Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane (55 page)

‘Let her do her job, Jako,’ Lula said.

‘The only way Kal’s going to break this curse is if she takes it up with Vuda herself,’ Jako grumbled.

‘What makes you so sure Vuda has cursed the Islanders?’ Kal asked him, as she sat down on a rock for a rest.

‘Not just the locals. Me, you … everyone who ever sets foot on these islands. It’s because we’ve wrecked the place: acres of jungle on the south coast have been chopped down; all the fish have been caught and eaten; the silver mines have been emptied, and all the beautiful shells that you used to just find washed up on beaches have been stolen and sold. So yeah, either argue your case with Vuda … or burn down Port Black, and maybe then she’ll leave us alone.’

‘I can’t imagine this Magician character would be very happy about that,’ Kal said.

‘No he wouldn’t,’ Lula said. ‘Everyone in town who hasn’t suffered the curse is happy to keep on making money while they can, and damn the consequences. It really would be easier to find a god and beat her into submission than to take on the Magician and the coterie of captains that rule Port Black.’

Kal smiled grimly. So that was what they expected of her—to search the islands for the elusive god of dark magic, who everyone believed was still alive and living in a hidden temple somewhere, and parlay with her for the lifting of the curse. Jako seemed to honestly believe it was their only chance. Who knew what Lula really thought.

Kal got up. ‘Well, let’s go ask a seashell where to find Vuda,’ she said lightly.

Jako held up a hand. ‘Zombies!’ he whispered. ‘I can hear them … that way!’

Kal couldn’t hear anything. She followed Jako and Lula to where the trees ended, and a sloping meadow stretched out before them; a field of low, lush green plants. There was a sickly sweet smell in the air … and there were zombies in the field.

Kal counted about a score of them: twenty or so. They were walking slowly along furrows in the field that they had trodden down over time. When they reached the end of their row, they turned and doubled back. They made no noise except a quiet rustle as they brushed past the plants.

Kal turned to Lula. ‘Give me your telescope.’

Lula handed her the brass instrument, and Kal put it to her eye. It was a five-draw instrument that extended to about thirty inches. Kal spent a few moments struggling with the focus, but then suddenly she was staring so closely at a zombie’s face that she gasped.

The face was white and cracked, as if it was made of ashes from a burnt-out fire. Its eyes were just black glassy spheres, with no iris or pupil, and its mouth was pressed shut in a grim line. The creature was wearing clothes that were old and dirty, but otherwise in good condition. It had once been a man, but some of the others in the field had been women. There were no child zombies, Kal was relieved to see.

‘What are they doing?’ she wondered out loud. ‘Morning exercises?’

‘If you stumble on them in the jungle, they never seem to react unless you approach them,’ Lula said. ‘But then sometimes, when you think there’s none around, they rush out of nowhere and attack you. There’s no sense to what they do.’

Kal drew her knife. ‘I’m going down to see them.’

‘Did you just hear what Lula said?’ Jako hissed. ‘They’ll get you!’

‘So you both say,’ Kal said. ‘I need to know for myself.’

Jako growled and turned away. But it was a good job that he did, because at that moment about a dozen zombies came crashing through the jungle behind them. Jako barely had time to shake loose his scimitars before they were on top of him. He lashed out with both blades, decapitating two zombies at the same time. Lula drew her cutlass, and Kal pulled out her knives.

‘They don’t feel pain!’ Lula shouted to Kal as she hacked the outstretched arms off the nearest creature. ‘So don’t stop til you’ve chopped them to pieces!’

II.iv

The Blue Dragon

The
thing
stepping towards Kal, arms grasping for her neck, had once been a tall, well-built man—a villager, judging by its simple clothes and bushy fuzz of hair. Its face was dry and cracked, like sun-baked mud, and its black eyes stared at nothing.

Kal ducked beneath its outstretched arms and sliced its belly open with her long knife. The guts that fell out were cold and grey, and the blood that covered them was black and viscous. The zombie didn’t react to its awful wound; it just reached down and grabbed Kal around the neck, its fingers catching on the spikes of her collar. Kal wrenched her head back and forth, and the zombie’s fingers fell away, shredded by Kal’s dangerous adornment.

