The Third God (76 page)

Carnelian drew his mind into his core. He managed to look up from the iron blade to find eyes filled with tears.

‘Please . . . let us end this.’

Carnelian recognized Right-Quentha’s face; her lips moving, tears in her eyes. ‘Yes?’

Carnelian tried to nod, but once he lifted his head, it flipped back as if his neck were broken. Black wings blotting out the sky, as if a vast raven were descending to feed upon his eyes, but the wings were frozen and he saw they formed a wall that rose before him. Feathers wrought from iron, among which were bleak masks, whose eyes were windows, whose mouths gaped as must his, in agony. The whole mass floated above the ground with only a bronze staircase lolling like a tongue from a gate in the iron wall. As his mind tried to resolve how so much mass could rest upon such a narrow support, his gaze, wandering, found a great arch. Columns radiating from a common centre showed it to be a wheel, but one as high as the back of a huimur. This thing, then, was some kind of immense chariot.

Eyes closed, he struggled to lift his chest against the pain. He let his head sag back and opened his eyes again. A green face swam in his vision. Huge, it hung above the chariot, bearing the same four horns. Confused, he thought it must be Molochite grown as tall as the sky. Then he felt a difference in the way it looked at him. Was that a smile upon the gargantuan lips? It comforted him.

It was the plaintive desperate thinning in the voices of the Quenthas that made him find the strength to disengage his gaze from the God’s face and bring his head forward. Their lips were moving, but he could not understand what they were saying, though he caught the panic in their eyes.

The Quenthas suddenly fell silent, turning fearfully. In a remote corner of his mind Carnelian understood his chance for release from agony had gone. A Master was approaching. The Quenthas bowed. Carnelian’s gaze caught upon the stranger’s mask and was confused when he recognized it. His heart exploded. It was his father’s. Something was wrong. Suddenly, he knew it was not his father who wore it, for this Master was not tall enough, his shoulders not wide enough beneath his black military cloak.

The imposter lifted a thickly painted hand and said something that at first Carnelian did not understand because he was expecting Quya. In Vulgate the words were: ‘Free him.’

The Quenthas swung the blade towards the stranger’s throat even as Carnelian recognized his voice. ‘No,’ he barked, then choked as he lost the rhythm of his breathing. When he regained it, he saw the Quenthas were gazing at him.

‘My . . .’ he said and took another, rasping breath. ‘Friend . . .’

Both Quenthas frowned, then they turned to each other; a pale face facing one dark with tattoos. Though neither spoke it was as if they were exchanging thoughts. They nodded even as all four arms swung the fanblade halberd. As the first blow fell, Carnelian was certain his left hand had been sliced off. The arm slumped, slapping his thigh like a hunk of dead meat. The ribs on his left side seemed to snap like a rotten ladder. He slumped forward and was only caught by his other arm, wrenching the shoulder.

‘Help him!’

As his second arm came free, Carnelian crashed forwards into an embrace. The body beneath him reeled, but managed to catch his weight. Smell of leather. Feeling the rumble in Fern’s chest as he spoke. The relief of his spine curving the other way. The joy of taking a deep, deep breath. He felt Fern stagger back as his right leg came free, stubbing his toes. When the left was released, Fern leaned back so that Carnelian was fully off the ground. Carnelian felt a cloak settling over him. Felt its grip as it was tucked over him and a hood was pulled over his head.

‘Flee,’ two throats said in Quya, ‘while you still can.’

‘Can you stand?’ rumbled Fern almost in his ear.

Carnelian just wanted to hang there, draped over him, loving him. He edged his weight back and felt his toes touching stone, his heels, his feet spreading as they took his weight. As his legs buckled, Fern leaned back to take his weight again.

‘Flee,’ hissed the Quenthas.

Fern began to drag him away and as he did so Carnelian’s feet found passing purchase on the stone. He felt the strain in Fern’s body and tried to walk, as best he could, hanging off him. His mind lived for each step, willing the strength back into his legs, counting the joins between the paving stones of the road pass, each one a victory. When he felt Fern tense up, he managed to lift his head, clamping his teeth against the strain. He peered through the slit of the collapsed hood. A watch-tower rose from the side of the road, stripped of its leftway. Around the monolith protecting its stable door stood syblings and ammonites. Surely, at any moment they must come to question him and Fern, but when they did not budge, he dropped his head to concentrate on walking.

