The Third God (73 page)

‘You must not grieve for me, Carnelian. On balance, I have had a fortunate life.’ His hand returned to cover Carnelian’s. ‘For instance, I had no hope of seeing you again.’

Carnelian sank for a moment into comfort. He had not felt so safe since, well, he could not remember. A thought came to him that made him stiffen with alarm.

‘What is it?’ his father asked, eyes widening.

‘Why are you here? The Wise . . . ?’

His father squeezed his hand. ‘I have come here with their permission.’ He frowned. ‘We have scant time. Desiring to converse with the Lord Nephron, the Wise persuaded the God Emperor to let them come here. In exchange, they promised to bring Them you.’

Carnelian felt a chill of doubt in his chest. ‘Me?’

His father’s eyes flashed in reaction to something he thought he saw in Carnelian’s face. ‘Do you imagine I would betray you?’

Carnelian only half heard the words, contemplating, with surprise, how his father’s eyes had lost their power over him. Their gaze softened. ‘Forgive me. I have no right to be angry. What do I know of what you have suffered?’

Carnelian tried to work out where to begin, but his father had moved on. He held up his right hand, which bore no Ruling Ring. ‘I am no longer Suth.’

Carnelian’s nod caused his father to raise the ghost of what had been an eyebrow. ‘But I can see you knew that already.’

‘Aurum told me.’

His father’s face darkened. ‘Did he?’

Carnelian focused his mind on the situation. ‘The Wise have promised to reinstate you in exchange for you persuading me to return with you?’

His father nodded. ‘Not only that. They have promised me you will be pardoned so that you can assume the rule of our House.’

Carnelian could see how much his father yearned for that and it filled him with confusion. First he was surprised how much he yearned for it too. Then, even more surprising, his gut reacted against the thought of deserting Osidian.

His father cut through his turmoil. ‘But I have not come here to ask you to return.’

Carnelian looked a question at him.

‘Rather I have come to bid you flee.’

Carnelian was lost. ‘Flee?’

‘You must abandon this ill-conceived venture. Return to anywhere you have hope of finding refuge. Otherwise you will be encompassed in Nephron’s ruin.’ His father paused, suddenly very weary, weak, old. ‘I need to know that you are safe.’

Carnelian shook his head. ‘I do not understand, Father.’ He saw in his father’s face something he had never thought to see there: fear.

‘You know I have loved you since you were born?’

Uneasy, Carnelian gave a slow nod.

‘Never forget that.’

Carnelian watched his father’s face growing ashen and his heart began pounding. What was it that he wanted to say?

His father rallied his courage. ‘The thing is this. Though in every way that matters to me you are my son, it is not my blood that runs in your veins.’

‘What?’ Carnelian said, half numb, half exasperated.

‘Your mother came to me already carrying you.’

Carnelian felt his head was filled with ice. ‘Why then did you accept me as yours?’

‘I only discovered it much later.’

‘Much later?’ He groaned. ‘When?’

‘When I could no longer deny how much you look like your real father.’

Carnelian knuckled his forehead in a sort of agony. Then it all became clear. ‘The God Emperor.’

Sardian nodded solemnly.

‘That is why you took me to visit him.’

Sardian was nodding.

Carnelian was startled. ‘I drank his blood.’

‘We arranged it thus.’

For only the blood of his real father would ignite the ichor in his own. Carnelian stared at the man he had thought was his father. ‘This is why you chose not to come back from exile for so many years.’

Sardian nodded.

Carnelian felt his heart was rattling in his empty chest. ‘Then why did we return?’ He knew the answer. ‘Aurum!’

Sardian nodded. ‘The moment he first saw you, he knew you were Kumatuya’s son.’

Carnelian watched a dangerous light come into his father’s eyes. ‘To protect you, I would have slain him, all of them . . .’

Carnelian looked down at his hands, then he understood. He looked up. ‘You wanted to bring me back to Osrakum and so you put yourself in his power.’

‘He assured me your identity would be safe, for he alone was old enough to have seen Kumatuya’s face before it was hidden for ever behind the Masks.’

Carnelian nodded. It was all so clear. ‘In exchange you agreed to help him in the election . . .’ He paused, feeling as if he was falling. ‘He’s my brother.’

‘Will you forgive me?’

