The gate opened a little and, from behind it, a silver face emerged with solid spiral eyes. ‘Please enter this purgatory, Seraphim. The procedures of purification await you.’
As Carnelian and Osidian approached, more ammonites appeared, hunched as each gripped with both hands the handle of a ladle in which blue fire burned. At a command it was poured over the ground before them. Flames ran across the earth. Carnelian and Osidian were urged forward onto the now purified ground. Fingers fumbled at their feet, trying to free them of their polluted footwear. A hissing made Carnelian turn to see more arcs of blue flame being ladled over the ground on which he and Osidian had walked. The palanquins they had come in were already aflame. The Marula were backing away, eyes bulging.
‘Enough! I have no patience for this,’ boomed Osidian, chasing ammonites from his path. ‘Morunasa, come with me. Bring your people.’
The Oracle gathered up the Marula and they swarmed after him. Ammonites flung themselves in their way, screeching, forbidding entry, but the Marula beat them aside. Some of the ammonites lost their blinding-masks and fell, grovelling, on the still burning earth. Carnelian glanced at the Legate and his commanders, who were watching in stiff disbelief, then followed after the Marula, who were pouring through the gate Osidian had thrown open.
Drugged smoke unfurled like ferns in the gloomy halls beyond. Carnelian felt a languor settle about his shoulders. His face began to swell, his bones to liquefy. He recognized the feeling from his entry into Osrakum. The drug was meant to encourage their submission to intrusive cleansing. A deafening clatter brought his eyes back into focus. Swaying, the Marula were knocking smoking brass bowls from their tripods. Carnelian squinted against the undulating surface of a pool in which mouths and tongues of light were kissing, separating. Backing away into the shadows were metal faces distorting reflections of their whole drunken procession. He saw a rectangle of daylight opening far away and did what he could to herd the Marula towards it. At last he was stumbling out with them into eddying daylight.
He found himself with Morunasa and the Marula in a gully between limestone walls pierced with gates. The place was already in afternoon shadow. Only the crest of the eastern wall still caught the sun. Bronze hoops held poles whose banners were swimming in a breeze. Guardsman niches were empty. A gate opened a crack. For a moment he glimpsed an eye widening with horror. Then the gate slammed closed and a voice beyond it began keening an alarm. Bolts were shot home. Commotion spread beyond the walls and a scurrying, so that Carnelian felt he was invading a termite city. Faces peered down from the battlements above. Carnelian felt as shunned as a leper.
He located Osidian, a shadowy shape striding away along the gully towards where a tower rose, tier on sculptured tier. Morunasa asked for instructions, but Carnelian ignored him and set off after Osidian. The Marula opened a path through their midst to let him through. Carnelian was only vaguely aware of their faces. He was concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. As the effect of the drug faded, each footfall felt more solid than the last. When he caught up with Osidian, he spoke: ‘Why . . . why break through?’
‘I had my reasons,’ Osidian growled.
Carnelian saw no point in pressing him further and fell in step with him. Behind them came scuffling Marula.
The gully terminated at a gate from which the two faces of the Commonwealth sneered down. Carnelian and Osidian threw their weight against the bronze and the gate opened, exhaling a waft of lilies. Penetrating the gloomy hall beyond, Carnelian noticed figures flitting away through openings all along its rim. Members of the Legate’s household, no doubt. He glanced round anxiously to make sure the Marula were keeping close; he did not want any massacres. Huddled hesitantly on the threshold, they came when he beckoned them.
They crossed the hall among the echoes of their creeping footfalls. Carnelian did not blame the Marula for their wariness. Even to him this place felt like a tomb. The pillars on either side seemed guardians. Figures writhing in the pavement beneath his feet might have been a view down into the Underworld.
Their route took them within sight of archways that opened into the gold of late afternoon. Carnelian longed to escape through them, but Osidian always turned away into the shadows. The cold grandeur seeped into Carnelian’s heart until he began to shiver. The polished floor seemed frozen meat whose veins had turned to stone. Columns might have been the corpses of trees. As he walked he became aware he was clutching his marumaga robe. Its coarse but honest weave brought him some little comfort.
