The furious lapping of the waters almost drowned out the sounds of the rainforest. And yet Lopes de Guatemuz's startled ears seemed to catch, beyond the long thin leaves of the crown-trees, the call of the female black leopard. The man scratched the back of his neck protected by the metal tongue of the helmet and leaned harder on the handle of the tall spear; he struggled to catch the thread of Aguirre's words, seated beyond the arc of his gaze. It was, however, about death.

"If you chose to come with me and His Most Catholic Majesty Leon Alfons I of Eldorado and killed the six worshipers of the bisque King Fernando II of Aragon and Castile, that means you swore not to stop and don't back down until the river deposits us on the banks where the golden walls of the ancient citadel of Eldorado rise. Above all, don't back down! Because where I betrayed, where I broke the oath to Spain and to Christ, there is no room for other betrayals. The betrayal of God is the last and greatest betrayal. No one has the right to think about the past anymore, do you understand me? The past means Hernando Cortés, but no one can say, now, whether he and the one hundred and forty soldiers who remain with him are still alive. His way back to Tlaxcala passes through the heart of the jungle and through the swamps full of yellow frosts north of Guaxocingo. And for those who dream of Cortés's camp, the river journey means thirty-six days of rowing and six waterfalls to skirt over the unknown peaks of the north.

Aguirre's voice trailed off for a moment, and the hiss of foaming waters rushed to fill the void left in the air by the lack of words. Lopes again wiped the back of his neck from the splashes of water carried by the current towards the back of the mountain and cast a searching glance at the not too distant lap of the forest. Beyond the black trunks and the foliage, which became more and more difficult to distinguish, owing to the approach of evening, were perhaps the spies of the Cempoal Indians, the cannibals whose huts they had set fire to two days ago, in a little valley on the bank Right. Lopes could not see them, none of the 26 nobles and soldiers (plus the Emperor, he quickly corrected himself, plus His Most Catholic Majesty) had managed to catch a glimpse of even one leg of the cursed cannibals, but they all knew they were there, beyond the green curtain, shooting little poisoned arrows through the long reed tubes and patiently waiting for the right moment for an ambush. Hernando Carrero had died yesterday evening as he exited the makeshift latrine in the tail of the raft without seeing the unknown dwarf warrior. He had only managed to snap the tail of the tiny blue-feather quivered arrow and murmur, "Yellow devils… Eldorado…".

Lopes quickly shook his head to banish the memories. Aguirre's distant voice thundered again:

"You all wanted to pass beyond the golden gates and partake of the boundless riches there." No one asked you to take an oath for this, because oaths are made precisely to be broken. The path through sin is unique and unrepeatable. You wanted the gold more than you wanted the repentant ways of the Lord God's believers. Then continue this way to the end. And you will have the gold, I, Alvaro Lopez de Aguirre, promise you that. But for those who give back there is only one reward: they will be shorter by a head. With that head that didn't advise them at the right time.

Lopes de Guatemuz did not hear the hiss of the fall of the sword, but he imagined it. This time, the back of his hand brushed his Adam's apple, straining into a violent spasm. Beyond the deformed rock, to which the raft was tied, on the damp ground, covered with thick moss, had fallen the head of the nobleman Juan de Grijalva, the secret eye and ear of King Fernando II, who had tried to determine Alonso Yanez, Diego Velsquez and the renegade priest Francisco de Lugo to leave the cursed expedition and return to Cortés' camp, promising them his pardon.

***

- There is no forgiveness! Aguirre snarled, dragging his tight body in the metal plate over the muddy ground. There is no God, no saints, and no angels. The devil is an invention of that renegade pop sinner. We are… phew!

He stopped crawling and spat out the mud that had entered his mouth. The soldier next to him stopped in turn, waiting. Two steps in front of him, Juan de Escalante and Bartolome de Olmedo stopped in turn, clutching the hilts of their swords between their fingers.

— Cursed mud! Aguirre snorted and looked back.

The bed of the river could barely be seen, deep in a seemingly endless canyon. The chasm of God's wrath, as if that's what de Lugo had told him, looking at him strangely, just a moment before he lost his temper. You will sail through his boundless wrath to the torment of the doomed. Condemned to death, as if he had said so, Aguirre pursed his lips. Nonsense! he decided after a moment, feeling doubt begin to creep into his soul. He, Francisco de Lugo, was doubly doomed: once because he had reneged on his holy vows to follow him on an adventure with nothing holy about it, and the second time because he was now floating, without a doubt, in the flames of Hell his, with which he had so many times threatened his sheep given to shepherd by the archbishop, at the moment of his departure from Cadiz. Cadiz…
Alvaro Lopez de Aguirre spat in the mud once more and motioned forward. The eight bodies began to fight the mud puddles again. Less than a hundred paces separated them from the stone threshold, jutting out just above the path, beyond which they had thought they had seen, the previous night, the bright points of fires.