Then a ditch opened up before their feet. The usual mess from the road was overlaid with rubble and stone dust. Fern manoeuvred him to where a slab had been thrown over the ditch. As they hobbled across, Carnelian’s nostrils caught a fragrance. Attar of lilies suffused with rare musks. Glancing up, he saw a path running between pavilions that fluttered with the colours of butterflies, their silk walls thick with the cyphers of the Chosen. He dragged his heel to bring Fern to a halt.

‘What is it?’

Carnelian used him as a support upon which to turn and gaze back the way they had come. Between its wheels, the Iron House swelled up from the stem of the bronze stair into a baroque black tulip. In the air above it, supported on a mast, the green face. Then he became aware of a mountain of darkness looming up behind it.

‘What is it?’ cried Fern again, in response to Carnelian’s violent shudder.

Too weak to raise his arm, Carnelian pointed with his chin. ‘The Horned God.’

He felt Fern shaking his head. ‘Just a thundercloud.’

Gazing up, Carnelian saw Fern was right. An immense tower uncannily like a baobab grew up from the dark layer of cloud roofing the sky. It was its smoky branches he had taken for horns. He regarded it uneasily. Its faceless immensity seemed to be gazing down on them with the malice of the Darkness-under-the-Trees.

Fern tensed. ‘They hunt us!’

Carnelian could see, beyond the Iron House, a dragon, and the traces, the hawsers and hooks with which an ant crowd of men were hitching the monster to the chariot. Then he saw upon the road a posse of syblings coming their way. Leaning upon Fern, he allowed himself to be half dragged into the encampment of the Masters.

They had passed perhaps a dozen pavilions when cries broke out behind them and they knew they were being pursued. Carnelian had been managing to keep up a reasonable pace, though only by leaning on Fern, whose breathing had grown more and more laboured behind his mask. Carnelian knew they would be chased down unless he could move on his own. He disengaged from Fern, batting away his protests and his arms even as he tottered forward and found his legs just strong enough to bear him. Balance was another thing altogether and, as he broke into a clumsy lope, Fern often had to reach out to steady him. The sound of pursuit grew louder. Focusing on each stride, half lost in the aching of his abused body, Carnelian did not dare to look back. The cries of their pursuers were drawing curious retainers out from the pavilions. The tattooed faces of guardsmen and other servants grew wide-eyed as they saw Carnelian and Fern bearing down on them. Reacting to Fern’s mask, these retainers fell to their knees, imagining they were two Masters. In places there were so many of them they blocked their path and Fern was forced to pull them off to right or left, along another alley.

At last he came to a halt at one of the crossroads. Carnelian fell to one knee, his head swimming. Glancing up, he saw his father’s mask turning as Fern tried to spy out the way. ‘I don’t know where we are. I can’t see anything through this thing.’ He gave out a growl of frustration and reached back to loose the bindings of his mask. Carnelian glanced round and saw faces giving them frightened looks, expecting at any moment some syblings to come careering into sight.

Fern sighed his relief as the mask came away. Carnelian was glad to see his dear face. Fern looked at the mask.

‘Throw it away,’ Carnelian said.

Fern hesitated, then threw the thing down, grimacing. He pointed. ‘I think it’s this way.’

Soon they were up and stumbling along. A clump of guardsmen appeared before them. Fern was about to turn away at a junction when Carnelian, with a grim laugh, threw back his cowl to expose his face. The guardsmen’s faces suddenly sickened and they ducked back from where they had come and he and Fern moved on.

Suddenly, they found themselves on the edge of a ditch whose depths were lost in shadow. Along its further edge a road ran, dense with dragons and squadrons of riders. They had worked at digging ditches long enough to be shocked by the vast labour this represented. The ditch curved round and out of sight: a stupendous work that seemed beyond the power of men. Again Carnelian gazed across to the other side and saw, beyond the vast melee of the camp, the wall of red dust full of a slow, blossoming life and his heart raced.

‘I’ve no idea where your father’s tent lies.’

