(like a demon).
But he still had a long way to go before she could start thinking of him as a friend.
Soon Ria could feel the Little Teachers beginning to take effect.
She breathed in deep. She was ready for this.
A wave of giddiness struck her but she forced herself to her feet and found her way to the same patch of the rock wall, bone white and glistening, that had attracted her attention three nights earlier. Once again she stood before it and brought her eyes close to its shimmering reflections. Then the dizziness surged back. She crumpled in a heap to the floor and felt herself leave her body and pass through the rock into the tunnel of water and sky that lay beyond. She surrendered to the current and allowed it to sweep her out of the night of the cave and into the bright daylight of the spirit world with its familiar twin suns.
Ria had expected she would arrive again in the meadow of green flowers, but this time, although she was provided with the same body wearing the same strange clothing as before, the tunnel brought her out at a different location – high up on a hillside overlooking a broad valley. In the valley floor sat a camp like none she had ever imagined. A thousand times larger than the Clan’s camp, it consisted of countless towering structures of wood and stone arranged in a perfect circle and surrounded by a vast stockade.
Standing with her head turned in profile a few paces lower down the hillside was the spirit woman with deep blue skin whom the Uglies called Our Lady of the Forest. She was awesomely beautiful and dressed in wondrous garments that shimmered and changed colour with any slight movement she made. Her voice was rich and strong: ‘I can help you defeat Sulpa. He is my enemy as well as yours.’
‘You’re a spirit,’ said Ria as she reached her side, positioning herself a little higher up the slope so their eyes were at the same level. ‘You look like a powerful one. Why don’t you just defeat him yourself?’
‘I cannot defeat him in your world.’
‘I heard that. My friend Brindle told me, but I didn’t believe him.’
‘Nevertheless, it is true …’
‘I should have known! The Uglies never lie about anything …’ Ria paused and thought back. ‘Brindle said Sulpa is a demon.’
‘Amongst the very worst of demonkind.’
‘And that you had him chained up for a long time, but he escaped?’
‘He fled into a human body where he is beyond our power. In that body, if he is not stopped, he will destroy your world.’
‘I’m going to stop him.’
‘I have confidence in that. It’s why I chose you … and one other to fight alongside you. She is the first of three gifts I bring you today.’
Out of nowhere the blue woman had conjured a peculiar square wooden frame, about two spans on each side, with what looked like a sheet of glistening water stretched tightly across it.
‘Look here,’ she said. She held the frame up for inspection.
At first Ria saw nothing, was not even sure what she was expected to see, until slowly, in the shining surface, the face of the golden-haired girl began to appear.
‘I know her,’ she whispered. She craned her neck to peek behind the frame. ‘She saved my life. Is she a spirit? Like you?’
‘She is human. Like you. Her name is Leoni. She too fights Sulpa.’
‘Then why do I only see her in dreams and visions?’
‘Because she is not yet born.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘She lives a thousand generations in the future …’
‘I still don’t understand …’
‘It is not necessary to understand, only to act. You cannot defeat Sulpa now without Leoni’s help, and Sulpa cannot be defeated in her time unless he is defeated now. Together you and she possess great strength that neither of you have yet imagined. Better you meet in dreams and visions than not meet at all.’
‘I feel like you’re using us,’ said Ria. ‘Both of us. To fight your battles for you.’
‘Have I not already said as much? Sulpa is in human form, so of course it is humans who must fight him …’
Ria gave the blue woman a ferocious look: ‘I saw you with my parents. The last time I ate the Little Teachers. I saw you with my mother and father and they were alive even though I know they’re dead. What was going on there?’
‘There are realms in which your mother and father still live.’
‘Can I see them again?’
‘Perhaps there will be a time for that.’
‘If it’s only “perhaps”, why did you even show them to me in the first place? Are you trying to drive me mad?’
‘It was a test. The balance you draw between love and reason. I had to be sure I chose well when I chose you to fight Sulpa.’
