Dreamlands (14 page)

* * *

“Captain!”

I
rose at the lookout’s call, sea-fog clinging to me like icy sweat.  From the volume
of Jome’s shout, I thought to see pirates bearing down on us, but what I actually
saw was more shocking still.  When his cry faded, no other sound took its place,
and the waves themselves seemed to pause in their lapping against the hull.  No
more than fifty meters away, a great gloomy rock rose from the waves like a
dowager mantled in mist.

“Witchcraft,”
young Marthin whispered, breaking the hush.

As promised, there was a beach on the
west side, and we had no trouble hauling our craft up on the soft sand.  The
fog stopped at the shoreline, leaving us at the bottom of a great grey bowl,
open to the stars.  Though I could hear the wind blowing offshore, the air of
the island was inert and stifling.

Marthin
lit three of the mirrored hand lanterns of Celephaïs while a few others muttered
about cursed voyages.  Crews had been lost forever in such places, they said, going
cannibal before the end.  As Orvuhlt gathered his breath to top these claims
with something more outrageous, I interrupted.

“If
this islet spawned all at once from the sea, where is the weed and kelp?”  I rose
from where I had been resting my palm on bare rock.  “The ground isn’t even
wet.  We lost our heading and drifted, that’s all.  If everyone’s done clucking
like a bunch of hens, let’s get on with what we came for.”

I
did not add that the rock was not just dry but warmer than the day’s sun, long
since set, would account for.  There was no vegetation either.  I had never
seen a place on the coast where thatch grass would not grow.

Taking
up our kit, we followed a path of loose schist inland until we came to a
cluster of roughhewn shacks.  The men studied them charily until Marthin directed
his lamp into one of the skewed openings.

“Do
you see a bogeyman,” Erik growled, “sitting on a little pyramid of human heads?”

“No,
just a few old bones, rotten rope, and the like.”

“Fascinating. 
Help me get a fire going, you layabouts.”

Since
there was no deadwood to be had, the men began to dismantle the sheds, the
regular thunk of Orvuhlt’s hatchet sounding to me like a bell calling for their
occupants to return.

From
the crest of the next hill I spied the cavern in a scene as still as a
painting.  I picked out four men, including Ajer, to accompany me and the boy. 
Erik followed us the short distance to the cave.

The
tunnel was almost perfectly round, with shallow, regular ribbing about the
circumference, reminiscent of a woodworm’s hole.  A poorly made petroglyph
beside the opening showed a giant lizard with ridiculous round eyes laying at
the bottom of a chasm.  Its blunt snout was raised towards a parapet, where a
row of blindfolded people walked over the pit.  Their genitals were exaggerated
to show their nakedness, and the first of them was about to fall into the maw
of the beast.  I moved to block Lark’s view, but the boy showed no interest.

“Are
we going to find this shrine or whatever it is,” Jome said, “or stand around
looking at pretty pictures all night?”

“Well
said,” I said to him, and to Erik, “Make sure that fire is hot and some kind of
supper is waiting.”

He
bit back what he had been about to tell me, and nodded.

The
passage was comfortably wide, and straight and level as a mason’s rod.  The air
was cooler than outside, but sadly no sweeter.

“Are
you going to work some magic when we find the pool?” I asked Lark.

“I
know what to do,” he said, unconcerned.

I
stopped when a side branch came into view on the right, but when I moved closer,
I found the fissure was only about a hand's span wide.  I ran my fingers along
the edges, which were smooth and rippled, like blown glass.

We
continued.

“If
you ever tire of spells and herbs and whatnot,” I said, “there’s always demand
for a smart boy to sign on as a hand.”

“Hell,
he don’t even need to be smart,” Jome added helpfully.

Lark
did not answer.

The
passage opened into a much bigger space.  Through a jagged hole in the ceiling the
stars glittered like shattered glass. 

“Cheerful,
ain’t it?” Jome announced, loudly.  Rather than return an echo, the cave
swallowed the words.

