The Third God sdotc-3

by Ricardo Pinto

  From far away a murmurous sound came filtering through the Labyrinth.

  ‘The Encampment of the Seraphim is waking, Celestial,’ said Left-Quentha. ‘Though they are much further away than the sound suggests.’

  ‘So how…?’

  Her shrug spread to her sister’s side of their body. ‘Sound moves strangely through the Labyrinth, Celestial.’

  ‘In one place, someone you can see directly,’ said Right-Quentha, ‘you cannot hear at all.’

  ‘While in other places one can hear a faraway voice as if the speaker were close enough to touch,’ said her sister, reaching out with her tattooed hand.

  Right-Quentha smiled. ‘For us, this was one of the chief attractions of this place. Several times we were alerted by the sound of the court preparing to migrate up to the sky.’

  Both sisters nodded.

  ‘Carnie…’

  Carnelian turned to Tain.

  ‘Why can’t you raise the Masters against these-’ He glanced at Sthax. ‘They’re all still there with their guardsmen.’

  Carnelian looked at the Quenthas. ‘Could that work?’

  The sisters shook their heads. ‘The Halls of Rebirth are a fortress, Celestial. Even with most of the Ichorians away garrisoning the Gates, our cohorts – the sybling cohorts – should easily hold off any assault.’

  Carnelian nodded. ‘At the very least there would be much blood spilled; at worst, it could ignite civil war.’ A shadow passed over his heart. ‘Besides, Osidian might be killed.’

  ‘What of it?’ said Fern. ‘He deserves to die.’

  There were gasps round the circle and wide-eyed fear at such sacrilege.

  ‘If he dies now, most likely I would become the next God Emperor,’ said Carnelian. He sensed more than saw the hope that entered many around the circle. ‘Were that to happen, I’d be locked behind the Masks for ever.’ He was aware of Fern’s horror at this. ‘Imprisoned here.’ He extended his hands to take in the Labyrinth. ‘Meanwhile, the world outside would sink into strife and famine.’ He looked into Sthax’s eyes. ‘I don’t know if I’d be able even then to save your people.’ He shook his head, imagining it. ‘The best I might manage would be to attempt to hold the balance of power here.’ He glanced around the ring of faces. ‘Be certain of this. If the Masters fall into fighting each other, they may destroy themselves, but they would take the world down with them.’

  Everyone stared, consumed by their own vision of that calamity.

  ‘What hope, then, is there?’ asked Tain at last.

  Carnelian felt some faint belief rising within him. He turned to Sthax. ‘Do your brethren feel as you do?’

  ‘We desperate.’

  The Maruli looked at Carnelian as if he was a spar floating in a stormy sea. Carnelian would not refuse his hope. ‘We’ll do nothing to interfere with the Masters returning to their palaces. When Morunasa comes into the Labyrinth, we’ll move against him.’

  He did not reveal his relief when none there questioned this. At that point, what he had stated was all the plan he had.

  ‘How will we know when that happens?’ asked Left-Quentha.

  It was Fern who answered her. ‘We’ll know.’

  The tree that inhabited the clearing was a pomegranate. Though laden with fruit, these were all still green. Right-Quentha had regarded them, disappointed, saying that she and her sister had hoped that the tree would be able to feed them at least for one night. On their previous visits, the fruit had been ripe, but then they had always come later in the year.

  Even before they had thought to find some firewood, the sisters cautioned them against lighting a fire. Its smoke might betray their location to anyone searching for them. They made what camp they could within reach of the light. Fern made a bed for Carnelian from the fern fronds, but though they yearned for each other, they chose to sleep apart.

  What little food they had was divided equally. As the day waned, they sought sleep as an escape from the darkness encroaching from the Labyrinth. Wrapped in his cloak, Carnelian lay listening to the murmur of the Masters’ camp. Soon they would return to their coombs. What of Coomb Suth? Matters there were still unresolved. If anything were to happen to him or to his father, Poppy and the rest would be at the mercy of Opalid.

  Another day of waiting, listening to the Masters’ camp. When Fern went with the Quenthas and some of the Suth guardsmen to find some food, Carnelian remained behind with Tain. When the others returned, they had a couple of fish and a small saurian. Fern prepared them and they ate them raw.

