The Third God (99 page)

Openings in the high vaults let in the first grey light of dawn. They followed the sisters down winding stairs beneath the gaze of frowning colossi. For a while they moved along ravines flanked by their legs. Here, Carnelian managed well enough, only a few times having to lean on Fern, but when they began to climb countless steps, he found his legs leaden and they had to stop often to let him rest.

Fern gazed with knitted brows at Carnelian, who was wheezing, pain sawing his head in two. ‘What did they do to you?’

‘They bled me,’ Carnelian said and his heart warmed when he saw anger burning in Fern’s eyes.

As they climbed higher, he became aware the columns, though still massive, were more slender. Pausing to regain his breath, he gazed up into the shadows and saw that the stone stems swelled into pods that clung to the underside of the roof like the eggs of some monstrous moth.

At last they came up onto a road whose paving was raised here and there as if something had been burrowing beneath it. The vaults seemed a low stormy sky. Light slanting down revealed that the columns had the form of gigantic poppyheads upon whose spiked crowns the ceiling sat. Small as ants they moved off through this deathly, penumbral meadow. Here and there Carnelian could see the stems were graven with faces worn down to sketches of eyes and mouths. Glyphs that tattooed the stone were soft-edged, unreadable. Walking beside the Quenthas, he eyed these effigies, finding them familiar in a way he could not catch hold of. ‘How do you know of this place?’ he whispered.

‘We used to come here as children, Celestial,’ the sisters replied. Right-Quentha swept a hand round. ‘This place was our playground.’

Such a name seemed to Carnelian incongruous for such a sombre place. ‘The Labyrinth?’

‘It is where we were born, Celestial,’ said Left-Quentha.

‘Our world,’ her sister added.

They came into a green clearing where the vault between four poppyheads had collapsed. There a single tree reached up to the morning. From every crack fresh ferns sprang, uncurling their fronds all the way up the glyphed shafts of the columns. One of these had a verdant beard that showed where water trickled down to fill a pool nestling in some masonry tumbled at its feet. After the sterile wilderness of the Labyrinth, Carnelian was struck by unlooked-for joy at this haven of life. Beside him Right-Quentha smiled, half turning to her sister. ‘It’s still here.’ She turned to him. ‘This was our most secret place, Celestial.’

They formed a ring around the clearing. Carnelian had invited everyone, including the Suth guardsmen, who crouched, heads bowed. When one of them dared to glance up, Carnelian gave him a smile of encouragement, causing the man to blush and duck his head. He did not blame the man for being nervous in his presence and before his strange collection of friends, but the guardsmen had risked everything for him and he felt they had a right to be there.

‘I’ve asked you all to sit with me because the decisions we’re going to make will affect us all.’

There were nods around the ring; Tain and Fern fixed him with fierce attention. Carnelian began by asking Sthax what he knew about Morunasa’s attack.

The man shrugged. ‘I say.’

Tain shot the Maruli an angry glance, before returning his gaze to Carnelian. ‘How can we trust him?’

‘Didn’t he just save us, Tain?’

Tain frowned. ‘It could be part of their trap.’

Carnelian shook his head and, deliberately, looked Sthax in the eye. ‘I trust him.’

Fern seemed to share Tain’s anger. ‘What need is there to ask what’s behind it? We all know the Marula are the Master’s creatures.’

Carnelian re-examined his feelings, then shook his head again. ‘In my bones I’m now sure the Master’s not behind this.’ He could see Fern was still not convinced. He turned back to Sthax. ‘How much do you wish to go home?’

Sthax ducked a bow. ‘You know.’ There was both sadness and hope in his eyes.

‘Why have you come over to me? What help could this possibly be to your people?’

Sthax’s glistening forehead creased. His hands lifted as if trying to grab hold of the words. ‘You know I follow Oracle. We follows Oracle. Oracle promise we peoples saves, Marula saves.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘We follows brings deaths. We peoples, Marula, in homes, suffers and we here’ – he touched the silver collar forged around his neck – ‘what we?’

Carnelian sensed how Fern, regarding the Maruli, was softening. Perhaps he was remembering he too wore a collar.

Carnelian turned his attention back to Sthax. ‘The Oracle wears a collar identical to yours, Sthax. Is he a stupid man?’ None around the circle believed that. ‘Is he a coward?’ Carnelian saw Fern’s frown deepen and gaze fall. ‘His promise to you, Sthax, was built on the promise the Master gave him. The Master told me himself he has no intention to honour that promise.’

