The Silent Isle

by Nicholas Anderson

  ***

  Though the openings between the standing stones were the dark of a starless sky as Dane and the others approached them, they found when they entered they did not need the torches. The building was filled with a pallid green light. Whether this was the effect of the sunrays bouncing off the leaves outside or some spell, Dane was never sure. In the dim light, they could see to the furthest reaches of the space.

  The rear and two side walls were solid; only the front held openings. The closed walls were lined with low shelves dug into the walls that reminded Dane of niches in a funeral vault. Two of them, the center two in the rear wall, held skeletons. Stepping up to them, Dane guessed they must have been great men in their lifetimes, giants nearly, taller than any man in his father’s army. But at first glance, their arms seemed too short for their stature. On leaning closer he saw why. The skeletons had no hands. The bones from the ends of the forearms down were missing.

  Dane moved to some of the other shelves. Elias stepped beside him. “There is magic here. It is like the preserving spells which were placed on the settlement, but much stronger. Whoever put these things here wanted to ensure they endured.”

  “Looks like they’ve been here a long time already,” Dane said, wiping his hand through the dust that clung to the lid of a dark chest.

  “Yes,” said Elias.

  “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here for a long time either,” Dane said.

  “It looks that way,” Elias said.

  Dane picked up a heavy object of wood and metal that sat on a nearby shelf. He thought at first it was a kind of club. But one end could be rested against one’s shoulder not unlike their crossbows and near the center protruded a strange curving handle of metal. The other end had a small opening. Dane wondered if it had been a crossbow from which the arms had been removed or if it was some kind of ceremonial pipe. He set it back on the shelf. “Strange relics,” he said to Elias.

  Dane walked across the center of the space. The sound of his footfalls made him pause. He drove his heel down several times in the center of the floor. Then he tapped his toes there. It made a dull booming and knocking. Elias looked at him. “I noticed it, too. The floor is hollow, I think.”

  Dane traced the floor with his torch for a better look. The center of the floor was one large, slate-like stone, set into the floor like an enormous tile. Dane stood and walked back to the wall. He shuddered to think what kind of things would be kept below a place like this.

  He went back to the chest from which he had wiped the dust. The lid came off easily. It was full of cloth. He pulled out the first piece. It was a threadbare banner of intricate design in gray, pink, and yellow. He wondered if the colors had not originally been of different hues and had faded to what he now saw. He pulled out a second and unfurled it in his hands. Even with his hands held up and out it fell nearly to the floor. An orange banner with dull stars in one corner. He folded it and placed it on the shelf beside the first.

  As he pulled out the third cloth, Elias called to him. “We need to leave, now.”

  Dane turned towards him. The priest was staring at the skeletons set against the rear wall.

  “What’s the rush? I thought you said no one has been here in a long time,” Dane said.

  “I don’t know that for sure, but I know now what this place is.”

  As he spoke, Dane let the third banner unfurl from his hands and shook it out. His face was still turned over his shoulder towards Elias but the priest now stepped up beside him, looking at the fabric in his hands.

  “This isn’t a temple at all,” Elias said. “It’s a trophy hall.”

  Dane turned back to the banner and sucked in his breath at what he saw.

  He was holding Haven’s missing flag.

  ***

  As the men and women in the courtyard turned in the direction of the shout, they saw Rundal exit the kitchen holding his right hand in his left. Blood was squeezing between the fingers of his left hand.

  Rawl realized he had been so taken up in the competition he had not noticed who had not been in attendance. He was suddenly worried. He glanced around for Josie and did not see her. A split-second later she came out the same door as Rundal, holding her knife.

  “Bitch,” Rundal shouted, shaking his wounded hand.

  “What’d you do?” Rawl said, starting towards him.

  “He tried to corner me in the kitchen,” Josie said.

  “Well, I guess it’s a good thing your poker was longer than his,” Paul said.

  “Shut up,” Rawl said.

  Rundal was standing between Josie and the men. Rawl was pushing his way through the crowd towards him.

  “We were just having a bit of fun,” Rundal said.

  “I don’t think I like your idea of fun,” Rawl said.

  Rundal shot him a look. “Lighten up. The little camp-follower was asking for it. Stealing away on our ship.”

  Rawl had made it through the crowd now and made his way straight for Rundal. Bailus stepped between them and pushed Rawl back with one hand. With the other he caught Rundal by the collar and drove him back against the rough beams of the wall.

  “Asking for it?” Bailus said. “Let me tell you what you’re asking for, you smarmy little bastard. You come near her again, you so much as look at her the wrong way, and I’ll stake you down outside the wall at night and in the morning your friends will have to borrow a pail and a pair of Leech’s forceps to pick up what’s left of you. Do you understand me?” He shoved Rundal against the wall but dropped his voice to a whisper. “I said, ‘Do you understand me?’”

  Rundal nodded without looking at him. Bailus half shoved, half flung him aside. Rundal stumbled, picked himself up, and slunk away. Bailus turned around to face the men but tottered and fell back heavily against the wall. Leech stepped forward. “It’s time I checked that wound,” he said.

