by Alan Baxter
She pulled out a mobile phone as her face resumed its human shape, flipped it open. ‘My Lord.’
Alex frowned. Joseph?
Sil listened for a moment, then, ‘Yes, sort of. It’s hard to tell.’
She listened again.
‘Well, we think we’ve found the second piece. Yes, I know, but I think we really have.’
A tremor rippled up Alex’s spine. Why is she telling him this?
Silhouette sighed, clearly exasperated. ‘Joseph, I’m fine. I can take care of myself.’ A pause. ‘Yes, I know, but all the time he’s alive, he’s stuck with it. It can’t hurt me.’ Pause. ‘I know he can but I can look after myself.’
Alex’s mind spun in neutral. He’d been a fool to think that she wouldn’t have told her Clan Lord everything. But did Joseph’s interest really lie in Silhouette’s welfare?
Silhouette crouched, hooking one long fingernail into the wino’s rent chest. She plucked out a string of meat and chewed it lazily. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But we can’t separate the stone and the book, so the danger remains the same as ever.’ She paused again, looking up at the night sky. ‘Yes, of course. First chance I get. Okay, talk to you soon.’ She flipped the phone closed and fell on the wino again as if she were starving, ripping open the filthy shirt and tearing off a hunk of meat with feline teeth.
Alex looked away, swallowing against her animal feeding. He took painfully slow steps backwards, trembling in shock. First chance for what? He went back to the hotel, his mind filled with fears and suspicions.
16
Morning dawned bright but overcast, the sky a gleaming white lid on the world. Sil snuggled against him and pressed her face into his neck. Alex kept his eyes on the view outside the window and tried to relax. His suspicions had kept him awake half the night but he couldn’t address his concerns without admitting he’d followed her, spied on her. Would she forgive that? Would she care? He didn’t even know if his apprehensions were fair. That she talked to her Clan Lord was no crime. If she conspired with him, that would be different. But right now Alex had no way of knowing. He wanted to trust her, needed to trust her.
He slipped out from under her, pulled his clothes on. ‘We should get going.’
She looked disappointed, frowning at him. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah, yeah. Just anxious to get on.’
‘Okay then.’ She got up and walked naked to the bathroom.
She was breathtaking, firing his passion instantly. But was that a mask? If it were a mask, it was a bloody good one and real enough. Alex rubbed at his eyes, confused and lost. My life has gone truly bizarre.
An hour later, full of coffee, toast and bacon, they stood on the docks of Bonavista. Several jetties protruded into the choppy water, tiny wavelets forced through the narrow concrete mouth of the harbour causing the boats to bob randomly against their moorings. A sharp, chill wind cut across from the open ocean under a sky turned slate grey. The breeze and the salt smell helped clear Alex’s head. Silhouette was in conversation with a rough-looking fisherman. The man wore oilskins, a heavy jacket and an expression of deep suspicion.
Silhouette tipped her head and a hip, eyes batting under her fringe. The man’s misgivings melted away. After another minute she walked back to Alex, obviously pleased with herself. ‘He’ll lend us his boat.’
‘Lend? I thought you were going to convince him to take us!’
‘Where’s he going to take us? He can’t see the island.’
‘I can’t believe he’s just going to give you his boat!’
‘I have a way with human men.’
Alex narrowed his eyes at her.
‘Don’t worry. With you I mean it.’
The exchange did nothing to allay his fears. ‘I don’t know the first thing about boats, Sil.’
‘You don’t need to. I can manage that. I’ve been around a while, collected a few skills. I can get us to the co-ordinates. You have to make sure we don’t hit the island when we get there.’
Jim Daley landed at Halifax, still bemused by the last couple of days. The strange couple had seemed nice enough but there was something wrong about them. And about their requests. Flying for hours over open ocean, treating him to dinner and drinks afterwards. It made no sense. Still, it was good money and he’d had nothing better to do.