  Carnelian and Fern wandered off together. They had told the others that they would not be long and would stay within earshot of both their camp and that of the Masters.

  ‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ Fern asked.

  Carnelian smiled at him. ‘I feel much better.’

  They walked along the road beneath the poppyhead columns, the silence deepening between them, until neither could find a way to words. It was Carnelian who spotted another clearing and headed towards it, though it took them away from the path. Even before he reached the clearing he realized it was much larger than the one around which they had camped. A column had collapsed, cracking others as it fell. A ragged hole had been left in the vaulting, through which light was flooding. The head of the fallen column lay half in light, half in shadow. Approaching the great bulb of stone, Carnelian reached out to touch it. Under his hand was the remains of the red with which it had once been painted. Like dried blood. He frowned, reminded of the funerary urns into which he and Osidian had been squeezed. His fingers found branching channels eroded into the stone. He gazed up into the light. This column had once stood naked against the elements. Long ago, perhaps, before the Labyrinth had been roofed in. He walked round to look at its spiky, poppy crown and saw the pod was cracked. A gash as if it had been slit to bleed its opium. He leaned towards it and detected a faint smell of ancient myrrh. He slipped his hand into the gash.

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  Carnelian saw the anger in Fern’s face. ‘I just want to take a peek inside.’ And, with that, he squeezed into the pod.

  Inside, the air was musty. He stepped aside to allow light to filter in through the crack. It fell upon a sort of stalagmite angling up from the floor. But, of course, the whole pod had rolled over, so it was emerging not from the floor, but from what had been the ceiling. He reached out and touched it. It swelled into a spiral. Intuition made him reach out to the wall. His fingers found the buds, the seeds with which it was carved. As much as he was inside a huge poppyhead, it was also a pomegranate. He could make out shapes piled up beyond the spindle. Cautiously he crossed the curving floor, using the spindle as a support. A mound of rubbish, of shards, a glimmer of metals and stones, among mouldering flakes and fibres of something else. He jumped when he saw the grin: a row of teeth in a skull skinned with thin, scabrous leather; a mummy, curled up as if in a womb, wrapped in brown cloth. There were others in among the heap. Bones held together by scraps of dried flesh. He grew uneasy, remembering the pygmy dead in their baobabs. He could hear again the crackle as they had burned. Caught by the stare of a dark socket, he shuddered, recalling the render the sartlar had made from pygmies they had killed. His eyes were drawn to a glinting profile. A beautiful face among the corpses. He leaned closer and saw it was a mask. Touching it, he found it was stone. The mummy to which it belonged was larger than the others, its wrappings paler bands of half-perished linen. Among these bands, the glint of gold. He stared, disturbed. This could be one of his fathers, his mothers. There was no sign here of an after-life, of resurrection. His thumb found the edge of the mask. The rest of his hand gripped across the bridge of the nose, into an eyeslit. He tugged and it snapped open like the lid of a rusted box. The face below had darkened, the eyes withered, the lips thinned, riding up the teeth, but it was still a Master’s face. An adult face, but not much larger than a Chosen child’s. Carnelian saw the hands crossed upon the chest, wedged behind the knees. He put
the mask down and reached out to compare his hand with the mummy’s. The mummy’s was so much smaller. Perhaps embalming had shrunk it. Carnelian shook his head. The skull could not shrink.

  At that moment the light was snuffed out. Carnelian turned, felt the tomb shudder, then a release of light dazzled him. ‘Fern? Look here, this is a Master, but for some reason much smaller than I am.’

  ‘Haven’t you had enough of the dead?’

  An edge to Fern’s voice made Carnelian rise, shuffle back towards him. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said, reaching out to touch him.

  His hand was slapped away, stinging him to anger.

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  The almost childlike tone in Fern’s voice cooled Carnelian’s anger to sadness. ‘I don’t know, Fern, I don’t know.’

  ‘You must have a plan?’

  ‘We wait for Morunasa and then-’

  ‘You mean we wait for the screaming!’

  Carnelian felt the grief leaching out of Fern connecting to his own. He remembered the nightmare in the Upper Reach. ‘Yes, the screaming.’

