Isle of the Dead

3 – The Lighthouse

Barda stood stiff with shock. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Filli popped his head out from beneath Jasmine’s jacket and began chattering a welcome. Prin was panting up to the lighthouse with Bruna and Ailsa close behind her.

‘What are you looking for, Barda?’ Prin asked. ‘Have you lost something?’

Barda turned like one in a dream. ‘Only my senses, it seems,’ he mumbled.

Plainly he was going to say no more, so Prin turned her attention to the lighthouse.

‘Oh, it is much larger than it looks from a distance!’ she squealed. ‘And we can all fit through the door easily, I am sure of it! Shall I—?’

‘Wait!’ Lief exclaimed. Gently he pushed Prin aside and put his hand on the shining brass doorknob.

‘Jasmine and I will go in first,’ he said. ‘You Kin follow, close behind us. Barda will come last. It is very important that we stay together. Do you understand?’

The three Kin nodded, their eyes wide.

‘Is there… danger?’ whispered Bruna, glancing worriedly at Prin.

‘The lighthouse is deserted,’ Lief said carefully. ‘But we may see or hear things—things that are not real.’

‘Spirits!’ Prin squeaked in excitement.

Bruna made a frightened sound and clasped her small front paws.

‘Some say they are spirits,’ said Lief. ‘My mother says they are only visions from the past, kept alive by the walls of this place. The lighthouse is very old, and the magic of Tora is in every stone of it.’

He sighed. ‘The builders of Raladin have been asked to try to knock it down so that another lighthouse can be built in its place. But the Torans have little hope that this can be done.’

He turned the brass knob. The door opened smoothly, as though its hinges had been freshly oiled.

Inside it was very dark, and cold as death.

‘Something bad happened here,’ quavered Prin, stepping back. ‘Something very bad. I feel it.’

‘I, too,’ Bruna murmured.

‘And I,’ said Ailsa.

‘We will turn back, if you wish,’ Lief said.

‘No,’ said Ailsa in a small voice. ‘We will go on. Dreams cannot harm us.’

Lief and Barda lit their lanterns. As the flames flared up and began to glow, they saw in front of them a spiral staircase winding upwards. Shadows flickered on smooth, curved stone walls.

Looking up, Lief thought he saw a flash of yellow, like the swirling hem of a yellow skirt. He caught his breath.

‘It is not real,’ Jasmine murmured behind him. And he knew that she had seen what he had seen.

On the wall at the foot of the stairs hung a painting framed by polished sticks of driftwood. It was a picture of the little bay and the sea beyond, painted with love and skill.

The sea was glittering in early morning light. A red rowing boat was drawn up on the smooth, wet sand, which was marked with a wavy line of shells cast up by the tide. At the bottom of the painting was a signature.

Lief reached out and touched the name gently with the tips of his fingers.

Bubbling laughter floated down the stairs. Lief jumped violently.

‘Father!’ a high, excited voice called, echoing, echoing in the tall, hollow space. ‘A visitor is coming. Someone is rowing in from that ship! Go down to meet him, Father! Make haste!’

Bruna wailed softly.

‘I have caught some fish, too!’ the voice ran on. ‘And the water berries by the bay have ripened. Is it not wonderful? We will be able to give him a good dinner, if he will stay.’

Visions from the past… Not real…

Mother, Zeean and Peel saw only glimpses, and heard only muffled sounds, Lief thought. They reported nothing like this.

He touched the Belt of Deltora, hidden beneath his clothes. The great amethyst, the gem of Tora, the symbol of truth, is in its own territory now, he thought. It feels the power in the lighthouse stones. I must expect that we will see and hear more than others have done.

Gritting his teeth, he set his foot on the first stair, and began to climb.

He climbed fast, trying to keep his mind blank, concentrating on the sound of his companions’ footsteps close behind him.

Every now and then he would come to another painting fastened to the stone wall. There were paintings of seabirds, shells, the lighthouse from every angle, the sea in every mood. All had plainly been created by the same loving hand, and were signed in the same way. He took care not to touch them.

Verity, he thought. A girl with red hair who loved the birds, and the sea. A lighthouse keeper’s daughter, who rowed in a little red boat, and fished, and painted pictures of what she saw around her. What happened to her? Why does her shade linger here?

He remembered what his mother had told him of Verity.

‘Little was known of her except that she was born in the lighthouse,’ Sharn had said. ‘Her mother died when she was only one year old. The local folk say that she was raised by her father, and the sea.’