"We're alone in this damned place called Earth, do you understand, Montejo?" Alone!

- No blasphemy, Aguirre! hissed Juan de Escalante from the front, but without turning his head. If we have agreed to break our holy vows and accompany you on this road of no return, it does not mean that we are all heathens or, even worse, renegades. If you don't believe in the Lord God, don't force others to be on your side. And pray, if you have any, that this path ends beneath the golden walls of the citadel. Otherwise, we won't have enough food for more than three days, and we'll have to eat among ourselves, like those damned bastards, who have killed 13 of our soldiers so far. And I'm not sure they didn't dig them up and eat them after us.

- Mouth, Escalante! Why believe in a god who doesn't support you when you're struggling? How did he help Lugo get rid of the sword?

— Lugo is a damned renegade and deserves nothing but Hell! the other muttered angrily, then fell silent, sensing the storm in the other's voice.

"Olmedo, on the other hand, is much more cautious than you," Aguirre laughed gloomily and remained silent in turn.

He knew Escalante was right about the food. Since they had decided to revolt against Alonso de Avila, the commander-in-chief appointed by Hernando Cortés, and against his four associates, hanging them on ropes just above the river, he had rationed the food three times. And now they had reached the bottom of the bag. And they still hadn't made it out of the mountains. Only mountains everywhere, Aguirre sighed and bit his lip angrily. Eighteen nobles and soldiers, the two horses and doña Maria Heredia, Cortés's stepdaughter... This was the balance of losses. Three more soldiers, a black slave and two yucca slaves awaited them down there on a weathered raft less than ten meters from shore. Ten yards which, under the cover of dusk, a leather kayak would have traversed in less time than it would take him to say the "Our Father."

Suddenly the two in front stopped and left their helmets in the mud. Aguirre raised his left hand and motioned for those behind to remain still. Above, somewhere in the faded belly of the sky, a condor screeched. He crawled slowly forward, trying not to make too much noise. The armor of the two was also one of mud, making them almost invisible. He pulled his elbows under him and brought his ear to Olmedo's lips.

"I heard something upstairs," he whispered, through pursed lips. Like a trotting horse.

"Indians don't have horses," Aguirre breathed, smiling sinisterly. And ours have been running on their bellies for a long time.

"I know, but it's as I tell you." Beyond the mane was a horse. Or a hoofed animal.

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. If the enemy had been lurking above, they would have been clothed in arrows long ago. On the other hand, a horse or more, on a mountain plateau in a country that had not known this animal until the coming of the Spaniards, seemed like a bad joke. Or a tragic truth, Aguirre frowned. An ironic God, mocking him. Or, even more simply, an expeditionary force sent by Cortés to capture them. No, it was impossible, Cortés had only three pack-horses and a few donkeys left. And then how to find your way riding on top of the mountains in this wilderness?

He lifted his forehead and looked back. The bodies of the soldiers looked like tree trunks, scattered on either side of the path. Here and there, the tip of a spear glinted dimly. The condor screamed again, much closer, but Aguirre ignored it. Down there, somewhere he could no longer see, the float trembled at the end of a long, wet rope.
He waved them to wait still and crawled on to the stone threshold. When he finally arrived, his body was drenched in sweat and his heart was pounding.

"I know there is no God," he murmured and flexed his fingers several times. Somewhere nearby is only you, proud city of gold... Only you and I... Both of us will pass through History and our names will become immortal. Eldorado and Alvaro Lopez de Aguirre... You will give me your secret and your gold, and I, the boundless power of those who will come after me to discover and conquer new worlds. Help me, now, when my will approaches the edge of life, that I may continue to believe in you. Give me a sign…

With a leap, he jumped over the stone slope, rolling over. He stood up, one hand on the hilt of his sword and the other shielding his eyes from the glare taking away his vision. The wall of light seemed endless, cutting diagonally across the plateau and cutting off the mountain top to the north. His lips were dry and his tongue rough and swollen, like the bark of a tree. He held out his hands fearfully, but the wall suddenly flashed and threw his arms back with incredible force. Aguirre howled, feeling his shoulders being ripped from him. He took a few steps back, staggering.

