The Third God

by Ricardo Pinto

  Carnelian almost asked him, To what end? But he knew that the lust in Osidian’s eyes could only be for the Masks. Carnelian focused on his own aims: the salvation of the Plainsmen, and of the Lepers too if that should prove possible. Even here at the periphery of the Commonwealth the Earthsky seemed already far away; the Plainsmen, inconsequential. There was hope in that, but it would be foolish to underestimate the appetite the Wise had for being thorough. Osidian’s attempt to reclaim the Masks must surely fail. Once the eddies of his rebellion had dissipated, the Wise would turn their minds to the Plainsmen and then there would be a reckoning. He frowned. It always came back to the Wise. He shook himself free of these musings. Though in playing any game of strategy it was important to look many moves ahead, it was also crucial that, in doing so, one did not fail to make sure one’s next move was sound. ‘Assure me we can count upon the commanders.’

  ‘Now that we have broken the link between them and the Wise what choice will they have but to obey me?’

  Carnelian thought Osidian’s certainty sounded hollow. He shook his head. ‘This weapon we would wield does not yet feel firmly in our grasp. How might we be certain they would fight for us against Aurum?’

  ‘What does my Lord suggest?’ Osidian said, irritably.

  Carnelian grasped at what he knew of the Masters. ‘Can we not bribe them?’

  ‘Iron? Access to impregnating women from my House?’

  ‘That is a payment your brother could more convincingly offer than we in our present circumstances.’

  ‘What then?’ snapped Osidian.

  Carnelian pondered. Something occurred to him. ‘Why would they covet iron or access to the women of the House of the Masks?’

  Osidian frowned to show that he was uninterested in playing this game.

  ‘Is it not because they wish to rise to being of the Great?’

  Osidian sneered. ‘Shall I transfuse my blood into theirs to awake in them divine fire?’

  Carnelian smiled. ‘Offer to enfranchise them.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell them that, once you have regained what is rightfully yours, you will give their Houses the right to vote in elections; to participate in the division of the flesh tithe.’

  Osidian looked aghast. ‘What you suggest threatens the Balance itself.’

  Carnelian hardly heard him as the idea took flame within him. ‘Why stop with them? Why not enfranchise all the Lesser Chosen?’

  Osidian stared at Carnelian as if he were mad. ‘So you would break the Balance altogether?’

  ‘What of it?’

  Carnelian watched as Osidian’s eyes dulled. Was he considering the inconceivable?

  ‘At one stroke you would undermine any confidence the Wise have in the legions. It might sow havoc among them. It must surely weaken Aurum’s ability to resist you. Certainly it would give the commanders here a real reason to risk following you.’

  He could feel Osidian’s resistance weakening. ‘This one act could bring the Masks within your grasp, without need of the Wise, or the Great. You would tear her most powerful weapon from your mother’s hand. You might even be able to wield all the power of the Chosen yourself.’

  Osidian looked at him. ‘Except the Ichorian Legion.’

  What of it? Carnelian signed. He made a gesture of encompassment. ‘In the last resort, you could lay siege to Osrakum herself.’

  The moment he said that he realized he had gone too far. Osidian’s disbelief returned. Carnelian tried to retrieve the initiative. ‘It will not come to that, Osidian. The Wise will negotiate with you, but with their power diminished.’

  Uncertainty returned to Osidian’s face. ‘Once broken the Balance might be impossible to rebuild.’

  ‘Why would you wish to resume the chains that have bound your House for millennia?’

  Osidian spoke distractedly: ‘Not millennia. It has been only seven hundred years since my House lost the Civil War . . .’

  Carnelian had only a vague awareness of this. It had happened so long ago.

  Osidian began shaking his head. ‘Your scheme is flawed, Carnelian. The Lesser Chosen that are not beyond my reach within Osrakum are scattered among the cities of the Guarded Land.’

  ‘Surely you can get messages to them by heliograph or by sending couriers along the leftways?’

  Osidian shook his head. ‘Even if I had a seal, the watch-towers would not relay a message from me unless it was vouched for by the Wise.’

  Carnelian sank into disappointment. It had all seemed so easy. He had made the mistake of underestimating the systems of the Wise.

  ‘The Lesser Chosen know their place. They shall bow down to me,’ Osidian said, frowning. ‘You and I must return to all the traditional usages. We must resume the wearing of masks. The more we run our power along the usual channels the stronger the grip we will maintain upon their loyalty.’

