The Third God sdotc-3

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘Murderers!’ he cried, shoving into their midst, hurling them aside like dolls. Censers clattered to the floor. He reached the shrouded body, reeling. Stooping, he dug his arms under it and, with a groan, swung it up and over his shoulder. Then he staggered towards the wavering incandescence of the door. Ammonites moved to stand in his path. Hysterical with alarm, they wove drugged smoke around him. With his free hand he scooped up a tripod and, swinging it, struck. A clang as a mask flew off. That cleared a path to the open air. Loping, now, he reached it. Light engulfed him. He managed several more steps then stumbled, crying out for fear of hurting Osidian. As he fell onto one knee, he felt the burden lifting off him. He was choking. The mask would not let him breathe. He had good reason to know the risk, but feared he might lose consciousness. So he tore his mask off and gulped fresh air.

  As his mind began to clear, he rose, turning. Ammonites streaming out from the purgatory collided with those who were standing motionless. Though they were masked, the stiffness of their poses betrayed their terror. Some had stains darkening the skirts of their robes. Through the eyeslits of their masks they were gazing upon his naked face. Sthax and his Marula too were in breach of the Law. It was a choice between the ammonites and the warriors. He was struck momentarily by pity, but then he remembered the Maruli lying in his own blood. Frowning, he made a sign to Sthax and his men, one they could not help but understand, then pointed at the ammonites. As the Marula advanced on them with lowered lances, the ammonites began keening. Carnelian forced himself to watch their massacre.

  Osidian came awake, frowning.

  ‘Where’s Fern?’ Carnelian demanded. Waiting for Osidian to recover he, Sthax and the other Marula had had time to drag all the bodies they could find in the purgatory out into the open air. There had been more than twenty Marula with their throats cut, but no sign of Fern.

  Osidian’s frown deepened as he focused on Carnelian’s face. His eyes widened. ‘We’re unmasked!’

  ‘There are none left alive to see our faces save for the Marula and to them our faces are nothing new.’

  Osidian glowered. ‘Blood and iron, what is going on?’

  ‘Fern?’ Carnelian almost barked at him.

  As Osidian regarded him, Carnelian saw in his face that old familiar pain. ‘He is safe enough, Carnelian. I left him commanding Heart-of-Thunder in my place.’ He lifted his arms to show the dirty Leper shroud. ‘While I came here in his.’

  Carnelian found this news alarming. ‘Do the other commanders know you have left?’

  Osidian shrugged. ‘If things go badly they might find out.’

  Carnelian saw how precarious things were, but then what had he expected when he had sent his message to Osidian?

  ‘Tell me what has happened. Why am I lying here?’

  Carnelian told him about the drugged smoke; the destruction of the ammonites; Legions’ plot against them.

  ‘You are sure it is Legions himself?’

  Carnelian described the finial on his domain staff and Osidian’s face went pale, his eyes blinded by thought. He shook his head in wonder. ‘Only this morning I chose to reveal myself to the Wise by heliograph. I was awaiting their reply when Fern came with your message.’ He shook his head again. ‘It was hard to believe.’

  ‘But still you came.’

  Osidian focused on Carnelian. ‘So it is to you, once again, that I owe my salvation.’

  Carnelian spoke quickly to quench the light of love that was stirring in Osidian’s eyes. ‘The Grand Sapient tried to buy me. Had he promised to spare the barbarians, I would have given you to him.’

  Sadness returned to Osidian’s face. He lowered his gaze. ‘He would never promise you that. He could not.’ He looked up. ‘So you continue to fight at my side?’

  ‘As you said, did I not just save you from falling into his power?’

  ‘Don’t expect me to make war, Carnelian, without your precious barbarians suffering casualties.’

  ‘As long as you don’t deliberately cause them to be hurt.’

  Osidian held Carnelian’s gaze. ‘We understand each other?’

  Carnelian gave him a nod. ‘Release the Lepers from their agreement.’

  Osidian made a gesture of negation. ‘I cannot. We need them.’

  Carnelian saw there was no moving him. He had not expected to, but had had to try.

