“I found this aboard The Howl,” she answered, seeing no reason to keep it a secret anymore. “Jack Darcy’s magicians were speaking to it. One of them asked it to hide them from the Octopus. They used it to keep themselves alive longer than the Blood Oath would allow.”
“How interesting,” he said, looking at Chera and Ine as if they all knew something but no one knew who should explain.
“Why? What is it?” Molly asked, glancing around at them all and coming back to Geoffrey.
“We met a man in market,” Geoffrey began, “wearing a red blanket around his shoulders. He was young and I took him for a warrior, for he carried a spear as he drove some cattle through the street. He was the one who sold us the blood.”
“Well, what of him?” Molly pressed.
“He was the only person we met all day who spoke much English,” Geoffrey went on. “He was fascinating, telling us all manner of stories as he bled the cow and prepared the gourd for us. I thought I misunderstood him, but he told us he had died and recently awoken in this world again. He said his family had taken his body to a mountain and laid him next to a blue rock, where they prayed for him. His spirit wandered the afterlife but he found his way back, because the magic of the blue rock supposedly hid him from Death.”
“Do you suppose the blue rock he mentioned was genamite?” suggested Molly, seeing where Geoffrey was going with his point. “So there is some truth to this? Genamite is strong enough to at least combat death, even if it cannot overcome it all the time.”
“Yes, but …” Geoffrey looked at Ine and Chera again. “That is not the strangest part of his story.”
“What do you mean?” asked Molly, folding her arms and listening. She winced, unintentionally pressing on one of her many bruises left over from her scuffle with Udbala. The burns from the olemancer’s magic had healed, but the other wounds had been numerous. “What is it? You look as if I won’t believe what you’re going to tell me.”
“This man,” said Geoffrey, “this man described a person he met while he was dead … a person who had gold hair and blue eyes, the strength of a beast, and carried a strange sword that could cut down demons and housed the spirit of a dark wading bird. He described Captain Crowe. He met Thomas, Miss Bishop.”
III
Oi’alli
The cool tickle of water ran up Tom’s legs, and he shivered. The skin on his arms and back was sore and scratched. Every time the water came rolling in it burned and then numbed the sore spots. All was dark except for one streak of light that crossed his vision and drew a line down his chest. As he sat up, Tom banged his head on something hard.
“Damn it!” he shouted, falling back. As he moved his arms and tried to touch his hands to the bump on his head, his hands and shoulders knocked against wood. It was all around him. Another cold rush of water ran up his legs and he jerked, suddenly afraid. Kicking his legs did no good, for his knees and feet banged into the hard wood that surrounded him. As he continued to squirm and swear, the strength of his werewolf curse coursed through him, so that finally, with a thrust of one hand, he pushed away the wood overhead, the squeaking of rusty nails crying out.
As Tom sat upright, shoving the wooden boards above him, the sun met his skin and a sea breeze blew his salty hair around. Another wave rolled up on shore and flowed over the sides of the wooden casket in which he had found himself. The cool water made a pool in the box where his feet were, where the casket had sunk into the sand. Tom turned his head this way and that, seeing no one else around. Then, turning part of the lid of the casket over in his hands, he found a curious engraving in the grain of the wood. There was only one word: “Hope.” There looked to have been something else, but it was worn away. Finding the planking’s other half, he fit them both together. They then read, “The Good Hope”. Tom realized the casket had been made out of pieces of a ship that had once sailed with Alecandre Love and the Dreaded Amphitrite.
Tom tossed the lid aside and got to his feet, feeling as though he’d just awakened after sleeping for years on a bed of rock. Scowling like a wet cat, he groaned and grunted as he stretched out his arms, legs and back and peeled the hair from his face and mouth. Leaning over and reaching into the casket, he picked up Yatagarasu. The weapon had come off its belt when he’d stood. Tom spent some time searching around the casket for the worn, leather cinch. He first discovered its tarnished gold buckle winking at him from the sand. Washing it clean in a retreating wave, Tom paused to inspect it. The ornament was ancient—a round medal with a raised image of a heron or crane of some kind holding a curved blade in one of its three feet. Banging the sand off the sword, he fixed it to its belt, wrapping the belt around his waist and fastening the gold buckle. He checked to make sure the Uyl Talisman was wrapped around his arm where it should be. Everything was in order … so far. Now what Tom really wanted to know was his location. Had his stunt worked? Was he alive? Dead? Somewhere between?
