Elixir

by Davis Bunn

  Midway up the mountain lane, they were forced to halt and pull aside. The road ahead was filled with lowing cattle and barking dogs and whistling herders. The cattle were curried until their coats gleamed. Ribbons had been woven into their tails and manes. Garlands of fresh wildflowers were wrapped about their horns. Taylor spotted the herdsman they had seen in the highland valley. Inyakie rose from the car and held a hurried conversation with his friend. The grinning giant shouted something that was lost to the cattle’s din and waved them on their way.

  Inyakie said to no one in particular, “In an hour the whole world will know of our departure.”

  They entered the highland valley and parked their van by the now empty herder huts. The young man driving the Citroën spun the car around and headed back for the lowlands. Besides Inyakie, Kirra, and Jacques Dupin, they were accompanied by four others, two men and two women, all experienced at harvesting medicinal herbs. Since many of these plants were known to live in just one or two highland valleys, it was vital that the pickers leave enough for the plants to grow new shoots.

  Once they checked their accommodations, they shouldered their packs, crossed the valley, and took a narrow path up and over the western ridge. Although Jacques was the eldest of the group, he set a pace that had the rest of them puffing and struggling to keep up.

  Inyakie eased back so that he walked alongside Taylor. The air was rarified enough to leave them both winded. The night’s rain had cleared the air such that flowers to either side of the path seemed etched from skyborne colors. They walked in companionable silence for a time, then Inyakie asked, “You have Basque heritage?”

  “No. Minorcan.”

  “This was perhaps once a Basque tribe?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  Kirra spotted them walking together, and her pace momentarily faltered. Then she hurried to catch up with Jacques. Inyakie waited until she had vanished around a jink in the path to say, “This plan of yours. It is good.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “We have centuries of experience fighting stronger foes. Last night, my father said your plan was very Basque.”

  “That’s the finest compliment I’ve heard in a long time. Please thank him for me.”

  They crested the ridge. Patches of snow hugged the permanent shadows cast by several rock overhangs. Although it was still summer below, the wind was a breath of highland winter upon Taylor’s face. Ahead of them stretched a highland vale, untouched by man or machine. From this height, the narrow basin was a fingerlet of brilliant green. Other than this single path, there was no way in or out. No house stood there, no road, no tree, no sign of man.

  Together the two of them turned to look back over the way they had just come. The world stretched into a panorama of diminishing hills and majestic pastels.

  Inyakie stood beside him, taking draughts of the sweet air. “Kirra has agreed to marry me.”

  The light dimmed. But only momentarily. “Congratulations.”

  Dark eyes forced their way under his skin. “You are not angry?”

  The day was too piercing and heaven too close for anything other than the truth. “It is tempting. But it would lead nowhere.”

  Inyakie nodded slowly. “The time has come to make our ancient remedies known to the outside world. I have prayed for years, asking God to bring me a way. When Kirra arrived, I knew it was the divine hand at work. But then you came, and I thought . . .”

  The silence was enough to finish the statement. Taylor said quietly, “I understand.”

  “We Basque are known for blood feuds that can last for generations.”

  “The Minorcans also.”

  “My blood calls for us to be enemies. But my spirit says otherwise. I have seen you with my mother, my friends, my father. I have seen you in my church, and seen your own search for the divine hand. I have seen you keep me from doing great harm to another at Mundaka.” He gazed over craggy mountains descending to emerald-clad hills. “I cannot love my God and hold to this anger against you.”

  “Nor can I.”

  “It would taint my love for Kirra as well. As you said in the Mundaka waters, it may even destroy us.”

  The wind’s fingers pried a single tear from Taylor’s eye. He blinked it away.

  “Truly, now.” Inyakie offered his hand. “You believe we can be friends?”

  There was only one answer he could give. Taylor accepted the iron-hard grip and replied, “With God’s help.”

