Nightsong (6 page)

“Other men and women weep, master,” assented Biton at once, “but in the end they live to enjoy good, long lives.”

“Poetry,” Orpheus said, “will win Eurydice back from the darkness.”

Without a further word the poet stepped again through the shadow entrance.

And Biton followed, into the world of night.

4

EIGHTEEN

Biton trailed the poet, the two stepping cautiously down the slippery path, lichen-scabbed rocks on either side.

Lingering daylight dissolved quickly to an absence of any light at all. And yet that perfect darkness was diminished gradually by an otherworldly illumination, given off by mineral veins of persistent luminescence and dimly glowing stones.

“Biton, be careful!” cautioned Orpheus, pointing out a gushing stream across their path.

Orpheus led the way, reaching back to take Biton's hand, pulling him across the shocking-cold stream. But Biton's foot slipped, and he plunged into the numbing rush of water.

The poet set his feet, took a firmer grip on the younger man's clothes, and hauled his servant free.

“Surely that accident is nothing but an omen,” said Biton, as he wrung out the hem of his tunic. His teeth were chattering and he had to stamp his feet to force feeling back into them. “It's certainly a sign that we must turn back, master, and find the daylight again.”

Orpheus straightened his servant's garment, laughing gently. “That you are unhurt, Biton, is the most encouraging omen of all.”

As they descended, their eyes began to take in enough light to make out ever more easily the path ahead, and the trickling streams that searched their way downward, nearly ice to the touch.

The light that illuminated each turn of the descending passage was more than enough to keep the two from stumbling, but it was an increasingly stale, shale-gray illumination, given off by the cold rock.

Young Biton had never been so uneasy in his life. When at length the passage opened up, an immense cavern rising high above, the poet hurried out into the open void and the servant quailed, “Master, wait for me!”

Before them stretched a river, a current so wide that the opposite bank could barely be observed, a low rim of darkness.

A boat, lopsided and creaking, was making its way in their direction, and Biton began to dread the nature of this vessel even as he felt a shadowy, feathery touch at his arm. Biton sensed an airy grasp take his hand, and a voice making a persistent, nearly silent request.

Fear-sick, the servant spun quickly, and the faint, vaporous entity vanished, only to drift back again, beseeching. “A coin, my lord, if you please, a coin,” came the rusty whisper, “so I might find my way across the river.”

At the touch of Biton's warm flesh, the phantom presence shrank back once more.

One shade – the remnant of a once living human – lingered closer, circling Biton, rapt with curiosity, it seemed, or intent with menace.

The lad was terrified. He did not even want to breathe the air around such things – they struck him as unclean, maybe even poisonous. Biton felt the strength melt from his knees – it was a struggle to remain upright. He certainly did not trust himself to make a sound.

Noble Orpheus, however, hailed the shades politely, his voice revealing only a hint of his fear. Biton knew his master well enough to admire the show of courage – the poet, too, was no doubt profoundly uneasy in this place.

“The gods' blessing on you all, good friends,” said the poet, the silver lyre under his arm reflecting the dull rumor of light.

The shades drew back and fell still, the sound of his polite greeting awakening them perhaps to all the hope and cheer they no longer possessed.

“These are the shades of the impoverished, Biton,” Orpheus confided, his voice soft with compassion. “They say that such spirits were too poor to give Charon the ferryman a coin – and so they cannot cross the river Styx.”

“Why would they desire,” asked Biton, “to cross the black and smelly water?”

Orpheus did not respond at once – he was concerned at the fear in Biton's voice. “They say the dead can rest in peace only near Pluto's palace,” the poet explained, putting a protective hand on his companion's shoulder. “Biton – you're shivering!”

“Then let us give them all our gold and silver,” said Biton, when he found the power to speak again at all. “Let them cross the river, and let's go back to daylight ourselves.” He clutched the poet's arm. “Dear master, we do not belong in this darkness.”

“Ferryman, over here,” Orpheus was calling.

The boatman poled his lopsided vessel toward them, guiding it with strong, steady plunges of his pole.

