The Spider Stone

by Alex Archer

  "Belief in magic is an ingrained trait," Hallinger said. "You won't find a culture anywhere that didn't or doesn't believe in some sort of sorcery or magic."

  Annja returned to the ship's log, still on the Latin entry.

  I had Yohance brought to me tonight. I wanted to put an end to all this foolishness. Since I didn't speak his dialect and the boy had no English, I had de Mornay in attendance because he could speak the boy's savage tongue. I swore the man to secrecy, made him give me his gravest oath that he would not let slip anything that we discussed in my quarters.

  The boy, Yohance, was afraid. I could see it in him. That vulnerability again reminded me of my own son, Georges, and how he might fare under these harsh conditions. But Yohance kept himself composed despite being outnumbered and outgunned.

  I had my first mate ask the boy his story, how he came to be in Ile de Goree.

  The boy told us of his village near the confluence of the Semefé and Bafing Rivers.

  Annja stopped reading and looked at Hallinger. "Did you read this?"

  The professor nodded. "I wanted to wait until you were up to speed before we began searching. There's still a lot of area to cover. And that's if Captain LaForge and his first mate actually got everything right."

  "Doesn't that map on the Spider Stone show two rivers joining?" McIntosh asked. "That seems like it would be hard to miss."

  "No," Annja said. "The problem we've had so far is that there aren't large numbers of Hausa living in Senegal. If they're not here now – "

  "Then chances are good that they weren't here then," Hallinger finished. "The Hausa people date back to 500 A.D., and their ancestral lands in Nigeria have been occupied by civilized peoples since prehistoric times. Between 500 and 700 A.D., the Hausa began consolidating, developing seven city-states that were believed to have been founded by Bayajidda, a hero of their people who supposedly had a magic knife fashioned for him. He used the knife to fight his enemies and rescued the queen of Daura and her people from a giant snake."

  "The queen married Bayajidda," Annja said, taking up the tale, "and they had seven sons. By the thirteenth century, the Hausa controlled most of the trade in those areas. They also mixed with the Fulani people, whose roots are Muslim. After a series of jihads in the early nineteenth century, the Fulani took over, forming the Sokoto Caliphate, which became the Fulani Empire."

  "Wars generally ruin records and documents," Ganesvoort put in. "They also tend to scatter people. For Yohance's people to be where they were – "

  "Somewhere near Kidira from the sound of it," Annja said, looking at a map she had on the desk.

  " – they had to have gone far from their homelands," Ganesvoort said.

  "Not necessarily," Hallinger said. "Yohance's people may have already been scattered."

  "There are pockets of Hausa scattered all across West Africa," Annja added. "According to the words on the Spider Stone, Yohance's people had already fled from invaders."

  "Probably the Yoruba." Hallinger stroked his chin. "They'd been an aggressive people until the Fulani Empire put them out of business."

  "So what happened to Yohance?" McIntosh asked.

  Annja smiled. That's the thing about history, she thought. Everybody thinks it's a boring subject until they learn it's really about people.

  Annja returned to translating the captain's writing.

  The boy was reluctant to say anything more, but I knew I had to get to the bottom of the medicine-man myth. When I asked him about it, he refused to answer.

  I've dealt with reluctant men before, and I'm not leery of employing tactics that some would deem harsh or cruel. A man has to know what a man has to know.

  After growing frustrated with questioning the boy, I took out a knife and cut off his left ear. After all, a slave doesn't use an ear to work, and the amputation didn't make him deaf.

  Yohance cried and became very afraid.

  I told him I would cut the throat of one of the other boys if he didn't tell me what I wished to know. Looking at his own ear lying there before him, he believed me. And that was good because I don't make idle threats.

  He told an incredible tale. I believe it was a complete fabrication, but I knew he hadn't created the tale. It had been handed down through his people.

  His people hold to the savage belief that their gods are some kind of animal. Or gods can be found in animals. Heresy, all of it, and spread by the Devil himself to undermine the faith of good Christians.

