Is This Apocalypse Necessary? - Wizard of Yurt - 6 (54 page)

The ferryman pushed off with his pole, and we were immediately seized by the current, spinning around and almost crashing against a rock, from which he fended us off just in time. We sat very still, trying to keep out of his way, as he poled desperately. I couldn't help but notice that we seemed to be making no headway.

"The weight of flesh," the ferryman gasped, as a wave broke over the railing, "is more than this boat was made to handle!"

"We paid you in silver," said Joachim firmly, "and you agreed to take us. You cannot turn back now."

The boat spun again, and again as waves splashed high around us I thought I saw the shapes of human body parts, faintly outlined in the spray. The remains, I wondered, of those who had not made the crossing successfully?

But the ferryman kept on poling. He worked us out of one eddy, and in momentarily smoother water he was able to make a dozen yards of forward progress. Then the current hit us again, and we were swept downstream, far away now from where we had first begun to cross. Off in the distance I could hear a heavy roaring, as of this river pouring over a precipice.

Theodora's face was white, and her lips tight together. I squeezed her arm, wondering what would happen after we shot over the waterfall.

Would we just continue our journey across Hell, being dead now, or would we have to start all over again?

The river banks were closer together here and steeper. Caught in another eddy, the boat spun right next to the shore—and then came joltingly to a halt, as the prow caught on a hidden rock. Theodora was thrown into my lap by the force of the impact.

"Out," said the ferryman. "All of you, out!" Water was now gushing into the boat—we were going to be in the river in a few seconds anyway.

A scrubby tree, that looked as if it had never borne a leaf, leaned over the bank, just beyond my reach. But Joachim, with his longer arms, stretched up and seized it. "Hold onto me," he told us, swung a foot over the boat's railing to plant it against the nearly vertical riverbank, and started to climb.

Theodora and I clung to his shoulders like children, and for a second the bishop seemed to have grown, twenty feet tall and enormously muscular.

Then he had pulled his way far enough up the bank that we were able to snatch at branches ourselves, and drag ourselves to safety. Behind us, the boat, freed of our weight, leaped higher in the water. The ferryman did something in the prow, then started poling steadily and easily back upstream, without a backward glance.

We sat on the rocky ground for a moment, catching our breaths. "This was an even more idiotic idea than I thought," I said, wondering how Joachim had managed to grow like that, and shy to ask him. He looked perfectly normal now, wringing fetid water out of his vestments.

"As long as we cannot go back," he said, "we should go on."

The landscape still was dry and unfeatured, the occasional bush twisted and dessicated. "I somehow thought Hell would be more, well, violent,"

said Theodora, "not just have flames off on the horizon."

"We are not yet actually in Hell," said Joachim. "These are only the outskirts."

We started walking along the riverbank. Here we were on a high ridge and were able to look for what seemed many miles across the depressing outskirts of Hell. The sounds of the waterfall before us grew closer. Beyond the churning black river below us, I spotted another river, also aiming toward the waterfall, and on our other side, off across the stony plain, were the beds of two more. "These are the four rivers of Hades," said Joachim, sounding almost pleased, "just as I have seen them described."

"When people die," Theodora asked, "do they all have to make this entire journey, starting with the ferryman?"

"When I was dead," I provided, "I don't remember seeing anything like this."

The bishop looked thoughtful. "Hell is very old," he said, "the first creation of Lucifer when he rebelled against God and tried to make himself God's equal. All humans came here between the Fall and the time of Christ. Some of the earliest recorded visions of Hell took place before the beginning of the Christian era, and all mention the ferryman and the four rivers. With the coming of Christ, however, and the coming of salvation, I think that those who die with pure hearts skip this—and even the damned may not now start at the beginning." That would avoid the problem of not carrying silver pennies, I thought. "We, however, entered living."

We had now come so close to the waterfall that we had to stop talking because of its noise. All four rivers came together here, and the ridge along which we had been walking ended in a promontory, thrusting out into a chasm, down into which the stinking black water of the rivers poured.

Arching over that chasm was a bridge.

