Chapter Forty-Eight
Leoni stepped outside the thatched maloca, the longhouse that formed the central ceremonial space of Mary Ruck’s jungle lodge, staggered three paces and dry-retched until she poured with sweat and gasped for breath. She had never needed to barf so badly but her stomach wouldn’t let go and the spasm seemed to continue for ever. Then the vile taste of the Ayahuasca she’d drunk an hour earlier rose up in her throat, her guts cramped and she vomited. It was embarrassing that the others had to hear the weird yodelling sounds she made, but she didn’t care too much. It was just such a relief to hurl. Finally she straightened, lurched two more paces across the clearing, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and looked up at the vast Amazonian sky.
Amongst a few scattered clouds the stars glittered and the half-moon rode high, bathing the surrounding jungle in fairy light, outlining each leaf and bough with silver tracery. Heady fragrances filled the air – rot, orchids, the breath of the river – and Leoni was alert to the shrieks and whirrs of nocturnal birds and insects, to the soft flap of bats’ wings, and to distant bumps and crashes that could have been branches falling or large animals pushing their way through undergrowth.
She coughed and spat. Yecch! By comparison with Ayahuasca, pure DMT by intravenous infusion was an absolute breeze. They stuck the needle in your arm, pressed down the plunger and WHOOSH, off you went to the other side of reality.
Ayahuasca was supposed to do that too, or so everyone kept saying. But for Leoni anyway one cup had produced absolutely no WHOOSH.
She stumbled back to the door of the maloca and poked her head inside. It was a simple rectangular room, maybe twenty feet long by twelve wide, and it was dark in there with just a single candle flickering on the shaman’s table.
It occurred to her that, for all the hype, Ayahuasca should be like any other drug.
If you didn’t have a big enough dose you wouldn’t feel the effects.
Gut-wrenching though the thought was, she was going to have to drink a second cup.
On the twenty-mile boat ride from Iquitos to the lodge Bannerman had announced, since this was now private research, conducted legally outside the United States, that he intended to join their first Ayahuasca session this evening not as an observer but as a participant. ‘I need to see this kind of experience from the inside,’ he admitted.
Now, as she picked her way back across the crowded floor of the maloca, Leoni saw that Bannerman lay on his back on one of the thin mattresses they’d all been provided with, his eyes closed, his features composed, totally silent. In the very faint light cast by the candle she couldn’t even be certain he was breathing but she suppressed an urge to check as she stepped past him.
She and Bannerman had been placed on one side of the maloca, on the shaman’s left, with Bannerman closest to the shaman. Mary Ruck and Matt were on the other side, with Mary closest to the shaman.
The shaman was sitting cross-legged on the floor near the middle of the rear wall of the room with his little table in front of him and the two rows of mattresses arrayed on either side of him. Next to the flickering candle, in the middle of the table, was a bowl full of mapacho cigarettes, thick as rifle bullets. As well as an assortment of crystals and various small figures of wood and bone there was a bottle of Agua Florida, a cheap local cologne. Together with the tobacco, Mary had explained earlier, it was believed to clear dark energies from the room. There were also two chacapas, bundles of dried leaves bound together in such a way that when they were shaken they produced a rhythmic and hypnotic susurration.
For a short while during the first hour of the ceremony, the shaman had stood to sing eerie high-pitched songs called icaros, and had shaken the chacapas. But now he sat stock-still on the floor, his skin the colour of shoe leather, his back straight, his black eyes sparkling in the candlelight. He was just a little guy – probably not more than five feet, Leoni guessed – but he had something about him, she couldn’t quite put her finger on what, that made him seem bigger than that.
His name was Don Emmanuel Alvaro, and Mary had made a big deal about how lucky they were that he had agreed to ‘hold the space’ at their ceremonies. He was eighty-six years old, not a mestizo but a full-blood Shipibo Indian who had been preparing Ayahuasca since the age of fourteen.
Well, great.
Except so far his brew had done nothing for Leoni.
No sooner had she asked for a second cup than Mary Ruck crawled forward over her mattress, where she’d been lying at Don Emmanuel’s feet, and reminded Leoni that the shaman didn’t speak a word of English. ‘It’s a bit early to have a booster,’ she advised. ‘The brew can take a while to kick in. Maybe you should wait another hour?’