Carnelian glanced at his father, but barely registered his look of entreaty. ‘Osidian, my brother?’ Things fell into place and with each realization he released a groan. He became aware of his father’s distress, but a wall of ice had risen up between them. ‘There is nothing to forgive. You saved my life.’

Even to himself, his voice sounded cold. He watched his father withdraw behind his own defences, but something stopped him from reaching out to him.

‘And I seek to do so again, my Lord.’

Carnelian felt they were trapped on either side of a barrier and could see no way to scale it. It was easier to slip back into the relationship they had once had: father and son. He focused on what his father had said, instead of the look of pain on his face. ‘Only Aurum knew,’ he said, half to himself. Then it became obvious. ‘He told Ykoriana.’

His father nodded. ‘I do not know that for certain, but I can find no other reason why she would have commuted his deposal to exile. She has as much bile for him as she does for me.’

Carnelian looked at his father. ‘She fears I will accuse her of abduction?’

His father snapped a gesture of anger. ‘To attempt your life before, it was enough for her that she blamed you for the death of her sister in childbirth. To protect herself, as well as out of hatred, this time she will make sure you die.’

Carnelian nodded. It made sense. ‘If I do not return, what will happen to you, my Lord?’

His father shrugged. ‘For the time I have left I can endure Spinel. Then, our— my lineage will die with me.’

Carnelian felt a stab in his chest. The hollows of his father’s face already seemed to be cradling the shadow of death. He wanted to say something, but he was too numb to work out what.

‘I brought your brothers so that you can say farewell to them.’

Carnelian rose, nodding, wanting to get away from this man, who was and was not his father. He turned his hooded face enough to make sure no one else could see him unmasked. He regarded his brothers, now both also unmasked. Their faces had changed, but in a way they were just the same. Suddenly he could not bear the tears in their eyes. He gave them a curt nod, pushed his face into his mask, then strode back towards the tower.

Carnelian stood on the heliograph platform almost unaware of how he had got there. Osidian was a hole cut in the shimmering band of the embassy of the Wise below as it moved off along the leftway. Osidian was his brother. So many things suddenly made sense.

The black shape turned its head as Carnelian approached. Standing beside him, Carnelian gazed down at the torches moving north. The man who had once been his father was down there and those he had once believed to be his brothers. Though they were no longer that, he still felt a tug at his heart to follow them. ‘So what happens now?’

‘Nothing has changed,’ Osidian rumbled. ‘We march against my brother and destroy him.’

Carnelian felt another shock. Molochite was his brother too. He focused on Osidian, struggling to grip this new world. ‘Did nothing the Grand Sapients say affect you?’

Osidian cast an angry gesture into the night so that, for a moment, against the lights below, his hand seemed the wing of a crow. ‘The Wise are desperate. They would do anything, say anything, to regain the power they have lost.’

Carnelian snatched at some hope. ‘You think Lands was making up the threat of famine?’

‘I imagine that is true enough.’ Osidian shrugged. ‘Should we care about some of our subjects perishing? That is their lot. Once I wear the Masks we will re-establish the food supply. Their numbers will soon be replenished. They breed like flies.’

Carnelian turned to see his profile. His brother. It was there clear to see in the face, but their hearts were nothing alike. Sadness soured to anger. ‘Remind me, Osidian, why it is we deserve to defeat Molochite?’

Osidian began one of his interminable speeches about his rights, his god. Carnelian cut through it. ‘This is hopeless. Every move we make only serves to bring more victims into our circle of destruction. And for what? Your childish need to undo something done to you that you consider unfair?’

Anger leached away leaving him feeling sickened. He was no better than Osidian. He had been driving himself on with the delusion he could save others. He was like a fish caught in a mesh whose ever more frantic struggling only served to draw others into the net. When had he come to believe that power would be safer in Osidian’s hands than Molochite’s? Had his confidence that he could influence him always come from a hidden understanding that they had a bond that could not be broken?

Osidian was looking at him, but his face was shadow. ‘The Wise have frightened you. Have you forgotten the promise in your dreams?’

