Hacking our way through the tangle of jungle wilderness by night wasn't any easier than it had been during the day. Between the fog and the tree cover, it was as dark as pitch, and without the lamps we'd have walked square into tree trunks more times than we could count. The only good side was that the flytrappers and any other natural hazards were nowhere to be found; either they were purely diurnal hunters or else they were bright enough to leave the night to the supernatural hazards--unlike us. We were walking right towards the heart of it. My palms were sweaty with nerves and fear; I probably would have dropped the cutlass I'd been given (it had belonged to the late quartermaster, Edgars, which I tried not to think too much about) had I not kept it in a two-handed grip.
"Say," Patch commented, chopping his way past a tangle of vines, "how's it that Teach knows where we be goin', if he never set foot on th' island afore now?"
"Probably Van Dierken told him," I guessed. "That 'hearing his voice in Teach's soul' effect, most likely."
"Or Teach might just have been lying," noted Jack.
"Or that, yes."
My hem snagged on a sharp bit of undergrowth, and I pulled it free impatiently, ripping the cloth. This dress was never going to be the same; it would have to be cleaned and repaired just so I could give it to charity. I wished that I'd had the foresight to beg a change of clothing from one of the female pirates before going ashore. Not that it really mattered, as we were walking towards what would likely be certain death.
At the very least, Teach did seem to have some idea where it was we were going, for he kept to a steady pace without pausing or having to think about his direction, which was quite remarkable given the miserable conditions. We went up a slight slope, then seemed to be working our way down again in a gentle corkscrew descent. The thought struck me that perhaps the island had been formed by a volcano whose tip just protruded above the waves, and as if it was long extinct the rich, mineral-laden soil formed by volcanic ash had become overgrown with lush vegetation. We did not have to descend far, no more than fifty feet in all, so that if it was a volcano it must have been unspeakably ancient for its lip to have crumbled away so far. Nonetheless, it was clear when we had reached the bottom, for we emerged from the treeline and the fog alike into a barren patch about fifty yards in diameter.
Starlight shone down brilliantly, with the Blue Star seeming to be almost directly above us and illuminating the area like a beacon, for the mist clung to the treeline as it it was some exhalation of the foliage itself or if it--as we should have--feared to advance further. The ground was rocky and generally flat, though it was broken at haphazard intervals by upthrusting fingers of rock, great spikes that seemed to have plunged up from beneath at crazy angles. In several places these rock ridges formed a natural wall for the clearing, and I realized that we were, in essence, in a cave that simply neglected to have a roof. The approach we'd taken was the only efficient way to enter the area.
"Althena's eyes," whispered Hornigold in awe.
"Glory be!" another gasped.
Patch went so far as to clap Teach on the back.
"Well, yer may be the diseased spew of a bottom-feeder what didn't know its father, old man, but at least ya told us true about this! Ahrrr, it'd be worth riskin' me life ter find it."
As might have been expected, the freebooters were not moved to such expressions of awestruck elation by natural wonders (not that the rocky clearing was even all that wonderous). The treasures that lay strewn about as if so much debris were beyond the dreams of avarice. Silver coin overflowed from chests, split the seams of bags, and lay scattered in heaps or seeming to flow like rivers along channels in the rock. Gold and gems were well-represented in jewelry, in plates and tableware, and in works of art. Certain items has an almost barbaric magnificence to them, such as a pair of goblets hewn apparently out of a single gigantic gem each, one ruby and one emerald. There were chains and beads, books with gem-encrusted ivory covers, and weapons so ornamented with precious stones and metal that they must have been for ritual or purely ornamental use. That the Cape Matapan treasure was part, even most of it was easily verified by certain objects that bore the unmistakable stamp of Prairie Tribe work, including gold-leaf death masks that had surely come from rifled graves. Yet there was more, too, wealth not just from that one fabulous haul but from the many additional trips Bloodheart had made to the island.
It was an incredible sight, but I wasn't particularly moved by it. Perhaps because, unlike the pirates, I had grown up surrounded by the trappings of wealth, simple piles of money did not enthrall me.
"Har," Mel said, "this be the result o' all Van Dierken's pirating over the years."
"And look what it got him," I responded.
"Aye, that. A hoard he can't spend, and himself trapped with it for all time, a damned soul not even knowing Althena's peace after death and only a skeleton crew o' his victims for company." Mel's face was as grim as his words; he, at least, had not been distracted from our purpose by the sight of all the treasure.
A moment later, laughter sprang up from all around us, as if mocking the sentiments Mel and I had expressed. With a great rattling and chiming of coins, a dozen or so skeletons thrust themselves upwards from the treasure heaps. It was they that laughed; though without lungs or throat to give voice nonetheless a cackling screech burst from their jabbering teeth. Then another laugh rang out from the air above us, just as it had on the beach.
"Only the crew for company?" Van Dierken cried, his words beginning even before his figure took shape to speak. "Nothing could be further from the truth!"
He came into view perched on one of the rock spires; his type of petty tyrant would always seek to look down on others.
