The Third God sdotc-3

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘Corpses?’ Morunasa asked.

  ‘In a way,’ Carnelian answered. ‘We’re taking them to the Master’s watch-tower.’

  Gazing at the capsules, Morunasa nodded. The homunculus located poles that Carnelian helped him slide into the carrying handles of Legions’ capsule. Carnelian was aware of the Marula watching him as if he were preparing for them a poisoned meal. He was careful to ignore Sthax.

  The homunculus checked the poles were secure, then announced: ‘The capsule is ready, Seraph.’

  Carnelian relayed this to Morunasa, who issued a command in his own tongue. When the Marula hesitated, Morunasa barked at them. Soon they had managed to slide the capsule horizontal, then, bending to the carrying poles, four on each side, they raised it into the air. As they began to climb the steps with it, the capsule started to tilt. Carnelian cried out in alarm.

  The homunculus touched his arm. ‘My masters are as safe as butterflies in their chrysalises, Seraph.’

  More like pupating maggots, thought Carnelian as he followed the capsule up the stair.

  They crossed the fortress like a funerary procession. When they reached the watch-tower at the outer gate the homunculus showed them strange, wheeled carriages stowed in its stables. They dragged these up onto the leftway with their aquar. From that vantage point, Carnelian became mesmerized by the market teeming below. After having been confined for so long in the Legate’s tower it was a joy to see so much ordinary life. He raised his eyes to the horizon. Beyond the dun chaos of the earthbrick hovels of the city lay the rusty vastness of the land.

  The homunculus showed the Marula how to secure each capsule to its carriage, in a near-vertical position. When all was ready, Carnelian climbed into his saddle-chair. He noticed the homunculus standing as awkwardly as an abandoned child. ‘You do not know how to ride, do you?’

  ‘No, Seraph.’

  Carnelian beckoned him to approach, then helped him clamber into his saddle-chair, settling him between his legs. When he reckoned they were as comfortable as was possible, Carnelian made the aquar rise. He asked Morunasa to ride ahead with his men, leaving only three of them to lead the aquar hitched to the carriages. He eyed the maggot-pale capsules as they lurched into movement. The sun was bright enough to find the dark spindles at their core.

  ‘The Standing Dead,’ he murmured.

  The homunculus stirred a little, tense as ice.

  Soon they were loping along the leftway, Carnelian bringing up the rear of their cortege. They rode above the market, passed under two more watch-towers, then increased speed on the clear run north.

  Even before they reached it, Carnelian could see the disc of Osidian’s camp disfiguring the earth around the watch-tower. Ahead the leftway came to a sudden, ragged end. Some distance further on it rose again, continuing north. In between, it had been reduced to rubble. Surveying the land round about, he understood why Osidian had torn down the leftway: so that he could meet any attack, whether it came from the east or west, with his whole legion.

  Morunasa and the Marula were dismounting. Carnelian made his own mount kneel. He helped the homunculus clamber out, then climbed out himself.

  The little man looked around. ‘Where are the ammonites of this tower, Seraph? They should be here to greet us.’

  Carnelian gazed up into the watch-tower branches. It was Marula that sat as lookouts in the deadman’s chairs. This tower was Osidian’s and any ammonites could only compromise its security. ‘The Celestial dismissed them.’

  The homunculus’ child mask glanced towards their Marula escort. ‘Then, Seraph, we must make do with these creatures.’

  Under his instructions the Marula unloaded the capsules and carried them into the tower. Inside, the homunculus climbed the ladder that was set against the back wall. As he disappeared up into the shadows, Carnelian and Sthax exchanged a glance. Carnelian was trying to work out a way to keep the Maruli close when the homunculus returned, pulling a rope from which hung a hook. Carnelian helped him remove the carrying poles from Legions’ capsule and then watched him attach the hook to one of the freed rings. After the homunculus had fetched and attached a second hook, he showed the Marula some ropes and, at his command, they began to heave on them. As the capsule came slowly upright, the homunculus wrestled it against the wall, then clambered aboard. The Marula continued to pull upon the ropes and the capsule rose up into the gloom of the tower, with the homunculus clinging to it like a child to its mother.

