Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago: Tales of the Lost Isles

by JOSEPH A. MCCULLOUGH

Of course, I had no idea.

  ‘In my land we have men called smiths,’ I said. ‘They… they are great magicians, who can work metal into blades a hundred times stronger than bronze.’

  Javan nodded, and reluctantly handed the sword back to me.

  ‘Come,’ he said.

  I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to venture further, but with Javan’s warriors around us I could see that we had little choice. All I wanted to do was trade, by which I meant rob them blind. A city this size, where gold was worth less than bronze, and steel looked like magic… oh, the money that could be made here!

  Javan and his men led us deeper into the city, and all around us I could feel the weight of the years and a sense of all-pervading decay. The Dricheans might be the more civilised inhabitants of the Ghost Archipelago but all the same it was obvious that theirs was a failing, declining civilisation. Great cracks were visible in the stone buildings, and long beards of moss hung from every ledge and balcony.

  I looked across an open plaza to a building that had clearly collapsed under its own weight, and saw young saplings pushing up through the fallen rubble. A huge snake wound around one, banded black and gold, and regarded me with pitiless eyes. Barefoot children ran out of a house to greet the returning warriors, clad in nothing but scraps of course-woven cloth.

  ‘Your city is magnificent,’ I told Javan. ‘You must have many enemies, jealous of your wealth and civilisation.’

  I heard Jondan cough loudly behind me, but I ignored him.

  ‘The Tribals are a spear in our side,’ Javan said. ‘We are civilised and organised, but on this island we are few and they are many. Without our rangers to scout for us and warn us when they approach in force, we would be sorely pressed to hold them off.’

  I nodded slowly in a way that I hoped looked wise.

  ‘With steel weapons, you would be able to hold them off with ease,’ I said. ‘Your rangers saw me fight, on the beach. You know what steel can do.’

  Those things may not have been directly connected or entirely the whole of the truth, but Javan nodded all the same.

  ‘How would we come by steel weapons?’ he asked me.

  ‘With gold,’ I said. ‘Gold is mostly useless, as you say, but there are those in my land who enjoy looking at the colour of it. A large enough amount of gold could, perhaps, persuade the magical smiths to conjure a few steel weapons for you.’

  ‘We have much gold,’ Javan said. ‘The hills around here give little else.’

  I swallowed in a dry throat, and forced my trembling lips to keep still and not betray the smile I felt. This whole island was made of gold! It was the legends come true, and Marek Price was here to claim the bounty of the Ghost Archipelago from these uneducated simpletons.

  If only it had been that easy…

  * * *

  They feasted us that night, under the stars beside a great fire that burned in the open plaza at the foot of the pyramid. There was food and music and dancing, a throbbing rhythm of drums and pipes that set the Drichean women whirling in their loose, colourful garments. I was eating some sort of roast monkey, but it tasted good enough and their wine tasted better still. Curiously sweet, granted, but excellent none the less.

  I was seated in the place of honour with the pyramid at my back, Javan on one side of me and Jondan on the other. In front of me were the gifts.

  Oh, such gifts!

  Javan had lavished me with gold, with sceptres and goblets and plate and rings and necklaces. I was wearing as much of the jewellery as I could fit on my hands and around my neck, and the rest of the treasure spilled out of a great leather sack that I kept close between my feet. I could buy ten ships with what that would bring, and hire the crews to sail them. I sat back in my carved wooden chair with a contented sigh. For that much gold I might even honour my side of the deal and bring them steel swords. Stranger things had happened.

  I turned and gave Jondan a sly smile, but saw that he was asleep in his chair with his empty goblet dangling from limp fingers. Strange, he could usually hold his drink. My own head was heavy, I realised, and I looked around at the rest of my crew. Melissa was snoring on the floor, her wounded arm cradled against her body in its rough bandages, and Erik and Hallan were slumped in their chairs with their heads almost on their knees. Of all of them, only Headhunter was still awake, and he was reeling in his seat.

  I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment and opened them again, and my vision swam. The great fire was a blur of light in front of me. How much had I had to drink, exactly?

