The Tides of Avarice (41 page)

She thwacked Gasbag upside the head again, not because he'd done anything new to deserve it, but presumably as a matter of principle.

“At least, they think they think it. Deep down, what they know is that it's all hocus pocus. But it's hocus pocus that makes them happy and that's what they pay me for – pay me willingly, and shower honors and gifts upon me even when I don't want them. O' course, my advice would be every bit as good without the voodoo hocus pocus, but it wouldn't be so enjoyable for them to swallow, like a pill someone'd forgot to put the sugar coating on. I can see, young Sylvester, that you're one of the few that can do without the sugar coating. What you don't know, my lad, is how much o' what I just been telling you is true and how much is,” she gestured expressively, “hocus pocus.”

“Then all this,” said Sylvester, nodding toward the impressive crystal ball in the middle of the table. “All this is just a ruse?”

Madame Zahnia shook her head firmly. “Oh, no. I didn't say that everything I do is a fraud. I do have a gift. The gift I have is being able to see the future. I can't always see it very well, and I can't always see it very far and without the help of my Revealer,” she patted it affectionately. “There's times I can't see into the future at all, but the gift's there, all right, and it's as real as you and me.”

Sylvester, who occasionally wondered idly if he did exist or whether life was actually an illusion, took her words at face value.

“And the future you've seen for us all is what?”

“That I can't tell you,” the old mouse replied. “The only way you can find out what the future's going to hold for you is to live through it yourself.”

“Well, that's not much use,” exclaimed Viola. Clearly, she'd been keeping a lot of emotion pent up for far longer than she'd have liked, because her voice was uncomfortably loud in the confined space. “What's the use of being able to predict what's ahead if you can't tell anyone about it?”

Madame Zahnia grinned inscrutably. “It's better than nothing, ain't it?”

Sylvester knew that wasn't the real reply, but it was all Viola was going to get. While Madame Zahnia and Viola shared one of those conversations that goes round and round in circles without anyone expecting it to ever actually get anywhere, Sylvester tried to recall something he'd read in Cap'n Adamite's journal was nagging away at the back of his mind and for a few minutes he couldn't for the life of him put a finger on what it was. Then, with a little gasp of relief, he remembered. He could see the dead buccaneer's scrawl as clearly as if it had been there in front of him (rather clearer, in fact, because his imagination cleaned off a few of the ink smudges created by the dampness of the journal's hiding place). What Sylvester read was this:

The true location of the treasure?

Let me commit to writing no more than that it can be seen only through the fall of the Ninth Wave.

He waited for the next gap in the increasingly waspish exchanges between Viola and the old voodoo priestess, then said shyly, “Tell me, Madame Zahnia, if you'd be so kind, what's the Ninth Wave?”

Madame Zahnia seemed to freeze mid-breath. Viola could tell she'd been dismissed instantly from the old mouse's attention and pursed her lips angrily.

“The Ninth Wave?” said Madame Zahnia quietly. “And where would a young feller like yourself have been hearing about that, eh?”

Sylvester looked evasively from side to side. Somehow he didn't think it'd be right to tell a near stranger about Cap'n Adamite's secret journal. “It was just in, er, idle chitchat, you know. Something I overheard in a bar one day. Can't think why it popped into my head just now.”

It must be excruciatingly obvious that I'm lying, he thought. He dared a glance at Madame Zahnia and could see by the smile touching the corners of her mouth that she was seeing right through his clumsy subterfuge.

She chose, however, not to call him on the lie.

“The Ninth Wave,” she said. “Ah, yes. It's a tale out of mythology, you know.”

Now Madame Zahnia's the one who's lying, thought Sylvester, and I'm the one seeing through her. She doesn't believe this is just a piece of mythology at all. She believes in it as much as she believes in the treasure of the Zindars, which is with everything she's got.

The old seer was still talking.

“In everyday terms, there's the sailor's superstition that every ninth wave is bigger than the other eight, but I don't think that's what you mean. What the old myths say is that the boundaries of the mortal world are marked by a wall of … a wall of something that's called the Ninth Wave. On this side of the Ninth Wave, there's the world we know, and not just this world, but all the stars of the firmament too. On the far side of the Ninth Wave, though, ah, things are different there. That's the Otherworld, that is, on the far side of the Ninth Wave. It's where magic happens, and it's where the soul journeys in dreams, or after it's left behind this mortal realm.”

