The Third God (89 page)

‘The Halls of Rebirth,’ Osidian said, sounding surprised, as if he had never again expected to see them.

They entered a realm of dream. Vast halls they crossed, giving onto perspectives apparently infinite. Forests of gleaming stone. Cliffs of filigreed marble liked bleached bone. Walls of translucent alabaster hung like mist. Pools bisected landscapes of stone polished to a sheen like oiled skin, that was veined with fiery filaments. Chambers echoed to falls of water. Hanus led them through sequences of spaces like the hollows of a seashell, all hung with lamps like clouded stars. Up flights of steps they followed, each stair bringing them into some new world of form, of shimmering colour, of sound. Every surface was slick with subtle reflections. Gargoyles pushed out through membranes of coral, of lapis lazuli. Faces everywhere vanished when you looked at them directly. Feeling eyes upon him, Carnelian, turning, saw only jewel mosaics so fiendish they mesmerized him. Shadows flitted at the edge of vision but, when he looked round, there was nothing there.

Among these wonders the Marula stumbled, their thick feet leaving trails across the mirrored stone which blushed then faded like breath on glass. Some of the Oracles looked around them wild-eyed, their mouths hanging open. The rest hung their heads, gripping each other, like children skulking through a haunted wood.

Rising into open air was like coming awake. Glancing back the way they had come, Carnelian could see nothing but shadow. The splendour of the palace was already fading. They were on the roof. Terraces spilled their cataracts into the immense pit of the Plain of Thrones. He felt a vast presence behind him so menacing it took courage to turn. As the towering blackness came into sight he stopped breathing, certain it was the Darkness-under-the-Trees rearing to engulf him. He gasped back to life as he recognized the Pillar of Heaven: a black shaft plunging down from the light-veined clouds to impale the earth way off down the broad belly of the Labyrinth.

A distorting shadow, Hanus guided them across the Labyrinth roof. When he came to a halt, at his command the Ichorians lit lamps. Carnelian followed Osidian to stand beside the sybling on the brink of a well, still partially covered by an immense slab. Osidian snatched a lamp from one of the guardsmen and held it aloft. Its light found steps spiralling down into blackness.

‘The Path of Blood,’ Osidian muttered and his words seemed to find an echo in the rumbling sky. He turned to the sybling. ‘My mother went this way?’

‘She did, Celestial.’

‘It is forbidden.’

‘She waits for you, Celestial, alone.’

‘Without attendants?’ Osidian’s tone was incredulous.

‘I myself watched her descend, Celestial. None followed her.’

‘Only a candidate may walk this path, accompanied by the primary sacrifice.’

Carnelian’s heart misgave at that word.

‘She asked that you should bring the Lord Suth with you.’

‘She expects us to walk defenceless into her trap?’

The sybling bowed his misshapen head. Carnelian saw a trail of spots leading down the first few steps. He crouched and reached out to touch one. He expected it to be wet and was surprised when it felt like skin. He pinched the thing up, brought it to the nose holes of his mask. Inhaled. Rose. He extended his hand into the light. The petal sat in his palm like a wound. He looked again at the petals on the steps that still seemed like a trail of blood. The well was exuding from its black throat the odour of blood. The hackles rose on his neck. Was this the well that had so often haunted his dreams? He glanced back at the Pillar of Heaven remembering the stair that had taken him to his first meeting with Osidian. In his gut he knew it was his fate to descend into its depths. Even though what lay down there might be his mortal enemy and his own certain death. ‘I think we should go.’

Osidian’s mask turned to him, imperious. ‘Even after what happened last night?’

‘I am certain she will be alone.’ Carnelian was. Ykoriana would want no witnesses for what she was going to say.

‘You saw this in a dream?’

In so many dreams, Carnelian thought, but said: ‘Trust me.’

Osidian’s gold face regarded him impassively. ‘Very well.’ He raised the lantern, perhaps to check it had enough oil.

‘Light is forbidden—’ the sybling began, but Osidian cut him off with a harsh gesture. He passed the lantern to Carnelian, then commanded two of the Sinistrals to give him their swords. Taking them, he offered one to Carnelian, who shook his head. Osidian handed back the unwanted sword, then muttered some instructions to Morunasa. Carnelian set his foot on the top of the stair and, holding the lantern out so that its light fell on the next few steps, he began the descent. As he followed the wall of the well round, he glanced back to make sure Osidian was following him. A grating sound made him aware the slab was being pulled over the opening.