  According to Yohance, the spider god of his people, gave them a vast treasure after he allowed their village to be destroyed. He also gave them a weapon, a curse that they could visit on any enemy.

  I didn't believe any of it, but I could tell that de Mornay did. I remonstrated the boy, told him the error of his ways regarding how he was causing the other slaves to act, and I told him that I would hold him responsible for their actions. If anything further happened, I swore to him that I would tie a bag of cannonballs around his neck and hurl him into the Atlantic. Then I sent him back to the hold.

  I have every confidence that I have seen the end of this matter.

  When she finished reading the entry, Annja felt slightly sick. She had a strong stomach and she'd read about and even seen much worse in her own work, but the thought of the boy being so harshly treated at the hands of uncaring men touched her.

  "That's it?" McIntosh asked.

  "There's one other important entry," Hallinger said. "Just a few days later. It's written by Captain LaForge's lieutenant."

  Annja read the entry.

  August 2, 1755

  Maurice Cariou, Lieutenant of Cornucopia

  Evening

  Prevailing Winds, Northerly

  Weather, Poor

  It is with a heavy heart that I take up the pen to finish the work begun by my captain, the good Henri La-Forge. I pray that he is with Our Lord, and that his name will always be remembered with favor.

  The storm that has constantly dogged our tracks on this voyage caught up with us once again last night. I've never seen such a determined effort on part of something that is without purpose, human or divine, that acted so cold-heartedly.

  While we were lashed about, Captain LaForge took the deck and gave his courage and strength to our crew. During the worst of the storm, a sail came loose and whipped across our rear deck, malevolently wrapping the captain in the ropes and dragging him overboard. He was gone, vanished into the sea before we could do a thing about it.

  I shall be glad when this voyage is over. Ever since we have taken on the boy Yohance, luck and fortune have been against us. I struggle not to be a superstitious man because I don't want to affront God, but in these circumstances I find myself hard-pressed not to at least wonder.

  "Interestingly enough," Hallinger said, "if you read the entries before that one, you'll see that the storm never once let up. It stayed on the ship's tail. Many of the ship's crew grew increasingly agitated. Captain LaForge had to take more and more aggressive means to keep the situation under control. After he cut off Yohance's ear, the crew turned against him, believing that he was responsible for the storm's continued fury."

  "What you're saying is that you don't think LaForge's death went exactly the way his second-in-command said it did," McIntosh said.

  "You're the expert in our midst when it comes to murder," Hallinger said. "What do you think?"

  "I think it's awfully convenient that a whole ship's sail could come loose in a major storm and only take out one guy."

  Annja agreed. Then she turned her thoughts to the puzzle of the Spider Stone again. They had a direction. They almost had a location. All they had to do was get there.

  Looking at Ganesvoort, Annja asked, "What's the quickest way to Kidira?"

  Chapter 20

  Looking up from the train seat, Annja saw the smiling face of one of the two young boys in front of her. As it turned out, the fastest way to Kidira was on the Dakar-Niger Railway. Going hundreds of miles overland by car woul
d have taken nearly twice as long, even factoring in the five-hour delay in leaving Dakar. Punctuality wasn't one of the railway's strong suits.

  Nor was comfort. The train generally concerned itself with cargo first and passengers second. Or third or fourth or fifth, Annja was quick to realize. Cargo was the big ticket for the railway, moving goods in from the coast to the interior.

  She was jammed into a narrow seat with little room. There was no dining car, so meals had to be packed on. Fortunately, Ganesvoort's chef put together an excellent picnic basket.

  McIntosh slept only a few seats over, lulled by the slow sway of the train. The CIA agents accompanying them occupied other seats. Three rows up, Hallinger and Ganesvoort conferred, going over topographical maps on Hallinger's computer just as Annja was doing, comparing the pictures they'd taken from the Spider Stone to the physical features of the land.