And Cap'n Adamite believed the chest of the Zindars can be found only “through the fall of the Ninth Wave, thought Sylvester. What in the name of goodness can he have meant by that? Did he mean the only way anyone can find the treasure is by dying first? But that wouldn't be much use, would it? Not a lot of fun having your wishes granted if you happen to be dead at the time.

His confusion must have been written all over his face, because Madame Zahnia smiled at him sympathetically. “My answer hasn't been as helpful to you as you'd hoped, has it?”

“No.”

“Answers have a habit of doing that,” she said. “Especially the answers to the most important questions of all. And especially when those answers come from the lips of an old charlatan voodoo woman you ought to have better sense than to ask questions of in the first place. No?”

There wasn't any malice in her teasing, and Sylvester grinned back at her. “I expect you could tell us more if you really wanted to.”

Her face grew serious. “No, I couldn't. It's like my telling you about what your future holds. I can tell you only so much. After that, it's something you have to find out for yourselves. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.”

Madame Zahnia suddenly clapped her forepaws together. “Now, it's getting late and you've a long journey behind you. You people must be tired and, if you're not, this old voodoo woman most certainly is. These pesky scamps of grandchildren it's been my evil luck to inherit will sort you out somewhere to sleep, and some good food to put in your bellies before that.”

She turned a stern eye on Rasco.

“Hop to it, brat.”

“Okey-dokey, surely I will, Madame Zahnia, oh mighty one, mistress of all the known universe. You can rely on your Rasco to—”

She aimed a half-hearted blow at his head. “Less of your impertinence, rascal.”

Sylvester wasn't really listening to her. “Sometimes I wish,” he began, speaking really to himself, “sometimes I wish it wasn't me all this was happening to but someone else. It'd have been easier if I'd never set eyes on that map.”

Old she might be, but there was nothing wrong with Madame Zahnia's hearing.

“Don't talk tripe, Sylvester.”

“What?”

“Tripe. Don't talk it. You're not a fool, so don't make yourself out to be one.”

“Eh?”

“Throw a stone into the pond.”

Sylvester looked around him. “There isn't a pond.”

The fat old mouse rolled her eyes expressively. “Pretend there's a pond, dimwit. Do I have to explain everything to you?” She saw Sylvester looking down at his paw and added, “And pretend there's a stone as well.”

“You want me to throw a stone that isn't here into a pond that isn't here?”

“You're a bit slow to catch on, young feller, but you get there in the end. Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Now, go ahead and toss your stone.”

A little self-consciously, Sylvester mimed lobbing a pebble. “Splash,” he said.

“Well, at least you didn't miss the pond altogether,” said Madame Zahnia with a mock sourness. “Now, look at the ripples.”

“I'm looking at the ripples.”

“See them?”

“As clearly as I see you.”

“All right, Sylvester, what I want you to do now is stop those ripples.”

He took a half-pace forward, as if to the edge of the imaginary pond, then looked at her in bafflement. “What do you mean?”

“The surface of the pond is all covered in ripples because of the stone you threw in. I'm just asking you to make that surface smooth again.”

“But I can't do that,” he cried, his brow furrowing in mystification. What was the voodoo lady trying to tell him? “If I tried to get rid of the ripples, all I'd do was make more ripples, and more ripples on top of that. Every attempt of mine would just make the surface … ripplier.”

“Exactly,” said Madame Zahnia. “And that's how it is with life, too. The only way you can stop the ripples is not to throw the stone in the first place. But you've already thrown the stone – or discovered the map, it's the same thing really. You can't go back and change that. So, you're just going to have to live with the ripples until time makes the surface smooth.”

“I've got to live with the consequences of my own past, you mean?” said Sylvester.

“Exactly. Like it or lump it, you've started along a road you're going to have to stay on until you reach its end. These good companions of yours” – Madame Zahnia indicated Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry, who were watching all that was going on as if it were a theatrical play – “they could abandon the route if they wanted to. But—”

Viola grabbed Sylvester's arm. “Who said anything about abandoning? We're all in this together.”

Madame Zahnia stared at her. “You're certain of that?”

“Yes.”

“Me too,” chipped in Mrs. Pickleberry. “If I don't keep me peepers on those two there's no telling what they might get up to they shouldn't oughter.”

