The Third God (75 page)

Myrrh and the fresh blood smell of the iron seeping with other rare scents in through his nostrils made him strive to lift again the boulder of his head. Balancing upon the blade of unbearable pain, his gaze flickered, searching for any understanding of where he was. In the gloom, a pattern of bright flecks spattering over human forms. In the corner of his eye he could see the screen through which the light was filtering. Achieving focus, he became able to distinguish the shapes of each face pushed up against it. Sinuous markings broke up their outlines, making it difficult to see where one ended and another began. Subtle jewel fire sparkled at ears, nostrils, glimmered around throats, over breasts. A woman eyed with stones that had dark fire at their cores had her ear turned, waiting, into the light. A beautiful boy, his head slick with feathers, regarded Carnelian with a smirk, eyes devouring him. Carnelian wanted to cross his arms over his body, hide, find shelter. All he could do was collapse his head, the first boulder in an avalanche. His knees seemed as soft as warmed wax. His legs trembled, threatening to buckle. His guts and organs were swelling his abdomen so that he felt he was ripe, that at any moment he would spill his innards out upon the floor. His arms, two leashes of sinew, snapped taut, stopped him falling. Hanging on them he was sure they must tear.

A voice cut through his collapse; mellifluous, a pouring of honeyed Quya syllables. The peculiar pronouns it was using forced themselves through his pulsing agony. In the first person, declined in the divine mode, dual. Only the Twin Gods spoke thus, or their incarnation on Earth. A God Emperor speaking? Molochite!

Carnelian focused his attention like a needle through the raw pain.

‘. . . his rebellion pitiful. Though he managed to destroy the Red Ichorians, what does that demonstrate except the impiety of their sending? A folly in which the Wise and those of you who call yourselves the Great conspired, led by incompetent Imago, betrayed by perfidious Aurum, came inevitably to disaster. Are We surprised?’

As he listened, Carnelian’s gaze had been crawling across the contorted, writhing surfaces of the floor. He frowned, unable to understand what it was he was seeing.

‘So have We been forced to come out from the Hidden Land seeking with Our power to heal this wounded Commonwealth.’

Carnelian lost hold of the beautiful voice as his eyes tried to unravel the exquisite traceries of the pavement upon which his cross was set. He lifted his head enough to allow his gaze to scale the wall to where it emerged into the light. Ribbed stone? Through its peculiar, dark patina, he saw evidence it was assembled from fragments. Bonework? An Ancestor House? He squeezed the confusion drop by drop. This was no barbarian work. Besides, it was pocked all over with holes. The ribbing curved up from the floor. Was it possible he was in the hold of some immense bone boat?

The cross trembled under his skin to the rhythm of feet approaching. Shadowy forms swam into his vision, crablike, each with several arms and legs and double-headed. Hands, some pale, some so densely tattooed they seemed veined ebony, curled into the handles that grew from his cross. He knew these odd but graceful creatures. Syblings: the joined twins of the elite cohorts of the Sinistral Ichorians.

One pale woman’s face arrested his gaze. Though she was not as she had been, he knew her. ‘Quentha,’ he sighed.

The sybling’s eyes pierced him. ‘Seraph?’ An urgent whisper.

‘Have you forgotten . . . ?’ he managed.

Her sister turned the jet almonds of her stone eyes upon him, but then the sisters responded to a gesture of command from the other syblings. Together they took the strain. The cross rising into the air caused Carnelian’s shoulders to threaten dislocation. He threw back his head, choking off a cry.

‘Behold Suth Carnelian!’ cried the beautiful voice.

Spreadeagled on the cross, as the syblings carried him into the light Carnelian was blinded by pain. The impact as they put him down sent through him a surge of nausea. He pushed his consciousness into the soles of his feet, clawing his toes, digging his heels into the ledges, finding just enough strength in his legs to push back, squeezing his stomach, drawing up his innards, adjusting his shoulders gingerly to relieve their tearing agony.

‘Behold another of the Great who threw in his lot with Our rebel, apostate brother.’

