by Mark Hare
****
IV.
“Where are we?” asked Kai, looking at the map over Bane’s shoulder.
When Bane glanced up, Kai’s long hair covered his face and he inhaled its fragrant scent. She apologized and tossed the locks over her shoulder. As she knelt beside him, she restrained her hair as the light breeze played with it. Bane tried not to let his distraction show. As was traditional for both sexes on long sea voyages, Kai wore bare skin. Custom allowed her the option of a short breechcloth or grass skirt, but she disliked both. She claimed they made her uncomfortable and looked ugly on her so she preferred nakedness. Bane silently agreed: she was at her most natural and beautiful when unadorned, especially now that the months at sea had darkened her skin and toned her muscles until she lost all plumpness, giving her a lithe, cat-like slender grace. With her close enough to cause the small hairs of his skin to twitch, he found it hard to talk. He pointed to the map spread out before him, indicating a large diamond-shaped island several degrees south of the equator. “We should be about here.” He shaded his eyes, assessing the inverted triangular sail. “We’re making good time. We should reach Skyros by dusk.”
“So we are halfway there,” she said, her tone reflective, a little sad. “I can’t believe it. As fast as this ship can sail, two thousand leagues should have taken us two weeks, not five.”
“True, if we could have sailed in a straight line without tacking, but the winds weren’t in our favor and we had to detour around countless islands, reefs, shoals, whirlpools, storms, pirates, and the hunting grounds of leviathans. Not to mention all the stops for supplies, information, and...” He stopped, aware Kai did not pay attention. “Pardon me, but...”
“No, it’s nothing.” She gave her head a little shake as if to say ‘never mind’, but seemed to reconsider after taking a deep breath. “If it wasn’t for Angor Drava, knowing we must go there, I would count these days as the happiest of my life.”
Bane agreed. Kai seemed so at home on the waves he wondered if she had any blood of the Sea Peoples in her ancestry. The Sea Peoples lived in fantastic crystal cities far beneath the Northern Sea and swam the ocean currents like seals, hunting fish and eels with flint spears, going deeper and longer than could any normal human. The finest divers and sailors in the Clans all claimed Sea People in their family trees, though Sea People rarely mixed with outsiders.
“What...what do you think of Elsu now?” he asked.
“He can be so stubborn! When he gets like that...”
Bane looked over his shoulder. Elsu stood with Akahele, engrossed in conversation. “Rocks would break upon his head,” he muttered. Elsu caught his eye and for an instant, a frown creased his forehead.
She grinned. “Something of the sort,” she admitted with a trace of sarcasm. “Except for his stubborn streak and rashness, there’s a lot to like about him. I’m glad I chose him at the Festival. I think I love him more than before. Yes, he drives me insane and I get mad at him, but then he does something nice and kind. Do you remember how we stayed at Tulau for a week helping the fishermen hunt down that killer shark preying on divers?” Her hand strayed to the shark tooth necklace around her throat, all the clothing she needed. A gigantic great white shark, a monster among monsters, Elsu set the trap to snare it and needed ten men to end the shark’s life after a brutal, bloody fight. “He risked his life to save those divers and then, when they offered him all those rewards, all he took were the teeth for my necklace.” She fingered one of the black teeth, the largest, laying flat between her breasts, pointing down. “Just when you think you have him figured out...”
“He surprises you,” finished Bane. “He could be a great chieftain.”
“If it wasn’t for his arrogance...”
“And rashness...”
“And stubbornness...” Kai darted a glance over her shoulder as well, noting Elsu still in deep conversation with the captain, turning serious as her voice softened. “He’s a man who hasn’t quite matured. Don’t tell him I said that!” She reached out, touched his arm, prickling his skin. “His pride is too easily hurt.”
“I won’t,” promised Bane in a thick voice.
She smiled and Bane’s heart ached. Fearful it showed on his face, he ducked his head, pretending to spy something on the chart. The captain sang out. A dark green shape lay humped on the horizon, misty and glimmering as a mirage, saving Bane by distracting Kai.
