The Third God

by Ricardo Pinto

  Carnelian saw how scared Poppy was. ‘Whatever happens, in a day, two at the most, I’ll cross the water to you.’ He buried deep his dread that, on that day, he might be coming to say goodbye to them for ever. He saw Fern’s misery. As their eyes met, Carnelian was sure Fern guessed something of what he was trying to hide.

  ‘We need to descend to the ground now,’ he said, hoping Fern would accept this. When his lover gave an imperceptible nod, Carnelian felt a lightening of his burden. Whatever happened, he convinced himself that Fern would survive and would take care of Poppy and Krow. He managed a smile for the two youngsters. ‘You must take as much care as if the people on the ground were raveners.’ He was glad to see the colour draining from their faces. He remasked and bade his officers see again. The marumaga sneaked glances at Fern and the others. Carnelian could see their shock and appreciated how strange it must seem to them, in spite of not understanding a word, the intimate way he talked to his people.

  As he rose painfully from the command chair, he raised his hand to stop Fern coming to help him. Putting weight on his wounded leg, he was sure it would carry him. He pulled the Suth Ruling Ring from his finger and thrust it into Fern’s hand. ‘Give it to the eldest of my brothers.’ He considered urging all kinds of advice on him, but the handing over of the ring would have to be enough to show his brothers how important Fern was to him. ‘Tell my father everything that you know.’

  Fern raised his eyebrows, but then nodded and closed his hand around the ring. Carnelian sent him ahead, then Poppy and Krow after him. When they had disappeared through the hole in the deck, he turned to his officers. ‘Hold her here until I return. You will take commands from none but me.’

  The two men jerked their heads. ‘As you command, Master.’

  Satisfied, Carnelian turned to the ladder.

  Leaning a little on Fern, Carnelian watched ammonites swarming the palanquins. Masters emerging from them were coaxed by the silver-masked ammonites towards the ragged wall of smoke that was rising at the head of the Turtle Steps. There, from among the ranks of purple figures, rose the taller shapes of their masters the Wise, who, though motionless, seemed to be overseeing the reception of the Chosen. Like ants the ammonites clipped the finery from the Masters. Robes as bright as butterfly wings were cast into braziers, where their iridescent colours soon turned black. Divested of their gorgeous carapaces, the Masters grew thinner, paler. Stripped of their distinguishing heraldry, they were revealed as being very much alike as they approached the wall of smoke. Next they were flayed of their ritual protection. The windings came away like dead skin, revealing the white beneath. Painfully thin they seemed, in their icicle nakedness. Vulnerable. Wearing nothing but their masks they disappeared into the smoke.

  The ache in Carnelian’s leg stung him into motion towards a nearby clump of Sapients. Closer, he became aware of the figure at the heart of their conclave. The stone surmounting his staff was emberous whilst all the rest were emerald. The murmuring of the homunculi faltered. Carnelian recognized the red finial with a sinking heart. It was too late to retreat. The eyes of the homunculi indicated the awareness of their masters to his approach.

  ‘My Lord Law,’ he said, dismayed that the Grand Sapient had reached the cleansing cordon before him. It was going to be harder to get what he wanted.

  ‘Suth Carnelian,’ said Law’s homunculus. Neither had turned towards him.

  Before Carnelian had time to marshal his thoughts, the eyes of the homunculi released him to fix upon another Sapient approaching. The staff with which he walked gave off a ruby glint above his pale fist. A homunculus was holding his other hand. When close, the little man took the staff with one hand, while guiding his master’s fingers to his throat. ‘Greater Third of Gates,’ he announced.

  The other homunculi murmured an echo. The Third’s homunculus locked his gaze to that of Law’s. ‘Does my Lord wish to pass through the cleansing system now?’

  ‘I shall be cleansed in Thrones,’ said Law’s homunculus. ‘Another system is being prepared at the Forbidden.’

  ‘And my Lord’s ammonites?’

  ‘Through the cages.’

  ‘I too wish to pass my servants through the cleansing,’ said Carnelian. He could not help glancing back to where he had left Fern and the others with his father’s palanquin. His brothers were there. The Quenthas. He was relieved to see they were all still kneeling with their heads bowed. He had asked them to do that so as to make them invisible to the Masters processing past them. He fingered the roughness of the military cloak he was wearing, that he had found in his father’s tent. Certain he had heard his name in the muttering of the Third’s homunculus, he turned back.

