He resolved to turn around and march back up those stairs without giving the cavern and its treasures a second look, but just then, a voice thundered from above filling every crevice, every alcove of the cavern: “Are you going to plunder my treasure again, Pirate?”

Yap whimpered, thinking the dead king had come to life. He slowly rotated and looked up. There, at the top of the stairs, shafts of sunlight streaming past him and half-blinding Yap, stood Lord Amberhill and beside him, Yolandhe.

“Well?” Lord Amberhill demanded, his voice once again filling the cavern. “Speak now or suffer judgment.”

“No! No, sir!” Yap cried. Then he wondered about Lord Amberhill claiming the treasure as his own. “It’s cursed, sir.”

Yolandhe’s light silver laugh trickled down to him. “Leave the small man be, my love,” she told Lord Amberhill. “He has repented. He returned the treasure he had taken.”

Repented? Is that what she called it?

“Yap, what are you doing here?” Lord Amberhill asked in his normal voice.

“I was just lookin’ round and came to the opening. I swear! I had no idea it was right here. What are you doing here, sir?”

“Yolandhe tells me I’ve an inheritance here, and I must say this is most unexpected.”

Inheritance?

“Not just an inheritance,” Yolandhe proclaimed. “You are the sea king reborn!”

In the Present:

YOLANDHE’S ISLAND

“The sea king reborn?” Amberhill asked. “Is that what you said?” Whatever caused his frequent episodes of confusion might have also impaired his hearing and comprehension.

“It is what I said,” Yolandhe replied, and with a subtle gesture of her hand, light hissed to life throughout the cavern—dirty stubs of beeswax candles and dry reed torches flared along the cavern walls, clam shells filled with rancid oil and crude lanterns shielded by tarnished punched bronze flickered with tentative flame. The light allowed Amberhill to see the enormity of the cavern and his “inheritance,” as well as the size of the ship with its gleaming red eyes. At the bottom of the steps, Yap had fallen to his knees and flung his arm over his face as if to ward off a blow.

It was the first show of real power Amberhill had seen from Yolandhe. Yap had called her a sea witch, and now Amberhill could see it was no exaggeration. He had great discomfort with any woman who held such power. Discomfort mixed with intrigue by the danger of it. He gazed at Yolandhe anew. She was neither beautiful nor homely but deceptively average. Back in Sacor City, he would not have given her a second glance, but . . . It was all in the way she held herself. Her manner. He could not quite put a finger on it, but there was something terribly hypnotic and arousing about her, something he felt with his entire body, especially when she sang. When she sang, he lost himself in her.

She took his hand and led him down the stone steps to where Yap knelt. Was Amberhill mistaken, or was the pirate fighting back tears?

He is truly afraid. But Amberhill did not dwell on his servant’s state of mind, for it was as if he stood among constellations, the way the lights shone in the vastness of the cavern. They revealed the riches all around him. From a chest, he plucked a silver coin impressed with a ship on one side and a dragon on the other, its tail wrapped around its neck just like his ring. The silver was icy smooth between his thumb and finger.

“Did you say this is my inheritance?” Amberhill asked Yolandhe, still in disbelief. In all his widest ranging avaricious dreams, he could not have imagined so much treasure collected in one place. It made him light-headed. To think, as the Raven Mask, he had plucked a brooch here, a necklace there, from the possessions of the wealthy just to retain his estate, and all this time this hoard was sitting here waiting for him.

“I did,” Yolandhe replied. “It is your birthright.”

“I still don’t understand.”

Yolandhe sighed as though tired of explaining to a child, and the cavern echoed with it as if exhaling its own breath.

“You are descended down the line of kings,” she said, and she pointed at the ship. “His blood runs thick in your veins. You are Akarion incarnate.”

“Huh.” Once just low level nobility and just this side of poverty, Amberhill was now descended from kings and richer than some nations. He almost laughed wondering what he was going to do with it all. Where would he stash it? I will fix the estate and then some, he thought. He could create his own kingdom.

The ruby eye of his ring winked in the light. The gold slithered around his finger. He found himself drawn to the ship. Yolandhe did not stop him. Yap sobbed. There was a ladder nearby, rickety with age, but he leaned it against the ancient hull between two of the oar ports. The oars jutted from the sides of the ship symmetrically positioned as though those who manned them had heeded the commands of the coxswain to the last.

The decking bowed and creaked beneath Amberhill’s feet. The bier of the dead king stood just behind the mast with its ragged sail still unfurled though listless. The king’s bones were layered in moth-eaten furs. A helm with intricate geometric patterns protected his leathery skull. Thick braided hair and beard of faded red bristled from beneath the helm and wreathed the skull. At his feet lay a shield and a pitted iron sword.

“So lies Akarion,” Yolandhe said.

Amberhill had not heard her climb aboard.

“And so stands Akarion,” she added, gazing at him.

“I am not he,” Amberhill replied.