'Would the Seraph please kneel.'

Carnelian looked at Right-Quentha. She nodded. Gingerly, he bent his knees. The shoes folded in half and for a moment he felt he was falling, but they locked, leaving him kneeling, his shins supported in long ivory grooves. He tried to straighten his knees and found the shoes slid him back to standing.

Carnelian turned to the syblings. 'Why…?'

Left-Quentha looked startled. 'Surely, Seraph-'

Her sister turned to her. 'He has been away in exile all his life. How do you expect him to-'

'Sister!' Left-Quentha stared, appalled. Her sister's hand flew to her mouth.

'No harm done,' said Carnelian and he held up his fingers in a smiling sign.

Still frowning, Left-Quentha turned to him. 'Kneeling on the ranga allows the Seraph to make the robe support its own weight.'

'What robe?'

Right-Quentha gave him a sheepish grin. 'We shall have it brought in, Seraph.'

The syblings walked to the doors and drew them open.

At first Carnelian thought it was a Master who was coming glittering in to fill the chamber, but then he saw the figure had no head and that several syblings, half hidden in its skirts, were carrying it. As the suit came into the light it seemed to ignite. It was a column of brocade densely woven from gold in which a tall and narrow panel running from neck to floor was set like a window into some heavenly realm. A verdant garden blossomed, each leaf a cut peridot or emerald. Roses petalled with spinel rubies. Orchids, opals. Creatures ran among the foliage, the mottle of their hides blemished bloodstone. Sapphire rivers foamed diamond spray. Jade trees filtered the light from iolitic skies. Rainbows brighter than parrots formed ladders up to a storm among black coral and moonstone clouds in which fire topaz lightning flashed. As the robe came closer he put his hand out to touch the miraculous mosaic.

'But this looks like Earth and Sky, the heraldry of the Masks.'

The Regent petitioned the House to have his son adorned thus,' said Right-Quentha.

The robe has been adjusted for the lower ranga the Seraph is entitled to,' said her sister.

The suit began to spin slowly round until his fingertips were grazing metallic threads. He was surprised they did not give sound off like a harp. The suit opened like a fist. Its innards were filled with scaffolding.

'Please, Seraph, would you walk into the robe and then kneel,' said Left-Quentha.

Carnelian did so. Its hinged ivory collar was at his throat. He fumbled blindly at the scaffolding.

The bones of birds and the smaller saurians, for lightness,' said Right-Quentha, who must have seen his fingers move. She coaxed his arms down into the sleeves. He felt the robe closing behind him.

'With care, would the Seraph please slowly stand to carry the burden of the robe?'

Carnelian tried to straighten his knees and at first met so much resistance he could not. More adjustments were made and at last he found he could stand, supporting the robe, which felt like a shell of bronze.

He knelt again and they began to build a crown upon his head. First a diadem of misty jade from which fell tresses of beaded tourmalines. Over this they set a helmet of jewel-ribbed leather that flared from his neck like the hood of a cobra. Above this they placed a final coronet that spread a jewelled halo behind his head, upon whose summit sat side by side a face of jade and one of obsidian.

They produced two Great-Rings. 'My own?' he asked, surprised.

'Come from the Three Gates,' they answered and urged him to rise again.

When he did so he felt as if he were wearing a house. He took a few tentative steps and was amazed that the whole mass moved with him. The syblings scurried around below, clearing obstacles from his path. Before Carnelian left, Right-Quentha bullied her sister into setting up a mirror, angling it so that the Seraph might see how he had been transformed into a towering, glimmering apparition.

The syblings formed a ring at whose centre Carnelian paced slowly along the curving corridor, pumping his knees open and closed in slow rhythm. His breathing roared inside his mask. The court robe swung languidly like a huge bell in which he was the clapper. He felt mountainously tall. A precipice of gold fell away towards the floor, casting glimmers on the faces of the syblings so that it seemed as if an open furnace were being carried in their midst.

The corridor opened into a sun blaze. Carnelian narrowed his eyes and walked into the glare. He tried to rotate his head but the crown's neck flares resisted him. He discovered it was easier to turn his whole frame to look. A sky of flame was pulsing in time to the Gods' heartbeat. Against this, the syblings seemed to be made from charred sticks. It took Carnelian a while to realize that he stood before a mosaic of amber rising to such heights it made the window appear narrow. 'Is that the sun?' he gasped.

'Does the Seraph refer to the door?' asked Right-Quentha.

The door? What door?' He followed her eyes and saw to the right of the window, smouldering in its lurid glow, a door in whose gold the sun's rayed eye was wrought.

'No, I meant, is it the living sun shining through that window?'

'It lends the window its fire, Seraph.'

Carnelian began a nod but stopped when he imagined his crowns toppling from his head. He carefully turned his back on the light. 'Which way?'

Both Quenthas pointed. 'Down the nave, Seraph.'

The incandescence flooding over his shoulders could not reach the end of that cavernous space. There, dimly, a mossy column rose like the rotted trunk of some immense tree. It was from this that the beating of the God Emperor's heart seemed to come. The pulsing drew him. The syblings followed in a cordon round him. There was something flickering in the corner of his eye. He peered sidelong through his mask's slits. It was one of the lictors, his armour set alight by the window. Carnelian had forgotten them. He watched the uneasy glance the man cast over the syblings. He himself was surprised how quickly he had accepted their strangeness. He looked around him. One pair were barely joined. Another were melted so close they had only two legs between them and but a single, wizened arm squeezing out from where their shoulders were. Every pair seemed to have two living eyes and two of stone. Their bronze armour looked as if it had been cast directly onto their flesh: the left half baroqued with spiral inlays, the right smoothly imitating the contours of the skin beneath. Several dragged green and black tessellated cloaks. As his eyes fell on one of their halberds, they widened behind his mask. Its black blade could only be iron. He looked and saw that all their weapons were made of iron. It was a display of fabulous wealth.

This discovery made Carnelian hungry for more wonder. As the light from the window waned, he found his eyes could see better. The Quenthas walked in front with a fluid three-legged gait, arms about each other's shoulders. A breeze laced with strange perfumes was blowing. Away up ahead, the gold spindle of a Master was moving amidst a retinue of guardsmen. Carnelian felt more than heard a strange flapping like birds in a dream. He peered into the gloomy stillness of the colonnades that flanked them on either side. More columns marched off as far as he could see. The slow continuous beating of immense wings was unnerving him. He searched above the colonnades where the carved stone rose sheer like the wall of a ravine. When his head was angled back he saw the furtive movement of shadowy banners wafting like unbrailed sails.

His crowns wearied his neck and forced his head down. They entered an even wider cavern where the Gods' heartbeat was tremoring the air and floor. What had seemed the trunk of some vast tree was a curving wall of green rusted bronze almost filling the centre of the cavern and ringed by a mirror moat. A bridge crossed over to a gate that he saw was part of the wall's dense interweaving of branches. For a moment, he was convinced that he was peering into a forest's dark, secret core. He shuddered, remembering the Labyrinth.