Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

Here Masters were drinking potions Carnelian shunned for he did not wish to join their preying upon the sylphs who leaned here and there – languorous, half-asleep, it seemed – their skins of many shades, some patterned, tattooed, some with glimmering jewel eyes, others with their own half-lidded brown animal eyes. Sinuous, graceful creatures of different sexes, of none, giving themselves libidinously to the caresses of the Masters, sometimes until they bled.

He fled into an infernal chamber of midnight lapis lazuli. Mirrors of obsidian hung everywhere in which he glimpsed even more terrible shadow worlds. A haunting interplay of inhuman voices wove the misty air. Smoke curling in the voids was taking on the shapes of men, of monsters, of bizarre landscapes. He tried to shake his head free of these apparitions and managed to focus enough to see, in the shadows, figures completely sheathed in black, who were working the smoke rising everywhere in wavering streams. Stirring it, shaping it with strigils, blowing through tubes, sucking, as they conjured up their evanescent puppetry.

Carnelian could not long stop his mind from splintering and soon was lost in the chimeric visions. At first he was seduced by the shadows of what had been, then unease flared to terror as he saw what was to come. In full flight, he ruptured a slowly evolving nightmare.

In an amethystine chamber he found the hope of what seemed a silver dawn. Walls and floors writhed with nacreous loops and spirals. He started as the shadows coalesced into the shapes of men. Darkly clothed were they, with faces like a winter sky. They put his mask upon his face and doors opened for him and he staggered out onto a hillside aflame. A warm hand took his. Its clench anchored him. A familiar voice made him burst into tears. When the hand tugged, he followed like a child.

When Carnelian awoke, he felt his head was glass shattering. In the dim light he recognized a face. ‘Fern,’ he cried, drawing him into a desperate embrace.

Fern pulled free. Carnelian could see his mouth was moving, heard his voice, but could grasp no words. It was the sharp fear in Fern’s face that brought his voice into focus. ‘Can you walk?’

Carnelian stared at him.

‘The Marula have come for you.’

‘ What?’ Carnelian was confused.

Fern’s eyes were sharp with anxiety. ‘Morunasa’s trying to fight his way through to you.’

‘To me?’

‘Your people are even now fighting to hold him back. The Quenthas know a back way-’

‘I don’t understand.’ Carnelian could not focus his mind. He felt so very weary.

A glistening, ebony face filled his vision: Sthax. ‘Oracle come get you.’

A two-headed shape loomed up: the sybling sisters. ‘This Maruli came to warn us.’

The pieces came together in Carnelian’s mind. ‘He has betrayed me.’

They were staring at him, waiting.

‘I have to give myself up to him. To avoid bloodshed.’

Fern threw his head back, grimacing. ‘You know how much that man hates you.’

‘There may still be time to get you to safety, Celestial,’ said Right-Quentha, pointing towards a dark corner of the chamber.

‘Into the depths of the Labyrinth where none will find you,’ her sister added.

Carnelian regarded the sisters. ‘You do realize it is the God Emperor Themselves you are intending to defy?’

Both faces set; indomitable. ‘It is you we serve now, Celestial.’

That touched Carnelian, but he shook his head. ‘How long could we hope to evade Their power? And to what end?’

A scuffing of footfalls in the outer chamber jerked their eyes towards the door. Fern and the sisters turned their gaze upon Carnelian in desperation. He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. ‘I need time to think.’

Fern gave a resigned nod. Sthax grimaced, his yellow eye following the Quenthas to the door. Carnelian turned, agonized, to the Maruli. ‘The Oracle said nothing about who sent him?’

Sthax shook his head violently. Carnelian tried to pull apart the threads of the power play, but there was no way he could reweave them into anything that made sense. He groaned, desperate for clarity. Then he remembered walking hand in hand with Osidian along the Path of Blood and felt suddenly calm.

‘He’s not behind this,’ he announced.

At that moment the Quenthas moved aside and Tain pushed into the chamber, eyes wild, blood spattered across his face. ‘Carnie, they’ll soon have the outer door down.’

‘Get everyone in here,’ Carnelian said. Tain stared, jerked a nod, then disappeared.

Carnelian rose from his bed, gripping Fern’s arm when it reached out to steady him. He found the strength to stand on his own and indicated the bronze doors of the chamber. ‘How long will those hold?’

Right-Quentha glanced at them. ‘Long enough, Celestial.’

Carnelian had them bring him his green robe, his military cloak. He was already dressed when men crashed into the chamber, skittering on the polished paving, their chameleoned faces glazed with sweat and blood. Seeing him, they began to fall on their knees. Carnelian surged forward and plucked one up. ‘Get up, you fools.’

Tain came in last of all.

‘Anyone left behind?’ Carnelian demanded. When his brother shook his head, Carnelian commanded they engage the door locks. Turning away, he saw a menacing shape looming against the wall: the glimmering carcass of his court robe. Glinting on the floor before it, cushioned in his neatly folded undergarments, a gold face, his mask.

Right-Quentha, catching the focus of his gaze, made her sister follow her as she went to scoop it up.

‘No, leave it,’ Carnelian said. The sisters frowned as they looked at him.

A thunderous clatter reverberated from beyond the locked gate. The patter of many feet. Something massive struck the bronze doors making them boom, but the locks held. Carnelian grinned grimly at the sisters, his blood up. ‘Get us out of here.’

He did not breathe easily until they had finished the crossing of the Encampment of the Seraphim. Urging his people past him, he looked back. The column sarcophagi stood in sombre rows wreathed in a mist of smoke. The fires were now banked throughout the camp that lay sleeping at the feet of those hollow gods. He and his people had found a way through the camp in the golden twilight cast by the Shimmering Stair. Heads had risen as guardsmen had watched them pass, but it was not their place to challenge a party led by sybling guides.

Fern approached, bringing up the rear of the line.

‘Is that all of them?’ Carnelian asked, almost in a whisper. When Fern nodded, he put his arm round his shoulders and they set off after their people, into the forest of stone trees.

Openings in the high vaults let in the first grey light of dawn. They followed the sisters down winding stairs beneath the gaze of frowning colossi. For a while they moved along ravines flanked by their legs. Here, Carnelian managed well enough, only a few times having to lean on Fern, but when they began to climb countless steps, he found his legs leaden and they had to stop often to let him rest.

Fern gazed with knitted brows at Carnelian, who was wheezing, pain sawing his head in two. ‘What did they do to you?’

‘They bled me,’ Carnelian said and his heart warmed when he saw anger burning in Fern’s eyes.

As they climbed higher, he became aware the columns, though still massive, were more slender. Pausing to regain his breath, he gazed up into the shadows and saw that the stone stems swelled into pods that clung to the underside of the roof like the eggs of some monstrous moth.