  From far ahead, Jacques hallooed, urging them to hurry. As they started along the path, Inyakie clapped Taylor’s shoulder and said, “It is a very good plan.”

  chapter 22

  THE TEAM DIVIDED THEIR TIME BETWEEN THE hidden valley and the herdsmen’s huts. There was no source of water in the hidden valley. Which was why the herders did not use it for their cattle, that and the difficult access. The small valley where they worked was accessible only by the long trail snaking over the razor-edged ridgeline. Each dusk Jacques and his little crew hiked back to the herders’ cabins in the broader valley directly east. Because the surrounding peaks were so steep, the hidden valley lost light around three in the afternoon. Direct sunlight was required to identify any blooming herbs, because the plants rolled up their flowers each afternoon as protection against the coming cold.

  And cold it most certainly became. By the time they hiked over the ridgeline and arrived back at the cabin, they could see their breath. The huts’ one nod to modernity was an oil-fired stove. The herders drove up an oil tank each summer and took it down before the first snows. Each dusk, Jacques fired a stove and made a pot of pungent herbs. They took their mugs out to watch the dimming light.

  Sunsets were lingering affairs. The western reaches became crowned with streamers that turned simple stone into celestial peaks. There was no ambient light, nor people, nor noise. Even the softest whisper became an interruption to the orchestral display. When the first star appeared, they trooped back indoors for the evening meal. Watches were set, bedrolls spread, and all but the first guard were swiftly asleep.

  By the fourth morning, Taylor was beginning to fear he had judged the situation entirely wrong.

  They awoke to yet another cloudless dawn. Taylor had volunteered for the predawn watch, the longest of the night. It was his duty to stoke the stove and fill the pots with fresh water and prepare the morning coffee. The oil tank was almost empty, so in the evenings they let the flame go out. By morning the cabin and their bedrolls were frosted white. The lake and streams had begun to grow ice edges at night. Before the light had grown strong enough for Taylor to cut off the lantern, the others were stirring. He sweetened the mugs with condensed milk and set them by each head, allowing the others to warm their bones before fully emerging.

  After breakfast, Taylor filled a basin with steaming water and took it into the neighboring cabin designated for the men’s ablutions. He was not sleeping particularly well. The longer they stayed up there, the more he was convicted by how Kirra and Inyakie acted together. The intimate looks, the quiet smiles, the glow that outshone the lantern each night, the quick touches, the way she would rest her hand upon his shoulder or slip into his embrace as they watched the sunsets. All of this weighed heavily.

  Kirra softened around Inyakie in a way she never had around Taylor. In return, Inyakie was chivalrous. His decorum was almost formal. Each night Taylor sat in the corner he had claimed as his own and saw how Inyakie had become her knight. He was strong for her, patient with her. His passion was a flame, yet he made no demands of Kirra. It shamed Taylor so bitterly that he felt as though his insides had been scooped out and burned over their cooking fire.

  The truth was obvious. This was Kirra at her best. And it was far finer than she had ever been with him. To see them together was a harsh reminder of just how wrong he had been. How desperate he was to be better. How fearful he was of being unable to change.

  Taylor finished shaving and stood watching the gathering light when Inyakie en
tered. The young Basque tossed him a backpack filled with the day’s provisions and announced, “We go.”

  Taylor followed him from the cabin. They took up position behind the others trudging up the steep path. “Today we’re through?”

  “Jacques says we have been here long enough.”

  Taylor mulled that over as they trekked upward. “Which means I’ve failed.”

  “You weren’t wrong.”

  “We brought up eight people to pick plants at the backside of nowhere. There are more people guarding your house. The cop has planted wires and tapped phones. Nothing’s happened, and I’m not wrong?”

  “You’re tired because you’ve been on watch.”

  “I’m fine. I just don’t see how you can say I wasn’t totally crazy to suggest we do this.”

  Inyakie halted by the final switchback before they crested the ridge. He took a couple of breaths so as to speak more easily. “The people who watched my house were pros. I told you that. The policeman agrees. Your plan was good and you were not wrong.”

