The light from his half of the finder’s stone glowed much more dimly in this place, like a candle burning in a nearly airless room. The bard could just barely pick out the trace of the beam of light indicating Akabar’s direction. Finder flew along its path. The light led to the river’s edge and stopped.
He would have to take a boat, he realized. If he tried to travel by himself, he would attract the attention of the myriad of evil creatures that dwelled in this plane, creatures like Phalse, who captured fools like Dragonbait and himself who traveled where they shouldn’t. Even if he could keep from the notice of such creatures, he could easily get lost in this place and wander for centuries.
He had only a vague idea of how one went about summoning Charon, the Boatman of the Styx. It required some magical spells that he didn’t possess. In lieu of that, Finder decided to try the only other magic he had beyond the broken finder’s stone and the dagger he might still need to use to wrest Akabar from Moander’s grasp. He pulled the horn of blasting from his belt. If it failed to bring Charon, it might at least hail one of the lesser boatmen who carried passengers along the river.
Finder didn’t trigger the instrument’s destructive magic, but blew into it as he would a normal horn. He blew a fanfare he’d once composed in honor of a legion of soldiers who had all been killed in a single day in battle. It seemed an appropriate tune for this place. Then he waited.
In less than a minute, the black water began to churn and froth; then a heavy, sparkling silver mist appeared upriver and drifted downstream with the current. As the mist drew closer, Finder could just barely make out the pointed bow of a boat shrouded within it. Then suddenly the boat, as black as the water of the Styx, emerged from the silver mist, and the mist dissolved into nothingness.
A single boatman stood in the back of the boat and steered it toward the shore with a pole. The boat halted beside Finder, and the boatman held it stationary without any apparent effort, despite the swift current that flowed around it. Finder’s eyes widened at the sight of the boatman. It was Charon himself, not one of his helpers. The Lord of the Styx wore a full-length hooded cloak of black silk, trimmed with ermine. Beneath the hood, his face was haggard and his eyes glowed a fiery red. The hands that held the pole were nearly skeletal. The figure stood in the boat without speaking.
“I’m Finder Wyvernspur,” the bard explained. “I’m seeking Akabar Bel Akash. He has been taken by the god Moander, who dwells in the Abyss.”
Charon held out his palm.
“Will you take this horn in payment?” the bard asked.
Charon motioned for Finder to blow the horn again.
Finder repeated the fanfare for the dead legion of soldiers.
Charon nodded and held out his hand. Finder laid the horn in the boatman’s palm, taking care not to touch his flesh.
Charon set the horn down at his feet and motioned for Finder to come aboard. The bard floated over the boat and took care to settle himself down into it gently, but he was still surprised that the boat didn’t rock at all from his weight. The boat was completely dry inside and empty save for him, the boatman, and the horn. Finder sat facing forward so he wouldn’t be forced to stare at Charon, whose eyes made him feel uneasy. The sensation of bobbing on the water or of air flowing by was completely absent, even as Charon pushed the boat away from the river’s edge into the faster-moving water in the middle of the stream. The boat seemed so still that Finder began to feel as if he’d seated himself in a coffin buried in the earth.
The river steamed around them, in the chillness of the air Finder created with his sliver of para-elemental ice. The bard glanced back at Charon to see if the cold made the boatman uncomfortable. Charon seemed completely oblivious not only to the cold, but to the bard’s presence as well. Finder recalled then that the boatman traveled through regions of the outer planes that would make Icewind Dale seem temperate.
The bard turned his attention to the scenery, but the bogs which stretched out from both banks of the river were a depressing sight. Dead, brown marsh grasses covered the ground as far as the eye could see, and the monotony of the flatland was broken only occasionally by stunted, leafless bushes. Despite the warmth and moisture of the soil, nothing grew. Only after great storms, when the rain had temporarily washed away the poison of the soil, could any plant survive in this region of desolation.
In an effort to take his mind off the bleak scenery around him, Finder tried to think of Alias and Olive. He tried to remember their faces and how they had sounded when they sang together in the Singing Cave and the feel of their hands on his own, but the memories wouldn’t come to him. The river Styx, he recalled, drove away memories of the living.
The bard found himself dwelling instead on memories of Flattery and Kirkson and Maryje. It seemed he thought of nothing else for hours as Charon steered his boat through twisted paths of the river. A desire to throw himself in the river, so that he could forget the evils of his past life, grew stronger with every passing minute.
Finder shook himself with sudden alarm, remembering that the river would rob him of all his memories, good as well as bad. He would forget his songs … Olive … even Alias. Whether the allure of oblivion was due to some enchantment of the dark water and depressing landscape or his own weakness, the bard knew he had to fight it off somehow. A song, he thought. I should sing a song.
Uncertain how the boatman would react to any other music, Finder began by humming “The Tears of Selûne.” When Charon gave no indication of annoyance or displeasure and nothing leaped out at the boat from the banks, the bard began to sing the words. Halfway through the song, he began wondering if Olive had been right, that Selûne’s Shards sang it as a duet. He started the song from the beginning, and for the first time since he’d written them three centuries ago, he began changing the lyrics so that they would work better as a duet. By the time Charon pulled his boat over to the opposite shore, the bard felt as though he’d changed his whole life. He thanked the boatman for the ride, though he had paid for it with the horn, and Charon acknowledged the bard’s gratitude with a nod.
Finder hovered out of the boat and flew the few feet to solid ground. While he’d been concentrating on his music, he hadn’t noticed the change in scenery, but now he surveyed the new landscape with repulsion. The bogs of Tarterus hadn’t been half as horrible as his first sight of Moander’s realm in the Abyss. The shoreline was encrusted with slimy brown muck; the banks were heaped with piles of rotting carcasses and decaying vegetation, and a noisome odor filled the air. Finder turned back to Charon, uncertain if he really wanted to journey any farther into this oppressive region, but the boatman and his boat were gone.
Grateful yet again that his fly spell hadn’t worn off, the bard held out the broken finder’s stone, which put out a feeble light pointing away from the river. The stench beyond the banks of the river was unbearable, but he had no choice. Flying over the fields strewn with debris and the mountains of refuse, Finder wondered if Moander’s realm was the repository for all the garbage of the other six hundred and sixty-five layers of the Abyss.
The bard hadn’t flown far when, from the corner of his eye, he thought he spied a huge gem, but when he landed and bent over to pick it up, it proved to be a piece of rotten fruit. Likewise, his eyes were deceived into seeing a silvered sword, which turned out to be the slime-encrusted bone of some great beast. When he tried to salvage a gilded, leather-bound tome and found himself holding a rotted log alive with larvae, the bard realized that all these illusions were calculated to keep him from his quest. He flew on, ignoring all the other riches he imagined he saw, no matter how enticing they looked.