The Third God (21 page)

(extract from a beadcord manual of the Wise of the Domain Blood)

A SICKENING ODOUR OF COOKED MEAT WAS WAFTING OVER HIM AS HE
rolled with the gentle pace. A sinking feeling, then cool hands lifting him. Carnelian rolled his head and saw Sthax. He smiled.

The profile of the rock under his back was forcing him to lie a little twisted. In the dim light he could just make out a ceiling of fractured stone. He was waking from another awful dream. Was he still among the Lepers? He jerked as he remembered Fern burning in the flames. The movement released a stinging pain on his arms, his shoulders, his cheek. Enduring it he rolled over and saw a familiar, small shape stooping. ‘Where?’

It turned, and was Poppy, her face in the moonlight blank with fear. She rushed to him. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Fern?’

A grimace squeezed tears from her eyes.

Carnelian sat up, reeled. ‘Not dead?’

Poppy shook her head, shrugged, tried a smile. She helped him get up. He leaned on her as he took some steps to where a body was lying naked on the rock. It had Fern’s face with lips blistered and hair burned away, but it was not his body. What lay there was swollen. Carnelian fell to his knees beside him and dared to touch him. Fern’s left arm had the texture of dead leaves. Carnelian edged in close to peer at his face. He winced at the cooked smell coming off his flesh.

Poppy knelt on the other side of Fern. ‘We’ve poured water on his burns. We don’t know what else to do.’

He glanced up and saw her despair. Then back down at Fern’s face. He put his ear to Fern’s mouth. ‘He breathes.’

He straightened up, staring, stunned by the disaster. A small inner voice said: Are you surprised?

Poppy was there in front of him. ‘You’re burned too.’

Carnelian looked down at his arms. They stung. His robe was charred, but the skin beneath seemed unbroken. He glanced back at Fern.

‘You saved him. You brought him out of the fire. We brought you here.’

‘We?’

‘Marula.’

‘Sthax?’

Poppy nodded. ‘He was one of them.’

Carnelian looked around him at the cave they were in.

A shadow loomed over them. ‘What now, Master?’

It was Morunasa. Carnelian was overcome by a surge of rage. ‘Why ask me?’

‘The Master won’t speak to me.’

Carnelian rose and saw shadowy forms scattered through the cave. ‘Where is he?’

Morunasa walked off and Carnelian followed him. As they wound through the cave, scared faces turned up to watch them pass. One man whimpered, another embraced him with a long, trembling arm. Leaving them behind, they came to the mouth of the cave. The moonlight made the Pass seem a delicate picture engraved on glass. Osidian, leaning against a rock, seemed part of it.

Carnelian moved round to stand in front of him. Osidian’s gaze rose. ‘You countermanded my order.’

Carnelian felt sick. ‘What?’

‘You sent the Marula back.’

Carnelian groaned. ‘Do you really imagine the aquar would have ridden through that firestorm?’

Osidian glanced at Morunasa, who was making no attempt to hide his resentment of their use of Quya. ‘I would have thought it would suit you to have the Marula dead.’

‘I no longer know what I want.’

Osidian nodded as if this were some great wisdom. ‘It is time to admit defeat.’

Carnelian stared at him. It felt as if the last prop holding him up had been pulled away. Though he had never believed in Osidian’s plan, opposition to it had defined his own. ‘So that is it, you are simply going to give up?’

Osidian glanced up the Pass. ‘I will wait here for Aurum. I want to die in Osrakum.’

Carnelian looked at him with contempt. ‘Never a thought for anyone but yourself.’

Osidian looked around as if wounded. ‘You can come with me. The Wise will punish you, but you will survive.’

Carnelian looked back into the cave. ‘And these others?’

Osidian shrugged. ‘I do not imagine my Lord Aurum will let them live, but you can try to bring some with you.’

Slow anger simmered in Carnelian. ‘I will not so easily abandon them.’ He turned to Morunasa. ‘Oracle, at first light, we’ll leave this infernal canyon.’

‘And go where, Master?’

Carnelian felt suddenly so tired it was an effort to remain standing. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. Perhaps we might find some Lepers and get some help for our wounded.’

He gazed at Osidian. ‘Stay here by yourself if you want.’

He walked back into the cave. When he reached Fern he sank down, drawing Poppy towards him and putting his arm around her.

