Pirate Emperor Read online

  They ran, past the burning railings, from which ever new tongues of flame were now spreading to the crisscrossing ground timbers. Not much longer and the bridge would collapse under their feet.

  What had at a distance looked like a wall of flame turned out to be a labyrinth of individual nests of flames, between which they might still be able to find a path. If the bridge held. And if the fire didn’t keep spreading at such breakneck speed.

  “Griffin!” cried Jolly. “You have to jump. The impact on the water won’t do anything to you.”

  “And leave you alone?”

  “Stop playing hero and jump, will you?”

  He shook his head as he ran. “What good would that do me? The kobalins are waiting down there.”

  “They’re long gone. They’re more afraid of the fire than we are.” She wasn’t certain that was the truth. Whatever had made the kobalins go onto land could make them still hold out in the water, too.

  Was the wyvern the commander? Not very likely. After all, the kobalins had attacked the workers before the bridge was finished. The shape-shifter was presumably as surprised by the attack as they were. Someone or something had changed its plans without informing Agostini of it.

  But then who had set fire to the bridge?

  They’d reached the front third. The wood creaked and cracked under their feet. Their height over the sea here was about fifteen yards, still much too high for Jolly to jump into the water. Through the spaces between the timbers they saw cutouts of the water behind black clouds of smoke. The seething kobalin heads between the waves were gone; but whether they were entirely gone or just submerged was uncertain. Besides, there was still the wyvern, which might be lurking under the surface.

  At the last stretch, just before the cliff, there was no longer a way to get through. The beams and crosspieces were all aflame. The heat was almost intolerable, and now it was coming from all sides.

  “That’s it,” Griffin panted.

  “Griffin,” Jolly said once again, “you must jump into the water!”

  He was about to contradict her again, but the words remained stuck in his throat. Something dark shot up behind him, over the railing, and to them. Out of the corner of her eye, Jolly thought she saw mighty wings, as dark as the leathery skin of the kobalins. It seemed as if a piece of the Mare Tenebrosum had followed them and now descended on them like a giant bat.

  The shadow landed between them on the timbers, the wings—which were not wings—remained open, and a voice shouted, “Here to me! Quickly!”

  Darkness fluttered over them and enveloped them. It was material, dark, coarse material, and underneath it smelled musty and warm. But it kept the heat away from them. Underneath the material: a muscular body. Over it: the face of a one-eyed man.

  The Ghost Trader gripped Jolly in his right arm, Griffin in his left, both closely wrapped in the wide cloak.

  “Where did you come—”

  Jolly never finished her sentence. The ground vanished beneath her. At first she thought the bridge had collapsed and she was falling into emptiness. But then she realized that everything was quite different.

  The burning bridge was left behind below them—over them? Beside them? In any case, it was gone, and Jolly, Griffin, and the Ghost Trader floated toward the water, turned into a sea of lava by the glow of the fire.

  She’d seen the Ghost Trader make such leaps before, in the harbor of New Providence, when the Spanish fleet was turning the pirate nest into ruins. Now he’d done it again. Not flying. Not even hopping. This was something superhuman, which he accomplished as matter-of-factly as any other man would an ordinary step.

  He let Jolly slide out of his embrace. She crashed onto the waves, fought for balance for a moment, and then finally stood upright. The flaming bridge was about twenty yards away, a gigantic glowing sickle in front of an inferno of dark smoke. The heat was definitely palpable down here. Not much longer and the entire lunatic construction would collapse like a house of cards.

  They were not alone in the water, even if Jolly was the only one who could stand securely with her feet on the waves. Strange creatures had formed a circle around them, creatures that at first sight looked like horses, except that they were bigger and only rose about halfway out of the waves. The lower part of their bodies were under the surface. Their rough, furrowed skin shimmered with the colors of the rainbow. In place of ears they had stumpy horns, and their eyes were round and fishy. They had no limbs; their entire body was a single, broad fishtail, which was not smooth but horny and graduated in irregular tiers. On their backs they bore odd-looking saddles, which allowed their riders to sit up straight in them. Each of the wonderful animals towered at least six feet out of the water; Jolly guessed that the hidden part was just as long.

