‘The brutes feel the presence of my Father.’
Carnelian turned and saw Morunasa had lifted Osidian’s head enough so that he could look out. The dark hands reverentially let Osidian’s head down. He was too weak to lift it himself, Carnelian could see that. Then Carnelian noticed Heart-of-Thunder’s Hands kneeling a little way off along the leftway. He summoned them and they came. ‘Dispatch a message to Earth-is-Strong. Her Lefthand is to command her until I return.’
The Hands touched their foreheads to the stone, so that when they came up they were bloodied by the dust. Carnelian gazed out once more and saw the wave of kneeling was still receding towards the horizon. He brought his gaze back to the edge of the camp. The dragons were beginning to swing round towards the ramp that would lead them up onto the road. Beneath him, the auxiliaries were already mounted. He gave the sartlar one more glance, then led the procession of Oracles and biers towards the dragon tower.
Moving along the open road, Heart-of-Thunder was easily outpacing the sartlar, who were pouring like oil across the murky land. Carnelian’s heart leapt when he noticed the miasma ahead wavering. He held his breath as the haze slipped to the ground in undulating thinning veils to reveal a vision of clear air, of a land running green to a far horizon. He let out a sigh that mixed relief with wonder. He felt free and had to fight a desire to tear the mask from his face so that he could enjoy the clean air unfiltered. Even through its nosepads he could detect the rich pungency of hri. He scanned the land and saw its greens were duller than they had seemed at first. These fields were tinged with brown. The rising heat was already turning the morning sky to enamel. He scanned round to the west. There the red haze formed a vague cliff fading away into the south-west, from whose base shapes were emerging like ants. He watched them slowly darkening the earth, turning the fields a dunnish red.
‘It is nearly harvest time,’ said the homunculus.
Carnelian turned to the little man, a question on his lips, but he forgot this and everything else as a shadow rose up at the edge of his vision.
‘Like locusts.’
Carnelian gazed at Osidian and wished he could see beneath his mask. Though his voice sounded sane enough, only looking into his eyes would make Carnelian certain. Still, he rose, steadied himself against the motion of the deck and offered the command chair to Osidian who, moving like an old man, slumped into it. For a long while he hung forward watching the sartlar devouring the land.
‘Numberless,’ he said, almost in a whisper.
He half turned so that Carnelian could see the gleam of an eye behind the mask. ‘Why did you gather them?’
‘I too was promised victory in a dream,’ Carnelian answered. He expected more questions, a dismissal, but at that moment a long, vibrating stream of Quyan syllables began pouring out from behind them. Carnelian saw Jaspar’s shadowy form laid out against the cabin wall.
‘The Lord speaks,’ said Osidian, in deep tones, as he nodded ponderously. He watched the sartlar stripping the land of its green to leave it red. ‘They consume the land as the worms did my own flesh.’
As dragons pushed the sartlar back to make space for a camp, Carnelian descended to the road from Heart-of-Thunder, glad to escape Jaspar’s incessant babbling. Auxiliaries were pouring off the road, fanning out over the cleared land. Their torrent veered away from him as he approached the ramp. Once he had reached the earth he set off in search of Fern. All around him men were choosing spots upon which to light fires, dismounting, unhitching packs from their saddle-chairs, sacs, waterskins that some were carrying off to fill at the stopping-place cisterns. Carnelian was glad of his mask that filtered the air. Even so, he realized he would be lucky to spot Fern through the churned-up dust. It occurred to him to ask one of the auxiliaries whether he knew Fern’s whereabouts, but his instincts were against the abasement such an enquiry would produce. Already there was a region around him into which none dare stray.
At last his wanderings brought him to the margins of the camp, where the dragons rose as a forbidding rampart, black against the westering sun. As he came closer he noticed men scrabbling up a rope girdle and walked round to get a better view. One man had clambered onto the monster’s haunch and was daubing something on what Carnelian saw was a wound that a leg of the tower had worn into its hide. That disturbed him; clearly the creature had already worn its tower too long.
