The Third God

by Ricardo Pinto

  Then he sensed the shadow falling upon the upper northern wall. His hackles rose as he felt the presence of some vast malevolence looming over them, eclipsing what little blue there had been above them. His eyes resolved battlements. It was only the Black Gate. The Death Gate, a voice within him said in Vulgate. And, though he now knew it was Osrakum that was the Land of the Dead, it seemed to him he was in a funerary barge carrying them all to damnation.

  The fetor swelled into a miasma moist with decay. Approaching the fork in the ravine, they were too close to be able to see the Blood Gate that he knew was rearing its bulk somewhere above them. He glanced round at the cowering children. Mucus clung to their upper lips; vomit from their chins. Beyond them, the steersman seemed carved from the stern post. Carnelian raised his arm, amazed that the foul air should provide so little resistance, and indicated the left fork.

  The sound the oars were making dulled as the water became as thick as treacle. They were coming to where the corpse dam had been. Still piled against the walls was a mouldering scree composed of filthy bones. Hissing, a torrent of flies broke over them. Carnelian swallowed a cry as he, the kharon and the boat all became encased in the itching, buzzing plague. Behind him the screaming of the children turned to choking. Then he was thrown forward as the hull struck something. He only just managed to catch the bow to stop himself falling into that soup of putrefaction. Flailing at the flies he glimpsed the mound of matter upon which they had run aground.

  With poles they delved into the filthy stuff beneath the prow. In an agony of disgust, convulsed by dry heaving, they painfully gouged a channel. Squinting back through the swirling plague, feeling the writhing nodules of the flies with each blink, sneezing them out of his nostrils, Carnelian watched the kharon along the bow shove their poles into the soft weeping mounds on either side, loosening chunks that plunged into the pools, causing the splashed to whimper.

  They slid free into the shadow of one of the bridges that spanned the Cloaca. Carnelian sank his head in despair as he saw, ahead, a bronze grille barring their way. On either side angled the slots with the counterweights. They edged the boat as close as they could, then Carnelian scrambled over with a couple of Marula. More clambered into the slot on the other side. After a struggle, the counterweights began to slide down their ramps, even as the grille rose, shedding lumps, streaming fluid.

  The bone boat passed under the toothed edge of the grille. The channel ahead was clear. The kharon rowed them so fast they snapped some oars on the ravine wall. Everyone feeling with each push of the oars they were edging away from the horror. Soon they were emerging from the bridge shadow. The fly plague thinned and, as they reached the joining of the channels, they all gazed up the edge of the Prow, drinking in the clear air, the blue beauty of the sky, crying tracks down their gory faces.

  They waited to see that the next boat was following, then continued down the channel. By the time they reached the first turn in the Canyon, the Cloaca walls were noticeably less lofty; the stream of the sky was widening to a river. By the second turn they had begun to feel they had escaped death, that they were fully alive beneath the filth whose stench came off their bodies and the boat, so that they hardly noticed the miasma fading in the breeze. Following the turn they saw the Green Gate rising to bar their way. Carnelian tensed as he realized how much the water level in the Cloaca had risen. What if the boats were unable to pass under the fortress?

  The bone boat slowed as the first structures of the Green Gate loomed up before them. The Cloaca continued under the masonry along a barrel-vaulted tunnel. It was obvious there was not enough clearance for the prow and stern posts. Carnelian saw that here the walls of the Cloaca were not much more than twice his height. The stone was smooth, but they might be able to rig up some kind of ladder, or netting, to scale it. Though he could not see out, he was sure they would be able to reach the leftway that ran all the way from here to the Wheel, round it and then alongside the south road. The whole route must lie above the flood level, at least until it reached the section Molochite had had demolished. Could the flood have reached that far? That first doubt caused his vision to unravel. There were so many places where the leftway might have collapsed or been torn down. All it would take would be for one of the bridges that spanned the gates of the Wheel to be broken and they would be stranded without any means to go further. He looked again at the sloping Cloaca wall: even if he took the risk of trusting to the leftway, it was hard to imagine how they could get the thousands of children up that. He shook his head and instead examined the elaborate mosaic of limb bones from which the prow post was shaped. His hand reached out to touch it. They needed these boats. He peered down the tunnel. It seemed clear all the way through to the oozing daylight beyond. He picked his way back along the deck. What was going to have to be done would be best put to the steersman.

