The Eight

by Katherine Neville

  It would take them nearly a day to reach Tamrit, so far into the canyons of the Tassili, but Mireille did not need to wait for their arrival. She knew they were coming for her. She’d felt it for many days now. Kissing her son on the top of his head, she wrapped him in the sack she’d slung about her neck and started back down the mountain—to wait for the letter. If not today, it would come soon enough. The letter from the Abbess of Montglane, telling her she must return.

  THE MAGIC MOUNTAINS

  What is the future? What is the past? What are we? What is the magic fluid that surrounds us and conceals the things we most need to know? We live and die in the midst of marvels.

  —Napoleon Bonaparte

  THE KABYLE

  JUNE 1973

  So we went up into the Magic Mountains, Kamel and I. Journeying into the Kabyle. The deeper we penetrated into that lost domain, the more I lost touch with everything that seemed real to me.

  No one knows precisely where the Kabyle begins or ends. A labyrinthine maze of high peaks and deep gorges sandwiched between the Medjerdas north of Constantine and the Hodnas below Bouïra, these vast front ranges of the High Atlas—the Grand and Petite Kabylie—wander over thirty thousand kilometers, tumbling at last down the sheer rock corniche near Bejaïa into the sea.

  As Kamel drove his black ministry Citroën along the twisting dirt road between columns of ancient eucalyptus, the blue hills rose above us, majestic, snow-capped, and mysterious. Beneath them spread the Tizi-Ouzou—Gorge of the Gorse—where wild Algerian heather bathed the wide valley in brilliant fuchsia, the heavy blossoms swaying like sea waves with every sultry breeze. The scent was magical, flooding the air with heady fragrance.

  The clear blue waters of the Ouled Sebaou rippled through knee-deep heather beside the road. This river, fed by spring snow melt, meandered three hundred miles to Cap Bengut, watering the Tizi-Ouzou throughout the long hot summer. It was hard to imagine we were only thirty miles from the mist-bound Mediterranean and ninety miles to our south spread the largest desert in the world.

  Kamel had been strangely silent during the four hours since he’d picked me up at my hotel. He’d taken long enough to bring me here—nearly two months since he’d promised. In that time, he’d sent me on every sort of mission—some resembling a wild-goose chase. I’d inspected refineries, gins, and mills. I’d seen women with veiled faces and bare feet sitting on the floors of semoule plants separating couscous; I’d had my eyes scalded in the fiber-filled hot air of textile plants, my lungs burned out inspecting extrusion sites; and I’d nearly toppled headfirst into a vat of molten steel from the precarious scaffolding at a refinery. He’d sent me everywhere in the western part of the state—Oran, Tlemcen, Sidi-bel-Abbès—so I could collect the data I needed as a base for his model. But never to the east, where the Kabyle was.

  For seven weeks I’d loaded data on every industry into the big computers at Sonatrach, the oil conglomerate. I’d even put Therese the phone operator to work collecting government statistics on oil production and consumption in other countries, so I could compare balances of trade and see who’d be hit the hardest. As I’d pointed out to Kamel, it wasn’t easy jerry-rigging a system in a country where half the communications went through a World War I switchboard and the other half came by camel. But I’d do my best.

  On the other hand, I seemed farther than ever from my goal—to track down the Montglane Service. I’d heard nothing from Solarin or his sidekick, the mysterious fortune-teller. Therese had sent every message I could devise to Nim, Lily, and Mordecai, with no results. There was an information blackout where I was concerned. And Kamel had sent me so far afield, I almost felt he knew what I was planning. Then only this morning he’d shown up at my hotel, offering “that trip I promised you.”

  “You grew up in this region?” I said, rolling down the tinted window for a better view.

  “In the back range,” Kamel replied. “Most of the villages there are on high peaks and have a lovely view. Was there anywhere particular you wanted to go, or shall I just give you the grand tour?”

  “Actually, there’s an antique dealer I’d like to visit—a colleague of a friend in New York. I promised to see his shop, if it isn’t out of your way.…” I thought it best to be casual, as I didn’t know much about Llewellyn’s contact. I couldn’t find the village on any map—though, as Kamel said, Algerian cartes geographiques were pretty sparse.

