The Third God sdotc-3

by Ricardo Pinto

  Shadows were stretching when they turned north riding directly for the Pass. The ground became scrubby and strewn with rocks the colour of bad teeth. As the Pass widened to receive them, the cliffs that framed it rose higher still, so that Carnelian felt he and the Marula were shrinking. Soon the pale boulders surrounding them were so large that, even riding, they could no longer see over them. Larger still they grew, becoming cliffs in their own right. The Guarded Land had risen up to fill the sky with ramparts etched by deepening shade. Then shadow fell on them like a tidal wave. The sun was shut off by sheer, forbidding rock. The Marula shivered. Carnelian wound his uba around his face.

  They marched on in twilight, though behind them the land was still soaked in gold by the westering sun. When even this began to darken Osidian called a halt.

  They made a camp among some boulders. The Marula sent foraging came back with roots like snakes. The fires cheered them. Some dared to turn their backs upon the Pass. Others faced it, though they sank their heads so as not to see it. Carnelian gazed into its abyss of darkness. Somewhere up there was Aurum and his dragons. The Pass had a look about it of the canyon that led up into Osrakum, though it was impossible to imagine that a smiling lake encircled with palaces lay within its black depths.

  In the dawn, men eyed the Pass nervously. Osidian sent word round that they should hone their weapons. Carnelian watched the Marula sharpening the bronze of their stolen blades and made a show of doing it himself, though he failed to see how lances would be effective against dragonfire. At least it distracted everyone from the coming trial. He ran his finger along the edge of his spearhead, imagining what the day ahead might bring. He was a victim to his hopes and fears. Glancing up, he saw Poppy working hard on some flint she had found. Fear for her choked him.

  At last Osidian ordered them to mount. Soon they were filtering up through the boulders into the black throat of the Pass, the sartlar, as usual, at the end of the column. Narrower and narrower the Pass became. Closer and closer its limestone ramparts. The sun bathed the valley behind them, but they were denied its light and heat. A chill wind blew constantly in their faces carrying a bleak odour of remote, empty places. Scree skittered constantly down from above. The scrabbling their aquar made upon the chalky paths was echoed by the cliffs, so that it seemed their march was haunted by other, invisible riders. The walls on either side were filled with caves like empty eye sockets or toothless, gaping maws. Occasionally they crossed the mouth of a tributary canyon down which sunlight could be seen glowing; some were only a narrow slit, others wider, choked with boulders or rotten with caves.

  Then light caught the ragged summit of the western cliff. It burned lower, chasing shadows from the strata, turning the whole cliff brilliant white. Down it came until it reached the canyon floor. A tidal wave of incandescence broke over them. The sun was on their backs. Carnelian loosened his robe, delighting in the warmth seeping back into his bones, but the heat kept building. Breathless, the wind fell silent. The air began to melt, the cliffs to dance. Soon it was unbearable and they had to seek shelter in caves.

  Some nibbled at djada, some fed from sacs. Carnelian sipped water from a skin, squinting out at the featureless blaze, trying to sear the fear from his heart.

  They waited for the shadow to slip back across the canyon floor. They waited until its stone was cool enough to stand on. Then they resumed their march, the breeze returning to waft in their faces, to lift and flutter their robes like flags.

  Day was failing when they saw ahead a fork in the Pass. Its walls had been drawing in steadily to squeeze the sky above into a luminous strip. The sun was just gilding the craggy heights of the eastern wall. Carnelian was as weary as his aquar. Around him the Marula sagged in their chairs, their mounts plodding forward with drooping necks. He lifted his head to examine the canyons of the fork as they approached. The right and narrower of the two had a steep, irregular floor. The left was wide with a smooth floor and gloomy almost to the brim. He squinted, trying to pierce its shadows. Something caught his eye: a regularity like the crenellations of a city wall. He resolved the shapes into towers supported by great black masses. His cry of warning was drowned out by a harsh, metallic braying that reverberated so deafeningly in the Pass it seemed the limestone cliffs must shatter and fall.

  ‘Dragons,’ Carnelian breathed as the trumpet echoes faded. He gaped at the line of monsters stretched across the Pass.

  ‘Their pipes are unlit,’ Osidian cried. ‘Ride between them!’

