The rescue is underway. But will it come too late…?
Astropho awoke to the strains of worried voices echoing about the outer cave. Peering from his blanket, he saw Elgwid and Hanno in furtive converse, scowling faces haggard in the lanternlight.
“Broke free from her mooring, she has,” rasped Elgwid. “How she hasn’t gone and wrecked, the Powers alone know.”
“But what’s come o’ the lads aboard?” asked Hanno.
“Can’t say,” replied he. “Hid belowdecks, ashamed. Cut up drunk on that cheap grog Gedlo smuggled on the other day, most like.”
“Can’t be that. Musadi never supped no grog. ‘Tis more like the sick’ning,” boded Hanno, with a leary glance down the passage to the shrine chamber. “Gedlo were gaunt with pox. The sick’ning’s took him, it has, and he’s dragged the others to Nether beside him.”
“No need for fear just yet, till ‘tis known what’s what,” Elgwid said. “Anyhow, the witchwoman wants these lot up and digging. They’re all to be chained over the far side, where the relic were dug yesterday, for she reckons like as not the last be hid there too.”
“Pray ‘tis, so we can find it and shove off,” griped Hanno, fearful. “Happen we’ve outstayed our leave in this accursed hole.” And at that, fraught with refreshed purpose, he began to rouse the sleeping diggers to their unwelcome work.
Elgwid meanwhile dragged the eavesdropper to his feet. “Time for you to press on with your scribing, dandyman,” he growled, plain in no mood for foolery. “You ain’t been forgot!”
Thus within moments Astropho had been scuffled out the cave into the bright morn glare, his eyes scrunched against the stark shift to daylight. Despite this, as he glanced seaward he could see The Silver Tambor, clearly unmanned and deserted, out amongst the farthest breakers. He at once knew in the marrow of his bones that his friend had had some hand in that happening.
“A portent?” he asked his captor, doubt now his ally, questions his weapons.
“No concern to you,” parried Elgwid.
“Oh indeed? Because I too would like to get back to the mainland someday soon and I cannot say I much fancy the swim!” An artisan rumourmonger, Astropho was well aware that seafaring folk, while as god-fearing as any other, were also riddled in queer superstitions uniquely their own, fears of angered water sprites, of strange stars, of peculiar birds, of ill-thrown dice, of oddly blackened fingernails, and of ill-hued sunsets red as blood. He baited his lures with verve, and a sly angling of doubt. “What could have occurred, I wonder, to cast her out there, against all rhyme and reason? The whim of the Gods? Or, perhaps, some lesser spirit, some wraith or spectre native to the isle, made restless at our disturbance of its peace? Perchance some undine of the weirdly water, or some fell forest fay, bestirred to rancour by our meddlesome trespass here?”
“Get on from your dawdling yammer,” grumbled Elgwid, though plain rattled by the suggestion. “The witchwoman is furious. You’ll not be wantin’ to vex her today, or sore shall you rue it.”
“Nor should any of us vex her,” Astropho continued. “You should read those spells I have already translated for her. Old magic, of the elder time gone. Very terrible. Best left lost, in faith. Little wonder the spirits are rousing unsettled from their rest. Wondering, as do I, what she could possibly want with such awful power?”
“Mischief, like as not,” Elgwid muttered.
“Oh, that cannot be, no,” said Astropho, all innocence. “A noble Priestess of the Moon? Once she has gained her desire, her better nature will shine forth, like crescent through clouds. She will be grateful of our industry, no? And reward all her thralls with their freedom. Especially her willing ones, such as you and I.”
“Don’t lump me in with you,” said Elgwid. “I am thrall to no one. I serve the Captain out o’ my own liking, naught else.”
“Well, yes, of course, of course,” agreed he. “But, well, does he not serve her? And to whose service is she herself pledged?”
To this Elgwid could fathom no reply.
Kulira awaited in her cabin, the sigils again spread before her, as she sat studying the sheets of translations provided her the previous day.
“Problems with your ship, I see?” Astropho asked her, as Elgwid released him of his manacles, his ankles once again left chained.
“That is of no concern to me,” she said, her focus never leaving her parchment, her fingers toying upon a snow-white braid.
Astropho shared with Elgwid a glance. The latter looked away, sheepish, then retreated out the door to stand watch without.
“Curious have I grown, this morning,” she began after a while, setting down her parchment, “why it might be that you managed to translate only three of my inscriptions yesterday. For, as I recall, you boasted this runic language quite a simple one, to a man of your talents, and had no issue reading the runes freely when it better suited you to do so.”