  The two boys and their mother had sat in the seats in front of Annja. The mother had looked tired and frazzled. She'd stayed on her cell phone nearly the whole trip, evidently stressing over the conversation. Something somewhere wasn't going right.

  "Hi," Annja said to the small boy.

  The boy leaned over the back of his seat and peered at Annja's notebook computer. "Playing video games?" His English accent was unmistakable.

  "Not exactly." Annja grinned at the boy's curiosity. She guessed that he was five or six, dressed in a red T-shirt, denim shorts and high-top basketball shoes.

  "My brother plays games on his computer."

  "He does?"

  The little boy nodded. "Yeah. All the time. He gets in trouble with my mom because he doesn't know when to quit."

  "I see." Glancing over the top of the seat, Annja saw the little boy's older brother by maybe three or four years was sound asleep. The mother had walked to the other end of the train car, evidently seeking a better connection for the phone.

  "My name's Bashir." The boy stuck out his hand.

  Annja took the hand and shook it. "Nice to meet you, Bashir. I'm Annja."

  "You have a pretty name."

  Chuckling, Annja said, "Thank you."

  The boy waited maybe a heartbeat, then looked at her in exaggerated annoyance, as if she'd missed something she should have automatically known. "Don't I have a pretty name?" he asked.

  With the prompting, Annja immediately understood what she'd done wrong. "Yes, you do. I was trying to think if I've ever heard that name before, and I don't think I have. You have an unusual name, too."

  Bashir smiled then. "My mom says my name means 'bringer of good news.' What does your name mean?"

  "I don't know."

  Bashir looked puzzled for just a moment. "Didn't your mom tell you what your name means?"

  "No," Annja said truthfully, feeling just the smallest twinge of pain stab at her for a moment. "She didn't."

  "Oh. My brother's name is Kamil. It means 'perfect.'" Bashir leaned in and cupped his hands around his mouth. His whisper was still loud. "Only he's not perfect – he's a slob."

  Annja laughed. "I see."

  Bashir looked at her curiously. "Are you an African?"

  "No."

  "I had to ask 'cause I found out there's white Africans, too. I didn't know that till I came here with my mom."

  "I'm an American," Annja said.

  "Our ancestors were Americans, too. But we're English now. Before we came here, we lived in London. My mom says our ancestors went to England after President Lincoln freed the slaves." Bashir thought some more. "Can I see your marble?"

  "My marble?"

  "Yeah." He pressed his hands together and smiled, revealing a gap where his two front teeth had been. "The pretty yellow one."

  He meant the Spider Stone. Annja had had it out earlier, looking at it again and trying to get a deeper feel for it.

  "Do you promise to take good care of it?" she asked.

  "Sure."

  Annja took the Spider Stone from her pocket and gave it to the boy.

  He turned it around and around in his hands, studying it with complete fascination.

  Bashir handed the Spider Stone back to Annja. "Why does it have a spider on it?"

  "That spider represents Anansi. Do you know who Anansi is?" Annja asked.

  Bashir's forehead wrinkled. "Some kind of hero?"

  That's close enough, Annja thought. "Right. He's a hero. Anansi is a spider who lives here in West Africa."

  "A spider?"

  "Well, sometimes he can turn into a human."

  Bashir grinned. "Brilliant. Do you know any stories about him?"

  "I do." Annja put the computer aside and gave Bashir her full attention. "Anansi is one of those guys who seems to always get into trouble. Because he's always doing something or because he's after something he wants. And he wants a lot."

  Outside the train windows, the countryside whipped by. Most of it was savanna, dry and covered with scrub brush and stunted trees.

  "One day Anansi decided he wanted to be the king of all stories," Annja began. "So he went to his father, Nyame, who was the sky god."

  "Anansi's dad is a god?"

  "It's just a story."

  Bashir looked at Annja as if she were a simpleton. "I know that. I'm not a baby."

  "Sorry," Annja said.

