Episode 5:
The Cay of Terror

T HE COLD, CLAMMY WATER OF THE XAROLOUTH splashed about Neekin's bare feet as she waded up onto the black shore. Alombo ben Fadahl, the first mate, was close behind her, followed by a half dozen men who spilled out of the boat, their splashing feet conjuring the sound of a chill, autum rain.  

The ground was coarse, rocky, with thick, unyieldy weeds. Overhead, the bone white moon glared down upon them.

"Well?" Alombo prodded in a hushed voice.

Neekin crouched, scanning the hard earth, certain this was where the man -- or whatever he was -- had come ashoree. But there was little to betray his passage. "We'll have to hunt for him," Neekin said at last.

"So she says," muttered one man.

Neekin glanced back, but held her tongue. Alombo had suggested that though there were those among the crew who thought her a portent of good fortune, equally there were those who saw in her a bad luck charm.  

"We'll split up," Alombo said quietly. Neekin made to object, but saw in his eyes that he was no happier than was she. "We'll cover more ground."

And so they left the beach and trickled into the dark foliage clinging to the craggy rock like scars upon a murdered man.

Neekin padded cat like through the night, a knife at her waist, a short sword clenched in her hand. She drew the back of her other hand across her full lips, wiping away beads of sweat that had little to do with the temperature.

She whirled, dropping down into a crouch. She thought she had heard something rustle through the bushes beside her. She waited a moment, then heard it again. But it seemed too low to the ground to be a man, and it was moving away from her. Relaxing only slightly, she started on again. The ground heaved up before her -- not as a gentle hill, but in jagged outcroppings, as though steps carved crudely for a giant. She hesitated, then clampered up the rise, moving from "step" to "step", rising above the brush.

She glanced behind her, but could see none of the crew in the darkness and the flora. Peering out to sea, she could see the Falcon's Heart moored some distance from shore. Though he would be too tiny to make out, she could well imagine the vessel's reclusive, mad captain, El-Antiague, standing statue-like upon her deck, staring stonily back at her.

Then she peered forward. The rise dropped off as quickly as it began, spreading before her a view of the far side of the cay. She crouched at the lip of the drop, hoping she was inconspicuous in the moonlight.

The island was still, breathless, seeming deserted. But it had not always been so, apparently.

Edifices stabbed from the black earth, clearly erected by conscious design -- though why, was another question. There seemed no logic or pattern to what she was looking at, as though a city had been raised, then raized, all in a single night. Now all she was staring at were fragmented echoes of something that might have been, that had once been. Something unearthly.

She shuddered again. But the search had to be pressed. Neither Alombo, nor El-Antiague, would be content until it was. She started nimbly down, toward the weirdly leaning structures. At the foot of the drop, the brush yawned open, betraying a small clearing burned bald in the moonlight. Neekin hesitated, not liking to be exposed. But she liked the thought of hacking her way through the dense brush on either side even less. She cautiously strode forward.

Her foot caught on something. She made to pull free, but found her other foot equally trapped. She squirmed about, thinking a vine had snagged her.

Then she felt herself sink a little.

She looked down and realized her feet had vanished into the ground, and the earth was rising up her shins. She squirmed, stretching out for a branch, her fingers clawing at the air -- but it was too far away. Already she was up to her thighs. "Alombo!" she screamed. "Someone! Help!"

She felt the moist dirt settle obscenely around her groin, pushing up under the skirt formed by the lower part of her shirt. Then it was coiling about her belly, making it hard to breathe. "Help!" she screamed again.

"Where-?" came a distant voice.

"Here!" The earth rolled over her breasts like a drunk's unwanted caress, then surged up over her shoulders. "Help-..."

And then she was gone.  

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Neekin was wrenched from unconsciousness, retching and gagging, spitting dirt from between her teeth. She dragged herself to her hands and knees, her ribs heaving as she sucked in desperate lungfuls of air, scarcely believing she was still alive.  

She fell back onto her buttocks and lay sprawled upon the ground for a moment, panting. Then she wiped a hand across her face and, blinking, looked about her. She was in a dark tunnel, the floor wet, suggesting perhaps it was below sea level. As she glanced up, a few granules of dirt dripped down upon her nose. She shook her head and staggered hurriedly to her feet. Belatedly, she noticed shafts of moonlight stabbing through gaps in the ceiling here and there. She realized the cay must be honeycombed with underground tunnels, perhaps once hollowed out by the ocean itself. She had sunk through a sinkhole of some sort. Spitting to clear the last vestiges of the dirt from her mouth, she turned.

And she froze.

She was not alone.