“Lady, and I am curious as to why I have not yet been given any breakfast,” he said. Not a flicker of humour lit her face. “Oh dear,” he sighed, “I see you are quite out of sorts. Well, truth be told, the language is simplistic enough. But magic is not. ‘A tricky business’ as many a Galdurburgh mage has been wont to say. The text I offer you must be precise,” said he with emphasis, “precisely precise, or your rituals may have no effect at all, or worse, run awry, and yield an outcome quite unforeseen. You should know this far better than I. Also, I might well add, I have no resources here, other than my own memory. Which is, forgive my conceit, a respectable resource alone. Still, no lexicon, no grammar, no histories. And some of the allusions made in these inscriptions are rather vague. My dear lady, who can know how ancient these relics really are?”
“Older than the Akhaenite Empire,” she said. “More ancient than the Old Empire that ruled the Wandered Lands before, now forever lost to history. But not older than the Shadow Chantry. Our scripture contains remembrance of Arkunagash and the cult who served her after her fall, and the secret shrine they fashioned in her worship. Countless of my predecessors have studied that scripture over the centuries. But I did what none of them had the imagination to even dare possible. I found the shrine. And now, I will have the reward I deserve. I insist upon it. Now, translate me another,” she said, pushing toward him the sigil of Ibis, “and then, slave, we might perhaps see about your breakfast.”
Quill in hand, Astropho set to work. Kulira watched on, arched eyes keen as those of a kestrel. There was undoubtedly some due in her idea that he was dallying. In truth, at the outset of his labours yestermorn he had considered such, the stringing out of the task as much as might be possible, the longer to maintain his own bargaining position. He had soon found, however, that such deceit on his part had not been needed, accurate translation proving genuinely troublesome, and his own curiosity to learn and discover driving him on regardless, peril notwithstanding. For certain he believed that Gastapar purposed to murder him the instant his usefulness lapsed.
At that moment Gastapar himself stood upon the beach, two of his crew at his side, with crabs crawling about his boots. The captain watched on as the gig, carrying his coxswain and four other hands, came alongside the drifting Tambor. Wary, with weapons drawn, the men in turn climbed aboard. After a minute, the ship swiftly searched, Caedsen came to the rail, his holler scarce carrying over distance and surf.
“Not a soul aboard her, Captain,” bellowed he.
“Make her fast,” commanded the captain, hailing loud, “and send back one of the lads in the gig, to fetch the rest of us aboard.”
“None aboard?” said Phorso. “I reckoned they’d all be drunk and lolled silly in the bilges. So what could’ve happened to ‘em?”
“‘Tis for sure this blamed island, mate,” boded Acklun. “The Altarfaari folk keep gabbing on about how this here strand be haunted. Laid hex on us all, it has.”
“Stow that prattle,” snarled Gastapar. “Plain ‘tis no hexery. She has come loose at her anchor, is all, on account of the tide with the Moon peering full. Those fools have bolted, afeard of my wrath at their lack of care, and want of sobriety. Oh, I know all about those bottles of grog smuggled on! Naught passes on my ship without my noting. Those dogs are most like lain blind drunk somewhere about the isle, and shall show their shamefaces again come nightfall, when they have hungry bellies agnaw at them.” But, though he sounded convincing for the benefit of his crewmen, Gastapar did not himself feel persuaded, knowing one man of the missing three to be a snake-culter and thus no drinker. He watched on as, out on deck, the hands lowered the second boat down onto the sea. “We’ll man both boats and tow her back to safer sound,” he concluded, “and worry about finding those cowering tosspots by the by.”
It was at that fateful moment, with the shore gig part way back to collect the three men on the beach, under Gastapar’s painstaking supervision, and with Astropho translating the sigil of Ibis, under Kulira’s expectant scrutiny, that once again a cry sounded from the mountain above. For, adhering true to the priestess’s intuition, and perhaps holding to some far more recondite design, the twelfth and final sigil had precisely that moment been found, buried not far from where the eleventh had lain hid.
“Found,” came Hanno’s cry from the cave mouth. “The last is found!”
“You two, hold here,” commanded Gastapar. “Do not strike back without me.” And he left the beach, striding up toward the cabins.
As he came into the clearing he saw Kulira, casket under her arm, leading Elgwid and the again manacled Astropho, as the three set out for the cave. He strode nigh, hailing his lady.
“Why, my love, ‘tis found?” he asked. “And so soon?”
“Even as I predicted it would be.” Kulira’s eyes shone as balefire, her smile one of prideful glee. “I am heading up to retrieve it at once.”
“Why take those other trinkets?” he asked, spying the casket.
“Because,” she said, “with the twelfth found, then at long last I can assay their combined use. And I can so judge the veracity of our friend the poet’s handiwork, whether or not he is deceiving me in his efforts.”