Then he forgot everything else as he became aware he could hear the sea. At least it seemed the sea, though he knew it to be the murmuring of the sartlar multitude. He was drawn to gaze upon them and slipped into the shadow under the monster’s belly. He saw the silhouette of a beastmaster hefting up a sac to feed the monster. Pulling his cowl over his head, he crept behind its right front leg, making sure the massive column was firmly tethered to the ground. He just wanted a peep, but feared his mask might reflect some ray of the sun. Imagining the panic of the sartlar, he removed it. The tumult swelled as he slipped out of the shadow. Their stench wafted like the miasma from a midden. Squinting against the sun’s orb, at first he could see nothing but swirling currents. Then he began to make out the individual creatures on the margin of the host. Ragged, hunched, they crouched huddling in groups. Some limped among these clumps on stick legs. Everywhere his gaze snagged on filthy, bony limbs. Then he began noticing that some had stomachs swollen like render sacs, above legs that seemed far too brittle to bear them. Pregnant females? Difficult to tell, but then he saw some so small they had to be whelps. Children, he thought. Matted hair, hideous profiles. So many faces made monstrous by the earth glyph burned deep into nose and skin. He saw an old woman with one eye milky from a careless branding. He became aware of a pair of eyes gazing towards him. One of their young. The face already melted by the brand, but such bright eyes. The realization sank in that he was being watched. It was the child who broke their link first. It ran, screeching, into the body of the multitude. Carnelian darted back behind the dragon’s leg, fumbled his mask on even as he heard behind him the commotion building to a roar. Without glancing back he returned to the camp.
Later, when Osidian insisted they must sleep high in the watch-tower, Carnelian gave in, hardly heeding his arguments. Something about the need to maintain the awe with which their men regarded them; how else could they expect their obedience in a battle against his brother, the Gods on Earth?
Morose, Carnelian shared some render with him on the heliograph platform. There was nothing else left to eat. He hardly looked up at all at the dark mass of the sartlar clothing the land. He returned to his cell and gave one-word answers to Poppy’s questions. As he lay trying to sleep all he could see was the sartlar child’s bright, human eyes.
For the next two days they marched along the road. Carnelian was relieved to be back in the tower of Earth-is-Strong with Poppy near him and away from Jaspar. Always, as far north as he could see, sartlar were streaming from the west along the tracks between the hri fields towards the road, concentrating along its margin as if they were sightseers coming to watch a procession pass by. He could not understand how they found their way, for he had summoned them to come to a watch-tower now away in the south.
The hri in the fields ahead turned brown, then yellow, then white as if the land itself was ageing before his eyes. As the green in the world faded, the hope it had brought faded in his heart and memory. Everywhere water-wheels were still. The rain wind picked up steadily. Wafts of dust came dancing from the south-west, cavorting and gyrating in spirals that thinned as they reached for the dead white sky. Then, as they passed a watch-tower near the middle of the third day, the wind angered to a gale that made Earth-is-Strong’s mast rattle in the cabin. A great front like a frothing wave came rolling towards them, eating up the sky.
‘A sporestorm,’ Poppy said, eyeing it with alarm.
‘Just the earth turning to dust,’ Carnelian said, but as it broke over them the day turned to red dusk.
Each day they woke to a thin violet light oozing from the east. The mosaic of t
he camp came apart even as the dragon rampart broke into its cohorts and loomed up towards the road to follow Heart-of-Thunder north. Dozing in his command chair, Carnelian rarely saw the auxiliaries pouring after them in their column. The nearest dragon seemed like some rock rising up out of the sea. The leftway, a seawall slipping slowly past, faded away into the murk ahead. All sound was muffled, only the nearest murmurous swell of sartlar noticeable.
As the midday sun diffused orange in the haze above, they could look forward to reaching another watch-tower. Like some vast and lonely tree it would loom ever more distinct until its grim bulk was threatening to topple onto them. There, upon the leftway, leading a squadron of riders, Fern would meet them and confirm the land ahead was clear. This done, he would hurtle off with his escort, heading for the tower beyond the next, which he would occupy, spying out the way ahead as best he could until their rendezvous at the same time the next day.
