Three Times Chosen Read online

  Chulib did cough up one derogatory standpoint. “Eskaa is about as trustworthy as a sea snake and twice as venomous."

  Ryops nodded agreeably. “That'll be all, Chu."

  Left to his musings, Ryops sought out solitude and perhaps even a little understanding by visiting the Temple of Elements adjoining his personal residence in the fenced compound; the church and the chieftainship went hand in hand. Slipping outside and down the bamboo-sided walkway connecting the neighbouring complexes, he paused at the entrance to the square, unassuming structure. Built to withstand the seasonally destructive hurricanes, the brick and mortar shrine exuded the same aura of antiquity and permanence imbuing the Dokran Teh's sturdy residence. The projection of power needed to seem everlasting and be weatherproof to boot.

  Ducking inside through the bamboo curtain, Ryops was instantly challenged by the woody stare of Vhello, God of Fire and War; his squat, tadpole-shaped likeness carved from a mangrove trunk and stained an intimidating black by a dye extracted from bakau leaves. In one oversized hand the glowering idol clutched a flaming brand replaced daily by temple acolytes, while the other gripped an obsidian hand axe rumoured to be over 4,000 seasons old and still sporting functional cutting edges. Defiantly facing outwards from the northern wall of the temple, Vhello was flanked by his equally scary brothers. Enayres, God of Water and Blood, occupied the western quadrant, a turtle shell bowl caked with crusty, aged blood from a more barbarous time, when ritual sacrifice appeased the gods, cupped in his massive wooden hands. Soruca, God of the Wind and the Dead, hulked larger than life from the east side of the temple, arms outspread, his cheeks puffed up as he blew the controlling zephyrs for weather, which guided also the passage of the spirits departing into the hereafter of Dughenna.

  Bypassing that happy trio, the moody Dokran Teh presented himself to the deity lounging against the southern wall. Movement surprised Ryops and he disturbed a slaving acolyte fastidiously oiling the fourth timber statue. Looking up from his chore, Eskaa's devout follower shot Ryops a discouraging glance. This was the stronghold of his pretentious Subos.

  The frosty reception did not deter the Piawro chieftain. Employing his sternest tone, Ryops blustered, “I'm seeking enlightenment from my ancestors. Unless you have a direct link with Ceretas, you're of no use to me. Therefore bugger off."

  Demonstrating unheard of commonsense for a religious groupie, the acolyte left Ryops to his veneration.

  The ebony God of Earth and the Underworld vacantly stared down his worshipper with sculpted eyes as lifeless as the ash filling the inverted amphib skullcap strung from his neck as a macabre medallion. Ryops returned the blank gaze, pondering the patent ironies of the moment. Requiring practical solutions to the problems afflicting his people, here he was questing solace from the ghosts of the past. Partnering that paradox came the absurdity of his piety outstripping that of his ordained priest. More materialistic than mystical, Eskaa was not above using religion as a springboard for his own political ambitions.

  Spiritual guidance was not in the offing.

  Silently petitioning Ceretas to coax the collective souls composing his lineage to impart any shreds of numinous wisdom, the praying chieftain completely missed the sticky afternoon waning into a spectacular tropical sundown blooding the seamless sky. Tiring of his heartfelt entreaty going unanswered, he hopped mechanically back to his roundhouse through the cooling twilight, not needing his unseeing eyes to negotiate the gathering dusk.

  Maidservants having already prepared his evening repast, Ryops dined alone on an entrée of roasted mango kernels, the main course of dried coconut flesh served on a bed of boiled banana flowers followed by bamboo seed cakes. While the bulk of the populace either starved or supped on the slim pickings the receding jungle provided, the Piawro hierarchy were catered for with adequate vegetarian fare.

  Picking half-heartedly at his dessert, he washed the unappealing food down with a swig of arrack, counting on the potent spirit distilled from the sugary coconut palm sap to drown the aftertaste of his unfulfilling meatless meal. Sending for a refill, Ryops made the servant leave the bamboo bottle as well as light a smouldering coconut husk to act as a mosquito repellent. He quaffed a second cup without blinking a bulgy eye and poured another, slapping at a pesky bloodsucker bothering his neck. Getting blind drunk held the appeal of blocking out the pressures of heading a tribe marooned on a desert isle, if only for the night. It might also intoxicate the insects.

