Heart of Light (43 page)

“So I traveled the world, never staying around long enough that the bingeing of the dragon upon livestock and whatever else couldn't be ignored. In Italy I almost managed to control the dragon. Almost. But then I was very low, living on the little my father could spare, often sleeping in the open fields, destitute, performing magic tricks for the amusement of low hostelry owners who would, in exchange, allow me a night's sleep or an hour by the fire in the chilly Tuscan winters.

“Living as I did, a member of the nobility at loose ends and often away from the company of all men, I met some people . . . To tell the truth, I fell in with some well-educated Italians, some Frenchmen, some others belonging to the fine flower of intellectual life in Europe. And from them I heard a theory that gave me purpose and reason to live.

“They made me see how unfair it was that Charlemagne, the bastard of a king and a peasant, born with little enough hereditary magic of his own, should steal everyone's magic and use it for himself. They made me see how his imposing upon the people of Europe in that way only made them poorer yet. They made me see that it had to stop, that the noblemen must be killed, that all with great power must be killed, so that it could return to the people who originated it.”

“But noblemen were your people. Those with power were doubtlessly your friends,” Kitwana said, no longer able to contain himself. “How could you so ruthlessly mean to kill them?”

Peter shrugged. “The individual is nothing. It is justice for the world that counts. As my life could be ruined for the sake of some dragon ancestor I never heard of, why shouldn't others give their lives up for the sake of justice in the world? At least their deaths will mean that the Earth will be a better place.”

“And you killed Hyena Men, too,” Kitwana said. Grief and rage rose in him and he realized, in shock, that part of his anger came from Peter Farewell's denying Kitwana's father's lifelong belief that the individual was everything.

Every sense, trained from childhood, told Kitwana that anyone who believed the individual counted for nothing must die. But then, Peter Farewell was an individual also. A misguided one who only wished to rid himself of the were-beast's control, no matter how many lies he told himself about his intentions. And having heard how the dragon's emergence had destroyed Farewell's prospects and best hopes, Kitwana understood him. And understanding, how could he kill this tormented man?

Peter shrugged. “Hyena Men, like the English, mean to do nothing but take the ruby and bind the power to a minority again. They, too, needed to die, lest the atrocities of the oppressors perpetuate themselves.”

“The Hyena Men do not mean—” Kitwana started, but stopped, as his thought interrupted his speech. What if they did? A cold finger of dread drew down his spine as he remembered how he'd suspected Shenta back in Cairo. Peter shrugged. He looked too unnaturally hot, as if his skin were only a shell and inside him a fire burned wild, consuming him.

“We—my fellow anarchists and I—captured that old faker Widefield,” Peter said. “He was on our list to eliminate. But while we set about it, he offered us the story of the ruby and Nigel's search as a means to escape what he had coming to him. I knew Nigel's name and I offered to meet him in Africa, to gain his confidence—”

“Would you have killed Nigel Oldhall, too?” Kitwana asked. He didn't know if it would change things, but he had to know. If Farewell said he would have killed his best friend without remorse, Kitwana would have to destroy Farewell now. A beast, a raging lion, had to be destroyed, no matter if it had only acted according to its instincts.

Peter looked at him, puzzled. “I didn't want to kill Nigel,” he said. “I loved Nigel like a brother when we were children. But the cause I serve is greater than myself. Greater than any man, or any thing. It is the happiness of the whole of humanity.”

“But who are you to say in which manner humanity is to be happy?” Kitwana said, his voice slow and almost a whisper, as if he heard his father's words through his lips. “And what percentage of humanity would be happy? Because I can tell you that you'll never make the whole of humanity happy. So how many would be enough for you? A third? Half? Depending on how you see it, that many are happy now. It all hinges on your definition of happiness. What
is
your definition of happiness?”

Yet Kitwana himself had joined the Hyena Men to save all of Africa, and perhaps to prove his father wrong. To prove that it wasn't just individuals who could be saved.

At that moment they felt magic overhead and heard something zooming past. Looking up, Kitwana saw many little flying rugs. The British army.

He leapt forward and, grabbing Peter, pulled him to standing, pressing the knife against his throat. “You called them,” he said. “You used your mind to call the Englishmen down on us. You're going to sell me to save your worthless hide.”

Farewell struggled for speech.

Emily bounded from behind the big boulder and grabbed Kitwana's arm. “Stop, Mr. Kitwana. Stop.”

He realized in the same instant that Farewell's expression was of sheer bewilderment and his lips shaped “The army?” soundlessly.

Looking up and over his shoulder, Kitwana saw the rugs veer overhead. The night was dark, but not impenetrable, and Kitwana saw well enough to distinguish, on the rug nearest them, a shape and figure that made him think of Shenta.

Farewell's teeth chattered with the shivers of a great fever. “The Hyena Men,” he said. “By God, the Hyena Men.”

“Are you sure?” Kitwana asked, turning to him and pulling the knife away from his throat.

Farewell didn't seem to notice that the knife had been withdrawn. His state was such that Kitwana was not absolutely sure that he had registered its presence in the first place. But he looked at Kitwana and his gaze focused. “I'm quite sure,” he said. “I can smell their power.”

“We must leave,” Emily said. “Now. And hope we cross with Nigel on the road.”

Kitwana looked at her. “You heard everything,” he said.