Sthax’s eyes narrowed further. ‘You believe Oracle against Master?’

Carnelian nodded. ‘Morunasa has taken the fate of your people into his own hands.’

Sthax looked incredulous. ‘What good Oracle do?’ He glanced round at the stone forest and shuddered. ‘How Oracle control Masters?’

‘There’s another, greater power he might believe will give him the strength to conquer the Masters.’

Sthax’s eyes widened with horror. ‘Darkness under trees.’

Just as disturbed, Carnelian gazed into the gloom. ‘This place is very like the Isle of Flies.’

Fern looked sick. Right-Quentha was registering the look on their faces. Her unease spread to her sister’s face. ‘We are not sure to what you refer, Celestial, but let us raise the Ichorians against this demon.’

‘Would your brethren directly defy a command from the God Emperor?’

The sisters looked appalled. ‘Impossible.’

‘Well, the Ichorians have grown accustomed to seeing Marula around the Lord Nephron. If now, as a fully consecrated God Emperor, They choose to seclude Themselves behind these same Marula, who among the Ichorians would dare challenge this?’

From far away a murmurous sound came filtering through the Labyrinth.

‘The Encampment of the Seraphim is waking, Celestial,’ said Left-Quentha. ‘Though they are much further away than the sound suggests.’

‘So how . . . ?’

Her shrug spread to her sister’s side of their body. ‘Sound moves strangely through the Labyrinth, Celestial.’

‘In one place, someone you can see directly,’ said Right-Quentha, ‘you cannot hear at all.’

‘While in other places one can hear a faraway voice as if the speaker were close enough to touch,’ said her sister, reaching out with her tattooed hand.

Right-Quentha smiled. ‘For us, this was one of the chief attractions of this place. Several times we were alerted by the sound of the court preparing to migrate up to the sky.’

Both sisters nodded.

‘Carnie . . .’

Carnelian turned to Tain.

‘Why can’t you raise the Masters against these—’ He glanced at Sthax. ‘They’re all still there with their guardsmen.’

Carnelian looked at the Quenthas. ‘Could that work?’

The sisters shook their heads. ‘The Halls of Rebirth are a fortress, Celestial. Even with most of the Ichorians away garrisoning the Gates, our cohorts – the sybling cohorts – should easily hold off any assault.’

Carnelian nodded. ‘At the very least there would be much blood spilled; at worst, it could ignite civil war.’ A shadow passed over his heart. ‘Besides, Osidian might be killed.’

‘What of it?’ said Fern. ‘He deserves to die.’

There were gasps round the circle and wide-eyed fear at such sacrilege.

‘If he dies now, most likely I would become the next God Emperor,’ said Carnelian. He sensed more than saw the hope that entered many around the circle. ‘Were that to happen, I’d be locked behind the Masks for ever.’ He was aware of Fern’s horror at this. ‘Imprisoned here.’ He extended his hands to take in the Labyrinth. ‘Meanwhile, the world outside would sink into strife and famine.’ He looked into Sthax’s eyes. ‘I don’t know if I’d be able even then to save your people.’ He shook his head, imagining it. ‘The best I might manage would be to attempt to hold the balance of power here.’ He glanced around the ring of faces. ‘Be certain of this. If the Masters fall into fighting each other, they may destroy themselves, but they would take the world down with them.’

Everyone stared, consumed by their own vision of that calamity.

‘What hope, then, is there?’ asked Tain at last.

Carnelian felt some faint belief rising within him. He turned to Sthax. ‘Do your brethren feel as you do?’

‘We desperate.’

The Maruli looked at Carnelian as if he was a spar floating in a stormy sea. Carnelian would not refuse his hope. ‘We’ll do nothing to interfere with the Masters returning to their palaces. When Morunasa comes into the Labyrinth, we’ll move against him.’

He did not reveal his relief when none there questioned this. At that point, what he had stated was all the plan he had.

‘How will we know when that happens?’ asked Left-Quentha.

It was Fern who answered her. ‘We’ll know.’

The tree that inhabited the clearing was a pomegranate. Though laden with fruit, these were all still green. Right-Quentha had regarded them, disappointed, saying that she and her sister had hoped that the tree would be able to feed them at least for one night. On their previous visits, the fruit had been ripe, but then they had always come later in the year.

