Eye of the Forest (5 page)

Mr. Vodyannoy gasped.

“Oh, my goodness,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “Nimrod, do you remember that photograph in the newspapers a few days
ago? From the South American jungle. The Eye of the Forest?”

“I’ve hardly thought about anything else since I saw it,” confessed Nimrod. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“The prophecy,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “Of course. What else could it be?”

“What prophecy?” asked John.

“Do you suppose we could try to summon Manco Capac again?” Nimrod asked Mr. Vodyannoy. “With the talking board?”

“Not now he has his own mummy back,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “He’ll use that for any future manifestations rather than a talking board.”

“Then we’ve missed it,” Nimrod said. “We’ve missed our best chance to avert a disaster. We missed it.”

“Strange, don’t you think?” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “That it should have been the boy who summoned him. Given that he’s a twin. I suppose it means that John and Philippa are the twins, after all. The ones who were foretold.”

“I hardly want to think about it,” said Nimrod. “But I was afraid of that, of course. Always have been, really. I suppose I’d better inform Faustina.”

“Would someone mind telling me what this is all about?” John said as loudly as he could without scaring another policeman.

“I think it would be better if your sister was present when I explained how things are,” said Nimrod. “Since this affects her just as much as it affects you. But Manco Capac wasn’t
just the first Incan king, he was also a djinn. A very great djinn.”

“And the prophecy?” asked John.

“The prophecy?” Nimrod sighed a great sigh. “The prophecy is called the
Pachacuti,”
he said quietly. “Something feared by all the tribes of djinn, good and evil. It’s an Incan word. It means the ‘great earth shaking.’ It’s a prophecy about the end of the world.”

B
etween Djinnverso games at Nightshakes, Philippa went to her room and wrote in her diary, which was a favorite habit since the time she had spent at Iravotum, the official residence of the Blue Djinn of Babylon. One of her opponents at Nightshakes was Zadie Eloko. This is what Philippa wrote about Zadie Eloko:

Hearing a car outside the house, Philippa put aside her diary and got up from the writing desk. Looking outside her bedroom window she saw an enormous Rolls-Royce pulling up at the front door. Out of the driver’s side of the car stepped a little man she recognized. He was wearing a neat dark suit, a bow tie, and a pair of yellow driving gloves. It was Jonah Damascus, the Blue Djinn’s chauffeur, bodyguard, and handyman from her unofficial residence in Berlin.
Jonah went around to the rear passenger door, opened it, and out stepped Faustina herself.

“What’s she doing here?” Philippa murmured, and went downstairs to find out.

Faustina had become more glamorous since becoming the Blue Djinn. The necklace and earrings she wore were made of sapphires as big as bottle caps. And her clothes were all djinn-made copies of expensive Italian designers, only better. She shrugged a
Smilodon
fur coat into Bo’s hands, placed a folded newspaper on the sideboard, and greeted Philippa coolly. “Is your uncle about?” she asked. “Or Mr. Vodyannoy?”

“They went to the Peabody Museum,” said Philippa. “With John. But I don’t think they’ll be very long.”

Zadie showed up in the entrance hall with some of the other guests, among them Patricia Nixie from Germany and Yuki Onna from Japan, both of whom bowed on seeing the great Blue Djinn of Babylon. But after all they had been through together, Philippa couldn’t bring herself to bow to Faustina.

“Did you come for the tournament?” asked Philippa.

“No, of course not,” said Faustina. “I’ve got much more important things to do these days than watch or play Djinnverso.”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Like coming here on official djinn business.”

“Is there any news of your brother, Dybbuk?” asked Zadie.

“No,” said Faustina. “He was last heard of in England. Since then he’s disappeared completely.”

“That seems to be an occupational hazard in your family,” said Philippa. When Faustina scowled at her, she realized she might have given some offense and added quickly, “What I mean is, I expect he’ll turn up safe and sound, just like you did, after you disappeared for a while.”

Faustina nodded, acknowledging the debt she knew she owed John, Philippa, Nimrod, and Mr. Groanin. But for them, she might still have been little better than a corpse in an Italian crypt.

Bo showed Faustina into the library and fetched her some tea. But she didn’t have long to wait before Nimrod, John, and Mr. Vodyannoy returned from the Peabody Museum.

“Faustina,” said Nimrod. “Light my lamp, how very fortunate that you’re here. We were just going to call you with some extremely grave news.”