“You're a mother after my own heart, Daphne,” said Madame Zahnia warmly. “Now, as I said, I'm tired even if you three aren't. Let Rasco and Gasbag look after you, and don't eat the mango they offer you for your supper, even though Gasbag'll tell you it's perfectly fresh. He's been trying to get rid of it for a month now.” Madame Zahnia waved them away carelessly. “Now, be gone with you.”

There was a monkey chattering directly outside his window. Sylvester propped himself up on one elbow and looked around him through blurry eyes. Last night, he'd slept better than he could remember doing in years, and certainly since leaving Foxglove. There'd been something about the combination of the heavy and surprisingly good meal their hosts had served up, then a bed made of a heap of mats and cushions, then the gentle rocking of his little hut all night long as the wind made the branches sway.

The only trouble was that he'd spent much of the night dreaming about Cap'n Rustbane, or at least of being back on board the Shadeblaze with Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry.

It must have been the motion of the branches making me think I was at sea, thought Sylvester crossly to himself, shaking his head to try to banish his dreams from his mind. He pushed the covers back and stretched his legs.

Someone threw something at the monkey, but it carried on chattering regardless. No wonder. Had it taken it into its mind to do so, the monkey could have easily killed a few of the mice, which were far smaller.

The mindless cacophony reminded Sylvester of something he'd heard last night as he was drifting off to sleep – or had it been another of his dreams? He'd heard – or imagined he'd heard – Madame Zahnia talking in quiet tones. He hadn't been able to estimate how far away she was – right outside his bedroom window or on a different branch altogether. In the stillness of the night, once all the mice and their guests were safely tucked up in bed, sounds were deceptive. Nor had he been able to make out any of the words Madame Zahnia had been speaking.

After a short while, the flow of words stopped altogether. There was the sound of wings fanning the night air, then silence.

He shook his head again and smiled ruefully to himself.

There was a scrabbling noise as the monkey suddenly shut up and scampered away through the foliage, attracted by the prospect of food, perhaps, or by another of its kind.

Sylvester breathed easier. The mice had told him not to worry about the monkeys, that the monkeys were trained not to harm anyone in the settlement, but even so Sylvester couldn't make himself trust long-legged, long-tailed creatures. They were big monsters, and their teeth were sharp.

Thinking about sharp white teeth made him think again of Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane.

He shuddered.

I wish I hadn't done that.

There was no sign of Viola or Mrs. Pickleberry, but someone had left a dish on the floor for him with a couple of bright red berry-like fruit on it. They tasted like sugar dusted with cinnamon, he discovered rapidly, and he wished his unknown benefactor had left him more.

A few minutes later he was standing at the bottom of the rope ladder, his hand in Viola's. She and her mother had been waiting down there with Madame Zahnia, Rasco and Gasbag. The plan, they explained to Sylvester when he'd appeared, was for Rasco and Gasbag to guide them to a port on the far side of the island, Skull Cove. Once there, with luck, they could stowaway on one of the merchant ships that, despite the constant threat of piracy, plied their trade in these waters.

“Now, my friends,” said Madame Zahnia, all the bangles and gewgaws on her arms jangling discordantly as she adjusted her headdress, “it is time for us to be saying our goodbyes to each other.”

Each of the lemmings leaned down so Madame Zahnia could embrace them around the neck. Her perfume seemed even heavier than it had last night, when it had been almost suffocating in the confines of her house.

Sylvester was the last of the lemmings she hugged and, once she'd done so, she looked at him earnestly.

“I wish,” she told him, “there was something more I could give you as you leave Ouwinju than just the advice my Revealer relayed to you yesterday.” She shrugged. “But that's the way my gifts work.”

Her voice became so bleak and sympathetic that Sylvester stared at her, trying to read the meaning behind the words.

“Always remember,” she was saying, “that the true path is seldom the one you'd like it to be, even though it's the one that leads you home quickest and safest. You still have much to do, Sylvester Lemmington, and many lives depend on you completing those important tasks correctly. Believe me when I tell you I'm acting in your best interests.”

Sylvester wrinkled his forehead. What in heck is she trying to tell us?

“Uh, thanks, I guess,” he said.

“You would do well to remember my words, all three of you, even though it may be hard to believe them in the days to come.”

