Ollie led them along the sandstone slabs and boulders, picking his way carefully and poking the clumps of shrubs and grass for snakes with a walking stick he’d fashioned from a fallen tree branch. At last they were all safely standing just outside the overhang of the shelter. Even in the fading light, they could see clusters of red spatter-painted hand stencils on both sides of the sloping entrance and finely executed paintings on the rock walls within. Beside the entrance, the weathered image of a large dingo was incised on a boulder that was vaguely dog-shaped, with rounded body, small head, and ear-like protrusions. Inside, more images of dingoes adorned the walls of the cave.
“Dingo Dreaming,” Ollie stated. “Dingo clan people used this site.”
Thunder boomed in the distance, promising more rain pouring onto the land and into the rivers and streams before the night was over. The shelter seemed high enough above the river, and after he’d checked the inside of the cave for “nasties,” Ollie pronounced it a suitable campsite.
Ned dropped his backpack on the stony floor of the cave and sank to his knees, bathed in sweat. Voices filled his head, cresting and ebbing away, like the drumming sound of rain moving up the canyon. His vision blurring, he stared at the rock wall, trying to make out the tall reddish figures in conical headdresses topped with what appeared to be tassels or feathers. They did not seem to be done in the same style as those they’d seen in the large cave near the top of the bluff.
“Are these Quinkans?” he asked.
“Older,” said Ollie, looking them over. “That mob,” he said, indicating the largest of the humanoid figures, “those are Ancestral beings, but they don’t look like any Quinkan figures I’ve ever seen. My guess would be that this is a ceremonial site, not a habitation shelter.”
Suzanne stood beside him, looking at the parade of figures. “How can you tell?”
“Well, first off, there’s that engraved rock by the entrance. Carvings like that are old, I’m talkin’ thousands of years. And there’s no occupational stuff, like campfire ashes, stone tools or shards, animal bones, or bark and wood sleeping platforms that I’ve seen in other caves. And look,” he said, walking away from the entrance. “There’s a dished area further back, see? For dancing, or some kind of rituals, I’d reckon. And here we have a stone slab long enough for somebody to lie on, or be held down on. My guess is that we have an initiation site, where boys would get circumcised and a tooth knocked out or senior men would be inducted into shamanic mysteries of some kind.”
“Fascinating,” said Suzanne. Her voice sounded hollow and distant to Ned, as if she were speaking through a tunnel. Other voices were calling him, pulling him. Ned staggered to his feet.
“It’s here,” he gasped. “The place is here.”
“What? Are you sure?” Suzanne took his hand, but he was having difficulty distinguishing the warmth of her flesh from the fevered state of his own body.
“Not in this room, this gallery, but further back and down. There’s a chamber connected to this room somewhere.” He was beginning to see the outline in his head of the interconnected cave system and of the place where it exited through a split in the rock at the base of the cliff, except that now, during the Wet, that particular point of entry and the distinctive rock formation that marked it were under water. He would have loved to be able to go down to the riverbed and compare it to his drawings, but that wasn’t possible.
Ollie stood in the cave entrance, looking out at the canyon. “It’s getting dark. We ought to be making a fire.”
Ned stumbled and nearly fell. “I don’t think I can help you,” he said, holding onto Suzanne for support.
“No worries, I’ll go back to those trees we passed and collect some fodder.” He was looking at Ned with a frown. “You look right knackered. Just sit and I’ll be back in an eye blink.” He strapped his long bush knife to his belt and went out of the cave.
Ned gripped Suzanne by the shoulders. His heart was thudding in his chest to the point of breathlessness. “I can’t wait for him.”
“Neddy, what do you mean?”
“Got to go now.”
Suzanne grabbed his arms and then sucked in her breath. She was looking at his forearms.
“I know,” he said, breathing hard. “They’re gone. Please let go of me, Suzanne. There’s a way into the cavern below, I can see it, but I don’t want you to follow.”
“Ned, please wait till Ollie comes back, and we’ll all go together.” She was gripping his arms with her thin, birdlike fingers.
