Mad Ship

If it was a trail and not an accident of nature, whatever had made it was more sure-footed than he was. It was not wide enough for him to walk comfortably on it; he had to face the rock and edge up it. It ascended the face of the rock sharply. It shone underfoot with sparkly slime like a slug's dried track. One moment it seemed slippery, the next tacky. It suddenly seemed higher than it had from the beach; if he fell there were only rocks and barnacles to land on. Still, he had come this far, he would satisfy his curiosity. He came to a sudden indentation in the rock, the begi

A very narrow fissure in the rock extended all the way to the cliff top. Sunlight reached down timidly from an opening high above. Someone had chiseled and ground out a cave within it, not much larger than a coach. Inside the wrought cave, the rock floor sloped sharply away. Water from a high tide was trapped there in a dark still pool. He could see light reflected from its surface.

So what was the purpose of the bars? To keep people out, or to keep something in? He set his hands to one of the bars and tried to rattle it. It did not budge, but he could rotate it. It grated against the stone, and suddenly the surface of the pool erupted.

Wintrow stepped back so quickly he nearly fell over the edge. The pool was deeper than it looked to contain such a creature. Then, as it continued to regard him with immense gold eyes, he became bold enough to venture back to the bars. He clutched them in his hands and stared.

The sea serpent confined in the cave was stunted, its body marked with the limits of the pool. Its head was the size of a pony. Its body was so convoluted, he could not guess the length. It was a pale yellow-green, like a glowing fungus. Unlike the scaled sea serpents he had glimpsed from the deck of the Vivacia, this one looked plump and soft as an earthworm. Its body bore thick layers of callus where it had rubbed against the rocky walls of its prison. He suddenly realized that it must have grown to fill the pool. It had been captured and confined when small. He suddenly knew that this was the only world this creature had ever known. He glanced about himself. Yes. A high tide would just reach the lip of this fissure, bringing with it new salt water. And food? He didn't think so. Someone must bring it food.

It roiled in the confines of the pool, no more than a shifting of its tail from one side to the other. The effort corkscrewed its body. He watched with pity as it worked each segment of its serpentine body, trying to ease the twist on it. It could not, not completely. It stared at him expectantly.

"So you're used to being fed," he observed. "But why are you kept here? Are you a pet? A curiosity?"

The creature canted its head as if intrigued by his words. Then it dipped its immense brow down into the pool to wet it once more. The movement was an effort in the confined space. When it tried to lift its snout, its whole body kinked and bound. He watched it struggle, its length bulging up out of the water and scraping against stone smoothed by many such wedgings. It gave a cry like a raven's sharp caw, then suddenly snapped its head free again. Wintrow felt sickened. A fresh scrape showed on the side of its face. A thick greenish ichor oozed from it.

He set his hands once more to the bars. He could turn each in its socket, but they were set deep in stone both above and below. He could not budge them from their beds. He knelt at the base of them, to see how they had been fitted. He found the answer under his feet. He brushed away sand and sea detritus, to find the fine seams of worked stone. Above him, the sockets for the bars had been painstakingly drilled into the stone. A slight discoloration at the edge of one suggested it might have been a slot cut in the stone, one that had been filled in to the shape of the bar afterward. He visualized it to himself. The long bars would have been brought in, inserted at a sharp angle into the deep holes above and swung into place. The stones that secured them at the base had then been set. An examination of the seams proved him correct. He tried lifting each bar in place. Each had some play, some more than others. Yes. Now that he knew how it had been done, could he undo it?

The Treasure Beach and Ke

The mortar was old and crumbly. If the mortar was his only enemy, he would have won easily. But the blocks themselves had been cut and fitted with the precision of a master. He worked until his calloused hands broke new blisters. His knees ached from kneeling on the stone. He leaned close to the seam and blew sand and mortar out of his way. He tried his fingers in the crack. They would just slip inside. If he could get a grip, would he have the strength to lift the stone? He pulled with all his strength, and thought he felt the block slide fractionally. He took up his knife and went back to work while the serpent watched him with spi

ETTA WAS BATHED IN SWEAT BEFORE THEY GOT TO THE BEACH. BY TAKING his arm, she was able to help Ke

"Where is he?" the pirate demanded. "I don't see Wintrow." She shaded her eyes and looked up and down the beach. "I don't see him either," she said uneasily.

The curved shoreline was black sand and rock backed by the tableland. There was nothing large enough to conceal him. Where could he be? She blinked her eyes against the glare of sun on the water. "Could he have walked the beach already? Would the Others have met him and taken him somewhere?"

"I don't know," Ke

She thought he would blame her then, accuse her of dawdling on the path or otherwise delaying him. Instead, he settled his crutch under his arm and nodded at the alcove rock. "Help me get there," he growled.

She surveyed the loose dry sand and the stretches of uneven black rockface that made up the beach and her heart sank. The tide was at full ebb now. Soon it would turn and gradually cover the beach once more. The men at the boat expected them to return by high tide. It would make more sense for her to run ahead and see if Wintrow was there first, instead of forcing Ke