The Third God (28 page)

The ammonite’s legs seemed to lose their strength as he fell prostrate to crack his forehead on the cobbles. ‘Celestial,’ he murmured.

His fellows copied his abject abasement. Seeing this the legionaries joined them. Carnelian and Osidian were left like the only trees strong enough to have survived a storm.

Osidian commanded the ammonites to take the letter and deliver it to the Legate. They complied, fleeing as fast as decorum would allow. Then Osidian came to loom over the Quartermaster. ‘Rise.’

He had to say it again before the man obeyed. ‘How long would it take for a legion to reach here from Makar?’

‘Master?’

‘How long?’

The man narrowed his eyes, thinking. ‘Perhaps six days, Master.’

‘How quickly can the dragons here be fully armed?’

The man shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Ten days, Master, is the standard requirement.’

‘You will do it in five.’

The man blinked up at him as if he was convinced he had misheard.

‘Five. Go and wake them now.’ Turning his back on the legionary Osidian held his hand out in a gesture of dismissal.

Carnelian stepped into the barracks block Osidian had had the legionaries prepare for them. He removed the ammonite mask and rubbed at where it had impressed its rim into his face. He enjoyed the cool limestone, smooth beneath his feet. He ran his fingers along the hairline joints between the stones in the wall. He wondered at the perfect square angles of the chamber. The sleeping platforms were of finely jointed wood. Thick mattresses lay over them, each provided with a blanket of raven feathers. He plucked one up, brought it to his lips, breathed in its clean odour. A ewer was set into a niche, from which he poured a draught of clear water into a bowl. He drank and was surprised at the taste. So pure it seemed sweet. He regarded the chamber in wonder. He had forgotten that such order was possible.

Osidian was drawn back to the door by a man begging audience. He returned holding a letter. Carnelian watched him read it. Osidian passed the letter to him. Carnelian paused for a moment, startled by the beauty of the glyphs on the parchment. Then he turned them into sounds. When he was finished he looked up. ‘He is not coming.’

Osidian smiled. ‘Oh, he will.’

Carnelian woke on the floor of the chamber. He had started the night on the bed, but it had made his back ache. He became aware of Osidian gazing down at him.

‘Why are you on the floor, my Lord? We no longer have need to live like barbarians.’

Carnelian rose and wrapped himself in his raven-feather blanket. He indicated the mattress with his chin. ‘After so long sleeping on the earth that seems too soft. Did you manage to sleep comfortably on yours?’

Osidian frowned, but gave no answer. ‘Tonight we shall have no need of these primitive arrangements.’ He took in the chamber with an elegant gesture. ‘We shall resume our proper place among the Chosen.’ His frown deepened. ‘We must be ready.’

Breakfast was hri cakes and water. The delicate wafers crumbled as they bit into them. Carnelian was amazed at their flavour. In his memory they had been so bland. Now the hri seemed rich, with a nutty, lingering finish. The taste was, at the same time, familiar. Each mouthful brought back more memories of the life that had been his before exile. Disturbing images mixed with joyous ones. Osrakum still seemed a fairytale, but his father was becoming real again – and Ebeny and his brothers. Wounds of loss he had long ago thought cauterized were opening.

A Maruli coming into the chamber was a welcome distraction. In his hand the man had a folded parchment. Carnelian was struck by the man’s odour and wondered that he had not noticed it before. Osidian seemed uncomfortable as he accepted the letter. Carnelian looked from him to the Maruli and saw, with a jolt, how the man’s bloodshot eyes were gazing at Osidian’s face. The Maruli’s stare had already earned him a terrible death. When the man had left, Carnelian tried in vain to read Osidian’s impassive expression, and decided he must confront the issue openly. ‘We will have to do something about them.’

Osidian looked at him.

‘The Law will take them all from us.’

Osidian frowned.

‘Perhaps we should adopt them into our Houses.’

Still frowning, Osidian broke eye contact to concentrate on the letter. He unfolded it and read. The corners of his mouth rose perceptibly. ‘It seems our dear Legate is deigning, after all, to pay us a visit.’

Carnelian nodded. He had had time to think about it and was not surprised. One of the Lesser Chosen, even a Legate, would find it impossible to ignore a summons from a Lord of the House of the Masks. He was trying to imagine the meeting between Osidian and the Legate when he realized something. ‘What shall we wear?’