  Kharon were hacking into the bones of their forebears. As Carnelian stood in the stern watching the prow post splinter under the Ichorian blades they had borrowed from the Marula, he remembered the columns of his home being felled at the insistence of Aurum and the other Lords. He was glad to be distracted by the approach of another boat, Fern in the prow, who raised a gore-encrusted arm in salutation. Carnelian returned the greeting, then gestured him closer so they could talk.

  The splintered, butchered stump of the prow post still stood higher than Carnelian, but, as they moved into the tunnel, it was a good forearm’s length short of the vault. He leaned forward to help spy out their way. The confined space muted the thresh of the oars. He noticed all manner of holes in the vaulting that led up into the fortress. So it was he could not miss the serrated edge of a portcullis pulled up into the roof just before the tunnel end. Of course there had to be something to bar entrance, otherwise the Cloaca would have perforated the defences of the Green Gate. What a relief that it was raised. It would have been a major undertaking to find the mechanism that opened it. Unease soaked into him as he questioned who had opened it.

  Just then the boat carried him out of the tunnel and he forgot everything else, mesmerized. Before them the Cloaca flowed on, seeming to rise until, in the near distance, it overflowed to fill the Canyon with a lake that shimmered all the way to where the Wheel colossi stood gazing out upon a world of blinding, dazzling light.

  When the boat reached a point in the Cloaca where its walls were level with the bows, they began helping the children to disembark onto a portion of the dry Canyon floor still above the flood. Fern’s boat arrived before they were finished. Carnelian confirmed with him the details of the plan they had agreed earlier. Leaving him to muster the flotilla as it appeared from under the Green Gate, Carnelian set off down the Cloaca, his boat lighter and swifter.

  Reaching open water, the boat leapt forward as if in delight at winning her freedom from the Cloaca. Carnelian too felt elation as they sped down the flooded Canyon. They slowed as they passed the ankles of the colossi. Kharon came forward to stare in wonder at a world they knew only from stories. Before them the drowned Wheel seemed shimmering glass. Carnelian could just make out the ring of punishment poles standing at its centre; the backs of the six bridges rising like huimur from the water. He gazed round the outermost edge of the lake. The five pairs of gatehouses still seemed intact, but the rim of tenements and towers that had once made the Wheel a shallow bowl seemed rotten, crumbled, broken. Beyond he thought he could make out something that might have been the ruins of the city; further still, nothing but an ominous haze that could have been the very edge of existence.

  They rowed towards the Wheel, staying above the Cloaca channel in case the water covering the Canyon floor was too shallow. When they reached the moat that defined the edge of the Wheel, they decided to follow it sunwise, reluctant to move out over the submerged pavement for fear of running aground. One of the bridges that linked the Canyon to the Wheel they drifted over without mishap. Carnelian gazed at the lake, sad at how still the place was that once had been such a ferment of humanity. Soon t
hey were approaching the southern lip of the Canyon where twin gatehouses rose from the water embossed with quincunxes. As they passed over the bridge these towers guarded, there rose on their right the vast, once dazzling brass gates, tarnished, as if sucking the blue-green up from the water. On their left the beginning of the Great East Road had become a stagnant canal clotted with mounds and debris; flanked by mouldering half-collapsed tenements like a long jawful of rotting teeth. The kharon stared, their wonder turning to horror. Carnelian shared their relief when this view was hidden by the rim wall. This too was decaying. The buildings that had once formed its smooth jigsaw were coming apart. Ramparts buttressed with brick, though bulging, still stood; but in many places reinforcing beams, charred, shattered or swollen, had torn wounds in the mudbrick walls. Leprous plaques of shattered plaster covered the façades that looked ready to shed them dangerously onto the boat slipping past below. Sewer mouths had ruptured, dribbling filth to corrode cavities into the cliff. The whole curving wall seemed a dance of giants, rotting as they staggered and threatening to collapse. The further the boat went the more nervous everyone became of the ruinous overhangs. Some looked so precarious that the waves their oars sent lapping at the foundations might bring the whole lot down on them.

