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“But according to those same legends,” Kadir said, “the Serpent can also stop this process if caught in time. It could burn away the poison and make one whole again.”
“Like what caused those welts on Stoepker,” Heng said, looking around the group.
Kadir sighed. “Clearly, the early Aboriginal people—whether they traced back to the Toba eruption or to the dawn of humankind—they experienced something that they could only describe in mythological terms, an ongoing understanding between two species, maybe one that traced back to a distant common origin.”
Gray searched the faces around him. He had a thousand more questions, but a shout in Mandarin rose from the wheelhouse above.
Xue straightened, listened, then shared the news. “We’re nearing the waters where theTenebraesank.”
Gray looked up. “Then let’s go see if the past can save the present.”
9:48A.M.
As the boat slowed to a trolling pace, Seichan gripped the butt of her holstered Glock. She kept vigil at the stern and appreciated the pistol’s cold steel as she faced the fiery destruction.
Off to the east, the horizon had been set ablaze, but above it all towered a black peak. Its flanks streamed with rivers of lava. Its caldera gushed with arcs and sprays of molten fire. Those flames lit a black column of smoke. Lightning flashed in a continual corona of energy throughout that ominous cloud.
She knew that monster’s name.
Mount Tambora.
Seichan breathed through the damp cloth over her mouth and lips. Still, she tasted and smelled the fiery brimstone. Her eyes watered from the falling ash. But she had no reason to complain.
Closer at hand, their boat crept along the coast of West Nusa Tenggara, passing the outlying islands of Panjang and Saringi. Small villages burned along the shoreline. Out on the water, fishing boats had become floating torches, both near the coasts and out to sea.
There had been no escape for the villagers.
She spotted no movement along the shores, no shifting shadowslimned against the flames. All lay quiet and dead. They were the only ones still moving, a lone sentinel in the dark.
Is this what the entire region will soon look like?
She cast her gaze farther out.
What of the rest of the world?
Hopelessness weighted her shoulders, dragging her eyes down, too. This close to Tambora, the sea was covered in great rafts of floating pumice. Some rocks were still red and smoldering. They scraped the hull and scratched in a continual chorus.
The rest of the sea was blanketed by ash. She tried to pierce that veil to the waters under it. As she did, something small poked into view, pushing through the powder from below. They looked like a handful of black sticks. They cut through the ash, rolling and spinning, revealing themselves to be balls of coral, the same as Crawfurd had sketched.
Brought to her attention now, she spotted dozens of others, all across the sea, cutting briefly into view, then away again. One rattled out of the water, riding atop a pumice raft, trying to beach itself, then tumbled off.
Seichan returned her attention to the burning skiffs and fishing boats. They were all wooden. Such vessels had no chance of crossing this fiery minefield. She imagined the bodies hidden under the ash or sunk into the depths. An ominous sense of foreboding settled over her.
We shouldn’t be here.
A commotion drew her attention from the watery graveyard. Gray led a party from the wheelhouse to the stern deck. He waved to clear a space.
“We need a good ten feet,” Gray called out.
Seichan stayed at the stern as others pressed toward her. Her mother spotted her and elbowed over to her side. Zhuang followed. A majority of triad members kept close around them. The Falcon commandos remained on the other side, framing the doorway into the wheelhouse where Captain Wen watched with darkened brows.
He clearly had little faith in this endeavor. She had caught him grousing earlier to his teammates, forgetting that she was fluent in Mandarin. Or maybe he hadn’t cared who heard him.
In truth, she shared his pessimism.
“We had better pray this works,” Guan-yin murmured through the fold of cloth over her face.
“It won’t,” Seichan said. “We’re chasing ghosts out here.”
