Emily Rodda - Isle of the Dead

There were only a few words on the card.

This will do,’ Lief said. ‘We have solved puzzles like this before.’

Very aware of Barda’s eyes burning into his back, he strode to the treasure chest and took a single gold coin. As he was turning away, he found to his surprise that several more coins were sticking to his fingertips.

For a moment he was tempted to keep them, in case he needed to play more than once. Then he realised that he was being lured into borrowing more than he had intended. He turned abruptly and brushed the extra coins back into the chest.

Clutching his one gold piece, he quickly moved back to the table.

‘I do not like this,’ Barda growled. ‘There is a time limit, Lief. That is clear from the notice. And it is Jasmine who is good at this sort of game.’

‘Jasmine is not here,’ Lief snapped. ‘We are. And surely between us we can see the answer. Especially with the topaz to aid us.’

He sat down. Barda stood close behind him and watched as he slipped the gold coin into the slot at the top of the money jar.

Lief put his hand to the gold cloth. Instantly there was a tiny chiming sound, as if a crystal glass had been tapped with a fingernail. A line on the little card standing by the money jar lit up and began to flash.

Lief’s stomach seemed to turn over. He wet his lips. ‘You will have to move away, Barda,’ he said. ‘It seems I must play the game alone.’

With a muttered curse, Barda moved back. The words on the card continued to flash. Barda moved away, further, further…

And suddenly the words on the card grew still and the gold cloth vanished.

‘I can see nothing from here,’ Lief heard Barda call in a low voice. ‘I cannot help you.’

Lief did not answer. He was concentrating fiercely on the objects revealed on the table top.

Thirteen silver sticks had been arranged so as to make six rectangles. Inside each rectangle was a little jewelled beetle. Below the pattern was a small piece of parchment.

As Barda had feared, a small glass timer stood beside the puzzle. Lief glanced at it, and saw that fine sand had already begun trickling through the narrow tube that linked the timer’s two chambers.

When the top chamber was empty, his time would be up. The timer was the same size as the one used in the forge kitchen for boiling eggs, so he knew that he had less than three minutes to solve the puzzle.

Three minutes to win back what he had borrowed.

Three minutes…

Beneath his feet oars creaked and chains rattled.

Fail to pay and down you’ll go

To take your seat with those below.

8 – Truth

His heart thudding painfully, Lief picked up one of the silver sticks and put it aside. Now twelve sticks remained on the table, and one beetle’s ‘cage’ had only three walls.

With his left hand on the topaz, he hunched forward and with his free hand began moving sticks around, desperately trying to find the solution. But whatever he tried, he could not make six cages of the same size.

What you owe you must repay…

The sand was running, running. The top chamber of the timer was already half empty.

Calm your mind, Lief told himself. There is a trick here. A trick! You must relax enough to see it!

He moved his fingers from the topaz to the amethyst—the amethyst that calmed and soothed.

Peace stole through him. His racing mind slowed. And as it did, a thought occurred to him.

If the puzzle was to make cages with twelve sticks, why had there been thirteen sticks in the first place? And why had the sticks been arranged as they were?

To throw me off the scent, he guessed suddenly. To fix my mind on cages of a certain shape…

He looked at the silver sticks with new eyes. And then he saw the answer.

He glanced at the timer. Only a tiny pile of sand remained in the top chamber. He had just moments left.

Swiftly he re-arranged the sticks and put the jewelled beetles in place.

The last grain of sand slipped through the timer. Silently a slot opened at the bottom of the money jar and two gold coins slipped out. Lief snatched them up with a cry of triumph and leaped from the chair.

Barda groaned with relief.

Lief swung around to face him, holding up the coins in his closed fist.

‘Two coins!’ he crowed. ‘One coin to pay our debt, and one to keep for a souvenir!’

‘A souvenir!’ Barda called, shakily wiping sweat from his brow. ‘By the heavens, I could well do without a souvenir of the last few minutes. I believe they took ten years off my life!’

Lief’s excitement abruptly died. For a moment, the thrill of winning had made him forget where he was. Now he remembered only too well.

The cursed beings below his feet were still rowing. The sounds chilled his blood. Every stroke of the oars was pulling the ship further away from Bone Point, further away from hope of rescue.

‘Let us get out of this prison,’ he muttered.

Quickly, keeping close together, he and Barda walked back to the treasure chest.

‘We have played a game, and hereby we repay our debt,’ Lief said loudly. He threw one of the coins he had won onto the golden pile in the chest. It settled into place with a soft chink.

They turned and began to move towards the far end of the room.

This time they made progress, and in moments they were standing before the painting—staring at it in astonishment.

The picture was smooth as glass, but within it a painted sea moved sluggishly and clouds drifted in a red-stained sky.

And rising in the centre, unmistakable, was the tall white shape of the Bone Point Light.

Barda drew breath sharply. ‘What is this? It seems alive! It moves, like a reflection in a mirror. But it is a painting! Only a painting of the Bone Point Light as seen from—’

‘From the sea,’ Lief finished. His scalp was crawling. ‘I think this is a mirror, Barda. Or it was. Look at the signature. Verity made this image. It is her view of the Bone Point Light from the prow of The Lady Luck. ’

He rubbed his sweating hands on his coat. ‘Verity was a prisoner, but no ordinary one, it seems,’ he said. ‘Somehow she made an image of what she could see appear in this mirror. She did it with the power of her mind, just as once she used paint and paper to make the pictures hanging on the lighthouse walls.’

‘It cannot be!’ Barda shook his head in disbelief.

‘Verity was born in the lighthouse,’ Lief said quietly. ‘Toran magic filled the air she breathed from her earliest days. It would not be surprising if she had powerful gifts of her own—though even she may not have been aware of it until…’

‘Until wickedness and terror came into her life for the first time, in the person of Captain James Gant,’ Barda finished heavily. ‘Then, it seems, her gifts awoke. Not soon enough to save her, but in time to leave this image behind, in memory of all she had lost.’