Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

As they continued to advance, a vast moat opened up before their feet whose mirror doubled the glowing golden vision. Crossing this on a causeway, squinting against the coruscating air, Carnelian only slowly became aware of a dark figure standing at the foot of the stair, haloed by its shimmer. The hackles rose on his neck. Was this Morunasa’s god in human form? The closer they approached this apparition, the more mortal it appeared to be. It had a strange globular head, a crown, perhaps, except that Carnelian had a nagging feeling he had seen it before. A few more steps and he knew who it was. He looked for and found upon its dark head the glimmer of its double mask: two gold Master’s faces set side by side.

‘You!’ Osidian exclaimed.

Carnelian had good reason to remember the sybling Hanuses: Ykoriana’s lackeys who had overseen him and Osidian being forced, drugged, into funeral urns to meet a certain and terrible death.

The syblings bent forward, leaning to one side and reaching for the ground with a thin arm. Thus supported, they folded into a prostration so painfully that Carnelian felt they must be wounded. Osidian waved the Sinistrals and Marula out of his path and went forward, Carnelian at his side. They both gazed down at the double-lobed head. It had changed. One side of it was smaller, wrinkled.

‘Rise,’ Osidian said, his voice tight.

Carnelian observed with what difficulty the syblings came to their feet. The twin faces of gold, though imperious and beautiful, hung at an angle that cheated them of their power.

‘Unmask,’ Osidian commanded and Carnelian could hear how dangerous he was.

A single, tremulous voice sounded from behind the double mask. ‘Celestial… the barbarians…’ The syblings lifted a hand to indicate the Marula.

Coldly, Osidian informed them that, since he had taken the barbarians into his service, they were now a part of the household of the House of the Masks. The syblings bent their head to comply. Their right hand struggled up to worry at the bindings behind the misshapen head. Carnelian looked for and found the left arm hanging withered, useless at the syblings’ side. Then their faces were revealed. The left was unlike Carnelian’s memory of it, but he could adjust to how much it had aged, to the folds in the putty flesh, and in its pitted eyes it had the same black diamonds. The right shocked him. Shrunken, wizened like a dried fig. Where it met the living face, it dragged down the corner of its mouth, the empty cheek, the right eye so that it seemed that, at any moment, the black jewel might be squeezed out like a pip, might run down the cheek like an oily, black tear. Clearly, it was Left-Hanus alone who stood before them. His brother had died. Carnelian gazed with horror at the shrivelled remains of Right-Hanus. In his bones he knew this was Ykoriana’s handiwork.

‘What made you dare appear before me?’ Osidian said.

The sybling’s face grew moist. ‘Your mother, Celestial, bade me come and bring you to her.’ The sybling’s speech was slurred by him being forced to speak out of the left corner of his mouth. ‘To bring you both to her.’

It was as much the sound of that voice as the words it had spoken that chilled Carnelian. The moment was upon him. That Ykoriana had sent the sybling must be a sign that she felt no remorse for what she had done to them. On the contrary, she was clearly determined to brazen it out. Carnelian grew grim. She had reason to be so confident.

‘Take us to her then,’ said Osidian, a weariness in his voice that suggested he was thinking similar thoughts.

Left-Hanus ducked a bow, then motioned with his good hand. A child rose from the shadow at his feet and nestled its head under his hand. Then, hobbling, the sybling turned to the steps and began a slow ascent. Carnelian watched the man as they followed him. He felt no rage, not even anger, but only pity. He could imagine what it was to lose a brother, but even then he could claim none as close to him as the sybling’s. For Carnelian, if one of his brothers were to die he would bury him; he would not have to carry the corpse as part of him all the remaining days of his life.

They climbed the central, raised stair of the Shimmering, passing several of the immense portals that penetrated the slope in pairs. At last they came to the final gateway that gaped at the summit of the steps. Two colossi flanked it, one of jade, the other of mirror obsidian. Osidian came to a halt gazing up to either side. Carnelian could not see what he was looking at, but then noticed the hinges twisting out of the rock from which massive gates had been wrenched. This made him recall the gap torn in the fabric of the Green Gate. Most likely this desecration had the same cause. Portals of iron had stood here, that Molochite had melted down to sheath his chariot. Brooding on this, Carnelian looked through the gateway. His eyes found it hard to grasp the strange geometries of the spaces beyond.

‘The Halls of Rebirth,’ Osidian said, sounding surprised, as if he had never again expected to see them.

They entered a realm of dream. Vast halls they crossed, giving onto perspectives apparently infinite. Forests of gleaming stone. Cliffs of filigreed marble liked bleached bone. Walls of translucent alabaster hung like mist. Pools bisected landscapes of stone polished to a sheen like oiled skin, that was veined with fiery filaments. Chambers echoed to falls of water. Hanus led them through sequences of spaces like the hollows of a seashell, all hung with lamps like clouded stars. Up flights of steps they followed, each stair bringing them into some new world of form, of shimmering colour, of sound. Every surface was slick with subtle reflections. Gargoyles pushed out through membranes of coral, of lapis lazuli. Faces everywhere vanished when you looked at them directly. Feeling eyes upon him, Carnelian, turning, saw only jewel mosaics so fiendish they mesmerized him. Shadows flitted at the edge of vision but, when he looked round, there was nothing there.

Among these wonders the Marula stumbled, their thick feet leaving trails across the mirrored stone which blushed then faded like breath on glass. Some of the Oracles looked around them wild-eyed, their mouths hanging open. The rest hung their heads, gripping each other, like children skulking through a haunted wood.

Rising into open air was like coming awake. Glancing back the way they had come, Carnelian could see nothing but shadow. The splendour of the palace was already fading. They were on the roof. Terraces spilled their cataracts into the immense pit of the Plain of Thrones. He felt a vast presence behind him so menacing it took courage to turn. As the towering blackness came into sight he stopped breathing, certain it was the Darkness-under-the-Trees rearing to engulf him. He gasped back to life as he recognized the Pillar of Heaven: a black shaft plunging down from the light-veined clouds to impale the earth way off down the broad belly of the Labyrinth.

A distorting shadow, Hanus guided them across the Labyrinth roof. When he came to a halt, at his command the Ichorians lit lamps. Carnelian followed Osidian to stand beside the sybling on the brink of a well, still partially covered by an immense slab. Osidian snatched a lamp from one of the guardsmen and held it aloft. Its light found steps spiralling down into blackness.

‘The Path of Blood,’ Osidian muttered and his words seemed to find an echo in the rumbling sky. He turned to the sybling. ‘My mother went this way?’

‘She did, Celestial.’

‘It is forbidden.’

‘She waits for you, Celestial, alone.’

‘Without attendants?’ Osidian’s tone was incredulous.

‘I myself watched her descend, Celestial. None followed her.’

‘Only a candidate may walk this path, accompanied by the primary sacrifice.’