The ship’s soul shivers visibly, slumps in a rippling cascade of flesh. He redoubles his blows, targeting carefully. The tone of the sound is changing, to relief, to gratitude. The Ligeia slithers down into the burbling rippling tide that is now almost waist deep. Suddenly it coils and pulses with renewed energies. Flaring like a human-size jellyfish, rippling through the torrent, towards the breached hull, and out into the sea beyond. Bahl lurches backwards, stunned and overwhelmed. Kalyfaron is pulling him back. Through the galleys and up the companionways towards the deck. The lurching underfoot is getting more pronounced, trembling as though shaken by a giant claw, spumes of water jetting in through gaps ripped in the timber.

  ‘We should take. . . something. Documents, charts, evidence.’

  ‘No, we have all we need. We must get back to The Drakkon while we still can.’

  He hesitates far longer than he should. Then follows her to the serpent-ship prow, over the bulwark and down into the bobbing coracle. Even as they unhook the tether and push away, the wreck shivers and cracks with the deafening sound of thunder, and settles lower into the tide. Its collapse sets up a bow-wave that propels them forward, clinging grimly to the wildly spinning boat, losing the guideline.

  As the explosion of surf settles and they begin sculling back across the expanse they can see the liberated Ligeia circling them in a graceful rippling motion.

  Kalyfaron looks up at him with a teasing expression. ‘I apologise for volunteering you for this. I needed to find out about you. Now I know.’

  ‘What was it you wanted to find out?’

  She smiles enigmatically. ‘I now know what I know.’ Her voice dances silkily.

  Then Master Yosay is reaching an enormous brown hand down to haul them back up onto the deck. ‘What happened over there?’

  He was about to shake his head ruefully when Kalyfaron interrupts, ’We released their Ligeia, it’s out there now, talking to our Ligeia. We’ll find out what happened from her.’

  The Drakkon turns into the wind. The Ligeia follows in its slipstream.

  *

  ‘Intense pain and extreme suffering has a force that warps and disturbs the aether, that sends a vortex of ripples outwards, backwards and forwards in time. Those with exceptional psychic gifts, after long training in their use, become sensitive to interpreting the shimmer of vibrations, and the codes they embody.’ Yosay speaks carefully.

  ‘This is the vision that we follow?’

  ‘The world has its seasons. The Mystoneian island empire has withstood ten-thousand years of the Earth’s summer. The mage’s collective vision foresaw icesheets enveloping us all in ten-thousand years of winter. A new world is coming. A different world. I’m ready for that change. I accept it. I’m prepared. Yet we know there were lost ages in time before the first stones of Mystoneia were placed one upon the other. The archives of those eras have deteriorated over the centuries, there are gaps in our knowing. So much has been lost. But the people of earlier ages left time-tombs to help and guide us. That is what we seek. That is what our twelve serpent-ships seek. I care not for enigmas. I’m a practical man of certainties. I know we’ll find the tombs not because we are more worthy, but simply because we’ve been striving for year upon year, and sometimes simple persistence pays off.’

  ‘But the other ship. What about the wreck?’ says Bahl.

  ‘They were deliberately lured onto those reefs, at night, by guide-lights set up by slavers,’ explains Kalyfaron. ‘They took the crew. But obviously they neither knew nor understand what the Ligeia was, so they simply left her there in the ship. But she knows. We pool this knowing. She can guide us to where the slavers have taken the crew. We can yet help them to fulfil their mission.’

  Two long days further down the inhospitable coastline. A hard cold drizzle drifts, with thick shafts of sunlight slanting across the choppy sea from rifts in layers of dark clouds. Then there are lights. At first it seems little more than the glisten of wet stone beyond the cliffs. Yosay studies it through a lens. There’s a narrow fjord entrance, leading into an enclosed bay. And hidden away behind the towering gates of rock, the source of the lights. Below decks the Ligeia is becoming more agitated. This is their most immediate destination. The lair of the Slavers.