It was narrow, spiked, and wet with spray from the roaring water. Its rusted iron span was no more than twelve or fifteen inches wide, and in the distance it seemed to shrink to the width of the hair. On the far side of the chasm, a quarter mile away, rose a castle's dark walls. Theodora and I looked at each other. Neither one of us liked the appearance of that bridge, but it seemed the only way on.

Joachim did not hesitate. He started across the bridge at once, placing his feet carefully between the spikes, his arms out to the side to keep his balance. The moment he stepped on the bridge there was a sharp sizzling sound, and for a second he stopped with a cry. He half turned toward us, and I saw that the silver crucifix he always wore around his neck was gone. But then he turned resolutely back toward Hell, and again started placing his feet between the spikes of the bridge that would take him there.

He was our guide, and our only hope of ever finding our way out of here.

I gave Theodora what was supposed to be a reassuring smile and started after him.

As soon as I stepped on the bridge, I was hit by a powerful wind.

Reeking with the scent of the fetid waters below, the wind made me sway so that for a second I almost lost my balance. I snatched at one of the spikes to steady myself, then jerked my hand back with a red slice across the palm.

For a second I went totally motionless, my knees refusing to move as I contemplated the drop into the roaring waterfall below. I took a quick peek, to see if I could see the bottom of the chasm into which the water raced, and could not.

Theodora spoke behind me, her voice low under the thunder of the water. "Hell doesn't want us."

I started to take a deep breath, almost choked on the foul smell wafting up toward us, and took a few quick shallow breaths instead. I couldn't spend the rest of eternity here, especially since Theodora, with her much better climbing ability, was waiting behind me to go on. If Hell didn't want us, that must mean we were on the side of right. By sheer will, I urged my feet forward.

Another step, and another. And then, strangely yet undeniably, the bridge was getting wider. The spikes shrank and seemed less sharp, and I was able to step without each step being an exercise in swaying and determination. Ahead, I saw that Joachim had already reached the far side. I didn't dare go too fast, for fear that I would fall when three-quarters of the way across and have made most of the difficult crossing for nothing.

But in a few minutes of grim balancing I too was on the far bank, and Theodora was right behind me.

"Here," said Joachim, "is where we truly enter Hell."

Hell was guarded by a castle's soaring stone walls, as though it actually wanted to keep out the souls of the damned. But its gate was open. An inscription over it read, "Through me lies the way to eternal pain.

Through me runs the path of the lost. Abandon all hope, ye who enter."

Standing in the gateway was a enormous black hound with three heads.

Its six eyes were a bright red, and its fangs long and sharp. But it wagged its tail at us, its three tongues lolling from its mouths. "How are we supposed to get by
that?”
Theodora asked, staying back behind me.

But Joachim advanced confidently. "It shouldn't stop us. These walls aren't for us. They are to prevent the escape of the damned." And indeed as he advanced the dog stepped to one side. Its monstrous heads were on a level with the bishop's, and it gave him a quick lick with each tongue as he went by. I pulled Theodora rapidly past while it was distracted.

Two steps, three steps beyond the gate, and we were into Hell.

Spreading at our feet was a lake of molten fire. I stopped and looked back at the hound.

Immediately it bared its fangs and began to growl, crouched ready to spring on me if I took even one step back. I turned quickly around and moved closer to the burning lake. Going on remained our only choice.

The heat from the lake beat against our faces, and the air was heavy with the smell of sulphur. "I hope we aren't going to have to resort to an inadequate ferry boat again," said Theodora.

But the bishop shook his head. "There should be a path around the lake."

I put a hand on his arm. "Who are those?"

Standing in the lake, up to their chests in burning pitch, were human shapes. They were clearer than the forms I had thought I had seen in the first river of Hades, but when I looked at them directly they faded. Only when I looked at them sideways did they gain any solidity. Fire licked at their naked skin, covered with raw burns and with bites from giant snakes that writhed in the flames. The human shapes twisted in pain, and their mouths moved as if screaming, but I could hear nothing.

"Those," said Joachim shortly, "are the damned."

