The Third God (33 page)

Osidian threw his hand up in a gesture of dismissal. ‘The time for hiding has passed.’

For a moment Carnelian became lost in a maelstrom of anxiety. So they had finally passed the point of no return. He marshalled his thoughts. ‘You have a plan?’

‘We penetrate deep into the hinterland beyond the seeing of the Wise. Then we shall turn towards Makar.’

Carnelian saw it in his mind. ‘You wish to outflank him.’

‘And snatch his base from him.’

To capture Makar would put them astride the South Road that ran north to Osrakum.

Osidian’s eyes went opaque. ‘That should get the attention of my Lords the Wise.’

Even though he did not believe they would give Osidian anything, Carnelian felt uneasy.

Osidian’s eyes brightened. ‘Aurum will be forced to come to me.’

Could it be he still hoped the old Master would join him? Carnelian felt a need to put a crack in Osidian’s certainty. ‘How can you be so certain of that?’

‘How else is he going to keep his legion supplied?’

Carnelian paused. ‘Surely he will find all he needs here.’

When Osidian smiled, Carnelian could already see Qunoth burning.

Carnelian stood upon a low dais within a raised ring of stone. The curved alabaster wall suffused the chamber with soft white light. An ammonite entered, bearing a casket of ribbed ivory. He put this on the floor, broke its seals and opened it. Pulling back layers of parchment, he reached in and drew forth a pale garment. The torso was of a piece with the legs that followed, which another ammonite swept into the crook of his arm so that the suit would not touch the floor. Together they carried it towards Carnelian, climbed up onto the stone ring then let the suit fall, dangling its toed feet and fingered hands. It opened up the middle, inner edges fringed with ties and hooks. It seemed the skin flayed whole from a man. The ammonites asked him to raise his arms, then they fed them into those of the suit. The soft leather poured like silk, rucking at Carnelian’s elbows. The gloves that formed the extremity of the arms were slipped over his hands. He helped the ammonites by worming his fingers into each pocket. They tightened the gloves along their outer edges with delicate ties like tendons. They did up the paired green and black buttons on the back of each wrist. Flexing his hands Carnelian was hardly aware of their covering. The ammonites smoothed the leather up his arms, fitting his elbows into the ridged joints, slicking it over the muscles of his upper arms and easing the shoulders of the suit over his own. As they pulled the leather over his chest, the dangling, empty head flopped down under his throat. The legs of the suit hung nudging at his shins. The ammonites lifted his left leg and fed it into the suit. His foot slipped into the leather foot as easily as had his hands into the gloves. They squeezed his big toe into one pocket and the other toes into another wide enough to accommodate them all. When he put his foot down he could feel soft calluses under his toes, the ball and ridge of his foot, his heel. Once his other leg was clothed he raised it, turning his foot up to see the sole. The heel was red, the ball and ridge black, the toes green. It was a ranga shoe integral to the suit. He felt the leather slide and grip his body as the ammonites began to engage the ties and hooks up his back.

As the suit moulded itself to his body Carnelian raised his arms, surprised at how it flexed at the gathering ridges of wrists, elbows and shoulders. He did not like the paleness of the leather which reminded him of the bleached faces of the Wise. In its sickly, greasy pallor it also bore a resemblance to the maggots of the Oracles.

He dropped his arms and practised breathing against the embrace of the suit. It was restrictive, but not so much that he felt trapped. He became aware of the way the suit was padded to accentuate the musculature of his body that the ritual bandages obscured.

When the ammonites asked him to climb down and walk around the chamber, he was pleased to find the legs of the suit articulating as comfortably as the arms. As he bent and twisted and crouched, the suit clung to him like a second skin. The ammonites asked him to stand still, then, after some adjustments, all left save one who, removing his silver mask, replaced it with one whose eyes were solid spirals. Begging his permission, the ammonite reached up and released Carnelian’s mask. He took hold of the flaccid head of the suit, smoothed it over Carnelian’s chin, then up and over his head. Carnelian pulled its opening around the contours of his face. He felt buttons being secured at the nape of his neck. Then the ammonite came round and bound his mask back on. Finally, the others returned with a great, black, hooded military cloak that they threw about his shoulders and bound across his chest with a clasp that, in jet and jade, showed the faces of the Twin Gods.

Carnelian followed Osidian onto the summit of the pier. There before them was a dragon tower: a pallid, three-tiered pyramid from which a mast rose, supported by rigging. In front, one flame-pipe pointed towards the heart of the cothon; the other was just being raised. From the rear of the tower two thicker brass chimneys emerged with sooty swollen mouths.

Even as he was taking in these details, Carnelian became increasingly disturbed. He realized the tower was reminding him of a Plainsman Ancestor House, and of the boats of the ferrymen of Osrakum. Though smoother, it too seemed made of bone. Those other structures people had fashioned from their own dead, with reverence and as memorials. The dragon tower, though more finely wrought, was an instrument of war and thus seemed gruesome.

Osidian was facing a diagonal brass cross set against the tower flank. As Carnelian approached him, he saw it was no cross, but a gigantic woman wrought from brass. Her back to them, she was spreadeagled on a mesh as if crucified. Between her splayed legs he could see a portion of an opening that gave into the dark interior of the tower.