Lief realised that there was a door ahead of him. He climbed the last few steps and, holding his breath, pushed the door open. Holding the lantern high, he cautiously moved into the room beyond.

His companions crowded after him, the Kin squeezing through the doorway with grunts and groans.

Barda turned to close the door behind him. He stared.

‘Certainly, something has happened here,’ he said. ‘This door is damaged. It looks as if it has been kicked. And these marks…’

He lowered his lantern and bent to peer at the ominous dark smears that stained the dented, splintered wood of the door.

Lief was looking around him. Plainly, they were in the lighthouse keeper’s sitting room.

Dim light filtered through two round windows, one looking back to the land, one looking out to sea. Many more paintings decorated the walls. Two easy chairs sat together in front of an old black stove. There was a bright woollen rug on the floor. There was a small table with wooden benches on either side of it, and a shelf stacked with blue-striped plates and cups.

It should have been a cosy scene, but it was not. Instead, the room chilled the blood. The very air seemed to taste of misery and horror.

On the far side of the room, near the stove, there was another door. Lief knew that beyond it must be a second staircase that led to the bed chambers and at last to the viewing platform.

Yet he could not make himself move. And nor, it seemed, could anyone else. They stood in silence, crowded together, as if no-one was willing to take the first step.

A cold breeze brushed Lief’s cheek. He caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye.

He turned his head slowly. He blinked.

The room had been deserted only moments before. Now he could see, as if through a light mist, two men sitting on either side of the table, playing cards.

Cups stood at the men’s elbows, and empty stone bottles lay in a jumble on the floor around their feet. The candle flickering between the men had burned down to a lumpy stub, swimming in wax.

Visions from the past…

Lief opened his dry lips. ‘Do you see them?’ he whispered.

‘Yes.’ His companions’ voices were like the rustling of leaves in the wind. The Kin sounded terrified.

The man facing them had a broad face, dark red hair and a bushy red beard. His blue eyes were bloodshot and deeply shadowed. His shoulders were bowed. His blunt fingers trembled as he threw down his cards.

‘You win again,’ he said thickly. ‘It is nearly dawn. I—I will play no more.’

The other man nodded.

He had his back to Lief. Lief could see nothing of him but a dark coat and limp black hair pushed behind a pair of large ears. But something about the way his narrow shoulders tensed showed that this was the moment he had been waiting for.

‘Then pay me what you owe, Red Han,’ he said softly. ‘And I will leave you.’

‘I cannot pay,’ the bearded man muttered. ‘You know it, Gant! Why, at midnight I told you I was ruined. You yourself urged me to play on, saying my luck was sure to change.’

He put his face in his hands. ‘Ah, what a fool I was to listen to you!’ he groaned. ‘Instead of winning back what I had lost, I now owe three times the sum I owed before!’

‘You had better keep your voice down, or you will wake your daughter,’ the man called Gant murmured. ‘Let her sleep while she can. She will find out what has happened soon enough.’

The bearded man gave a muffled sob.

In one smooth movement, Gant drew a sheaf of papers from his pocket and put them on the table.

Lief, Barda and Jasmine leaned forward and caught a glimpse of the top sheet.

James Gant flicked through the papers with long, thin fingers.

‘Why, it has been a long night, my poor fellow!’ he said softly. ‘You have signed ten notes in all, I see. And each is for ten gold coins.’

Red Han thrust his fingers through his hair and tugged as if to tear it out by the roots. ‘I cannot pay!’ he repeated. ‘Where would I get a hundred gold coins?’

The thin man shook his head. ‘You should have thought of that before,’ he said regretfully. ‘You signed the notes. You swore a solemn oath to pay.’

‘It was madness!’ groaned Red Han. ‘Madness!’ He looked up, glaring at his visitor with haunted eyes. ‘You—you encouraged me! You filled out the notes, and gave me them to sign. You made it so easy!’

His visitor shrugged. ‘I was merely trying to help,’ he said. He paused, then leaned forward, clasping his bony hands on top of the pile of papers.

‘Perhaps—perhaps there is something I can do for you, even now,’ he said, raising his voice to a normal tone for the first time. ‘There is nothing I like better than helping those less fortunate than myself. Why, I live to do good. And you seem such a worthy fellow.’

Lief went cold. Those words… That voice! He heard Jasmine draw a sharp breath, and knew that she, too, had recognised them.

Why had he not seen it before? This vision from the past, this man calling himself Captain James Gant… was the man they knew as Laughing Jack.