  * * * *

  Chanting invaded Ryops’ drunken stupor. The feminine-voiced canticle slithered through the alcoholic haze fogging his brain, mesmerising his addled psyche with an invitation to join the singers in a fusing of essences. Intriguing and enticing, even in his susceptible, inebriated state Ryops fought off the temptation to surrender his will to the call, as he had been doing for the better part of the month. Every night for the past three weeks the mantra tugged persistently, steadily eroding his stiff resistance like water seepage weakening an earthen barricade. Tonight, the dam was about to burst.

  Instinct forced sobriety upon Ryops, jolting him awake with an overpowering sense of urgency. Rolling off his palm weave bedding, he hopped unsteadily to the uncovered doorway, leaning on the stone architrave for support. The Eye of Cetera shone watchfully from a boundless field of blue-black pinpricked with the ageless lights of faraway alien suns. On nights of the full moon Landhoppers believed the deity presiding over Dughenna used the lunar orb as a seeing eyepiece from his underworld domain to track incoming souls drawn to the hidden fissure in the earth which led to the climatic afterlife.

  Ryops chuckled croakily. What with the death toll from starvation and related diseases on the rise daily, not to mention the growing incidences of frogmanslaughter arising from squabbles over tillable land, Cetera should have no trouble spotting the influx of deceased Piawro headed his way.

  Vying with the twinkling starshine, unearthly moonbeams ghosted Lunder Atoll, silvering the sleepy coral isle in a muted parody of daylight. Fearful islanders stayed indoors after dark, respecting the vaporous dead roaming the hoary nightscape with invisible impunity. Demonstrating no such qualms, Ryops lurched outside into the moonlit compound. The shiningly vigilant moon not only shepherded the exodus of the dead, it was the harbinger of a renewal of Piawro life.

  Drawing a steadying breath, Ryops reeled from the inrush of clammy night air. Taking a moment to recover, he bent and stuck his aching head between his inverted knees. A solitary Shurpeha sentry observed from his watchtower overlooking the barred gate the wobbly Dokran Teh and sensibly averted his gaze. His job was to guard, not mother, his intoxicated chieftain.

  Coming erect, Ryops started shaking. As his mind slowly cleared, the chanters increased their tempo, his skull reverberating from the upbeat mantra. Clutching his throbbing temples with trembly hands, Ryops rapidly lost the fight to retain control of his actions. The last of his resolve crumbling, he gave in to the magnetic pull with a dramatic eighteen-foot vertical leap over the bamboo paling, vanishing from sight. Turning back from his prudence to find his leader gone, the sentry supposed Ryops was restarting his drinking session indoors and scowled enviously.

  Landing heavily on his flatfeet outside the back fence, Ryops sprang clumsily away uphill, goaded by the tumult in his head. Starting off enthused his zigzagging bounds were soon blunted by the steepening slope of Mont Plaas into short, wheezing hops. Despite tapering to a summit forty feet shy of the thousand-foot mark, the raked sides of the volcanic cone proved a daunting ascent for even a sober climber. That did not deter the smashed chieftain from scaling the foundation of Piawro civilisation.

  The stunted volcano figured prominently in amphib faith from the earliest remembered times. Way before the advent of the four elemental gods, Mont Plaas was itself deified by the first of the colonists migrating from the mainland. Whatever compulsion prompted the resettlement, hundreds braving a hazardous swim through thirty miles of shark-infested waters to claim the tempting isle jewel, was long
since relegated to the mists of forgotten time never to be recalled. Millennia ago global warming insidiously withered the lush continental rainforest greening the eastern shores of the landmass into the inhospitable desert coastline of today, also killing off the mainstream amphibs unable to tolerate the excessively drier heat. Lunder Atoll essentially became the ark of the Piawro, outwardly preserving their primordial existence unchanged while in reality subtly restyling their culture, Mont Plaas the defining shaping tool.

  Unpredictably active back in those formative days, gassing superheated steam from noxious fumaroles, the primitives viewed the smouldering mountain as a fickle landlord, exacting terrible payment for settling its jungly roots. Unstoppable lahars, triggered by heavy tropical rains pelting the slopes in the wake of minor eruptions, periodically swept down the mountainside, the mudflows engulfing whole villages and burying alive those quaking within their flimsy bamboo houses. Gorged with its cull, the volcano reverted to grumbling ominously, expelling the occasional belch of smoke to keep the petrified villagers permanently on edge.