Even before they had thought to find some firewood, the sisters cautioned them against lighting a fire. Its smoke might betray their location to anyone searching for them. They made what camp they could within reach of the light. Fern made a bed for Carnelian from the fern fronds, but though they yearned for each other, they chose to sleep apart.

What little food they had was divided equally. As the day waned, they sought sleep as an escape from the darkness encroaching from the Labyrinth. Wrapped in his cloak, Carnelian lay listening to the murmur of the Masters’ camp. Soon they would return to their coombs. What of Coomb Suth? Matters there were still unresolved. If anything were to happen to him or to his father, Poppy and the rest would be at the mercy of Opalid.

Another day of waiting, listening to the Masters’ camp. When Fern went with the Quenthas and some of the Suth guardsmen to find some food, Carnelian remained behind with Tain. When the others returned, they had a couple of fish and a small saurian. Fern prepared them and they ate them raw.

Carnelian and Fern wandered off together. They had told the others that they would not be long and would stay within earshot of both their camp and that of the Masters.

‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ Fern asked.

Carnelian smiled at him. ‘I feel much better.’

They walked along the road beneath the poppyhead columns, the silence deepening between them, until neither could find a way to words. It was Carnelian who spotted another clearing and headed towards it, though it took them away from the path. Even before he reached the clearing he realized it was much larger than the one around which they had camped. A column had collapsed, cracking others as it fell. A ragged hole had been left in the vaulting, through which light was flooding. The head of the fallen column lay half in light, half in shadow. Approaching the great bulb of stone, Carnelian reached out to touch it. Under his hand was the remains of the red with which it had once been painted. Like dried blood. He frowned, reminded of the funerary urns into which he and Osidian had been squeezed. His fingers found branching channels eroded into the stone. He gazed up into the light. This column had once stood naked against the elements. Long ago, perhaps, before the Labyrinth had been roofed in. He walked round to look at its spiky, poppy crown and saw the pod was cracked. A gash as if it had been slit to bleed its opium. He leaned towards it and detected a faint smell of ancient myrrh. He slipped his hand into the gash.

‘What’re you doing?’

Carnelian saw the anger in Fern’s face. ‘I just want to take a peek inside.’ And, with that, he squeezed into the pod.

Inside, the air was musty. He stepped aside to allow light to filter in through the crack. It fell upon a sort of stalagmite angling up from the floor. But, of course, the whole pod had rolled over, so it was emerging not from the floor, but from what had been the ceiling. He reached out and touched it. It swelled into a spiral. Intuition made him reach out to the wall. His fingers found the buds, the seeds with which it was carved. As much as he was inside a huge poppyhead, it was also a pomegranate. He could make out shapes piled up beyond the spindle. Cautiously he crossed the curving floor, using the spindle as a support. A mound of rubbish, of shards, a glimmer of metals and stones, among mouldering flakes and fibres of something else. He jumped when he saw the grin: a row of teeth in a skull skinned with thin, scabrous leather; a mummy, curled up as if in a womb, wrapped in brown cloth. There were others in among the heap. Bones held together by scraps of dried flesh. He grew uneasy, remembering the pygmy dead in their baobabs. He could hear again the crackle as they had burned. Caught by the stare of a dark socket, he shuddered, recalling the render the sartlar had made from pygmies they had killed. His eyes were drawn to a glinting profile. A beautiful face among the corpses. He leaned closer and saw it was a mask. Touching it, he found it was stone. The mummy to which it belonged was larger than the others, its wrappings paler bands of half-perished linen. Among these bands, the glint of gold. He stared, disturbed. This could be one of his fathers, his mothers. There was no sign here of an after-life, of resurrection. His thumb found the edge of the mask. The rest of his hand gripped across the bridge of the nose, into an eyeslit. He tugged and it snapped open like the lid of a rusted box. The face below had darkened, the eyes withered, the lips thinned, riding up the teeth, but it was still a Master’s face. An adult face, but not much larger than a Chosen child’s. Carnelian saw the hands crossed upon the chest, wedged behind the knees. He put the mask down and reached out to compare his hand with the mummy’s. The mummy’s was so much smaller. Perhaps embalming had shrunk it. Carnelian shook his head. The skull could not shrink.