As the suit moulded itself to his body Carnelian raised his arms, surprised at how it flexed at the gathering ridges of wrists, elbows and shoulders. He did not like the paleness of the leather which reminded him of the bleached faces of the Wise. In its sickly, greasy pallor it also bore a resemblance to the maggots of the Oracles.
He dropped his arms and practised breathing against the embrace of the suit. It was restrictive, but not so much that he felt trapped. He became aware of the way the suit was padded to accentuate the musculature of his body that the ritual bandages obscured.
When the ammonites asked him to climb down and walk around the chamber, he was pleased to find the legs of the suit articulating as comfortably as the arms. As he bent and twisted and crouched, the suit clung to him like a second skin. The ammonites asked him to stand still, then, after some adjustments, all left save one who, removing his silver mask, replaced it with one whose eyes were solid spirals. Begging his permission, the ammonite reached up and released Carnelian’s mask. He took hold of the flaccid head of the suit, smoothed it over Carnelian’s chin, then up and over his head. Carnelian pulled its opening around the contours of his face. He felt buttons being secured at the nape of his neck. Then the ammonite came round and bound his mask back on. Finally, the others returned with a great, black, hooded military cloak that they threw about his shoulders and bound across his chest with a clasp that, in jet and jade, showed the faces of the Twin Gods.
Carnelian followed Osidian onto the summit of the pier. There before them was a dragon tower: a pallid, three-tiered pyramid from which a mast rose, supported by rigging. In front, one flame-pipe pointed towards the heart of the cothon; the other was just being raised. From the rear of the tower two thicker brass chimneys emerged with sooty swollen mouths.
Even as he was taking in these details, Carnelian became increasingly disturbed. He realized the tower was reminding him of a Plainsman Ancestor House, and of the boats of the ferrymen of Osrakum. Though smoother, it too seemed made of bone. Those other structures people had fashioned from their own dead, with reverence and as memorials. The dragon tower, though more finely wrought, was an instrument of war and thus seemed gruesome.
Osidian was facing a diagonal brass cross set against the tower flank. As Carnelian approached him, he saw it was no cross, but a gigantic woman wrought from brass. Her back to them, she was spreadeagled on a mesh as if crucified. Between her splayed legs he could see a portion of an opening that gave into the dark interior of the tower.
As she began to fall back towards them, Carnelian realized she was a drawbridge with ropes tied to her wrists. As her knuckles and the back of her head clinked against the pier, two legionaries emerged from the tower and ran out over her. When they reached Osidian, they unclasped his cloak, folded it carefully, then stood aside. The brass woman shuddered as Osidian’s foot struck her in the face. His next step fell between her legs. A third took him into the dragon tower through its oval portal. As the legionaries removed Carnelian’s cloak, he turned his head to see her face the right way up. Though it was worn almost smooth, he could still make out a noseless, eyeless grinning skull trapped within the circle of the deeply cut earth glyph. It must surely represent the branded face of a dead sartlar of the Guarded Land. He did not want to tread on that face and so he put his ranga down on the mesh between her head and an arm. Long, empty breasts sagged down the sides of her body. She was almost a skeleton. He stepped over her bony arm. Her vulva looked like a scooped out pomegranate. He stepped over her leg. It disturbed him that she was there to be walked on. He turned to the legionaries, now kneeling on the pier. ‘Who is this woman?’
One of them mumbled something and Carnelian asked him to speak more clearly.
‘Brassman,’ the legionary said.
Carnelian frowned behind his mask but, seeing the man’s discomfort, he stooped and entered the tower.
The ceiling of the cabin forced him to remain stooped. Just enough light squeezed past him to allow him to make out the organs and entrails of sinister machinery. When a voice behind him begged leave, Carnelian shuffled aside to let the two legionaries past. A porthole grated open in the opposite wall. More followed, letting in daylight. The rimless wheel of a capstan filled the rear of the cabin. In front of this a ladder led up to a trap set into the ceiling. The front of the cabin was dominated by a convoluted arrangement of tubes, vessels and other structures.
