The Third God sdotc-3

by Ricardo Pinto

  The guardsman punched his forehead into the floor. ‘As the Master commands.’

  Carnelian gave a nod, then advanced towards the stairs, morose.

  A wheel divided in two by a horizontal russet bar. Wide-rimmed, its ratcheted hub meshed with a long brass pawl that was rooted in a float within a vessel of jade carved in the form of meshing chameleons. As a child, he had discovered a water clock like this discarded, and had tried to make it work. He slid a finger lightly around the wheel rim, of gold with a delicately chased arabesque of flames. His had been gilded copper. He touched the rays of the sun-eye showing above the russet bar, which was a solid piece of precious iron, unoiled so that it would rust to the colour of earth. On his clock the land had been merely carnelian. The sun on Aurum’s clock had fallen beneath the iron horizon. The arc of rim following it represented the firmament of night. Squatting above this was a figure wrought from obsidian: the Black God, Lord of Mirrors. Carnelian reached up and caressed each of His four horns in turn, remembering Osidian and the legion they had stolen and the war they were making upon the Masters. His own clock had been crowned merely with a crude turtle shell. The God’s empty eyepits glared down at him. He sought distraction in the finer points of the mechanism. The reservoir of such thin jade made the liquid it held seem blood in a bruise. A scale ran up its side, numbered from zero to nineteen. The liquid was above fifteen. He glanced up at the hidden sun-eye. This clock seemed to be keeping time, but there was no sound of water dripping. Peering above the jade, he saw a siphon. No drops were falling from it, but there was a glint like spider thread stretching between the siphon and the jade. He put his finger out to break it and was amazed when dribbles of light flashed across his skin. Upon his finger pad there rested a tiny bead. He touched his fingernail to the lip of the jade and let the bead roll off. Standing back he admired the clock. The liquid silver made it seem sorcerous, as if it were measuring time with moonbeams. He had always assumed the clock he had found at home had once been his father’s. That was why he had repaired it, then taken it to him. Now he realized it had been no Master’s device. In comparison with Aurum’s it was less than a crude toy. His father had dismissed the gift saying he had no desire to measure time; it passed slowly enough already.

  Anger rose in Carnelian, the same he had unleashed in the hall below. Almost he smashed Aurum’s clock, but he knew that destroying its beauty would achieve nothing. His anger had its roots in fear: fear for Poppy, for Fern, for Lily, for all those innocents he and Osidian had brought into danger. He feared for Sthax, whom he had left outside, without a word, when the Maruli had risen with his fellows, clearly hoping for some reassurance Carnelian had not felt he could give them. His fear was like the first twinges of a recurring fever made worse because he had let himself believe he was cured of it. As it burned more strongly it was heating to panic. It was actually worse here in Makar. At least in the lands below it had been Osidian who had made the Law, who, though monstrous, was a man – and a man could be pleaded with, persuaded, killed even. Here, though he might defy ammonites, he knew that, ultimately, the Law was unassailable. He coughed a laugh. Had it come to this? That he was nostalgic for Osidian’s murderous tyranny?

  He grew more morose. What hope was there for his friends, his loved ones? He turned away from the liquid-silver clock. As he passed a mirror of polished gold he gazed sidelong at himself. All he could see was a shadowy Master. A fabulous creature: beautiful, but deadly. He stroked his hand down a pyramid of crystal standing on its point upon the point of another. Through the narrow waist of their meeting poured green sand. Powdered jade, no doubt. Perhaps malachite. Tiny emeralds, even. One emptying slowly into the other a few grains at a time. To contemplate this was to slow time. For a moment he fantasized that, should he invert them, he might be able to make time run backwards. Reaching back he might seek to unmake the past.

  ‘Pathetic,’ he said. Today they had been within reach, but he had not dared touch them. A wall stood between them, more impenetrable than bronze: his mask, his caste and the Law-that-must-be-obeyed. It was a barrier he could not breach.