“Then I shall accompany you,” he said, striding nearer.
But Kulira bade him back.
“See to your ship,” said she. “I shall deal with this.” And she heeled from him in her hurry, with neither smile nor salve for his evident hurt.
“Worry not, Captain. All is in very capable hands,” said Astropho with a taunting smile, unable to resist an opportunity to exacerbate discord within the ranks of his opposition.
Gastapar fumed, stung by his rejection. But back to the beach he strode, for in truth, alike most rovers of the sea, his was a soul torn twixt two contrary passions, love for his woman, and love for his ship. And at that moment, both his loves seemed to him imperilled, the Tambor torn from her mooring in mysterious circumstances, and Kulira possessed by her ensorcelling trinkets and under the sway of that viperous player. Soon he stood again alongside Phorso and Acklun. Both crewmen shifted in unease, for their captain’s rage seemed to boil off him like steam.
“Put your back into it, Boucico, you laggard!” he sniped to the lone oarsman in the gig, still only halfway back from the ship. “We’ll all die rotted old men afore you strike shore!”
“Swells are hard against him,” ventured Acklun, “and he’s been laid up with the shrine sickness, poor lad.”
“Mercy! Ah, well, the final treasure is found, praise to the Powers,” said Gastapar, glancing back through the trees toward the cave and the stark black peaks above. “Soon now we can quit this foul place at last, and not a day too soon. Back we go to Scyrasaar, and some civility. Wenches, liquor, kahwe and good smoke. And thereafter some plunder of barbarous coin and honest spilling of blood. And plumb of all away from these blasted crabs!”
Still they waited, the gig struggling nearer by mere inches seeming at each laboured stroke of oars. Gastapar cursed in his impatience. But constantly he looked back toward the cave and the peak, for his hackles prickled beneath his collar, as if eyes were trained upon him, remorseless, predatory. Seconds passed as minutes, his sense of being watched growing, growing. In his agitation he attributed his unease to anxiety for Kulira, and her doings at the shrine, with that damnable odious player whom he dearly yearned to kill.
And Gastapar’s concerns were hardly misplaced.
As Astropho entered the shrine, nudged on by Elgwid behind him, it became at once obvious that the temperament of the shadowchantress had rapidly mutated, from frustrated ambition, through exultant celebration, to a mania bordering disturbed. Ahead of the two she had hastened, impatient at their slow pace and eager to behold the final sigil for herself. Thus, before they arrived, she had already taken possession of the relic from Hanno. And the relic, it seemed, had likewise taken possession of her. In a circle upon the chamber floor she had lain out the sigils in their celestial sequence. At the centre she sat, under the uncanny gaze of the idol, under eyes possessed of an intent to which metal alone seemed to brook no natural claim.
“Lady, what are you doing?” Astropho at once challenged her. “Surely you cannot purpose to risk one of the rituals so soon? Far more study is required. My translations are not even complete.”
“Years enough have I waited,” she hissed, furious at his presumption. “How can a fool such as you even begin to conceive the magnitude of my efforts to arrive at this moment? The libraries I have read, the tombs I have broken open, the nights I have shivered naked under howling stars. Robbed by rogues. Pawed by pirates. Eight long years. Dare you even imagine how tireless I have toiled? How often and how much I have sacrificed? No more! No further delay!”
“Lady, I am anxious of this rash course,” he uttered, “and more so of your sudden hysteria. I doubt not your past endeavours, nor your pains. However, patient study and small steps are now in order, not ignorance and blind leaps. At the very least take a moment to allow the diggers out of the shrine, in case aught goes awry, and disaster befalls. These poor men have done your bidding, in the teeth of much cruelty and misuse. Show to them now the mercy you first promised them.”
Kulira shot a withering stare at Elgwid. “Shackle that viper with the others, you dull oaf!” she commanded. “Should he speak, beat him quiet. Should he speak still, cut out his forked tongue!”
Elgwid, plain trembling with fear of her, hustled Astropho to the rear wall of the chamber, where the nine surviving prisoners were chained, now stood idle and watching on in trepidation, with Hanno alone guarding them, dirk drawn. He linked the poet’s cuffs to the chain holding the others.
“Elgwid,” implored Astropho, low and urgent, “say something to prevent her. Magic is no plaything to be toyed with, no matter the skill of the adept. No good can come of reckless haste. Who can know what havoc she may unleash upon us all?”
“Hush now, you,” Elgwid said, he himself hushed, “or I shall be obliged to knock you senseless, will I or no.”
