Blood upon the Sands

© 2011, ANDREW WARWICK

Chapter One – The Falls of the Cleft Rock

The turquoise waters of the lagoon were a crystal mirror, still and unsullied.  Beneath the surface, the rippled sands stood out sharp under the bright burning sun.  Small shoals of vividly coloured fish dared amongst the long strands of weeds that wavered with rise and fall of the water, while small crabs scuttled to and fro through the shoals.  Above, gulls lazily drifted in the silent, breathless air.  A furnace of humid heat blanked the region, the air thick with it, almost suffocating in its intensity.

White sands that dazzled with blinding brilliance in the sunlight bounded the lagoon, forming a narrow band of beach between the water’s edge and the dense, emerald growth of a wild and vibrant jungle, one thick with palms, dangling vines and bushes heavy with intense colours of flowers.  Through the jungle, a stream cut its way, running across the sand of the beach to feed the lagoon.

A sandy breakwater ringed much of the lagoon, sheltering it from the seas beyond.  Out there, small islands dotted the horizon; steep sided and crowded with growth, they were part of a veritable maze of hidden shoals and reefs, jagged rocks and islands.  They were but a fraction of an archipelago sprung out along the western seaboard, ranging from the windswept, chilled north, where floating ice was as much a danger as he shoals, to the far, burning south and the steaming jungles.

Dipping oars marred the mirrored surface of the lagoon, ripples echoing out across it as three small boats were rowed in from the open sea, through the narrow gap in the breakwater, making for the pristine sands of the beach.  Anchored just offshore sat a twin masted lanteen-sailed ship, its oars stowed.  Of the type that the men of Metsheput labelled a xebec, the corsairs and cut-throats that plagued the shipping lines of the southern islands much favoured it.

The three small boats were packed with a score of men each, hailing from a dozen lands.  There were pale skinned men from the far north, and ebon skinned men from the lands beyond the jungles to the south.  There were those that hailed from the great cities of the plans, from ancient Metsheput and from the feuding western kingdoms.

The first shore as the boats drew near to the beach, leaping with the grace and caginess of a wild beast, came a striking auburn haired woman, a heavy cutlass in her hand.  With bare feet and breeches of loose crimson silk, she waded through the water up to the beach.  A broad green sash was wrapped around her waist, into which a long dirk had been thrust, while over a loose white shirt she wore a leather vest.  Her amber eyes were sharp as she studied the beach and the jungle beyond and she moved with the caution of hunting cat.

Others spilled out behind her once the boats touched the beach.  Quickly the boats were pulled up out of the water. The occupants were a rough looking, motley crew, men and women both, clad in an assortment of clothing, from the drab to the flamboyant, no two alike in appearance or accoutrements.  Corsairs and cut-throats drawn from the dregs of nations, still none of them could match the air of the barely suppressed danger that lurked about the auburn haired woman.  A lioness among jackals she was compared to them, a primal, untamed force of nature such as could only come from being born into it.

The crew of corsairs spread out along the white sands of the beach from the boats, while the woman stalked closer to the trees, her eyes guardedly intent upon them.  Two others from the motley crew followed after her.  One was a tall man, though in comparison to her he appeared slender and soft, a creature of the cities rather than a true corsair.  A long and languid face beneath dark hair and pale skin gave him a look of culture, and of refinement, as did his clothing.  He wore a silk short of dark scarlet, well tailored, and embroidered with delicate details in golden thread, while a slender rapier hung from a baldric slung over his shoulder and across his chest.

The other was a big man, not merely in height, but in the girth of his paunch, though despite it he still walked with the light, rolling gait of a man born to the seas.  His dark hair and beard were thick and coarse, while a patch across his left eye gave his dark complexion somewhat of a menacing aspect.  Silver rings adorned his ears, and fingers, while a broad hat with a red feathered plume rested jauntily upon his head.

“This is the place?” he asked, his voice gruff and weathered, while his one good eye married as he stared at the jungles that lay ahead of them, an entanglement so thick that barely a yard could be seen into it.