  Fed up with recurring entombment, an enterprising mystic came up with a gruesomely novel method of placating the thunder spirit making its home in the bowels of Mont Plaas: throwing a sacrifice routinely into the crater must surely mollify the cantankerous entity, thereby preventing future devastation. At first criminals and undesirables were made “volunteers,” but after the crime rate mysteriously dropped to zero and every Piawro went about the island on their best behaviour no more suitable candidates could be drafted. The utter lack of disposables mattered not, as the drastic ploy worked a charm. Its bloodlust satiated, Mont Plaas lapsed into a state of dormancy, taking with it into sedentariness the barbaric ritual.

  Until the volcano came out of retirement decades later, rocking the atoll with a series of hellish blasts cataclysmic enough to push the amphib colony to the brink of extinction. Pelted hourly with pebbly lapilli falling amid showers of scorching cinders and ash, trapped by constricting lava flows incinerating flora and flesh alike, the condemned Piawro made a last-ditch stand on the isolated northern beach. Hemmed in by blistering rivers of surface magma turning the ocean at his back into a boiling cauldron, a desperate Shurpeha resorted to old practices in order to save his witless chieftain and damned race. Stepping defiantly into the path of advancing death and drawing his flint knife, the protector cut into his own chest, toppling face forward into the runny fire even as he held aloft his stilling heart. Miraculously, the suicidal guard's noble offering did the trick. Slowing as the volcanic fireworks quieted then petered out, the crawling lava cooled sufficiently to solidify scant yards from the cringing amphibs. Amazing how a single, selfless act changes the world.

  Saved in the eleventh hour, the sacrificial Shurpeha's deed held far reaching repercussions for ancient Piawro society. The resumption of blood sacrifices, guaranteed to gentle Mont Plaas, endured for centuries afterwards, eventually discontinued when the sleeping mount showed no sign of erupting from its torpor. Relegated to a backseat by its own inactivity, the volcano god soon faded into obscurity, surrogated by the favourable sibling elements.

  Gaining finally the summit of the precipitous cone, breathless from exertion and excitation, Ryops puffed his way down to Crater Lake, slipping and sliding down the shingly slope. The clamour thrumming his brain lessened each foot he skidded closer to the rock-bounded lakeshore, dwindling into thankful silence by the time he hopped to a standstill before the inky pool. Blackened by night, the expanse of normally cloudy green water steamed with volcanic warmness, the vapour drifts shimmering in the lunar glow like a ghostly overcoat. Formed by the last eruptive gasp of the fractured mountaintop collapsing unevenly into its partly emptied magma chamber directly below, teeming tropical rains watered the lopsided caldera, creating over time the lofty rim lake. Warmed by Mont Plaas's subdued internal fires, the heated pool often served as personal spa for relaxing Dokrans. However, its chief function remained far more stimulating than its use as a soothing hot tub.

  Plunging in, Ryops exulted in the tepid, mildly sulphurous water washing over him, leaching the tension from his wearied body. Allowing himself to descend unmoving deep into the lake's 300 foot limit, he sank in blissful numbness, his troubles cleansed if only for a short while. Opening eyes glazed over with euphoria, his pupils dilated into circles, he sensed rather than saw the buoyant strings of jelly wrapped eggs free-floating in their incubating cocoon of balmy, ebony fluid. Ryops enjoyed a carefree smile. There was no place on the island better to bask than the Spawning Pool.

  Such was the Dokran Teh's prerogative.

  Piawro breeding was sexless simplicity itself. Specially selected spawners, handpicked by the chieftain from his extensive harem, each laid several clusters of forty-plus jellified eggs during a nighttime egg-laying orgy in the temperate waters of Crater Lake timed to coincide with the autumn Harvest Moon. On completion of their reproductive frenzy the exhausted females chanted a daylong summons, a crescendo of sultry lust that lingered eerily in the steamy lake air for the weeks Ryops resisted its pull. Drawn in by the aphrodisiacal murmurings, the obliging amphib chief leaped with gusto into the enviable task reserved solely for the big boss; a sedate, fertilising swim through the moonlit frogspawn. Only the Dokran was permitted to seed the next generation of Landhoppers, that pleasurable task the greatest perk associated with his position.

