Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

‘It is imperative we re-establish our link to the outer world,’ said Lands. ‘Without it, we are blind.’

‘The huimur you brought hither, Celestial,’ said Legions, ‘must be sent to the Green Gate to restore the relay there.’

Carnelian was about to ask how they could know that there was where the problem lay – after all the City at the Gates was overrun by sartlar – but then he understood. ‘The Green Gate is not responding to your diagnostics.’

‘Just so,’ said Cities.

‘Can you be sure the watch-towers in the City at the Gates are still intact?’

‘Even to a determined foe they would be nigh on impregnable,’ said Cities. ‘Besides, Celestial, a single link to the network is all we require to restore our vision of the Guarded Land.’

‘A single link will allow our voice to be heard across the Three Lands,’ said Legions.

Carnelian felt uneasy at the thought of the Wise reacquiring such power before the new political balance was in place to restrain them. This situation would have to be played carefully. He took a step towards them. Their homunculi were muttering even as they stood aside. He moved through the Sapients, aware of the dull, resinous odour of their crusted robes. Then he forgot everything except the vision that opened up at his feet. Though still in shadow, it was clear the Canyon floor was clothed with sartlar right up to the turn and beyond. He imagined the solid tentacle of flesh winding through the Canyon and out, spreading over the Wheel, to fray into the alleyways and causeways of the City. ‘What of the sartlar?’

‘They shall return to the Land.’

Carnelian turned to Lands. ‘How do you envisage that this be done?’

It was Legions’ homunculus who answered him. ‘No doubt it is hunger that has driven them into the Canyon. That they have penetrated so far is only because of the breach made in the Green Gate by the previous God Emperor. With fire we shall quickly drive them back from Osrakum.’

Carnelian eyed the multitude below. ‘Do they pose a danger to us?’

The Grand Sapient and his homunculus came to stand beside him. His master’s fingers working at his neck, the homunculus raised a thin arm and pointed at the triangular tower across the circular plain below. ‘That tower there, the Prow, has the firepower of three full legions.’ Legions tapped the floor with his foot. ‘This fortress has the puissance of another three. And, delved into the bedrock upon which these structures stand, there are tanks holding, under pressure, quantities of naphtha seventy-six times that which is held within a legionary fortress of the second class. Even were all our legions to rise up against us, they could not hope to overcome the power here. We are invulnerable.

‘Fire will tame the sartlar brutes as it has always done. We advise that a firestorm should be unleashed from here to clear them from the approaches to the fortress. Issuing forth, the huimur will complete their rout. Be assured, my Lords, the link shall be restored before nightfall.’

Carnelian glanced round at the Grand Sapients, feeling as if he was beneath their notice. Were they attempting to assert their ancient authority? As much could their motives be focused on the internal struggle among them. Under his predecessor’s rule, Domain Legions had been pre-eminent. Perhaps the new Grand Sapient was merely trying to regain something of that lost standing. Carnelian gazed down at the sartlar. He remembered Fern comparing them to earthers. He remembered too the careful way the Ochre sent to fetch water had crept through the earther herds to the lagoons.

‘Would it not be more efficient to merely walk the huimur through the sartlar? Surely they would move from their path?’

‘Celestial, to open the gates without removing the creatures from the killing field would be to compromise our purity,’ said Legions.

‘The creatures are riddled with disease,’ said Lands.

Carnelian remembered that the Ochre had given to the place where they had butchered the heaveners the name ‘the killing field’. Remembering that bloody slaughter, pity rose in him for the sartlar, but he told himself that, if they did not return to the land soon, millions would die from famine. Even the destruction of all the sartlar in the Canyon was not too high a price to pay if it would lead to so many others being spared. ‘I shall go to the Green Gate in the manner you prescribe, my Lord Legions.’

‘My Lord has chosen the path of wisdom.’

Sitting in Heart-of-Thunder’s command chair, Carnelian could not only feel the monster’s power beneath him, but he was also aware of the other dragons, one on either side, framed by the bronze walls of the open portals of the eastern gate. Before him rose the unscalable cliff of the outer, western gate. Above that, the sky was choked with smoke from the lit ranks of flame-pipes that crowned the Blood Gate towers. His own pipes were lit. Everything was ready.

A vast voice roared; a horn blast that caught, echoing, in the throat of the Canyon, causing Carnelian to grind his teeth. The relief of silence filled him with a terrible anticipation that made him burst into a cold sweat. The air began to tear with high whinings almost beyond hearing. Then suddenly, with atrocious force, screams shredded the world, harsh enough, it felt, to skin him alive. A whoosh, dozens more merging into roaring, then he was near-blinded by continuous, flickering lightning. The portals ahead were shuddering as if being struck by an earthquake. Their bronze gonged. He did not hear this, but felt it through his chair, through the judder of the cabin. Black smoke rose turning day to night.

He endured the shaking, the shrieking that hysterically pulsed its daggers in his ears, as the towers round him lit up, flickering, reflecting the coruscating detonations of energy on the other side of the closed gates.

At last the pipes, spluttering, fell silent. The great gates throbbed and clanged as the opening mechanisms engaged. The firmament of bronze came apart to create a hazy slit that brightened as it gave a widening view onto unimaginable carnage.

He issued the command for Heart-of-Thunder to advance and they slid between the open portals of the outer gate. On the sides of his neck he could feel the heat the bronze walls were radiating. Involuntarily, his gaze was fixed in horror upon the charred meat encrusting the killing field. The stench of it assailed him, making him gag. A mesh of black and red and white and seething gold; of limbs and blackened torsos and heads, crisping. Glistening with bubbling fat. Rags and hair smouldering. And, through his chair, he could feel the delicate concussion as Heart-of-Thunder cracked skulls beneath his feet.

The ride smoothed out. Weak with horror, Carnelian became aware they were now moving along a shelf of the Canyon floor that seemed as clean as sun-bleached bone. All the way there their path had been carpeted with sartlar remains: even the bridge that they had crossed under the malevolent gaze of the Prow with its furious mane of smoke. Those sartlar surviving were ebbing away from him. Red they were, engrained with the dust of the outer world. He watched them with a weary, deepening hatred. All he wanted was to reach the Green Gate, fix the accursed relay, then return.

He was slow to realize the sartlar were no longer receding. Their mass solidified all the way to the turn in the Canyon and, no doubt, beyond so that it was impossible for them to move from his path. Filthy, stupid brutes, forcing on him the choice whether to trample them underfoot or to scythe a way through with fire. Lost in the loathsome contemplation of the decision he must make, Carnelian had to be alerted to their movement by his Left. They were surging towards Heart-of-Thunder. Instinctively he cried: ‘Open fire.’