The Blackhope Enigma

by Teresa Flavin

  “Sunni,” said a voice.

  She rolled over and looked around. Pieces of shredded sail and shattered hull littered the pool. The high arch of the ceiling curved down into a horizontal stone platform. Blaise was huddled at its edge, his hand extended.

  He helped her out of the water. “You made it!”

  “You too,” she whispered.

  “Only just.”

  “Dean. Have you seen Dean?” Sunni staggered along the edge of the rock platform, her eyes streaming with seawater and tears.

  Blaise walked with her, his arm hovering around her back. “No.”

  “He was right there with us. I should have held on to him! I am so stupid —”

  “No, you are not —”

  “Listen. What’s that?” She wiped her eyes and cocked her head at a distant rushing sound. The rush grew into a roar. Bubbles rose to the pool’s surface as if it were coming to a boil.

  A ball of seaweed, silver fish, and bubbles blasted upward and splashed over them. The smell of kelp filled the cavern, like a beach at low tide.

  As the water settled again, placid and glowing blue, Sunni and Blaise swept startled fish back into the pool and picked seaweed fragments off themselves. A giant clump of kelp had surfaced, and something was stuck underneath it. A hand emerged from the seaweed.

  Dean’s streaming face peered out, and Sunni dived frantically into the pool to help him.

  “Sun.” Dean grabbed her arm, his eyes half-shut as she fished him out and hugged him close.

  “You’re alive! I thought you’d gone for good.” Sunni sniffled and laughed at the same time. “I think crabs have it in for you, Deano.”

  “I thought I’d drowned.” Dean buried his head in her shoulder.

  “One minute you were there, and then you weren’t. Stop doing that to me!”

  “The water just took me,” murmured Dean, “and I came out here.”

  “I know. It got me and Blaise, too.”

  “Is he OK?”

  Blaise crouched down and ruffled Dean’s wet hair. “Yup. Hey, man, nice swim.”

  “I couldn’t have swum if I’d tried!” Dean spat and worked his finger around in his mouth. “I’ve got seaweed stuck in my teeth.”

  A gigantic bubble burped up in the pool and pushed a billowing dark shape to the surface.

  “What the —?” Dean exclaimed.

  “Come on, Blaise, help me,” Sunni said urgently. They swam out to the floating shape and turned the figure over to reveal Marin’s unconscious face. With all the strength they had left, they towed him back to the platform and laid him out. Corvo’s apprentice was clammy and still, his olive skin drained of color.

  Dean crawled over to see. “Is he dead?” he asked hopefully.

  Sunni touched the side of Marin’s neck for a pulse. “No, just alive.” She knew what she had to do because she had practiced many times in junior life-saving class. She shook his shoulder gently and said loudly, “Marin? Marin, wake up.”

  There was no response, so she tilted his head up and carefully lifted his neck. She put her ear to his mouth, but no breath came. Sunni opened Marin’s mouth, took a deep breath, and put her mouth tightly over his. After four breaths, she drew back and listened. Within a few seconds, he spluttered and came to, coughing water.

  “Marin!” Relief washed over her. “You’re all right. Just rest for a minute.”

  His eyes fixed on Sunni, then Blaise and Dean, before he rolled onto his side, spewing.

  “Gross!” Dean wrinkled his nose.

  Sunni’s stomach was a cage of butterflies. I kissed him, she thought, sort of, and wondered what it might have been like if he had been awake at the time.

  “So this is Corvo’s apprentice.” Blaise’s face knotted up with resentment as Sunni pulled off her jacket and pushed it under Marin’s head. “You don’t have to make him too comfortable, Sunni.”

  “Yeah. Why don’t we throw him back in?” Dean jeered.

  “Give it a rest, will you?” murmured Sunni.

  “He left us in the water after we went overboard!”

  After a few moments, the apprentice said in a choked voice, “I gave you a rowboat, boy! Bashir would have caught us all if I had stopped to pull you from the sea.” He had a coughing fit and went on, “You should not have been on deck. I told you both to stay inside, but you disobeyed.”

