Isle of Fire

by Wayne Thomas Batson

  It was then that he noted a strange round hatch on the other side of the chamber. Glancing back at Dmitri, he walked over to examine the opening. From the location of the hinge, it appeared that this hatch opened outward. And rather than a handle latch, it had a kind of pressured bond. Father Brun noted with apprehension that seawater dribbled in along the hatch’s perimeter. “So this is it then,” said Father Brun aloud as he walked past Scully back to Brother Dmitri. “There’s no way out.”

  Even so, Father Brun determined to try. He slung Dmitri’s arm up over his shoulder and hoisted the big man up once more. He thought maybe the water behind the door at the other end of the tunnel might subside at some point and maybe he could somehow pry open that door. It was a lot of maybes.

  A great grinding noise shook Father Brun out of his thoughts. But there was not time to react to it. A massive wall of water exploded up the passage, lifting Father Brun off his feet and launching him and Dmitri backward into the chamber. Father Brun felt himself smack into something that felt oddly like a sack of grain. As the water propelled him backward, Father Brun realized he’d crashed into Scully’s body. But the irresistible force of the water blasted them straight back into that strange hatch. Father Brun heard a sickly crunching noise . . . then a crack. He felt his own body curl, and the water pushed him through the opening in the stone, jettisoning him out into the cold depths of the sea.

  With one arm, he held Brother Dmitri. With the other, he flailed and pushed Scully’s body away. His breath was already turning stale in his lungs. Nonetheless, Father Brun struggled to retain it. He could see nothing and dared not swim until he knew which way was up. He held his breath and let himself float. After what seemed like an eternity, Father Brun felt his momentum shift, felt himself rise. Then he kicked madly with his feet and clawed at the sea with his free hand. He had no idea how deep below the surface he was, but shoved thoughts of drowning away. His lungs burned deeply, intensifying to a searing sort of agony that sent showers of sparks into his mind. His thoughts became confused, and an odd numbing threatened to take over his limbs—just as he broke through the surface.

  Father Brun gasped, sucking in a massive breath. Instantly his strength returned and he flailed to tread water. That was when he realized he’d heard someone else cough. He shook his head and blinked the water out of his eyes. And to his utter amazement, Brother Dmitri spluttered and spat. “You’re alive! Oh-ho! You’re alive!” Father Brun exclaimed.

  “Am I?” came a hoarse reply. “I can’t tell.”

  “Yes, you goat . . . yes, you are, praise the Almighty!”

  “Where are we?”

  Father Brun jerked his head back and forth, craning to see anything on the sea under the night sky. He saw nothing of the island and assumed that, by now, it was fully submerged. But there! Something floated not twenty yards from his position.

  “I see the cutter!” he told Brother Dmitri. “Can you swim?”

  “I’ve only got one good fin,” he replied. “But . . . I’ll try.”

  Smacked repeatedly by sudden whitecaps and moving slower than driftwood, they made their way to the small boat. Father Brun helped Dmitri clamber over the side and then hoisted himself in as well. They lay in the cutter and stared up at the stars for only a moment when Father Brun sat up. “Cat and Anne!” he exclaimed. “They . . . they’re still down there.” He reached frantically around the bow of the cutter and found the mooring line. He pulled it swiftly, hoping that it was somehow still attached to the now-submerged island. But when he drew the line in, it came back with a hunk of coral attached to it. “It’s torn free,” he said quietly. “We’ve lost them.”

  With a groan, Brother Dmitri sat up. He squinted at the rope and then over the monk’s shoulders. “No, we haven’t,” he said. Then he pointed. “It’s the Constantine.”

  Father Brun lifted himself higher and saw the huge shadow swaying gently on the water. There was a second ship with it, but not a third. Father Brun picked up an oar and began to paddle. “We’ll wait this out,” he said. “And when that island surfaces again, we’ll take a larger force in, bring iron bars to pry open those doors, and get Cat and Anne back.”