  A tiny hope flickered. Surely a door could be opened through which they could come to him. He could adopt them into his House. Poppy would come, even Fern. He imagined their faces disfigured by his chameleon tattoo. Poppy perhaps might accept it, but would Fern welcome becoming his servant, his slave? Carnelian’s anger flared again as he felt trapped. His hands, reaching up, found the hard metal of his face. Even were he to manage somehow to bring them into his House, would he be achieving anything other than assuaging his loneliness at the cost of bringing others in to share his prison?

  He glared at a copper disc on spindly ivory legs. An arc of numbers seemed to be grinning at him in derision. It had delicate arms holding sighting lenses, a fin. Some kind of sundial, no doubt.

  Even his House was not a certain refuge against what might come. Besides, there was no assurance he would survive. Nor that, whether he did or not, the Wise would sanctify any adoptions he made. Nor, for that matter, even that his father would. Would his father see them as anything but barbarians?

  Carnelian wrung his hands. What he really wanted was for them never to have come at all. There must be some way to persuade them to return to the Leper Valleys. He let out a grunt. To hope for this was foolish. Osidian had bound them to him with some accursed agreement. Carnelian tried to imagine what this could be. Promises of wealth? Power? Perhaps it was nothing more than revenge that brought them up to fight against Aurum, whom they hated. So was there anything he could do to save them?

  He had been noticing a clicking sound for quite a while. Something was swinging, glinting back and forth in an arc. A stone chameleon swinging by its tail from a hive of wheels. Of brass and gold and silver. Toothed and meshing with each other, in convoluted, furtive movement. This mechanism had a face very like the liquid-silver clock, and had not only a sun-wheel but also another wheel for the moon, whose tearful eye hung just above the last rays of the westering sun. And there were other rings. One for the morning star and many more, concentric, stars and planets revolving round a silver ammonite shell. If this was a clock, it was surely one that had been made for the Wise. Carnelian backed away from it, glancing round the chamber. Why was this place filled with clocks? Unease descended upon him. He felt like a child lost in a place where there was nothing he could understand.

  Then he saw the pool. It seemed water except that it was set vertically up a wall. A miraculous thing. As he came before it, he saw a Master in its depths. His heart jumped a beat. It was a doorway through which another Master was gazing at him. Then he moved and the other Master mimicked him. The illusion was broken. He approached his reflection, amazed. When close enough, he reached out to touch his reflection’s fingers. It was cold. Glass perhaps. He pulled his fingers from its surface and watched the ghost of his touch slowly disappear. It was a mirror, but one more perfect than water. He leaned closer, seeing his eyes behind the mask. He seemed a man peering through a prison window. The longing to escape from that hated shell suddenly overwhelmed him. Glancing round to make certain he was alone, he freed his face. It appeared like the moon from behind a cloud. He jumped. It seemed he was seeing Osidian. He cursed softly. It was clearly not Osidian’s face, but it had the same green eyes. Uncannily the same. The face frowned and that too seemed Osidian, though there was no birthmark folding into the wrinkles. The eyes again. That same intense look. He looked at himself in a new way. Why was it always Osidian who led and he who followed?

  ‘I can play the game as well as he,’ he said, though he only half believed it.

  He turned his head from side to side. How unwhite he had become. He decided that he liked it. It made him look a little bit more like a Plainsman. The face in the mirror smiled. He looked into its eyes and felt as if he was understanding something for the first time. He leaned closer still, fascinated by his face. He realized he had never really seen it properly before. There were wrinkles in his sk
in, especially around his eyes. He looked older than he remembered. Not as old as his father. Nothing like as old as Lord Aurum. Lord Aurum. He looked round the room, then back at the mirror. Why did the Master surround himself with mirrors, clocks? And children? Carnelian felt repulsed by what these things suggested about the man, but at the same time he began feeling something else. This was surely a man who feared death. Carnelian regarded his face in the mirror. Though he had every reason to fear death himself, he realized he did not. He feared it more for others than himself. Lord Aurum was old even when he came to their island. Carnelian remembered how much Aurum had appeared to want a son. He remembered how much he himself had grown to despise the secondary lineage in his own House. Who knew what it was that Aurum feared? What would exile from Osrakum be like for such a man?

