The Third God (111 page)

The pain of the coming partings spread through the household. It was as if those who were leaving were already on the boats; those left behind lining the quay holding their hands, grips tearing as the boat pulled away. His brothers too would be losing their father and also their mother without hope of seeing either again. Child and man fused in each one of them. One wanting to cling, the other knowing he had to pull away. The unbearable had to be borne. Their burden was made lighter when Grane announced he would stay behind to look after their parents. He did not have to tell them why: they could see his stone eyes.

Inevitably, these partings, the gathering of stores that the Master had had the foresight to set aside, all this brought back to many the destruction of the Hold and the famine that those who had been left behind had had to endure. Still, even those who had known terrible hunger gladly gave up what food there was for their children to take with them.

The first morning after Carnelian had appeared at the coomb, he and Fern had watched the boats bringing the Masters back from the Gates. After that, nothing disturbed the eerie calm of the Hidden Land except, sometimes, a torn banner of smoke drifting across the sky from the Valley of the Gate.

On the third day after they had reached the coomb, Fern spotted a pale grain where the carved pebble beach touched the Skymere. Something had washed up on the mud.

The two of them, alone on the mud, an immense white corpse at their feet. Already bloating, its greasy marble was slashed with blue-lipped wounds. The hands had been hacked off, the face sliced away, leaving a mask of blood. Carnelian recalled, with a deep resonant horror, the red faces in his dreams. It was a Master.

He gazed out across Osrakum. A beautiful morning. The sapphire waters of the lake. The emerald Yden. The jade hump of the Labyrinth. The pure green slopes that concealed the Plain of Thrones. To the north, coombs were revealed by the rising sun as jewels.

At his feet, the water level had fallen enough to reveal a band of greened-black rock that edged the Skymere as if it were a vast well. He shuddered at what might be revealed were the lake entirely to drain.

He looked once more upon the corpse. It shocked him to the core, this mutilated Master. It was not just that he felt in his gut horror at the tortures the man had had to endure, but at who it was must have done this. He gazed back at the palaces piling up behind him, porticoes and friezes and, among the columns and pierced marble, all kinds of openings, each seeming as blind as a Sapient’s eyepit. Yet, from any one, a Master could be looking down; worse, one of their slaves.

Carnelian removed the blanket he had thrown on and covered the corpse with it. Its border was quickly darkened by the stream winding down from under the skirt of carved pebbles. He watched it washing the noisome liquids leaking from the corpse down to pollute the lake.

There were signs that the drop in water level was slowing, but they dare not set off until it stopped altogether. The sky was a clear blue, untainted by smoke. Though he had been expecting that for days, it still seemed shocking.

‘The attacks on the Blood Gate have stopped,’ Fern said.

Carnelian nodded. ‘Soon it’ll be time to go.’ He saw the relief on Fern’s face and allowed himself to see past his grim determination to follow his plan, through to the hope there was in this sign. He glanced up towards the Plain of Thrones. Was Osidian still there, in the Stone Dance of the Chameleon? He became aware Fern was looking at him, but decided not to notice. He was not clear enough about how he felt to talk about it. He indicated the corpse with his chin. ‘We need to do something about this.’

That night, one of the coombs on the far shore of the Skymere lit up, luridly, as if it were a fire in a grate. When morning came a lazy column of smoke could be seen uncurling into the sky. More smoke seemed to be rising from a neighbouring coomb, but its origin was concealed from them by a buttress of the Sacred Wall. Bloody rebellion was spreading around the shore of Osrakum.

Later that day, Opalid headed an embassy from the Second Lineage to their Ruling Lord. Carnelian stood with his father as he lied to them, telling them he did not know what was happening, but that, the moment he did, Opalid would be the first to be informed. When the Masters left, Carnelian told his father that he felt Opalid had not believed him. His father nodded, grimly. ‘I have faith the tyadra will remain loyal to me.’

