Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

Carnelian could look into his brown eyes now. There was anger there, but also a vulnerability, as if Fern were caught in a trap he could not escape. Carnelian yearned to help him free himself, but did not know how. ‘I’m not sure.’

Lunging forward, Fern kissed him. ‘There. Do you feel better? Now both of us have proved we don’t care if you’re a leper.’

Carnelian stared. Fern vaulted into the saddle-chair, then touched his feet to the aquar’s neck. The creature rose, forcing Carnelian to step back. As he watched it pound away he frowned, confused.

After crossing a stretch of marshy water their march brought them up onto the hump of an island. For the rest of the morning they journeyed along its spine, keeping parallel to the silver band of the cliffs of the Guarded Land. They were still following Aurum’s ashen road.

The sun was at its highest when the land began to sink down into a vast swamp, on the other side of which they could see the gaping maw in the white cliff. Green land ran up into the narrowing throat, greying until it became the pale thread that led up to Makar.

Earth softened to mud as they descended towards the swamp. Soon they were wading, water up to their saddle-chairs, following the winding route marked through the water lilies by posts. Here and there they would pass a mound covered with the charcoal ruins of some hamlet whose inhabitants’ tattered remains spiked the road posts, grinning like Oracles.

At last they began to leave the pools behind. Ahead the cliffs of the Guarded Land rose white and scabrous in the afternoon. They followed the high ground west towards the gaping Pass.

Shadows were stretching when they turned north riding directly for the Pass. The ground became scrubby and strewn with rocks the colour of bad teeth. As the Pass widened to receive them, the cliffs that framed it rose higher still, so that Carnelian felt he and the Marula were shrinking. Soon the pale boulders surrounding them were so large that, even riding, they could no longer see over them. Larger still they grew, becoming cliffs in their own right. The Guarded Land had risen up to fill the sky with ramparts etched by deepening shade. Then shadow fell on them like a tidal wave. The sun was shut off by sheer, forbidding rock. The Marula shivered. Carnelian wound his uba around his face.

They marched on in twilight, though behind them the land was still soaked in gold by the westering sun. When even this began to darken Osidian called a halt.

They made a camp among some boulders. The Marula sent foraging came back with roots like snakes. The fires cheered them. Some dared to turn their backs upon the Pass. Others faced it, though they sank their heads so as not to see it. Carnelian gazed into its abyss of darkness. Somewhere up there was Aurum and his dragons. The Pass had a look about it of the canyon that led up into Osrakum, though it was impossible to imagine that a smiling lake encircled with palaces lay within its black depths.

In the dawn, men eyed the Pass nervously. Osidian sent word round that they should hone their weapons. Carnelian watched the Marula sharpening the bronze of their stolen blades and made a show of doing it himself, though he failed to see how lances would be effective against dragonfire. At least it distracted everyone from the coming trial. He ran his finger along the edge of his spearhead, imagining what the day ahead might bring. He was a victim to his hopes and fears. Glancing up, he saw Poppy working hard on some flint she had found. Fear for her choked him.

At last Osidian ordered them to mount. Soon they were filtering up through the boulders into the black throat of the Pass, the sartlar, as usual, at the end of the column. Narrower and narrower the Pass became. Closer and closer its limestone ramparts. The sun bathed the valley behind them, but they were denied its light and heat. A chill wind blew constantly in their faces carrying a bleak odour of remote, empty places. Scree skittered constantly down from above. The scrabbling their aquar made upon the chalky paths was echoed by the cliffs, so that it seemed their march was haunted by other, invisible riders. The walls on either side were filled with caves like empty eye sockets or toothless, gaping maws. Occasionally they crossed the mouth of a tributary canyon down which sunlight could be seen glowing; some were only a narrow slit, others wider, choked with boulders or rotten with caves.

Then light caught the ragged summit of the western cliff. It burned lower, chasing shadows from the strata, turning the whole cliff brilliant white. Down it came until it reached the canyon floor. A tidal wave of incandescence broke over them. The sun was on their backs. Carnelian loosened his robe, delighting in the warmth seeping back into his bones, but the heat kept building. Breathless, the wind fell silent. The air began to melt, the cliffs to dance. Soon it was unbearable and they had to seek shelter in caves.

Some nibbled at djada, some fed from sacs. Carnelian sipped water from a skin, squinting out at the featureless blaze, trying to sear the fear from his heart.

They waited for the shadow to slip back across the canyon floor. They waited until its stone was cool enough to stand on. Then they resumed their march, the breeze returning to waft in their faces, to lift and flutter their robes like flags.

Day was failing when they saw ahead a fork in the Pass. Its walls had been drawing in steadily to squeeze the sky above into a luminous strip. The sun was just gilding the craggy heights of the eastern wall. Carnelian was as weary as his aquar. Around him the Marula sagged in their chairs, their mounts plodding forward with drooping necks. He lifted his head to examine the canyons of the fork as they approached. The right and narrower of the two had a steep, irregular floor. The left was wide with a smooth floor and gloomy almost to the brim. He squinted, trying to pierce its shadows. Something caught his eye: a regularity like the crenellations of a city wall. He resolved the shapes into towers supported by great black masses. His cry of warning was drowned out by a harsh, metallic braying that reverberated so deafeningly in the Pass it seemed the limestone cliffs must shatter and fall.

‘Dragons,’ Carnelian breathed as the trumpet echoes faded. He gaped at the line of monsters stretched across the Pass.

‘Their pipes are unlit,’ Osidian cried. ‘Ride between them!’

With that he launched himself towards the dragon line. Morunasa bellowed out a command that was taken up by the other Oracles. They kicked their aquar forward. Reluctantly the Marula followed them. Through his feet Carnelian felt his aquar keen to shoal with her kind. He let her go, casting glances from side to side. Fern overtook him. Poppy and Krow were looking to him.

‘After them, we have no choice.’

Then he had to give attention to his aquar’s increasing pace. He rolled with her strides. Riding the rhythm he could look up and face the dragons. Dim massing of shadows, they seemed more like the columns of the Labyrinth than creatures of flesh. Their towers with banner masts and rigging seemed incongruously delicate machines. His eyes detected a fraying above them. ‘Smoke,’ he groaned. ‘Their pipes are lit,’ he cried, but his warning was lost in their rushing charge.

A coughing came from somewhere above, then lightning. Night became day. Shrill screaming. Gobbets of fire spitting through the air. Incandescent arcs. Black masses mushrooming suddenly into great rolling clouds in which danced shards of sun. The reek of naphtha made his nose run, his throat raw. A rotting sulphurous stench. And heat, a furnace heat that beat in waves upon his face. His aquar stumbled, thrashed her neck from side to side. He struggled to make out the shapes of men and riders. Scratches of their cries engulfed by another chorus of shrieking fire that lit up the world. He urged his aquar forward; saw Osidian, terrible, with flamelight living in his eyes as he commanded everyone to advance. Carnelian located Morunasa and veered his aquar towards him. ‘Retreat,’ he cried. ‘Back.’