Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

She was scowling. ‘Clouds darkened my mind. The world had been turned inside out. When you claimed to be angels, we had had no doubt that you lied.’ She appraised Carnelian. ‘You even showed compassion. I came to believe that perhaps it wasn’t you who were cruel, but the overseers and their masters.’ Her blistered lips curled into a sneer. ‘The other Master showed me otherwise.’

Carnelian knew she meant Osidian.

‘He proved to me that your beauty was indeed a lie; that, though you had the power to take on a pleasing form, beneath it you were being consumed by worms. Things became once again as they had always been. And how could the Living ever hope to fight the Dead?’

Understanding broke over Carnelian like an icy wave. ‘My blood.’

From under her brows, Kor regarded him with baleful eyes. ‘I tasted it.’

‘You discovered we were just men.’

Her voice flat, clipped: ‘I discovered you could be killed.’

So much seemed clear to Carnelian then. The purpose of the Law, the Wise, what the true Great Balance had been. He saw in his mind’s eye how the world had whirled into destruction. He was appalled. ‘From a single drop of blood?’

‘It took more than that spark to ignite our rebellion. When I came up to Makar, of those of my people I found there, few believed me. As for our multitudes across the Land, they were beyond my reach. Generations it would’ve taken to pass on this new creed.’

Carnelian saw what he and Osidian had done to make the disaster inevitable. Gathering the sartlar together. Marching them to the heart of the Commonwealth, and there destroying not so much the legions as the Masters’ aura of invincibility.

‘When, in obedience to the Mother, you gathered up Her Children, my creed found many willing listeners.’ Her face became a dead mask. ‘Those who opposed me, we fed upon.’

Carnelian must have shown his disgust, for she lashed out: ‘Does the Master forget who it was taught us to feed on man-flesh?’

Hatred rose in him against the ugly, filthy creature. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You really do not know?’

It was her surprise that tamed him. His hatred was a defence against the realization rising in him with the vomit: that render was sartlar flesh. He struck the floor with his knees, pumped his stomach out in acidic convulsions.

‘So you’ve eaten from the same pot,’ she said, gleefully. ‘Did you really believe it was only the barbarians who paid you flesh tithe?’

Carnelian wiped his mouth, recalling the mounds of render sacs, glimpsing something of the scale of horror she was revealing to him. Looking up he watched her rage cool until she seemed to be wearing a leather mask.

‘I was born in the rendering caves. It was well after I grew into a woman that I first breathed the Mother’s sweet air. Mostly it was the old who were sent down to us, but also “troublemakers”, rebels, any and all who showed any spirit of defiance. The overseers even sent us children.’ Her glassy eyes slid to meet his gaze. ‘We tried to drug them before smashing out their brains with rocks.’ Her nose cavity changed shape. ‘I’m never free of the stench of their cooking.’

Carnelian cradled his stomach, tears and phlegm running together down his face. He withstood the contempt in her eyes.

‘How did you expect us to stay alive on the march to the Mountain? And on what do you imagine we feed now?’

He wiped his eyes, his nose, lost in horror, desperate to find light somewhere. ‘The meat from the dragons?’

Kor stared at him, then threw her head back and let forth a raucous coughing noise he realized was laughter. The convulsions slowed, and she lowered her head, shaking it. ‘That was barely enough to provide each of us with one meagre meal. Even the City’s inhabitants only fed us for a single day.’ She frowned. ‘We can’t escape hunger, nor do we wish to. Our Mother’s dying. She’s been dying since you enslaved us. Only our love and care have slowed Her decline. Still, each year She’s given us less.’

‘Surely some of the Land can still be saved?’

Kor glanced at him with a misery beyond sadness. ‘Too late. She turns to dust. Once we’ve consumed what lies here at Her heart, our dust will mix with Hers.’

‘Surely you must want something to survive? What about your children?’

As she turned away, he glimpsed a gleam of madness in her eyes. ‘We consumed them all,’ she whispered. ‘I, their mother, made my people do it. I asked them why they didn’t wish to spare their little ones more suffering.’ She gave him a desperate, furtive glance. ‘I feared they were so tired of killing, of dying, that they might give up, settle down to starve to death or attempt to find survival’ – her huge hands flailed the air – ‘somewhere.’ Her gaze fixed predaciously on Carnelian, her face filled with disgust. ‘So I stoked up their hatred. Now they hate me, but they hate you more.’ She leaned closer and spat words at Carnelian with her filthy breath. ‘We shall all die, but first I’ll rid the world of your cancer.’

She subsided, became just a strange, misshapen, mutilated woman. Carnelian was too weary for strategy and so let his heart speak. ‘But what will be left of that world?’

Her madness abated; Kor gazed at him with human eyes. She shrugged. ‘The lands beyond?’

‘The barbarians…’

Kor shrugged again.

Carnelian put his trust in his certainty that she was a woman, with a woman’s heart. ‘I have their children here.’

She looked at him, strangely still.

‘I brought their flesh tithe out from the Mountain. Thousands of children.’

Tightness had spread to buckle the upper curve of her branding. He held her old woman’s eyes. ‘Let them go.’

Kor chewed her upper lip, her eyes lensed with tears. He watched her face, breathlessly, as it betrayed the turmoil in her heart. Then, at last, she nodded and joy burst out through him as tears.

She turned. ‘Take them with you.’

‘Me?’ He had expected to pay for this boon with his life.

She gazed at him, seeming blind. He dared more. ‘Some of my people came with me.’ She was not saying no. ‘And some Marula…’ Her frowning made him quickly add, ‘whom I freed from their masters the Oracles.’

‘Take them all,’ she said. ‘The Children of the Earth shall show you mercy who have never been shown it themselves.’

Her eyes turned to glass and Carnelian judged his audience was at an end. He rose, turned away.

‘Master?’

Heart beating, he looked round.

‘How did you arrive here?’

At first Carnelian was confused, then he remembered the boats, remembered the water gate they had had to leave raised. His instinct was to lie, but it was a price that must be paid. He hardened his heart against the people in Osrakum. ‘We came by boat from the lake within the Mountain.’

Kor stared as if she could see that far. ‘Our legends speak of water the Dead have to cross.’

Carnelian waited a little, then turned away. His joy at what he had achieved was leavened with horror at the fate of those he had delivered to Mother Death.

‘Is that you, Carnie?’ came a voice from a clump of shadows on the road. He told Fern it was. Lumpen shapes surrounded Carnelian. ‘She’s let us go,’ he said to them. They grumbled and for a moment he did not believe they were going to let him through, but then they shuffled aside.

‘What’s happening?’ demanded Fern.

Carnelian closed in on his voice, gripped him, felt Fern tense then relax as he embraced him, found his mouth and kissed him. He threw his cloak around them both.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’ Fern said into his neck.

Feeling his warmth against him, Carnelian decided there was no reason to burden him unnecessarily. ‘They’re going to let us pass.’