“If it’s about the
Pachacuti
Prophecy,” said Faustina, “then I may have anticipated you, Nimrod. Mr. Vodyannoy, is there somewhere private the three of us can talk?”

“Of course,” said Mr. Vodyannoy, and led Faustina and Nimrod out of the huge library and into his office, closing the door behind him.

“She’s changed,” observed Philippa.

John bit his lip and nodded. There was a time when he had been extremely keen on Faustina. “She didn’t even say hello,” he murmured.

“So, what’s it all about?” Philippa asked her brother. “Nimrod looks worried.”

“I’m not entirely sure,” admitted John. “But it’s almost certainly a matter of life and death. Given what Nimrod was saying, I think it might even be more important than that.”

“Is this another adventure, do you think?” Philippa asked.

“It’s beginning to look that way,” admitted John.

Philippa glanced at Zadie, whose eyes had widened at the very mention of the word “adventure.”
No time like the present,
she thought. Especially since John already seemed to be in a mood about Faustina.

“John, you remember Zadie, don’t you?” John looked at Zadie and nodded glumly.

“Okay, don’t get mad,” said Philippa, “only, I kind of promised Zadie that the next time we had an adventure, we’d take her along.”

“You did
what?”
John looked horrified.

“I invited her along on our next adventure.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because she asked me.”

John looked at Zadie accusingly. “What’s the matter?” he said. “As if being a djinn is not a big enough adventure already. Why don’t you just go and grant some poor mundane three wishes? That usually provides enough excitement for most of us.”

Philippa frowned. “John. Don’t be so rude.”

Zadie removed the toothbrush from her mouth and smiled a big smile that made John feel like a heel. “That’s okay,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” John told Zadie. He pointed at Mr. Vodyannoy’s office door. “I just don’t like being discussed by the three of them, that’s all.” And he proceeded to tell Philippa and Zadie everything that had happened in the hall of shadows, as well as all that he had heard in the Peabody Museum. “Mr. Vodyannoy mentioned a picture they’d both seen in a newspaper a few days ago that’s got them both worried about some kind of prophecy. A prophecy that involves us, Philippa. I’m certain of it.”

“This is the newspaper that Faustina arrived with,” Zadie said helpfully. “And it appears to be several days old. I wonder if it could be this newspaper.”

John and Philippa stood over Zadie’s shoulders as she turned the pages.

“There,” said John, pointing to a picture. “That’s the one.”

The three young djinn took a minute to look at the black-and-white picture. Several bearded explorers were grouped around a strange stone doorway in the South American jungle. The doorway was shaped like an eye and overgrown with vines and creepers. But the strangest-looking thing about the doorway, which was complete with a heavy wooden door, was that it seemed to lead absolutely nowhere except to more thick jungle.

Zadie read the picture caption. “‘The Eye of the Forest,’” she said. “‘The door was discovered in Peru, in the remotest depths of the upper Amazonian rain forest by a team of English explorers and archaeologists. There are no other buildings about, not even the foundations of buildings now ruined. There is just this unusual eye-shaped door that the local Indians call the ‘Eye of the Forest.’ Believed to be of Incan construction, the door possibly marks a site that was considered holy, although no one knows why.’”

Zadie let John take the newspaper so that he might look at the picture more closely. “Weird, huh?” she said.

“What could that have to do with us?” Philippa asked John.

“I have no idea,” said John as the door to Mr. Vodyannoy’s office opened again. “But I have a feeling we’re about to find out.”

Mr. Vodyannoy stroked his beard, which was redder than a foxtail, the result of applying a henna-based dye to a beard that was, in reality, white. “Horror show,” said Mr. Vodyannoy.

At least this is what John, Philippa, and Zadie thought he said. In fact, as he often did, Mr. Vodyannoy was using a Russian word to begin an English sentence, a word that only sounds like “horror show.”

“There were eight Egyptian djinn,” he said. “Four brothers and four sisters who decided to leave ancient Egypt and find another country in which to live. They traveled by a
system of underground caves that were known only to the djinn and that once connected a djinn-made world with the human one. Eventually, their journey led them to what we now call Peru. The youngest but strongest of these eight djinn was called Manco, and secretly he had decided to make himself a great king and a god among the ancient Incas. Of course, he knew his brothers would never agree to that and so one day, when they least expected it, he turned them and his oldest sister into solid-gold statues. Then Manco married his other sisters and, claiming to be descended from the sun god, he set himself up as lord of the valley. Using djinn power, he easily conquered other tribes and became known as Manco Capac, for
Capac
means ‘warlord.’