  “Antiques?” said Kamel. “There aren’t many. Anything of value has been put into museums long ago. What’s the name of the shop?”

  “I don’t know. The village is called Ain Ka’abah,” I told him. “Lewellyn said it was the only antique store in town.”

  “How very unusual,” said Kamel, still watching the road. “Ain Ka’abah is the village I come from. It’s a tiny place, far from the beaten path, but there’s no antique shop there—I’m certain.”

  Pulling my address book from my satchel, I leafed through it until I located my hastily scribbled notes from Llewellyn.

  “Here it is. No street address, but it’s on the north side of town. It seems they specialize in antique carpets. The owner’s name is El-Marad.” Perhaps I only imagined that Kamel turned slightly green at these words. His jaw was locked, and his voice seemed strained when he spoke.

  “El-Marad,” he said. “I know him. He’s one of the biggest traders in the region, which is famous for its carpets. Are you interested in buying one?”

  “Actually, I’m not,” I said, careful now. Kamel wasn’t telling me everything, though I could see from his face something was wrong. “My friend in New York just asked me to stop in and chat. I could always come later on my own, if it’s a problem.”

  Kamel didn’t speak for several minutes. He seemed to be thinking. We came to the end of the valley and started up the road into the mountains. Rolling meadows of spring grass were dotted with flowering fruit trees. Little boys stood beside the road selling bunches of wild asparagus, fat black mushrooms, and fragrant narcissus. Kamel pulled off the road and bartered for several minutes in a strange language—some Berber dialect like the soft chirping of birds. Then he put his head back in the window, handing me a bunch of the sweetly scented flowers.

  “If you’re going to meet El-Marad,” he said, recovering his former smile, “I hope you know how to barter. He’s as ruthless as a Bedouin, and ten times as rich. I haven’t seen him—in fact, I’ve not been home—since my father died. My village has many memories for me.”

  “We don’t have to go,” I repeated.

  “Of course we’ll go,” said Kamel firmly, though his tone was far from enthusiastic. “You’d never find the place without me. Besides, El-Marad will be surprised to see me. He’s been head of the village since my father’s death.” Kamel clammed up again, looking rather grim. I wondered what was going on.

  “So what’s he like, this carpet trader?” I said to break the ice.

  “In Algeria, you can learn much about a man from his name,” said Kamel as he wound expertly along roads that were becoming ever more tortuous. “For example, ‘Ibn’ means ‘son of.’ Some are place names, like Yamini—Man of the Yemen; or Jabal-Tarik—Mountain of Tarik—or Gibraltar. The words ‘El,’ ‘Al,’ and ‘Bel’ refer to Allah or Ba’al—that is, God—like Hanniba’al: Ascetic of God; Al’a-ddin: Servant of Allah; and so forth.”

  “So what does El-Marad mean—God’s Marauder?” I laughed.

  “Closer than you think,” said Kamel with an uncomfortable laugh. “The name is neither Arabic nor Berber—it’s Akkadian, the language of ancient Mesopotamia. Short for al-Nimarad, or Nimrod, an early king of Babylon. He was the builder of the Tower of Babel, which was meant to rise to the sun, to the gates of heaven. For that’s what Bab-el means—the Gate of God. And Nimrod means the Rebel—One who trespasses upon the gods.”

  “Quite a name for a carpet trader.” I laughed. But of course, I’d noticed the resemblance to the name of someone else I knew.

  “Yes,” he
agreed, “if that were all he was.”

  Kamel wouldn’t explain what he meant about El-Marad, but it was no accident that he’d grown up in the one village of hundreds where this carpet trader made his home.

  By two, when we reached the little resort of Beni Yenni, my stomach was crying aloud with hunger pains. The tiny inn at the top of a mountain was far from posh, but the dark Italian cypresses twisting against ocher walls and red-tiled roofs made a charming setting.

