Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull (34 page)

he flying river of faeries raced to the edge of their land and crashed to a halt at the foot of the dark mountain, exploding like a wave against invisible rocks. Streaks of light splashed into the air and Jim and George went tumbling into the soft grass. Jim’s body hummed from head to toe as he picked himself up from the ground. He and George were wind-blown and breathless from their flight over Queen Tanaquill’s domain.

“Couldn’t ‘ave just set us down, could ya ‘ave?” George said to the faeries as he readjusted his hat and his jacket. The army of pixies just laughed with a sound like soft rain on a pond. They pointed and waved at the boys - a sea of flickering candle flames. Jim could have watched them fly and play for hours and hours, mesmerized by the lights. But the dawn crept close behind them.

“Come on, George,” Jim whispered. The two boys ran the rest of the way, to where the grass grew thin and the rocks slowly became the foot of the dark mountain. The black shape stood tall in the sky and masked what remained of the stars and the moon. Yet even in the shadow of the mountain, Jim and George quickly found the sign Tanaquill had promised.

Two trees, white blossoms bright even in the dark, stood in columns before the rock. Green ivy grew in an archway on the stone. Between the trees and beneath the ivy Jim found the hidden entrance to the cave. The door was carved from the rock itself. Beside it hung an unlit torch upon a grommet, the striking stone dangling there by a string. As it had been in the Pirate Vault of Treasures, a warning was carved deep into the face of the stone door.

“Another door, another warning.” Jim said to himself.

“What does it say?” George asked, plucking the torch from the grommet and handing it to Jim.

“Magic, Monsters, and Doom Beyond this Door.

Ye Have Been Warned.”

“Well, that sounds about right, don’t it?” George said. He took a deep breath and swallowed hard, his face more than a bit pale.

“You don’t have to go in, Georgie,” Jim said as he struck the stone on the wall and lit the torch with the sparks. “I’ve done this sort of thing before, and it wasn’t fun the first time, I promise you. So if you want to wait here—”

“People’ll call you all sorts o’ stuff, in this life, Jim, but don’t ever let chicken be one of ‘em.” George said. “So my father always – well, so I always say.” Jim smiled back at his friend.

“So, in we go?”

“In we go,” said George.

Jim held the torch high and leaned against the stone door. It opened with the crunching grate of stone against stone. A gust of air rushed from the blackness beyond and the scent of ancient time swirled thick
about them. The torch flame whispered and whipped in the wind. Jim summoned his courage and fixed his thoughts on Peter, Paul, and Lacey. He stepped into the darkness with George just behind.

The shadows on the cave walls swam about Jim and George as they followed the tunnel beneath the mountain. Darkness loomed on all sides, kept at bay only by the fire-lit reach of Jim’s torch. Teeth of sharp stone jutted down over the boys’ heads, and above the whisper of Jim’s flame, the steady drip, drop of water echoed in the deep.

Jim and George stuck close together, tucking themselves in the center of the torchlight’s sphere. But more than fear of the dark hastened their steps. The doom of sunrise followed close behind.

After a long while, the pair had gone so far that Jim feared they had missed a turn somewhere. He worried if they carried on much farther, they would descend to the very center of the earth. But he and George crept through an archway in the stone and the torchlight burst into the free space of a massive cavern. The ceiling above curved like a great dome, arching far over the boys’ heads. Jim stared up at the high cavern roof, awed in spite of all his fears and worries. George whistled low and urgently tugged at Jim’s tattered sleeve.

“Would you look at that?” George whispered. Jim raised the torch in his hand a little higher. His own eyes went wider still.

On the walls before them, polished smooth as glass and shining nearly like mirrors in the torchlight, enormous paintings lined the way from one entrance of the cavern to the other. Each drawing was taller than Jim and George and wider than their outstretched arms, a great mural from ancient times.

“It’s the painted cave, George. We found it! Now we just need to find the entrance to the Hidden Chamber within.”

“You know, Jim,” George said. “Reminds me o’ the stained glass back at St. Anne’s, if you know what I mean. Like they’re religious pictures that go in a story or somethin’.” Jim ran the torch from the tunnel entrance to the other side of the cavern, where the tunnel resumed once more.

“I think you’re right, George.” A frightful story it was, too. The paintings told of a great city, peopled by giants - a city more vast and powerful than even London. But by the final image, the city had fallen into the sea. Only one building, a temple of some sort, remained. Over and over the symbol of the Treasure of the Ocean, the very same trident as was carved onto Jim’s box, appeared amidst the calamitous tale. Death and destruction, Jim thought to himself. Those were the fates that surrounded the Treasure of the Ocean, Queen Melodia had warned him.

“That entire city was destroyed,” Jim finally said. “I wonder how a whole city could be destroyed, George.”

“Don’t know about that, Jim, but maybe that giant snake over there had somethin’ to do with it.” Jim turned to find a serpent’s face glaring at him from the far wall - mouth open, fangs bared, ready to devour any creature fool enough to tempt its wrath. The painting was so life like that it gave Jim a start, but he saw nearly at once that this drawing differed from the rest. Tanaquill’s words from the riverbank came back to him, reminding him that the entrance to the Hidden Chamber lay behind a fanged doorway.

