Heart of Light (10 page)

He raised his eyebrows and said nothing in return. For a moment, she wondered whether he understood her, or if she'd somehow come to the wrong place altogether. Then Kitwana narrowed his eyes. “Like calls to like,” he said. “Water to water, blood to blood.”

As he spoke, he unfastened the white cuff of his shirt, beneath his suit coat. Then he pulled it up just a little. At the point at his wrist where the vein divided into a delta of life, a small half-moon-shaped scar marred his flawless skin.

Nassira understood.

She lifted her own wrist, displaying the twin of his scar—a scar so small and unremarkable that it would pass unnoticed to the uninitiated.

When close to one another, both scars glowed momentarily with a bright brilliance, like a pinprick of sunlight beneath their skins.

“Lion to lion, and hyena to hyena,” Kitwana said, and threw the door open.

The scars were the magical remainders and marks of their initiations into the Hyena Men, and linked to one another by the collective magical power of the group.

Though Kitwana spoke as good English as Nassira did herself, it seemed to her that she detected in his pronunciation a hint of an accent. A man she'd met early on in the Hyena Men had spoken with a similar tinge in his voice. And that accent sounded Zulu, but Kitwana's features were like no other Zulu Nassira had met. Yet what did she know about the Zulus? They lived many months away, in the western end of Africa. As for his giving her neither name of parents nor of tribe, that, too, would fit in with the Zulus, the proudest—some said the maddest—people in Africa. Not so long ago, they had terrorized the British with their strength, their warlike ways.

They still erupted into sudden violence now and then and remained an empire within an empire, a confederacy within the greater confederacy. There were several of them in the Hyena Men, and looking at this tall, dark man with his expressive dark eyes and his broad shoulders, Nassira wondered if perhaps he wasn't the power behind the Hyena Men. He looked strong enough to carry the organization. Besides, the magical power she felt in him—strong, shapeless and immense—had an unexpected quality that was like an unknown taste on the tongue, a name she couldn't quite recall.

But no matter how powerful he might be, she was Masai and would not be intimidated.

He let her into a small, shabby living room, furnished in nondescript British furniture.

“Forgive my suspicions,” he said, unexpectedly polite. He closed the door behind her and refastened his sleeve. “But we're under attack and we don't know by whom. That force that disturbed our mind communications has disturbed all other mind links with our brethren throughout Africa. It sometimes seems to shut them down altogether. And many of our men have been found dead—stabbed many times through the heart, or consumed in a great magical fire.”

“I tried to contact the Hyena Men from London,” she said, and set her face in the stern disapproval that had been known to send young Masai children running for cover. “And no one answered me. My messages were blocked.”

The young man sighed. “As I said.” He walked up to the fireplace and leaned on the mantel, like a warrior of the Masai might lean against a tree. It was an incongruous sight in this place that might have been the living room of the head servant at the club.

There was a shabby carpet on the floor, and upon it a dining room set, its varnish coat blistered and peeling. Probably bought second- or thirdhand from some European expatriate about to return home. A sofa took up the corner, and tattered red velvet showed around the corners of a colorful shawl draped over it.

The fireplace was swept, and from the lingering smell of char and old grease around it, one could tell it had been used for cooking. On the mantel rested a strange melange of curios, laying on their sides, none of them all that decorative. A powerstick, Martini-Henry brand—polished mahogany—favored by English hunters; the power mace of a Xhosa chieftain, a Zulu assegai.

All of this appeared only dimly in the pervading twilight within the room. The only light came from windows placed high up on the walls, and cut in narrow slits as was normal in Egypt. Magelights and an oil lamp rested upon the scarred table, but Kitwana made no move to turn any of them on. Nor did he invite Nassira to sit. Instead, as she stepped forward, he moved away from the fireplace and walked backwards in front of her, barring her way to the narrow little stairway that presumably led into the bowels of the house. Despite his English suit, his posture was so warriorlike that Nassira could practically see the muscles on his broad chest as he threw back his head and looked down at her. “These are dangerous things to talk of in the street.”