Ned shook his head; he heard the Rai calling in their whispery voices. He went to his backpack and took out the drawing of the tjuringa and stuffed it in his pocket. It was then he remembered the quartz chunk Ollie had given him and that he’d kept in his shorts pocket; it was hot against his thigh. He pulled out his own flashlight and inspected the back of the cave, looking for an opening that would lead to the sacred site he knew was somewhere below.
Thunder rolled across the top of the bluffs and echoed inside the canyon.
“Ned, I’m begging you, please wait.”
He was desperate now and pushed her hands away. “Here it is,” he said, looking up. The flashlight beam rested on a small opening in the rough rock wall where the ceiling sloped down just above his head. He found footholds and handholds in the rock, and before Suzanne could stop him, he’d scrambled up to the opening and crawled inside. He could hear Suzanne’s distraught voice behind him, but her words no longer registered. The only words he could hear were in the high keening song of the Rai, and a harsher voice that cackled and hissed in a rasping counterpoint.
Ned found himself wedged into a very narrow tunnel that barely accommodated his man’s frame with its heavy boots. In his mind flashed the image of thin, dark-skinned people about the size of Suzanne moving on their bellies toward the chamber below. He pushed with his toes and worked his way over the rough surface of the tunnel, turning his shoulders left and then right, working his way down the sloping passage until it widened abruptly, and he fell headlong into the chamber below as the small ledge at the end of the tunnel crumbled and gave way.
Ned landed painfully, face-first, on a tumble of rocks and lay dazed for a moment. Sitting up, he tasted blood. Touching his mouth, he discovered that his upper lip was split. Touching it warily with his tongue, he also realized that one of his front teeth was broken off.
“Shit,” he whispered to himself. His voice sounded thick and deadened in the still air of the chamber. He sneezed and wiped snot, dust, and blood on the front of his T-shirt. The air made him choke, and it smelled like a rat’s nest or a snake’s den. Gripping the flashlight, he looked around. The room was narrow and high, with many paintings on the slanting walls. Dingo images were prominent, but also ibis, flying foxes, barramundi and other fish, crocodiles, turtles, numerous snakes from only a few inches long to monumental serpents that stretched across an entire wall. Also prominent were Ancestor figures with large round heads and wavy lines emanating from them like rays of the sun. Ned was so astonished, he almost forgot the pain in his mouth.
Somewhere behind him, a long way off it seemed, someone was calling his name. But his focus was drawn toward the highest wall, where a number of sorcery figures in yellow and dark red, some twice as high as his head, cast their menace over the chamber. Trembling violently on his knees, Ned swung the flashlight upward, revealing their postures of aggression and death. Their colors were so vibrant, even in the minimal light of the flashlight, he felt an overwhelming urge to reach up and touch them.
With bloody, shaking hands, he pushed himself to his feet and stood, swaying.
“I’m here,” he said aloud. “Show me what to do.” His words fell like dry leaves in the dead air.
Turning around, he saw behind him dozens of shallow shelves chipped into the rock wall, each holding a bark coffin with its ends tied in grass twine. Some of the shelves also held implements such as boomerangs, stone axes, and small dilly-bags made of reeds or grass. It began
to dawn on Ned that what he was looking at was a mortuary chamber, an Aboriginal burial cave. So Ollie had been right. Even with Ned’s limited knowledge of Aboriginal customs, he knew this would be one of the most forbidden places you could stumble upon.
On a shelf nearest him, the light from his flashlight caught a perfectly chiseled quartz spear point resting on top of a bark coffin. Remembering, he put his hand in his pocket and drew out the quartz ball. It shone gold and white in the flashlight’s beam. At the same moment, he heard a shuffling of heavy feet behind him, and claws scraping on the rocks.
Ned wheeled to find himself face to face with a dingo of monstrous proportion, its eyes red in the torchlight and its yellow fangs bared. A curling tongue slid over its front teeth.
“Helloh, Neddy,” it growled. “You’ve come to see me at lahhst.”
“Who … what are you?” he gasped.
“Blimey,” the creature coughed, “I’ve lived with you all your life, and you don’t know me?”