As Osidian gave commands, Carnelian was drawn to peer at these contraptions. Hanging in the air, a mass of leather strips wove around some metal ribs. Stepping round it, he saw this was a chair floating in mid air upon a limb of brass that came into the cabin like an oar into a baran. He could imagine the rest of it projecting out from the tower and knew it must be the end of the flame-pipe. He peered at some handles set upon its barrel. Taking hold of one, he found the pipe so finely counterbalanced he could swing it easily. Sliding his hand along the barrel, he touched the tube that curved from it down to a vessel of copper as large as a pumpkin. From the rear of this vessel a brass tube ran up to and back along the ceiling and out, presumably to emerge from the tower as one of the chimneys.
‘My Lord, please move away from the furnace. It is about to be lit.’
Osidian was waiting for him by the ladder. Carnelian watched him climb it even as legionaries were opening hatches in the copper vessels and striking flints. As he followed him up, one of the furnaces roared into life.
He emerged into a second cabin partially filled with trumpets the size of canoes. Climbing further he came up into the brightness of a third cabin. He clambered up onto the deck. He was pleased to find he did not need to stoop. The front wall was a delicately pierced screen that curved round to open up the front half of each side wall. A single chair faced this screen, upon which sat Osidian. Carnelian had to avoid some contraptions lying on the floor to the side of the chair as he approached the screen. His eyes adjusted to the glare enough for him to be able to see out through the web of fine rods.
Below him the two flame-pipes pointed forwards. Beyond was the open cothon, piles of empty render sacs forming a ring around its hub. The hub itself was now only a scaffolding rack almost entirely denuded of the flame-pipes it had held. He could smell something burning. Gazing back into the cabin he almost expected to see it smouldering. A legionary had come after them and crept forward to kneel on one side of the chair. Another appeared through the floor and hesitated, a look of agony on his face. Carnelian realized he must be standing in the man’s place. He moved back to stand behind Osidian and the legionary rushed forward to kneel beside the chair, then lifted a tube from the floor and connected it to his helmet.
‘The pipes are ready for testing, Master,’ the other legionary announced. Tubes snaked from his helmet also.
Carnelian noticed both legionaries were crouched over a kind of fork they held before them and from each of which two tubes hung. Osidian’s gloved hands closed on the armrests of the chair. ‘Target the render sacs.’
The legionary at his right hand leaned down and murmured into one prong of his voice fork. Carnelian heard a sound and looked up to see the flame-pipes lifting.
‘Flame,’ said Osidian.
The legionary spoke again into his voice fork. From the bowels of the tower there rose a choking and gurgling. Then a high whine that made Carnelian grit his teeth. Screaming arcs of sunlight erupted from the mouths of the flame-pipes. A mist of smoke. Then the sacs began detonating. Their fiery brilliance was almost immediately concealed behind a mass of black smoke that boiled into the sky. A wall of heat struck the cabin, carrying a stench as if from a funeral pyre.
Night had fallen when Carnelian accompanied Osidian on a final inspection of all twenty-four dragons. Smoke obscured the stars. The incessant testing of flame-pipes had hung a pall over the fortress that had turned day to murky twilight. The fires of the Marula camp guttered across the cothon floor, where Osidian had insisted they must all spend the night. Carnelian had agreed to stay with
him. He shared Osidian’s anxiety. Now the dragons were fully armed, he did not want them out of his sight. Lit by the torches attached to the piers, the bellies and legs of the monsters formed a continuous portico that could have been the edge of the Isle of Flies. Carnelian shuddered. He gazed up at one of the monsters. Though its upper horns were now bound to its tower with a hawser, its lower horns were still tethered to the cothon floor. The sickly pale tower with its pipes, chimneys, mast and rigging seemed a sinister ship in a fog. For some reason he was recalling the fear Ebeny had felt on that night, long ago in the Plain of Thrones, when she had been chosen from the flesh tithe.
