The Third God

by Ricardo Pinto

  He gave his hand again to Poppy. The lantern light wavered. The homunculus was clearly in some distress. Down more ramps they went, Carnelian itching with disgust at the delicate hail of flies striking against his mask. The gold was too thin a membrane between him and such vermin.

  At last they reached the lowest level, where he found, to his relief, that the portcullis giving onto the road was raised. Eagerly he strode out, past the monolith, into the bright morning, where he and the homunculus sucked at the clean air as best they could through their masks. Poppy glanced back, pale with fright.

  As they emerged from the rampart of the Qunoth dragons, the Lepers rose like an ocean swell. Carnelian glanced back to the road, where the Marula camp huddled right up against the doorway into the stables. He was trying to rid himself of his unease at the way they had cowered when he had appeared among them.

  He turned and saw the Lepers surging towards him. Poppy clenched his hand and the homunculus drew closer. The Lepers swarmed around them, murmuring, staring at them though keeping their distance. As he advanced a way opened up through their midst. Glancing from side to side, he could see he was surrounded and began to wonder if he had made a mistake in coming. There was nothing for it. To hesitate might be fatal.

  Some figures stood their ground before him. With relief he saw a tall shrouded shape among them that could only be Fern. As Carnelian came to a halt the Lepers pressed in so close he was breathing their rankness. Their low menacing grumble beat around him.

  ‘Make space,’ cried a voice he recognized as Lily’s. Fern strode in a circle round Carnelian, shoving the Lepers back. ‘Give them space. Space, I say.’

  As Poppy let go of his hand, Carnelian glanced down. Her face was set in an expression he could not read. He raised his eyes. For a moment he considered asking Lily for a private meeting, but he was only too aware of the dangerous temper of the crowd. What he had come to say he did not want to be heard by Aurum’s Lesser Chosen commanders or, even worse, Aurum himself, but he calculated that his voice would most likely be smothered by the Leper mob. And he did not believe that the Lepers would betray him even to the auxiliaries, never mind the other Masters.

  His silence seemed to be heating them into anger. Voices began shouting questions from the back of the crowd. Others took these up until the noise swelled into a baying in which he could detect, in many voices layered one upon the other, the demand: ‘Give him to us.’

  Carnelian raised his hands for silence, but their storm continued to build around him. The homunculus pushed against him. Carnelian too feared for their lives. For a moment he considered removing his mask whose cold, arrogant expression could not but be provoking them.

  Then Poppy moved in front of him and her treble carried above the hubbub. ‘Let him speak.’ First Lily’s husky voice joined hers, then Fern’s booming tones, and slowly the noise abated.

  Carnelian turned in a circle so that they could see he was addressing them all. ‘You shall have him.’

  They answered him with thunderous cries and a stamping rhythm. He raised his hands again and this time they fell silent. ‘But if I attempt to give him to you now, you will have to fight for him against the auxiliaries and the dragons.’

  Spears sprang into the air about him as they roared their rage. Once again the homunculus pressed in close. Carnelian looked round, sure that at any moment they would fall on him. Beyond natural fear he felt the first stirrings of panic that he had misjudged the situation.

  Fern came to his side, and Lily and a figure that had to be Krow. With Poppy, they formed a shield around him, facing the mob, bellowing at them until, raggedly, the Lepers again fell silent.

  ‘Will you hear me out?’ Carnelian said. He gazed out over their heads, anxious to gauge whether the auxiliaries or the Marula or, worse, the dragons were making any move to intervene, but the dust the Lepers were raising in their agitation had shut the rest of the world out behind a hazy wall. He focused his attention on the front rank of the crowd. ‘Will you hear me out?’ he repeated.

  He waited until nods in the front ranks spread out into the crowd. ‘Listen then,’ he said, using the strength there was in his Master’s voice. ‘If what I am about to say fails to persuade you otherwise, I’ll give your enemy to you now as was promised.’

  Fern and the others moved away from him, turning to face him so that they could listen too. Carnelian gave Poppy a little shove. She glanced up angrily, but went to stand by Krow.

