The Third God sdotc-3

by Ricardo Pinto

  Carnelian’s stream of thought was muddied by the approach of the summoned Marula. They were Oracles, among whom was Morunasa. There was malice in the glance the man gave him, but also fear. Clearly, Morunasa had never imagined he would see Carnelian again. Did he fear that Carnelian had told Osidian that it was Morunasa who had let them go? Osidian was telling Morunasa and the other Oracles that they must find a way into the Iron House. He was indicating where the drawbridge stair was slightly ajar and how they might enter that way.

  ‘Bring me all the bodies you find in there.’

  As they watched Morunasa and the other Oracles moving away, Carnelian was frowning. ‘There will be a lot of bodies.’

  Osidian turned on him. ‘How could you know that?’

  ‘Before the battle I was there with Molochite.’

  Carnelian sensed Osidian wanted to know more. He frowned, haunted, imagining the interior of the Iron House. ‘All the children.’

  ‘Children?’ Osidian’s voice betrayed the first colourings of emotion.

  Carnelian explained how Molochite had with him the children of the Great, presumably as hostages for the good behaviour of their fathers commanding in the battle. As he did so he saw a rigor taking over Osidian’s body.

  ‘You did not know?’

  Osidian seemed lifeless.

  While they brought Heart-of-Thunder up towards the door of the Iron House, Carnelian described to Osidian something of his time there. He was not sure Osidian was listening and it seemed he was not, for he said nothing when Carnelian fell silent. As its keeper kept the dragon still, Marula scrambled up its horns and onto its head, and from there managed to clamber up into the open gap of the drawbridge stair and so gain entry into the Iron House. Some time later, the chains began to be paid out and the stair, jerkily, fell, until one corner of it clanged into the stone of the road.

  The first corpse to be brought out from the black maw of the Iron House was that of a sybling pair. The Marula carrying the dead twins leaned away from them, as if they feared some contamination. Though blackened, it was clear the syblings were male. Carnelian was relieved it was not the Quenthas. When a second sybling pair was carried down, Morunasa came ahead, to report the stairs within the Iron House choked with bodies. Carnelian and Osidian hardly heard him, focused as they were on the dead syblings. Curling in on each other, they held within their embrace the body of the Chosen infant they had been trying to protect. Soon more small bodies were being brought out and laid upon the stone. Once beautiful children, blackened, but unburnt, faces scrunched up, eyes slivers, mouths opened as if singing. Some of the small bodies clung to each other so desperately they were brought out by the Marula as knots of limbs. The warriors frowned carrying them, putting them down as if they were glass.

  Carnelian became trapped in looking from face to face. When he tore his eyes away, he saw Poppy gazing at the dead children with a rapt expression, as if she was listening to something they were saying. He became aware Osidian was unmasking. His face, revealed, seemed weathered marble in the rain. He was muttering something.

  ‘What?’ Carnelian asked.

  ‘I thought I had already paid the price for victory.’

  This stung Carnelian to anger. ‘What exactly did you pay?’

  Osidian gazed at him, pale, wild-eyed. ‘They will blame this on me.’

  ‘And why should they not?’ Carnelian said and his anger turned to despair. His own hands were not clean of this.

  The flow of children ceased at the same time as the rain. As the Marula penetrated the upper levels of the Iron House, Carnelian and the others were left to stand guard upon the dead. Then the Iron House began to disgorge more corpses. Chosen and syblings, their gorgeous armour and robes stained black with their faces and limbs, some clutching at their throats as if seeking to strangle themselves. Their jewels now seemed tainted tomb goods.

  Then Carnelian saw them bringing out a body sheathed in dull silver. As he approached it, he saw Osidian was already there watching it being put down. Molochite’s beautiful, cruel face was distorted by a grimace that combined horror and surprise. Osidian gazed down upon his brother, eyes wide and bleak. Carnelian looked from one face to the other, marvelling at how alike they were. He recalled how much his own features resembled theirs, and why. He too looked down at a dead brother, but was glad to find he felt nothing but disgust. Turning back to Osidian, he saw his gaze transforming to a staring panic. He tried in vain to gauge the cause in the sight before him, then realized it was not what Osidian was seeing, but what he was not seeing. The face that had been hidden behind the Masks during the Apotheosis emitted no light. It was the face of a dead man, not a dead god.