  At last they steered away, between a pair of crooked cranes, out over the pavement of the Wheel, eyes half closed, anticipating a grinding of the keel even as they tried to spy out a clear channel. Carnelian became aware that they were following the dark serpent of the Dragonway, sinuous beneath the water, but at that moment the steersman turned their prow back towards the rim. They were moving round the back of the second pair of gatehouses to avoid the brass posts where once guards had demanded tolls. Soon these were swept from view by the bulk of the Gate of the Sun. They slowed behind it, floating above its bridge, as they turned towards the Great South Road: another gloomy canal hemmed in by ruined, leaning walls. Its path of water in some places seemed merely a linked string of wounds gouged through the corpse of the city.

  Carnelian’s heart sank into his stomach. How could they find a way through that? As he looked round, past the gatehouses, the Wheel seemed seductively open and free. Perhaps the next road would provide a clearer route to the Gatemarsh; but shadows were lengthening. If he did not find a way now, they would have to try again the next day. Could the children spend a whole night crammed on the boats? Perhaps they could all disembark in the Canyon. He imagined how long it would take; the chaos. His plan had been to disembark them on the road south before nightfall. That was still the best plan. Reluctantly, he gave the steersman the command to take them into the rotting city.

  They poled the boat from one pool to the next, having to coax her keel through the narrow channels that linked them. The flooded road was shoaled by the mudbrick walls that had collapsed into it, then softened into shapeless mounds. In places they had to lower themselves over her bows and struggle to find a footing in the slime as they pushed and dragged her hull through the sucking mud.

  Once, Carnelian wandered away into what had once been a courtyard. The place stank of mildew and sodden plaster. The walls defining the chambers that opened into the court were now vague, crumbling boundaries. Here and there a patch of stucco still showed a snatch of ochre, of blue, of yellow that spoke of a room in which people had lived. Mostly everything was blotchy with mould or succumbing to a creeping dingy green scum. The angled, swollen, charred stumps of immense beams seemed bones ruptured for their marrow. Peering round at the blackened shells, he saw how conflagration had brought floors and walls down. The tumbled ruins seemed the remains of half-burnt, half-eaten corpses.

  Slowly they dragged the bone boat along the road. Most of the alleyways branching off on either side were choked with fallen debris. Those that gleamed with water were too narrow for the boat. Carnelian grew morose, feeling the rot of the place invading him. All around them, torn and exposed, were homes where once families had eaten their meals, loved, slept. Where humble treasures had cheered busy lives. What fire had not consumed was sodden and as mouldy as old bread. The spaces seemed haunted by voices and laughter and the roar of the multitude that had once poured down this thoroughfare. The relentless decay drew even these imagined vestiges out of him until nothing was left but ruin and a silence that pressed in on them. For they were clearly the only living things in that dead city. He could not deny the growing, uneasy realization that they had not seen the slightest scrap of any of the millions that had once inhabited this termite mound, nor yet of the sartlar hordes. Away from the gory boat, there was not even the slightest odour of a corpse.

  Then, just as they came within sight of the burnt stump of a watch-tower, brightness ahead showed where there must be a wide gap in the buildings. As their ragged prow slipped into the light they saw, to the right, a flight of submerged steps that had once led down to the lake. The water above them formed a channel easily wide and deep enough to accommodate the boat. They scrambled back onto her deck and her oars propelled her between collapsed towers out into open water turned to liquid gold by the late afternoon sun. Across the water they saw the gilded tumbled tenements that flanked another of the raised roads running off towards the west. The flood stretched as far as the horizon. If it had not been so still, Carnelian might have imagined they had reached the sea.

  They rowed west for a while so that they could look down the ruin-clustered flank of the Great South Road. At last Carnelian called out for them to halt. As the oars backwatered, he peered south. He nodded, certain that the tiny spike he could see there must be what was left of watch-tower sun-three. He pointed and asked the nearest kharon. The man confirmed that there was a thread running from that tower away to the southern horizon. There the road surface rose from the flood. Carnelian gave the order to turn about. They must return to the Canyon as fast as they could if they were to have any hope of guiding the flotilla back and so reach that road before night fell.

