Osidian with his scarlet face was being given some of Carnelian’s blood to drink.
‘The Sky Lord come to thunder . . .’
The Wise were holding up what seemed a face reflected in a mirror of night.
‘Rumbling His stormy belly . . .’
The Wise held the obsidian mask over Osidian’s face and he was transformed. Terrible he became, the very blackness of the sky incarnate.
‘Heart-of-Thunder,’ Carnelian heard the homunculi intone.
‘Withholding Your urgent seed . . .’ chanted the ammonites.
‘Lord of Mirrors,’ intoned the homunculi.
‘Until You shall pierce her with Your shafts . . .’ the ammonites sang.
‘Father of Corruption, Lord of Pestilence, Prince of Plagues.’
‘Quench the burning air . . .’
The obsidian mask was peeled away, revealing what seemed the raw meat of Osidian’s face.
‘Rill and pool her dusts . . .’
The jade mask was raised, the obsidian one hung below the breastplate in its place.
‘Fill her wombs with spiralling jades.’
Osidian was drinking another draught of Carnelian’s blood.
‘Until her flesh swells up . . .’
The wise were dipping their fingers in the bowls of blood and sprinkling Osidian.
‘In the midst of breaking waters . . .’
‘Clenching for release . . .’
The jade mask was held over Osidian’s face.
‘Thrust forth are You, oh Green Child . . .’ the ammonites chanted.
‘Lord of Abundance, Lord of the Earth,’ the homunculi intoned.
‘Ten thousand times reborn . . .’
‘Immortal One.’
‘Squeezed into the air . . .’
‘You who taught.’
‘Enjewelled by the morning . . .’
‘First and Last.’
‘That You may dance again . . .’
‘Lord of the Dance.’
‘And once more breathe Your scents beneath the sky . . .’
‘Life . . .’
The voices of the homunculi were drowned by a roaring fanfare.
With a lurch, the Creation Chariot began to climb the spine of the Pyramid Hollow.
‘Our Lord leads the Faithful up from the sea.’
Carnelian reeled. They had resumed bleeding him into the bowls. It was an effort to stand. The vast, bloody apparition of the Black God was looming over them all. Carnelian had watched the Obsidian Mask replace the Jade. The glimpse of Osidian’s red face had reminded him it was he beneath that carapace, but once he was wearing the black mask, there was nothing left of Osidian.
Carnelian gave his attention to the weird braided voice of the homunculi. He knew they were quoting from the Il Kaya, but it seemed they were describing the journey he, Fern and Osidian had made through the swamps. The horror of it, long forgotten, saturated their words. ‘Then our Lord brings them up to the Land He had promised would be theirs . . .’
Carnelian recalled that first view of the Earthsky and smiled. His vision expanded to take in the sea of ferns and then the fragrant hill of cedars of the Tribe. He breathed deep, but the perfume of the mother trees had aged and was now laced with iron. Myrrh mixed with blood. Carnelian blinked and became half aware of where he was. The homunculi’s talk of conquest cast a shadow over his heart.
‘Men lower than beasts,’ they said.
Carnelian shook his head weakly, anger rising in him. The Masters believed that, but he knew his Plainsmen and his beloved Fern were men. Desperate horror washed over him. Osidian, corrupted, corrupted them. Carnelian wept at what he had allowed him to do.
Shawms were braying. The banners that ammonites were carrying up the steps on either side fluttered like birds in flight. Among them glimmered the crescents of the Wise, the silver ammonite spirals of the Law. The music swelled, borne up on the growling of massive trumpets and a clattering and a constant shattering of glass. The ammonites were singing, joyfully, of peace. Carnelian’s heart rose on the tide. He basked in this omen. Peace after war. A rebuilding, a remaking of the world, a new shape, a flowering of love.
‘Their Commonwealth, to Heaven a perfect mirror,’ the homunculi declared, and Osidian was once more jade-faced.
Carnelian watched a vast disc rising among the Wise like a red sun. He frowned. Except that it was hollow, so that it was a vast glyph of death. An annulus of his birth stone polished to a mirror in which the world was reflected as if in blood. Still the ammonites sang of harmony and blessings but, through the red mirror’s central hole, Carnelian saw the Wise were once more transforming Osidian into the Black God.
