The Third God (55 page)

Carnelian clambered up the brassman to the leftway, then walked along its ragged, crumbling edge to gaze north. Upon the road, Aurum’s dragons came lumbering, three abreast, their towers bobbing gently like the pendulums of the old man’s clocks. Keeping pace with them, on a parallel course, Osidian’s dragons were shadows obscured by the russet murk they were churning up through the fields. Carnelian looked west, squinting against the low sun. The Leper tide was coming in past the cisterns. He regarded them, wondering what it must be like for them to watch the same dragons that had brought destruction to their valleys now being invited into their camp. He imagined what Lily must be feeling. He would have to do something to keep them placated, at least until he had a chance to find out what was going on.

The clank of ranga striking brass made Carnelian turn. Aurum’s looming bulk was crossing the brassman with the aid of his staff. Reaching the rough stair cut into the rubble of the leftway, the Master paused; his mask, gazing up at the steps, looked like a cold flame. Carnelian gestured to his Hands, standing behind Aurum. They understood him and, coming forward, they offered their assistance to the giant Master. Aurum’s mask, glancing down, caused the men to cower. He floated his arms up and, taking them like the poles of a chariot, they helped him up onto the leftway.

Carnelian approached him, hearing the Master’s breath loud behind his mask. Again he was struck by how weak Aurum had become. It made him angry. He did not want to feel sympathy for his enemy.

Aurum glanced up at the watch-tower. ‘Let us meet down here.’ He struck the cobbles with his staff. Carnelian reminded him that Osidian’s command had been specific. ‘He wants us to wait for him up there.’ He pointed up at the heliograph platform. For a moment the Master seemed again granite, then his shoulders softened. He bowed his head, nodding, so that his cowl slid forward to quench the cold fire of his mask.

As they entered the watch-tower together, the roar of the camp faded, even as, in the confined space, Aurum’s breathing grew louder. Its rasp marked the labour of each step. Carnelian’s hands rose to give the old man support, but he pulled them back as if they had been about to betray him. He made himself recall Crail, whom this Lord had had maimed to death. The memory of that loss made Carnelian glance up the hollow core of the tower. Poppy was up there. Fear that she might fall foul of the Master possessed him.

‘My Lord, I shall go ahead to make sure the way is clear.’

Aurum’s gloved hands clung to his staff. He seemed too busy struggling with his breathing to respond. Carnelian climbed the first ladder. When he reached its top he glanced down to make sure Aurum was following him. The Master was halfway up, each rung wringing a groan from him. Steeling himself against compassion, Carnelian began climbing the next ladder.

Entering their cell, Carnelian saw two small heads wedged into the slits that looked down onto the camp. The heads pulled back and turned. Carnelian was struck by the shocking contrast between Poppy’s face and the wizened face of the homunculus. She plucked the little man’s blinding mask up from the bed and handed it to him; he put it on. Carnelian could not help smiling; not only at how the homunculus obeyed her, but at how he himself would now follow her implied command. He released his mask.

The severe look in Poppy’s eyes drove away all amusement. ‘Whose are the new dragons?’

Recently her voice had become more womanly. At such forceful speech in the tongue of the Ochre, Carnelian felt as if Akaisha and the other Elders were in the cell, judging him.

‘They’re Hookfork’s, aren’t they?’

‘Yes.’

Poppy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is he here?’

‘He is.’

‘You’re going to give him to Lily?’

‘It’s— There are—’ Carnelian grew angry. ‘There are things you don’t understand.’

Her eyes were burning into him. He and she had been here before with horrific consequences. Her anger was justified. His was fired by guilt. ‘Look, I don’t understand what’s happening myself. I need— We need to know more before we act and I’m scared of what the Lepers might do.’

‘With good reason,’ she said.

‘I will talk to them, but not until I know more.’

Her expression softened. ‘Do you want me to go and do what I can to keep them calm?’

Carnelian shook his head. ‘It’s not safe for you to move through the tower alone. Besides, you would have to go through the stables.’

She paled, for she knew what was down there.

‘Can you please just stay here?’

When she nodded, he took his leave of them both and, making sure they could not be seen from the hallway, he slipped out. He stood for some moments, his back to the door, telling himself she would be safe, then he advanced on the ladder that led to the roof.

