The Third God sdotc-3

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘What shall I tell him when he wakes?’ Krow asked.

  Words flitted through Carnelian’s mind. Clenching his teeth he silenced them.

  A shape materializing near them made Krow jump. It was a Leper, perhaps Lily. ‘Master, you’re about to be left behind.’

  A man’s voice. Carnelian’s heart rose in him. He turned to Krow. ‘Tell him I… that I…’

  He felt the youth’s grip on his arm. ‘I know.’

  Carnelian realized it was time to say goodbye to Krow. He sensed the youth feeling awkward and caught a glimmer in his eyes. He pulled him into a hug. They clung to each other. Gently Carnelian disengaged. ‘Take care of Poppy and of yourself.’

  ‘I will, Carnie.’

  Carnelian left him and made for the faint glow of arriving day. The cave was filled with the mounds of hobbled aquar. Lepers had gathered at the entrance. They parted as he approached them. Then he was through and jogging along the path they pointed out.

  Clambering over rock-falls. Struggling over chalky scree. Sometimes the Lepers would lead them into galleries where massive columns held a skyful of limestone above their heads. Streams had to be forded. As the sun approached the earth Lily assured Osidian they would before nightfall reach a Leper settlement that had been told to expect their arrival.

  The dying sun turned the water gushing from the ravine into frothing gold. Lily led them in single file along a ledge above the torrent. Squeezed between mountainous walls the river was deafening. They came into a hidden valley where the water roar quietened to a hiss. Three shrouded figures came to meet them. As they drew nearer, Lily turned to Carnelian and Osidian. ‘I must display you to them.’

  Carnelian glanced round to see Osidian’s reaction. It was no worse than an irritated frown.

  Lily saw this. ‘If you expect them to feed your men they must believe what they’ve been told about you.’

  She went ahead to meet their hosts and soon returned with them. The shrouded figures approached the Masters and peered up at them. One turned back to Lily. ‘You’re going to take them all the way to Qunoth?’

  ‘If other caves be as generous as yours.’

  The Leper nodded, examining Osidian. He turned again. ‘And you say they’ve promised to give him to us?’ The tone was incredulous.

  Lily assured him they had.

  The Leper came closer to Osidian. ‘Why would you give us one of your own?’

  Carnelian answered for him. ‘He’s as much our enemy as he’s yours.’

  The Leper’s cowl shook from side to side. ‘Oh no. I don’t believe he can have hurt you as badly as he’s hurt us.’

  Carnelian realized his mistake too late. The Leper came close enough that he could smell the staleness of his shrouds. ‘Why should we not hate you as much as we hate him?’

  ‘You should hate us.’

  The Leper seemed taken aback, but nodded. ‘We shall feed you.’

  They were led onto a rock that overhung the torrent. Carnelian followed its white thresh upstream to where it issued from a cave mouth. He leaned down to Lily and pointed. ‘Do you know how deep that cave goes?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s said some wend their way through the blackness even to the very heart of the Landabove. A dark world none dare enter.’ She indicated the river below. ‘Sometimes strange creatures are washed out. So colourless you can see their blood running under their skin, their organs. Huge eyes or none at all. Sartlar have appeared out of such places claiming they’ve come from the far interior.’

  Carnelian shuddered, imagining the creatures crawling through the endless dark. A world beneath the Guarded Land, rotten with pits and channels through which sartlar and worse monsters slithered like maggots. He shook himself free of this dark vision. ‘Do sartlar live among you?’

  ‘All outcasts are welcome.’ His face must have shown his disbelief for she added: ‘Are sartlar so different from other people?’

  Carnelian did not have time to argue with her. More Lepers were appearing from cave mouths that opened all along the back wall of the ledge. The smell of the food they brought made him aware of how ravenous he was. Soon he was digging into a bowl of fernroot gruel, its bitterness sweetened by his hunger. His gaze kept returning to the source of the river. He imagined Kor crawling out from it. He forgot to chew as he contemplated the horror of that journey. How terrible the lot of the sartlar must be that they should seek an escape through that underworld.

