‘Totally serious. We’ve got to stop seeing them as subhumans and start seeing them as allies. We’re going to need all the help we can get …’
‘But they smell so bad. They can’t speak. They’re stupid. Even if what you’re saying is true, can’t we have other allies? I think I would rather befriend bears or rhinos, or even large rocks.’
‘This isn’t a joke, Ligar. They have … powers.’
‘Powers?’ He looked sceptical. ‘What powers?’
Ria told him about the Uglies’ remarkable ability to heal.
‘But if they can heal,’ Ligar objected, ‘why didn’t they heal Hond?’
‘They did!’ Ria exclaimed. ‘He was dying. They brought him back but they had to make him sleep for the healing to work.’ She looked up. Dawn was breaking and they were very close to camp. ‘He’ll have recovered by now,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’
The Clan were an abundant people, numbering more than two thousand. But it was only during the summer moons, from solstice to equinox, when vast herds of reindeer migrated through the region, that all the scattered hunting bands came together in the great camp beside the Snake river. With the equinox still almost a moon away the whole population of the Clan was therefore present to witness Ria brought in a prisoner in the midst of the column of braves.
She realised in a wash of emotion how tired and beaten-up and hungry she was feeling, and how bedraggled and done-in she must look.
She was sure Grigo would be close to enjoy her humiliation but he wasn’t beside his father at the front of the column and there was enough daylight to see he wasn’t anywhere amongst the ranks. It seemed all the more likely he’d slipped away during the night. But where? To do what? The only certainty, Ria thought, was that no good would come of it.
Their route took them past the ragged lean-tos and hide-covered bivouacs clustered round the southern edge of the camp where the forest ended and the cleared land began. A toddler ran into their path but was snatched up by his mother, then Ria was spotted by a crone named Garanit, famous for her shrill vindictive gossip, who cried out: ‘Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!’
It was nearly full daylight when they reached the camp’s muddy thoroughfare, lined on both sides by wattle huts from which people poured to join in the chant: ‘Murderer! Murderer!’ Murderer!’ Someone shouted that Ria was a witch; other voices muttered about burning.
Her heart was pounding. Had everyone gone mad? And where had Murgh got this horrible new idea about burning people to death? Was he – spirits forbid it! – planning to burn her to death?
Up ahead was the lookout tower built of gigantic logs roped ingeniously together. No lookouts had been posted this morning but as she approached the looming structure Ria saw that dozens of children had climbed to its first level. Grigo’s younger brother, an eight-year-old tearaway named Karst, was amongst them. When she passed beneath him he spat a fat glob of mucus into her hair.
There was still no sign of Grigo himself.
Two hundred paces north of the tower, in the heart of the camp, was the meeting ground, an open expanse of hard-packed earth three hundred paces from side to side, where the assembly of elders held their deliberations in public. The whole area was enclosed by a circle of huge logs, each one three times Ria’s height, set upright at intervals into post holes.
It took her only an instant to grasp the essentials of the scene before her.
Brindle wasn’t the Ugly who’d been killed during the ambush. That must have been poor Brigley – because Brindle was alive, tied to a stake at the centre of the circle with Porto, Jergat and Oplimar, surrounded by an enormous pile of fresh-chopped wood and dry kindling. Yet another of Grigo’s relatives, this time his tiresome uncle Grine, stood close by, holding a smoking brand, ready to set the bonfire ablaze. At a safe distance behind him, on the ceremonial stools of mammoth ivory they used only when judging a trial, sat all five of the elders. They had arranged themselves in their customary semicircle. Rotas, the most senior, was perched in the middle, flanked to his left by Torga and Otri and to his right by Krant and Ezida. Behind them stood the massed council of braves.
‘Help us, Ria.’ Brindle’s thought-voice, absent this whole night, rang out again inside her head. He sounded lost and bewildered. ‘Afraid to die by fire. Begging you, please ask Clan give mercy. Kill us quick …’
Chapter Forty-Two
Leoni breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the rendezvous and found the cab already waiting with its engine idling. They ducked into its back seat and soon turned north onto the I-405. ‘Where did you learn to fight like that?’ she whispered to Matt. ‘You made mincemeat of those two guys.’