Carnelian awoke on Heart-of-Thunder’s pier. He and Osidian had slept there so that they could be free of their masks. Dawn was running blood down the mast of the monster’s tower. Osidian was gone. Carnelian put his mask on and rose to face the day.
He found Osidian down on the cothon cobbles talking to Morunasa. Osidian was instructing the Oracle on how he and the Marula were to seed the fortress with naphtha sacs. Listening, Carnelian was struck by how thoroughly Osidian was planning his act of sabotage. He could not keep silent once Morunasa had gone. ‘Is it necessary to destroy this place so utterly?’
Osidian’s mask turned its imperious glance on him. ‘This fortress must provide no succour to my Lord Aurum.’
‘Is it not rather that you wish to send a message to the Wise?’
‘My Lord, you will take your grand-cohort out immediately.’ Osidian indicated the dozens of lesser huimur chained one to the other, each bearing a fully laden render frame. ‘Take our supplies with you to safeguard them. When you reach open ground, deploy your huimur to cover my exit from the city. Do you understand?’
Carnelian frowned behind his mask, angry at Osidian’s tone. ‘No news of Aurum?’
Osidian made a gesture of negation, then indicated the brightening sky. ‘The smoke we have been releasing will be visible from a great distance.’
‘As far as Osrakum,’ Carnelian said, knowing it must be clearly visible to the nearest watch-towers.
Indeed, signed Osidian.
‘And while I am screening the city, you will be here incinerating this place?’
‘I shall do nothing myself.’
Carnelian could hear the smile in Osidian’s voice. ‘You will make the Lesser Chosen commanders do it so as to fully implicate them.’
‘There are more ways to bind others to one’s cause than love.’
Carnelian would not allow himself to be stung by Osidian’s bitterness. ‘Which huimur is to be mine?’
Osidian made a summoning gesture and two legionaries rose from among the rest. ‘These are your Righthand and Lefthand. They will guide you to your command, my Lord.’
‘Until later then.’ Carnelian indicated to his officers that they should lead and he set off with them across the cothon floor.
As he approached the dragon Carnelian judged that, if it was less massive than Heart-of-Thunder, it could not be by much. Gazing up between the swelling arches of its eye-ridges, he found the scar glyphs of its name: Earth-is-Strong.
Carnelian turned to his Lefthand. ‘Have you ridden him long?’
‘She, Master,’ the man said, then shrank away at his presumption.
‘You were right to correct me, legionary,’ Carnelian said, gazing back at the dragon. He had not thought they could be female.
‘Nine years,’ the man was saying when Carnelian’s chuckle interrupted him. He was amused to find he was detecting feminine curves in the monster’s horns, her beak, the sweep of her crest. Her lower right horn was just a stump, so she really only had three.
Carnelian became aware of the legionaries’ confusion. ‘Come, let’s take her out.’
He followed them to the rear of a pier, where they opened a door for him. He dismissed them and began to climb the stair alone. No doubt its form was intended to remind a commander of the Law. He used its spiralling path to compose his mind. He must be careful how he managed those under his command. When he reached the summit, he saw before him the bone pyramid of her tower upon her massive back. He could not help feeling a stab of elation that she was his.
His officers were waiting, kneeling. He passed between them, then crossed the brassman into the tower. He surveyed the gloom through the slits of his mask. Men were kneeling before the furnaces, beside the flame-pipe counterweight chairs, between the spokes of the capstan. Carnelian noted the hawser that emerged from a hole in the deck, wound itself round the spindle of the capstan, then disappeared through another hole on the other side of the cabin. It was this hawser, attached to the upper horns of the dragon, that allowed her to be steered.