  Osidian pulled away and clutched hold of a Maruli whom Carnelian recognized, with shock and distracted relief, as Sthax. Osidian shook him. ‘Where is it? Tell me now!’

  Sthax tried to shake his head and opened his mouth, so that Carnelian feared the Maruli might be about to give himself away by speaking in Vulgate, but suddenly Osidian cast him aside. Morunasa was there, trying to calm Osidian, who began rattling out some command. Morunasa listened to him for a while, nodding, then barked an order to one of his men. Carnelian saw his family witnessing how close Osidian seemed to madness. At last two Marula warriors approached him opening their hands. He looked down with horror at what they were offering him. Shards of what appeared to be green ice. Pieces of jade. Osidian plucked these from the black hands and frantically seemed to be attempting to join them together. Then with an eruption of rage, he cast the pieces to the ground. Some shattered into smaller fragments, or skittered over the paving. A single piece came to rest near Carnelian’s foot. He stooped to pick it up. Its translucence was like the sun through leaves. His finger felt its sinuous curve. It was the bridge of a nose and twin prongs of cheek and brow that had enclosed the hollow of an eyeslit. A piece of the Jade Mask. Through that gap, God Emperors had looked out upon their perfect world for a thousand years.

  Carnelian glanced up as if woken. Fern was looking away from the Iron House towards Osrakum. There, coming along the road, were mirrored palanquins. The Wise. Osidian was tying on his mask with clumsy fingers, like a child hoping to conceal from a returning parent something he had broken.

  Three Grand Sapients emerged from the mirror palanquins. Upon high ranga they stood, forbidding, their long faces of silver crowned with crescent moons. Each had a homunculus before him holding the staff of his Domain.

  ‘We greet you, Lord of the Three Lands,’ the homunculi chorused.

  Osidian inclined his head a little to each in turn. ‘My Lord Tribute, my Lord Cities, my Lord Law.’

  ‘We would speak to you privately,’ said Law, through his homunculus.

  ‘None here can comprehend our tongue, save for the Lord Suth, and I would have him by my side, for this victory is as much his doing as mine.’

  Carnelian glanced at Osidian, unsure if he was being given a share in the glory or the blame.

  ‘Suth Carnelian is unmasked,’ shrilled the homunculus.

  ‘Recently the Law has been much disobeyed,’ said Osidian with something of his old defiance.

  The homunculi muttered an echo. Then Cities’ fingers began to flex around his voice’s throat. ‘And for that very reason does the Commonwealth stand in peril of dissolution.’

  ‘My Lords are as guilty of this as any here.’

  ‘We do not deny it, Celestial,’ said Tribute. ‘We come not to make recriminations, but to help you restore the Commonwealth.’

  ‘The legions that survive must return to their fortresses,’ said Cities.

  ‘The Seraphim must return to within the sanctity of the Sacred Wall,’ said Tribute.

  ‘You must resume your place at the centre of the world,’ said Law.

  Osidian stood very still. ‘It is not for the conquered to dictate terms to their conqueror.’

  ‘Celestial,’ said Tribute, ‘we do not deny your right to rule, but if you are to have anything to rule o
ver, then you must allow us to re-establish order.’

  Osidian’s hands crushed to fists. ‘I will not submit to the Balance.’

  ‘And yet, a balance there must be,’ said Law.

  Osidian’s hands opened. ‘Yes.’

  ‘We must recover the dead.’

  Osidian nodded.

  ‘Has the God Emperor been found?’ asked Law.

  As Osidian indicated where his brother lay, Law freed one of his cloven hands and gestured some quick commands. Ammonites poured forward so that, very quickly, Carnelian could no longer see Molochite at all as they wound him into a cocoon of green silk.

  Law’s hand returned to move at the throat of his homunculus. ‘Even if we are to consider the Law suspended for the moment, to have any of the Seraphim exposed thus to animal eyes is folly; to have a consecrated God Emperor thus displayed is madness.’ The homunculus swept a hand to take in the people round about. ‘All these should be destroyed.’

