‘He must be woken, Grane.’
His brother’s mouth twisted, lips thin like an old man’s. ‘We’ve been unable to wake him since he collapsed.’
Carnelian heard the tone of bitter accusation. Collapsed when, for a second time in his life, searchers had come back to him with news that they could not find his son. Carnelian corrected himself: adopted son. ‘I know that his care for me has so often brought disaster for others.’
‘You’re his son,’ Grane said with bleak finality.
Carnelian almost laughed at the irony. Should he tell his brother that they were not brothers at all? Tell him that, of the two of them, it was only in his veins that any of their father’s blood ran? Not a drop of it was pulsing in Carnelian’s. He said nothing. At that moment it could only deepen Grane’s pain at being deprived of a father’s love.
Carnelian looked at their father. Even if he were awake, could he help them? Carnelian realized it was up to him to find a way to save his people. His gaze followed the blue-veined bones of his father’s hand to the jewelled swelling on the smallest finger. The Ruling Ring of House Suth where it belonged. Once before when his father had been near death Carnelian had taken it from him. Then he had not known how to wield its power. His aunt had died.
‘I must take his ring, Grane.’
Grane frowned. ‘Why?’
‘I must control our coomb.’
Grane’s face softened to putty. His head wilted. ‘Can’t you wait, Master, until he’s dead?’
Instinctively, Carnelian reached out to this broken man, but his brother flinched at his touch. Carnelian considered confessing his fears, but they were his burden to carry. He must not risk fear spreading among his people. If even a rumour reached Opalid’s ear, the last chance to do something might well be lost. Instead he must play the Master. ‘From your own experience, Grane, you know what can happen when our House is not ruled well.’
Carnelian watched how his assumption of authority put iron back in his brother’s bones. Grane gave a nod. ‘As you will, Master.’
He moved aside, allowing Carnelian to lift his father’s hand. It seemed as light as a child’s. He slipped the ring off as easily as if it had been strung on a cord. He turned it in the light, then put it on. ‘Prepare Father, we’re taking him home.’
Carnelian stood by his father’s palanquin, wearing the mask his father had sent him, one of his robes and a black military cloak he had found in his pavilion. He was all the time aware of the unfamiliar weight of the Ruling Ring upon his hand. He had had the bearers set the palanquin down by the northern gate of the Masters’ Camp. Grane stood beside its sombre bulk, his head hanging, rain running down his face, dewing like tears upon the polished surfaces of his stone eyes. House Suth tyadra formed a cordon separating them from the rest of the camp. Carnelian was watching the funeral procession of the Masters coming down the road. On either side their slaves lay prostrate in the mud, their backs sodden, in terror of their Masters returned grief-stricken and murderous.
Carnelian lingered long enough to make sure the Masters were giving commands to disassemble their pavilions for immediate departure to Osrakum. Then he raised his arm in a signal he had prearranged with his Lefthand. Earth-is-Strong lurched into life, her footfalls causing the nearby gates to shudder and rattle. He gestured a command and the palanquin rose into the air and, swaying gently, began following the dragon. Carnelian was only too happy to accompany it; he had no wish to witness any atrocities the Masters might visit upon their cowering slaves.
The watch-tower loomed up out of the rain-fogged air. It was the second tower they had seen since leaving the camp. Carnelian was no less sodden than his guardsmen. His robe and cloak clung to his back like flayed skin. As they drew closer he peered up, his mask keeping the rain from his eyes. Sun three. There were only two more watch-towers before the road terminated in the Wheel. Time was running out. What land he could see on either side was drear grey marshland. Osrakum filled the eastern horizon with its leaden rampart. The road curved away across a flinty mere towards an island, upon which, through the murk, he could just make out the huddle of the first tenements of the City at the Gates.
When he reached the monolith standing guard upon the road gate of the watch-tower, Carnelian found Fern, Poppy and the others waiting for him, having just climbed down from Earth-is-Strong’s tower. He motioned them into cover and soon was following the palanquin into the shelter of the tower stables. He wanted to get them all as far away as he could from the road and the vengeful Masters.