  He looked around him at the chamber, at its furnishings, and seemed saddened by what he saw. ‘There is nothing to be gained by remaining here.’ His gaze fell on Carnelian. ‘It would be best if we were to relocate to somewhere closer to the cothon; that has now become the heart of our venture.’ He looked away. ‘We must begin to adhere to the Laws of Purity.’

  Carnelian felt as if he was being threatened with imprisonment. ‘Do you mean the full ritual protection?’

  ‘I do, my Lord.’

  ‘I have experienced it and it was extremely uncomfortable.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  ‘But what is the point in it? For years we have been exposed to the outer world and we are still intact.’

  Osidian scowled and touched the scar about his neck. ‘I do not think, my Lord, that we are wholly untouched by its filth and humiliations.’

  Carnelian was in no mood to back down. ‘If you felt like this why then did you pollute the purity of this place?’

  ‘I desired to make the commanders share something of our degradation. There, does that please you, Carnelian?’

  It was the pain in his eyes that made Carnelian falter. When he opened his mouth to say something more, Osidian chopped: Enough! ‘We are returned to the Commonwealth. Here none dare disobey her Laws.’

  Twelve masks looked back at Carnelian and Osidian. They had been donated, at Osidian’s demand, by the Legate and his commanders. He picked one up and turned it into the light. His lips curled. ‘Surely this is the work of an apprentice maskmaker. Look how thick the bridge of the nose is, how crude the nostril flare. And as for the eyes . . .’ He shook his head and picked up another.

  Carnelian’s fingers strayed to one that was reminding him of someone. He lifted it. It took him a while to see who it was. The mask had something about the mouth that made it resemble Fern’s. Carnelian was about to put it down, not wanting such a painful reminder; instead he placed it over his face. It seemed to fit well enough, though he knew that wearing it for any length of time would soon reveal where it did not perfectly fit his face. He turned to regard the ammonites kneeling, waiting with the strips of linen, the unguents and all the apparatus they had brought from the purgatory at Osidian’s command. The masks they wore had solid spirals for eyes. They had tried pleading excuses: that only the quaestor was qualified to administer the ritual protection; that the purity of everything in the sanctum had been contaminated when it had been breached by the black barbarians. Osidian had dismissed all their objections with contempt.

  Carnelian approached the prostrate men. ‘Here, I have chosen.’ He offered the mask and one of the ammonites reached out blindly. He put the mask with Fern’s lips into the trembling hands.

  When Osidian had selected a mask he commanded the ammonites to begin the procedure. Reluctantly, one of them rose to his feet, a length of beadcord in his hand. Reading it with his fingers he began to intone in Quya: ‘You who are Chosen shall now make ready to leave this place. You who are Chosen must take all precaution before leaving the sanctity of this place.’

  As the blind spiral eyes regarded h
im Carnelian recalled the time so long ago when he had endured this ritual in the Tower in the Sea. ‘We are supposed to give a response.’

  ‘A response?’ Osidian said.

  ‘Something about the obeying of the Law.’

  Osidian threw his hand up in irritation. ‘Ammonite, dispense with the catechism. Limit yourself to what is essential.’

  ‘Essential, Celestial?’

  ‘The practical elements,’ Osidian said, his voice rising dangerously.

  As the ammonite fell to the ground the forehead of his mask struck a dull clang on the floor.

  ‘The ranga, Celestial, the filtered mask, the embalming.’

  ‘Well, get on with it.’

  Carnelian glanced at Osidian, unsure why he was so angry. With surprise, he sensed Osidian was apprehensive. He had to admit he felt the same.

  Under the direction of the ammonite, the others began the procedure. Ranga shoes were produced, raised upon a green, a black and a red support. Osidian refused to anoint them himself and so it was the ammonites who applied the unguent. They stripped them and cleansed them with chill menthol. Climbing onto the ranga, Carnelian bore the tickle of their styluses as they painted warding symbols and designs upon his skin. When they had wafted the ink dry they submerged its itch beneath a glaze of myrrh. The odour reminded him first of Aurum, then of his wounded father, then once again, unexpectedly, of the scent of the mother trees. That brought tears.