“All indications point to it being so, Vaspari,” the slender man told him.

“I had wished that it had been otherwise, Blade,” Vaspari stated after giving a troubled grunt.  “This place is named  Zoatolan, once part of the vast and malevolent empire of the Zoacana, back before the oceans swallowed it up in ages past.  They may have walked as men do, but the Zoacana were devils in human form, necromancers and sorcerers of the darkest kinds.  A black curse still lingers on this place so that few will dare risk even setting foot upon it, despite the long ages since the Zoacana fell.”

The wild woman laughed and the sound startled  as it broke the stillness of the air.  “The world is filled with curses of ages past, Vaspari, but few sites there are that hold such wealth as we shall uncover here.  For that I would gladly hazard a few lingering hexes.  Hraega’s Teeth!  I had believed that the Sevinian Corsairs were formed of a sterner resolved than to be spooked by a few rumours and ghost stories.”

Vaspari responded with a flash of a grin through his beard.  “Aye, there is that, Peregrine.  Still, sailors are a superstitious lot by nature at the best of times, and it was only the lure of the fabled treasure of Mad Dog Khaladin that could entice this lot from carousing in Port Al-Barra to venture upon the cursed soil of Zoatolan.

Turning his back upon the shrouding greenery, Vaspari looked upon the corsairs spread along the beach.  “Listen well, you band of mang, mutinous dogs,” he barked, though there was no malice in his words, “We are here for the Mad Dog’s treasure, enough to make all of us wealthy beyond your wildest imaginings.  Ossari, select ten of the crew to remain behind with you to guard the boats.  The rest of you, with me.  Keep your weapons at hand and your eyes sharp.  What we are first looking for is a place that Khaladin called the Falls of the Cleft Rock.”

A tall man, his nose hooked and his trimmed beard tinted a blue-black, bearing the swarthy aspect of a Hashalite, a Son of the Sands, nodded.  He motioned for a number of the crew nearby to join him, returning to the boats that had been pulled up on the beach, there to await the return of the rest of the corsairs.

*****

Peregrine led the way up off the beach, stalking ahead along the gurgling stream that flowed out of the jungles.  Broad, but shallow, it barely reached their ankles at its deepest, and it ran across a bed that alternated between pale sand and small stones that had been worn smooth by the flow of water.  Fallen driftwood clustered at points along the banks, while the jungle crowded in dense and impenetrable to either side of them.  The canopy above blocked the right glow of the sun so that they were plunged into a dappled green and golden gloom, penetrated only at random by glittering beams of light that shone through gaps between branches overhead.  In the trees there echoed the cries of vibrantly plumaged birds.  Monkeys gambolled in the heights above, their chattering laughter competing with the cries of the birds.

The bands of rogues that waded their way up the steam, deeper into the heart of the island, towards where a mountain peak towered high, gripped tight to cutlasses and axes, pikes and crossbows.  They went forward with trepidation and eyed the viridian wilderness that towered around and above them with apprehension.

The minutes rolled by as sweat coursed down their bodies, while fears plagued their imaginations.  Those fears touched Peregrine not, for she was from far off, wild lands wherein the tales of the ancient evil that was the Zoacana had been forgotten, if they had been known at all.  Nor did they impinge upon Blade, insomuch as he knew more of the world long dead than the sailors did, and his qualms were of a more esoteric nature.  If they had known but a measure of the knowledge that he had accumulated through his studies and his journeys, the corsairs would have mutinied long before setting foot upon the sands of Zoatolan.  They did no, and thus went ahead blissfully unaware of the true dangers, and horrors, that might remain ahead of them.

After a long walk, the time and distance hard to judge in the confines they found themselves in, the jungle started to open out again, and they stepped forth into a clearing, one wherein a pool of water forehead, fed by a waterfall.  The sky overhead remained clear of the jungle canopy, and the sun shone bright once more, the glare of it taking a moment to adjust to after the steamy shade of the jungle.  Across the pool from where they had emerged rose a stark, grey stone cliff that appeared to be as if some giant’s blade had hacked deep into it, the wears spilling from above through the cleft so formed.

