The Third God (109 page)

He gazed past the stern. It must be because the lake was so immense that its surface showed no sign of the maelstrom where it was flooding into the spillway. The second boat was nudging away from the stepped slope. When the first boat had arrived, a kharon had told him that his vessel was not big enough to take them all. As they had waited for the second, he had imagined the one-eyed men struggling to launch the vessel from a boathouse. He recalled lying captive in one such boathouse with Osidian before they had been packed into funerary urns. It seemed some other life than his, but in his heart a desire stirred to see Osidian again. Only when the ferrymen had demanded payment had Carnelian realized he had no jade rings. At a loss, he had turned to the Marula, had considered using force, but then had had an inspiration. He had asked two of the warriors for their swords and given one to each ferryman. Even though they were masked, he had sensed their shock. Each of the iron blades in their hands was worth more than the boat they steered; probably more than all the boats of the kharon and their lives too. He was glad that such economics would not survive the Masters.

Slicing the dark mirror of the Skymere, the prow creased its water, mixing the lights from the coombs as sparks into the ripples. Carnelian watched Fern gaze at the palaces, entranced. Vague sweeps and outlines, heavy hanging masses all lit with what seemed countless burning jewels. As their eyes tried to grasp shape and form, Carnelian wondered what miracles of art and beauty lay behind those soaring façades. In his heart there was an ache for how much was going to be lost. For a moment, he perceived each of the myriad lights as a human life that must be soon snuffed out. His mind veered away from thoughts of atrocities in paradise.

The eerie silence was broken only by the sculling oars, the bow wave silkily slipping. He glanced back over his shoulder. Though the glory of the Yden was now muffled beneath a pall of shadow, the longer he looked, the more he saw the lagoons were still reflecting something of the blue sky, which its mirrors transformed into infinite, mysterious depths. Tearing up through the blackness, the double spire of the Pillar of Heaven. There at its summit, which was bathed in the last light of the sun, were the hollows where the glorious Chosen had gathered for sacred election. Beneath, the caverns in which the Wise had lodged the spooled beadcord of their library. He could not imagine all of that gone. Was beauty and wisdom then to perish from the earth?

His gaze followed the long back of the Labyrinth and climbed the slope of the cone that wore a crown upon its summit of molten gold as if to mark the place where, below, Osidian, the Gods on Earth, was camped at the heart of the Plain of Thrones. In spite of everything, some compassion rose in him for his once lover, now brother, imagining his despair. In seeking to possess Osrakum, Osidian had only brought it to utter destruction.

Carnelian was musing melancholically on these and other losses when he glanced up. They were sliding past a vast hollow in the Sacred Wall filled with a twinkling scree, among which he could discern a shadowy gathering of colossi. He recognized Coomb Imago and recalled his visit there; the tortured innocents dying on crosses. Other memories began to seep into his mind. The eyeless slaves living their life out in the dark like maggots, turning the wheels that lifted water up to cool the echoing palaces of his own coomb eyries. Then, in riotous recall, the death and maiming that was the lot of most in the outer world; the misery and fear. It was upon such suffering this paradise was built.

Shadow had now reached across the crater to turn the whole Skymere into an obsidian mirror. All around its rim the lit coombs formed a necklace of stars. Carnelian’s hand rose, his fingers finding the scar that the slave rope had left around his neck. No less was this collar of palaces a scar about the neck of the peoples of the earth. Wonder died in him. Let the Masters and all their works perish.

FAREWELLS

What then do we make of an atrocity in Paradise?

(a Quyan dialectic)

COOMB SUTH WAS SO MUCH MURKIER THAN THE OTHER COOMBS THEY
had passed that, as they slid towards it, fear gnawed at Carnelian that it had already become a tomb. A flickering thread of pinprick lights winding down towards the lake revived his spirits: people were coming to the visitors’ quay to meet them. He searched within the arc of moving lamps for the carved pebble beach upon which he had landed on that first visit so long ago. He recalled a jade pebble, its spiral cracked in two. He could not remember if, then, he had seen it as an omen. A lurid red glimmer reflected from the sky showed the beach submerged. It seemed that, after all, news of a sort from the Blood Gate had reached here before him.