Ria was getting angry. Whatever made this being think she had the right to test her for anything? Or decide who or what she was to fight?
But then she remembered Hond and Rill and swallowed her pride. The truth was she did want to fight Sulpa. She wanted to destroy him. Any way it could be done. ‘You said you have three gifts for me today,’ she said.
The blue woman held up a glittering crystal, smaller than an acorn but with a thousand intricate facets. ‘This is my second gift,’ she said. She leaned forward, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. ‘Accept it and you will have the power to speak and understand all languages.’
Ria thought about Driff. It would be good to know the Illimani tongue. She’d be able to get much more out of him that way to use against Sulpa.
And she thought of the neighbouring human tribes in near and distant valleys – the Ree, the Jicaque, the Merell, the Dirker, the Naveen, the Sher, the Yona, the Spearjig, and many others whose names she could not bring to mind. She thought of the strandwalkers called the Aine who lived along the borders of the Great Sea, and of the fierce mountain folk called the Kosh who hunted mammoths in the tall ranges to the east. All these different peoples – isolated, scattered, mutually hostile, ignorant of one another’s languages – would be in grave danger from Sulpa, and some had perhaps already suffered the same fate he had inflicted on the Clan. Ria did not doubt he intended to pick them off one by one and annihilate them all, and knew in a flash that her task was to unite them against him. This would be much easier if she spoke their languages.
‘Only a fool would refuse such a gift,’ she said.
The spirit woman’s right hand shot out, and with the speed of a striking snake she plunged the crystal deep into Ria’s temple. ‘You have the gift of languages,’ she told her. ‘Use it well.’
‘Ahh!’ Ria gasped. The pain was excruciating. She put her hand to her forehead but found no wound there.
‘The pain will pass,’ said the woman. ‘Now look here, please. My third gift for you.’ She held up the frame. This time the water was not still but swirled in a spiral and Ria found herself first drawn into it, then falling through it.
Then it was night again and she was no longer in the blue woman’s realm. The moon was nearly full, high in the sky, and she was flying, out of her body, over the mountains and valleys of her homeland.
She looked at her legs, arms, hands and realised that she could see through parts of herself to the ground far below – that she was as transparent as the night sky. Invisible! Weightless! Flying faster than any bird, without any flapping of wings, simply by directing herself here or there.
As she recovered from the initial surprise she paid more attention to where she was. Winding amidst dense forest, she recognised a deep, precipitous, rocky gorge through which, with much rush and noise, tumbled the foaming headwaters of the Snake river. This was the wild region, claimed by no single tribe, known as the Gate of Horn. It was a day’s hard march upstream of the Clan camp and Ria had been here just a few months before on a hunting expedition with her brothers.
Movement caught her eye.
Ahead, scurrying across a wide clearing, casting long shadows in the bright moonlight she saw a group of people – t
wenty at least, maybe thirty.
Ria dived towards them, swooping so low she was skimming the treetops. There were men and women in the group. And children. Hope stirred as she began to recognise faces. These were survivors of Sulpa’s massacre of the Clan! Then she was amongst them, excited, crying out, trying to embrace them, but they couldn’t see or hear her.
They were obviously terrified. Running from the horror of the Illimani horde. Running for their lives in the dead of night. Many were wounded. All seemed exhausted. The kids and the elderly were falling further and further behind.
Disembodied and invisible, Ria let them stream past her.
Last of all, hundreds of paces behind everyone else, was a little family group, a mother and two small children. Perhaps it was because the hair had been singed entirely from one side of the mother’s head, or because her eye was swollen closed, or because the little boy and girl were so battered and dirty, that Ria didn’t recognise them at first.
Then it came to her. The mother was Sabeth, Bont’s wife. And the two children were Nibo and Maura, his son and daughter.
An irresistible force drew Ria up into the sky.
Up amongst the stars.