Leoni sat next to her and responded in a whisper, ‘I don’t think so. This Aya just isn’t hitting me, and I need it to hit me.’ She looked Mary up and down: ‘It doesn’t look like it’s hitting you, either.’
‘It is,’ Mary replied: ‘Believe me. But I’ve been drinking for ten years. After a while you learn how to walk in both worlds.’
Despite her Anglo name, Bannerman’s anthropologist friend claimed Native American descent on her mother’s side and looked like a Spanish diva. She was in her late thirties, a sexy, tanned, full-figured woman with world-weary dark eyes and thick raven-black hair that cascaded over her shoulders. ‘The effects will come on soon enough,’ she said. ‘Be patient and you’ll see. It’s good not to be too eager with Ayahuasca.’
But Leoni was adamant: ‘I need that second cup.’ She was counting on Mary’s support. Nothing of her story had been held back and now the older woman wrapped her arms around her in a warm and deeply sympathetic embrace. Then she said a few words in Spanish to Don Emmanuel who gestured Leoni to come closer. As she did Matt got to his feet, hurried to the door and disappeared outside. A moment later Leoni heard the sound of vomiting.
Don Emmanuel was looking Leoni over, as though measuring her. When he was satisfied he reached out to his table, lifted the grubby plastic bottle containing the Ayahuasca brew – dark, almost black, with sinister red tones deep in its heart – shook it several times, and unscrewed the cap. There was a faint hiss and a reddish-brown froth rose up in the neck of the bottle and spilled over the top. Don Emmanuel allowed it to drip to the floor and poured what looked like three ounces of the brew, still slightly foaming, into a stained ceramic cup. He set the bottle back on the table and screwed down the cap again. Then he lit a mapacho cigarette from the candle, picked up the little cup and blew clouds of tobacco smoke into it while muttering words in a language Leoni did not recognise. Finally he passed the cup over to her, holding it with both hands, and indicated she should drink.
She took it from him and was hit at once by the indescribable smell of Ayahuasca. It caught in the back of her throat and made her gag. Uggh! She looked down and shuddered again at the red-black sheen of the thick syrupy liquid, wrinkled her nose, raised the cup to her lips and drank it in two gulps.
Argh! That taste! Uggh! Yecch! Somehow a thousand times worse than the first cup. A horrible gut-cramping amalgam of cheesy feet, raw sewage, jungle rot, sulphur, vinegar and chocolate that seared her oesophagus on the way down and now lay in her stomach like battery acid.
Returning to her place, she noticed Matt had already finished purging and was back on his mattress, lying on his side looking at her. ‘She’s incredible,’ he whispered groggily.
Leoni’s ears pricked up: ‘Who’s incredible?’
But Matt didn’t seem to hear: ‘Her business is the planet,’ he slurred. ‘But she still finds time for us.’
He closed his eyes and said no more.
Leoni lay flat on her back, gazing up into the darkness.
Surely visions must come after doubling the dose?
But how long would she have to wait? Half an hour? Forty-five minutes? She checked the time. They’d started the ceremony around nine in the evening and, somehow, now it was after eleven.
Her head and body felt
heavy. She closed her eyes again and fell asleep only to be awoken by Don Emmanuel beating out a rhythm on his chacapas. Then he sang an icaro with such haunting notes and cadences that it brought her to tears. After that a melancholy mood settled upon Leoni like damp fog and she began to review episodes from her own life in an extremely self-critical and unsympathetic way.
In fact, the more she thought about it the more worthless and pointless her whole existence seemed. Sure, she’d had some tough breaks but it had been her choice to piss her life down the tubes all those years. She found herself dwelling on the countless small and not so small acts of meanness, the betrayals, the lies, and the utter superficiality that characterised her relationships with others.
She was overwhelmed by painful feelings of shame and regret.
Leoni looked at her watch and found that time had fled again. It was close to one in the morning, nearly two hours since she’d drunk her second dose. All around her the others lay silent, lost in worlds of their own, but she remained grounded in the here and now.