  His hunger sated, he became aware of an ache in his heart for his friends. It seemed strange he had shed no tears. Perhaps it was because a part of him did not yet believe he would never see them again.

  Two more days of following Lily and her Lepers along the margin of the Guarded Land. Two more difficult meetings with settlements of Leper refugees. The third day brought them to another system of caverns threaded by a river. The Lepers here were more timid. They left food, but Carnelian caught hardly a glimpse of them. Settling down to sleep he was haunted by the roar and echoes reverberating through the caverns.

  He woke frightened, but not from a dream. Something needled a trajectory near his face. The sound of its passing was a scratch in his ear. A fly. Carnelian sat up. Another so close it made his skin itch. Sweat chilled him. All round him the buzz of flies. The menace of the Darkness-under-the-Trees tainted the air like rot. A murmur from the Marula warriors. He shared their fear. A commotion came from where the Oracles had lain to sleep, Osidian among them. The stutter of flesh being ripped by flint. Again. Again. The iron scent of blood. The Oracles subsided. He could hear them lying down. The dance of the flies thinned, then ceased. Staring at the dark, he made sure to breathe only through his nose. He swatted at itches he imagined crawling over him and prayed no wounds on his body were open.

  He woke still feeling tired. As he made his way with others to greet the morning he considered the horror of the night and decided it must have been a dream, but as he looked around him at Marula faces emerging from the cavern gloom, he saw how weary they were, how red their eyes. In contrast, the Oracles when they appeared seemed radiant. Among them only Osidian looked grim. Morunasa even acknowledged Carnelian with his ravener grin. It was then that he noticed that the robes of the Oracles were streaked with blood.

  For many long, weary days they continued eastwards. The Oracles grew increasingly irritable. They scratched constantly at their wounds. Eventually, fever began to glaze their skins with sweat. A twitching at the corners of their mouths showed the pain they suffered as the maggots in them fed. They stared as if their god was gazing back at them. At night they murmured, they cried out. The Marula would not look them in the face. When an Oracle passed by, the warriors would lower their heads almost into the dust. Even their Leper hosts shunned them, though they did not know what contagion it was they carried. Osidian walked among them, seeming the sum of their ashen paleness. Now more than ever they deferred to him as they came seeking his interpretation of their dreams. Morunasa kept his to himself. Sometimes Carnelian would see him squatting by a torrent, his eyes rolled yellow up into his head, his lips quivering in ecstasy.

  Setting off one morning, they saw, through the mists below, the valleys narrowing towards a gap where the cliff of the Guarded Land approached the escarpment of the Earthsky. Carnelian recognized this as the mouth of the gorge he had seen the day Lily had freed him from captivity. All day it yawned wider as it vomited out the torrent that fed the swamps and river courses. In the late afternoon he became certain they must be making for the caves in which he had been held captive. As dusk fell, he saw the entrance to the caves. For a while now, memories of the dreams he had had there had been seeping unease into his mind.

  The caves were smaller than he remembered. Smoke, the smell of food, the musk of people made them seem homely. He chose a place near the cooking fires. Hunched down in his robes and uba he hoped he might pass for one of the Lepers. He watched them roasting fernroot, stirring stews of meat and dried fruit. Steam curling up into the cavern vault cau
ght his eye. The shapes were suggestive, unsettling. They seemed to be showing him things he had dreamed here, though he could not grasp at any clearly. He went for a walk. Passing among the Marula he avoided the Oracles and found that his feet were taking him to the cave in which he had been held captive. The sounds of the encampment were soon erased by the rushing of the stream. This cave too was smaller than he remembered it. He entered, slowly approaching the spot where he had lain. Images began forming in his mind. The water outside had acquired the hissing rhythms of the sea. He turned to face the sound, uncomfortable to have it at his back. He dared to close his eyes. Undulating red, its breath moist and carrying the tang of iron. He opened his eyes and left, desperate to be with people.

  The odour of the stews dispelled that of blood. He had left the dream back there in the cave, but still it whispered to him. He moved into the encampment to drown the whisper in the bustle and domestic din. He glanced to the centre of the mass of Marula. The Oracles were lying there with Morunasa, communing with their god. Carnelian could not see Osidian among them and went searching for him.