Before he led the Marula out from the caves Carnelian waited until the sky was bright enough to light the Pass. In spite of the care with which he and Krow had loaded Fern into his saddle-chair, with each step his aquar took, he jigged like a doll. Many Marula were nursing livid burns. Some were crammed two to a saddle-chair. Aquar that had been badly scorched had become uncontrollable. Looking back along the line, Carnelian saw not a military force but a mob of mauled and beaten men.

As the morning passed, the wind following them seemed to urge them to greater speed. Still, he was not keen to risk the wounded on the uneven ground. Allowing his aquar to find her own route down he had plenty of time to think. Osidian was there, riding at his side, brooding. Carnelian nonetheless thought it unlikely Osidian would change his mind: he meant to give himself up to Aurum. Carnelian knew he should be thankful Osidian was not bent on returning to the Earthsky, but all he could feel was resentment. It sickened him that Aurum had won. The Lepers would have no justice. Unbearably, the destruction of the Ochre would become nothing more than an incidental occurrence utterly peripheral to the political upheaval their absence from Osrakum had caused. It was as if everything he and Osidian had suffered, all the destruction they had brought about, all the atrocities, were to become nothing more than an inelegantly played gambit in a game of Three. With Osidian’s capture and return to Osrakum Aurum and the Wise would have pulled off a major coup. As for him he was a minor piece. Depending on the movements of the major pieces he might end up merely chastised. His House would lose influence. Ultimately, he would be returned to the splendours and luxuries of his palaces. The massacres in the Earthsky and the Leper Valleys would merely elicit some small adjustments in the tributary lists and some measured reprisals of terror against the errant tribes. The ripples that had spread out from Osrakum would undulate away to nothing. Order would return. Everything would be as it had always been. How he yearned to stay behind somewhere, anywhere that he could live in peace with Fern and Poppy, but this desire had been shown for the madness that it was. He had no place out here among the subjects of the Commonwealth. What little he could still do he must endeavour to do well.

Fern’s wounds needed urgent attention. The only possible source of help was the Lepers, but even if, somehow, he could contact them and they not only had the means to help, but chose to, where would Fern live out the rest of his days?

Poppy was riding nearby, Krow beside her. There was some hope there. The youth seemed to love her and, in time, she might forgive him. Carnelian tried to visualize scenarios in which they could return to the Earthsky, find a tribe, resume the pattern of their lives his coming had nearly obliterated. He could see nothing but the difficulties. Lily came into his mind. Her people had suffered terrible loss too, and defilement. Among them, his friends might be able to find a refuge; in time, even happiness. This was something that was possible and that might be within his power to arrange. But he was forgetting the Marula. Morunasa’s control of them was now the greatest threat. If he found out what Osidian was planning to do, he would have his people slaughter them all. Carnelian’s gaze took in the Marula warriors riding all around him. They must be kept busy long enough to get his loved ones to safety. He realized he was searching for Sthax. What good would finding him do? The Maruli was as much a creature of the Oracles as the rest of his fellows. As for Osidian and himself, he cared not a jot. If anything, he drew pleasure from how their deaths might still ruin the game Aurum and the Wise were playing.

He urged his aquar to drift towards Osidian’s. When he was close enough he waited until Osidian eventually looked up. Osidian was about to speak, but Carnelian gestured:
No words
. With his hands Carnelian explained some of his thinking. He told Osidian that he would return with him to Osrakum but, first, they would have to survive among the Marula. Osidian was watching his signs with half-lidded eyes. When Carnelian had finished, Osidian gave no indication he had even understood. Carnelian saw how listless he looked. Defeated, Osidian seemed to have lost the will to live. What little motivation he had left would, most likely, be focused on obtaining at least some measure of revenge against Aurum, the Wise, his mother and his brother. Carnelian recognized that, for whatever came next, he was on his own.

The sun was low when they began emerging from the shadow of the Pass. Surveying the emerald mottle of the swamps, the winking diamonds of water, Carnelian let it all flow over him and disperse the shadow from his heart. For a moment he even managed to forget his failures and the coming reckoning.

