The Echidna's Scale (Alchemy's Apprentice) (38 page)

His guide gave him a withering look.  “Do you know nothing of death?” she asked.  “The Acheron is the river of pain.  You don’t want a drop of it to touch your body,” she answered.  “The water creates unimaginable pain.”

They arrived at the short dock just as the boat completed its crossing, and a pair of passengers disembarked, looks of dazed confusion on their faces.   Mitment boldly stepped forward and grabbed the arm of the unnaturally thin oarsman in the boat, her filmy hand making solid contact with the figure’s flesh, though seeming to cause no reaction.

“We wish to cross the river,” she spoke in a haughty, demanding tone.

“I only carry riders one way,” the pale boatman answered as he shrugged her hand off.

“I have here one of the living, who must return to the land of the light to carry out a sacred quest.  The spirit of Ophiuchus has placed this duty on him,” Mitment pressed her case forward.

“A living rider?  Come forward,” the boatman said, beckoning Marco over to him.

“He’s not an attractive youth, is he?” the boatman asked Mitment.  Marco was gaunt, and his hair was long and unkempt, weeks after the last time he’d had it cut.  His clothes were wrinkled at best, scuffed, dirty, and torn for the most part.

“He’s had a hard way of it, Charon,” Mitment answered for Marco, as the boatman reached out and grasped Marco’s arm in his long-fingered hand.

Marco winced in anticipation of the pain he suffered every time Mitment touched him, but instead he felt only cool flesh grab him.

“He feels solid enough,” Charon said, as he released his hold on Marco.  “He may enter the boat; you may not,” his spoke to Mitment.

“I must go with him.  I have been commanded by the Light to set him back on the path among the living,” she answered.  “You may count on me
to return; my time left here is short until my journey moves onward.”

“Better to be commanded by the Light than the Dark,” Charon said.  “The Son is a much more loving master through eternity than the fallen one.

“You both may proceed,” he stood aside, and let them each step into the boat.

Marco quickly took his seat in the flimsy vessel, then looked down at the water that was just a few inches below the gunwales of the ship.  It was black.  He moved his glowing hand, the only illumination available over the course of his whole journey with Mitment, and looked at the water more closely, making his hand glow even brighter, but the light was absorbed completely by the water, without even a reflection back.

The boat starting moving, and he hastily jerked his hand upward as he sat just inches from Mitment, her cold, filmy figure as much as a threat to touch as the river water.

The boat needed only seconds to glide across the water, then bump against the dock on the receiving side of the river barrier, where many souls waited.

“I’ll see you again soon,” Charon said to Mitment as the two passengers disembarked.  “And I’ll see you again too, eventually,” he said with a cold grin to Marco.

Mitment led the way past the waiting crowd and up a trail that climbed away from the river, and towards a small tunnel opening in the wall of the vast underworld.  She moved on without comment, as they passed a continual stream of souls that were on their way to the underworld.  The faces of the newly dead bore looks of confusion, and Marco felt his heart break as he saw a small girl, no more than seven or eight years old, walking along with tears on her face.

“She will grow calm, have no fear,” Mitment told him.  “The children are treated gently here.  Now move along or I’ll slap you again,” she raised her hand in a threatening gesture, though Marco sensed less hostility than she had displayed before.  He hurried up his speed nonetheless, leaving the child’s sorrow behind.

Their journey continued for another length of time, until Mitment halted and waited for Marco to reach her side.  “Look up there,” she pointed ahead.  “What do you see?”

Marco looked closely into the darkness, where he imagined he might have seen a spot of light.  “Is there light up there?” he asked.

“There is; it’s daylight,” Mitment answered.  “That is the entrance to the underworld, from Station Island up among the living.  There’s a monastery there, and men who pray constantly, as well as pilgrims who come to pray at the entrance to the cave.”

“With all these spirits going by?” Marco asked in astonishment.

“They cannot see the spirits, idiot,” Mitment said dismissively.  “They are living still, and the spirits are dead.

“And,” she spoke to cut off the question she saw Marco was about to ask, “You can see the spirits because you are in the underworld.  I don’t know whether you’ll see them once you’re back among the living.

“I’ll walk on a little further with you, but I can’t get much closer to the sunlight.  You heard me promise Charon I’d return,” she added.

“You make sure you get those scales back to the island.  Find out what you need to do to protect and help the lady,” she commanded.  “Don’t let the darkness take away the island and the order, or pain and suffering will spread far and wide across the land, and evil will be in control.”

They walked on in solemn silence for several more yards, until Mitment stopped.  “This is it.  Don’t fail me Marco.  Don’t fail the lady.”

“I’ll do my best Mitment.  Thank you for being my guide,” he said.  He looked from her to the clearly visible dim light that was visible ahead.  He couldn’t shake her hand, he couldn’t hug her, so he walked forward alone for three steps, moving against the flow of the traffic of the arriving spirits, then stopped and looked back.

There was no one there.  He was alone in the cave.  He suddenly realized that he was alone in a cave, and had no idea why he was in the cave.  It was empty and dark, except for where the rays of sunlight were visible as they slanted down through the air at the entrance to the cave.

Marco felt a sudden emptiness, an emptiness equal to the empty, dark space around him, and a sudden longing.  He couldn’t think of anything – his mind felt empty.  Yet he felt a powerful longing to make a trip; he wanted to go on a journey to Barcelon, to see the lady named Folence who was head of a cult there.  It made no sense, yet he felt compelled to make the journey.