  With that he launched himself towards the dragon line. Morunasa bellowed out a command that was taken up by the other Oracles. They kicked their aquar forward. Reluctantly the Marula followed them. Through his feet Carnelian felt his aquar keen to shoal with her kind. He let her go, casting glances from side to side. Fern overtook him. Poppy and Krow were looking to him.

  ‘After them, we have no choice.’

  Then he had to give attention to his aquar’s increasing pace. He rolled with her strides. Riding the rhythm he could look up and face the dragons. Dim massing of shadows, they seemed more like the columns of the Labyrinth than creatures of flesh. Their towers with banner masts and rigging seemed incongruously delicate machines. His eyes detected a fraying above them. ‘Smoke,’ he groaned. ‘Their pipes are lit,’ he cried, but his warning was lost in their rushing charge.

  A coughing came from somewhere above, then lightning. Night became day. Shrill screaming. Gobbets of fire spitting through the air. Incandescent arcs. Black masses mushrooming suddenly into great rolling clouds in which danced shards of sun. The reek of naphtha made his nose run, his throat raw. A rotting sulphurous stench. And heat, a furnace heat that beat in waves upon his face. His aquar stumbled, thrashed her neck from side to side. He struggled to make out the shapes of men and riders. Scratches of their cries engulfed by another chorus of shrieking fire that lit up the world. He urged his aquar forward; saw Osidian, terrible, with flamelight living in his eyes as he commanded everyone to advance. Carnelian located Morunasa and veered his aquar towards him. ‘Retreat,’ he cried. ‘Back.’

  Morunasa’s face was lurid with reflected light. Just as he turned to face Carnelian, he disappeared behind blossoming, rolling blackness. Carnelian felt more than saw the Marula flee. The dragons hung before him, horned, their great white eyes blindly staring, their towers reflecting the firestorm. Osidian’s pale face was coming towards him, distorted by rage. ‘Where’re they going, the cowards?’

  Carnelian was allowing his aquar to turn away from the heat when he heard a voice he knew. He searched for it. Located Fern, who was struggling to force his aquar into the dragonfire. The creature fought his control and he half fell, half tumbled out of his saddle-chair. Stumbling to his feet he confronted the dragons with arms upraised.

  Carnelian was slipping away from him as his aquar picked up speed. There was no stopping her. He threw himself out of his chair, was kicked up by her rising knee, flew through the blazing night. It seemed as if the curling flames were his wings. Then the ground slammed into him.

  He lay dazed, feeling thunder and the detonations through his ribs and jaw. He pushed himself up. Fire spirits uncurled like serpents, spun like acrobats. Fern’s voice drew him. Carnelian could see him dwarfed by the pillars of smoke, in the path of a blade of quivering light. He lunged towards him. Felt heat peeling his skin, turning his eyes to leather. In front of him Fern arched his back as the flame roared towards him. His hair was crisping. He danced and twitched in a shower of sparks. He threw his arms up to deflect the light and screamed. Carnelian reached out for him, gazing into the sun. He clutched his body. Pulled its weight onto him.

  Slumped under what was left of Fern, Carnelian staggered away from the inferno.

  BARGAINS

  Sexual attraction is a dangerous and chaotic force. If we were not free of it the mirror-like clarity of our thought would be stirred to opacity. Though this force cannot be excised from the Chosen it can and must be controlled. The incarceration of f
ertile females, while it ensures the accuracy of the blood calculus, as importantly constrains the sexual force between the genders to run along channels that we control and supervise. The fraction of the force that remains at least partially unconstrained between females within a forbidden house is a small and measurable factor. Far more dangerous is the fraction that remains unconstrained between males and for which no effective system of control has yet been devised. This free sexuality is to be considered dangerous in the extreme. It has the potential to severely disrupt the astrological calculus with the consequence that our ability to project our thought into the future could become fatally compromised.

  (extract from a beadcord manual of the Wise of the Domain Blood)

  A sickening odour of cooked meat was wafting over him as he rolled with the gentle pace. A sinking feeling, then cool hands lifting him. Carnelian rolled his head and saw Sthax. He smiled.