Up on the leftway, he leaned upon the parapet. Below, all across the stopping place, slaves with tattooed faces were raising tents and pavilions under the gaze of their Masters, whose gold faces were watching them from their palanquins with icy malice. Dragons were churning through the mud outwards from the road in an arc to form a protective rampart. Only Heart-of-Thunder was heading for the watch-tower, behind a procession of palanquins: the Wise, amid the sombre purple of their ammonites and the greens and blacks of their Sinistral guards.
Night seemed to be seeping up from the Sacred Wall. On the leftway, Carnelian fixed his gaze on the monolith that stood before the watch-tower. He had pulled his guardsmen back from the tower so that they would not become involved with ammonites or Sinistrals. He had watched the Wise enter from the road below; had watched Osidian set Marula to guard the lower gate, after which he had entered escorted by syblings.
A bluish light began flickering on the inner face of the monolith. Ammonites were purifying the interior of the tower with fire. Carnelian waited. The reflected radiance died and no one appeared. He looked up the trunk of the tower to the branches that held up the heliograph platform. Clearly, the Wise were already up there and, it seemed, Osidian with them. Carnelian turned the Suth Ruling Ring upon his finger, reluctant to join him, but knowing he had no other option. He approached his father’s palanquin and saw Fern watching him, his brothers, the Quenthas.
‘I must climb to talk to the Master – to Osidian,’ he added for his brothers, for whom ‘the Master’ was their father.
The Quenthas stepped forward, their hands upon the hilts of their swords. Carnelian’s hand shaped a gesture of negation. Remain here, he signed; protect my people.
Frowning, Right-Quentha muttered his command to her sister. Carnelian took his leave of them and turned towards the monolith. He felt it was safer to go alone. Besides, he did not wish to force upon the sisters the humiliation of appearing before their fellow syblings.
Climbing out onto the roof of the tower, Carnelian was first aware of the bright air, free of the odours of sorcerous burning and myrrh. Then he noticed the silence and knew it had stopped raining. Between the ribs, he caught glimpses of a world bloodied by sunset. The roof with its snaking pipes was still slick and slippery. He found the staples and climbed. When he reached the platform, he gazed out. Below was a red lake from which crusts and scars of land arose and the towers of the City at the Gates. Curdled, fleshy clouds formed a ceiling to this wounded world. Osrakum’s rampart was an ever-cresting wave of yet more blood, at which Carnelian stared in tense horror, waiting for it to break. He felt he was back among the corpse mounds, or witnessing one of his nightmares with waking eyes.
At some point he became aware of Osidian, black against the gory sun. Carnelian found the will to move. Osidian turned as he approached, the last rays revealing the sadness in his unmasked face. Osidian turned back and Carnelian stood by his side, watching the sun being consumed by the earth. The lake was darkening to a mirror of obsidian whose reflections seemed so real, Carnelian felt for a moment it was the world they inhabited that was the illusion. ‘Tomorrow when we enter Osrakum, I shall accompany my father to our coomb.’
Beside him, Osidian remained as still as a Sapient in his capsule.
‘There are matters there I need to settle. I will return in time for your Apotheosis.’
‘What can be so urgent it cannot wait?’
Carnelian could glea
n nothing of how Osidian was feeling from his neutral tone. For a moment he considered telling him the secret of his birth. He yearned to reveal his fears, to ask for help, even to be held. But he could not predict Osidian’s reaction and could not risk interference. There was little enough time already in which to make his coomb safe for his people. ‘My father is dying.’
‘If you were any other, I would assume you sought to ensure your smooth succession. Is it that you wish to be there when he dies?’
Carnelian frowned against the thought of his father dying. ‘I want to make my coomb safe for my people.’
Osidian’s head dipped, then turned a little towards Carnelian. ‘I would like you to come into the Labyrinth with me.’
Defiance rose in Carnelian as he anticipated a command.