  ‘. . . come to petition me,’ Law was saying. His homunculus turned on Carnelian. ‘Why do you want this, Suth Carnelian?’

  The Sapients crowded round him like crows, but he sensed their wariness. It occurred to him they might think he spoke on Osidian’s behalf. His mind focused on his need to get his people through this safely. It could be dangerous to show any concern for them. ‘My father ails.’

  ‘And would have died long ago were it not for our ministrations.’

  Anger rose in Carnelian. Rather than saving him, just then he felt they had poisoned him. There was also the part they had played in his deposal and the recent use they had made of him. He felt no gratitude. ‘Still, I fear for him should he be long delayed here.’

  ‘The Ruling Lord Suth is high among the Great and so will naturally be among the first to be processed.’

  Carnelian clenched his teeth. He had played badly and was now trapped. He could see no way except the truth. ‘My Lord, I want our servants to be processed with him because they know how to tend to his needs.’

  ‘Is House Suth possessed of no other servants?’

  Carnelian felt the trap pressing in on him. He had already all but confessed he had some special interest in these servants. Fear rose in him lest he had made them pieces the Wise could use in their struggle against Osidian. If so, that was too late to undo. Now even less did he dare trust them to the quarantine. ‘Nevertheless, I wish it.’

  ‘What you ask directly contravenes the Law.’

  ‘Much is already out of balance,’ Carnelian said, with stress. ‘This does not seem to me a great sin.’

  The homunculi muttered an echo of his words then fell silent. Carnelian became aware of the bustle all around him. He resisted an urge to turn and look at his people again.

  ‘We shall grant you this boon, Suth Carnelian,’ said Law’s homunculus. The little man turned his gaze on the homunculus of the Third. ‘Process not only the Ruling Lord Suth, but also his slaves, though only after all the Great. We do not wish to needlessly provoke their ire.’

  Carnelian had got what he wanted, but at what cost?

  Standing against the cabin screen, Carnelian watched his people embarking onto a bone boat. After taking his leave of Grand Sapient Law, he had summoned the Quenthas and asked them to shepherd his people through the cleansing. Then he had climbed back to his dragon tower, from where he could see down to the water’s edge.

  He sighed with relief when the bone boat pulled away from the steps. The mirror of the lake was being opaqued by the wakes of dozens of the pale boats rowing the Great back to their coombs all along the outer shore. He limped back and sank heavily into the command chair. While he waited for the chariots of the Wise to move aside, he gazed down the causeway towards the brooding Yden. At last the way was clear. When his Lefthand confirmed that the funerary procession was ready, Carnelian gave the command to begin the crossing.

  Thunder reverberated around the crater. The rain was giving the Skymere the look of knapped obsidian. It was drumming on the roof above his head. The mirrorman up there was surely nearly drowned, but still Carnelian could almost envy him and, even more, the lookout, exposed to the raw energies of the sky, washed by the elemental downpour. Osrakum could be seen only dimly through the rain. He could just make out the loomi
ng shadow of the Pillar of Heaven. At its feet, the lagoons of the Yden had swollen into a single, murky mere. Its verdant glories lived only in his heart, illuminated by the summer light of childhood. The actual world was dark and forbidding.

  Even above the hissing rain he could hear the Yden’s black water roaring under the road to gush out, furious, down the channels to froth the edge of the Skymere below. Paths of marble wound down beside the streams; flights of pale steps and landings cascaded down to quays. Carnelian imagined the Masters would soon be disembarking there from bone boats, climbing up to the road on their way to the Plain of Thrones and the Labyrinth. Then he noticed the narrow house, end on to the Skymere shore. A kharon boathouse like the one in which he and Osidian had been kept prisoners after their kidnapping. He remembered again the sybling Hanuses, minions of their mistress Ykoriana. The woman who, after everything that had happened, still had the power over him of life or death.