He began to plod across the sand. For as long as he walked along the shore he did not come across another soul. The midday sun many times drove him into the shade for a rest. Tom was dried out and hot, and it was because of these nagging discomforts that he figured he must be alive again. That knowledge would have been a wonderful relief if he weren’t marooned without a hint of a direction to follow. After some time he fell asleep and began to dream.
In the dream Tom was in the back of a covered wagon, much like the one his father had built to carry the Crowe family along the Gem Road to Romania when he and Harlan were young. An oil lamp hung overhead and drew in a few moths. Its light was warm and drove out the darkness of the night. Molly was speaking softly to him from above and looking down at him with happy eyes. Her gentle hands touched his face, and her bare chest brushed his when she leaned down to kiss him. Thomas shut his eyes and wrapped his arms around her, holding her close as she squeezed him between her legs and moved her hips. Wrapped in a warm blanket, they tangled themselves in one another’s love with only the murmur of the wind outside accompanying the sound of their hastened breath.
“How much farther?” Molly asked when they finished, nestling herself against Thomas.
“What do you mean?” asked Tom, unsure where they were.
“When will we be home?” Her second try did not help him understand.
“Where is home?” he asked, laughing quietly. “Where in the world are we?”
“I don’t know, Thomas. You’re the one driving the horses.” Molly wrapped an arm around him and shut her eyes. She was so warm, so soft, so …
“Where would you like to go?” he whispered, moving his fingers through her dark hair.
“Anywhere but here. Anywhere but this world,” she answered, with sadness in her voice.
“All right. Well, I guess we’ll have to find a new one,” said Tom, not entirely sure what he meant by it. He closed his eyes with a smile, but when he opened his eyes and looked again at Molly’s face, it had changed. No longer was Molly lying next to him.
“Thomas, we’ll make it our world. Our new world,” said the woman lying next to him. It was the voice of Corvessa, and as she spoke she crawled up onto him with a sly flash of her green eyes. A cool tickle ran up Tom’s leg, and when he looked to see what it was, he saw slithering up his leg a long, emerald-green snake, flicking its tongue and following the sound of Corvessa’s voice as she talked and cooed to it.
Tom jumped with a start, getting up quickly and hopping around on one dry leg as the tide came in. The cool water had once again caught him off guard and soaked one of his trouser legs. In moments he was wide awake again and meandering along the shore, hoping to find a sign of civilization before nightfall. He had slept for only a short time, less than two hours.
As he gazed at the sparkling sand ahead, a strange sight caught his attention. Little white flowers seemed to be growing along the beach, and Tom thought the heat must be getting to him. The flowers were popping up one after another, their white petals marked with red dots, but he could see th
rough them as though they were ghosts. Of course he recognized them as moonbloom, the same kind of flowers that showed themselves to him in the prophetic dream he’d had of killing Harlan, the same flowers that had led him east into Romania after he escaped Paris, and the same flowers that had bloomed on the night the Helvetii had pried the evil dreigher from his soul. They were an encouraging sign, and Tom meant to follow them, but his optimism was guarded. Every time the moonbloom had revealed itself to him, it guided him along a path determined by fate. This knowledge made him curious, but he also knew that fate did not always plan pleasant endings for him.
