The Third God

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘Things have changed since the battle,’ Carnelian said. He sketched out for them the contents of the edict. ‘Utter defeat is likely.’

  Poppy nodded, tears beginning to well. ‘So? We’ll die with you.’

  ‘If it’s hopeless, why do you go on?’ said Fern.

  Carnelian regarded him, considering what to say. Then he decided to discard all attempts at managing the situation. ‘I’ve had a dream that I believe promises victory.’

  Fern shrugged. ‘Then I’ll hazard what’s left of my life on a dream.’

  Carnelian had not expected that. ‘You want to come with me?’

  Fern glanced up into the sky, frowning. ‘Though I’m not sure any longer what it is I’m fighting for, I want— I need to keep fighting the Masters.’

  ‘Besides . . .’ said Poppy and Carnelian was glad to turn to her, not wanting to see the agony and confusion that Fern was struggling with.

  ‘. . . if your dream’s wrong, the vengeance of the Masters will find us wherever we hide.’

  Krow gave a solemn nod. ‘I too would rather die fighting the Masters than hiding somewhere waiting for them to hunt us down.’

  Poppy hugged Carnelian. Eyes lensed with tears, he sought for restraint, as he sensed the others were also doing, muttering all the time, ‘I’m glad. I’m glad.’

  With his friends, Carnelian watched Lily and her people march away. He could just make out their tiny forms amidst the red, sky-high banners of dust their column was raising. He was glad they had agreed to take a route to the east of the leftway wall. It was much harder going than it would have been upon the road, but he had not thought it wise for them to attempt to pass through the camp of Osidian’s auxiliaries.

  Amidst the relief of seeing them go was sadness that he would never see Lily again. His gloomy contemplation of that loss diminished the glow of having his friends with him, along with his worry that selfishness had stopped him from trying harder to get them to leave with the Lepers. There was something else, too, an irritation. Why could he feel no satisfaction at having got revenge on Aurum? It seemed a betrayal of his uncle Crail, whom Aurum had had murdered. Carnelian had sworn one day to avenge him and now he had. Once again he imagined Aurum waking among the Lepers. Perhaps outrage and anger would keep his terror at bay, but not for long. Soon he would discover he was alone. For the first time in his life he would be powerless. He might no more be able to comprehend this than a bird its inability to fly if its wings were shorn off. Nothing in the Lord’s long life could have prepared him for the humiliation and agony. Carnelian shuddered. The Lepers would not let him die quickly.

  Carnelian had come to the edge of the heliograph platform to watch the commotion below. Masters with a Marula escort, moving in convoy through the camp, were sending a bow wave of kneeling out through the auxiliaries. The Lesser Chosen commanders were heading towards him. They must be obeying a summons from Osidian. Carnelian shuddered, knowing none would leave the tower alive.

  Hearing movement behind him, he glanced round. The homunculi were approaching. He had had them send heliograph signals south to the watch-towers of Makar commanding them to give free passage to the Lepers. Hoping to ensure obedience, they had used Legions’ codes. While waiting for confirmation, Carnelian had asked them how he might summon sartlar and the little men had huddled down in earnest discussion.

  It was Legions’ homunculus who now addressed him. ‘Seraph, though we are not of the Domains Roads or Lands, through our duties we have picked up some understanding of their systems. One protocol in particular might be appropriated to your purpose: that which is used to bring sartlar to the roads to repair them. Our judgement is that we are close enough in appearance to the ammonites who would normally convey such a summons that the overseers will heed us.’

  Carnelian nodded. ‘How many sartlar will come?’

  ‘That is uncertain, Seraph. The overseers we directly communicate with will pass this on to others deeper into the hinterland; a process beyond our control.’

  Carnelian nodded again, brooding.

  ‘Seraph!’

  He looked to where one of the homunculi was pointing. There, in the south, a mote of sun was flickering. They decrypted the message for him. ‘“A mass of the unclean have entered the Pass and are now marching down to the land below.”’

  Carnelian felt a shadow passing from him. Glancing back down at the procession of Masters he hardened his heart against them. Let them pay for the suffering they and their fathers had brought upon the barbarians.