Osidian shrugged. Carnelian hunted around. The best he could find were some robes of coarse black cloth. He showed them to Osidian, who gave a grimace of distaste, but then flung out a gesture indicating he did not care. He smiled humourlessly. ‘A difference in rank inhabits the mind more completely than does the impression of proper state.’

Wearing the black robes and ammonite masks they returned to the cothon. Osidian had decided it was there he would receive the Legate. Carnelian was content with this, being curious to watch the dragons being woken.

It was the Master of Beasts who guided them to one of the vaults in the cothon wall. ‘The Legate’s own dragon, Master, and our strongest.’

A vast presence filled the vault. Horns gleamed faintly. Stripes of sun sculpted the contours of its head. Its reek oppressed Carnelian with memories of the Earthsky and corpses. In the depths of the vault, brass toppled in massive links. Instinctively Carnelian took a step back. ‘Is it already awake?’

‘Not fully so, Master,’ said the Master of Beasts. ‘Normally the waking takes many days as we wait for the drugs to wear off, but—’ He glanced at Osidian. ‘The command for haste means we’ve had to resort to administering waking drugs.’

Carnelian wondered if he was detecting a tone of reproach, but decided the man was only expressing genuine concern for his dragon.

Osidian walked over to one side of the vault. Seeking distraction from his unease Carnelian followed him. There a spar rose, barbed like a tree amputated of its branches. It was held between the prongs of stone forks that were set up the wall. Its trunk was smooth, its upper part sheathed in a green bark of copper. Glyphed oblong plaques were riveted all the way up to where this standard blossomed into a pair of grimacing faces.

‘He is ancient,’ whispered Osidian, pointing upwards.

Carnelian strained to read the plaques through the narrow slits of his ammonite mask.

‘He has held many positions in the line.’ There was passion in Osidian’s voice. ‘He is a lord of battles. Behold, he is called Heart-of-Thunder.’

As if responding to his name, the dragon avalanched towards them. Sun-stripes climbed the flare of bone behind his head. His beak sliced the air. A putrid stench exuded from his maw. His horns flashed. His eye was a blind, milky moon. The Master of Beasts was bellowing, but before they were overwhelmed, chains clattered taut to hold the monster back. The head swayed a moment there on cables of sinew, then it swung back into the gloom. Shock juddered Carnelian’s chest, a relic of the thunder of the monster’s feet.

The Master of Beasts barked instructions into the vault. Carnelian saw figures scrambling up the walls. He heard a metallic crunching as some windlass pulled the brass chains taut.

‘Was he in danger of coming free?’ Carnelian asked.

The Master of Beasts glanced at Carnelian in surprise. ‘Oh no, Master.’ His eyes strayed back to the tightening chains. ‘He still dreams. His chains were too loose. We let them out slowly to allow his muscles to regain strength enough to hold his head up on their own.’ He pointed into the gloom and Carnelian saw more chains fixed to the monster’s legs and abdomen.

‘Without those he’d collapse. The waking is a delicate business. If he were to break a leg he might not survive.’ That thought was enough to make the Master of Beasts pale. ‘Many would die with him.’

Carnelian imagined that a reference to his keepers. ‘How long before he can have a tower put upon his back?’

The Master of Beasts turned to him. ‘A tower complete, Master?’

Carnelian nodded.

The man shrugged. ‘We dare burden him only in accordance with his returning strength. Perhaps four days, Master.’

‘They recover more slowly than do the Wise,’ said Osidian in Quya.

Carnelian looked round. ‘The Wise take the same drugs?’

‘Something very like,’ Osidian said.

As a child Carnelian had been told stories of how the Wise often sank into a magic sleep so as to extend their lives. This was one of the many things he had dismissed as fantasy.

Osidian took his shoulder and led him away. ‘We must prepare to give audience to the Legate.’

‘Do the Wise live as long as the huimur?’ Carnelian asked.

Osidian made a gesture of uncertainty. ‘It is rumoured that some Grand Sapients have ruled their Domains for generations.’

Carnelian considered this. It made the Wise seem even more alien.

Osidian glanced back at the huimur. ‘Does his name not seem an omen to you?’

Carnelian grew wary. He had heard that tone before. ‘It had not occurred to me . . .’ He lied. He knew perfectly well that it was the heart of thunder that brought the Black God each year to Osrakum.

