Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

Carnelian shrugged. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Perhaps it’s because I’m monstrously disfigured.’

‘I’ve seen much disfigurement.’

He sensed her anger in the cast of her shoulders. ‘How like a Master that you should only be capable of seeing this from your own perspective.’

Carnelian was stung by this rebuke, not least because it was justified. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘A Master apologizing to a leper?’ She laughed. ‘Incredibly, you seem to have the capacity for pity. Keep it for yourself, Master.’

Her bandaged hands rose to her cowl. As she pulled it back, a cascade of white hair was released that, for a moment, blinded Carnelian to anything else. It was not old woman’s hair, but thick and lustrous. Then he saw her skin, rosy, pale as one of the Chosen. There was something strange about her eyes. She held his gaze and he saw they were the colour of watered blood.

‘You like my eyes?’

Carnelian could not think what to say.

Lily began to unwrap the lower half of her face. Each unwinding showed more of a wide, flat nose. He tensed, fearing the ragged wound of a mouth that would make a mockery of her strange beauty. Her lips appeared, a washed-out coral, but unflawed.

The last bandage fell away from her small chin. Her eyebrows and lashes were white. Carnelian gazed, mesmerized. ‘You’re beautiful.. .’

Her eyes darkened. ‘Who did the Enemy, Au-rum, kill? Someone you loved?’

Carnelian told her about Crail, then: ‘And you?’

She looked puzzled. ‘Is it possible all Masters are like you under their masks?’

Carnelian frowned. ‘No. Most of them are like Aurum. Pray you never see him unmasked. The atrocities against your people he carried out with indifference or for his amusement.’

Lily’s eyes grew dark as roses. ‘Lust for revenge withers my heart; the hearts of all the Lepers. He murdered everyone I loved.’

On the cave wall, shadows played out the scenes of torture and death that Carnelian had witnessed the Masters inflicting; that he had inflicted.

‘You’re not to blame.’

Carnelian turned on her. ‘You don’t know that!’

Her shock chased away his anger. ‘My actions, my inaction, have brought disaster on those I’ve loved. I was a fool to believe I could escape what I am. We’re a cancer.’

Lily nodded. ‘One for which there is no cure.’

‘Perhaps,’ Carnelian said, not seeing her, seeing only Osidian’s face, Aurum’s, the sheer, invulnerable ramparts of Osrakum. ‘I would cut it out and burn it if I could find a way.’

He became aware of how intensely Lily was looking at him. ‘I believe you would.’

She chewed her lip. Carnelian waited, knowing she wanted to tell him something. She made her decision. ‘Your Marula are looking for you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They search the Valleys for you.’

Carnelian had been certain that the Marula, driven by Osidian’s obsession with reaching the Guarded Land before Aurum, must be far away by now. ‘Have they done violence to your people?’

Lily shook her head. ‘Though they threaten it if you’re not returned.’

Such restraint on Osidian’s part made Carnelian uneasy. ‘You shouldn’t trust him.’

‘Him?’

‘They’re led by another Master who’s more like Aurum than he’s like me.’

‘But he too is Au-rum’s enemy?’

Carnelian considered this. ‘For the moment.’ When it came to wars between themselves, Masters were driven more by whatever might bring political advantage than by their feelings.

‘So you don’t want to be given back to him?’

Carnelian probed Lily’s red eyes. He thought of Fern and of Poppy. He thought of playing the game. ‘You told me your people are being gathered to watch me die.’

‘They are, but it’s not you they really hate.’

‘One Master will seem to them very much like another.’

‘That’s true, but I now believe you are different.’

Lily offered him a shroud. She looked angry at his hesitation. ‘Take it. Put it on – or are you too proud?’

Carnelian regarded the rags. To take them was to confirm what he already knew. He might prefer death to living as a leper. He imagined Poppy shunning him, Fern. ‘I don’t think I can return.’

‘Why not?’ she demanded.

He indicated the shrouds she was holding out to him.

She looked puzzled. Then her white eyebrows rose. ‘You mean as a leper?’

Grimly, Carnelian nodded.

To his surprise Lily threw back her head and laughed. ‘I thought you would’ve noticed I’m clean.’

Carnelian stared at her. ‘But… why then do you wear a shroud?’ Before she had a chance to answer he knew it already. ‘A disguise…’

‘A leper’s all but invisible to the Clean. As an object of horror we’re almost invulnerable. They may cast stones, but that’s just fear. We slip through their cities like shadows.’

Carnelian felt as if she had given him the gift of life. When she offered him the shrouds again, he took them and she helped him put them on.

They crept through the darkness along the edge of a river. Though Lily held a lamp aloft it cast little light. Carnelian felt his way with feet and hands. Then the rock fell away, opening into a cavern, its ceiling low enough to force him to stoop. A diamond-bright slot oozed light in from the outside. Squinting, Carnelian could make out furtive movements. Soon they were passing through an encampment. Chambers had been made by hanging rugs from the rock. Within these lurked thickly shrouded shapes. As he drew closer to the source of light Carnelian almost had to close his eyes against its intensity. People shuffled like ghosts. They drew away from his path as if it were he who was a leper.

When they reached the entrance of the cave Carnelian had to turn his back on the flood of light. His head ached. He felt dizzy.

Lily touched his arm. ‘Are you strong enough?’

‘I just need some time for my eyes to adjust.’

Looking back into the cavern, he could see people more clearly. Hunched, bony women. Tiny mounds of filthy cloth from which children’s limbs projected as thin as sticks.

‘Where’re your men?’ he said.

‘I lied to you. Most died defending their families.’ She pulled at his arm. ‘Come on.’

Lily led him down to the bank. There, concealed under some ferns, was a boat sewn from bundled reeds. Carnelian helped her launch it on the stream. The water was a braided mirror to the fully risen sun. Its rays sliced into his head. The slow rocking of the boat soothed him. A gentle breeze cooled his face as they drifted along the bank. Squinting, he could see Lily using a pole to keep them from running aground.

When he offered to take the pole, she shook her head. ‘I’ll do it better.’

He slept and, when he woke, he found they were pushing through a dense weave of stems. Gnats threaded the air. Fish darted glinting in the shadowed water. Sometimes the boat would drift into pools along whose banks he glimpsed giants shifting slowly, their movements hissing a sway into the reeds.

Their stream eddied suddenly into a great, winding river. With her full weight Lily poled them towards the northern bank where they could move hidden within tunnels of rushes. Glancing up-river he caught glimpses of an immense gorge.

Soon Lily was poling them down a branch channel that swelled into a water meadow paved with lotus pads and golden hyacinth. The pads squealed as the prow parted them. He tried to talk to her, but she seemed not to hear him. Her shrouds streaked with sweat, she kept the boat slicing through the green.

When she pointed over his head, he swivelled round and peered into the twilight. An island rose where the river forked ahead. For a moment he could see nothing out of the ordinary, but then he noticed a thread of rising smoke. He turned back to her, heart beating hard. ‘My people?’