Eye of the Forest (13 page)

Muddy ran to the edge of the cave and looked down a hill at the Xuanaci village. A large party of Xuanaci warriors was already coming up the hillside path. They were carrying spears and longbows. “She’s right,” he said. “We gotta do something quick before them Indians come up the hill.”

Philippa was untying the sack in which Sicky lay, bound hand and foot. “Sicky’s tattoo,” she said. “The one on his belly. It turns anyone who looks at it to stone. Like the
Gorgon. They won’t dare come up here if there’s a risk of seeing that.” She loosened the gag on Sicky’s small mouth.

“Thank you, miss,” he said.

“How do you feel, Sicky?” asked Philippa.

“Sick,” he said, sitting up and untying his feet.

“Ask a silly question,” said Zadie.

“But I’ll be all right.”

“Just tell him to bring his belly over here,” said Zadie, tap-dancing on the floor nervously. “And quick.”

“No good,” said Sicky, and showed Philippa his belly. “I’m not well at all. Before they put me in the sack, the Xuanaci blindfolded themselves and covered my tattoo with liquid latex. Rubber. From the
Hevea
tree. It’ll take ages to peel off.”

“That’s unfortunate,” remarked Philippa. “Because it will take at least an hour to build a fire and get warm enough to have djinn power again.”

“I hate to sound like I’m stating the obvious, but we don’t have an hour.” Zadie screamed and then ducked as an arrow and then a spear flew through the air and into the cave.

“She’s right,” said Sicky. “We gotta get out of this place. If it’s the last thing we ever do.”

“How I wish Pizarro and his whole army were here now,” yelled Zadie. “To teach these horrible people a lesson they’d never forget.”

Philippa picked up the torch and then retreated into the back of the cave. “Here,” she cried. “This way. There’s a kind of curtain in the rock.”

She peered inside the fissure and saw that the torch had illuminated a steep natural stairway that was enclosed between narrow walls of cold damp rock. Philippa stepped inside. The others followed quickly. There was no time to debate where the passage might lead them.

At the bottom of the narrow stairway, Philippa scorched the wall with the torch. “In case we need to find our way back again,” she said.

“I hardly think we’ll want to come back this way,” observed Zadie. “Not unless we want to wind up on the Xuanaci menu.”

“We don’t actually know that they’re cannibals,” said Philippa. Remembering that she had been completely wrong about headhunters, she glanced at Sicky and said, “Are they?”

“Not cannibals as such,” he said. “Xuanaci like to eat raw piranha that have just feasted on living human flesh. This is why you were in the rock pool. Piranha stuffed with fresh human meat is a great delicacy for Xuanaci.”

This made everyone hasten their steps even more, although there was no indication that they were being pursued.

“Why don’t they come after us?” asked Groanin, looking around nervously. In a small backpack, the butler was carrying the box containing Pizarro’s skull, which he’d grabbed just before leaving the cave, to avoid Nimrod — if he ever saw Nimrod again — scolding him for losing it a second time.

“Because we have the only torch,” said Philippa, heading farther down into the secret depths of the cave and making
another scorch mark on the wall. “They’ll probably follow as soon as they’ve brought more light.”

They wound this way and that and eventually found themselves descending a precipitous path into a spacious cavern from whose dripping ceiling hung virtual chandeliers of stalactites. Leaving this cavern, they progressed down to another cavern that was full of stalagmites growing out of the ground like so many stone trees. And beyond this, at an even deeper level, was a vast cavern where stalactites and stalagmites had come together in fantastic glittering pillars and in which everything was a shadow or a pool of darkness. The light from the burning torch in Philippa’s hand seemed quite unequal to the task of illuminating the tomblike gloom. And now, for the first time since the excitement of their escape, the silence of these deep, underground caves laid a chill hand upon their spirits. It hadn’t escaped anyone’s attention that the light from the torch was getting smaller and that all too soon they would be in cold darkness.

“I was kind of hoping that we might find something to burn down here,” Philippa said as they climbed down a new passageway. She put her finger in a freezing rock pool and tasted it carefully.

“Duh,” said Zadie. “Most plants and trees that you could burn don’t grow underground. Any fool knows that. And with nothing to burn, there’s zero prospect of getting warm.”

“I was thinking more of mineral deposits,” admitted Philippa. “Oil or sulfur or coal.”

Groanin shot Zadie a sarcastic smile. “See? She knows what she’s doing.”

“Unless we find a mineral deposit we should go back, and take our chances with the Xuanaci,” said Zadie. “One chance in a hundred with them is better than no chance stumbling around in the darkness.”