  We had lunch on the small slate terrace surrounded by a white railing that jutted from the mountaintop. Eagles skimmed the valley floor below, glints of gold sparkling from their wings as they passed through the thin blue mist rising from the Ouled Aissi. Around us we could see the treacherous terrain: twisting roads like thin frayed ribbons about to slip from the mountainside, whole villages that looked like crumbling reddish boulders, balanced precariously at the pinnacle of each high hill. Though already June, the air was cool enough for my pullover, at least thirty degrees colder than the coast we’d left that morning. Across the valley I could see snow capping the Djurdjura Massif and low-hanging clouds that looked suspiciously heavy—just in the direction we were headed.

  We were the only people on the terrace, and the waiter was somewhat surly as he carried our drinks and luncheon from the warm kitchen. I wondered if anyone was staying at the inn, which was state-subsidized for members of the ministry. The tourist traffic in Algeria was hardly sufficient to support even the more accessible resorts along the coast.

  We sat in the brisk air drinking bitter red byrrh with lemon and crushed ice. We ate in silence. Hot broth of pureed vegetables, crispy baguettes, and poached chicken with mayonnaise and aspic. Kamel still seemed deep in thought.

  Before departing Beni Yenni, he opened the car trunk and brought out a thick pile of wool lap rugs. Like me, he was concerned about the impending weather. The road became precarious almost at once. How could I guess this was nothing compared with what we were soon to encounter?

  It was only an hour’s drive from Beni Yenni to Tikjda, but it seemed like an eternity. We spent most of it in silence. At first the road wound down to the valley floor, crossed the little river, and headed back up over what seemed to be a low, undulating hill. But the farther we went, the steeper it became. The Citroën was straining when we reached the top. I looked down. Before me was a chasm two thousand feet deep—a maze of jagged, gaping gorges torn from the rock. And our road—what there was of it—was a crumbling mass of ice-crusted gravel about to collapse at the spine of the ridge. To add to the thrill, this narrow ledge cut from broken rock, torqued and crimpled like a sailor’s knot, also dropped down the sheer rock face at a fifteen percent grade—all the way into Tikjda.

  As Kamel moved the big, catlike Citroën over the edge and onto the crumbling path, I shut my eyes and said a few prayers. When I opened them again, we’d swung around the curve. The road now seemed connected to nothing at all, suspended in space among the clouds. Gorges dropped a thousand feet or more at either side of us. Snow-tipped mountains seemed to spring like stalagmites from the valley floor. A wild, whirling wind screeched up the walls of the black ravines, sucking snow across our path and obscuring the road. I would have suggested turning around—but there was no place to do it.

  My legs were shaking as I braced my feet against the floorboards, prepared for the shock when we lost the road altogether and hurtled out into space. Kamel slowed to thirty miles, then twenty—until we were crawling along at ten.

  Oddly, the snow got heavier as we descended the steep incline. Occasionally, coming around a sharp turn, we’d encounter a hay wagon or broken-down truck abandoned in the road.

  “For God’s sake, it’s June!” I said to Kamel as we edged our way carefully around an especially high drift.

  “It’s not even snowing yet,” he said quietly, “just blowing a bit.…”

  “What do you mean, yet?” I said.

  “I hope you like his carpets,” said Kamel with a wry smile. “Because these may cost you more than money. Even if it doesn’t snow, even if the road doesn’t collapse—even if we get to Tikjda before dark—we still have to cross the bridge.”

  “Before dark?” I said, flapping open my unwieldy and useless map of the Kabyle. “According to this, Tikjda is only thirty miles from here—and the bridge is just beyond.”

  “Yes,” agreed Kamel, “but maps only show horizontal distances. Things that look close in two dimensions can be very far in reality.”

  We reached Tikjda just at seven. The sun, which mercifully we could see at last, was balanced on the last ridge, prepared to sink behind the Rif. It had taken three hours to go thirty miles. Kamel had marked Ain Ka’abah on the map near Tikjda—it looked as if we could jog there from here—but that turned out to be quite misleading.

  We left Tikjda, having stopped only to fill our car with gas and our lungs with fresh mountain air. The weather had changed for the better—the sky was peach, the air like silk, and far off in the distance beyond the prism-shaped pines rolled a cool blue valley. At its center, perhaps six or seven miles away, rising purple and gold in the last of the setting sun, was an enormous square-shaped mountain, the top cut off flat like a mesa. It stood completely alone in the middle of the wide valley.