“Just
look out for the pool,” I said.

As
we entered the chamber a trio of lights swam up through the blackness to meet
us, the reflection of our lanterns in water.  The pool was perfectly circular,
about three meters in diameter but only knee deep.  No seam separated it from
the cavern floor.

Ajer
and Jome milled about the perimeter of the chamber, flashing their lights and squinting
into the nooks and corners.

“The
way goes on here,” Jome said.  The passage began to slope downward where he was
standing.  I was glad to leave it unexplored.

“Captain,”
Lark said, “can everyone please cover their lanterns?  When there is moonlight
we may begin.” 

I whistled
to the others and we squatted on our hams to wait.  As the moon edged past the
lip of the hole overhead, the water in the basin redoubled its light, revealing
new details about our surroundings.  A dozen of the vertical fissures were
regularly spaced around the circumference of the cavern.  Like the one in the
passage, they presented a weird illusion, appearing to broaden into a passage
when the viewer was more than a spear’s length away.  A stone outcropping adjacent
to the basin took on the aspect of a throne in the twilight, one that had grown
up like a stalagmite, then eroded with time.  Behind this projection was another,
different sort of opening, an oval a meter high and the width of a man’s
shoulders.  I put a hand on Marthin's shoulder as he leaned forward to peer
within.  It arched straight down, the surface smooth and slick.

“It
must go somewhere,” he said.  “Feel the breeze.”

Wind
sucked into the carrion-smelling hole, and I figured it for a garbage chute, or
a pit to dump sacrifices.

The
moon had come fully into view, and Lark directed me to kneel at the side of the
pool, with my back to the weird throne.  He withdrew a small pot of some gritty
red stuff from his bag and loosened the ties of my shirt.  With the tip of his
boy’s finger he drew a circle on the left side of my breast, and inside it some
kind of sigil.  He followed this with a thumbprint of the same grit on my brow.

“Make
yourself comfortable,” Lark said, though the dank floor made this impossible, “and
think on the person you wish to find, all that you remember of her.”

I
called to mind the first time I woke in the harbour, the snapping sails of
dormant ships, the smell of salt and tar.  It was surprisingly easy, and for
the first time since the coal burners’ camp I recalled without pain Isobel
dancing, carrying, walking with me along the pier.

“Place
your palm on the surface of the pool,” the boy said.

The
mirror-like surface remained undisturbed beneath my hand.

“Touch
the water to your lips and say her name.”

“Isobel,”
I said.

“Place
her hair in the water.”

I
did as he asked.  The tie came loose and the hairs dispersed, filaments of pure
negation floating atop the moon’s ghostly reflection.

“Say
her name again,” he said softly.

“Isobel.” 
It sounded quiet and fuzzy, as if in a dream.

“Once
more,” the voice sounded in my head like a father’s, wise and comforting.

“Isobel.”
 For one blissful moment, I heard her laughter as clearly as if she sat in my
lap.

I
opened my eyes and the restless and changeable patterns in the bottom of the
pool had resolved into images.  Ropes strained and a hull creaked as a wavering
rectangle of light stilled and, as if through a window, I saw her face.

Isobel
was huddled in a sort of cell in the hold of a ship, lit by a gap in the
decking above.  I heard the sound of a woman weeping and people speaking in an
unfamiliar language.  I tried to move, to call out to her, but was gently restrained,
again as if in a dream.  That scene darkened.  Next, I witnessed a galley
sliding through the seas, oars sweeping like the legs of a gigantic insect.  The
row of foreign characters on the hull burned like hot coals.

An
inhuman shriek snapped my trance off as cleanly as a dry bone breaking and I
sat down on the floor, thinking it the abrupt end of a nightmare.  But there
was another scream, rising to such a pitch that I covered my ears.  When the
screams ceased, I heard cutlasses being freed from belts and clubs taken in
hand.  It was dark now, the moon absent and the stars obscured, and dim lights,
like paper lanterns, hovered in pairs on all sides.  I rubbed my eyes, figuring
they were an aftereffect of the boy’s spell.