  “Forget it,” Bailus said. “It hurts enough without you needling it.”

  Leech insisted several more times that afternoon until Bailus turned on him and snapped, “Mind your own damn business, Doc.”

  Leech backed off.

  ***

  The other men had joined Dane and Elias now and they stood in a semicircle looking at the banner. Dane folded it carefully.

  “We need to go,” Elias said.

  Dane slipped his pack off and began to tuck the flag away in it.

  Elias grabbed his hand. “With all the spells in this place, they will know if you take something.”

  Dane hesitated.

  “If they want it back, let them come and claim it,” Joseph said.

  Elias withdrew his hand and Dane shoved the flag into his pack.

  They filed out into the daylight, extinguished their torches in the grass, and started downhill. Dane felt a little better on the way down. Downhills are always easier than uphills and he was already thinking of a way to make up with Mirela.

  Indeed, he was beginning to form a plan for the next two days. It was no safer and no less foolhardy than what they were doing now, but it seemed his only choice. The trip to the temple-now-trophy-hall had confirmed what he’d feared, that the colony had fallen to a presence that long predated them on the island, but it had given him no more answers. He had to know more. And there was only one people in the world who might be able to tell him what he needed to know. If only they didn’t kill him first.

  They descended the same way they went up: down the stony switchbacks of the waterfall, between the sentinel stone towers, across the ford. Just before the second ford, Joseph, who was walking beside him, grabbed Dane’s shoulder. Dane jerked to a halt and turned towards Joseph thinking it strange the soldier hadn’t simply asked him to stop. When he turned to Joseph he realized Joseph wasn’t looking at him but at something slightly behind him and to his left. The younger man still held his shoulder firmly. Dane followed Joseph’s gaze to the trunk of a large tree. The bird skull totem hung there, just above eye level. It was not facing uphill - which i
s why Dane had nearly missed it - but downhill towards the ford. Whether it had been there on their way up and they had missed it or whether it had been placed there while they were between the site and the stone hall Dane could only guess.

  “What’s that mean?” Joseph said, hardly above a whisper.

  For answer, Dane started moving downhill at a quicker pace than before.

  XV

  Deathdreams

  Dane and his party entered the compound shortly after Bailus’s final rebuff of Leech. The sun had already sunk behind the hills. The shadows of the forest were spreading and melting into dark pools with the coming of night.

  There were two people Dane needed to talk to, one of them he wanted to talk to more than anyone in the world. She was easy enough to find. But she was busy, serving soup to the men in the kitchen. He watched her for awhile. Surely no one had commanded her to do this. Bax had been out all day with him. So why would she serve these people willingly? The gods are a mystery a man could spend his life unraveling only to find at the end of it he had not solved it, but only been about to ask the first real question. And such a life would not have been wasted. Elias had told him that. But he had quoted it like a pithy maxim, not a passionate manifesto. Dane thought he could say the same of the woman before him, but with every fiber of his being resonating with sincerity.

  But he could not talk to her like this. Not here. Not now. He wanted to be alone with her. He turned and went looking for Bailus.

  Bailus was seated at the end of the table, laughing with some of the men there about something the twins had done. So the Johnsons had accomplished the purpose Dane had had for them today – to take the men’s minds off their problems. Dane watched Bailus tell the story for a moment. But Bailus was not Mirela. Dane could pull him aside without arousing any suspicion. He asked Bailus to meet him in his room when he was done. Bailus drained his bowl, excused himself, and caught up with Dane as he headed out the door. They started talking as they crossed the courtyard.

  “Find anything?” Bailus asked.

  “That,” Dane said, pointing to the flag which hung above the north gate. He had had Joseph run it up as soon as they’d returned. Bailus nodded. Nothing fazed this man.

  “The temple wasn’t a temple,” Dane said. “It was some kind of trophy hall. A place to store plunder – but not gold or jewels; things of a more symbolic value. They have things there from other battles they’ve won. Banners I don’t know from kingdoms I’ve never heard of. Old things. Things that might be centuries old. Or older. One thing I now know: this is definitely their island.”

  “Been that way for some time it looks like,” Bailus said as they entered Dane’s room.

  “I agree, but what I don’t understand then is how the colony existed in peace for as long as it did.”

  Bailus was silent for a moment. “Maybe this island isn’t their home. Maybe it has some kind of spiritual significance to them. What if they only come here to offer sacrifices to their gods? On their last trip, they discover the colony, a pagan incursion on this sacred soil. Wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened.”

  “But where is their home then? Where did they come from?”

  Bailus shrugged. “The rebel lands out west?”

  “Dim? Alistar? That’s a long ways.”

  Bailus paused. He looked straight at Dane as he continued, “You don’t think they could have come from Tira?”

  Dane sighed. “That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s what I have to know.”

  Bailus studied his face. “How?”

  “My father always believed the Tirans knew about this island. It stands to reason they do. They’re simple people but clever watermen in their way. The islands are but a day’s voyage from one another. They could have discovered it by accident years, generations ago. They never spoke of it to us, but my father always suspected they were trying to keep it secret.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “The only thing I can. I have to find out what they know.”

