Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago: Tales of the Lost Isles

by JOSEPH A. MCCULLOUGH

  They made it to the colonnade, then through the doorway to stand in the antechamber amongst dead and wounded temple guards.

  The door to the Sanctuary of the Holy Albatross lay open. At the far end, flickering lamplight played across a giant figurine of the goddess, whose golden wings stretched across the entire vault.

  A couple of unwounded guards shoved on the doors: great bronze disks rolled in grooves to close the curved-sided entrance. The wind shrilled through the narrowing gap. Finally, the doors thudded into place.

  Strong enough to withstand the storm, judged Ulrich, but not an armed attack.

  An eerie silence descended, broken only by the whine and hiss of the wild weather beyond the temple’s threshold.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Ulrich. ‘The storm is impressive, but hardly lethal. Why did the buccaneers flee? They were winning.’

  ‘Buccaneers cannot go buccaneering without their ships,’ said Ayesha. His sailing mistress was seated on the floor while a temple guard bound her injured leg.

  Ulrich imagined the storm thundering into the great bay. The fisherfolk must have known it was coming, which is why they fled inland. He shuddered. ‘Is the Redeemer in peril?’

  ‘No,’ said Lady Brightfeather, emerging from a side room at the head of her attendants. She smiled tightly. ‘Oddly, the Holy Albatross will leave the Pilgrim Harbour unscathed.’

  Ulrich shuddered again. A tremor went through his limbs. His helmet seemed to have tightened. The first claws of his headache sank into his temples. ‘How long before we can take our leave?’ he asked, unbuckling his chinstrap.

  ‘A while. Long enough for you to view the Clockwork Chart.’

  ‘What?’ Ulrich half-lifted Guiltbringer. He gestured with his left hand, indicating the blood on the blade, the splatter on his arm and chest. ‘If I was impure earlier, how much more impure must I be now?’

  Lady Brightfeather made her open-handed gesture. ‘You will understand. Come.’

  Ulrich left his sword and helm and followed the high priestess into the side room, then down a narrow staircase.

  Cool, still air soothed his head but the metal-plated brigandine grew heavier with each step. His shoulders were sagging by the time they reached the bottom.

  The staircase opened out onto a raised wooden walkway that ran around the side of a torch-lit cavern.

  ‘The Clockwork Chart,’ declared Lady Brightfeather.

  Weights and pulleys decked the walls. What looked like four massive orreries filled the cavern floor. Instead of the Sun and planets, the brass arms bore little model islands. Each orbited around yet another island placed over the spindle. The nearest of these was clearly a detailed model of the Isle of Farsight.

  Ulrich leaned against the rail and recalled the chart Lady Brightfeather had given him. Using the Isle of Farsight as a fixed point, he cast about.

  There! On the other side of the cavern hung a little island with a cup on its summit – the Isle of the Crystal Pool.

  ‘I knew it!’ cried Ulrich. He winced, clutched his temple. He continued in softer tones. ‘There is a pattern. I can work out the formula… let me fetch measuring tools.’

  Lady Brightfeather laughed. She pulled a lever. ‘Watch.’

  Gears creaked. Weights dropped. Metal clunked. The sound reverberated in Ulrich’s skull. He flinched, gritted his teeth.

  With a metallic squeal, extra empty arms lifted into position, giving each orrery the look of a dandelion seed.

  A spring boinged. With a painful clattering, everything began to move. The islands turned around the spindles, some clockwise, some anticlockwise. As they rotated, the arms rippled, shortening and lengthening in waves. Every so often, there was a collision and an island attached itself to the tip, an empty arm belonging to one of the other orreries.

  Ulrich stared, jaw open. After a while he cried, ‘It’s utterly random! There’s no damned pattern.’

  Lady Brightfeather yelled over the noise. ‘It’s a divination tool, like casting the bones or shuffling the cards.’

  The clatter died away. The movement ebbed. Now almost all the islands were back where they had started.

  ‘Each island incorporates a stone from the real island,’ said the high priestess.

  Ulrich leaned further out. ‘Sympathetic magic…’

  One particular island had moved. The Isle of the Crystal Pool now sat very close to the Isle of Farsight… perhaps just a morning’s voyage away. Were things to end so abruptly?