  ‘As you now know, your enemy is here. He came to join his strength to the Master’s. He came to fight with the Master against one more terrible even than either of them.’

  A murmur soughed across the Lepers like a breeze over fernland.

  ‘He who is your enemy is also mine, for he tortured my uncle to death.’ He gave time for that to pass among them and registered Poppy’s puzzlement. ‘But he who comes against us is more dangerous still. He’s the consort of the Master’s mother and it is she whom you should fear more than any other. She it was who betrayed her own son and would have murdered him, as she did her daughter, if he hadn’t escaped with me out of the Mountain. More than this, it is she who sent your enemy to your valleys.’

  As this news passed back through the crowd, Carnelian felt unhappy that he was bending the truth. He had worked this out in his cell. Even when he had imagined he would be talking only to Lily and a few others, he had already half decided he would not attempt to explain who the Wise were, nor the part they had played. Neither was he minded to attempt an explanation of the politics of Osrakum. Gazing at his friends, he knew he was deceiving them. As the Lepers fell silent again, Carnelian drew strength from what he knew was no lie. Jaspar and Ykoriana were at least as dangerous as Aurum and Osidian; and to tip the balance there was the fact that, in the current circumstances, he had some power over the latter two.

  ‘If you take your enemy now and return to your valleys, the Master’s mother will not forget you. She’ll not forget the secret way you showed us up to Qunoth.’

  He glanced at Lily, fully aware that had been her gift to him. ‘What she’ll not forget nor forgive is that you’ve come up to the Guarded Land in arms. Worse, you’ve taken the part of the son she hates. Your enemy, Aurum, attacked you for his amusement; she’ll do so seeking to exterminate you utterly.’

  He waited for his words to reach them all and then waited even longer to allow their threat to penetrate each stomach.

  ‘I didn’t come here to frighten you, but to give you hope. I’ve extracted from the Master an oath that, should you choose to help us fight his mother and her minion, and should we be victorious, you shall be pardoned.’

  He looked at Fern, then Poppy, then Krow. ‘As will be all those who’ve risen in rebellion.’ He had hoped for more of a reaction, at least from his friends. The Lepers standing round him had their heads bowed and so he could not see their faces, but he felt that, there too, his words had awoken precious little hope. Almost he stumbled into making stronger promises – that the world would be changed; that they would play a part in freeing many others from the tyranny of the Masters – but he knew that would be going too far. Even what he had promised he could not be certain of delivering. ‘Choose to fight with us and there is a good chance you will gain the peace to rebuild your lives.’

  Still they besieged him with their silence. He wished Lily could see his face. ‘You were prepared to fight for revenge against your enemy. Will you not fight to secure a future for yourselves?’

  Lily freed her face with its blood-red eyes from its shrouds. ‘You speak to us of Masters we do not know, of threats that lie beyond the horizon. You make promises we’ve no way of knowing you can fulfil. What do you expect, Master?’

  Fern raised his head and fixed Carnelian with a baleful gaze. ‘And are you so certain we can win this battle?’

  Carnelian regarded him through the slits in his mask. It had come to the point when what he now had to reveal would fall upon Fern more heavily than any other.
‘I’m less than certain.’

  As din erupted around him, he kept his gaze on Fern, whose face was screwed up with incomprehension. Carnelian spoke knowing he had run out of options. ‘Even now the Master communes with his god. He believes he’ll be guided by him onto a path to victory. I’ll not lie to you. I’ve no faith in his god and thus little hope he’ll find what he seeks.’

  Fern’s look of pain threatened to break Carnelian’s heart. The wound the massacre had cut in Fern, so deeply it had almost destroyed him, was being reopened.

  ‘And you expect us to put our trust in that!’ Poppy glared at him, her face ashen.

  Carnelian composed himself. This was no time for him to give way to their pain, nor his. ‘I didn’t come here expecting you to do this thing from faith nor out of trust. In surety of the risk you will take in waiting, I’ll give you control of your enemy, of the Master and of myself.’

  Lily grimaced, not understanding. ‘How?’