  The profile of the rock under his back was forcing him to lie a little twisted. In the dim light he could just make out a ceiling of fractured stone. He was waking from another awful dream. Was he still among the Lepers? He jerked as he remembered Fern burning in the flames. The movement released a stinging pain on his arms, his shoulders, his cheek. Enduring it he rolled over and saw a familiar, small shape stooping. ‘Where?’

  It turned, and was Poppy, her face in the moonlight blank with fear. She rushed to him. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Fern?’

  A grimace squeezed tears from her eyes.

  Carnelian sat up, reeled. ‘Not dead?’

  Poppy shook her head, shrugged, tried a smile. She helped him get up. He leaned on her as he took some steps to where a body was lying naked on the rock. It had Fern’s face with lips blistered and hair burned away, but it was not his body. What lay there was swollen. Carnelian fell to his knees beside him and dared to touch him. Fern’s left arm had the texture of dead leaves. Carnelian edged in close to peer at his face. He winced at the cooked smell coming off his flesh.

  Poppy knelt on the other side of Fern. ‘We’ve poured water on his burns. We don’t know what else to do.’

  He glanced up and saw her despair. Then back down at Fern’s face. He put his ear to Fern’s mouth. ‘He breathes.’

  He straightened up, staring, stunned by the disaster. A small inner voice said: Are you surprised?

  Poppy was there in front of him. ‘You’re burned too.’

  Carnelian looked down at his arms. They stung. His robe was charred, but the skin beneath seemed unbroken. He glanced back at Fern.

  ‘You saved him. You brought him out of the fire. We brought you here.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Marula.’

  ‘Sthax?’

  Poppy nodded. ‘He was one of them.’

  Carnelian looked around him at the cave they were in.

  A shadow loomed over them. ‘What now, Master?’

  It was Morunasa. Carnelian was overcome by a surge of rage. ‘Why ask me?’

  ‘The Master won’t speak to me.’

  Carnelian rose and saw shadowy forms scattered through the cave. ‘Where is he?’

  Morunasa walked off and Carnelian followed him. As they wound through the cave, scared faces turned up to watch them pass. One man whimpered, another embraced him with a long, trembling arm. Leaving them behind, they came to the mouth of the cave. The moonlight made the Pass seem a delicate picture engraved on glass. Osidian, leaning against a rock, seemed part of it.

  Carnelian moved round to stand in front of him. Osidian’s gaze rose. ‘You countermanded my order.’

  Carnelian felt sick. ‘What?’

  ‘You sent the Marula back.’

  Carnelian groaned. ‘Do you really imagine the aquar would have ridden through that firestorm?’

  Osidian glanced at Morunasa, who was making no attempt to hide his resentment of their use of Quya. ‘I would have thought it would suit you to have the Marula dead.’

  ‘I no longer know what I want.’

  Osidian nodded as if this were some great wisdom. ‘It is time to admit defeat.’

  Carnelian stared at him. It felt as if the last prop holding him up had been pulled away. Though he had never believed in Osidian’s plan, opposition to it had defined his own. ‘So that is it, you are simply going to give up?’

  Osidian glanced up the Pass. ‘I will wait here for Aurum. I want to die in Osrakum.’

  Carnelian looked at him with contempt. ‘Never a thought for anyone but yourself.’

  Osidian looked around as if wounded. ‘You can come with me. The Wise will punish you, but you will survive.’

  Carnelian looked back into the cave. ‘And these others?’

  Osidian shrugged. ‘I do not imagine my Lord Aurum will let them live, but you can try to bring some with you.’

  Slow anger simmered in Carnelian. ‘I will not so easily abandon them.’ He turned to Morunasa. ‘Oracle, at first light, we’ll leave this infernal canyon.’

  ‘And go where, Master?’

  Carnelian felt suddenly so tired it was an effort to remain standing. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. Perhaps we might find some Lepers and get some help for our wounded.’

  He gazed at Osidian. ‘Stay here by yourself if you want.’

  He walked back into the cave. When he reached Fern he sank down, drawing Poppy towards him and putting his arm around her.

  Before he led the Marula out from the caves Carnelian waited until the sky was bright enough to light the Pass. In spite of the care with which he and Krow had loaded Fern into his saddle-chair, with each step his aquar took, he jigged like a doll. Many Marula were nursing livid burns. Some were crammed two to a saddle-chair. Aquar that had been badly scorched had become uncontrollable. Looking back along the line, Carnelian saw not a military force but a mob of mauled and beaten men.