“The Falls of the Cleft Rock, just as Khaladin spoke of them,: Blade said.

“I am gathering that the treasure is not here,” Vaspari noted.  “That would be far too simple if it were so, and would not live up to the Mad Dog’s reputation.  He was far too cunning for that, and this place far too easy to reach for his liking.”

A brief flicker of a smile passed across Blade’s languid features, and then was just as swiftly gone.  “Khaladin did speak of passing through a veil of tears.”

“The waterfall, you mean?” Peregrine asked bluntly.

“I would expect that to be the case, yes,” Blade told her. “The alternative, to die, would seem most counterproductive to the exercise at hand.”

“I would not put it past the man to deliberately lure those that sought his treasure to their deaths,” Vaspari commented.

Peregrine fixed her amber eyes upon the falls that tumbled and splashed down from above.  “There does appear to be an opening beyond it,” she announced.  Stepping into the cool waters of the pool, she began to wade across it towards the waterfall.  The waters rose steadily, until they were well above her waist, and yet she continued on, undeterred.

“Wait here, dogs,” Vaspari growled at his band of ruffians before he and Blade plunged into the pool to follow after Peregrine.

The sword-maiden struck out for the waterfall, pushing her way through the cascading curtain, and disappearing into a small cavern that lurked beyond.  In the light that seeped through the falling water, casting dappled shadows about, she could see that the cavern opened out further in, and that the floor had a covering of fine, damp sand across it.  Carved into the stone wall jus inside the entrance as an engraving made by human hand, that of one of a skull clenching a skeletal hand in its grinning mouth.

“That is the mark of Khaladin,” Vaspari announced after entering the cavern through the falls and spotting the engraving.  “It was much feared wherever it was seen.  He did not earn the name Mad Dog lightly.”  Vaspari stared with intent further into the cavern.  “There is naught else here but the carving.  I would have expected further clues as to where Khaladin hid his treasure at the least.”

“There is nothing of the treasure here, nor indeed were there any clues left to indicate that it would be here either,” Blade told him.

“Then why did we enter?” Vaspari growled.

“Khaladin made mention of it, and it piqued my interest, that is all,” came Blade’s mild reply.

“Then if this place is of no help to us, then where do we go from here?”

Blade took on an expression of thoughtful concentration, his lips moving as if speaking, yet no words came out.  It appeared as if he was silently reciting words to himself.

“What is he doing?” Vaspari asked Peregrine, his one good eye narrowing.

“We didn’t so much steal the map from Mardouf,” Peregrine admitted, “As make a mental copy of it.  The map merely showed the way to which island the treasure was upon, but to find where the treasure is hidden one needs to follow the clues that were left in the form of a rhyme.  Blade memorised it.”

“So the map still remains in the hands of that treacherous dog Mardouf?” growled Vaspari, his face lined with a loathsome scowl.

“Aye,” Peregrine grinned, “But there is not much he can make of it without the rhyme.”

Blade spoke up, his reciting having reached its end.  “We go up,” he announced.

“You are certain of that?” Vaspari asked.

Blade nodded, and, in a soft voice, began to recite.  “Beyond the veil of tears I looked, and not afraid to die, the way ahead was set my feet, and thus we ascended high.”

Vaspari gave an irritated grunt, running his fingers through his thick beard.  “The man always did consider himself something of a philosopher poet, so I should not be at all surprised by such flowery prose.  So, we climb above the falls and press on into the heart of the island.  Did he at least mention where it was that we are meant to head to next?”

“He spoke of journeying into the Heart of Stone,” Blade replied  “What he meant exact by that, we shall just have to discover as we continue on our way.  Much of what he wrote does not at first glance have a readily obvious explanation.”

The trio abandoned the empty cavern, thrusting their way back out through the waterfall and wading across the cool waters of the pool, to rejoin the rest of the waiting, misbegotten crew of ne’er-do-wells who loitered around outside.

“We climb,” Vaspari told them.  “Put your backs to it, dogs.”

On to Chapter Two – Heart of Stone, House of Pain