Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

Carnelian suppressed revulsion; he had to play the game. ‘Fern, Poppy and Krow are coming with me. In the unlikely circumstance that we win I intend to induct them safely into my House.’

Anger and sadness mingled in Osidian’s expression, but he lifted his hand in acquiescence.

They became aware Morunasa was approaching. He looked grim. ‘They’ll follow you, Master. But, be warned, we’ll hold you to our agreement.’

Osidian controlled anger at being addressed thus. ‘Make ready to ride north.’

Morunasa almost smiled as he shook his head. ‘They’ll not leave until they’ve burned their dead.’

He was demonstrating to them both that they were not going to command unquestioning obedience. The Marula might need Osidian, but he was in their power.

As they watched him ride off, Osidian said: ‘I wish there were a way to communicate with the creatures other than through that man.’

Carnelian glanced at Osidian, uneasy. Marching north with the Marula it was not only Osidian and he who would be in their power, but also his loved ones. And Osidian was right: it was not the warriors who were the real danger, but their masters, the Oracles. It must surely be possible to find a way to speak to the warriors direct.

Marula corpses being thrown on pyres were pumping smoke up into a sky choked with scavengers. The Plainsmen were loading their dead onto drag-cradles they had improvised from the battlefield debris. Tending to the dead seemed such familiar work that Carnelian was drawn to help. What held him back was his reluctance to diminish the Masters any further in Marula eyes.

His thoughts turned to the auxiliaries, and what their beliefs might have been. That their bodies should be left for the scavengers would doubtless be as abhorrent to them as to the Plainsmen or the Marula. Eventually he sent for Kor and her sartlar and set them to piling the auxiliary dead upon blazing saddle-chairs. Soon they were adding their smoke to that of the Marula.

Weary, burdened by loss, as night approached men collapsed among the smouldering pyres. The reek of smoke, of roasting flesh was close enough to the smell of food to bring nausea. At least the fires kept the raveners at bay.

Carnelian rose. Overnight the horror of the battlefield seemed to have seeped into his bones. Raveners nosing round had haunted his half-waking dreams. He peered at the smoke-choked dawn. Huddled in twos and threes the Marula were grimacing at the bony grins of their charring dead. He wandered among them, but could not find the one he sought.

Osidian had the Marula scour the battlefield for the bronze-bladed lances of the auxiliaries with which to replace their flint-headed spears. After that it was a drawn-out struggle to gather them and get them mounted. As the Oracles marshalled them, Carnelian watched Osidian ride up. Osidian indicated the Mother’s Backbone with his spear. ‘There lies the road my Father made for us.’

Carnelian said nothing as Osidian rode ahead, but glanced to where drag-cradles were pulling away into the south. Gazing at the hunched Plainsmen he knew he would never see any of them again. He looked for Poppy and Fern and Krow. When he found them, his feelings of love for them conflicted with his conviction that they were all riding to certain ruin.

Mangled ferns formed the wake left by the passage of Aurum’s dragons. Dung rose in hills along that route. Poppy complained about how much they stank. ‘Like ravener shit,’ she said, her face twisting.

‘By feeding them render,’ Fern said, ‘the Standing Dead make them akin to raveners.’

Osidian drove them hard through the blistering day. His eyes, revealed in the slit of his indigo swathings, were always fixed on the wavering horizon. It was a race, but not one that Carnelian or the others were certain they wanted to win.

As dusk fell the pace slackened. Eventually they came to a halt and found a place up among the Backbone rocks to make a camp. People sat round their fires in morbid silence.

Even before dawn Osidian had them mounted and trudging northwards. It was around midday when they began to see the horizon ahead, banded with shimmering white. With each passing moment this mirage solidified. As they looked for a spot to make camp, Carnelian watched the band turn pink then bloody purple. Gazing thus on the cliff edge of the Guarded Land he could not help feeling a yearning to see his father and his family again.

In the still morning air the Guarded Land was solid, undeniable. Its cliff formed the pale foundations of the sky. As everyone packed up, Carnelian spotted some sartlar and wondered what those creatures must be feeling at seeing again the land of their bondage. He watched Fern and Poppy and Krow frown as they stole glances at the cliff. In their faces and those of the Marula he saw his own doubts and fears reflected. Only Osidian’s eyes burned as if gazing upon some long-lost lover. Soon he had them mounted and coursing northwards again, their shadows spindling away towards the vertebrae of the Backbone. As the shadows shortened, the sun began to melt the Guarded Land into a shimmering vision that rose ever higher as they rode.

Cresting a ridge Carnelian lifted his feet from his aquar’s back. As she slowed he stared. The slope plunged down into a land veined with rivers. These braided eastwards into a single channel: a torrent that issued from a canyon where the cliffs of the Guarded Land closed upon the slopes of the Earthsky. Westwards the land fanned out, undulating, sparkling with water, spreading to hazy distance. On the edge of delight he felt unease. The greens should have been more vibrant. There was a greying, like mould tainting the skin of a lime. Blackened patches. Scars disfigured the canopies. Everywhere he could see signs of fire. Of flame-pipes.

They wound down a wide gully. Trees towered on either side. Gouged scree showed where the dragons had gone before them. Soon they were riding into a deepening twilight. Sky was banished to shifting diamond cracks high among the branches. The air moistened like breath. Moss carpeted the slopes and boulders. Lichens furred trunks and twigs. They followed a tunnel, edged with splintered branches, that had been ripped through the forest by something massive. The only sounds were aquar footfalls muffled in the moss. Carnelian could not rid himself of a feeling of impending doom.

At last it began growing brighter up ahead. The air was acid with a reek of charcoal. His eyes took some moments adjusting to the light. He became aware that a sinister autumn had come to these forests. The ground was scattered with the ghosts of leaves. Trees were skeletal and black. The feet of the aquar were churning up a mist of ash. This was a world so wan it felt as if the capacity to see colour had drained from his sight.

They came to a river soapy with ash. After crossing it they climbed a path lined with posts. As they neared this fence Carnelian’s dread flared into full horror. Melted, grinning, to each post was what was left of a human being.

That was only the first avenue of charred bodies. In that ashen land such fences were common. Villages were thickets of charcoal stumps on the edges of black fields. Drifts of ash like grey snow banked here and there. The cliff of the Guarded Land was a vague, leprous wall. Even the sky seemed bone. The Oracles with their ash-rubbed skin seemed natural inhabitants of that sere land. Soon pale powder floating on the air had turned their march into a procession of wraiths. Terribly white, Osidian urged them on, driven by an inner vision that seemed to make him blind to the devastation. Hope leached from Carnelian’s heart. Anything beyond this dead world must be an illusion. Life and vigour were a fantasy; atrocity the only truth.

Darkness found them on a hill overlooking the ruins of a village edging a black stream. The gold of the fires they lit seemed counterfeit. That dead world drew Carnelian away from the warmth. He drifted down the hill. Burnt trees had become the roots of the encroaching night. His footsteps faltered as his nostrils caught a whiff of cooked meat, of decay. Passing down an avenue of charred corpses, he could feel their eyeless sockets watching him. Despair claimed him. Would he never escape the Isle of Flies? Was he doomed to witness its malice infecting the world? Was he, perhaps, a carrier of its contagion?