"Do you think I'm here now from the blackness of my heart alone?" He slashed through the air with his sword to punctuate his remark. "I've always had an eye for the main chance and I took it!"
"Spare us the soliloquies," snapped Jack, surprising pretty much everyone with his vocabulary.
"Why, I had no intention of talking you to death. Did you think a man like me had much use for gab? No, I think a demonstration would be more in order."
With that, he jumped off the rock and landed just to our right. His boots scattered coins when he hit, so he had at least some physical reality. He waved his hand, and the skeletons rushed us together with Van Dierken.
There was a difference between this battle and the one a few hours past, and not just that this time I had a weapon. That time there had been blood and death, the horror of the living dead, but this encounter didn't have that same sense. Even with the uncertain footing, with slippery, shifting piles of treasure and the uneven rock surface beneath, Mel and the crew met the skeleton charge without apparent difficulty, fending off attacks and striking back with brutal efficiency, taking out one-third of the enemy almost at once. Was it that we were past horror now, driven past fear by the desire to live? Or only a heartless evolution at place, that the pirates who were weak victims for the skeletons had been killed on the beach, leaving only those capable of standing their ground for this fight?
I myself was next to useless; I swung my cutlass in two-handed strokes like I was chopping with an axe, but all I accomplished was to strike chips off bone at best. Often, I didn't even succeed in hitting my target, but swung wildly through the air as a skeleton moved. One particularly wild chop, I realized with horror, left me wide open to a counterattack, but the skeleton just stood there, jabbering laughter at me. It made no sense--why didn't it attack?
A hint of an explanation came a moment later when a pirate lunged at the creature, crushing its skull with a massive overhand swing. Before Lowe could even free his cutlass from bone, Van Dierken himself entered the fray. A ghostly hand seized the man's hair, and began to drag the pirate back towards the crag.
"Grimzol!" Van Dierken cried out. "Black Wind of the Prairie! Plaguebringer! Accept my offering!"
He whirled his sword around and slashed it across Lowe's throat. I gasped in horror, not at the death (there had been so much of that already that, it seemed, I was becoming numb to it) but at what followed. The blood that gushed from the wound seemed to catch flame, swirling through the air in a sickly crimson flow, unerringly seeking out one item among the heaped and piled treasure: a squat idol about three feet tall.
It was obviously an idol rather than simply a statue, even without the rite of sacrifice making it plain. The thick body, stubby legs, and masklike face, sculpted of bronze and ornamented with inlaid gold, held a power to it, a force that screamed out, "worshippers carved this." It had been crafted in awe, or perhaps more accurately fear.
The idol seemed to drink in the scarlet fire, absorbing the flow, and a red light kindled in its staring eyes. There was an unearthly howl, and the rocky clearing was suddenly ringed with walls of ghostly fire ten feet high.
Van Dierken dropped Lowe's corpse with a callous flick of his wrist.
"Now, who wants to be next?" he invited, and dove at us.
The clash of steel rang out again as Ace parried the ghost's sword, a second pirate lashed out at the ghost's side, and Mel chopped down with his great axe. The skeletons were down by now, but the unholy flames had us trapped more effectively than a mob of the animated dead could. They had only been to delay us, I now realized, until the first sacrifice could be made.
Yes, first. It was all too obvious now, why Bloodheart had left us alive on the beach, why he'd made Teach bring us here. We were fodder to him, lives to spend.
"So, this be what becomes o' ya at last," sneered Mel even as Van Dierken shrugged off blows that would have felled giant monsters. "The great Bloodheart Van Dierken, scourge o' the Meribian, nothing more than the undead lackey o' some demon idol."
"Lackey?" The ghost beat down Ace's guard and slashed at Mel's off side, but Jack got his sword up in the way. The ghost was tireless, and it was all the pirates could do to hold him in one place. "When you and yours have been offered up to Grimzol, I'll take your ship as my own and the crew you left on board will become mine! At last I'll be off this forsaken rock and be able to spread death and terror again!"
"We really are stuck in a bad Lytonian opera, Miss de Alkirk," Ace said.
Van Dierken apparently didn't have a sense of himor; an orb of that sickly greenish-white flame formed in his hand and he hurled it at Ace. The orb burst against his chest and knocked him off his feet. An instant later the ghost struck the sword from Jack's hand, then kicked away Condent from his left side. He drove a lunge at Jack's breast, but Patch hit him with a diving tackle that drew a grunt of pain from the dead man and left Patch writhing on the ground, clutching his shoulder. Van Dierken stabbed down at Patch with a snarl of rage, but Mel lunged with the long shaft of his axe outstretched and deflected the thrust. Roaring, Van Dierken stepped in and slashed Mel across the chest (drawing a squeak of fear from me) and only a concerted effort by Anne and Hornigold drove him back.
Althena's tears, this is useless! I thought ruefully. The cutlass I held was twice-over worthless, both for the weapon itself and for the wielder. We couldn't run, we couldn't hide, and there was no way we could hold off the ghost captain's unholy speed and magic until dawn.
