“Who knows?” the woman translated the old man’s words to Phen. “The Jakarri have been dead for two thousand years, but there is a place on the island where you might find something very interesting.” The woman looked at her father with more than a little concern showing when he named the place. She didn’t seem to like the idea of translating its location to Phen, which made Phen all the more eager to learn it.
“The Serpent’s Eye,” she finally said with a voice full of reluctance. She showed Phen its general location on the map she’d sold him. It wasn’t labeled as such-it was just a cove on a stretch of rocky shore. “You’ll have to enter at low tide and by boat,” she told him. “The eye closes when the tide comes up. But be warned, none who have ventured there have ever returned.”
Now here they were, still reeling from the night before, hunched in a low-ceilinged cavern watching the tide close up the only way out. Deck Master Biggs had let them off and rowed out of the cavern some hours ago. Talon was outside as well. The hawkling was hunting the glade of windblown trees at the top of the rocky formation they were inside of. Hyden wanted his familiar close so that he might send him for aid if the need arose.
They had already followed one of the two passages that led away from the entrance. It terminated in an ancient pile of bones, many of them human. They were scattered about a long abandoned nest of some sort. Phen found a rusty shirt of chain mail, a broken dagger, and a chain made of fine silver with an ornate key dangling from it. In a dried out oil cloth sack, he also discovered a small journal. The pages were brittle and the wire-thread binding was ruined, but the strange text that had been expertly scribed within could still be made out. Phen carefully wrapped the old volume and put it in his pack. Then he put the silver chain over his head with a proud grin of accomplishment.
Phen was so pleased with what he found that he already agreed to return to the inn without exploring further. The others wanted to sleep off their agony, but there was a problem: the tide had already risen past the point of no return. Now they were stuck in the cavern until the tide withdrew. After coming to terms with their plight, the others agreed to explore the other passage with Phen just as soon as they had a meal and a took short nap.
They ate dried salted meat and cheese, with fresh bread Phen purchased from the inn’s cook. After they had eaten, Oarly and Brady both lay back and rested. Hyden used the time to practice a simple illumination spell that Phen had already mastered. When it was cast properly, a small fist-sized ball of yellow radiance, about as bright as an oil lantern, would appear in the caster’s hand. It would rise above his head and hover there, following him wherever he went, until he broke the spell with a gesture and a spoken word.
Hyden had managed it a few times, but more often than not, his sphere appeared too small or misshapen, and the light was some strange mixture of green and orange that barely lit his hand when it formed.
“Your problem is your pronunciation of the words in the spell,” Phen scolded him. “You can’t speak like a village hick when you’re using magic. Very, very bad things can happen.”
“The boy found, and looted, a dead man,” Oarly grumbled between snores. “Now he’s grown bigger than his britches.”
Brady laughed. “No, Oarly, he’s right. Hyden Hawk might turn one of us into a goat by accident if he gets his words wrong.”
The dwarf didn’t hear. He was already snoring again. What Oarly referred to as peaceful sleep sounded more like a cavern full of angry bears. Oarly was happy to be off of the ship, and ecstatic to be underground. He had said so at least a hundred times while they were exploring the first tunnel. The quality of Oarly’s snoring shifted and began to sound more like a trapped and wounded animal bellowing for its life. Hyden tried to blame the terrible sound for his mispronunciation of the spell words, but Phen wasn’t buying it.
“If you can’t say the words with Oarly snoring,” Phen lectured. “How are you going to be able to say them when arrows are flying at you?”
“All right, Phen,” Hyden sighed and tried again. This time the orb appeared in the correct shape and with the proper amount of yellow light emitting from it, for its size. The sphere was only the size of an acorn, though-far too small to light anyone’s way.
“You’re getting closer,” Phen encouraged. “It’s more in th-”
“Shhh!” Brady hissed suddenly. “Can you hear that?” he added in a whisper.