  Dean was sullen.

  “And you survived, did you not? No simple feat in this place,” Marin went on.

  “We did manage to get in the rowboat,” said Sunni. “And then Lady Ishbel’s ship picked us up.”

  A look of annoyance crossed Marin’s face. “Ishbel.”

  “Everybody rescues us and then wants something for it!” complained Dean. “Secrets, maps —”

  “What is he saying?” Marin interrupted, pulling himself up to sitting. “What maps?”

  “Blaise found a map,” said Sunni. “Lady Ishbel decided it was her property. Then Angus tried to double-cross her and get it for himself.”

  “Angus — the stranger on her ship, who was also at the arch?”

  She nodded. “He was going to hurt Dean unless I stole the map for him, but we escaped to Blaise’s ship. Then the crabs attacked us.”

  “If you hadn’t been blocking my way, I never would have had to go near the crabs!” Blaise glared at the apprentice.

  “Did your crew not warn you?”

  “They did, but it was the only way.”

  “To where?”

  Blaise’s mouth was set in a stubborn line.

  “We are shipwrecked here!” shouted Marin, struggling to his feet. “What difference does it make if you tell me now?”

  Blaise stayed silent.

  “It was a location on your map, was it not? Come, boy, do you think I am a simpleton?”

  “All right!” Blaise burst out. “It’s an island.”

  “That tells me nothing. This sea is full of islands.” Marin held out his hand. “Let me see this map that everyone thinks is his.”

  “I don’t know,” said Blaise, his chin jutting out. “Hugo Fox-Farratt told us you were working for Soranzo.”

  “That is untrue! He is spreading lies about me.”

  “Hugo’s not the only one. You don’t have a great reputation.”

  “Yeah,” said Dean. “Lady Ishbel said she heard bad things about you from Zorzi. He rescued her from this ocean while he was keeping away from you.”

  Marin reeled as though he had been punched in the stomach. “Zorzi is here — and avoiding me?”

  “Who’s Zorzi?” Sunni asked, puzzled.

  “My fellow apprentice. The youngest of us three, only thirteen and like a brother to me.”

  Blaise noticed Sunni’s face softening at this and said, “Hugo said Sir Innes didn’t want you here, either. But you sneaked in anyway, like a rat.”

  “You would have done the same if you had been me.”

  “Betray Corvo? No way.”

  “I did not betray my master!”

  “Then why does everyone think you did?”

  Marin let out a rueful laugh. “Because they are like sheep, believing without thinking.”

  “So you did nothing wrong,” said Sunni. “Capturing us and treating us like criminals was the right thing to do?”

  “I have protected you and kept you alive!” Marin stopped and gave Sunni a grateful look. “As you have me.”

  Sunni’s shy smile and the way she looked back at the apprentice made Blaise interrupt. “Yeah, OK, we’re all alive. The question is, how do we stay alive? We’ve got to find water and food.”

  “Where do we think we are, exactly?” asked Sunni.

  “Well, we were close to the island when we went down.”

  “Yeah, really close,” said Dean. “It was the last thing I saw before I went under.”

  “Maybe we’re underneath it somehow,” Sunni ventured.

  “Come, come, enough of this,” Marin said tartly to Blaise. “I know this arch
ipelago far better than you, but you still will not show me the map.”

  “Let him see it,” Sunni said with a sigh.

  “I don’t know.” Blaise kept his hand firmly on his messenger bag.

  “Blaise,” said Sunni, “I think it’ll be OK.”

  Reluctantly he took out the map and unrolled it. Marin spent a few moments feeling the paper and studying the drawings.

  When he looked up at them, his face was unusually soft. “My master did not make this.”

  Blaise slumped. “Does that mean it’s worthless? We wasted our time coming here?”

  “No, I meant that someone else drew this map. Zorzi. Where did you find it?”

  “Stuck to the white wall between the maze and the sea.” Blaise regarded Marin coolly. “It wasn’t attached very well and peeled off pretty easily, but I was running from Angus and had to leave a piece behind. He snagged it, but luckily Sunni saw it and copied what was on it.”

