Arthur remained silent, staring out over the Styx, trying to see through the thick, undulating clouds of gray vapor. Ceridwen did not like the expression on his face.
'An excellent question.' Conan Doyle turned his gaze from the river to the black sand of the shore. The sand had been disturbed. There was no doubt that Gull and his operatives, along with captive Eve, had arrived first. He removed one of the two gold coins the Cyclopes had provided them to pay Charon and began to play with it, dexterously rolling it back and forth across the knuckles of his hand. It was a trick he had learned from Harry Houdini, a friend from long ago.
'What have you done now, Gull?' Conan Doyle whispered, lost in thought as the coin danced atop his hand.
As if in response to his query, the Underworld answered.
Ceridwen could feel it in the elements around her; from the granules of sand beneath her feet, to the mournful whistling of the wind that caused the skeletal branches of the trees along the shore to click and clatter. The Underworld was attempting to speak to them, and only she had the ability to hear.
She closed her eyes and listened. Then she wandered across the sand, closer to Conan Doyle and the boy, closer to the river’s edge.
Conan Doyle watched her as she approached. 'What troubles you, Ceridwen?'
She did not respond, his voice added to the cacophony of the elements as they attempted to communicate. The river was the loudest voice of all, and she found herself drawn to its flow. This was the place from which the answer would come: the Styx, eager to share with her what had transpired. Ceridwen squatted down at the shore and extended her hand toward the hellish waters.
'No!' Danny yelped, his alarm cutting through the static inside her head, and she looked up into a face wracked with worry.
'I don’t think you want to do that.' He turned his nervous gaze out over the water. 'There’s something… not right about it.'
Conan Doyle had moved closer as well and she tried to assuage their fears with a smile. Then she gently touched her fingertips to the agitated water.
Ceridwen and the River Styx were one. Her body went rigid, her mind filling with rapid-fire images detailing what had come to pass, what the river had seen. Most of it was monotony, the ferryman in his launch and its countless journeys, transporting the dead to their final destination. Faces flashed across her mind, wan and bewildered. So many faces. But then her mind’s eye settled upon the most recent passengers, including the twisted, ugly visage of Nigel Gull. Ceridwen witnessed what had transpired from the river’s point of view, as though she were looking up from beneath the water. Gull had committed a terrible crime, a most foul act. Ceridwen saw the murder of Charon, saw Gull set his body adrift upon the river.
She drew her hand from the water with a gasp, stumbling into Conan Doyle’s waiting arms, the violence seared into her mind.
'I told her not to touch it,' she heard Danny say, concern in his voice. 'What did it do?'
Ceridwen opened her eyes and looked up at them, pulling back from Arthur’s embrace. 'The ferryman is not coming. Gull and his people were here with Eve no more than two hours ago,' she said, seeing the ghastly image reenacted in the theatre of her mind. She closed her eyes and shuddered even though the temperature was oppressively hot.
'What has he done?' Conan Doyle asked, eyes stormy beneath salt-and-pepper brows.
'He’s killed Charon,' she said, trying to force the images from her mind. 'And they’ve taken his boat across on their own.'
Conan Doyle clenched his fists in anger, turning his back upon them and walking away. She understood his frustration. Their enemy was besting them at every turn. This was not something to which Arthur Conan Doyle was accustomed.
'So we’re screwed, then. Game over,' Danny muttered. 'How do we help Eve now?'
'Arthur?' Ceridwen called. He was standing with his back to them at the edge of a forest of black, skeletal trees, again lost in thought, but this time she suspected she knew what occupied his mind. It was the way he eyed the copse of trees that gave his thoughts away.
The sorceress was far from Faerie, far from anything the Fey might think of as nature, but she had begun to establish a rapport with what passed for the elements of this barren place. Her strength was returning. Her magick as well, though tainted now by the Underworld. Yet Arthur did not know that. He must have sensed that communicating with the elements here was not as debilitating for her. He had, after all, only just witnessed her forging a bond with the River Styx. But he could not know how far she had adjusted.
This is a test for him in a way, she thought. Conan Doyle was a man of both thought and action, and he prided himself on practicality. What must be done, he would often say, must be done, and damn the consequences. Yet in their battle with the Hydra, his fear for her had caused him to become distracted, endangering the lives of the others and the success of their mission. He had promised it would never happen again.
But here was a similar situation. Will he ask it of me when he knows it will cause me pain?
Ceridwen was about to take that responsibility from him, when Conan Doyle turned to face her. The steely look on his face told her all she needed to know.
'Gull has thwarted us for the last time,' he announced, walking toward her. 'These trees,' he motioned to them with a wave of his hand. 'We have no time to build a raft, nor anything to lash them together. You must coerce them into taking on the shape of something we can use to get across.' He walked past her to stand again at the river’s edge, gazing out over its broad expanse. 'We must act with haste.'
Danny strode angrily toward him, his features more demonic than ever. 'What is wrong with you? You know she can’t do that. This place is bad for her. Using magick here hurts her. It’s obvious you don’t give a shit about people when it comes to getting what you need, but I figured if there was anyone, it’d be — '
Conan Doyle turned and glared at him, nostrils flaring, and the boy was silenced. Ceridwen wanted to speak up for him, but if they were going to survive, they would have to rely upon one another. Part of that was working out their own conflicts.
'Have you given Eve up for dead, then?' Conan Doyle asked, every word a dagger. 'Abandoned her to her fate?'
'Of course not,' Danny growled.
'Nor have I. Whatever Gull’s intentions here, they are likely sinister. Even if they were not, he has manipulated us throughout this fiasco, and now Eve’s life is in the balance. I ask what is required, nothing more.'
When Conan Doyle spun to face Ceridwen again, Danny seemed about to argue, but then fell silent once more. The sorceress did not blame him. Arthur was correct. In truth, she was relieved that he had chosen their purpose over her comfort.
'Can you do this?' he asked.
And how could she deny him?
They walked upon a surface of bones.
From a perilous mountain path, they had descended into a broad expanse of what Eve at first believed to be limestone. But as they grew closer, she had begun to see pieces of dry, yellow bone scattered on the dirt. In matter of minutes, no matter where her foot fell, the soles of her Italian leather boots landed atop the remains of something that had once been alive. Some of the bones were human, yes. She recognized those readily enough. But from what she could see there were bones there belonging to just about everything in creation.
'Am I the only one who’s a little freaked out by this?' Eve asked, turning to face her captors.
'It’s the bloody Underworld,' Hawkins snarled. 'What do you expect, a field of poppies?' He reached out, placed the flat of his hand against her back, and shoved. 'Keep moving.'
Eve stumbled, still under the sway of Nigel Gull’s magick, then turned to look into Hawkins’s eyes. She prided herself on the way she evolved with the world, but in her were all the women she had ever been, all the ages she had lived, and now in her fury she fell back on the Eve of another era.
'Mark me,' she said. 'You may do your best to forget who it is you trifle with, but I shall not forget. I have bred legions of monsters, and slain even more. Your bones will join these others beneath my feet before long. One way, Mr. Hawkins, or another.'
