by Alex Archer
For a moment they stared at each other.
Then Annja broke the silence.
“What the matter, Porter? Cat got your tongue?”
He screamed in rage and moved in. For such a big man he was quick and he seemed to think that his quickness would allow him to get inside the arc of her blade and inflict some damage.
Annja was more than happy to show him that wasn’t the case.
She knew at that point she wasn’t going to get out of there alive. Even if she killed Porter, she’d still have to fight her way through several men armed with guns, and the chances of her doing that without getting shot at least once were slim. But for every moment she kept them preoccupied with her, Henry could get farther away.
She kept her back to the wall, making it impossible for Porter to circle around and attack her from the rear. He did his best to trip her up, weaving back and forth in front of her, consumed, it seemed, by his need for payback. His eyes were bright and full of hatred. He’d gone beyond wanting to see her grovel; he’d kill her now, if he could.
He rushed forward, knife at the ready, but Annja was there with the sword, driving him back. He feinted and tried again, this time from the opposite direction, but only managed to get a slash across the outside of one arm for his trouble.
The new pain seemed to wake him from his frenzy. Instead of rushing forward a third time, he suddenly stepped back and called out.
“Shoot her in the leg, please, Bryant.”
As Porter’s words sank in, Annja looked over at Bryant to see him unsling the rifle from his shoulder.
“With pleasure, sir,” he said in response.
She already knew there was nowhere to run. She gauged the distance between her and Porter, deciding in that moment to rush him and use him as a physical shield to protect herself from Bryant’s gunfire.
Who knew? Maybe she’d get lucky.
Annja kept her eyes on Porter, mindful that he might be using Bryant as a distraction to rush in and jab her with his own weapon while she was busy watching the other man. She could see Bryant out of the corner of one eye and that was all she needed. She’d move when she saw the gun come up toward his shoulder.
Any second now...
Twang!
Twang! Twang!
Two of Porter’s men suddenly collapsed, arrows jutting from their throats. A third shot, aimed at Bryant, struck the barrel of his gun as he was in the process of bringing it up across his body and, as a result, the arrow was deflected away without hitting its target.
The half second it took Annja to realize that not only were they under fire but the shots were coming from above and behind her was enough time for the shooter to get off two more shots, taking down the third of Porter’s men and narrowly missing Porter himself when he twisted to one side.
Annja dropped into a crouch, releasing the sword into the otherwhere, and looked up at the top of the canyon wall behind her.
Several tribal warriors stood silhouetted against the sky, bows drawn. As with the San back in the village, they wore little clothing and their wrists and ankles were decorated with all manner of bracelets and charms. Unlike the People of the Elephant, however, this particular group’s jewelry appeared to be fashioned from gold and jewels.
Bryant caught sight of the newcomers about the same time Annja did and they became his new target. He fired several quick shots and at least one of them must have hit its target for the body of a San warrior suddenly slammed into the ground a few feet from Annja. Bryant began backing up toward the entrance of the rocky cul-de-sac as fast as possible.
Annja was forgotten as the men turned their attention to this new threat. More gunfire rang out, the shots echoing in the narrow canyon with earsplitting intensity, and the sound of the natives’ bows was soon lost in the roar of automatic weapons. Two more tribesmen were hit and fell back out of sight, which should have helped Porter’s team recover their confidence, but the unerring accuracy of the enemy’s efforts far outmatched their own. With the exception of Bryant, few of them had faced a foe who fought back. The death of several of their number in so short a time had them spooked. When another of their number went down with an arrow in the thigh, the rest of Porter’s men broke and ran, despite the fact that their modern firearms were more than a match against traditional weapons.
Seeing his head of security abandoning the field, along with the rest of his men, Porter did the same. He glared at Annja one final time, then turned and ran as fast as he could for the canyon mouth a few dozen yards away. Several arrows were fired in his direction, but by some miracle he wasn’t hit. At the mouth of the canyon, Bryant waited for his employer to run past him, sent a few more covering shots toward the tribesmen on the ridge above and then followed in Porter’s wake.
And then there was only silence.
