warm golden glow that surrounded it from stem to stern. It headed unhurriedly towards us, a single human figure standing amidships, poling the barge along with a solid silver staff. The barge was a good twenty feet long, painted a cheerful pastel blue, with big black eyes delineated on either side of the pointed prow. The human figure propelling the barge with his efforts wore a concealing scarlet cloak and a featureless pale cream mask that covered all his face. Disturbingly, the mask only had one eyehole, the left. The barge slid to a halt before us, and the cloaked figure gave us a deep, formal bow.

"Welcome to the World Beneath, you poor damned fools," he said, in a deep resonant voice with more than a hint of a French accent. "Where do you wish me to take you? Not that there is a lot of choice, I'll admit. Upstream is bad, downstream is worse, though at least the Eaters of the Dead have been quiet lately. Someone tried putting poison down a while back, but the rotten buggers positively thrived on it. I hope you've got a specific destination in mind, because I don't do tours. I'd go back up, if I were you. It doesn't get any better, the deeper in you go."

"Pretty much the kind of welcome I'd expected," I said, when I could finally get a word in edgeways. "Can you take us to the Lord of Thorns?"

"Is life really that bad?" said the bargeman. "There are easier ways to kill yourself, and most of them are a lot less painful."

"The Lord of Thorns," I said firmly. "Yes or no?"

"Very well, my friends. Climb aboard. Don't fall in the water. The natives are restless, and very hungry."

We all boarded his barge very carefully, and it hardly rocked at all under our weight. The bargeman pushed his silver pole into the water and started us on our way with one long, effortless movement. There was more to him than there seemed, but then, there would have to be. Surrounded by the golden glow of the barge, Pretty Poison doused her hell-fire, and we all relaxed a little. The barge moved silently and easily on into the enveloping dark. The bargeman stared straight ahead, but whatever he saw with his single eye, he kept to himself.

"Don't get many tourists down here these days," he said, his voice quite distinct behind the pale mask. "Not that we ever did have many visitors, and for the most part we like it that way. Peace and quiet's a wonderful thing, you know? Are any of you famous? I don't keep up on the gossip like I used to."

"This is Sinner," I said. "This is Pretty Poison, and that is Madman. I am John Taylor."

The bargeman shook his head. "No. Sorry. Means nothing to me. I had that Julien Advent in my barge once. A real gentleman, he was."

"How long have you been down here?" I asked.

"I have no idea. And don't tell me, because I don't want to know. It was the beginning of the twentieth century when I first came to the Nightside, boarding the newly opened subway from Paris with a howling mob hot on my heels. I soon found my way down here. I'd had enough of the hurly-burly of city life, and wished only solitude. I do miss the opera, though ... Still! I provide a service here, to keep myself occupied, and as a small act of penance for the days of my hot-headed youth."

"What can you tell us about the World Beneath?" said Sinner.

"Parts of it are as old as any other part of the Nightside, and as dangerous. It started out as a collection of sewers, canals, and offshoots of the Thames, covered over by the growing city, running through and around a huge system of catacombs built by the Romans, so they could do things down here that the world above wouldn't approve of. Very practical people, the Romans. They believed that if the gods couldn't see what you were doing, it didn't count. Lot of people in the World Beneath still think that way, though of course I use the term people very loosely. We have quite a population down here, these days. Solitudes, of course; religious types sitting in dark stone cells for the good of their souls. Then there's the odd type who just can't get on with anyone, even in the Nightside. And those on the run, like my