The Light of Heaven

about to happen and dove to the side just in time. A ball of crackling ice flew past his head and slammed into the nearest creature. Its scales froze and exploded into glass-like shards as it took its next step. It swung round, bleeding from a crater in its side and lunged for Margrave. The Captain fell, but Crowe intercepted the creature before it could deliver a finishing blow, his cutlass biting into the inside of its upper arm.

It fell back, screaming, and Crowe brought a fatal blow down into its neck.

The deck of the Belle was a mass of struggling bodies, but the sailors were definitely pushing the creatures back into the sea. Crowe managed to pick up another cutlass from a fallen sailor and took off a webbed and clawed hand that was slashing towards him, before slashing the creature's throat.

Leaping over the twitching body, he kicked another creature off of Margrave, who gasped for breath now that its hands were free of his throat. It rose, lunging for Crowe, but the bos'un speared it through both shoulders with a pair of daggers, and cut its throat.

'You should not be here,' it hissed suddenly, through its wound.

'It speaks!' Margrave was amazed.

'Leave, while you can,' the creature insisted. 'Or die.'

'We're not the ones who'll be dying,' Farran told the thing.

The creature looked at him. 'There is no escape.'

'What sort of city is on this island?' Margrave asked. 'Is it yours? Do your people live here?'

The creature spat black slime. 'This is no city.'

'What is it then?'

'It is a bridge.'

'A bridge? To where?'

'To Kerberos.'

All the men around instinctively looked upwards, then Crowe and Margrave looked at each other. 'I'm not much of a nautical cove,' Crowe began, 'but I've walked across a few bridges over the years and they all have spans. Do you see a span here?'

'No.'

'It will reveal itself at the appointed time,' the creature burbled. 'Leave or die.' It stopped breathing then.

'Throw it overboard,' Farran ordered. The bos'un glared at him and looked to Margrave for instruction. Margrave gave him a hurried nod, and the creature and its comrades were returned to the waters out of which they had climbed.

No-one felt much like breakfast after the fight, but they went through the motions anyway, before a party was put together to explore the island.

Though it was called the Isle of the Star, it wasn't particularly star shaped. The ground resembled plain old white rock crystal or glass, as far as Crowe could tell.

There were no diamonds or jewels on the beach either. There was nothing but more rock crystal and chunks of broken glass. There was no sign of vegetation either and the beach simply rose up into a tall central peak. The centre of the island was less a hill proper than a twisted spire, like the horn of some sea beast. If so, it was a beast that was wracked by disease. Its surface seemed to weep, as droplets and tears left trails between long-worn pustules.

It didn't look much like anything even remotely valuable. Crowe suddenly knew with a certainty that the legends had been started by people who had never been out here. The Isle of the Lump of Shapeless Glass wouldn't have brought a storyteller many tots of rum in even the most desperate dockside tavern.

'Well, Farran,' Margrave said. 'Is this… Is this it?' Margrave was too professional to sound as disappointed as he clearly wanted to.

'This is the Isle of the Star,' Farran replied smoothly. 'And it has a value.'

'What value can such a place possibly have?'

'Its history, Captain Margrave. That is its value.'

'You mean this may have been built by the older races? They may have left something?' Margrave asked hopefully.

'Something like that.'

The bos'un picked up a chunk of knobbly glass and threw it at Farran's feet. 'Is this what you call diamond?'

Farran made a placating gesture. 'Diamonds don't sparkle when they're first found. They have to be cut and polished — '

'Aye, that they do,' another sailor joined in. 'But I've worked in a diamond mine and rough diamonds don't look like this rubbish. This is slag, not gemstones.'

'Maybe the people who used to live here made jewellery and smelted gold. This could be what's left,' Farran suggested. 'There may yet be profit to be found elsewhere on the island.'

'What people?'

'You're standing on one.' Startled, the bos'un looked down, as did Crowe and saw that there was indeed a vaguely humanoid skeleton set into the translucent earth below him. 'Somebody used to live here.'

Something else caught Crowe's eye, on a smooth blister a few feet above. He lurched over and realised that what he was seeing wasn't on the blister, it was inside it.

The skull of some ancient beast, full of crumbling fangs, was lying on its side deep inside the rock. Crowe had seen flies trapped in amber and sold in the markets of Freiport, but he had never seen anything like this. 'What it is?'

'Sea devils,' a sailor muttered.

'Or Dwarves,' another said.

'He's the tallest sodding dwarf I've ever seen, mate,' Crowe replied. Margrave could only shake his head in wonder. 'I've never seen such a creature. Whatever it is, it must be an ancient thing.'

Crowe turned away in disgust, walking back towards the longboats. This place wasn't right. Not for him and not for anyone.

'Where are you going?' Farran shouted.

'Back to the ship.'

'Send water and food across,' Margrave said. 'We may camp here tonight.'

'Rather you than me.'

Crowe rowed back to the Belle alone, his head buzzing with a sick and dizzy feeling. At first he thought it was still the images of the trapped bones that was making him feel strange, but as he climbed back aboard the ship he began to realise that in fact there was a literal buzzing in his ears.

It was a sound that Crowe had never heard before. No-one on board had ever heard anything like it before, and everyone was looking around them in a mixture of terror and bafflement. It was a hissing and sizzling sound, descending from the skies and filling the air. Crowe could feel it quivering in the breaths he took.

Someone pointed to the sky, and cried out: 'Look!'

There were no clouds in the sky, but even the deep blue of the day was peeling itself apart, as the very air shuddered in agony. The air was tearing itself apart.

The Isle of the Star was burning, glowing from the inside out with the silver light of a million of the stars that twinkled in the night. In a heartbeat, it was too bright to look at. Crowe spun, trying to find a direction in which he could still see. There was a sudden silence and then Crowe felt the blinding starlight burn every muscle in his body. His hair was straining to escape from its roots and every part of him was screaming in the fire that consumed him.

There were footsteps thumping across the deck and the sound of men's' voices. Crowe blinked the water out of his eyes and tried to look over the edge of the barrel in which he sat.

A startled sailor was looking at him. Crowe didn't recognize the man. Maybe he was a pirate. More likely he was a dream, or a figment of Crowe's imagination. Perhaps he was dead and the sailor was just another soul that had joined him in Kerberos.

'Mister Farrow!' the man shouted. 'I think there's a man alive here!'