The Third God

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘How does my Master wish to be adorned?’

  Carnelian could see how the prospect of fulfilling what was clearly one of his functions calmed the boy. He looked for his cloak and robe, but could see nothing as drab as those among the fleshy tones that Aurum favoured, the glowing golds. ‘Something plain?’

  The boy frowned a little, then edged away. As he did so, other boys appeared, each moving to one of a row of lapis lazuli chests the colour of predawn sky. Lifting the lids with willowy arms they drew up robes and turned to display them: thickly embossed samite encrusted with jewels, mosaicked with iridescent feathers. Carnelian rose to his feet swaying, even as the pain abated in his head. He walked among them and they bowed a little, turning their heads as if they were detecting his movement from eddies in the air. Appalled by the awful magnificence of the garments, he settled for a relatively sombre robe that glimmered with rubies so dark they seemed almost jet and that, more importantly, seemed to be the least impregnated with Aurum’s odour.

  The boys guided him to a place encompassed by mirrors of gold. There they worked on him, their amethyst eyes turning black, pulling strigils from racks, wielding brushes and pads, glazing his skin with pigments, floating undergarments over him that might have been stitched together from the wings of dragonflies. He submitted to them and was several times fooled into thinking they could see him when their stone eyes caught a flake of light. He disliked how tall he looked among them when reflected in the mirrors, above which rose the quivering limbs of the machines.

  Finally they masked him, then slipped away. Startled, Carnelian glanced round, but was too slow to see them disappear. He was alone, but for the other sinister versions of himself inhabiting all those other mirror worlds. He was wondering why it was Aurum had so much need to see himself, when there was a rapping at a distant door.

  ‘Enter,’ he said, echoes rippling some of the mirror worlds.

  The door gasped open and guardsmen entered with the faces he remembered, round and yellow and bisected by Aurum’s tattoo. So familiar were they that, when a dark figure approached, he drew back, alarmed, certain it must be Aurum himself. Then he saw the figure was far too diminutive and, as its mask caught the light, its metal was too wintry to be gold. The guardsmen knelt to form an avenue flanked by their forked spears, down which the quaestor approached him. The man came close enough for Carnelian to smell the myrrh that wafted off his dark brocades as he knelt and bowed his head. ‘Seraph,’ he breathed, offering up a folded parchment.

  Carnelian took the letter and turned its seal to the light. It was not bright enough for him to read the impressions in the purple wax. Besides, at that moment, he was anxious to find out what had happened to him. A sudden thought caused him to glance up at Aurum’s guardsmen. ‘Where are my Marula?’

  The quaestor curled so tight the forehead of his mask clinked against the floor. ‘They were sent back to the cothon, Seraph. It is not permitted that they should enter here save through quarantine.’

  Carnelian was trying to remember what he could about the moment he had entered the purgatory with them, but he could recall almost nothing. He sensed the quaestor’s unease. ‘Unmask.’

  The man lifted his head from the floor, but not enough for the light to reveal his metal face. ‘Seraph?’

  ‘Remove your mask.’

  Another clink as the man abased himself. He reached behind his head and fumbled his mask loose, then laid it upon the floor as if it were made of the thinnest glass.

  ‘Look at me, ammonite.’

  The quaestor hesitated, but then his pale face came up all written over with numbers. His eyes were still cast down.

  ‘How did I end up here?’

  The quaestor suppressed a shrug, licked his lips. ‘My Lord the Seraph reacted badly to one of the purifying drugs. We are mortified, but—’

  ‘I have been through many such purifications and never before have been affected thus . . .’

  Numbers folded into the wrinkles of his grimace. ‘The creatures that entered the purgatory on the insistence of the Seraph panicked like animals. They overthrew censers. They spilled fluids. Because of this, prodigious quantities of the drugs were released . . .’ The quaestor cracked his forehead against the stone floor. ‘Your servants did what they could for the Seraph. Forgive them for what they could not do.’