Aurum was seated with his back to the heliograph, recovering from the ordeal of his climb. Carnelian moved to the edge of the platform and gazed down into the mass of Marula camped at the foot of the tower. In their midst stood the twenty or so black-robed Masters: Aurum’s Lesser Chosen commanders. Carnelian felt as if he had left his heart behind in the cell with Poppy. He feared he might stray into betraying not only her, but also the Lepers and the Plainsmen, by dealing with the monster, Aurum. And it would be not only the living he betrayed, but also the dead.

Below, Osidian’s dragons were manoeuvring into their positions in the circular rampart they made every night, facing out towards the land. Beyond lay the grey mass of the Lepers huddling down, as the waves of dust beat upon them from the passage of Aurum’s dragons on a course to somewhere beyond the cisterns.

When Osidian climbed onto the edge of the platform, he dismissed the lookouts from their deadman’s chairs. As he advanced on Carnelian and Aurum, the lookouts clambered down out of sight.

Aurum, who had risen, bowed as deeply as he could, pulling himself back erect with the help of his staff. ‘Celestial.’

Though the old man was the taller, it was Osidian who seemed to loom, a black tower crowned by the muted sun of his mask. He reached up and began unfastening it. Masking Law dictated Carnelian and Aurum must do the same. When Carnelian’s face was naked, he watched Aurum attempting to remove his mask one-handed. The bony hand he had ungloved fumbled at the fastening. The joints of his fingers were swollen red. Watching the procedure, Carnelian had to resist an impulse to help him.

As the gold shell came away, Carnelian stared in horror at Aurum’s face. For a moment it seemed that of one of the Wise looking back at them. Aurum’s wizened, sallow skin looked hardly thick enough to stop his skull tearing out. Cheekbones, chin, the rims of his eye sockets were all a geometry of blades. His lips revealed the pattern of the teeth behind. His eyes, blue ice sunk deep. Ice that had a blinding bloom of frost.

‘Why, my Lord, do you defect to me?’

Carnelian did not turn to Osidian, but kept his gaze upon Aurum’s withered face. He remembered how once it had been cracked like a fine porcelain glaze. Now the cracks had deepened, uniting around the mouth and eyes into fissures resembling those that cut into the margin of the Guarded Land.

‘Celestial, I would speak to you alone.’

Rage rose in Carnelian. Once before he had been excluded from hearing what Aurum had come to say.

‘Lord Suth will remain here,’ said Osidian.

Aurum gave a muted shrug. ‘I have come, Celestial, so that together we can defeat the Ichorian.’

Shock overturned Osidian’s composure. ‘The Ichorian?’

‘Even now it is only days away from here under Imago’s command.’

‘Jaspar?’ Carnelian said.

Osidian’s head cocked to one side as he frowned. ‘Osrakum is undefended?’

‘Apparently, the Great have chosen to garrison the Gates with their tyadra.’

Carnelian imagined his brothers at the Gates with all the other guardsmen of the Great. What part had his father played in these events?

Osidian’s face pulled back into the shadow of his cowl. ‘How came the Clave to sanction this?’

Aurum began some vague gesture with his clawed hand. ‘Of course, Celestial, I did not witness their deliberations, but I believe Imago had been urging them to send the Ichorian against you for some time. His thesis seems to have been that, the Lesser Chosen having witnessed your election, the Great dare not trust to them any force dispatched to defeat you.’

Osidian’s frown deepened.

‘It will not surprise you, Celestial, to hear that the Clave long resisted him. Until, that was, the commanders of Qunoth were brought before them with the forbearance of the Imperial Power. There they claimed you had issued an edict enfranchising all their kind.’

Carnelian went cold. Was it, then, the act of mercy he had urged upon Osidian that had brought this thing about? He glanced at him, expecting to be accused, but Osidian’s eyes seemed more opaque than Aurum’s. Carnelian felt a need to put fire into their discussion. ‘I had believed Imago’s faction to be weak in the Clave, but if I understand you rightly, my Lord, they have made him He-who-goes-before.’

Carnelian half expected the old Master to ignore him again, but Aurum turned and seemed almost eager to answer him. ‘He had the support of Ykoriana.’

‘He has had that before and it was not enough.’

‘He did not before have use of her rings.’

