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and a third when all four ships had at last reunited. A number of speakers confirmed the existence of such sites as I had suggested, where the tributaries of the River Styx—Acheron, Cocytus, Aornis, Lethe, and Phlegethon—twine in their circuit beneath the earth.
    The nearest, at Raria on the Magnesian coast, was Fire River. This was the one I had been inspired to cite and the one for which plain sense argued the most compellingly. Its entrance lay within ten days’ ride of Athens. It could be reached entirely by land, requiring no sea crossing (since Amazons fear and despise the salt element). And it was the only one on Selene’s likely track, that is, to the ultimate destination of her homeland.
    At the twelfth dawn, then, the patched flotilla put back to sea, retraversing the expanse across which the storm had driven it, to beach three days subsequent on that strand of shingle called the Hollows, in Magnesia, again on the mainland. A party of twenty was detailed to guard the ships, while the main body, fifty or more under arms, commenced the tramp inland seeking the portal to the Underworld.
    This proved a desultory shuffle, as several among the crew who had personal acquaintance of the site had reported that “Fire River,” so daunting in its appellation, was nothing more than a subterranean sump void of supernatural substance, a tarry trickle stinking of sulphur and bitumen. The stench was so foul, these fellows recounted, that neither bird nor beast inhabited the region but only lizards, serpents, and slugs.
    The belt Father had cinched about my waist was of a type whose usage he had acquired in Amazonia twenty years previous, on the original voyage under Theseus. The Amazons call it an
astereia,
a “star belt,” and the Greeks a riding wale. Selene wore such a wale always, for, as all horsewomen know, nothing comes in handier in the company of fractious mounts than a good length of rope, as lead, halter, hobble, or lasso.
    So tethered, I advanced in Father’s train. A stink ascended from the ooze, vile as eggs gone rotten. Men packed their nostrils with moss and bound muffles about their faces.
    There was no village and the only locals, a runt race calling themselves Rarians, “Womb People,” over whose greased topknots even I towered, spoke a form of shore Pelasgian so antique than not even our mates from Brauron or Marathon could savvy it. Heaven knows how these beggars made their living; perhaps they rustled lizards or swamp cats for the hides. Their fingers were no greater than my toes, and the stunted limbs from which these nubs protruded appeared more like the paws of some species of nocturnal rodent than the extremities of God-spawned humankind. Their mantles were of rat skin and opossum with the heads and tails still on, while both male and female ran naked from the waist down. Their loins they smeared with particolored mud, perhaps for its protective shell, or, as Prince Atticus reckoned, they were just plain dirty. Coin or gold meant nothing to them, but they would jig with glee over any artifact of fired clay. They coveted drinking cups, which our men carried strung to packs and belts, and would offer any tale for one. Yes, they had seen an Amazon. Make that ten, or a hundred! A young girl, indeed! Of roan hair, wasn’t she, or did we say raven? Three times these denizens directed our companies to the Portals of Persephone, the debouchment from the Underworld (they claimed) of the River of Hell, each sortie revealing a less illustrious backwater than the one before.
    At one point Damon achieved a parley with their headman. “These wart bastards worship the Womb Goddess” was his report to Atticus and the captains. “We’re trespassers. They won’t steer us near the cleft, bet on it, and may strike a ruckus if we stumble too close. Here’s more to chew on. Every swamp breed I’ve heard of are master poisoners. These may tip their