Authors: Ricardo Pinto
As they shook their heads, Carnelian looked at them. He could sense nothing in their demeanour that would suggest the news had reached them. As, at his bidding, they opened a door in the gate, he considered giving them a command to let none pass: neither Chosen, nor of the Wise. He decided against it. These poor bastards would soon have enough to contend with. Why make them, unnecessarily, objects of wrath? He would have liked to have taken them with him, but it was already going to be nigh impossible to save the few he hoped to save. As he focused on who those were, he perceived his new identity to be no more than a disguise. His heart beat faster: he was going home, to see his father and Ebeny who were, in every way that counted, his parents.
They passed through the door into the vastness of the Canyon throat beyond, which was in shadow halfway to the Black Gate. The hidden valley of Osrakum seemed a bright, unattainable vision outwith the cares of the world.
As they walked away from the door, Carnelian focused on the solid reality of the camp that clothed the wedge of the Blood Gate rock as far as the two bridges. Though to call it a camp was to flatter it. Clumps of men huddling together among the pathetic shelters they had managed to improvise with their spears and cloaks. Their Masters had left them there without even a few sticks to make a fire. Anger flared in him against the mighty who had so thoughtlessly abandoned their own. He quenched his compassion: he could no more save these men than he could the Ichorians. They watched him and the Marula pass, with eyes that peered out between the bars and strokes of the tattoos that showed who owned them. Their world was ending just as much as was their Masters’. His blood ran cold when he thought what cruelties their Masters might inflict on them to assuage their own fear. Then he saw how numerous they were, that they had swords and fanblades, helmets and armour, and a different dread swelled in him. What kept these men subservient to their Masters’ whims, other than terror of their power? He made an effort to keep his pace steady, his posture erect, imperious. All the time his mind raced: what now the power of the Masters was broken?
He was relieved to reach the left bridge without incident. Fear of what might happen in his coomb once the news reached there lent his pace urgency. They crossed, then hurried on. He could not help casting glances at the wall of the Canyon rising on his left. The stone red as if in token of some great slaughter. He glanced up to the barracks galleries. After that he could not rid himself of the feeling that the dead were gazing down from the countless windows, reproachfully. Almost he heard their voices: what has all this blood been shed for? He focused on the racks that now held erect his two legions’ trumpet pipes that had screamed out so much fiery death. Behind them the dragon towers, smoke-blackened, battle-stained. Beneath and further back, the caves where Earth-is-Strong and Heart-of-Thunder lay wounded with the other dragons, all now the remnants of another vanishing race.
All the way he was aware of the gurgle of the Cloaca rising up from the abyss along whose rim they hurried. The Black Gate raised its wall before them. Beyond, the Hidden Land, soon to become a land of the dead.
Suddenly, their shadows leapt away in front of them as a great, flickering light sprang alive at their backs. As they turned, the air was strained, then shredded by the shrilling screams of the Blood Gate’s flame-pipes. Coruscating energies reflected up the cliffs that flanked the towers. On the killing field was a boiling incandescence they had to squint at to endure. Carnelian turned away, printing blue images of that holocaust upon the blackness in front of him. Bitterness in his heart, in his mouth. How typical of the Masters that they should seek to salve their fear with senseless slaughter.
Judging it unlikely the immense dragon gates would open for him, Carnelian led Fern and the Marula towards the central portion of the black wall. There, a single door stood in the cliff of masonry: a door of oiled, precious iron. They came to a halt before it. He was reluctant to go this way: he remembered his previous passage; that first time he had entered Osrakum with his father. He was going to have problems with the ammonites that kept this purgatory. As he waited for the gate to open, the harsh ululating of the flame-pipes came echoing down the Canyon. Surely their approach had been noted? He caught Fern’s eye and, glancing round, Sthax’s and those of the leading files of the Marula. All bright, intense. Carnelian asked Sthax for his halberd. Its pole was crowned by an elaborate nest of iron blades and hooks. Striking iron on iron caused the door to give off a sonorous clang. Moments later it parted into two leaves that swung silently into the blackness within. Moist air swept out over them, intoxicating with myrrh. Carnelian shared the reluctance of his people to enter. The Marula recoiled as ghostly faces coalesced in the gloom. Carnelian held his ground, knowing them to be nothing more than ammonite masks.