The light in Hyden’s hand dissapated, leaving them in relative darkness. The sloshing water surging in and out of the cavern’s mouth had a blue-tinged glow deep within it. It kept the space swirling and drifting in a perpetual glimmer of subtle illumination. Over the sound of the ocean, a long deep hissing sound could be heard. The shimmering of the water played on the stalactites crazily. Hyden could barely see Phen, who was sitting only a few feet away from him.
“What is it?” Phen whispered. The sound was growing louder.
“Look,” Brady pointed toward the black gaping maw of the tunnel they hadn’t explored yet.
They could barely see what he was pointing at. A faint green glow was flickering slowly along the tunnel walls. It was growing brighter, as if someone were carrying a green-tinted lantern out from the tunnel’s depths. The hissing sound came again, and this time the fact that it was coming from something very big and very alive was unmistakable. Oarly’s snore rumbled through the cavern over the hiss, then stopped abruptly as Brady cuffed him in the side of the head.
“What… what?” Oarly grumbled angrily.
“Shhh!” both Phen and Brady hissed in unison.
A soft “Ooh,” was all that Hyden could manage to get out of his mouth as the thing came into view.
With eyes the size of chicken eggs, Phen quickly scrambled to Hyden’s side.
The huge eel-like thing undulated forward. None of the companions dared to move for fear of alerting it to their presence. Its slimy, scaled skin radiated a phosphorus green glow. It turned its hovering head toward them and a long purple-black tongue flickered forth. Hyden couldn’t judge how big it was until it lurched swiftly at them and put its head close enough that it nearly licked his face.
Its milky white eyes had no pupils and were as big as Hyden’s head. At least twenty feet of the thing was out of the tunnel now. The creature’s head was viper-like and swaying sinuously above the rough floor. The underside of its body was lined with row upon row of palm-sized suckers. Its mouth was wide enough to swallow a man whole. Hyden felt the strangest sensation as the serpent weaved in place, tasting the air around them.
Hyden’s chest began to tingle. When he looked down, he saw that it wasn’t actually his chest, but the medallion that hung there. Tiny little sparkles of light were jumping from the teardrop shaped jewel mounted in the disc. They weren’t alive, but the prismatic flashes of pink, turquoise and lavender light resembled fleas or fireflies shooting out like a fountain. The strange emissions faded after they went more than a foot or two away from the jewel.
The serpent hissed, and Hyden sensed its disapproval of them trespassing in its home. He tried to speak with it in his mind, as he had with the dragon, Claret, and King Aldar’s great wolves, but the scaly creature’s only response was to flick its tongue at the dragon’s tear hanging around his neck.
Hyden could hear the breath trembling in and out of Phen’s lungs, and he smelled something rancid. After a moment the serpent eased away from them and slipped itself headfirst into the water. The eerie light of the distant sun shining through the submerged cavern mouth died out as the creature filled the hole. Hyden counted his heart beats as it slithered past them. He was at ten when Phen broke his concentration.
“What was that?” the boy rasped.
Hyden figured that he could have gotten his count up to as many as fifteen or even twenty before the serpent’s tail finally disappeared into the water, taking its phosphorus glow with it. By Hyden’s estimation, the thing had to be nearly a hundred feet long.
“I don’t know what it was, lad,” Oarly murmured in a shaky tone. “But it made me shit me britches.”
“I thought that was its breath,” Brady said with a gagging cough. “Make some light, Phen.”
Almost instantly a globe appeared in Phen’s palm and ascended to a spot about a foot over the boy’s head.
“It’s going out to feed,” Hyden said after taking a few deep breaths to calm himself. Oarly’s stench was foul.
“Let’s go see what’s back there while it’s gone,” Phen suggested.
“You go, I’ll stay,” said Oarly. The look on his hairy face was a comical mixture of disgust, embarrassment, and relief as he stood and unsnapped his belt. He waddled gracelessly to the water and waded into it until he was standing waist deep. The water clouded around him, causing the others to retch and turn away.