  ‘What did you tell him?’ Osidian said.

  Carnelian related what he could remember of his conversation with Legions.

  ‘Nothing more?’

  ‘I wasn’t feeling very chatty.’

  Osidian seemed blind again. Carnelian watched the muscles working in his jaw as he rehearsed what he would say to the Grand Sapient.

  The Grand Sapient was in the vault. In the lamplight he appeared to Carnelian exactly as he had before. Displayed upright in his capsule, seemingly no more alive than a mummy, his homunculus between his legs. As Osidian unmasked Carnelian did the same. Revealed, Osidian’s rapt expression was difficult to read. Wonder tinged with awe, but there was something else. Carnelian nursed an emerging impression, then realized, with shock, what it must be. Love.

  ‘It is you, Legions,’ said Osidian.

  The homunculus murmured behind its blinding mask. Legions’ fingers worked its neck and throat. ‘It is, Celestial.’

  ‘I feared we would never meet again, my Lord.’

  ‘We shared your fear.’

  Osidian gazed up at the Grand Sapient. ‘You searched for me with your childgatherers, but I made sure to remain well hidden, never guessing you would send a legion. That I had not imagined possible.’

  ‘We have often had to transcend the possible.’

  ‘But to send the Lord Aurum, surely that was a terrible risk?’

  They waited for Legions to take the sounds from the homunculus’ throat.

  ‘To use one of the Lesser Chosen would have been no less a risk, Celestial. Besides, we had used him before. He was an instrument who came easily to hand.’

  Carnelian wondered if he meant that it was the Wise who had been behind sending Aurum to fetch his father from exile.

  ‘My brother knows nothing of this?’ Osidian said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘That you have come yourself, my Lord, suggests your mind was primary in this affair. It suggests also the Wise are desperate.’

  ‘It was Suth who kept from us the knowledge of your disappearance until it was too late. Our trust in him led us into error and left us exposed to your mother.’

  Though the voice of the homunculus was free from emotion, Carnelian sensed the menace in Legions’ words. So it was not only Ykoriana who had been his father’s enemy. Carnelian would have challenged the Grand Sapient, but Osidian, sensing this, stayed him by touching his arm. As the homunculus continued, Osidian gave Carnelian a look of reassurance.

  ‘She forced us to gift the City at the Gates to the Brotherhood of the Wheel.’

  ‘She dared parade her guilt before you thus?’

  Once he had understood that, Legions turned his eyepits on Carnelian. ‘Without evidence, we could not touch her. Suth’s sin had made her invulnerable. Though that brought him no gratitude from her.’

  Carnelian would no longer be restrained. ‘So you aided her against him?’

  ‘It was she who had the Clave impeach him. We merely did not raise a finger to defend him.’

  ‘Aurum was as much her enemy,’ said Osidian.

  ‘She commuted his deposal to exile, Celestial.’

  ‘Why, my Lord?’

  ‘Our thought combined has not yet been able to deduce a reason.’

  ‘My mother is given neither to whim nor mercy.’

  ‘Some factor is missing from our computations.’

  Osidian frowned at this. Either he was disturbed by this failing of the Wise, or else he sensed the Grand Sapient was keeping something from him. ‘And how did you persuade Aurum to do your bidding?’

  ‘It has been our experience’ – th
e eyepits glanced towards Carnelian again – ‘that those of the Great will do almost anything to regain entrance to Osrakum.’

  Osidian regarded Legions with a fixed concentration. ‘It seems, my Lord, we have the same enemies, the same goals.’

  Once the homunculus had echoed these words, they waited, but Legions’ fingers remained so still that the homunculus could have been wearing a collar carved from alabaster.

  Osidian looked up at Legions, uncertain. ‘Join with me, my Lord, give me back the Masks. Once I am They, I will rid you of my mother. .. and make you other concessions besides…’

  The alabaster fingers came alive. ‘Surely, child, you know that what you ask is beyond our power to grant. You have been too long in the wilderness, too long free. Even I am a slave to the Law-that-must-be-obeyed and what you ask you must surely know the Law forbids.’

