“Gran, Anne, you can’t…”
“Oh,” Anne said, “now you know I have to go, don’t you?”
The Father of Monsters let out a cacophony of screaming, moaning, shrieking coming from countless alien mouths. The sound made Maude’s bones shake. Ya reaped a mass of tentacles with the twin-hand scythe technique, but was driven back by a forest of limbs whipping her. She staggered against the rising sea of sand, but caught herself. Inna was a whirlwind of destruction, ripping apart the monster as fast as it could spawn more members. Itzel ducked between the tentacles as best she could, pulping and slicing them with her war club. The smallest of the sisters was having trouble moving, since the sand was almost to Itzel’s knees.
“This is your time, Maude,” Anne said. “Revel in it. Have bloody adventures, cross blades with villains, teach your girl there to sing and dance, and act the fool. Life’s too fucking short to be proper; plenty of time for proper in the ground.”
Maude closed her eyes as she hugged Anne. “I love you,” she said. “You were a mother to me. Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” Anne said. “For being a daughter to me. You’re the greatest treasure I ever found, Maude. I suppose I love you too. Never said that to anyone before, ’cept my ma, and really meant it. This time I do.”
Anne started across the silver circle, sword in hand, throwing up clouds of sand as she strode. Maude remembered something hanging at her belt. “Here!” She tossed the hatchet Ch’eng Hunag had given her to Anne, who caught it in her left hand and kept running. Anne tested the weight of it in her off hand as she stood at the edge of the abyss.
“Get ready to close that thing up, you hear me!” Anne shouted over the vengeful wind. “Then get out of here, the whole city’s being buried by this damn desert.”
“Wait, Gran!” Anne shouted. “Young you jumping in that vault, after old you is dead? Won’t this … tamper with cause and effect?”
Anne shrugged. “Beats me.”
“Well, aren’t you at least a little concerned about tampering with the laws of the universe?”
Anne Bonny cocked her head. “You know how much I hate to break the law.”
She winked and dove into the darkness of the vault with a wild cackle of unbridled passion, sword in one hand, hatchet in the other. An instant later there was a roar from the vault and the tentacles began to shudder and withdraw back into the depths. Rivers of sand poured down into the open pit.
“Now, everyone, quickly!” Maude shouted. “Push!” The Daughters marshaled their strength, drawing on all the might the blood could give them. The silver vault cover groaned and began to slide forward. Straining every muscle, the five Daughters struggled as if they were pushing against the lever of the world itself. Slowly, slowly the cover moved, an agonizing inch at a time. The sandstorm was in the arena, no longer above it. The wrath of the storm, of the planet, swallowed Typhon’s cry. The grit stung their eyes and choked their mouths and nostrils as the Daughters struggled to close the pit.
“Again,” Maude shouted. “We can’t stop! Push!”
Dripping in sweat, teeth clenched, they gave a final effort and felt a vacuum from below in the vault catch the lid and seal the silver circle with a thump and a loud crash. Constance’s blood had completed staining the circuit of symbols on the disc, and they watched in amazement as the silver circle came to life. For an instant, the chamber was bathed in cool, bright moonlight and then the light faded and the chaos of the storm returned, the Sahara seeking to wipe away all traces of lost Carcosa.
The training they had all gone through gave them the ability to operate with their eyes closed. Cloths and kerchiefs were tied over faces, quickly.
“Everyone, out through the roof!” Maude shouted over the banshee wail of the storm. She gathered up Constance and pulled her daughter against her tightly and then hung the Grail about Constance’s neck on its ancient chain. Maude looked around the room and saw Ya helping Amadia to climb up on top of the growing mountains of grit. The African Daughter had been securing a satchel and closing it as she headed to the roof.
Inna was carrying Lesya’s small form and Maude looked about to see where Itzel had gotten to. The Guatemalan was standing before the rapidly disappearing golden statue of Lilith.