As she began to fall back towards them, Carnelian realized she was a drawbridge with ropes tied to her wrists. As her knuckles and the back of her head clinked against the pier, two legionaries emerged from the tower and ran out over her. When they reached Osidian, they unclasped his cloak, folded it carefully, then stood aside. The brass woman shuddered as Osidian’s foot struck her in the face. His next step fell between her legs. A third took him into the dragon tower through its oval portal. As the legionaries removed Carnelian’s cloak, he turned his head to see her face the right way up. Though it was worn almost smooth, he could still make out a noseless, eyeless grinning skull trapped within the circle of the deeply cut earth glyph. It must surely represent the branded face of a dead sartlar of the Guarded Land. He did not want to tread on that face and so he put his ranga down on the mesh between her head and an arm. Long, empty breasts sagged down the sides of her body. She was almost a skeleton. He stepped over her bony arm. Her vulva looked like a scooped out pomegranate. He stepped over her leg. It disturbed him that she was there to be walked on. He turned to the legionaries, now kneeling on the pier. ‘Who is this woman?’

One of them mumbled something and Carnelian asked him to speak more clearly.

‘Brassman,’ the legionary said.

Carnelian frowned behind his mask but, seeing the man’s discomfort, he stooped and entered the tower.

The ceiling of the cabin forced him to remain stooped. Just enough light squeezed past him to allow him to make out the organs and entrails of sinister machinery. When a voice behind him begged leave, Carnelian shuffled aside to let the two legionaries past. A porthole grated open in the opposite wall. More followed, letting in daylight. The rimless wheel of a capstan filled the rear of the cabin. In front of this a ladder led up to a trap set into the ceiling. The front of the cabin was dominated by a convoluted arrangement of tubes, vessels and other structures.

As Osidian gave commands, Carnelian was drawn to peer at these contraptions. Hanging in the air, a mass of leather strips wove around some metal ribs. Stepping round it, he saw this was a chair floating in mid air upon a limb of brass that came into the cabin like an oar into a baran. He could imagine the rest of it projecting out from the tower and knew it must be the end of the flame-pipe. He peered at some handles set upon its barrel. Taking hold of one, he found the pipe so finely counterbalanced he could swing it easily. Sliding his hand along the barrel, he touched the tube that curved from it down to a vessel of copper as large as a pumpkin. From the rear of this vessel a brass tube ran up to and back along the ceiling and out, presumably to emerge from the tower as one of the chimneys.

‘My Lord, please move away from the furnace. It is about to be lit.’

Osidian was waiting for him by the ladder. Carnelian watched him climb it even as legionaries were opening hatches in the copper vessels and striking flints. As he followed him up, one of the furnaces roared into life.

He emerged into a second cabin partially filled with trumpets the size of canoes. Climbing further he came up into the brightness of a third cabin. He clambered up onto the deck. He was pleased to find he did not need to stoop. The front wall was a delicately pierced screen that curved round to open up the front half of each side wall. A single chair faced this screen, upon which sat Osidian. Carnelian had to avoid some contraptions lying on the floor to the side of the chair as he approached the screen. His eyes adjusted to the glare enough for him to be able to see out through the web of fine rods.

Below him the two flame-pipes pointed forwards. Beyond was the open cothon, piles of empty render sacs forming a ring around its hub. The hub itself was now only a scaffolding rack almost entirely denuded of the flame-pipes it had held. He could smell something burning. Gazing back into the cabin he almost expected to see it smouldering. A legionary had come after them and crept forward to kneel on one side of the chair. Another appeared through the floor and hesitated, a look of agony on his face. Carnelian realized he must be standing in the man’s place. He moved back to stand behind Osidian and the legionary rushed forward to kneel beside the chair, then lifted a tube from the floor and connected it to his helmet.

‘The pipes are ready for testing, Master,’ the other legionary announced. Tubes snaked from his helmet also.

Carnelian noticed both legionaries were crouched over a kind of fork they held before them and from each of which two tubes hung. Osidian’s gloved hands closed on the armrests of the chair. ‘Target the render sacs.’

The legionary at his right hand leaned down and murmured into one prong of his voice fork. Carnelian heard a sound and looked up to see the flame-pipes lifting.

‘Flame,’ said Osidian.

The legionary spoke again into his voice fork. From the bowels of the tower there rose a choking and gurgling. Then a high whine that made Carnelian grit his teeth. Screaming arcs of sunlight erupted from the mouths of the flame-pipes. A mist of smoke. Then the sacs began detonating. Their fiery brilliance was almost immediately concealed behind a mass of black smoke that boiled into the sky. A wall of heat struck the cabin, carrying a stench as if from a funeral pyre.

Night had fallen when Carnelian accompanied Osidian on a final inspection of all twenty-four dragons. Smoke obscured the stars. The incessant testing of flame-pipes had hung a pall over the fortress that had turned day to murky twilight. The fires of the Marula camp guttered across the cothon floor, where Osidian had insisted they must all spend the night. Carnelian had agreed to stay with him. He shared Osidian’s anxiety. Now the dragons were fully armed, he did not want them out of his sight. Lit by the torches attached to the piers, the bellies and legs of the monsters formed a continuous portico that could have been the edge of the Isle of Flies. Carnelian shuddered. He gazed up at one of the monsters. Though its upper horns were now bound to its tower with a hawser, its lower horns were still tethered to the cothon floor. The sickly pale tower with its pipes, chimneys, mast and rigging seemed a sinister ship in a fog. For some reason he was recalling the fear Ebeny had felt on that night, long ago in the Plain of Thrones, when she had been chosen from the flesh tithe.