  Yosay’s momentary indecision was alerted by an eerie wail from an ivory horn, the sound beats in a long note in the air, answered by a flotilla of small craft emerging from the rock mouth, hailing them. The crew brace, ready for flight if that becomes necessary. Bahl Longfar and Kalyfaron watch, crouched on the crossbeam so they can see over their heads, in a mix of foreboding and rising excitement. These are ghost-people. Pale-skinned, but unmistakably human, in rough barbaric garb. The leading water-taxi docks against The Drakkon’s prow, and they lower a grapple.

  Yosay stands ready as a delegation clambers aboard. A long-haired older man with a tall staff to steady him, a beard that flows into his mass of hair, and eyebrows that meet in the middle to form a hairy ridge. And his more solid companion, pale to the point of bloodless, with his dark hair in knotted braids. The older man, it seems, is Ezrel, the other is Sigurt. They speak in a more guttural accent, that at first Bahl Longfar has difficulty in understanding, as words are torn away and lost in the chill breeze. ‘Arhavj is an open port,’ Ezrel was saying. ’You’re free to trade here, so long as you respect the free trade rights of others.’

  ‘You’re Mystoneian,’ Sigurt was saying, striding back and forth aggressively. ‘I’ve heard of your island empire, ancient with wealth, decadent and ripe for plunder.’

  ‘Yet guarded by powerful sorceries,’ replies Yosay defensively.

  ‘Sorcery is old culture, only real for those who believe in it,’ Sigurt snorts disparagingly.

  ‘Draw your fine vessel into the protection of our harbour,’ the oldster cuts in, tactfully defusing the rising tension. ‘Then you will perhaps join in? While your crew enjoy the hospitality of our taverns.’

  The two men regard each other silently, until Yosay gives an almost imperceptible nod. He leads a group from The Drakkon down onto the water-taxi and across towards the port. As they near, Bahl and Kalyfaron can see it’s an unlovely tumble of buildings largely constructed of timber with reed-thatch roofing. A sprawling rambling town surrounded by natural buttresses of stone. Crude and primitive compared to the island empire they’ve sailed from, yet with a raw vigour of its own. Through narrowed eyes Bahl envisages it as a pastel drawing of shades and shadows, his sketchbook and pens invitingly in his backpack. A number of other ships are tethered at the quay, with a gaudy array of contrasting styles, denoting a diversity of foreign origins. One of them must be the Slaver, with captured mariners from the wrecked vessel. The harbour-side is thronged with bustling taverns, traders, chandlers overflowing with goods, while stevedores offload fish, heavy bales and amphora. People so fish-belly white they must be bloodless, he thought. Once they’ve disembarked, Yosay is led away by the reception delegation towards an austere building, taller than its neighbours, its exterior decorated with pennants and the skulls of huge horned creatures.

  Bahl Longfar, with Kalyfaron, squirm away unseen into the press of people. He knows how to run and hide. How to take alleys and side streets where the stench of open gutters stain the drizzling breeze. The two outsiders provoke curious stares, but the hooded ghost-people are obviously used to visiting strangers in unusual garb. The winding side-streets rise steeply from the harbour, muddy and uncobbled, overhung by ramshackle awnings. Eventually they’re high enough to look down over the harbour, and see The Drakkon moored in the centre of the bay. Bahl points. A chain-barrier has been drawn up across the sheer rock mouth, barring passage back into the open sea beyond. A simple security measure, or something more sinister?

  He turns, and shocks still. Across the foul street, beneath an alcove, a powerfully-built man is brandishing a leather strap over a cowering youth. Even as Bahl watches, the strap whips down with an audible rip across the boy’s shoulders, he whimpers and crouches further in upon himself as the brutal flail comes down again and again.

  ‘Hey, stop!’ yells Bahl, leaping across the muddy way, his arm raised. Acting on impulse.

  The man turns, glowering. ‘My property. I discipline my property as I think fit. You dare to interfere?’ He brandishes the strap menacingly.

  ‘He’s had enough. Leave him alone.’ Bahl braces, ready, but suddenly sick with fear.

  The assailant lurches across the street, the strap hissing in a deadly arc, catching Longfar’s shoulder and ramming him backwards. He slips and falls, as his attacker raises his arm again. Almost before he realises what’s happening there’s a sharp whirring detonation. The man howls in shock and horror.