  The men who maintained their seats on the gigantic sea horses with no apparent effort were wearing simple clothing of leather, which in some places was studded with something that looked like stone. Or coral.

  “The riders of Aelenium,” the Ghost Trader called down to her from the back of a sea horse. His animal had also been waiting for them in the circle with the others; its sharp head was as white as ivory, the horns the color of amber. The creature’s lidless eyes were deceptive; actually, it observed the surroundings with watchful intelligence.

  Now Jolly understood why the Trader had set her down on the water: He needed both hands to place Griffin in front of him in the saddle. Only then did he reach a hand down to Jolly.

  “Come up!” he commanded urgently. “Hurry!”

  She grasped his hand and let herself be drawn up and pushed behind him in the wide, curving saddle. She was held at the back by a network of straps that had tightened around her waist when she sat down.

  “Let’s go!” cried the Ghost Trader to the circle of sea horsemen. The men were armed with sabers and flintlock pistols. Most carried their loaded guns in their right hand, while their left held the reins of the horse.

  Jolly pressed close against the Ghost Trader’s back. She didn’t yet understand where he’d come from and who these other people were; however, she was infinitely grateful that they’d appeared at the right moment.

  “The kobalins,” she burst out frantically. “Where are they?”

  “They dived.”

  “But they weren’t alone!”

  “No.” With a powerful jerk, the Trader turned the sea horse around. The other animals followed the motion, maintaining the protective circle formation around them. “The hippocampi sense something.” He must have meant the sea horses.

  “It must be the wyvern,” Griffin called over his shoulder. “A—”

  “A shape-shifter,” said the Ghost Trader, and he nodded. The sea horses moved forward, away from the bridge, toward a lane between the countless islands. Somewhere in this direction lay the open sea, the endless Atlantic.

  “So you know about Agostini?” Jolly hardly had the strength to put this question. To keep from falling, she clung more firmly to the Ghost Trader.

  “Agostini? Is that what he calls himself?”

  “Not anymore,” said Griffin. “Presumably.”

  “They knew about him in Aelenium. And about this bridge. We came just in time.” He looked back over his shoulder at Jolly. “You’ll never guess who’s come with us.”

  “Munk?” she asked weakly.

  He paused briefly before he answered. “No. Munk is in Aelenium. But Walker is here. And Soledad. The good captain hasn’t let the princess out of his sight ever since she smiled at him once too often.”

  Jolly looked around. Her eyes flitted over the other sea horsemen, but they swam before her like something that wasn’t even there. Mere hallucinations. Fantasies.

  “Hold on tight!” cried the Ghost Trader as the hippocampus increased its speed. Jolly doubted that there were ships as fast as these creatures.

  The formation of sea horses rushed through the island labyrinth. The burning bridge was left far behind them. It had almost vanished behind cl
iffs and rocks when a horrible grinding and crashing announced its end. Jolly looked back over her shoulder, but her eyes were no longer sharp enough to see anything in detail. All she saw was a glowing stripe in the distance, which abruptly collapsed and immediately vanished into a boiling witch’s kettle of black smoke and white steam.

  “It’s finished,” said the Ghost Trader, although she guessed his words more than she really heard them. The waves broke loudly against the horny chest of the sea horse. White spume sprayed into Jolly’s face and deposited a film of salt on her lips.

  She couldn’t believe that he had really said finished. A voice inside her whispered to her that it wasn’t the truth. He wanted to reassure her and so he was concealing something from her.

  In truth, this was just the beginning.

  “Where’s the wyvern?” asked Griffin in a voice that sounded just as weak as her own.

  “Gone,” replied the Trader. “Shape-shifters are cowards, when it comes right down to it.”

  There was still something else, thought Jolly again, but she was too exhausted to articulate it.

  Still something else.