‘But sin casts its shadow over their hearts,’ cried the homunculi.
The shawms and trumpets shrieked in hideous cacophony. The red mirror shattered, shards gouging the bloody floor like talons.
‘Brother falls upon brother. Canker spreads from flesh to flesh, carried upon the plague wind. Men fornicate with beasts. Mothers devour their children.’
Carnelian would have plugged up his ears, but Sapients were clinging to his arms. Defenceless, he was exposed to their descriptions of the destruction he and Osidian had brought upon the world. Famine and pestilence as the Darkness-under-the-Trees stalked the land.
‘You He chose to be His own, for you alone held to your faith in Them.’
Carnelian relived the march on Osrakum, described as the Apostates coming against the Chosen. He relived the great battle in which the Chosen were defeated. He clung on, waiting for the hope there is even in despair. The hope of what he might yet do to heal the world with the power he had taken for himself, but the gloom of the symphony did not abate, but darkened further. The voices of the Wise were speaking of the Apostates coming with black hearts even into Holy Osrakum. In a great crescendo the last great battle was described, within the Valley of the Gate. The symphony of chaos rose to an excruciating pitch, then subsided as if tumbling into an abyss.
‘Our Lord leading us, we are victorious. Joyously we bring Them hither for Their coronation.’
‘You come with victory bright on Your brow,’ sang the homunculi.
Carnelian was confused. They were speaking to the Gods and Osidian was Them, or possessed by Them, but Osidian had also come here from victory, a victory the Wise begrudged him.
‘On the plain below You have written Your Law upon the twelve calendar stones. Upon this foundation stands the Commonwealth of the Chosen.
‘Thrones You have erected here, upon which You will sit in judgement on the world. Here, now, as a symbol of Your mastery of the Three Lands, shall we crown You Emperor.’
The echo of the Quyan words reverberating round the Pyramid Hollow slowly died away, even as sistra began shaking out a bright, brittle rustling. One of the Grand Sapients was holding a hood of purple leather above Osidian’s shaved head. As he lowered it, it flowed down on either side of the Obsidian Mask. Two long tresses of jewelled beadcord glittered and chinked as they snaked over the gory breastplate. Carnelian saw that the hood was bound to a silver diadem that sat now upon Osidian’s brow. Emberous rubies ran round the circle of the diadem. By their spacing he judged there to be twelve stones and, though he could see only rubies, he was sure that, round on the side hidden to him, there would be two green stones and two black. It had to be a representation of the Stone Dance of the Chameleon. From what he could deduce of its orientation, it was as if the Black God, approaching the dance along the Rain Axis, had stooped to raise it and put it upon His head. It must signify His authorship of the Law. Carnelian expected some utterance from the Wise to confirm this, but they remained silent. Perhaps they did this as tacit acceptance of the new balance of power.
Carnelian was distracted by something rising into view that seemed an emerald glade. Hope of deliverance after stumbling lost through the glooms of some infernal jungle. It was a crown three Grand Sapients were holding above Osidian’s head. From a diagonal cross centr
ed on a horned-ring of translucent jade, the crown flared down into a cobra hood that seemed to have been cut from the hide of some fabulous, bejewelled saurian. This hood split in two, and through the slit between the halves, Carnelian glimpsed delicate scaffolding, but his eyes could not long resist being drawn up to the verdant explosion above the horned-ring. A great shimmering nest set about by a thicket of quills sheathed with emeralds and peridots, malachites and prase. The whole thing shivered and glimmered like a thing alive. As this sank to rest upon Osidian’s head and shoulders, Carnelian expected he would be unable to support its weight, but the structure of the robe held. The Obsidian Mask, framed by the flaps of jewelled leather, seemed a secret darkness lying at the heart of a fabulous forest.
‘Behold the Green Crown,’ cried the homunculi, ‘symbol of Your dominion over the wildernesses beyond the Ringwall, over sward and jungle, over fernland and fen, dominion eternal over the savages who lurk there far from the light of Your countenance, who, in fear and adoration, bring to You as tribute their children to be Your slaves . . .’
The homunculi, reunited with their masters, turned outwards to face the plain and in stentorian tones cried out in Vulgate: ‘Prostrate yourselves before your God!’