  A shadow appeared in front of him. It touched its chest. ‘Sthax.’

  Carnelian edged round until light caught the man’s face. It was indeed Sthax.

  ‘Where we goes?’

  Even though Poppy had told him about Sthax, Carnelian was stunned. He crouched, pulling the man down beside him. ‘You speak Vulgate?’

  Sthax touched his ear. ‘I hear. I learn.’

  Carnelian considered asking him whether the Oracles knew of this, but realized that, if they had, this man would not be here now talking to him. Sthax glanced round, then fixed him with eyes Carnelian could not see. ‘Where we goes?’

  Sthax gave a grunt. ‘Where are we going?’ Gesturing, Carnelian explained as simply as he could their mission to the Landabove and Sthax nodded, or waved his hand when he wanted something put another way.

  ‘Master promise Oracle?’

  Carnelian guessed Sthax must be referring to Morunasa. ‘Yes, he made promise to the Oracle to make ladder’ – he mimed the ladder with his hand – ‘down to your people.’ He made a gesture mimicking the winding course of the Lower Reach river, then touched Sthax on the chest of his corselet. The man ducked a bow, then rose and soon disappeared among the other Marula.

  Carnelian got to his feet, wondering how this changed things. He remembered where he had been going. Even in the gloom at the back of the cavern, Osidian’s towering, narrow form was unmistakable. The Lepers around him barely reached his chest. It looked like a conference. Carnelian became immediately alarmed. He moved towards them, needing to know what was going on. Before he reached Osidian the Lepers began moving away towards where the food was being prepared. Carnelian recognized Lily by her gait and fell in beside her.

  ‘What were you talking about with the Master?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ she said, without turning her shrouded head.

  Carnelian walked a little way with her, but when he realized she was not going to say anything more, he let her move off and was left feeling uneasy.

  When he woke, his first thought was of Lily. The anxiety to find out what Osidian had said to her had long kept him from sleep. He rose and went to look for her. Across the cavern, people were packing up. Marula were filing down to the stream to fill waterskins. They had left the Oracles behind, still lost in their dreaming. Looking for the Lepers who were their guides, he saw a huddle of them by the cave entrance. They bowed slightly as he approached.

  ‘Lily?’

  ‘She’s gone, Master.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘West.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Before daybreak, Master.’

  Carnelian stared at them, hardly believing them. As he returned to gather his things he was angry with himself that he had not forced her to speak when he could. It was a while later that he realized he had lost the last person he could call a friend.

  The gorge swallowed them into a narrow, vertical world ruled by the vast serpent of water that coursed past them, scouring great bowls with its coils, displaying its turbulent scales at rapids, frothing a furious white as it leapt falls. They crept across the mouths of vast bays gouged from the limestone, dank with shadows, heaped with slabs and scree, infested with pockets and wells all skinned with moss and struggling trees; but mostly the path wound beneath sheer cliffs from which a constant hail of stones kept them anxiously waiting for the next boulder that would fall like a skystone to smash the edge from the path then bound down to the river to be consumed. Much of the cliff was rotten with caverns and slits and cracks that gave into depths that spoke with strange echoes. Sometimes, to circumvent a buttress of the cliff, they were forced to follow their Leper guides into the noisome dark. Stumbling through malodorous dripping tunnels hand in hand, they welcomed the return to light as if it was a rebirth.

  Every morning Lepers from the place where they had slept would take over, while those they replaced would be carried off by the flood in a flimsy coracle. Around dusk the new guides would bring them to the next staging post: another collection of caves and ledges within reach of the spray from the roaring water or having access to it down some rough-hewn, precipitous stair. By the river, in some natural pool, a few coracles would jiggle, just safe from its fury. In the caves the Oracles would occupy what space there was. The warriors would make do with any crannies they could find among the rocks. Whatever store of food was there would be distributed to all as a meagre meal.

