The Third God (63 page)

‘My Lord Suth,’ said one, his deep voice Aurum’s. ‘Behold the evidence of our victory.’

Carnelian glanced at the service collars, the fire of their gold dulled and clotted with gore. He looked up, searching for Osidian. There was a slight inclination in the heads of those Lords that led his eye round to the one inspiring their deference. ‘And Imago?’

‘There are only fifty-two collars here and his body was not found,’ said Osidian.

Carnelian knew there should be fifty-four.

‘If he still lives, he will come to me.’

Carnelian tried to deduce the basis of this certainty. Jaspar had failed not only Ykoriana, but also the Great. He could hardly expect to find succour among the Wise. Thus, all he could hope for now was that he might come to some accommodation with Osidian.

Aurum gazed north. ‘He will be in a nearby watch-tower. The only leverage left to him is controlling communications between ourselves and Osrakum.’ The Master’s tone of contempt was edged with glee.

Osidian shifted and all there turned to see him indicating the collars. ‘My Lord Aurum, oversee the loading of these onto a beast and escort it to the nearest tower. There make arrangements for them to be couriered to the Clave.’

‘Under whose seal, Celestial?’

Osidian removed Legions’ ring from his finger and gave it to Aurum. Carnelian could not see how this could work. ‘Will Jaspar let them pass?’

Osidian made a smile gesture. ‘We have to leave him something to bargain with. I expect we will, quite soon, manage to persuade him to send them along the road under the seal of He-who-goes-before. I shall now climb to the heliograph and attempt to open communications with him.’

‘May I accompany you, Celestial?’ Carnelian asked.

Osidian lifted his hand in assent. The other Lords bowed low as they let them through.

‘What are you doing with the Lepers?’

In the shadow of the monolith, Osidian’s mask had a sinister cast. ‘I have no further need of them.’

Chilled by his tone, Carnelian, glancing out, saw some Leper stragglers moving off along the road and wondered if Lily was once more among them. He denied his dread its hold on him and mustered his strength for a fight. He turned back. ‘You are going to honour the oath you swore to them?’

Disdain was frozen into the gold of Osidian’s mask. ‘The situation has changed. As soon as the supplies I have sent for arrive from Makar, we shall march upon Osrakum. Even if I wished it, there is no time to train Aurum’s crews to replace their Chosen commanders.’

Carnelian understood then from where Aurum’s renewed vigour had come. ‘What have you promised him?’

Osidian made a gesture of dismissal. ‘What is pertinent is that my imminent triumph in Osrakum has made him unconflicted in his support. With him come those he commands.’

‘I did not think you would so easily betray your honour.’

Osidian’s fingers began to curl, but then quickly straightened. ‘There will be time enough to send him back once I have no further use for him.’

Carnelian felt icy fear at where his next question would lead, but he knew he had no choice but to ask it. ‘And what if the Lepers do not accept this?’

‘Do you imagine they are in any position to defy me?’ Osidian turned into the shadows of the stables. ‘Persuade them to leave while they still can.’

Carnelian was left frozen where he stood, watching Osidian become one with the darkness. He could not rid himself of the conviction that the Master who had massacred the Ochre had returned. Were things sliding towards the abyss as they had done before? Osidian had had no further use for the Tribe; they had been in his power too. Lily and her Lepers had become at least as much of an affront to his vision of himself as had been the Ochre. Carnelian felt his fear fraying into panic. How much had this to do with him letting the Lepers take Osidian prisoner? Even without the maggots gnawing at his flesh, this was not the kind of humiliation Osidian left unrepaid. Suspicion arose in him. Had Osidian really lost control in the battle? Had he really been unable to steer Jaspar’s rout away from their left wing? The wing commanded by the woman to whom he had sworn his oath.

Carnelian centred himself. Osidian had not yet moved against the Lepers, though he could have done so easily. There was some hope in that. It seemed his oath still bound him to some extent, but for how long? The Lepers must leave immediately.

The Marula had resumed their guarding of the watch-tower. As he moved through them, they abased themselves. He took his time and was rewarded by a black face momentarily glancing up at him: Sthax showing he had survived.