  Brother Dmitri smiled. His spiritual mentor was also the fiercest warrior he’d ever met—a wonderful combination, Dmitri thought. Father Brun stroked the oar hard toward the shadows on the sea. He never once looked back over his shoulder. He never saw the other shadow, carving the sea and moving swiftly toward them like a ghostly giant.

  The Merchant grew restless. It had been utterly gratifying to hear Father Brun and the others scurrying through his network of tunnels like rats in a trap. And even more pleasing to hear their voices suddenly cease. But the silence from Cat and Anne was unexpected . . . disturbing. He scanned the openings all around his domelike chamber and wondered. Since the last junction, he had not heard a sound from them. Had he crushed one of them in the door? Had they split up? He doubted it. But still, the silence was troubling. “Where are you?” he hissed.

  The light of several recessed lanterns led Cat and Anne to a sturdy door. It was very wide and had an iron wheel in place of a handle. Assuming it would be sealed tight, Cat grasped the wheel and turned. To his and Anne’s surprise, the door opened. And to their everlasting relief, the door was well maintained. It moved soundlessly on its hinges. On the other side, bathed half in shadow, half in the peculiar green light from the oil lanterns, was a chamber full of metal cabinets and a very old desk made of half-rotted wood. The room itself was on a slight slant, and the books in the one open cabinet all leaned to the side like men pushing against a seawall to hold back the crushing tide.

  Her eyes wide and curious, Anne turned to Cat and pointed. She started to enter, but Cat held her back and gestured toward the two openings that gaped like empty eye sockets in the ceiling. Anne nodded that she understood, and they went to the open cabinet. Cat carefully removed one of the old leather-bound books and opened it. The first few pages were inscribed with names—some in English, Spanish, or French—but many more in languages he did not recognize. After that, the book seemed to become a sort of ledger. There were columns of sums and figures, as well as names and dates. The dates showed this to be a very old volume; the first entry was 1596 for a shipment of cannon shot. The line beneath it indicated that twelve hundred pounds of black powder had been purchased and shipped to Romania. The next was an import sale of swords from Spain.

  It went on like that for page after page—every weapon imaginable and every resource needed to make war—the Merchant had bought it from or sold it to the interested parties of the world. But, Cat noted, every so many years, the handwriting in the ledger changed. That was when the new Merchant replaced the old, Cat thought. It amazed him that for centuries the evil had passed from one hand to the next. He wondered how each generation could produce a young man so bent on destruction—so destined for evil—that he’d be willing to bear the mantle of the Merchant. Destined . . . was that right? Were some men just born with something broken inside, something that leads them to horrible, vicious ends? A sudden image bolt across Cat’s mind. He saw his father’s bleeding stick lying on the dark stone at his feet. And he saw his own hands glistening with blood. He shook the thought away and handed the book to Anne.

  “This is incredible,” she whispered. “He’s sold enough cannons to start a war . . . and this is just one book.” She flipped through a few pages and stopped toward the end. “This is different,” she said. “Realgar, cinnabar, belladonna . . . what is this?”

  “Those are poisons.”

  Anne looked at Cat curiously. “How . . . how do you know that?”

  “I’m not sure,” he replied, unconsciously wringing his hands. “But when you said belladonna, I just knew. They are deadly.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Anne said, closing the book. “If the Merchant dealt with it, I’m sure it involved death.”

  There was no warning. From the crow’s-nest of the Dominguez, Brother Perrin had sc
anned the calm black sea, but clouds had covered up the moon, and he’d seen nothing. He’d turned his back for just a few minutes. When he turned again, it was there, a wall of undulating shadow, the clear silhouette of a massive warship. Brother Perrin opened his mouth to yell a warning, but cannon fire drowned his voice in a sea of thunder.

  Fifteen, maybe twenty cannon muzzles flashed at an absurdly close range. Heavy iron balls slammed into the forecastle and cabins of the Dominguez. Others gutted the ship’s hull and touched off powder kegs on the lower decks. The Dominguez foundered and collapsed upon itself, killing most of the crew before they could respond to the attack. Even before the burning hull could slip beneath the surface, the enemy turned its guns on the Constantine.