  The next morning, from the leftway, Carnelian watched the homunculi ride out, each with an escort of auxiliaries. East and west they went, seeking overseers in working kraals beyond the region Osidian had devastated with his manoeuvres. He had misgivings. Perhaps his mind was still in the shadow of his dreams. He had not slept well. Knowledge of what was happening in the bowels of the watch-tower had made him feel he was precariously balancing over a gaping cesspit. He was going to abandon the tower. Osidian could have it all to himself for his filthy maggot rituals.

  Carnelian took Poppy with him on Earth-is-Strong and soon they were leading their forces out into the dust of the land. Aurum’s dragons followed those from Qunoth, their Lefthands sitting for the first time in command chairs. Fern led the auxiliaries and Marula, with Krow as his lieutenant. That day would be the first of many spent on manoeuvres.

  Later, their shadows reaching the camp before them, the army returned, weary, caked in the earth’s rust. Carnelian descended to the road to find the homunculi waiting for him. They told him they had accomplished their mission. Even now his summons was spreading across the land.

  Haunted by doubt, it was a joy for him to slump beside the fire Fern lit for them upon the road. After they had eaten, Carnelian lay down to sleep, free of his mask, trusting to the homunculi and his friends to keep unwanted eyes away.

  In the days that followed, he constantly scanned the vague reaches of the haze wondering if any sartlar would obey his summons and, if they did, whether in sufficient numbers to fulfil the purpose he believed had been shown to him in his dream. Then they began arriving, hobbling under baskets of their rotten bread, trailing infants, coming to form pathetic cringing huddles near the edge of the camp beneath the blind stare of the dragons.

  The days merged into a monotonous rhythm. Each morning Carnelian set off with their host. They made lines, they wheeled and charged, churning dust up into red veils. In the evening they would return to find the sartlar numbers swollen. Soon their multitude reached beyond the cisterns and, daily, crept further and further out into the desiccating land. He became aware that, every day, it was taking him longer and longer to reach open ground. At his manoeuvres, in whichever direction he looked into the murk he would see small groups of sartlar crawling towards the dark spire of the watch-tower.

  At night he slipped through labyrinthine nightmares threatened always by a dark welling sea. Always the sea, the drowning sea. Waking, his eyes as bleary as the sun, he gazed out over the endless sartlar, hearing the swell in their ceaseless muttering.

  Imperceptibly a blood-red sun came to hold sway in a bloody sky. Everything took on that hue; all shapes and outlines softened to ghosts. The only things that seemed truly real to Carnelian were his own hands and the people near him. Every face was bound up: not to breathe through cloth was to choke. The rain wind had picked up and lashed them with scratching sand so that, when he was not in his command chair, he would turn his back upon it and gaze listlessly north-east. Legions’ homunculus told him that, as ever more sartlar left the land, it would turn to desert. It seemed too small an explanation in the face of this new world.

  At first the sartlar, heads bowed, had waited around the cisterns patiently for men and beasts to drink their fill. Now, all such decorum had been abandoned. To slake the thirst of their limitless numbers, they now drew their water directly from the sinkhole. Night and day it brimmed with their frantic climbing. As Carnelian passed the sinkhole high in
his dragon tower each morning, he would gaze down in a sort of horror at that entrance to some vast ant-nest from which the earth herself seemed to be giving birth to the brutes.

  For as long as he could, he had fed the sartlar from his own supplies, sending auxiliaries to hurl scraps into their multitude. As food dwindled, he had sent to Makar for ever more. When the fortress quartermaster came himself to convince him his demands could no longer be met, Carnelian had sent Fern into the city with several squadrons of their auxiliaries. He returned with wagons, but with a grim face and furious eyes, and Carnelian saw the blood drying upon the lances of the men who rode behind him.

  At last, one day, Carnelian returned to find the sartlar crawling like lice over the remains of the Ichorians. Disgusted, he almost sent men to drive them away but in the end he turned his back on their scavenging. That night he could not sleep for what he imagined was the sound of their feeding. In the blackness it was harder to feel confident in the rings of dragons and soldiers that lay between them and the sartlar.