“Charon, good master ferryman,” Orpheus greeted the boatman – a forced but convincing heartiness as the craft nudged the stony quay. “We have the fee to pay our way across, if you please.”

Only then did they see the ferryman's eyes, red-rimmed as though with fire. Charon lifted his pole, dripping with black water, and thrust it at Orpheus's chest, pointing peremptorily with his other hand.
Go back

Charon looked hard at Prince Orpheus, and then at the young servant – and gave a wordless hiss of warning.

Biton fainted, falling senseless to the stony quay.

NINETEEN

When Biton was aware of anything, he saw his master kneeling over him.

For an instant the young servant did not know where he was. When he smelled the chill of the river, his heart sank.

“I did not faint, master, despite what you might think,” protested Biton. “My feet slipped out from under me, and I found it much wiser to lie down.”

Orpheus took Biton's hand. He did not speak for a further moment.

“It was wrong for me to ask you to join me here,” said Orpheus at last. “Biton, return to the world of sunlight.”

“No, master, please,” insisted Biton. “I will prove as sturdy as a donkey, and twice as sure-footed.”

“I am requiring you to go back, Biton,” said the poet, “and to find provisions for our happy return. You will arrange a merry feast in honor of Eurydice, dear Biton. I give you no choice in the matter.”

“I am a worthy servant to you, Prince Orpheus,” wailed Biton, torn between duty and relief “I would go anywhere beside you.”

Orpheus put a gentle finger to his servant's lips.

The poet paid the ferryman in gold, far more than the toll of two simple coins a shade would require. Charon looked away, as though loathing the touch of a living mortal, and kept his knobby hand extended until it was full of treasure.

The fine gold reflected no luster in the poor light. The ferryman gave a grunt of assent, at length, and emptied the fistful into a long, weighty purse at his belt.

The poet lifted a hand in farewell, Biton lingering to watch the ferry depart for the opposite bank.

The servant scampered off, on his way back to daylight, and Orpheus felt the damp rise up around him.

Orpheus already missed young Biton badly.

The poet felt all the more alone when the ferryman let his glance flicker over him, his fire-rimmed eyes dismissing the poet, but finding him again with an air of baleful curiosity.

“She's a plucky vessel, is she not?” Orpheus forced himself to say, believing that bright manners were likely to succeed anywhere. The ferry was malformed from an age of working the hard current, so badly warped its deck was uneven, although, Orpheus judged, the craft was surely sturdy enough for another eon of service.

Charon made no response.

Orpheus backed away, toward the center of the broad, ungainly craft as the current lapped up over the ferry's sides, cold and smelling of carrion.

All of this made Orpheus look forward to seeing Eurydice all the more fervently – whatever effort it required. He was certain that soon he must surely free her from this domain.

His determined reverie was shaken by the sound of baying on the far side of the river. Barking and growling echoed fiercely across the sullen current, and it sounded as though three ravening mastiffs were hard on the heels of some quarry.

Surely not, Prince Orpheus tried to console himself. Surely such legendary monsters cannot await me.

The three-headed dog Cerberus snapped and lunged at the approach of the ferry.

The threefold beast grew all the more frenzied as Charon's pole touched the quay, and the ferryman gave a bow and a sweep of his arm, indicating that his passenger was free to make his way.

The monster was restrained by the iron loops of a chain, but the chain was long and did not look strong enough. The three heads erupted from a single, muscular body, and the heads were so ill-tempered that they bit at one another, slavering and disagreeing over which head was the master.

At last the head in the center vanquished its fellows with growls, and turned its fangs in the direction of the poet. Cerberus dragged the iron links with little effort, all the way to their limit, the slavering beast rising up on its hind legs.

However, Charon had allowed Orpheus to disembark farther up the quay than the use-worn stones, shiny with centuries of wear, indicated was customary. The poet was safely ashore.

So perhaps, thought Orpheus, a cheerful tone was not entirely wasted, even along this murky and disagreeable river.

“Thank you, good ferryman,” called Orpheus.