From the road, Carnelian descended a ramp made from compacted rubble. Larger fragments of the demolished section of leftway formed a boulder field on either side, from which he emerged on the edge of the new Leper camp. Their multitude seemed a colony of gulls. He lingered, gazing at them, wondering if Lily was there and, if she was, how he might find her without exciting a riot. Near the edge of the crowd, a figure rose and must have noticed him, for it came directly towards him. As he recognized it was Fern, Carnelian’s heart misgave. He knew that what he had come to say could only serve to tear open yet again the wound of Fern’s grief. However, it was Fern who would understand better than anyone else what terrible danger the Lepers were in and Carnelian needed all the help he could get to persuade them to leave.

‘Is Lily there?’ he said as Fern came near.

Fern nodded grimly, so that Carnelian became afraid for her. ‘Has she recovered?’

‘As much as can be expected. Wait here and I’ll bring her to you.’

Carnelian watched Fern as he returned to the crowd. When he came back, there was a smaller shrouded figure with him. Carnelian led them both into the shadow of a boulder and there unmasked. The others responded by freeing their heads from their shrouds. Carnelian regarded Lily, saw how aged she looked, how fragile.

‘You’re going to have to leave now.’

Lily looked up at him, haunted. ‘Give us Au-rum and we shall go.’

Carnelian regarded her bleakly. ‘The Master’s not ready to give him to you.’

‘He’s not going to keep his promise?’

‘He’ll send him to you once he has no further need of him.’

Lily, frowning, looked close to angry tears. ‘When?’

He rejoiced at the return of some of her spirit. ‘I don’t know.’

Her frown deepened. ‘He’s not going to give him to us at all, is he?’

Carnelian wanted to contradict her pessimism, but when he imagined Osidian far away, imagined him having achieved his aims, then he could not see him sending Aurum back to the Lepers. ‘You must leave while you still can.’

‘Do as he says,’ Fern said, the pain raw in his voice.

Lily looked at the Plainsman, bewildered. ‘We can’t return empty-handed, we simply can’t . . .’

A look of shame came over Fern: ‘We can still sack the city?’

Carnelian did not feel he was in any position to lecture them and was trying not to judge them. ‘As long as you don’t interfere with his supplies, I don’t imagine the Master will care what happens to Makar.’

Lily was shaking her head, staring. ‘This makes a mockery of all we’ve suffered. How can we add this defeat to that which destroyed so many of my people? If we return defeated, we will fade, slowly, broken. We may as well die here.’ Her pale lips formed a thin smile. ‘And wait here in hope that we’ll remind you and the Master of your honour.’

Carnelian could think of nothing to say.

Lily set her face. ‘Besides, too many of the wounded are not ready to be moved.’

Carnelian nodded, feeling hollow. ‘Once he has his supplies we’ll be marching north.’

Lily nodded absent-mindedly and, then, pulling her shrouds back over her head, began walking away. Carnelian and Fern caught each other’s look of despair. Fern grunted something, then followed Lily.

Standing on the northern edge of the heliograph platform, Carnelian gazed down into the camp. On his right the chaos of the new Leper camp; on his left, the far greater expanse of the auxiliary camp that faced the Lepers through the gap in the leftway wall.

He glanced round to where Osidian was sitting in the shadow of the heliograph. Beside him was the homunculus, ready to operate the device. When Carnelian had come up onto the platform he had hidden nothing from Osidian. He had said that, justifiably, the Lepers were reluctant to leave without that which they had been promised. He had tried to make light of this, saying, What does it matter? Osidian had growled that he would starve them, refuse them water. Carnelian had pointed out that their wounded needed time to build up the strength to make the move. In a few days’ time the supplies would have arrived from Makar and they would leave the Lepers behind, who would then have no choice but to return to their valleys. Osidian had made a loose gesture that Carnelian chose to see as agreement.

He focused on their camp. What would they be returning to? He could only hope Lily was wrong, that her people would manage to rebuild their lives even without Aurum as a symbol of justice. He grew grim at the thought that in a few days he would have to part from Fern once more, for ever. He wondered if he should attempt to send Poppy and Krow back to the Valleys with him.

He squinted north along the road, as if hoping to see the future and Osrakum. All there was to see was the road narrowing away to a thread from which, far away, there rose the peg of the next watch-tower. He willed it to begin flashing. His feelings were too much in turmoil for him to know how he would react to seeing Jaspar again, but at least he would provide some distraction, though not necessarily a pleasant one. Osidian seemed to be awaiting Jaspar’s arrival with the predatory patience of a spider sitting at the heart of its web.

