The Third God

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘Your property, Celestial?’

  ‘If that is what it takes.’

  ‘Very well,’ Tribute said, at last. ‘We shall accept this. For now.’

  Carnelian watched the children being led or carried off by syblings towards the cages of the flesh tithe. Other syblings, armed, escorted the few surviving Oracles, who had promised to oversee the children through their period of infestation. Carnelian had felt no need to threaten them; for, after all, most of what survived of their god was now contained in the tiny bodies of those children.

  He frowned, remembering the long weary journey through the darkness. It had taken the fight out of him. The whimpering of the children had frayed his compassion, until it was replaced by disgust for what they harboured in their flesh. By the end, however unfairly, he was angry with them. He shook his head. They were just a place to put his anger. He glanced back at the Forbidden Door, uncertain what he was leaving behind. The Twelve were free. Osidian would, most likely, recover. Carnelian was glad that, when he had asked them, the Quenthas had agreed to remain behind to protect him.

  He gazed at the Plain of Thrones. Flanking the edges of the Black Field the dragons remained in the positions they had held since the Apotheosis. The multitude they had menaced had all been driven out of Osrakum, leaving the Black Field a mired and stinking plain. He scanned the towered monsters. It would be best to lead them out on Heart-of-Thunder, from whose tower they were wont to take their commands.

  Coming up through the floor onto the command deck, he was aware that the cloying, sickly smell pervading the tower was stronger here. As he stepped away to let Fern up, Carnelian became aware the air was being sewn by buzzing flights. Flies. His heart began pounding, his throat grew dry, as he searched the shadows at the back of the cabin. Somehow, Morunasa’s god had found his way here. A bundle lay against a wall. Soft and tapering at both ends like some monstrous chrysalis. As he approached it, he became quickly aware it was the source of the sweet odour. A smell of meat near rotting. He stood over it. Fluids it had oozed had stained the deck. Creeping horror claimed him as he realized the chrysalis had something very like a head. A bloated, leaking, swollen face. He stared with shock as he recognized it. He jumped when it moved. It was alive. Of course he was. Carnelian had seen enough corpses, had smelled enough, to know he was not yet dead.

  ‘What is it?’

  Carnelian looked into Tain’s anxious face. He tried some kind of explanation. His brother’s face twisted strangely when he heard the name. He did not seem to be listening to Carnelian’s explanation of why this thing was there. As Tain gaped at what was left of Jaspar, Carnelian remembered what that Master had done to Tain when he was a boy. Carnelian wondered if the expression on his brother’s face was the satisfaction of revenge. Disturbed, he looked away. There was a shape in the shadows he had not noticed before. Something like a child in a tight knot.

  ‘You there.’

  The knot tightened.

  ‘I can see you there.’

  The shape unbent and Carnelian saw its face and recognized it. ‘You!’

  Legions’ homunculus cowered.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  The little man indicated Jaspar with a shaking hand. ‘Taking care of the Seraph.’ Carnelian’s frown of incomprehension forced more words out of him. ‘Giving the Seraph water. Chewing his food for him.’

  Carnelian stared at the homunculus, unable to understand why he should have chosen to prolong Jaspar’s agony. Anger rose in him at the cruelty.

  Then Tain cried out: ‘He’s looking at me.’

  He stared in horror at Jaspar, whose eyes had squeezed into view between the bloated lids. Carnelian imagined how riddled Jaspar’s body must be with worms. How long had he lain here? Tended by the homunculus just enough to keep him alive. Just alive.

  Tain grabbed at Carnelian’s arm, dug his fingers in. ‘For the gods’ sake kill him.’

  Carnelian looked at him, not wanting to ask him, asking him: ‘Do you want to do it?’

  His brother stared at him as if he thought him mad. Tain shook his head, frowning, backing away. Carnelian became aware Fern was there, watching. He put his hand out, and Fern understood, for he unsheathed a blade and put its hilt in Carnelian’s hand, who turned, crouched, then insinuated its point under the dewlap chins and, finding the root of an ear, punctured the flesh and sliced down. Then, rising, he watched a dark pool widening around Jaspar’s head.