  It seemed an age since they had reached the hill that held within its summit the Plain of Thrones. Gradually the road had been winding up its flank. Hunched in his chair, Carnelian was shivering, listening to the rain. The rough stuff of his father’s cloak was in his grip. Lifting his head he peered westwards seeking to glimpse Coomb Suth but, through the rain, he could see nothing except for the shadowy Sacred Wall, which seemed a far, leaden horizon.

  His Left muttered something at Carnelian’s feet, then Earth-is-Strong began to turn. Sliding off towards his left, steps swooped down in many flights. He recognized them as the same he and Jaspar had climbed from the Quays of the Dead. Then the view of the rain-filled void was snuffed out by a wall of stone. The command chair pushed hard into his back even as the deck tilted up. They were climbing into a ravine by means of long shallow steps. Everything shuddered and rattled as the tower began to swing heavily first to one side, then the other. His grip tight on the arms of the chair, he watched with alarm as a ravine wall would lurch towards them, then away. After a while, he relaxed his grip, reassured that Earth-is-Strong’s gait would not dash her tower to pieces against the rock.

  As they climbed, Carnelian fell to wondering what had happened to Jaspar. He hoped the man was dead: even considering his sins, he had suffered enough.

  At last the deck tilted forward, even as the ravine gave them up into the vast and airy cliff-walled Plain of Thrones. Carnelian had eyes for nothing except the black trunk that rose from behind that wall. The Pillar of Heaven was a tree whose storm-sky canopy cast all the world beneath into shadow.

  They were approaching the centre of the plain when the rain stopped, suddenly. The sky gave one last shudder, then eerie silence reigned. Before them lay a ring within a ring. Carnelian had seen this thing before, but not from above. The outer ring swept round like a cothon. From this a mosaic of ridges of fiendish complexity converged on the inner ring. His gaze became enmeshed in the radial branching tendrils that seemed like the iris of some vast eye. Escape lay only in the double inner ring that enclosed the dark pupil. For a moment he was possessed by an uneasy conviction this was an opening to a well, a smooth sinkhole into which he might tumble.

  It began to drizzle. Drawing back into himself, he gazed at the Stone Dance of the Chameleon, ostensibly a calendrical device. At its centre, the twelve month stones. Eight red, two black, two green. Upon these twelve was carved the Law-that-must-be-obeyed. The stones had a round-shouldered look as if they were hunched against the rain, or against the too-vast sky. Still square and young, another twelve stood behind like ghosts. It was from these that ridges flowed, branching, meshing, intertwining to connect with the outer ring of, as he recalled, commentary stones. The twelve innermost stones were the least imposing of the Dance and yet they were clearly the jewel for which all the others were nothing more than a setting. He could see how time had softened them. His gut told him that even when Legions had been a child, these had been ancient and once had stood there on their own.

  As Earth-is-Strong carried him round the rings of stones, Carnelian gazed for a moment, sombrely, upon the road running off south-west, along which the funerary procession would soon go. At the end of that road were the caves in the wall of the plain, where the Wise embalmed the dead. As the wall continued to slide past, he discerned, in a long row with their backs to it, a line of what seemed pale homunculi. Except that he knew these were not tiny men, but the colossi who stood each astride the entrance to a tomb. These it was who, gazing down upon the Plainsmen tributaries, had given them the name for the Chosen, ‘the Standing Dead’. The view continued to swing round and he saw the terraces and galleries of the lower palace carved into the cliff above those tomb guardians. He frowned, desolate. There, penetrating deep into the cliff like a nasal cavity into a skull, was the hollow pyramid in which the Masters would stand in tiers as bright as angels as they gazed down upon their tributaries. Earth-is-Strong was heading straight towards this now. Before her a black rectangle stretched out over the floor of the Plain. Upon this tens of thousands would cower. Soon they would be there, gazing up to watch Osidian made God. Perhaps they would see Carnelian sacrificed.

  His Left gave the command to turn the dragon onto the road that skirted the black field.

  ‘Belay that order,’ Carnelian said. ‘Steady as she goes.’

  On the ground, his back to the Forbidden Door, Carnelian looked back the way they had come. Grand Sapient Labyrinth was there behind him with one of his Thirds and a gang of their ammonites. They had offered him an immediate cleansing so that he might enter the Labyrinth, but when Grand Sapient Law on arrival had declared he would wait for Osidian, Carnelian had said he would wait with him.

