Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago: Tales of the Lost Isles

by JOSEPH A. MCCULLOUGH

  Jorasca had drawn her crossbow reflexively, even though there was nothing to shoot. The fusillade of darts kept coming, streaming from hundreds of hidden openings into the shield of water. Then, finally, after what seemed like an hour, they were spent and the last of them clattered to the floor.

  Cirillian let her staff drop and the shield of water fell to the floor, soaking the cowering crew.

  ‘Well done, Warden,’ said Thaal.

  ‘Not quite as well as I would have hoped,’ replied Cirillian. She drew back the hood of her robe and brushed a strand of pale blonde hair from her cut-glass face. ‘My profoundest of apologies, Lord Thaal. I had hoped to assist you further, but fate does not seem to will it thus.’

  A single dart protruded from the ivory skin of the Wave Warden’s neck. For the first time since the expedition had set sail, Cirillian showed discomfort. She shivered and beads of sweat stood out on her face. Veins of red were running across the skin of her throat and face. The dart’s venom took hold and her knees buckled. Xavion ran to her and caught her as she fell. Her mouth opened to say something more, but no sound came out.

  Akmon Thaal stared down at Cirillian’s corpse for a long moment.

  ‘This shows our path is true,’ he said, clenching a fist. ‘There is something at the heart of this temple worth defending with such trapwork. Something it is our destiny to take. We press on.’

  * * *

  The next chamber was full of corpses, long dried out and mummified. They hung from the walls in their dozens. Each was impaled by a steel spike and had its eyes and mouth sewn up.

  No one spoke as the crew made their way deeper into the temple. They did not flinch as they picked their way between huge statues of spiders inlaid with bloodstone and jade. Their feet crunched through bones so old they turned to dust. They negotiated a half-collapsed stairway, squeezing between the sandstone blocks in near-total darkness before they could light their torches again.

  ‘We’re below ground level,’ said Dolth as he struck his flint. ‘Either they dug down to build this, or the ground rose up.’

  ‘Who are “they”?’ asked Jorasca. She rubbed her elbows where the rough passageway had scraped at her.

  ‘Don’t know,’ replied Dolth. ‘Dead now.’

  His torch caught and its light licked against the walls of the smaller square chamber the crew found themselves in. The walls were covered in carved skulls, stylised and square-edged but impossible to mistake. Along the lower edge, reddish humanoid figures raised spindly hands to the ranks of skulls above them.

  ‘Hardly a good omen,’ said Xavion. Already the knight’s armour, normally kept polished, was scraped and dented. ‘More to the point, there doesn’t seem to be a way out.’

  ‘Do we turn back?’ said Jorasca.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Akmon Thaal, rounding on her. ‘This is but another test. The savages who raised this temple did it so its secrets would be revealed only to those of cunning and strength. What was miraculous to those primitives is simple for civilised folk like you and I. There is some simple trick to this room. Find it.’

  The rest of the crew searched up and down the carved walls, trying to find some hidden mechanism. Jorasca ran a hand along the smooth stones of the floor. There wasn’t enough space between them to get a fingernail. ‘This would be a good place to trap us,’ she said.

  ‘Then best get out,’ said Dolth. He was examining the ceiling with his torch held high. The skulls continued across the ceiling, staring down with flecks of blood-red pottery in their eye sockets.

  ‘This is a door,’ said Thaal. He had one hand against the wall while the other pointed out the faint indentation around a section of it. ‘There is no handle or lock. There must be a way to open it.’

  ‘Found it,’ said Felhangar, one of the crew’s swordsmen. He had found one of the skulls was separate from the rest of the wall and swung forward to reveal a niche with a wooden lever set into the stone. ‘Cunning buggers these. Didn’t hold us long, though. What you think they’re hiding past there?’

  ‘Can’t be much more to this pile,’ said Arnulf. Like Felhangar he was a mercenary with little in the way of subtlety or skills, just a competence with a blade and a willingness to do whatever he was paid for. He and Felhangar were both crew from the Fathom’s Faith, salty and crude but reliable in their own way. ‘Got to be the treasure. Got to be.’

  ‘Come ’ere, you little sod,’ said Felhangar, hauling on the lever. With a crunch of mortar falling away, the lever snapped down.

