Earth and Air (8 page)

What now? In the world of flesh and bone the only sane thing would be to turn back. It was the pipes that made up his mind. Unconsciously while he hesitated he had been weighing them in his hand, but now he found himself gazing dreamily down at them. His shadow self returned, allowing him to look at them through shadow eyes, to see them for what they were in that dim light. In the world of fresh and blood he had brought them here as a tangible offering to make as part of his farewell to Ridiki, a way of telling himself that now, truly, finally, he was letting her go. But, like one of the echoes in this place of echoes, that purpose now reverberated back to him from the shadow world all changed, telling him that if he used them the pipes were a passport, a charm with which he might persuade the powers of the underworld to let him through.

Suppose it was all nonsense. Suppose the dog's only response was to set up a clamour of barking and bring its master running. The man must be a little way off, beyond the dog's awareness, to judge by its anxious, waiting pose. He'd have a good start. Once through the door he could run the collar through the lock-shackles and fasten it tight. It would take the man some while to force his way past that, and by then Steff would be out of the cleft and well up the hillside . . .

Before that half of his mind had finished these flesh-and-blood calculations his shadow self had moved him quietly out to the centre of the tunnel and put the pipes to his lips. He drew a calm breath and blew two sharp notes, well apart on the scale, three times repeated. All Deniakis dogs had been trained to the same signals, and since, once trained, they were going to be sold on, Nikos never allowed them to bond to a single man, but got them accustomed to obeying the commands of strangers. This was the
Attention
call, a musical version of the dog's
Alert.
Instantly the dog heaved itself onto its haunches. Its head swung round, ears pricked. Herd dogs have excellent sight, but Steff was some way from the lantern's dim light and the dog, he now saw, was old. Its movements had been stiff and there was something awkward about its posture, very like Ridiki's when she was at attention.

Nevertheless it recognised a stranger, and was about to spring up and rush yelling to the reach of its chain when Steff blew a long, fluttering call—
Down. Wait. Be Ready.

The dog paused, uncertain. He blew the call again. The dog subsided, though still with obvious doubt, and lay with its muzzle on its outstretched forelegs. Its hackles continued to stir as he walked confidently forward, the pipes ready at his lips, but its training held. As he neared he saw why it had so reminded him of Ridiki. The left forepaw—what would have been the hand on a human arm—was missing as far as the wrist. Once well past the dog, he turned and played the first few notes of a local lullaby.
Relax.
It obeyed, obviously relieved, looking in fact rather pleased with itself at having performed a known task well. It was a nice old dog, he thought, not at all dreadful. And only one head.

And the same with everything else. The tunnel he was in was now an old mine shaft and nothing more. The dead no longer flooded invisibly along it—it was empty apart from himself. And what he was doing was once again pure, reasonless, dangerous folly. Only the memory of his earlier resolution carried him on.

Another lantern glowed in the distance. Very likely that was where the dog's master was doing whatever he was here for, but again the danger had to be faced. Twice now he had come to such a moment with nothing more to rely on than shadow certainties that he no longer felt, and twice they had compelled him to face the test. Why stop trusting them now? Still, spasms of fear shuddered through him as he stole nearer to the light, and he had to stop and wait for them to pass before he could force himself on.

Now he could see the end of the tunnel, a rock surface with a thick rope running across it through a series of old iron rings. The rail track curved round to the left, into the lantern light. The floor of the tunnel ended halfway across to the opposite wall—the gap must be the channel in which the water ran.

He edged along close to the left-hand wall, checking to the right on what he could see of that side of the chamber ahead, as more and more of it came into view. In fact it ended in a blank stone wall only a couple of paces round the corner. The water flowed out of it under a low arch.

At the tunnel's end, huddled close against the wall, he stood and listened, but the steady rustle of the water drowned any small sounds the man might be making, if he was there. Cautiously he peeped out, just far enough to see round the corner with one eye. The lantern stood on a flatbed rail trolley, a simple wooden platform on wheels, with a hinged handle either end for pushing or pulling. The rails ended a pace or two beyond it, and the chamber a little beyond that, with a blank wall through which the water flowed out of a tunnel high enough for man to stand in. The rope along the far wall continued through more rings and on into the tunnel.

At first there seemed to be no one about, but then a man's head and shoulders, facing away from Steff, rose from behind the trolley. For a moment he seemed to be standing in the river, but his body rocked as he lifted something heavy up onto the quayside, showing that he must be standing on some kind of boat or raft. The rope on the wall was for him to pull himself up and down the river.

Still with his back towards Steff he climbed up onto the quay and lifted his load onto the trolley and slid it forward. It was a sturdy wooden box, not large but obviously heavy. He returned to the raft and disappeared, clearly to fetch another one.

Steff had only a moment or two to think, but barely needed it. Everything he'd seen and been told seemed to click into place in his head. Somebody—probably one of the men who'd done the final survey on the mine and said it was worked out, had actually found a vein of fine silver, like what Alexander had used to pay his soldiers. He'd kept quiet about it until he could use it for himself. He'd then done a deal with Mentathos, to share the profits if he'd help. They had to keep dead quiet about it, because the silver really belonged to the mining company, and besides, if nobody knew, then they wouldn't have to pay taxes. (The papers were always full of this sort of shady dealings, and the men talked about them over their dinners.)

So what Steff was doing was no longer a silly escapade for which he'd be seriously punished if anyone found out. Suddenly it had become extremely dangerous. He'd better get out, and quick, while the man was busy and he still had time to pipe his way past the dog.

But the man was Charon the ferryman, and the river was the Styx, the first of the seven rivers of the underworld, and all around, at this very moment, unseen, unfelt, the dead were crowding the quay, begging for passage, paying him with the two coins that had been put in their mouths before they were buried.

