Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

‘Sort of. We made conditions.’

‘He understood you?’ he said, incredulous.

Poppy shrugged. ‘Well enough.’

Carnelian frowned. ‘You were right to lie about him.’ Poppy was gazing at him, curious about his reaction. ‘Please continue with your story.’

Poppy let it go. ‘The Lepers became friendly enough when Krow showed them his burns. It was only then they believed we’d suffered from the dragons.’

Krow nodded. ‘They said we could return with them to some cave, that they would hide us, even share their food with us.’

‘Did they?’ Carnelian sat back, thinking.

Poppy knew him well enough to be able to read something of his thoughts in his face. ‘You want to leave us here with them, don’t you?’

Carnelian grimaced. ‘There’s nowhere else.’

He looked to Krow for support. The youth put his hand on Poppy’s shoulder and began to speak, but she jerked her shoulder free. ‘What about you?’

Carnelian grew annoyed. ‘Look, didn’t you see the way Morunasa and the others behaved with me? We’re in their power. Even if we manage to survive, I intend to leave with the Master.’

‘Leave?’ asked Krow, frowning.

Poppy half turned to him. ‘Back to the Mountain with Hookfork.’

‘Hookfork?’ exclaimed Krow.

Poppy ignored him. ‘And what about us?’

Carnelian shook his head. ‘You two could still slip away, and take Fern with you.’ He watched as their gaze shifted to their injured hearthmate. ‘Please try to understand. You must know that the last thing I want is to leave you behind, but it’s simply madness to imagine I could get you safely to the Mountain. Hookfork’s a monster. He already hates me and would gladly use you against me. Eventually, he would make sure you both died, horribly.’

He waited, wanting it to sink in. ‘Even if that wasn’t a factor, we can’t trust the Master. He’s lost what heart he had. All that’s left in him is bitterness and a reflex instinct for revenge.’

Poppy was still staring at Fern, battling tears. Carnelian leaned forward to kiss her head. ‘You three will find yourselves a new life here among the Lepers. The one I met was not so different from a woman of your people.’

Poppy was shaking her head. He reached down to catch her chin and brought her eyes up to look into his. ‘Poppy, this is the only hope for any happiness I have left.’

As she gazed at him the fierceness leached away. She ducked the slightest of nods into his hand. He let her go.

‘What about the Marula?’ asked Krow.

Carnelian raised his hand to his brow. ‘I don’t know.’

Carnelian was setting off to talk to Osidian in preparation for the meeting with Morunasa when a commotion broke out. From all across the camp Marula were converging on its eastern edge. Anxious, Carnelian was drawn to find out the cause. As he pushed through the crowding Marula he heard Morunasa’s voice rise in anger. He broke through to find him confronting some shrouded figures. His heart leapt. Lepers.

Seeing Carnelian they surged towards him. The Marula drew back like crabs from a rising tide. Keeping his distance from the Lepers, Morunasa too approached him. ‘They say they’ve come with a warning, but that they’ll speak only to the Master.’

Carnelian did not flinch when one of the Lepers stepped forward. Their sudden appearance seemed a gift from the gods. He tried desperately to think of how he might best use this good fortune to save his loved ones.

‘We came to warn you, Master.’

‘Of what?’

‘The Master who is your enemy and ours intends to fall on you with a numerous host.’

‘Aurum?’

The Leper nodded and raised a bandaged arm to point towards the Pass. ‘Even now he approaches.’

Carnelian was stunned. If this was true everything was suddenly overturned.

‘You’ve little time if you’re to escape.’

‘What’s this?’

Everyone turned to look at Osidian. While Morunasa explained, Carnelian tried to find a way out of the trap they were now in. Though he had achieved the contact with the Lepers he had been working for, their announcement of Aurum’s imminent arrival had ruined everything. Morunasa was hardly going to let Poppy and the others go off to safety with the Lepers while he and his warriors remained behind to be destroyed.

The Lepers drew back as Osidian advanced on them. ‘How could you possibly know that a force is coming down the Pass?’

‘Information’s come down to us from the Landabove.’

‘Impossible. The Ringwall’s closed.’

‘It came by a route the Masters don’t control. A route we could show you. A route that could bring you, Master, and these Marula up to the Landabove unseen.’

‘Unseen?’

‘It’s a secret way, unprotected.’

Osidian stared at the Leper.

‘We’ll show you this secret way, but at a price.’

Carnelian had a feeling there was something going on he should understand. ‘A price?’

Another Leper stepped forward. ‘Au-rum. You must give the Master Au-rum to us.’

Carnelian’s heart stopped as he recognized Lily’s husky voice and her peculiar pronunciation of the Quyan name.

Osidian laughed. ‘Madness, sheer madness.’ His face became as forbidding as the cliff of the Guarded Land. ‘Do you really imagine I would hand over one of my own kind to you?’ His lips curled with disgust. ‘To a rabble of filthy lepers?’

Carnelian addressed himself to the Leper he now was certain was Lily. ‘Even if we were to agree to this how do you think we could bring such a thing about?’

‘What if we brought you up into a city of the Landabove, within its walls, unseen? Would this make any difference?’ she said.

‘Even so such a city would be well defended by its legion.’

‘What if the city of which I speak had been stripped of its auxiliaries?’

Carnelian turned his head enough to see Osidian’s eyes. As he expected, they were brightening with greed. Such a city would be vulnerable. What the Lepers were offering was a chance to acquire a legion of dragons.

Morunasa leaned forward, glaring. ‘You were rash, Leper, to put yourselves in our power. We can take from you what you know.’

Lily moved to confront the Oracle. ‘You could certainly force from us the knowledge of where it lies, Maruli, but it’s far away and you can only hope to reach it with the help of many of my kind – you won’t get that unless you promise to pay our price.’

This show of defiance to their Oracle was making the Marula bristle and growl. It was a most unexpected sound that silenced them: Osidian laughing. Morunasa looked at him in surprise. Fire had returned to Osidian’s eyes. ‘You’re a fool, Morunasa. Can’t you see that these lepers have been sent to me by the Darkness-under-the-Trees?’

As the sun was westering the Lepers led them up into the mouth of the Pass, so that it seemed they were riding towards the very thing they were trying to escape. Then the Lepers turned east towards the cliff of the Guarded Land. The ground began rising, becoming encumbered with boulders, earth turning to chalk that floated in veils around their march. Though they seemed to be riding towards the cliff they were not following a direct route. The Lepers led them up winding watercourses that followed narrow and tortuous tributaries. The aquar were finding it hard going. As Carnelian watched the shadows lengthen, he wondered how he might find a way to talk to Lily alone.

The sky was striped with ochre as, dismounted, they began to clamber up scree. Behind him Carnelian could see the mouth of the Pass already in twilight. Above them the cliff rose so high it was almost impossible to see its crest.

Dusk climbed the slope after them. It overtook them even as a cave mouth came into view. Near-darkness forced them to slow their climb. At last, Carnelian saw the Lepers ahead begin to be swallowed by the cave. When its arch was over his head, he looked back, then flinched: a glimmering tide was pouring out from the black throat of the Pass. Countless torches and, in among them, clots of darkness that must be dragons. As the Lepers had warned, Aurum had come.