The Third God (64 page)

The flame-pipes guttered, spitting a few last gobbets of liquid flame, then, silence. Stunned, Carnelian watched the smoke lift from the road, ripping, thinning as it rose. The road was black, but covered with lumps, riddled with threads of smoke that unravelled into mist. Flames sprinted through the crusted mess. Red-rimmed gold fissures gaped, puffing steam sprinkled with sparks. The tar tide washed all the way up the leftway wall.

Redness swelling near him made him jerk round to see Jaspar rising. At the same time the lictors dropped, releasing their standards with a clatter onto the road. Tears and phlegm glazed the nearest half-black face. The man’s mouth released a moan as if he were deflating. His unblinking stare of loss made revulsion rise in Carnelian like vomit. He turned on Osidian. ‘Why?’

Osidian’s hands framed appeasement. ‘They would have harried us all the way to Osrakum. Besides, they had lost their use.’

‘But we could have brought them over to our side,’ Carnelian nearly screamed.

Osidian shook his head. ‘They were the creatures of the Great, brought up since childhood to adore them. Nothing would have persuaded them to take up our cause.’

Jaspar’s mask was gazing at the massacre impassively. Carnelian wanted to understand. ‘You brought them here for this?’

Jaspar turned to him his rayed eye. His hand rolled an elegant gesture, as if he were about to pronounce on some dance he had just watched that was skilled, but not quite perfect. ‘They failed me, cousin, neh?’

Staring at that hand, Carnelian became blind with rage.

‘Carnelian. Carnelian?’

He turned to Osidian. ‘I give Imago to you. Do with him as you will.’

Jaspar’s voice: ‘Surely you jest, Celestial . . . your oath . . .’

Osidian’s voice: ‘I swore an oath to you. The Lord Suth Carnelian did not. I am sure you have not forgotten the part you played in our fall. You did not realize we knew? As much as you have wronged me, my Lord, you have wronged him.’

Carnelian saw Jaspar haloed by blood. For a moment he savoured tearing that mask off like a shell, rending the face beneath. He feasted on fantasies of furious tortures. He felt his passion ebbing. It was not just Jaspar who was a monster, but all the Masters.

Carnelian extended his hand. ‘Give me your mask, Jaspar.’

The sun-rayed gold face turned to Osidian, but there was no help there. It turned back to Carnelian. ‘You cannot—’

‘I will not ask again.’

Jaspar pushed back his hood, then fumbled behind his head. The mask came away to reveal a joweled, glistening, pasty face. He put his mask in Carnelian’s hand then shrank away, fear putting a curve into his shoulders and back, his eyes fixed on Carnelian as a bird might regard a serpent arching above it.

Carnelian hardly recognized the man he had once known. He no longer felt rage, just contempt. ‘You two, lictors, bind your betrayer.’

The two men looked up, blearily, their faces blank.

Carnelian was patient with their shock. ‘He brought you all here to die . . .’ He pointed at the smoking charnel field. ‘To die like that. You no longer owe him service. Look into his face, see what kind of man he is.’

A hungry gleam came into the eyes of first one, then both as they fixed upon him whom they had so recently called father.

Jaspar, trying to stand his ground, shrieked: ‘You shall not lay your unclean hands upon me!’

Everyone could smell his sweaty terror. Taking hold of Jaspar’s cloak Carnelian yanked at it, over and over, pulling the Master off-balance, until the silk came away in his hands. Finding an edge he began tearing it into strips. He gave these scarlet ribbons to the lictors. ‘Bind him with these. For what he’s done, we’ll have to determine a fitting punishment.’

When they had finished, Carnelian forced the sun-rayed mask into the hand of one of the lictors. ‘Use this to buy yourselves new lives.’

The last of the Red Ichorians glanced at the metal face they had spent so much of their lives in awe of, before gazing back at their dead with empty eyes.

‘His consciousness rises,’ said the homunculus.

He released his grip from behind the Grand Sapient’s heel, rose from his knees, backed away. Strapped in, Legions stood in the open capsule that was propped up against the wall, his skeletal arms crossed over his chest, his skin like bleached leather, his face concealed behind his one-eyed mask.