They skirted one last court by means of a cloister. Walking close to its edge Carnelian was able to see they were nearing the tower whose tiers were borne upon the curved backs of humbled men. The cloister curved to deliver them to a stair that they began ascending. They passed chambers panelled with malachite and purple porphyry whose sterile beauty Osidian declared to be that of reception chambers. ‘It is the Legate’s private halls we seek.’
Higher they climbed until they came to a landing where they were challenged by guardsmen bearing the Legate’s cypher on their faces. Osidian stayed the Marula with a command then climbed the last few steps towards the guardsmen and their levelled spears. If his height had not been enough to alert them that he was a Master, his disregard for their weapons proved it. Their spear blades clattered to the floor as they knelt.
‘Clear this level. These chambers I claim for my own. Any creature left behind shall be slain.’
Carnelian had reached Osidian’s side and could now see the great door upon which the men had been standing guard. Abandoning their weapons they fled through it into the chambers beyond. He noticed that the stair continued climbing. ‘The roof,’ he said, remembering the heliograph he suspected to be up there. Osidian nodded and bade Morunasa approach him. He selected some of the Marula to stand guard upon the door. ‘Take these others,’ he said to the Oracle, ‘and bring me anyone you find up there.’
The Oracle was about to scale the steps when Osidian stayed him. ‘I want them alive.’
The Oracle darted a nod and soon he and most of the Marula had disappeared up the stairs. Carnelian waited with Osidian as the Legate’s household cowered past to scurry down the steps. The guardsmen were the last to leave.
‘Nothing living?’ Osidian asked them.
‘Nothing, Master.’
As they ducked past him and away down the stair after the others, Osidian indicated to the Marula the recesses flanking the door in which they were to stand guard. Then he and Carnelian passed into the chamber beyond.
They emerged into a suite of rooms more humanly proportioned, graced with gilded furniture, with hangings of featherwork, walls pierced by ivory doors. Wandering, they came into a chamber in which bronze lecterns shaped like hands cradled books. Osidian took one, opened its jewelled cover and read. He looked at Carnelian.
‘An inferior edition,’ he said, stroking the binding.
There were tears running down his face. This sadness, that was also joy, made Osidian look young again. As they explored further together Carnelian watched him sidelong. Osidian professed disdain for such provincial architecture, aloofness towards the minor treasures that were all about them, but when he turned his gaze from something his fingers would linger on it a while as if he feared that, should he lose touch of it, it might disappear. Indeed, the polished stone in which they moved as shadows, the hanging silks that floated on the breeze like smoke, the narrow views some windows gave down into the hazy infinities of the land below, all these things seemed unreal, so that it was as if they moved together through a dream.
At last they came to a chamber in which water ran in channels in the walls. Here Osidian let his marumaga robe crumple to the floor and soon was standing in an iris-scented waterfall. He beckoned for Carnelian to join him. The eyes looking at him had something of the boy in the Yden, but now they were set in a face that had been hardened by pain. The water was making Osidian’s maggot wounds redder than his mouth. The mark of the rope was
livid round his neck. His once flawless limbs had been weathered by the margins of garments into different shades so that he seemed assembled from unmatched pieces of ivory. Pity became an ache in Carnelian’s chest. He felt anew the agony of loss for what Osidian had been and sadness for what he had become. Undressing, he joined him in the waterfall. They stood together, sheathed in its warm pulsating embrace. Osidian’s eyes seemed emeralds lost in the sea. ‘Forgive me.’
Carnelian’s heart responded to the appeal. There was still a part of him that yearned for the way it had been between them, but he could not so easily forget the dead. ‘Forgiveness is not in my gift,’ he said and endured the hurt that came into Osidian’s face.
‘At least, stay with me.’
Compassion and the dregs of their love fought within Carnelian with what his heart felt he owed the dead. At last he yielded nothing more than a nod though even that felt like a betrayal.