Walking across the tarmac, heading for the office to check his schedules, he caught sight of a small man in a long, dark coat. Something about the guy gave him pause. The way he moved, like he was searching for something. Was he sniffing the ground?
The man looked straight at him, his stare unnervingly intense. Jim drew himself up tall as the thin man strode purposefully over. ‘Help you?’ he asked.
The man leaned uncomfortably close, staring into his eyes. He sniffed sharply, across Jim’s face and down one shoulder.
‘What the hell is wrong with you, man?’ Jim pushed a hand into the guy’s chest, forcing him back.
The man stepped away willingly, a broad smile spreading across his face. He seemed to have too many teeth. ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘You and I need to talk.’
Jim didn’t like anything about this strange guy. ‘I don’t think so, buddy.’ He turned away.
The man grabbed hold of Jim’s shoulder, his fingers biting deep into the flesh. ‘I said, you and I need to talk.’
The journey was cold and rough. After a little over two hours Silhouette told Alex to start looking out for their destination. Within another few minutes he’d seen it. Tall, dark grey rocks made a ragged cliff of one side. The island sloped from east to west, seemingly nothing but desolate, deserted stone.
‘Aim a bit to the left,’ Alex called out over the wind and the diesel engine.
Silhouette cast him an amused glance. ‘Aim?’
He pointed. ‘Go a bit that way. I don’t speak nautical!’
As they rounded the western side, the shape he’d seen from the air became more apparent. Tall, broken cliffs made up the rounded belly of the teardrop. The west coast of the island, leading towards the point, lay lowest in the water, with natural bays between the rocks where waves bit at shingly beaches, with no sign of any kind of vegetation. Cold, wet rock led up from the sea to slick plateaus. Basalt columns stood strangely geometric in natural sculptures. The isle extended about two kilometres on the longest side by his best guess. Alex strained his eyes, looking for any signs of life. Signs of anything other than naked rock.
Silhouette slowed the boat to a drift. ‘Well?’ she asked.
‘Can’t you see it?’
‘It’s all just open ocean. What do you see?’
‘A massive rocky island. It looks dead. Deserted.’
‘Is there anywhere we can land?’
Alex scanned the rocky shore, numerous tiny bays and miserable beaches. ‘I can’t really tell where would be safe to head in, but there are beaches.’
‘How close are we?’
‘About fifty metres away.’
Silhouette turned the boat. ‘Are we facing the island? Near a beach?’
‘A bit more to the right.’
She gunned the engine again.
‘That’s it,’ Alex called. ‘We’re pointing right at a beach.’
Silhouette revved again, propelling the fishing boat forward. ‘Tell me when we’re about twenty metres out.’
‘You’re turning away again!’ Alex shouted.
Silhouette scowled at him. ‘I am not. We’re going in a straight line.’
‘Turn right some more.’
Sil turned the boat back towards the beach then almost immediately began veering away.
‘You’re doing it again. Turn right some more.’
Silhouette made a sound of annoyance. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Definitely!’
‘There’s some powerful magic at work here.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Guide me if I go off course again.’
‘Right again. That’s it. Nearly there.’
As they chugged towards th
e island, a sense of trepidation welled up from deep inside Alex. A thick malevolence wept off this rocky lump, washing over him, a chill far colder than the ocean wind. ‘That’s it,’ he called out.
Silhouette killed the engine, went to the stern. She cranked a lever and a heavy anchor dropped into the choppy waves. Chain slid with a metallic rattle over the gunwales. They both watched it and jumped when it stopped within seconds. ‘Well, that only went a few metres. We should be in open ocean,’ Silhouette said.
‘Told you.’
She moved to a wooden locker and pulled it open, dragged out a heavy canvas parcel. The weight didn’t seem to bother her, but Alex helped anyway. Holding on to a yellow plastic tag in one hand and a piece of attached rope in the other, she threw the thing overboard, yanking on the tag as it went. The parcel burst and hissed into a rubber dinghy, bobbing at the end of the rope. ‘Get the oars.’