“Itzel!” Maude shouted. “We have to go!” Itzel seemed lost in contemplation for a moment, then nodded and trudged toward the wall. She looked back to see the face of the Mother vanish under the rising desert. The Daughters launched themselves skyward in defiance of gravity and the storm through the rapidly filling opening in the roof of the arena. They landed together at the edge of the opening, and began to move as quickly as they could away from it, lest it became a giant sinkhole, sucking them under and burying them with the dying city of monsters.
The sand encompassed everything, and Maude led the others away from the city and toward the open desert, relying on her other senses as the particles bit and stung her closed eyes. It was one painful, struggling step after another as they moved slowly away from the cursed place. Maude felt Constance shift a bit in her arms and pressed on. Each Daughter held onto another shoulder as Maude fought to resist being devoured by the desert as well. They reached a high dune, a little ways above the core of the storm.
Maude squinted, daring a look back to Carcosa. She saw through the plumes of sand a dark shape that may have been the great spinal tower, the highest landmark of the city. It jutted out of the gathering sand like a skeletal hand, a drowning man grasping for life. After a moment it was gone, swallowed. The desert was clean and barren again. The storm lessened in that moment, satisfied with its work.
35
The Hierophant (Reversed)
Lake Chad, North Africa
November 25, 1721
Adu was the first to hear the singing, coming from the charred ruins of the Biloko’s forest. He had been tending the fire in the early dawn, and heard a voice raised and painfully off-key. A kestrel screeched as it drifted over the charred and broken branches. It lighted on a stone near Adu.
“Otele mbgeke eeeee,” he said, shaking his head. The song was “The Wild Rover,” an old Irish pub song. Several of the Ahosi on guard duty heard it now, too, and started to raise the alarm that someone was approaching the camp.
“Rise!” Adu called out as he stood and ran for the edge of camp, where he and the pirate queen had said good-bye three weeks ago. “She’s alive!” Adu shouted as he headed to the clearing near the burned woods. Anne came into sight, bruised, sunburned and singing, with a sack over her shoulder. Adu was surprised to find Raashida with her, dressed for travel and carrying a small sack of her own.
“I thought you were unconvinced,” Adu said, smiling at Raashida.
“I was … convinced,” the Oya said. “She will do.”
“She does tend to grow on you, doesn’t she?” Adu said.
“‘She’ is standing right here,” Anne said, unburdening herself of her gear. “And dry as that pegging desert!”
Belrose made his way down the hill, as well trimmed and coiffed as ever, along with some of the Ahosi, to see the woman who had braved the dead forest and returned.
“We can address that right away,” the mercenary said. He handed Anne a half-empty bottle of port. Anne upended it.
“What happened?” Belrose asked. “When we saw the fire the night you went in, we feared the worst. We searched and found no trace of you, so we decided to wait a bit longer and see. Did you find the city? Did you find the treasure?” Anne held up a finger and kept drinking. Finally she stopped with a gasp and then a burp.
“Look at you,” she said. “They should call you ‘the Peacock’ instead of the Hummingbird.”
“The city?” Belrose said. “The booty?” Anne glanced over to Adu and Raashida, then back to the mercenary. Nourbese had joined them now, with more of her Amazons. She stood silently behind Belrose, her arms crossed.
“The city,” Anne began. She paused to take another drink. Where to start? The a
rena floor full of rubies? The golden sarcophagus? Anne looked past Belrose to Nourbese. “There is no city, not anymore, the desert ate it up. I think all that talk of a treasure is just … a big fish tale. I guess lost Carcosa will just have to stay lost.” Nourbese surrendered a thin smile to Anne and nodded slightly. “We’ll just have to settle for the king’s fortune we have already.” Anne’s fingers went to the golden serpent at her throat. “We’re adventuresome souls. We’ll make do.”
That night they had a feast to celebrate Anne’s return. An Ahosi hunting party had managed to kill a deer, and they roasted the meat as part of the evening meal. Adu found Anne away from the fire near the spot she had been standing before her journey into the Biloko’s tangled forest. She was looking at the shadows between the blackened trees. She turned as Adu approached.