Fern stood at bay regarding the route they had come, his head turning slightly from side to side as he listened out for the cries of their pursuers. Carnelian wanted to ask about his father, about Poppy, about how Fern had come to save him disguised as a Master, but that Fern was here was answer enough. To ask for more was to risk the decision he felt stirring in him. He tried to clear his mind enough to work things out. Notions of finding his father, his brothers, rolled together with other, inchoate feelings. One thing he knew: as things stood, in joining them he could only bring them more suffering. He focused on Fern, trying to think of a way to save him. He shook his head, letting out a growl that caused Fern to turn to him. It was those dark eyes that seemed the only solid thing in the world. ‘I’m going to cross this ditch.’

Fern scowled. ‘What about your father?’

‘You go and find him, but I’m going to cross this ditch.’

Fern looked surprised. ‘You want to fight in the battle?’

Carnelian had not thought that far ahead.

‘Is it because you want to help defeat the Master?’

Carnelian shook his head. ‘I don’t care about him.’

‘But is he going to lose?’

It was a strain for Carnelian to give any thought to that. He regarded the vast turmoil of the camp. ‘He has all that ranged against him.’

‘But you still believe he will win?’

Eyeing the red dust, Carnelian nodded.

‘So you want to fight on the losing side?’

He regarded Fern, feeling sadness welling up in him. ‘I no longer care who wins.’ He felt doubt fall from him; a burden he had been carrying for so long, he had forgotten how much it weighed. ‘I just want to be free.’

‘So do I,’ Fern whispered. He raised his hand tenderly to Carnelian, but his fingers hesitated short of touching him. ‘Are you strong enough?’

Carnelian caught his hand and pulled it to him. ‘I will be.’

Fern began to cry, but also to laugh. Carnelian let his tears join Fern’s and the laughter came bubbling out of him. Like sun after a storm, Fern’s smile stirred Carnelian to joy. ‘It’s a good day to die.’

Together, like children, they slid down the earthy wall into the ditch, leaning back against the slope, using clawed fingers and heels as anchors to try to control their descent. Soon they had plunged into a region in which night yet dwelt. Here the earth gave way to a stinking mulch that sucked at their limbs. The stench intensified until they felt their feet sinking into some noisome pool. Carnelian tried to gather up his cloak, but its edge was already heavy and dripping. He peered across, but could see nothing. They could easily have been on the edge of some filthy swamp. Carnelian raised his gaze to the black sky and saw the upper edge of the further wall of the ditch rising like a cliff into the morning light. He searched along the rim until he saw a gully leading up from the darkness. He reached out and found Fern’s arm and lifted it to point at the gully. ‘We can climb that.’

‘Unless we drown in this filth,’ came back Fern, his tone enough for Carnelian to imagine his face twisted with disgust.

Together they began to wade through the sewage. It climbed up to their knees, but no further. Carnelian made sure to breathe through his mouth, giving a shudder every time he put his foot back into the sludge.

At last they reached the other side and, moving sideways, found the mouth of the gully. Then they began the long, careful clamber up its slippy, slimy course, clawing at clods of sewage-sodden soil. As they climbed, Carnelian began to feel a tremor in the earth. Glancing up, he wondered if it was thunder, but the higher they went, the more the tremor resolved into an arrhythmic pounding he recognized.

As they emerged into the light, they saw their limbs were sheathed with dark slime. Carnelian’s cloak dragged and he wanted to discard it, but it was all he had to wear. The pounding intensified so that it seemed the earth itself was alive. A fine red dust settled upon them and rouged their filthy skin. The closer they came to the rim of the ditch, the louder grew the din. At last they pushed their heads up over the edge and their ears were assaulted by a roar. They gaped. Dragons were thundering past, the leprous pyramids of their towers scratching the stormy sky. Their horns were huge bone scythes. Their heavy heads were rising and falling like beaked ships upon a swell. Walls of hide stretching, rucking, flexing as massive muscles pistoned beneath. Tree legs lifting improbably, swinging forward, settling with a thump that sent a rumble and shudder through the earth. Among this heaving tide of hide and flesh and bone, squadrons of aquar cantered past, their riders watching the monsters nervously. As the vast procession slid from left to right across their vision, Carnelian peered among the reed legs of the aquar and the forest of the passing giants and caught glimpses of the camp beyond, from which an inexhaustible torrent was pouring out to join them. In this distant melee, a few twinkling flashes made him look round and see the watch-tower rising behind him, from whose summit a constant stream of instructions was being transmitted. This seeming chaos was being directed by the Wise, perhaps relaying instructions from Molochite.