  As the morning passed, the wind following them seemed to urge them to greater speed. Still, he was not keen to risk the wounded on the uneven ground. Allowing his aquar to find her own route down he had plenty of time to think. Osidian was there, riding at his side, brooding. Carnelian nonetheless thought it unlikely Osidian would change his mind: he meant to give himself up to Aurum. Carnelian knew he should be thankful Osidian was not bent on returning to the Earthsky, but all he could feel was resentment. It sickened him that Aurum had won. The Lepers would have no justice. Unbearably, the destruction of the Ochre would become nothing more than an incidental occurrence utterly peripheral to the political upheaval their absence from Osrakum had caused. It was as if everything he and Osidian had suffered, all the destruction they had brought about, all the atrocities, were to become nothing more than an inelegantly played gambit in a game of Three. With Osidian’s capture and return to Osrakum Aurum and the Wise would have pulled off a major coup. As for him he was a minor piece. Depending on the movements of the major pieces he might end up merely chastised. His House would lose influence. Ultimately, he would be returned to the splendours and luxuries of his palaces. The massacres in the Earthsky and the Leper Valleys would merely elicit some small adjustments in the tributary lists and some measured reprisals of terror against the errant tribes. The ripples that had spread out from Osrakum would undulate away to nothing. Order would return. Everything would be as it had always been. How he yearned to stay behind somewhere, anywhere that he could live in peace with Fern and Poppy, but this desire had been shown for the madness that it was. He had no place out here among the subjects of the Commonwealth. What little he could still do he must endeavour to do well.

  Fern’s wounds needed urgent attention. The only possible source of help was the Lepers, but even if, somehow, he could contact them and they not only had the means to help, but chose to, where would Fern live out the rest of his days?

  Poppy was riding nearby, Krow beside her. There was some hope there. The youth seemed to love her and, in time, she might forgive him. Carnelian tried to visualize scenarios in which they could return to the Earthsky, find a tribe, resum
e the pattern of their lives his coming had nearly obliterated. He could see nothing but the difficulties. Lily came into his mind. Her people had suffered terrible loss too, and defilement. Among them, his friends might be able to find a refuge; in time, even happiness. This was something that was possible and that might be within his power to arrange. But he was forgetting the Marula. Morunasa’s control of them was now the greatest threat. If he found out what Osidian was planning to do, he would have his people slaughter them all. Carnelian’s gaze took in the Marula warriors riding all around him. They must be kept busy long enough to get his loved ones to safety. He realized he was searching for Sthax. What good would finding him do? The Maruli was as much a creature of the Oracles as the rest of his fellows. As for Osidian and himself, he cared not a jot. If anything, he drew pleasure from how their deaths might still ruin the game Aurum and the Wise were playing.

  He urged his aquar to drift towards Osidian’s. When he was close enough he waited until Osidian eventually looked up. Osidian was about to speak, but Carnelian gestured: No words. With his hands Carnelian explained some of his thinking. He told Osidian that he would return with him to Osrakum but, first, they would have to survive among the Marula. Osidian was watching his signs with half-lidded eyes. When Carnelian had finished, Osidian gave no indication he had even understood. Carnelian saw how listless he looked. Defeated, Osidian seemed to have lost the will to live. What little motivation he had left would, most likely, be focused on obtaining at least some measure of revenge against Aurum, the Wise, his mother and his brother. Carnelian recognized that, for whatever came next, he was on his own.

  The sun was low when they began emerging from the shadow of the Pass. Surveying the emerald mottle of the swamps, the winking diamonds of water, Carnelian let it all flow over him and disperse the shadow from his heart. For a moment he even managed to forget his failures and the coming reckoning.

  They wound through boulders, beneath stands of acacias, across ferny meadows until he saw, ahead, a cleavage in the earth. He took the Marula down into it, towards a watercourse nearly choked with white rocks through which myriad streams percolated. He chose a spot where jumbled slabs enclosed a honeycomb of caves and crannies. There among cascading rivulets he bade the Marula make a camp.