The Third God sdotc-3

by Ricardo Pinto

  Osidian walked over to one side of the vault. Seeking distraction from his unease Carnelian followed him. There a spar rose, barbed like a tree amputated of its branches. It was held between the prongs of stone forks that were set up the wall. Its trunk was smooth, its upper part sheathed in a green bark of copper. Glyphed oblong plaques were riveted all the way up to where this standard blossomed into a pair of grimacing faces.

  ‘He is ancient,’ whispered Osidian, pointing upwards.

  Carnelian strained to read the plaques through the narrow slits of his ammonite mask.

  ‘He has held many positions in the line.’ There was passion in Osidian’s voice. ‘He is a lord of battles. Behold, he is called Heart-of-Thunder.’

  As if responding to his name, the dragon avalanched towards them. Sun-stripes climbed the flare of bone behind his head. His beak sliced the air. A putrid stench exuded from his maw. His horns flashed. His eye was a blind, milky moon. The Master of Beasts was bellowing, but before they were overwhelmed, chains clattered taut to hold the monster back. The head swayed a moment there on cables of sinew, then it swung back into the gloom. Shock juddered Carnelian’s chest, a relic of the thunder of the monster’s feet.

  The Master of Beasts barked instructions into the vault. Carnelian saw figures scrambling up the walls. He heard a metallic crunching as some windlass pulled the brass chains taut.

  ‘Was he in danger of coming free?’ Carnelian asked.

  The Master of Beasts glanced at Carnelian in surprise. ‘Oh no, Master.’ His eyes strayed back to the tightening chains. ‘He still dreams. His chains were too loose. We let them out slowly to allow his muscles to regain strength enough to hold his head up on their own.’ He pointed into the gloom and Carnelian saw more chains fixed to the monster’s legs and abdomen.

  ‘Without those he’d collapse. The waking is a delicate business. If he were to break a leg he might not survive.’ That thought was enough to make the Master of Beasts pale. ‘Many would die with him.’

  Carnelian imagined that a reference to his keepers. ‘How long before he can have a tower put upon his back?’

  The Master of Beasts turned to him. ‘A tower complete, Master?’

  Carnelian nodded.

  The man shrugged. ‘We dare burden him only in accordance with his returning strength. Perhaps four days, Master.’

  ‘They recover more slowly than do the Wise,’ said Osidian in Quya.

  Carnelian looked round. ‘The Wise take the same drugs?’

  ‘Something very like,’ Osidian said.

  As a child Carnelian had been told stories of how the Wise often sank into a magic sleep so as to extend their lives. This was one of the many things he had dismissed as fantasy.

  Osidian took his shoulder and led him away. ‘We must prepare to give audience to the Legate.’

  ‘Do the Wise live as long as the huimur?’ Carnelian asked.

  Osidian made a gesture of uncertainty. ‘It is rumoured that some Grand Sapients have ruled their Domains for generations.’

  Carnelian considered this. It made the Wise seem even more alien.

  Osidian glanced back at the huimur. ‘Does his name not seem an omen to you?’

  Carnelian grew wary. He had heard that tone before. ‘It had not occurred to me…’ He lied. He knew perfectly well that it was the heart of thunder that brought the Black God each year to Osrakum.

  Standing in the long shadow of one of the cothon piers Carnelian watched the Masters approach, swinging censers. Amidst the smoke, each was a spire whose gleam was filtering through their escort of Marula. They detached from the escort and came shimmering across the cobbles. Carnelian gazed entranced. They were appallingly tall. Sun flashed from their horned helms, from their faces of gold. They seemed unearthly beings.

  Carnelian stepped back into the deeper shadow cast by the dragon tower above him. As the Masters passed between the piers their jewels, their masks brought glimmers of the late afternoon light into the shadows. The clouds of incense they were weaving round them had for a moment the scent of cedar, but he quickly resolved it to be sweet myrrh. Removing his ammonite mask he stepped out to meet them. They overtopped him by a head. Glancing down, he saw they were wearing ranga. It made him aware his own feet were planted firmly on the ground in clear defiance of the Law. Myrrh was not only in the smoke rising from the censers they swung in pendular arcs, but emanated from the dense samite of their robes, from the carapaces of their iridescent armour. He looked at their hands which were spotted with symbols. These Masters were wearing the ritual protection the Wise claimed was proof against the plagues of the outer world. It made Carnelian realize he had forgotten how utterly exposed he and Osidian had been and for so long. He had lived among the Plainsmen, eaten their food, even kissed them. It would seem he was irremediably contaminated. He suppressed a smile. The masks of these Masters might be looking down on him with imperious contempt but, in his heart, he still felt cleaner than they.