The march would leave the midday tower and soon they would once again be adrift in the ghostly land. Well before nightfall another tower would begin to solidify ahead. Though weary of sitting in his chair, Carnelian would still eye it with some dread. For there, just below its branches, he would have to spend another night of dreams.
When they reached it, while Earth-is-Strong and Heart-of-Thunder remained on the road beside the watch-tower, the other dragons would descend to the earth, fanning out across it to form the margin of a new camp, pushing deep enough into the sartlar to bring the stopping-place cisterns within their curve.
Krow was always there on the road to greet them, having set off at dawn to keep watch from that tower. Sometimes, he and Carnelian would exchange a few words but, mostly, he left Krow and Poppy to each other. He would climb to the summit of the tower as if ascending to his execution. Often he would reach the heliograph platform in time to watch the disturbance the dragons made ripple away to the vague margins of the sartlar multitude. Sometimes he would imagine the tower and camp had just that moment risen up from the depths of the sea. He would sit there watching the auxiliaries pouring off the road into the camp until the dusk bruised the murk purple. Only then would Osidian appear upon the platform and they would share some render. Carnelian loathed the stuff, but there was nothing else and so he ate just enough to sustain his strength.
At last, beneath a starless sky, the time would come he most dreaded. He would descend and the world would close around him to become nothing more than his cell. Every night it seemed to be the same cell. He had tried to catalogue their differences, but it was their similarity that dominated his mind. It was hard to believe he had ever left that cell. As if the journey of that day had been merely a recurring dream. When Poppy appeared he was pleasant enough, but always claimed exhaustion so that he would not have to talk to her. He feared he might pass on his misery to her and so lay down and faced the same stone wall and tried to stay awake until morning. He dreaded the ambiguities of his dreams for they cheated him of certainty about that which he had set in motion.
In the neighbouring cell the three homunculi slept together. He had long ago put aside his fear that they might betray them. The duststorms made it impossible to use the heliograph or the flares. Besides, what could they tell the Wise that they did not already know?
Through the other wall Osidian and Jaspar shared a cell. A near-dead thing, Jaspar was carried up and down each watch-tower locked within a Sapient capsule that had belonged to one of Legions’ Seconds. Sometimes, through its ivory skin, Carnelian could hear mumbling. The same mumbling he could hear now, though he pressed his hands against his ears. Those mumblings that fed not only Osidian’s dreams, but his own. He pulled his hands free and tried to listen instead to the murmuring of the sartlar, or the squealing water-wheels with which they were drawing up water to quench their oceanic thirst. While at the same time he clung to the edge of his own black well into which he knew he must eventually fall.
Blearily, through his bone screen, Carnelian watched the tiny figure grow more distinct beneath the bulk of another midday tower. When that figure became two, he narrowed his eyes, thinking he was mistaken. Soon he saw it was not only Fern waiting for them, but, beside him, a smaller figure that seemed in comparison a child. It could only be Krow. What news had he brought from the next tower?
As Earth-is-Strong came to a halt behind Heart-of-Thunder, Carnelian could just make out Osidian’s voice emanating from his dragon tower as he questioned Krow, who was on the leftway looking up at him. Strain as he might, Carnelian could make out nothing of the youth’s answer. Osidian said something that caused Krow to bow and fall back. A while later, Heart-of-Thunder’s mirrorman began signalling with his arms. Carnelian watched his Lefthand reading the signals. At last he turned. ‘Master, you’re to assume command of the host.’
Carnelian began relaying a reply, but then he saw Heart-of-Thunder’s brassman falling and Osidian walking out upon it. Soon he had descended to the road. Frustrated, Carnelian waited. Osidian appeared from behind the monolith onto the leftway, a flood of Marula and aquar pouring out after him. Soon, riding away, they were fading into the haze.