  Carnelian loathed the Oracles with their sweaty muttering, their blind white-in-white eyes as they listened to their Lord roaring to them from the midst of the flood. He was glad to leave them with Osidian as they babbled to him their dreams, though how could he possibly understand them when Morunasa, his sole interpreter, remained aloof keeping his nightmares to himself? Carnelian preferred to eat with Sthax and the other warriors. Covertly he taught Sthax more Vulgate while the other warriors, who deferred to him, kept watch. Carnelian took to sleeping among them in some spot as far away from the voice of the river as he could find. Dreams of bread awrithe with worms plagued his sleep. Often the bread was the world; sometimes his own body.

  ‘Behold Qunoth,’ said one of the Lepers.

  The plain to whose edge their guides had led them terminated, at its further end, in a dark wall. Sheer, it butted on one side against the limestone cliff of the Guarded Land, was breached where the river poured in a foaming cataract, then rose lofty again on the other side, where it faded away into the Earthsky. It reminded Carnelian of the Backbone at the Upper Reach.

  ‘Where?’ said Osidian.

  The Leper pointed to the top of the black wall. Squinting, Carnelian could see that the northern half of it had a pale upper edge.

  ‘A city wall?’ Morunasa said.

  Gazing up at it Osidian shook his head. ‘The Ringwall leftway.’ He pointed to the southern half of the rock, which did not have the pale edge. ‘That will be the fortress.’

  He glanced at the Leper, who gave a nod of confirmation.

  ‘And the Ladder?’

  ‘It’s further round. We can’t see it from here.’

  Carnelian saw that the limestone cliff curved away and that its meeting with the city rock was out of sight.

  Osidian was gazing up at the city. ‘It would be foolish to cross this plain in daylight.’

  They returned to where they had left the Marula. Through Morunasa and the Oracles Osidian told the warriors to prepare for war. Carnelian and Sthax were careful to avoid each other’s eyes. They had ignored each other since the Oracles had emerged from their dreams some days before.

  Carnelian ate sparingly, brooding on what the night might bring. He tried to dissipate anxiety by busying himself with the honing of his spear. When it was sharp he put it down and went among the clumps of warriors, stopping here and there to pat his belly with a quivering hand to show he shared their fear, smiling when they smiled, laughing with them though he did not unders
tand their jests. With Sthax he exchanged the merest glance.

  The crescent moon had fallen behind the cliff when they began to creep across the plain after their Leper guide. Pinpricks of light could be seen along the outermost, upper edge of the city rock. Carnelian imagined Masters there, sleeping perhaps or indulging in some lordly pleasure. That world up there, nearer to the stars than to the earth, seemed at the same time alien and alluring.

  Countless gullies gouging the plain made the going hard. Rounding the cliff they saw the city rock looming before them as an immensity of blackness. The Leper led them down a path into a gully. They crossed a stream by means of a plank bridge. As they drew ever nearer to the city rock, Carnelian became aware of a sickening odour. With each step it wafted stronger so that he became convinced they must be approaching some immense, rotting corpse. He tried to wind his uba more tightly over his face, but still the stench thickened until he could feel it rasping at his throat. Seeing the Leper begin climbing a steep slope, Carnelian came to a halt. The night was filled with the sound of retching. A hill rose before them from which the stench was emanating.

  ‘What is this?’ he called up to the Leper.

  ‘The Heap,’ said his voice, already somewhere above them.

  ‘We have to climb it?’ Carnelian did not want to believe it.

  ‘The Ladder’s up there.’

  He could not see the Leper clearly. Pushing his head back he thought there might be a crack running up the rock all the way to the sky. It seemed to him he had seen this before. Then he realized how much it resembled the fissure in the Pillar of Heaven that the Rainbow Stair climbed. He saw how the crack disgorged onto the Heap. It seemed that the Lepers’ Ladder was actually the sewer of Qunoth.

  Grimacing, he approached the mound. He put a foot on it and felt it give. Up he went, feeling the mush through his shoes, slipping on slime, hearing the squelch and crunch. Each footfall punctured the outer crust of the mound, releasing fluids and fetid exhalations. He fell several times, knees first into the soft excretions. When he put his hands out to stop his fall, they sank in up to his wrists. Yanking them out, he smeared the filth down his robe. Nausea curdled his belly. Eventually he could control it no longer. Tearing the uba from his face he added his vomit to the hill.