Standing in the long shadow of one of the cothon piers Carnelian watched the Masters approach, swinging censers. Amidst the smoke, each was a spire whose gleam was filtering through their escort of Marula. They detached from the escort and came shimmering across the cobbles. Carnelian gazed entranced. They were appallingly tall. Sun flashed from their horned helms, from their faces of gold. They seemed unearthly beings.

Carnelian stepped back into the deeper shadow cast by the dragon tower above him. As the Masters passed between the piers their jewels, their masks brought glimmers of the late afternoon light into the shadows. The clouds of incense they were weaving round them had for a moment the scent of cedar, but he quickly resolved it to be sweet myrrh. Removing his ammonite mask he stepped out to meet them. They overtopped him by a head. Glancing down, he saw they were wearing ranga. It made him aware his own feet were planted firmly on the ground in clear defiance of the Law. Myrrh was not only in the smoke rising from the censers they swung in pendular arcs, but emanated from the dense samite of their robes, from the carapaces of their iridescent armour. He looked at their hands which were spotted with symbols. These Masters were wearing the ritual protection the Wise claimed was proof against the plagues of the outer world. It made Carnelian realize he had forgotten how utterly exposed he and Osidian had been and for so long. He had lived among the Plainsmen, eaten their food, even kissed them. It would seem he was irremediably contaminated. He suppressed a smile. The masks of these Masters might be looking down on him with imperious contempt but, in his heart, he still felt cleaner than they.

‘I am Suth Carnelian.’

Though he knew the Law demanded they could not remain masked in the presence of a Lord of the Great it also declared that no Master should breathe unhallowed air. He was not sure which law took precedence, but thought it likely this was the reason they had taken the precaution of bringing incense. One by one they released their masks to reveal faces that seemed made of chalk. Startled, he remembered that the Chosen were compelled to paint their skin against the sun. Strange he had forgotten that when once it had seemed as natural to him as breathing. He began to feel unease at their predatory beauty.

‘We have come to speak with the Jade Lord,’ one said.

Carnelian saw around his neck a torc of jade and iron that bore four broken rings. ‘You are the Legate here?’

The man raised his hand in elegant affirmation.

Follow me
, Carnelian gestured, which in its agreement and requisitive mode made it clear it was only the Legate he was inviting. Walking back through the piers he was pleased to hear the clack of only one set of ranga.

Beneath the arch of Heart-of-Thunder’s beak Osidian seemed a coalescing of the shadows. Carnelian stood aside to let the Legate approach. He watched with trepidation as the exquisitely armoured Master moved to loom over Osidian. Osidian seemed overmatched but, when he spoke, his voice was commanding. ‘Kneel.’

For a moment it seemed as if the Legate might defy him but, after settling his censer before him, shimmering darkly, the Lesser Chosen Lord subsided, spreading his gorgeous train upon the cobbles. Carnelian watched the Master’s grey eyes seeking to pierce the myrrh smoke to make out Osidian’s face in the gloom. ‘We heard, Celestial, you had disappeared.’

‘It seems I have reappeared.’

The Legate began to say something else, but Osidian raised a pale hand that closed his mouth. ‘Where are your auxiliaries, my Lord?’

The Legate raised hands encrusted in gems, fingers vaguely framing evasions. ‘When the Great Lord came he was impossible to resist.’

‘Did he have a mandate from the Wise?’

The Legate did not wholly manage to suppress a grimace. ‘His House is very high, Celestial.’

Osidian’s voice came forth from the abyss of darkness. ‘Is it to House Aurum you owe allegiance, my Lord? I thought you had sworn it to the House of the Masks. Was it not my father who appointed you, my brother who ratified that appointment?’ Then, more severely: ‘How do you imagine They will react to this betrayal of Their trust?’

Suddenly, brass began clattering behind Osidian. He did not flinch as chains collapsed link on link. Even when the prow of Heart-of-Thunder’s head shifted in the air above him Osidian remained motionless.

The Legate had bowed his horned military helm.

‘I will need fitting accommodation.’

‘You shall have my own chambers, Celestial. Though miserable, they are the best I have to offer.’

‘Very well, my Lord, we shall return with you to the sanctum.’

The horned helm rose. ‘Now, Celestial?’