Book description
Carnelian is of the Masters, cruel beings who rule their kingdom from
an earthly paradise hidden in a crater that is the navel of the world.
Soon after he is born, Carnelian's father takes him across the sea to
an island in the colourless north. Far from the Crater's rituals and
pomp, their household is allowed to become a family to the boy and the
world of the Masters fades to alluring fairy tale.
In deepest winter, years later, a ship comes riding before the
gales, three Masters her only cargo. As these giants remove their
masks of gold, Carnelian is awed by the light that seems to radiate
from their skin. In formal conclave they ask Carnelian's father to end
his exile and return with them to oversee the election of a new God
Emporer. His father's agreement feeds Carnelian's longing for the
world beyond the sea, but as the days pass Carnelian watches with
growing horror as the ship's needs devour his home. The Masters are
indifferent, imperious, concerned only with their blood politics,
their majesty. As his father becomes strangely powerless, Carnelian
strives to save his people, but when the ship turns her pro towards
the stormy sea he knows that he is abandoning them to famine among the
ruins of his former home.
This is the beginning of Carnelian's journey. The terror of the
tempest yields to the weary grind along the road, the climb up the
forbidding cliff wall to the Guarded Land and then the frantic rush
into the deep south. Carnelian's education, which began with the
starving of his people, proceeds with bitter lessons in bloodshed,
intrigue and betrayal. When they finally reach the Canyon of the Three
Gates, which leads into the Crater, Carnelian finds both love and
treachery, but it is here within the Heaven Wall that he will set in
motion the concluding events in a story already ten thousand years old.
Ricardo Pinto is Portuguese, but has lived and studied in Scotland
since he was a child. Previously he designed and programmed computer
games. This is his second novel. He lives in Edinburgh and is currently
working on the final volume in this trilogy.