The little riddling flowers led Tom along the beach for several more hours and then had him cut through the thick island vegetation once the sand ran out. Swatting at biting flies and other airborne furies, Tom trudged through the dense growth and finally came out again onto a new beach. In the distance, a little town appeared, only a few fishing boats bobbing in the water around it. Much closer to Tom was a stranded ship, pushed up into the bend in a short wall of rock and cliff that stuck out into the waves and then degraded into piles of rock in the shallows. The trail of moonbloom continued ahead of him and stopped beneath the hull of the old ship where a funny little door had been cut. Tom followed the moonbloom but lacked any faith that it had led him to anything more than an empty, abandoned, rotting wreck.
When he reached the crooked door in the hull of the ship, Tom paused to look up and admire the stained glass windows that had been used to replace old portholes. Not only that, but an old shore boat had been placed next to the ship and filled with dirt. A variety of flowers had been planted in it. Atop the main mast a weather vane spun in the breeze, and out through the hatch in the main deck, a steady stream of smoke rose as from a chimney. Shirts, trousers and stockings dangled from the bowsprit, drying in the sun. Beyond, closer to the scrubby inshore growth, a dozen or so chickens scratched at the earth, clucking and strutting about.
Tom stepped up to the door in the ship’s ribs and knocked three times, then took a step back. A sudden commotion came from behind the door, and then all was quiet again. Tom used his keen hearing to determine that indeed someone was inside, and they were approaching the door slowly. He didn’t like it, so he stepped back once more and put a hand on the pistol in his belt. The doorknob turned slower than the unwound hand of a clock, and then swung open abruptly.
“I’ve got nothin’ you want! I’m not who you’re lookin’ for! I don’t build ships anymore, not with the lame hand and bad back and …” The old man standing in the doorway spewed all this at once and then stopped, sticking a pistol out the door and pointing it at Thomas. Tom drew his pistol and held it out in response. Neither man said anything for a moment. Tom’s pistol gave a gurgle and then burped a stream of salt water that dribbled out the end of the barrel.
“I didn’t come for a ship, Bart,” said Tom, lowering his pistol. “You build a fine home, though. And you’ve a green thumb as well, I see.” Grinning and squinting one eye as the sun struck his face he turned and flipped his pistol hand in the direction of the garden-boat.
“Thomas? Thomas C-C-Crowe?” the old man stammered, touching his beard. “How did you find this place?”
“I followed the little white flowers,” said Tom, smiling.
“Are you drunk or has the sun baked your brain like a biscuit?” asked Bart. “Good Lord in Heaven, will I never see the end of this man?” he complained, eyes pinched shut in frustration as he reeled back and cursed at the sky. “Oh, damn it all. Get inside. Come on.” Back inside the house he shuffled like a tired old horse, tossing his pistol aside on the head of a barrel.
“Good to see you, Barty!” said Tom, ducking inside and shutting the door behind him. “How’ve you been, old friend?”
“Better than the last ship I sold you, I’m sure. Even so, business is … well, look at my house and you can surely guess how it’s been.” Bart took a cloth from his neat vest and wiped grease from his hands; putting the cloth back in a pocket, he showed Tom to a seat in what Bart called his sitting room—a cozy hole in the bottom of the ship directly beneath the center of the main deck. A stove crackled and pumped smoke up through the decks overhead and out the main deck. All of Bart’s things were hanging about the room in a way with which Tom was familiar, piled on tables and desks or piled onto shelves. “What about you, Captain? You look washed and drowned in the kind of excitement that always leaves you standing ragged on my doorstep.”
“Oh, I’ve been quite dead, wouldn’t you know it,” said Tom, rocking back in his chair and propping a boot up against the table between himself and Bart. “Been dead, or asleep. Not sure when I stopped doing one and started the other … for … what month is it?” he asked.
“August, Captain. And I’m afraid I wouldn’t know about you being dead. Are you sure you aren’t drunk?”
“Really? I thought you were the one who had built the casket,” said Tom, making a face and tapping his fingers on the tabletop. “August? I died in … February? My, my, that’s quite longer than expected.”
“Captain, I don’t know nothin’ about a casket. You really did die, then?” Bart didn’t know what to make of Tom’s sudden appearance or his fair mood. For some time he was convinced he was talking to a ghost.
