The Third God (107 page)

Barring the opening between the grille and the Cloaca bed was a massive portcullis clogged with filth. In slots cut into the walls on either side, Ichorians were greasing the tracks in which ran the counterweights that controlled the portcullis. Eventually, it would have to be raised. Reluctantly, Carnelian looked upstream to where the Cloaca was choked by the immense corpse dam.

In the Cloaca, his feet squelched deep into a stinking putty. On the opposite wall, superimposed tidelines showed the levels where water had run. Through the portcullis, he could make out the Cloaca curving left, out of sight. He lingered, trying to resolve a feeling that he had seen this place before, then turned to face the dam. He began wading towards it through the filth, the fetor so thick it was almost a physical barrier.

The slope rising before him was like the midden mound beneath Qunoth, though immeasurably vaster. Of corpses, mouldering, mulching down to squeeze out their juices which were licking around his feet. He surveyed that mountain, judging the labour needed to release the waters it was damming. When he had stood upon the Blood Gate tower so far above, gazing down, it had seemed a simple thing to describe the opening they must make, as if with a single sword-cut. Sapients had described how, given a narrow channel through, the pent-up fury of the lake waters would quickly flush the whole mass away. Standing before it, Carnelian found it harder to believe their plan could work.

Around him, Ichorians, chins soiled with vomit, were trying not to see the limbs, the rotting faces in the mound they were going to have to dig through. Carnelian knew his impulse to work alongside them was inappropriate.

Climbing back up to the Blood Gate, he released more Ichorians and sent them down to the Cloaca. Thereafter, each day, standing among the mute heliographs, he watched them labouring far below in those sewers. Sometimes, when the breeze died, the charnel stench reached even his eyrie. Too slow the work, too slow for him so that, in desperation, he denuded the Gate of its garrison. Legions’ Thirds protested that he was compromising their defences, but he held his ground, stating that the Prow could break up any sartlar surge long enough for the Ichorians to return to their posts.

Judging progress still too slow, Carnelian sent a command that work in the northern branch was to be abandoned and all effort concentrated on the southern. The Cloaca haunted his dreams. He longed to see its disgusting blockage flushed away as much as if it were a clot in his own arteries.

Infrequently, messages were heliographed from the Labyrinth. One reported that the God Emperor had slipped into a sleep from which he could not be woken. Knowing Osidian would soon wake, Carnelian wondered how he would react to what had been happening while he slept. In darker moments Carnelian brooded as to who it was who would emerge from such terrible dreams wearing the face of a god. At last, one of the Thirds came to inform him the God Emperor had taken up residence in the Stone Dance of the Chameleon. The Sapient had no answers for Carnelian’s questions. He said only that Osrakum was now hungry. When Carnelian learned that Osidian had been deaf to the appeals of the Wise that the render in the Red Caves should be distributed to the coombs, he authorized it himself. That night, Fern and he stood on the summit of the South Tower in a world made frosty by a full moon. The only warmth came from the patch of gold that flickered in the Cloaca far below where the Ichorians had made their camp. Though both were starving, neither could stomach eating render.

One morning Carnelian woke feeling that a burden had lifted from his heart. He went to stand upon their balcony as had become his habit. Night still filled the Cloaca. He raised his eyes towards the open Canyon. His glance hardened to a stare of scrutiny. He called into the cell for Fern to join him. When he came, tousled, bleary-eyed, Fern confirmed what Carnelian already believed. Their spirits soared. The sartlar were gone.

Carnelian watched Ichorians scurrying along the Cloaca bed to clamber up into the counterweight slots. He could imagine how they were struggling to raise the portcullis. Filthy water was already gushing out of the channel they had delved in the corpse dam. As the stream widened, the edges of the channel crumbled into it like a sandbank into water escaping to the sea. The rush roared as it snagged more and more corpses and swirled them off along the channel. Carnelian felt it all as a physical release.

The sun falling beneath the clouds set them aflame. Light drained from the world, but the fire did not die in the west. Carnelian thought it was just another storm coming. It was Fern who recognized its true nature. ‘Dragonfire.’

Carnelian caught hold of Fern and they grinned at each other like boys. It began to rain and they laughed as it ran down their faces. At last the legions had come to lift the siege.

The next day was dark and brooding. Even atop the Blood Gate, Carnelian felt as if there was no room for movement. Sounds were dulled by the thick air. The black, smothering sky felt close enough to touch. In the west, the cloudbase was reflecting the release of titanic energies. Masters started arriving. More and more came until, by nightfall, the summits of both Blood Gate towers were crowded. All profane eyes had been commanded to remain below, so that the host of the Great could look towards the west unmasked.

By the following morning the conflagration in the west had become a flicker. By late afternoon there was nothing except, now and then, a sudden, wavering discharge. By nightfall, the sky seemed eerily dead. As Carnelian left the roof, he detected the salty tang of render. Elegant voices rose and fell. The Masters, congratulating each other on their victory, talked greedily of the delicacies that would soon be flooding into Osrakum.

Cowled against the midday sun, Carnelian had been able to remove his mask to see better. Legions was beside him with his Seconds. Their homunculi, after having described to their masters what they could see, had fallen silent. The edges of the tower roof, west and south, were crammed with Masters. Every eye was fixed on the outer reach of the Canyon. It was some time since sartlar had appeared from around the corner and the sounds of consternation across the summits had had time to fade. Carnelian’s mind had ceased to devise scenarios to explain them being there when he had been expecting towered dragons, or some aquar-mounted auxiliaries dashing ahead to bring news of her relief to Osrakum. Dread gripped him as he tried to pierce the intervening distance. Among their multitude, pale pyramids like bloodied ravener teeth, but large enough to rise above the dust of their march. Then there were the white grains that floated above the procession. He pulled himself back from the drop as terror possessed him. He could no longer deny what he was seeing.