“Fetch Gastapar here, if you will do naught yourself,” pleaded Astropho in desperation. “Perhaps he can argue some reason into her, and prevent this sudden calamity.”
“Here, you’ve been told to stay quiet, you have,” snarled Hanno, waving his dirk close to Astropho’s face. “Keep it stitched, mate, or I’ll open you up so wide you’ll need stitchin’ up again, after.”
Elgwid meanwhile had skulked back to the chamber entrance. He watched the shadowchantress as she sat, cross-legged in the centre of the zodiacal circle, her back to him as she gazed up devoted to the demoniac Arkunagash staring down. In her proud and pallid hand she gripped the parchment containing the Scarab translation, the sheet shivering in her excited grip as she upraised it and began to read. Quivering in anticipation she recited the incantation, her voice swelling from the deeps of her being, as if no utterance of tongue but of lungs and throat. Some quality of those words, their patterning, their arrangement, as much their meaning, caused the hackles at the base of his neck to prickle and chill, and his blood to run icy. He saw the shadowchantress fling aside the parchment as she restarted the rhyme a second time, repeating that sequence of words from memory, faster, more measured, throbbing in a rhythm unhallowed, a metre macabre.
As the chant built, from forth her body strange filaments snaked, appendages almost intangible and insensible to sight, illusions of negative matter unformed. These filaments appeared to writhe, and coil, and strive, until hissing they latched onto the sigils. Together those twelve unholy discs began to rise upwards, freed from floor, exempt of gravity, adrift in vacant air, where about the head of the priestess they began to gyre and orbit, maintaining their positions relative as if in mimicry of the celestial patternings they symbolised. He heard the diggers cry out in fear, Hanno in alarm, Astropho in protest, when, to his disbelief, he saw the still seated priestess rise up, levitating high above the gravel, in violation of all natural order, with the sigils whirling around her, charged electrons about her static core. Still she chanted, faster, louder, her rhythm ravaging, her pitch razing. The air revolted at those unnatural energies. And the perverted idol, staring on, pulsed in malevolent pleasure.
Elgwid rounded and fled. In his inward reason he fooled himself that he was seeking the aid of the captain to secure some salvation, even as the poet had suggested he should, but at the base of all he knew his motive to be terror, simple and plain. Through the sleeping cave and down the passage he ran, not stopping until he stood out the threshold in the broad day, where the good radiance of the sun rallied him, and reinforced his quailing spirit.
Here Elgwid paused, and breathed, and took stock. Behind he could yet hear the cries of the chained men, helpless in their terror, and for the first time in many a long year he felt that uncomfortable sensation, like a hot needle in the base of his brainpan, pricking, prompting. His conscience. Thus a moment he tarried, indecisive and unsure, not knowing that his own fate would greet him there, on that threshold into the dark.
The captain, meanwhile, remained stood upon the beach, caught twixt his conflicting passions, his unfettered love for that damned bewitching woman, and his heartfelt duty to his beloved ship. With the gig just yards out, finally his tortured resolve collapsed.
“The moment he gets in, the three of you row back out there, and help tow back the ship,” he ordered Phorso and Acklun, who still stood hard by. “Caedsen knows his trade. He is in charge of all. I shall be found in the shrine, at any need.”
With that Gastapar left the beach, hurried past the cabins, and up the rocky trail bent for the cave mouth. All his focus lay on Kulira, and his jealousy. His hand fell to his sabre, and tightened, his intent now to run that villainous poet through, and thereby prove to her his devotion. The cruel tempests of her temper he would weather, gladly, for once again she would be his, alone, and uncontested.
But of a sudden he stopped cold. Down from the beach rose a din, a clash of steel. Then a cry, bloodied, and gurgling with the ruin of life. Unthinking he whirled and sprinted back down the path he had just trod, until he came down to the shore once again.
There, the gig lay beached. Before her hull, her oarsman Boucico lay dead, split by a khopesh, shoulder to spine. Beside his corpse lay Phorso and Acklun, slashed, dismembered, dirks drawn to no avail. Already over the three dead men the crabs had begun to swarm, a throng of the very hells athirst for flesh. And, there, stood over all, their vanquisher.
The jinx. The red nomad from the city gaol, with burning eyes of the wolf and the hair of vibrant flame.
“Do you have time for me now?” asked Rhoye of Khetaine.
Continues next week. If you enjoyed this instalment and would like more of the adventures of Rhoye of Khetaine, you might consider taking a look at my book ‘Man of Swords’ available from Amazon as a paperback, hardcover and ebook, or free to read via Kindle Unlimited.
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‘The Isle of the Shrine of the Sick’ning Scarab’ Copyright ©2023 Robert Victor Mills. All rights reserved.