Alex retrieved two plastic and aluminium oars from the chest and they clambered into the rocking dinghy. Alex set the oars and rowed the short distance to the beach. He watched Sil’s face as they went. As they scraped into the shale of the beach, her eyes widened and she looked frantically left and right. ‘It’s fucking huge!’
‘You can see it now?’ Alex asked as he jumped out onto slick gravel and dragged the small craft and Sil up out of the water.
She stepped out. ‘Yeah, of course. The illusion only works against the eyes and mind. No illusion of this size can work against a physical contradiction. But seriously, Alex, your vision is strong to see through this. Now that I’m inside the magic I can see it at work. It’s powerful, intricate stuff.’
‘I wonder who put it here.’
Silhouette pursed her lips. ‘It feels like Kin magic. I wonder if whoever hid the shard here hid the island too.’
‘If the shard is here.’
‘I’m pretty sure it will be. Come on.’ She dragged the dinghy further up the beach, rolled a rock over the lead rope to stop it washing away, and headed between basalt columns.
As they gained higher ground, Alex’s trepidation grew. The book almost buzzed. It urged him on, anxious excitement drifting through his mind from his jacket. The stone in its locket was hot against his chest. ‘Can you feel that?’ he asked.
Silhouette stopped, turned around. ‘What?’
‘Something is going on here. The book and stone are alive with it. I feel … I don’t know exactly. Scared. I feel like killing.’
‘The book is driving you on. Resist it, as best you can. Try to channel the sensations and use them how you want. Don’t let them drive you.’
Alex drew a long, deep breath in, centring himself. His chi gung training proved useful, helped him to calm the frantic throbs of the book. ‘There’s going to be a fight,’ he said, with absolute certainty.
Sil raised her eyebrows. ‘Is there?’
‘Yep. I can’t tell you how I know, but I do.’
‘Okay. Come on then. Neither of us have a problem facing up to a fight.’
They moved on through the rocks. Eventually the dips and peaks gave way to an open view and they both stopped, catching their breath. Across a rough scree, only a hundred metres or so from where they stood, a ramshackle town of stone houses spread haphazardly up to the point of the island. The homes were simple, built of stacked slate and shale, closely packed, low roofs with a shallow slant, small doors, no windows. At the head of the town, standing on the point of the island, a larger structure, squat and wide, loomed over the others. People wrapped in heavy sealskins, pasty faces peering out from dark hoods, moved slowly between the buildings. They were bent and weak-looking, shuffling as they moved.
Alex and Silhouette dropped out of sight behind a low outcrop of dark rock. ‘What the fuck?’ Alex asked in a low voice.
‘Those people look … wrong,’ Silhouette said, spooked.
‘I know. What the hell are they doing here? How can anyone survive here?’
‘Do you have any idea where the stone might be?’
Alex let his mind be guided by his shard. He could feel it drawing him on. ‘I’m guessing we need to be in that big building at the end.’
Silhouette peeked out from their hiding place. ‘I wonder how friendly the locals are?’
‘There’s gonna be a fight, remember?’
‘Come on then. Let’s try to sneak around. If we have to fight, so be it.’
She crept along under cover of the rock, heading back towards the ocean. Alex kept low, following. They used rocky outcrops to hide, moving down towards the water when they had to. It was painstaking work but they slowly made their way along the island. The cold wind and ocean spray froze their fingers and faces as they went, but neither complained. A sense of urgency and concern for the strange denizens of this rock made the cold a welcome distraction. Eventually they found themselves on a steep slope of shale and basalt, the side of the large building looming over them.
Hundreds of thousands of slate pieces stacked tightly together made the walls. Like the smaller structures, there were no windows, no gaps. Alex knew from their first glimpse of the place that a low, wide door stood in the middle of the front wall. How would they get in there without being noticed?