“Of course, as in ancient Egypt, sun worship was common among the djinn at that time. But it was not generally understood by the djinn back then how heat gives us power. Nor was it understood how at higher altitudes the cooler temperatures there could cause a djinn to lose his power. This was what happened to Manco. And since he had come to use his power almost exclusively for the creation of gold to enrich himself and his kingdom, his sudden inability to do this anymore was how Manco believed that his djinn power had deserted him.

“Now Manco thought that his power had gone not because Cuzco, his capital city, was located at a height of some 11,500 feet and too cold for djinn power, but because the sun god — who the Inca called Inti — was angry with him. So Manco, seeking spiritual advice, summoned several Incan priests to
the holy city of Paititi, whose location was a closely guarded secret, although it is said that their route to the holy city lay through a magical door known as the Eye of the Forest, hidden somewhere in the jungle, and which Manco had especially constructed for this purpose. When at last the priests arrived in Paititi, Manco asked these priests to help him devise a special ritual to honor the sun god, Inti, which would restore Manco’s power.”

“And did it?” asked John. “Did the ritual bring Manco’s power back?”

“All of this happened a very long time ago,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “We cannot be sure of very much with so little archaeological evidence. So much of that was destroyed afterward by the Spaniards. But it is said that the ritual
was
successful, that Manco’s djinn powers were indeed restored, and that the number of gold objects in the kingdom was increased tenfold, so that the Incas grew rich again. Even so, a short while later Manco became sick and was near to death. But before he died, he summoned his priests to Paititi once again. There he promised them that if ever they should have need of him, he would return one day to destroy the enemies of the Incas in a great destruction called the
Pachacuti.
All their priestly descendants would have to do would be to lead the enemies of the Incas through the Eye of the Forest, and Manco Capac’s spirit would do the rest.

“Hundreds of years passed, and for thousands of square miles, the Incas ruled without opposition. So powerful were they that no one could even conceive of them having any
enemies at all, and their only enemies were themselves. The location of the Eye of the Forest was almost forgotten. And Manco’s promise was known to only one or two select priests who kept the story secret for fear that one Incan ruler might try to use the power of the Eye against another.

“But then one day in 1532, all that changed forever. The Spanish conquistadors, commanded by Francisco Pizarro, arrived in Cuzco and proceeded to brutally rob the Incas of everything they had, after which they enslaved or murdered them. Their hunger for gold seemed insatiable. For as much as the Incas gave them, the Spaniards still wanted more. The Incas fled the Spaniards, retreating into the high Andes. But the Spaniards pursued them relentlessly, murdering many and always hungry for yet more gold. Then, a priest named Ti Cosi, remembering Manco Capac’s words, sought to find the Eye again in order to lure the Spaniards into the jungle and through the Eye of the Forest so that they might be destroyed in the
Pachacuti,
as Manco had promised.

“Well, of course, it never happened. The Spaniards were not destroyed and their descendants govern Peru to this day. Because before he could lead the Spaniards to the door, Ti Cosi was captured. Worse still, he caught smallpox, which was one of many diseases the Spaniards had brought with them, and to which none of the Incas had any resistance. On his deathbed, hoping still to draw the Spaniards into the trap Manco Capac had created for the mortal enemies of the Inca, Ti Cosi told a Spanish priest named Father Diego that El Dorado, the city of gold, which the Spaniards were convinced
existed hidden in the jungle, was really Paititi, and how it could only be reached through the Eye of the Forest. Ti Cosi also told Father Diego that in Paititi lay the secret of turning base metals into gold and that this was why the Incas had so much gold in the first place. That the secret of making gold was contained in a ritual called the
kutumunkichu,
which some believe was the name of the very ritual carried out earlier by Manco himself. The same ritual by which he had restored his own djinn power. And what seems more than likely is that if Ti Cosi meant the Spaniards to have the secret of turning base metal into gold, then he also believed that it would bring about their total destruction. Although to this day no one really knows how. Anyway, it is said that Ti Cosi drew a map for Father Diego. But that the map was lost. And neither Paititi, nor the chronicle describing the
kutumunkichu
ritual dictated to the Spanish priest, has ever been found.”