Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane (62 page)

‘Your will is my will now, Captain. You’ll do as I command.’

‘Yes,’ Dead Leg said again in a hollow voice.

‘Good. Now kill Kal Moonheart.’

END OF PART TWO

PART THREE

THE FORBIDDEN ISLAND

A swirling storm, a turning tide,

Send me to my shell to hide.

But the deepest sea and the darkest cave,

Are just new challenges for me to brave.

III.i

The Purple Mountain

Lula Pearl paused for a brief rest under the shade of the eucalyptus trees. They smothered the slopes of the Purple Mountain, and on a warm day like today they gave off a cloudy emission, the amethyst hue of which gave the mountain its name. Lula breathed it in; it was sweet, fresh and cooling, and gave her energy for the next stretch of the climb: a steep ridge on the side of the mountain that was exposed to the sun. She had better hurry; the peak of the mountain was riddled with caves and secret gorges, and she couldn’t afford to lose her quarry.

Out on the ridge, she could see them ahead of her: a white man and woman, lugging a chest between them as they struggled up the path. If they looked back, though, they would just get an eyeful of the sinking afternoon sun, and not see the ten-year-old girl who was on their trail.

She didn’t know it then, but at the same time as Lula was climbing the Purple Mountain, halfway across the world her future friend and lover, Kal Moonheart, was trudging through the snow up the Starfinger Mountains. In some respects, their worlds were very different; in others, the same.

Lula stopped where a cloud of enormous green dragontail butterflies had landed on something. They fluttered away as she reached down and lifted it up: a golden cup that was fashioned with a pattern of geometric skulls.
Inzek treasure!
The Inzeks were the children of Vuda, and inhabited the Islands thousands of years ago. Legends of their lost cities and treasure hordes still fuelled the fantasies of adventurous children like Lula even today.

To take the treasure, though, was to be cursed by Vuda herself. Yet Lula wasn’t surprised that the woman she was following up the mountain paid no heed to ancient warnings. This woman was from a distant city called Amaranthium, where the people laughed off stories of the gods, and turned the temples into banks and casinos.

The woman Lula was following was her mother.

Back in the village, earlier that day, Lula had heard her father and her stepmother talking. Arguing, really, since Lula’s real mother was a prickly topic of conversation between them. But between all the shouting and sulking, Lula gathered that her mother’s ship had been spotted anchored off the coast. Then, later in the afternoon, Lula’s friend Otis had seen strangers on the mountainside. He said he had been out earning a few extra coppers picking coffee beans in the plantation on the leeward side of the mountain, and had fallen asleep on the job. When he woke up, everyone else had gone home, but he had spied two figures taking the path that led to the summit.

Lula hadn’t seen her mother in five years. She was a wealthy merchant who travelled the world, and had little time for the children she left with their fathers in her numerous ports of call. But on that last visit, she had given Lula a triangular beaver-fur hat, and Lula was wearing it now. She wanted to be sure her mother recognised her daughter when she surprised her at the top of the mountain.

The summit of the Purple Mountain wasn’t a sharp peak, but rather an uneven plateau of fern-covered gullies. The view from the edge was incredible: Lula could see all the way to Port Black, and she could even pick out the half-built fort out on its island in the bay. Further along the coast she could also see the seashell quarries and bare patches of tree stumps, where the island’s natural resources had been plundered by its Republic overlords.

But what did a ten-year-old care about such things? Right now, all Lula thought about was the thrill of stalking her mother. Perhaps her mother would come and visit more often if Lula impressed her today. Or maybe she’d even take Lula away to sea with her, and teach her how to be merchant, and get rich travelling the world buying and selling exotic goods.

Lula turned into the interior of the summit. The trail was easy to follow; at this altitude it was cool and humid, and there were damp footprints in the lush grass. It wasn’t long before Lula was creeping through the ferns towards the sound of voices in a secluded grove. Over the babble of the voices was another sound:
squelch, slap, squelch, slap 
…

Lula crept as close as she dared. Peering out from between the fronds, she could see her mother and the other man (her mother’s first mate, she reckoned) standing around a hole in the ground. Lula’s friend Otis was waist deep in the hole, digging out clods of dark, fertile earth with a shovel.