  ‘I can’t bear it again.’ The words a skin of ice over tears. Fern was reliving not the Upper Reach, but the massacre of his people. Carnelian felt panic rising in him. The memory of that horror came alive in him from where he had thought it buried.

  ‘Tell me this time it will be different,’ Fern sobbed.

  Carnelian reached out, desperate to touch him, wanting to promise, but not daring to lest his promise should turn into a lie. ‘I can’t, Fern, but this time we’ll fight to save what can be saved. This time, together.’

  His hands reached Fern’s face, felt his warm tears, his skin. They melted together, seeking life in the midst of death. Skin finding skin. Their mouths. Their hard flesh. Making love, at first violently, but then tenderly.

  When they emerged from the tomb, they stood close enough to feel each other’s breath. Eerie silence. Their cheeks grazed as they turned to look at each other. The Masters had left the Labyrinth.

  The screaming began the following evening. Thin, bleak, harrowing sounds scratching the sepulchral gloom. Blood drained from the faces edging the clearing.

  ‘What is it?’ Tain asked in a whisper.

  Fern closed his eyes as if he hoped that would close his ears. ‘Morunasa feeding victims to his filthy god.’

  Carnelian felt sick. ‘Putting maggots in children.’ As they all turned to him, he cursed himself for having said that aloud.

  Heads angled as people listened to the pitch of the screaming. Fern licked his lips, looking queasy. ‘The flesh tithe.’

  Carnelian nodded. Tain jumped up. ‘We must go now!’

  Carnelian saw in Tain’s face he was being haunted by what he had endured as a child.

  The Quenthas shook their heads together, frowning, grim. ‘It’ll soon be night. If we attempt to find our way in the dark, we’ll become lost.’

  Carnelian, who had known that before the sisters said it, still felt angry at them for having taken from him any hope of action. ‘Then we must sleep as best we can.’

  He caught Fern’s look of despair. How could they all endure such a night?

  The first grey light found them awake, bleary-eyed, haggard. The screaming had kept them from sleep, or else mired in helpless nightmares. Carnelian glanced at Fern, saw how aged he seemed, as if it had been night for years. Memory weighed down on both of them. They had good reason to know the horror Morunasa had brought into the Labyrinth. Yet another scream sounded, a sort of lightning shrilling through their nerves. Carnelian had had enough. ‘Let’s go and end this.’

  Everyone looked to him with hope; everyone save Fern, who did not look away fast enough to prevent Carnelian seeing his doubt.

  Rain began to fall as they set off. They followed the sisters through the twilit Labyrinth. Above their heads the vaults hung like stormclouds. Water pouring in through openings hissed as it sprayed down.

  They used one of the column sarcophagi as cover. Carnelian glanced back at the Shimmering Stair. No sign of life there. Dull, its cascade of steps seemed an approach to an immense tomb. Before it the moat was being turned opaque by water falling into it from the shadows above. Litter and mess was all that remained of the Encampment of the Seraphim. On higher ground, between two great pillars, stretched a line of sybling Ichorians. Beyond them, higher still, a darker cordon of Marula from within whose circle rose a particularly massive colossus shouldering flying arches and the high, shadowy ceiling. It was clear why Morunasa had chosen this vast sarcophagus, for it reminded Carnelian of the central trunk of the banyan of the Isle of Flies.

  Somewhere near this colossus, a shriek rent the air, causing a shiver to ripple along the rings of Marula and syblings. All were fixedly turned outwards, no doubt fearing even to glimpse what was going on behind them.

  Carnelian glanced round at his flint-eyed people awaiting his command. An attempt had to be made to stop that torture even if it should cost their lives.

  As Carnelian strode towards the Sinistrals, he saw a party of Sapients addressing them. Fern, the Quenthas and Sthax were at his back. He had left Tain behind with the Suth tyadra.

  The Sapients turned as their homunculi, muttering, watched Carnelian approach. Heart racing, he announced who he was.

  One of the Sapients advanced. ‘Celestial, please command these creatures to let us pass.’

  It was as Carnelian had surmised: the Wise had lost control. The Sapient betrayed his agitation by the way he gripped the throat of his homunculus. The finial of his staff showed two faces turned to each other wrought in red stone. ‘You are of Gates?’ he guessed.

  ‘The first Third of that Domain, Celestial.’