  ‘How long…’ Ulrich realised he was shouting. He lowered his voice. ‘…will it stay there?’

  ‘A few days, perhaps,’ said the high priestess.

  Ulrich averted his eyes from the place where he would die.

  Other islands had also shifted location.

  He pointed to one that bore what looked like a broken tower. ‘What’s that one?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Lady Brightfeather. ‘The Tower of the Sanguine Topiarists. Long abandoned, but said to be dangerous and full of riches.’

  ‘And that one?’

  ‘The Tombs of the Skyborn… no I don’t know what that means. Again, reputed to be full of treasure.’

  ‘Santino could have done it, then. Gathered enough wealth to make himself king of Markibec,’ said Ulrich.

  ‘There will be others like him,’ said Lady Brightfeather. ‘Patient enough not to need the Clockwork Chart.’

  Ulrich stared at the little model islands. Even if he did away with the Heritors, the Ghost Isles would remain. Their real curse was that they offered easy wealth to the ruthless and the ambitious, who could then return to wreak havoc in their own societies.

  And with that realisation came the understanding that it wasn’t Ulrich’s Heritor curse that killed Hans. Nor even were Ulrich’s own moral failings really to blame. Hans was just another victim of the senseless faction fighting that wracked Markibec, faction fighting that put childhood friends on opposite sides.

  Perhaps Santino was right and the crown of Markibec was ripe for the plucking. If so, why shouldn’t Ulrich be the one to make himself king? To end the faction fights and hold the throne against all comers?

  His mind raced. Once he had established order in the city, he could deal with all the robber barons that beset the trade routes, and then perhaps extend his peace to the other neighbouring cities…

  ‘When we first talked,’ said Lady Brightfeather, ‘you were divided against yourself and impurity festered in that division. Now you are pure and whole.’

  ‘Pure what, though?’ asked Ulrich. ‘I don’t feel I have become a better person.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Lady Brightfeather. She offered him her arm. ‘Come. Your Storm Warden awaits you, Eye of the Storm.’

  THE PRICE YOU PAY

  BY

  PETER MCLEAN

  I almost died in Southport.

  I stood at the prow of Dancing Girl with the salt wind blowing in my hair and the spray in my face as the ship wallowed across the waves, and fought back the tears of shame. I had been so godsdamned scared.

  There were four of them, from the Guild of Mercers. Mercers, for the love of the gods. Cloth merchants. Hardly known for their murderous reputation, but they’d had an axe to grind about those bolts of silk I had sold them the previous day. They had brought that axe to the harbourside tavern with them, and some knives too.

  I was drinking with Jondan while the rest of my crew were off entertaining themselves with whatever they did when I wasn’t looking. I dread to think, really. The mercers cornered us in the tavern, their blades glinting in the lantern light, and put their case to me.

  Perhaps those bolts hadn’t been silk all the way through, I’ll admit that. Perhaps I had padded them a little with roughspun cloth. Perhaps I had padded them a lot.

  If we had sailed with the dawn tide like Jondan had urged then I would have got away with it too, but no. I’d had to stay in Southport one more day, chasing rumours. That decision almost cost me my life.

/>   ‘Well?’ the lead mercer demanded. ‘What do you have to say for yourself, Marek Price?’

  He was a swarthy fellow with an angry look on his face and that axe in his hand, only half-concealed under his loose robe.

  I swallowed. I could have taken him, axe or no axe, I knew that. Was I not the last living descendant of the great Marta Price, founder of Price Shipping and oh-so much more? Marta Price, who, seven generations ago, had journeyed to the fabled Ghost Archipelago and there drunk the waters of the legendary Crystal Pool.

  Marta Price, who had made herself invincible.

  I was that indeed, not that my crew knew anything of it. Even Jondan didn’t know about Marta’s legacy. I may have inherited some of Marta’s powers but not, I’m afraid, her bravery. By my own admission, I am a coward.