  “They’ll kill you. Even if they’re not responsible for what happened here, they’ll kill you.”

  “Then I have to take that chance.”

  “Chance? It’s not a chance. It’s a certainty. They were free men until your father subjugated their island. Think of what they’ll do to the heir of that power if he lands on their soil with only thirty men.”

  “I won’t be taking thirty men,” Dane said. “I’ll be taking only the bare number needed to man the ship.”

  “This is madness,” Bailus said.

  “This whole business is madness,” Dane said. “There’s a chance, a hopeless chance, that some of the colonists are still out there. That they escaped into the woods. They could be making their way here as we speak. We have to leave men to man the fort if that’s the case.”

  Bailus laughed mirthlessly. “I suppose throwing away a dozen men is better than thirty.”

  Dane shook his head. “I don’t believe they’ll kill us, at least not for the reason you gave. They are fierce, but they are honorable, and my father, for all his indulgences, has won their respect in more ways than one. They were overawed by our ships and weaponry, I think they thought we bore the favor of the gods in our sails and bowstrings, and they surrendered before the real bloodshed began. My father, in his affection or avarice for fighting men, chose not to annihilate them but to assimilate them into his army. I think they will honor the graciousness he showed in victory.”

  “And if they don’t.”

  “The only reason they won’t is if they are responsible for what happened here. I will not tarry on Tira. One day out, one day for the return journey. If I’m not back by the third day, well, then you’ll have your answer and you’ll know what you have to do.”

  “My lord, I cannot condone this,” Bailus began.

  “I’m not asking you to. But I needed to let you know. You’ll be in charge of things here while I’m away.”

  “But, sir.”

  “No more discussion,” Dane said. “Even if all I can find there is an answer, an explanation to what happened here, then I owe that to Josie, to the families on the mainland who will never be whole again. And I’d stake my life to get it for them.”

  Dane left Bailus seated by his hearth, still shaking his head. As he closed the door behind him, he saw her crossing the courtyard at a diagonal from him. He hurried to intercept her. She looked up at him as he came up beside her and smiled slightly. “Walk with me,” he said, taking her hand. He led her into the shadows between two of the unoccupied houses near the wall. “I was a fool,” he said, “I should have taken you with us.”

  “Did you have trouble?” she asked.

  He was slightly disappointed by her response. He was slightly surprised to find he did not chide himself for denying himself the help she would have been had they run into trouble, but for denying himself her company. “No, but I should have let you come.”

  His response seemed to soften her. “What did you find?”

  He told her everything, in greater detail than he had told it to Bailus, not because he thought there was an answer there but for the simple pleasure of speaking with her. He knew these were stolen moments, but he wanted to take them for all they were worth. She made him repeat the part about the hollow-sounding floor.

  “It just makes you wonder what they’d keep under there,” she said.

  “I got chills thinking about that,” Dane said.

  “What’ll you do now?” she asked.

  “Take you to sea.” He couldn’t help smiling as he said it.

  She looked up at him, studying his face.

  “I’m sailing for Tira tomorrow. Would you like to go with me? I mean, with all of us. All of us who are going.”

  It was her turn to smile. “It has been hard,” she said, “being so close to the sea and not being able even to walk down to the beach.”

  He warmed inside. He had been right. This was the greatest gift he could g
ive her. Well, there was one greater but he was getting to that. “I can’t promise you it’ll be safe,” he said.

  “I didn’t ask you to,” she said. She winced suddenly and drew her breath in sharply.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, stepping closer to her.

  She nodded, but was more serious after that. “But we can’t keep doing this,” she said. “Keep pretending we’re both something we’re not. Bax is…”

  “Bax is coming with me,” Dane said. “Whatever you want to do, I’m sure I could make him alright with it.”

  “But it won’t always be that way,” she said. “Even if we survive this, one day we’ll be back on the mainland. I’ll be shut up in his house again and you’ll…”

  “Bax won’t sell you,” Dane said.

  She started at the interruption but fell silent.

  “I’ve offered to buy you, to buy your freedom, but he won’t even listen to me.”

  She put her hand on her stomach and looked away.

  “It’s because of Lam, his little brother,” Dane said. “Because of what happened to him. When Bax got it into his head to raid Alistar, he thought it would be easy. He took Lam with him even though he was only seventeen and had never been in anything more than a fistfight. They’d hardly come in sight of your island, but they spotted a few huts sitting on a palm beach. They left the ship in the shallows and stormed ashore. But the villagers were ready for them. They’d hid in the trees on one side of the village. When the raiders were split up pillaging the houses they sprang the ambush. It wasn’t even a battle; it was a bloodbath. Bax’s cousin, Crig, was killed. Five others were killed before they made it back to the ship. And then, shoving off with the oars, from up on the deck Bax heard his little brother screaming. He ran to the prow and saw Lam held down on the beach by two of the islanders, alive, but screaming. Crying. There was nothing he could do.

  “I don’t think Bax’s ever forgiven himself for that. I don’t think he ever will. But he thinks having you is some kind of retribution.”