Hanno and Liva stood upon the stern watching the sun warm the level sea when they set out the following morning.

  “That was a good thing we did,” Liva said.

  “Forging alliances and leveraging their abilities is the hallmark of my people,” Hanno noted.

  “Is that what I am?”

  Hanno grabbed Liva about the waist. “You are an enemy to my senses.”

  Liva laughed. “Am I to be defeated?”

  “This is another hallmark of the Phoenicians. We do not defeat our enemies directly. We either pay them off, or we have our enemies fight each other.”

  “So who will be fighting me?”

  “As I said, my senses.”

  Hanno kissed Liva and held her close.

  “Your senses have been defeated,” Liva declared. “What will you do now that your enemy still stands?”

  Hanno shrugged. “Buy you off.”

  Liva laughed.

  “Greeks just kill their enemies. Makes things simpler,” Artemisia interjected.

  “All who bow before Baal Hammon are allies,” Aba stated.

  “Guess I’m an enemy too, then. But you’d better not kiss me.”

  “I believe you’ve already accepted payment,” Hanno noted.

  “True.”

  “So let’s find you a bonus. Perhaps the next creatures we encounter will spit gold and weave silver cloth.”

  “Will our journey be concluded then?”

  “When our hold fills with treasure and our map fills with allies, then we can turn back.”

  “Do you think Suffete will let you return?” Liva asked.

  “How could he not? When Hanno has claimed these treasures and friends, who would question my return?”

  “And… what would Suffete think of me?”

  “Of you? He’s already met you.”

  “No, I mean…”

  “Do you wish to return with us, Liva?” Hanno asked.

  “I think it would be interesting to witness this city you’ve talked about. I’ve never seen a high wall, or a temple made of tall stone.”

  Hanno smiled. “Then you shall witness it. Mapen, sing us a song of Carthage! Set our rowers strong so we know for what we venture.”

  Mapen sang and Jabnit played, and they progressed along the coast five days. Each night at camp, Hanno told Liva more of the Phoenician and Carthaginian tales. He told her of the Assyrian fire lords who haunted his ancestors, of the Roman marauders who sat upon Italy like stubborn fleas, and the Egyptian ruins even Hanno could not comprehend. All the while, Liva shared tales of the great plains, great creatures, great people, great songs she’d heard and sang around their nightly fires.

  At the end of the five days across the unbroken coast, pushed along by a cooperative wind, the ground began to rise.

  “We filled our stores the previous night, correct?” Hanno asked Artemisia.

  “Of course,” she replied.

  “Probably going to be little foraging in rocky terrain like this,” Bostar noted.

  The boulders pressed against the beaches, rising steadily in height. A tall mountain loomed in the distance, the clouds obscuring its top.

  Liva cocked her head to the side.

  “What is it? Do you see something?” Hanno asked.

  “You don’t hear that?” Liva replied.

  Hanno trained his ear to the ocean. He heard the splash of the many oars striking and rising from the water. He heard the billow of the sails, the stretch of the wind-blown mast, and the creak of the marines tying and retying the trireme’s many ropes.

  “You don’t hear it?” Liva asked.

  “Hear what?” Hanno replied.

  A great horn thundered over the waves.

  The sound interrupted the rowers’ pace in a clatter of oars.

  The horn repeated, and all froze where they stood.

  Before any could wonder at the origins of the sound, the wind carried the trireme around the edge of a great bay. The crescent-shaped coast continued on for miles, sheltering the waters and walling off the land with smooth, high cliffs. In the bay’s middle rose a single island, perfectly round and covered in trees.

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  Once more the horn blasted, echoed and strengthened by the surrounding cliffs.

  “The Horn of the West,” Liva stated.

  “What is it?” Hanno asked.

  “It’s a tale, a silly song really. I heard it only once, a mother singing it to her child. She sang of a great horn on an island of music and magic. I thought it a fantasy to put a child to bed.”

  The horn greeted them once more.

  “Trim the sails. Oars halt,” Artemisia ordered.

  “We’re stopping? I see no beach in this bay,” Hanno noted.

  “I know few occasions for horns loud as that to be used in music making.”

  “You think it a signal horn?”

  Bostar readied his bow.

  “Any sign of life on the island?” Hanno asked.

  Bostar shook his head.

  “An island of magic, you say?” Hanno said to Liva.

  “I didn’t hear anything else,” she added.

  “Then let us complete this tale.”

  “Is there a reason little is known of this island?” Bostar cautioned.

  “If it is an island of magic, it is the work of Baal Hammon. If we tread with piety, he may allow us to look upon his works,” Aba proclaimed.

  The horn shook the waters with its deep, deep roar.

  “Harden your hearts,” said Hanno. “The Horn of the West greets us. Let us accept its invitation. Jabnit, a single high note please.”

  Jabnit took a deep breath, and belted out on her pipe.

  The horn answered.

  “Tanit preserve us,” Aba gasped.

  “The island calls. Let us hear more of its music. Beach us, Helmsman,” Hanno ordered.

  Artemisia gave the signal and the oars advanced. She kept looking around, judging the waters and trees for a sign of danger. Only the sound of pipes and cymbals, and the booming of the horn revealed any life on the island.

  “They’re playing,” Jabnit said. She trained her ear to discover the rhythm, and played along with the unseen musicians.

