Christopher Golden - Tears of the Furies

They drew toward the dark, sucking center of the maelstrom. The raft began to rock and Conan Doyle and Danny were driven to their knees. Water surged up over them, soaking their clothes.

"Is there any way you can ask the river currents to pull us from the whirlpool’s grasp?" Conan Doyle shouted at Ceridwen over the roaring water, trying to clear his vision to have the comfort of the sight of her.

She looked up at him with eyes barely focused. "I’m trying," she croaked, shaking her head in the negative. "But Charybdis is too strong."

It tore at him to see her so helpless but there was nothing he could do. If they were to survive, all of their power and guile would have to be brought into play. He reached within himself, drawing upon the magick that resided there. Conan Doyle expected excruciating pain, but found only the slightest discomfort. Just as the nature of this place was adjusting to Ceridwen, the laws of magick were growing accustomed to him. He didn’t like that at all, but at the moment he was more concerned with Charybdis.

Conan Doyle raised a hand above his head and sketched at the air. A sphere of dark blue energy coalesced around his fingers and then a lance of magick thrust across the river, causing a wall of water to erupt beneath it as it passed. It was a powerful enchantment meant to disrupt magick, to short-circuit the supernatural. Again and again he summoned that spell, and cast it out across the river to strike at the heart of the swirling water. The river began to froth and steam and a strange sound, the cries of some ethereal beast in pain, rose up from the water to fill the air.

The raft rocked upon the choppy water as the vortex started to falter, and from the corner of his eye Conan Doyle saw Ceridwen pitch to one side, coming dangerously close to falling from the raft. He scrambled to her, pulling the sorceress closer to him.

"I have you," he told her as a wave of exhaustion passed over him.

"I think we beat it," he heard Danny say excitedly, and he looked to see that the boy was standing at the raft’s edge, peering into the slowly calming waters. The raft was again at the mercy of the river’s natural flow.

Ceridwen was shaking off her stupor, trying to talk, but her voice was so soft that he could not hear. He bent his ear down close, attempting to decipher her whispering words.

"Charybdis," she began. "Charybdis is no…"

"Charybdis is gone," he said, pulling her close in an attempt to comfort.

Her violet eyes flashed angrily as she pushed herself out of his arms, shaking her head from side to side.

"No," she said, her voice stronger. "Charybdis is not… alone."

He recalled her words from before; that they had come to separate Charybdis from its mate.

Its mate.

The water in front of them began to bubble and churn, and again their raft was tossed about.

"What now?" Danny shrieked, losing his balance and collapsing.

Something exploded up from the depths, its skin catching the strange light of the hellish place, glistening with all the colors of the rainbow. Conan Doyle was reminded of a rainbow trout, but this was no mere fish.

Scylla, the mate of Charybdis, surged up from the bubbling black waters of the Styx, her voice raised in a scream of rage over what they had wrought upon her consort.

Once she had been a beautiful sea nymph, loved by Zeus and Poseidon in turn, until twisted by the jealousy of Circe into something monstrous. If one looked closely enough, past the slick, greasy skin and thick appendages that grew like tumors from her body, one could see that this had once been a creature of beauty, but that had been so long ago that Conan Doyle doubted even Scylla remembered.

The river beast surged toward them in a spray of water. Scylla grabbed the front of the makeshift raft in large, webbed hands, tipping it forward. Holding Ceridwen tightly in his arms, Conan Doyle dug his fingers into the wood, halting his slide toward the enraged beast.

"Hold on!" he cried out to Danny, but the boy’s clawing hands could not find purchase and he began to slide toward the monster.

Her tentacles darted at him with incredible speed, almost as if they had a sentience all their own. Conan Doyle watched in horror as the tapered ends of those appendages split open to reveal snarling faces, needle-toothed jaws snapping in horror.

Is there no end to the nightmares of this place? Conan Doyle thought as he plucked a spell from his memory. He thrust out his hand and began to utter the incantation.

The blast that streamed from his fingertips struck Scylla square in the chest and seared her flesh black. With an ear-piercing scream she dove beneath the water to recover. Danny struggled to climb back up onto the raft, and Conan Doyle was forced to leave Ceridwen’s side to assist him.

"Take my hand, boy," he cried, extending his arm.

"What the fuck is up with this place!" the boy yelled, hauling himself out of the water with Conan Doyle’s help, and back up onto the raft. "Does everything have to have multiple heads and a serious mad on for us?"

"It does appear that way, doesn’t it?" Conan Doyle sighed, taking a moment to catch his breath now that Danny was safe.

The waters of the Styx were becoming agitated again. He was about to tell the boy to hold on, when he heard Ceridwen’s cry of warning, and he turned just in time to see the elemental sorceress standing, her hands crackling with unrestrained power as she prepared to defend them.

"That attack will come from beneath us!" she cried out just as the raft was struck from below.

Then they were airborne, the raft propelled up and out of the water by the savagery of the attack. The raft was destroyed, reduced to wreckage floating upon the turbulent waters of the River Styx. Conan Doyle broke the surface, spitting the foul tasting water from his mouth. Its taste was like nothing he had ever experienced before, and it stirred memories of times and events best left forgotten. Times of sorrow. The water wanted him to surrender, to give himself over entirely to the flow and pull of the river.

But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would never surrender.

Shrugging off the influence of the river he began to search for Ceridwen and Danny in the choppy waters. In the distance he saw something upon the undulating surface and relief surged through him as he realized it was Danny, clutching Ceridwen with one arm and with the other clinging to a section of their decimated raft.

Swimming against the current, he went to them.

"I think she might have hit her head on something," Danny shouted over the rush of the river.

Conan Doyle helped him with Ceridwen. The sorceress had a gash on her temple, and she moaned fitfully as she struggled to regain consciousness.

"We have to get to shore," the demon boy said, his eyes wild as he searched the waters for any sign of further attack. "I can’t freakin’ stand this anymore."

Conan Doyle could offer nothing to allay the boy’s fears. They were being carried by the current, not near enough the bank to swim, only the wreckage of the raft keeping them above water. Conan Doyle racked his brain for a way to the other side.

Then he saw Danny’s eyes go wide with fear.

"Something just touched my… " The demon boy gasped, but never finished as he was yanked beneath the surface of the water.

"Danny!" Conan Doyle cried, illuminating one of his hands and plunging it down into the river. But he could see nothing in the darkness.

The boy was gone.

The water began to churn again and he readied himself for the conflict. Ceridwen was barely conscious so he could not depend on her for assistance. As he clung to a piece of raft, keeping his love from sliding beneath the river’s cold embrace, Conan Doyle brought forth a spell of defense and held it at the ready.