Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
All the way back to Bareheep Ward remained quiet and thoughful in the cart. The book remained hidden in his bag. He didn't get it out until he was back in his room beneath the city.
He only got a few pages into it that night before he fell asleep, and he didn't absorb anything he'd read.
The following night he started over. He lay on his bed in his cell-like room, a lanthorn hissing on the table beside him, a thick blanket pulled up to his chin, the city sprwaling far above his head. It was the only place in the world he felt truly safe.
Frank Jaggles wrote well. His entries mostly stuck to the basic facts, but occasionally expanded to provide some perceptive insight. From the dates Ward ascertained that Jaggles had departed for the Isle of Demons thirty years ago. Ward could only guess how old George Jaggles was. In his fifties? So when this journal was written he would have been in his twenties. Ward couldn't imagine him as anything other than what he was now. He had never heard Jaggles mention his mother. Likewise, Frank Jaggles made no mention of a wife in his journal. He seemed a man cast out from all bonds of family and community.
The journal started with Jaggles buying passage on a merchant ship returning from Bareheep to its home port of Obar on the south east coast of the Isle of Demons. The ship set out in Spring. Jaggles was hoping to return in Autumn and avoid the brutal Demonian winter. During the colder months icebergs drifted past Obar, making passage by sea treacherous, and in more severe winters the ice sheet extended north to cut the port off altogether.
When Jaggles arrived in Wine Bay, where the port of Obar was situated, the waters were red. At certain times of the year the ocean thereabouts teemed with bal, and the great sea creatures were butchered in the harbour. It was a brutal place, inhabited by a mercenary people. There was no official law. The most powerful merchants were constantly vying for supremacy, but out of self-interest, for it affected the profitability of their enterprises, they kept crime in check. Their policing of the town was remorseless.
Jaggles had evidently been in such towns before. He knew how to make himself inconspicuous, which barmen to tip in return for information, who to avoid, and where to find the wharfside characters who saw everything and knew everyone. There was no shortage of people willing to accompany him into the island's interior, but he turned them all down, for he somehow knew they planned to rob him and leave him out there to die. In the end he found his guide: a bushman who had lived for many years in the wilds outside Obar, had traded with the tribes of the interior, and spoke some of their languages. He was a strange, solitary man, but as it turned out, a highly capable and courageous one.
The adventure that followed was a gripping read. The two explorers narrowly escaped death several times. The mountains were treacherous, as were some of the tribes they encountered. One had the cheerful custom of flaying its enemies alive. Jaggles referred often in the text to maps he was drawing as he went; unfortunately none of these were included in the journal itself – not even sketches. Ward wondered what had become of them.
Jaggles managed to return to Obar by the start of Autumn. His voyage back to Bareheep was less detailed. The journal entries consisted chiefly of dates, cartesii, and brief descriptions of the most obvious landmarks.
It was late at night as Ward pushed through the final pages and his eyelids were growing heavy that he saw it. He wasn't conscious of what he had read until he was well into the following page. He jolted awake and rubbed his eyes, then flipped back to the previous page.
Freeday 15st Mark, 2984
39°29'40"S 147°17'58"E
Land sighted dawn. Two islands. Lighthouse on SW point of larger: Deville's Island according to charts. Captain, wanting to make most of excellent sailing conditions, didn't anchor.
Deville's Island? Ward thought.
Too tired to investigate further, marked the page, put the journal on his bedside table, snuffed out the candle, and went to sleep.
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Thus endeth Chapter the Twelfth. I hope thou liketh'd it.