‘We will not be coming back this way,’ Osidian said.

Carnelian suppressed a thrill of panic as the last rind of the dark sky was eclipsed by the stone. Then he resumed the descent, their footfalls having acquired a disturbing echo.

The steps spiralled them down, down into the blackness. Fearing his sight dangerously impaired by the eyeslits through which he was peering, Carnelian removed his mask and hung it at his waist. A moist exhalation rising up from the depths made his skin clammy. The air was thick with the odour of spilled blood. Carnelian put his hand out to touch the wall. It was gritty, slimy. He brought his fingers to his nose.

‘Rust,’ said Osidian.

Carnelian glanced up and saw he too had unmasked. He watched Osidian squinting into the blackness below.

‘If you were going to your Apotheosis, I would be going to my death.’

Osidian focused on Carnelian’s face and he frowned. ‘Go on.’

Carnelian resumed the descent, each step taking him closer to his doom. Notions flitted through his head: of murder and becoming a god; of despair and a striving for absolution.

Down and further down they went. The breeze from below slowly died. It grew hotter until their robes were clinging to their skin. It became harder to breathe. The lantern flame was guttering.

At last they reached the ground and saw a tunnel leading off into blackness. As they moved into it, their hackles rose: shapes were following them. Carnelian convinced himself they were only reflections given feverish life by the pulsing flame. Then the light died and they were in blackness. They came to a halt. The only sounds in the world were their breathing and his own heartbeat. The blackness was smothering. A touch on his hand made him recoil.

‘Just me,’ Osidian whispered.

Carnelian let his hand fall, questing in the darkness for Osidian’s. Their fingers found each other. They crept forward, hand in hand.

Ahead, beyond the end of the tunnel, was what appeared to be a clot of blood glowing. Carnelian and Osidian slowed, unsure of what it was they were approaching. Osidian slipped his hand free of Carnelian’s as they advanced. He raised his mask to set it before his face. Reluctantly, Carnelian copied him and was glad when its slits subdued the glare.

They emerged into open space, both still mesmerized by the mass of redness. This was surmounted by a halo of darker red. Crusted and ridged, like a dried puddle of blood, at whose centre was a face of gold, so beautiful it stopped Carnelian’s breath.

‘Mother,’ said Osidian, coming to a halt at the entrance to the tunnel, half emerging into the light, half remaining in shadow. His mask fell with his hand, exposing his pallid face. Carnelian registered the movement, but his attention could not long be diverted from the scarlet apparition. She was clothed in rose petals. A countless number of them sewn together in drifts, each like a tiny gouge of bloodied skin. The whole robe seemed almost to bleed, in contrast to the deathly, perfect mask that sat above it.

‘My son,’ the mask said, in a rich, melodious voice. The jewelled halo flashed and coruscated as Ykoriana gave Osidian a nod. ‘Carnelian,’ she said, giving another nod.

The rose robe whispered, tore red, shedding petals as she raised an arm. A porcelain hand emerged and formed a gesture of invitation. Drawn by its command they both stepped further into the light. Carnelian raised his mask as a screen, breaking the compulsion of fascination long enough to be able to look up and round. They were emerging from an opening set into a staircase that rose precipitously, lit with lamps, to a great height. On either side tiers shelved off into the gloom. He was becoming aware of the vastness of the cavern they were entering when a flash of light momentarily illuminated its entirety for a moment. An immense space backed with a ladder of tiers set with stone seats. A dull rumble caused the world to quiver as he looked down. He waited until another flash revealed the Plain of Thrones below. They were standing in the Pyramid Hollow. When the darkness returned, the only thing he could see out there was, far away, something like a star fallen burning to the earth.

‘On your head is all the destruction, all the deaths, even among the Chosen,’ Osidian said, pointing to the fallen star. Carnelian regarded the point of light. It was located near the rim of the Plain of Thrones, where the Chosen dead had been carried. That light was likely a pyre made from the palanquins that had brought them there. He remembered other pyres.

He dropped his mask and gazed once more upon Ykoriana. She towered above them; no doubt she stood on ranga. Her robe gave off an intoxicating perfume.

