Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

Carnelian felt some faint belief rising within him. He turned to Sthax. ‘Do your brethren feel as you do?’

‘We desperate.’

The Maruli looked at Carnelian as if he was a spar floating in a stormy sea. Carnelian would not refuse his hope. ‘We’ll do nothing to interfere with the Masters returning to their palaces. When Morunasa comes into the Labyrinth, we’ll move against him.’

He did not reveal his relief when none there questioned this. At that point, what he had stated was all the plan he had.

‘How will we know when that happens?’ asked Left-Quentha.

It was Fern who answered her. ‘We’ll know.’

The tree that inhabited the clearing was a pomegranate. Though laden with fruit, these were all still green. Right-Quentha had regarded them, disappointed, saying that she and her sister had hoped that the tree would be able to feed them at least for one night. On their previous visits, the fruit had been ripe, but then they had always come later in the year.

Even before they had thought to find some firewood, the sisters cautioned them against lighting a fire. Its smoke might betray their location to anyone searching for them. They made what camp they could within reach of the light. Fern made a bed for Carnelian from the fern fronds, but though they yearned for each other, they chose to sleep apart.

What little food they had was divided equally. As the day waned, they sought sleep as an escape from the darkness encroaching from the Labyrinth. Wrapped in his cloak, Carnelian lay listening to the murmur of the Masters’ camp. Soon they would return to their coombs. What of Coomb Suth? Matters there were still unresolved. If anything were to happen to him or to his father, Poppy and the rest would be at the mercy of Opalid.

Another day of waiting, listening to the Masters’ camp. When Fern went with the Quenthas and some of the Suth guardsmen to find some food, Carnelian remained behind with Tain. When the others returned, they had a couple of fish and a small saurian. Fern prepared them and they ate them raw.

Carnelian and Fern wandered off together. They had told the others that they would not be long and would stay within earshot of both their camp and that of the Masters.

‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ Fern asked.

Carnelian smiled at him. ‘I feel much better.’

They walked along the road beneath the poppyhead columns, the silence deepening between them, until neither could find a way to words. It was Carnelian who spotted another clearing and headed towards it, though it took them away from the path. Even before he reached the clearing he realized it was much larger than the one around which they had camped. A column had collapsed, cracking others as it fell. A ragged hole had been left in the vaulting, through which light was flooding. The head of the fallen column lay half in light, half in shadow. Approaching the great bulb of stone, Carnelian reached out to touch it. Under his hand was the remains of the red with which it had once been painted. Like dried blood. He frowned, reminded of the funerary urns into which he and Osidian had been squeezed. His fingers found branching channels eroded into the stone. He gazed up into the light. This column had once stood naked against the elements. Long ago, perhaps, before the Labyrinth had been roofed in. He walked round to look at its spiky, poppy crown and saw the pod was cracked. A gash as if it had been slit to bleed its opium. He leaned towards it and detected a faint smell of ancient myrrh. He slipped his hand into the gash.

‘What’re you doing?’

Carnelian saw the anger in Fern’s face. ‘I just want to take a peek inside.’ And, with that, he squeezed into the pod.

Inside, the air was musty. He stepped aside to allow light to filter in through the crack. It fell upon a sort of stalagmite angling up from the floor. But, of course, the whole pod had rolled over, so it was emerging not from the floor, but from what had been the ceiling. He reached out and touched it. It swelled into a spiral. Intuition made him reach out to the wall. His fingers found the buds, the seeds with which it was carved. As much as he was inside a huge poppyhead, it was also a pomegranate. He could make out shapes piled up beyond the spindle. Cautiously he crossed the curving floor, using the spindle as a support. A mound of rubbish, of shards, a glimmer of metals and stones, among mouldering flakes and fibres of something else. He jumped when he saw the grin: a row of teeth in a skull skinned with thin, scabrous leather; a mummy, curled up as if in a womb, wrapped in brown cloth. There were others in among the heap. Bones held together by scraps of dried flesh. He grew uneasy, remembering the pygmy dead in their baobabs. He could hear again the crackle as they had burned. Caught by the stare of a dark socket, he shuddered, recalling the render the sartlar had made from pygmies they had killed. His eyes were drawn to a glinting profile. A beautiful face among the corpses. He leaned closer and saw it was a mask. Touching it, he found it was stone. The mummy to which it belonged was larger than the others, its wrappings paler bands of half-perished linen. Among these bands, the glint of gold. He stared, disturbed. This could be one of his fathers, his mothers. There was no sign here of an after-life, of resurrection. His thumb found the edge of the mask. The rest of his hand gripped across the bridge of the nose, into an eyeslit. He tugged and it snapped open like the lid of a rusted box. The face below had darkened, the eyes withered, the lips thinned, riding up the teeth, but it was still a Master’s face. An adult face, but not much larger than a Chosen child’s. Carnelian saw the hands crossed upon the chest, wedged behind the knees. He put the mask down and reached out to compare his hand with the mummy’s. The mummy’s was so much smaller. Perhaps embalming had shrunk it. Carnelian shook his head. The skull could not shrink.

At that moment the light was snuffed out. Carnelian turned, felt the tomb shudder, then a release of light dazzled him. ‘Fern? Look here, this is a Master, but for some reason much smaller than I am.’

‘Haven’t you had enough of the dead?’

An edge to Fern’s voice made Carnelian rise, shuffle back towards him. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said, reaching out to touch him.

His hand was slapped away, stinging him to anger.

‘What’s going to happen?’

The almost childlike tone in Fern’s voice cooled Carnelian’s anger to sadness. ‘I don’t know, Fern, I don’t know.’

‘You must have a plan?’

‘We wait for Morunasa and then-’

‘You mean we wait for the screaming!’

Carnelian felt the grief leaching out of Fern connecting to his own. He remembered the nightmare in the Upper Reach. ‘Yes, the screaming.’

‘I can’t bear it again.’ The words a skin of ice over tears. Fern was reliving not the Upper Reach, but the massacre of his people. Carnelian felt panic rising in him. The memory of that horror came alive in him from where he had thought it buried.

‘Tell me this time it will be different,’ Fern sobbed.

Carnelian reached out, desperate to touch him, wanting to promise, but not daring to lest his promise should turn into a lie. ‘I can’t, Fern, but this time we’ll fight to save what can be saved. This time, together.’

His hands reached Fern’s face, felt his warm tears, his skin. They melted together, seeking life in the midst of death. Skin finding skin. Their mouths. Their hard flesh. Making love, at first violently, but then tenderly.

When they emerged from the tomb, they stood close enough to feel each other’s breath. Eerie silence. Their cheeks grazed as they turned to look at each other. The Masters had left the Labyrinth.