  When Carnelian’s boat slid out from behind the gatehouses of the southern gate, he saw the rest of the flotilla coming towards him out from the Canyon mouth. A figure standing in the prow of the lead boat waved and he waved back, certain it was Fern. When close enough, Fern called out that all the boats had made it through unscathed and that they had picked up the children Carnelian had disembarked. Carnelian passed this news to his steersman and, soon, his boat was turning back towards the ruined city.

  The sun was low, the flooded lake copper when Carnelian’s boat cut into it again. Down the flank of the long island they rowed, Carnelian turning to watch with satisfaction as one boat after another emerged into open water. When they reached the end of the island, he saw the road emerge, running south across the flood, but so little raised above its surface that the wake of the boat washed right over the road to lap against the leftway wall.

  By the time they were passing the stump of watch-tower sun-three, the road had risen above the water by perhaps half Carnelian’s height. He urged the steersman on until the road was standing higher than the bows. At his signal the boat began to slow, angling slightly towards the road. The port oars were shipped as they closed. Her hull struck the stone, scraping along it as he and the kharon reached up to the lip of the road to try to bring her more gently against it. Scrambling up, Carnelian was stunned for a moment by the vast expanse of limestone whose paleness showed here and there through the filth. As the kharon in the boat cast ropes up, Carnelian walked over to the ditch that ran between the road and the leftway wall. There he found a basket that he loaded with rubbish and dollops of mud. He handed this to a kharon who appeared at his shoulder. He himself salvaged a wheel with a broken hub and rolled it back towards the boat. With these and other salvage they made her fast.

  As other boats drew up along the improvised quay, more were approaching from the north. He frowned. It would be dark before they got them all anchored. He gazed back towards the watch-tower, tiny in the distance. He wondered if anything survived there with which they could make some light. He do
ubted it. The realization came to him that, now he had safely brought the children out from Osrakum, he must follow his guiding dreams to their bleak conclusion. He looked towards the sun. Its gory gaze from the horizon made the world seem drowned in blood.

  In the afterglow he strolled north along the road, watching the shadow boats disgorge a flood of chattering children. There were cries of frustration, shouting, but also laughter as everyone managed as best they could in the near darkness. He halted and peered down the road. It was impossible to see if all the boats were there. Soon it would be impossible to see anything. Then it would be time for him to leave.

  He lay on his back looking up at the stars. Their frost seemed to be chilling the air. He wrapped his cloak more tightly round him and snuggled closer to Fern. In the dark they had all fumbled some morsels out from their packs. Water had been drawn from the flood lake and bowls of it passed from hand to hand so that everyone got a sip. It had been his decision to set no guards. He had argued that there was little they could do if they were attacked, but he had other reasons. Then, finding what comfort they could, they had huddled together and lain down to sleep. He had even dozed a bit himself. He had wanted to make sure everyone was asleep before he left.

  Awake now, he found doubt was gnawing at his certainty. In this darkness, at the edge of a frightened multitude, it was a lot harder to believe in the truth of dreams. Reality seemed as cold and solid as the stone beneath his back. Here they were with no possibility of defending themselves, exposed to who knew what horrors.

  Fern’s warm body called to him, but Carnelian feared to touch him lest he should wake him. He knew he must go before his courage failed. He listened. At first all he could hear was the lapping of the waves; the small sounds rising from the sleeping children. Then he managed to focus in on Fern’s breathing. Carefully, he rolled away, all the time listening to that breathing. Hearing no change in its rhythm, he pushed himself up onto his knees, then stood. Nothing indicated Fern or anyone else had noticed. He gazed at the black road ahead of him. He knew there was no one there. He had made sure of that. One step. Two. Another and another and another. He imagined it would get easier, but it did not. He was leaving behind all that was left of what he loved. His heart felt as if the night was drawing the life from it. He concentrated on feeling the edges of the paving stones with his feet.