The Third God (25 page)

The odour of the stews dispelled that of blood. He had left the dream back there in the cave, but still it whispered to him. He moved into the encampment to drown the whisper in the bustle and domestic din. He glanced to the centre of the mass of Marula. The Oracles were lying there with Morunasa, communing with their god. Carnelian could not see Osidian among them and went searching for him.

A shadow appeared in front of him. It touched its chest. ‘Sthax.’

Carnelian edged round until light caught the man’s face. It was indeed Sthax.

‘Where we goes?’

Even though Poppy had told him about Sthax, Carnelian was stunned. He crouched, pulling the man down beside him. ‘You speak Vulgate?’

Sthax touched his ear. ‘I hear. I learn.’

Carnelian considered asking him whether the Oracles knew of this, but realized that, if they had, this man would not be here now talking to him. Sthax glanced round, then fixed him with eyes Carnelian could not see. ‘Where we goes?’

Sthax gave a grunt. ‘Where are we going?’ Gesturing, Carnelian explained as simply as he could their mission to the Landabove and Sthax nodded, or waved his hand when he wanted something put another way.

‘Master promise Oracle?’

Carnelian guessed Sthax must be referring to Morunasa. ‘Yes, he made promise to the Oracle to make ladder’ – he mimed the ladder with his hand – ‘down to your people.’ He made a gesture mimicking the winding course of the Lower Reach river, then touched Sthax on the chest of his corselet. The man ducked a bow, then rose and soon disappeared among the other Marula.

Carnelian got to his feet, wondering how this changed things. He remembered where he had been going. Even in the gloom at the back of the cavern, Osidian’s towering, narrow form was unmistakable. The Lepers around him barely reached his chest. It looked like a conference. Carnelian became immediately alarmed. He moved towards them, needing to know what was going on. Before he reached Osidian the Lepers began moving away towards where the food was being prepared. Carnelian recognized Lily by her gait and fell in beside her.

‘What were you talking about with the Master?’

‘Nothing much,’ she said, without turning her shrouded head.

Carnelian walked a little way with her, but when he realized she was not going to say anything more, he let her move off and was left feeling uneasy.

When he woke, his first thought was of Lily. The anxiety to find out what Osidian had said to her had long kept him from sleep. He rose and went to look for her. Across the cavern, people were packing up. Marula were filing down to the stream to fill waterskins. They had left the Oracles behind, still lost in their dreaming. Looking for the Lepers who were their guides, he saw a huddle of them by the cave entrance. They bowed slightly as he approached.

‘Lily?’

‘She’s gone, Master.’

‘Gone?’

‘West.’

‘When?’

‘Before daybreak, Master.’

Carnelian stared at them, hardly believing them. As he returned to gather his things he was angry with himself that he had not forced her to speak when he could. It was a while later that he realized he had lost the last person he could call a friend.

The gorge swallowed them into a narrow, vertical world ruled by the vast serpent of water that coursed past them, scouring great bowls with its coils, displaying its turbulent scales at rapids, frothing a furious white as it leapt falls. They crept across the mouths of vast bays gouged from the limestone, dank with shadows, heaped with slabs and scree, infested with pockets and wells all skinned with moss and struggling trees; but mostly the path wound beneath sheer cliffs from which a constant hail of stones kept them anxiously waiting for the next boulder that would fall like a skystone to smash the edge from the path then bound down to the river to be consumed. Much of the cliff was rotten with caverns and slits and cracks that gave into depths that spoke with strange echoes. Sometimes, to circumvent a buttress of the cliff, they were forced to follow their Leper guides into the noisome dark. Stumbling through malodorous dripping tunnels hand in hand, they welcomed the return to light as if it was a rebirth.

Every morning Lepers from the place where they had slept would take over, while those they replaced would be carried off by the flood in a flimsy coracle. Around dusk the new guides would bring them to the next staging post: another collection of caves and ledges within reach of the spray from the roaring water or having access to it down some rough-hewn, precipitous stair. By the river, in some natural pool, a few coracles would jiggle, just safe from its fury. In the caves the Oracles would occupy what space there was. The warriors would make do with any crannies they could find among the rocks. Whatever store of food was there would be distributed to all as a meagre meal.

Carnelian loathed the Oracles with their sweaty muttering, their blind white-in-white eyes as they listened to their Lord roaring to them from the midst of the flood. He was glad to leave them with Osidian as they babbled to him their dreams, though how could he possibly understand them when Morunasa, his sole interpreter, remained aloof keeping his nightmares to himself? Carnelian preferred to eat with Sthax and the other warriors. Covertly he taught Sthax more Vulgate while the other warriors, who deferred to him, kept watch. Carnelian took to sleeping among them in some spot as far away from the voice of the river as he could find. Dreams of bread awrithe with worms plagued his sleep. Often the bread was the world; sometimes his own body.

‘Behold Qunoth,’ said one of the Lepers.

The plain to whose edge their guides had led them terminated, at its further end, in a dark wall. Sheer, it butted on one side against the limestone cliff of the Guarded Land, was breached where the river poured in a foaming cataract, then rose lofty again on the other side, where it faded away into the Earthsky. It reminded Carnelian of the Backbone at the Upper Reach.

‘Where?’ said Osidian.

The Leper pointed to the top of the black wall. Squinting, Carnelian could see that the northern half of it had a pale upper edge.

‘A city wall?’ Morunasa said.

Gazing up at it Osidian shook his head. ‘The Ringwall leftway.’ He pointed to the southern half of the rock, which did not have the pale edge. ‘That will be the fortress.’

He glanced at the Leper, who gave a nod of confirmation.

‘And the Ladder?’

‘It’s further round. We can’t see it from here.’

Carnelian saw that the limestone cliff curved away and that its meeting with the city rock was out of sight.