  He produced Sunni’s sodden sketchbook from his bag.

  “You saved my sketchbook!” Sunni hugged it to her chest. “Thanks, Blaise.” She opened it carefully and pointed out the nine little drawings to Marin. “We don’t know what these mean.”

  The apprentice studied the images of a fish-tailed man holding a trident, a winged woman, a man with a sickle, a woman cradling two young children, a woman on horseback, two men holding cornstalks, a man with a lyre, and another woman on horseback.

  Marin’s face lit up. “I know them. They are part of a code we used in the workshop. It came from the time when our master taught us to read.”

  “Is that when you learned English?” asked Sunni.

  “I learned some from my master and more from Lady Ishbel. But that was long ago, when she first arrived here and things were different between us,” he said brusquely. “Someone hand me something to draw with.”

  Using one of Sunni’s pencils, Marin drew a grid of squares on a damp blank page. In the first box he sketched a man holding a lyre and wrote A above him. In the next he drew a man holding a cup and grapes and put a B over him.

  “A is for Apollo, and B is for Bacchus,” said Marin. He drew a few more Roman gods and the first letter of each name. “This is a picture alphabet. We used it for remembering letters. If we saw A written down, we thought of Apollo, the god of music, and his lyre.”

  “Zorzi spelled out a word in pictures,” said Sunni excitedly.

  “A message for me or Dolphin, the other apprentice.” Marin was actually smiling. “Perhaps he is not avoiding me after all.”

  “What does it say?”

  “First is a labyrinth symbol, but the word starts with Fortuna, goddess of fortune. After her is Iris, goddess of the rainbow. Then the sea god, Neptune, with his trident, Iris once more, and Saturn, holding his sickle.”

  “F-I-N-I-S?” Dean spelled out.

  “Exactly,” said Marin. “The next picture is Tellus, the goddess of earth, with Epona, the goddess of horses. Then twice we see Robigus, protector of corn crops, with Apollo and Epona again.”

  “FINIS TERRAE.”

  “Land’s End in Latin,” said Marin.

  “Does that mean it’s the way out of Arcadia?” asked Sunni.

  “It may be. I do not know.”

  Blaise arched an eyebrow. “In all the time you’ve been here, you’ve never come across a way out?”

  “I was not looking for one,” said Marin. “Though I have found paths that transport you back to the upper layers unexpectedly. The night before I captured you, I had been fighting with Bashir but was pushed up through a weak place in the painting and into the naiads’ lake.”

  “So part of the game for Sir Innes was taking the right path to avoid going back to the palace and starting again?” Sunni broke in.

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “We’d better not be heading into one of those,” said Dean. Sunni hugged him and said, “I hope not.”

  “So, now what do we do?” asked Blaise.

  Marin walked to the edge of the shimmering water. “Pray that this treacherous pool is not the only way out.”

  Angus gazed at the towering island before them, its surface dotted with boulders and marked with veinlike paths that disappeared into the clouds obscuring its top. The Luna had crept along the entire shore searching for signs of the other ships and a place to moor.

  “Your clever plan did not work,” said Lady Ishbel. “Neither of the two ships is here.”

  “That’s because we were faster, I suppose,” Angus replied. “We must be ahead of them.”

  “I thought Marin would follow my ship, not that boy’s.”

  “So that’s what’s bothering you, my lady,” Angus said with a smirk. “Marin.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A problem of the heart.”

  “How dare you! My business with Marin has nothing to do with you.” Her face was crimson.

  “Let’s see, what was it? He didn’t return your affection? Or he preferred someone else?”

  Lady Ishbel’s anger robbed her face of all its beauty. “You are impudent! Pray be silent!”

  He rolled his eyes and changed the subject. “Have you been to this island before, my lady?”

  She struggled to contain herself. “Some time ago, I can’t remember when. It’s a forbidding place, with hardly anywhere to land.”

  “That bay we passed earlier will do nicely.”