  Carnelian followed Legions’ capsule up through the tower. When it reached the uppermost storey, he helped the homunculus drag it into one of the cells. The capsule was much lighter than he had expected. They propped it up against one wall. Carnelian looked around the chamber. It was so like the many he had seen on his journey to Osrakum that, for a moment, the time that had passed since then seemed an illusion.

  ‘I shall descend for the others, Seraph,’ said the homunculus.

  Soon, he was out of sight, taking with him the hooks and ropes. While Carnelian waited, he opened the doors to the other chambers. All the cells save one looked as if they had not been used for a while. One smelled of sweat, but this odour was cut through by another, myrrh. The same smell that he was just aware of rising from his own, bandaged body. This must be Osidian’s cell, then. He walked around it as if he expected Osidian to return at any moment. He felt that he was intruding; these cells were far more territorial than had ever been the hearth or the sleeping hollows. He backed out of the cell and closed its door. He really would prefer to sleep somewhere out in the open, but even if this had been advisable, he felt a need to stay close to the capsules. He chose the cell furthest from Osidian’s, then returned to the landing to wait for the homunculus to appear with the next capsule.

  After he had helped the homunculus stow the other two capsules, Carnelian climbed the ladder to the roof and had soon reached the platform, at the centre of which gleamed a heliograph. Movement drew his eyes to a Maruli spreadeagled in a deadman’s chair. Carnelian looked west. Far away, red clouds hung like mist over the land. In their midst, he saw flashes. Motes moved, veiled by the rolling dust: Osidian’s dragons on manoeuvres.

  He let his gaze return to wander across the mottled semicircle of the camp below. A glint caught his eye. There was a hole in the ground ringed with silver. Cisterns, perhaps, but it was the hole that drew his attention. It plunged into deep blackness. Pallid creatures were writhing up its sides. Sartlar, like maggots crawling out of a wound.

  When he descended the tower, he took the homunculus with him, down through the stables to the bottom gate. As grooms raised this for him he became aware of the hubbub of the road. He slipped out behind the monolith that screened them from the traffic. He watched the multitude thronging past, and bathed in its ever-shifting odours. He feasted on the faces, the smiles and flashing eyes of so much raw humanity. The beasts, the heaped wagons with their slowly turning wheels.

  ‘We must cross,’ he said quietly to the homunculus.

  He sensed the little man’s fear and offered him his hand. Hesitantly, the homunculus took it and together they emerged onto the road. At first the shadow of the leftway wall concealed them, but then someone saw his mask, his looming height. Cries of ‘Master’ spread panic through the crowd. Pulling the homunculus after him, Carnelian began to cross the road. Everywhere people were falling to their knees. Carnelian did not turn his mask, for its gaze was terrifying to them, but restricted his attention to the bare stone before his feet. When they reached a ramp, they went down its slope to the red earth beyond. Each step thereafter, Carnelian made sure to scuff the earth to churn up dust to hide them.

  He gave up counting the black hearths burnt into the land. Hazed with flies, hills of dragon dung gave off their stench. The glitter of the cisterns drew him and the promise of breathable air. Besides, he had a notion to take a look at the hole in the ground.

  As they drew nearer, they saw the cistern was a trough, its lip gouged and cracked. Bright water rocked i
n its curve, which was the rim of an immense pit plunging down into blackness. The circling wall of the pit was pale limestone rotten with caves and rusted by the land’s red earth. The closer he drew, the further he could peer down into the gloom. Sartlar infested the caves. Others were clambering up out of the blackness using handholds gouged into the soft walls. Each was burdened with a waterskin. As he watched, one of the creatures struggled up from the well and emptied its skin into the cistern. Free for a moment, it rested its gnarled hands on its knees, hacking breath. Suddenly, sensing him, it glanced up. It cowered as it caught sight of the mirror gold of his face. Disliking the creature’s fear, Carnelian turned his back on it and, with the homunculus, he made his way back to the watch-tower. Weary of the world, he climbed to his cell and, as the homunculus hunched down against the wall, he lay down to await Osidian’s return.