As she got to her feet a wave of giddiness and nausea washed over her but she fought it and picked her way around the table to Don Emmanuel. ‘Are you OK?’ Mary whispered, becoming alert in an instant. Leoni sat down beside her: ‘You’re going to think I’m crazy,’ she said ‘but I’ve decided to drink a third cup of the brew. You know why I have to do this. Please just back me up and ask the shaman to give it to me.’
Once again the older woman embraced her. Then there was another whispered conversation in Spanish and at the end of it Don Emmanuel stood and lit a mapacho. Without explanation he gestured to Leoni to bend forward and began to puff smoke over her head and shoulders, enveloping her in its strong, sweet fragrance. Then he indicated she should stand and turn around while he blew more clouds of the smoke over her body and legs.
‘Don’t they use this to drive off evil spirits?’ Leoni asked.
‘Hush,’ said Mary. ‘It’s better to stay quiet.’
Resting the butt of the mapacho on a plate, where it continued to smoulder, Don Emmanuel took up a chacapa rattle and shook it all around Leoni, making sweeping and brushing motions, singing icaros as he worked. When he was satisfied he told her to sit again, resumed his own position cross-legged on the floor, looked into her eyes and said a few words to her.
Mary translated: ‘He asks if any shaman is your enemy.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Leoni. ‘I don’t know any other shamans.’
More Spanish, then Mary shrugged. ‘Anyway, the diagnosis is that a shaman has put the evil eye on you. Don Emmanuel wants you to know you could be vulnerable to this guy when the Ayahuasca takes you. He says he’ll try to protect you but this could be a tough trip. Are you sure you want to take the risk?’
Leoni thought about it. She knew the out-of-body state could be dangerous and she didn’t doubt there were malevolent forces out there.
‘I’m ready for the third cup,’ she said.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Ria ran full-tilt towards the bonfire as Kimp reached her friends. They were still tied to the stake and at his mercy. With a rock in her hand she would have had him cold. But the spear wasn’t Ria’s weapon – particularly this weird Illimani spear – and even as she threw it she knew she’d misjudged its balance. Instead of flying true, the heavy flint spike at the tip dragged the projectile down and it somersaulted, swiped Kimp across the face with its shaft, and clattered into the firewood at his feet. Showing his teeth in a bellow of hatred, he grabbed Brindle’s hair, bent his head forward and raised his axe to decapitate him when a second spear, thrown with enormous force, shot in over Ria’s shoulder. It was a Clan spear, not one of the foreign weapons. It smashed into the middle of Kimp’s chest and bore him back, stone dead, away from Brindle.
Chard, a pace behind Kimp, had reached the Uglies. As he launched his assault, swinging his axe, an arrow took him in the left eye and burst out through the back of his skull.
Ria spun on her heels. The arrow had been fired by Ligar, who had already nocked another to the string and now gave her a look of mocking acknowledgement. She just had time to register that ancient Rotas had somehow made the powerful throw that had saved Brindle when the sky darkened and a third volley of the Illimani spears came in. She was hit again as a glancing flint point gouged a deep gash across her shoulder. Krant and Ezida died in the same moment. Bont took a spear in his back but tugged it out. Bahat was unhurt. On top of the bonfire the albino brave Porto was hit but Brindle, Jergat and Oplimar were left unscathed.
Because the spears were closely targeted on the meeting ground, from which so many survivors of the first two volleys had fled, there was less immediate carnage, but Ria was clambering the stacked firewood of the bonfire and saw that hundreds already lay dead roundabout.
At last she reached the Uglies, snatched up Chard’s axe and used its blade to cut her friends free from the stake.
Porto had been disembowelled by one of the terrible falling spears. He was alive but it was obvious he was in unbearable pain and dying. As Ria cut the ropes supporting him he collapsed, uttering huge, heartrending screams, his mind sending out waves of sadness and fear. Beside him there was horror in Brindle’s eyes. Jergat looked half-dead with thirst and exhaustion. Only stocky little Oplimar seemed to be fully in command of himself and she heard his thought-voice loud and clear: ‘Illimani going to come after their spears, Ria. We got to get out of here right now!’