He looked embarrassed: ‘I did five years of military service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Late teens, early twenties. Before … well …’ He seemed to hesitate: ‘It was before certain things changed in my life.’
Leoni had a strong intuition that now was not the time to press Matt on what had changed in his life. The rush-hour traffic was heavy and as it swallowed them up in its safe anonymity she edged closer to him, rested her head on his shoulder and let her eyes droop closed. As she drifted into sleep she decided that she very much liked the fresh-washed smell of his hair and the lean, muscular feel of his body. Was there just the slightest tremor of a turn-on here? Too early to decide.
She had a strange dream. She was following a narrow trail along the floor of a pine forest on a sunny afternoon. Although beams of golden light lanced down through the thick canopy of branches and leaves, the trail was overgrown, faint and difficult to see, and at last faded out. She turned, but the trees had closed up behind her like water behind the keel of a boat. With mounting panic she began to search, first in one direction, then another, running and stumbling, sometimes finding a hint of a path only to lose it again moments later. The great trees rose up all round her, oppressing her, seeming to box her in, and no matter how fast she ran she kept coming back to the same place.
Just when things were getting really freaky a girl stepped from behind a massive pine and stood in front of her. Even in the dream she felt the physical shock of recognition. It was the girl with nut-brown skin and chestnut hair she’d seen on her ketamine trip – the girl she’d warned about the tree-birds. She smiled and took Leoni’s hand. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said. ‘Together we will find the way.’
A tremendous warmth suffused Leoni’s heart – was this what it felt like to know the love of a sister? – and she woke up with a jolt.
No forests here. And no sister.
It was late afternoon and they were in Los Angeles. The cab was rolling along a potholed street lined with broken-down homes and abandoned shacks. Groups of tough-looking youths loitered on corners, giving off a hostile vibe, and three police cars shot past, sirens wailing, lights flashing. ‘Welcome to South Central,’ said Matt with a grin.
Moments later they were standing by the side of the road. They waited until the cab had disappeared from sight, then Matt led the way to the right down a cross street and took a left at the end. After about fifteen minutes of apparently aimless walking, with very little conversation, he hailed another cab and gave an address in Venice Beach, where the procedure was repeated. It was not until they were in their fifth cab, heading for West Hollywood, that he finally seemed to relax. ‘I got Bannerman on the phone earlier when you were asleep,’ he said. ‘I thought it would be a good idea to meet up with him and see where we go from here.’
‘This is Bannerman’s house?’ Leoni was surprised twenty minutes later as they pulled into the long sweeping driveway of a spectacular Italianate villa. ‘I didn’t realise he was this loaded.’
Matt shook his head. ‘It isn’t Bannerman’s place. It’s just where we’re meeting. The house belongs to his funder.’
The huge mansion appeared to be deserted except for Bannerman and his partner David who were already installed at one end of the refectory table in the kitchen. Matt found wine and beer in the refrigerator, pizza
s were ordered in and by nine p.m. they were ready to talk.
Before sharing his news, which he said was all bad, Bannerman insisted on hearing a full account of Leoni’s DMT experience, jotting notes on a yellow legal pad as she talked and questioning her at several points. When she described the way the Blue Angel had operated on her temple, implanting a filament of crystal, he looked puzzled: ‘You were on an out-of-body journey with DMT, so I’m confused about what she operated on.’
‘It’s hard to explain. I have to leave my body to travel to the land where everything is known – that’s what she calls her realm. But when I get there I find myself back in a body again. That was the body she operated on.’
Bannerman made a lengthy note: ‘And did she tell you the purpose of the operation?’
‘Yes, absolutely. She said she did it to make DMT more efficient at taking me where she wants me to go.’
‘Remarkable,’ Bannerman muttered.
Leoni described the second part of the trip – the brutal men, the Stone Age weapons, the human sacrifices, the encounter with Sulpa, the apparent connection between Sulpa and an entity called Jack whose shadow had hung over her since childhood, and how it was Sulpa/Jack who had possessed Becky.
Bannerman’s manner became reproving: ‘You didn’t say anything to me about Jack before.’
‘There’re other things I haven’t told you yet,’ Leoni admitted. ‘Private things between me and my parents that tie in to all this.’