  “Ain Ka’abah,” said Kamel, motioning through the car window.

  “Up there?” I said. “But I don’t see any road.…”

  “There is no road—only a footpath,” he replied. “Several miles over marshy ground in the dark, then up the trail. But before we get there, we must cross the bridge.”

  The bridge was only five miles from Tikjda—but four thousand feet below. At dusk—that most difficult time for clear vision—it was hard to see through the purple shadows cast by the high cliffs. But the valley to our right was still brilliantly flooded with light, turning the mountain of Ain Ka’abah into a block of gold. Directly before us was a view that took my breath away. Our path hurtled down, down, nearly to the valley floor—but five hundred feet above the rocks, suspended over the plunging torrent of a river, was the bridge. Kamel slowed the car as we dropped and dropped toward the canyon floor. At the bridge, he stopped.

  It was a flimsy, shaky bridge that seemed to be built of Tinkertoys. It might have been constructed ten years before or a hundred. The surface, high and narrow, was barely wide enough to admit one car, and ours might be the last. The river pounded and tore at the invisible supports beneath, a raging torrent of water falling swiftly from the gorges above.

  Kamel edged the sleek black limousine out onto the rough surface. I felt the bridge shudder beneath us.

  “You’ll find this hard to imagine,” said Kamel in a whisper, as if the vibration of his voice might prove the last straw, “but at high summer, that river is just a dry trickle through the marshland—nothing but loose gravel and tundra through the hot season.”

  “How long is the hot season—about fifteen minutes?” I asked, my mouth dry from fear as the car creaked forward. A log or something hit the pilings below, and the bridge trembled as if we were having an earthquake. I hung on to my armrest until it stopped.

  When the front wheels of the Citroën passed onto solid ground, I started breathing again. My fingers stayed crossed until I felt the rear wheels touch earth, too. Kamel stopped the car and looked across at me with a wide grin of relief.

  “The things women ask of men,” he said, “just to do a little shopping!”

  The valley floor looked too soft to put the car down, so we left it on the last stony ledge below the bridge. Goat trails crisscrossed the marshes cutting through the high rough grass. You could see their dung and deep hoofprints in the sloshy mud.

  “Lucky I wore the right footgear,” I said, looking ruefully at my thin, strappy gold sandals, unsuited to any purpose.

  “The exercise will do you good,” said Kamel. “Kabyle women hike every day—with sixty pounds of hods on their backs.” He grinned at me.

  “I must trust you because I l
ike your smile,” I told him. “There’s no other explanation for why I’m doing this.”

  “How can you tell a Bedouin from a Kabyle?” he asked as we slugged through the wet grasses.

  I laughed. “Is this an ethnic joke?”

  “No, I’m serious. You can tell a Bedouin because he never shows his teeth when he laughs. Impolite to show the back teeth—bad luck, actually. Watch El-Marad and see.”

  “He’s not Kabyle?” I said. We were winding our way across the dark flat river valley. The mountain of Ain Ka’abah towered over us, still catching the last of the sun. Where the sweet grasses had been trodden down, we could glimpse wildflowers in purple, yellow, and red, just closing for the night.

  “No one knows,” said Kamel, breaking the way before me. “He came to the Kabyle years ago—I’ve never learned from where—and settled at Ain Ka’abah. A man of mysterious origins.”

  “I gather you don’t much care for him,” I said.

  Kamel walked ahead in silence. “It’s hard to like a man,” he said at last, “whom you hold responsible for your father’s death.”

  “Death!” I cried, racing ahead through the grass to catch up with him. One of my sandals was pulled off and disappeared in the grass. Kamel paused while I hunted for it. “What do you mean?” I muttered from the deep grass.

  “They had a business venture together, my father and El-Marad,” he said while I retrieved my sandal. “My father went to England for a negotiation. He was robbed and murdered by thugs in the streets of London.”

  “So this El-Marad didn’t actually have a hand in it?” I said, catching up to him as we went on.

  “No,” said Kamel. “In fact, he paid my tuition from the proceeds of my father’s business, so I could remain in London. He kept the business, however. I never sent him a thank-you note. That’s why I said he’d be surprised to see me.”