THE ISLAND WAS shaped much like a bell. A wide, more or less circular beach of white gold sand ran like a ring around the rising jungled interior. It was a little higher to one side than the other, owing to a rising scarp that traced out a mesa in the center. Trees hung dangerously from the sheer sides of the bleached cliffs, growing wherever root found purchase, sweeping perilously back and forth in the endless sea winds. Atop that elevated rise was a massive temple complex, built in an age long lost to memory.

Rising from the dense jungle trees at the highest reaches of the island was the head of a huge stone turtle. Sleek and squarish, it thrust its snout toward the smoldering sunset. The vast ruby light of dusk at sea gave the monolith a bloody, savage aspect.

The weary pirates were making for the narrow staircase that climbed the mesa and led to that strange godhead and the temple around it. The flies were thick about them now, and they swatted angrily at neck, arms, and legs as they cut through jungle shadow. Green leaves were fading to black as the island slid into night.

Red Rahm marched at the head of their ragged column and was the first to see the body hanging from the trees in the clearing where they had stopped to rest earlier in the day. It was a calm little pocket, free of the explosive growth that choked the island. Several stone pillars stood among the trees, bearded with moss, slouching in their old age. Squared cross beams stood between these, from which thick, flowering vines hung like ropes of jade. The place had a sacred quality about it, but it was faded, nearly consumed by the voracious jungle. Several of the stones had fallen, or broken, long before the pirates had come upon them.

A body now hung from one of those cross beams, stripped to the waist and strung up by its feet. The corpse’s arms were tied behind its back with strips of his shirt, as were his ankles. A sack was tied over the head.

Red Rahm cursed. Xereks and Tahn-lo hurried after him, and then Jol. Llyr followed more slowly, casting his suspicious gaze across the tree line, searching for the eyes he felt on the back of his neck. The feeling of being watched had dogged him since they had quit the beach, but there had been no sign of Tahn-lo’s spear-throwing ape-man. Or of anything else at all. The silence pressed on him like a knife to his throat.

So it was that Llyr did not see Red Rahm fall into the pit below the dangling body. He heard the screams and commotion, the cheap blasphemy thrown at the uncaring sky. He forced his way between big Jol and little Tahn-lo.

“Zol’s glaring eye!” he swore.

Red Rahm coughed weakly. The pit was small: only a few feet deep. But the big drunkard had fallen straight through and onto a dozen sharpened stakes. These had punched half as many bloody holes through him. Gory tips stuck through his side, arm, leg, and neck. Even as Llyr watched, Rahm stopped moving.

Jol roared, shaking his fists at the canopy. “Enough! Come out and face me, you bloody cowards!” Tahn-lo crouched beside the pit, his arms wrapped around his knees, and said nothing. Xereks staggered to the side of the trail and vomited.

The hanged man dangled over Rahm, twisting in the slight breeze. Llyr fought back his instinctive fear, and ignored the urge to turn tail and run. He fished around with the point of his cutlass until he snagged it in the fabric of the hanging man’s mask. It tore away, revealing Fett’s bearded, sun-chapped face. His throat was cut. The killer had bled the man like an animal. As he spun, Fett’s vacant eyes seemed to catch Llyr’s for a long moment.

But they were dead, and he was not, and that made all the difference.

“It’s the Lion,” Llyr said, standing. “He’s hunting us.”

“Can’t be,” Xereks said.

“Rahm thought that too. Look where it got him.”

Jol’s fury had tapered. He stalked back and forth, shaking the knife in his fist. “Then we kill him, this time for good. Finish the job. I want his head!”

“How could he have survived?”

“He was a tough bastard,” Llyr said. “We all knew it. That’s why the Captain done as he did.”

“Dead men,” Tahn-lo said, and they all knew he was talking about them.

Llyr glared at the little man, but it had no effect. “Let’s go. If he’s hunting us, we make him come to us. The temple’s walls are high, and he’s just one man! We can take him together.”

“Now you’re for Rahm’s plan?” Jol asked, wiping spittle from his lips. He was panting, his eyes shot with red rage.

“Do you want to be standing in the dark jungle, swatting flies, when he springs his next trap?”