  Carnelian tensed, careful to avoid glancing in the direction in which he had sent his family off the road for fear of the Wise. He relaxed a little when he saw Osidian making a clear gesture of negation. ‘All here are of my household or of that of the Lord Suth. I will allow none to be executed.’

  ‘Is it possible, Celestial, you do not realize how much this diminishes you?’

  Osidian chopped an angry gesture: Enough!

  Silence fell, then Tribute’s fingers came alive again. ‘Have measures been taken to recover the dead from the battlefield?’

  Osidian’s head had sunk so that his mask seemed to be contemplating the crack where two slabs in the road met. Seeing he was not going to answer, Carnelian spoke for him. ‘The legionary commanders have been instructed to bring them here.’

  ‘Who else has been recovered from the Iron House?’ said Cities’ homunculus.

  ‘The children of the Great, syblings and others of the court.’

  ‘No sign then of our colleagues who counselled the God Emperor?’

  Carnelian shook his head.

  ‘Perhaps you will help me search, Suth Carnelian?’ said the homunculus.

  Carnelian glanced at Osidian, still staring at the ground, then up at Cities’ blank silver face. He was not going to be able to stop the Wise conversing with Osidian alone. ‘As my Lord wishes.’

  The Grand Sapient released the neck of his homunculus, who turned to place the Domain staff in his master’s left hand, then clasped the right. Together, Carnelian, Cities and the homunculus began moving towards where the bodies were laid out on the road. Looking again upon the faces of the dead children, Carnelian forgot everything else and was only woken from his sombre survey by the homunculus crying out. As it pulled its master off along the line of dead, Carnelian followed them. The corpse of the Grand Sapient lying on the road might have been long-withered. There was another beside it and, further along the line, beyond some ammonites, a third.

  Standing before the first, Cities knelt, using his staff as a support. His homunculus guided his fingers to the corpse. The cloven hand touched the skull head, then rose, hesitating. The hand presented itself to the homunculus, who also hesitated. It shaped a command and the homunculus, peeled off the glove. The hand, naked, seemed opaque glass. It fell gently upon the face of the dead Grand Sapient, moving with painful delicacy down to feel the glyphs tattooed in a ring around the root of the missing ear. Cities gave the slightest nod, then rose and allowed himself to be guided to the next corpse. There he knelt again, to repeat the procedure. Another nod. This time he had to have help to rise, and leaned upon his homunculus as they moved to the final corpse. Cities knelt for a third time. His fingers tracing down the rucked skin around the eyepit with its jade stone began to tremble as they reached the ear root. There, they shook so much, the Grand Sapient was unable to read the tattoos. He released his hold on his staff, removed the glove from his left hand, then brought them both back to the skull head. Steadying his right hand with his left, he felt the side of the head, then collapsed onto the body.

  The homunculus turned to Carnelian, stiff with panic. A hissing was coming from the prostrate Grand Sapient. A hissing that swelled into a harsh, tearing sound. The homunculus ran back to where the other two Grand Sapients were still standing before Osidian. Carnelian’s gaze returned to Cities who, back rounded and convulsing, seemed to be choking. Carnelian knelt beside him, tears starting in his eyes at the man’s grief. He looked in wonder at the Grand Sapient’s body being racked by the strange sobbing. At first he thought the mourning was for the passing of what were perhaps the most ancient creatures in the world, but then he realized it was this corpse alone that had provoked Cities’ prostration and he wondered whether, despite the detachment cultivated by the Wise, this was perhaps some kind of love. Through shared fate, their passing together through the ages, was it not possible some Sapients became like brothers? Or perhaps this was a father with his son, or a son mourning the death of his father? And moved by the thought, Carnelian stretched out to touch the grieving man.

  Cities’ homunculus returned with ammonites and they drove Carnelian away from their master. He walked back towards Osidian, brooding over loss. As he came closer, he saw him watching the ammonites tending to Cities.

  ‘He mourns his fallen colleague,’ Carnelian said and was aware of Tribute’s and Law’s homunculi murmuring so that he knew their masters heard his words.