  The funerary procession had already reached the caves of the embalmers. There the palanquins seemed a nest of tiny beetles. He could just make out a thread of people returning along the road towards the standing stones. He guessed these must be the bearers being driven to the cages of the quarantine.

  He squinted back towards the ravine through which he had entered the Plain. Watching the minuscule movement on the floor of the slot in the cliff, he became certain it was a towered dragon entering the Plain. It had to be Heart-of-Thunder. Grumbling, the sky was beginning to blacken in the east. Carnelian’s spirits sank even further. Night would fall before Osidian reached him. He had hoped they would confront Ykoriana in the light. He gazed up at the galleries scaling the cliff like some vast ladder to the sky. Rock everywhere riddled with holes. From any one of those myriad cavities she could be scrutinizing him with borrowed eyes.

  Starless night. A tremor in the ground made Carnelian relive the horrors of the battle. Many dragons were approaching. The massing shadow of the leading monster was growing larger, carrying the lantern of its tower. The world quaked as light filtering down from the honeycombed cliff began to sketch Heart-of-Thunder’s mountainous form.

  Carnelian met Osidian as he descended from his tower. ‘I had expected you sooner.’

  There was only shadow in the loop of Osidian’s cowl. ‘I had to take the submission of the Sinistrals at the Blood Gate then wait while they gathered supplies.’

  Render, thought Carnelian, almost tasting it. Then he gave a start as the night dewed into flesh: the ash-misted faces of the Oracles. Their grim expressions could have been fear. Whatever they were feeling, Carnelian was filled with unease. At that moment Osidian angled his head back. Some of the light coming from the terraces above found the sinister mirror of his mask. ‘Come.’

  Together they advanced upon the Wise, who were framed by the pale silver faces of their ammonites. They halted beneath the jewelled gaze of the two Grand Sapients.

  ‘Welcome, Celestial,’ said Labyrinth’s homunculus. ‘We have brought the means by which you shall be cleansed of the taint of the outer world.’

  It seemed to Carnelian it would take more than unguents to do that.

  ‘I shall submit to the cleansing, my Lords,’ said Osidian, ‘but I give warning I intend to bring these barbarians in with me.’ He turned enough to take in
the Oracles and the Marula warriors behind them.

  As soon as the homunculi finished repeating his words, Labyrinth’s homunculus began to speak, but was interrupted by Law’s. ‘We cannot allow this, Celestial. The Law-that-must-be-obeyed is unequivocal. These barbarians may be infested with corruption that external examination will not reveal. To bring them onto holy ground is to endanger its very sanctity.’

  ‘Whatever danger they pose, my Lord, I am no less a threat. You will clean them as you clean me.’

  ‘It is perilous, Celestial, to let these animals pass through the Forbidden Door untamed,’ said Labyrinth. ‘You may have fought your way back into Paradise, but you must not force your way into Heaven.’

  ‘Lecture me not, my Lords, about peril. Only last night was my own life endangered. I will not leave myself thus exposed again.’

  ‘Celestial, the Sinistral Ichorians are the proper guardians of your life.’

  ‘Who then will guard the Gates?’

  The Grand Sapients absorbed his words through the throats of their homunculi. For a moment, it seemed they would respond, but their fingers faltered.

  ‘I intend to breed from these creatures a new caste of Ichorians that shall be in their person a joining of the two previous castes. Their skin shall symbolize the unity of my rule.’

  Carnelian’s unease rose in unspoken protest: Have you forgotten the promise you made to save their Lower Reach? He found among the Oracles Morunasa’s sombre face. Was he aware of Osidian’s plans for them? He bit his tongue when it would have warned that the wealth of Osrakum would corrupt these barbarians. He had enough problems of his own. Behind the Grand Sapients, he could see the Forbidden Door. What dangers might lie beyond that portal? If he were to be slain before he had a chance to put in place the necessary arrangements, his people would suffer. He focused upon the long, blind masks floating above. The fingers of the Grand Sapients formed collars of ice around the throats of their homunculi. Carnelian wondered what thoughts, what calculations were flashing through their masters’ minds.