Dennis McKiernan - Once upon a Spring morn

Celeste and Roel took their leave of the heroes, and out from the hall they strode. Mounting up, across the plains they fared, out from sunlit Elysium to come once more under the leaden skies of the Asphodel Fields.

On they rode, and at last in the distance ahead they once again saw the great dark dwelling they had seen as they had ridden opposite less than eight candlemarks prior. Toward this massive palace they went.

Up out from the plains it towered, its ebon stone rising in tiers toward the somber vault o’erhead. Toward a wide entryway at ground level they fared, the opening yawning darkly wide.

“We must take our horses with us,” said Celeste as they came upon black basalt pave.

“Oui,” replied Roel.

Now they rode into the enshadowed gape, and Celeste turned to Roel and said, “Oh, my love, I do hope Lord Thoth is right.”

Roel grimly nodded but said nought.

Dark stone pillars lined the way, and hooves rang and echoed from the gloom-laden surround.

Following the directions given by Chiron, they came to a broad stair climbing up into darkness; dismounting, they led the horses clattering upward.

Into a long ebon hall they emerged, torches in sconces lighting the corridor with eternal flame, or so Chiron had said.

Rightward along this hallway they trod, their horses trailing after, to come at last to a wide archway.

Across a polished black marble floor they went and toward the far wall, where before ebon curtains sat two thrones, a beautiful maiden upon one, a dark male on the other.

This pair was in deep converse and did not look up even as Celeste and Roel came to stand before them.

Celeste cleared her throat and said, “My Lord Hades, my Lady Persephone.”

Now the pair looked toward the two, and rage crossed Hades’ features, and he shouted, “Mortals!

Again! Will this never end?”

And with a bellowing shout, he swept the back of his hand outward, and as if from a mighty blow, into roaring blackness Celeste and Roel hurtled.

Desperate Run

When the great rush of blackness subsided, Celeste and Roel found themselves and their horses standing in sand before the great stone Sphinx outside the City of Meketaten’s Tomb. And in that moment the first rays of the rising sun struck the face of the Abulhol, and it looked down at them and smiled, rock grinding on rock with the grin.

“Ah, summarily ejected by Hades, eh?” it asked.

“Oui,” said Celeste. “Just as Lord Thoth said Hades would do.”

“Did you find what you sought?”

“Oui,” replied Celeste. “The gray arrow is ours, and for that I say merci, my lord, for your aid; without it we would have failed.”

With a grating of stone upon stone, the Abulhol inclined its head in acknowledgment.

Roel frowned and glanced over his shoulder at the morning sun. “I do not understand, Lord Sphinx. It was just after dawn when we went into Erebus. Have we come back the same dawn we entered?” Slowly the Abulhol shook its head. “Nay, Chevalier.

Two days have elapsed since you first broached the realm of the dead.”

“Two days?” exclaimed Roel. “We spent but ten candlemarks at most therein.”

“Time marches at a different pace in the netherworlds,” said the Sphinx.

Celeste gasped in dismay and said, “Oh, Roel, that means there are but three days left ere the dark of the moon, and we have far to go.”

“Then I suggest you set out,” said the Abulhol.

After a quick glance at her map, Celeste pointed sunwise and said, “Yon.”

“South it is,” cried Roel, and he and Celeste sprang to their mounts and rode into the dunes, the Sphinx murmuring after, “May the smiling face of Atum be turned your way.” Then it closed its eyes and went back to sleep.

Across the sands they fared, stopping now and again to feed and water the horses as well as themselves. It was at one of these pauses when Celeste remarked that during the time they were in Erebus, even though two days in the world had elapsed, they had not felt the need for food or water.

“Mayhap one never gets hungry or thirsty in Erebus,” said Roel.

“In Tartarus they do,” said Celeste. “Remember Tantalus, love.”

“Ah, oui,” said Roel. “Yet mayhap it is his eternal punishment for the deeds he did. Perhaps none else suffers such pangs.” Celeste nodded, and they mounted and rode onward, up and over and down tall golden dunes-great still waves of sand-and across long stretches of gritty flats, the surface baked hard, and through rocky wadis, some salt encrusted, which spoke of leaching streams of ages agone, and then back into dunes again.

They ran out of water in midafternoon, and only sand and grit did they see; there were no wells, no piles of rocks, no birds to follow across the waste where they might find an oasis or a pool.

Yet in the evening in the distance ahead they espied a looming wall of twilight, and within a candlemark they reached it. It took them another candlemark to find the fallen obelisk at the crossover point, and back into Faery they passed. They came into a world of green trees and lush grasses and cool air. The sky above was deep violet with dusk, and almost immediately they came upon a stream. They let the horses drink, and they drank as well and replenished their waterskins.

“We have to press on,” said Roel as they brushed the animals clean in those places where grit would chafe,

“for we cannot tarry.”

“Yet we must not enfeeble the horses,” said Celeste, examining the legs of her mare. “Else we will most certainly lose any chance we have.”

“I know, my love,” said Roel, shaking sand from the saddle blankets.

“What we need are remounts,” said Celeste.

“Oui, remounts for getting to the tower ere midnight of the dark of the moon, horses which will become mounts for Avelaine and Laurent and Blaise on the way back. Is there a city or ville between here and the next boundary?”

As Roel resaddled the mares and laded the goods on the geldings, Celeste unfolded the vellum chart and studied it in the failing light. “Ah,” she said at last. She stabbed her finger to the map. “I think this must be a town along the way. Perhaps there we can get horses.” Roel looked. On the chart were the initials FdTn. “A town?”

“Oui. That would be my guess. I mean, it doesn’t seem to be by a twilight border, and though I don’t have a notion as to what the Fd might mean, I think the Tn might stand for ‘town.’ It is slightly out of the way, but if it has horses, that will more than make up for the extra distance.” Roel sighed and said, “Once again, whoever made the original map seemed to want some of it to be in cipher.

Yet if the scale of this chart is anywhere close, without remounts we haven’t a chance. Let us go to whatever this FdTn might be.”

With their own horses flagging, in the noontide of the next day Celeste and Roel topped a hill to see a goodly-sized town along the banks of a river meandering through a wide valley below. And as the waterway wended past the ville itself, it broadened to nearly three or four times its width elsewhere.

“Ford Town,” said Roel. “The Fd stands for ‘ford.’ ” Down the slope they rode, and soon they came in among the buildings, and after inquiries, they reached a stable. Roel traded their mares and geldings for three fresh mounts. And spending some of the gold given them by Vicomte Chevell of the Sea Eagle, Roel purchased three more, bringing the total of their horses to six: two were to be ridden, while the other four would trail behind on long tethers as remounts to share the task of bearing the princess and the knight on a headlong run into danger. He also purchased additional tack so that when shifting from one horse to another they would not have to switch gear, saying, “It will save time.