  They began winding him in linen, the first layer sticking to the glaze. As more and more strips wound round him they tightened as they dried. The feeling of being trapped swelled in him almost to panic. He felt they were preparing him for his tomb. At last they brought the mask they had prepared. He regarded the hollow thing with horror. He shuddered as they fitted it to his face. His breathing hard and fast was restricted by the gold. It became a roaring in his ears as he forced the air in through the narrow mouth of the mask. The nostril pads smothered his nose. Ill-fitting, the mask squeezed out some liquid from the pads that dribbled down his lip into his mouth. Bitter, bitter taste and its numbing reek pushing cold needles up into the root of his nose to sting his eyes. Forced tears blinded him to what little he could see through the eyeslits.

  ‘We hide our faces from the world like lepers,’ Osidian was saying, but Carnelian barely registered the words as he struggled to choke back the horror that he was buried alive.

  MOBILIZATION

  A legion is maintained as an unassembled weapon not only by necessity, but also by design. Its assembly requires procedures subject to Chosen authorization as well as a properly maintained cothon mechanism. Naturally, we mediate all such authorization. Further, in operation a legion is wholly dependent on the logistics of render and naphtha supply.

  (extract from a beadcord manual of the Wise of the Domain Legions)

  AS CARNELIAN AND OSIDIAN APPEARED FROM THE LEGATE’S CHAMBERS, the Marula guarding the door fell back, gaping. Carnelian almost stumbled on his ranga. In their stares he saw too clearly what he had once more become. It sickened him to be back behind a mask looking down on fearful men. He wanted to cry out that he was still the same man they knew, but he had chosen his path. At least the Marula were on their feet. Something pale moved in the corner of his vision: Osidian’s hand shaping a command. Carnelian half turned, hearing the ammonites behind him settling to the ground. Glancing at each other, the warriors, reluctantly, began falling to their knees.

  In obedience to Osidian’s summons, the Legate and the other Lesser Chosen commanders were waiting for him by the door to the purgatory. A pall of myrrh smoke was rising from a ring of censers set around them. Only the Legate, and those subordinates who earlier had accompanied him to the cothon, stood outside the curtain of smoke, safe in their ritual protection. All knelt as Osidian approached. Carnelian noted that these Masters abased themselves more quickly than had the Marula. Osidian beckoned the Legate to approach him. Though his mask gave the man an air of imperious indifference, Carnelian detected anxiety in his gait and in the way he sank before Osidian.

  Osidian pointed to the collar at the Legate’s throat. ‘Surrender that to me, my Lord.’

  The Legate’s hand went up to the jade and iron. ‘Celestial, this was put about my neck by the hands of the God Emperor Themselves.’

  ‘The might of the Commonwealth properly belongs to the House of the Masks. It is in the name of that House I take back from you the legion you were lent.’

  As the Legate hesitated, Osidian turned his mask just enough to allow the Legate to see the Marula reflected in it. The man must have understood the warning, for he turned to the other Lesser Chosen. ‘You are my witnesses. I have no choice but to yield my command to the Lord Nephron.’

  This said, the Legate reached behind his neck, released the collar and offered it to Osidian, who coiled it around his fist. He stepped past the Master who had been Legate and addressed the other commanders. ‘I am now acting Legate. Serve me well, my Lords, and I shall reward you with blood and iron. Fail me and be assured that, if I do not destroy you, you will surely suffer the vengeance of the House of the Masks.’

  Osidian’s gold face regarded them a while, then he indicated the ammonites who had followed him from the tower. ‘These shall prepare you for the outer world. I do not know how long it will be before any of us shall walk again upon sanctified ground.’

  Even through the closed gates of the cothon, Carnelian could hear the squealing of brass. As they began to open they belched a reek of naphtha and dragons. The view widening between the parting portals was of a vast and complex machine come to life.

  Morunasa and his Oracles, coming to greet them, faltered. Dazzled by Carnelian’s and Osidian’s masks they were forced to squint. Morunasa found enough composure to address Osidian, but was ignored as the Master half turned to Carnelian. ‘Behold, my Lord, the sinews and technology of our power.’

  Carnelian could see the cothon in motion, shrunk and twisted in the gold of Osidian’s mask. Osidian slid forward, forcing the Oracles to move from his path. Carnelian followed, onto the road that curved off between the piers and the stable vaults. Hawsers now ran out from each vault, which they had to step over. Up on the piers men were greasing stone trackways and the bone-lined channels in which ropes ran as taut as bowstrings.

