Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

Then Tain cried out: ‘He’s looking at me.’

He stared in horror at Jaspar, whose eyes had squeezed into view between the bloated lids. Carnelian imagined how riddled Jaspar’s body must be with worms. How long had he lain here? Tended by the homunculus just enough to keep him alive. Just alive.

Tain grabbed at Carnelian’s arm, dug his fingers in. ‘For the gods’ sake kill him.’

Carnelian looked at him, not wanting to ask him, asking him: ‘Do you want to do it?’

His brother stared at him as if he thought him mad. Tain shook his head, frowning, backing away. Carnelian became aware Fern was there, watching. He put his hand out, and Fern understood, for he unsheathed a blade and put its hilt in Carnelian’s hand, who turned, crouched, then insinuated its point under the dewlap chins and, finding the root of an ear, punctured the flesh and sliced down. Then, rising, he watched a dark pool widening around Jaspar’s head.

From Heart-of-Thunder’s command chair, Carnelian gazed out to starboard, through the rain, at the ring of standing stones. Though he had had Jaspar’s body removed, the deck scrubbed, the flies driven away, killed, the smell still lingered. He could still see the stains Jaspar had left in the deck. He looked round to the other side of the cabin to where Fern and Tain were sitting against the wall; Fern staring, frowning, grim; Tain still in shock, haunted. Further back, in the shadows, the homunculus. Carnelian felt like punishing the little man for his cruelty. Empathy quenched this impulse. How long had the homunculus been there, tending Jaspar’s near-corpse? Abandoned without hope of rescue. Perhaps he had been cruel, perhaps merely lonely and terrified. Carnelian had to accept that it was he most of all who had abandoned the little man, had forgotten him.

A mutter at his feet made him turn, feeling the dragon beneath responding to his Left’s whispered command. The view through the screen began sliding right until the narrow entrance to the Plain of Thrones came into view. He focused grimly on the task he had before him and wondered what he was taking them all into.

As they came off the Great Causeway, the downpour abated. On either side, the Turtle Steps cascaded down to the lake. Ahead, something smouldered. Staring at it, Carnelian felt a heaviness descend upon him. Though he knew it was the gilded Clave, it reminded him of the Iron House burning in the midst of a landscape of sartlar dead. Grimly, he contemplated that he was on a mission to inflict more carnage on the poor brutes.

When Fern coughed, Carnelian turned and saw him indicating Tain. His brother had the look of a terrified child, listening. Carnelian listened too. Beneath the shudder and rattle of the cabin there was a dull roaring. He glanced at Tain, then ordered Heart-of-Thunder onto the Cloaca Road. As the monster turned, a canal came into view, cut into the Valley floor, a spillway. Only a dyke separated it from the lake shore, through whose immense stone comb the Skymere poured into the spillway in many waterfalls. Carnelian recalled that Tain’s ordeal in the quarantine had terminated somewhere near those falls. He glanced round at him. Clearly, the encounter with Jaspar had left Tain shaken. A solution occurred to him, not only for Tain – and for the homunculus as well, whom Carnelian knew he could not bring before the Wise – but for relieving another worry.

‘Tain, you must carry a message to Father for me.’

Tain frowned, seeming to have difficulty in bringing Carnelian into focus. ‘He’d not forgive me for leaving you unprotected.’

Carnelian indicated the homunculus. ‘I also need him taken to safety.’

His brother gave a reluctant nod.

‘Tell Father everything you’ve witnessed. Tell him I’m going to the City at the Gates to sort out some problems.’ Carnelian could add no more. How long would it be before he was free to return to Osrakum?

Once Tain and the homunculus had disembarked, Heart-of-Thunder proceeded along the lip of the Cloaca, in whose depths storm waters roared.

The grey afternoon was waning when they reached the Black Gate. It opened for them and Heart-of-Thunder carried them into the Canyon. Nearby it was twilight, but further away, where the Canyon turned south, night seemed to have arrived already. Carnelian could only just discern the blacker clot of the Blood Gate. If they pushed on, he hoped they could reach the City at the Gates before nightfall.

‘I wish to send a message ahead,’ he said.

‘A signal flare will have to be lit, Master,’ said his Left.

As Carnelian waited he watched the cliffs on either side swaying in time to the cabin. The air trembled to a constant roar. It seemed a more dreadful sound than merely the rushing waters of the Cloaca reverberating along the Canyon. His Left announced the mirrorman was ready.

‘Bid them open the gates, we’re passing straight through.’

As his Left repeated his words into the command tube, Carnelian hoped this act of foresight would avoid any delays. He became aware of a blinking light that could only be coming from one of the towers of the Blood Gate.

‘The outer gate cannot be opened, Master,’ his Left said.

‘Ask them why.’ Carnelian waited impatiently as his message was transmitted. The Blood Gate signal resumed its blinking.

The Left turned to look up at Carnelian. ‘They claim it is forbidden, Master.’

Unease stirred in him. He would have liked more information, but he was reluctant to carry out any further interrogation by signal flare.

A man-sized door opened in the cliff that was the closed inner portal of the Blood Gate. Several lanterns swung out, carried by a number of figures, each of whom seemed to have but half a face. These Sinistrals could not help glancing fearfully over Carnelian’s head. He knew how menacing was the shape that loomed up behind him, for he had just descended from the monster’s tower. The Sinistrals knelt, touching their foreheads to the stone. ‘Seraph.’

‘I am Carnelian of the Masks. Why have you closed this gate against me?’

They struck the stone with their heads. ‘Forgive us, Celestial, we merely obey the Law.’

Carnelian could make no sense of this. ‘The Wise have sent commands?’

As their eyes came up, he could See how confused the Sinistrals were. He did not want to terrorize them. ‘Is there some kind of emergency?’

‘Perhaps, Celestial, you might deign to see the cause for yourself?’

Carnelian almost barked: See what? Turning, he regarded the mountainous shadows that formed a line from the Blood Gate rock off across the massive bridge and down the Canyon. ‘Fern, will you come with me?’ he asked in Ochre. He waited for Fern’s nod, then turned to his Lefthand. ‘Please take my place in the command chair. Pass a message down the line. You are to wait for me.’

Carnelian turned to the Sinistrals. ‘Show me this “cause”.’

Carnelian was breathing hard. He had lost count of the levels they had climbed. Stair after stair past military gates, warrens and military engines of gigantic size. The chill on his face as a breeze caught his sweat was a relief. They had come out into the open at last. He became aware of the night, then, almost immediately, of a dull glowing on the underside of the clouds that capped the sky to the west.

‘Dragonfire?’ said Fern.

Carnelian shook his head, grimly. ‘There’re no flashes. The City burns.’ He turned to the Sinistral commander. ‘Is that what you wanted me to witness?’

‘Not so, Celestial.’

Carnelian and Fern followed him to a parapet where the Sinistral pointed down. Carnelian sensed the vast spread of emptiness below. ‘Can you see anything?’

Fern traced some vague outlines in the darkness. Carnelian was trying to work out where their eyrie was located, when he became aware of a murmur distinct from the throbbing of the Cloaca. The hackles rose on his neck. He knew that sound. Fern breathed the word that had formed in Carnelian’s mind. ‘Sartlar.’