  I wore a sword at my hip but that was more for show than anything else, nothing more than was expected of a ship’s captain. With the blade alone I’m no better than any other man, if even that good. Only if I use the legacy of Marta Price do I become unstoppable, and this is the very thing I fear. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest just thinking of it. Jondan is even less use in a straight fight than I am, and the only things that hung at his tattered belt were a trowel with a clod of earth still stuck to it, and two small bags of what he called ‘interesting stones’. Right then I was more interested in the mercer’s axe than Jondan’s bags of dirt. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, and forced myself into action.

  ‘I say this!’ I yelled, and flipped over the table so that our tankards of ale flew up into the faces of the armed men in front of us.

  A choice between fight or flight is one that makes itself, in my opinion.

  I grabbed Jondan’s arm and half-dragged him after me as I sprinted for the back door of the tavern and out into the heat of the yard. Even in the evening darkness the air sweltered, and there was not so much as a breath of wind from the sea.

  ‘You’re going to get me killed one of these days,’ Jondan panted as he ran at my side.

  The back door of the tavern crashed open again as the mercers charged after us. I could almost feel the wicked blade of that axe slamming between my shoulder blades.

  Don’t make me do it, don’t make me…

  ‘Do something!’ I gasped at my friend.

  Jondan cursed under his breath and stabbed out a hand towards the crumbling stone wall that edged the yard. There was a grinding noise as four hefty rocks pulled themselves free of the wall and shot through the air, striking down our pursuers with satisfying thuds.

  I kept running, out through the back gate of the yard and into an alley that ran behind the tavern, the breath coming hard through my mouth until I realised Jondan was no longer at my side. I stopped halfway down the alley and leaned against a rotting wooden fence for a moment, gasping.

  My friend strolled out of the tavern yard a moment later with a small stone in his hand, studying it closely as he walked. I shook my head at the state of him, his frayed and patched clothes and the deeply ingrained dirt on his hands. Jondan was an Earth Warden, of course, one of those peculiar fellows who believe that the land is sacred and connects all living things in some strange, mystical web of nature magic. I didn’t understand anything of it, but at least his brand of magic didn’t seem to hurt him when he used it. There he had me at a great disadvantage, I had to admit.

  ‘Will you hurry up?’ I hissed at him. ‘I don’t want to finish the evening dead.’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, they’re all out cold,’ he said. ‘When I move a rock, it goes where I put it.’

  I nodded and heaved a great sigh of relief.

  I hadn’t had to do it. Marta’s legacy was untapped, thank the gods.

  Marta’s legacy was my inheritance from the Price dynasty, that and one lone, leaky single-masted ship with the unlikely name of Dancing Girl.

  That legacy was my blessing and my utmost curse. What is the point of superhuman powers if you don’t dare use them?

  * * *

  A great wash of spray burst across the prow of Dancing Girl, soaking my thin linen shirt to my chest and jolting me out of my thoughts. I was glad of the momentary coolness the water brought me. Here in the Southern Ocean the heat was like a living thing, even out on the open sea. I pushed my wide-brimmed hat back from my eyes and wiped sweat and salt water from my forehead with the back of my hand, and squinted into the distance.

  Leaving the whole ‘nearly dying’ thing aside, our stopover in Southport had been a success. There was coin in my purse again at last, and more importantly there was news. Rumours, yes, but believable ones. The word on the docks and in the taverns was that the Ghost Archipelago had finally reappeared, after seven long generations.

  Two hundred years of nothing, and now… now, if the rumours were to be believed, it had returned. Two hundred years ago Marta Price had walked those islands, drank the waters of the Crystal Pool and plundered the untold treasures of lost civilisations. She had returned both magically invincible and fabulously wealthy, and had founded the Price Shipping dynasty that six successive generations of Prices had run into the ground and virtually bankrupted. If only she had come back immortal as well we might still be rich, but alas that was not the case. My father, alas again, was probably the worst of the Prices. In the thirty years it had taken him to drink himself to death, the Price line had reduced from nine ships to one, and I suspected Dancing Girl was only left for me into inherit because no one had wanted to buy her.

  Truth be told she was an ugly ship, and she leaked badly enough to keep my six-strong crew busy with the bilge pumps in anything but the calmest sea. Ah well, a leaky ship was better than no ship, and being a ship’s captain was considerably better than actually working for a living.