‘You must be cleansed, Celestial,’ they sighed.
Uneasily, Carnelian eyed the dark behind the silver faces. Other odours wafting towards him made him recall the drugged smoke with which Legions had captured him in Makar. Even if it was nothing more than the standard narcotics employed during purification, he did not want his mind dulled. He wanted to see things as they were; to be entirely himself. Half turning away, he extended his arm to take in the Marula. ‘I wish to pass through with these.’
‘Impossible, Celestial. They must go through the quarantine. Would you bring death into the Land of the Everliving?’
Carnelian almost laughed, mirthlessly, and wondered if they could really be so ignorant of the irony. He peered past the disembodied faces, trying to determine how far there was to go and if he could find his way to the other side without their guidance. ‘You know I am brother to the new God Emperor and that these men are his new Ichorians.’
‘The Law does not bow even to Them.’
Carnelian lowered the halberd. ‘But it will bow to me.’ He advanced and the faces melted away into the darkness. He was glad to hear the shuffle of the Marula following him. Voices round him rose in a keening that had soon drowned out the Blood Gate flame-pipes. Even as he became aware of subtle revolvings in the air above him, he realized his focus was slipping. Gaps in the uncoiling smoke revealed the position of figures surrounding them. As he moved forward, apparitions slid towards him. He traced circles before him in the smoke with the halberd head to clear a path for them. It struck something with a sharp clap, even as one of the apparitions disappeared in a tinkle of shards. A mirror of glass as perfect as water. He was aware of the ammonites drawing back. He swung the halberd into another mirror and another and the ammonites faded, whispering, away.
His shadow died as he moved away from the light that was streaming through the open door behind them. He glanced round to make sure Fern and the others were still following him. By the time they reached an arch standing all alone, his eyes had adjusted to the gloom. He remembered seeing it before and put his hand out to touch it as he had then. Faces as vague under his fingers as they were to his eyes. The faces of corpses submerged in water. His hand recoiled. He could smell the blood rust on his fingertips and wiped them down his cloak. The ghost of an inscription ran around the iron curve. Unreadable beyond a vague whispering in his mind. He stood back. It was not an arch, but a ring partially embedded in the ground. If it were a glyph it would read as ‘death’. He frowned. In Vulgate, his people referred to this fortress as Death’s Gate. Reluctant to walk through it, he moved round it, gesturing to Fern, Sthax and the others to do the same.
They came at last to a barrier Carnelian knew must be the door that gave entry into Osrakum. As he placed his hand upon its cold surface, the whole world gave a shudder as if it had been struck by some immense hammer. Again, the sound shook the air and ground. A massive bell was tolling, that was soon joined by more, until it seemed to Carnelian the world must convulse itself to pieces. Clamping his hands over his ears, he sought some explanation why the ammonites were ringing the Black Gate bells in this cacophonous manner. Were they sending an alarum to warn of the imminent breach of Osrakum’s sanctity? Or perhaps the warning was for their masters, the Wise. He shuddered as the feeling rose in him that the bells were announcing the ending of the world. Panic welled up in him, he felt trapped, buried alive. His hands fell from his ears and began feverishly scrabbling across the wall in front of him. Shapes stubbed his fingers, grazed his skin, but he kept on pulling, pushing, twisting, seeking anything that would free them from this tomb. His hand alighted on a wheel that turned under pressure. He forced it round and was rewarded by the quivering of some mechanism stirring into life. Several percussive shudders made him imagine counterweights rising, falling. A hairline crack divided the blackness to his left. It widened blindingly.
When his sight returned, he gasped. He heard other gasps around him. He forgot the bells. The Valley of the Gate fell away from them in a shadow that spilled out across the Skymere and the causeway to lap at the edge of a vision. Emerald shimmer and dance. An achingly beautiful dream – the Yden. For a moment Carnelian was lost again in that garden where he and Osidian had played as innocently as children. It seemed his heart had stopped at the beginning of the world. He dared not breathe out lest that should be enough to eddy that vision like smoke. His lungs forced the air out. The vision remained, but seemed changed. His gaze took in the whole vast lotus of Osrakum. Exquisite bloom that fed upon the life of millions. A flower whose roots had turned so many into corpses that soon it too must wilt and die.
