The Third God (101 page)

Morunasa fixed him with crazed eyes. ‘Come closer and I’ll slay him.’

Carnelian glanced quickly to either side to make sure his companions knew to halt. He turned back to Morunasa. ‘If you harm him, your people will surely die.’

Morunasa gave a dry laugh, his lips curling up to reveal his needle teeth. His head jerked up. ‘What do I care for these traitors?’

‘
All
your people will die.’

The cold grin died on Morunasa’s face to be replaced by a haunted look. Carnelian felt his heart stirring for this man at bay. ‘I’ve already promised him—’ He glanced round at Sthax, who was approaching. ‘Promised them all,’ he said, with a gesture taking in all the Marula warriors, ‘that I’ll do everything I can to save those in the Lower Reach.’

He held Morunasa’s gaze as the man tried to see into his heart. Morunasa seemed to find what he sought, for his head dropped and the tension left his limbs. He looked down at Osidian, who Carnelian realized was wearing the oily Obsidian Mask. Morunasa lifted his head, smiling defiantly, but Carnelian could see the man had little fight left in him. Morunasa raised his arms, bared his ravener teeth, then, with a lunge and a vicious twist of his head, he tore first one of his wrists open, then the other. His arms dropped, blood glistening in cords down his pale palms, to pour in skeins from his fingers. Instinctively Carnelian brought his own scabbed wrists together as if he were feeling Morunasa’s pain. He stepped forward, his foot slipping on the blood pooling around Morunasa’s feet. He held the man’s gaze once more, then knelt beside Osidian. His scrutiny took in the new wounds they had cut to put in the maggots, patterning the white flesh between the shadows of the old scars. He gazed at the gleaming, perfect black face that made it seem as if Osidian was one with the colossus towering above them. He reached forward to remove it, wanting to throw it away, to look upon Osidian’s face.

‘No! It is forbidden!’ cried an unhuman voice.

Carnelian turned and saw a homunculus watching him, the figure of his master rising behind with his long silver mask. He considered for a moment defying the Sapient even as he questioned his fear at giving them back their power. He answered himself: Enough of the world is already broken. He became aware other homunculi were moving past him into the shadows beyond. Then he saw the frieze of what seemed skulls beneath the colossus. Grand Sapients. The Twelve slumped against the stone of the column, the odour of excrement and urine coming off them.

‘Let’s get him out of here.’

Carnelian saw it was Fern. They lifted Osidian between them and carried him out of the gloom. As they laid him down, Fern put an ear to his chest. He looked up. ‘He lives.’

Carnelian nodded, but was watching the Grand Sapients being helped up by their homunculi. The ancients leaned upon them like infirm parents. But even as they rose, their hands quested for their children’s throats. The homunculi began to make sounds, half-words, mutterings, as if their masters, drowning, through them were coming up gulping for air.

Carnelian looked up at the small bodies on the netting. They were covered with the fresh wounds into which maggots had been introduced. Some of them had their eyes open, glassy with terror. He left Osidian to Fern, called for Sthax and soon Marula were swarming up to free the children. Carnelian watched, agonized, as one by one they were released, passed down from hand to hand. As he caught a little girl, he winced at how cold and clammy she was; at the tremor in her tiny body.

Even as he helped, his attention was more and more being drawn to the Wise. They had regained their composure. The Twelve, in a line, were confronted by another line of Sapients. Between them, a double interface of homunculi. The Grand Sapients were reconnecting to their Domains. As Carnelian approached them, still reviewing his decision, he heard the rattling vocalizations of the homunculi. A constant, frantic stream of apparently meaningless syllables interspersed with the muttering of the Grand Sapients’ receptive homunculi, through whose throats their masters were receiving who knew what volume of data. Carnelian glanced back at Osidian, lying inert. He refocused on the Wise. It was up to him. Should he try to take control of them? If he did not, how might they take advantage of the situation?

Suddenly, one of the Grand Sapients choked his homunculus silent and began prodding instructions into its neck. Soon others, terminating the receptive mode, were turning their homunculi to transmission. The homunculi that had been speaking fell silent and were soon murmuring an echo to the questions the Grand Sapients were voicing through their homunculi. There was a tension in the fingers of the Grand Sapients as they worked their voices’ necks. Questions and answers shuttled back and forth, homunculi speaking all at once, so that Carnelian was amazed that anything coherent could be being communicated by means of such cacophony. Yet its frantic tone was infecting him with an increasing foreboding. The flow quietened to a murmur, then silence. The Twelve turned their empty eye sockets towards Carnelian. They nodded.