Charon offered no courtesy in return, but simply shoved hard against the quay, turning the vessel back into the current.

The pathway rose upward from the river, puddles glistening in the glow permeating the darkness.

The source of this illumination was the palace in the distance, its lamps and fires offering dim promise. Shapes flitted through the dark near the towering walls, wings arcing and dodging, and Orpheus could only guess what these flying creatures might be.

Within a few paces, and before Orpheus could allow some tentative hope to kindle in his breast, a fearsome rumble stopped him in his tracks.

It was the grumble of a stone, grinding and bounding down an unseen slope, smashing to a standstill.

Orpheus proceeded along a curve in the path and stopped, unwilling to go farther, taking refuge behind a rocky outcropping.

The sound echoed in the half-dark, the sound of a massive stone being rolled, forced along bedrock, scraping and gritting over an unyielding surface.

Orpheus steeled his nerve, and stepped forward.

TWENTY

A bearded figure in a ragged mantle shoved and heaved a massive, irregular boulder up a hill.

The slope was rutted with the passage of this same stone, and the man laboring to work the boulder to the summit of the hill was powerfully built. Even so, he was just able to inch the boulder halfway up the incline when he was forced to fall to one knee, gasping for breath.

Orpheus recognized Sisyphus, damned to this toil by great Jupiter.

As the poet watched, the condemned mortal renewed his effort, powering the boulder upward with sweaty zeal, and with a degree of desperate speed. The boulder was manhandled all the way to the peak of the hill, only to sway unsteadily, and then slowly bound all the way to the base of the incline, back where it had begun.

The figure returned, too, all the way down the slope, trudging heavily but with an air of resignation. The stories Orpheus had heard explained the supposed crime this human being had committed, but the tales did little to make the punishment seem fair. Jupiter had run off with Aegina, daughter of a river god, only to have Sisyphus, a wise and well-liked mortal, disclose to the water deity the place where his daughter had been secreted. For this, Jupiter had decreed an eternal penance: pushing a boulder up a slope that would forever return the stone back to its starting place.

“Sisyphus, may I help you for a while?” asked Orpheus.

The bearded figure gave no sign of having heard, and so the poet asked again.

Sisyphus glanced up from the boulder. “Help me – in what way, traveler?”

“Two of us might make the boulder seem a little lighter.”

To the poet's surprise, Sisyphus gave a weary laugh.

“Surely someday,” offered Orpheus, “the gods will decide against your punishment, good Sisyphus.”

“Do you call this punishment?” asked Sisyphus, putting his shoulder to the massive stone.

“The songs describe you as kind and fair-minded,” Orpheus said. “No mortal feels you should suffer in this way.”

“What is that frame of silver you carry on your shoulder?” asked Sisyphus, heaving the boulder upward an inch, and then another.

“My lyre – a gift from Apollo,” Orpheus answered, feeling how out of place the name of the sunny divinity sounded.

“And you carry it everywhere, do you?”

“Of course – I am happy to,” the poet answered in some puzzlement. He introduced himself, and told quickly of his love for Eurydice.

As he spoke, he was startled by a pair of wings that darted through the darkness, followed by another.

The poet ducked his head, and stepped closer to Sisyphus's boulder for brief shelter.

“Those are the Erinyes,” said Sisyphus with an air of unconcern. “The Furies – relentless spirits of revenge.”

“What do they want of me?” asked Orpheus shakily.

“If you have killed a member of your family,” replied Sisyphus, laying both hands on his boulder with something close to affection, “they will see to it that you pay for your crime.” Sisyphus leaned forward, heaved, and the boulder rolled slowly upward.

“Dear Sisyphus, do they add to your torment?” asked Orpheus, putting one shoulder into the boulder and helping to shove it higher up the slope.

“Torment!” echoed Sisyphus with a laugh. “Do I seem to be in misery, traveler?”

“Not misery, perhaps, dear Sisyphus,” Orpheus was forced to respond after a moment of thought. “But I myself would hate your pointless task.”

“The day may come, poet,” said Sisyphus with a chuckle, “when you remember me as much like you.”