The two boys approached the hideous image with caution, for the open mouth was wide enough to swallow a handful of grown men whole.

“This must be the entrance to the hidden chamber,” Jim said. But George ran his hand along the snake’s fangs and found only solid rock behind the painting.

“Nothin’ here but a big old’ wall o’ rock, Jim.”

“That’s why they call it a hidden chamber, George,” Jim said. He stepped back a few paces from the serpent’s mouth and stretched his torch toward the wall. “There must be some magic words or something.” An idea stole into Jim’s mind. Without wasting time he gave voice to the thought.

“Magic, monsters, and doom wait for me beyond this door.

I have been warned…but I’m not turning back.”

The torch’s whisper was the only reply. But just when George opened his mouth to say something smart, a slow grinding of stone cut through the quiet.

A dark hole broke through the cavern wall.

Jagged chunks of rock pulled away from one another like teeth in a beast’s mouth. When the entrance fully opened, it appeared to Jim as though the painting had come to life in the rock – as though the great serpent bared its fangs for real. Jim and George looked at each other, then back at the newly formed hole in the wall. Their mouths hung open and the great spark of adventure caught fire once again in their hearts.

“Jim, if we ever do get to live in a house,” George said, eyes sparkling in the torchlight. “This is the door I want to me room, ‘cept with bigger fangs – definitely bigger fangs.”

“I’m not sure Lacey would approve, Georgie. Not so sure how much I’d want to go in either, really.”

“Yet in you must go, young Morgan,” a voice said from behind them. “And in you shall go this very night!” The boys whirled around and found only darkness at their backs - until a second voice rasped from a black recess of the painted cave.

“Nara Lahaba!”

At those words three torches sparked to life. Beneath the flames, drenched in writhing shadows, the faces of Count Cromier, Bartholomew, and Splitbeard the Pirate leered at Jim and George. Lacey, Peter, and Paul struggled and squirmed in the villains’ grasps, rough hands clamped over their mouths.

THIRTEEN

romier!” Jim shouted. His angry voice echoed off the vaulted cavern walls. “Let them go, you coward!” “You are in no position to demand anything, young Morgan,” the Count snarled. His purple scar twisted and turned on his face. “Why do you persist in fighting the inevitable? You challenge death as haughtily and foolishly as your father. Yet you also bear in common with Lindsay his foolish courage, and even more of his dumb luck. Now you will use those cursed Morgan gifts to fetch for me the Hunter’s Shell and lay it at my feet.”

“Never!” Jim cried.

“Never?” the Count asked. He drew his sword and set the blade at Lacey’s throat. Bartholomew took his sword in hand as well, resting the sharp edge on Peter’s shoulder. “Never say never, Jim.”

“I hoped you would say no, Morgan,” Bartholomew seethed, his mouth twitching at the corners. “I want you to watch me do to every one of your friends what I should have done to you in your father’s study. You can watch me run my blade through their hearts.”

“Cowards!” Cornelius croaked weakly. He lifted his battered frame from Lacey’s arms and raised a tattered wing to challenge Bartholomew. “To hide behind these young ones, to use them as your shields, marks you as curs and cheapens what traces of honor still cling to your name. You, who would claim the right to Lindsay Morgan’s treasure, would hang another as bait upon a hook, out of fear for your own necks. You call yourself a captain of the sea? For shame, sir!”

Cornelius might have continued his barrage of insults at the Cromiers indefinitely, but the Count, a sneer upon his face, sheathed his sword and swatted Cornelius from Lacey’s arms. The brave bird fell hard onto the rocky ground, where Cromier kicked him across the floor until he came to a rolling stop at Jim’s feet. Broken feathers lay strewn across the rocks and the raven groaned in pain. Lacey shouted out and wrenched herself free of the Count’s grasp. She ran to Cornelius and shielded him with her body. Gently, she stroked his feathers with her fingers and whispered that it would be all right. George had to hold Jim back from leaping across the cave and charging the Count, sword or no sword.

“Preach not to me of honor or chivalry or any of that rot, Darkfeather, you twit!” The Count raged. “You speak of good men and honor, but you know as well as I that Lindsay Morgan was nothing more than an arrogant thief. He was a man too frightened or too stupid to wield the power he had discovered. Nor speak to me of cowardice, for I am the one, the only Pirate of our order, willing to do what is necessary to unlock the greatest force of magic the world has ever known. If I must sacrifice some vagrant children to do so, then so be it.”

“Perhaps we should skip straight to the sacrificing, Father,” Bartholomew said. “Dawn is coming, Jim. So either stand here and watch your friends die by my blade or by stone, or bring my father his prize!”

“Speakin’ o’ dawn comin’, you blackguard,” George said, his fists balled up at his sides. “Maybe you should be just as worried about turnin’ to stone as us!” It was Splitbeard who answered, a sly smile on his face and a curved dagger in his hand at Paul’s throat.

“Have you not seen, oh callow thief? Splitbeard the Pirate has no fear of curses or death, nor has he need to flee with haste to the gate of the Devil’s Horns. Thanks to Splitbeard’s secret ways, the venerable Count Cromier and I have far more time than you think.”