Blearily Carnelian tried to locate the source of that pure voice. His racked body gave a shudder as he saw the towering horned shape that could only be the Darkness-under-the-Trees having assumed a near-human form. Then he saw this was just the shadow of the apparition sitting upon an iron throne. Jade its sublime face, its head encased within a four-horned helm that gave it the look of a spider. Behind rose a green man, above whom a black man loomed with vast glimmering obsidian mirror wings stretching like startled hands. All around the throne, children huddled naked, their Chosen skin a dazzling headache.

The apparition rose, its body clothed in a sinuous metal skin that might have been that of a fish, along the midline of which a lightning bolt jagged down. Taller by far than any mortal should be. Carnelian knew this was the God Emperor. Molochite extended Their hands, which were sheathed in what appeared to be shadowed, glimmering water. In obedience two of the children rose, extending trembling fingers. The God Emperor took their hands, then slid across a fur of blue fire towards Carnelian, whose attempt to recoil was thwarted by the cross. The apparition loomed over him, its horns like scorpion stings. He could not bear to look upon the jade of that perfect face. His gaze fell and was for a moment snared by the exquisite mail. Metal duller than silver, each link no larger than a fingernail. It chinked as They gestured. In response the syblings leaned against the cross and turned it.

Below, beneath the vaulted ribs of the ceiling, stretched an assemblage of Masters. A field of gold masks, gleaming. Squinting, Carnelian saw the white cross of his body reflected, melting, over noses and brows and lips; displayed for them like a whore.

Molochite drifted back into sight. ‘Now suffers he the fate to which all shall be consigned who dare raise their hand against Us.’ They offered Their left hand to one of the children. The Chosen girl looked up, her blue eyes frozen terror. Not only had the hair been shaved from her head, but even her eyebrows. The rims of her eyes were red from where the lashes had been plucked. Tiny fingers fumbled at the hand of the God Emperor and peeled off the glimmering glove. Molochite’s hand was living porcelain as it floated towards Carnelian’s throat. He turned his head away as far as he could. Molochite’s touch settled finger by finger along his jaw line. He tried to shake it off, but this only caused the touch to slide down to his throat, where it lingered on the scar around his neck.

‘You were his lover . . .’ They murmured.

The fingers spread across the span of his collar bone, cupped his shoulder, slid down his chest so that Carnelian could feel the heel of Molochite’s hand as it rubbed over his nipple. One finger tip, another, grazed it. Again, Carnelian tried to pull away, but the cross and its agony tamed him. As the hand pulled down over his stomach horror boiled into his head. He gazed down through tears at the Masters, but they only watched with cold indifference. He tensed his muscles against the pressure of Molochite’s hand as if somehow that might stop it moving lower. His muscles began shuddering as the strength poured out of them like water. His bones felt as if they were coming out of joint. His heart melted like wax down into his bowels. He struggled against the shame, but his body no longer obeyed him. He threw back his head, wanting to die as his body relieved itself upon the floor.

The hand withdrew, suddenly. A hissing. ‘Filthy animal!’

Molochite’s shadow slipped off him. Sensing movement Carnelian lowered his head and saw the Quenthas stooping to clean the floor.

‘Take him away,’ said the beautiful voice, disgust clipping the syllables.

Carnelian gritted his teeth as the cross was lifted and glared defiance upon the gathered Masters as he was carried down steps towards them. At each shudder fighting the panic that his arms must tear out from their sockets.

‘Behold how far from his Chosen nature this one has fallen,’ the God Emperor announced.

The Masters drew back as Carnelian was set down in their midst. Pale as maggots they were, each clothed in commander’s leathers.

‘Examine him carefully. See how tainted he is in flesh and mind. However high, not even one of the Chosen can hope to endure an existence among the bestial creatures of the outer world without much of his angelic nature leaching away. As it is with this one, so it is with Our brother. Neither is now fully Chosen. What else could explain that one of Our own blood should stoop to recruit vermin to bring against Us? Not only has Our brother become hopelessly corrupted but, evidently, he has lost hold of that divine reason that once was his birthright.

‘A host have We gathered here immeasurably more powerful than his rebellion. Though, insanely, he seeks to conceal his weakness within a deluge of bestial slaves, does he really imagine they can withstand Our flame? My Lords may demur that Our apostate brother has won a victory over the Ichorian, but this he did through no genius of his own, but by adopting a tactic common during the Civil War. Within the same books We have found described the technique that rendered that tactic obsolete. This is why We shall deploy Our huimur in two lines. Though the Apostate might pierce the first, Our second shall then be ready to annihilate him.’

