Now the captain returned Conan Doyle’s gaze, yellow eyes glinting like polished gold in the last rays of the setting sun. A kindred spirit, he had called himself.
He had intercepted Conan Doyle and his group at the rear of the tavern, introducing himself as Captain Lycaon. Conan Doyle had sensed immediately that there something not quite human about the fisherman — something unnatural, but there seemed no malice in him, no duplicity. If he was an agent of Gull’s, well, that was the risk.
The captain smiled now through the wheelhouse window as he piloted the boat, and Conan Doyle could not help but notice again that there were far too many teeth in the man’s mouth. He doubted that Captain Lycaon smiled much around his fellow fisherman, or even that he had much contact with their like at all, other than to occasionally partake of some refreshment in the same establishment.
Kindred spirits. Lycaon said that it was Danny who had changed his mind, that he had sensed their kinship and would never have forgiven himself for not helping one of his own. Conan Doyle had considered asking the old man for his story, but decided against it, choosing instead to simply offer their destination.
"We’ll need passage along the coast to Cape Matapan — or Cape Taenarus as it used to be called."
The old man had nodded slowly, removing a pipe from his back pocket, preparing to smoke.
"Let me guess," he had said between puffs, the sweet smell of his tobacco causing Conan Doyle to crave the relaxing pleasures of his own briar pipe. "It’s the Ayil Asomati caves you seek."
"Precisely."
Lycaon spoke with a strange accent, not Greek, or anything else familiar, but with the hint of the Mediterranean in it nevertheless. "At night I hear the call of the caves sighing upon the winds, and they ask me if I am ready to lay down and sleep my last, but I tell them that it is not yet my time, that there are still many fish to catch, and much ouzo to drink."
"Will you take us then?" Conan Doyle had asked after a moment of silence during which the old captain puffed on his pipe, seeming to listen for the sounds of the caves.
"When would you like to leave?"
"Immediately."
They were on their way in a matter of minutes.
Now upon their journey, Conan Doyle took stock of his Menagerie. At the back of the boat Eve, Danny, and Ceridwen sat, enjoying a moment of respite before the next phase of their mission. They were tired and could have used some time to rest and regroup, but Gull had a healthy lead on them, and if they had any thought of catching up to him and his Wicked, they could not afford to tarry even for a moment.
Eve must have felt his eyes on her, for she glanced up, brows knitted in consternation. She rose to her feet and strode toward him, tugging at her torn leather coat, which was stained with her dried blood.
"I’m going to stink like fish for days," she complained, the wind whipping her hair around her sculpted features.
Conan Doyle always marveled at her beauty. Here she was only hours after battling a Hydra to the death, and she looked as though she could have stepped from the pages of Vogue.
"You don’t smell of fish," he assured her. "Blood, yes, but not fish."
Eve stared at him then, dark, almond-shaped eyes boring into his own. "Are you all right?" she asked. There was empathy in her gaze, but a steely judgment as well. "Back on Lesbos, with the Hydra, you were a little off your game."
"I was momentarily distracted." His concern over Ceridwen’s injuries had left him embarrassed and a bit ashamed. Matters of the heart needed to be set aside when dealing with conflicts of this magnitude. "I assure you it will not happen again."
Eve slowly nodded. Sometimes she seemed so very modern, so young, and at other times her gaze revealed the profoundness of her age, and an ancient wisdom lay within. "That’s good to hear. Danny and I almost got our asses handed to us today."
Conan Doyle glared at her, leaving no doubt that the conversation was over.
She put up her hands in defense. "It had to be said."
The boat’s engine cut off, and Conan Doyle watched as Captain Lycaon emerged from the wheelhouse. The old man was smoking his pipe again and said nothing as he pointed to the promontory that was gradually coming into view as they rounded the headland from Cape Matapan, the southernmost point of continental Greece.
Danny and Ceridwen had joined them, each peering out into the darkness for a glimpse of their destination.
"Is that it?" Danny asked. "I don’t get it. Why do you think Gull wanted to go there? It’s just a big cliff."
Ocean-blue cloak fluttering in the wind, Ceridwen extended her arm, fingers splayed, feeling the emanations from the great stone projection. "So much more than that," she said in a voice tinged with foreboding. "So much more than is obvious."
Eve made clicking noises with her mouth as she placed her hands on her slender hips. "Isn’t that always the way," she said, giving Conan Doyle a quick look from the corner of her eye.
The high rocky formation loomed above them, and Conan Doyle moved to the front of the boat for a better view, searching for the area that was rumored to be an entrance to the Underworld. The Ayil Asomati caves were the most famous of Hades’ ventilation shafts, favored by mortals on quests.
Captain Lycaon joined him. "I’ll get you as close as I can," he said, eyeing the towering rock formation as he suckled the end of his pipe. "But you’ll need a raft, if you’re planning on climbing to the caves."
"Bring us as far as you dare, Captain," Conan Doyle ordered. "We’ll make do from there."
The sound began as a distant warble, and Conan Doyle at first mistook it as the cry of some lonely night bird. It was a song, perhaps one of the most beautiful he had ever heard, and it was coming from somewhere on the cliffs of the promontory.
"Look!" Eve called, distracting him from the unearthly tune.
Conan Doyle followed her gaze, again enveloped in the overpowering beauty of the song, and saw three figures standing on one of the small ledges jutting out from the promontory. It was Gull and his people, and the deformed sorcerer was using his damnable gift to sing in the voice of Orpheus.
They were closer now, and Conan Doyle could make out the words of the song in the language of time long past. Plaintively it asked for the entrance to the Underworld to be revealed.
"It’s beautiful," Captain Lycaon whispered, and Conan Doyle saw that the old seaman was crying.
As he looked back toward the promontory, he realized that it was not only they who had been affected by the song of Orpheus. Conan Doyle watched transfixed as two towering gates of solid rock parted in the face of the mountainous cliff.
The Underworld.
Clay is falling.
Deeper and deeper he plummets into the darkness within himself, the oblivion into which he has been cast by the gaze of Medusa. After a while, he finds himself comforted by the darkness surrounding him, the desire to escape slowly draining from him.
He wonders if this was how Medusa’s other victims had felt? Suddenly trapped within themselves, gradually losing the will to be anything but stone.
For a brief moment he again struggles against the sucking pull of the abyss, but to little avail. He is drowning in shadow, the ebony pitch attempting to work its way into his mouth and nose. It wants to be inside him — to consume him. It wants him to forget that he ever existed.
And it almost succeeds, but then he hears Eve’s voice, as he had that day they lunched on Newbury Street. "Do you remember?" she had asked, a longing in her voice that made his heart break.
And he does. He remembered then — and he remembers now, and his unremitting fall into oblivion is slowed by the recollection. Memories flash before him, curtains of darkness are savagely torn aside. Clay recalls a murk deeper and darker than the one that now envelops him, but it lasts for only a brief instant, before it is banished by the brightest flashes — the light of creation. And the inky black is replaced by entire constellations.