Skyros, one of the largest islands in Southern Archipelago, some thousand leagues across, formed part of a chain of five massive islands. Volcanoes formed it and pushed up a giant mountain range running through the heart of the island like a rocky spine. Ikrona, the capitol, sat on a mountain plateau surrounded by a lake. By the time they reached the city, Bane hated the sight and smell of oxen, devoutly wishing Elsu wasn’t afraid of horses, else they might have forgone the carriage and traveled faster.
Kai at first thought it a grand adventure, although the discomfort of getting back her land legs and riding in a carriage left her bruised and sore, wearing away the glamor. She had grown too used to living in the open air, wearing nothing but her necklace of shark teeth, feeling the sun and wind on over every part of her body, riding the great waves that rose and sank in undulating swells, free as a dolphin or a seagull. Now she suffocated in her long robes and skirts of cotton and linen. Even Elsu noticed how she fidgeted, unable to get comfortable, and joked about it.
They lodged in a hostel in the better part of town, courtesy of Kai’s considerable funds. Kai, worn out and still a little sick from travel and the high altitude, stayed in bed while the men visited the great library within sight of a magnificent tower Bane thought looked very familiar.
The Senior Archivist greeted them with reluctance after staring at the introduction from the sexton, holding it at arm’s length, squinting to read the nearly illegible handwriting. A tall, crusty old man with bristled white hair and a beard that fell down his chin and across his chest like a snowdrift, the archivist could not achieve a whisper. Everything boomed, his voice, his manner, his gestures, and even the way he walked, a staccato hollow thump followed by the softer, sharp tack of the cane supporting his wooden leg.
“Used to be a shellfish diver,” he explained. “Didn’t watch where I swam. Got stung by a big eel. It tore up my leg. Because I couldn’t swim, fight, or fish, I became a scribe. Better pay than a priest, you see. Now I sense every change in the air, every storm that blows in from the sea. Ah, here, let me get the key. Let’s go somewhere private.”
Bane wondered where that could be since his loud voice echoed throughout every part of the library. He brought them to a room full of books, scrolls, and desk buried in manuscripts and written notes. Light came from wide windows opening up to a narrow balcony overlooking city below them.
“None of the churches like people going to Angor Drava,” he began as he rummaged through his desk and among the stacks of papers and books. “Once, long ago, they forbade the entire area and destroyed most records about the city. They won’t stop you now, but they won’t help you either. They hate and fear the place, perhaps with reason. No, your main problem will be the tides.”
“I thought the city was underwater?” said Elsu, frowning.
“It is. Here, let me show you. You are of the Sea Clans. I don’t need to tell you about tides, how they can be regular or highly variable. Angor Drava has a mixed tide with a difference. The geography of the coastline and the island itself, the position of the sun and moon, the deep ocean tides – the great Empty Sea sits on its doorstep to the north and east – and the influence of tidal nodes makes the tides at Angor Drava unpredictable. Mind you, no one has bothered to record tidal information there in over a thousand years so what little we know is guesswork.
“Now, you aren’t the first to sail to Angor Drava and most likely won’t be the last. Every decade or two some fool dares the city despite its cursed name and disappears. Those who return are
the ones who do not dive or disturb anything. I can tell you that when conditions are right, at low tide a good part of the city lies under a fathom or two of water. The upper part of the city becomes a tidal marsh and you could walk through most of it. I wouldn’t attempt the temple then. People who walk the ruins tend to disappear. At the same time, the water currents among the ruins are ferocious and seem to excite the bloodlust of the sharks. I’ve heard accounts of sudden whirlpools and tidal races occurring without warning or explanation at low tide, making it dangerous for swimmers or small craft.”
“It sounds as if the city has a massive tide,” commented Akahele, giving Bane a significant look.
The archivist pulled a book from a stack. “Monstrous would be a better description.” Several books tumbled from the top but he ignored them, throwing open the pages to find a diagram. He turned the book so they could see it. With a beefy finger, he tapped an etching of a city plan. “Here is the island before it sank. They built the city next to a natural bay, one of the greatest and best harbors in the entire Eastern Reaches, protected from storms by the remains of ancient lava flows that formed three high walls, blunting the waves. Seawalls, dikes, and levees supplemented those natural barriers as they reclaimed land from the sea and diverted a small river into the famous canal system. Before its fall, records indicate tides of up to five fathoms and more. That was before most of the island sank when the volcano erupted. Now...” He spread his arms and hands, shrugging to punctuate his uncertainty. “However, if you reach the temple during the slack tide of the lowest high tide, you have perhaps two hours when the currents are nonexistent and water level is five or six fathoms around the temple, shallow enough for a good diver to make it into the temple and back – or so some have claimed.”