Bannerman sighed: ‘Well, I guess you’ll tell me when you’re ready.’
The news Bannerman had for them was every bit as bad as he’d hinted.
Following Becky’s attack on Leoni in the morning, Shapira had cancelled the rest of that day’s DMT sessions. She was convinced that Becky’s spectacular psychotic breakdown had been triggered by the drug, and who was to say that other volunteers might not also be on the verge of equally pyrotechnic freak-outs? As a responsible clinician, she’d insisted, she couldn’t possibly allow trials to continue after such an incident and of course she’d felt obliged to report Becky’s case to the Head of the UC Irvine School of Medicine. Within an hour the DMT project had been officially suspended.
Then had come the afternoon raid that Matt and Leoni had narrowly avoided. The agents had flashed IDs from the Drug Enforcement Agency but had looked and behaved like thugs. Shapira and Monbiot had been so terrorised, fearing a scandal over Becky, that they’d allowed the project to be searched from top to bottom and surrendered their case notes.
Finally, a few hours ago, the UCLA Med Centre had also suspended Bannerman from duty and minutes afterwards he’d received an e-mail from the California State Medical Board informing him he was under investigation for possible ethics breaches. ‘It looks like your parents have pulled some powerful strings to bog me down fighting for my job and defending my professional reputation,’ he told Leoni. ‘I guess they figure that way they’ll stop me working with you.’
Panic welled in her chest. There was so much further she needed to go with this. ‘So what do you plan to do?’ she asked
‘I get stubborn when people try to bully me,’ said Bannerman. ‘I’m passionate about my research so I want to carry on working with you. You have the potential to be a very special subject and I think we’ve stumbled on something … well …’ He hesitated: ‘Honestly, I think we’ve stumbled on something quite extraordinary. I’m a scientist, I do my best to stay objective, rational, grounded. But this phenomenon of the Blue Angel, the way she keeps appearing to more people, the special connection you seem to have with her. And now this Jack stuff. All that has me beat. I can’t explain it with science. Not yet, anyway. Maybe it really is something supernatural. I’m open to that. Or maybe it isn’t. But having my life demolished by your parents hasn’t made me stop wanting to find out …’ He seemed to look for the right words: ‘How about yourself? After all this, do you still want to find out?’
Leoni didn’t hesitate: ‘I still want to find out. A million per cent.’
‘Good,’ said Bannerman. ‘That’s what I’d hoped.’ He rubbed his hands together, suddenly cheerful: ‘Now, what do you know about the Vine of the Dead?’
Chapter Forty-Three
‘I won’t let them kill you,’ Ria pulsed to Brindle.
‘How can you stop them?’ Brindle’s thought-voice was heavy. ‘They are so many.’
‘Trust me, Brindle. Don’t be afraid. I’ll get us out of this.’
Executions were always popular and once inside the circle of great wooden pillars most of the braves who’d escorted her thus far melted into the huge crowd, already more than a thousand strong, pouring into the meeting ground. With only Vulp, Bahat, Ligar and Bont remaining at her side, while Murgh, Kimp and Chard cleared the way ahead, Ria was marched the last hundred paces through the throng to stand before the assembly of elders. Her eyes sought out Hond, convinced she would find him fully recovered and ready to speak for her, but he was not behind the elders in the ranks of the council of braves, or anywhere to be seen in the multitudes pressing in around them.
Instead Grigo appeared, forcing his way to the front of the crowd. He was flushed – perhaps he’d been running – and Ria found something strange about his manner. Was it excitement? Conceit? Triumph? If so, why was fear part of it as well? She couldn’t be sure. He flashed a quick, nervous glance over his shoulder as he hurried to join his father.