Carnelian wondered for how long, once he had left with half the household and all of its remaining supplies, but he locked his doubts away. He felt like a child, harbouring hope that a thing unsaid could not come to pass.

Lying with Fern in the dark, Carnelian finally came to a decision.

Deliberately thinking no more about it, for he knew that, however he phrased it, he was going to hurt Fern, he said: ‘I have to go and see the Master.’ He felt Fern tense beside him. ‘I could tell you that this is the most certain way to get the boats we need, which is probably true, but I will not try to deny that I want to say goodbye to him.’ He might have added that Osidian was his brother – but Osidian was also the murderer of Fern’s people.

Fern stirred against his side. ‘Will it be dangerous?’

Carnelian felt an overwhelming gratitude for Fern’s level tone. ‘It could be.’

‘Is it your dreams that drive you to this?’

Carnelian shook his head. ‘No.’

And they left it at that.

Overnight the level of the lake had hardly changed at all. A bell sounding again made him glance up at the main palace quay, which was stranded by the falling water. The summoning bell was up there, but it would be down here on this muddy shore that the bone boat would have to pull up. His father seemed huge in a cloak much grander than Carnelian’s black military one. Ebeny beside him, tiny, yet his bulk could not eclipse her beautiful, brittle smile, her sad eyes. Fern was frowning. He knew Carnelian was going into peril.

‘Are you sure you want to go alone?’ said Keal.

Carnelian nodded. They were none of them happy about that. Grane’s frown was causing his eyelids to ruck against his stone eyes. ‘This is our final goodbye, then, big brother.’

The blind man ducked a nod, ‘Master,’ then would have knelt except that Carnelian held him up and embraced him. He felt Grane soften in his arms, lean into him, a little, for a moment accepting the love Carnelian was giving him. Then they drew apart, Carnelian frowning back tears. Ebeny’s eyes seemed bright glass. His instinct was to fall before her, clasping her round the waist, putting his head where she could stroke it, comforting him, but he was no longer a child, though the child was still there within him. He stooped to put his arms about her. Felt her wet face slide past his cheek. ‘Mother,’ he whispered into her ear.

‘My son,’ she whispered in his.

Gently, he disengaged, smiling through his tears at her, holding hands, until these too let go.

His father’s mask seemed a furtive fire in the hood of his cloak. A Great Lord among his servants. Carnelian’s eyes fell, drawn to a movement. A pallid hand, all bones and sinew. The Suth Ruling Ring back in its place like a swollen joint. The hand rose and for a moment seemed about to speak. The other joined it and, together, they moved into the shadow of the hood to release the mask. Carnelian was compelled to turn by a sudden, startled movement. Keal stood back, a look of horror frozen on his face. His instinct was that he was facing blinding; nevertheless he did not look away. Panic stirring in Carnelian was stilled by his brother coming alive with wonder. Their father gazed with love upon Keal, a son who had never before seen his father’s face. Suth turned his eyes to Carnelian, who could not bear his father’s look of aching sadness. Carnelian approached him, wanting to say something, but his father spoke first. ‘You are my son too, Carnelian.’

Carnelian embraced him. ‘You are my father.’

They stood together thus for some time, Carnelian feeling how weak his father was in his arms. Fearing that, should he let go, his father would fall broken upon the ground. Then he felt strength coming into him, and his father pushed him away. ‘The boat approaches.’

Carnelian put on his mask for fear of terrifying the kharon. The bone boat slowed, shipping her port oars as she sought the rocky shore. His father was again a Master wearing an imperious face of gold.

Carnelian turned to Fern. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Fern gave him a nod. They had already said their goodbyes.

There was an inky space between the bone boat and the muddy rock upon which he stood. The kharon ferryman was below upon the deck, his bony crown rising up like gnarled fingers. He extended his whitened hand for his payment. Carnelian took hold of it with his left hand, held it as the ferryman attempted to jerk it back. It relaxed in his grip. After some hesitation, the man helped jump him aboard. Soon oars were clunking against the rock as they pushed the boat away from the shore.