Sylvester felt his hackles rising. There was something very … amiss going on here.

“Thank you, Madame Zahnia,” Viola said, her suspicions evidently unaroused. “Thank you for everything.”

“You're welcome,” said Madame Zahnia, pleasantly enough. “There's something else you should know. There may come a time when one of you has to make the greatest sacrifice of all, when one of you has to close the circle.”

Everybody looked at the old seeress, expecting her to explain herself, but her lips remained closed.

“What do you mean?” said Sylvester at last.

“You'll find out soon enough,” was all the answer Madame Zahnia gave him.

Rasco and Gasbag were looking at her in just as much confusion as the lemmings.

“What's you talking about, grandmère?” Rasco began. “It seems to me you—”

There was a sudden turmoil in the undergrowth.

“Ah, there you are!” said a dreadedly familiar voice. “Good to meet you again, Lemmington. So tiresome of fate to have pulled us apart the way it did, what?”

Sylvester looked up. Standing over him, a big grin on his face, was the one person he'd hoped never again to meet in his life.

“Rustbane!” he gasped.

“That'll be Cap'n Rustbane to you, my lad. Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane. You could add a few respectful words about me being the Scourge of the Seven Seas and the like, if you felt like being a little bit extra-courteous. No? I can see that my appeals for gentlemanly etiquette are lost on you. So sad. Maybe a few dozen lashes with the cat-o'-nine-tails will persuade you to pay a little more attention to social decorum. Seize her, boyos!”

The last cry was directed toward a bevy of his thugs, who'd come crashing out of the bushes behind him. Obediently, they leaped as one upon Mrs. Pickleberry,, who'd been threatening to do serious damage to their skipper with Elvira.

“Now, where was I?” said Rustbane a few moments later, when the din of the scrum on top of Mrs. Pickleberry had died down a little. “Ah, yes, I was dwelling upon the delightful prospect of watching Sylvester's miserable little furry hide being sliced to shreds by the cruel claws o' the nine-tailed cat.”

Sylvester tuned the pirate's gloating out.

He looked at Madame Zahnia. The old, gaudily dressed mouse was standing there, her hands knitted in front of her copious breast, the rolls of fat on her throat overflowing the neck of her bright pink dress, her eyes closed as if the last thing in the world she wanted to see was Sylvester's accusatory glare.

When finally she spoke, it was in a voice entirely unlike any they'd heard from her before.

“Here's yer prey, Deathflash. I'd a trussed 'em up all neat and tidy fer ya, but there din't seem no need, wus there? Leastwise, that's what this old jungle priestess thought.”

Madame Zahnia cackled like a she-devil and danced a little caper where she stood.

“If a fish coulda keep him mout' shut, it would neva get itself caught,” she said with a further burst of shrill hilarity.

Cap'n Rustbane joined her laughter.

And now Madame Zahnia did open her eyes.

She stared straight at Sylvester, who stared straight back into the depths of her gaze.

What he saw there was an emotion entirely different from that in her voice or her words, or on her face. He saw what he could describe only as a frozen ocean, infinitely deep, eternally chill. There was sadness there, and pleading and a wisdom that seemed to belong not to any living creature but to come from somewhere far beyond all mortal understanding. It was, he realized, making a sudden intuitive leap, the wisdom of the Zindars, which had not disappeared from Sagaria when that ancient race had left but passed down from one Sagarian to another, preserved in such unlikely frames as that of a fat old mouse with atrocious taste in dress isolated in the middle of nowhere on a pirate-infested island. The Zindars had left behind two treasures, not just one. And who was to say which was more valuable?

Sylvester heard once more those enigmatic words of Madame Zahnia, spoken just a few moments ago, “Believe me when I tell you I'm acting in your best interests. You would do well to remember my words, all three of you, even though it may be hard for you to believe them in the days to come.”

He nodded almost imperceptibly to the voodoo mouse and she nodded back. He thought he could detect, just for an instant, the hint of a smile in her gaze.

Then it was gone. She was the cruel mistress once more, the turncoat who'd sold them out to their pursuers.