  Carnelian lifted his hand to point back at the watch-tower. ‘Move your camp around the foot of the tower. We shall then all be your prisoners. I’ll make it impossible for any of us to give commands save by your leave.’

  He waited, keeping his mind and heart numb, feeling pain around his eyes, but seeing nothing but Lily’s bowed head. At last she raised it. ‘We’ll discuss it and let you know. Now leave us.’

  Carnelian felt a twinge of anger at being dismissed thus, but he gave her a nod, left the homunculus with Poppy, then began the journey back towards the watch-tower.

  Up on the road, more and more Marula were rising to gaze in his direction. At first Carnelian felt, uncomfortably, that they were responding to his approach, but then he realized they were looking past him. Glancing round, he saw Lepers were pouring towards him through gaps in the dragon line. He turned back to the Marula with a sense of urgency. If he did not manage to make them quit their posts quickly there could well be bloodshed. Without help this might prove beyond him. They had been set to guard the watch-tower not only by their Oracles, but also Osidian. He searched along the ranks of faces, and breathed relief when he found the one he was looking for. He made straight for him.

  ‘Sthax,’ he called out.

  The Maruli glanced nervously towards the watch-tower foundation wall, behind which the Oracles lay communing with their god. As Carnelian climbed the ramp up to the road, the other Marula made space for him to approach Sthax. ‘I feared you lost.’

  Sthax regarded him with what seemed to be suspicion.

  ‘You have to move your people away. I’ve given the tower to the Lepers.’

  Sthax’s face hardened and Carnelian felt the Marula round them sensing his anger. ‘You have no choice.’ Carnelian glanced round at the approaching Leper tide to reinforce his point. The light his mask was reflecting into Sthax’s eyes was making him squint. Again Carnelian’s instinct was to talk to him face to face, but what was the point in pretending he was other than he was? ‘Tell the Oracles you were forced to obey my command.’

  Sthax, unappeased, stood his ground. ‘What happen?’

  Carnelian felt rage rising in him against this man, but knew he was not being fair. His disgust at the Oracles and their god and his obsession with the Lepers had made him treat these people shabbily. They had every right to an explanation and so he began to give Sthax one.

  ‘Battle?’ Sthax said, nodding wearily. His eyes seemed to be seeking Carnelian’s face through the mask. ‘We wins?’

  Carnelian felt drained at having to trot out the same fragile reasons he had had to give to the Lepers, but as he explained they were waiting for Osidian’s dreams, Sthax’s back stiffened. Of course, Osidian’s god was the god of all the Marula.

  Carnelian opened his arm to take in the warriors behind Sthax. ‘In a battle, many will die.’

  Sthax’s smile was like unexpected sun. ‘We warriors. We fears no die.’ Light left his face. ‘We fears for loves. We fears for homes.’

  This man was no fool. Sthax knew how narrow was the hope upon which his land and people hung. Carnelian explained why he had given the tower to the Lepers. ‘If they do not believe the Master will give them victory, there will be no battle. The Lepers will go home. The Marula will go home.’

  He could tell from Sthax’s face that he saw even less hope in that. Grimly, the Maruli took leave of him as he began the work of persuading his fellows to quit their posts.

  The Marula yielded to the Lepers. Lily left Fern behind to organize a new camp and then picked some of her people to accompany her. With a glance back at Fern, Carnelian led her and her people into the watch-tower. He climbed the ramps, keeping his gaze fixed always ahead, and was relieved when they reached the cistern level without mishap. Lily’s shrouded head turned as she surveyed the chamber with its shafts and ladder rising up into the tower. She gave a nod of acceptance, then assigned some of her people to stand guard upon the ladder, while to others she gave the duty of controlling the ramps they had just climbed.

  As Carnelian walked out onto the leftway, he glanced over to where three of Aurum’s guardsmen rose to deny him access to their master’s dragon tower. Regarding their sallow, bisected faces, he judged they were unlikely to cause any trouble. It was not their job to react to changes in the camp, but only to protect their master. He busied himself with supervising the raising of the drawbridge that connected the watch-tower to the long run south to Makar. As the device was ratcheting up, he noticed anxiously that Lily had appeared and was gazing at the guardsmen and the dragon tower. As he approached her she turned. ‘Is Au-rum in there?’