  ‘Land ho!’

  The cry came from Melissa in the crow’s nest, and I craned my neck to see her leaning from her precarious perch with one thin arm pointing ahead and slightly to the east. I lowered my hat to shade my eyes and squinted into the distance, wincing as the bright sunlight flashed from the shining blue waves.

  I could see it now, a distant shape and a thin column of smoke on the horizon. The fire mountain!

  The rumours had been true, I realised. When the far-ranging fishermen of Southport had first brought back tales of a fire mountain seen where no land should be, the port had suddenly become a bustle of seafarers out to seek their fortunes. The Ghost Archipelago might be little more than legend these days, but it was a legend built on the promise of gold. Gold for the taking, for those brave enough to seek it out.

  Now I may be a coward where Marta’s legacy is concerned, but if there is one thing that can drive me to flights of reckless bravery it is money. Saddled as I was with the name of Price, with the weight of all that family history around my neck and barely enough coin in my purse to pay my crew, the lure of easy plunder was strong indeed. The Archipelago was virtually made of gold, to hear the tales. Nuggets of it lying on the beaches, so men said, ripe for plucking by any man prepared to make the voyage.

  I grinned and turned to Erik at the wheel.

  ‘Three points sou-south east,’ I told him. ‘Make for the smoke.’

  ‘Aye, cap’n,’ he said, grinning back at me through his unkempt grey beard, and the great wheel turned in his skilful hands.

  Dancing Girl creaked alarmingly as she leaned into the turn, and I saw Francis and Headhunter swarm up the rigging like monkeys to do whatever it was they did with the sails. I’m more of a businessman than a seafarer, truth be told, and the actual working of the ship was something of a mystery to me. Erik was my first mate, which made him the Captain in all but name. I owned the godsdamned ship, but I have to confess I had no idea how to sail her.

  Jondan joined me at the prow a moment later, an excited gleam in his eye.

  ‘Think of it, Marek,’ he said. ‘A lost land, untouched for two hundred years. Where has that soil been? What stones might I find upon those shores?’

  ‘Gold ones, with any luck,
’ I said. ‘You heard what they were saying in Southport, Jon. Gold lying on the beaches! Think of it, man!’

  I wanted that gold, of course I did, but there was more to this mad voyage than simple plunder. Marta Price had found the Crystal Pool somewhere amongst these islands, and drank its sorcerous waters. If I could do that, then might not the curse of Marta’s legacy be lifted from me? Family legend spoke at length about her powers, and never a word of them bringing her crippling pain. I thought that was a corruption in the bloodline, something that seven generations of dilution might have brought. If I could find the Crystal Pool for myself, if I could make myself great as Marta had been great…

  Jondan slapped me on the back and laughed, bringing me sharply back from my dreams and into the here and now.

  ‘Gold,’ he said, and shook his head. ‘Dead metal is nothing next to living soil, my friend. Nothing lives in metal. Metal makes nothing grow.’

  ‘Gold would make my fortunes grow quite impressively,’ I snapped at him.

  Even after a week at sea Jondan was somehow still filthy, with black crescents of soil under his nails and dirt ground hopelessly deep into the lines of his knuckles and palms. His threadbare shirt was half unbuttoned over his sweaty chest and I saw now that he wore a stone around his neck on a leather thong, one of his ‘interesting’ ones with a natural hole in it.

  ‘What’s that around your neck?’ I asked him.

  ‘A piece of home,’ he said. ‘I carry it with me always, so that I am always connected to the land that birthed me.’

  The whitecaps were higher now as we neared land, and seabirds wheeled and called overhead. In the distance, I could see a wide green line of dense jungle with a short beach where breakers rolled against the shore. The fire mountain was still distant, perhaps on a different island entirely. The Ghost Archipelago was rumoured to be huge and widely spread out, island after island in a long, confusing chain that seemed never to stay entirely still.

  ‘This place cannot be natural,’ I mused. ‘No normal islands disappear for hundreds of years, or move about by themselves. Doesn’t that bother you?’