Carnelian burst into laughter that quickly gurgled away to self-disgust. He shifted into Vulgate. ‘We really are so alike, both driven by dreams. By Earth and Sky, I can’t deny I hate the Masters and I’ve supported you because I’d hoped that together we might destroy them, but now I find I can’t go on. Can’t you see that the Wise are right? Even at the price of letting the cancer that is the Masters suck away at the world, our order is better than chaos, than famine’ – Carnelian swept his arm out to take in the sartlar below – ‘better than letting those poor wretches be turned to charcoal by Molochite’s flame-pipes.’ He brought his arm back and took Osidian by the shoulders. ‘This madness has to end. Let’s end it together.’

Osidian pulled himself free, snarling. ‘What’s happened to you?’

Carnelian felt suddenly almost too weary to stand. He knew nothing short of death would stop Osidian. He knew also that he would never be able to kill him. ‘My father came with the Wise. We spoke.’

Osidian’s hands came up to his head. ‘Surely you can see they brought him here to trap you?’

‘Nevertheless I’m going to join him.’

Osidian’s hands fell to his sides and he grew very still. ‘You intend to betray me?’

Carnelian shook his head, finding some comfort in understanding the true nature of the love he felt for Osidian. ‘Not willingly.’

‘Then you’ll stay with me.’

Carnelian shook his head again. ‘Not this time. I’m going to do what I should’ve done long ago and walk away.’ Misery claimed him. ‘I really don’t know why I ever thought this was a good idea. It’s all such a stinking mess.’

‘I won’t let you go,’ Osidian said, his voice ice.

Carnelian heard in it the tones of an abandoned lover and wanted to tell him they were brothers, but even were Osidian to believe it, Carnelian could not see that it would change anything. ‘Then, you’ll have to kill me.’

They stood as shadows, confronting each other. Just then, Carnelian would have welcomed death at Osidian’s hands. The moment passed. He turned and walked away.

By the time he reached the roadway, he was cold with fear. Not for himself, but of what Osidian might do to Fern and the others. He strode through the camp until he found them around a fire. Poppy and Krow looked up at him. Carnelian motioned and they made space for him to sit. He sank beside them, hunching, seeking not to draw too much attention from the auxiliaries around them. ‘I’m leaving.’

Poppy’s face lost colour. ‘Where’re you going?’

He nodded towards where the embassy was a faint gleam along the leftway.

‘Why?’

Krow beside her seemed as anxious as she was, but Fern was staring into the fire as if it did not concern him. Carnelian focused on the youngsters. He tried to marshal his thoughts. ‘I feel I’ve just woken from a strange dream. In the horror . . . the guilt following the massacre . . .’ They all glanced at Fern, but he showed no reaction. ‘I allowed myself to get drawn along the same sort of path the Master walks. Led by dreams; sacrificing people with a view of reaching some goal.’

Carnelian looked first into Poppy’s eyes, then Krow’s. ‘Even if my motives are wholly different from his, my methods have been too similar. The people who’ve just left came to explain to both of us the stark realities. We can’t hope to win and, even if we did, we’d gain nothing. Just in making the attempt, countless more people will die. Worse, what we’ve already done is going to bring famine to the Gods know how many.’

The fear in their young faces made him pause.

‘For the Masters this is all a game and I believed I could beat them, but I was wrong. I’ve just made things worse.’

He saw how they would not look at him and felt a stab of shame that they were feeling let down. He wanted to take Poppy’s hand, to tell her that her belief in him had been justified, but he had nothing with which to back that up. He glanced at Fern, who was still impassive. He resisted an urge to tell them that very likely he was going to his death. That seemed a poor way to restore their faith in him. Besides, it might only serve to have them attempt to persuade him not to go and that he did not want. His heart ached with the need to save them. That at least was something that might be in his power.

Poppy looked up at him, her lips pursed. ‘Perhaps it’s for the best.’

‘Have you told the Master?’ asked Krow.

At Carnelian’s nod, the youth gazed up at the watch-tower with fearful eyes.

‘I want you all to come with me,’ Carnelian said.

Krow jerked back round to look at him. ‘Won’t he try to stop us?’

‘He might. That is why we must go immediately.’

Poppy fixed Carnelian with a stare, glanced at Fern, then back with her fingers tracing a chameleon over her face. He understood and said it for her, but looking towards Fern. ‘You’ll all have to join my household. I’m not making any promises, but I believe there’s a chance that you’ll survive this.’