I shouted to Hezekiah, «Take Wheezle,» and heaved the gnome toward the far end of the skiff. There was no time to see if the boy managed to keep the Dustman from harming himself; I grabbed one of our packs from the floor of the boat and threw open the flap. «Garou,» I snapped, «it may seem like fun to betray us, but remember I haven't finished the painting. You think you can find a painter like me anywhere else in the Lower Planes? One who won't try to pike you the way you're piking us?»

«Don't be so melodramatic,» the boatman replied. «I'll get you out of here.»

Languidly, he pushed off the bank with his pole. «Faster!» Miriam cried.

«And ruin my paint job? I think not.» He planted the pole with extravagant slowness and gave a soft nudge. The boat moved inches forward, drifting into the river's sluggish current.

«Ten seconds before the fiends get here,» Yasmin murmured to me. «Are you the sort of man who likes to hear mushy things before he dies?»

«I'll let you know if I come close to dying,» I told her. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the fiends were almost upon us: pure darkness, with teeth. «Chew on this!» I yelled, as I plucked a soul-gem from my pack and hurled it into their midst.

The rushing horde hissed like hot iron thrust into ice water. The three frontrunners all fell back to catch the prize, colliding with the fiends racing up from behind. I heard a dull crunch, the sound of delicate wing-bones breaking in the tangle of bodies. A moment later, two fiends fell screeching out of the scrum, their wings trailing uselessly behind; they both caromed off the bank and into the water, where their caterwauling stopped abruptly.

Several more seconds passed as the mob of flying fiends fought over possession of the gem. At last, a victor shot away from the group, clutching the gem to its chest – the gem's purple light throbbing against the umbral's blackness. A few fiends broke off to pursue the one with the gem, but the rest turned back toward us and howled with fury.

«Yeah, yeah,» Miriam growled back. Following my lead, she had fished out another gem from our packs; now she hurled it full-force at the screaming fiends.

«Please don't rock the boat, madam,» Garou chided.

«Please get the lead out of your sodding arse,» Miriam snapped back.

«Language, language,» Garou sighed. He gave another half-hearted push with his pole, sending us out a few more inches into the stream. The current angled the prow around and drew us forward, aiming us toward one of the pillars of mist hovering above the Styx. My guess was that each such cloud acted as a portal, opening to another part of the river on a different plane; even spurred by greed, umbrals would fear to follow us through… I hoped.

The struggle to claim Miriam's gem ended after only a few seconds. No one's wings broke; indeed, a few of the fiends ignored the gem entirely, circling around the other umbrals and continuing to pursue us. Did that mean they wanted to attack us more than they wanted to claim a gem? Or had they remembered we possessed many such gems, free for the picking if they managed to dump us in the Styx?

I had plucked up another gem and Yasmin had found one too; we threw simultaneously, aiming for the closest fiends. One fiend managed to catch a gem, and was immediately set upon by two others. The remaining gem was fumbled by clumsy-clawed hands and fell toward the river. Two fiends dove for it at full speed; they reached the gem simultaneously, clonked heads like a clown act, and plummeted the rest of the way into the water. A moment later they surfaced, sputtering and gasping. Both gripped the gem… and both stared at its purple glow as if they'd never seen such a thing before. There was no way to tell how much the water had affected their memories, but they goggled at the gem with obvious greed, like crows coveting a shiny bauble. Immediately, they began clawing and biting at each other, splashing showers of greasy water into the air.

«Peel it away,» Wheezle shouted. «Peel away the shell!»

«Britlin…» Hezekiah gasped, as he struggled to hold the gnome's hands. «We've got more trouble.»

I glanced in his direction. At first, I couldn't tell what Hezekiah was talking about; then I saw that Wheezle's eyes had turned into hollow pits of blackness, as empty as the night sky. Nightmare eyes. Umbral eyes.

«He's converting,» Yasmin said. «What do we do?»

«Keep throwing gems,» I answered. «Keep the fiends off our backs until we get into that mist.»

I nodded toward the closest bank of cloud, but Garou gave a low chuckle. «You'd be very upset if I took you through that one. There's no air on the other side, and the temperature's cold enough to freeze your eyeballs to ice cubes.»

«How do you know?» Miriam asked.

«It's my business to know,» Garou replied. «We're heading for that fog there.»

He pointed to another patch of mist, some fifty paces away. It seemed like a long distance with a swarm of fiends screaming for our blood; I wondered if Garou was stringing us along, taking pleasure in our fear. «Make it snappy,» I told him, «if you ever want your painting done.»

«Britlin!» Hezekiah cried again. «Hurry!»

Wheezle's fingernails had begun to extend into claws, ripping at Hezekiah's hands as the boy tried to hold him still. The gnome hissed and growled, spitting out words like a snake spitting venom. «Peel, peel, peel! Peel away the shell!»

There was another soul-gem in my hand; perhaps that would pacify him. But when I dropped the gem in Wheezle's lap, it only spurred him to greater exertions, screaming and foaming at the mouth. Bar that then – I grabbed the gem and threw it at an umbral flying less than two yards behind the boat. The fiend caught the gem, squealed in triumph, and sped away, three other fiends chasing him.

«I can't help but think,» Yasmin said matter-of-factly, «that our visit has had a negative effect on this village's sense of community.»

«Peel, peel, peel!» screeched Wheezle.

«I can't hold him,» Hezekiah warned. The gnome's claws had torn the boy's hands bloody.

«Damn it,» I said. Poisonous umbral thoughts must be filling his mind completely. If only…

I froze. Desperate times call for desperate measures. My sword lay on the floorboards, ready to be snatched up if I needed to fight the fiends. I grabbed it now, dipped its tip into the Styx, and lifted it out again. Carefully, I moved the blade over Wheezle's screaming face and let a single drop fall on his cheek.

He stopped shouting immediately. To be precise, he fell completely quiescent, as if he had plunged into a coma. Two seconds later, we passed through a pillar of mist and the rest of the world fell silent too – the hissing of umbrals, the splashes of fiends fighting in the water, all vanished in a trice.

We emerged into a bleak expanse of gray.