  ‘You are strong,’ Javan said suddenly, a hard smile on his face. ‘A mighty warrior. Your heart must be strong indeed.’

  ‘What?’ I blinked at him, swaying in my chair.

  There was a horrible noise as Headhunter vomited in his own lap. A moment later he had passed out.

  ‘Your heart will honour the sun.’

  ‘I…’

  I really didn’t feel well. Not at all, and the look on Javan’s face was only making me feel worse. Something was badly wrong.

  ‘You think us fools and savages, easily cheated, but you are the fool,’ he said. ‘The rangers told me of the questions you asked, and of your greed for gold. We have greed too, greed for the hearts of strong warriors to appease the sun god. Come the dawn, you will see.’

  I tried to rise, but my legs betrayed me. I grabbed at the arm of my chair but only succeeded in pulling it over on top of me as I fell to the ground. I stretched out a hand and my grasping fingers touched the sack of gold. Javan laughed, and the world went dark.

  * * *

  I woke with the dawn, light stabbing into my eyes as the first rays of the sun crested the horizon. I was high up, I realised, looking down on the canopy of the jungle. I tried to move and found my wrists and ankles lashed to a wooden frame that was holding me upright before a great stone altar. That stone was streaked rusty brown with old blood.

  Fighting down panic I turned my head, looking for Jondan, for any of my crew. I was alone up there, atop the pyramid with the huge gold sun looming over me. I could hear chanting, coming closer.

  I narrowed my eyes, fighting the pain in my head. Whatever they had drugged the wine with had left me with a savage headache, but in truth I had had worse. My father wasn’t the only drinking man in the Price family, after all. I craned my neck and squinted, and now I could see Jondan and the others penned in a rough stockade hidden amongst the crumbling stone buildings below.

  The tramp of boots was audible now, climbing the steps of the pyramid towards me. Three, maybe four men. I tested my bonds but I was held fast, although I realised suddenly that not only was I still wearing the huge quantity of gold jewellery I had adorned myself with the previous night, but also that my sword hung at my side, infuriatingly out of reach.

  Of course, I realised. They want to sacrifice a warrior to this sun god of theirs, and what is a warrior without a weapon?

  Oh, I had a weapon all right. I had a weapon they didn’t know about.

  I had Marta’s legacy.

  It was going to hurt, I knew it was, but I had learned my lesson on the beach. There, faced by overwhelming odds, I had drawn on everything I had, all at once, and blacked out in the resulting frenzy of killing. I couldn’t risk that now. Instead I took a deep breath and pulled in just a little of my gift, enough to give me the strength to burst the ropes that held me. I grinned as the woven vines popped and gave but I stayed as I was, standing spread-eagled against the wooden frame until I saw Javan’s head appear above the line of the steps. I waited until he was only three steps away, his head now level with my waist, then kicked him in the face as hard as I could.

  I put a stab of my gift into that kick, enough to send him flailing back off the steps of the pyramid and into open space. There were two other men on the steps, some kind of priests I assumed from the leopardskins they wore over their clothes. Each had a long bronze dagger in his hand and a look of serene, holy murder on his face.

  My sword flashed from
its scabbard and I stabbed one of them through the neck even as I elbowed the other in the face, sending him tumbling from the steps with a wailing scream. Then I was off and running, pounding down the steps of the pyramid with my red blade in my hand.

  I was halfway to the bottom when Javan grabbed me.

  His leg was obviously broken from his fall, twisted under him at an unnatural angle, but his dark face was set in a snarl of hatred and he too had a dagger in his hand.

  ‘The sun must have your heart!’ he screamed, and plunged the dagger towards my chest.

  I grabbed his wrist with my free hand and stayed the blade, cursing as I struggled to bring my sword to bear in the close confines of our deadly embrace. He gripped my wrist in turn, spitting hatred in my face. We were still on the steps, straining and struggling, and I knew any wrong move could send us both crashing to the bottom in a tangle of broken limbs.

  Summoning my gift, I butted him in the face so hard I felt his skull shatter.