Sicky took the torch from Philippa and wrapped the sack he’d been tied up inside earlier on around the flame. “We can burn some of our clothes for a while,” he said. “We can do that.”

“And get even colder than I am now?” demanded Zadie. “I don’t think so. I’d give anything for a nice hot bath.”

“Wait a minute,” said Philippa. “A hot bath. Yes. That’s it. Maybe there is something we can do. Back at Mr. Vodyannoy’s house, when John was attacked by that big cat in the hall of shadows, he put his hand in the fire and pulled out a burning log.”

When Zadie failed to respond with anything more than a shrug, Philippa shook her head and said, “Don’t you get it? He wasn’t burned. Perhaps if, together, we sort of washed our hands in the flame of this torch we might get a bit of djinn power back.”

“Have you ever done anything like that before?” asked Zadie.

“No,” admitted Philippa.

“Well, then. It sounds a bit far-fetched to me.”

“Why? We djinn are made of fire. Everyone knows that.”
Philippa shrugged. “And what’s the worst that could happen? We get our fingers burned.”

Somewhere in the distance they heard a shout echoing through the caves. The Xuanaci were on their trail again.

“Better hurry up,” said Muddy. He peeled off his T-shirt and wound it around the burning torch.

“Look, why do you need me to do it with you?” asked Zadie. “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

“All right, I will,” said Philippa, and sitting down on the cold stone floor of the cave, she rolled up her sleeves and cracked her knuckles, like a conjurer preparing to perform a magic trick.

Sicky sat down in front of her and held the torch out. “You sure you know what you’re doing, miss?” he asked. “This fire burns small but still plenty hot.”

And seeing it close up, Philippa was bound to agree with Sicky in one respect, at least. The flame probably wasn’t going to last long enough for what she had in mind.

A shirt lasted hardly any time at all. They were going to have to burn something else as well. Something longer-lasting that gave a more even flame. But what?

“Here,” said Groanin, guessing the reason that lay behind Philippa’s hesitation. “Why not burn this?” He laid the antique wooden box, which he had been carrying, on the ground between them before opening it and removing the skull of the infamous conquistador, Francisco Pizarro.

“Good idea,” said Zadie.

Philippa considered the idea for a moment. Something about the ancient box gave her pause. “I don’t know,” she said.

“It’s just an old box,” added Zadie. “What harm could it do?”

“All right,” Philippa told Sicky. “Go ahead and set fire to it.”

Sicky lit his vest and then laid the box on top of the burning cloth.

For a moment the box smoked mysteriously and started to burn with a small clear green flame. Philippa was about to take a deep breath in order to concentrate but was put off from doing so by a strong sulfurous smell — like the vague stink of rotten eggs — that now filled the cavern’s air. She waved her hand in front of her nostrils.

“That wooden box is inlaid with cinnabar,” said Groanin. “I’ll bet that’s what we smell.”

Philippa nodded and, extending one hand, held it over the growing green flame.

“Ouch,” said Muddy.

“Give over talking,” said Groanin. “She needs to concentrate. I say, she needs to concentrate.”

Philippa nodded her thanks silently and continued to hold her small hand above the flame. To look at, it remained the same. Her hand did not change color and blacken as a human hand would have. Nor was it an unpleasant sensation that she experienced. Already she felt nothing more than the molecules in her hand starting to buzz, as if she were holding
a wire attached to an electric current. But it was not enough and so she clasped both her hands together as if washing them in the pungent green flame, in the hope that heating both hands at the same time would achieve the desired result. Closing her eyes she pictured the heat now coursing through her body and the warmer blood moving more quickly in her veins, and prayed that the heat might stir something deep inside her supernatural being. And yet it was not enough. The return of djinn power still eluded her.

“It’s not working,” muttered Philippa. “Quick, Zadie, give me your hands for a djinncantation. I need to harness your power to mine. Immediately.”

“Yes, but what shall we wish for?”

“To find a way out of here, of course.”

For once Zadie did as she was asked without an argument. And holding hands tightly in the green flame the two young djinn waited for some sensation that the spark of djinn power had been reignited deep inside them.

But instead of Zadie harnessing her power to Philippa’s, it was Philippa who found her own power harnessed to Zadie’s. And almost immediately a wish was granted. Abruptly, Zadie let go of Philippa’s hands and stood up with a yell, aware that power had been and gone, albeit in an instant. “No!” she said. “Not that. I didn’t mean that.”

At the same moment, Philippa felt an almost insignificant bat-squeak of power herself and quickly wished for a flashlight. Almost immediately a flashlight duly appeared. It was not much of a wish. It was not much of a flashlight. But
it was all that Philippa was able to manage with just the thin sliver of djinn power that had been left to her by Zadie. Something else — another stronger, more powerful wish — had taken precedence and vacuumed up all the djinn power that she and Zadie had manufactured in the heat of the now spluttering green flame.