  A scratching at the outer door made him jerk his mask up so fast he grazed his nose and chin. Quickly he secured it and approached the door. He gave leave to enter and ammonites appeared bearing censers that they began setting up around the chamber. Soon they were lighting them. Smoke began uncurling into the air. The odour of myrrh made Carnelian notice again the stale tang of attar of lilies that pervaded the room. Aurum’s smell. He reminded himself this was the man who had had his uncle killed, who had inflicted atrocities upon the Lepers. Whatever his suffering, Aurum was a monster.

  When Carnelian had dismissed the ammonites he began to feel drowsy. It had been a difficult day. He could do nothing more. He would resume the fight in the morning. He removed his robes until he was standing in nothing but the cocoon of the ritual protection. Weary beyond measure he slipped under the feather blankets and was instantly asleep.

  Keeping the spider in a crystal box. Its legs moving, like hair in his eyes. He wants to look away, but fears if he does it will escape. Creeping, creeping, always creeping, seeking a way out. The horror of its thought as it watches him through the obscene cluster of its eyes .

  Carnelian came awake, gasping. A child at the foot of his bed was looking at him. Not a child, but the metal facsimile of a child’s face. A homunculus. The eyes, ears and voice of a Sapient of the Wise. Carnelian stared, petrified. Fading into the darkness, its child smile became the moon’s crescent gleaming in a pond. Then it was not there.

  When an amethyst-eyed boy woke him, Carnelian frowned, remembering the same thing happening before. His nightmares clung to him like a wet cloak. He closed his eyes. Pain was curled dormant in his head and he did not want to move lest he should wake it. He squinted at the ceiling.

  ‘Would you break your fast, Master?’ said the boy. His stone eyes seemed bruises.

  ‘Please,’ Carnelian said and was relieved when the face went away. He moved an arm and felt the bandages that clung to his skin like scabs. He had not imagined the previous day, then. His dreams would not let go of him. He shuddered, remembering the spider’s eyes, then recalled the homunculus with its borrowed face. That part of his dreams had seemed so real.

  As he sat up, the pain stirring in his head sent needles into the bones of his face. He wondered at that pain, but his eyes were already seeking the corner where the homunculus had disappeared. Try as he might, he could not pierce the shadows there.

  More amethyst-eyed boys brought him food and served him as he ate. Taste seemed remote, as if he were reading about someone eating. He was aware he was sitting with his back to the corner. At last he could bear it no longer. He told them to take the plates away and disappear. Thankfully, the headache was fading. He rose, gazing into the corner. An inner voice was telling him it was just a dark corner, that it was dangerous to blur the boundary between dreams and waking life. Still he went in search of a lamp, but all he could find were the bronze flambeaux and they were too heavy. He edged towards the corner. It seemed to grow brighter as he came closer. Bright enough for him to see the tapestry of featherwork that hung there upon the wall. He could make out something of its writhing designs, but nothing of its colours. When he was close enough he put out his hand. It was silky smooth beneath his touch. So fine he could feel the texture of the wall beneath. A crack. A vertical groove running up the stone. He stroked the tapestry aside. A door. He ran his hand over it and found a catch. It clicked. The door sighed open. The air beyond was cold and laced with a strong, disturbing odour. The spider in his dreams touched his face and he recoiled and the door clicked closed. He stood with his fingers on it, listening with his fingers for vibrations. He pulled away, allowing the tapestry to fall back, and retreated to the centre of the chamber, but kept glancing back at the corner. He summoned the boys and, when they came, he bade them bring him a lamp. When they had returned with it he lit it, but approached the corner only when they were gone.

  Figures danced in the tapestry. Feathers that were green and black and red, so tiny they could have been brushstrokes. Once again he stroked the tapestry aside, saw the door, located the catch, opened it. Beyond, steps curved down into darkness. He put his head in, lifted the lamp and spilled light down a few more steps. Desiring to see more of them, he began descending. Round and round, spiralling down into the darkness.