‘I played my part in the destruction of the Balance, but let us not pretend, my Lord, I brought it down alone.’

‘My part in it was also your doing, Madam,’ snarled Osidian, his sword rising in his hand so that Carnelian feared he might impale his mother. ‘You snatched from me what was rightly mine.’

‘I too have lost much, had much taken away from me,’ said Ykoriana, oblivious to the blade aimed at her. Carnelian remembered that she was blind.

‘The Chosen chose me to become the Gods. What you did was a crime, a sin.’

The jewelled halo winked and ran with light as it jerked back. Ykoriana laughed. ‘A sin? You turn the world upside down to right a wrong committed against you and that is perfectly justifiable but, when I act against the wrongs done to me, you name that a sin.’

The point of Osidian’s sword slowly fell. Carnelian was relieved. He gazed up at Ykoriana’s face of gold trying to work out what it was he felt. Whatever it was, he did not want her slain there, now, in cold blood.

Osidian’s face saddened. ‘Years I endured living among filthy barbarians.’ Tears lensed his eyes. Carnelian felt that sight awakening his own grief.

‘I was a slave,’ Osidian said, bleakly, gazing up at his mother through tears. ‘A slave.’ Horror paled his face. ‘It was a living death within the funeral urn.’

The halo dulled as the gold face inclined towards them. ‘You forget, Nephron, to whom you speak. All my life I have been confined, much of it in darkness.’

Osidian grimaced. ‘But it was not I who did that to you,’ he pleaded.

Ykoriana straightened. ‘That hardly matters. What I did to you was not out of hatred. It was simply a tactic in the slow, cold war that has been fought within the House of the Masks for centuries. We are all casualties of that war.’

But not the only ones, thought Carnelian. He flinched when he saw Osidian’s face changing. So would Ykoriana had she been able to see his barely contained fury. Many who had seen it had died. ‘Unnatural mother,’ he hissed.

The gold mask above them moved a little to gaze down on them with imperious scorn. ‘I deny your right to make a claim on me. I know you not who hardly ever saw your face, who never felt your mouth upon my breast. Even your voice is a stranger’s. You were taken from me at birth so that I did not even have a touch of you to salve the pain of your release.’

Her head fell. ‘But you cannot know what it is to carry a child within you, to have it torn bleeding from your womb, knowing it is born to die in sacrifice, to be imprisoned, to be used as I have been used. Yet I have done what I could to protect those of my children that I love.’ She raised her head. ‘You know, Carnelian, how far your father was prepared to go to protect you.’

Carnelian, even while he wondered at the softness of her voice, felt a barb in those words that tore at him.

She pulled herself up and became imperial again. ‘A mother’s love is stronger by far than a father’s. To save her child, she would destroy the world.’

There was a terrible edge to her voice that shook Carnelian, not only with fear, but also with a twinge of desire to be that child.

‘And, yet, you gave yourself and the Masks to the murderer of your daughter.’

Carnelian looked at Osidian, stung by the venom in those words, but saw no rage burning in his eyes, only . . . was it hope?

The petal robe, shivering, gave off a wall of perfume. ‘Would seeking revenge against her murderer have brought my daughter back from her tomb?’ Her voice was as cold as the metal of her mask. ‘Women are forced to see life as it is. In contrast, you men are so ready to believe in your fantasies, to have your every expectation confirmed. In spite of hating your brother for what he had done, I protected him because he was my path to power. You prefer to believe women victims to their passions, but we can be at least as calculating as you. Love does not make us weak, but strong. Do you remember, Carnelian, when your father brought you to see me? He did so hoping that, through love of my sister, I would stay my hand against you and, even, against him.’ She laughed. ‘Why do men prefer to make themselves blind to who we really are? Perhaps this is why you use us as you do, but be certain I will not let it happen again.’

Carnelian, who had felt he was being reduced to a stupid child, could not follow her. ‘Let what happen again?’

Her mask seemed to regard him for a while. ‘Molochite, I lost control of; you, Nephron, I will not.’

There was doubt and confusion in Osidian’s face. Carnelian felt no doubt, only fear, but also a longing for the relief of at last confronting what he knew was coming.

‘I shall wield not only the power I once had but, now the Balance is broken, vastly more; not only here in Osrakum, but in the world beyond.’