  Anne wished she’d never picked up the second book. It looked like most of the others on that shelf . . . perhaps a little older, that was all. Just another ledger of the Merchant’s deadly commerce, she’d thought. But it had felt different. It was far heavier than the first book. And when she opened it, she noted that the pages were thicker, almost more like parchment than paper. And an odd, unpleasant odor drifted up from the pages. It wasn’t the musty, mildewed smell of many old books. The smell of this volume was more offensive, more like something had died and then rotted within the pages. Cat frowned when he smelled it. But Anne turned the first few pages and found a text she couldn’t read. She thought it might be Latin because the words sounded like the formal prayers she remembered the vicar reading in the church when she was little.

  The next few pages were full of woodcut printed drawings of the human body: first the outside with Latin words and lines from them to the parts identified; and then the skin off, showing the muscle tissue and bone; and finally the vital anatomy. These pages were busy with footnotes at the top and bottom of each page—even some hastily scrawled in the margins.

  “I think you should put that one back,” Cat whispered. But he stared at the pictures nonetheless. Anne’s stomach tightened, and if Cat’s admonition had not been enough, there was a strange pressure on the top of her hand. It felt almost like a weight placed there to keep her from turning the page. But she did anyway.

  Anne had seen many horrible things in her life aboard a pirate ship. But in all Anne’s life she had never seen anything so detestable as the image in that book. She dropped the book and wretched.

  “My study,” the Merchant growled under his breath. “Very clever, young Thorne. I should not be surprised.” He went to his network of levers, pulled several, and waited the few seconds it took for the right doors to open and close in his labyrinth of tunnels. Then he began turning the wheel valves, one after the other. The other valves would have to be triggered in person and at just the right time . . . otherwise his ledgers might be destroyed. He’d have to enter the tunnels, do it himself. There would be an incredible amount of water. A bit of overkill. But finality was what the Merchant wanted. The time for uncertain subtlety was over. Cat and Anne were still together.

  The Merchant stood and drew his dagger.

  Three of the doors began to close.

  Anne screamed. “Go, now!” Cat yelled. But they were too late. Cat lunged for the nearest door and strained to keep it open. Anne was at his side, and together they held it for a few more moments. But that was all they could manage. Cat barely avoided being pinned by the door. He slipped back into the chamber and slammed a fist hard against it.

  “I’m sorry,” Anne whispered.

  Cat spun toward her, and at first it seemed he wore a mask . . . a horrible combination of anguish, anger, and blame. But then his features softened, and he just looked tired. “It’s not your fault,” he said as he walked toward the lone open door. “The Merchant is our enemy, and this is all his design.” Anne bit her bottom lip and nodded. She wanted to believe he meant it, but that look on Cat’s face . . .

  “He’s forcing us to follow his path,” Cat yelled over his shoulder. “We fooled him once . . . maybe we can do it again. But we must be silent at every junction.”

  “At least this path is going up,” Anne said. And it was, just slightly at first, but the incline steepened as they proceeded, and climbing the tunnel became arduous. They were out of breath when they came to the first fork in this tunnel. They were also out of choices. The door to the right-hand path was shut. They took the only path open, daring not even to whisper.

  The path leveled off as they came to a place where their tunnel and three others met. They wandered warily into the midst of this crossroads. Sound holes punctured the ceiling in many places, and the openings to the other paths had no doors at all. Cat and Anne exchanged glances, and each wondered which of the paths might lead to safety. The path on their right was as dark as pitch, as was the path in front of them. The only path lit by the oil lanterns was the path on their left. It seemed an obvious choice . . . maybe too obvious.

  “You are trespassers here,” a voice slithered out of the darkness to their right.

  Cutlasses drawn, Cat and Anne turned and watched as a man emerged from the gloom. His face came first: pale, sunken cheeks, a thin misshapen nose, and a gaping wound of a mouth. His eyes dwelt in shadow beneath a mantlelike brow. Then his hands appeared, and in one of them, he held a long, thin dagger. The rest of his outline was difficult to discern because his black clothing blended in with the shadows.

