Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

As he passed Akaisha’s mother tree, Carnelian averted his gaze. Nevertheless, at the edge of his vision, a corpse seemed to be standing in the gloom. One of his hearthmates. The stench of its rotting smothered him. He doubled up, vomiting, then lurched down the rootstair, his eyes half closed and his feet finding the hollow steps.

The ferngarden was an emerald framed in the gateway. The bright air beckoned him as if he were struggling up through water to breathe it. Stumbling over the earthbridge, he gulped the breeze. Arid musk of fernland laced with acacia and magnolia. He gaped at the sun making a gory end to the day. Turning away, with each blink he printed its turquoise ghost on the ferns.

Poppy? He spun round, checking to see where he was relative to the earthbridge. This was the Bloodgate. He was certain it was here he had made her promise to wait for him. There was no movement but the swaying ferns. What if some Marula had found her? Panic choked him. He had abandoned not only Poppy, but also Fern. What if Osidian had commanded the Marula to leave no one in the Koppie alive?

He took the roots of the stair three at a time, desperate to find Poppy and Fern. Akaisha’s mother tree was caging twilight. He came to a halt when he realized her branches were now bare. Squinting, he managed to make out a shape lying in a root hollow like a seed in a pod. Edging closer he first smelled then saw, in its green marbled face, that it was a corpse. He circled it; saw another, then another. Then he spotted one still hanging. His heart jumped when it moved. It was changing shape like a chrysalis erupting. Then it began to fall so that he almost cried out, but it halted, sagging, before reaching the ground and he saw that it was being held; saw it was Fern holding it. He was cutting down the dead.

A smaller shape rose from a crouch. Poppy. She wandered a little, then crouched again. Drawing closer, Carnelian saw she was straightening the body of a child that lay within a root hollow as if asleep. He was grateful the gloom did not allow him to see which one it was of the hearth’s children. He watched Poppy’s tender movements, unsure what to do, unable to speak. Already she had had to endure the massacre of her own tribe; now this. He wished he could see her face. Surely she must be aware of his presence. She rose. He reached out to touch her, but she pushed his fingers away. A chill spread over his chest. Did she hate him too? Then he felt a hesitant touch, a tiny squeeze, before she moved away to another corpse. The one Fern had been carrying was laid out on the ground. Already he was embracing another. Carnelian, determined to help, found an occupied hollow, crouched, then leaned forward into the sickening aura of decay, feeling for something he could grab hold of.

From the direction of the rootstair a figure emerged: Morunasa in his pale Oracle ashes. Carnelian reacted with instinctive outrage when Morunasa set foot upon the hearth’s rootearth. The reality sank in of how terribly it had already been violated. He glanced round, expecting Fern to launch himself at the Maruli, but he was laying a body out along a hollow and seemed unaware of Morunasa’s presence.

‘The Master’s sent me to bring you to him.’

That Fern showed no reaction to Morunasa’s voice left Carnelian desolate. He would have preferred rage, violence, anything but passivity.

Following Morunasa away from the hearth, he noticed with some alarm a shape skulking. Too squat to be Marula, it could only be Krow. Carnelian did not want to believe that the youth had taken any part in the atrocity, but there was his bloodstained robe, his guilty looks, and so he said nothing as he passed him.

When they reached the stair, he gripped Morunasa’s shoulder. As the Maruli came to a halt, Carnelian remembered that what caked the skin of an Oracle was the burnt remains of their human victims. He wiped his hand down his robe, then indicated Fern and Poppy. ‘If they’re harmed, I’ll kill you.’

Morunasa shrugged, and resumed their journey to the Crag.

Osidian sat upon the floor of the Ancestor House that was a mosaic of the bones of Ochre grandmothers. Tiny fetal skulls grinned under his feet. Behind him crouched two Marula warriors with stone blades in their fists. Carnelian noted the shadow welling around Osidian’s sunken eyes and at the corners of his thinned lips. His sweat-sheathed, pale skin was spotted with festering wounds. In the firelight, his grin flickered as the maggots inside him feasted: an infestation the Oracles claimed brought communion with their god and that made Osidian one of them. It was only his hunger to annihilate the Ochre that had drawn him from the Isle of Flies before the maggots had had time to pupate.

Morunasa’s face showed fear and hatred as he gazed upon Osidian. Carnelian had already determined not to reveal the Maruli’s betrayal.

‘My Lord,’ he said to Osidian and waited for him to focus a frown on him. ‘We must cut down the dead.’

Osidian’s frown deepened. ‘The Ochre shall hang on their trees as a lesson to the other tribes.’

Carnelian grew cold with fear for Fern and Poppy and what he had left them doing. He must save them. Osidian must have chosen the mode of death deliberately, for he knew what Plainsmen believed. His intention was that no Ochre soul should find release through the proper rites, but, perhaps, there was a contradiction in Osidian’s goals that could be exploited.

‘What lesson do you intend the other tribes to learn, my Lord?’

Osidian grimaced. ‘I would have thought that clear enough.’

‘That they will be destroyed if they oppose you? You have gone to some lengths to justify this massacre in their eyes.’

‘I merely administer the Law-that-must-be-obeyed.’ Osidian regarded him balefully. ‘It allows no exceptions.’

The implied threat struck Carnelian hard. Whatever transgressions against the Law of the Masters the Ochre might be guilty of, so were Poppy, Fern and all the other Plainsmen of Osidian’s tribes. He focused on the moment. ‘The Law demands only that they should die; it says nothing about how their bodies are to be disposed of. We have seen how they keep their enemies as huskmen, using them as guards.. .’ He still had Osidian’s attention. ‘But eventually even they are released…’

The maggots were gnawing at Osidian’s patience. ‘I said, they will see them hanging.’

‘You have summoned them?’

‘They will be here tomorrow if they value their lives.’

‘Then they will see your justice but, after, if you were to allow the proper funerary rites, you would only serve to force the lesson deeper by framing it in a show of respect for their ways.’

‘When they come, I march north. There will be no time for burials.’

That statement seemed an unscalable wall. Then a way over occurred to Carnelian. ‘Fern and I will do it.’

The labour required to save all the souls of his people must surely force Fern to put off any attempt at retribution. It would also provide them all with a channel down which to pour their grief.

Osidian sneered. ‘Do you not feel already unclean enough? Besides, surely the barbarian would rather join his tribe in death.’

Fear for Fern overcame Carnelian’s distress. ‘Would it not be better to force him to live as a permanent reminder to the other tribes of the lesson that you have taught them?’

Osidian considered this a moment, then gave a slight nod. ‘We shall let your barbarian boy live until he next defies us.’

The smile that followed showed how certain Osidian was that such a time would come. Carnelian could not let that go unchallenged. ‘Do you really want to have his corpse join the others lying between you and me?’

Pain closed Osidian’s eyes before he could respond. Carnelian had time to calm himself, to realize he did not want to throw away what he might have gained, but there was another anxiety he could not ignore. He waited for Osidian’s attack to subside.