by Tom Abrahams
Desmond Branch pulled ahead of her. He climbed speedily, perhaps reinvigorated by the proximity of the crater.
They didn’t stop again until they reached the lip of the crater. At the edge of the gaping hole, Branch stood with his hands on his hips and surveyed the black chasm, which ran down the center of the amorphous bowl. It led into a hole, which appeared to descend deep into the heart of the mountain.
The entire crater’s floor sparkled like the night sky. It was obsidian, a sea of hardened lava. Flecks of sunlight danced off the sharp angles of the glass rock.
Anaxi found it breathtaking.
Branch pivoted away from the crater and faced his remaining crew. A renewed sense of purpose lit his features. A smile squeezed his wounded eye, purpling the swell that stretched from the top of the bridge of his nose to his temple.
His voice was energetic, almost buoyant. “We made it. We’re here. The final part of this journey begins. Let’s go.”
In dramatic fashion, he unsheathed his sword and raised it. Then he unleashed a rousing shout. A primal call. The men followed his lead. The bird circling above banked to one side and flapped it wings to disappear behind the peak.
With Branch and the others so focused on what lay ahead, none of them took the time to see where they’d come from. None of them but Anaxi.
She looked out over the island. From this vantage point, a gentle wind whipping her hair across her face, it seemed the whole world was visible.
She’d never been this high above the endless ocean. Never had the horizon appeared so far away, so unreachable. The water looked like a flat blue plain devoid of movement or life.
Her knees almost buckled at the sight of it, both magnificent and overwhelming, but she held her composure while her eyes danced along the horizon’s gently arcing edge. Her stomach clenched when the drift of her vision caught something foreign in the water aside the Saladin.
At first, she thought her eyes were playing tricks. The black boat, smaller than the pirate ship, was almost invisible from this vantage point. Was it a boat? It had to be. Despite its alien appearance, with sharp angles and no visible means of propulsion, it looked seaworthy.
She’d seen vessels without sails before—the tanker Texas the largest example—but never had they looked so clean, sleek, and new.
What is it doing here? she wondered.
Her stomach tightened again. Her heart raced.
Had someone come to help her? Or was it another band of pirates worse than the ones who held her now?
Who had a boat like that? Had they commandeered the Saladin?
A mix of emotions flooded her body and weakened her knees again. Clenching her fists, doing her best to show no reaction to the events unfolding hundreds of meters below, Anaxi spun back to Branch and his men. None of them seemed to notice what she’d seen. All remained so focused on the crater and the crevice and the hole and the Kalevanmiekka they were oblivious. She took another deep breath and willed herself not to check back again.
There was nothing she could do right now about the mystery black boat or the people aboard. There was nothing she could do about the Saladin. No point in spending any energy on it. She had to focus on what she could control, and that was the final part of this journey.
Done with the raucous show, Branch slid his sword into his scabbard and began the descent into the crater. He ordered Anaxi to keep pace with him. Le Grand stayed on her heels.
The gentle slope into the crater led them straight to the high-walled crevice slicing toward the hole in the crater’s far wall. The path it formed was the only way.
As they moved, Branch put his hand on Anaxi’s shoulder. “Any more poems?”
She nodded reflexively. There was one more. She’d held out hope he wouldn’t ask, but should have known better.
He slid his hand from her shoulder and patted her back between her shoulder blades. Saying nothing, they marched deeper into the crevice, the black walls stretching higher and higher.
The floor of the crevice was soft. A fine powder, sinking with each step like the black sand beach at the water’s edge so many meters below them. Anaxi thought about her toes sinking into that sand as she pushed forward. It seemed to her as if it had been weeks since she’d stood on the beach.
She imagined herself being back there, the water washing over her bare feet. With each gentle surge, she relished the sensation of her heels sinking more deeply into the sand.
But as she played out this daydream, it wasn’t the Saladin anchored off the comforting sandy shore of the volcanic island. It was the foreign black vessel. The boat absorbed the light around it, almost blending into the undulating sea on which it bobbed.
On the boat, a handful of shadowy figures passed back and forth along its aft deck. One of the figures, thin and awkward, waved at her. There was something so familiar in the gentle movement.
She lifted her planted feet from the sand and moved deeper into the surf. Walking toward the boat, floating almost in the water, she squinted and tried to focus on the waving figure. The features began to take shape as she drew near. Swimming now, her arms churned. Her legs kicked. She was almost there, could almost make out the face. Then it evaporated and she was back in the volcano’s crevice.
Branch had her by both shoulders, shaking her and staring straight into her eyes.
“Are you here?” he asked. “Anaxi? I need you here.”
She blinked him into focus but said nothing. Her heart thrummed in her chest.
Branch motioned with his head toward the hole. “I need that poem now. We’re about to go inside.”
Anaxi took two steps back, pulling away from the pirate’s hold. She bumped into Le Grand and accidentally drove her heel onto the top of his boot. He grunted but caught her and stopped her from falling.
The hole was larger than it appeared from the rim, or even from the path along the crevice floor. The echoes of their voices, the shift of the boots in the sand, bounced off the solid walls.