  She is Akaisha and Ebeny, though looks like neither. Carnelian feels the itching of her wounds as if they are his own. Scratching, she picks out maggots that writhe over her fingers like drops of oil. She licks them off. Her nails return to dig the wounds. They widen like mouths to devour him. He loses hold and tumbles in and falls and falls and falls.

  He came awake with Osidian standing over him. He had the uncomfortable impression that Osidian had been there for a while. When he sat up, Osidian did not back away enough to give him the space he felt he needed. Osidian seemed too large for the cell, which he filled with the odour of his leathers. Every part of him was reddened except for his face. It seemed he was wearing a mask of pallid alabaster. He frowned, but there was a shy tenderness in his eyes that flustered Carnelian further.

  ‘Where are the commanders?’ Carnelian said, to say something.

  Osidian’s frown deepened as he sensed Carnelian’s unease. ‘On their way to the Mountain as we agreed.’

  In his military cloak, Osidian was filling the cell as Carnelian’s father had filled the cabin on the baran. Carnelian wondered why he was making the comparison. He felt his face was burning.

  Osidian took a step back, dismayed. ‘I’ll leave.’

  Carnelian did not want to part like that. Though they were no longer lovers, they needed to be allies. He struggled to find a way through his feelings. ‘Let’s eat together tonight.’

  Osidian glanced at the cell as if he was seeing it for the first time. ‘Here?’

  Carnelian grimaced. The cell would not do; it felt like a battlefield. He remembered a time long ago. ‘Why not up on the platform, near the heliograph? It would be cool up there. Unrestricted.’

  Osidian’s eyes were flint. ‘As you say, unrestricted.’ He gave a weary nod and had to stoop to leave through the door. Carnelian watched it close, then was left with only his breathing and his beating heart.

  Standing with his back to the heliograph mechanism, Osidian removed his mask and gazed north. Carnelian was reluctant to remove his own. ‘There is no protection here, my Lord.’

  Osidian turned to look at him. ‘It was you who pointed out to me that we spent years unprotected among the barbarians.’ He resumed his squinting at the northern blackness, which was relieved only by the naphtha flares of the next tower and the faint glimmer of the stopping place around its feet. ‘Besides, up here we are as far from the contaminating earth as birds in flight.’

  Carnelian glanced uneasily to where the homunculus was sitting astride the beam that ended in the hoop of a deadman’s chair. The little man was wearing his blinding mask. Osidian had dismissed the Marula lookouts so that there would be no eyes to see them. As Carnelian unmasked, his face was chilled by the night air touching his sweat. He breathed deeply, enjoying not having to draw air through the mask filters.

  ‘Will you take your place in Earth-is-Strong’s tower and help me with the training of our legion?’ Osidian said.

  Carnelian regarded his back and sensed how tense he was. ‘Who would guard the Grand Sapient?’

  Osidian glanced round. ‘You oversee the feeding of the elixir, do you not?’

  Carnelian gave a nod and Osidian turned away again. ‘The Marula will make sure no one enters the tower and they themselves would not dare.’

  Carnelian remembered how Sthax and the other warriors had looked at the capsules. He considered whether to spend the next few days riding the dragon. No doubt it would be preferable to remaining cooped up in the watch-tower, but he was remembering Osidian torching the sartlar. He was not sure their brittle alliance could survive another such atrocity. He had fooled himself before that he could steer Osidian away from such behaviour. Of course, he might try imposing some conditions but, in the past, that had worked badly. Still, he could no longer pretend he was not committed to this war and he must be prepared to bear the consequences. ‘I will join you.’

  Osidian gave a couple of nods.

  Carnelian turned his thoughts to what the coming war might involve. ‘How long will it take the commanders to reach Osrakum?’

  Osidian turned. ‘You are likely to know that better than I. The Guarded Land is like a great wheel. The commanders are travelling along one spoke to its centre. You travelled along another when you came up from the sea. How long did that take?’

  Carnelian cast his mind back to that journey. It stretched in his recollection to span scores of days, though he knew that it had really not taken so long. ‘Five or six days, I think, but we were travelling at great speed.’

  Osidian smiled coldly. ‘The commanders will also be travelling at great speed.’