  “Who lives on this island?” Hanno asked Liva.

  Liva shrugged.

  “They play well,” Mapen noted.

  “Then we will exchange songs,” Hanno said.

  The instant the trireme’s bow touched the sand, the music stopped. Silence greeted their beached ship.

  Even the wind settled when Hanno climbed over the railing and set foot on the island, Bostar, Liva, Barca, and his picked marines behind him.

  They clustered a moment, spears ready and more marines standing at the bow with raised javelins.

  The thick trees hid the island’s interior. It was likely twice as big as Cerne, though it lacked a hill in its middle. Instead, occasional rises spread the trees in a pulsating ring around the narrow beach.

  Not a bird. Not an insect or sun-speckled ray of dust littered the island. The air smelled sweet as unburnt incense, and were it not for the gentle creaking of the beached trireme, time itself would have seemed stilled.

  Hanno put his hand on the hilt of his sword. He smiled at the feel of its chip, encouraged by the many times he’d felt its sting, and stepped toward the trees.

  The others followed, eyes racing through the thick growths for any sign of the departed music’s source.

  Sand kicked up around the soft soil, allowing for only modest undergrowth of simple ferns or bare-leafed bushes. After passing through the terrain for a short time, they spotted a wide expanse of water.

  “Have we crossed the island already?” Hanno wondered aloud.

  But once they broke through the trees and onto the new beach, they discovered the island completely encircled this water.

  “A lake,” Liva said.

  “A lake of the sea,” Hanno marveled.

  The lake glistened blue and deep, reflecting the ringing trees like a cut sapphire.

  “With its own island,” Bostar added.

  Black trees grew from dark sand on an island in the center of the lake. Light seemed to be captured in the shadowed land, preventing sight of its interior.

  The horn greeted them, blasting from the black trees like a hundred massed pipes. The waters rippled then stilled, leaving silence in their wake.

  “Do we swim?” Liva asked.

  Bostar set his foot in the water.

  “Warm,” he said. “Quite wide too.”

  “I’ve swam further than that,” Liva noted.

  “There appear to be no golden nets. But this doesn’t seem to be a normal lake.”

  “Agreed. Fetch axes and rope, Bostar. We can construct a raft easily enough,” Hanno commanded.

  Liva stared at the black island.

  “What is it?” Hanno asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted.

  “Keep your eyes wide.”

  “You don’t wish to depart?”

  “Without seeing this horn for ourselves?”

  “The island itself appears to be the horn.”

  “But who’s the player?”

  Liva grinned.

  “I’m glad we’re building a raft,” she said. “Maybe we’ll return with a new musician to accompany Jabnit.”

  Back at the ship, Artemisia scoffed at the request for axes and more men. She instructed her officers to have the rowers relax but make ready to depart quickly and joined in the raft’s construction.

  The helmsman made quick work with the knots while Hanno selected the timbers for his marines to fell. Before the sun began its fall, they assembled a raft large enough to float six.

  Artemisia took up one of the two oars she’d taken from the trireme and handed the other to Hanno.

  “You’ll be joining us?” the king asked.

  “I’m your helmsman, aren’t I?” the Greek replied.

  “Are you curious as I about this island, Artemisia?”

  “I’m your helmsman. Now get on.”

  Hanno laughed, and stood while Bostar, Liva, Barca, and another marine named Tarsus sat on the freshly knotted timbers. The helmsman pushed off and they set out across the flat, blue lake.

  They left behind a row of marines leading back to the ship, protecting their return should the island prove less uninhabited than it seemed, while the rest of the crew waited on the trireme.

  “If we’re to make camp here, we should cut down a block of these trees,” Artemisia advised.

  “I’m not sure I want to camp here,” Liva noted.

  “We’ll dispel this island’s dangers once we’ve explored it,” Hanno reassured her.

  “Plus there’s no landing spot in the bay for the trireme,” Artemisia added.

  “And I intend to learn the songs of this mighty-lunged musician.”

  The horn played once more, loud and low.

  The lake offered no resistance to the raft’s slow progress. When Hanno lifted the oar, the water seemed clear, and it appeared the lake bottom itself provided the color. Vibrant blue rocks littered the ground in an unbroken carpet.

  “I’ve seen ponds turn green and red,” Liva noted, keeping her voice low. “But nothing this big.”

  They completed their silent journey while the sun touched the tips of the trees. The black sand of the inner island received the raft with little protest. When Bostar set his sandal upon it, the ground crunched beneath his foot like polished gravel.

  He stood, paused with arrow nocked, and said, “It feels like normal ground. Just black.”

  Hanno nodded, and joined his friend. They looked around the beach, and approached the dark trees.

  Their leaves resembled sheets of obsidian, their trunks dark spears. Bostar tapped one of their sides and discovered the trees to be hollow. The sound reverberated to the open top.

  Artemisia readied a torch and raised it to the shadowed space beyond the trees. The light progressed no further than the next trunk.

  “I suppose we’ll have to go in there,” she said.

  They waited, as if thinking the horn player might answer, but only silence greeted them.

  “Musician,” Hanno said to the dark. “I am Hanno, King of Carthage. We have heard your horn and wish to see you.”

  The horn blasted, near deafening those on the island.

  “Come, if you will. But I know you will,” came a deep, deep voice in the island’s middle.