Anyone with senses just a fraction less keen than hers would not have realized it. But something lurked down the cavern, hugging the wall -- something that was no more than a shadow that swelled like a tumour from the deeper shadow of the tunnel. Neekin looked around and espied her sword. Swooping, she caught it up and turned to face her mysterious companion.

"Who's there?" she demanded, well aware that she was completely cut off from Alombo and the rest of the shore party. They might search the cay from end to end and not be aware that she was below their feet. Still, she did not allow her isolation to lace fear through her tone. "Speak. Or show yourself."

The thing moved, slightly, then was still again. It was a ludicrous, almost childish thing to do. Clearly she knew it was there -- why would it persist in pretending it could not be seen?

Then a shiver raced up her supple spin as she recalled the barely glimpsed man that had lurked beneath the tarp in the bottom of the drifting boat -- the thing that had remained still, even when it knew it had been discovered. The thing that had torn out Gannah's throat in the blink of an eye.

She gripped her sword more tightly. "Speak, I said, or so help me, I'll cut you down and let your blood do your talking for you." She shifted her feet in the wet clay of the tunnel bottom, and distantly heard the occasional titter-tat of dirt granules rain from the ceiling. Otherwise, it was quiet. The man silent. She could not even detect his breathing.

"We want your master, Charwan Kan," she continued, desperate to break the silence if he would not. "If you tell us where he harbours, or the course he was on..."

The shadow did not move. Did he even understand her words? she wondered.

"He left you behind, man. Wasn't that why you were adrift in that boat?   Because he sailed away, perhaps by accident, perhaps not, but leaving you trapped on a burning ship, forced to take refuge in a lifeboat?"

The clay ground made eerie suckling noises as she took a step forward. Sounds that echoed off the tunnel walls. She knew the man could move fast when he wanted. She hoped she was faster.

Suddenly she heard sounds behind her, the sucking sounds of feet trodding upon the cavern floor. She spared a glance behind, but it was too dark to see. Then she whirled around, expecting her silent foe to attack now that reinforcements had arrived. Only the shadow split from the wall and began scurrying in the opposite direction.

And abruptly she realized: whatever was coming down the tunnel was no friend of the silent man.

She whirled, just as something spit from the darkness, a wiry, clammy figure that tackled her. She was aware of coarse old cloth, of arms thin but sinewy. She brought her knee up into the figure and kicked out at another. But the tunnel was too narrow, the light too poor, for fighting. Three, maybe four, of the diminutive men piled upon her, dragging her to the earth. She screamed in feral frustration as her sword was torn from her grip, and thin but deceptively strong hands pulled her arms back, till her shoulder blades almost met in the middle -- and her scream became one of genuine pain. Something hit her in the stomach, doubling her over.

Struggling, but now only weakly, Neekin was dragged down the tunnel. She kicked out, and received another beating for her efforts, till she was a limp rag that was dragged into a wider chamber. Here the ceiling vanished to reveal the moon and stars twinkling coldly over head. She caught a glimpse of another cluster of figures, and a dark shape being herded by the robed figures. She realized the other man, the mute, had been captured as well. But he seemed to be offering little resistance.

Neekin was thrown upon her back on the ground, her arms stretched over her head, while two others of the robed islanders each grabbed an ankle and her legs were pulled savagely apart. Again she cried out in pain. Clumsy fingers clawed at her belt, freeing it, and her only garment, the oversized shirt that she wore to her thighs, was pulled up over her head.

She lay there in the moonlight, panting hard, blinded by her own shirt that was thrown up over her face and arms, completely naked from the neck down. She squirmed, but her arms were pressed down tightly and, if anything, the men at her ankles opened her legs even wider. "Bastards!" she hissed. She had little doubt what was to come. Though, in a strange way, she almost welcomed it. To be raped by men was, at least, something she could comprehend. And there was too much about the Xarolouth Ocean that defied understanding.

She felt a presence kneel between her thighs, and she forced herself to relax, to minimize the pain...

And then something hot and wet splashed across her belly. She cried out, more in start than in pain, as something was poured over her up-thrust breasts and down across her full hips. Then each leg was similarly annointed. She sucked in great lungfuls of air through the cloth across her face, feeling a panic well up again. What was this? What were they doing? she wondered. She wanted to see, to at least glimpse the faces of her assailants.

Gnarly hands gripped her proud breasts, kneading them roughly, pinching the fear hardened nipples. She groaned, still panicking in her blindness. The hands rubbed down the firm plain of her belly, her stomach muscles taut as she squirmed. Hands rubbed between her legs with coarse intimacy, then down her thighs.

And the most horrifying thing was that she realized there was nothing sexual about it at all. The hands were just rubbing the liquid into her skin. Through the fabric of her cloth, the scent of the liquid began to permeate to her nose. And she recognized it.

It was oil.

She was being doused in flammable oil...