When he was done and had climbed out, Lula’s mother and her mate dragged the chest to the lip of the hole, and shoved it in.

They were burying Inzek treasure!
This was bad news. If the Islanders ever found any Inzek gold, they were sure to donate it to the temples of Vuda. To secretly bury it was sure to incur the god’s wrath.

But if her mother’s actions so far didn’t completely shock or surprise Lula, then what happened next turned her world completely upside down …

Lula’s mother stepped towards Otis as if to thank him, but her hand suddenly flicked upwards, and there was a bright flash of metal. Otis was left standing there, a vivid red horizontal line drawn across his throat. As he seemed to struggle for some words, the other man, the first mate, started cursing at Lula’s mother. The tall blond woman put her hand on the man’s shoulder to calm him, but then he dropped to his knees clutching his stomach as if taken by some sudden illness. Lula’s mother helped Otis gently down into the pit he had just dug, and then she gave her first mate a friendly pat on the back, sending him tipping forward to join the village boy.

It was only when her mother took up the spade and started to shovel earth back over the bodies, that the full realisation of what had just happened hit Lula, and she gasped out loud.

Her mother was with her in an instant, holding her close and whispering platitudes, explanations and soft words of affection. ‘I had to do it, Lula darling, don’t you see? Or they would have done the same to me. Gold turns people against each other. That’s its curse.’ Lula was sobbing, and her mother’s patience was thin; the tenderness didn’t last long. ‘If I could only give you one piece of advice, Lula,’ she said in a serious tone, ‘then it would be this: always look out for yourself, and never mind anybody else.’

She gripped Lula’s head in her hands and looked her daughter in the eye. ‘Now run back home,’ she said with a twisted attempt at a smile, ‘before I have to kill you, too.’

* * *

Lula never saw her mother again after that day. A few years later, Analine Marley was captured at sea by General Cassava of the Republic fleet. She was hung as a pirate from the yardarm of her own ship. Lula learned her lesson, though; she never told anyone else about the hidden gold.

And six years later, when village life was closing in on her and threatening to bind her to the slopes of the Purple Mountain for the rest of her life, the advice came in useful. To the surprise of her father, stepmother and stepbrothers, Lula Pearl somehow found the means to buy, equip and crew a small ship. Then she sailed away from her old life and never looked back.

III.ii

Marooned

Lula squinted in the harsh sunlight. She could see a blob of green floating in front of the sun, underlined by a white stripe and surrounded by blue sea and sky.
A small island!
She looked up: the sky was clear and cloudless. She looked down: the sea was clear and teeming with shiny mackerel. She turned around …

Amaro Azul was standing at the other end of the plank, toting one of his pistols. The rest of his crew were gathered around him, enjoying the spectacle.

‘Go on, girl,’ Azul said. ‘One more step!’

Lula could barely feel her limbs, let alone move them. She had spent the last three days chained to Azul’s bed. Fortunately, the captain himself had spent the nights sleeping in the forecastle with his crew. But during the day he had sat at his desk and, while Lula squirmed in frustration, her muscles cramping in agony, he had chatted away as he worked on his ledgers and logs.

Azul had fondly reminisced about growing up in Eldragoro with his brother, Gaspar. Lula had no choice but to listen to all the charming tales of brotherly adventure: Azul and Gaspar’s first voyage, where they had sailed a two-man yacht between the Straight of Swords; their first trip to a brothel, where they had shared the cost of the most expensive whore; and their first kill—the owner of the brothel, who had tried to charge the brothers twice the whore’s usual price, even though they had finished up with her in half the allotted time, and hadn’t bruised her too badly.

And as he talked, Azul fingered the brass telescope that had once belonged to Gaspar; the accursed trinket that had proved too tempting for Lula to resist, and inevitably had given her away.

She had put up with three torturous days of this physical and emotional torment, and then this morning they had keelhauled her.