To keep his people in sight, Carnelian moved back along the bow towards the stern as they slid away. He stopped short of the ferryman and leaned out upon a bony rail. He saw his father and his mother holding hands, seeming no longer to care to whom they announced the truth of their relationship. For a moment Carnelian managed to hold onto Fern’s dark eyes.

Losing sight of them, Carnelian turned to the ferryman. Against the stern post he stood, the black and white design of his robe a furious dapple uncomfortable to look upon. His white-washed hands steady on the steering oars provided a quiet counterpoint. The turtle glyph was like a saurian egg in the nest of his crown, but it was his sinister ivory mask that made it seem he was gazing away off over his shoulder. Carnelian was close enough to smell his stale sweat; close enough to see through the slit to the gleam of his single eye. ‘Didn’t you fear bringing your boat to my coomb?’

As the ferryman shook his head, his crown rustled. Carnelian gazed at him, his eyes finding the edges of the delicate mosaic that formed his mask. Not ivory, then, more probably it was made from the same bone from which the boat was wrought. Carnelian realized he had never before heard a kharon speak. For all he knew, they, like the Wise, might have been lacking tongues as well as an eye. He tried again, this time in Quya. ‘Did you not fear coming to my coomb?’

‘Seraph,’ said the ferryman, ‘we are into your service bound.’ His Quya was husky, thick, sounding strangely antique.

‘But you must be aware of the disturbances?’

The ferryman bowed his crowned head.

‘Still you came . . .’

‘No troubles did we observe in Coomb Suth, Seraph.’ Then as, Carnelian considered this, he added, ‘We hoped it would be thee, Seraph, who summoned us.’

Carnelian was taken aback by this. Confused. ‘You know who I am?’

The crown rustled again. ‘Seraph Carnelian of the Masks.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘We carried thee to Coomb Suth, Seraph. You paid us with sky-metal.’

Carnelian regarded the ferryman with a more acute eye. These kharon were more aware of things than he had guessed. Clearly, they communicated among themselves. He tried to imagine how recent events might have appeared to them. Though each was possessed only of a single eye, between them they had enough to observe everything. The gentle sculling of the oars impressed itself upon Carnelian’s hearing. How many kharon were there beneath his feet? And there must be women of their kind, and children. He mused for a moment on how their society formed a ring along the shore of the Isle.

‘Why didst thou, Seraph, break the sluices?’

Carnelian heard the tremor in the man’s voice. He was brave to be so bold. Carnelian considered rewarding him with an answer, but his heart misgave. It was too soon and now it occurred to him that what he must ask of the kharon must be asked of all of them at once. He considered this for some moments before speaking. ‘If the kharon wish to know what is happening in Osrakum and the world beyond, then you must send an embassy into the Plain of Thrones.’

Lurching, the boat betrayed the ferryman’s reaction. ‘Impossible,’ he sighed.

‘There is a good chance you could talk to the God Emperor Themselves.’

The whitened hands curled tighter round the oars. ‘We are permitted only the Inner Shore and the Shadowmere.’

Carnelian wondered at how strangely the ferryman named the lake, even as he tried to find a way to persuade him to do what he was now even more sure he needed. Again he thought hard before speaking lest he should lead them into peril. He glanced up at the Sacred Wall. The peace within its circle was an illusion. How could these people hope to survive what was coming?

‘You say you know who I am,’ Carnelian said.

‘Carnelian of the Masks,’ said the ferryman.

‘Then you must know that I am brother to the God Emperor, who went with him into the outer world, returned in triumph and who survived his elevation.’

The nest crown inclined and Carnelian was certain the kharon not only knew this to be true, but understood the implications. ‘Even as I have defied the Law, so must you. Upon my blood I swear I shall answer for your coming before the God Emperor my brother.’