Carnelian moved Earth-is-Strong past Heart-of-Thunder, then led their army along the road. All that long afternoon he kept his gaze fixed on the leftway, waiting for Osidian’s return or, at least, some messenger, but all in vain. So it was that, when he saw the world ahead darkening, for a moment he thought it was approaching dusk. Except that the west was still glowing orange. As they drew nearer, he saw the earth crusted with shanties and realized they had reached the outskirts of some vast and gloomy city. The sartlar slowed as they poured into ditches and along alleys like a wave infiltrating a pebble beach. Carnelian searched for signs of anything living, but the hovels seemed abandoned. Even though they were now leaving the sartlar behind, he did not slow Earth-is-Strong and led the army deeper into the city. A region solidified ahead from which rose several spires. He shuddered, having the impression they were approaching the eaves of some murky forest. It occurred to him that, perhaps, he should order the flame-pipes of the leading dragons lit, but the city seemed dead. The two nearest spires grew branches and slowly resolved into watch-towers, one on either side of the road and each rising from a dark rampart. He detected movement there, upon the leftway, beneath the rightmost tower. He breathed a sigh of relief, certain they must be his people. He gained confidence in that feeling with each lumbering step his dragon took. At last they came close enough to see a figure waving.
‘Krow,’ said Poppy, and so it was. Carnelian gazed at the dead city and made his decision. He ordered the army to a halt, then, leaving Poppy in the care of his Righthand and Earth-is-Strong in the care of his Left, he bade the homunculus follow him and together they climbed down to the road. Before them the two watch-towers faced each other, each rising from a forbidding rampart, each standing guard upon a massive gate. His heart misgave. These were surely legionary fortresses. He listened for the enemy, but the only sound was thunder fading back along the road as his dragons drew to a standstill. He set off to meet Osidian.
Osidian was there on the edge of the heliograph platform with Morunasa. As Carnelian approached them he became aware of the city stretching off in all directions.
Osidian acknowledged him. ‘Behold the city of Magayon.’
A charred, ruined labyrinth lay directly below, another on the other side of the road. At the heart of each the circles of cothon wells. Fortresses, then, torched by their legions before they left, no doubt to deny Osidian equipment and supplies. More watch-towers clustered where the road reached a junction with another running off into the west. Duststorms had already begun to bury Magayon. Carnelian recalled with melancholy the ruins he and his father had seen on their way to the election. He searched along the northern road for enemy legions or any other sign of life. The horizon there seemed to be sucking ink up from the land. ‘Burn-off?’ he said, wondering.
‘If so, Seraph,’ said the homunculus, in a low voice, ‘it would be unusually early.
Generally the stubble is not burned until the Rains approach for fear the earth, unfettered, will turn to dust.’
Carnelian glanced down at the little man, wondering if he was being ironic, but his face was grave. Carnelian returned his gaze to the north. There was an obvious conclusion. ‘They intend to starve not only us, but our sartlar.’
Osidian came alive and half turned to him. ‘A sign of weakness.’
Carnelian gazed at the profile of his mask. ‘What do you mean?’
The mask turned to him. ‘If my brother has commanded the earth be burned before us, does it not suggest he fears us? You should be happy, Carnelian. It seems your sartlar strategy has disconcerted him.’
Carnelian could see no cause for happiness. ‘Whatever Molochite may be feeling, surely he has succeeded—?’
Osidian’s mask jutted towards him. ‘In what?’
Carnelian could hear in Osidian’s voice the madness rising. ‘How far are we from Osrakum, my Lord?’
Osidian’s hands tensed. ‘More than twenty days.’
‘How do you imagine we could cross a charred wasteland for more than twenty days with millions?’
Osidian became a motionless doll. ‘I’ve faith our Lord will provide,’ he said in Vulgate.
Morose beside them, frowning as he gazed blindly out over the abandoned city, Morunasa gave a slow nod.
Carnelian lolled in his command chair. He had slept even worse than usual. Haunted by the dead city, he had wandered lost in nightmare labyrinths. Waking, he had led the army through a gate, past the junction with the western road and north between the mudbrick tenements with their blind windows and the alleys between them choked with the red dust that made them seem to be running with blood. The screams of Osidian’s flame-pipes had echoed through Magayon. He had joined Poppy to watch the leftway wall crumble under the fiery onslaught. Like a collapsing seawall it had released a torrent of sartlar. They had watched them infest the city even as their flow caused the gap in the wall to widen.
The Third God Page 52