  Ahead of them, the man on lead pointed back down the pathway and yelled, “Ils arrivent!”

  Taylor did not need to know what the man had said. The alarm on everyone’s face was more than enough. He dropped to the earth. Inyakie scrambled up the path at a crouch and flattened beside Kirra.

  Below them, figures in camouflage backed away from the first cabin. There was a drumming compression in the air about him. The cabin lifted off its foundations from the power of the explosion. Flames burst from the door and window and around the eaves.

  Kirra cried aloud and started to rise. Inyakie halted her with a hiss and a fierce grip.

  “I count six,” Taylor said. “No, seven.”

  “Too many,” the man beside him agreed.

  “The cabins,” Kirra moaned. “Our things.”

  “Our lives,” Inyakie responded. “Stay down.”

  One young man eased the rifle from his shoulder and slid the bolt. Jacques yelled sharply. The man whined and gestured at the attackers. Inyakie added his voice to that of his father’s. Dejectedly the guard rammed his gun into the dust beside him.

  Four of the hunters had spread out, automatic rifles at the ready. They stared up to where Taylor and his party cowered. “Get ready to run,” Taylor said.

  Attackers moved to the other cabins. There were further crumps as one by one the huts went up in flames.

  Two of the hunters checked through the van. They fanned their rifles and blasted the rear windows. But this was not enough. They emptied their clips into the van, riddling it with bullets.

  Inyakie managed to keep to a semblance of calm. “Do you recognize them?”

  “I can’t see their faces.”

  “Kirra?”

  But she was weeping too hard to see anything at all.

  The attackers pulled the sacks of gathered herbs from the demolished van and tossed them into the nearest burning cabin.

  Jacques tensed and spoke a warning. Taylor had seen it as well. “They’re coming!”

  The attackers’ movements distinguished them as seasoned professionals. Two of the hunters moved out to either side. The others started up the path behind those on point. All of them held their weapons at the ready.

  “Quick now,” Inyakie said, hefting Kirra to her feet.

  They slid to the ridgeline’s other side and scrambled northward. Behind them came a shout of alarm. As soon as Taylor slipped below the line of sight, he moved up to take Kirra’s sack. She was sobbing heavily and moaning her sister’s name. Taylor tossed the pack to the next man in line, gripped Kirra’s other arm, and helped Inyakie accelerate them to greater speed. The going was very uneven. The altitude robbed them all of breath. By the time they had covered a quarter-mile all of them were huffing and stumbling.

  A rifle shot rang out behind them. A bullet whanged to Taylor’s right. A puff of dust and a white scar marked the earth’s wound. Nobody said anything. They could not spare the breath.

  Jacques was by far the most nimble, despite his age. He bounded ahead, rounded a corner, then came back to wave them forward. They passed the outcrop to spy a cave’s mouth up ahead. They staggered forward and into the gloomy depths. Taylor and Inyakie dropped Kirra to the dusty earth and returned to the mouth. Taylor’s heart hammered so hard he could see the tremors in his hands where they gripped the rock. His mouth gaped, his lungs heaved, yet he could not seem to find breath.

  The first of the hunters came around the bend. Inyakie took one of the rifles, aimed carefully, and fired. The bullet careened off a rock by the attacker’s head. The man ducked back behind the first rock.

  One of the others futilely tried his cell phone, then stowed it away. There was no signal anywhere in the valley.

  They waited through the pressure of gathering silence. Kirra rose and wiped her face and stood behind Inyakie. There was no sound.

  Kirra asked for them all, “Why aren’t they coming for us?”

  Taylor said, “They weren’t after us to begin with.”

  “But they shot at us.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “If they had aimed for us, they would have hit us,” Inyakie agreed.

  “Then what—”

  “They were herding us.”

  “Why?”

  “They were only after the herbs.”

  A half-hour passed. Nothing happened except for a strengthening of the daylight beyond their cave.

  Then they smelled the smoke.