‘I need you with me when I confront my mother,’ Osidian said, his voice taut, as if at any moment it might snap.
Carnelian’s anger receded. For Osidian to admit need, he must be fragile indeed.
‘You have as much right to be there as I.’
‘Is she not in Jaspar’s coomb?’
‘The Wise tell me she has returned to the Labyrinth.’
Carnelian regarded the filigree of twinkling lights tracing the arms of the City at the Gates and coalescing at its pulsing heart. The Sacred Wall was now a rampart blacker than the night. Beyond it lay Ykoriana and – what? His death? Was that really so certain? A vague, disturbing hope rose in him. It was at the meeting between mother and son that his own fate would be decided. If he was to survive it could only be because Osidian submitted to having his mother put a collar around his neck. To save him, Osidian would have to swallow his bile, become his mother’s creature, probably take her for his wife. Anger stirred in Carnelian. Even if Osidian were prepared to make that sacrifice, could he allow him to do so? For all Osidian’s crimes, Carnelian did not want him to become again a slave. Weariness washed over him. It seemed he had spent more than half his life caught upon a web from which every attempt to break free brought only disaster to others. By living he might achieve uncertain gains, but more solid ones might be purchased with his death. Another pang of hope cheated him of what comfort there was in that acceptance. Becoming confused, he took hold of one grim certainty: the meeting with Ykoriana was where his fate would be decided.
He looked into Osidian’s eyes, all the time fighting down strange, disturbing presentiments. The longing to save his people was something to cling to. ‘Swear upon your blood that if I come with you, you shall do all in your power to facilitate my visit to my coomb before the Apotheosis.’
Osidian made the oath without hesitation. ‘In place of the Ichorians I intend to take our legions into Osrakum. Six others I left behind to herd the surviving sartlar back to the land. The rest of my legions will march with us to the City at the Gates, from where they will return to their fortresses; save only their commanders, who shall remain behind to attend my Apotheosis.’
In the silence that followed, Carnelian was left feeling he should say something. ‘It is good they should be there . . . all the Chosen must witness it as an act of unity . . . the better to restore order . . .’
Osidian gave a ragged nod. Carnelian took his leave of him and made for the edge of the platform, seeking to spend what certain time he had left with those he thought of as his family.
Picking his way across the pipes and tubes upon the watch-tower roof, Carnelian stubbed his toe, cursed, slowed, heading for the faint light of the trap that led down into the tower interior. Around him the ribs rose like the trunks of trees, between which stretched the indigo of the darkening sky. One of the ribs gave birth to a form. Carnelian tensed, but it was upon him. He was struck, then he was falling. The odour of the assassin was obscured by the iron welling of his own blood.
INTO THE BLACK LAND
If night is the hidden face of day
What then is the hidden face of Paradise?
(a Quyan riddle)
BLADES SLICED IN FROM THE DARKNESS. MORE SHADOW HEADS. A BURST of foul breath as a cry was cut off. Carnelian swung his arm and hammered bone. A groan of pain in a lighter voice. ‘Seraph, it is us.’ A woman’s voice. Carnelian saw a two-headed silhouette against the night sky. ‘The Quenthas,’ he said, shocked to his core that they had turned on him.
The sisters crouched. ‘The assassin is dead.’
One of the ribs was shuddering as someone heavy was coming rapidly down its staples. A thump as that someone jumped down to the roof. The Quenthas had already turned to meet this new threat, swords slanting back ready.
‘Out of my way, fools.’ Osidian’s voice. The sisters moved aside and he came to kneel at Carnelian’s side. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Carnelian said, pressing his hand against his thigh, the palm sliding on a slick of blood.
Osidian and the sisters helped move him into the light of the naphtha flares. Osidian snatched Carnelian’s hand away from his wound and peered at it. ‘It doesn’t look deep.’
‘I feel fine,’ Carnelian said, stunned at how close he had come again to failing those depending on him. All he could focus on was how his life was the thread upon which hung their fates.