“But here's a fish can't keep his mouth shut,” said Cap'n Rustbane, beaming. He gestured, and two of his crewmen stepped behind Sylvester and started hobbling his legs. Out of the corner of his eye, Sylvester saw that Viola was being similarly tied. Nearby, Rasco and Gasbag were staring at their grandmother in complete shock. It was obvious this betrayal, if betrayal it truly was, was as much of a surprise to them as to the lemmings.

“How could you do this, Grandma?” said Gasbag, looking as if he was about to burst into tears. “How could you do this to our friends?”

“Never trust an old voodoo witch further than you can throw her,” Cap'n Rustbane explained. “It's a maxim that'll guide you well in the future. Now get lost, small fry, unless you want to join your friends aboard my merry pirate vessel?”

The two younger mice melted into the undergrowth, so that within a moment it was as if they'd never been there.

“I thought so,” said Cap'n Rustbane, picking at his teeth with a long curved thorn.

He took off his feathered hat and bowed deeply to Madame Zahnia. “I have you to thank for the successful conclusion of this search, my lady,” he said. “Believe me, it is not something I shall forget early. Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane is well aware of how deeply he is in your debt, and be assured he will return the favor at some not-too-distant time.”

Madame Zahnia gave an awful leer that was at least ninety-five percent scarlet lipstick. Sylvester, by now so well-bound he could hardly breathe, thought she was blushing. “Oh, go on with you, you old rogue,” she said.

Cap'n Rustbane became businesslike, moving briskly around the clearing at the base of the rope ladder and issuing crisp orders to his henchmen. Mrs. Pickleberry had incapacitated five of them before being eventually overpowered, so arrangements had to be made to carry injured personnel as well as herself – the only way the pirates had been able to subdue her had been by beating her unconscious. One of them, Jeopord, was wearing her rolling pin in his belt as if it were an extra sword. Sylvester could detect no trace in the gap-toothed ocelot's demeanor of the treachery he was planning against his skipper.

At last, they were ready to depart for the long march back to Hangman's Haven.

“See ya soon, big boy,” was the last they heard of Madame Zahnia.

Sylvester glanced back down the path along which he was being poked and prodded by his captors. The old fat mouse was standing beneath the treetop settlement of Ouwinju, which had become unnaturally still, as if the mice who dwelled there were horrified by their elder's perfidy. She was waving a large red and white-spotted handkerchief after them.

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿

Sylvester had no idea how much time had passed when the lemmings became aware from the rocking of the floor beneath them that the Shadeblaze was making its way out of Hangman's Haven.

The trek back from Ouwinju had been a nightmare of savage heat, exhausted muscles, and merciless lashing by the low branches and twigs that seemed to search out the captives as they stumbled along in the midst of the scoffing pirates. Once they'd reached the harbor, they'd been led immediately down into the deepest bowels of the corsair vessel. Deeper, deeper and yet deeper, until it seemed for sure they must burst through the planking of the Shadeblaze's hull and emerge in the cold, murky water beneath. Instead, they'd been hurled into a cabin barely large enough for the three of them that smelled of stagnant water, mildewed timber, and rancid, well, best not to think of what it was that had gone rancid.

Mrs. Pickleberry had been unconscious but, after they'd been sitting there in the pitch darkness for an indefinite period, Sylvester and Viola heard her pull herself up off the soggy floor.

“Are you all right, Mom?”

Mrs. Pickleberry hawked and spat a few times before replying. When she did speak it was in a voice almost unrecognizable. “I'll be even better when I've nailed that blasted mouse's hide to the wall. With the blasted mouse still in it.”

“Er, Madame Zahnia, you mean?” said Sylvester. He could hear Viola shuffling on her rear across the cabin floor to put her arm around her mother's shoulders.

“Who else? Viola, get your nose out of my ear, drat you, you clumsy chit.”

“Mo–om.” Threateningly.

“O' course I mean that fatty Madame Zahnia,” continued Mrs. Pickleberry, clearly addressing Sylvester now. “Who else d'you think I mean? Though I reckon her hideous little grandsons are as bad as she is any day, if you give 'em the chance.”

Tripping over his words, Sylvester tried to explain to her what he'd seen after Mrs. Pickleberry had vanished beneath a punching and grunting pile of pirates. “The two young mice were as dismayed by what she'd done as any of us. Besides …” He paused. How to explain in the darkness to a doubtless skeptical Daphne Pickleberry the expression he'd observed in the old voodoo priestess's eyes?