  ‘I am Suth Carnelian.’

  Though he knew the Law demanded they could not remain masked in the presence of a Lord of the Great it also declared that no Master should breathe unhallowed air. He was not sure which law took precedence, but thought it likely this was the reason they had taken the precaution of bringing incense. One by one they released their masks to reveal faces that seemed made of chalk. Startled, he remembered that the Chosen were compelled to paint their skin against the sun. Strange he had forgotten that when once it had seemed as natural to him as breathing. He began to feel unease at their predatory beauty.

  ‘We have come to speak with the Jade Lord,’ one said.

  Carnelian saw around his neck a torc of jade and iron that bore four broken rings. ‘You are the Legate here?’

  The man raised his hand in elegant affirmation.

  Follow me, Carnelian gestured, which in its agreement and requisitive mode made it clear it was only the Legate he was inviting. Walking back through the piers he was pleased to hear the clack of only one set of ranga.

  Beneath the arch of Heart-of-Thunder’s beak Osidian seemed a coalescing of the shadows. Carnelian stood aside to let the Legate approach. He watched with trepidation as the exquisitely armoured Master moved to loom over Osidian. Osidian seemed overmatched but, when he spoke, his voice was commanding. ‘Kneel.’

  For a moment it seemed as if the Legate might defy him but, after settling his censer before him, shimmering darkly, the Lesser Chosen Lord subsided, spreading his gorgeous train upon the cobbles. Carnelian watched the Master’s grey eyes seeking to pierce the myrrh smoke to make out Osidian’s face in the gloom. ‘We heard, Celestial, you had disappeared.’

  ‘It seems I have reappeared.’

  The Legate began to say something else, but Osidian raised a pale hand that closed his mouth. ‘Where are your auxiliaries, my Lord?’

  The Legate raised hands encrusted in gems, fingers vaguely framing evasions. ‘When the Great Lord came he was impossible to resist.’

  ‘Did he have a mandate from the Wise?’

  The Legate did not wholly manage to suppress a grimace. ‘His House is very high, Celestial.’

  Osidian’s voice came forth from the abyss of darkness. ‘Is it to House Aurum you owe allegiance, my Lord? I thought you had sworn it to the House of the Masks. Was it not my father who appointed you, my brother who ratified that appointment?’ Then, more severely: ‘How do you imagine They will react to this betrayal of Their trust?’

  Suddenly, brass began clattering behind Osidian. He did not flinch as chains collapsed link on link. Even when the prow of Heart-of-Thunder’s head shifted in the air above him Osidian remained motionless.

  The Legate had bowed his horned military helm.

  ‘I will need fitting accommodation.’

  ‘You shall have my own chambers, Celestial. Though miserable, they are the best I have to offer.’

  ‘Very well, my Lord, we shall return with you to the sanctum.’

  The horned helm
rose. ‘Now, Celestial?’

  ‘Why not?’

  As the Legate swept past Carnelian Osidian approached and raised his hand. ‘Come, my Lord.’

  ‘I shall remain here.’ Carnelian realized the Legate was within hearing and added: ‘Celestial.’

  Osidian hesitated. Watching his hand, Carnelian detected a firmness in it that suggested Osidian was about to issue a command. The hand softened. ‘My Lord Legate.’

  The Legate turned. ‘Celestial?’

  ‘Go on ahead, we shall join you presently.’

  The man bowed. ‘As you command.’

  Carnelian watched the Legate move away, resigning himself to a confrontation with Osidian. He turned to him. ‘Someone needs to keep an eye on things here,’ he said in Vulgate.

  ‘Morunasa can do that.’

  ‘I don’t imagine the marumaga would be happy to obey a Maruli.’

  ‘They will do as they are told!’