As the bone boat curved a course to present her port bow to the quay, Carnelian and Fern pushed through the Marula. Reaching the bow, he saw lamp-lit faces watching the boat nuzzle into the quay. He felt a burst of love. These were his people, and not only because they wore the chameleon that made him feel a child again, but because the faces beneath those tattoos were Plainsman.

He watched Fern’s eyes and wondered if his frown meant he was seeing his own, lost Tribe. Feeling the first touch of grief, Carnelian turned away from it, put on a smile, threw his hood back so the people on the quay could see his face. As they recoiled, he gasped, for an instant fearing he had done something wrong; realizing he had not, even as a familiar voice spoke up. ‘Can’t you see it’s the Master’s son?’

Carnelian located his brother among the guardsmen and relaxed as Tain led them to kneel upon the stone. The bone boat juddered as it touched the quay. Carnelian was surprised to see how far below the level of the deck it was, but thinking no further on it, swung himself round one of the mooring posts and jumped down onto the quay. As he landed, he realized that, of course, it was the lake that was higher. The corpse dam had raised its level further than he had supposed. He was going to have longer to wait for it to drain to the level he needed. On the other hand it might give him more time to sort matters out in the coomb.

He straightened, approached his brother and, stooping, drew him close and, to Tain’s surprise, kissed him.

Tain, at first flustered by this breach of decorum, was soon grinning. ‘Carnie.’

‘Brother.’ Carnelian told them all to get up and Tain’s grin spread among them as he greeted those he recognized by name. Tain shocked them all by barking a command that brought everyone back into formal order. Though startled, Carnelian regained his smile: Tain had acquired something of the manner of their eldest brother, Grane.

‘You’ll be wanting to see the Master.’

Carnelian nodded, feeling a grimness come upon him, glad now that Tain had tamed the informality. Fern landed with a thump on the quay. Carnelian urged the Suth tyadra to move back from the boat, then motioned the Marula to disembark. He noticed Tain sending a messenger back up to the palaces. Further along the quay, the rest of the warriors were disembarking from the second bone boat. Carnelian asked Sthax to leave ten of his men, then to take the rest and go with the guardsmen. ‘Make sure you keep them under control. I’ll send for you as soon as I can.’

The man gave him a sober nod. Carnelian put the ten selected warriors under Fern’s command. He felt perfectly safe among the tyadra, but he wanted to make sure Sthax did not feel he and his people had been forgotten. No more did he want Fern to feel ignored, a barbarian, among the guardsmen. These arrangements made, he followed Tain away from the quay.

‘When will we be receiving more food, Master?’ said Tain.

Carnelian did not know how to answer that. ‘How much hunger is there here?’

His brother shrugged. ‘We’ve known for more than a month that resupply was likely to be delayed. Since then we’ve been rationing the stores. Still, things are getting tight.’ He grinned, wanly. ‘Those who suffered hunger in the Hold after we left keep saying this is nothing. The Master’s made sure everyone’s given a share appropriate to their need.’

Carnelian looked at Tain. ‘Everyone?’

His brother nodded with satisfaction. ‘The Masters too. Even himself.’

Carnelian saw the pain tensing Tain’s face, but turned away. He did not want to learn more about their father just then. ‘How tight?’

Tain made a face. ‘For more than ten days we’ve had nothing to eat but that stuff from the “bellies”.’

‘Render,’ Carnelian said and saw in Fern’s face he was sharing their disgust. ‘What about the mood of our people?’

Tain leaned closer. ‘There’s unease among the tyadra and between the households.’

Carnelian remembered Opalid’s animosity. ‘How secure are our people?’

Tain eyed him cautiously. ‘From the others?’ Then, when Carnelian nodded, ‘Keal keeps guards on all the gates between our halls and theirs. We’ve turned ours into a fortress.’

‘Ebeny? Poppy?’

Tain smiled. ‘As safe as worms in an apple.’