She drove her knife hard into the creature’s neck. The flesh was dry and dusty, and was easily breached, but still the fingerless zombie flailed at her, trying to crush her in a fatal embrace. Kal gritted her teeth, planted her feet firmly on the ground, and pushed her blade upwards, under the zombie’s jawbone and into its brain. Finally it got the message, and collapsed in a heap at her feet.

Another was ready to take its place. Kal put her blades either side of its neck, her wrists crossed over each other, then ripped her arms out wide, separating the zombie’s head from its body.

There were no more left to destroy. Lula and Jako had efficiently butchered the rest. Both of them were sweating and panting with exertion. Lula wiped crumbly zombie flesh and sticky zombie blood off her cheek. ‘You alright, Kal?’ she asked.

Kal was shaking as she stepped clear of the pile of limbs and chunks of flesh. ‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘I got two. How many more to go?’

‘Thousands,’ Jako said. ‘You can’t fight this curse, Kal. For every zombie you kill, two more people will have turned in the meantime.’

People!
Kal recalled the warning of the tarot cards. Did these two count towards the twenty-nine she was fated to kill? Or didn’t they matter now that they were mindless zombies? Kal couldn’t bear the thought of murdering innocent villagers, but twenty-nine mercy killings wouldn’t be so hard to live with …

The jungle was silent again. The zombies down in the field were still stomping up and down the rows of low shrubs, as if either they hadn’t noticed the fight, or had no interest in it.

‘Lula,’ Kal said. ‘People are still alive on the island, right? In villages? Your father …’

Lula’s father was a local fisherman who had been seduced by a visiting merchant—a wealthy woman long since vanished from Lula and her father’s life.

‘His village is five miles along the coast from here,’ Lula said. ‘He was fine last time I visited. I told him to leave the island. I almost daren’t go and see …’

Kal could see that Lula was worried—frightened, even. She didn’t care about her own safety half the time, but she still looked out for the only family she had left.

‘Did he carry the white spot … the curse?’

Lula shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But my step-mother did. Dad promised he’d look after her and my step-brothers, no matter what, but Kal … I can’t bear to know!’

Jako was shaking his head. ‘You don’t need to go there, Lu,’ he said. ‘Whatever’s happened to them, there’s nothing we can do until we break the curse. Right, Kal?’

Kal looked at the pair of them; minutes earlier, Jako and Lula had dismembered five horrific monsters apiece, but now it was Kal who was the strong one they were both looking to for reassurance. But this was why they had brought her here: in the face of supernatural terrors, only she had the cool head to look the worst of it in the eye.

‘We’ll swing by the village,’ she decided. She needed more information, and the one thing she hadn’t seen yet was someone actually
turn
into one of these things.

They tramped downhill until they emerged from the trees onto an endless strip of narrow beach. The sand was soft and fine; Kal carried her boots as they walked, so that she could get a sure footing with her toes. They walked for an hour in bright sunlight, shunning the shade of the trees in case anything awful leaped out at them. Kal felt her neck and forearms burning. Lula, however, looked cool and comfortable under her hat, and Jako’s black skin was natural armour against the sun.

The first signs of habitation they encountered were the villagers’ canoes pulled up onto the beach. The brightly-painted boats looked cheerful against the white sand and pale blue sea, but Kal could tell straight away that something was wrong …

The canoes were upside-down, their bottoms smashed out—most likely by the large rocks that lay strewn around.
Would mindless zombies do this?
Kal wasn’t so sure.

The village was a collection of bamboo and palm-thatched huts scattered on the lush green lower slopes of one of the island’s tallest mountains. Even at ten thousand feet high, its peak was green, and a strange purple mist covered the trees. It was alien and unlike any mountain Kal had seen before.

There was no sign of life anywhere in the village; only a few wild boar rooted around the huts looking for scraps. Lula’s family had lived in the largest hut in the centre of the village, befitting her father’s status as a village elder. It was raised on stilts—a precaution against floods and vermin. Not zombies, though: the front door panels—lightweight cedarwood frames supporting tightly-woven bamboo rods—had been ripped off their hinges.

‘Don’t go in there,’ Kal said to Lula.

But Lula had already seen the graves at the side of the hut: four small roughly-carved stone effigies standing on low mounds of fertile soil.