Ned was shaking from his bloody face to the soles of his feet. “Is … this your true form?”
“One of them,” it huffed. “Many Dingo Clan humahhns have served me well.” It licked its lips with a horrid smack. “When I appeared to them like this, they called me their god, their Ancestor. I found their young boys sent here for initiation most toothsome.”
“The death adder, was that you …” Ned was too shaken to think straight.
The Quinkan make a nerve-shredding attempt at laughter. “I used thahht form especially for you because your Snake Clahhn great-grandmother tried to interfere with me, but as you see, she’s deserted you now, no more protection marks. She had business elsewhere.”
Ned glanced at his arms, confirming what he already knew. The skin pattern had been a protective screen against shamanic magic, which probably explained how he’d managed to stay alive all these years, but now it was gone.
“I was making a nice living here, until your arrogant half-breed fool of a half-wit grandfather invaded this place with his delusions of grandeur. He thought he could hahhrness the powers of creation. A truly wicked, evil man,” it snarled.
“You would know about evil. You killed my father.” Ned barely got the words out.
The Quinkan growled deep in its throat. “He killed himself. I didn’t have to touch him. He was useless, couldn’t do the job I needed from him, but I have some faith in you, Neddy-boy.”
Ned closed his fist around the quartz ball, drawing unexpected courage and comfort from it. Maybe what Ollie had said about it was true, that it really did have some senior man’s Quinkan protection magic in it. At this point, he was ready to believe anything.
“Yer face is a right dog’s breakfahhst,” the devil-dog observed, adopting Ollie’s voice and cocking its head. It took a step toward him.
“What did you want from my father, or from me?” Ned shone the flashlight directly into its eyes, and it took a step back. “I intend to do everything in my power to get rid of you, not help you.”
“But that’s the same thing, innit?” The devil-dingo grinned, showing its teeth. “This is the place where the mistake was done. As Black Hahhrrow’s next of kin, it’s your job to undo it. That’s why you’re still alive, wretch of a humahhn, to undo the magic! Otherwise, I would have just eaten you long ago.”
“But how? I don’t know how!” Ned backed away from the creature’s stench, his stomach churning.
“Use the Dingo Clan tjuringa, fer fuck’s sake!” it yelped. “That’s why you’re here, to fix the mess your stupid ahhncestor made. So whip it out already and cut the cord that keeps me tied to your sorry bloodline.” It gnarred and chewed at its hide in a disgusting manner.
“Then show me where it is, this tjuringa thing, and I’ll try.”
“But that’s the bloody point,” it howled at him. “Hahhrrow spellbound it nobody knows where, sealed with his own blood, hid it away. You’re his blood kin, you met him in the billabong. You didn’t ask him where it was?”
Ned no longer felt the floor under his feet. “I-I didn’t know …”
“Whahht kind of pitiful shahhmann are you? With yer bloody face and another man’s magic there in yer hand? You’re so stupid, you didn’t even bring the tjuringa with you!” It lifted its leg and pissed on a ledge, filling an empty oval-shaped depression in a rock ledge with its urine. “How did you think you could undo Black Harrow’s sorcery without the clan tjuringa he stole?”
“But, I thought the thing was here, that I was supposed to find it and take it to some clan elders. I thought …” Ned said helplessly. It was clear he had misinterpreted the visions, that he had staked everything on the hope that once he found the cave where it all began, he would be shown what to do.
“Curse Black Hahhrrowrowrow and all his brood,” growled the Quinkan, snapping toward Ned. “Figure out how to do the job proper or I swear I’ll eat you anyway!”
A scream cut through the chamber, and Ned saw Suzanne’s head and shoulders emerge from the tunnel entrance. Her face was a mask of terror as she took in the scene.
The Quinkan turned toward her, and a red light blazed in its eyes. It stood up on its hind legs, balancing unsteadily for a moment, then turned toward Suzanne. Its guttural half-human voice froze Ned’s blood. “Shahhll I eat this one, then? I’m soooo hungry!”
