Free The Ragged Man by Tom Lloyd Page A

at the top and opened outwards, but they opened only for those who’d sold their soul to one of Ghenna’s inhabitants. The bars were slightly curved, the smooth flow to the design suggesting an organic creation rather than the rigid regularity of a human construction.

    The journals of Malich Cordein had named the three main gates for him: Jaishen Gate, the smallest, was on the left; the largest of them all, Gheshen, was in the centre, with Coroshen on the right. There were three other gates, each around fifty feet tall - less than half the size of Jaishen’s - that Malich had called the borderland gates, opening to the parts of Ghenna where no master ruled and the daemons fought a never-ending war of attrition.

    Mihn scanned each of the main gates in turn. He had no idea which would open to admit the soul. Malich himself had dealt with a prince of Coroshen, the domain that existed nearest to the surface, but Duchess Lomin was of the Certinse family and he guessed the Certinses would have sought help elsewhere - if ever there was a family to play two sides it was theirs.

    ‘Mihn, you must move,’ Mihn growled to himself as the soul walked out of the pavilion and stopped. He urged it on until at last the soul began to stumble towards the gates. ‘They are creatures of darkness; they turn away from the light. You need to go closer to them.’

    Against every natural instinct, against the terror that was welling up in his gut, Mihn followed his own advice and forced himself forward. The ground was hot now, enough to scorch his feet, and the air was growing foetid and sulphurous, but he ignored the increasing discomfort, intent only on the gates ahead. One began to open, and Mihn threw himself forward, just in time to grab the bottom rung of the Jaishen Gate before it lifted away. He swung his leg over the smooth ivory and hauled himself up until he was sitting on the lower bar.

    As he looked around he noted to his relief there were no sounds of alarm, no hungry calls of delight at the sight of an undamned soul. It looked like the old myths had once more come to his aid: the denizens of Ghenna did indeed turn their faces away from the light of the last pavilion. Mihn wasted no time as the gate continued to rise; he could see patrols of minion daemons, armed with harpoons or huge barbed fishing lines - the sort of weapons that had damaged the pavilion, he now realised. The daemons were only at ground level; a skilled climber like Mihn might be able to make his way up, and avoid the guards and hunters entirely - or so he hoped.

    A condemned soul would stumble around in the darkness beyond the pavilion until it was snagged by one of those patrolling daemons and hauled through one of the gates into Ghenna, to the domain of whichever master the daemon served. There, the damned soul would have to face horrors unnumbered and untold, until the end of time or the fires of torment forged them into a new shape.

    There were gaps in the gates easily large enough for souls to be dragged through, big enough even for daemons to step out from Ghenna - but they would not, not whilst the last of the Mercies stood, forever watchful, in his pavilion.

    As the Jaishen Gate lifted, Mihn found it easy to climb the massive ivory bars. The biggest were easily twice as thick as his own body and bore his weight easily. When he reached the side he looked down and saw two massive, squat beasts standing below the gate, one end of a long iron bar strapped to their backs that lifted the bottom edge of the gate as they walked forward. From the way their heads swayed he guessed the beasts were blind - that was how they were able to face the light of the Mercy’s pavilion. They sniffed at the stinking air, snuffling their way towards the soul of Duchess Lomin, limping onwards to its eternal damnation. The beasts lunged at her, displaying rows of jagged teeth in huge mouths, but they could move no more than a foot before being stopped by the pivot