  Some moments later Osidian gave a slight nod, as if he had only just registered what Carnelian had said. ‘We have been negotiating my Apotheosis. It shall be held in seven days’ time. They have kept the tributaries waiting in the City at the Gates. Tribute’s primary concern is that the awe of witnessing my ascension should replace what they have seen of our disunity and strife. He hopes that thus, at least for the moment, the outer ring of the Commonwealth will hold without need of further intervention.’

  The murmuring of the homunculi continued a while and then fell suddenly silent.

  ‘Celestial, the sartlar must be sent back to the Land,’ said Tribute.

  Osidian turned to the Grand Sapients. ‘Will this avoid the cities being visited by famine?’

  ‘With rationing it can be hoped they will suffer little degradation.’

  ‘And the sartlar?’ Carnelian asked.

  The two Grand Sapients stood motionless long after their homunculi had completed their echoing of Carnelian. Then Law’s fingers stirred, causing his homunculus to sing out: ‘They will starve in vast numbers.’

  Carnelian frowned, trying to accustom himself to the weight of responsibility he would bear for that. He glanced towards the battlefield. At least those had died quickly. Hunger was a cruel killer.

  ‘The legions must return to their fortresses, Celestial. They will be needed to quell disturbances among the sartlar.’

  Carnelian felt crushed by this new prophecy of disaster.

  Osidian was nodding. He raised his head. ‘Six legions shall remain here to herd them away from Osrakum.’

  ‘As you wish, Celestial,’ said Tribute.

  Law’s homunculus gazed at them. ‘And now we must haste back to Osrakum. We have all been too long exposed to the pollution out here.’

  Carnelian looked around him, weak with relief at the thought of fleeing all this destruction and death. In his mind’s eye he saw the ordered perfection of Osrakum and yearned for it. At the same time he was ashamed of these feelings. How easily he was allowing himself to think like a Master. How easy it would be to wash his hands of the holocaust he had helped to bring about, then go safely behind Osrakum’s mountain wall, where the disaster that was to come would be hidden from his eyes.

  Following the direction of his thoughts, his gaze had drifted north towards Osrakum. He became aware of a darkness creeping towards them along the road. Palanquins. Hundreds and hundreds of them. The Chosen were coming to gather their dead.

  The first ranks of palanquins disgorged Masters the colours of butterflies. Their iridescent robes and the sunlight h
ue of their masks spilled glorious summer out over the grey, puddled road. Carnelian pulled the hood of his brother’s cloak further over his face, peering down its tunnel at this alien spectacle as their bright flood left the palanquins behind and approached, Masters towering above their tyadra. Osidian was lifting his hand, holding it aloft to form gestures of command. Come alone.

  The Masters left their guardsmen behind and continued to advance on their ranga, their gait measured as they passed along the rows of children, their masks glancing at the dead faces, the sight of which only seemed to quicken their approach.

  Carnelian dropped his head as they drew closer, for a moment seeing nothing but the shimmer of their silks, the glitter of their jewels. They slowed as they neared Osidian, trailing their sleeves in the filth of the road as they made obeisance, their greetings of ‘Celestial’ like a whisper of breeze. And in the midst of their pomp Osidian was a spindle of shadow, seeming more a part of the angry sky than anything to do with the mundanity below.

  He addressed them, his Quya ringing through their ranks, telling them that, of their Ruling Lords, perhaps only eighty had perished, but that the rest lived still and had accepted him as their master and, further, that he had confirmed the new rights his brother had gifted them. Even if Carnelian had not given half his attention to this speech, he would have known these were only the Lesser Chosen, for he was now watching the approach of a more sombre procession. In more autumnal splendour, the Great were filing out of the raft of palanquins and coming on in stately gravity. Slowly they approached the dead laid out upon the road and, though Carnelian watched for a change in their demeanour as they realized these were their children, they did not flinch, but moved along the rows, searching, with as much decorum as if they were appreciating a display of lilies. Suddenly, one raised a hand, throwing a gesture back towards the waiting guardsmen that stirred up a commotion among them. Other hands began rising, their fine bones obscured by the linen of the ritual wrappings, some seeming to tremble a little, perhaps, so that Carnelian felt a tightening around his eyes, recognizing in that little sign what grief was tearing at their hearts. They might be Masters and of the Great, but they were fathers too and these stiff and sodden corpses on the stone were their children.