Slowing his heart against the fear he will lose his vision, he dares to look away. He gazes at Fern beside him and finds some confirmation he is not mad in the look of wonder upon his sweet face. Poppy is there in Krow’s embrace as they gaze, gaping. His brothers grin like idiots. Sthax and the other Marula, frozen in a stare. The homunculus, his eyes gauging, judging; he alone seems to be certain what he is looking at is real. All around them their children, encrusted in the red dust of the Land that has slowly been drawing the living moisture from their flesh; each sandstorm hiss and scrape progressing their mummification. Every eye blinks red in a red face. Breathing is coughing that barely flutters each pair of blistered, thinned lips. Love for them rises, threatening to overwhelm him. It seems he has been witnessing their struggle along the road all his life. Trudging on through a red world. Driven south and ever south along the empty road by the screaming, gasping fury of the Land in Her death throes. Cowering in the feeble shelter of their rags and arms and bodies; huddling together against the raging dust. Sipping the trickles that they found in cisterns, or delved for in the black honeycombed depths of wells.
Carnelian gazes back at the long, long column of children that is swallowed up into the red smoky throat of the Pass. Moments ago he was putting one foot in front of the other, seeing nothing, deaf to the scratching air, following the memory of a desperate hope that, somewhere, something of life has survived the death of the world. Makar is up there, a piling-up of the Land’s bones snaring Her red dust so that, along its duned road, they had walked almost at the level of the rooftops. Its people had abandoned the lost city as if it were a ship run aground. That he had seen no evidence of violence anywhere in the houses, or the alleys, was the first sign that had stirred hope in him.
He turns back to the vision and laughs joyously when he finds it is still there. Fern is grinning at him, offering him his hand. Carnelian smiles back, lighting up at the happiness releasing the beauty in Ykorenthe’s face. He lifts her back onto his shoulders, grips Fern’s hand and, with a smile to his family, leads them down onto the sward, drinking the clean, bright air until it hurts, eyes narrowed against the shimmer of the beckoning streams; the blaze and mercy of the clear, blue sky.
The Third God Page 90