Osidian pulled away, seeming to grow larger. ‘I shall have them flayed.’
‘Who?’ said Carnelian, still confused.
‘The Marula I set to guard this tower.’
‘Celestial, we are certain the assassin was already here.’
Osidian turned on the sisters, who were kneeling, heads bowed. Carnelian realized how close they had come to cutting Osidian down. ‘They saved my life.’
Osidian glanced round at him.
‘We came up after the Seraph,’ said Left-Quentha; her sister indicated Carnelian.
‘No one could have passed us coming up from below.’
‘Fetch some light,’ Osidian growled.
The sisters rose and soon returned, carrying something aflame. Osidian directed them to cast the flickering light over the body of the assassin. One cruel gash through his nose had opened his temple to the skull. Another had sliced down through his shoulder, so that his arm hung at a strange angle. He wore a dark spiralled robe and a silver mask at his belt but, with his stubbled, thin, swarthy face, he was clearly no ammonite.
It was instinct that made Carnelian stoop to pull the purple robe down from the man’s neck. With his other hand he rolled the man’s head away. There it was. The tattoo of a six-spoked wheel.
‘My mother,’ Osidian breathed, sounding surprised.
It was the obvious conclusion, so Carnelian was puzzled at feeling doubt. Osidian was staring at the assassin as if he were a window he could look through. ‘I was the target of this attack, not you.’
‘How could she know you were to spend the night here?’
Osidian threw his hand up in a gesture of irritation. ‘For all we know she may have infested every tower between the battlefield and Osrakum with her assassins.’ The fury in his eyes dimmed. ‘Though it amazes me she would be so inept as to use these scum a third time.’
He turned to squint between two of the watch-tower ribs towards the black abyss of the Sacred Wall. ‘Perhaps desperation forced her to risk one last throw.’
‘Why could it not have been the work of the Wise?’
Osidian turned crazed eyes on him. ‘However much they may fear me, they fear and hate her more. Besides, they would have as much reason to fear the ensuing interregnum as have the Great. With no candidate of pure blood left, one would have to be chosen from among the Houses.’ Osidian’s lips curled. ‘In terror for their lives, the Great would be unable to muster a common front against her. Enough of them would scramble to fall at her feet.’ Osidian’s eyes cooled with hatred. ‘Imagine their terror as she lingered over her choice. The more impure the candidate, the deeper into the Great would be cast his shadow of death. The new God Emperor alone would survive from his own kin, his peers and superiors. A single tree left standing after the forest all around
was blasted by the storm. The Great cowed, the Wise naked before her, she would have absolute power in her grasp.’
Osidian’s expression was bilious, but yet Carnelian could see something else in his eyes. Was it avarice?
Osidian was nodding, on his face a look of understanding, of admiration. ‘For such gains who would not risk everything?’
Carnelian was overcome with horror, of Osidian and of the thought of Ykoriana triumphant. Though, after everything he had experienced, why was he still surprised? Were they not mother and son?
Carnelian sagged. And yet, he was Osidian’s brother. A thought crept into his mind: Osidian had been incorrect when he said there would have been no pure-blood candidate left. If Osidian were dead, then the path to the Masks would surely be open to his only surviving brother. Carnelian saw how he could present himself to the Great and Wise as a saviour; the more so because he would come unlooked-for. Ykoriana might oppose him, but even she could not impose her will if the Great and Wise stood behind him. He could discard her as she deserved, take her daughter for a wife. In the time before Ykorenthe became capable of bearing children, he would rule protected by the fear of the chaos that would ensue should he die without pure-blood issue. With such power he would be able to keep his loved ones safe. More, what could he not do to heal the wounds of the world once he became God Emperor?
Osidian came alive. ‘Come, we must get your wound tended. Then we must wait for dawn, so that we can get this business over.’ He let forth a sigh. ‘How weary I am of this outer world.’ A childlike look of hope came into his eyes. ‘Tomorrow, Osrakum.’
The Third God Page 63