Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

His Left muttered something at Carnelian’s feet, then Earth-is-Strong began to turn. Sliding off towards his left, steps swooped down in many flights. He recognized them as the same he and Jaspar had climbed from the Quays of the Dead. Then the view of the rain-filled void was snuffed out by a wall of stone. The command chair pushed hard into his back even as the deck tilted up. They were climbing into a ravine by means of long shallow steps. Everything shuddered and rattled as the tower began to swing heavily first to one side, then the other. His grip tight on the arms of the chair, he watched with alarm as a ravine wall would lurch towards them, then away. After a while, he relaxed his grip, reassured that Earth-is-Strong’s gait would not dash her tower to pieces against the rock.

As they climbed, Carnelian fell to wondering what had happened to Jaspar. He hoped the man was dead: even considering his sins, he had suffered enough.

At last the deck tilted forward, even as the ravine gave them up into the vast and airy cliff-walled Plain of Thrones. Carnelian had eyes for nothing except the black trunk that rose from behind that wall. The Pillar of Heaven was a tree whose storm-sky canopy cast all the world beneath into shadow.

They were approaching the centre of the plain when the rain stopped, suddenly. The sky gave one last shudder, then eerie silence reigned. Before them lay a ring within a ring. Carnelian had seen this thing before, but not from above. The outer ring swept round like a cothon. From this a mosaic of ridges of fiendish complexity converged on the inner ring. His gaze became enmeshed in the radial branching tendrils that seemed like the iris of some vast eye. Escape lay only in the double inner ring that enclosed the dark pupil. For a moment he was possessed by an uneasy conviction this was an opening to a well, a smooth sinkhole into which he might tumble.

It began to drizzle. Drawing back into himself, he gazed at the Stone Dance of the Chameleon, ostensibly a calendrical device. At its centre, the twelve month stones. Eight red, two black, two green. Upon these twelve was carved the Law-that-must-be-obeyed. The stones had a round-shouldered look as if they were hunched against the rain, or against the too-vast sky. Still square and young, another twelve stood behind like ghosts. It was from these that ridges flowed, branching, meshing, intertwining to connect with the outer ring of, as he recalled, commentary stones. The twelve innermost stones were the least imposing of the Dance and yet they were clearly the jewel for which all the others were nothing more than a setting. He could see how time had softened them. His gut told him that even when Legions had been a child, these had been ancient and once had stood there on their own.

As Earth-is-Strong carried him round the rings of stones, Carnelian gazed for a moment, sombrely, upon the road running off south-west, along which the funerary procession would soon go. At the end of that road were the caves in the wall of the plain, where the Wise embalmed the dead. As the wall continued to slide past, he discerned, in a long row with their backs to it, a line of what seemed pale homunculi. Except that he knew these were not tiny men, but the colossi who stood each astride the entrance to a tomb. These it was who, gazing down upon the Plainsmen tributaries, had given them the name for the Chosen, ‘the Standing Dead’. The view continued to swing round and he saw the terraces and galleries of the lower palace carved into the cliff above those tomb guardians. He frowned, desolate. There, penetrating deep into the cliff like a nasal cavity into a skull, was the hollow pyramid in which the Masters would stand in tiers as bright as angels as they gazed down upon their tributaries. Earth-is-Strong was heading straight towards this now. Before her a black rectangle stretched out over the floor of the Plain. Upon this tens of thousands would cower. Soon they would be there, gazing up to watch Osidian made God. Perhaps they would see Carnelian sacrificed.

His Left gave the command to turn the dragon onto the road that skirted the black field.

‘Belay that order,’ Carnelian said. ‘Steady as she goes.’

On the ground, his back to the Forbidden Door, Carnelian looked back the way they had come. Grand Sapient Labyrinth was there behind him with one of his Thirds and a gang of their ammonites. They had offered him an immediate cleansing so that he might enter the Labyrinth, but when Grand Sapient Law on arrival had declared he would wait for Osidian, Carnelian had said he would wait with him.

The funerary procession had already reached the caves of the embalmers. There the palanquins seemed a nest of tiny beetles. He could just make out a thread of people returning along the road towards the standing stones. He guessed these must be the bearers being driven to the cages of the quarantine.

He squinted back towards the ravine through which he had entered the Plain. Watching the minuscule movement on the floor of the slot in the cliff, he became certain it was a towered dragon entering the Plain. It had to be Heart-of-Thunder. Grumbling, the sky was beginning to blacken in the east. Carnelian’s spirits sank even further. Night would fall before Osidian reached him. He had hoped they would confront Ykoriana in the light. He gazed up at the galleries scaling the cliff like some vast ladder to the sky. Rock everywhere riddled with holes. From any one of those myriad cavities she could be scrutinizing him with borrowed eyes.

Starless night. A tremor in the ground made Carnelian relive the horrors of the battle. Many dragons were approaching. The massing shadow of the leading monster was growing larger, carrying the lantern of its tower. The world quaked as light filtering down from the honeycombed cliff began to sketch Heart-of-Thunder’s mountainous form.

Carnelian met Osidian as he descended from his tower. ‘I had expected you sooner.’

There was only shadow in the loop of Osidian’s cowl. ‘I had to take the submission of the Sinistrals at the Blood Gate then wait while they gathered supplies.’

Render, thought Carnelian, almost tasting it. Then he gave a start as the night dewed into flesh: the ash-misted faces of the Oracles. Their grim expressions could have been fear. Whatever they were feeling, Carnelian was filled with unease. At that moment Osidian angled his head back. Some of the light coming from the terraces above found the sinister mirror of his mask. ‘Come.’

Together they advanced upon the Wise, who were framed by the pale silver faces of their ammonites. They halted beneath the jewelled gaze of the two Grand Sapients.

‘Welcome, Celestial,’ said Labyrinth’s homunculus. ‘We have brought the means by which you shall be cleansed of the taint of the outer world.’

It seemed to Carnelian it would take more than unguents to do that.

‘I shall submit to the cleansing, my Lords,’ said Osidian, ‘but I give warning I intend to bring these barbarians in with me.’ He turned enough to take in the Oracles and the Marula warriors behind them.

As soon as the homunculi finished repeating his words, Labyrinth’s homunculus began to speak, but was interrupted by Law’s. ‘We cannot allow this, Celestial. The Law-that-must-be-obeyed is unequivocal. These barbarians may be infested with corruption that external examination will not reveal. To bring them onto holy ground is to endanger its very sanctity.’

‘Whatever danger they pose, my Lord, I am no less a threat. You will clean them as you clean me.’

‘It is perilous, Celestial, to let these animals pass through the Forbidden Door untamed,’ said Labyrinth. ‘You may have fought your way back into Paradise, but you must not force your way into Heaven.’

‘Lecture me not, my Lords, about peril. Only last night was my own life endangered. I will not leave myself thus exposed again.’