“NO!” Ned shouted and threw himself at the Quinkan, sending them both toppling into the black shadows of the cave. Ned kicked and punched for all he was worth as the Quinkan clamped its jaws around his thigh, shredding his flesh to the bone. A quick look at the tunnel showed him that Suzanne had retreated from the entrance.
“I’ll KILL you!” Ned yelled, his mind a red blur. “If I have any guardians at all, I summon them NOW!”
The Quinkan shook Ned by the leg and flung him across the cave. He could feel bones breaking, but he was beyond caring about his own body. His only focus now was to do as much damage to the hated creature as he could manage. He could barely see it coming toward him through the flashlight’s distant beam where it had landed against the painted sorcery wall. But then, a shimmering light that was not battery produced filled the narrow cave. Shining ovoid figures began to emerge from the rock walls, and Ned felt the icy touch of the Rai at his back. Snarling, the Quinkan stopped in its tracks.
We are the Rai. We teach, we guide. The shaman’s path is our purpose. Their words sang in Ned’s mind like cataracts and shrieking winds. Simultaneously, the tallest of the Rai plunged its amoeba-like appendages into Ned’s body, ripping out his heart and lungs and viscera. It took the quartz stone from his hand and thrust it inside his body cavity, sealing the wound. Ned fell to the floor of the cavern, rolling and jerking as if in the throes of a grand mal seizure.
When he sat up, a bright light leaked from the sealed slit in his torso. Getting to his feet, he looked into the red eyes of the Quinkan but felt no fear, only a terrible burning sorrow. His body was numb and held no sensations of pain, and he marveled at the luminosity of his hands as he held them out. To his left, the Rai were faint ripples of light against the chamber wall.
“With my imperfect knowledge, I cannot unbind you,” he said in a monotone to the Quinkan, as it circled him warily, “but I can restrain you until another comes who will learn fully what to do.” Ned stumbled toward the tallest sorcery figure on the wall, his hands outstretched to it, just as the devil-dingo launched itself.
Both fell heavily against the painted wall, and Ned heard Suzanne’s anguished screams mingled with the strangled howls of the Quinkan.
It was the last sound he heard as a mortal man.
Chapter 30
September 8, Thursday—Present Day
Alice sat on her deck swing in shorts and a Hardison Museum T-Rex T-shirt, savoring her next-to-last day of medical leave from the office. Barefoot, her right ankle and foot still wrapped in bandages, she sipped her coffee and contemplated the future.
The day, September 8, was her birthday, but that significance pale
d in comparison to recent events. She pushed the swing with her good foot, sipped at the cup, and took stock of things. This was the first day since Hal’s death and the destruction of Dunescape that she had not taken the antidepressant prescribed by her doctor. Her head was clear, and she no longer felt guilty for being alive.
This was also Margaret’s first week back at school and the first week of Nik’s fall semester teaching gig at the university, his last before graduation at the end of the year.
She drained her cup. Twelve days since Hal’s death, and she’d been thinking, sitting here on this placid late-summer morning, about a lot of things, some pleasant, and some not. On the pleasant side, Nik and Margaret were taking her to dinner that evening (she’d asked for no useless gifts). She was also relieved to be cleared of suspicion regarding Hal’s sudden death and the destruction of the house. The autopsy confirmed natural causes (a heart attack), and the house fire had been ruled an accident caused by an oil lamp getting knocked over and igniting combustible materials in the upstairs area. She’d received a copy of Hal’s will from his lawyer, and they’d agreed to meet soon. There was a lot of legal business to take care of, but the man assured her when it was all said and done there would be a tidy inheritance.
She thought about Nik. He’d been supportive beyond all expectations, asking few questions and taking up the slack in daily tasks, which included picking Margaret up from school during Alice’s recuperation. Margaret had returned to school with enthusiasm, eager to stay in touch with several friends she’d met at science camp. Now that she was fourteen, she’d begun to change, in a good way. For some reason, she seemed less bratty and more reasonable, which Alice hoped wasn’t just a phase. Margaret had spent a day crying and mourning for Carlisle, but now she seemed over it. About Hal, she’d said nothing.
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