  Carnelian thought about that. He could see how haste would benefit them. They might be hoping to be the first to arrive with the news of Osidian’s revolt. It could seem to them that only thus might they avoid retribution. He felt a stab of anxiety. ‘That is not going to leave us much time to get the legion ready.’

  ‘Long enough,’ Osidian said. ‘Though Aurum is close, I do not imagine he will be sent against us alone.’

  Carnelian nodded. ‘It would be one legion against another.’

  ‘The Wise prefer not to take risks. They will attempt to muster overwhelming odds against us. Besides, Aurum’s naphtha will be much depleted.’

  Osidian gazed at him expectantly. Carnelian realized that Osidian was expecting him to ask just how bad it had been for the Lepers. If he was being tested, he would pass. ‘What makes you think Aurum has not refuelled in the city to the north of here?’

  Osidian regarded him, then allowed himself a smile. ‘Perhaps. That is not important. What is, is that when the attack comes it will not be from a single legion.’

  The certainty they would be outnumbered left Carnelian feeling bleak. He remembered the dragon tower exploding. Death in such circumstances would be quick, but his heart ached when he imagined how the Lepers and the Marula would suffer on the ground. ‘How can we hope to prevail?’

  Osidian’s smile surprised him. ‘I have a notion or two…’

  Carnelian considered asking him what those might be, but suspected he would get no answer. He glanced down through the bars of the platform to the lights of the camp spread out below. Whatever Osidian’s plan, it would be unlikely to spare the Lepers or the Marula.

  Back in his cell, Carnelian was struck afresh by how identical it was to the others he had slept in before. He touched one of the walls, knowing that behind it Legions and the other Sapients lay dreaming in their capsules, but it could so easily be his father, wounded. This illusion was so great, he almost moved to the door, going to see if it was possible he had dreamed all that had happened since then.

  A movement in the corner startled him. A small figure adjusting itself. For a moment he could believe it was Tain, his brother. Then, a flicker of the lamplight caught a surface of its metal face. Not his brother, but the homunculus in his blinding mask. Carnelian squinted and once again it could be Tain, whom Jaspar had threatened to blind. There was a strange parallelism in all this. A pattern that, should he be able to see enough of it, would make sense of everything.

  He gave up the struggle, despairing,
and went to one of the slits he knew must look down into the stopping place. The fires spangling the land below seemed, at first, very like all those other stopping places, but then he noticed the hills of blackness arrayed along the edge of the road. Dragons. Still, the flicker of the campfires seemed welcoming even from that distance. Poppy and Fern were there somewhere. How he yearned to join them.

  The next morning he rose and put on his leathers again with the help of the homunculus. Then, after feeding the Sapients, they descended the tower with Osidian. To Carnelian’s surprise, he did not go down into the stable levels, but walked out onto the leftway. As Carnelian followed him into the open, he was confronted by the flank of a dragon tower. Its brassman had the back of its head resting against the leftway where the crumbled edge had been hacked into rough steps.

  Osidian’s Hands were there. ‘After I move Heart-of-Thunder away, they will bring up your huimur, my Lord. Follow me out.’

  Carnelian lifted his hand in assent and Osidian descended the rough steps to the brassman. He crossed and entered the tower, his officers scrambling after him. The brassman was only half raised when Heart-of-Thunder began to move away. His footfalls sent tremors up through the leftway and caused more of its rubble to come loose and skitter over the edge. Carnelian watched the monster veer across the road, then saw below a dark mass of mounted Marula. Other dragons berthed all along the edge of the road, freed from their hawsers, were beginning to turn, their towers catching the morning sun. Beyond, spreading to the edges of the camp, was the paler multitude of the Lepers. He narrowed his eyes, searching among them for Poppy or Fern or even Krow, but it was impossible to make one figure out among so many.

  More tremors in the ground alerted him to another dragon tower swaying towards the leftway. Taking a step forward he peered down and was sure he could see the distinctive configuration of Earth-is-Strong’s horns. Soon her brassman was lowering. He had begun to descend the rough steps to it, when he remembered the homunculus. The little man stood petrified, but came when Carnelian called him. He took his hand to lead him into the tower.