As they walked on in silence, the warmth that came from the thought of seeing Poppy and Ebeny again was slow to fade. Their scuffling footfalls echoing back from distant walls made it seem they were creeping through vast caverns.

Carnelian jumped when Tain spoke. ‘Why’s the lake rising?’

‘It’s already falling.’

Tain nodded as if Carnelian had given him an extensive explanation. Carnelian sensed his brother was building up to something.

‘More than a month ago smoke started drifting out from the Canyon right out over the water. A few days later we heard you’d taken control of the Blood Gate.’

‘Who told you that?’ Carnelian said, anxious that news of the disaster might have reached Coomb Suth already.

‘Some Masters came to visit Father. We talked to their tyadra.’

Carnelian judged they must have come to ask his father to attend the Clave. What had they told him about what was going on?

Tain broke into his musing. ‘The second time they came, Master Opalid left with them.’

‘What happened when he returned?’

‘He went straight to Father.’

Carnelian nodded. His heart sank. His father would know about the summoning of the legions, then, but it was he who was going to have to tell him about their destruction. And about the part he had played in all of this.

‘How is he?’

Tain’s face tensed again. ‘Weak and spending most of his time alone.’

Carnelian nodded, sad. ‘That’s him all right.’

‘Even Keal hardly sees him.’

‘Ebeny?’

‘Mother tends to him when he lets her.’ Tain glanced at him. ‘She’d love to see you.’

‘I’ll go to her after I’ve seen Father. And Poppy?’

Tain lit up. ‘She’ll be with Mother. It’s as if they’ve known each other all their lives.’

Carnelian drew some much-needed comfort from that.

‘Of course, if she’s heard you’re here, we might all be seeing her much sooner than we think.’

Carnelian saw the wry grin on his brother’s face, then on Fern’s, and all three burst into laughter that soon came swooping back from all directions out of the blackness as if the whole world was laughing with them.

They came to a guarded door where carved warding eyes gave warning they were about to enter the halls of the first lineage. The guardsmen looked uncertain, but began to kneel. He stopped them with his hand and advanced on one whom he recognized as Naith, who grew tearful recognizing his Master’s son and kissed his hand.

The chambers beyond were warmed by light and a smell of home that brought tears to Carnelian’s eyes. When far from prying ears, Tain asked him, bluntly, why he had come now and with the black barbarians.

That reminded Carnelian. ‘Is the homunculus safe?’

‘The little man? Safe enough.’

Carnelian saw his brother wanted his question answered. ‘Difficult times are coming, Tain. I’ve a plan to save us all, but before I can speak of it, I must talk to Father.’

‘Of course, Carnie,’ Tain said, leaving Carnelian troubled by the trust in his brother’s face, but also more determined.

At last they reached immense white doors. Carnelian saw Keal among some guards, and rushed forward to catch him by the arms to stop him kneeling. He kissed him. ‘My brother.’

Keal blushed. ‘He’s expecting you,’ he whispered, as if he wished not to wake some invalid beyond the doors. Carnelian eyed them with some faltering of his purpose. They looked so much like the doors of his father’s hall in the Hold. Of course, he realized, it was the other ones that were a copy. His child’s eyes had made those seem massive; these doors really were.

‘Keal, are we secure from any outside attack?’

‘We are, Master.’

There was a certain look in his brother’s face, the same in Tain’s, in that of the other guardsmen. All there were relating what was happening to what had happened on the island. Then the danger had come from Aurum and the other Masters arriving on their black ship. Though his people did not know it yet, the situation now was even more perilous.

Carnelian turned to Fern. ‘Please wait here.’

Fern looked unhappy, but nodded. Carnelian cleared his mind and turned to the doors. They were an ivory mosaic of chameleons whose eyes were rusty iron rivets. He struck one of the doors three times with the heel of his hand. As the doors opened, through the gap between them he saw a fire. Beyond it, sculpted by its light, the shape of a Master. For a moment Carnelian felt the weight of time falling from him. He was a boy again, coming to tell his father of the approach of a black ship.