  Carnelian was shocked at Osidian’s vehemence. He could not understand why this should be so important to him. ‘Surely it is obvious that we must take all precautions? These huimur have been purchased at a heavy price.’

  Osidian lowered his head as he crushed one hand with the other. ‘I really want you to come with me, Carnelian.’ His anger had gone. ‘Please.’

  Carnelian gazed at Osidian in disbelief, then turned to look at Heart-of-Thunder lurking in his vault. ‘Very well.’

  The Legate and his companions had journeyed to the cothon in palanquins. Osidian commandeered one for himself and another for Carnelian. Two of the Lesser Chosen commanders were going to have to walk. As Osidian replaced his bearers and Carnelian’s with Marula, Carnelian looked among them for Sthax, but could not see him there. He dismissed anxiety: there were more immediate things to worry about. As he watched the changeover Carnelian was surprised how much the bearers appeared disfigured by their Masters’ heraldic tattoos. He wondered that he had ever thought it natural that men should be thus marked to show to whom they belonged. Once it had even seemed elegant; now it appeared hardly different from the branding on a sartlar’s face.

  When the palanquin was ready he folded himself into it reluctantly. In contrast with the samite brocades, the inlays of tortoiseshell and pearl, his rough-woven marumaga robe appeared to be little more than sackcloth. An Oracle slid closed the lacquered door and the Marula lifted the palanquin. Inside, Carnelian felt imprisoned. Each breath he took was cloyed with the perfume of lilies, the taint of myrrh. Finding a grille he slid it back to let in some air. Framed by its gold filigree, the machines and geometries of the cothon appeared more brutal. The southern gates of the cothon gulped open. He glimpsed gate chains, toothed wheels, then he was being carried through a garden. Trunks showed they were passing down an avenue of gigantic trees. Framed between them, verdant vistas. Shield leaves thrust up fiery flower-spikes. Paths wound among rocks, quaintly carved, banded and spiralled with cultivated lichens. Here and there he managed to snatch glimpses of the sky, but these only served to make the palanquin feel more like a prison. He was uneasy. Perhaps the feeling had been caused by Osidian’s uncharacteristic gentleness towards him back in the cothon. Carnelian hoped he would not regret having agreed to join him. Perhaps his anxiety was about returning to the world of the Masters. Perhaps he was afraid he might be changed back into what he had been.

  The palanquin was set down amidst muttering. Carnelian covered his lower face with a fold of his robe before carefully sliding open the door. He cried in Vulgate: ‘Look away, we are unmasked.’

  Climbing out he was confronted by a gate that glared at him with a single, tearful eye. Wrought in the bronze, it was surrounded by a silver frieze of ammonite shells. These wards proclaimed whatever lay beyond to be under the jurisdiction of the Wise. Unsanctioned entry was forbidden under penalty of the Law-that-must-be-obeyed.

  The gate opened a little and, from behind it, a silver face emerged with solid spiral eyes. ‘Please enter this purgatory, Seraphim. The procedures of purification await you.’

  As Carnelian and Osidian approached, more ammonites appeared, hunched as each gripped with both hands the handle of a ladle in which blue fire burned. At a command it was poured over the ground before them. Flames ran across the earth. Carnelian and Osidian were urged forward onto the now purified ground. Fingers fumbled at their feet, trying to free them of their polluted footwear. A hissing made Carnelian turn to see more arcs of blue flame being ladled over the ground on which he and Osidian had walked. The palanquins they had come in were already aflame. The Marula were backing away, eyes bulging.

  ‘Enough! I have no patience for this,’ boomed Osidian, chasing ammonites from his path. ‘Morunasa, come with me. Bring your people.’

  The Oracle gathered up the Marula and they swarmed after him. Ammonites flung themselves in their way, screeching, forbidding entry, but the Marula beat them aside. Some of the ammonites lost their blinding-masks and fell, grovelling, on the still burning earth. Carnelian glanced at the Legate and his commanders, who were watching in stiff disbelief, then followed after the Marula, who were pouring through the gate Osidian had thrown open.