"The sign…" he stammered, his tongue tripping between his teeth. Are you Eldorado?

But the wall did not answer. He drew his sword from his hip and threw it like a spear in his direction. No sound was heard. Like his arms, the sword made its way back, rolling past the stone threshold. An anguished cry arose from behind, then something rustled and died. His gaze turned to the right. On the slope on the other side of the river, a faded glow could be seen climbing the ridge of the mountain and disappearing to the south.

You will sail through his boundless wrath to the torment of the doomed… he remembered the renegade's words. And the way he had looked at him before he died. As if he knew! Aguirre frowned. How could he have known?

The condor screamed again, even closer. Aguirre looked up, but saw no bird. Only the stinging glare of the endless wall, which left him no direction to take but that of the downstream, ever downstream flow of the river. He shivered and descended the threshold to his own. They only had three days until the food would run out.

***

And the food ran out.

The day before, His Imperial Majesty, Leon Alfonso I of Eldorado, had committed suicide. Villa Viciosa had found him lying with his head in the water behind the cannon. Finding no sign of wound or animal bite on his body, Aguirre had declared that the emperor had died of a bad heart and had prepared a sober burial for him. As there was no shore to be seen suitable for landing, although they had sailed continuously for 16 hours, they sewed his bloated body into a jute sack and buried him, with all the honors (the five soldiers had saluted in a standing position, and the cannon had released a cannonball) , in a chest, from where they had emptied the bridles of the former horses and the parade clothing, in which they had once planned to make their entrance into the city. Then, in solemn silence, they had released him into the swirling waters and gazed long after him. The box had floated for a time to the right of the raft, drifting away, then one of the ends had suddenly sunk, and by degrees it had lagged behind, until sight had lost sight of it altogether, when the bed made a sharp bend to the left, crushing -she angrily in a threshold of sharp rocks.
Now all seven of them stood around the vessel, holding the mooring ropes with both hands, and staring up at the tracks of the trembling wet rope above the deck. Small waves hit the raft, splashed over the half-submerged trunks, and washed away their almost rotten boots. It was cold, and the damned dampness had swollen their palms, which had turned whitish towards the fingertips.

"He won't make it," Escalante muttered. It's too cold.

"Perhaps he is going up," answered Bartolome de Olmedo and made a wide cross. If Christ is not with him, perhaps the Devil is helping him. Someone has to do it, or we die here.
Juan de Escalante said nothing more, but glanced briefly in the direction of the river. They were anchored between two almost flat rocks, less than 15 meters from the shore, where a wave from the center of the current had propped them up, just before dawn grayed the atmosphere. Two of those sleeping on the starboard side of the raft had rolled into the water and drowned before the others knew what was happening. As the first glimmers of light had trickled down the gorge from the tops of the ridges, they had tried in every way to break free from the rocks or reach the shore, but without any success. Moreover, Lopes de Guatemuz had drowned around noon while swimming to shore with a rope tied around his middle.

When the sun had passed the ridge on the right, they had made a last attempt: they had emptied more than half the charge of gunpowder from a projectile, and placed in the mouth of the cannon a kind of cange, tied with the coil of chain that had been used to bind the feet and hands of slaves. The blast hadn't been very strong, but the force of the resulting gas had thrown the cane straight up and pinned it between the branches of a side-growing tree above the river, not far from where they were.

"It's too many meters for the muscles to support him and the armor," Escalante continued, stepping closer to the ledge above the wet rocks. If it's going to collapse—and it will, quite possibly—what do we do?

Olmedo bit his upper lip. Aguirre remained their last chance to escape alive and prolong the agony a little longer. With a little more... maybe that was all that was needed. Perhaps behind the bend that could be seen ahead and where a deafening boom came from, was the much-sought-after plateau. The golden fortress of Eldorado…

- How, what are we doing? We throw the rope to him, together with the barrel, as we have determined.

- We throw the rope to him... the other teased him, mockingly. Fool, this is the only time we can get rid of this madman and you want to throw the rope at him? Don't you understand that wherever we end up, nothing but death lurks beside him? Don't you see how many of the 42 are left, how many started at the beginning?

Escalante's voice had reached almost a scream, and Olmedo feared that his words would break through the continuous roar of the waters and reach Aguirre's ears. But it continued to advance slowly, supported only by muscles, almost three meters above the liquid snakes that struggled below, furious that they could not touch their prey. The soldiers near them had heard him and were staring at them with glittering eyes.