The largest stone figure was about a foot high: a crude representation of a round, jolly smiling woman. The other three were smaller, skittle-shaped males. ‘He lived long enough to bury his family, at least,’ Jako said. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

Lula just stood over the graves. ‘My step-mother always said that I’d meet a bad end on one of my crazy adventures,’ she said. ‘That’s what she hoped, I suppose; because every time I came home I reminded her of my father’s indiscretion.’

While Lula was lost in memories, Kal entered the hut and looked around. The place was a mess: the thin partition walls had been torn down, and clothes, fishing spears and ornaments lay scattered around the seagrass rush-matted floor. Had zombies been in and trashed the place?

Maybe. Maybe not.
Kal stooped at the foot of the bed and picked the broken neck of a rum bottle that was lying amid a pile of sharp shards.
Maybe it wasn’t the fresh water that was contaminated here.

She sensed movement behind her, and sprang to her feet. But it was only Jako who emerged from the shadows. ‘We shouldn’t linger,’ he said. ‘Zombies will sometimes follow you for days at a
respectful
distance, then spread out and surround you when you stop for a rest.’

Kal nodded. ‘I’ve seen all there is to see here anyway,’ she said.

Back out on the porch, Kal squinted as her eyes adjusted to the sunlight. As the world swam back into focus, she saw a far-off blurred square of dark blue, set against the light blue sea and sky. Her brain beat her eyes to the conclusion that is was a sail. She leaped down to ground level and dragged Lula into hiding behind a pile of lobster pots. Jako joined them an instant later.

‘Telescope!’ Kal said.

‘I’m going to have to get you your own for your birthday,’ Lula said, handing Kal her instrument. Kal put it to her eye; she found the focus faster this time, but Jako had already recognised the approaching ship.

‘The
Drago Azul
,’ he said.

The ship rounding the headland was a large brig, half as long again as the
Swordfish
, with eight gunports on either side. The square-rigged sails were blue, and the hull was also blue with lots of gold trim on the transom stern. Kal could see a crowd of sailors moving around on deck.

‘You know whose ship it is?’ Kal asked, although she had a suspicion already.

‘Amaro Azul’s,’ Lula said, a trace of fear in her voice.

‘The pirate?’ Kal said. ‘What is he doing here?’

‘
Here
here? Who knows? But he’s come to the Islands for revenge, most likely,’ Lula said. ‘It was the governor of Port Black that put the hempen halter on his brother. Hanging Gaspar Azul was actually the
last
thing the governor did before he was forced out of power.’

‘No wonder the poor guy’s holed up in his fort,’ Kal said. ‘Kicked out of town with nowhere to go but into the hands of the world’s most pissed-off pirate. Hey, they’re lowering a boat to come ashore.’

‘We should go,’ Jako said. ‘Whatever Azul’s here for, it’s got nothing to do with us.’

I’ll be the judge of that
, Kal thought. ‘We could find a spot in the jungle to hide and watch what he does,’ she said.

Jako shook his head. ‘We don’t want to be caught between a gang of a hundred pirates and an army of zombies when the sun goes down,’ he said, the voice of reason. ‘Let’s get back to Port Black and plan our next move from there.’

Kal looked at Lula, who nodded. ‘You two are far too careful for your own good,’ Kal said. ‘Aright, let’s go back. I’m getting hungry anyway!’

* * *

Something was different about the Blue Mahoe when Kal, Lula and Jako stumbled through its doors. Instead of high jinks and ribald laughter, everyone was sitting around eating and chatting quietly. Dead Leg and the rest of the
Swordfish’s
crew had arrived; the captain was sitting at a table gaming with Dogwood, the pair of them holding bowls of food in one hand and dice in the other. Whatever they were eating, it smelled delicious. Kal followed the savoury aroma through several parlours and corridors until she found her way to the kitchen at the back of the mansion.

There she found Che throwing whole onions, cloves of garlic and handfuls of rice into an enormous cauldron. His pretty girlfriend, Rose, was sat on a wooden counter plucking a chicken. ‘What’s going on,
man
?’ Kal said. ‘Are you trying to work off the bill you ran up with Rose last night?’

Che laughed. ‘No way. They offer me a job here! All I did was make breakfas’ for me and Rose, and suddenly everyone wants a taste and I have to cook a whole heap more!’