The Master approaching seemed enveloped in red flame. With his vast cloak he could have been the sandstorm made flesh. Two figures flanked him, glimmering as if they were clothed in sunlit water. Behind came slaves with dragonfly tattoos upon their faces. They had descended from a dragon, all sweeping slopes of rouged hide, sickle-horned, bearing upon its back a castle of bone from which rose a mast that held aloft a rayed sun gleaming in the dusty air. Behind the monster stretched a field of lances that flickered scarlet pennants north along the road as far as Carnelian could see. Drifts of aquar plumes, the long volumes of their beaked heads, the casques of their riders, spired and feathered, gold collars at their necks, their half-black faces: everything combined to make an ever-varying tessellation that confused the eye. This spectacle was flanked by an avenue of Osidian’s dragons that stretched down the side of the road to hazy distance.

Though Carnelian wanted to glance round to see the reassuring bulk of Earth-is-Strong and Heart-of-Thunder, he could not take his eyes from the advancing scarlet apparition. He had had a notion of remaining aloft in his command chair in case Jaspar should be planning some treachery, but Osidian had insisted they must confront their enemy together. The scarlet apparition raised its hand to show the emberous red jewel of the Pomegranate Ring like a wound through its palm. From the right eyeslit of its mask rays radiated across the golden skin. The last time he had seen that perfect face, it was his father who had been behind it. For a moment he expected it to be his father who spoke.

‘I have come, Celestial, as we arranged. Are you prepared to make the same oath to me now that you made by means of the heliograph?’

Carnelian knew that voice, but it was not his father’s.

‘On my blood I swear I shall not harm you, Imago,’ said Osidian.

Carnelian flinched, shocked, but said nothing.

‘Honour now your part of our agreement, my Lord.’

Jaspar hesitated a moment, then glanced to one of his lictors and made an elegant sign with a gloved hand. The lictor bowed. ‘As you command, my father.’

The lictor turned to the massed Ichorians and, raising his standard, he angled it down until it nearly touched the road. The nearest aquar ranks sank first, this movement sweeping back along the road. In their thousands they climbed out from their saddle-chairs. The striking of their feet upon the road was like a sudden hailstorm. Jaspar, who had turned to watch, waited until the sound was faint in the distance, then turned back. For moments that perfect face gazed imperiously upon them. The only sound a creaking as one of the monsters behind them caused the tower on its back to shift. Carnelian was trying to grasp what he was feeling when, suddenly, Jaspar fell to one knee. His cloak floated for a moment then settled. He offered up something that glimmered in his hand. ‘I give the Ichorians to you, Celestial, with myself.’

Carnelian registered the look of horror on the half-black faces of the lictors. One took a step back, staring at their kneeling master. Carnelian was not sure whether it was the statement or the action of kneeling that had shocked them. For He-who-goes-before to offer himself to one of the House of the Masks was inconceivable. But then, so was such an act of abasement before one who was only a Jade Lord. After all, Jaspar had been elected to incarnate the majesty of the Great. Such a being should kneel before none but a fully consecrated God Emperor.

Movement made him glance round to see Osidian accepting from Jaspar what Carnelian saw was the Pomegranate Ring. Osidian seemed to be examining it even as he raised his hand. Carnelian was trying to read its shape when twined voices of brass from behind him blared so thunderously he was bent by their gale. Heart-of-Thunder’s trumpets. A signal, then.

He sensed Osidian’s expectation. His masked face was fixed towards the road before them. With increasing alarm, Carnelian followed its gaze and, at first, he could see nothing but a swirling consternation among the Ichorians. Then he saw the pall drifting up from the dragon towers all down the road. Their pipes were being lit. His gaze darted to the road, where men were running, trying to mount their aquar, crying out. He moaned with horror as a whining almost beyond hearing swelled into a choking scream and the first pipe spat fire. All down the line, flame jets ignited. He inclined his head so that the slits of his mask shielded his eyes from the glare. The space between the dragons and the leftway wall began to fill with rolling black smoke that, as it frothed and boiled, allowed glimpses of the furnace in which the Ichorians and their aquar were burning like tinder.