  Once the road had been picked clean, the brutes began to starve. The nights were now disturbed by an oceanic moaning that moved him with its anguish. Marching out he would look out over the sea of heads and spot clumps of smaller heads. Sartlar squatting, hugging swollen bellies. Not mothers-to-be, but starving children. He knew that, if they did not set off soon, the sartlar would begin to die in vast numbers. So it was with relief that he greeted Morunasa’s news that, at last, Osidian had fallen into the birthing fever.

  RED DUSK

  What kind of society survives turning to cannibalism?

  (a Quyan fragment)

  CARNELIAN SLUMPED BESIDE THE FIRE STIRRING THE STILL WARM ASHES with his foot. He was weary of waiting. Morunasa had said Osidian would wake in five days. It had already been eight, perhaps nine: he had lost count. It seemed a long time since he had suspended manoeuvres. Neither he nor their host had left the camp for days. He had hardly ventured away from their fire. Poppy and Krow went to fetch food for them and water. Fern went out periodically to walk around the camp. Sometimes Krow went with him; sometimes he remained behind, his head hanging, as miserable and worn out as everyone else. No one wanted to look upon the famine stalking the land beyond the dragon wall. They could not avoid hearing the moaning. Night and day it lent a desolate, bleak voice to the choking wind that blew ever more fiercely from the red desert the land had become. Hearing that sound of suffering, Carnelian feared that, if they did not soon march, all that would be left of the sartlar was bones. He glanced up and saw the great crag of towered Heart-of-Thunder looming up in the gloom, against the leftway wall. He had had him moved there so that they could march north the moment Osidian awoke. A fantasy of green land and clear air possessed him. There the sartlar would find food.

  He trailed his gloved hand along a crack between two flagstones, heaping red dust. He took some in his palm and prayed Osidian would soon wake.

  ‘Master?’

  The voice made him jump. It was Morunasa’s gravel tone. ‘He’s woken.’ The Oracle was there and gave him a grim nod.

  Carnelian put on his mask and sprang to his feet. He gazed out over the auxiliaries huddling against the duststorm, their aquar like rocks in a bloody tide. He saw Fern coming towards him and cried out: ‘Get the legions ready. Send messengers among the sartlar. We’re marching north.’

  Relief flooded into Fern’s face even as the news began spreading through the camp, waking men from their lethargy so suddenly that, everywhere, aquar heads were popping up, eye-plume fans half opening. Carnelian lingered for a moment watching the camp come alive like the Earthsky after the rains. Then, as he saw Morunasa turn towards the base of the tower, he grew grim and prepared himself for what lay within.

  The red light of the outer world snuffed out and the moans of the starving multitude faded as Carnelian followed Morunasa into the tower. As the portcullis was raised in the mouth of the stables a stench flowed out that made Carnelian flinch. Morunasa stooped and entered. Gathering his courage, Carnelian followed. Doughy shapes formed a pale frieze about the walls. Quick dusk as the portcullis fell, then darkness. He refused to give in to the fear that he was trapped. The sickening fetor thickened as he drew nearer to one of the pale shapes. It must once have been a man. A Master hung on hooks, his flesh sagging away from his bones. A beam of light sprang out to illuminate the corpse. Carnelian glimpsed Morunasa behind him holding aloft a narrowly shuttered lantern. He turned back to what it was the Oracle wanted him to see: a dead body not so unlike how his would be were it hanging there. A half-melted tallow doll. Sallow skin spotted with twisted black wounds like the eyeslits on a mask. Feet and hands dark bloated clubs. He had seen this kind of thing before. He looked up at a face frozen in pantomime surprise. He scanned along the walls and as he did so, the light followed his gaze. The commanders were all there, all surprised, all riddled with the Oracles’ holy vermin. Carnelian steeled himself against guilt. Though he had offered up these Masters as victims, it had been to save the Lepers. Besides, it was Osidian who had carried out this abomination. He might claim his god demanded victims, but what had really killed these Masters was Osidian’s injured pride.

  Seeing the way Morunasa was gazing at him, Carnelian was overcome with revulsion. ‘I’m not afraid of you, Oracle. Enjoy this, because you know you will never dare visit your vengeance on him.’