  Carnelian did not feel it likely he would get much more out of him. It could wait. Curiosity over the letter now took precedence in his mind. He felt the seal. The wax was smooth. At first he did not understand, but then it occurred to him. It must be from Osidian, who had no seal to use. He broke it open and saw with some excitement that the glyphs were indeed drawn in Osidian’s hand. He read it.

  Expect visitors in the cothon. Equip them as best you can.

  Carnelian turned the parchment, looking for more, but the rest of it was blank. Osidian had written nothing that could not be read by anyone. Carnelian read the letter again. Visitors? The quaestor, fidgeting, drew his eyes. Carnelian’s mask hid a bitter smile. It was fully possible the wax had been broken, the letter read, then resealed. What did it matter? Its import seemed innocuous enough. His mind turned again to what had happened when he had entered the purgatory. The quaestor’s explanation did not ring true. Carnelian regarded the letter. Visitors? What visitors? Obliqueness from Osidian was always a reason to worry. Carnelian tried to gather his thoughts. How could he think with all these people grovelling before him? His gaze fell on the face of one of the guardsmen. Aurum’s mark there on that round face filled him with disgust. He shaped a gesture of dismissal and turned his back on them. As he waited, listening to them creep away, he became aware that, at the far end of the chamber, there was the merest diamond-bright crack. The promise of clean daylight drew him and a lust for unperfumed air to breathe. To his delight, as he approached, a waft sliced fresh through the stale lily odour of the chamber. He had to squint against the glare leaking through the crack like first light on a horizon. Shadows appeared; their litheness suggested they were the amethyst-eyed boys.

  ‘I wish to gaze upon the day,’ he rumbled.

  They released a blinding flood of light that brought back his headache. He paused until the spasm had subsided, then strode into the blaze. He turned his face up towards the sun, waiting until he could feel its heat seeping through the gold of his mask. The scene began emerging round him. More of Aurum’s guards kneeling. Stretching away behind them, a garden. Commanding the guardsmen to remain where they were, he wandered out along a path, delighting in the open space, in the dappled shade. Magnolia perfume soaking the air for a moment took him back to the Koppie. Disturbed, he pushed on. At last he reached a ragged wall, broken down here and there by dragon-blood trees. Moving into the shade of one he gripped its trunk. At his feet yawned a canyon. This could be nothing else than the same Pass they had tried to fight their way up, only to be repulsed by Aurum’s fire. He pondered this, feeling again the agony of separation from his friends. So much had happened since, it seemed an age ago. He peered down that chasm, his heart yearning to carry him on wings down to the green land below. In his melancholy, it was some time before he noticed the dust hazing up from the canyon. At first he thought it smoke until he saw its pallidness was mixed with rust. He had seen enough such clouds to know that only a saurian herd could lift so much, or dragons, or perhaps a great body of riders. He tensed. Osidian had told him to expect visitors. Visitors! His eyes tried to pierce the hazy canyon below. He fought down panic. He had suspected Osidian had some hidden reason to take Makar. Those he had believed safe were now returning into the very heart of danger. A seedling of joy grew up through the dread. He turned his back on the canyon and returned to the tower. He must go to the cothon to see what could be done to avoid what he now most feared.

  The outer doors opened as he approached them, revealing a staircase descending into gloom and shadows. As he reached the top of the stair, a rushing sound rose up from the vast hall so that he imagined some waterfa
ll had been released, perhaps to cool the air, but then the disturbance ceased as quickly as it had begun. When he searched the gloom on either side of the steps, he could just make out figures in serried ranks. What he had heard was their obeisance. Another figure was ascending the steps towards him. As it looked up at him its mask caught the light and he knew it must be the quaestor. He descended to meet him.

  The quaestor knelt on the steps. ‘What is the Seraph’s desire?’

  Carnelian looked over the edge of the stair to the floor with its retainers. They must all be of Aurum’s household. He spotted some distant doors. ‘Is that the way out of the sanctum?’

  The quaestor’s mask came up. ‘It is, Seraph.’

  Continuing his descent, Carnelian heard the quaestor creeping after him. When he reached the ground, he moved off along an avenue flanked by kneeling guardsmen. Beyond them he glimpsed small shapes in the shadows. He was halfway to the door when he realized they must all be children. He became uneasy, feeling as if half the flesh tithe was prostrate around him. Was it possible Aurum’s household consisted almost entirely of children?

