The Third God

The Third God Read Free Page A

Book: The Third God Read Free
Author: Ricardo Pinto
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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

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