Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

Black water at his back, he shrinks away from the tree. Vast, it ensnares the sky in its branches. Its roots bind the earth, and his limbs; entwine his iron spear. He reels, gazing skywards, mouth agape, pouring a moan. His eyes misty blue cataracts.

On the pit rim, he grips the earth with frantic fingers for fear of falling in. The world tree’s roots snake down to feed upon the Underworld. Roots awrithe with worms. O false strength! Terror that it will topple on him, tearing the sky from its circle; uprooting the earth. A small door lies open in its trunk. Strange he has not noticed it before. He and his shadow hold hands as they enter.

Alone in the tomb. A seed crushed in a withering pomegranate. A baby in a dried-up womb. He sees the huskman. No, a woman, arms outstretched, desiring to hold him. He is willing, for she is the mother of his mother he has never known. He offers her a baby. Puzzled, he knows it is himself. Glancing up, he sees her unfleshed, eyeless face and knows she is Death.

He woke, gasping, terrified, the dream more real than the night. He sat up, aware of the shapes of his loved ones sleeping around the fire. Silence beyond, pregnant with the multitude of children. He focused on the embers blushing with each shift of air. He had asked for a dream, for certainty. Now his heart was registering its bleak meaning. He quietened his fluttering mind. There was no room for doubt. Some part of him had known it all along. Still, it had been a long struggle to accept it.

Brooding, he was watching the food being distributed to the children that many were already packing away for the journey, when a slave shuffled into view. The slave’s painted eyes flinched as it caught sight of his face. It fell trembling to its knees, but not before Carnelian had seen its mutilation displayed within a frame of ivory.

‘Please, will the Celestial Lord deign to follow me?’ said the eunuch.

Carnelian noticed two scarlet palanquins some distance away and signed agreement. As he approached, he saw more of the eunuchs in gorgeous costumes of verdant silk ribbed and studded with jewels, but his focus was on the palanquins: boxes lacquered the colour of fresh blood. He had a premonition of whom they might contain. In a whisper his guide urged him to kneel before the first of these. Frowning, Carnelian obliged. A panel sliding back released a dark perfume of mummified rose. A glimmer like a fish in the gloomy interior made him lean forward. Inside, curled up as if in a womb, an apparition smothered in scarlet damask, a mask in her lap, her pale beautiful face staring at him with two angry, eyeless pits.

‘My Lady,’ he said.

‘Lord Carnelian,’ said Ykoriana. Her head inclined a little as if her empty sockets were giving him a sidelong glance. ‘What is it I have been watching from my palace?’

He saw no point in not telling her the truth. When he was done she dipped her chin. ‘It is as I had thought. The world is finished then?’

‘This world is.’

‘And what hope have you for life beyond, Celestial?’

Carnelian considered the dark promise of his dream. ‘For those I lead, certainly not the life they might have lived here, but one lived freely beneath the sky.’

Ykoriana nodded, her brow creasing, sadness in her face. Her brow smoothed. ‘You know why I have come?’

‘I have an idea, my Lady.’

One of her hands slid out from a sleeve and, opening like a lily, reached out to him. Carnelian took it. Though it seemed porcelain, it was soft and warm. ‘Take your niece with you.’

He was touched by her plea, but felt in his gut the danger of taking with him a child from which could be grown a brood of imperial progeny.

Ykoriana pulled her hand free. ‘Do this not for my sake, but for hers.’

She made a sign of summoning that caused the eunuchs around the second palanquin to kneel. One opened its panel, then all touched their foreheads to the ground as a tiny figure emerged into the light. A divine doll wrapped in a dark robe. The very plainness of her costume only served to accentuate the beauty of her face; the emerald slivers of her eyes.

‘She has had no reason yet to become cruel.’

Carnelian returned his gaze to Ykoriana, who had retreated back into the gloom of her palanquin. He was remembering that the girl had witnessed the bloody rituals of the Apotheosis. Ykoriana was putting on a mask. Unhuman beauty frozen in gold. A hard brittle smile, but it was the eyes that startled Carnelian. Not slits, but solid staring ovals with irises of icy sapphire. The mask made Ykoriana appear as if she was in terror of some horror just behind Carnelian. It was an act of will for him not to turn to look for it. As the little girl tottered towards them in response to her mother’s call, Carnelian leaned towards her. ‘Let her see you as you really are.’

Ykoriana shook her head violently and her staring mask made her seem as if she was crazed. The little girl was there beside him, on tiny ranga, gazing up at the mask. Carnelian’s heart ached as he saw the barrier this mother felt she must put up between herself and her daughter.

‘This is your uncle, Carnelian. Do you remember, Ykorenthe?’

The little girl looked at him with solemn eyes and gave a nod.

‘Carnie,’ he said and she rewarded him with a smile.

‘Carnie.’

He gazed at her, entranced, then turned to Ykoriana. ‘She would be raised as a barbarian.’

‘But she will be free?’ said the staring mask.

Carnelian frowned. ‘I make no promises. We may never even win our way to any kind of safety.’

Her hand found his again. ‘Promise me you will keep her close to you.’

Carnelian looked upon the beautiful child again. ‘I will if I can.’

Ykoriana let go of him. ‘That is enough. The Gods love you.’ Her hand found the child’s face, caressing her chin, then sliding up her cheek. ‘My delight,’ she murmured.

Carnelian, watching this, was touched and considered once again urging her to unmask, so that at least she could kiss her daughter one last time, but the Dowager Empress was already receding back into her palanquin. ‘I shall pray for you both.’ With that, she slid the panel back. Soon it rose into the air, turned, then began the journey back towards the Forbidden Door.

Carnelian felt a tiny hand slipping around one of his fingers. He sensed the little girl’s anxiety and, scooping her up, rose and turned to carry her back to the camp and the other children.

Standing in the entrance to the Plain of Thrones, Carnelian turned to look back. Beyond the river of children, the shadow of the western cliff was beginning to creep towards Osidian’s camp. Above the tomb colossi were the galleries of the Halls of Rebirth where, at that very moment, Ykoriana might be standing having the scene described to her. Behind her the incomparable marvel of the chambers honeycombing the rock and opening out into the underworld of the Labyrinth. Rearing above its roof, the Pillar of Heaven, its flank gilded by the sinking sun. He felt a deep melancholy at all that was to be lost, even though those wonders had fed on misery and injustice and lies. He turned away to look down the steps cascading all the way to the turquoise waters along whose new muddy shore an armada of bone boats was pulled up like so many seeds. He smiled at Poppy who was holding Ykorenthe’s hand. It gladdened his heart that Poppy seemed to like her; that she was prepared to see Ykorenthe as a child first, a Mistress second. He caught Fern watching him. Carnelian put his arm about his shoulders and grinned. ‘Let’s go home.’

Carnelian turned side-on to the breeze. Aband of blackness separating the glory of the heavens from its murky reflection in the Skymere was relieved only by a few pricks of light. He focused on one, telling himself it must be coming from a chamber in which his father and Ebeny were together and he sent them a benediction. Then he pulled his cloak about him, suddenly chilled by the thin light of the stars.