"Maybe it's enough," he resumed indecisively, wondering how to react, if the other's sudden hysteria had pushed him to a thoughtless gesture, for example...

"Not if we cut the rope!" shouted Juan de Escalante, and before anyone near him could intervene, he drew his sword from its scabbard and struck with it the thick knot of rope that bound the chain at the feet of the creature.

- Not! Olmedo yelled and tried to grab him from behind, but the other man jerked and managed to strike once more.

- Let Judas die! Escalante yelled as well, trying to get rid of him. Let the Antichrist die and the golden city will be ours alone! Leave me, reprobate, leave me! Don't you realize there will never be another time like this? Do you not understand that the power with which he dominates us, when he stands around and does not let us think with our heads, is not a human one?

Olmedo wasn't sure if the man hanging in the middle of the rope, like a giant spider weaving its thread, had heard anything, but he must have sensed a wave of danger, because he stopped in place and twisted his whole body in their direction.

He can't go back, Bartolome de Olmedo decided, because no one would have been able to climb the dangerous path to the branches of the tree. They were all extremely weak and it was a wonder that Aguirre had made it this far without even taking a break.

He tightened his arms around Escalante who, exhausted from the effort, went limp and slid down the wet deck. The soldiers watched them motionless, breathing heavily, as if they were fighting against him.

"He's gone crazy," he said softly, as if apologizing. Viscount Juan de Escalante Y Ramiro went mad from hunger. If we cut off Aguirre now, no one will ever throw us off these rocks, and by tomorrow night at the latest, we'll be dead here or crushed against the rocks like Guatemuz. Aguirre, do you understand? Aguirre is our only connection to the world, to Eldorado, to God... Pray that he succeeds.

And Aguirre succeeded. Without another pause, he advanced meter by meter, and when the evening began to steam above the foaming waters, he leaped, a black dot, almost indecipherable, on the skeletal branches. From there to the surrounding rocks, it was almost child's play.

"If God exists, then he wanted me, Alvaro Lopez de Aguirre, to die," he spat toward the waters below, looking at his bloody hands. Because the Devil precisely does not exist, otherwise he would have helped me. Or maybe it helped me, you grinned. Cursed Olmedo wanted to see me dangling like a jagged kitten above the whirlwind below me.

He stood up and listened intently in the direction of the distant rumble.

"Perhaps therein lies the key to our despair," he muttered further, as if plucking up courage. Maybe fate wanted us to stop on those rocks, to protect us from something much worse. So on the road, death lurks everywhere anyway.

He stood up on the sharp point of the rock and leaned against the thin trunk. Somewhere, a small eternity away from him, the stiff puppets of the soldiers seemed to be waiting for a sign from him. He raised his arm and made a piggy gesture.

"Wait, you reprobates!" he shouted at them, but the words were lost in the wind. You deserve to die, like the porcupines that you are. But then no one will be able to witness the final victory and the triumph of Alvaro Aguirrez. It is destiny that wants you to live, so that my glory may be complete.

Hit the road. The only way he could cross: he dug steps into the stone spine with his sword and climbed with his claws, clinging to the sloping spine of the mountain. The knuckles of his fingers were torn off and he wrapped them in strips of cloth torn from the hems of his shirt. The boots lost their heels and the trousers became tattered, hanging on the rocks. He fell several times, but each time he managed to hold on to something, so that he came to the conclusion that the day of his death had not yet come. By the time he managed to pull himself up and pass the straight, saw-cut edge of the rock, the riverbed was like a palm-box, and the raft had completely disappeared.

He rolled over the wispy tufts of grass, belly up, and opened his eyes wide, trying to catch the whole sky between the openings of his eyelids. The night hung above him like a crystal bell, thin and transparent. Hundreds of stars dotted the immeasurable depths, giving him a sense of vertigo. He took a deep breath, trying to forget the pain in his hands.

I don't know any constellations, he thought, amazed that everything seemed so natural to him. The strangest thing that can happen to a man is to suddenly find himself under a foreign sky. A sky he never dreamed of. Or maybe this is the sky of the golden city? If so, then no effort was too great.

"It's not a foreign sky," someone unseen had contradicted him. It is the eternal heaven of this place. Maybe you are not his and you come from a foreign space.