For a moment Carnelian was aware of the rustling and glimmer as the Chosen around him turned in their roosts to view the tributaries below. Vast trumpets blasting forth from beneath his feet made him turn too and gaze out. Along the edges of the multitude, the dragon towers were blaring a fanfare in reply. Smoke was drifting across the tiny figures so that for a moment Carnelian was breathless with terror that the flame-pipes were lit and that he was about to witness another incineration, but then, with a great sigh, the multitude subsided in abasement. He did not feel the pride he should have as one of the Chosen, but only shame.
Three of the Wise held aloft a hollowed globe, tapering upwards like a bud, or perhaps a half-scooped-out pomegranate, and indeed its inner surface was studded with rubies like sweet seeds and Carnelian realized it could be read as the glyph for ‘womb’. Its outer shell, a rolling mosaic of almandines and pyropes, of coral, jasper and carnelian, made the swollen mass seem as if it had been freshly torn from a body. He watched as it was fitted into the emerald nest of the Green Crown.
‘Behold the Red Crown,’ the homunculi sang, ‘symbol of Your dominion over the fertile earth of the Guarded Land from which the world draws sustenance . . .’
Carnelian frowned, remembering famine.
‘. . . over its cities that teem under Your gaze, who, in fear and adoration and in gratitude for the protection You bestow unto them, bring You the tribute of their taxes in Your coin . . .’
Again the Wise turned to demand abasement from the plain, but Carnelian could not stop looking at the Red Crown swelling up from Osidian’s head. As it had been lowered, Carnelian had noticed the bruising of purple leather at its base that could signify the Ringwall. An amethystine band edged the mouth of the hollow and if this were symbolic of the Sacred Wall, passage through which the Wise regulated with their Law, then the womb hollow it enclosed must be the crater of Osrakum. These deductions, for some reason, Carnelian found disturbing.
As the Creation Chariot neared the apex of the Pyramid Hollow, a single Grand Sapient held aloft a glinting shaft. Fluted it was, split in two from top to bottom by a lightning zigzag of gold. In form it seemed to be the Pillar of Heaven rising up from a horned-ring of midnight coral. Of jet and obsidian and adamantine were its ridges and planes.
The voices of the homunculi rose in unison. ‘Behold the Black Crown, symbol of Your dominion over the Hidden Land of thrice-blessed Osrakum, where dwell the Seraphim who bask in the light of Your countenance and at whose heart now stands this vessel that You inhabit with Your double Godhead.’
The Grand Sapient lowered the Black Crown into the womb of the Red, and drawing back took his homunculus by the throat.
‘Behold the Gods your Emperor,’ cried all the homunculi. ‘Prostrate yourselves, ye Chosen.’
Around the towering, triple-crowned apparition of the God Emperor, the Grand Sapients and their homunculi knelt. Carnelian was aware of the Lords in the tiers below making their abasement. A tide rose up of voices, drums and trumpets. Ever higher it rose until it seemed the world must be blasted to dust. Carnelian and the new God Emperor alone remained standing. He glanced down to the bloody floor. The purple robes of the Wise and the homunculi were soaking up the gore. He was certain his strength would fail him should he bend his knees, that he would topple head first.
The Sapients in kneeling had released his arms and he folded them, squeezing the wounds in his wrists closed across his chest. He gazed at the new Gods, transfixed. Their crowns grew upwards and outwards, a wheelmap in the round. At its root the Gods’ face, anger of the skies; the night, the shadows under the trees crystallized into a visage of serene, sublime malice. What was there left of Osidian within that entity? Perhaps nothing more than a spindle of melting ice.