  As he reached the doors, they clanked apart. Through them he saw the structures of the fortress wavering in the haze. He could make out the high wall of the cothon and the city itself, looking as if it were made of sand, verminous with windows, spired, tottering-towered. A hot breeze bore upon it scents, none of which lingered long enough for him to identify. A smell of life, though, that he longed to breathe free of the prison of his mask.

  A shrill cry made him turn. The quaestor came scurrying towards him. ‘The Seraph cannot mean to walk?’

  ‘Can I not?’

  Carnelian followed a paved gully. Ribbed limestone rose up on either side, pierced with gates and slits. The echoes of his footsteps combined with those of the quaestor’s. No tyadra stood guard upon the gates. The rings on either side held no heraldic banner poles. The place felt desolate, abandoned, but he was certain that beyond those pale walls must lurk the households the Masters had left behind when they went on campaign with Aurum. He had the uncanny feeling that, through each slit, eyes were watching his progress.

  The quaestor several times attempted to lecture him about the Law and its demands. Carnelian knew that, however much he resented these, it had too often been others who had had to pay for his defiance. Moreover, it would be foolish to ignore its edicts, however distasteful, where doing so might diminish his status and thus weaken what little power he had. So, by the time they reached the purgatory door, he was ready to submit to the full ritual protection. As ammonites disrobed him and began inscribing his skin, he told himself that whosoever the visitors might turn out to be, he was determined he would not return to Aurum’s tower with its household of children. If there were no alternative, he would quit the fortress and return to the dragons and Osidian.

  He had agreed to be carried to the cothon in a palanquin. First the quaestor had told him that there were no aquar for him to ride, then he had pointed out that it was too far to go wearing ranga. He wished he had not given in. The palanquin was turning out to be no faster than walking. All he had done was trade the exhaustion of tottering along on his ranga for imprisonment in this box, where there was nothing to do but fret about who the visitors might be, and why they had come. From time to time he peered out through a grille in the hope of seeing that they had arrived but each time he was presented with what seemed an identical view of the crumbling city. Attempts to resolve its pale intricacies wearied his eyes. Depressingly, the only difference between one scene and the next was the shadows, which had lengthened so that he became anxious that it would be nightfall before he reached the cothon.

  At last he began hearing a sound like distant sea. Straining, he managed to distinguish in the hubbub countless voices ghosted by echoes. As a hush descended he was able to hear the snuffling of aquar. His heart pounding, he put an eye to the grille. All there was to see was a wall of bronze that had to be one leaf of an open cothon gate. He could no longer bear to travel blind and tapped on the palanquin wall. As it settled to the ground he put on his mask and readied himself to confront whatever might lie outside.

  Sliding open the door, he saw his bearers kneeling. Two ammonites placed his ranga on the cobbles, then, gathering his robe, he climbed out onto them. Cries shrilled around him as the ammonites gave commands. Rising to his full height, he turned. A shrouded crowd confronted him. Lepers. Though these were the visitors he had expected, he was still shocked. He had been so convinced he would never see them again. A forbidding bulk looming behind their tide turned his shock to alarm. A dragon, the bright, uneven cross of her horns turned on the Lepers. Earth-is-Strong, like a ship upon a grey sea. Almost he surged forward, shouting frantic commands to her crew that they must not open fire. The realization that her pipes were unlit brought a debilitating relief. The ammonites were still shrilling, motioning marumaga to advance on the Lepers. Tentatively, the legionaries approached the crowd who were, it seemed, determined to stand their ground.

  ‘They must abase themselves before the Master,’ one of the ammonites called out.