‘Celestial?’ sang one of their homunculi.

For a moment Carnelian could find no words, unnerved by their corpse stares. ‘What news?’

‘The City at the Gates is overrun by sartlar.’

Carnelian’s stomach clenched. Some part of him had known this was what they were going to say.

‘What happened to the legions dispatched to disperse them?’

The Twelve realigned in a row, facing him. Examining their staves, he deduced it was Tribute who now spoke to him.

‘It appears, Celestial, contact with them has been lost.’

‘This certainly seems to be the case,’ said another homunculus at one end of their line. The staff it held bore a smouldering red cross. For a moment, Carnelian was shocked, then realized this was not Legions returned from the dead, but merely his successor.

‘. . . we shall have to verify the integrity of our systems, Celestial.’

‘Some degradation in their functioning is to be expected in this disorder,’ Tribute said.

Carnelian fought his rising dread. ‘What does “overrun” mean?’

The twelve homunculi echoed his words, murmurously.

‘Sartlar are vermin,’ said Tribute.

Carnelian did not consider this much of an answer. If they were still in the vicinity of Osrakum, the creatures must be desperately hungry.

‘Additionally, these instruments of chaos must be destroyed.’

Carnelian wished they would shut up and let him think. ‘Do you mean the Marula?’

‘They have put unclean hands upon the God Emperor, upon us.’

Carnelian knew he must not give way to anger. He must think. Who knew how long it would be before Osidian regained consciousness? If Ykoriana discovered his condition, could she resist seizing power in the Labyrinth? He looked at the Wise. Dare he let them deal with the sartlar? No, he knew too well how pitiless were their methods. He must assume the agreement he had made with Osidian and Ykoriana would hold. The outer world was his responsibility. His father too would have to wait.

He raised his eyes to the Twelve. ‘You will not touch the Marula. I shall take them away with me.’

‘Away, Celestial?’

‘To the City at the Gates. I shall also take the huimur in the Plain of Thrones.’

Tribute took Carnelian’s words from the throat of his homunculus and then made it speak in the same garbled manner that they had been using before. Sound and murmuring interwove as the Twelve conclaved. At last they fell silent and Tribute’s homunculus alone spoke. ‘Will you accept our aid, Celestial?’

Carnelian considered this. At last he raised his hand in affirmation. He would feel better if at least some of the Twelve were where he could watch them. In truth, he was grateful for any help.

‘Then Legions, Lands and Cities will accompany you, Celestial.’

Carnelian nodded, looking at Osidian lying on his bier.

‘We shall take care of Them.’

Carnelian saw the children, Morunasa’s victims, being carried by the Marula. ‘I shall take these children with me too.’

The Wise voiced no objection. Carnelian remembered the thousands more out in tithe cages. ‘Henceforth, you will consider all of the flesh tithe to be under my protection.’

Even as he spoke Carnelian realized these were the preserve of the Domain of Tribute. It could not help but be understood by all the Wise as a challenge to their leader’s authority. So be it; on this issue, Carnelian would not back down.

‘Your property, Celestial?’

‘If that is what it takes.’

‘Very well,’ Tribute said, at last. ‘We shall accept this. For now.’

Carnelian watched the children being led or carried off by syblings towards the cages of the flesh tithe. Other syblings, armed, escorted the few surviving Oracles, who had promised to oversee the children through their period of infestation. Carnelian had felt no need to threaten them; for, after all, most of what survived of their god was now contained in the tiny bodies of those children.

He frowned, remembering the long weary journey through the darkness. It had taken the fight out of him. The whimpering of the children had frayed his compassion, until it was replaced by disgust for what they harboured in their flesh. By the end, however unfairly, he was angry with them. He shook his head. They were just a place to put his anger. He glanced back at the Forbidden Door, uncertain what he was leaving behind. The Twelve were free. Osidian would, most likely, recover. Carnelian was glad that, when he had asked them, the Quenthas had agreed to remain behind to protect him.

