blind, stroking his new blood-ring, working through what he would say to his father if they should actually meet An acrid charcoal tang made him see again. The road ended at an edge of sooty stone. Looking up he saw the blackness stretching off towards the wall of the plain.

'Why do you linger, my Lord?' said Jaspar.

This burning…?' said Carnelian, pointing.

'Yes, it has been burned,' Jaspar said impatiently. He waited but Carnelian did not move. He sighed. 'It is here at the ceremony of the Rebirth that our tributaries kneel to worship us' – he pointed up at the pyramid hollow – 'up there.'

Carnelian surveyed the black field and tried to imagine it covered by a vast and grovelling throng. 'But the burn-ing…?'

'Carnelian!' Jaspar sounded aggrieved. 'Do you really think that we could allow their pollution to go uncleansed, here…' He lifted his arms, turned round in a circle.'… here at the very centre of our hidden realm? The flame-pipes of the Ichorian Legion sweep this whole space like brooms and then…' He pointed the blade of his hand back the way they had come. '… all the way along that road, down to the quays, round the Ydenrim, over the causeway, through the Valley of the Gate and all the way up to the Black Gate.'

Carnelian saw the dragonflied faces round them hanging miserably and lost his curiosity. This is all the burning I have seen.'

'Sometimes, Carnelian, you are like a child. Do you really believe that the Chosen would choose to allow even their servants to walk around leaving black footprints all over Osrakum?'

'A vast labour,' said Carnelian gloomily.

There is a sky full of rain to help them.'

Carnelian looked at the blackness. 'How do we cross?'

Jaspar made a sign of exasperation. That way, my Lord.' The Master was talking through gritted teeth. That way, past the Cages of the Tithe.'