The vision lost its hold on him. Fern at his side was real and solid. Carnelian reached out and felt the living warmth in him. His touch released Fern from enchantment.
Carnelian smiled and spoke, in a low voice. ‘There’s still much to do before the darkness comes.’
He led them onto the road that ran along the Cloaca rim. As they marched on, the clamour of the bells slowly dulled enough for them to hear the water rushing below. He stopped once to look over, but could see nothing other than a blackness that made it seem bottomless. Still, the sediment of his dreams stirred in him.
The roaring had been growing louder for some time when, on their right, the ground fell away into the immense spillway, upon which everything depended. He scrutinized its further edge where the dyke rose that held back the waters of the Skymere. The dyke was cut with many slots, from each of which tumbled a waterfall. In those slots were the sluices that were controlling the overflow of the lake into the swirling, threshing surface of the spillway. What Carnelian was interested in was the difference in height between that surface and that of the lake. He heaved a sigh of relief as he judged that at least part of his plan was possible.
Ammonites came to greet Carnelian as he walked onto the dyke. Most fell to their knees, but a few were brave enough to approach him, ducking bows. One spoke up, telling him, apologetically, that he must have come the wrong way; indicating with vague gestures where, behind him, flights of steps led down to the lake and the bone boats, but not daring the impertinence to tell him this, that all the Seraphim knew. ‘This way, Seraph, lie only the sluices.’
‘I have an interest to behold their operation.’
Reluctantly, they led him back the way they had come, towards the first pair of arches. As he followed them, a spark of light caught in the corner of his eye. Turning, he saw a second pulsing in the bright belly of the Labyrinth mound. Perhaps, as he had approached the dyke, these ammonites had had time to slip an alarm to their masters. He did not care. The Wise had more pressing matters to occupy their minds and, if they did not, then what matter? They would find out what he was up to soon enough.
Approaching the first slot, Carnelian was surprised how much bigger it was than he had expected. He ignored an ammonite giving an explanation, and craned over the edge to look down. A bronze sluice at either end controlled the flow through the slot.
Everyone was watching him. He indicated to Sthax the cables that held the nearest sluice. ‘Hack those through.’
The Maruli, frowning, nodded and, soon, paying no heed to the shrill protests of the ammonites, he and the other warriors were chopping at the cables. Carnelian returned to the edge. The first cable snapped with a twang, the second soon after. Ponderously, counterweights began to rise; squealing, the sluice fell, releasing a furious roar and gush that quickly abated as the slot emptied. The sluice at its other end was still holding back the Skymere. Carnelian turned to Sthax.
‘Send your men to cut them all.’
From the top of the northern Turtle Steps, Carnelian gazed across the Skymere to where shadow, having consumed the Ydenrim, was eating its way over the lagoons. He swung the clapper into the bell and, as the sound shimmered the air, he narrowed his eyes, trying to see any sign of a bone boat answering its call. Twilight over the water hid any movement. Fern approached, Sthax and the Marula straggling in his wake. Carnelian’s ears, recovered from the ringing, allowed him to hear the roar rising from the spillway, into which the Skymere was tumbling in a flood so violent that the more than twenty separate falls were uniting into a frothing foaming mass that ran the whole length of the sluice dyke. He frowned, imagining what chaos and destruction his flood would unleash upon the City at the Gates and its sartlar infestation. Now all that remained to do was to wait until the lake and the spillway reached a common level.
At last they pushed out into open water, Carnelian and Fern standing on either side of the bony prow. Ahead, shadow had killed the emerald shimmer of the lagoons and was beginning to edge up towards the Forbidden Garden and the Labyrinth. Soon only the Pillar of Heaven would rise gleaming from the blackness and even that must eventually succumb. Looking back along the length of the bone boat, Carnelian had to rid himself of the notion the deck was crowded with that same shadow made flesh. These Marula had been the agents of a malign force, but he was in no position to blame them for that. Whatever the Masters maintained, he believed the eyes anxiously looking at him were as human as his own.