Jack got creative; he yanked a throwing knife from his sash and hurled it at the idol. It didn't even scratch the bronze, clanging off the side of its ugly face. Anne found herself brutally disarmed; she staggered away from the fight clutching a half-severed wrist from which blood pumped freely.
This adventure wasn't fun any more.
Then it was about to get a lot less fun, as Van Dierken blasted down Hornigold with another fiery orb like the one he'd used on Ace, and then he was coming after me! Two unearthly-quick steps covered the ground between us; he slapped aside my pathetic guard with the palm of his hand and slashed at my throat.
The blade never got there. Mel had seized Van Dierken from behind in a sort of wrestling hold, hooking both his arms under the ghost's and yanking them back. Mel's screams bellowed out, echoing through the clearing as he paid the price for saving me yet again, his arms and body wreathed in flame. Van Dierken's face was a study in baffled malice as he tried to free himself, but he could not. In terms of pure physical power, Mel was his master, and whatever laws of black magic governed his unholy existence made the grip of a person's own body effective at holding, even hurting him.
But oh, Althena, the price!
What could I do? No matter his strength of will, Mel couldn't hold on more than a few seconds longer, and there was nothing I could do. I didn't even have the strength to save him in return; none of us did, really. And our living flesh would burn just as--
Wait!
"Jack!" I screamed. "Use your hook! Now, while Mel has him!"
Praise Althena, the bearded pirate got it at once, or else he just chose to do what I said without asking questions. He slashed his hook down across Van Dierken's exposed chest, then up again and swept it backhanded across the dead man's throat.
Now it was Van Dierken's turn to scream, even as the pain grew too much for Mel and he lost his grip. The cuts Jack had inflicted were great rents in Van Dierken's body from which death-pale fire spewed grotesquely like blood. Bloodheart howled, staggering uncontrollably, actually seeming to shrink in on himself until he suddenly exploded in a blinding flash that left us all blinking and seeing spots. I was at Mel's side even before my vision cleared.
"Mel! Mel, please!" His face, his arms, and his chest were a charred ruin; it seemed a miracle that he was somehow still alive. "Someone, do something!" I screamed.
"Afraid...ta disappoint...ya..." he forced out through broken lips, "but...there ain't...nothing...ta...do." The last word wasn't even truly spoken; it was more of a sigh as if it had been exhaled with the rattling breath.
"That is not necessarily so."
The sepulchral voice echoed from all around us, as if it was the howling of the wind.
"Give yourself to me and I shall relieve your suffering."
"The idol!" Ace exclaimed, pointing. He was back on his feet, shaken but alive. We'd destroyed Van Dierken, but not Grimzol.
"Join with me. You have no love for Althena's law. You are worthy. Replace the weak vessel you overcame."
Then it wasn't using words at all, but visions, images that poured through our minds. The lives of the injured restored. All the wealth strewn around us and more besides. I saw Jack taking bloody vengeance on the Meribians who'd used and abandoned him; Patch settling matters with the brother who'd run off with his wife; Condent having the captain who'd lashed his back bloody, inspiring him to piracy, at his mercy at last; Anne blessed with years of youth; Ace with a captaincy of his own, his words heard and respected instead of being always a jest...
Amelie de Alkirk with power, real power to do something, instead of being a helpless ornament, an object to be prized by one group or another...
Hell Mel, a legend to echo down through the centuries as the plague-winds swept across the sea in his wake, kings and princes forced to heed his words...
Is that what drives Mel? I thought suddenly as I felt Grimzol's promise to him.
"'Hell' Mel only...be a...nickname," Mel gasped out. I couldn't believe he was capable of speaking, but it seemed that Grimzol's visions, reaching directly into his mind, had been able to rouse him. "And ya can't give me anything I want."
I gasped in disbelief--and I wasn't the only one, either--when Mel actually got to his knees. First one hand, then the other wrapped around the haft of the huge axe.
"Ya hafta earn it!"
With that shout, he hurled the axe. It spun end-over-end, driven by more than the force of his muscles but by the strength of his spirit. It seemed to be spinning faster and faster as it flew--and perhaps it was, for it hewed through whatever protections had previously shielded the idol like they weren't even there. The blade struck the sculpted mask dead-on, shattering the idol Grimzol. For the second time in only a few minutes, an explosion of white light filled the air as the dying demon-god released the stolen life-force that had been fed into it. The energies washed over us and into us, so that when the storm of white light passed and we picked ourselves up off the ground, we were left staring at one another hale and hearty. Not a trace of the horrible char-blackened burns remained on Mel's body, a fact I could fully appreciate since the wavefront of released life could do nothing for his ruined shirt.
I took a second, very careful look--there was quite a lot of rippling muscle to be seen and it took a while to make sure all of it was intact. Anne noticed the direction of my gaze and gave me a "just us girls" wink. I had the decency to blush.
"That," Ace summed up, "was fairly impressive, Captain. But really, the timing was more than just a bit melodramatic."
Jack cuffed him on the back of the head.