He climbed to the next deck. Framed by the brass of the huge trumpets, this cabin had been turned into a storeroom and barracks. He continued up to the command deck, where he took his place upon its chair. His officers came up behind him, then knelt to either side and began connecting tubes to their helmets. His arms rested naturally along those of the chair. Its bone seemed polished ivory. He raised his gaze to look out through the latticework screen at the cothon. Below him were the gleaming spars of his flame-pipes. Further down still the slope of Earth-is-Strong’s head sweeping out into the scythe and stump of her lower horns, into the hook of her beak.
He realized he did not know what to do next. He considered asking one of his officers, but decided it could not be that difficult. ‘Take her out.’
His Lefthand put his mouth to his tubed voice fork and murmured something, then lifted his head. Nothing happened. Carnelian was beginning to feel they were waiting for him to give another command, when he noticed some movement down on the dragon’s lower horns. Men were now sitting astride the brass cuffs, to which were lashed the tether ropes. Responding to some signal, both simultaneously leaned over and released the ropes. Earth-is-Strong’s head came loose. Carnelian flinched as she swung it up. For a moment he imagined her bony frill would shatter the tower he was in to shards. She let forth a cry like tearing metal. The tower shuddered. Then it heeled over to one side, causing Carnelian to grip the arms of the chair. The tower surged forward. The impact of the monster’s footfall jarred up into Carnelian’s head. The tower began another surge, toppling in the opposite direction. To his relief, as Earth-is-Strong got into her stride, the movement gradually smoothed like a ship riding a swell.
They were heading straight for the centre of the cothon. ‘The outer gate,’ he said, quickly.
The Lefthand jerked a nod and muttered into his voice fork: ‘Starboard for two counts.’
Carnelian felt the turn in his stomach. Ahead, the cothon was slipping right to left.
‘Shall I give the signal for the others to follow us, Master?’ the Lefthand asked.
Carnelian managed only a nod.
The legionary leaned to his voice fork and began murmuring instructions. Carnelian’s curiosity was piqued. ‘Who’re you talking to?’
The Lefthand looked up, startled. When he saw it was a question and not a complaint, he pointed up. ‘Our mirrorman on the roof, Master.’
Carnelian nodded, imagining something like a small heliograph up there. Earth-is-Strong was now pounding directly towards the outer gate of the cothon. As they approached, it opened before them. Soon its brass was glimmering past on either side. Then they began moving through the fortress towards the watch-tower that guarded its gate. Edifices slid past. Men scurried from their path. The fortress gate grated as it lifted into the retaining wall. Soon the shadow of the watch-tower fell over them.
‘Master, shall we give warning of our coming?’ said the Righthand.
Carnelian released the arm of the chair and raised his hand in affirmation. They were exiting the fortress. He could see the mosaic of squares and lozenges made up by the roofs of the mudbrick tenements. A trumpet roared beneath Carnelian’s feet. He could feel its vibration through the deck. It blared again, its harsh, ragged voice echoing back off the buildings as Earth-is-Strong slid between them.
&
nbsp; Carnelian had grown tired of watching the city slip by. His focus was turned inwards as he brooded on what was to come. He was startled by a rumbling like thunder that came from somewhere far behind him. For a while he heard its echoes getting lost among the alleys below.
‘What was that?’ he asked his Lefthand.
Staring, the man shook his head. Carnelian rose, swaying with the deck, searching the rear wall of the cabin for windows. There were portholes to either side of the mast. Finding his sea legs, he strode to one. Another explosion sounded as he fumbled at the bolt securing its cover. Then he had it open and was looking back along the road. Beyond the long line of dragons following his, a frowning black cloud was rising as it fed on wavering tentacles of smoke. As he watched, there was a flash as if the sun had been caught suddenly upon some vast mirror. Moments later he was hit by a detonation that made him recoil from the porthole. He returned to it and watched the smoke rising. Suddenly, the branches of the watch-tower were wreathed in flames. It looked like one of the mother trees in the Koppie burning.
The Third God Page 25