“Do you know when that might be?” asked Elsu excitedly as he studied the diagram.
“No,” replied the archivist slowly, “but we can calculate it.”
“How long do you think it will take?”
The Archivist scowled as he plopped in a chair. “I don’t have any free staff. Other projects demand their attention,” he declared, leaning back, thumping his wooden leg on a ragged cushioned footstool. Bane wondered why he seemed so angry. “I can spare a clerk or two on a part time basis, but you will have to do the bulk of the research.”
Bane thought Elsu’s temper would explode again. Instead, clenching his fists, his face reddening from the effort, Elsu controlled his tongue, thanked the archivist for the clerk, and said his friend, Bane, could do the needed research if someone could do the calculations.
The Master Archivist sighed, looked hard at Bane, then Elsu, and then rubbed his neck, a speculative gleam in his eyes. “Why are you doing this?” He asked it in a tone that suggested he did not expect an answer. “Why risk your life?”
Elsu told him.
The Archivist opened his mouth, shut it, scratched under his beard, and laughed. “You are a strange and foolish man. Why promise something so damned extravagant? As it happens, I, too, once romanced a girl at the Festival of Ascension. She was from the Kyrie Islands south of Madripoor, and they delight in wordplay. I suppose I was too thickheaded. My answers didn’t satisfy her so she trotted out the same line just to annoy me.” Elsu started at that, looking pale. “I was a poor, illiterate diver who didn’t know any better. The next day I went to the market, found one of those hollowed out crystals you sometimes see. You know, the ones with carved scenes in the back of the crystal and then sealed with water and metal shavings so when you shake it the scene sparkles. She wanted a city in the sea, I gave her one. When I presented it to her, she was so speechless with surprise and anger she smashed it over my head. Called me every name imaginable, too.” He laughed again, rubbing the top of his head. “Still have the bump to prove it. The kids love the story. Every time a dish or cup breaks, they look to their mother and ask if she broke something else over poor pappa’s head.”
Elsu laughed with everyone else, though his voice had an uncertain edge.
The Archivist turned serious, leaning across the cluttered desk, his eyes glittering. A sudden hot breeze filtered in through the open windows, stirring the papers and dust in a tongue of heat. “Before you dive,” he began in a soft, deep voice, “you must know what to expect.”
“It’s a crumbling city with a big temple at the center,” said Elsu too quickly. “That’s where I’ll find the dragon eyes...”
The navigator cut off Elsu with a shake of his white head. “No! Do you know what happened to the city?” he asked, aware Elsu had been incurious about the history of the city.
“A volcano...”
“That was the consequence. Do you know the cause?” injected the Archivist. “Do you know why no one survived?”
Elsu frowned. “I don’t understand.”
The Archivist struck a beefy fist on the etching of the city. “Look! A thousand years ago, it was a great city, a garden of stone transformed into a miracle of invention,” he began, talking slowly, as if speaking to a child, repeating for Elsu what everyone else knew but Elsu had been too bored to hear. “Hewed from the side of a sleeping volcano, built on the bones of the earth itself, the many great halls, domes, ziggurats, and forest of statues made it a wonder of the world.
“No one knows when it began, but an ancient religion, one forgotten throughout the rest of the world, took hold of the island. One story claimed the Moon Dragon descended on the volcano one evening in a mist and promised the city power beyond imagining if they worshiped him. In their arrogance, dreaming even then of empire, they reared a mighty tower and enshrined there the image of that terrible god worked in alabaster and adored with diamonds, opals, and pearls, sacrificing many to it in some strange fashion lost to history. What rites they performed is unknown, for no outsider ever saw them, and rumor claimed they were obscene and terrifying. In time, Angor Drava came to control most of the Ten Thousand Islands, rivaling Madripoor in grandeur, and even the Sea Peoples stepped lightly around them.