  He emerged into a pillared vault. Lifting the lamp, he saw, leaning against pillars, two cocoons, each taller than a man. He regarded them with horror, expecting at any moment to see within them some jerking, unhuman movement. What monsters could such things pupate? Once certain that nothing within them lived, he dared to approach. Ivory as translucent as wet parchment. Their narrow height had a suggestion of sarcophagi. Within, some darker masses that might have been bodies. He reached out and touched one. It had a skin-smooth surface, though he could feel swirls under his fingers. He lifted the lantern and peered close, but could not make out what lay inside. In the corner of his vision, he saw something that almost made him drop his lantern. A third cocoon not far away, but this one was open. In it he could see four feet side by side. He raised the light, trembling, up the legs. The outermost and larger pair were bound with pale leather bands. Between the legs, a smaller figure. He moved the edge of light up to see its face. It dazzled him. He angled the lamp and the dazzle abated to reveal a face like the moon. The face of a child near slumber. Carnelian gaped at the homunculus. Then he noticed what it was holding before it. A staff topped by a cross or what might have been a spider. This cypher was crowned by a crescent moon. His eyes darted to the creature’s throat, where long fingers meshed around it in a stranglehold. He played the light up above the homunculus’ head and found shadow welling in the hollows of a living skull face.

  LEGIONS

  Each Domain corresponds to a lunar month. Each takes the form of a tree with a Grand Sapient as its root. Each has two direct subordinates; each in turn has two more and so on. The number of Sapients in a major Domain is sixty-three; in a minor Domain, thirty-one. Only the Grand Sapients of the major Domains have Seconds as their immediate subordinates; all other Grand Sapients have Thirds. The major Domains are Legions, Lands, Tribute and Cities; the minor are Mentor, Roads, Law, Immortality, Labyrinth, Gates, Rain and Blood.

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

  ‘ Suth Carnelian,’ said the homunculus in a high, unhuman voice that made Carnelian’s scalp crawl. In shock, he stared up at the Sapient. Skin, sallow leather. A cavity gaping where there should have been a nose. Eyepits, empty. Except for the straps that held him upright within the hollow of the capsule, the Sapient appeared to be entirely naked. He seemed to be strangling the homunculus that stood between his legs. Carnelian’s focus snapped back to the finial of the staff the homunculus was holding. Its lurid red stone was in form something like the horned head of a dragon. Though he had never seen the cypher before, he could guess what it indicated. ‘You are of the Domain Legions?’

  ‘I am Legions.’

  Carnelian froze with terror. Standing before him was one of the twelve Grand Sapients and master of by far the greater part of the Commonwealth’s might. ‘What are you doing here… my Lord?’

  Behind its silver
mask, the homunculus murmured an echo to Carnelian’s words. A coiling around its neck drew Carnelian’s eyes. The corpse fingers came alive like worms. Their fretting at the homunculus’ throat made it speak again. ‘It is you, my Lord, who have need to answer that question. What do you intend to do with the forces you have stolen from the Commonwealth?’

  The authority in those words compelled Carnelian to explain himself. The reason Osidian would have given seemed too absurd to voice. How could they hope to remove Molochite, now God Emperor, and set Osidian up in his place? From Carnelian’s heart came what mattered to him: to save his loved ones, the Plainsmen and the Lepers who even now were not far away in direct defiance of the Law-that-must-be-obeyed. Gazing up, he struggled to marshal enough belief to answer the Grand Sapient.

  ‘You may have managed to defeat that fool Aurum with the rabble of barbarians you conquered with the Ochre tribe, but can it really be that you intend to challenge us directly?’

  The mention of the murdered tribe snatched the breath from Carnelian’s lips. How much did the Wise know? Though it felt like a betrayal, he must not hesitate to use the massacre of the Tribe in whatever way he could to save others. As for Osidian, he owed him nothing. ‘Osidian destroyed the Ochre to the last child. It was through this that he terrorized the other tribes into obeying him, but their fear of the Commonwealth turned out greater and they soon deserted him rather than follow him to the Guarded Land.’

  ‘But not before my Lord Nephron used them to annihilate an entire legion’s auxiliaries.’

  Beneath his bandages, sweat ran down Carnelian’s back. The looming Grand Sapient was standing in judgement upon the Plainsmen. Carnelian grasped at various retorts. All seemed dangerous, but silence most dangerous of all. The Grand Sapient’s line of argument must be challenged. ‘Still, they abandoned him as soon as they could.’