Iimmi shrugged. “I suppose it’s a lot of weight for one person. I’ll carry one of them.”
Geo took the chain with the platinum claw from his neck and hung it around Iimmi’s. As they moved through the moon dapples, the jewel blinked like an eye in his black chest. Snake beckoned them to follow him. They stopped only to pick up swords from among the shriveled darkness. As they passed around the corner of the broken building, Geo looked for the corpse they had left there, but it was gone.
“Where are we going?” asked Urson.
Snake only motioned them on. They neared the broken cylinder and Snake scrambled up the rubble under the dark hole through which the man-wolf had leaped earlier that evening. They followed cautiously.
At the door, Snake lifted the jewel from Geo’s neck and held it aloft. It glowed now; blue-green light seeped into the corners and crevices of the ruined entrance. Entering, they stood in a corridor lined with the metal frames of double seats from which ticking and upholstery had either rotted or been carried off by animals for nests. Shreds of cloth hung at the windows, most of which were broken. Twigs and rubbish littered the metal floor. They walked between the seats toward a door at the far end. Effaced signs still hung on the walls. Geo could distinguish only a few letters on one white-enameled but chipped and badly rusted plaque:
n … sm. k … g
“Do you know what language that is?” asked Iimmi.
“I can’t make it out,” said Geo.
The door at the end was ajar, and Snake opened it all the way. Something scuttered through a cracked window. The jewel’s light showed two seats broken from their fixtures. Vines covered the front window, in which only a few splinters of glass hung on the rim. Draped in rotten fabric, metal rings about wrists and ankles, two skeletons with silver helmets had fallen from the seats…perhaps five hundred years before. Snake pointed to a row of smashed glass disks in front of the broken seats.
Radio…they heard in their minds.
Now he reached down into the mess on the floor and dislodged a chunk of rusted metal. Gun…he said, showing it to Geo.
The three men examined it. “What’s it for?” asked Urson.
Snake shrugged.
“Are there any electricities or diodes around?” asked Geo, remembering the words from before.
Snake shrugged again.
“Why did you want to show us all this?” Geo asked.
The boy only started back toward the door. When they reached the oval entrance, about to climb down, Iimmi pointed to the ruins of the building ahead of them. “Do you know what that building was called?”
Barracks…Snake said.
“I know that word,” said Geo.
“So do I,” said Iimmi. “It means a place where they used to keep soldiers together. It’s from one of the old languages.”
“That’s right,” said Geo. “From when they had armies.”
“Is this where the armies of Aptor are hidden?” Urson asked. “Those horrors we just got through?”
“In there?” asked Geo. The broken edges were grayed now, blunted under the failing moon. “Perhaps. It sounded like they came from in there at first.”
“Where to now?” Urson asked Snake.
The boy only started back toward the door. They followed him into the denser wood, where pearls of light scattered the tree trunks. They emerged at the broad ribbon of silver, the river, broken by rocks.
“We were right the first time,” Geo said. “We should have stayed here.”
Ripple and slosh and the hiss of leaves along the forest edge — these accompanied them as they lay down on the dried moss behind the larger rocks. Boughs hung with moss and vines shaded moonlight from them. The weight of relief on them, they dropped, like stones down a well, into the bright pool of sleep —
— bright pool of silver growing and spreading and wrinkling into the shapes of mast, the deck rail, the powder-white sea beyond the ship. Down the deck another figure — gaunt, skeletal — approached. The features, distorted by whiteness and pulled to grotesquerie, were those of the Captain.
Oh, Mate, the Captain said.
Silence while Jordde gave an answer they couldn’t hear.
Yes, answered the Captain. I wonder what she wants too. His voice was hollow, etoliated as a flower grown in darkness. The Captain knocked now on Argo’s cabin door. It opened, and they stepped in.
The hand that opened the door was thin as winter twigs. The walls were draped in spider webs, hanging insubstantial as layered dust. The papers on top of the desk were tissue thin, threatening to scatter and crumble with a breath. The chandelier gave more languishing white smoke than light, and the arms, branches, and carved oil cups looked for all the world like a convocation of spiders.
Argo’s pale voice sounded like thin webs tearing.
So, she said. We will stay at least another seven days.
But why? asked the Captain.
I have received a sign from the sea.
I do not wish to question your authority, Priestess…began the Captain.
Then do not, interrupted Argo.
My Mate has raised the objection that —
Your Mate has raised his hand to me once, stated the Priestess. It is only my benevolence — here she paused, and her voice became unsure — that I do not…destroy him where he stands. Beneath her veil, her face might have been a skull’s.
But — began the Captain.
We wait here by the Island of Aptor another seven days, commanded Argo. She looked away from the Captain now, straight into the eyes of the Mate. From behind the veil, hate welled from the black sockets.
They turned to go. On deck, they stopped to watch the sea. Waves like gray smoke swirled away; beyond that, at the horizon, a sharp tongue of land licked dark mountains. The cliffs were chalky on one side, streaked with red and blue clays on the other. There was a reddish glow beyond one peak, like a simmering volcano. Dark as most of it was, the black was backed with purple, or broken by the warm, differing grays of individual rocks. Even through the night, at this distance, beyond the silver crescent of the beach, the jungle looked rich, green even in the darkness, redolent, full, and quiveringly heavy with life —
Then the thin screams —
Chapter Six
Geo rolled over and out of sleep, stones and moss nibbling his shoulder. He grabbed his sword and was on his feet. Iimmi was also standing with raised blade. Dawn was white and gray through the trees. The air was chill, and the river slapped coldly behind them.
The thin scream came again, like a hot wire drawn down the gelid morning. Snake and Urson were also up now. The sounds came from the direction of the ruined barracks. Geo started forward cautiously, curiosity pulling him toward the sound, fear pushing him from the relatively unprotected bank and into the woods. The others followed.
Abruptly they reached the forest’s rim, beyond which was the clear space before the broken building. They crouched now behind the trees to watch, fascinated.
Between ape and man, it hovered in the shadow of the wall. It was Snake’s height, but Urson’s build. An animal pelt wrapped its middle and went over its shoulder, clothing it more fully than any of the four humans observing. Thick-footed, great-handed, it loped four steps across the clearing, uttered its piercing shriek, and fell on one of the beasts that had dropped from the sky last night, rolling its head back and forth as it tore at the corpse. Once, it raised its head and a sliver of flesh shook from its teeth before it fell again to devour.