  Kirra said, “That can’t still be the cabins.”

  Taylor and Inyakie exchanged a glance. Jacques merely shook his head and turned away.

  “Can it?”

  A sudden burst of wind balled the smoke up like a fist and shoved it through the cave’s mouth. They all backed up coughing.

  Taylor demanded, “Is it true what Jacques said, the herbs grow in just one valley?”

  “It is known to all in this region,” Inyakie confirmed. “Almost every valley is a different microclimate.”

  Kirra cried, “Somebody tell me what is going on here!”

  Jacques said to his son, “Go and make sure.”

  Since Jacques had spoken in English, Taylor took it as an indirect order and followed Inyakie from the cave.

  They did a quick reccy from the mouth, then scrambled up the rockface and came out on top of a promontory. Inyakie was half a body-length in front of Taylor. He scouted to the west, or tried to, but the smoke was too thick to see anything. Taylor waited through a pair of rolling clouds. When the third arrived, he was already up and moving. Inyakie hissed once, then rose and followed.

  Taylor could scarcely see the ground in front of his feet, much less where he was headed. But the smoke was borne up to the ridgeline by slight puffs of wind coming from ahead and slightly to the left. He used the fretful breeze as his only compass and concentrated on keeping upright. The going was trackless and rough.

  Suddenly the screen parted, so fast he was caught coughing from the last oily burst. Utterly in the open, Taylor dropped hard.

  Inyakie fell alongside him. Softly he repeated, “You were right.”

  There was no need to respond. Down below them, four men swept the valley from ridge to rocky ridge. They wore metallic packs that glinted sharp in the growing sunlight. Hoses ran down the length of their arms, connected to long pipes which the men held down against the dry autumnal grass as they walked. Fire spouted from the pipes. Flames formed sharp red lines that ran across the valley floor like disorganized ribs. The irritable wind plucked the flames and scattered them in growing ferocity. The smoke was growing increasingly dark and pungent.

  Inyakie plucked at his sleeve. “Either we go now or we will never find the cave.”

  The return was through smoke so thick the sun turned an angry crimson. Taylor’s eyes streamed such that he was certain they would have to turn around and retreat above the smoke line. He managed to track behind Inyakie by gripping the man’s shirttail. The Basqu
e was far surer in his direction and led them back to where the ridgeline dropped away and the cave mouth reappeared. Taylor lowered himself off the lip and felt arms there to guide him down. He bent over in a ferocious fit of coughing.

  Kirra demanded, “Tell me what you saw!”

  Inyakie hacked, drank from an offered canteen, coughed again, and reached for Kirra’s hand. “Come away from the smoke.”

  She allowed herself to be pulled further back. “I want to know!”

  “You know already.” Inyakie gathered her into his arms. “Your sister’s men are torching the valley.”

  chapter 23

  THE COP’S NAME WAS LIEUTENANT ARMAND. Taylor recalled it when he heard Madame Dupin greet him. He watched the policeman bow over the old woman’s hand with timeless gallantry. Inyakie’s mother responded with the grace of an impish queen. The cop went next to Jacques and bowed a second time as he shook the healer’s hand. He then made his way around the Dupin kitchen where they all were gathered, weary and smoke stained from their trek down the mountain. Armand paused long over Kirra. He switched to English and said, “Now all has become clear.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Policemen are known to have strange senses of humor,” Inyakie said. “Or none at all.”

  Kirra shrugged her incomprehension and turned back to the kitchen’s side window. Of them all, Kirra remained the most deeply affected by the valley’s destruction.

  The cop finally made it to where Taylor sat. “It appears your plan has succeeded, Monsieur Knox.”

  “If they go away, it worked,” Taylor corrected.

  “They are already gone.” Armand accepted a steaming mug from Madame Dupin. “After the attack they crossed directly into Spain. None of them have been seen again. We have alerted the Spanish authorities. Warrants have been issued. But these men are professionals. They know how to disappear.”