Entangled (37 page)

If the second cup was a thousand times worse than the first, the third cup was a thousand times worse again. Although she pinched her nostrils to block the smell, Leoni still gagged and choked as she gulped down the loathsome brew, grimaced as the thick liquid coated her tongue and teeth, and shivered with revulsion as the aftertaste hit her.

She tottered to her mattress, lay on her back, flung her arms and legs out, stared into the darkness once more and discovered everything was different. Her system couldn’t have absorbed the third cup yet, so this storm of colours and weirdness exploding inside her head, these gushing fountains of light and energy she was immersed in, must be the delayed effects of the first two doses.

Coming on faster and stronger than anything she’d ever experienced before.

As the power of the drug overwhelmed her, Leoni surged out of her body, rose into the roof space of the
maloca
and looked down at the little group on the floor. Then she heard the Blue Angel’s voice, speaking inside her head. The words seemed filled with enchantment: ‘Find me by the river. I await you.’

Leoni needed no second summons but as she floated higher she saw Don Emmanuel looking right at her, his eyes bright with alarm. Was her aerial body visible to him? For some reason she felt a harsh twinge of guilt as she fled out through the thatched roof and into the night sky.

She saw at once she had not arrived in some weird parallel world but was still on planet Earth, in the Amazon rainforest, twenty miles south of Iquitos. She was directly above the
maloca
and the huddle of outbuildings of Mary Ruck’s jungle lodge. The moon still rode high and every bush and tree, every leaf and flower, was lit by an inner fire and writhed sinuously, each one seemingly self-willed.

As she’d learned to expect when she travelled out of body, Leoni
could still see her own hands and arms, legs and feet, but she had become so insubstantial she could pass through solid objects. The trees were no barrier to her. Nevertheless, she preferred to follow the same narrow path, leading back to the river, that she and her friends had used many hours earlier when they’d arrived here from Iquitos in Mary’s motorboat and walked up to the
maloca.

Except tonight nothing was quite the same. The floor of the path was aglow with scintillating light patterns, like the luminous trails of sea worms, and immense many-hued serpents with ivory teeth and ruby eyes were draped over the branches above.

Leoni mastered her terror. Both Mary and Don Emmanuel had warned her that she would see such serpents under the influence of Ayahuasca, and had reassured her they were benign creatures of vision that would not harm her.

Even so, she felt a twinge of fear and a glimmering recognition of the utter strangeness of her situation.

She sensed the vastness of the jungle, the presence of unknown creatures deep within, thick undergrowth pressing close all around her, and began to glide faster towards the river, the great sweep of which she could now see glinting through the ancient trees, wide as houses, tall as skyscrapers, that grew all the way down to the water’s edge.

The path brought Leoni out by the jetty where Mary’s boat was moored.

But the jetty transformed itself before she reached it from a thing of wood and nails into a living serpent, fifty feet long, its hulking, spade-shaped head thrust far out from the bank. Regardless of what she’d been told about these creatures, there was no way she would have stepped out onto its broad back, with scales like planks, if the Blue Angel hadn’t been there already, waiting for her. Her back was turned, her scarlet robe swept out behind her, her long black hair shone in the brilliant light of the moon which made everything seem like day. She said nothing, but stood still as a statue at the end of the jetty, looking out over the earthy brown depths of the colossal river.

Leoni was nervous as she approached. Why would the Angel not look at her?

Then, with a lurch of horror, she saw the figure at the end of the jetty turn and begin to undergo a terrifying transformation. Her hair lost its satin sheen and became shorter and coarser, streaked with grey,
her skin roughened and morphed from blue to jaundiced, her beautiful face lengthened and thickened, a wispy beard sprouted, her body became strongly masculine, and her robe shimmered through all the colours of the rainbow and took shape again as a white suit.

Leoni flew back and upward but was alarmed to discover that something held her down. She struggled and fought, only getting herself more tightly enmeshed so that she could hardly move at all. She suffered a moment of utter panic. How was this happening to her aerial body?

At first glance she couldn’t see what held her but as she looked closer thin filaments of red light appeared, so faint they were almost invisible, woven into a supple lattice.

She was caught like a fish in a net.

So overwhelming were the numbers of the Illimani, so ferocious, deadly and unexpected their onslaught, that the massacre of the Clan was accomplished with stunning speed. And even as the last adults were dispatched, Ria saw from her vantage point on the lookout tower that hundreds of children had been rounded up. They were subdued with shouts and cruel blows, their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were roped together tightly at the neck.

Vulp, Bahat and Bont all had close kin out there – including, in Bont’s case, two young children. ‘What are they doing with the kids?’ the big man said now, his voice hoarse. The spear wound in his lower back was still bleeding, spattering his legs with gore, but he seemed oblivious.

‘At least they’re not killing them,’ choked Vulp. Ria could see he was wrestling with his emotions. ‘They’ve killed everyone else.’

‘Not everyone,’ Ligar said, offering hope. ‘Some made it into the forest …’

Bont wasn’t listening: ‘We have to save the kids. Right now. If you’re not going to help me I’ll do it myself.’

‘He imagines he army,’
Brindle spoke up inside Ria’s head.
‘Can fight any enemy. But if don’t fix his back he going to bleed to death pretty soon.’

Ria surveyed the zone of slaughter around the outskirts of the camp. It was far enough, close to a thousand paces, for her little group on the tower not to be noticed so long as they kept their heads down, but there was no way this could continue. At any moment a patrol might be sent out from the main force to take possession of the meeting ground – the tower was an obvious strategic target – and then they would certainly be caught.

They couldn’t escape. To the south the way to the forest was blocked by the Illimani horde. To the north the Snake river lay in their path.

