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The isolated pools harboured anemones and seastars.

Tiny crabs scuttled from oasis to oasis.

A gull came down to join him in his inspection.

He knelt briefly by one tidepool. Anemones of red and white bloomed in its shallows.

A touch of his finger stirred the surface of the still water.

In a flash, the delicate petals of the creature folded away from him. He smiled, rose and went on.

The sun was warm on his back; it eased the ache in his shoulder.

There were no sounds save the wind, the water and the gulls.

He had almost forgotten the simple pleasure of walking an isolated beach on a pleasant day.

He did not realize he had rounded the headland until he glanced back.

He could not see the beach any more. A survey of the cliffs above him showed him that it would be death to be trapped here by an incoming tide.

They rose black and sheer. Except…He stepped further back and squinted upwards.

There was a fissure there, or perhaps something more.

A narrow sloped trail led across the cliff’s face.

It was not very high no more than the height of two men.

Before he had truly considered the wisdom of it, he had started up it.

If it was a trail and not an accident of nature, whatever had made it was more sure-footed than he was.

It was not wide enough for him to walk comfortably on it; he had to face the rock and edge up it.

It ascended the face of the rock sharply.

It shone underfoot with sparkly slime like a slug’s dried track.

One moment it seemed slippery, the next tacky.

It suddenly seemed higher than it had from the beach; if he fell there were only rocks and barnacles to land on.

Still, he had come this far, he would satisfy his curiosity.

He came to a sudden indentation in the rock, the beginning of the chimney.

He stepped inside and found his way blocked by bars of metal. He stepped close to peer past them.

A very narrow fissure in the rock extended all the way to the cliff top.

Sunlight reached down timidly from an opening high above.

Someone had chiselled and ground out a cave within it, not much larger than a coach.

Inside the wrought cave, the rock floor sloped sharply away.

Water from a high tide was trapped there in a dark still pool.

He could see light reflected from its surface.

So what was the purpose of the bars? To keep people out, or to keep something in? He set his hands to one of the bars and tried to rattle it. It did not budge, but he could rotate it. It grated against the stone, and suddenly the surface of the pool erupted.

Wintrow stepped back so quickly he nearly fell over the edge. The pool was deeper than it looked to contain such a creature. Then, as it continued to regard him with immense gold eyes, he became bold enough to venture back to the bars. He clutched them in his hands and stared.

The sea serpent confined in the cave was stunted, its body marked with the limits of the pool.

Its head was the size of a pony. Its body was so convoluted, he could not guess the length.

It was a pale yellow-green, like a glowing fungus.

Unlike the scaled sea serpents he had glimpsed from the deck of the Vivacia, this one looked plump and soft as an earthworm.

Its body bore thick layers of callus where it had rubbed against the rocky walls of its prison.

He suddenly realized that it must have grown to fill the pool.

It had been captured and confined when small.

He suddenly knew that this was the only world this creature had ever known.

He glanced about himself. Yes. A high tide would just reach the lip of this fissure, bringing with it new saltwater.

And food? He didn’t think so. Someone must bring it food.

It roiled in the confines of the pool, no more than a shifting of its tail from one side to the other. The effort corkscrewed its body. He watched with pity as it worked each segment of its serpentine body, trying to ease the twist on it. It could not, not completely. It stared at him expectantly.

‘So you’re used to being fed,’ he observed. ‘But why are you kept here? Are you a pet? A curiosity?’

The creature canted its head as if intrigued by his words.

Then it dipped its immense brow down into the pool to wet it once more.

The movement was an effort in the confined space.

When it tried to lift its snout, its whole body kinked and bound.

He watched it struggle, its length bulging up out of the water and scraping against stone smoothed by many such wedgings.

It gave a cry like a raven’s sharp caw, then suddenly snapped its head free again.

Wintrow felt sickened. A fresh scrape showed on the side of its face. A thick greenish ichor oozed from it.

He set his hands once more to the bars. He could turn each in its socket, but they were set deep in stone both above and below.

He could not budge them from their beds.

He knelt at the base of them, to see how they had been fitted.

He found the answer under his feet. He brushed away sand and sea detritus, to find the fine seams of worked stone.

Above him, the sockets for the bars had been painstakingly drilled into the stone.

A slight discoloration at the edge of one suggested it might have been a slot cut in the stone, one that had been filled in to the shape of the bar afterwards.

He visualized it to himself. The long bars would have been brought in, inserted at a sharp angle into the deep holes above, and swung into place.

The stones that secured them at the base had then been set.

An examination of the seams proved him correct.

He tried lifting each bar in place. Each had some play, some more than others.

Yes. Now that he knew how it had been done, could he undo it?

The Treasure Beach and Kennit forgotten, he knelt on the floor in the alcove.

He brushed sand and detritus away with his hands, then took off his shirt and cleaned the floor down to stone.

The fine knife that Etta had given him became a tool for cleaning the sand and tired mortar from the fine cracks where the stones were joined.

As he worked painstakingly, the creature watched him.

From its interest, it almost seemed to know that its freedom was at stake.

He gauged its girth against the spacing of the bars.

At least three of them would have to come out, he guessed – possibly four.

The mortar was old and crumbly. If the mortar was his only enemy, he would have won easily.

But the blocks themselves had been cut and fitted with the precision of a master.

He worked until his callused hands broke new blisters.

His knees ached from kneeling on the stone.

He leaned close to the seam and blew sand and mortar out of his way.

He tried his fingers in the crack. They would just slip inside.

If he could get a grip, would he have the strength to lift the stone?

He pulled with all his strength, and thought he felt the block slide fractionally.

He took up his knife and went back to work while the serpent watched him with spinning golden eyes. His injured shoulder began to ache.

Etta was bathed in sweat before they got to the beach.

By taking his arm, she was able to help Kennit along without being too obvious about it.

Sometimes she looked at what fate had done to the man and she wanted to shriek in fury.

And loss. The tall, strong body that had once intimidated her was taking on a cripple’s twist as muscles on one side of his body compensated for the loss of his leg.

She saw how he planned what he would or would not do, all with an eye to keep from disgracing himself with any show of weakness.

His tigerish spirit had not dwindled; his ambitions had not lessened.

She only feared that the heat of the fires that drove him might consume his weakened body.

‘Where is he?’ the pirate demanded. ‘I don’t see Wintrow.’

She shaded her eyes and looked up and down the beach. ‘I don’t see him either,’ she said uneasily.

The curved shoreline was of black sand and rock backed by a tableland; there was nothing large enough to conceal him. Where could he be? She blinked her eyes against the glare of sun on water. ‘Could he have walked the beach already? Would the Others have met him and taken him somewhere?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kennit growled. He lifted his arm and pointed to the far end of the beach, where a separate finger of land separated itself from the shore.

‘Down there is the alcove cliff, where all the treasures are kept on display. If he walked the beach and met an Other, it might take him there, to desposit whatever he had found. Damn! I should have been here with him. I wanted to hear what the creature would say to him.’

She thought he would blame her then, accuse her of dawdling on the path or otherwise delaying him. Instead, he settled his crutch under his arm and nodded at the alcove rock. ‘Help me get there,’ he growled.