Heart of Light (44 page)

And none too soon. The Hyena Men would be near at hand.

Nassira brought her herding stick down with a flourish and struck the earth in front of her. As her stick hit the ground, a flare of light sparked, with a sound like tearing fabric.

The light grew blinding. For a moment the whole forest was bathed in white, bright light that shone so absolute, so brilliant that it lit all the trees around.

Nassira felt that beyond seeing, she became the trunks and the low-growing brush, and the creatures scurrying for cover from the magical illumination.

Nigel screamed, and Nassira looked over her shoulder at him. He looked horrified, his mouth wide open, his expression slack with incomprehension.

She looked forward again. And there, in the light— She felt her knees buckle and her throat let out an inarticulate, mindless scream, like Oldhall's. She fell forward, her knees and hands on the ground, her palms pressed hard against the dirt. Tears streamed from her eyes, but she wasn't crying. Then there were hands on her, warm hands. Strong hands. Hands she knew all too well. They had her by the shoulders and were lifting her up.

She allowed him to lift her, to support her body. She felt his familiar strength as he held her, his arms surrounding her.

“Kume,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, his voice warm against her ear. “But no. It's not that easy.”

Nassira looked forward at where the Moran leader still stood, draped in his lion skin, his band around him. Had Kume been of that band? Were they ghosts?

She looked at her old lover. He didn't feel like a ghost. He felt warm, alive. And his voice was just as she remembered.

But he'd just said he wasn't Kume, had he not?

“Kume?” she said again, and her voice came out trembling, washed in her own grief and the silence she'd kept within her deepest heart since hearing of Kume's death. “You are dead.”

“Yes,” he said. “And no.”

“What do you wish to be forgiven for, daughter of Nedera?” the leader of the Moran asked again, his voice not really in her ears, but in her mind.

They hadn't disappeared. All of Nassira's illusion-dispelling power had not made these illusions disappear. And they wouldn't let her pass until she told them the truth.

Nassira trembled. Her legs felt too weak to hold her up. She must confess now. Confess her misdeeds before Nigel Oldhall, before the Water Man, who would then know that she was one of the Hyena Men. Who would never trust her again. Who would not allow her to save him. Who would die alone in this forest, without her.

Yet she had to do it.

Still, if she was going to do it, she would do it standing proud.

Though her legs still felt weak, though her heart beat within her rib cage, she pushed Kume's specter away. She pushed away the comfort of his touch, the warmth of his body. She held her herding stick tight and leaned on it as a herder would as evening fell and his body grew weary.

She told them of her brother and how, though she'd been jealous, she had not wanted his death. “I could have used a healing charm and kept him alive through the night. I could have saved him.”

“And kept him alive all his life after that?” the Moran leader asked. “How would you do that, Nassira?”

“And then my father started paying attention to me again,” Nassira said. “Oh, I mourned my brother, but his death brought me my father and mothers' love again. And I rejoiced in that.” The sob almost broke through, but she took a deep breath and kept it at bay.

“What child wouldn't rejoice in having her parents love her again? Nassira, you've done nothing wrong. You couldn't be expected to watch through the night and keep your brother alive. You wouldn't have been able to keep him alive through every night of his life.”

“And then there was him.” Nassira looked toward where Kume's ghost stood, a few steps away, looking solid and substantial and very much as Kume had looked in life, with his soft, warm gaze, his handsome features, his broad shoulders. “Kume was a proud warrior of the Masai, strong and handsome, quick with a poem, ready with conversation. I fell in love with him, helplessly.” She looked away from the image of Kume and toward the leader of the Moran. “But I soon realized that he lived as if with a curse.”

Again the sob tried to break through and she swallowed it back. She told them of Kume, of his death.

“Again, we find no guilt in you.” The Moran leader spoke, but the voice was Kume's. The apparition that looked like Kume came quite close to her. His hand rested on Nassira's shoulder, and he spoke in the well-beloved voice. “Kume was not yours to protect. You could never—even had you married him—spend every minute of every day with him. If he was fated to die young, he would have died, no matter what you did.

“But this greater duty, Nassira,” the Moran leader continued. “What was it, and where did it take you?”

“I was bespoken,” Nassira said, “by an organization that said it would liberate Africa. It said if it could get enough worthy people to serve it, it would make the Africans the equal of the Europeans. And free us from the yoke of the Water People.”

And as the words came out of her mouth, Nassira saw them for the first time. She saw clearly what they meant. To make Africans the equal of the Europeans. To give them a king, who claimed for himself the power of all Africans, leaving the common man stripped of magic, and only a few in power.

Oh, what an idiot she'd been.

“But now I understand that the organization serves only itself,” Nassira said. “And that if it does indeed expel the Water Men, it will only be to replace them with the power of one man within the organization, who will make himself our king and our owner.”

“And you don't think this is good?” the Moran leader asked. Was that a trace of irony in his tone?

Nassira shook her head, unable to speak.

“You don't think that it would be better to have one power, one man who controls all, and prevents the endless fratricide disputes of the various tribes?” the Moran asked sweetly. “One man who can perform magic such that even the Europeans must cower from it? One man who makes them fear the African races and know us, indeed, for their superiors?”