A long rope had been tied around her ankles, then Azul’s giant bearded first mate had dropped her over the side at the bow and dragged her along the side of the ship, all the way to the stern. He did this six times, yanking her up for air each time he turned. Too slow, and Lula would have been drowned; too fast, and she would have been ripped apart by the sharp barnacles that covered the
Drago Azul’s
hull. The first mate found a happy medium that left Lula gasping for air and covered in cuts.

And now here she was, the final humiliation: standing at the end of a plank, dressed only in her beaver-fur tricorn hat and a tattered shirt that flapped around her hips in the sea breeze.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Lula asked her captor. ‘Why don’t you just kill me?’

Azul made a face like he was shocked. ‘Do you take me for a
monster
!’ he protested. ‘I am a fair and honest man. You condemned my brother to his death by handing him to the governor of Port Black, but you did not kill him yourself. And so, following the pirate code, I too condemn you to death, but I will not strike the finishing blow.’

He looked at the pistol in his hand. ‘Here, I have a parting gift for you.’ He jumped up onto the plank, reached forward and laid the pistol within Lula’s reach, along with a small bag. ‘There’s a ball and enough powder for one shot,’ he said. ‘So make it count!’

Lula grabbed the gifts. She wasn’t too proud to refuse.

She looked over her shoulder at the lonely island: her new home, and probably her grave. ‘Where are we?’

Azul shrugged. ‘Just some remote little island we once used as a hideout some years back. The chart we made is probably the only one in existence. We won’t be coming back, though—there’s no shelter on the beaches, and the jungle is full of some of the biggest insects I have ever seen. Now go, Lula. Go and inspect your new kingdom!’

Lula could only think of one last play. ‘If you’re going after the governor next, I can help you get to him! We’ll make a plan together—I can take you in as if to hand you over for the bounty, then you can surprise him …’

Azul laughed, and Lula trailed off. ‘I wouldn’t trust you even if I did need help,’ Azul said. ‘But I don’t need it. My good friend the King of Eldragoro has been looking for an excuse to take over Port Black for years, and Gaspar’s cruel death has given him one. The Armada is already halfway here, and I have examined the town’s defences at first hand. Port Black will fall, Lula. Just be glad you will not be around to see it—there will be blood on the streets, and it’s so hard to tell who is and who isn’t a zombie these days.’

Lula’s anger rose, and she started back down the plank to the ship. Azul, still laughing, stamped his foot hard on the wood, and the plank started to wobble. Lula’s arms flailed desperately.

‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ Azul said, reaching into his coat pocket. ‘This belongs to you. I won’t have this filth polluting my ship.’ He tossed a small packet to Lula. Her last remaining Sirensbane! She grabbed for it, and as her fingers closed around it, she toppled off the plank and fell head first into the sea.

The water was warm and almost comforting. The salt stung her cuts, but it jolted her weary body awake. For a brief moment, she felt free and safe. When she surfaced, though, she got a mouthful of bilge water and rotten fruit peelings: the crew were dumping the garbage overboard. Lula loosed a colourful curse at Amaro Azul.

He waved as his ship’s sails caught the wind. ‘Goodbye, Lula Pearl! You were a good lay, but I have another woman to chase now. If I deliver Port Black to my king, then he may reward me with his sixteen-year-old daughter! She is as shy and as meek as a mouse, but I will think of you when I screw her. It will make it twice as exciting, but be only half the trouble of the real thing!’

Azul’s laughter rang in Lula’s ears as the ship drifted away.

* * *

The garbage would attract sharks, so Lula immediately made for shore. Both survival instincts and anger powered her limbs as she fought her way through the riptides. It was only a mile to the beach, but Lula’s leg and arms were aching before she was even halfway. At one point, she was certain that she wasn’t even going to have the luxury of contemplating her own death on a soft sandy shore; she was going to sink beneath the waves and get ripped apart by sharks before she even hit the bottom.

These grim thoughts were what inspired her to make the extra effort. Her brain focused on the white line of the beach, and her legs found their own kick-reflex, operating independently of her will. She was still kicking when a surging wave deposited her face down in soft wet sand. It took her some moments to realise she was safe.