Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
The track soon led into a grotto, where ferns sprouted in clefts and vines dropped tendrils down like plumb lines. Beetling cliffs rose on three sides. Sections of the track had fallen off the cliff-side: he leaped these gaps as the sea slurped hungrily below.
Pushing through a curtain of vines he found himself in a cave. A stream ran at his feet. He knelt down to taste it: the water was good and fresh. He drank until his thirst was gone. There was a gentle rush of air coming from the cave, as if some great lung was at work inside.
As he proceeded into the cave the sound of the sea behind him grew hollow and distant, and it quickly became too dark to see. He was about to turn back when he thought he saw a dim spot of luminescence hanging in the air. He moved still deeper into the cave.
When he reached it he discovered it was moonlight seeping down through a narrow chimney in the ceiling, which funnelled up through the rock to the night sky. The moon's silver face peered down through this aperture. A pool lay below the chimney. The pool was perfectly, unnaturally round, and seemed bottomless. He wondered how long the water had been trickling down through the chimney, carving out the pool. He wondered if anything lived down there in the dark water.
He resolved to stay beside the pool until the following afternoon. Then he would climb to the summit of Eblis Island and look for the ship. With any luck it would be gone by then. He was weary, and could think no further ahead than that. Sleep. Sleep was what he needed now.
He had stashed some corn husks in his bag before leaving the storeroom on Devil's Island; now he took one out, removed Fidelma from his pocket, and set them both down on the floor of the cave. She set to gnawing at the husk straight away. He made himself comfortable on the soft sand beside the pool and waited for sleep to come. But it didn't. Not right away.
Inevitably his thoughts turned to the man he had killed. Or had he? He wasn't sure. He had pushed him into the sea. He wondered if Nick had ever killed anyone. Nick had assured him he was not a murderer, but then he was also an accomplished and unashamed liar. Ward wasn't sure how to act, now that he had killed someone. He felt he should be more grim. Harder. He didn't feel it. All he could think about was the Brother's hands loosening around his wrist and falling away like kelp. Had the Brother drowned in that moment? Had Ward felt him die? He worried away at these thoughts, like picking at a scab. To distract himself from them he got up and looked about the cave.
There was something magical about this place. Lit by the moonlight, the pool glowed an unearthly blue. It didn't provide enough light to read by, and he didn't try, but after some hesitation he reached for the bag and took the leather pouch containing the dice from the small front pocket. He let it rest, unopened, in his hand. He remembered the first time he had beheld it, how he had been loathe to touch it. It was not so now. He couldn't wait to open it. He could feel his blood running hot through his veins. The fear was still there, but that was part of what made it exciting. There was power here. It was like Jaggles' electrickly, the mysterious invisible force that could make a lighthouse operate by itself. Nick had told him that the underground trains had once run on the same stuff – so much of it that if you touched it you would have been fried like a cricket tossed in a hot fire. Ward wondered if there was electrickly in his body. It felt like that now.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