Carnelian found it hard to believe this was anything more than a huskman. A tiny movement made him peer through the myrrh smoke uncurling in languid spirals. Legions’ left fist was opening its pale flower a petal at a time. The four fingers splayed, then recurled. The right hand, blossoming, was joined by the first opening again. Soon both were opening and closing, opening and closing. Then the wrists slipped a twist into this motion, turning the hands into the wings of a bird in flight. Then the hinges of the elbow opened and closed, moving this flight away from, then towards, the chest. Crossing, recrossing the arms several times. The motion slowed and died. The arms crossed, the elbows began rising, falling. This turned into a sinuous opening of the arms as if they were seeking to embrace someone. Closing, opening, closing, opening like seaweed in a tide. At last the hands came to rest, open, slightly apart, their heels resting on the bands wrapping round the Grand Sapient’s stomach.

Carnelian’s trance was broken by the homunculus, now wearing his blinding mask, backing towards the capsule. Reaching behind him to grip one of the bands, he raised his heel and placed it next to one of the Grand Sapient’s cadaverous, yellow feet. With a grunt, the little man pulled himself back and up to stand within the capsule. As he nestled his neck into the waiting hands, the fingers meshed about his throat and immediately began to flex.

When they stopped, the child mask of the homunculus murmured: ‘Lord Nephron has it.’

The fingers moved again.

‘A cell, fourth storey, sun-ninety-three. Ten, ten, three.’

Osidian advanced, removing his mask, revealing a sweaty face and eyes bright with anticipation. Unsettled by that expression, Carnelian hesitated before he in turn unmasked.

Osidian addressed the capsule. ‘Sapience, contrary to your expectations, I have won a great victory.’

The homunculus, repeating Osidian’s words, was momentarily interrupted by a convulsion of the Grand Sapient’s fingers that must have hurt the little man, for he flinched. ‘Nephron,’ he said, then resumed his echoing of Osidian’s words.

‘With two legions of the line I have annihilated the Ichorian.’

Carnelian was watching Osidian. He looked so strange: eyes open wide, mouth open too, lips holding a smile. He looked so young. Carnelian realized, with shock, that he had forgotten that Osidian really was not much more than a youth.

‘Has Osrakum been informed?’

The new, strong voice made Carnelian jump. Almost he looked around for some being unexpectedly arrived within the cell. It was the homunculus who had spoken, now nothing but a conduit for his master.

Osidian answered that he had sent the collars of the Ichorian huimur commanders to Osrakum by courier.

‘Has any heliograph been sent?’

Osidian replied it was possible that He-who-goes-before had sent a message, but he did not think it likely.

‘You speak of Imago?’

Carnelian was stunned. How could the Grand Sapient possibly know about Jaspar? While still in Makar, if Legions had known about the Ichorian and Jaspar, surely he would have used that information to gain power over Osidian? And, since then, he had slept, oblivious of the turning of events. Carnelian’s mind raced with superstitious conjectures of what powers this creature might possess. He calmed himself, strove to be rational; it was nothing more than deduction from what they had just told him. The Ichorian had been sent forth from Osrakam. Since it was likely Ykoriana was somehow behind its sending, it followed that whoever commanded it must be one of her allies, and Jaspar had been her chief ally among the Great.

Legions spoke again. ‘It would be in Imago’s interest to remain silent.’

Carnelian tried to work out why that might be the case, but his mind was simply not fast enough.

‘You sent the collars under my seal?’

Osidian began a gesture that, if he had finished it, would have been an apology. ‘Under that of He-who-goes-before.’

A momentary stiffening of the fingers seemed to Carnelian to betray the Grand Sapient’s disappointment. ‘Tell me how all this has come about.’

The verb used the requisitive mode but, to Carnelian’s surprise and dismay, Osidian submitted to its command. As he began explaining, the Grand Sapient steered his narrative, until it seemed to Carnelian he was reading events as if they were beads on a cord.