  The door did not open.

  ‘Well,’ said Arnulf, ‘that’s just…’

  His voice was cut off as the floor lurched away beneath their feet. Jorasca just saw Arnulf’s expression change, from frustration to shock, before her own stomach turned and she was falling. The neat blocks of the floor gave way and tumbled downwards, followed by the crew, into a dense and fibrous darkness beneath.

  Jorasca had a sense of the blackness turning end over end before a tremendous force smacked into her and white spots flared in front of her eyes.

  * * *

  It was some old instinct, ground into her like the dirt beneath her fingernails, that forced her not to just lie there and wait for the flaring pain to die away. It was a tough and unloving life that had brought her to the gangplank of the Fathom’s Faith. She had scrabbled in the gutter to feed her ailing parents, and when they were gone she did the same to pay protection to the underworld lords of the docks and put bread on her plate. She had scrapped and fought, and taken beatings. She had owed money to bad men. She had fled from shadows in the night, and one day heard the offer of work on the Fathom’s Faith and bid a bitter farewell to the streets that had forged her.

  None of it had taught her to lie down and hope the danger went away. It told her now to get her crossbow in her hands and jump to her feet, and damn the crimson pain flashing in the back of her head. She slid a bolt into the crossbow and cranked it back as she tried to get her bearings.

  The faint flicker from a discarded torch on the ground did not banish the darkness of her surroundings. It just outlined them in a fragile firelight. Jorasca had landed in a natural cavern underneath the trapped room. It must have been deep in the foundations of the pyramidal temple. The floor was filthy and the stench of rot and effluent assaulted her. She stumbled, unsteady, as she fought to find her balance in the slime underfoot.

  Xavion had landed hard a short distance away. He groaned and tried to roll onto his front, weighed down by his armour. Jorasca hurried to him and hauled on his arm to get him sitting up. His armour was dented where he had landed shoulder-first.

  ‘This place has quite the sense of humour,’ said Xavion. He could not hide his wince as he tried to get to his feet. The armour over one knee was twisted and buckled. The leg inside it could not be in good shape.

  ‘Dolth!’ called Jorasca. ‘Felhangar? Arnulf?’

  ‘Bloody kraken’s balls,’ spat Felhangar as he emerged from a heap of fallen masonry. He still had the lever in his hand. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘’Tis nowhere good,’ said Dolth, who had landed relatively unhurt. He picked something up that was lying at his feet and wiped the worst of the grime off it. It was a human skull, brown with age except for the bright white teeth.

  ‘Find a way out,’ said Akmon Thaal, who was untouched even by the grime. ‘They would not build this place without one.’

  ‘Unless no one’s supposed to leave,’ said Dolth.

  Thaal rounded on Dolth. ‘It is such weakness of thought that holds men back,’ said the Heritor. ‘Small minds make for small attainment. Without me, you would still be rotting in that port city praying for the misery to end! With me, you have a chance at greatness. It is our will that determines our fate. It is your fate to never understand that.’

  ‘We can’t all be born great,’ replied Dolth.

  Thaal’s face darkened. ‘You dare,’ he said. ‘All I have, I earned!’

  ‘All you have,’ replied
Dolth, his voice unchanging, ‘you got born with. Your great-great-whatever drunk from the Crystal Pool and now here you are. ’Tis luck, no more. A different roll of the dice and you’d be as low-born as any of us.’

  ‘Your body will pay the bill your tongue has run up,’ snarled Thaal.

  ‘Don’t care,’ said Dolth. He dropped the skull on the filthy floor. ‘Take my head if you want. We’re all going to die down here.’

  Jorasca felt her body tensing, as it always did when she smelled a situation turning bad. She had heard Thaal had keelhauled a stowaway before the Fathom’s Faith had arrived at her home port, and she had no doubt he would kill Dolth if his anger was stoked enough. Maybe the Heritor wouldn’t stop with just Dolth. Jorasca realised how little she knew about Akmon Thaal, the anger that smouldered constantly inside him, the lengths he would go to in his pursuit of riches and greatness.

  The growl came from the darkest depths of the cavern, and they all heard it. Low and grinding, like stone against stone. The faint light glittered against something winding through the shadows, stalking between the chunks of fallen masonry.

