Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

As they turned and began moving down the spillway, another bone boat was emerging from a sluice. Carnelian had to believe they would all be able to get through. Ahead, the mouth of the Cloaca was coming slowly into view. Dark it was and, as they curved in towards it, a waft of its fetid breath broke over them and he felt his resolve cowering, for he knew what lay in wait for them.

A movement made him turn to see the kharon next to him unmasking. The man’s single eye peered into the shadowy ravine. As Carnelian watched him lick his sallow lips, he remembered what it was like to behold something heard of, but never before seen. Another stinking waft made the kharon grimace, then smooth his face when he became aware Carnelian’s eyes were on him.

‘This will bring us out,’ Carnelian said and almost began explaining the stench lest the man think it characteristic of the outer world, but what was the point? They would all be witnessing the cause soon enough. He gazed back over the boat and saw how the taller children were straining to see where they were going. Each waft from the Cloaca creased their little faces with fear. He considered making a speech to try to reassure them, but how many would understand his Vulgate? Besides, he could only guess what lay ahead. He looked up at the widening grandeur of the Sacred Wall. This world was going to die: only outside was survival possible. He gave the steersman a signal. The man’s bony crown tilted forward in acknowledgement, then the oars began rising, falling and, slowly, as if the boat herself was reluctant, they slid towards the Cloaca’s stinking mouth.

It seemed a long time they had been creeping along. A breeze was streaming the fetor past them. The steersman threaded the boat along the channel so narrow that often an oarblade would graze the rock wall. Carnelian could feel the inward pressure of the black rock that rose sheer and unscalable.

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.