Osidian was gazing up at the city. ‘It would be foolish to cross this plain in daylight.’

They returned to where they had left the Marula. Through Morunasa and the Oracles Osidian told the warriors to prepare for war. Carnelian and Sthax were careful to avoid each other’s eyes. They had ignored each other since the Oracles had emerged from their dreams some days before.

Carnelian ate sparingly, brooding on what the night might bring. He tried to dissipate anxiety by busying himself with the honing of his spear. When it was sharp he put it down and went among the clumps of warriors, stopping here and there to pat his belly with a quivering hand to show he shared their fear, smiling when they smiled, laughing with them though he did not understand their jests. With Sthax he exchanged the merest glance.

The crescent moon had fallen behind the cliff when they began to creep across the plain after their Leper guide. Pinpricks of light could be seen along the outermost, upper edge of the city rock. Carnelian imagined Masters there, sleeping perhaps or indulging in some lordly pleasure. That world up there, nearer to the stars than to the earth, seemed at the same time alien and alluring.

Countless gullies gouging the plain made the going hard. Rounding the cliff they saw the city rock looming before them as an immensity of blackness. The Leper led them down a path into a gully. They crossed a stream by means of a plank bridge. As they drew ever nearer to the city rock, Carnelian became aware of a sickening odour. With each step it wafted stronger so that he became convinced they must be approaching some immense, rotting corpse. He tried to wind his uba more tightly over his face, but still the stench thickened until he could feel it rasping at his throat. Seeing the Leper begin climbing a steep slope, Carnelian came to a halt. The night was filled with the sound of retching. A hill rose before them from which the stench was emanating.

‘What is this?’ he called up to the Leper.

‘The Heap,’ said his voice, already somewhere above them.

‘We have to climb it?’ Carnelian did not want to believe it.

‘The Ladder’s up there.’

He could not see the Leper clearly. Pushing his head back he thought there might be a crack running up the rock all the way to the sky. It seemed to him he had seen this before. Then he realized how much it resembled the fissure in the Pillar of Heaven that the Rainbow Stair climbed. He saw how the crack disgorged onto the Heap. It seemed that the Lepers’ Ladder was actually the sewer of Qunoth.

Grimacing, he approached the mound. He put a foot on it and felt it give. Up he went, feeling the mush through his shoes, slipping on slime, hearing the squelch and crunch. Each footfall punctured the outer crust of the mound, releasing fluids and fetid exhalations. He fell several times, knees first into the soft excretions. When he put his hands out to stop his fall, they sank in up to his wrists. Yanking them out, he smeared the filth down his robe. Nausea curdled his belly. Eventually he could control it no longer. Tearing the uba from his face he added his vomit to the hill.

At last they reached the fissure, from which the sewage spilled like guts from a slit belly. Their Leper guide stood in what appeared to be an opening. As he saw Carnelian approaching, he ducked in. Carnelian peered into the tunnel, glanced round to see the Marula crawling up the hill like cockroaches, then crept into the darkness.

The Leper led him deep into the fissure. In the blackness he had to feel his way with feet and hands. The wall on his right was rock, upon which he scraped his hands as clean as he could manage. On his left was a barrier webbed with struts like the wings of a sky saurian. Their smooth curves suggested they might be bone. A leather membrane stretched over this framework was greasy with the noisome liquids it was holding back. Warm to the touch, it seemed the hide of some living monster. One mercy was that, in the tunnel, the stench was less violent.

Fumbling his way Carnelian ran into something that clutched at him. He fought down his horror, knowing it was the Leper guide.

‘Do we have to do this in the dark?’

‘Flame here turns the air to fire, Master.’

When the tunnel reached the crease of the fissure, it turned up to climb the rock. Carnelian clambered after the Leper, clutching at handholds, hooking his toes into steps made for smaller feet than his. They reached a ledge beyond which was another slippery climb. The Leper scuffing above him was a beacon in the blackness. Sometimes the sound would stop as the Leper waited for him. The first time, Carnelian froze. From below came a rustling as if a swarm of immense insects were following him. Something touched his foot and he jerked it free and moved on. It grew hotter and the air so stinking that, with each breath, he felt he was accumulating a disgusting paste in his lungs. Up and up he climbed until, faint from nausea, dizzy, he started to imagine himself nothing more than a maggot crawling through the cavities of a corpse.

At last he began to be able to make out above him the shape of the climbing Leper. Then Carnelian was pushing his fingers up into light. His arm followed, streaked with filth. A final few rungs, then a ledge. Squinting, he emerged into the open on the Leper’s heels.

He and the Leper were standing on a cascade of rubbish dammed by a wall pierced with arches. The lower ones were buried up to their keystones, but the ones above were free and open. Piled one upon the other they carried a parapet of stone upon their backs.

The Leper saw where he was looking. ‘The leftway, Master.’ He made a gesture to show how it ran over their heads. ‘This way.’

He began to scale the slope. Carnelian followed him, climbing through the muck. Rinds of fruit, mouldering gourds, pumpkins, carcasses, down and feathers. Everything was smeared with excrement, clotted with pastes, dripping cloudy fluids. The whole mass shuddered under each footfall. He tried to hoist his robe up, but it was already soaked through. Flies gummed his eyes. The impact of their bodies was like hail. A mat of them swarming everything. The stench was choking him. He stumbled as his foot broke through a saurian ribcage that snapped like twigs. He retched as his hand slid down into soft manure. He rose sobbing with disgust, flinging the stuff off him in dollops. Then he was up again, slipping and sliding. The morning swelled brighter as he came up over the brow of the slope.

‘The Midden,’ the Leper announced.

Carnelian saw they were on the edge of a hillocked expanse of rubbish hemmed in on either side by mudbrick walls, and running off towards a road already crowded with people.