He immediately rolled onto his stomach and rose to his knees, sword raised, ready to strike. He found it wasn't very dark. Not far from him, a kind of teddy bear, an opossum, was sitting in the bottom, looking at him strangely, with his head bent to one side. He licked his lips and found they tasted salty. Blood, he told himself, then shook his head. No, there are no talking opossums, and I certainly don't come from an alien space. I come from the camp of Hernando Cortés, and he is not more than 200 leagues up the water. I think I'm very tired and sick. And I'm crazy.

"You're not fooling around," the voice, which sounded somewhere very close, contradicted him. Aguirre could swear it wasn't the ears that heard her. You've made it this far, which is great. None of the previous reproductions managed to surpass the moment of death of the one you called Leon Alfons I of Eldorado. An extraordinary thing, but which does not bring us any additional information, so history remains an enigma, and the Cycle will have to be repeated.

"A possum can't talk," he said quietly. It's against nature.

He raised his sword in a flash and lunged forward. The shimmering wall appeared only as the bluish steel of the blade swung towards where the chubby body was, then disappeared. The impact threw him backwards. He tripped and fell. He quickly rolled to one side, but no one attacked him. He sprang to his feet again, sword at the ready. But in front of him was nothing but the chubby figure, waiting silently.

"I'm Alvaro Lopez de Aguirre!" shout. Aguirre who defies the gods and awaits their wrath! Are you, little creature, the tool of the One Above or the One below?

The little bear moved a paw and the stage seemed to gradually light up.

I'm dead Dead and dreaming of being alive, Aguirre frowned and threw his sword away. I fell off the chain and drowned. I woke up here and there is no one to tell me if this is Heaven or Hell.

"No, you're not dead," laughed the opossum. Or seemed to laugh. But you're the weirdest reproduction I've made so far. You don't look anything like any of the development projections I made before I let you run the route. I told you the random segment you insisted we put in was too big, he turned to the left. What would have happened if we had not introduced the barriers?

"Nothing," replied the female black leopard. Nothing at all. It's a projection, Your-Shine. Just a projection, and I think the random segment meant nothing. The deviations from the original program must be looked for in the set of changes that we have introduced in the environment, with each new restart. I insist that matter does not possess typical matrices for the evolution towards the threshold of intelligence.

"That's what happens every time we don't have enough information to make adequate reconstructions," the condor on the finger-shaped rock whistled boredly. Quite simply, reproductions crystallize other historical environments. I said from the beginning that we are wasting our time.
The female leopard lands on her front paws.

"It's just a damn different situation than projections." That doesn't mean we don't have everything under control.

"It's not about whether or not you have the situation under control, First Assistant." But the fact that we've wasted too many eons, trying to decipher the history of a civilization, starting from the scraps of information discovered in that ancient chip, on the Saadelid Park asteroid. We only have the fragment of the diary of that unknown Father Francisco de Lugo. Too many unknowns. Maybe that Eldorado that...

- Eldorado... Aguirre croaked, almost without a voice.

The light behind talking animals. The golden light was coming from the long sought after fortress. He had known, he had known that it would arrive! He rushes to the edge of the plateau, bypassing the opossum bear on the right.

"Let's send him back!" ordered the First Assistant. He has one more day until the end of the Cycle. Perhaps he will find an explanation for the meaning of the term Spain…

"There is no explanation, perhaps," the bear doubted. We try one more time. I propose to be patient for one more Cycle and not introduce the random segment. After all, I believe that this name Terra hides only a myth. The other one seems much more real — Eldorado. To me it suggests a constellation beyond Triffyde 00-Eyre.
Aguirre stopped. Suddenly, at the tip of the boots, the rock cuts straight down, gaping into a bottomless chasm. She almost bit her tongue, trying not to scream.
No, there is no God, only me alone… I have come this far… at the end of the world… Me alone and my crazy dream of Eldorado… Aguirre, the uncrowned king of the golden city… What do these beasts know about the happiness of dreaming…

He dropped to his knees. The river tumbled into the bottomless chasm, from which the stars shot forth.

— Perhaps the very logical principle of reconstruction of this story is different from the logical system used by the one who wrote it. In this case, we will only get…

Stand up. Alvaro Lopez de Aguirre had seen Eldorado. He had seen the end of the world. The abyss of God's wrath. The torment of those condemned to death had ceased. Here and now. Because this was the end of the road.

- Your anger... don't touch me anymore, he said very slowly and walked away without looking back.
Since then, that galactic point, near a red star of type FDK-0067, bears the splendid and incomprehensible name Eldorado. But no expedition ever wanders through those forgotten places in the arid wastelands of the outlying maps.