The Tides of Avarice (50 page)

The rest of pirates raised a motley cheer – a very quiet cheer, because of the guards outside the cave entrance. Soon, everyone except Pimplebrains was equipped with a torch, and some carried two. By silent agreement, Cheesefang was the person to lead the way into the dark, narrow passageway, with Pimplebrains following right behind him. Sylvester and Viola came next, then the remainder of the party.

The ceiling in there wasn't much higher than some of the larger pirates' heads, and when a stalactite hung down, which was frequently, it was even lower. There was a fair amount of bumping and thumping as unwary creatures collided with the stone pendants, not to mention the astringent smell of burned fur from accidents with the torches. The stalagmites too were a menace, often rendering an already narrow passage almost impossibly so. Once or twice Sylvester, as he struggled to clamber around a particularly large stalagmite, was certain he wasn't going to be able to squeeze himself through. Each time he managed it, of course, but he winced at the thought of how much of themselves the bigger animals must be scraping off on the sharp flints of the walls.

It took him a time to realize, what with all the exertion, but the air in the crevice was a whole lot colder than in the big cave the cannibals called the Larder.

He shuddered. How long could it be before their escape was discovered? Surely the islanders would instantly guess where the pirates had gone. They'd lived here since time immemorial. They must be fully aware of the back exit to the Larder.

Sylvester cursed himself. He should have thought to persuade Cheesefang and the others to leave a false trail outside the cave mouth, so the Vendrosians might be deceived into thinking the fugitives had fled into the deep jungle. Too late for that now. Half his life he seemed to be thinking of good ideas long after they'd have been useful.

He gritted his teeth and told himself crossly to get a grip. The only good option at the moment was to get as far from the Larder as possible. If Pimplebrains was right, they'd eventually come out into the open air. Then, if they were very lucky, they could lose themselves in the night before the cannibals even realized they'd gone.

“Strike me timbers and lash me thighs!” said Cheesefang suddenly in astonishment, up ahead.

“Gawd luvaduck!” agreed Pimplebrains. The awe in his voice was obvious.

Sylvester pressed forward with renewed vigor, holding his torch out in front of him.

When he saw what the other two had seen, his jaw dropped. “Blimey,” he breathed.

“What is it?” said Viola, close behind him. Then: “Oh!”

For Sylvester, it was like the first time that, as a very small lemming, he'd been taken by his parents to the temple back in Foxglove. The interior of the building had seemed larger, somehow, than the open sky outside. He felt as if there might be clouds and thunderstorms up near the temple's painted ceiling. The sheer scale of the place gave it an ambience of the most profound mysticism. He'd gaped in awe. It had been a long time before Hortensia and Jasper had been able to persuade him to come with them to the family pew.

In the years since, his mind had grown a little more sophisticated, of course, and he tended now when entering the temple to have to control his lips from moving into a mocking curl. But that reduced not at all the sense of unadulterated wonder that flooded through him as he gazed into what was a far vaster chamber than the Foxglove temple.

The rest of the pirates now stumbled out of the constricted passageway and were gathered together in a huddle. No one spoke very loudly. It would have seemed somehow disrespectful.

The torchlight could penetrate only a small distance into the cavern. Its far walls could be detected only as occasional glimmers, occasional impressions of things that might or might not have been actually seen. Sand covered the cavern's floor. The walls were a conglomeration of steep, misshapen rocks that were so black they might have been coal; the dancing of the torchlight made them seem like the claws of some enormous creature – at rest now but ready at any moment to pounce upon its prey. Overhead in the ceiling, the torches' flames made crystals twinkle like the red embers that had floated in the air above the cannibals' bonfire.

But none of these were what caught Sylvester's eye.

In the middle of the cavern, lying three-quarters of the way over to one side, was a ship that dwarfed the Shadeblaze. Somehow, Sylvester knew it was a ship, even though it looked nothing like the pirate vessel. Its hull didn't just cover the lower half of this ship but extended all the way round. It was made not of wooden planks, like the Shadeblaze's, but of some dull gray metal that seemed to swallow light and give nothing back in return. There were some angular markings engraved into the hull near the bluntly pointed tip that made no sense in any of the languages Sylvester could read, living or dead. But far more obvious was the huge, circular, splinter-rimmed hole in the hull about one-third of the way back from the ship's prow. It was high up near where the water line would usually be, but as the ship sat askew on the sandy floor, it was close enough to the ground for them to walk through. In the hole one could see nothing but the menace of dark shadows. Even those were enough to convey that this ship was damaged beyond all hope of repair.