  He slumped dead to the stones under me, and again I was off and running. I could hear shouting from below now as some of the Drichean warriors realised the sacrifice had gone awry. There were six of them charging towards the base of the pyramid with bronze weapons glinting in their hands. I leapt from the fifth step, sailing over their heads, and hit the ground in a neat roll that had me back on my feet and running towards the stockade before they realised what had happened.

  I grit my teeth as I ran, feeling the blood already burning in my calves and forearms. The pain was building, searing my veins. I reached the stockade some twenty paces ahead of my pursuers and simply tore the wooden palisade apart with my hands, roaring defiance.

  Headhunter was first out, his sword clutched in his huge hands.

  ‘Fight!’ I shouted, gasping through clenched teeth as the burning pain wracked my body.

  So confident had the Dricheans been that they hadn’t even stripped my crew of their weapons, and now they met the pursuing warriors with the fury of the betrayed. We had accepted hospitality from these people, and this was how they treated us?

  I heard Erik yelling as he stabbed a man, then the six Drichean warriors were dead on the ground and Jondan was at my side.

  ‘How bad is it?’ he asked me, the concern plain on his grimy face.

  ‘Hurts like all the hells,’ I confessed. ‘We have to get out of here, right now!’

  He nodded and turned, and then I remembered the gifts. There was no way I was leaving that sack of gold behind.

  I dashed back to the open space at the foot of the pyramid with Jondan’s shouts echoing behind me, and found a great mound of ashes where the feasting fire had died in the night. The bulging sack of gold was still where I had left it in front of my fallen chair, and I grabbed it up in one hand with a grin of triumph.

  ‘Our gold,’ a woman’s voice grated in heavily-accented trade. ‘Not for you, man of ship.’

  I turned to see her there, a fierce-looking warrior priestess wearing the skin of a leopard over her leather armour. She too had a sacrificial bronze dagger in her hand. Her eyes flashed with anger and she raised the blade.

  I’ve never killed a woman. I didn’t know if I could kill a woman.

  In the moment it took me to think about that, Hallan stepped up behind the priestess and smashed her head open with her mace.

  ‘We really should go,’ the burly woman said.

  I nodded my thanks to her.

  A moment later someone sounded a long note on a conch shell, and then there were Dricheans pouring out of the stone dwellings all around us.

  ‘We are leaving!’ I shouted, and led my crew on a frantic sprint out of the city and into the waiting green.

  The pain was growing by the minute. I might not be fighting anymore but now I was running, which I was unaccustomed to, and doing it with several stone of gold on my back in the bulging leather sack. Add to that the steaming heat and the swampy terrain, and I was having to draw more heavily on Marta’s legacy than was wise.

  It would fail me eventually, I knew. There was only so much power I could use, only so much pain the body could endure, and then both would fail. We had to reach Dancing Girl before that happened.

  We had to.

  We ran through the place where we had camped with the rangers two nights before, but other than the ashes of the fire there was no sign of them. I could hear things screaming and chattering in the green, monkeys and worse things racing away from the chaos we made as we splashed through pools and broke branches in our haste. Behind us the Dricheans were still coming, I had no doubt of that.

  ‘Which way?’ I shouted at Jondan. ‘Which way?’

  Surely he knew, he was the one who was supposed to be so in touch with nature.

  He stopped his headlong flight for a moment, reached into the green sludge at his feet and lifted a stone. His brow furrowed in concentration while I almost chewed through my lip with impatience, listening to the Dricheans getting closer behind us. I could only hope that without their rangers they were as lost as we were.

  ‘That way,’ he said at last, pointing to a thicket of dripping ferns that looks like every other.

  With no choice but to trust him, I led the crew in that direction, but the Dricheans were close behind us now.

  We ran.

  A spear flashed through the air behind me and stuck fast in the trunk of a tree, the shaft quivering. I fought the pain, tears stinging my eyes as I made myself run faster. It burned.

  It burned so badly!

  Eventually there was light ahead, a glimpse of white through the trees that I could only pray was the beach. We plunged out into the open sunlight at last and my booted feet caught in the sudden softness of the sand, almost spilling me onto my face. There was the boat, pulled up above the tidemark where we had left it.

  The tide was out.

  Of course it bloody was.

