When the top chamber was empty, his time would be up. The timer was the same size as the one used in the forge kitchen for boiling eggs, so he knew that he had less than three minutes to solve the puzzle.
Three minutes to win back what he had borrowed.
Three minutes…
Beneath his feet oars creaked and chains rattled.
Fail to pay and down you’ll go
To take your seat with those below.
8 – Truth
His heart thudding painfully, Lief picked up one of the silver sticks and put it aside. Now twelve sticks remained on the table, and one beetle’s ‘cage’ had only three walls.
With his left hand on the topaz, he hunched forward and with his free hand began moving sticks around, desperately trying to find the solution. But whatever he tried, he could not make six cages of the same size.
What you owe you must repay…
The sand was running, running. The top chamber of the timer was already half empty.
Calm your mind, Lief told himself. There is a trick here. A trick! You must relax enough to see it!
He moved his fingers from the topaz to the amethyst—the amethyst that calmed and soothed.
Peace stole through him. His racing mind slowed. And as it did, a thought occurred to him.
If the puzzle was to make cages with twelve sticks, why had there been thirteen sticks in the first place? And why had the sticks been arranged as they were?
To throw me off the scent, he guessed suddenly. To fix my mind on cages of a certain shape…
He looked at the silver sticks with new eyes. And then he saw the answer.
He glanced at the timer. Only a tiny pile of sand remained in the top chamber. He had just moments left.
Swiftly he re-arranged the sticks and put the jewelled beetles in place.
The last grain of sand slipped through the timer. Silently a slot opened at the bottom of the money jar and two gold coins slipped out. Lief snatched them up with a cry of triumph and leaped from the chair.
Barda groaned with relief.
Lief swung around to face him, holding up the coins in his closed fist.
‘Two coins!’ he crowed. ‘One coin to pay our debt, and one to keep for a souvenir!’
‘A souvenir!’ Barda called, shakily wiping sweat from his brow. ‘By the heavens, I could well do without a souvenir of the last few minutes. I believe they took ten years off my life!’
Lief’s excitement abruptly died. For a moment, the thrill of winning had made him forget where he was. Now he remembered only too well.
The cursed beings below his feet were still rowing. The sounds chilled his blood. Every stroke of the oars was pulling the ship further away from Bone Point, further away from hope of rescue.
‘Let us get out of this prison,’ he muttered.
Quickly, keeping close together, he and Barda walked back to the treasure chest.
‘We have played a game, and hereby we repay our debt,’ Lief said loudly. He threw one of the coins he had won onto the golden pile in the chest. It settled into place with a soft chink.
They turned and began to move towards the far end of the room.
This time they made progress, and in moments they were standing before the painting—staring at it in astonishment.
The picture was smooth as glass, but within it a painted sea moved sluggishly and clouds drifted in a red-stained sky.
And rising in the centre, unmistakable, was the tall white shape of the Bone Point Light.
Barda drew breath sharply. ‘What is this? It seems alive! It moves, like a reflection in a mirror. But it is a painting! Only a painting of the Bone Point Light as seen from—’
‘From the sea,’ Lief finished. His scalp was crawling. ‘I think this is a mirror, Barda. Or it was. Look at the signature. Verity made this image. It is her view of the Bone Point Light from the prow of The Lady Luck.’
He rubbed his sweating hands on his coat. ‘Verity was a prisoner, but no ordinary one, it seems,’ he said. ‘Somehow she made an image of what she could see appear in this mirror. She did it with the power of her mind, just as once she used paint and paper to make the pictures hanging on the lighthouse walls.’
‘It cannot be!’ Barda shook his head in disbelief.
‘Verity was born in the lighthouse,’ Lief said quietly. ‘Toran magic filled the air she breathed from her earliest days. It would not be surprising if she had powerful gifts of her own—though even she may not have been aware of it until…’
‘Until wickedness and terror came into her life for the first time, in the person of Captain James Gant,’ Barda finished heavily. ‘Then, it seems, her gifts awoke. Not soon enough to save her, but in time to leave this image behind, in memory of all she had lost.’
Lief nodded, then frowned. Suddenly he was imagining what practical Jasmine would say to that.
‘But why?’ Jasmine would exclaim. ‘If Verity could not use her magic to save herself, why did she not spend it on some useful purpose?’
Some useful purpose…
Lief looked again at the painting. And this time he saw something that he had not noticed before.
‘Barda,’ he said slowly. ‘Did you know that the name “Verity” means “truth”?’
‘Yes,’ Barda said. ‘What of it?’ Unwilling to abandon his hope that the painting concealed a hidden door, he was running his fingers around the gold frame, vainly searching for a spring or catch.
‘There are things in this painting that are not true,’ Lief murmured. ‘Do you see?’
Barda paused, glancing at the image. Then he frowned and stepped back a little, to see more clearly.
‘For one thing, the viewing platform is missing from the lighthouse,’ Lief said.
He stretched out his hand and touched the place where the viewing platform should have been. Instantly his fingertip tingled and beneath it something glowed.
Barda gasped, and Lief snatched his hand away. He rubbed his hot fingertip, staring at the painting in amazement.
Where his finger had been, the viewing platform now glowed brightly, its red railings vivid against the whiteness of the tower. And—was it his imagination, or was the Light above a little stronger?
I will shine like truth through the darkness…
‘The little bay, where I saw Verity first, is missing also,’ Barda said slowly. ‘It should be there, on the left—the north side—of the Point. But the painting shows only rocks.’
Lief nodded. Again he put out his hand and touched the place. And again, instantly, the painting changed. The Light brightened further, and beneath his fingertip, where only rocks had been before, the little bay glowed, complete with seaweed, shells and smashed red boat.
‘But the boat was surely not broken in those days!’ Barda exclaimed. ‘Verity used it for fishing!’
‘No doubt Laughing Jack wrecked it before he took Verity back to the ship,’ Lief said. ‘To prevent Red Han from rowing after them when finally he escaped from the locked room.’
As he spoke, he noticed that the sounds below their feet had grown louder, and the movement of the ship less smooth. It was as if the dead rowers were becoming restless.
‘The water,’ Barda said huskily. ‘It is too still. The waves are not foaming on the rocks. And look! The birds are carrying stems of water berries. People on the coast use them for food and drink. But sea birds do not. They are—flesh-eaters.’
He hunched his shoulders and rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth, as if he wished his last words had remained unspoken.
Lief stretched out both hands. He touched the water at the end of the point, and the berries carried by one of the birds.