  From Heart-of-Thunder’s command chair, Carnelian gazed out to starboard, through the rain, at the ring of standing stones. Though he had had Jaspar’s body removed, the deck scrubbed, the flies driven away, killed, the smell still lingered. He could still see the stains Jaspar had left in the deck. He looked round to the other side of the cabin to where Fern and Tain were sitting against the wall; Fern staring, frowning, grim; Tain still in shock, haunted. Further back, in the shadows, the homunculus. Carnelian felt like punishing the little man for his cruelty. Empathy quenched this impulse. How long had the homunculus been there, tending Jaspar’s near-corpse? Abandoned without hope of rescue. Perhaps he had been cruel, perhaps merely lonely and terrified. Carnelian had to accept that it was he most of all who had abandoned the little man, had forgotten him.

  A mutter at his feet made him turn, feeling the dragon beneath responding to his Left’s whispered command. The view through the screen began sliding right until the narrow entrance to the Plain of Thrones came into view. He focused grimly on the task he had before him and wondered what he was taking them all into.

  As they came off the Great Causeway, the downpour abated. On either side, the Turtle Steps cascaded down to the lake. Ahead, something smouldered. Staring at it, Carnelian felt a heaviness descend upon him. Though he knew it was the gilded Clave, it reminded him of the Iron House burning in the midst of a landscape of sartlar dead. Grimly, he contemplated that he was on a mission to inflict more carnage on the poor brutes.

  When Fern coughed, Carnelian turned and saw him indicating Tain. His brother had the look of a terrified child, listening. Carnelian listened too. Beneath the shudder and rattle of the cabin there was a dull roaring. He glanced at Tain, then ordered Heart-of-Thunder onto the Cloaca Road. As the monster turned, a canal came into view, cut into the Valley floor, a spillway. Only a dyke separated it from the lake shore, through whose immense stone comb the Skymere poured into the spillway in many waterfalls. Carnelian recalled that Tain’s ordeal in the quarantine had terminated somewhere near those falls. He glanced round at him. Clearly, the encounter with Jaspar had left Tain shaken. A solution occurred to him, not only for Tain – and for the homunculus as well, whom Carnelian knew he could not bring before the Wise – but for relieving another worry.

  ‘Tain, you must carry a message to Father for me.’

  Tain frowned, seeming to have difficulty in bringing Carnelian into focus. ‘He’d not forgive me for leaving you unprotected.’

  Carnelian indicated the homunculus. ‘I also need him taken to safety.’

  His brother gave a reluctant nod.

  ‘Tell Father everything you’ve witnessed. Tell him I’m going to the City at the Gates to sort out some problems.’ Carnelian could add no more. How long would it be before he was free to return to Osrakum?

  Once Tain and the homunculus had disembarked, Heart-of-Thunder proceeded along the lip of the Cloaca, in whose depths storm waters roared.

  The grey afternoon was waning when they reached the Black Gate. It opened for them and Heart-of-Thunder carried them into the Canyon. Nearby it was twilight, but further away, where the Canyon turned south, night seemed to have arrived already. Carnelian could only just discern the blacker clot of the Blood Gate. If they pushed on, he hoped they could reach the City at the Gates before nightfall.

  ‘I wish to send a message ahead,’ he said.

  ‘A signal flare will have to be lit, Master,’ said his Left.

  As Carnelian waited he watched the cliffs on either side swaying in time
to the cabin. The air trembled to a constant roar. It seemed a more dreadful sound than merely the rushing waters of the Cloaca reverberating along the Canyon. His Left announced the mirrorman was ready.

  ‘Bid them open the gates, we’re passing straight through.’

  As his Left repeated his words into the command tube, Carnelian hoped this act of foresight would avoid any delays. He became aware of a blinking light that could only be coming from one of the towers of the Blood Gate.

  ‘The outer gate cannot be opened, Master,’ his Left said.

  ‘Ask them why.’ Carnelian waited impatiently as his message was transmitted. The Blood Gate signal resumed its blinking.

  The Left turned to look up at Carnelian. ‘They claim it is forbidden, Master.’

  Unease stirred in him. He would have liked more information, but he was reluctant to carry out any further interrogation by signal flare.

  A man-sized door opened in the cliff that was the closed inner portal of the Blood Gate. Several lanterns swung out, carried by a number of figures, each of whom seemed to have but half a face. These Sinistrals could not help glancing fearfully over Carnelian’s head. He knew how menacing was the shape that loomed up behind him, for he had just descended from the monster’s tower. The Sinistrals knelt, touching their foreheads to the stone. ‘Seraph.’