A clanging brought them back to the outer door. Putting his ammonite mask over his face, Carnelian opened the door. Morunasa was on the landing. He moved aside to indicate a huddle of ammonites ringed by Marula. There was another ammonite laid out on the floor. Carnelian approached the prone figure, crouched, then, using one hand to hold his own mask, with the other he released the ammonite’s. Beneath was a sallow face marred with examination tattoos. Carnelian leaned closer. ‘He’s dead.’
Osidian had followed him. ‘It is the quaestor of this city.’
Carnelian turned to look up at him. ‘How can you tell?’
Osidian interpreted for him some of the markings on the corpse’s face. Then he turned on Morunasa. ‘Did I not tell you to bring all of them to me alive?’
The Oracle presented a stiff face. ‘We found him like that on the roof.’
Carnelian leaned closer to the corpse. ‘Look at how his tongue is swollen.’
Osidian crouched to see for himself. ‘Poison.’
Carnelian was about to ask how Osidian knew that, but then remembered that he had grown up at court where such things were not uncommon.
Osidian rose and stood statue still. Carnelian sensed he was pondering something and chose not to disturb him. Instead he addressed Morunasa. ‘On the roof, you say?’
‘Beside one of those sun machines.’
That was suggestive. Carnelian turned his mask on the huddle of ammonites. They drew away from him as he approached. ‘Have any heliograph messages been sent or received from here today or yesterday?’
He saw himself reflected in the silver of their faces. He raised his hands and signed the command: Unmask. They did so, hesitantly, glancing round at the Marula, their sallow tattooed faces sweaty with fear.
‘Answer me.’
One braver than the rest shook his head. ‘We do not know, Seraph. We have been forbidden the roof.’
‘By the quaestor?’
The ammonite’s eyes flicked to the corpse and back again. ‘That is so, Seraph.’
Without a word, Osidian turned to the stairs and began climbing them. Carnelian assured Morunasa that neither he nor his men had done any wrong, then, telling him to wait, Carnelian followed Osidian.
When they reached the roof the dizzying view drove everything else from Carnelian’s mind. He approached the edge. Laid out at his feet was the Earthsky, turned to copper by the setting sun. Osidian was squinting into the west. Carnelian joined him. Against the liquid gold horizon the limestone margin of the Guarded Land, scored and gouged by gullies, seemed gnawed and incised bone. Away from its rim, the rock became stained with earth like a crust of dried blood. Further inland, his eyes found the knife slash of the Ringwall. He followed this until he came to a thorn. Another watch-tower. He glanced back at the heliograph and saw that it was to that tower it was aligned. He made the inevitable deduction. ‘The quaestor sent a message to Osrakum, then killed himself.’
Osidian shook his head. ‘It seems more likely that he received a command to kill himself.’
‘From the Wise?’
Osidian turned to him. ‘Who else?’
‘But surely there wasn’t enough time for the signal to get here—’
Osidian turned back to gaze at the watch-tower. ‘No, there wasn’t.’
Carnelian felt suddenly exposed, as if at that very moment the Wise had lifted the roof off the world and were peering in at them. ‘How could they know we were coming?’
Osidian shook his head, a look of resignation on his face. ‘It is a fool who underestimates the Wise.’
Carnelian contemplated their situation. ‘But why would they want the quaestor dead?’
‘Perhaps they feared he would fall into my hands.’
Carnelian could not work it out. ‘What could he possibly reveal to us?’
Osidian shook his head again, dejection in his face and posture. ‘Their strategy, or some trap they have set for us.’
Carnelian realized how much he feared Osidian would fail. ‘What shall we do?’
Osidian gazed at him. ‘We proceed as before. What else can we do?’
Carnelian could think of nothing. As Osidian made his way back to the steps, Carnelian remained behind a while, gazing at the watch-tower, almost hoping to see it flash. If the Wise had them defeated he would rather find out there and then. Bleakly, he turned towards the steps.
Carnelian woke lying beside Osidian. Though he had agreed to sleep at his side he had not allowed anything more. Asleep, Osidian regained enough of his unsullied youth for Carnelian to see in him the boy he had loved. His heart ached as he gave in to the seduction of imagining they were still in Osrakum, still lovers. He stared at the ceiling, watching its gilded vault pulse with the pounding of his heart. That was a dream; the massacres were not.