Branch stepped to her, virtually pinning her between himself and Le Grand. He glowered down at her, the blacks of his eyes matching the darkness of the chasm.
They absorbed light. They were cold. They were desolate.
“The poem. Now,” he growled.
Anaxi swallowed back her dry throat. The words formed in her mind. And she recited the last of the prescient verses.
Across the sea, through sun and shower
There is a sword of heavenly power
Its blade honed sharp, its grip is true,
in the hand of the righteous, its strength glows blue
Many shall seek, one shall find
This gift and curse, this fruit and rind.
Hunt with a warning, all who dare
The course is rough, the challenge unfair.
Within the earth, the loamy soil,
Where darkness reigns and light recoils,
One stone contains that which ye seek,
A gift for the strong but not the meek.
A final feat remains below,
Where pain and fear shall seed and grow.
If worthy ye are, the gift shall wrest,
If not, prepare for Harbingers of Death.
When she finished, the men were silent. For an uncomfortable period of time, nobody spoke. Then, as if from nowhere, Desmond Branch laughed.
It was loud. It was hearty. It echoed and bounced back at them from the walls of the crevice and the gaping hole in front of them.
Anaxi thought it affected and false bravado. The pirate wasn’t the confident marauder he pretended to be. Not really. She’d seen him at his weakest, and it tipped the scales more deeply than the times during which she’d seen him at his strongest.
As he laughed, the other men joined nervously at first until they too were leaning back, somehow finding humor either in the poem or comfort in their leader’s nonchalance.
Branch waved them off when he was finished. “Really?” he scoffed. “The Harbingers of Dea
th? That’s a thing? What does that even mean? C’mon now.”
Anaxi wasn’t sure what he meant. Was he questioning the veracity of the rhyme? Hadn’t he already seen that what the poems contained were real warnings. There was nothing false about them. Nonetheless, he persisted.
“I’m not buying what you’re selling on this one,” he said.
His body language betrayed his uncertainty. It didn’t matter what he said. He was frightened. Acting brave only for the sake of impressing his men.
“Let’s go,” he said and moved toward the hole. He paused. “You go first.”
Anaxi pointed at herself. “Me?”
“Yes. You.”
He grabbed her arm and shoved her ahead of him. Then without arguing or hesitating, Anaxi did as he told her. She took the lead and climbed into the dark. It was time…
Chapter Thirty
Zeke stood on the rocks, looking back at the smoldering remains of the camp. Plumes of smoke twirled into thin wisps before dissipating. A collection of the men from the Saladin who’d surrendered sat cross-legged in clusters. None of them spoke. Some of them shot angry or frightened glances at the quartet who’d threatened them with certain death if they resisted.
Uriel was at Zeke’s side. Hands on her hips, she sighed and motioned toward the peaks with her chin. “That’s our destination?”
Zeke faced the mountains. They cut against the sky like they were wide black rips in an otherwise orange and pink canvas. Clouds formed above the peaks, reflecting the light and casting soft hues of red into the darkening sky.
“That’s what Lucius says,” Zeke said. “The Kalevanmiekka is up there inside the crater. Inside the mountain, actually.”
Uriel shifted her weight. The rocks underneath her scratched against one another, emitting a squeaking sound. Zeke turned his back to the mountains and looked out at the beach stretching before him.
Lucius stood at the water’s edge. He watched the Saladin anchored off the shore.
To the far right, Phil bound the last of the hostage pirates. He’d used a clever combination of rope and anchor chain to cuff them to their spots. They couldn’t leave the men unattended, and Zeke was sure he’d need all four of them atop the volcano. This seemed the best option.
The others offered help. Phil declined. He appeared to relish the task.
The wash of the surf sloshed onto the sand behind them. Along with the breeze it brought, the air vibrated with a constant hum. The sound was unlike anything Zeke had ever heard.
He closed his eyes to focus on it. The volume of the surf rose and fell. He could smell it, the mix of brine and decay. A beautiful mixture of life and death.
Zeke took a few steps from the rocks and onto the sand. His boots sank into the forgiving texture of it. He’d spent his previous life in a sand-whipped desert wasteland where it was always hot and crusted. Never before had he seen its source so plentiful, so active, so violent. The ocean before him was what had carved and honed the rocks behind him into the fine granules of sand beneath his feet. Without the sea, and wind, and time, sand wouldn’t exist.
He considered those things, about how the sea was the machine, the wind the power, and time the fusion of them both. Without one, the others couldn’t do their job. None was more important than the other.
But the sea, he thought, is the most tangible of those elements. Time was relative. It was a construct that had no true existence. The wind was invisible. It grew and shrank on its own whim. Only the sea was a constant. An omnipresent player in an eternal mission.
He glanced at Lucius. The man crouched in the surf, letting the tidal surge wash onto him.
Then at Phil. He worked knots into weak links.
Finally, he twisted to look at Uriel. She had her back to him. She held her heel in her hand, stretching one leg and then the other.
He thought of Li and her confused misery. And of Pedro. The wise old man tending bar, issuing weapons, assigning missions, offering aphorisms.
Who among them was the sea? Who was time? Who was sand?