Nassira sighed. She'd joined the Hyena Men at fifteen, while staying at the Maniata—the warrior camp—of the warriors of her generation. For the next three years, she'd served the Hyenna Men by helping recruit members among her peers. Though there were many other girls there, the lovers and companions of the warriors, Nassira had found that most of her friends were the warriors themselves. And not only friends in the sexual way, though she'd enjoyed her trysts and liaisons. But she could also talk with these virile warriors and hold her own in their conversations.

Through these male friends, she'd become intimately acquainted with the male predilection for rules and codes, or secret passwords and hidden gestures. Though she understood that the Hyena Men were a secret society, and that the Europeans would crush them if they could, she'd always wondered if most of the games around it weren't just a reflection of that male love for secrecy and rules.

Right then she had no patience for it. “It is indeed dangerous to broadcast our affiliation,” she said. “But it is more dangerous, and far more stupid, to block transmissions from the member you sent to London to spy on the Englishmen. I have important news to tell you. And I couldn't get it to you in time, because the transmissions were blocked. Not just interfered with by this enemy you speak of. Blocked. At this end.” She crossed her arms on her chest and threw her shoulders back. “No doubt a measure of security instituted by one of you.”

Kitwana had lost his warlike stance and stared at her with a puzzled expression. He put his hand on his forehead, fingers splayed, as though she'd made his head hurt. “You're saying that you were sent to London? By the Hyena Men?” He gave her a suspicious look. “I didn't know we had Masai women among our members.”

Nassira shrugged. If he were the leader of the Hyena Men, this man was very ill informed. “I am the only one I know personally. The Hyena Men emissaries came to our Maniata—our warrior camp—and they talked to us of Africa's cause. I enlisted. The man I helped for years to recruit other members, Adili, came back last year and said I was to go to London and gather information about the great magic that was said to have made the Europeans so much more powerful than us. They didn't know what I might discover, or what I might not, but they told me they had other men and women in London, gathering intelligence. And then I came across a great piece of information. I tried to talk to the men here, through the mind link that I'd been given, but found the transmission blocked.”

“It shouldn't have been blocked,” Kitwana said. “Perhaps you were incompetent in your mind-send.”

Nassira withered the crazy man with a look, then turned to leave.

“No, wait,” he said, as her hand touched the doorknob. “If you're going to leave, tell me first, what did you find?”

Nassira turned. “Why should I tell you anything, you who have no understanding of anything and no respect for anything I've done? In my land, the men hunt the lion and the women do not tell them how to do it. The women look after the children and the goats and men do not instruct them.”

Strangely, the young man appeared to be amused by this. His lips curved upward, almost imperceptibly, and he muttered something she didn't understand, in a language she didn't know. Then he looked serious. “This is true,” he said. “And I was arrogant.” He rubbed his forehead again, with his square-tipped fingers. “But there are other things happening, people dying . . .” He shook his head. “Please, Nassira, daughter of Nedera, tell me what you've discovered. It will greatly help our cause and make you a heroine of all dark-skinned people.”

Nassira wasn't sure she believed his sudden repentance, but she also didn't know what else to do but report to him. He was the only one of the Hyena Men she'd been able to trace in the wilds of this Cairo that, though African, remained as alien to her as London. And though she longed to return to her homeland, to the craters and lakes, the volcanic mountains of her childhood—though she longed to see again her mother and her two stepmothers and revel in the homey feel of her father's kraal—Nassira had left that well-beloved home for a reason. The reason was to help Africa. To rid Africa of the white, bloodless people who would pillage it. How could she return home without having accomplished her aim?

So, standing tall and proud, she turned to Kitwana. “You know the stories we heard, of how there is a sacred temple in the heart of Africa to which all of mankind's magic is bound, and with it all the worlds without end?”

Kitwana stiffened, his shoulders becoming more square, his eyes narrowing. “It is a legend,” he said. “Nothing more.”