  ‘The boat!’ I shouted, my throat raw with pain. ‘Get the boat into the godsdamned water!’

  I could see Dancing Girl rocking at anchor, barely a hundred yards from the shore, could just make out the figure of Iain at the bow, waving. What use did he think that was, the fool?

  The Dricheans crashed through the jungle behind us, and now I could hear drums pounding over the sound of the surf. The whole jungle was a cacophony of noise and fury.

  It was no good, they would be on us in moments and my gift was all used up for the time being. If I had left the gold behind, if I hadn’t wasted so much of Marta’s legacy in carrying it, then perhaps I could have fought them. It was out of the question now, I realised. I could barely see for the pain as it was. I had to rest or I would drop where I stood.

  It was hopeless.

  The Dricheans charged onto the beach, twenty of them with their great bronze shields flashing in the sun.

  The Tribals hit them like a stampeding herd.

  They whooped and screamed as they came, thirty, forty of them, flint axes and sharks-tooth paddles in their hands.

  Erik, Headhunter and Hallan were wrestling the boat into the surf while Melissa and Jondan dragged me down the beach, each helping to support the weight of the bulging sack that I still stubbornly refused to let go of. The edges of my vision were grey with pain and I could hardly stand, but I felt the relatively cool water wash around my ankles before they heaved me into the rocking boat.

  ‘Oars!’ I heard Erik order, and then we were moving.

  From the beach came the crash of battle, the whooping of the Tribals and the sounds of the Dricheans’ cheated rage.

  I barely remember being hauled up the ropes onto the deck of Dancing Girl like a bale of cargo, the sack of gold still clutched tightly in my arms. By the time I came back to myself we were under sail.

  Jondan was squatting in front of me where I lay near the bow, the soothing cool of the spray washing over my fevered body.

  ‘We did it,’ he said, a shaky grin on his face.

  I looked down at the bulging sack on the deck in front of me
, at the rings that glittered on my fingers and the ropes of gold that hung around my neck, and then back over my shoulder at the dark shape of the island that was steadily receding into the distance behind us.

  ‘Aye, we did it,’ I said.

  We had done well. I had enough gold to rebuild Price Shipping, and once that was done I would mount a proper expedition to the Ghost Archipelago before it vanished again. I swore then to myself that I would find the legendary Crystal Pool and drink the waters that would, I was convinced, finally rid me of the curse of Marta’s legacy and make me as great as she had been.

  Jondan shook his head and put a rueful hand on my shoulder.

  ‘I told you, you’re going to get me killed one of these days,’ he said.

  I nodded, but I was barely listening. I would find the Crystal Pool, whatever the price I had to pay.

  ISLE OF THE SILVER MIST

  BY

  HOWARD ANDREW JONES

  We were in-bound to the island, wind filling the sail of our little skiff. Our ship lay anchored in the clear blue bay behind us, and I had myself thinking it wouldn’t be too long before we returned to her decks with a chest of shining treasure. Our luck had been great all the long way over, with clear skies and a wind out of the north-west, and I guess I thought maybe, just once, the gods were smiling on us. I should have known better.

  Between us and the island loomed those tall, spiny brown reefs you see all over the Ghost Archipelago. They’re dangerous in a storm, but with calm waters there was plenty of room to manoeuvre for its beach. Beyond the golden sand glistening in the sunlight lay leaning palms and the thick greens of the deep tropic jungle, ornamented with bright florals. And beyond even that was the worn grey stone height of a step pyramid.

  That pyramid was our goal, and I figured, maybe, just maybe, we could get to the shore, get through the jungle, and snatch the treasures from the ruins before the sun set.

  I was at the prow, right where a brave captain ought to be. Manning the tiller was my cousin Heln, whose bald pate and muscular bare chest were ornamented in blue and green tattoos. Working the sail was the ship’s Wind Warden, his lover Lilandra, slim, trim, her silvery hair queued up tight at the base of her skull, her expression almost mournful in its calm. She was one with the wind, coaxing it to send us the right way. If Heln was my right hand, Lilandra was my left, and I’d been venturing the deeps with them long before the ghosts ever broke back up to haunt the surface again.