  ‘I am Carnelian of the Masks. Why have you closed this gate against me?’

  They struck the stone with their heads. ‘Forgive us, Celestial, we merely obey the Law.’

  Carnelian could make no sense of this. ‘The Wise have sent commands?’

  As their eyes came up, he could See how confused the Sinistrals were. He did not want to terrorize them. ‘Is there some kind of emergency?’

  ‘Perhaps, Celestial, you might deign to see the cause for yourself?’

  Carnelian almost barked: See what? Turning, he regarded the mountainous shadows that formed a line from the Blood Gate rock off across the massive bridge and down the Canyon. ‘Fern, will you come with me?’ he asked in Ochre. He waited for Fern’s nod, then turned to his Lefthand. ‘Please take my place in the command chair. Pass a message down the line. You are to wait for me.’

  Carnelian turned to the Sinistrals. ‘Show me this “cause”.’

  Carnelian was breathing hard. He had lost count of the levels they had climbed. Stair after stair past military gates, warrens and military engines of gigantic size. The chill on his face as a breeze caught his sweat was a relief. They had come out into the open at last. He became aware of the night, then, almost immediately, of a dull glowing on the underside of the clouds that capped the sky to the west.

  ‘Dragonfire?’ said Fern.

  Carnelian shook his head, grimly. ‘There’re no flashes. The City burns.’ He turned to the Sinistral commander. ‘Is that what you wanted me to witness?’

  ‘Not so, Celestial.’

  Carnelian and Fern followed him to a parapet where the Sinistral pointed down. Carnelian sensed the vast spread of emptiness below. ‘Can you see anything?’

  Fern traced some vague outlines in the darkness. Carnelian was trying to work out where their eyrie was located, when he became aware of a murmur distinct from the throbbing of the Cloaca. The hackles rose on his neck. He knew that sound. Fern breathed the word that had formed in Carnelian’s mind. ‘Sartlar.’

  BLOOD GATE

  It is the will that conquers.

  (a precept of the Wise)

  WANDERING LOST THROUGH A FOREST OF GREY TREES. HIS FINGERS, touching one, recoil. Cold, its bark degloves like corpse skin. Cracked bone revealed could be chapped lips. A baby there, nestling among desiccated, grinning dead. A boy he knows, but has forgotten. No, a girl. His mother? Which mother? He feels the tiny thing’s need and scoops it up. His shadow has a horrible life of its own. A dark presence swirling the air. Itch in his ears. Fearing flies, he flees, cradling the child as if it were his own heart.

  A wall crusted with spirals all the way to the sky. He feels its pulse. Puts his ear to the shell. Hearing the sea turns fear to rage. Plunging his spear in he tears a wound he squeezes into. Smothering flesh. Bursting into headache light. Up to his ankles in streaming blood. High banks bristling with bones. Thunder. The dark sea lap lap lapping at a beach of powdered bone. Salt wind murmuring in his face. Trying to tell him something he is desperate to hear, but he claps his hands over his ears in terror. The need in the child’s eyes. No child belongs in the Land of the Dead! His cradling arms become a boat his shadow shoves into the swell. Another with him. Nuzzling the thither shore upon which looms a shape so terrible it blinds him. But he is undeaf to its roaring rage.

  He woke in Fern’s arms, sweating, heart hammering. There was comfort in Fern’s warm strength, in his smell. The dread from the dream was slow to fade. Carnelian remembered the sartlar at the gate. That was something solid to worry about. He scanned the cell. Plain plaster walls. Some shelves. A wooden manikin, big-shouldered for wearing armour, mushroom-headed to take a helmet. A rack for weapons. An oblong of brass set into the wall, in which lurked a murky twisted world. A stone basin with a lead spout with a valve around its throat. The night before, the Ichorian commanders had offered to vacate some of their cells for his people. They had been aghast when he had told them he intended to occupy one himself. This chamber was the finest they had: that of the grand-cohort commander. It was certainly not intended for a Master, but he had slept in far worse places. It was clean and private and he found its simplicity soothing.

  Thin light was filtering from somewhere at the foot of the bed. He was drawn to it. He kissed Fern and slipped out from his arms. ‘I yearn to see the new day.’