“What in Sagaria is that thing?” said Cheesefang.

“I can tell you what it is,” chipped in Sylvester.

“Ye can?”

“Yes. Sometimes it's valuable having an archivist along with you.”

Cheesefang snorted. “I'll believe ye. Thousands'd rather tear orf their own 'eads. So, go on then. What is that thing?”

The rat was trying to keep his voice nonchalant. The big giveaway was that he couldn't bear to turn his gaze away from the huge edifice that filled the center of the cavern.

Sylvester's own voice became humble. “It's one of the ships of the Zindars.”

“Of the wot?”

“The Zindars.” Sylvester explained as concisely as he could. The pirates gathered around him, listening eagerly to his narrative. For once they were silent. That is, until there was mention of the Zindars' treasure chest, and the fact that Jeopord possessed the map old Cap'n Adamite had created. The map that showed the location where the treasure chest was buried. Sylvester felt it was time, way past time, that the pirates should know all this. There had been far too many secrets kept back from this crew, first by Throatsplitter Adamite, then by Terrigan Rustbane and, most recently by their latest captain, Jeopord.

At the same time, something made him hold back from telling them that the map Jeopord owned showed its “X” alongside the wrong island.

Think of it as my insurance, he decided. He glanced at Viola and she nodded back, clearly understanding his thoughts.

“Ye mean,” said Cheesefang, stroking his jaw with the paw that wasn't holding a guttering torch, “the treasure chest of the Zindars could be right 'ere in front of us?”

“Unlikely,” said Sylvester promptly. “Vendros isn't the island marked on Cap'n Adamite's map.”

“I remember Cap'n Adamite,” struck in Pimplebrains. “He was all right, he was.”

“Thank ye for that,” said Cheesefang sardonically. At last, he turned to look Sylvester in the eye.

“But ye think this … object belonged to the Zindars?”

Sylvester gulped. “Yes, I do. I think this must have been one of the sites of the great last battle between the Zindars and their persecutors from the stars. I think a bolt from one of the foe's great energy weapons punched the hole in the side of the Zindar vessel that we can see in front of us. They must have had other ships, obviously, because they were able to escape from Sagaria back to the starways, but—”

“So 'ow come yer thinks their treasure chest ain't buried 'ere?” Cheesefang interrupted.

Sylvester gave his very best imitation of a carefree laugh. “It could be buried here. I'm not saying for definite it isn't, but it also could be buried in any one of a thousand other places. And, like I said, Vendros isn't the island indicated on Adamite's map.”

Cheesefang glowered. “I served under Josiah Adamite for many a long year and, lemme tell you, years were very much longer back then. 'Specially if ye was serving on the Shadeblaze when Cap'n Adamite was the skip. And I can tell ye this, safe in the knowledge that there's none here can countersay me, ol' Throatsplitter was a devious bugger and there's no way he would tell the truth if there was the chance to tell something different. Most particerlarly when he was concoctin' hisself a treasure map.”

Sylvester tried not to let his astonishment show. It was as if the sea rat could somehow read the dead captain's mind.

“So,” Cheesefang continued, once more scratching his jaw, “wot I'm sayin' is this could just as likely be the island where the treasure's buried as anywhere else in this part of the ocean. My guess is ol' Josiah'd have made sure 'is treasure map was of the right region, 'cause he'd need that information hisself if he was goin' to navigate here. But I think 'e prob'ly put a mark on the chart indicating the wrong island, just to get up people's noses, like.”

Sylvester said nothing. Apparently, that was enough for Cheesefang to know that he'd penetrated the lemming's, and Cap'n Adamite's, secret.

“Wot I'm thinking,” Cheesefang concluded, “is that we should mebbe start diggin', jus' on the offchance. The dead ship's here. There's no better clue than that, that these Zindthings stuffed their chest inter the ground somewhere near it?”