He gazed at the Plain of Thrones. Flanking the edges of the Black Field the dragons remained in the positions they had held since the Apotheosis. The multitude they had menaced had all been driven out of Osrakum, leaving the Black Field a mired and stinking plain. He scanned the towered monsters. It would be best to lead them out on Heart-of-Thunder, from whose tower they were wont to take their commands.

Coming up through the floor onto the command deck, he was aware that the cloying, sickly smell pervading the tower was stronger here. As he stepped away to let Fern up, Carnelian became aware the air was being sewn by buzzing flights. Flies. His heart began pounding, his throat grew dry, as he searched the shadows at the back of the cabin. Somehow, Morunasa’s god had found his way here. A bundle lay against a wall. Soft and tapering at both ends like some monstrous chrysalis. As he approached it, he became quickly aware it was the source of the sweet odour. A smell of meat near rotting. He stood over it. Fluids it had oozed had stained the deck. Creeping horror claimed him as he realized the chrysalis had something very like a head. A bloated, leaking, swollen face. He stared with shock as he recognized it. He jumped when it moved. It was alive. Of course he was. Carnelian had seen enough corpses, had smelled enough, to know he was not yet dead.

‘What is it?’

Carnelian looked into Tain’s anxious face. He tried some kind of explanation. His brother’s face twisted strangely when he heard the name. He did not seem to be listening to Carnelian’s explanation of why this thing was there. As Tain gaped at what was left of Jaspar, Carnelian remembered what that Master had done to Tain when he was a boy. Carnelian wondered if the expression on his brother’s face was the satisfaction of revenge. Disturbed, he looked away. There was a shape in the shadows he had not noticed before. Something like a child in a tight knot.

‘You there.’

The knot tightened.

‘I can see you there.’

The shape unbent and Carnelian saw its face and recognized it. ‘You!’

Legions’ homunculus cowered.

‘What are you doing here?’

The little man indicated Jaspar with a shaking hand. ‘Taking care of the Seraph.’ Carnelian’s frown of incomprehension forced more words out of him. ‘Giving the Seraph water. Chewing his food for him.’

Carnelian stared at the homunculus, unable to understand why he should have chosen to prolong Jaspar’s agony. Anger rose in him at the cruelty.

Then Tain cried out: ‘He’s looking at me.’

He stared in horror at Jaspar, whose eyes had squeezed into view between the bloated lids. Carnelian imagined how riddled Jaspar’s body must be with worms. How long had he lain here? Tended by the homunculus just enough to keep him alive. Just alive.

Tain grabbed at Carnelian’s arm, dug his fingers in. ‘For the gods’ sake kill him.’

Carnelian looked at him, not wanting to ask him, asking him: ‘Do you want to do it?’

His brother stared at him as if he thought him mad. Tain shook his head, frowning, backing away. Carnelian became aware Fern was there, watching. He put his hand out, and Fern understood, for he unsheathed a blade and put its hilt in Carnelian’s hand, who turned, crouched, then insinuated its point under the dewlap chins and, finding the root of an ear, punctured the flesh and sliced down. Then, rising, he watched a dark pool widening around Jaspar’s head.

From Heart-of-Thunder’s command chair, Carnelian gazed out to starboard, through the rain, at the ring of standing stones. Though he had had Jaspar’s body removed, the deck scrubbed, the flies driven away, killed, the smell still lingered. He could still see the stains Jaspar had left in the deck. He looked round to the other side of the cabin to where Fern and Tain were sitting against the wall; Fern staring, frowning, grim; Tain still in shock, haunted. Further back, in the shadows, the homunculus. Carnelian felt like punishing the little man for his cruelty. Empathy quenched this impulse. How long had the homunculus been there, tending Jaspar’s near-corpse? Abandoned without hope of rescue. Perhaps he had been cruel, perhaps merely lonely and terrified. Carnelian had to accept that it was he most of all who had abandoned the little man, had forgotten him.

A mutter at his feet made him turn, feeling the dragon beneath responding to his Left’s whispered command. The view through the screen began sliding right until the narrow entrance to the Plain of Thrones came into view. He focused grimly on the task he had before him and wondered what he was taking them all into.