She pressed her lips together in disapproval. “You tried to trick me,” she said. “You would have killed him. How could I sleep when I can't trust either of you?”

MORAN IN THE FOREST

“What do you seek in the forest?”

Nassira started. She was sure the leader of the Moran band, the one in the middle of the group, had spoken. The voice and question still echoed in her mind. But when she thought about it, she couldn't remember seeing his lips moving.

“We just want to get through,” Nigel spoke from behind her. “We just want to be safe.”

And this, too, was a wonder, because Nassira was sure the question she'd heard—if indeed she'd heard it—had been spoken in Maa. But Nigel, who did not speak Nassira's language, was answering it in English.

The Moran leader looked toward Nigel for just a moment, as though evaluating him. “There is no safety,” he spoke. Or rather, his words appeared in Nassira's mind as a recollection of having heard them, but there was no sound. The still air was unnaturally quiet. “There is never safety, Water Man. While you're living, you must always die. Not all your knowledge, not all your reading, not even the safe walls of your ancestral home will ever prevent the enemy who comes in the night.”

Nigel made a strangled sound and the Moran turned to Nassira. His eyes were dark and immense, filled with a knowledge that Nassira felt went beyond anything a mere human could accumulate in the short span of a lifetime. “What do you seek, daughter of Nedera?”

Nassira's mind worked. The truth was that like Nigel, she'd plunged into the forest for one reason only—she was being chased. She was being pursued, attacked by the organization to which she'd given her allegiance, the organization that had caused her to go away and allow Kume to die. All she wanted was to get away from them and find out what they were doing and why. But instead her lips were forming an alien word, one she'd heard in London in the church of her employers. “Absolution,” she said.

And on saying it, she found that was truly what she wanted. She wanted absolution—forgiveness for all her past sins, assurance that she truly had nothing to do with her brother's death, that she wasn't responsible for Kume's.

Her word echoed in the dark forest, and for a moment nothing happened. The Moran did not move. And Nassira thought that surely there was nothing here—that she was imagining it all. The Moran were just an illusion, spun from her brain, meaning nothing. Or else they were a psychic trap created by the Hyena Men and she and Nigel were already captured, dreaming away their lives while enemies stripped them of their minds and willpower.

Then the Moran smiled, a smile of infinite sweetness and sad irony. “Of what are you guilty, Nassira?” he asked.

And his voice, remembered in her mind, was Kume's, through the hot summer nights of their innocent love.

Nassira looked back. She wondered how much of this Nigel could hear, how much he could even understand. He looked paler even than normal, a ghostly apparition in the middle of the forest, a man transmuted to ice. But his eyes were intent on her, as if he, too, needed to know, needed to be apprised of her transgressions, her evil deeds.

She shook her head, deciding this was too strange and too dangerous. Why should she confess her transgressions to this creature when she wasn't even sure what it might be? She struck her father's herding stick into the Earth and spoke loudly, as much to scare away her fear as to answer the thing. “I just want to pass through, and I want my enemies detained.”

The Moran shrugged. “You came into the sacred forest. You wandered into the glades of power. You will pass, yes, but not before you find the answers you seek.”

Nassira felt a dull anger. She'd never been very religious. She was a woman who could understand simple magic and deal in it without fear. Magic lit your fire, with which you could cook your food. Magic healed a sick baby. Magic kept the cows safe at pasture. But magic was clean and concrete—a few gestures, a few ritual words that your ancestors had found influenced the world.

Religion—that was something else.

Having been in London and seen the mighty buildings of the Water Men, having seen the cows in the English countryside, Nassira wasn't sure she could believe the simple dictum that Engai had given all cows to the Masai and the beasts of the field to everyone else. If indeed Engai had done that, he was a foolish God, for he'd allowed the Masai property to wander across the ocean and into the possession of a pale people stranger than any African tribe.

And the whole legend about how death had come amid men by accident, and the legends of sacred mountains and sacred forests, and men who lived in isolation and spoke to God, the whole idea of lost, ghostly Moran living in these places, ready to harangue the unwary. All of it seemed almost silly to Nassira. Why would God play childish games of hide-and-seek with his own creatures? If he existed, why didn't he show himself and speak plain?

So she narrowed her eyes at the Moran in front of her, those solid-seeming young warriors.

“You don't exist,” she said. And stepped forward, hurrying toward the dim forest past the Masai apparition. Out of habit, she reached back and grabbed for Nigel's wrist and pulled him forward with her, though she seemed to be dragging him against his will.

“Come, Mr. Oldhall,” she told Nigel. “These are nothing. Just illusions. Apparitions.”

But as she stepped forward, the Massai did, too. They grabbed at her hands, at her body, and pulled her back to where she had been.

Yet they hadn't moved. She hadn't seen them move. But she'd felt their hands on her, and now she was three steps back, and they still stood in front of her, barring her way.

She struck her herding stick into the ground again, and then, lifting it high above her head as a warning, as a defense, she said, “I do not
believe
in you. I do not believe in sacred forests where one sees one's own soul. I do not believe in Engai, nor that all cows belong to the Masai.”

The scary words sliced through the night like a flash of lightning. Without even realizing what she was doing, Nassira had thrown her whole magic into the words. This should dispel the apparition. Whether it came from her own head, or from the Hyena Men's spells, or from the snares of her enemies, these obstacles in her path should vanish.