"But I can't see them," I said, trying with sidelong glances to tell if any were people I had known. I really didn't want to meet Zahlfast down here.

"We are still alive," he said soberly. "I do not think the living can look on the faces of the dead."

"But if the living knew the punishments the evil will have to suffer—"

said Theodora in horror.

"That's what we priests keep on trying to tell them," said Joachim.

"Until the devil himself is redeemed at the end of infinite time, the wicked must suffer for their deeds in unquenchable fire. Come. Let us find the path."

We walked a short distance along the edge of the burning lake, Theodora and I clinging together and trying not to look at the dead. Then we came suddenly on two paths, both leading away from the lake: they ran next to each other for a short distance, then diverged.

The left one was smooth and wide, paved with flat white stones. The right-hand one was narrow and stony, leading between thorny bushes, marked by no more than a continuous row of pebbles. "I choose left," I said.

But Joachim shook his head. "From some of the accounts of visions of Hell, it is clear that if one keeps going, one will eventually reach the gates of Heaven. But this is only if one has followed the right paths through Hell.

It may be that our only way back to the lands of the living lies through Heaven, and if so we want to get there."

I certainly had to agree. My stomach knotted at the realization of how even more dangerous Hell was than I had imagined. "But how do you know which road to choose?"

"The Bible tells us that strait and narrow is the road that leads to salvation. Let us take this one."

The path was so narrow that we had to go single-file, and so rough that sometimes we had to go on all fours over the rocks that littered it. Above us, clouds gathered gray and angry, with rumblings of thunder and flashes of lightning that threatened to ignite the sulphur in the air. But away to our left, I saw the wide paved path end abruptly at a monstrous set of jaws: jaws without more than a vestigial head or any body at all, but sharply toothed, gaping ready for anyone who had chosen the wide and easy path.

Our narrow path turned a corner and reached—a flower garden. Colors were bright, and the air, rather than reeking with sulphur, was soft and perfumed. I stopped and looked around suspiciously. "Either this is a sign that we've taken the right path, or it's another temptation to lead us astray."

"I think it means we chose aright," said Joachim, not sounding nearly as confident as I would have liked. "Perhaps we can rest here for a short time."

But barely had we sat down amidst flowering bushes when an ear-numbing shout assaulted us: "Living flesh! What do you think you're doing here?"

The tone was light, though loud: but even surrounded as we were by unquenchable fire, it made me cold with raw terror. A yellow demon bounced into sight beyond the garden, so short and round he would have been comical if any of us had felt like laughing. His feet were cloven and his tail barbed. His enormous mouth had heavy yellow teeth that looked ready for crushing bone. The dead had been hazy and hard to see—this demon was remarkably vivid.

"We are pilgrims," said Joachim, "wanderers in a strange land."

"Yes, most people find Hell pretty strange!" yelled the demon with a grin that threatened to split his head in half. "Couldn't wait for your deaths to have a look, eh? They do say people are just
dying
to get into Hell! Hah! Good joke, eh? How about a few pokes with my pitchfork, just to give you a preview of eternal torment?"

But Joachim held up his hand. "You cannot touch us, for we are not yet condemned."

I wondered desperately if this were true. The demon, however, frowned in frustration, then laughed once more. "Well, I'm friendly enough," he said, waving his pitchfork, "but not everyone you meet will be! All I would have done was to have a little fun with you. Now get moving, before I forget how to treat pilgrims. And take this as a gesture of my esteem!" He bent over, giving us a good look at a naked and hairy rump, as, arms linked, we hurried away again.

There wasn't much of a path anymore, only a rough track between thorn bushes, where burning pits appeared at every twist of the track. We saw demons standing hip-deep in some of the pits, whipping at hazy shapes that must be more of the damned. In other places huge cauldrons were set up, boiling, and demons stirred with their pitchforks, occasionally holding up a hazy skewered arm or leg as if to see if it were done. In still other places demons had wrenched the mouths of the damned open and were feeding them what looked, from a second's horrified glance, like their own rotted flesh. "I'm sorry," I said quietly. "I should never have let you come with me."