Jol said nothing. Beside them, Tahn-lo was shaking like a cold dog. Xereks cursed and walked off to mutter a prayer. Whether he found any peace, Llyr could not say, but even in the gloomy dusk, it was clear the pirates were unconvinced. He could see the whites of their eyes, wide and terrified. Hells, he could almost hear the thumping of their hearts. Llyr felt it, too. Perhaps they should have stayed on the beach...but no, poor Linol was proof that camping on the sand would only have made them easy pickings.

Better to have simply swam for the ship, he decided.

“What about his treasure?” Jol asked, looking down at the sack that had fallen into the pit with Red Rahm.

“Useless if we’re dead. Leave it. We need to move fast.” Llyr was unused to giving orders, but they fell in behind him, to a man. “And keep your eyes open.”

They abandoned the trail, for fear of traps set along the way. No man wanted to end up like Rahm or Fett. So they hacked their way through vine and bush, fighting the obstinate jungle for every.

Llyr was relieved beyond words when he spied the rugged white cliff emerging through the trees. They hurried forward to the foot of the scarp, where jagged boulders had piled over long centuries. Spindly trees grew out of the gaps between the huge, lichen-stained stones. Roots that ran like skeletal fingers over the rocks, clutching them together and giving anchor to the feathery boughs that hung high above their heads.

They crept along the wall until they found the foot of the narrow stair that wound up the side of the cliff. Each step was carved with strange, intertwining glyphs so eroded that it was difficult now to make them out. What story they told, or wards they held, the men could not say, nor cared to puzzle over. They climbed with shoulders hunched, silently fearing that rocks would crash down from above.

No killing stones came.

The stars emerged from the veil as the east settled into the silvered darkness of the sea at night. From that high up, they could see the twinkling lights aboard the Scarlet Wind. They were too far away to make out much detail, but the ship was well-lit, as if trying to chase off spirits of the dark. Perhaps even out there, they sensed the fear that gripped the island.

Llyr cleared the top of the stairs and staggered off to the side, making way for his companions. The bag he carried seemed heavier with every step, and he regretted not leaving it on the beach with Linol’s sack. It was simply too important to leave aside—what if the tide swept it away? It was filled with artifacts of wrought gold and silver… enough to keep them in their cups for the rest of their lives, he thought.

Though that might be a very short time indeed.

The trees were thinner on the mesa above the island. The jungle had never truly claimed it, for the soil was stony and thin. In places, slick brown rock lay bared to the sky. Towering above anything else, still warmed by the final embers of the day, was the titanic turtle head. The Temple of the Great Turtle lay not much further ahead.

The path here was paved with interlocking flagstones. These were carefully maintained by the monks who lived at the temple. There were five of them, all knife-eared Erideshi. Llyr had never seen such creatures, but the sea was a place full of wonders. Strange though they were, the monks had not raised a hand as the pirates heaped booty into their sacks.

A sudden, sharp noise broke the silence. Llyr fell into a fighter’s stance and drew his cutlass. The men behind him dropped their sacks in a mad clatter. Swords and knives were drawn in a hurry.

“Well, he knows we’re here now,” said Jol humorlessly.

“Bloody fools!” Llyr said. “Get this shit in the temple!”

The temple walls were indeed tall. Each bore a relief carving of a vast turtle, upon which sat the circle of the world. Mountains and trees were piled above the disc, and clouds hung like cumulus islands in the sky. More of the intertwining glyphs traced rings around these scenes, flowing like unfathomable rivers from one to the next. For all their beauty, the walls were built to keep the jungle back. They stood taller than the largest trees, though vines had snaked their way up the sheer faces and over many years forced open cracks in the stonework.

The temple’s gates were two huge, copper-plated doors, heavily stained by a pale patina. Embossed on each door was a severe-looking woman who cupped her hands before her belly, and held bolts of lightning over her womb.

She was no mystery to them. Llyr and Xereks knew her as Inraela the Storm Queen, inheritor of the sea. Tahn-lo named her Dragon of the Sea. Jol’s folk called her The Mother of Sorcery. None of them liked being under her severe gaze. They pushed quickly past the unwelcoming gates, and into the wide garth beyond the wall.

The Temple of the Great Turtle was built all of squarish blocks that formed intricate patterns. Some were no more than the size of a man’s head, and others were far more massive, measuring several strides across. These were laid out in regular colonnades that traced out a roofless yard in which lush, tropic gardens grew. Four statues stood in the garden, each fashioned after a fierce-faced stormlord. All dead and gone now, but they lived on in stories swapped in every harbor and quay.