“As their power grew, Angor Drava became a light-hearted city that turned away from the deadly rites, laughing at the doom foretold by the priests. In their merriment, they looked with a blind eye on the death that moved from the tower and ignored the volcano when a new vent opened on the far side of the island until it erupted and everything sank in a great earthquake. It would have been better if the volcano buried the city in lava or exploded, erasing everything. I fear the water has not silenced that living death. I believe it is still down there.”
“That was a thousand years ago,” said Elsu. “I doubt there’s anything there now but superstition. I’m not afraid of ghost stories.”
“Others have said the same. They vanished.” The Archivist collapsed back into his chair. Wood creaked. The spurt of wind died and the sounds carried by it faded away, leaving behind the distant chirping of a bird. “I hope you are right, I really do, but all tales have kernels of truth to them. You would be wise to pay attention.”
The Archivist kept his word. He allowed Bane the run of the library. The research proved every bit as exhausting as Bane feared. He spent hours among the dusty books, reading and making pages of notes until his hands and eyes ached, seeking every bit of information related to the city. When he told the old navigator some of what he learned, keeping the more dangerous secrets to himself, Akahele grew troubled, saying nothing.
Often, Bane would stop and stare up at the ceiling, thinking enviously of how Elsu and Kai enjoyed the city and the surrounding countryside while he toiled in darkness among silent books. In the city, in high society, Kai flourished in the world she knew. Elsu, adaptable as ever, matched her well enough to make it seem he belonged there beside her. Parties and social gatherings and banquets consumed days and nights, leaving Bane largely on his own, save for the occasions when Akahele or the Senior Archivist forced him to take a break to drink tea or play the glass bead game. Imagination painted a
thousand images, all of them transfigured in his mind’s eye into scenes where he, not Elsu, escorted Kai and when he returned to the hostel, listening to Kai’s excited comments left a thin film of rancor settling in deepening layers around his heart.
During his research, he discovered the temple was accessible several times a year, with the most favorable in the first days of autumn. He also found things he wished he did not know. The fragmentary comments in the scroll from Sairenji assumed new and deadlier significance as he added more information, assembling a harrowing truth that caused him sleepless nights. What had seemed mere possibility took on flesh as reality, frightening him. The faint shreds of his old self enabled him to resist the whisper in his thoughts, but he knew he walked a knife’s edge; a single push could topple him into darkness.
The push came the night before they left Ikrona.
From an animal importer, Elsu purchased a golden bird of paradise for Kai, fulfilling one of her haikus. That night, during their last supper in the capitol, he presented the gorgeous bird to Kai. The most beautiful thing Bane had ever seen, its plumage more a cascade of jewels than feathers, it caught the candlelight and shone. Despondent over the gorgeous present, Bane expected Kai to be delighted.
Instead, she looked at the bird in sadness, putting her slim hand on its cage of woven wicker, thinking about her life in her father’s mansion, and refused it.
“Why?” demanded Elsu.
“I could never let anything so beautiful waste inside a cage simply for my own amusement,” she said. She often felt like the bird when growing up. Now she was free and hated to see anything else trapped that ought to be free.
“But I got it for you!” Confusion made his chiseled face narrow and pinch. “You had asked for it...”
“In a poem! Something someone taught me. I didn’t mean to ask for anything. I...”
“So it was a game to you? Did you think my feelings were a game?”
“No! I did not say that!”
“This is how you thank me? By insulting me?”
“That isn’t my intent...”
“You have a bad habit,” he gritted as his face darkened. “You appear to say many things you don’t mean.” Striding quickly, making her flinch, he planted himself inches from her. “Are you honest?”
“You’re being unfair!”
“Are you leading me on?”
“I’m not! You misunderstand...”
“So I don’t listen?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I suppose Bane understands you?” snarled Elsu, jabbing his head in a curt nod toward Bane. “You two talk behind my back quite often.”
“Stop it! You’re hurting me!” she said, pulling back, but Elsu kept his hand clamped on her shoulder.
“This bird was my way of honoring...”
“Then honor me by letting it go. Let it free.”
Elsu squeezed harder, attempting to rein in his temper, his face reddening from the effort. Kai cried in pain and jerked hard, losing her balance, falling backwards. Elsu snatched at Kai, muttering something Bane could not hear. Whether he planned to catch her or the bird, it was impossible to tell. The blunt heel of his palm grazed her cheek and her teeth clacked, biting her lip before she landed hard on the wooden floor. She sat there, stunned, as she gazed up at Elsu with an empty expression, tears in her eyes.
