The Ragged Man (8 page)

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Authors: Tom Lloyd

BOOK: The Ragged Man
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He crept closer to the chain, watching the soul carefully, but he appeared not to notice the not-dead traveller at all, not even when Mihn nudged the chain - ivory for malice of deed - off the stone. Once freed the soul continued to plod onwards, and as he began to approach the empty pavilion Mihn followed at a cautious distance, wanting to witness what would happen, despite his fear of being observed.
The pavilion was hexagonal, with a pillar at every corner supporting the scrolled roof, and an iron lantern hanging from each pillar. There were bee-shapes cut into the lantern sides, indicating that this was Death’s province still, though only a few rays of light escaped.
The soul walked up the steps of the pavilion and across the centre, oblivious of his surroundings. In a flash of light a woman appeared at the spirit’s side. She was robed in gold and white and carried an enormous golden hammer, which she smashed down on the trailing chains as they passed her. One shattered in a brief blaze of light and faded to nothing. The rest remained unbroken, continuing to drag after the soul, who made no reaction. The woman lowered her hammer and turned towards Mihn as he approached.
‘You should not have freed him. It is not your place to judge the dead,’ she called to him.
‘I did not judge,’ he replied, bowing to her as he approached the steps. ‘I merely showed mercy. There are many chains around his neck; he will not be escaping Ghain’s slopes too quickly.’
The woman nodded approvingly. ‘You bear no chains. Have you led a blameless life?’ She stretched out her hand and a long curved horn chased with silver appeared in it. ‘Few come to me this way; usually only children have no chains. Rarely do I have the pleasure of calling Death’s attendants for a grown man.’
Mihn shook his head. ‘My judgment is not yet at hand, Lady. You must not call them but must let me pass.’
‘
Must
let you pass?’ the woman said. ‘You walk these slopes out of choice, and the folly is your own - but I am a Mercy. Lord Death alone commands me.’
Mihn ducked his head in humility. ‘That is so, but it is written that all those who name you may ask a boon of you. This I so do, Kenanai the Mother, to pass uncalled and unharmed.’
The Mercy was silent for a while as she stared at him. She betrayed no emotion but he assumed she was confused by his presence; such a thing had never happened before for those asking a boon of the Mercies in myth had always been immortals.
Eventually Kenanai lowered her hand and the horn vanished. She gestured after the spirit, indicating that he could pass.
‘It is granted.’
A low rumble echoed across Ghain’s slopes and she too disappeared, leaving the pavilion empty and still but for the flickering light of the lanterns. Mihn climbed the steps and as he crossed the pavilion he whispered an ancient prayer to the Mercies. When he reached the other side he stopped and looked around. The soul he had helped was nowhere in sight, though he could see the trail in the dust left by the chains. Other than that, Mihn could see only the empty landscape - broken boulders, dust and dead trees - for miles in all directions.
‘“This journey I walk alone,”’ he quoted grimly. ‘And how alone I feel now.’ He continued his ascent, choosing his path as carefully as he could, keeping a look-out all the time. Occasionally creatures flew or scampered across his path - many-limbed beings like horrific spiders the size of small dogs and crawling bat-winged monstrosities - and once he saw a daemon marching grimly across Ghain’s jagged landscape: a fat figure as tall as he, with four spindly arms, each dragging an ancient weapon behind it. His heart jumped as the daemon paused and looked up, as though sniffing the air, but whatever it had noticed, it wasn’t enough to make it linger there for long.
Each time he saw movement he would stop and crouch, trusting the witch’s magic to keep him safe. Each time, he was passed by without note. Distance proved meaningless in this blasted place, where a dozen steps felt like a mile. All Mihn was certain of in this strange domain was that no time was passing as he walked. After a score or more miles he was no less exhausted by the journey than he had been when he started. Though the neverending heat and the fear Ghain itself engendered sapped his strength, the exertion of walking had no discernible effect, he was glad to discover.