He had to get away from him. He slipped from under the feather blankets. The floor seemed ice. The walls banded with dark stone oppressed him and made him shiver. He drew on his marumaga robe and went in search of light. The next chamber was lit by a faraway opening. Shafts of sunlight beckoned him onto a balcony. Blinded, he advanced into the morning not caring that the sun would taint his skin further. As he basked in its warmth, its wholesomeness, only slowly did his sight return and then he saw he was perched on the rim of the sky. Bleached green mottled with gold grew purple towards a far horizon. It seemed the whole Earthsky was there at his feet. He closed his eyes and breathed the scent that was on the wind. His heart jumped as the world he had known there came alive again. He was sure he could smell the musk of the fernland sweetened by magnolia. He felt in his heart how clean and simple his life had been there. He longed for the murmur of the mother trees. He ached for the touch of Akaisha’s warm hand, for the wise laughter in her eyes.
‘We must talk.’
Carnelian turned and saw Osidian the murderer. He watched him falter under his gaze and was glad of it. Osidian retreated into the shadows. Carnelian tried to return to his reverie, but Osidian had snuffed out the vision of the Earthsky. Only tragedy remained and a sickening regret. He leaned on the balustrade and looked down. Far below in the gorge the blue river frayed white as it tumbled over falls. He was sure he could hear a whisper of its roaring. He gazed downstream, where the gorge carved its curves west to the Leper Valleys. A yearning for Poppy and Fern flared in him, but he crushed it. Regret was an indulgence he could not afford. He straightened and returned to the cold grandeur of his new life.
It was Marula who brought them breakfast. Carnelian vaguely knew two of their faces but, again, there was no Sthax. Plates of white jade, bowls beaten from several colours of folded gold, all sat incongruously in their calloused hands. As they came nearer their stale sweat overpowered the perfume of the food. It was only when Osidian dismissed them that Carnelian found it possible to appreciate the saffron pungency of the porridge, the rosewater sweetness of the hri cakes.
Osidian frowned, gazing at the faraway doors closing behind the Marula. ‘They must be washed and those barbarian corselets disposed of. Their ebony necks would look handsome collared with gold
; their limbs adorned with greens, with scarlets. At the very least they must be made to wear legionary cuirasses. If they are to join my household, they must look the part.’
Carnelian noticed that Osidian was studiously avoiding eye contact. He watched him begin to eat, then took a mouthful of the golden porridge. The flavour assaulted him. He ate more, greedily, but subsequent mouthfuls failed to match the first. Soon it seemed too rich. He thought of sharing what he was experiencing, but the distaste on Osidian’s face made him pause. Sensing he was being watched Osidian masked his previous expression. Whatever he was feeling he was clearly determined not to communicate it.
Nibbling one of the cakes, Carnelian looked around him. The magnificence left him homesick. That feeling centred him. He had been afraid the Masterly pleasures would seduce him. Having justifiable hope they would not made it easier to contemplate continuing to play the game. ‘What plans have you for the huimur, my Lord?’
Osidian looked at him coldly. Carnelian waited, then lost patience. ‘Though we may not be lovers we can still be allies.’
Osidian frowned. ‘Even granted the Wise may know we are here, I believe we still have time.’
‘Because you are convinced the Wise will dare use no one but Aurum against us?’
Osidian gave a nod. ‘If the Gods be with us, we shall be ready to deal with the Lord Aurum.’
There was something in his tone that made Carnelian realize Osidian still had hopes of bringing Aurum over to his side. This would be to renege on the promise he had made to the Lepers. Carnelian dismissed a build-up of outrage. Aurum’s defection was unlikely. He became aware Osidian was watching him. ‘And what then, my Lord? What do you envisage once we have defeated Aurum?’
Osidian scrutinized him a while before going on. ‘We shall turn the Powers against each other. My appearance will weaken my mother and my brother. The revelation of the role Aurum has played will weaken the Wise. Many of the Great will take my part. The Wise will be forced to negotiate with me.’
The Third God Page 22
