Part 86

Suddenly he stopped.

The ferryman neither shrank from his approach, nor responded. His face was hidden by the hood he wore. Yet his eyes shone from beneath that hood.

The look from those eyes froze Dionysius in midstep.

"No! No! It is a bedtime story to frighten children. What are you telling me . . . ."

His gaze shifted from stream to boat, from boat to ferryman, from ferryman to stream.

"It is a fairy tale, nothing else. Take me to the shore!" His voice was once more threatening.

Suddenly he sat down, held his head between his two hands, sobbed quietly.

"It's true, isn't it? This river - Styx is its name. You are the ferryman. This gloom is not the dark of night. It's all true!"

Suddenly a thought came to mind.

"Then you are . . . You are Charon. And I must have - yes, here it is. Your toll. Take me then to the Elysian Fields. Quickly, take me away from this dreadful place."

He extended Charon's toll.

The figure made no move to accept.

Rather, a deep and melancholy voice responded. "Your stop is not the Elysian shore."

Dionysius gazed at the dark figure, at the coin. Reluctantly he let the coin fall, watched it disappear into the depths of the murky water.

He was silent.

What more was there to say!

20. The Demon's Lair

There are dark grottoes in the high mountains. And tarns, deep and cold, bottomless pits of murky water. And in some few favored spots, dark grottoes and murky tarns together.

Such was the site at which Demo stood.

Here dwelt one whom even Olympians fear. This was the Demon's Lair.

The village folk had long remembered legends. Hoary legends, whispered around campfires during winter storm. Used to frighten children to mind their manners. But only legends. Or so Demo had long believed.

Something - no one spoke a name - there was. Or something there had been. Something that preceded even the Titans, that ancient race from whom the Olympians were descended.

The Titans, so the tales went, had not conquered it. Rather, they had duped it, deceived it, and encaged it in bars not of this world. Bars that, until now, had held. Bars that, perchance, were weakening with the passage of eons.

Whispered conversations on earth, whispered conversations on the pristine streets of Olympus, told of an ominous presence. Not seen, nor heard - still dread of this unknown creature stalked the night as might stalk even the creature itself.

Idle chatter of fearful children? Old wives tales from the back woods? Or something else, something evil. Something so powerful that even the gates of Olympus stood not against it.

No one knew.

And that was why Demo stood at the gate to the demon's lair. Zeus would know what manner of creature was there imprisoned. Zeus would know what manner of prison held such a creature in throe.

Who better to send than Demo? If he succeeded, another task marked off. If he failed, one less concern as Athena chose another.