Another of the Mercies’ pavilions was passed, then another, and another. After some indeterminate period of time he had counted off six, and he knew he was close to his goal - though before he could reach the one that remained, Mihn would have to cross the river of fire called Maram - the barrier that kept the daemons of Ghenna within the Dark Place. A new fear started up within him: worry that a bargain the witch of Llehden had made had in fact not been kept and the next step of his journey would be all the more risky. It was a gamble he hated to have been forced into, and while he knew it had been necessary, Mihn couldn’t help but wonder what sort of chain it might add to his own burden of sins.
At last he came to a peak, where indistinct clouds raced close overhead. His human senses saw it as a great crater at the peak of Ghain, within which the ivory gates of Ghenna’s entrance were to be found, but he knew it was not so simple - not even by digging down through the rocky slope of Ghain could one break into the Dark Place; it took an immortal’s eyes to fully behold the mountain and the Dark Place within.
He stood at the peak of the slope and looked back over the empty miles he had walked, then down at the swift, churning river of orange flames no more than a hundred yards off. As Mihn tried to follow Maram’s twisty path, he found the effort hurt, and his vision became blurred. Maram obviously didn’t like to be stared at.
He gave up and concentrated on the two constructed features he could see: a silver pavilion, bigger and more magnificent than the rest, stood just the other side of a thin bridge that crossed Maram. Mihn knew from the myths he’d studied that the bridge was only a hand-width wide, and covered in nails to tear the feet of sinners. Aside from the pavilion, the other bank was hidden by impenetrable shadows, though Mihn felt a subconscious horror at what lay beyond.
The scene was exactly as the stories described, but nothing could prepare a man, not even a Harlequin, for the sight of it. For a moment he forgot his mission and simply stared: at Maram, at the nail bridge, at the Dark Place beyond . . . until a soft moan broke the silence and awakened him from his reverie, enough to stir him into movement. He scrambled down the slope towards to the edge of the river, where a figure stood, ghostly of form and clad in tattered rags, the soul of a woman. The chains she was dragging were far longer and heavier than those carried by the first soul Mihn had met - despite the Mercies, there remained dozens of sins unforgiven by Lord Death. Mihn could see half-a-dozen were the pitted iron of murder.
The soul was walking towards the bridge, compelled, as all souls were. Mihn watched, shaken, as she ground to a halt, turning about in confusion, as a shapeless but unmistakably malevolent black mist swirled about her feet.
He saw her walk a few yards back the way she had come, head bowed and feet dragging with exhaustion, before being turned again, and again.
After a while Mihn approached, with great caution, watching the black mist in particular. He knew the threat it posed, but he was far more afraid that the scent of the soul’s many sins would attract Ghain’s many torments.
He opened his mouth to speak, but he felt the words catch in his throat, the bile rising, for all that he knew how necessary this was. The soul’s journey up Ghain’s slopes must have been long and hard, attracting each of the thousand torments like moths to a flame, and it was impossible to tell how many years it had felt like to her.
The passage of time in the afterlife bore little relation to that of the Land, and Ehla’s bargain, suggested by Daima - who knew the lay of Ghain better than most mortals - might have kept the soul walking for centuries more, especially given the weight of her sins. That she was a grievous sinner, one ineluctably bound for the Dark Place, made Mihn feel no better about inflicting further cruelty - even more since the first Mercy had told him judgment was not his to mete out.
Mihn reminded himself of the choices involved and called out, ‘Duchess, turn around and close your eyes to it.’
The soul turned, as though waking from a dream.
‘It — It is everywhere,’ she sobbed eventually. ‘I cannot . . .’
‘Close your eyes,’ Mihn commanded, ‘and walk.’
After more wails of protest he repeated himself, and this time the soul did as he ordered. Almost instantly the swirling blackness around her stopped its darting movements and rose up angrily. For a moment Mihn thought it was about to take form and attack him, but instead it raced away, disappearing into the distance.
‘Now cross the bridge,’ Mihn told the soul.