With a sigh he walked up to the entrance of the cave and climbed up the rough stones, then stuck his head up into the bright, direct sunlight, and blinked his eyes repeatedly.

“Would you look at that?” an accented voice said in astonishment, and as Marco’s eyes adjusted to the light, he realized he was amidst a group of ten or more men.  They were gathered around a short stone wall that encircled the rocky opening in the ground he was climbing out of.

“Who are you?”  a voice asked.

The men were kneeling, Marco realized, and they all wore brown robes.

“How long have you been in there?” someone else asked as Marco climbed up to stand on the level ground.

“My name is Marco.  I’m going to Barcelon to see the Lady Folence of the Order of Ophiuchus,” he answered.  “I don’t know how long I was in the cave.  I don’t remember going in there,” he added as someone helped him hop over the short wall and join the group of monks and pilgrims, who were praying for the souls of the dead.

“Where am I?” he asked.  “How far is it to Barcelon?”  Marco looked up at the bright sun in the cloudless sky, and he enjoyed the mild breeze that blew past him.

“You’re in the monastery of Saint Joseph,” one of the monks gathered around Marco said, “on Station Island.  The cave is the entry to the underworld, and we are here to pray for peace for the dead.”

“You don’t know how you got in the cave?  We’ve had men here praying every hour of every day for the past two hundred years; no one reported seeing a wild man,” he gestured vaguely to Marco’s unkempt condition and long, unkempt hair, “enter the cave.”

“Take him to the chapter house and let him clean up,” someone else said, as most of the monks returned to their knees and resumed saying their prayers.

“Did he say he wanted to go see the witches?” one voice murmured.

“The holy father doesn’t call them witches,” someone answered.

“He’s going to Barcelon?  That’s a long journey,” another voice added.

“He’ll be able to go on the great pilgrimage.  A fellow like that needs to pray for help,” was another voice’s answer, which elicited a round of murmurs of agreement as Marco passed out of earshot.

Marco was escorted into a stone building, one whose interior felt cool after the warmth of the sunshine outside.  He and one of his escorts sat at a table in the hall, while the other disappeared.

“How did you get into the cave?  Are you returned from the dead?” the monk asked.

“I don’t know.  I don’t remember anything before I was in the cave, walking towards the exit,” Marco answered.   “And I don’t really know where I am right now,” he said.  “Where are we?”

The monk, an older man, looked at Marco with a pitying expression.  “Come with me,” he said, standing up.  Marco obligingly followed him down a hall and up a steep, narrow staircase.  The monk pressed a trap door open at the top of the fourth flight of steps, the hinges squealing as the heavy wooden door rose.  The two of them climbed up, and Marco looked around.

They were in a small, square chamber at the top of a tower.  The room had wide, tall windows on all four sides, and Marco could see in all directions as he slowly rotated.  There was a small island directly below, covered with multiple buildings.  Beyond that, on all four sides, only water was visible, except for a distant, smoking mountain on the northern horizon.

“This is Station Island,” the monk said.  “You say you want to go to Barcelon?” he asked.

“You will need to sail on a ship for three days in that direction, south,” the monk pointed.  “Your ship will land at Lacarona, and then you can travel on the pilgrim’s way to Compostela, where you can pray,” the monk’s voice hinted, “and then you can follow the eastern pilgrim’s way back to Barcelon.”

“It’s a long journey?” Marco asked.

“Perhaps a month,” the monk conceded.

“When can I start?” Marco asked next.

“When the next pilgrim and supply ship leaves the island, which will be the day after tomorrow.  It’ll arrive in the morning and leave in the afternoon,” his host replied.

Marco started to protest that he couldn’t wait that long for a ship, then bit his lip.  He knew he had a mission he had to undertake, his trip to Barcelon, but as he looked out the window at the ocean that stretched to the horizon, he realized there was no alternative.  “I’d be grateful for the opportunity,” he answered.

The monk led the way downstairs, and when they returned to the hallway, four more men waited for them, men who had been fetched to examine the strange being who had emerged from the entrance to the underworld.

“Let’s go to the chapel to talk, shall we?” one of the monks asked casually, and so they all walked back outside and across a yard to an ornate pair of wooden doors that led into a small chapel.  His hosts held the door open and invited Marco to enter first.

“Well, he passed that test,” one of them said, looking less somber than he initially had.  “The boy was able to walk into a consecrated space without being struck by lightning.”

The men proceeded to question Marco diligently for the next two hours, then satisfied themselves that they could extract no information from him, through a sincere lack of memory on his part.

“So what do we do with you before we ship you out?” one of them asked.

“We could feed the boy; he’s nothing but skin and bones,” his earlier guide in the tower answered.

Marco was soon taken to a mess hall, where he greedily ate three bowls of gruel of indifferent quality, and he then went to the chapel and repeated the evening mass with the brothers who were there.

Two days later, Marco sat by the dock in the late afternoon, watching the crew of the ship prepare to depart.  He’d been told to stay out of the way, and he did so diligently up until the captain of the ship looked at him and beckoned.

And minutes later, he stood on the deck of the ship as it shoved off from the island and raised its sails.  Marco waved at the tiny speck of land that had been his home for all of two days, the only two days of his life he could remember.

He knew that a journey to Barcelon was ahead of him, and that was all that mattered.