  The legionaries menaced the Lepers, but their shrouded mass seemed uncowed. Fearing bloodshed Carnelian strode forward, commanding the legionaries to desist, making gestures towards the ammonites that silenced their haranguing. As the legionaries retreated, he saw it was only the first few ranks of the Lepers that had confronted them; the rest and major part of the crowd were mostly turned to face Earth-is-Strong – many of them still mounted. He glanced up to make sure the dragon’s pipes were still not lit. Then he noticed, with pleasure and relief, Sthax and the rest of his Marula to one side. He decided it was better not to get them involved, so located among the legionaries those whose stance emanated authority. ‘Attend me,’ he said, motioning them to approach. He scanned their collars and found the one he had hoped among them. ‘Quartermaster, send a command to that dragon that she is to withdraw to the other side of the cothon.’

  ‘As you command, Master.’ The Quartermaster bowed and sent one of his men hurrying away to do Carnelian’s bidding, then approached him, eyes cast down. Carnelian sensed he was about to be petitioned to make a decision as to what to do with this invasion. Uncertain, he turned away from the man and approached the Lepers, who recoiled from him. He put his hands up to stay them. ‘I would speak with your leaders.’

  He could see no faces in their cowls, but sensed their fear. A few glanced back towards Earth-is-Strong. ‘I’ve given instructions that the dragon is to retreat. She’ll not harm you.’

  The people before him stayed as they were, uneasy, afraid of the dragon, afraid of him. He wished he could remove his mask, climb down from his ranga, walk among them. There must be some there who would know him. Of course, such actions would be madness. Any who saw his naked face the Law would have destroyed.

  It was only once Earth-is-Strong started moving away that the whole crowd began turning towards him. He noticed an eddying in their midst as someone came through them. The front ranks parted and two figures emerged. Carnelian’s heart leapt into his throat. Even shrouded as a Leper, he could tell by her size, by her gait, that one of them was Poppy. Both seemed very small as they came to stand before him. Carnelian gazed down at Poppy. When she looked up, her face appeared in the shadow of her cowl. He yearned for a smile of recognition, but her mouth was a line in a face tight with fear. It took a moment for him to realize it was not his face she was seeing, but an unhuman one wrought from gold. He felt trapped behind it. Everyone was waiting for him but, anxious about what effect his voice might have on Poppy, he was reluctant to speak. He turned his mask enough to see, on either side, ammonites, keepers of a merciless Law, as well as marumaga legionaries with cruelly hooked poles. The Lepers greatly outnumbered them, but they were, effectively, unarmed. Besides, if there were a riot, he might lose control of Earth-is-Strong. Still, he had to say something. ‘Why have you come?’

  Poppy’s eyes widened as she stared up at
him but, thankfully, she showed no other sign that she had recognized his voice.

  It was the shrouded figure beside her who spoke. ‘We’ve come to honour the agreement we made with the Master Osidian.’ It was Lily.

  ‘I had understood that agreement fulfilled.’

  ‘There are things you don’t know.’

  Her tone convinced Carnelian she knew to whom she was talking. Its lack of reverence was causing agitation among the legionaries. Carnelian glanced round and saw, anxiously, how closely the silver masks of the ammonites were watching Lily and Poppy.

  ‘You must leave the way you came.’

  ‘We must honour our agreement.’

  Even through her shroud Carnelian could see the stubborn angle of Lily’s head and it made him angry. He had trusted her to protect Poppy. ‘What possessed you to agree to anything that would bring you and all these others into the jaws of your enemies?’

  When Poppy took a step forward and fixed burning eyes on his mask, marumaga moved to intercept her, but Carnelian jerked his hand in a gesture of command that made them retreat.

  ‘We’re free people,’ said Poppy. ‘Free to decide what risks we take.’

  Lily’s bandaged hand clasped Poppy’s shoulder. Carnelian was glad when he saw Poppy accepting its restraint.

  ‘Everyone here’ – Lily swept her free hand round to take in the crowd – ‘has suffered terrible loss. All are here moved by an implacable hatred of the one who has inflicted those losses upon us.’

  Carnelian saw how resolutely the Lepers stood, while the legionaries, who had less to fear from him, cowered in his presence. He could not help feeling proud of these outcasts. If there were to be any hope of reversing this disaster he must know what further agreement they had made with Osidian, but this was neither the time nor the place to ask such questions. There was one question, however, his heart would not be denied. ‘And the Ochre?’