  Drugged smoke unfurled like ferns in the gloomy halls beyond. Carnelian felt a languor settle about his shoulders. His face began to swell, his bones to liquefy. He recognized the feeling from his entry into Osrakum. The drug was meant to encourage their submission to intrusive cleansing. A deafening clatter brought his eyes back into focus. Swaying, the Marula were knocking smoking brass bowls from their tripods. Carnelian squinted against the undulating surface of a pool in which mouths and tongues of light were kissing, separating. Backing away into the shadows were metal faces distorting reflections of their whole drunken procession. He saw a rectangle of daylight opening far away and did what he could to herd the Marula towards it. At last he was stumbling out with them into eddying daylight.

  He found himself with Morunasa and the Marula in a gully between limestone walls pierced with gates. The place was already in afternoon shadow. Only the crest of the eastern wall still caught the sun. Bronze hoops held poles whose banners were swimming in a breeze. Guardsman niches were empty. A gate opened a crack. For a moment he glimpsed an eye widening with horror. Then the gate slammed closed and a voice beyond it began keening an alarm. Bolts were shot home. Commotion spread beyond the walls and a scurrying, so that Carnelian felt he was invading a termite city. Faces peered down from the battlements above. Carnelian felt as shunned as a leper.

  He located Osidian, a shadowy shape striding away along the gully towards where a tower rose, tier on sculptured tier. Morunasa asked for instructions, but Carnelian ignored him and set off after Osidian. The Marula opened a path through their midst to let him through. Carnelian was only vaguely aware of their faces. He was concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. As the effect of the drug faded, each footfall felt more solid than the last. When he caught up with Osidian, he spoke: ‘Why… why break through?’

  ‘I had my reasons,’ Osidian growled.

  Carnelian saw no point in pressing him further and fell in step with him. Behind them came scuffling Marula.

  The gully terminated at a gate from which the two faces of the Commonwealth sneered down. Carnelian and Osidian threw their weight against the bronze and the gate opened, exhaling a waft of lilies. Penetrating the gloomy hall beyond, Carnelian noticed figures flitting away through openings all along its rim. Members of the Legate’s household, no doubt. He glanced round anxiously to make sure the Marula were keeping close; he did not want any massacres. Huddled hesitantly on the threshold, they came when he beckoned them.

  They crossed the hall among the echoes of their creeping footfalls. Carnelian did not blame the Marula for their wariness. Even to him this place felt like a tomb. The pillars on either side seemed guardians. Figures writhing in the pavement beneath his feet might have been a view down into the Underworld.

  Their route took them within sight of archways that opened into the
gold of late afternoon. Carnelian longed to escape through them, but Osidian always turned away into the shadows. The cold grandeur seeped into Carnelian’s heart until he began to shiver. The polished floor seemed frozen meat whose veins had turned to stone. Columns might have been the corpses of trees. As he walked he became aware he was clutching his marumaga robe. Its coarse but honest weave brought him some little comfort.

  They skirted one last court by means of a cloister. Walking close to its edge Carnelian was able to see they were nearing the tower whose tiers were borne upon the curved backs of humbled men. The cloister curved to deliver them to a stair that they began ascending. They passed chambers panelled with malachite and purple porphyry whose sterile beauty Osidian declared to be that of reception chambers. ‘It is the Legate’s private halls we seek.’

  Higher they climbed until they came to a landing where they were challenged by guardsmen bearing the Legate’s cypher on their faces. Osidian stayed the Marula with a command then climbed the last few steps towards the guardsmen and their levelled spears. If his height had not been enough to alert them that he was a Master, his disregard for their weapons proved it. Their spear blades clattered to the floor as they knelt.

  ‘Clear this level. These chambers I claim for my own. Any creature left behind shall be slain.’

  Carnelian had reached Osidian’s side and could now see the great door upon which the men had been standing guard. Abandoning their weapons they fled through it into the chambers beyond. He noticed that the stair continued climbing. ‘The roof,’ he said, remembering the heliograph he suspected to be up there. Osidian nodded and bade Morunasa approach him. He selected some of the Marula to stand guard upon the door. ‘Take these others,’ he said to the Oracle, ‘and bring me anyone you find up there.’

  The Oracle was about to scale the steps when Osidian stayed him. ‘I want them alive.’

  The Oracle darted a nod and soon he and most of the Marula had disappeared up the stairs. Carnelian waited with Osidian as the Legate’s household cowered past to scurry down the steps. The guardsmen were the last to leave.