Sylvester could think of a thousand reasons why this line of reasoning was flawed, but all he did was stand there with his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish's.

“This place is colossal,” said Viola. “You could be searching here forever and still not know if the treasure chest lay just one more spadeful away.”

“It's a chance I is willin' to take, Miss Droppydrawers,” said Cheesefang with what probably seemed like civility if you were a sea rat.

“Cheesefang?” said Viola in a deceptively light tone.

“Ah, yerss?” The sea rat looked anxious. He'd obviously remembered their last conversation on the subject of drawers.

“Are you fond of your head?”

“Er, yerss.”

“Then just be careful, you hear?”

“Um, yerss.” The relief in the sea rat's voice was manifest.

Despite the objections of Viola and Sylvester, the sea rat was determined the pirates should give the cavern floor at least a perfunctory search for the Zindar's chest. He ignored their warnings that it surely couldn't be too much longer before the cannibals discovered they were missing and came in hot pursuit.

All this time, the group of pirates had, without any particular volition, been moving slowly toward the enormous gray vessel. As they grew closer, Sylvester began to appreciate how truly gargantuan it was. And there was more, it was heavy. He had the sense it had so much mass it was drawing them toward it by gravity. Just the hole in its side was bigger than the Library in Foxglove, the place where he'd spent so much of his life. He wished he could see farther into that hole, but the light from their torches seemed incapable of penetrating its blackness.

He shivered.

Who knew what secrets there might be hidden in the Zindars' ship?

“Besides,” Viola added, “we don't have any spades.”

“Yes, we do,” said Pimplebrains.

They'd just reached the prow of the mighty ship, and now the feeble light of their torches probed into an area of cavern that had been invisible to the pirates before. It seemed to have been the scene of a battle, or at least a skirmish, because on the sand lay enormous, unrecognizable bones and skulls, rusted weapons so huge a whole troop of rats and lemmings might find too heavy to raise, and, scattered hither and thither with no apparent reason, curved plates of what Sylvester guessed must once have been metal armor.

“That stuff's too big for us to dig with,” he said.

“Nah,” said Cheesefang. “There are some smaller bits as well, see?”

He was right. Between the monstrous swords and the mammoth breastplates were plenty of pieces of metal more in proportion to lemming paws. Pimplebrains didn't have to, of course, because he could scrabble at the ground with his metal hooks, but the rest of the party went scavenging amongst the detritus on the cave floor to find suitable digging implements. The item Sylvester eventually settled on looked as if it might once have been a muzzle-guard. He could barely lift it. He deliberately chose not to imagine the scale of the creature whose muzzle must once have needed guarding.

Once everyone was equipped, Cheesefang called for order.

“You, I mean you, Sylv and Droppydr—ahem, Viola, you go with Pimplebrains and dig on the side of the ship we just come away from.”

“The side the cannibals is likely to come out into first, you mean?” said Pimplebrains dourly.

“Ye's got it in one,” Cheesefang confirmed. “Ye's pretty bright for someone with pimples for brains.” He waited for the others to laugh. No one did. “Next you's'll work out how to pick your nose with them 'ooks.”

“They've feasted on many a pirate's gizzard,” observed Pimplebrains with frightening quietness, eyeing Cheesefang's throat. “Tearing flesh, they're good at that.”

But the beaver clearly had no inclination to take the argument any further, because with a nod to the two lemmings he led them back round the bow of the Zindar ship.

“This is dimwitted,” said Viola, gazing around at the great tract of vacant sand, which was featureless except for the trail of shuffling footprints the pirates had left as they advanced toward the ship. “Like Sylvester said, we could dig here for the rest of our lives and still have hardly started.”

“You're right,” said Pimplebrains with a chuckle. “But Cheesefang? He's too stupid to think that through, even though Sylvester here told him so in so many words. Cheesefang's going ta set everyone to digging as fast and furious as they can dig, hoping to get the treasure out of the ground and into his pockets without Jeopord knowing. 'Cause, my little friends, if the cannibals ain't the first to come and find us, it's going to be Jeopord. An' I'm not sure which of them as I'd prefer it to be.”