Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull (20 page)

The
Spectre
, on the other hand, came away far worse than the Ratt Clan. Overturned barrels, broken boards, and all manner of battle debris littered the deck. Pirates helped one another to their feet and formed a long line before Mister Gilley. The pot-bellied pirate seemed to be something of an expert at stitching up bloody wounds and setting
broken bones, of which there were several amongst the crew. The rest of the pirates gathered at what was left of the portside railing, where Jim, the Ratts, and Lacey now stood. They watched Dread Steele step to the edge of the extended plank, where he bowed his head low to the clutch of mermen gathered in the waters before him.

“We are in your debt, Fulkern,” Dread Steele said to the foremost merman, who seemed to Jim even larger and more powerful than giant Mufwalme. A brown beard covered Fulkern’s grim face. A string of shark’s teeth hung over his chest and blue and gold tattoos lined his arms and shoulders. Though the battle had ended, he still gripped a coral spear in his powerful fist.

“Payment in advance, Dread Steele,” Fulkern replied. “For the keeping of your word given long ago. Had this been any other ship upon the sea, we would have stood by and watched the Kraken drag it down into the depths.” The warrior scowled at the pirates behind Dread Steele, until a voice chimed over the waters to silence the enormous merman.

“Peace, Fulkern!” the voice said. The words rung in the air like a chorus of bells. “Dread Steele is a Friend of the Sea. He may be the last of them from the world of men. As such, he is like a brother to your King, and also to me.” Fulkern bowed his head low and swam aside, as did the mermen with him. They cleared a path for the chariot, which rode up beneath the plank, pulled by the hammerhead sharks.

Without doubt, the mermaid in the chariot possessed the loveliest face Jim had ever seen. It was smooth and gentle as porcelain. Golden hair flowed from beneath a crown of pearls upon her head. Her ivory arms and shoulders were bared to the sun, but she wore a seaweed gown wrapped about her body. It was not dank, nasty seaweed that would wash upon the shore. Rather it was fresh and vibrant, as though still alive upon her skin, green as spring leaves upon a tree. A bejeweled necklace, laced with gold, hung about her neck. Where her green raiment ended, scales, sparkling blue in the sun, ran down to a bright white fin like a dolphin’s tail.

“She’s beautiful,” said Lacey. Jim could not agree more. He could hardly look away from the mermaid as she spoke with Dread Steele, Lord of the Pirates.

“Dread Steele, it is good to see you again, especially after so many years.”

“It is my honor, Queen Melodia. Forgive me that it has been so long.”

“A Queen?” Peter asked from just behind George and Jim, where he and Paul stood on their tiptoes to see. “Queen of the Merpeople?”

“She looks like a Queen, don’t she?” Paul said.

“I’m glad to see you safe from the wrath of the Kraken, Captain,” the Queen continued. “Fulkern and I chased this beast all the way from the cold depths, below even our great city. It is a rare thing indeed for such a monster to swim to the warmer waters near the sun. But such things have been happening more and more often. It makes me afraid for us all. The tides speak of ill fortune, Dread Steele. They speak of the Trident - that which you call the Treasure of the Ocean - found again. They speak of the blood red storm stalking the skies. They speak of destruction and despair.”

“If that is so, your majesty, then where is Nemus?” Dread Steele asked the queen of the Merpeople. “Where is the King?” The Queen paused for a long moment before answering. Jim thought he saw her brace for only an instant in her chariot and squeeze the seaweed reigns tight in her ivory hands.

“Nemus does sit upon the throne, Captain. But his heart is still broken, even after all this time. He has never been the same since the Flower…our Flower, was taken from us. He may have lost the will to take up his spear ever again. But those are our concerns. What business carries you and your men over our waters?”

“I still seek The Treasure of the Ocean, your majesty. I still chase Count Cromier and his son, the dark child, Bartholomew. They now sail with Splitbeard the pirate upon the
Sea Spider
, on a course to the rocks known as the Devil’s Horns.”

“You’ve been chasing the Treasure a long time, Captain, and much to our thanks,” said the Queen. “But there is a renewed urgency in your voice and in your face. Something has changed, hasn’t it? What is it, Dread Steel? What has happened?”

Dread Steele took a deep breath, so much so that his shoulders rose and fell. He stole a sideways glance in Jim’s direction. Jim could see troubled thoughts churning behind the Captain’s grey eyes.

“Something has changed indeed, your majesty. A new clue has been found,” Dread Steele said. “A map was discovered – in part by young Jim there – Jim Morgan. He is Lindsay Morgan’s son.”

The weight of a hundred pairs of eyes descended upon Jim. A hush fell over the
Spectre’s
deck. The mermen stared at him from the ocean waves – but there was no kindness in their eyes. Judging by their hardened glares, Jim thought more than a few of them wanted to skewer him alive with a coral spear. Even the pirates gathered around him took a step or two back, murmuring quietly amongst themselves. Only Jim’s friends stuck by his side. But when he met the Queen’s gaze, even Lacey and the Ratts’ presence were of little comfort.

“I would meet the son of Lindsay Morgan,” said the Queen. Her eyes, which were nearly as golden as her hair, were fixed upon Jim’s face. Jim looked to Dread Steele for help, hoping the Captain would say no, or send him down below decks or into his quarters. But the Captain nodded for Jim to join him on the plank.

Jim slowly made his way across the deck. His face itched and his heart beat hard in his chest. He hated the way the merpeople glared at him so angrily. But worse still, he thought he knew why. If Janus Blacktail’s story was true, it had been his father who had broken King Nemus’s heart by stealing his treasure.