As the most senior of Ria’s accusers, Murgh had to make the initial address. He looked, Ria thought, faintly deranged, as though the presence of so many people had gone to his head, but his sinister, bullying tactics hadn’t changed and now he actually shouted at the elders: ‘EXCELLENCIES,’ his tone was hostile and sarcastic, ‘VENERABLE LORDS. A great night’s work has been done.’ At this he turned and gestured at Brindle, Porto, Jergat and Oplimar. ‘We have captured the dangerous gang of Uglies who murdered two of our boys and we have brought them here as promised’ – he was shouting again – ‘TO FACE DEATH BY BURNING in the presence of the entire Clan.’ Murgh drew himself up to his full, not very impressive height and swivelled his neck until his stare fell on Ria: ‘We also bring this WITCH before you for judgement. She was caught in a forbidden act, COPULATING with an Ugly’ – cries of outrage from the crowd. ‘She ordered the Uglies to murder Duma and Vik’ – gasps of horror and revulsion. ‘For these crimes we demand that the witch Ria BE BURNT TO DEATH WITHOUT MERCY on the same pyre as the Uglies!’
There was a sudden buzz of controversy, and heated arguments broke out, the crowd dividing, Ria judged, roughly equally between those in favour of burning her and those vehemently opposed. She could understand why Murgh and Grigo had wanted her lynched when she was first captured. She had support here she could turn against them.
Finally Rotas, the highest-ranking elder, called for silence. Long, lean and angular, with joints that clicked and creaked when he walked, he was reputed to have passed eighty summers and to have been a great warrior in his youth. He had a full head of silver hair and a thick grey beard but also a certain mischievous expression that made him seem far younger than his years. Now he leaned forward on his ivory stool and Ria’s confidence grew as he proceeded to reprimand Murgh in a slow, clear, emphatic voice, as though he were talking to a child: ‘We have not established that the prisoner is a witch. We have not established that the murder of Duma and Vik was the work of these Uglies, or any Uglies, or whether Ria ordered it or not. We have not established that Ria had sex with an Ugly male. We are here to prove or refute these charges. Show me your evidence.’
‘He has no evidence!’ Ria exploded. Her bruised rib ached. Her hands, still bound tight behind her back on Murgh’s orders, were numb. But she tossed her head, flicked her hair around her shoulders, and fixed the elders with a level gaze: ‘Everything he said about me is a lie, and I’m going to prove it.’
‘Nonsense!’ snorted Murgh. He reached for Grigo, whose shifty eyes were darting from side to side, shoved him forward, and again ad
dressed the elders. ‘Here is our evidence. My eldest son. A youth of irreproachable good name. He saw it all WITH HIS OWN EYES. He saw the witch copulating with the beast. He saw the murders. Didn’t you, Grigo? SPEAK, boy!’
‘Wait!’
The interruption was from Torga, nicknamed ‘The Vulture’ because of his enormous hooked nose, bald head and wattled neck. He had vacated his stool next to Rotas and was hobbling towards Ria. ‘Turn around, girl,’ he said to her. When she obeyed he clicked his tongue and asked Murgh sharply: ‘Why is she tied?’
‘Because she’s a prisoner,’ Murgh snapped back. ‘Because she’s a traitor to the Clan. Because she’s a murderer. How do you expect us to arrest a bitch like this?’
‘We expect you to do whatever is necessary. But it is a sacred thing from the long-ago that no man or woman of the Clan is to come before the elders tied at hand or foot. This girl’s hands are tied …’
‘She throws stones. She’s said to be deadly …’
‘A meaningless objection since there are no stones here’ – Torga indicated the flattened earth of the meeting ground. ‘Please release her from her bonds.’
‘With respect, venerable ones, I prefer not to,’ sneered Murgh.
Now Rotas too was on his feet, his joints grinding in protest: ‘She must stand trial a free woman,’ he growled. ‘It is the law.’ Pulling a dagger from his belt, he beckoned Ria towards him, ignoring further protests from Murgh, and cut her loose. ‘Child,’ the elder observed, ‘you are covered in blood. How did that come about?’
Ria stretched out her cramped hands, finding to her astonishment that she was on the verge of tears – which she held back. ‘Yesterday I fought a battle,’ she whispered.
Rotas leaned closer: ‘Speak up. I am a little deaf …’
‘Yesterday I fought a battle and was covered in the blood of my enemies. Not these poor Uglies’ – Ria pointed towards the stake – ‘but terrible, fearsome and cruel outlanders never seen before in our valleys. GRIGO IS THEIR FRIEND,’ she shouted. ‘Ask him about the Illimani! Ask him about Sulpa!!’