Castle Perilous

Underworld

Something brought Jacoby out of his meditation. He looked out over the river. A boat was approaching.

“Come, Charon,” he said, “and ferry me across.”

The long boat moved rapidly, yet no one was rowing. Standing at the stern and manning the tiller was a strange being, a black figure, immense and powerfully muscled, humanlike but not quite human, with red eyes that glowed like embers in a face like a bull’s. The boatman deftly guided the craft into shore and brought it abreast of the pier, whereupon he moved to the bow and threw a loop-ended line over a mooring post. With a sinewy black arm he beckoned Jacoby to come aboard.

The fat man stepped down into the launch, made his way amidships and chose one of a number of wooden boards slung gunwale to gunwale. There were seats for perhaps two dozen souls. The boatman cast off and moved to the stern, taking his station at the tiller.

The journey downstream was uneventful. The boatman said nothing, and neither did Jacoby. Propelled by unseen forces, the boat parted the water gently with its blunt prow, leaving a wake of undulating ripples. The black waters of the river flowed quietly, inexorably. An occasional prismatic oil slick drifted by, faintly aglow in the passing light. The rest was darkness and quiet.

It could have been hours, it could have been days, or only a few minutes. Jacoby’s sense of time had been left in the mortal world above. Eventually the boatman steered for the far shore and put in, docking at another stone wharf.

Jacoby disembarked, walked to the end of the pier and looked about. “What, no Cerberus at the gate? No Virgil to guide my way?”

The ebony boatman raised a thick arm and pointed to a flight of steps rising from the riverbank. He spoke in a voice as deep and as slow as the black waters he plied: “Go forth from this place. Go up into the light of day. Do not return.”

“I shan’t, you needn’t worry.”

Jacoby climbed the steps, which eventually led into a passage that cut through the rock, bearing ever upward.