  The shape resolved itself into the outline of an immense reptilian form. It was easily the height of a man, though it walked with its head low, balanced by a long, whipping tail. Its back legs were muscular and taloned and its forelimbs withered almost to nothing. Its head was a horror, with a massive undershot jaw crammed with teeth. It seemed to grin as its mouth opened, and something flopped from its maw, caught on the daggers of its teeth.

  It was an arm. A human arm. Arnulf’s arm.

  Three more jumped from the darkness, arrowing in at the crewmates from all directions. One of them made a hideous sound, half-screech and half-hiss, and leapt at Jorasca. Its taloned foot caught her on the shoulder and knocked her flat on her back again.

  She felt the points of its claws piercing the leather of her armour. Its massive jaws snapped down at her face and she forced her head to one side. The stink of its breath was appalling, like a heap of spoiled and flyblown meat. She could see its eye now, with the black slit of its iris bisecting a sickly yellow orb.

  Its jaws snapped at her again. Its whole weight was on her and she couldn’t draw breath. Jorasca forced her arm out from under it and groped down in the slimy filth on the floor. Her hand closed on the stock of her crossbow. The creature reared back, ready to clamp its jaws down on her head, and she jammed the crossbow between its teeth and up against the roof of its mouth.

  She pulled the trigger and the weapon kicked in her hand. The bolt was driven up through its mouth and the base of its skull. Whatever it pierced, it was something the creature could not do without. It thrashed uncoordinated for a moment before rolling off her to scrabble uselessly in the dirt.

  Jorasca ignored the red points of pain in her shoulder as she jumped back to her feet. She saw Xavion swinging his broadsword two-handed at a creature that leapt at him. The blade connected with the meat of its thigh and carved off one of its hind legs in a tremendous upwelling of blood. The creature screamed and crashed to the ground where it thrashed its remaining limbs as the blood pulsed out of it. Xavion’s reverse stroke buried the length of the blade in the side of another creature’s skull.

  Xavion struggled to wrench the blade free as another creature stalked at him. A bolt from Dolth’s crossbow pinged against the wall as the other crew were falling back, towards the unseen far edge of the cavern. Akmon Thaal, at the edge of Jorasca’s vision, was wrestling one of the reptilian beasts to the ground and wrenching its head around so its spine gave way.

  Jorasca ran for Xavion, loading another bolt. Xavion kicked the dead reptile free of his blade and Jorasca fired at the one approaching the knight. The bolt caught it in the chest, just above one of its atrophied forelimbs, but it didn’t seem to register any pain. The reptile leaped at Xavion as the knight tried to bring his blade round to bear.

  But the sword was too long. The reptile closed too quickly. Before Xavion could slash or stab, the creature’s jaws closed around his sword arm and shoulder. Jorasca could hear the metal buckling and puncturing as the enormous jaws’ muscles clamped down.

  Jorasca dropped her bow and drew the thin-bladed dagger she kept in her belt. She ran to Xavion and stabbed the creature in the eye. It did not let go of its grip and she grabbed its jaws, trying to force them open.

  ‘Go,’ gasped Xavion.

  Two more reptiles were approaching. One of them had a muzzle covered in blood, presumably from devouring Arnulf. Jorasca was sure it was grinning at her.

  ‘Go, child,’ said Xavion again.

  Jorasca grabbed her crossbow, and ran.

  She looked back, once. Xavion was trying to fend off the blood-muzzled reptile. Pinned down by the weight of the dead creature still clamped to him, he could only jab feebly at the creature. Jorasca turned away as the reptile darted inside his guard, its jaws yawning open, ready to bite down on the knight’s unprotected head.

  Jorasca plunged into the noisome darkness as she heard Xavion crying out. She forced herself to keep running as his cries became quieter. Finally, the knight’s screaming stopped, and there was only a seething silence around her.

  * * *

  They halted at a wall of infernal heat, pulsing from beyond a half-fallen wall covered in carved figures. It was an image of despair and abandonment, for the portions showing the heavens had collapsed long ago and the carvings’ prayers were offered up at nothing.