  ‘But now that your scheme to take me captive has failed you cannot hope to keep your plotting concealed from her and, once she and Osrakum know of that, the power the Wise have to counter hers will be seriously diminished.’

  ‘I am curious: what caused my scheme to fail?’

  ‘Carnelian…’ Osidian turned, puzzled, to Carnelian. ‘How did you know…?’

  Carnelian shrugged. ‘I was warned of it in a dream.’

  Osidian looked incredulous. ‘A dream?’

  ‘A dream?’ echoed the homunculus.

  Carnelian and Osidian turned back to the Grand Sapient. ‘Have there been other dreams of warning, Suth Carnelian?’

  Carnelian felt uneasy at having become the object of the Grand Sapient’s interest. His thought became tangled as he tried to work out what to say. In the end it seemed easier to simply state the truth. ‘There have been others.’

  ‘What does it matter? It did fail!’ cried Osidian. ‘And without me you are exposed to my mother.’

  The Grand Sapient seemed to have withered back to a corpse. Carnelian’s unease grew. He turned to Osidian for help, but was shaken by how young he looked, how helpless. Osidian’s face sagged into anguish. ‘It was I, not my brother, who was elected to wear the Masks. Surely my mother’s plot cannot be allowed to overturn the expressed will of the Chosen?’

  As the homunculus echoed Osidian’s words, Carnelian regarded Osidian with increasing horror. After everything he had done, after all his claims, he appeared now to be merely a child demanding fairness.

  ‘Once made, the Gods cannot be unmade,’ said the homunculus.

  Osidian seemed close to tears, exhausted. ‘I too was anointed with blood. The God came to me not once, but many times. He spoke to me. He acted through me. I am His instrument.’

  Carnelian felt his horror turning to contempt. He expected the Grand Sapient to swat Osidian with more relentless logic, but was disappointed when, instead, the homunculus began to question him, probing his claims. He watched the interrogation, incredulous that the Grand Sapient could be finding anything of interest in Osidian’s deranged beliefs. Then, as Osidian unwound their story, Carnelian became mesmerized with fear that Osidian was betraying the Plainsmen, then the Marula. Carnelian reassured himself, first that Legions knew most of this already, then that the Marula were most likely already lost and, finally that, come what may, the Grand Sapient was in their power; that whatever Legions was learning from Osidian they would make sure he would remain unable to communicate it back to his brethren in Osrakum.

  Osidian was done. He gazed up expectantly at the Grand Sapient. The homunculus spoke. ‘I do not deny the signs, the portents, but they change nothing, Celestial.’

  The change that came upon Osidian’s face Carnelian had had reason many times to fear. ‘We shall see if the rest of the Twelve shall be as intransigent as you, my Lord.’

  ‘How do you imagine, Celestial, that you will fare better with them who are free, than you have with me, who am your prisoner?’

  Osidian’s eyes burned. ‘Then I shall march upon Osrakum.’

  Legions lowered his head, causing his eyepits to flood with shadow that poured down to his lipless mouth. ‘You hope to overthrow the Commonwealth with a single legion?’

  Osidian looked round as if for allies, but Carnelian was in no mood to give him support. Osidian looked up into the dark curves of the ceiling as if searching for something. Then his gaze returned to the Grand Sapient. ‘I will enfranchise the Lesser Chosen and they will follow me to the Three Gates.’

  The leather of Legions’ face formed into an expression that might have been contempt. ‘And how do you imagine you will communicate with them?’

  Osidian’s face reddened. ‘No doubt, my Lord, you did not come here without reconfiguring the watch-towers to your needs. It would profit you nothing to be here more blind, more mute than if you had remained in Osrakum.’

  The horned-ring was lost in Legions’ frown. ‘After your message reached the first few legions, we would lock down the system. Isolated, the commanders would not dare rise.’

  Legions loomed forward, his fingers digging instructions into the neck of the homunculus. ‘Do you really believe, child, that even with a dozen legions you could overcome our systems? You would dash yourself ineffectually upon the cliff of our defence. Why do you think we have named this the Guarded Land? However many legions you might gather to your rebellion, we would have more. The web of roads has been constructed to our specifications. Their walls dissect the Land and bind it. Our towers give us the vision of the Gods Themselves. Through them we speak with light, faster than the wind.