There was some small change left from this week's pocket money. But how . . .?

Still hesitating, Steff edged an eye round the corner to check what he was doing. As it happened the man was looking straight towards the mouth of the tunnel.

He stared for an instant, and bellowed. Automatically Steff jerked back, caught his foot, and fell. Before he could rise the man was on him. He was grabbed by the shoulders, hauled to his feet, and shaken violently back and forth, while the man continued to bellow.

“Mother of Christ, who the hell are you? And what in God's name do you think you're doing here, you nosy little bastard? I'll show you!”

The man flung him back against the rock wall, grabbed him before he could fall, and began to batter him to and fro again.

“Charon?”

Winded, half-stunned, terrified, Steff wasn't aware of deciding to say the name. It was a barely audible croak, forced out of him by the violence of his shaking. But the man paused, staring. He wasn't much taller than Steff, but broad-shouldered, with a weather-beaten, flat, snub-nosed face and dark eyebrows that joined above his nose.

“Mother of Christ!” he said. “The boss sent you? That case, what cause you got to go sneaking around like that?”

“No . . . No . . . He didn't . . . No one did. I'm looking for Ridiki . . . My dog.”

“So what the hell makes you think your bloody dog might be down here? Hector's the only dog down here. Come to that, how'd you get past him without him yelling his head off? And how come you know what the boss calls me?”

“She isn't down here—not like that. She's dead. A snake bit her. But Ridiki's short for Eurydice. That's her real name. The story, you see . . . And this is Tartaros. It's an entrance to the underworld . . .”

“And so I'm Charon. Look, kid, that was just a lucky guess. Like I said, it's what the boss calls me, one of his jokes, because of what the mine's called. Next thing you'll be telling me Hector's got three heads, and you charmed your way past him by playing him beautiful music.”

“Well, sort of. I'd brought my pipes, you see, to leave for Ridiki, but when I saw he was one of our dogs, I played him . . .”

“Hold it there. One of your dogs? You're Deniakis? Don't tell me you're one of the old man's kids? No, they're older . . .”

“He's my uncle.”

“Your dad was the one those bastards in Athens got?”

“That's right.”

The man paused, thinking.

“Right,” he said. “You're in a mess, kid, a bloody, stupid, dangerous mess you got yourself into. And by sheer fool's luck you've run into the only Mentathos who's going to get you out of it. Your dad was my wife's childhood sweetheart. All of ten years old they must have been. Fell for each other,
click!,
just like that. He smuggled a puppy down to show her, let her cuddle it. And they weren't supposed even to talk to each other; their dads would've flayed them if they'd heard, and they'd both got elder brothers at the school to keep them toeing the line. Year and a half they kept it up, stolen moments, couple of friends they could trust. Then her brother twigged, got up a Mentathos gang to take it out on your dad and his brother, but Deniakis—he's your uncle now—was waiting for us with his own gang, and between us we pretty well wrecked the school. Upshot was her dad took my wife away but they smuggled letters back and forth for years.

“She told me all this before we married—I didn't like it, of course—but she got me to understand she wasn't in love with him, not like that. He was going to come to our wedding in disguise, bringing his wife, but his ministry sent him to America, so when our first kid was on the way she wrote to him and asked him to be a sort of secret godfather. I'd tried to talk her out of it and I tried again when he wrote back and said he'd give us one of the Deniakis dogs. I could see the sort of trouble that would cause, but she was set on the idea so I cleared it with Mentathos. Not that he liked it either, but he owed me one. He's a hard man—hard as they come, but he pays his debts. Said OK, we could have the dog and told his men to let it alone.

“Someone didn't listen. You saw Hector's missing a foot. Fox trap, left deliberate. I caught the fellow that put it there. You'll know him if you meet him. Two fingers missing on his left hand, and he can count himself lucky I left him the hand . . .”

“Rania dropped a skillet on Ridiki's left leg—she didn't mean to, she's just clumsy, but it could've killed her.”

“Right. Anyway, that's Hector. Best dog I ever owned, three legs or four. Took a bit of time for us to get him—Deniakis keeps count of his dogs. Your dad was dead by the time he came but a fellow called Nikos fixed it . . .”

“He helped me train Ridiki.”

“Another thing we've got between us, then. Now, the fellows with the mules will be up here . . . let's see . . . bit over half an hour. Just time to get you clear.”

“But . . . but I've got to see Dis about Ridiki.”

“Listen, kid . . . what's your name?”

“Steff.”

“All right, Steff. Looking at it your way, if Hector's Cerberus and I'm Charon, then Dis is the boss down here. You absolutely do not want to see Dis. River in the underworld—isn't that right?—fall into it and you forget everything. Same here. Fall into our river and next time anyone sees you you've forgotten everything all right, because you've been washed up in Siren's Bay with a hole in your head might have been got by you banging it on a rock. Or maybe being banged with a rock. No, I wouldn't put it past him. Why d'you think I beat you up the way I did? Sorry about that, but I couldn't let you go, not after what you'd seen, and I was scared rigid what he'd do when he got his hands on you. You won't get any sympathy out of him—you'd just as well ask old Hector . . . Wait! That's it, Steff lad. What call d'you think Dis has to be interested in dogs? Cerberus is the one you've got to ask. You can do that as you're going.”

“But . . .”

“You've got two choices, Steff. Either you do what I tell you, ask Hector for what you want, and then make yourself scarce, or I carry you kicking and screaming out onto the hillside and tie you up and come back for you later. Either way I'm taking a hell of a risk, trusting you not letting on to anyone. OK, your uncle would flay you if he found out, same as my wife would flay me if she found out I'd handed you over to the boss. But your uncle's not the only one. You're telling nobody. Got it? Nobody. Now, make up your mind.”