Sinking in a mire of shame and agony, Carnelian closed his eyes.

‘Now, my Lords, behold your enemy!’

The clattering awoke in Carnelian a little strength. Light struck the side of his head in bursts. He managed to grind his chin up his shoulder. Another sudden flood of light. Another. He opened his eyes to the merest slits and endured the slicing incandescence. One shutter at a time, a wall of the chamber was being opened up upon a lurid dawn. Beneath a sky clotted with fleshy cloud rose the towers of a leprous city with a pale road running through it like an exposed spine. Carnelian could make no sense of where he was. Then fear bleached the pain away. He stared, convinced he was in a dream. Beyond the city, beneath the clouds, a blood tide was coming in. This was a nightmare he would not wake from. Against the red, the leprous towers were spined with masts and billowing banners like sails. No city this, but rather a vast military camp upon which a wave of dust was bearing down, its surge churned up by Osidian’s sartlar millions.

Though Carnelian had managed to straighten his legs, his balance on them was precarious. Each breath was a struggle against agony and exhaustion. As he sucked air into his lungs in a narrow, snagging thread, he doubted he would find the strength to do it again.

A stench of sulphur woke his senses. He ungummed his eyes. It was a shock to find the chamber before him empty. How long had he been sunk in the fight for breath? Blue fire, swimming below him, released wisps of smoke.

‘Was it not gracious of Us to let you use this cross?’

Carnelian saw Molochite’s dull silver mail, but was too weak to raise his head.

‘We brought it with Us so that We might bear Our brother back to Osrakum upon it.’

Silence. Then Carnelian’s jaw was caught by fingers and his head raised so that he was forced to gaze at the monster. The sublime face of jade seemed to have changed its expression to sneering amusement. ‘We had planned to have you by Us so that you might observe your lover being humiliated.’ The hands shaped airy gestures.
Never mind
. ‘We shall not subject Ourselves to the odour. Even were you cleansed, how could We be certain you would not foul yourself again?’

A gloved hand melted into a vague gesture that had a nuance of unkind regret. ‘We are sure you understand that nothing must be allowed to mar the pleasure of watching Our dear sibling being brought low at last.’

At that moment the wind gusting into the chamber whipped the God Emperor’s cloak against Carnelian’s thigh. For a moment he was certain he could smell the Rains. For some reason that kindled a spark of joy in him. He yearned for its waters to wash away the filth, the pain, his soul, even.

‘You cry for him? Or is it for yourself?’

Carnelian wished the hand holding his chin would let go. Something cold pressed against his cheek. It was the God Emperor’s mask.

‘Why do you love him?’ Molochite whispered through the jade. ‘How does he draw love to him?’ The mask jerked; one of the horns of his crown clinked against the cross. ‘Always he vexed me, encompassed me, thwarted me. But now I will destroy him. Surely I must. How could I not? Have I not crushed them all? Even her.’

Molochite pulled away. ‘We doubt you realize how complete will be Our triumph. At the moment of Nephron’s destruction, We shall regain the absolute power Our ascendant lost to the Wise and you Great centuries ago.’

Carnelian stared at Molochite as he raised his arms, horror mixing with disgust, but there was also some pity.

‘This armour of tempered iron was Theirs, this helm.’ The jade mask gazed around the chamber. ‘And we are here within Their Iron House that We brought out from Osrakum. Today shall We undo the wrong done to Our blood. Undo all wrongs.’

As the jade face turned towards Carnelian, in its slits he was sure he could see the glimmering malice of Molochite’s eyes. ‘Be not worried, cousin, you will not miss the battle. We shall have you hoisted to the roof of this chariot and We are certain you shall live long enough to watch your lover die.’

The gloved hands shaped some signs.
Take him
.

As the syblings bent to lift the cross, Carnelian saw Molochite moving away, then tumbled helpless into a well of pain.

Raging agony was devouring his mind. Then, miraculously, its frenzy calmed. A breeze coolly caressing his skin. He heard the voice and felt something touch his lips. He threaded more air through his raw throat. He opened his eyes and saw the bladed black half-circle of iron, saw its rust-veined surface.

The voice again rose above the rasping of his breath. ‘. . . slit your throat.’