The central structure of the temple was a gallery with a dozen doors that opened into its interior. These were dark, emanating no light from within. Above, richly carved prangs stood in crested ridges, six to a side and twelve in all. Each of these bore a face assembled from many carefully carved blocks. Atop each of these sat a stone animal, some familiar to the pirates, and some strange. They were stained with age, but still, their power seemed to repel the intruders, who could not bear to look upon those huge faces for very long.

At the very end of the gallery was the rising prow of the great turtle head, staring out over the horizon, forever vigilant. The stars danced above its head, and it seemed impossibly large as they gazed up at it in the dark: a cyclopean thing born of another world, carved not by mortal hands: a relic of a long-lost time when great powers still worked the earth and sculpted wonders beneath titanic hands.

Shuddering, Llyr led them up the narrow stair and onto the gallery’s promenade. Scurrying like mice, they disappeared into the dark therein.

Unlike their earlier visit, the lamps were banked. Only a faint hint of the heady incense lingered in the air. The alcoves they had plundered now held pools of impenetrable shadow, and the columns astride the many doors seemed to threaten to fall in. It felt as if they had come into a decrepit tomb.

A vision of death awaited them at the altar: the ape-man Tahn-lo had told them of stood waiting for them. He was huge, broader and taller than every man except Jol. His skin was daubed with mud, and his wild black mane hung loose about heavy shoulders. The man’s savage face was contorted in primal fury.

Ulrem the Slayer, his name was, the wildest and fiercest of the reivers. Drowned three days ago by the order of the Captain. Yet there he stood, wearing nothing but a kilted skirt, the scabbard belted to his back, and sandals that laced up his calves. On his right forefinger was a golden ring that seemed to glow faintly in the dark. Flat gray eyes watched their approach from deep pools of shadow.

“Dog!” cried Jol, charging forward. “Maybe you don’t drown, but I know you bleed, you cut-throat!”

“Jol, no!” Llyr raised a helpless hand to stop him. Xereks drew his notched sword and rushed forward, nob-booted feet loud on the tiled floor.

The savage drew his broadsword. The blade was twice as wide as a man’s hand at the hilt and tapered to a wicked point. A simple, brutal design, but one that had shed a great deal of blood over the years. Llyr saw that vile sword and seized Tahn-lo by the front of his tattered tunic.

“Run!” Llyr shouted into his face, shoving the smaller man ahead of him. He wanted out of the temple more than anything in the world. What fools they’d been to march back to the temple: they had stumbled right into his trap!

The beast roared like a wild thing and met Jol’s heavy slash with a fierce stroke of his own. Sparks flew as blades crashed together, and the men slammed into one another. Jol shrieked as Ulrem sank his yellow teeth sank into Jol’s shoulder. His iron fingers caught the pirate’s sword wrist, forcing it up and back. Jol hammered the madman in the head, trying to drive him back. But those feral teeth tore loose a chunk of flesh and outraged blasphemy. Jol staggered back, pressing a hand over his wounded shoulder.

Xereks drove in, slashing at the beast. The savage side-stepped and thrust his vicious blade up and into the pirate’s belly. The man was lifted off the ground by the force of the blow, feet dangling in the air. Ulrem tossed him aside and spit out a mouthful of Jol’s flesh. He snarled like a jackal, eager for more.

By then Jol had collected himself. With a wordless snarl of utter hatred, Jol jumped on the savage, hacking and chopping. His cutlass met fierce resistance, and then a guttural cry of outrage as one of the pirate’s frantic slashes struck home.

The sword fight devolved into grappling as the two men fought to break one another. Llyr hesitated at the doors, wondering if he should have tried to help. But even as he did, the mud-smeared savage came to the top of the pile and drove his thumbs into the black giant’s eyes. What chilled Llyr most as he fled down the steps and into the night was not seeing the indomitable Jol blinded and defeated by the madman...but the sound of primal joy in those barking gales of laughter.

No man, who had by Llyr’s troth cheated death itself, could be so happy to walk again at the very brink. A man who feared not even death was little more than a demon.

No wonder the captain had tried to kill him, Llyr thought as he hurtled after Tahn-lo’s rapidly retreating silhouette.