Jim stepped onto the plank, which was just wide enough for him circle around Dread Steele. When he came to the edge, he stood looking down into the eyes of the Merpeople’s Queen. For a long moment Queen Melodia said nothing. She only held Jim in her unwavering gaze. When she finally spoke, her voice rang harder and colder than it had before.

“You are indeed the son of Morgan,” she said. “I can see him in your face.”

“Yes ma’am,” Jim said. He felt Dread Steele flick him on the back of the neck to remind him he was speaking to a Queen. Jim remembered to bow his head, which he did rather clumsily. “Yes, your majesty,” he corrected himself.

“You could not have known your father well, could you? Nor your mother, I imagine, if at all.”

“No, your majesty.”

“Did he ever show it to you, though? The Treasure of the Ocean? Did your father ever display it to you proudly and tell you what he planned to do with it – that which he took?” Jim gritted his teeth and put his hand behind his back to clench his fist. Queen or not, he loathed even the thought that his father was a thief.

“No, he did not.” Jim replied, leaving off the ‘your majesty’ on purpose. “But I did see it once, in the Pirate Vault of Treasures. I stood in the same room with it. Close enough to touch it.”

“But you did not even lay a hand upon it? Why did not take it for your own? I find this hard to believe. What foolish trinket lay in the Vault that would have distracted you from such magic as the Treasure of the Ocean?”

“It was just an amulet. An enchanted amulet I needed to rescue my friends.”

“Rescue?” the Queen said. Jim thought he heard a hint of surprise in her voice. The Queen’s eyes drifted then for the first time from Jim’s face to his friends at the railing behind him. When she looked back to Jim, he thought her hard gaze might have softened ever so slightly. When she spoke, the bell chimes sounded faintly again behind her words.

“Your father’s face does indeed live in yours, Jim Morgan. But perhaps that’s not all that lives there. Perhaps you resemble another as well. We shall see. So I shall give you at least this warning. Beware the Veiled Isle, which lies behind the Devil’s Horns. More than that beware the Treasure of the Ocean. Dark magic guards it. The path that
leads to it is fraught with danger. And as for the Treasure itself…death and destruction surround it.” The Queen pulled on the seaweed reins and the sharks began to pull the chariot away. At the last moment she turned over her shoulder and looked to Jim again.

“Be careful, Jim Morgan,” she said. “Perhaps…perhaps it might be good to look upon your face again.” Jim could not be sure, but for a moment, mixed with the ocean water, he thought there had been tears in the Queen’s eyes.

The Queen and her warriors neither bade farewell nor waved goodbye. They dove silently beneath the waves and melted into the darkness of the deep. The Queen’s caution rang in Jim’s mind. He wondered at the anger and sadness that had welled up in her eyes. It was all so very confusing. But in spite of everything else, Queen Melodia had left Jim with a warning: danger and death lay ahead. Jim put his hand in his pocket to touch the box. He could feel the rose thorn’s magic thrumming there within.

TWENTY

anging in the sky above the high seas, like a great white eye, the pale moon lit a path for the black-hulled
Sea Spider
. Below and above decks, the Corsair Pirates laughed, cursed, sang songs, and boasted of the wicked ways they would soon spend their great wealth. Count Cromier - the Red Count, they called him - had already paid the pirates handsomely in advance. He had also promised them more gold than they could count once the deed was done. And the deed’s completion was ever so close at hand. But the Corsairs were not the only ones burning with desire for glittering prizes just within reach.

Inside the captain’s quarters, a rack of candles burned bright. The flickering flames threw wavering shadows over the faces of Bartholomew Cromier, the Count, and Splitbeard the sorcerous pirate. On the table beneath the candles, where great drops of wax fell like tears, sat Lindsay’s Morgan’s enchanted map. The drawings on the page still shimmered with blue magic. Bartholomew found himself entranced by the moonwater’s light, still burning upon the parchment. But the glow twinkled brightest in the black eyes of his father, the Count.

“The quest for the Treasure of the Ocean is the quest of my life,” said the Count, as much to himself as to the men beside him. “I was so close before. So close to total victory, before those fools, Morgan and Steele, intervened. But now, at long last, the end of my journey is at hand.” The jagged purple scar on the Count’s cheek twitched beneath his unblinking eye. “Soon, the power of the sea, and the sky above it, will be at my command. If a navy sails against me, I will send a wave to crush them to the ocean floor. If an army refuses to submit to my will, I shall smite them down with lightning. I will scatter them with the winds. The kings and queens of the world shall kneel before me and pay me homage, or I will cover their lands with a cold darkness that will last a hundred years. Can you even imagine, Splitbeard, what it will be like to hold such power in your hands?”

Bartholomew could. In truth, he could more than imagine it. He could remember it. It was a memory from a long time ago, when he was but a boy, younger even than Jim Morgan. Bartholomew tightened his hands into fists behind his back. Even so he could only lessen the shudder than trembled his body. The memory still terrified him – but he would never admit that to his father. Never.

“I am but a man of the sea, oh great red one,” said Splitbeard. “What have I to do with such ambitions as yours? But is it this Treasure you seek that lies at the end of the map?” Splitbeard pulled at the shark’s teeth braided into the split ends of his beard. The arrogant smile lingered on his face, but his black eyes were fixed upon the parchment.

“Not according to Lindsay’s map,” replied the Count. “But what awaits us in the cavern is the key to discovering the Treasure’s final location. Once I have the Hunter’s Shell, all else shall fall into place. The shell is a seeker more powerful than any other in the world. The Treasure of the Ocean’s hiding spot will be revealed to my eyes. Whatever secret path leads to it will be uncovered in my mind. Such is the purpose and power of the Hunter’s Shell. Lindsay was wise to retain such a tool. Soon, nothing will stand in my way.”