  As Bahl scrambles to his feet he sees Kalyfaron reloading her crossbow, and the bolt she’s already loosed impales the man’s foot to the mud. He yells in pain and attempts to wrench it free. She skips around him, seizes the crouching boy by the hand, and makes off down the street. Bahl glances this way and that, and – without even conscious thought, hares off after them. The urgency of flight is exhilarating, ducking through garbage-strewn alleys and losing themselves in the crowd.

  Eventually pausing for breath, he glances across at his companions. Kalyfaron is laughing, bending, hands on her knees. And he feels a rush of exhilaration. Surprised by their own reactions. The three of them are standing in a small square at the squalid junction of three narrow streets. He inhales deeply and holds the chill air in his lungs. Mystoneia, the shining city of miracles and impossible devices, is a million miles away. Instead, his anger has found tangible targets, until he can stand aside from it. He can see his rage for what it is. Anger was a useful energy. But it was also self-destructive. It leads only to chaos and suffering. To hate his father for his weaknesses leaves only a hard burr of resentment in his gut. It won’t change anything. It won’t bring his father back. It won’t hurt his father. It only hurts himself. After all, didn’t his father carry scars from his own childhood? Pain is a legacy passed down the generations. He has to learn how to contain that pain. It’s possible to love and hate at the same time. Until it no longer touches him. He’s left it behind.

  He glances across at Kalyfaron, meets her eyes, and they’re smiling. He gets an instant image of her at the capstan, turning the vanes, the muscles moving beneath her sweat-shining skin, the rise of her small firm breasts. The image is excitingly disturbing.

  ‘Thank you.’ He deliberately shifts his attention, drawn by the voice of the youth they’ve rescued. And his flesh crawls. Beneath a shock of dark hair there’s a raised forehead ridge that looks brutishly deformed. Wary deep-set eyes either side of wide flared nostrils. He’s some kind of un-human halfling.

  ‘Why was he beating you?’ asks Kalyfaron. Gentle concern in her voice. She moves closer to him and examines the raw welts on his shoulders.

  ‘It’s what they do.’ He shrugs, wiping his nose on a dirty sleeve. ‘I am Moongold Fourmost of the Shilmah. We were taken.’ His breathing is heavy with pain and exertion, his voice strangely modulated, rasping in a low throaty tone that’s different from that of Ezrel or Sigurt.

  ‘We? There are more of you? Taken as slaves?’

  He nods his huge shaggy head vigorously.

  ‘Were there others taken? Others such as we?’

  ‘I can show you.’

  Bahl glances across at Kalyfaron. She smiles her agreement. ‘Show us. Take us there.’

  Cautiously they set out, following Moongold Fourmost as he ducks and weaves through the maze of alleyways, every now and then gifting them an unexpected panorama of the Arhavj harbour beneath them, so they’re roughly able to orientate their position. They were circling the bay, while maintaining their elevation.

  Eventually they arrive in the shadow of a large hall on the town’s outer rim. Fourmost ducks his head and turns his back on the building, obviously fearful of what it represents. Bahl notes the presence of sallow-faced armed guards in position at the tall, decorated gates. Kalyfaron leads the way down a narrow passage to one side of the building, to where it ends in the solid rock face that rears behind it and ascends yet higher. As though the hall itself is built into the steep gradient itself, rather than on the surrounding rock-face. They pause. Then circle around the other side of the hall, to find a similar blind alley. This must be the Slavers’ holding centre. They take their unfortunate victims in raids and imprison them here awaiting export through the harbour to trading cities beyond the sea.

  Dusk was already gathering. The looming black granite cliffs silhouetted against a coral evening sky. ‘We should return and tell Yosay what we’ve learned,’ suggests Bahl.

  ‘We’ve learned nothing. We have only hints and suggestions. Wait.’ She cups her hands over her eyes and looks upwards. Then, bracing against flaws and fissures in the rock, she swings herself upwards, clambering higher, shifting her weight from the knotted timber crossbeams to the rough stone, hanging there, questing for her next place of purchase, planning her ascent carefully. Scuffing her knee painfully, cursing, then grappling her way up to the next level. There are high vents just beneath the rim of thatch. She hangs suspended, resting, then ventures higher.