  Akmon Thaal had halted, confident the huge lizard beasts were too content with devouring the dead to pursue. He leaned against the wall and consulted the map again as Dolth and Felhangar reached him, panting with exertion and the sudden heat.

  Jorasca’s lungs burned. She suddenly felt pain flaring all over her from her close encounter with the lizard, as if the pain had been left behind when she fled and was now catching up with her. She took in a scalding breath and the heat was like a weight pressing down on her.

  We go on,’ said Thaal, his face dully lit by the ruddy glow coming through the doorway beside him. ‘We are nearly there.’

  ‘How do you know?’ said Jorasca.

  She hadn’t willed the words to come out. They had emerged of their own accord. Another, angrier woman inside her had decided to speak her mind.

  Thaal turned to her and held the map up in front of her face. ‘Everything that was written has come to pass,’ he said. ‘As I always knew. As you should have accepted.’

  Jorasca had glimpsed the map from a distance, but this was the first time she had got a proper look at it. It depicted the island the Fathom’s Faith had reached, with an oversized diagram of the pyramidal temple. The way through was stylised, bearing little actual relation to the path the crew had taken, but the symbols of a hail of arrows and a fanged maw suggested the perils they had already encountered. Beyond that was a sea of flame inked in red, and beneath it, a circle with the emblem of a gleaming gemstone. The map was covered in annotations in a language Jorasca couldn’t read. In one corner was stamped an emblem of two dragons intertwined.

  ‘The mark of the Athenaeum Noctis,’ said the Heritor, indicating the emblem. ‘The greatest seat of learning in the world. It was from their libraries that I acquired this map, at greater cost than you can imagine. And every line has been proven true. Is that enough for you?’

  The braver woman inside Jorasca had retreated, leaving her only with the immense presence of the Heritor Akmon Thaal bearing down on her. ‘What is the treasure?’ she said, forcing the words out.

  ‘Something beyond mere wealth,’ replied Thaal. ‘The map tells of a treasure of knowledge that will unlock true greatness for whoever grasps it. Something of such immense import it was locked away in this temple and protected by all the dangers we have survived, so the jealous god of the builders would never have to share it with a mortal. But I am not mortal, and I will take it.’

  ‘How to find the Crystal Pool,’ said Dolth. He spoke, as ever, without inflection, as if he was observing a bug
on the ground.

  Akmon Thaal shot Dolth a dark look and folded the map back up. ‘As I said, we are nearly there. Stay here if you will. The guardian beasts will have your scent again soon enough. I shall press on.’ He stepped through the doorway and into the heat beyond.

  ‘You stayin’?’ asked Felhangar.

  ‘Depends on whether what’s past here is worse than what’s behind us,’ replied Dolth.

  ‘I can’t imagine anything worse,’ said Jorasca.

  ‘Yeah, well, I got a good imagination,’ said Felhangar. He had a habit of snarling every other sentence, revealing black and broken teeth. Perhaps, Jorasca thought, it was how he smiled. ‘But there ain’t nothing back there I can buy me own ship with, so I’m going with him.’

  ‘Nought for me back there either,’ said Dolth. ‘Too few left to sail the Faith even if we did get back to shore.’

  And that was the decision made for Jorasca, because as much as she feared what lay beyond, she wasn’t going back through the temple alone.

  She followed the crew through the doorway, and saw what they were up against next.

  An immense natural cavern lay in front of her, almost entirely filled with a sluggish, glowing river of orange-red molten rock. Some volcanic system below broke through here and the lifeblood of the earth poured up through a great upwelling at one side of the chamber, to vanish in a churning lavafall at the far side. Thaal stood on the shore of volcanic sand, looking up at a building little larger than a townhouse perched improbably on four slender pillars rising from the lava. A bridge of stone lengths, like a grand staircase torn from a palace, led from the shore up to the chamber. The segments of the staircase hung from chains attached to the distant stone ceiling, and each part swayed in the buffeting of superheated air.

  ‘Well, that’s just bloody brilliant,’ said Jorasca.

  ‘What did you expect?’ said Dolth, to which Jorasca had no answer.

  Akmon Thaal took the first step onto the stairway. His clothing flapped around in the scalding wind pulsing up from the molten rock.