  The vessel glided along the south coast of the island, passing sea stacks and rocky islets, and anchored in a solitary bay.

  “Presumably the kids were heading here.” Angus frowned. “It’s a shame we haven’t got the map yet. We need it to know what’s so interesting about this place.”

  “My map.”

  “Your map,” he said. “I suggest we explore this hunk of rock. Would you care to accompany me, my lady?”

  Lady Ishbel shivered as she studied the island’s rocky terrain. “I do not care for this place. But, yes, I must see it again for myself.”

  Two oarsmen rowed them toward the shore on the Luna’s skiff and Angus helped Lady Ishbel onto a level piece of land.

  As they slowly progressed along the shore, she struggled to walk. Angus hauled her over ledges and across rocks as they approached the western side of the island, fuming all the way.

  “I am fatigued,” Lady Ishbel declared, and sat down on a rock, her vast skirt flipping up like a ringing bell.

  “Fine.” Angus continued along the path.

  “You must wait,” she called.

  “No, I mustn’t. If I find anything, I’ll bring it back.”

  “Turn round and face me when you speak. I must see your face.”

  Angus whirled around and fixed her with his stony eyes.

  “I do not believe you will come back!” shouted Lady Ishbel. “What do you want with this place?”

  He turned and began walking again. Lady Ishbel leaped up and dashed after him. Her voluminous gown made it impossible for her to see where she was putting her feet, and it was not long before she stumbled and rolled, shrieking, down the rough slope.

  Angus merely looked back at her over his shoulder and, saying nothing, walked on.

  Blaise squinted at the cave’s cathedral-like ceiling. “Look at those statues in the wall. Behind them there’s some sort of path up, but it gets dark toward the top and I can’t tell whether it goes anywhere.”

  “We have two choices,” Marin declared. “If we do not take the path, we must dive back into the pool and find an underground waterway to the sea.”

  “Too risky. We’ll end up back here again if we’re lucky, and drown if we’re not.”

  “Let’s try the path,” said Sunni.

  Marin rolled up the map and went to tuck it into his satchel.

  “Hey,” said Blaise, “I found that. Give it back.”

  “It was meant for me.”

  “I don’t see your name on it.” Blaise thrust out his hand. “Hand it over.”

  The apprentice
snorted. “As you wish. I am not a thief.”

  “Yeah, yeah. So you say.” Blaise made a great show of stashing the map away.

  “There. You are happy now?”

  “Can we get a move on?” Sunni took a few impatient steps toward the row of stone goddesses. Blaise caught up with her, and she gave him a pointed look.

  “What?” he whispered.

  “Why are you giving him a hard time?”

  “Huh? The guy kidnaps you and threatens to put you in a prison drawing, and you’re worried about him being given a hard time?”

  “We’re all right,” she hissed. “He ended up helping us.”

  Blaise let out a frustrated breath. “I still don’t trust him.”

  Sunni shook her head and bustled to the last statue in the row. Carved into the side of its body, a narrow staircase of shallow steps led straight up.

  “Dean, you follow me.” Sunni edged her way up the steps and along a catwalk behind the row of goddesses, the others inching along behind her. She reached a sharp turn, and the way ahead was dark.

  “Something’s in there,” she whispered. “I can hear sounds.”

  “What?” Dean’s voice quivered as Sunni felt her way along in the blackness. Suddenly an explosion of wings slapped her around the face and shoulders.

  “Bats!” she screeched. The cloud of creatures veered away into the higher reaches of the cave.

  There was scuffling behind her. Marin shouted in Italian, and Blaise barked something back at him.

  “What is it?” Sunni asked.

  “Nothin’, keep going.” Dean’s voice pierced the dark. “One of them kicked the other or something.”

  Sunni moved forward. The path twisted again, and a dim glow shone from above.

  “Light,” she called. “Come on, there’s light up here.”

  They crawled hand over hand through the slimy passage toward a chink of blue sky and emerged aboveground on a scrubby hillside studded with boulders and cacti. The sun scalded the earth and forced them to shield their eyes.