Silhouette climbed, heading for the back of the building. Alex followed. Climbing proved difficult with his numb fingers, but Silhouette made the ascent look easy. He wasn’t about to admit that it was any harder for him. She quickly scaled the rocks and immediately found fingerholds among the slates of the wall and climbed towards the roof. Waves crashed and hissed against rocks a hundred feet below. Not chancing vertigo by looking down, Alex focused on Sil’s butt and used his breathing to calm his fear and the buzzing desperation of the book. She reached the roof and pulled herself flat on her belly onto it.
Alex slithered up beside her and they both lay still, catching their breath. Across the wide roof they could see the strange town again. The bent, shuffling people moved around seemingly without purpose. Smoke rose from some homes, sickly orange glows dancing through the doorways.
‘What do they burn for fire?’ Alex asked.
‘Seal shit? I wonder if they have any contact with the mainland.’
Alex stared across the desolate settlement. ‘What now?’
‘Well, maybe we can slide across here and drop down in front of the door without being noticed. We can slip in without alerting any of that lot, maybe.’
‘And if there’s anyone inside?’
Silhouette said nothing.
‘Well, I guess I don’t have a better plan.’
They moved as carefully as they could across the wet surface. When they reached the edge, looking down for the door, both gasped in shock. Ranged along in front, hanging from tall, squared-off rocks, were human skeletons, tied in place with braided ropes of dried seaweed. Weathered, bleached arm bones were crossed above hanging skulls. Rib cages and untied leg bones shifted in the ocean wind.
‘I count nine of them,’ Silhouette said.
‘Yeah. And that one looks fresher.’ The figure hanging on the furthest obelisk still bore blackened flesh in patches, bits of it freeze-dried, flapping in the blustery weather.
‘So we’re not the first visitors then.’
‘The stones do offer a bit of protection between the building and that lot,’ Alex said. Each obelisk stood about six feet high and two square.
Without a word Silhouette slipped off the roof, dropping easily the ten feet or so to the ground like a cat, and rolled up against one of the carved stones. Her eyes scanned left and right, checking the door of the building. She nodded up at him.
Drawing a deep breath, checking again that no one shuffling around the town looked his way, Alex swung off the roof and dropped. He ran in a low crouch to the stone next along from Sil’s, put his back against it. The power of the book coursed through him. It goaded him to break cover, cry out a challenge to the pale denizens. He imagined his fists and feet flying as he brought harsh justice to these freaks who had people str
ung up against some sick mockery of Stonehenge.
Silhouette hissed at him. He started, a furious expression on his face.
‘It’s trying to get you killed,’ Sil said in a sharp whisper. ‘Focus, Alex!’
She was right. The rage and frustration of the book, the slice of entity within it, railed at him. ‘Fuck off,’ he whispered at it, almost silently. The shard burned at his throat and he concentrated on that.
Silhouette gestured towards the doorway. ‘I’ll go first,’ she said. ‘Wait for my signal.’
Magesign swam over her and she morphed into the feline form he was beginning to increasingly associate as a part of her. The colours of her skin shifted, her clothes merged into fur, mottled grey and indistinct. If he had skills like that, all this scurrying about might be avoided. She slipped from cover and into the darkness.
Alex crouched nervously, the cold stone hard against his back. He tried not to think about the bones hanging on the other side, who they might have been, why they died. Did these freaks eat them or just hang them up to rot? All kinds of horrible scenarios flashed across his mind. Silhouette had been too long. What if she couldn’t call out for help? Inaction was unbearable.
He pushed up from the rock and ran into the building, slipping to the side of the door, pressed his back against the wall inside. He paused, let his eyes adjust to the smoky gloom.
Guttering orange light flickered from sconces around the walls. What looked from the outside like inky blackness was a ruddy, hazy murk inside. He crouched, eyes and mind scanning. He caught sight of shades of magesign by the far wall and saw Silhouette, still shifted and camouflaged, glaring at him.
A raised dais against the centre of the rear wall drew his attention. Waves of power emanated from it, washing across the big, open space. Several pale creatures like those outside knelt on the steps leading up to the dais, bowing and rocking in strange obeisance. A low, keening sound accompanied their movements.