  Snarling, Morunasa began climbing the ramp to the next level. When they reached the top level of the stables Morunasa halted outside a stall and cast his lantern light into it. Carnelian’s head eclipsed the light as he peered in. He crouched, seeing two prone figures: another Master, this one laid out upon the floor, muttering, and beside him a skeleton. Carnelian gasped with horror and fell to his knees. ‘Osidian,’ he murmured, his voice breaking towards a sob. He gulped it back, knowing Morunasa was watching. He removed his mask and put it on the floor, then leaned close. The skeleton was indeed Osidian, all his flesh drained away, leaving only bones, and skin marred by many recent wounds. Carnelian grew angry that he should be seen like that. He unfastened his cloak and covered him. Blearily, this almost dead thing opened its eyes. Bright jewels among the ruins of his beauty. Carnelian’s tears were blinding him. He leaned closer, whispering: ‘What have you done to yourself? What have you done?’

  Osidian began a smile that his lips were too tight to finish. He tried to raise one withered arm, but had not the strength. He smiled again. ‘I have been to the Shadow Isle and have returned.’

  His breath was stale. His eyes seemed to sink back into his skull. Carnelian had no problem believing Osidian had returned from death.

  Osidian’s soul seemed to rise up again from the depths. ‘I found peace there,’ he sighed, but his eyes were haunted by some recollection. Then they ignited. ‘I bring back a promise of victory.’

  Carnelian drew back a little. Those eyes had in them the mercilessness of a raven’s. The light subsided and Osidian stared madly as if he were seeing some horror. Carnelian reached under the cloak and found his hand. He winced at its frailty, like the remains of a bird’s wing. He dared not squeeze it lest all its bones snap. ‘Famine threatens to destroy our forces. We must move to where they can feed or else there will be nothing to follow you to victory except the dead.’

  Osidian frowned, but showed no comprehension. His brow smoothed. ‘My Father promised me victory and peace thereafter.’

  Carnelian knew he would gain nothing by further speech and so he told him he was going to carry him up to Heart-of-Thunder.

  ‘Jaspar too.’

  On the point of asking what he meant, Carnelian became aware once more of the other body, and its muttering as constant as the babbling of a stream. He leaned over to see the face. A narrow face that at first he could not recognize as Jaspar’s, so wasted it might rather have been Jaspar’s aged father. His white flesh looked as if he had been the victim of a frenzied stabbing. Carnelian noticed some movement. A pale tongue was poking out from one of these woun
ds. Carnelian bent double, retching.

  ‘The God has entered him and speaks to me through him.’

  Carnelian glared at Osidian.

  ‘He seeds my dreams.’

  Carnelian regarded Jaspar with disgust. He was giving birth to his maggots. ‘Will he die?’

  ‘Oh no, he will suffer long.’

  Carnelian turned back to Osidian.

  ‘He shall be tended well so that I may use him as an instrument of divination.’ Osidian must have misunderstood Carnelian’s look of horror, for he added: ‘Worry not, we shall make sure he shall be fully aware of the God devouring him.’

  Carnelian rose, trying to overcome his disgust, his loathing for Osidian and his filthy obsessions by instructing Morunasa how the two Masters were to be carried up out of the stables.

  Carnelian emerged from behind the monolith onto the leftway and gulped fresh air through his mask. Heart-of-Thunder seemed insubstantial against the vast world beyond, which Carnelian felt he was seeing through a film of blood. A sea of sartlar stretched away to a murky horizon. Shock made the moment silent and eternal: he had stepped into one of his dreams. He forced his head to move, his eyes to focus on something with a human scale. Osidian lying masked upon a bier borne by Oracles, Jaspar upon another. The Marula stared as if they were seeing their deaths rolling towards them. Carnelian could not resist the pressure of their gaze and once more turned to look upon the multitude.

  ‘Millions . . .’ he breathed. His feet carried him closer to the edge as he sought to take in the vastness of such numbers. A great disturbance struck the shoreline of that sea where it came close to the dragons. For a moment Carnelian feared the dragons were attacking them, but there was no smoke, no fire, and the monsters seemed as motionless as rocks. The disturbance surged out across the masses, rushing towards the horizon like some vast wave sucking back from the shore. As he watched it race away, Carnelian understood what it was he was seeing. They were kneeling. An oceanic act of abasement. Was he its cause?