A gaping hole opened at her feet and she tumbled through it into a whirling tunnel.
When she awoke in her own body on the floor of the Cave of Visions she knew exactly what she had to do.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
As Mary translated, occasionally stopping him to clarify a word or phrase, Don Emmanuel told them why, despite the terrors of the night before, he had drunk the brew again this evening.
First, he was an Ayahuasca shaman. If he was too afraid to drink then he would be obliged to abandon his calling – which he was not prepared to do. He needed to prove to himself he could master his fear.
Secondly, he wished to spy on Don Apolinar. With the help of the brew he had travelled out of body to the brujo’s home in Iquitos. He was alert to the danger that Apolinar might sense his presence. But finding his enemy in the midst of a ritual to summon a spirit and oblivious to all other things, Emmanuel had made himself smaller than a fly and settled in to observe.
Apolinar sat in a high-backed wooden chair in a dimly lit room. He was alone, but positioned a few feet in front of him, set at an angle so that he could not see his own reflection, was an ornate full-length mirror with an antique scratched and stained surface. Apolinar was rapidly repeating the single word ‘JACK’ in a low sibilant whisper while staring into this tilted mirror.
Slowly, Emmanuel said, he began to see what it was that the brujo had called.
An amorphous mass of darkness was welling up within the glass, seething, chaotic, stormy darkness shot through with glints of lightning. And as the mass swirled and turned, threatening to burst free from the confines of the mirror, an imperious voice boomed forth from it and demanded: ‘¿PARA QUÉ ME HAS INVOCADO?’ [‘FOR WHAT HAVE YOU SUMMONED ME?’]
‘Para alertarlo, Señor,’ stammered Apolinar. ‘Se trata de esta muchacha …’: ‘To warn you, Lord … There is a girl. With my magic I entered her mind and learned her thoughts. She seeks your destruction.’
‘Many seek my destruction.’ The voice was quieter now.
‘This one is special. She has the force. And the Lady of the Forests protects her.’
In the mirror the thundercloud seemed to heave and swell: ‘THE NAME OF THIS GIRL?’
‘Her name is Leoni. Give me power and I will lead you to her.’
The voice from the cloud fell to a hiss: ‘You have a knife, Don Apolinar?’
The brujo seemed puzzled by the question: ‘Yes … ?’
‘Show me the knife.’
Emmanuel described how, with a flourish, Apolinar pulled a thin long-bladed dagger from the pocket of his white suit …
‘Good,’ said the voice. ‘Excellent. Now cut your throat, please …’
‘My throat? But …’
‘One deep slice from ear to ear.’
Apolinar had struggled, but it was as though his body was not under his control. Very slowly, fighting against himself, he brought the knife up to his throat until the blade nicked his skin and a rivulet of blood ran over his shirt collar and down onto the shoulder of his white suit.
‘From ear to ear, Don Apolinar. Now, please!’
Again the blade cut. Deeper this time. Blood flowed.
‘But I can help you,’ the brujo sobbed. ‘I am your slave …’
‘Give me power and I will lead you to her,’ mimicked the voice from the mirror, then suddenly ramped up the volume ‘YOU DON’T BARGAIN WITH ME, SLAVE. YOU JUST DO WHAT I WANT.’
‘Yes, master! Yes! My word on it.’ The jacket of Apolinar’s suit was streaked red, and fat drops of his blood dripped to the floor around the chair. ‘Whatever you require. I beg you, do not kill me. I and my magic are yours to command.’
‘Your magic? Ha! I DO NOT NEED YOUR CONJURING TRICKS. You are a WORM.’
‘Then let this worm take you to the girl, master … I know the jungle. I can be of service.’
‘Can a worm be of service?’ The cloud in the mirror seemed to consider the matter and relent. ‘Perhaps so. Perhaps after all I can find a use … for a jungle worm.’