THE FLOOD

Birth is preceded by a flood.

(a Plainsman proverb)

THE DIRTY, PALE PYRAMIDS THE SARTLAR WERE DRAGGING, WITH THEIR
baroque hollows, were dragon heads stripped of flesh. Gouged-out eyes had left caves a child could curl up in. These skulls pebbled the slurry of sartlar creeping along the Canyon floor. Enough skulls to account for all the dragons of all the legions. Carnelian felt a pang at the loss of those colossal creatures, which, in spite of the terror they had brought, were just more victims of the Masters’ lust for dominion. The feeling passed and he became eerily calm. The power of the Masters was broken and, somehow, he had known this was going to happen. The sartlar had wanted the legions summoned. Starving, unable to reach food, they had had the greatest store of living flesh in the Commonwealth come to them. With chilly certainty, he knew the pale standards the sartlar bore must be Masters, on frames, crucified. The commanders who had sat aloft, imperious, upon their ivory thrones, were now spreadeagled naked, alive or dead. He wondered whether the sartlar were carrying them in the hope the Masters would not hurl fire down upon them. More likely it was a terrible sign of their defiance.

Consternation was spreading like flames across the summits of the Blood Gate towers. Carnelian turned from the sartlar victory procession to the Masters round him. Hands, frozen in gestures of disbelief and outrage, had lost their capacity for shaping words. Masks turning from the spectacle below gazed upon each other, as if hoping to deny the truth, or to return things to their proper compass: a time already receding when it had been the right of the Chosen to determine all things. Elegant voices strained like strings on an instrument overstretched. A strangely remote observer, Carnelian wondered if it was the silent ones in the midst of the cacophony that were causing his hackles to rise; for among the gathered Chosen were some who seemed turned to stone. No, it was something else that was scaring him. He identified it. The smell of fear; that familiar, sweaty odour that emanated as an aura from slaves in the presence of Masters. Except, this time, the smell was almost masked by attar of lilies. It was the Masters who were afraid. That realization shocked him awake. Always, they were dangerous, but Masters cornered, terrified – he would rather confront raveners.

He became aware of a homunculus staring at him; they all were. He felt a surge of hope: the Wise would know what to do. Then he saw how their fingers hung around the throats of their homunculi like the discarded moult of their living hands. Legions’ fingers had let go entirely and were kneading each other in a slow, rolling motion. Carnelian shook his head to free himself of any hold the pleading eyes of the homunculi had on him. He backed away, turned and made for one of the openings that gave access to the strata below. In his mind there was but a single, beacon thought: he must find Fern.

On the balcony, Fern’s body was stopping light from entering their cell. He turned as Carnelian approached. ‘It’s the end.’

Carnelian squeezed through to stand beside him. As they gazed down at the sartlar, he became aware of a gurgling sound rising from the blackness of the Cloaca. He thought he could see faint flecks of reflected light down there where that dark river ran, almost beyond the gaze of the living, as if it were in the Underworld. Snatches of his dreams seeping into his mind caused an idea to coalesce.

‘There is nothing that can be done,’ said Fern.

Carnelian raised his attention from the depths. It was hard to focus on something as close, as alive as Fern’s face. Fern clearly was hoping to be contradicted. The idea was a seed of hope. ‘We need to get to my father’s house.’

‘To die?’

Carnelian regarded Fern and, again, hope stirred within him, but it was yet too small a thing to admit into the light. ‘To be with our loved ones, but we must move fast.’ He threw his head up to indicate the tower roof. ‘Soon the Masters will be flooding back into the Mountain.’

Fern’s grim nod made Carnelian sure they both understood the danger. ‘Let’s go then. If we’re going to die, I’d rather do it with other Plainsmen.’

Fern slipped back into the shadowy cell. Carnelian glanced down into the Cloaca, then followed him.

Sthax and some Marula were outside the door. Carnelian had been so focused on Fern that he had passed through them almost without seeing them. He realized how much he might have need of them. Besides, he had not forgotten the promise he had made to Sthax. If he commanded them to come with him, they might obey, though he could not imagine they would be eager to return deeper into the Mountain. But he would give no command: in what was coming they must have the freedom to determine their own fate. So he began explaining to Sthax what he knew. Describing the disaster made it rise more terrible before him.

Carnelian became aware of the lack of surprise in Sthax’s face. ‘You already knew this?’

The Maruli nodded heavily, his bright eyes never leaving Carnelian’s face. Carnelian felt a thrill of cold fear. If Sthax knew, the Ichorians must know too. How far had the news spread its cancer through the fortress? He focused on Sthax. ‘What will you do?’

‘What you want we dos?’

Carnelian felt he was being tested. He explained that he and Fern were going to his coomb. ‘Will you come with us?’

‘You plan?’

Carnelian could no more answer him than he had been able to answer Fern. What he had was less than a plan, merely a course of action suggested to him by a dream. He was reluctant to even voice it yet. ‘We’re all trapped.’

Sthax nodded again, but distractedly, gazing intensely at Carnelian, who felt the man was trying to penetrate to what was in his heart. Sthax nodded, seeming satisfied. He consulted the other warriors, then turned back. ‘We comes you.’

Carnelian was touched by Sthax’s trust and reached out to grip his shoulder. Then he passed by him, through the rest of the Marula, making for the first flight of steps.

Approaching the dark cliff of the eastern gate, Carnelian came to a halt when an Ichorian challenged him. He pulled open his cowl so that they could see his face.

‘Celestial,’ they whispered as they knelt.

Carnelian regarded the obeisance with a kind of regret, sensing it had already become a courtesy from a lost world. He raised them with his hand. ‘Have other Seraphim been here before me?’