The chaos of sound beat upon Carnelian like a migraine. He struggled for consciousness. The beadcords running down past the cheeks of the Black God were like tears and Carnelian was possessed by a strange desire to reach out and touch them, to read them. His gaze climbed the jewel beads to the silver diadem. Nothing of the purple hood was visible and yet it lay between the Gods’ head and Their crowns. Its purple membrane the power of the Wise separating the God Emperor from the Three Lands. How much the quills of the Green Crown looked like spears! If they were the legions that had been kept from the God Emperor’s control, then the Red Crown must surely symbolize the Great; its amethystine lip, the separation the Wise maintained between the Great and the House of the Masks; the Black Crown it held, the God Emperor imprisoned, isolated. Carnelian’s eyes lost focus. The Crowns could be read as being the Three Lands, but also as the Great Balance. Dread saturated everything. Osidian was trapped behind the Mask, within the carapace of that robe bedecked with slaughter; crushed beneath the intolerable weight of the world the two of them hoped to rule. Shock forced its way through increasing horror. He would never see Osidian’s face again! Carnelian sought hope, but this had flowed out of him with his blood. How ancient, how subtle were the systems of power the Wise wielded. Was it not insane to attempt to stand against their millennial patience? Even so might a rock hope to withstand the trickle of a stream.
CORONATION MASQUE
After the rain, a rainbow and then blue sky.
(fragment – origin unknown)
THE WORLD LURCHED TO A HALT. CARNELIAN FELT THAT THE NARROWING walls of the Pyramid Hollow must come together somewhere above him in the gloom. Giddy, he felt his soul might, at any time, slip free of his leaden body. Vaguely he was aware that the Sapients were removing the wheel breastplate. The rainbow heraldry of the God Emperor’s court robe, revealed, seemed barely dulled by dried blood.
Carnelian started as the towering apparition came to life. Oily shadows moved across the midnight lips of the Gods’ face as They began to turn. The great volumes of the Crowns smouldered and sparked. The dense grey metal weave of the robe flickered a constantly knotting and tearing web of light that hurt Carnelian’s eyes. The youthful Jade Mask came into view as the other Twin took His turn to gaze down upon the plain. A cloak pole was lifted and fastened to the shoulders of the tempered iron robe. A sweep of feathers was hung from it. Iridescent green and raven plumage interwove a bewildering tessellation as the God Emperor slid away from the platform. Morunasa and the Oracles enringed Them. The star-crowned spires of the Grand Sapients followed in solemn procession, the gory hems of their robes smearing a trail of blood. Carnelian managed to turn his head. Past the splayed-bone silhouette of the victim’s erupted chest, down on the plain, the tributaries were in commotion where the margins of their multitude met glimmering borders of ammonites in the shadow of the dragons. The barbarians were paying their flesh tithe. Carnelian remembered Ebeny, one scared child among so many.
‘Celestial?’
&n
bsp; Carnelian sought the origin of the voice. It was a blinded ammonite offering him a square spoon heaped with a brown powder. He remembered watching his father inhaling a drug from such an implement.
‘You are to draw it up into your nostrils, Celestial.’
Carnelian regarded the powder. He did not want to take it. It seemed the same his father had taken to gain a false strength when he had been wounded. It had broken his health.
This ammonite was an agent of the Wise. What if this were poison? Carnelian knew that, if anything were to happen to him, Osidian would slay the ammonite, but had not the creatures often proved they were prepared to die for their masters? He felt his consciousness wavering. He had made his decision. What else was there to do, but to trust to the new balance of power? He lifted a trembling hand, took the spoon, raised it beneath his nose and inhaled. The powder stabbed numbness deep into his head. Mucus dripped from his nose and down his throat, releasing a bitter, acrid taste. Vitality surged in. When it reached his head, it filled him with a merciless clarity.
Ahead. Carnelian had an impression of golden giants crowding in. Lamps like stars, like moons reflected in pools. He glanced back to get his bearings. The triangle of blazing daylight branded a headache into his forehead. It was the sudden blossoming odour of old myrrh that alerted him. He stopped just in time to avoid colliding with one of the Grand Sapients. They stood like a copse of blasted trees. He moved round them until he could find a gap, through which he could see a ring of pale kneeling youths with eyes that seemed freshly gouged. Between their legs a slitted scar where their genitals had been. In their midst a figure encrusted with blood jewels and possessed of a girl’s face of gold so achingly innocent Carnelian’s breath caught in his throat. Yet this mask clung to a woman’s head, shaved as perfect as an egg. A halo of rubies spread behind as if the head, cracked open upon a floor, had oozed a pool of blood. Pale hands, each bearing two Great Rings, confirmed what he already knew.
The Third God Page 72