  ‘And even should you break through the host that we would muster against you, have you forgotten the Three Gates? A thousand years have we had to perfect them. No force in the Three Lands could hope to breach them.’

  The evident truth of this overwhelmed Carnelian, who had seen the Gates with his own eyes. He had watched Osidian bend beneath the weight of the Grand Sapient’s statements. It seemed incredible that Osidian should find any more resistance, but he did. He looked up. ‘I could rule at my brother’s side.’

  The Grand Sapient regarded them with his dead face, his fingers mute. Osidian’s gaze clung to that face. ‘Are we not twins like the Gods? Was I not marked for the Black God as Molochite was for the Green?’

  The silence stretched, then, at last, the homunculus spoke. ‘Long ago were the Two made One. It is upon this foundation that the Balance of the Powers stands. You know this.’

  Seeing Osidian defeated, so drained, Carnelian felt almost unable to breathe. So much death, so much pain; for what? So that their rebellion should simply run dry? He had to release some of his bile. ‘And what of you, my Lord Legions? Why should we not slay you?’

  A languor came over the Grand Sapient that, strangely, made him seem more alive. ‘It would profit you nothing. My brethren would simply elect another to stand in my place.’

  As Osidian began to move away, Carnelian stood for some moments gazing at the Grand Sapient. At that moment, Legions did not seem a monster, but only a mutilated man. Carnelian knew what tyranny the Wise were responsible for but, seeing Legions powerless, he could not help feeling pity, though even that seeped away. Empty of all feeling, he turned and, taking the light away with him, followed Osidian.

  Behind him an unhuman voice spoke. ‘Ultimately, only the Commonwealth is immortal.’

  Carnelian caught up with Osidian in Aurum’s bedchamber. Seeing his dull eyes, his face still flushed, Carnelian’s heart sank. If Osidian had lost his will to fight, it was all over. In spite of Sthax, Morunasa and the Marula were sure to become unmanageable. Worse, the Lesser Chosen commanders would desert. Poppy, Fern, Lily and the Lepers, all would be left exposed to the full wrath of the Masters. He could see the fire, could smell the blood and crucifixions. He stared at Osidian, realizing with shocked amazement how much he had come to rely on his relentless drive for revenge. It had become such a solid part of his world that, without knowing it, he had built all his strategies on it.

  ‘Things are not hopeless,’ his voice said.

&
nbsp; Osidian’s eyes remained dull. Carnelian had to lead them back to solid ground. ‘We still have a legion. A city. In spite of anything the Grand Sapient said, it is we who have him in our power.’

  Life came back into Osidian’s face, then an expression of exasperation. ‘Have you still not understood? This chamber, this fortress, the whole of the Guarded Land, all have been fashioned by the sort of mind down there.’ He began wringing his hands. ‘They were the basis of all my hope. They ratified my election.’ He glanced at Carnelian, looking child-like, frightened. ‘And it was obvious how much they were prepared to risk to unseat my mother.’

  Carnelian searched around for something he could say that would reassure Osidian, but Legions’ logic seemed inescapable. That made him boil. ‘For all his wisdom, the Grand Sapient is still a man and, like all other men, he is prey to fear. He knows we have the power to do what we will with him. Cornered, is it any surprise he should have said the things he did?’

  Osidian frowned, but gazed at Carnelian, hungry for more.

  ‘You left the watch-tower, my Lord, before receiving a reply from Osrakum. Surely the rest of the Twelve will be nervous. At any moment the other two Powers could discover what they have been up to. At this moment of crisis they can have, at the very best, an imperfect idea of what is going on here. They probably know they have lost a legion. Perhaps they know we hold Makar. But, worst of all, they will have lost contact with he who among them is the master of their defence. Perhaps they already fear we have him in our power. If they do not, you could confirm this.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they just elect a replacement?’ said Osidian, shifting into Vulgate.