The soul that had once been Duchess Lomin, quietly executed for heresy and treason, began to trudge wearily towards the bridge. She stopped as she reached it. The bridge was roughly built and insubstantial, just a thin, nail-studded walkway, with a single handrail on the left-hand side. She started to gather the chains dragging behind her, intent on draping them over the rail, until Mihn called out again to stop her.
‘You must carry your sins; you must bear them, or risk the boatman dragging you from the bridge.’
On cue a scow appeared from nothing, racing towards them on the fiery tumult below. Standing at the prow was a single figure swathed in red robes. Its face was hidden by a veil and a jewelled pouch hung from its waist: the Maram boatman, neither daemon nor God, but a being of power whose true name was hidden to mortals. The Maram boatman was one of the few beings in existence that bowed to no authority. To see behind its veil was to see horror itself, so the legends said, and to be dragged into the river by the pole with which it propelled the scow was to become fuel for the flames.
The figure raised its pole as it reached them and swiped at the handrail where the duchess had been about to heap her chains. The pole caught only air, and the boatman flashed on underneath, a deep laughter echoing all around.
Reluctantly the soul started across the bridge, her chains heaped in her arms. Mihn watching as she laboured across, blood from her torn feet and arms dripping into the river below. He was horrified when he saw the trapped souls in the flames, leaping and fighting to lap up the falling droplets of blood. He looked away, at the pavilion at the other end of the bridge, only to see a shifting mass of darkness that was just as terrible.
This close Mihn could hear the screams ringing out from Ghenna’s ivory gates, the hoarse voices of the damned, the yammer of the Dark Place’s foul denizens. Jagged metallic sounds echoed discordantly over the river of flame, heavy thumps like huge hammers and screeching like the scrape of knives. He suppressed a shiver and walked to the end of the bridge.
The ghostly soul of Duchess Lomin had reached halfway, wailing piteously as she walked, but he willed the sound into the background, just another cry of the damned. The bridge of nails was nothing to what awaited her in Ghenna, and the time for pity was gone. Once her soul was near the end of the bridge Mihn readied himself and checked for the boatman again. It was nowhere in sight, but that meant little.
He took a deep breath and leaped up onto the single handrail, and as he did so, the boatman appeared again, poling the scow along with deceptive lethargy. Mihn wasn’t fooled; he had seen how quickly it could move, but he forced himself to ignore it. He looked down at the rail beneath his feet. It wasn’t wide, but at almost the width of his foot it was thicker than the cable every Harlequin learned on.
‘A shame I was only passable at wire tumbling,’ Mihn muttered to himself, ‘but this will be easier - and it did teach me to be good at grabbing the rope before I fell.’
He took a pace forward, testing his bare feet on the wood. It bore him easily enough, so before he could think any more about the consequences he set off at a brisk trot, his arms held wide for balance. The boatman underneath carved a path through the fire as it brought the scow sharply around. Mihn kept his eyes on the rail under his feet and the dark shape of the Maram boatman in his peripheral vision. The scow darted forward, racing to intercept him before he reached the other side, and Mihn slowed his pace a fraction, measuring out his steps as the little boat reached the bridge and the boatman raised his pole like a lance to snag Mihn’s legs.
At the last moment Mihn flipped his body forward, tucking his head down and throwing his legs over. Distantly he heard a screech as the pole caught only the wood underneath and then his feet were over, landing safely on the rail again as he dropped into a crouch. The boatman shot past underneath and jerked hard back around. Mihn stayed where he was, watching it come back on-path with unnatural speed to try the tilt again.
The end of the bridge was still a distance away.
‘I’m not going to make it in time,’ he murmured.
The boatman turned again, running alongside the far bank of the river behind him.
Damn, it is learning from its mistakes
. He didn’t wait to watch any more but broke into as fast a run as he dared. He guessed the boatman could cover the distance in a matter of seconds.
Something different then
, he thought, picking a spot ahead. He scampered forward until, without warning, he dropped onto his belly and wrapped arms and legs around the rail. He felt the pole whip over his head and dip as fast as the boatman could manage, but it was quick enough only to skim Mihn’s cropped head and then it was gone.

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