  At that moment, the mother arrived. She looked embarrassed. "I really must apologize," she said. "I asked him not to bother anyone."

  "It wasn't a bother," Annja said. "It was kind of nice to take a break. And you have a terrific kid."

  Bashir beamed. "She was telling me about Anansi. He's a spider god who can be a spider or a human, and he's supposed to live right here in West Africa, only he's really just make-believe."

  "I hope you don't mind," Annja said.

  The woman sat down, turned so that she could face Annja and smiled. "No, but I should warn you that you're dealing with an overactive imagination that requires constant feeding and attention." She offered her hand. "I'm Tanisha Diouf."

  "Annja Creed. Nice to meet you." Annja shook her hand.

  "How far are you going?"

  "Kidira," Annja said.

  "We are, too."

  "With the kids along, it looks like vacation, but with all the phone time involved, it looks more like work," Annja said.

  "Work. Definitely. I'm an engineer for Childress Construction."

  "Is that part of Childress Corporation?"

  Tanisha grimaced. "I see you've heard of us."

  "Only this morning while waiting in the train station. I scanned the newspaper and saw Childress mentioned."

  "Not a lot of people here like us," Tanisha said.

  "Because of the oil refinery that's being built?"

  "Exactly. Childress Corporation is the parent. The construction arm is one of the subsidiaries. I happen to be the engineer in charge of the project."

  "Sounds like a big job."

  "It is. Some days, like today, I think it's too big. Being a single mom is hard enough without being a single mom out of the country. But the opportunity and the pay is great. When I finish this, I can put both my boys through college on the bonus money I'll earn." Tanisha glanced at the topographical maps Annja had been studying. "What do you do?"

  "I'm an archaeologist."

  "Now, that sounds interesting."

  "Some days are more interesting than others," Annja replied.

  "May I?" Tanisha gestured toward one of the maps.

  "Be my guest."

  The woman picked up the map, then another one. "I don't think this is far from where we're putting the refinery in, actually."

  That got Annja's attention immediately. "Really?"

  "Really. What are you out here looking for?"

  "A Hausa village that was destroyed in 1755."

  "The sad thing is, you'll probably find lots of those. There's a lot of unrest in the savanna even now. Our work sites keep getting attacked by tribes that don't want us there. At least, they have been getting attacked. The last few days have bee
n pretty quiet. You'll want to be careful out there."

  "I will," Annja said.

  Tanisha handed the maps back. "You're not traveling alone, are you?"

  "I'm with a small expedition."

  "Let me make a phone call. If it looks like we're heading in the same direction, maybe I can get you in with us when you have to go overland. If that's all right."

  "I'd appreciate that." There is safety in numbers, Annja thought. But she feared it might also mean that she might endanger Tanisha Diouf and her children.

  ****

  Almost two hours later, Annja stood on the small platform outside the passenger car. The train's wheels rumbled over the tracks in steady monotony. Darkness filled the savanna on either side of the railroad line, but the silver moon lit the sky.

  She sipped from a bottle of water and ate pineapple chunks from a small plastic container Ganesvoort's cook had supplied. Fatigue ate at her, but she knew it was from spending the past few days doing nothing physical. She'd been active all her life. Inactivity seemed to take more out of her than physical exertion did.

  Standing, breathing rhythmically, feeling warm despite the chill of the wind pulling at her clothing, Annja stared into the darkness around the train. She felt at peace, and a sense of belonging. There was a power in the land around her, and she sensed it in a way that she never had before. She soaked up the sensation, reveling in it, and her heart lifted.

  Then she realized she wasn't alone. Someone was watching her.

  "Here."

  Annja spun, facing into the train car.

  The African woman from the hotel stood before her, leaning on her staff. She wore a black grand bubu, and the extra material belled around her.

  "You feel it, don't you?" the old woman asked. "You feel the pull of this land on you." She waved at the savanna. "This is where the world began, where humanity took root and spread across the world. We all belong to Africa. So many have forgotten that."