  Cat stepped in front of Anne and brandished his cutlass. He’d hoped to face the Merchant with Father Brun and the members of the Brethren at his side. But it had come to this. “You made a mistake, showing yourself, old man.”

  “Old?” he replied. “Is that what you think of me?” His laugh made a strange grating sound like the lid of a tomb sliding slowly from its resting place. “Think rather that I am . . . experienced.”

  The Merchant stepped from the shadows. Peeking out from beneath his cloak were black belts and leather straps that crisscrossed. Pistols dangled from some of these belts, but there were other things, too, that neither Cat nor Anne could identify.

  “Don’t come any closer!” Cat demanded.

  “No?” he replied. “But I want to come much, much closer.”

  Cat saw no alternative. He lunged at the Merchant and delivered a devastating fusillade of slashes and jabs. Anne was sure he’d killed the Merchant. He struck so fast and with such deadly precision she felt no one could have survived. But the Merchant had survived. His dagger had moved like a snake’s tongue, flickering and darting, and he intercepted all of Cat’s attacks, until finally batting Cat’s cutlass aside and whirling inside Cat’s outstretched arm. Before Cat could react, he felt the tip of the Merchant’s dagger at the base of his own throat.

  “You see?” said the Merchant, and then he shoved Cat to the ground at Anne’s feet. “Not so old . . .” The thin blade of the dagger intermittently disappeared in the folds of his black cloak as the Merchant came forward. But like a scorpion’s sting, the dagger—even when out of sight—was a looming threat.

  Cat clambered to his feet and then pulled Anne into the tunnel behind them. The Merchant, in no particular hurry, followed. This tunnel forked the first time fifty yards in. But the alternate path was sealed off by another iron door. Cat and Anne found several other passages shut to them, and still the central path went on.

  “Why didn’t he kill me?” Cat asked as they ran.

  “What?!” Anne exclaimed. “Who cares why? Maybe he likes to taunt before he kills. You’re alive . . . that’s what matters.”

  Cat still wondered, but he hoped to use this second chance. They ran on, hearing the Merchant’s taunts following them. “Run, run . . .” came his breathy hiss.

  Cat and Anne raced on. The passage did not split again, but it did dead-end. Cat and Anne found themselves in a small round chamber with no doors and no other way out but the way they came.

  “Running out of room . . . pity.” The Merchant sounded very close.

  Cat and Anne turned all around, frantically looking for something they could use to their advantage. �
��Look!” Anne shrieked. Four feet above them was an opening to a vertical tunnel that looked identical to the one through which they entered the Merchant’s lair.

  “Here,” Cat said, cupping his hands and holding them low. “I’ll boost you up.”

  “The tide,” Anne said.

  “What?”

  “Even if this is a way out, the tide’s come over the island by now.” Anne’s eyebrows bunched. “If I open the hatch, the water will wash us back down the tube.”

  “The island can’t be that far under,” Cat said with little conviction. “We’ve got to try.”

  They stared at each other for a moment then, and it seemed to each that so many things were spoken in that glance: respect, fear, regret, and . . . farewell. Then Anne put a foot into Cat’s hands and leaped up for the bottom wrung. She lithely pulled herself up and grabbed each consecutive handhold until she had made room for Cat to ascend beneath her. But then she heard something that chilled her blood. “He’s here,” Cat said.

  “Yessss, I am here,” came another voice.

  Anne looked down and saw Cat staring forward. He was unarmed. “Cat!!”

  The Merchant advanced on Cat and lifted his dagger. Cat had nowhere to go. Some part of his awareness heard Anne say, “Catch!” Suddenly, Anne’s cutlass fell right into Cat’s hand.

  Cat lunged at the Merchant’s chest and might have stabbed him through the heart, but the Merchant jerked sideways. Cat’s sword sawed across the Merchant’s dagger. Cat went swiftly back to the attack. He grew increasingly frustrated, for even though his cutlass was the superior weapon, he could not get to the Merchant. They fought back and forth beneath the opening.