  Carnelian admitted that he was, then thought it best to explain that, without its crew, the Master had no means of operating the dragon, nor any way to communicate with the rest of his forces. When he was certain she was not going to make an attempt to seize Aurum, a need arose in him to have her answer some questions. ‘Do you really intend to sack Makar?’

  ‘Do you think it selfish of us that, after what we’ve suffered, we should seek the means to rebuild our lives?’

  ‘Would you heal your own wounds by wounding others?’

  A furious glint came into her eyes. ‘You forget how badly the Clean have always treated us.’

  ‘They fear you . . . and it is, besides, a fear you’ve encouraged.’

  Lily bowed her head. ‘Even if I wanted to pull back from it,’ she said, in a quiet voice, ‘it’s too late.’

  Carnelian felt sympathy for her. He was certain she had used that promise to persuade her people to follow her here. ‘You’re not the first he’s trapped by turning your desires against you.’

  She nodded.

  ‘If only you had come to me with this at the time . . .’ He paused. ‘Why didn’t you?’

  Lily shook her head, then moved away to the edge of the leftway and gazed down. Carnelian was aware of the barrier between them. He moved to her side. Her people were occupying the whole breadth of the road below and, spilling down the ramp, covered much of the ground there too. ‘You have us all in your power, Lily.’

  She did not turn. ‘It would appear so.’

  Lily permitted Carnelian to continue residing in his cell with Poppy and the homunculus. He encouraged her to place a guard upon the tower heliograph and her people replaced the Marula as lookouts in the deadman’s chairs. He had discussed the situation with her and she had allowed Poppy to go down to see Fern and ask him if he would be prepared to go north to the watch-tower beyond the next and to remain there, keeping an eye out for Jaspar’s approach. When Fern agreed to do this, Carnelian sent him a mirrorman as a heliograph operator.

  Days passed during which the breeze from the north-east gradually became the merest breath before failing completely. Without it the heat rose so that, even though the nights were chill, the stone of the watch-tower stayed warm to the touch. Carnelian lingered in his cell with Poppy during the worst of it, then, under cover of night, they would climb to the high platform where beneath a star-studded sky they often sat, hardly
saying a word.

  Then one afternoon a servant emerged from Aurum’s tower seeking Osidian. Lily allowed Carnelian to talk to the man. Cowering, sallow-faced, he was at first reluctant to divulge his message, but he could not long resist the imperious glare of Carnelian’s mask. It seemed that Aurum wanted to know if the Ichorian had been sighted. As Carnelian watched the man skulk back to the tower with a negative answer, he felt an increased level of anxiety. Jaspar must be close. He spent the rest of the day upon the watch-tower summit gazing north.

  The following morning, Carnelian came awake certain he could hear gulls screaming above a gale. Poppy was there, staring at him. ‘Is this it?’

  Carnelian sat up, hunched against the vast wave that was about to engulf them. The fear in Poppy’s face freed him from his dream. A muffled cry was coming from somewhere above them.

  ‘The lookouts,’ he cried, jumping up. They stared at each other. It was what they had been waiting for for days. He pointed at the ceiling. ‘I’ll go up and find out what it is. Can you please go down and tell Lily I’ll come to see her the moment I know?’

  Poppy ducked a nod and made for the door. Carnelian put on his mask, took his leave of the homunculus, trusting him, then followed her out. As he scrambled up the ladder to the roof, the anticipation of what he would see up there was like lead in his stomach. He climbed the staples. Even as he crested the platform edge, he could see the Leper lookouts gathered, agitated, pointing. He clambered up onto the platform, blind to everything but the hazy north. A flash. He waited. A double flash. His heart, racing, measured the time to the next flashing. Three in a row. The prearranged signal. It meant Fern had sighted dragons coming along the road. Carnelian ignored the repeat as he peered into the vague north, straining to see the Ichorian. Dread arched over him like the wave in his dream: not just anticipation of the coming trial, but the acceptance that the time had come to wake Osidian.