They wound through boulders, beneath stands of acacias, across ferny meadows until he saw, ahead, a cleavage in the earth. He took the Marula down into it, towards a watercourse nearly choked with white rocks through which myriad streams percolated. He chose a spot where jumbled slabs enclosed a honeycomb of caves and crannies. There among cascading rivulets he bade the Marula make a camp.

Poppy found them a cave: a wedge of cool shade that tapered into darkness. Here they laid Fern out on a slab, setting his puckered burns against the cold limestone. Soaking their ubas in a little stream-fed pool they applied them as poultices upon his angry, red skin.

Carnelian left Poppy and Krow nursing Fern, telling them he intended to beg help for him from the Lepers. Then he went in search of Morunasa.

The Marula inhabited all kinds of hollows, like nesting birds. The handful of sartlar had dug a hole in the earth to hide in. Morunasa and the other Oracles had taken up residence in a series of slots that lay up the slope of a vast, lichen-streaked slab. Two kneeling warriors were lighting a fire around which the Oracles were seated in a half-circle. All save Morunasa gave Carnelian a nod as he climbed up to them. Morunasa indicated a space for Carnelian to sit. He betrayed no reaction when Carnelian announced his intention to get aid from the Lepers, but first spoke to his people in their tongue, then fixed Carnelian with an enquiring look. ‘To what end, Master?’

‘We need to find another way to the land above. The Lepers are likely to know many.’

Morunasa gazed out over the watercourse. The black limbs and bodies of the Marula looked dismembered among the limestone boulders. Without looking at Carnelian he spoke. ‘We have little belief left that getting there we’ll achieve anything.’

Carnelian found it hard to push his claim further. He could see as well as Morunasa how bony were the arms of the men working on the fire. It was obvious to all how weakened the Marula had become, how dispirited. ‘We all need time to heal our bodies and spirits.’

Morunasa gave a nod to this.

‘We need options,’ Carnelian said.

Morunasa regarded him.

Carnelian explained that he wanted to send as many of the able men as they could to seek out Leper groups to negotiate for medicines, for food, for information.

‘Why don’t we all go east?’ Morunasa asked.

Carnelian opened his hands. They were as empty as his strategy. ‘There’re many too wounded, too weary, to make a long march through the swamps.’

‘The Ochre worst of all.’

Carnelian examined Morunasa’s face. Was this mockery – or maybe even sympathy? He was sick of lying, but he dared not be frank. ‘A camp so close to the Pass will more likely be safe from Leper marauders.’

‘Who do you have in mind to head this expedition?’ asked Morunasa.

‘You?’

Morunasa shook his head. ‘I’ll remain here with the Master.’

Carnelian nodded. ‘I’ll have to remain here with Fern.’

‘I alone among my people speak Vulgate.’

The fire between them began teasing up smoke. Flames crackled in the central nest of twigs. As the two warriors rose, Carnelian saw one of them was Sthax. The warriors bowed to the Oracles and padded off down the slab.

Carnelian feared drawing any attention to Sthax and so continued with what he had been going to say. ‘Then we should send Krow and Poppy.’

‘The girl?’

‘As I’ve reason to know, the Lepers are frightened. Having a child speak for us will make us seem less threatening.’

In the morning, Carnelian stood with Morunasa watching Poppy and Krow ride away. Behind them rode most of the unwounded Marula warriors. Carnelian remained there until they disappeared. He feared he had lost them for ever.

Within a crevice, in shadow, Osidian lay like a corpse. Carnelian knelt beside him. It was hard to see in his face the boy from the Yden. The marble round the eyes had hairline cracks and not from laughing. The corners of the mouth drew down into the chin. The lips had thinned. It was a face that betrayed suffering. He regarded it, fighting sadness. Not just for the loss of what they had had, but also for what Osidian himself had lost and suffered.

Osidian’s eyes opened and found Carnelian’s face. For a moment he looked confused, vulnerable, but then his face set into its familiar, wilful mask. That mask drove compassion from Carnelian. The man lying there was the murderer of the Ochre. He focused on what he had come to say. ‘Our greatest peril now is Morunasa.’

When Osidian said nothing Carnelian felt cheated and realized he had been hoping for one of Osidian’s dismissive remarks. He continued. ‘I find it hard to believe he does not suspect what we are up to. If we are to survive until Aurum comes for us you must strive to allay his fears.’

Osidian pursed his lips, shook his head. ‘I can do nothing.’