Carnelian became addicted to the strange game they called Three. It was played on a circular board with a black centre within two concentric bands of red and green. The three sets of pieces each took one of the colours. The sisters always chose the jade and the obsidian sets, smiling conspiratorially, saying the colours of the House of the Masks were naturally theirs. He acquiesced. After all, the red pieces were made of his name stone. He assumed they would ally against him, but instead he was ignored as they fought each other to destruction. He became tired of winning. Losing his temper, he insisted that they fight the game fairly and try to defeat him. They shrugged, grinned, and in the games that followed overwhelmed him. He rejected their offer that they should begin the game with fewer pieces. Slowly, he began to learn strategy from his defeats. The games became tortuous, subtle, merciless wars in which his red pieces began more and more to triumph.

Often, as they played, he would try to talk to the Quenthas about the election, the candidates, their factions. They met his questions with elegant deflections. They grew positively sullen if he ever strayed close to mentioning Ykoriana.

'No more music,' said Carnelian, adding quickly, 'though you play like the rain.'

Left-Quentha reached for the Three board.

'Not that either.' He stood up, stretched, groaned. 'My body aches from inactivity.' He frowned, locked his hands together and tried to tug them apart. 'I know,' he said brightly, looking at the syblings. Right-Quentha was wearing her green copper mask. At his insistence, she and Carnelian took turns at being masked. 'You girls can give me a tour of these Halls of Thunder.'

They both made evasive gestures with their hands. 'We would have to put you in your court robe, Carnelian,' said Left-Quentha. She glanced at it, an intruder gleaming in the comer.

'You might well come across other Seraphs,' said Right-Quentha.

'And then again, it might not be wise that we three should be seen together,' said her sister.

'It certainly would look strange,' said Right-Quentha.

'Strange,' echoed her sister.

Carnelian sank cross-legged to the floor. He propped his face up with his arm. 'You confirm what I have suspected. My father has sent you to keep me imprisoned here, in the Sunhold.'

The sybling sisters looked blindly at each other. There is nothing to stop us giving you a tour of the Sunhold.'

Carnelian brightened, leapt up, grabbed his mask. 'Come on then.'

They sallied out into the passage where they gathered up an escort of his tyadra. In the chamber set around with doors, the Quenthas pointed out the portcullises that they told him led off down long passageways to various gates giving into the Encampment. Between these were other doors which they said led into barracks. At his insistence they opened one and lighting a lantern they all went in.

'Soon this warren will be filled with a cohort of Red Ichorians,' said Left-Quentha and both sisters frowned.

'Apart from the side on which they are tattooed, how do they differ from the Sinistrals?' he asked them.

'In every way, Carnelian,' Right-Quentha replied indignantly. They belong to the Great and we to the House of the Masks. We live in different worlds.'

'Worlds…?'

Left-Quentha caught him in her stony gaze. 'We can no more be in the same world than my sister and I can be on the same side of the mirror as our reflection.'

Right-Quentha chuckled. 'Ours is a dark, looking-glass world.' She made them both dance a little.

The Halls of Thunder and the Labyrinth,' added her sister, forcing their three feet firmly to the floor.

Theirs is the world of the sun, across the Skymere.'

'And yet, on occasion, you permit them to come here into your world?' Carnelian said.

They both looked at him. 'It is a concession the House of the Masks makes to the Great,' Left-Quentha began.

'And only during such dark days as these,' her sister continued.

'And even then they have to lock themselves in here, within this fortress, from fear of us,' said the other, fiercely.

Carnelian smiled indulgently. They had taken on a poise that he could see was making an impression on the nervous faces of his guardsmen.

With a grin, Right-Quentha became a girl again. 'And would our dear like to see the chambers that will be his father's?'

Carnelian nodded and they led him back into the chamber of doors and across it to a golden mirror that showed the sybling sisters to themselves. This was a door that brought them into an atrium where the sisters said the tyadra of He-who-goes-before could defend their Lord. The guardsmen peered into the quarters leading off it that their fellows would occupy. Another gold mirror door was opened and Carnelian's eyes widened as he looked in. He followed the syblings into the chamber. The thick gold of the walls was moulded into wheels, rayed eyes and huge ruby-seeded pomegranates. The floor was fossilled stone-wood ribbed and lozenged with carnelian. Gorgeous apartments opened off on either side, every wall and door and ceiling a piece of jewellery.

When Carnelian had marvelled at everything, the Quenthas announced that it was time to see the Hall of the Sun in Splendour. They returned to the chamber of doors whose marbles seemed to Carnelian suddenly drab. A double portcullis was opened allowing them to walk down a tunnel into a vast columned hall. This too was panelled entirely with gold. Carnelian saw they had entered it through a side door. At the hall's far end, with their sun-eye, were the huge bolted doors that opened into the nave. Opposite them, behind a dais at the other end, the wall held a glowing mosaic of rosy gems that Right-Quentha called the Window of the Dawn.

'On that dais, your father will kneel to give audience to the Seraphim.'

Across from where they stood, down the long side of the hall, ran a series of tall and narrow amber windows. Carnelian walked towards one. He touched its mosaic of molten gold. The window formed the image of an angel like a man in flames; only the eyes of watery grey diamond suggested this might be a representation of a Master. Carnelian walked along the line of windows. In the terrible burning beauty of their faces, their eyes were such cruel winter.

Carnelian's foot stubbed against something on the floor. He turned to look down at it. 'A trapdoor?'

'It is nothing, Seraph,' said Left-Quentha.

‘Surely it must lead somewhere?'

'A fright of steps down to ancient halls.' Right-Quentha made a gesture to take in their surroundings. 'Precursors to these. Ruined now a thousand years.'

Carnelian imagined these ancient dusty wonders. 'Could we not go and see them?'

They are decayed, Seraph,' said Left-Quentha.

'Lightless,' her sister added.

'Filthy.'

Carnelian made a smiling sign with his hand. 'Just a peek?'

Right-Quentha could not help a smile.

'We must not,' her sister whispered to her.

'Just a peek,' said Right-Quentha. 'Where would the harm be in that?'

Left-Quentha turned away, blinking her stone eyes, pursing her tattooed lips. Her sister forced her to bend when she herself bent down to lift a handle in the trapdoor. Left-Quentha gave in. They crouched, took the handle with all four hands and pulled. The cover stone grated open, spilling light down the steps.

The Seraph should send his guardsmen ahead,' said Left-Quentha.

Carnelian turned to his men and saw with what terror they were peering down into the depths.

'What's the matter with you lot?' asked Carnelian in Vulgate.

They began to kneel. He focused on one and grabbed his shoulder to stop him. 'Well?'

'Master… it's said this whole mountain's hollow.' The man stared, slack-eyed.

'And so?'

The Gods and the Masters walk the higher levels but in the lower they keep… you keep…' The man's voice tailed off, then he whispered,'… monsters.'