When
Ajer uncovered his lantern, the ghost lights became a score of wild,
white-skinned men circling us.  Some were dressed in rags like marooned sailors,
others were stark naked, and all stared from bulging, lamp-like eyes.  Ajer’s
light startled them, giving me time to draw my sword and dagger before they
rushed at us.

They
leapt with ululating cries to the attack, their splay feet gripping the stones
and ripples in the floor like fingers.  As disconcerting as their ambush had
been however, they came at us with splintered timbers, sharp stones, and a few just
with their fists.  My allies and I drove back the first sally
shoulder-to-shoulder, killing three while none of us was harmed beyond a few
scratches. 

The
cavemen formed a group, capering and jumping madly, their shrieks rebounding in
our ears.  But when a light much brighter than a lantern flashed behind me,
they jerked to a halt as if stung by whips.  Dropping to all fours, they
scurried back as if chased by our shadows, suddenly long and grotesque.  Jome was
about to press our advantage, but I stayed him.  The wild men groped their way
to the fissures in the wall and, with a sideways wriggle, vanished.

I
turned to congratulate Lark on his magic, shielding my eyes against the
terrific light.  The boy was not the source of the unearthly glow, and I was
slow to understand that he himself was silhouetted against two huge, unbearably
bright eyes.  What emerged would have been too large for the oval gap behind
the chair, were it not soft and pliable.  The head was like that of an enormous
catfish, whiskers and all, covered with albino-white scales.  Its blunt nose knocked
Lark with a splash into the pool, and its dazzling gaze swept the room,
freezing everyone in place.  Quicker than a striking snake it twisted forward,
took the boy headfirst in its jaws and began to slither backwards into its
home.

I
dropped my weapons and leapt towards the basin, catching Lark by the ankle at
the far edge.  In a single jerk, the monster’s weight pulled both of us all the
way to the aperture.  I held with both hands to the boy’s leg, bracing my right
shoulder and knees against the edge.  Eyes shut against the awful glow, I
gagged at the creature's fetid breath, briny and unexpectedly cold.  Before I
had time to consider what waited should I follow Lark down that pit, darkness
returned like an eclipse.  I fell backwards with a shout, still holding the boy,
and the creature was gone.  Everyone else was yet rooted in place.  I smiled
weakly at Ajer, who looked down at me with eyes as round as saucers.  My friend
came to loosen my hands from Lark’s naked limb, and seizing me under the arms
dragged me back from what I now saw:  two small, bare legs, the bottom half of Lark
trailing gore in a slick down the sacrificial altar.

I rolled
over to vomit on the stone floor.  Leaving the boy’s remains behind, Jome and Ajer
hustled me back through the round, ribbed corridor, which looked to me now like
a throat about to close.  The cavemen reappeared and followed at a safe
distance, stopping at the cavern entrance to pace back and forth like wolves
behind invisible bars.  As we hastened away, I looked back and saw their
lambent eyes still swarming like fireflies in the darkness.

Returned
to the sloop, I forced myself to stand upright at the mast as Erik piloted us
away from that cursed rock, though it took every bit of my will not to lie
shivering on the deck.

* * *

Our
return to Zij was as easy as the outgoing voyage, affording me not even the
distraction of hard work.  In port our comrades scattered back to their lives,
richer by a few coppers and an unbelievable tale, while Erik and I returned in
a bleak bad temper to the Street of Candlemakers.  The old augur sat stoically outside
her hut, hands folded, as we approached.

“What
did you not tell us about that island?” I asked without preamble.  “We were attacked,
ambushed by cavemen, and some monster–”

“With
eyes like twin moons,” Erik interjected, still awed at its horror.

“Why
didn’t you warn us?”

She
looked from me to Erik, nonplussed, before saying in a quivering tone, “The
shrine was abandoned decades ago.  No one lives there, nothing can live there.
 I know of no monsters.”