  Carnelian scanned the finials of the other Sapients and it seemed to him that, quite probably, all twelve Domains were there represented. He would test his hypothesis. ‘Is it your masters, my Lord, have sent you hither?’

  It was another homunculus who answered him, whose cypher of a cross Carnelian knew well enough was that of the Domain Legions. ‘It is our masters, Celestial, we need to communicate with, urgently.’

  An animal scream issued from up the slope. Carnelian fought to calm himself, to think. It seemed Morunasa had been cunning enough to realize he must control the Wise. ‘Are all the Twelve within this cordon?’

  Several four-fingered hands rose, making gestures of affirmation. It was as Carnelian had feared. Not only had Morunasa taken Osidian, but also the Twelve, thus decapitating the Wise. That only served to prove he was not dealing with a fool. He advanced on the Sapients, and they and their homunculi moved aside. Before him stood Ichorians armed with iron halberds, encased in armour and casques of the same precious substance. He threw back his hood and fixed one untattooed face with a glare. ‘Do you not know who I am, Ichorian?’

  The man ducked his head, even as his blind brother turned to him in consternation. His seeing half pulled them both down to kneel upon two of their three knees. ‘Celestial,’ he muttered. Raking their line, Carnelian caused them all to kneel, acknowledging him.

  ‘Let me pass,’ he said in an imperious tone.

  Two heads rose from a forked neck. ‘We cannot, Celestial.’ The lips that spoke were baroqued with swirling black tattoos. Eyes in the darkened face were ovals of glassy obsidian. ‘We have been commanded to let none through except at Their express instruction.’

  ‘Did They communicate this command to you Themselves?’

  Both syblings shook their heads.

  ‘The Maruli, then?’

  ‘It is not for us, Celestial, to question the choices of the Gods on Earth.’

  ‘Celestial, may I address this centurion?’

  Carnelian glanced round at the Quenthas and was glad to let them do what they could.

  The sisters confronted the kneeling centurion. ‘You know this is the brother of the Gods?’ As the syblings nodded, the Quenthas continued relentlessly: ‘From love of whom They changed the Law-that-must-be-obeyed
. Do you imagine They will easily forgive this insult to Their beloved?’

  ‘But the command-?’ said the centurion.

  ‘This command cannot apply to the Lord Carnelian,’ said the Quenthas with steely authority.

  The centurion ducked a bow. ‘We dare not disobey divine command.’

  ‘Was it given you in the angelic tongue?’

  The syblings had to admit it had not been.

  ‘How then can you be so certain of the precise nature of Their command?’

  Carnelian could see the resolve of the centurion weakening and so could the Quenthas. ‘Was it not delivered to you by a barbarian who traduced the holy will into a lesser tongue?’

  Carnelian gazed down with haughty condescension. ‘I shall vouch for you.’ He scanned their ranks. ‘For you all.’

  The heads of the centurion turned inwards so that each caught the eye of the other. The syblings rose and, at their command, the line opened for Carnelian. Through the gap, he saw the darker ranks of the Marula. They would not be so easily cowed. He raised his voice to summon the Sapients to follow him, then he strode through the sybling cordon and on towards the Marula.

  The Marula lowered their lances, their line buckling a little, bristling. They stared at Carnelian with yellow, feral eyes. He shortened his steps. Sweat trickled down his back. He was only too aware of the danger he was in, of the danger he was taking his people into. Earlier, the Quenthas had argued hard against this. Their counsel had been to subvert their brethren; to turn the Sinistrals against the Marula and slaughter them. It had been Fern’s silence that had steadied Carnelian’s resolve. Fern, who had reason to wish the killers of his people dead.

  Carnelian glanced round at Sthax. They had made promises to each other. Hope lay in the trust between them. Sthax addressed the Marula. His voice carried with the clicks and throaty syllables of their speech. The Marula listened to him, their eyes flashing from Sthax to Carnelian, gripping and regripping their lances. When Sthax fell silent, Carnelian watched the Marula whispering among themselves. He recognized some of them. He remembered training them in the Upper Reach to fight in the formation they now used against him; he remembered fighting on the ground at their side against Osidian’s mounted charges. Perhaps they too remembered this, because their lances began to rise as they moved aside.