Horrified, Elsu started to apologize, hands in the air, as he backed away.
When she said nothing, Elsu grew so angry he could not speak. He glowered at Bane, as if to suggest it was his fault, and stalked from the room, banging the door.
Bane and Akahele offered to help Kai get up, but she ignored them, standing on her own before silently unfastening the birdcage and shooing the beautiful creature out the window.
Although Elsu and Kai reconciled several days later after a long and tense carriage ride to the coast, Bane could not forget the incident. Bane now hated Elsu with a cold fury that astonished him, melting away the last remnants of his awe until a vague tinge of betrayal remained. He continued the pretense of being Elsu’s devoted companion, willing to do any task however menial, and gave no sign to the world that his smile was for the immolation of his friend.
On the last day on the island, Kai convinced Bane to take her shopping. She had noticed his foul mood and decided a morning away from the ship and his books would improve his outlook. Elsu had not noticed Bane’s mood – the moods of others seldom registered on his consciousness – but it worried Kai, who felt some fondness for the quiet and prickly Bane. She had decided he did not dislike her, but rather was too awkward or shy to know any better way to express himself, hiding his crush on her behind a blustery, reserved exterior.
For her part, she liked him when his defenses went down and his wits shined. Although she guessed he liked her, the knowledge did not cause her discomfort. She knew he would not act on his emotions and felt an odd sense of safety with him because he did not flatter her or treat her as an object of worship. When she spoke, she knew he would listen and appreciated it, trusting him more than he imagined. Fond of teasing him, she took delight in making him blush and stammer, cracking his studied composure. Now he seemed so depressed and distracted he did not react to her jests and it worried her. Taking his arm in hers, pretending not to notice how flushed he looked, she chatted gaily, attempting to draw him out.
Bane enjoyed the attention, happy to have a rare chance to be alone with her, but found himself so flustered he did not have a clue how to capitalize on the moment. He was sure she still felt hurt over what happened with the bird, however much she tried to hide it. The sight of her worrying over Elsu made his heart clench. Dull anger burned inside when Elsu shrugged off her fears, despite the warnings of Akahele and the Master Archivist. For whatever reason, Elsu took it as simply another adventure. Although Bane had decided to do something, he had spent many hours awake, hardly daring to toss or turn, wrestling with the question of what he should do, discarding all plans as unworkable, refusing to consider the one haunting him since that afternoon on Sairenji.
They wandered aimlessly about the market looking for anything of use on the voyage, though Kai shyly admitted she wanted a few small souvenirs. Shaking loose from his dark reflections, Bane gamely agreed to help her, seeing it gave her some joy. When Kai apologized for making Bane into a pack mule, he laughed it off, saying he did not mind.
Bane counted it the influence of some dark god, or perhaps the malicious working of fate, which led their steps to the little shop in the alley behind an old temple. In truth, it was Kai and her nose for scenting bargains, a talent that amazed her as much as anyone else. Her ability to out-haggle anyone came as another surprise, if not unexpected given the reputation of her family as ferocious negotiators. Bane would have passed by the shop without a second glance, but obscure places attracted Kai as if some instinct warned her of hidden treasure.
While she worked her magic with the shop owner over a beautiful embroidered sarong in need of repair and several seashell bracelets, Bane pawed through a table of bronze, copper, and brass trinkets, disinterested in the heated exchange and touched by boredom. By accident, his hand alighted on a bronze pendant on a thin leather strap. The design seemed familiar.
He picked it up, moved to get a better look. A cold chill replaced the heat of the day. The square pendant, no bigger than the palm of his hand, was ancient, the design so worn he could barely discern it. He had seen the same design once before, in the scroll he found on Sairenji. The shadow in his heart solidified, possessed and consumed him. Clearing his throat, he asked the price of the pendant.
The shop owner wrung her hands, not replying.
Kai took the pendant from him and asked the shop owner what it was. Hesitantly, she said the pendant was ancient offering for good luck to the old gods. Kai added it to her pile and got the shopkeeper to drop her price by a third.
The next morning, when the ship sail
ed on the tide, Elsu wore it as good luck piece, a gift from Kai.