  Griffin’s voice sounded thin in her ears, carried by the wind, which was beating against them more and more fiercely. “It stopped raining dead fish. Does that mean …”

  “Yes,” said the Trader. “Whatever it was, it’s gone. For the moment. We don’t know exactly why. When the soldiers of Aelenium appeared and set the fire, the kobalins made no attempt to stop them. On the contrary, right after our attack they withdrew.”

  Jolly tried to understand the meaning behind his words. “But the kobalins are commanded by the Maelstrom. Why would he permit the destruction of the bridge? After all, he was sent to prepare the way for the Masters of the Mare Tenebrosum.”

  The Ghost Trader shrugged and sighed. “The power and strength of the Maelstrom grow from day to day. Every move in this war serves a purpose, even if we don’t always know what.”

  Jolly pulled all her reserves together. “War?” she asked in a strangled voice.

  Now the surroundings were a blur, so swiftly did the sea horses glide over the boiling sea, toward the northeast, toward their invisible goal in the distance.

  The Ghost Trader looked over his shoulder, but Jolly saw only the blind half of his face, the dark band, behind which lay the dead eye.

  “The great battle for Aelenium,” he said.

  3

  The Sea Star City

  The hippocampi were tireless. They swept through the deep blue sea like dervishes, seldom needing rest and not sleeping at all—or they recovered themselves without losing any speed, which seemed even more inconceivable and marvelous to Jolly. She herself did sleep some, it was true, but in the confinement of the saddle it was brief and fitful and brought no real relief.

  The journey proceeded without incident. They saw no more of the deep-sea tribes. The Maelstrom appeared to have changed his plans. After they’d left the labyrinth of reefs and rocky islands behind them, Griffin was transferred to Walker’s sea horse and now was sitting behind the captain in the straps of the strange saddle. Walker was talking with him, but Jolly couldn’t understand what he was saying across the distance. Perhaps he was just trying to reassure Griffin, to cheer him up; a strange notion, because it hadn’t been so long ago that the pirate captain had wanted to throw the boy over the side of his ship.

  Walker had tied his shoulder-length hair into a short ponytail. He still wore the scarlet trousers he’d been wearing when they first met him, and his golden earring. Jolly herself had a half a dozen rings in each ear, besides a pin with a tiny diamond on each end in the skin of her nose just above the bridge. Nevertheless, she thought that the ornament looked silly on Walker.

  Soledad, the daughter of the murdered pirate emperor, Scarab, was riding ahead of Walker in the formation of sea horse riders. Like the captain, she was secured to her saddle by additional straps; after all, neither of them had any experience in dealing with those remarkable animals. However, it struck Jolly that Soledad handled herself more skillfully than Walker. In contrast to him, she’d had experience with horses on land. Her long red hair fluttered loose in the wind, and sometimes she sent Jolly encouraging looks or a cheering smile.

  During those long hours, Jolly thought often about the destination of their journey: Aelenium. She had no concrete conception of it, but she knew that it involved a sort of floating city, lying at anchor on a long chain somewhere in the Atlantic, northeast of the Virgin Islands. The inhabitants of Aelenium were something like guards, who had watched over the imprisoned Maelstrom for centuries—before he got free and gained new, terrible power.

  So far the Maelstrom had kept away from the city. Jolly had no idea why he was waiting so long to attack; all she knew was that Munk and she were the only ones who could stop him.

  The fate of Aelenium hung on their survival and, if she believed the Ghost Trader, ultimately so did the continued existence of the entire world. Only if the Maelstrom were kept from becoming strong enough to tear down the boundaries to the Mare Tenebrosum would they be able to return to their old lives.

  She thought about the day when everything had begun. In one stroke she’d lost her foster father, Captain Bannon, and with him the entire crew. Jolly had grown up on Bannon’s ship. He’d been father and mother to her and, in addition, the best teacher she could have imagined. But then he’d fallen into a trap. Only Jolly was able to escape. She had no evidence that the Maelstrom was behind it, and she’d always refused to believe that Bannon and the others were dead. But every clue she’d come across so far, every hope, had come to nothing. And although she didn’t intend to give up, the experiences of recent days and weeks had pushed her grief over Bannon more and more into the background.