‘How was this victory achieved?’

Osidian’s face lit up and, oozing pride, he began describing how the battle had proceeded according to his tactics. As he spoke, Carnelian watched the Grand Sapient’s fingers. He detected a twinge when Aurum was mentioned; thereafter, nothing. It made him wonder if the Grand Sapient was divining the part his brethren must have played.

Osidian concluded by recounting how he had destroyed the survivors of the Ichorian, the glow of his achievement bright in his eyes.

‘Your tactic was a commonplace in the early part of the Civil War,’ said the Grand Sapient.

Osidian’s cheeks coloured as if he had been slapped.

‘Until it was rendered obsolete by a counter-tactic. Though you may not be aware of it, it would seem likely you picked this up from the reels you read in our Library.’

These words lit another light in Osidian’s eyes. Beneath knitted brows they bored into the long silver mask. His lips thinned. ‘Nevertheless, I won. There will not be another battle. My victory will lead to chaos in Osrakum. When I appear at the Gates with my legions, the Chosen will bow to me. If they do not, I will lay siege to the Hidden Land.’

‘Your analysis, though sound, is incomplete. News of Imago’s failure will break your mother’s power and shatter the unity of the Clave. The Wise have played badly and their influence is weakened, but is there not a power you have forgotten?’

Osidian frowned, incredulous. ‘My brother?’

‘The God Emperor.’

Osidian looked exasperated. ‘He is my mother’s creature.’

‘You have released her grip on him.’

‘But he is spineless, incapable of independent action.’

Carnelian remembered his meeting with Molochite, relived the power of his presence, his malice, and fear crept into him that Osidian was wrong; that Osidian had miscalculated.

‘He was capable enough to murder your sister and remain unpunished.’

Osidian paled. His eyes widened. ‘My mother—’

‘Was unable to protect her. As, no doubt, she has been unable to protect her new daughter, Ykorenthe, your sister-niece, whom your brother will take for wife.’

Osidian’s face became weak with uncertainty.

‘Child, there is a reason why we have laboured to keep the Chosen locked inside Osrakum. Whenever they have been free to leave, it has led to this chaos.’

Carnelian, wanting to fight back, almost threw the example of the Lesser Chosen legates at the Grand Sapient, but then he recalled how encompassed about by the Law they were, spied upon by ammonites, the communications between them carefully filtered. Perhaps these, who were the least of the Chosen, might only be let out into the outer world, the better to keep the powerful imprisoned within.

‘The Balance of the Powers was constructed to safeguard the Commonwealth from your meddling. It seeks to protect you from yourselves. Removing the Red Ichorians from Osrakum is like un-stoppering a bottle.’

Osidian’s face had grown paler than his leathers. ‘The Sinistrals,’ he sighed.

‘You were raised among them; did they seem to you ineffectual?’

Carnelian saw in Osidian’s face that he had never given them much thought. They had always been there, part of the ritual of his world. Carnelian remembered how confident the sybling Quenthas had been, with their swords, to challenge the Red Ichorians, who had come into the Sunhold to guard his father.

‘Two of the Powers rely on the Sinistral Ichorians for protection from the third.’

Osidian rallied. ‘We have the legions.’

‘Child, you have not seen the Gates. The legions would never have been able to intervene in time to save the Isle from an assault by the flame-pipes of the Red Ichorians.’

Carnelian saw the truth of it. Only the strength of the Sinistral Ichorians had held the Great in check.

‘The Sinistrals were in perfect balance with the Red Ichorians.’

Carnelian digested this, then grew cold, understanding Osidian’s earlier shock. ‘There’s nothing to stop them taking the Three Gates.’

A jerking motion drew his eyes to the homunculus’ throat.

‘Suth Carnelian,’ it muttered and he realized the Grand Sapient had not known he was there.

Osidian’s face distorted with rage. ‘He would not dare!’

‘It is not too late,’ said the homunculus.

‘What?’ Osidian looked in despair.

‘Let me return to Osrakum.’

Osidian shook his head, looking drained.

‘At least let me communicate with my brethren.’