“What happened?” asked Philippa.

“The power went out of me before I could stop it,” Zadie said forlornly.

“Yes, but what happened?”

Zadie shook her head. “It wasn’t my fault,” she insisted. “I must have wished for something a while ago. It was a simple case of earlier wish fulfillment.”

“But what did you wish for?” demanded Philippa.

“I don’t know,” said Zadie. “I’ve forgotten.”

“You great Sammy,” said Groanin, and pointed at the box. The flame had gone out and it seemed unlikely that they would manage to kindle it again.

“Something happened,” said Philippa. “I felt a surge of power. A wish got granted. Quite a big wish.”

“Er, I think I know what she wished for,” said Sicky, nervously pointing behind them.

Pizarro’s skull was no longer just a skull. It had become something much more than just yellowing bone and ivory-colored teeth. It had become a tall, sinewy, yellowing man of about sixty years of age, with hollow cheeks and a thin gray beard. He wore an ancient steel helmet and a rather battered-looking breastplate, but the edge on his sword
looked keen enough. This unexpected result would have been quite bad enough, but even while they watched yet more Spanish conquistadors and several dozen horses began to appear inside the underground cavern.

“It’s almost as if an army is being assembled,” observed Philippa.

“Blimey,” said Groanin. “That’s it. I remember what it was that daft bat wished for now. It was back in the cave when the Xuanaci were chucking spears at us. I heard Zadie wish that Pizarro and his whole army could be here now to teach them Indians a lesson they’d never forget. And now here they all are.”

B
ack at the deserted camp, John handed Nimrod the message from Virgil McCreeby he had taken from Zadie’s pet bat, Zotz, which was still clinging to her backpack.

Nimrod read the message and then read it again. Then he read it aloud:

“You see?” said John. “What did I tell you?”

“Yes,” agreed Nimrod. “It’s disappointing.”

“Disappointing?” John shrugged. “I’d call that an understatement. Still, I guess it explains why she wanted to come along on this expedition. She’s been working for Virgil McCreeby all along.”

“It looks that way,” agreed Nimrod. “I suppose we’d better check to see if the map is still there.”

Virgil McCreeby was an unscrupulous and unprincipled English magus whom John and Nimrod had met before. He was also the father of Finlay McCreeby, his estranged son, who John regarded as one of his closest mundane friends.

John was already searching Mr. Vodyannoy’s backpack. “It’s gone,” he said.

“Let us hope that Frank has it on his person,” said Nimrod. “However, I do fear the worst.”

He placed McCreeby’s message in his pocket before examining the three stone statues, especially their feet.

“I’m afraid that these are Xuanaci warriors, all right,” he pronounced finally. “Each of them has the scar of a letter
X
on his heel. Sicky told me that this is a distinctive characteristic of the Xuanaci tribe. They make this mark so as not to
confuse the footprints of other men they might be tracking, with their own.”

“Then we have to mount a rescue,” said John.

Nimrod said nothing.

“They’re headhunters. We have to go after them.”

“All in good time,” said Nimrod. “First we have to establish why three djinn were unable to protect themselves.”

“That’s easy,” said John, and pointed at Hector. “Muddy’s dog chewed up the tents, which then let in water during last night’s heavy rain. They all got wet and were probably too cold to use djinn power when the Xuanaci turned up.”

“While that might certainly be true of immature djinn like Philippa and Zadie,” said Nimrod, “it doesn’t explain why someone of Mr. Vodyannoy’s age and experience failed to protect everyone from an attack. He would have to have been very cold indeed for his djinn power to have deserted him.”

“That’s right,” said John. “What happened to Mr. V?”

“As I see it there are three possibilities,” said Nimrod. “He abandoned his fellow travelers. He was murdered by someone. Or he was incapacitated by someone. Since I know Mr. Vodyannoy to be a djinn of some courage and resourcefulness, I must discount the first possibility. That leaves the second two possibilities. If he had died here, however, the Xuanaci would probably have taken his head as a trophy and, of course, we would have found his body. This leaves only the third possibility. That in some way Mr. Vodyannoy was incapacitated by Zadie. Perhaps, so that she might steal the map from him.”

Nimrod and John glanced around Mr. Vodyannoy’s tent.

“Maybe she put a djinn binding on him while he was asleep,” offered John.