“There it is,” he said. “You are not the same person now that you were before you went into that forest. I can see it all the way through you, in your eyes.”
“I’ll have you know, sir,” Anne said, “my lamps are as beguiling as they have ever been.”
“That they are,” Adu said. “I used to see someone back behind them that was old from the wear life had put upon her. One of the saddest things to see is a young person with such old eyes.”
“What do you see now?” Anne asked.
“A few flashes of wisdom,” Adu said, “here and there.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” Anne said, “I’ve got a reputation to uphold.” She began to walk back toward the fire and the company of the others. Adu fell in beside her. “And don’t wait around for a bloody ‘thank you,’” she said. “This little caper of yours put me through peggin’ hell.”
“Worth it?” the first man asked.
“Fuck yes,” she said and they both laughed.
* * *
Anne sat alone by the camp’s fire. She took another drink from the bottle of whiskey Belrose had left her with after they had talked. For a man who insisted on traveling so light, he seemed to make sure he had an inexhaustible supply of alcohol.
She opened the sack she had brought out of the desert with her. It contained a worn stone tablet, broken in a corner with black symbols painted all over it, animals standing like men, stick people with triangles for shields and lines for spears. Prominent on the tablet was a large looping cross. Raashida told her it was an ankh, a symbol of life.
Anne noticed when she opened the bag that a single one of the blood stones, the ruby tears of Lilith, had been caught in one of the carved pieces of the tablet. She plucked it out and held it up to examine it closer. It was beautiful and flawless, and she knew the power it contained. The ruby was also more proof that what had happened wasn’t a fantasy. So much of what occurred after she drank the blood tear from the golden statue seemed a dream or a hallucination. Many of the details were already fading the way dreams do, and she couldn’t quite remember what happened to her after she dived into the vault with the monster called Typhon. She had found herself in the open desert after a sandstorm. The tablet was sticking partly out of a dune, and she took it. Raashida had found her a few hours later and they had begun to make their way home.
Nourbese appeared out of the shadows, her musket slung over her shoulder. “The guard said you wished to see me?” she said.
“Yeah,” Anne said, slipping the ruby away. “Please have a seat. Have you given much thought to what you’re doing next, where you’re going, and what you’re doing with your share of the loot?”
Nourbese sat next to her. “I am still pledged to you,” she said. “I assumed you were headed home now, and would release me. I’ll go back to Abomey, back to the king, and his service. I’ll give my riches to him, for the betterment of all our people, as it should be.”
“Don’t you have any family, anyone?” Anne asked.
“I do. Did. They were taken,” Nourbese said. “They are slaves now, if they live, somewhere in the world. I do not know where.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said that night,” Anne said. “About not doing anything to stop all that. I think I know a way to put our money to some good use, if you and your troops are game. Or are you still all hot cockles to kill me?”
“No,” Nourbese said. “I am not … at least right now.”
“Fair enough,” Anne said. “I’ve talked to Belrose and he’s on board. Here’s what I have in mind…”
* * *
The slave port was on a tiny inlet that separated it from the city of Badagry. Slaves knew this place as “the point of no return.” The attack came seemingly from nowhere. A row of slaves, shuffling along under the watchful eye of a red-headed dandy of a Frenchman, were suddenly loose from their chains, armed with weapons and highly effective in their use.
An old woman in a bird-skull mask seemed to appear and disappear all across the battlefield, claiming slavers and guardsmen as if she were death incarnate. No blade or bullet could touch her.
In minutes the fighting was over. A Fon woman, who seemed to lead the other warrior women, moved quickly and efficiently among rows of other captives, unlocking them, comforting them that the ordeal was over. The Frenchman and a number of the women warriors covered the enemies who hadn’t died in the fighting. They consisted of slave merchants, slave hunters—both European and African—and the crews of the three slaving ships docked at the port. They were all ordered to their knees and then shackled in the manacles from the freed slaves.
Black smoke began to drift from the decks of two of the ships, causing a murmur of outrage from the prisoners.