The blade still cut into Apolinar’s mangled throat but now, Emmanuel reported, the brujo was allowed to drop his hand to his side and let the knife fall. The cloud roiled and billowed within the mirror and the voice spoke again: ‘When my servants reach you tomorrow you will take them to the girl. They will know what to do with her.’
Apolinar sat slumped in the chair, his breath coming in ragged gasps, and slowly, like a thick gas seeping away, the cloud began to recede – but then, with shocking speed, came boiling back again.
As he felt Jack’s attention burn into him, and Apolinar’s eyes swivel in his direction, Emmanuel fled.
He knew no more of what took place in that room.
Don Emmanuel had been told very little about Leoni’s case but he could not be kept in the dark any longer. The connection between Jack and Sulpa, the role of the Blue Angel, whom he knew as ‘Our Lady of the Forest’, the connection with Ria, Leoni’s troubled life history, and the pressing, imperative need for her to continue to work with Ayahuasca were all explained to him.
‘We’re in grave danger,’ he said when Mary had interpreted everything. Jack and Apolinar both knew he had spied on their conversation and although Jack’s ‘servants’ might not arrive until tomorrow there was nothing to stop the brujo rounding up a gang of local thugs and bringing them here tonight by fast motorboat.
Iquitos was Apolinar’s stronghold so there was no question of attempting to escape in that direction.
But there was an alternative.
Two hundred miles to the south along the Ucayali, one of the mighty tributaries of the Amazon, lay the homelands of the Shipibo, Don Emmanuel’s own tribe. There were no roads in that region. No electricity or piped water. It was a land of small villages, some strung out in plain view along the banks of the river, others hidden away in isolated creeks and backwaters. They could take refuge there, Don Emmanuel promised, where no one could find them. The work with Ayahuasca could continue. He looked apologetically at Leoni. He regretted he had failed to protect her from Apolinar in the spirit world. The brujo was too powerful. But in the Shipibo heartland there were shamans far more powerful than he who walked the path of light and would come to the circle to strengthen their defences. ‘Evil confronts us,’ Don Emmanuel said, ‘but it can be fought.’
* * *
All the supplies they needed for the journey upriver were at the lodge – gasoline for the outboard motor, fresh water, food, medicine. There was a tight sense of urgency but loading and stowing everything still required two hours and it was after midnight when they pushed off from the jetty.
Heavy clouds filled the sky, obscuring the moon, and the warm darkness felt thick as a blanket to Leoni. As they turned south against the current she looked back to the north, the d
irection of Iquitos, and saw a light flash in the distance.
There it was again.
Matt had already spotted it. ‘It’s a boat,’ he said. The light flashed a third time, glancing off the water. ‘A fast boat, coming this way.’
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Nobody doubted the truth of the vision Ria had received as her third gift.
Survivors of the Clan, Bont’s wife and children amongst them, had fled east into the forests of the wild hill country called the Gate of Horn. An attempt had to be made to rescue them.
The Gate was claimed by no single tribe and, by long convention, any could hunt there. The most direct way to reach it from Secret Place lay through the Clan’s territory, but this would be a perilous route with the main Illimani force, thousands strong, in full control there. The alternative was to head further south before cutting back north and east again towards the Gate of Horn, and this meant passing through the lands of the Merell and the Naveen – tribes as hostile to the Clan as they were to each other. They were the least promising candidates for the army Ria intended to bring together to confront Sulpa’s horde. But she had to start somewhere and there was no time to lose. Besides, it was a safe guess the Illimani would be boiling out in all directions, killing everyone they met, putting their marks of ownership on the land, so the main problem by any route was going to be avoiding them.
Ria had assumed, without question, that Brindle would join the expedition. They had been through so much together, and she counted on him. So it came as a blow when he told her, as they walked side by side out of the Cave of Visions, that he could not accompany her this time.
She was surprised how hurt she felt: ‘I suppose you’ve got more important things to do now you’re king.’