The Third God (117 page)

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 doubted 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.

Suddenly a touch on his shoulder made him spin round. A shadow man was there.

‘Where’re you going?’ it whispered in Ochre. It was Fern.

‘To make water.’

‘Why not just go to the edge of the road?’

Carnelian thought of making up a better lie. Then he felt an overwhelming need to confess to Fern and it all poured out in an urgent whisper: his dream, its promise of salvation in return for his sacrifice.

‘I knew you were up to something.’

‘Then you’ll let me go?’

‘Yes, but I’m coming with you.’

Panic tightened Carnelian’s chest. All kinds of objections came to him, but all he said was: ‘You can’t.’

‘What if you’ve not understood the dream properly?’ hissed Fern.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you so sure the shadow is Osidian? Couldn’t it be me?’

Carnelian wanted to deny this, but the dark vision of his dream held him back. Or, desperate to have Fern with him, was he just fooling himself?

‘Do you think I feel less for these children than you do?’ Fern said.

Carnelian thought his decision to go on alone weakening. Fern reached out for him. They clung to each other.

Carnelian felt Fern mouth the words against his neck: ‘I’m not going to let you die alone.’ He felt suddenly safe and, almost, joyous.

Black road beneath their feet. To their right, an infinite field of stars into which Carnelian kept kicking things to ripple the mirror and thus destroy the vertiginous illusion that kept making him lean towards the water. They had tried walking nearer the centre of the road, but away from the lake it grew so dark they stumbled all the time. In that direction rose the impenetrable black band of the leftway and its evil-smelling ditch. Apart from their scuffling footfalls and the curses as they stubbed their toes against the edges of paving stones, the only sound was the lapping of the water.

Where the watch-tower should have been was nothing but stars. Tumbled into the ditch amongst a mound of rubble that blocked the lower door they could just make out the spars that had held up the heliograph platform. Carnelian tried to see if they could at least scale the mound to get up onto the leftway, but it did not reach even halfway.

Fern called to him, softly, as if the night might be listening. He went to stand beside him, gazing south. ‘Look there.’

Carnelian saw Fern’s arm against the water starfield, pointing. ‘What—’ he began, then saw it himself. A narrow band of blackness between the stars in the lake and those in the sky. Their first glimpse of land beyond the flood.

Suddenly, the leftway came to a ragged end and they saw, spreading out before them, the flood mirroring the stars of heaven. From the water rose a lonely watch-tower. It seemed to Carnelian they had been walking lost, without any certain destination, neither uttering a sound, for fear words might dent their resolve, but he knew in his bones that that watch-tower was what they sought.

‘Let’s climb it,’ he said and Fern agreed, adding: ‘The edge of the flood must be close to where the Iron House lies ruined.’

Uneasy at that thought, they set off towards the shadow tower.

Posts rose up on either side of the road that they realized must be the remains of the massive outer gates of Molochite’s camp. Carnelian hesitated. The posts seemed guardians; like the colossi that guarded the entrance into Osrakum. He knew that he and Fern stood upon an earthbridge; on either side the military ditch had become a moat.

‘What’s the matter?’ Fern asked.

Carnelian sensed that, once they crossed the drowned ditch, there would be no turning back.

‘Come on, it’s not far away,’ Fern said in an angry tone Carnelian sensed was really fear.

They walked along the road that cleaved the mirror of the flooded camp where once Molochite had marshalled the might of the Masters. With each step the tower grew larger until they could see its arms spread wide against the stars. Carnelian felt the visceral shock even as Fern whispered: ‘It’s like a tree.’

Chilled to the bone, Carnelian said nothing, but just kept walking. They came to the stumps of the gates that had once opened into the Encampment of the Chosen and passed through, aware they were entering another circle. A ring within a ring, like the Stone Dance of the Chameleon, except that this circle was cut directly into the body of the earth. And then Carnelian saw that it was as if they were penetrating to the heart of some infernal mockery of the Koppie, except that in place of its mother trees there stood a lone, gigantic black tree. Like a baobab, he thought, with deepening foreboding. The impression grew stronger as they came closer and it spread its branches above them. Then they were standing before the doorway at its foot and Carnelian shuddered, for its reflection sent roots down into the Underworld and he knew in his marrow that this was the fulfilment of his dreams.