  Twice the sun sank into the sea and twice it rose again before a dense field of fog appeared ahead. Jolly tensed when the riders steered their hippocampi straight into the fog. They seemed to float through gray nothingness for a long time before they finally crossed the fog and saw Aelenium before them.

  Jolly’s heart missed a beat. She’d never seen anything like it. All the cities she knew were miserable settlements around the harbors of the Caribbean: crooked clusters of badly built huts and ramshackle houses interspersed with dark dives, storage sheds, and the businesses of the fences, rum traders, and tattoo parlors.

  Aelenium, on the other hand, seemed to her as though a piece of heaven had taken form, a frosted cake of interconnected coral structures, high as a small mountain rising out of the countless towers and balconies, pointed gabled roofs, crazy bridges and platforms. Everything there seemed to consist of coral, white or beige, sometimes with chocolate brown or amber-colored streaks running through it. The windows and doors were high and narrow, some buildings so finely chiseled that they reminded Jolly of the Chinese porcelain she had seen when Bannon once seized a whole shipload.

  But were they buildings? Was there anything there that was really built? In fact, it looked rather as if Aelenium had grown naturally, like the miracle of a coral reef. The city rose on a mighty sea star, whose points extended far out into the sea and were used by the inhabitants as natural quays. Most of these points, at least on this side of the city, were covered with low houses; not until the center of the sea star did the houses become bigger; they soared up to dizzying heights around a flattened triangle of a mountain. The mountain itself had steep sides of the same light material as everything else and was traversed by numerous streams of water: some flowing quietly through narrow channels, others plunging over ledges and terraces in waterfalls.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” said the Ghost Trader over his shoulder, but Jolly had no answer. “Impressive” seemed the wrong word to use. Aelenium was much more than that, a wonder, a spectacle, something utterly and completely incredible.

  And she noticed something else as well: Above the towers of the city, against the cloudless blue of the sky, circled winged creatures—powerful rays, which moved t
hrough the air the way the much smaller members of their species moved through the depths of the sea. A rider sat on each of these flying rays, the soldiers of the city.

  The sea horses let them dismount at the edge of one of the sea star points. Even the guardsmen were visibly wearied by the long ride. Walker leaped from the saddle, intending to hurry to Soledad—but his knees gave out. He fell flat on the ground. Some of the riders laughed, but Soledad sent him a sympathetic look: She knew that the same thing would happen to her when she tried to stand on her own feet again after days in the saddle.

  Someone lifted Jolly down and placed her on a coral block. Griffin was brought to her, his hand felt for hers, but neither one of them said a word.

  The Carfax lay anchored nearby, badly damaged by the battle. Carpenters and shipbuilders were busy all over the hull and in the rigging, working hand in hand with the sloop’s misty ghost crew.

  Turning her eyes from the Carfax, Jolly looked up at the city in wonder. It seemed to her that a fairy tale had come to life.

  Two birds fluttered down out of the sea of Aelenium’s roofs and landed on the Ghost Trader’s shoulders. He laughingly greeted the two pitch-black parrots. Hugh and Moe usually followed his every step; it was remarkable that they hadn’t accompanied him. Hugh had yellow eyes, Moe eyes of fiery red, and anyone who encountered them learned very quickly that both possessed a mysterious intelligence.

  New faces swam up around Jolly. Some regarded her curiously, some whispered things like “Is that her?” and “A little slight, isn’t she?” Jolly scarcely listened, and when she did, she acted as if she didn’t notice how impolitely they were looking her over and speaking about her as if she weren’t even there.

  Striding out of the crowd, cursing loudly, there emerged a tall, broad-shouldered figure with the head of a dog.

  Buenaventure, the pit bull man, flicked his ears, then drew his jowls into a toothy grin. He grabbed Walker, who’d been helped to his feet, embraced him roughly, and thumped him so hard on the back that the captain almost collapsed. Then he discovered Jolly, uttered a relieved yowl, and embraced her, too.