Zeke balled his right hand into a fist and lifted it. A dim throb of pale blue pulsed in his fingers, accentuating the parallel lines on his knuckles. He considered the options and decided all of them were the sea, time, and sand. All of them were responsible for their own path, their grinding journeys from one side of existence to the other.
He inhaled the salty air, relishing its thickness, and understood that in his past life the sea was missing both physically and metaphysically. A breeze brushed his face, and he opened his eyes to the wind. The ocean was inky now, the horizon purple where it met the endless stretch of water.
Behind him, Phil shouted, “All good here! We can get underway.”
Lucius used his fingertips to push himself to his feet. He dripped with seawater but appeared unfazed. He took heavy, long strides up the shore.
Zeke took in the expanse of water a moment longer, then pivoted. He marched up the sand to the rocks and joined the others. Ahead of them rose a dense jungle that manifested as thick as a fortress wall. The foreboding place stretched across the rocks from the encampment on their left to a curving peninsula on their right. There was no way around it. The only way to the mountaintop was through. In the dark.
Lucius took an audible breath. He exhaled from puffed cheeks. It was exaggerated for attention. Zeke obliged.
“What?” he asked.
“Something awaits us in there,” said Lucius. “I don’t know what it is, but legend foretells of a last resistance before the peaks. It’s in the jungle. Among the trees. Hidden somewhere in the darkness.”
Zeke nodded. “Okay. Good to know. I’ll take the lead. Whatever it is will have to go through me before it gets to you, Lucius. I want Phil up front with me. Lucius, you’re behind us. Uriel, you bring up the rear.”
Lucius’s eyes widened. “Why can’t we just jump over it? I mean, like we did from the boat to the ship?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” said Phil. “It’s too far and the canopy is to thick. We’d kill ourselves trying to do that.”
“Kill ourselves?” asked Lucius. “We’re already dead.”
Phil rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”
Zeke ended the back-and-forth. He pointed toward the peak, its irregular shape outlined with the last rays of the setting sun behind it. “We don’t have time for this,” he said. “They’re probably already in the crater. Who knows how close they are to finding the sword?”
“We’ll know the second anyone touches it,” said Phil.
“All right,” said Zeke. “You’ve got the plan. Me and Phil. Lucius. Uriel. In that order.”
Uriel scowled at him. Her annoyance was clear even in the dim light of a rising moon. “The rear?” she said. “Why can’t I take point?”
Zeke deadpanned, “You can, but you won’t. I’m not letting you go first. I need someone watching our six. That’s you.”
Uriel glared. “There are so many things wrong with that sentence I don’t know where to begin.”
“Pick one. Start there.”
Uriel flinched at the curt response. Studying him, she took a step back as if to see the bigger picture.
A new confidence swelled within Zeke. It consumed him. Made him feel almost invincible. It projected in his posture, in his decision-making, in his tone of voice. It wasn’t arrogance or misplaced bravado. Zeke understood, maybe for the first time in his lives, what he could do, who he was capable of being.
Uriel huffed. “First, you’re not letting me do anything.”
“Not for nothing, this is his mission, Uriel,” Phil remarked. “He is letting you.”
She held up her hand, signaling for Phil to stop. “And second, ‘watch our six’? Who talks like that? Since when are you in the military?”
Zeke smirked. “I don’t know why I said that. It sounded cool. And you said ‘take point’. I was going with it. But you’re last in line. I trust you there. I need you there, Uriel. It’s n
ot a slight. If anything, Phil should be offended because I didn’t ask him to go last. That’s how important a job it is.”
Phil grunted. “I’m not offended.”
The tension in Uriel’s shoulders eased. Her expression relaxed. She regarded the rocks under their feet and kicked at one with the toe of her boot. Finally, she nodded. “Okay. Fine. This is your mission. You’re right. I’ll kick ass no matter where you put me. Whatever.”
Zeke extended his arm and offered her his hand.
She stared at it and shook her head. “Not yet. Let’s see how this plays.”
Dropping his hand with a resigned chuckle, he winked at her. “Sure thing.”
With that, he took a first lunging step toward the jungle.
As they delved in, Zeke was suddenly aware of the chirping cacophony of nocturnal things alive in the jungle. It drowned the comforting sounds of the surf and wind, droning with a constancy that was almost deafening.
He pushed past a pair of heart-shaped leaves the size of elephant’s ears and was enveloped by darkness. Sweat formed under his arms, and a trail of perspiration ran down the center of his back. It was almost cold in the ripe darkness of the tropical forest. It wasn’t the temperature that produced the sweat. It was his gut. A sensation that what lurked within the walls of the jungle wasn’t the worst of what they had yet to face.
Chapter Thirty-One
Desmond Branch didn’t need both eyes. He could see plenty fine with one.
He had all four of his limbs. Two feet. Two hands. That was enough. His guile and wit had served him more than his vision during the sordid chapters of his life. They would serve him well here in the hole that wound down into the heart of a volcano.
The tunnel twisted back and forth, leading them in one direction and then the other. The only constant was the downward trajectory of their path. The temperature warmed with every turn. The sweat on his forehead, which began as a thin sheen, now streamed down the sides of his face and neck. His feet slipped uncomfortably inside his boots.