“I fear it was not a binding that she put on him, John,” Nimrod said quietly. “QWERTYUIOP!” A thin latex glove appeared on the older djinn’s hand even as he bent down to pick up a small yellow object he had spotted underneath Mr. Vodyannoy’s camp bed. “I strongly suspect that she put this on him. A poisonous arrow frog. One of the most deadly creatures in all of South America. Any mundane man probably would have been killed by skin contact with this little creature. And while it wouldn’t have killed him, even a powerful djinn like Mr. Vodyannoy would have been made very seriously ill if, as I think, it was placed on his head or chest.” Nimrod put the frog on the ground and carefully peeled off his glove.

“It’s true, I don’t like Zadie all that much,” admitted John. “Especially now in light of McCreeby’s message. But I find it hard to believe she could have done something so wicked. I mean, she’s from a respectable family. From a good tribe.”

“What you say is quite true,” said Nimrod. “But if Zadie does turn out to be responsible I’m sure it will be discovered that she has been acting under McCreeby’s influence. McCreeby is without question a powerful magus and a hypnotist of some considerable skill. Let us ask Mr. Vodyannoy. I’m sure he’ll be able to tell us what we want to know.”

John glanced around. “You mean he’s here? I thought he must have been captured, like the others.”

“I think not.” Nimrod delved inside Mr. Vodyannoy’s backpack and took out the black Fabergé bottle decorated with solid-gold filigree. “I imagine he’s inside this. Light my lamp, that’s where I’d go if a poisonous frog had crawled all over me. You wouldn’t see me for smoke. Indeed, it might be the only way he could survive such a terrible experience.”

Nimrod disappeared inside the lamp to look for Mr. Vodyannoy, leaving John alone again. Hearing himself blamed once again for damaging the tents, Hector had skulked off into the bushes. And wondering what to do with himself, John started to search Zadie’s backpack in the hope that he might find other messages from McCreeby and that these in turn might provide some further clue as to why she had betrayed her own kind and her friends. For John had not yet quite overcome his dislike of Zadie enough to accept the idea that she had indeed been hypnotized.

As he searched Zadie’s things, the primordial quiet was pierced by the sound of someone expertly whistling a carefree, plangent tune, a hauntingly rapturous, inspired human sound that floated through the forest glade like a beautiful, summery, magic spell.

John stood up and listened. How he had always wanted to be able to whistle like that! It was hardly the kind of tune an Indian would have known, surely. And it certainly couldn’t have been a bird. Not even a bird of paradise could have
mastered a melody like that; there must have been at least nine notes in the tune, which was whistled perfectly, and with tremolos, too. So, who could it be? Sicky? Muddy? Zadie, perhaps?

He was reluctant to break the spell of the catchy tune but, eventually, John called out, “Hello? Who’s there?”

The beautiful whistling stopped.

Picking up Sicky’s machete, John slashed at some bushes and advanced into the forest. “Hello?” he repeated loudly. “Who’s there? Come out and show yourselves.”

Working his way around the perimeter of the camp, John came back to where he had started from, and cocking one ear he listened closely, hoping to hear the whistle again. All he could hear was the myriad sound of the birds twittering tunelessly, monkeys laughing like hyenas, frogs creaking like old ropes, and insects whirring like dozens of small clockwork toys. He might have used djinn power except he couldn’t think what to wish for that could possibly have enabled him to determine the source of the whistling. As Mr. Rakshasas had been fond of saying: “Sure, knowing
what
to wish for is half of it.”

Had he imagined it? He was beginning to realize just what a strange place the rain forest really was and how your mind could play tricks on you: sticks that turned out to be insects, leaves that turned out to be lizards, logs that turned out to be alligators. John had even heard of a fish called the corvina that came to the surface of the water to eat fruit and make a bizarre chirping sound. He listened again.
Maybe it had been a bird after all. Some of the birds looked extraordinary. Was it so hard to imagine that they might have sounded extraordinary, too? Even though it was broad daylight, John felt a little unnerved by what he had heard. And very alone. John shook his head and went back to searching Zadie’s backpack.

He found no more messages from McCreeby, only a little notebook of canary-colored onionskin paper that she must have used for writing her own messages and, right at the bottom of the backpack, something that pricked John’s curiosity. Sealed in a glass jelly jar, and just a little smaller in diameter than the lid, were three gold disks. John opened the jar and, kneeling down, emptied the disks onto the ground before picking one of them up. It was thicker than a quarter — about as thick as two or three quarters — and heavy. Very heavy. He stayed there looking at them for a while wondering what they were. They weren’t coins or medals or plates. On each side were the faces of some Indian men — one of them very fierce-looking. He guessed they were possibly Incan but he wasn’t even sure of that.