Carnelian frowned, trying to make sense of this. Aurum was speaking of her voting rings. Surely these could not be used in the Clave?

‘She married Imago?’

Carnelian heard the disbelief in Osidian’s voice, but his face was lit by shock.

The membranes of Aurum’s lips slid back over his yellowed teeth. ‘Indeed, Celestial, after she had divorced the God Emperor.’

Carnelian looked from the old man to Osidian, but there were no answers there. He turned back to Aurum. ‘Does she fear Osidian so much?’

Before Aurum could answer, Osidian spoke. ‘Why would the Wise reveal that I had survived to my mother?’

The answer to this at first seemed clear to Carnelian: it was the arrival of the Qunoth commanders that had betrayed Osidian’s existence. But then Carnelian recalled that Aurum had claimed the Clave had already been discussing the situation for some time. He followed Osidian’s glare to Aurum’s face. The flame of life in the old man seemed to gutter. For a moment he might have been a Sapient wearing eyes of unpolished sapphire.

‘It was the God Emperor who informed her, but it was I who had sent Them a letter.’

Osidian snorted.

Aurum came back to life. ‘I will make no apologies, Celestial. After Legions’ schemes failed, I was left in an untenable position. The letter was the regrettable conclusion of calculation.’

Osidian’s lips curled. ‘I had not assumed you joined me from love. What further calculation is it that brings you here, my Lord? Is it possible you believe that I will triumph?’

Though Osidian’s stance and tone were communicating contempt, Carnelian knew him well enough to feel certain there was something else underneath. It made him sad. His heart told him Osidian really was hoping the reasons the old monster had come were love and faith in him.

Aurum had a predatory gleam in his eyes. Detecting Osidian’s weakness, he was devising a way to exploit it. Carnelian sought to cut him off. ‘We know that cannot be why you have come, my Lord. It is some far more squalid motive that impels you.’

Aurum looked as if he was about to spit venom, but then his face became again an icy mask. ‘Suth Carnelian is correct. It is inconceivable you will triumph, Celestial.’

‘So why have you come, Aurum?’ Osidian said, rallying.

Aurum’s free hand sketched an elegant gesture, but his face grew brittle with malice. ‘I have harboured contempt for those of my peers who saw fit to bow to the Empress and the Wise and conspired with them to send me into exile, but that is nothing to the disgust I now feel that they have become so subservient as to send the Ichorian from the canyon. All my life I have striven to maintain our ancient privileges against the encroachment of the other Powers.’ His hand curled into talons. ‘But I have lost my faith in the Great and what I now do I do for my own advantage. I come here because I have made a compact with the Wise.’

Osidian sneered at the old man. ‘Your speech is filled with patrician pride, my Lord Aurum, but your long service to the Wise makes it clear that your House would be more comfortable among the Lesser Chosen.’

Some colour oozed into Aurum’s deathly face. ‘I would have thought my Lord would understand how circumstances can conspire to force one into unwanted alliances. I can see in your face how low you have fallen and I already knew what squalid accommodations you have had to stomach.’

Carnelian stepped between them. ‘My Lords, we have all suffered humiliations, but what shall it profit us to cast these in each other’s faces?

He was glad to see their composure returning. Aurum made a vague gesture of apology. ‘The Lord Suth is not in error. We have the same enemies and have both been the playthings of the Wise. You have no doubt encountered Grand Sapient Legions?’

Carnelian sensed the old Master was returning to his sly game.

‘It was he who forced me to make an appearance of defending Makar. He assured me it would bring you into his power.’ Aurum’s taloned fingers closed into a fist.

Osidian shrugged and, though he spoke offhandedly, Carnelian felt he was watching Aurum carefully. ‘It was we who took him. Even now he dreams here beneath our feet.’

Though the old Master appeared uninterested in this, he could not help glancing down as if he might see the Grand Sapient through the watch-tower roof. ‘When he sent me no signal, I guessed he had failed. It was that which made me reconsider my position. I decided it was perilous to continue my alliance with the Wise. In my dealings with them, I had come to suspect that, behind the adamantine unity they present to us, there lie fractures. Though Legions had been for a long time dominant among the Twelve, there were other factions. With him out of contact, who knew what would happen? Certainly, I did not wish to fall victim to their calculations. I risked everything in a direct appeal to the God Emperor.’