  Thirty-five years old, the last twelve established as the current incarnation of the Piawro leadership, Ryops sired hundreds of offspring yearly. Eventually one of the tadpoles hatched and raised into froglets after transferral to the freshwater river nursery would come to bear the patently red poison sacs marking his adolescence as the up-and-coming chieftain. So far Ryops’ replacement had not emerged, ensuring his reign and fertilisation sprees continued unabated.

  Submersed in his rapturous duty, Ryops frog-kicked into action, the spawning streamers brushing against his skin triggering the release of vital sperm, his heritable chromosomes spreading forth to dominate the Piawro gene pool for another year. Gliding in a lazy spiral, the ecstatic Dokran Teh revelled in the godlike empowerment derived from the primal act.

  Yet even a god is fallible. Who in their right mind knowingly procreated, adding countless more progeny to an island crammed full with a hungry, destitute populace?

  Chapter Four

  Durgay came to. Awareness inundated his throbbing brain like a turning tide saturating coastal rocks. Darkness enfolded him as a seaweed wrap would, giving the old Fisher cause to wonder if he had truly woken.

  Am I dead? Has Nupterus claimed me for the afterlife?

  Flexing his biceps, Durgay felt no response, thinking himself armless.

  I must've died and crossed over, morphing into a piece of static whalebone resting on the ocean floor.

  Panic welled up in Durgay, a groundless horror churning his empty stomach and chilling the blood.

  Is this how I'll spend eternity? Alone in the icy dark, lying unfound at the bottom of the sea.

  Rationality crept into the merman's fearful mind. The inky water was acceptably tepid and briny, indicating a depth way above the terrifying Deep. A severe tail spasm reinforced the growing notion he had not left the sea of the living. Twitching involuntarily to relieve the cramp only aggravated the bite of the noose pinching his fleshy peduncle, the added pain a further reminder of Durgay's physical existence. He was alive—for the time being.

  The infiltration, the subsequent capture; all came flooding back with frightening clarity. Feeling now the rope bindings restricting his arm movements, Durgay thrashed about, heedless of his soreness. The oldster's struggle proved short-lived. Weakened by his ordeal, securely bound with unbreakable cords, he quickly yielded to fatigue.

  Oddly enough, blind luck was on the merman's side. Had he been a shark hanging upside down he would surely have suffocated by now. Cetari needed no constant flow of oxygenated water, guaranteed by swimming, to keep them breathing. Merfolk gill covers flapped with au
tomatic regularity, much like a set of lungs pumps in a continuous exchange of oxygen, although with far greater efficiency. A thousand times heavier than air, water comprises only 1% oxygen compared to the 21% forming the atmosphere above the waves. Whereas a terrestrial mammal extracts one fourth of that air coming into the lungs, fish gills—Cetari included—diffuses eight-tenths the oxygen component of water. In that respect the biology of scales surpasses that of hair.

  Quieted by his exhaustion, Durgay tried tuning into the subtle pulse of the ocean. The faint stirring of the ebbing tide on the edge of his perception gave him an approximation of time, pointing to the fact at least twelve hours had elapsed since...

  Princess Lorea!

  Calling softly, fretfully, to his royal ward, Durgay's timorous whistles went unanswered. He next employed his echolocation, deploying bursts of sonar in an effort to glean the whereabouts of the missing heiress. The returning clicks only confirmed his imprisonment in the Landhopper lagoon, bouncing off the coral ring walling him in with no interrupting contact betraying Lorea's presence anywhere in Harvest Shallows. He did detect a shadow echo fringing the limit of his sonar range; an unrecognisable snippet of a bulk too large to be Cetari that had dread rubbing shoulders with concern.

  Despairing, Durgay considered attempting a cry for help, an undersea SOS travelling the many miles gulfing Lunder Atoll and Castle Rock. Reluctantly, he discarded that idea. The opening in the reef wall ringing the lagoon was nowhere in sonar sight, meaning his captors had him stashed somewhere along the northern rim of Harvest Shallows. Any distress call would simply ricochet frustratingly off the sides of the lagoon, going nowhere fast in circles.

  Alone, with no prospect of rescue, Durgay gave up all hope and waited for the dawn to bring whatever grisly fate the Landhoppers held in store for him.