“Found something?” It was Nimrod, returned from his visit to the interior of Mr. Vodyannoy’s lamp.

“These were in Zadie’s backpack.” John showed Nimrod the onionskin and the three gold disks.

“Interesting,” said Nimrod, weighing one in his hand. “I’ve never come across gold that was quite as heavy as this.” He turned one disk over in his fingers. “Supay the Incan god
of death on one side, and Inti, the sun god on the other. That’s unusual, too.”

“What is?” asked John.

“To have the sun and death on the same artifact.”

“Well,” suggested John. “The sun gives life, doesn’t it? So life and death. Aren’t they just opposite sides of the same coin?”

“What you say makes sense,” said Nimrod. “But look how one disk fits into another and how both fit into the third. It’s almost as if they were meant to show that the sun and death were one and the same. That’s what’s unusual. I imagine that these must be the tears of the sun that McCreeby’s message talks about. The Incas actually called gold the ‘sweat of the sun.’”

“I guess we now know the true identity of the person who robbed the Peabody Museum in New Haven,” said John.

“Of course,” said Nimrod. “There were three golden disks stolen, weren’t there? I’d quite forgotten about those.”

“It wasn’t Manco Capac who stole them at all.”

“I think all he wanted was his mummy back,” said Nimrod. “Yes, you’re quite right, John, it must have been Zadie who stole them.” He nodded back at Mr. Vodyannoy’s black bottle. “Just as it was Zadie who tried to kill Mr. Vodyannoy. He told me just now that he woke up and found her in his tent. She said that she had been sleepwalking. Mr. Vodyannoy said she went back to her tent and that he didn’t think any more about it at the time. But now, he’s pretty sure she was
wearing gloves. And that it must have been she who put the frog in his bed.”

“How is he?” John asked anxiously.

“Really quite ill.”

“Shouldn’t we get him to a hospital?”

“And what could they do? Hospitals are for people, John. Not djinn. No, with warmth and rest, he’ll recover. Eventually. When a djinn gets as sick as that, there’s not much that can be done that he or she can’t do for himself. He will have to stay there in his lamp for a good while longer, until he’s rekindled his life force. Which might take several weeks. I’m afraid we’ve seen the last of him on this expedition.”

“And does he have the map?”

“No. I’m afraid he doesn’t.”

“Then Zadie must have it.”

“I fear so. But I am quite convinced she has been hypnotized. I cannot believe there is any other way she would ever have tried to murder Mr. Vodyannoy. For that matter, nor can he.”

“So, what are we going to do?” asked John. “How will we find our way to the Eye of the Forest without the map?”

Nimrod tapped his forehead. “Fortunately, I have already memorized it.”

“That’s a relief.”

“The message tube around the bat’s leg,” said Nimrod. “Did you keep it?”

“Of course.” John retrieved it from his own pack and handed it to Nimrod.

“Excellent.” Nimrod opened the little onionskin notebook and, taking out a pen, began to write. “We shall send our own message to McCreeby. As if it had been written by his young female accomplice. I think I can reproduce Zadie’s hand accurately enough. She writes in capital letters, does she not?”

“That’s right. With circles for dots and lots of fat curlicues.”

“This sort of writing usually signifies a certain lack of confidence,” said Nimrod. “Perhaps even a kind of moronic ignorance. It is almost as bad as forgetting to use capital letters altogether. Although of course there are some alphabets that have no capital letters. Hebrew, for example.”

“Sometimes she draws hearts instead of circles. Like maybe she was in love with someone.”

“Does she?” Nimrod said thoughtfully. “That is perhaps another indication that she has been hypnotized.”

“What are you going to tell him? McCreeby.”

“Only that we are all dead except her. Something that will serve to make him feel overconfident. And that he should now tell Zadie precisely where he is so that she can come and find them.”

John grinned and, while Nimrod wrote the message, he tried not to think about the fact that his sister and Groanin and Sicky and Muddy — and quite possibly Zadie herself — were in the hands of the Xuanaci Indians. To keep up his spirits he started to whistle. The very same catchy tune he had heard just a few minutes before.

Nimrod carried on writing but spoke up with disapproval in his voice. “My dear young fellow. Didn’t Sicky tell you? You must never, ever whistle in the rain forest. It is said that if you ever chime in by whistling the exact same tune as
el Tunchi,
then he will appear to you and play with you in a most horrible way.”

John gulped. “Who or what is
el Tunchi
?”

“A spirit that protects the forest,” said Nimrod. “A nasty mischievous spirit. Like a sort of poltergeist, I suppose. Only much, much worse. Or so I’m told. Just be careful, John. All right?” Nimrod looked up. “John?”