  There are roosting bats in the thatch, they take panicky flight. She worms her way into the dark mouth of the nearest vent, enabling her to wriggle through its mustiness, and look down into the hall’s interior. There is all the evidence they need. In flickering torchlight she sees a cluster of bored guards, then a number of caged Shilmah, obviously members of Moongold’s tribe. It’s only then that she sees a dozen prisoners in the ragged remnants of Mystoneian garb. Survivors of those snatched from the wreck.

  Squirming backwards she encounters Moongold behind her. He’d obviously followed her ascent with equal agility, despite his apparent clumsiness. She smiles into his squat face. ‘Do you think you could climb down inside and alert your people?’ she hissed with sudden resolve.

  He pulls a grotesque grin, then shuffles around so that he could commence a descent. For a moment she half-doubts her own decision, and would have bade him return, but already it was too late. Night was gathering as she slips back the way she’d come, darkness making it even more hazardous, slipping, fumbling and half-falling, only to grasp, arrest and steady herself, cursing under her breath. Bahl was waiting to help her the last distance to the alleyway, and she hastily explains her plan.

  Taking four of her remaining crossbow bolts he uses his knife to slit lengths of cloth from the hem of his tunic and ties them in tight around the barbs. He takes his snaphance ignition flints from his pack and pauses until she’s ready. Gathering a pile of dry weed and drifting thatch into a small mound, he ignites it, nursing and blowing until the flame catches. She paces up and down the narrow alley, her head cricked back, seeking out the most advantageous target points. She notches the first bolt onto the taut wire, and he lights the cloth taper, it gutters and burns. She raises the weapon, takes aim and releases it in a fiery comet streaking upwards, into the packed thatch, where it smoulders. She takes the second, third and fourth bolt, placing them strategically spaced along the hall’s overhang. The thatch is damp from the steady drizzle, but its underside is still tinder-dry. At first it seems they’ve failed. There’s a low fluctuating glow from each point of impact. One on them winks out and dies. The others flare and ripple in spreading flame, gathering in an intensifying conflagration.

  The two smile in satisfaction, then circle around to the front of the hall. The two guards have retreated inside and the heavy gates are bolted shut. At first there’s little response. Kalyfaron kneels with her crossbow ready. Bahl’s throat is dry with trepidation. Above them they can see the glow of the conflagration as it takes hold, already painting the underside of low cloud with bright reflection. Suddenly there are startled yells from inside, and the sound of excited confusion. There’s a frantic clattering, and the metal-studded gate swings outwards. One of the guards strides out, fleshy and dark-jowelled. Kalyfaron’s first bolt takes him down. Behind him there’s a glowing inferno, the raucous noise of screams and fighting as the fire rages with voracious energy. There’s a tumble of bodies cramming through the exit, guards swamped underfoot by escaping prisoners. One guard stumbles and gasps with his throat ripped away. Another guard – brandishing a halberd, is taken down by Kalyfaron’s next bolt. Bahl scoops up the axe-headed weapon and uses it himself.

  People from neighbouring buildings emerge pointing and yelling, fearing the blaze will spread to their own properties. They add to the confusion in their attempts to fight the fire, with a bucket chain. Bahl shouts as he spots Moongold through the melee, he’s guiding the Shilmah slaves out into the night. Behind him come the group of Mystoneians. A force of Slavers had also arrived on the far side of the mob. Bahl is startled to see that they’re led by Sigurt, but they seem more concerned with tackling the fire than in rounding up escapees. Kalyfaron, with Moongold, begin guiding the freed slaves away down the sloping street towards the harbour.

  Bahl approaches the nearest Mystoneian, a confused aged man wearing what had obviously once been richly-embroidered robes. ‘We are from The Drakkon,’ he hisses. ‘Are all of you safely here?’

  The man’s wild eyes settle on him, and there’s relief in his recognition. ‘Oh dear, Oh dear. Thank the old gods. We lost some good mariners. This is all most distressing. But the rest of us are here, yes.’ His lined face a mask of frisking light as the blazing hall throws up yet hungrier tongues of flame.