Nassira sighed. This man quite obviously suffered from the illusion that he knew everything and could not be proven wrong. “No. No, it is not a legend. We thought it was, but we were wrong, and by ignoring the truth of this, we have condemned our continent to slavery.”

She half expected him to protest. But, surprisingly, he didn't. Instead, his eyes went very wide and he stared at her expectantly.

“There is a temple in a well-defended village. In this temple, there were once two jewels,” she continued. “Into these jewels, which were set as the eyes of a statue meant to represent the mother of all mankind, wise ancient ones poured spells that bind the magic of humanity to this world. That stopped the splintering of primeval worlds, and made our world the center of the possible universe.”

Kitwana nodded. She could tell from his bored, complacent expression that he had heard this many times.

“After that comes what I know that is new,” she said. “You know how the whites are different from us. Their magic is not small magic, dispersed over every family and every man; instead, only gathered where, by chance or design, a father with great magic married a woman who was also similarly endowed.”

Kitwana waved his hand, a look of impatience in his eyes. “This is known. Only a few families of whites have the magic, but those have it powerful enough that they can charm magic sticks and make carpets fly—a feat even our greatest magicians couldn't manage.”

She smiled. He really did think he knew everything. “Exactly,” she said. “But that magic is not natural to the race. They were like us, too, not so long ago. Forty generations back, a king of the Water People bid one of his servants steal the eyes of the goddess. With these he meant to bind to himself and his descendants all the magical power in the world, so they alone would rule forever.”

“He failed,” Kitwana said, then looked annoyed, as though he'd not meant to speak.

Nassira smiled. “Partly. His envoy, armed with the compass stone that was supposed to guide him to the ancestral temple and the ancestral jewels, got caught at his theft, or failed in some other way. His account to his king said that he had stolen both jewels, but the guardians of the jewels—some ancient village—caught up with him and after fierce battle took one of the jewels back. Perhaps this is so. Or perhaps he only got the one.”

Kitwana nodded. Nassira enjoyed making the self-centered man abide in silence and listen to her. She had known many like him—warriors and elders of her tribe who would not learn anything new. They were usually the ones who objected to the fact that her father had let his only daughter use his cattle stick and look after his cows. Men's work. They had told him he let Nassira run wild too much and speak her mind too loudly, that her freedom and confidence was more than most boys were granted and that he should take a stick to her back and make her humble.

“But that ruby,” Nassira continued, “called Soul of Fire, was enough for the king to bind to himself and those related to him all the magical power in Europe. So he started the time of great monarchies in Europe. But we all know kings have many wives and mistresses, and each of those kings sired many bastards. The descendants of those bastards, without title or fortune, are now numerous and powerful enough that two or three of them together can do things such as run a magic carpet on an overseas trip or make huge trains move under magical power alone.”

“Or run the mills that flood our continent with cheap cloth,” Kitwana said, and narrowed his eyes with impatience.

She smiled a tight, superior smile. “And so there are revolutions against the royal houses, and now the queen of Britain, the empress of white men, has decided it is time to take the magical power from all those petty users and concentrate it again on a royal blood line. Her own.”

Now Kitwana's eyes widened.

“In the club where I worked as a maid,” Nassira said, “I used my magic to listen to two men speak of this in one of the private rooms. One of them was Widefield, the queen's friend, the other a white man known as Nigel Oldhall, of no great knowledge, no particular distinction, and without particularly great magic for one of his station in life. They said that years ago the queen had sent Oldhall's brother to Africa to find the other ruby, Heart of Light. And that because he'd failed, she had decided to send this young man and his wife on the same mission. He's been given the compass stone and granted transport to Africa.”

“You are sure of this?”

“He has disembarked in Cairo today,” she said. “I tried to warn you mentally, and my transmission was blocked. So I left my post and took the same flying carpet to Cairo. As soon as we got here, the man vanished. But I know where his wife is staying, and I'm sure he'll come back to her. What are we going to do about this, Kitwana?”