What did he mean? Was he going to tell her the Hyena Men were right?

Well, Nassira didn't care what he was going to say or what he thought. He might be a spirit. He might be resistant to her magic. He might be able to conjure the form and shape, the feel and sound of her dead lover with no effort at all. But there was something very wrong with the Hyena Men, with their secret structure, their orders that came from nowhere anyone could see. There was something evil about an organization that could tell Kitwana to kill a dragon and, at the same time, seek to eliminate the Oldhalls. Nassira was sure Kitwana had been ordered to kill the dragon, because he would never do it by himself otherwise. He was by nature not very violent.

Nassira realized with blinding clarity what the plan was. Whoever ruled the organization had meant for the dragon to kill them. And if Kitwana died and Nassira with him, and all the carriers or most of them were killed or dispersed, and Emily and Nigel Oldhall found dead near or in the encampment, then anyone coming to look for them or their remains would blame Peter Farewell for their deaths, and the Hyena Men would be free. Free to look for the ruby. Free to claim it. Free to make Africa into another Europe.

“Well, Nassira, daughter of Nedera?” the Moran leader asked.

Nassira looked at him, shook her head. “We do not need a king,” she said. “We do not need the Hyena Men and their misguided quest. I don't know what the answer is, but I know they do not have it. Nor do the Europeans. If there is a future for humanity, it is not in a world where one can make decisions for all and make all abide by his rules.” She lifted her head defiantly, knowing she would probably be burned to a crisp in the next minute. “When one man has that kind of power, he tends to think others don't matter, and murder and destruction follow. The color of the man's skin makes no difference at all to that. All men's hearts are the same color.”

The Moran leader raised his head, then threw it back.

Nassira thought he was about to emit a battle cry, to call down his curse on this blasphemer who'd already told him she did not believe in Engai and now compounded it by saying she didn't believe in Africa. But instead, he let forth a gale of laughter and amusement.

“And I, Nassira,” the Moran said. “I believe as you do.” He stopped laughing and looked at Nassira with a smile. “But there, you are right. There we find guilt in you. You should have seen through the promises of the Hyena Men. You should have known it wasn't possible. Now you must set right what you did wrong. You must find the ruby of power—Heart of Light—and set it all right.”

All of a sudden, things became too confused to follow. She heard a sound—or maybe it wasn't a sound, but a feeling, a scratching on the skin, a rending in the soul, a sensation like she was being turned inside out and upside down.

The Moran, even Kume by her side, seemed to shrink, to be called to a composite giant being before her, a shape—a thing—that grew till it was a young Moran, covered in ocher, draped in a lion skin, but ten times as large as Nassira and Nigel, standing in front of them, with legs as tall as the treetops, arms as thick as tree trunks.

“You may pass through,” it said. “Your enemies shall not.”

And like that, Nassira and Nigel found themselves on rocky ground. The forest had vanished and Nassira realized they had come through it and were now on the other side.

The sky rumbled overhead, and for a moment she thought that it was the scream of Engai, his rage pouring out on her, the disbeliever. Instead, lightning zigzagged across the sky. And, at first gently, then with increased violence, drops of water came crashing down.

“Rain,” Nigel said.

And Nassira, going weak at the knees again, felt herself starting to kneel and held herself upright by the strength of her herding stick. “Rain makes the pastures grow and fattens the cows,” she said, her voice small and even. “It is a blessing of Engai.”

IN THE DARK

Kitwana spoke in an urgent, scared voice. “I didn't
mean to kill him. Honestly, I didn't.” He sounded like a little boy, justifying himself to his irate parent. “I just wanted to know more about him, if he was a danger to us.”

“And if I were, you were going to kill me,” Peter Farewell said, his voice barely more than a whisper. He spoke without resentment, but a trace of his ironic amusement lingered in his words.

“Well . . .” Kitawana said.

Without thinking, Emily felt Peter's forehead with the back of her hand. It was like touching hot coals. Were dragons always hotter than normal humans? Or was Peter Farewell dying of fever?

“No one is going to kill anyone else,” she said. She spoke out of annoyance, not sure of what she said, just sure that she didn't want these two misguided males arguing now, when one of them might already be dying, and when all of them were lost in Africa, with enemies hot in their pursuit. “Mr. Farewell, is your temperature different?”

“Different?” Peter asked. He turned his cloudy eyes to her. “Different from what?”

Emily bit her lip. Must he be stupid, as well as feverish? “Different from normal humans?”

“I am a normal human,” he said, indignation raising his voice almost to customary levels. “I am just like you or . . . him.” He pointed a trembling finger at Kitwana. “When I'm not . . . When I'm not . . .”

“Right,” Emily said. She turned to Kitwana. “We can't leave now. We can go nowhere tonight, while he's consumed with fever.”

“I'll carry him,” Kitwana said.

And Emily wondered what went into making the human male that they could have so little perception of reality. Looking at both men, she could tell they were of about equivalent bulk, the same height and approximately the same weight. Did Kitwana truly think he could carry someone his own weight through the jungle in the dark of night? Fast enough and long enough to evade pursuers on flying rugs?

She just stared at him. “Right,” she said. “And you'll . . . fly? You'll carry him so far and so fast that we'll avoid those people on rugs?”