  ‘It’s cold,’ muttered Fern, getting up with him, his skin sliding against Carnelian’s. He plucked a blanket from the bed and drew it round them both. Light was entering in through gaps in some shutters. They fumbled for the catches. As the panels opened they released more faint light and a shock of cold air. They stepped out onto a balcony that held them with no space to spare. Carnelian turned his head towards the light, squinting against the incandescent rind of the sun rising from a violet horizon framed by the Canyon walls. The dyke of the Black Gate provided a threshold to that view into Osrakum. Half occluded by one of the Canyon walls stood the dark apparition of the Pillar of Heaven. For a moment he was lost in memories of his time in its hollows.

  He became aware Fern was gazing upwards and looked up himself. They were standing astride the ridge where two sides of the tower met. Above them, a thicket of flame-pipes ran in a triple band like a nest of snakes. Carnelian let his gaze fall, frowning. Below, two other balconies; a row of six more beneath those, many more in the next row and more and more, like the cliff-ledges gulls nest on; balconies erupting from the stone in a rash that widened then narrowed down the walls. He sensed this reflected the military hierarchy of the officers who occupied the cells below. The rash ran out as tiny blisters in the smooth masonry. This was rooted in rougher stone that went down and further down. His grip tightened on Fern’s arm. They were high in an eyrie teetering on the edge of an abyss. There was a black gleam in the depths of the Cloaca.

  ‘What is it?’ Fern asked.

  Carnelian silenced him with a touch to the lips. Just before Fern spoke he had become aware of a murmur that brought back the horror of his dream. He looked down the Canyon to where a vast bridge emerged from the gloom to touch the circular plain that stretched before the outer gates. It seemed covered with rust rough enough, he felt, to abrade his hand should he reach out to touch it. Subtle motion on that plain so far below made it clear the rust was a teeming multitude. ‘Numberless as leaves,’ he murmured in Quya.

  ‘What?’

  Carnelian turned to Fern, who had worry in his eyes. ‘Something my father once said to me. It’s not important.’ He nodded towards the sartlar. ‘I’d hoped I had dreamed them too.’ He wondered if it was hunger that had driven the poor creatures this far. How difficult was it going to be to herd them back towards
the City at the Gates?

  Fern focused on their multitude. ‘As placid as earthers cropping ferns.’

  Carnelian remembered how violently earthers stampeded when they were spooked and foreboding sent a shiver through him.

  Fern reacted to his shudder. ‘Let’s go back in.’

  Carnelian was glad to follow him. The light revealed a design upon the wall. A grid, its boxes filled with red, black and green dabs forming diagonals across it. He did not need the colours running along the top and the twelve columns to know these were the months. Down the side of the six rows, pomegranates alternated with lilies, each having a number beside it. The six grand-cohorts of the Red Ichorians. The coloured dabs showed the month on which each grand-cohort was to garrison which of the three gates. It made him sad, this duty rota for men almost all now dead.

  He looked away. He had his own duty. The previous night, as he and Fern had gazed down upon the sartlar, an ammonite had appeared, saying their masters had arrived at the Blood Gate and that they insisted he should attend a conclave with them immediately. He had been too weary, too disconsolate, to face them then, but he had promised that, at first light, he would meet with them.

  Following the ammonite up into the open air, Carnelian was overwhelmed. All around him the Canyon walls rose up to challenge the majesty of the sky. Such vast space was a shock after the confinement of the military strata, whose spaces, though cavernous, were inhabited by engines of war, reeking of naphtha, around whose bloated brass Ichorians crept like ants around their queen.

  Carnelian could see no threat and asked Sthax and his Marula escort to wait for him. His ammonite guide led him off across a plain that was the roof and summit of the Blood Gate tower in which he lodged and that was covered with a sparse forest of chimneys. They were heading for a promontory that curved up from a corner of the tower to a platform crowded with machines. As Carnelian climbed towards it he recognized some as heliographs, though larger than any he had seen before. As for the rest, he could not even guess their function. Sapients stood here and there, directing ammonites working the mechanisms. As he wound his way through the thicket of brass and bone, of lenses and louvred mirrors, he saw three taller figures at the platform edge and knew, from their staves, they must be Grand Sapients.