  Osidian came to a halt at the edge of a stable entrance. He turned to say something, but his words were lost amidst the rattle and groaning of counterweights falling in their niches. He pointed up. Carnelian saw above them the base of a dragon tower being hoisted, ponderously, off its supporting beams. When these were winched back, the tower base was left hanging, black against the sky. Along the curving run of piers, more were rising, creaking like the hulls of ships at sea.

  Movement just in front of Carnelian caused him to step back. The hawsers lying across his path were rising, curving ever more steeply up into the mouth of the nearest vault. As they lost their slack, it became clear they were pulling on something within the shadows. A dragon was being dragged out. Carnelian glanced between the piers towards the bright heart of the cothon. Rows of men, yoked to the hawsers, swayed in rhythm to a chant as they heaved. Other men appeared, carrying cruelly spiked billhooks. Seeing the Masters, they hesitated, but Osidian waved them on and they rushed into the stable. As their billhooks clawed at the monster, it let forth a terrible cry. The last time Carnelian had heard that sound was amidst fire and rolling sulphurous clouds. The cobbles under his feet gave a shudder. Another. Like the prow of a baran sliding out from its boathouse, the monster’s head began emerging from the gloom. The hawsers were attached to rings gripping its horns. Sun splashed up the hill of its forehead. He saw its white eye larger than a shield. Rusty tattoos coating its head seemed the dried encrustings left by a wash of blood.

  ‘Five, three, four twenties and one,’ Carnelian read. The glyph ‘Battle’ appeared in several places. ‘Bending River’ and ‘I cast down’ he saw, surrounded by other glyphs that folded illegibly into its hide as
it flexed. The inscriptions ran up the slope of its crest, sweeping in complex interweaving streams of signs, lapping the rugged cuticle of a horn, enringing its milky eye. Then its shoulder was dragged into the daylight. A cliff monumentally inscribed, spotted with the cartouches of the Lords who had ridden it, dates, paeans to its lineage as ancient as a House of the Chosen. At last Carnelian’s gaze was led to the ‘Nu’ roundel that rouged its forehead: a glyph, one of whose readings was ‘Annihilation’. Circling that was its battle name, pricked into its hide with raised scars. This was Heart-of-Thunder.

  ‘I must go and talk to the Quartermaster,’ cried Osidian over the tumult, ‘and then I will give the commanders an audience. Will you, my Lord, oversee the re-equipping of the Marula from the legionary stores?’

  Carnelian, unable to take his eyes off the vast monster as it was urged past, raised his hand in the affirmative. Each footfall shook the earth. Majestic, vast, Heart-of-Thunder slid between the piers and under the suspended tower base like a finger into a ring. When he next looked, Osidian was gone. He moved round behind the pier so he could gaze up at the monster’s head. Men were lifting bronze rings set into the cothon floor. Heart-of-Thunder shook his head. One of the hawsers whipped loose. Its yoke, yanking back, threw the men who had borne it onto their backs. They lost hold of it. Their cries of alarm mixed with the clatter the yoke made scraping across the cobbles. Other men pounced on it and, with the help of the bearers, they managed to bring the monster back under control.

  Carnelian continued to watch as the hawsers were made fast about the bronze rings. Thrice the monster, jerking back, threatened to tear the rings from the ground, but each time, unable to budge them, he subsided. Throughout, he rumbled a growl that reverberated through the cothon floor and off the piers, seeming to threaten a storm.

  A man Carnelian had not noticed before, who was sitting astride one of the monster’s lower horns, shuffled along it as if it were a log. When he reached the beast’s head he leaned against it just behind the moon of its lidless eye. Stroking Heart-of-Thunder’s hide, he seemed to be talking to him. Unbelievably, the monster stopped his growling and had soon become as motionless as stone. A barked command, then ropes snaked down the mountainous flanks. Men rushed into the squeeze between the dragon and the pier. Grabbing the ropes, they hung on them. Two massive counterweights began rising in their niches. Glancing up, Carnelian saw the four-prowed tower base descending. Its feet came to rest upon Heart-of-Thunder’s haunches and shoulders. As the feet pressed into his hide, the monster let forth a bellow that rattled the piers. While the keeper calmed him again, others were circling him, peering up at his muscles, tapping them with the curve of their billhooks. When they were satisfied, they waved a signal and men leaping up into the niches took hold of the counterweights and began swinging them in and out like bells. At last, with one coordinated action, the counterweights were swung back onto shelves. Their ropes sagged, as Heart-of-Thunder’s back took the full weight of the tower base.