‘What about Porto?’ she was about to ask when Brindle shook himself out of his slump, took Chard’s axe from her hand and with a single swift blow put Porto out of his misery. Ria felt only relief that there hadn’t been an argument over what was the right thing to do. She looked to the sky. The fourth volley couldn’t be long in coming.
But instead there was only an eerie silence from the direction of their attackers, punctuated by groans and cries rising up from the injured and the dying all around them.
Where were the Illimani?
While the ominous lull continued Ria hurried Brindle, Jergat and Oplimar down from the pyre and led them over to Rotas, Bont, Bahat, Ligar and Vulp. ‘You know these Uglies are my friends,’ she told her Clansmen, ‘and I ask you to accept them as your allies. They stood by me and Hond yesterday when we fought the terrible enemies who attack us now. They’ll stand by you today.’ Bont looked as though he’d been asked to eat shit and Ria saw him exchange a stubborn bigoted glance with Ligar. ‘Don’t even think about it’, she warned. ‘None of us are going to get out of here alive unless we all work together.’
‘Many questions must be answered,’ said Rotas. Ria’s heart sank, then rose when he added: ‘But there will be time for them later. Meanwhile it is a most intelligent idea to join forces with the Uglies to combat a common enemy.’ He glared at Bont and Ligar: ‘Do you accept this?’ Bont seemed about to object but Ligar spoke up: ‘Ask questions later, Bont.’ After some urgent whispering, they both nodded their agreement. ‘And you?’ Rotas directed his gaze at Bahat and Vulp. ‘I accept,’ said Bahat. ‘I too,’ said Vulp.
The elder’s grey eyes turned on Ria: ‘Since you have fought this enemy before, my child, what do you suggest we do now?’
The Illimani spears had come in from deep in the forest beyond the south-east quadrant of the camp, arching up into the sky and raining down death from above. They’d been able to get such range, Ria guessed, because of the spear-throwers she’d already seen in action. But how had they known – for they clearly must have since they had concentrated their attack here – that the entire population of the Clan would be gathered in the meeting ground this morning?
The answer was unavoidable. Grigo and Murgh must have told them. Grigo with his boasts about Sulpa. Murgh with his hunger for power. This was what they’d hoped to gain from the spectacle they’d so carefully prepared in the meeting ground – the Clan all in one place, ripe for slaughter.
But why?
Despite Murgh’s struggle with the elders, wh
y would even he have an interest in the total annihilation of his own people?
Or had he thought the whole thing was going to work out differently? Just a shift of power from the elders to him, enforced by the Illimani?
If that had been his plan, then the Illimani hadn’t waited for the agreed signal – the burning of the bonfire – hadn’t given their collaborators a chance to get clear, hadn’t cared whether they lived or died amidst the general massacre. And it wasn’t over yet.
For what sort of shocking close assault must follow now the devastating spear volleys that had so badly unmanned and scattered the Clan seemed to have stopped?
Ria knelt by Hond’s body, rested her hand in his hair for a moment, and withdrew the long flint knife that Grigo had plunged through his back and into his heart.
The Illimani knife that had killed both her brothers.
She took it up, used her neckerchief to clean the blade, folded the bloodied weaving carefully into a pocket of her jerkin and thrust the knife into her belt. Then without a backward glance she led the way towards the lookout tower two hundred paces south of the meeting ground.
* * *
Enclosed within its circle of huge wooden posts, the meeting ground lay at the centre of the camp and the camp lay at the edge of a great forest nestling in a bend of the treacherous Snake River. The waters in which Ria’s mother and father had drowned ran fast and deep, imposing a formidable natural barrier to the north and west, making the camp as good as impregnable from those directions. But now the river had become a trap. Because of it, survivors escaping the meeting ground and gathering up their families could only run towards the south and east – precisely the directions from which the Illimani spears had come.
From the vantage point of the tower Ria and her companions – only Rotas and Jergat had been too infirm to climb – began to track the surging tide of the fleeing crowd. Hundreds of frenzied and panicking men, women and children were spreading through the southern quarters of the camp. The fastest had almost reached the shelter of the forest when the front ranks abruptly turned back – even from this distance their abject terror was visible – and collided with those behind who in turn stampeded amidst oaths and screams.
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