“Yes, Bart. I awoke on a beach some distance from here and followed a vision right to your doorstep. How else would I have found you?”
“I truly do not know,” said Bart, scratching his beard. “I thought I was hidden well enough out here.”
“Where are we, by the way?” asked Tom.
“Isla Oscura,” answered Bart. “Not too far from Isla del Sol, but it’s a sight more difficult to come across if you aren’t looking for it.” Bart smiled proudly. “You won’t find it on the maps the Navy uses.”
“They looking for you?” Tom knew Bart had to have a reason for leaving his old ship house and business behind on Isla del Sol. The old man was edgy and sat straighter when he talked, kept looking out the windows when he spoke.
“The Navy? I suppose. It’s the Bureau I’m worried about, though. They come snatching up people here in the isles—magesmiths and the like, mostly. They press ’em into the service of England. I don’t know what’s happenin’ out there in the bigger world, but that Lord Young fellow is playing all kinds of bad magic on these here waters, Captain.”
“You don’t mean Rainer Young?” Tom asked, half smirking and half frowning.
“Yes, that’s the one. Most of the folks in the isles don’t know who he is, you see. He wears a mask. One of those old things what makes you look like a bird.” Bart raised a hand to his face and pulled on his nose, pretending to stretch it out. “You know, the kind them plague doctors used to wear, with the big glass eyes and beak … around here they call him Lord Poison.”
“Lord Poison, hm?” Tom sniggered a little, remembering his past run-in with Rainer Young and the many stories surrounding Young’s political career. The man had a knack for dramatics. It had been said that during a governor’s banquet in Saint Kitts and Nevis he wore the flag of England over one shoulder like a cape to display his allegiance to the Crown. He did this, according to rumor, after becoming the butt of many jokes stemming from an embarrassing episode of cowardice in battle. Wearing the flag did nothing to help his image. Even before the scandal, Rainer’s naturally high voice and thin frame earned him the nickname Lady Rainer. His contemporaries thought him to be not much more than the entitled nephew of George Abrams, a man of much greater esteem. They tolerated Rainer, but truth be told, he did not command their respect.
“He and his lot, they’ve been telling folks the water and the air are bad because of some voodoo magicians or rebels cooking up foul hexes. They’ve got everyone afraid of witches and curses, even making them afraid of their own magic! The merfolk are angry, too. But they don’t know the difference between the island folks and the Bureau. They think the land dwellers are trying to drive them away.”
Bart slouched back in
his chair, shaking his head. “The Bureau’s making the folks sick and telling them it’s the Bureau what has all the medicines they need to fight the sickness. But nobody gets medicine if they don’t first point out a witch or rebel. They have to prove their loyalty to the Crown. I don’t think the Royal Navy knows about what is happening, Cap’n.” Bart leaned forward again, whispering, as though it were necessary. “I think the Bureau is the French, pretendin’ to be English!”
“Well …” Tom laughed, and felt bad for it. “Something wicked is afoot, but I’ve crossed paths with the Bureau more than once, and every time they’re someone else. German, French, English—”
“German too?” Bart burst, throwing up his hands. “What’s it all about, Cap’n?”
“Bart,” said Tom, raising a hand and calming him down, “what I mean to say is that it isn’t the French or the Germans or even the English. There are a few clever, powerful people tugging on all our friends’ and foes’ strings, stirring up trouble and such.”
“But what for?” Bart wondered aloud. “Do you think there’ll be another war for the colonies? I’m too old to get called back into service! I won’t build another ship! Damned if I build one more beautiful ship for them to blow to pieces!”
“Easy, Bart. I don’t know what they want, but the colonies aren’t it.” Tom’s thoughts drifted back to the dream he’d had. Molly’s soft voice floated around in his mind, and he stopped paying attention to Bart, who rattled on and on across the table from him.
“… For them to grab it with their fat hands! Never got my share, noooo.” Bart was saying. “Because we lost the war! All that fuss about the new world—”
The Lore Series (Box Set): All 3 Books In One Volume Page 81