‘Of course we’re going to help you,’ Ria told Bont. She looked around
at her Clansmen – it was clear they were all of one mind – and led the way down the system of narrow ladders that connected the different levels of the tower. Bont descended above her, a continuous drip, drip, drip of blood falling from his back. Ligar, Vulp, Bahat and the Uglies followed.

Rotas was waiting at the base of the tower but there was no sign of Jergat. ‘I didn’t see where he went,’ the elder said. ‘Seemed like he was unconscious. He might even have been dead. I looked away for a moment. When I looked back he was gone.’

Ria exchanged a thought with Brindle – she sensed no concern from him for Jergat – and told Rotas of the coming of the Illimani and the terrible events they’d witnessed from the tower moments earlier. ‘We’re going to save the children,’ she said.

‘But that is suicide!’ Rotas protested. ‘If our attackers truly number thousands we can do nothing. We’ll be killed the moment we show our faces.’

‘We’ll be killed anyway,’ grunted Bont. ‘There’s nowhere to run to. I’m going in after my kids.’

‘I’m with Bont,’ Ria said.

Rotas thought about it: ‘It seems there is no other choice,’ he agreed at last.

Jergat reappeared, coming from the meeting ground. He looked energised, completely recovered from the ordeal of the bonfire. He held forth a deerskin pouch to Ria. It had a familiar heaviness:
‘I found your hunting stones,
’ he told her.
‘Our Lady of the Forest showed me where to look …’

‘The blue woman?’

‘
Waked me up when I was sleeping,
’ said Jergat.
‘Told me, hey you, Jergat. You got a job to do, remember? You’re supposed to collect Ria’s stones.’
Jergat’s thought-talk was accompanied by images of the bewitching woman with long black hair and deep blue skin whom Ria had seen when she’d journeyed with the Little Teachers, whose power had saved her from the terrible river of the spirit world, and who had spoken to her of tests. Then the imagery changed and she saw the body of the brave who had taken the pouch and stones from her during the ambush the night before – one of Murgh’s trusted men, struck down on the meeting ground, like his master, by an Illimani spear.

A roar of anger erupted behind her and she turned to see Bont strike
Brindle in the face with his huge right fist. ‘Touch me again and you’re dead,’ he yelled.

‘What’s this, Brindle?’
Ria pulsed.

‘Told you, Bont need healing or he die,’
Brindle replied. His cheek was split and swollen.
‘Tried to put hands on him to heal but he don’t like.’

Ria turned to Bont. He was pale with loss of blood but he still had his fists bunched. His dark eyes, small in such a large face, glared out with suspicion. But just when he looked his most threatening, like a rhino at bay, his feet slipped from under him, his knees buckled and he collapsed in a heap.

He had not lost consciousness. ‘Listen, Bont,’ Ria told him. ‘The Uglies have healing powers. Give them a chance and they’ll heal you now.’ He half sat up and uttered some incoherent words. ‘
THERE’S NO TIME FOR THIS,’
she yelled and eased him onto his stomach, exposing the deep, oozing wound in his lower back. Brindle, Oplimar and Jergat stepped forward, kneeled, linked arms in a circle over Bont, and began their hooting chant …

‘What’s going on here?’ It was Vulp who interrupted. ‘How do we know they aren’t just going to kill him?’

‘You have my word,’ said Ria.

‘You have my word too,’ said Ligar. His bow was half drawn. ‘Heal my friend,’ he told the Uglies, ‘or be certain I’ll kill you.’

Brindle ignored the threat and placed his palm over the bubbling puncture in Bont’s back.
‘Spear went deep,’
his thought-voice warned Ria after a heartbeat
‘Maybe not enough of us to make magic work.’
But almost at once blue light began to emanate from his fingers and poured into the big man’s body, suffusing the area around the injury with a phantasmal glow. Its brightness grew until it became dazzling. Bont’s body vibrated, then lifted and floated, still face down, a full handspan above the ground.

Vulp stumbled back with an oath, raising his arm as though to protect himself from a physical threat, Bahat made the sign of the evil eye, Ligar drew his bow to full stretch and took aim at Brindle’s head. Only Rotas remained calm. With much creaking of joints, he dropped to his knees to pass his hands beneath Bont and satisfy himself there was nothing supporting him. ‘Extraordinary,’ he said after a moment. ‘I have heard of such things, from the long-ago, but never believed they were true.’

The chanting of the Uglies reached a crescendo and ceased. Bont’s body descended to the ground. He’d remained conscious throughout and rolled over and sat up, rubbing his head.

‘Stopped bleeding,
’ Brindle pulsed to Ria.
‘Gave him energy. Put magic in his body. Wound will heal
.’

‘
Can he run?
’ Ria asked. ‘
Can he fight?’

But Bont himself answered by struggling to his feet and an instant later Ria understood what had alerted him. The meeting ground was surrounded by a zone of tightly packed wattle huts arranged around criss-crossing thoroughfares. Where the huts and streets came to an end, less than a hundred paces south of the tower, a dozen heavily armed Illimani braves burst out into the open and ran towards them, screaming guttural war cries. They were smeared from head to foot in blood. Some had freshly severed human heads dangling from leather waistbands, some had male genitals strung as gruesome necklaces and tied in their hair, one was even wearing another man’s skin. Now all had their eyes fixed on the little group of Clan and Uglies beneath the tower.

After the mass flight from the meeting ground, discarded weapons lay everywhere. As Ria pulled the first quartz hunting stone from her deerskin pouch she saw Bont snatch up a big double-headed axe. He weighed it in his hands, swung it in a great sweeping arc, and then, with a roar, charged the advancing Ilimani.