“What the hell is this!” one of the slave merchants, a stocky man in a cheap wig, bellowed. “Are you mad? You can’t do this!”
“Well, then, now I have to, governor,” a slender red-headed woman said as she walked down the catwalk of the third, unmolested ship, a machete in her hands and a brace of flintlocks at her belt.
“Do you have any idea how much money you just cost us, you stupid bint?!” the merchant said. “Between the ship and the fucking cargo?!” Anne paused before the kneeling man and rested her sword against his throat.
“At least you still have your health,” she said. The merchant shut up. “If I had my way,” Anne said to the assembled prisoners, “you lot would be chained belowdecks like your ‘cargo,’ and you’d cook inside your fucking slave ships.” Anne glanced up from the slavers and saw Adu and Raashida approaching with a large group of freed men and women. “However, I’m not doing that.”
“These people wish to come with you,” Adu said. “They want to be a part of your crew.”
“They understand what they are signing up for?” Anne asked.
Adu nodded. “Most of them have nothing to return to, thanks to the slavers, Captain.”
“Captain?” One of the slave ships’ captains laughed. “Some mouthy hat box thinks she can captain a sh—” Anne punched the man hard on the jaw and he collapsed.
“You were interrupting,” she said to the insensate man.
“We’ve given money and arms, most of it from these men, and provisions from those two ships,” Raashida said to Anne, as tongues of flame began to climb the masts of the burning vessels, “which, obviously, won’t be needing them, to the freed who wish to go home to their people.”
“Very good,” Anne said.
“This is bloody theft!” another slaver shouted.
“No, dear,” Anne said, leaning close to his frowning face, “this is piracy.”
Anne turned to the group of hundreds of freed slaves. “Yo-Ho-Ho!” she called out. The crowd quieted. Adu translated for her as she spoke. “Those of you headed home, these women are warriors,” Anne said. “They will see you back safely.” A group of the Ahosi broke away from the Amazons Nourbese was leading onto the third ship. “Those of you thinking of coming with us,” Anne continued, “you’ll be dedicating your sacred honor, and your last breath, to scuttling as many of these bastards who chained you up as we can!” Cheers and hoots went up from the crowd. An
ne went on. “This really is the point of no return. You sign on, you’ll be criminals and pirates, fitted for the hempen halter if you’re caught, but I promise you this, come what may, you’ll die free!”
A roar rose up from the assembled crowd. Belrose tipped his hat to Anne, grinning, and began helping lead the new crew toward the gangplank. “All right, you lot of landlubbers,” Anne called out, “let’s make sea dogs of you!”
“I can’t believe that you are going along with this,” Adu said to Raashida. They stood near the gangplank, watching the slaves-turned-pirate-crew and most of the remaining Ahosi Amazons board. “You are leaving your land? Your duty?” He looked down at the ancient iron flask around her neck. “And you are bringing the Grail with you?”
“We discussed this,” the Oya said. “It’s why you wanted to see if the girl could meet the challenges of the trials, why the Purrah lent their blessing to this undertaking, and why they will be safeguarding Carcosa in my absence, Adu.
“The future, for good or ill, is in the west. Their star is rising. We must ensure that the Daughters of Lilith are represented in this new world to meet whatever challenges come, and perhaps to try to stop some of the thoughtless evil that men do. You were right, we need her, and she needs me.”
“So you will teach her?” Adu said. Raashida nodded.
“She’s already taken a draught of the Mother’s blood,” Raashida said. “She has some instinctual link to the hall of the ancestors, to the Record. She’s accessed advanced techniques and disciplines on instinct alone. She needs the training, in whatever form I can give it to her.”
“The blood she drank is the purest any Daughter has ever taken,” Adu said. “It’s direct from the source and it’s giving her unprecedented aptitude, things other Daughters might take a lifetime to learn, if ever. It may be a trait that follows all those down her bloodline. This could be a new beginning for the Daughters.”
The Queen of Swords Page 41