Annja stayed where she was for a moment, looking out at the aftermath of the confrontation, troubled by something that seemed out of place. It took her a moment to realize that the injured were neither moving nor making any sounds. There were no cries of pain, no shouts for help, nothing. Just silence.
This wasn’t right.
She glanced back up toward the ridge above her. Three of the tribal warriors remained, watching her like hawks, their bows at the ready. The rest had disappeared.
Headed this way, no doubt. What happened when they got here was anybody’s guess. Yes, they had chased off Porter and his men, but that didn’t mean they were friendly. More than one well-meaning archaeologist had lost his life dealing with lesser-known indigenous cultures. She kept her hands in view and did her best to look disarming.
The situation in front of her had her puzzled, however, and after a moment she couldn’t resist her curiosity any longer. She cautiously made her way toward the nearest injured man, who had taken an arrow through the right calf. She could see the feathered end sticking up even now. The wound was by no means life-threatening but it probably hurt.
Yet he lay there, unmoving.
As Annja knelt beside him, she got her first look at his face. His eyes were open and unblinking in the sunlight, his features twisted in pain.
Somehow an arrow to the calf had killed him.
It could be only one thing.
Poison.
The San tribes used a kind of poison made from the larvae of a small beetle, but it was slow-acting and often required hunters to follow the injured animal for hours, sometimes days, before it succumbed to the drug. Whatever this stuff was, it worked much faster and with considerably more deadly results.
32
It didn’t take long for the rest of the warriors to descend from the ridge and enter the canyon below. Annja heard them coming and rose from her crouch to face them, well aware of the three still above her with bows trained on her.
Two of these men also held their weapons trained on her while a third bound her hands behind her back with a piece of rough rope. They left her legs free, so she could walk.
“Who are you and where are you taking me?” she asked in case any of them spoke English.
The man beside her said something in response, but it was in a clicking language similar to the one she’d heard back in the village and she was unable to understand it. He might have answered her question, but could just as easily have been telling her to keep quiet, she didn’t know.
Once her hands were tied, he took her firmly by the arm and led her to the mouth of the cul-de-sac, where they waited for the other men to finish searching the bodies of the dead. Guns were ignored but knives seemed to be highly prized; each time one was found it was held aloft and displayed to the others. The pigsticker Porter had threatened her with was collected by one of the men and handed to her captor, giving Annja the sense that he might be the leader of the group.
He was tall and well built, which was easy to see given that he was wearing little more than a loincloth around his waist. He had thick, dark hair and brown eyes. His nose, broken at some time, had healed slightly out of place. His skin
was deeply tanned but Annja thought it was lighter than the People of the Elephant.
Perhaps an indication of a different tribe?
It would make sense. The nomadic groups in the region were generally respectful of territory and tried to keep to informally agreed-upon boundaries where available. They’d traveled some distance from the People of the Elephant so it was logical to assume she’d stumbled into some other groups’ territory.
But who were they? And why had they attacked Porter and his men?
More importantly, what did they want with her?
Annja didn’t have any answers, but it looked as if she might have some soon. The rest of the group had finished with the bodies of the dead and were now gathering around their leader. Bent Nose, as Annja decided to call him, said a few words and as a group they headed off, taking Annja along with them.
They left the dead-end canyon behind and followed a twisting trail that led deeper into the canyons and made it difficult for even Annja to keep track of. At first she’d been surprised they hadn’t blindfolded her or made any attempt to keep their path a secret, but gradually she came to realize they didn’t need to. The complexity of the trail was barrier enough for anyone who attempted to follow. They walked for well over an hour, taking only one break. When they stopped, one of the men offered her a drink from a water skin. It was warm and tasted of old leather, but she drank greedily, not knowing when she might next get the chance.
When she was finished they set out once more, traveling up and down hills and through various intersecting ravines until, after what seemed like hours, they entered what she took to be another dead-end canyon. She realized it was something far different when they came to its end.
A massive stone temple loomed out of the fading afternoon light. Like the ruins at Petra in Jordan, the front of the temple had been carved directly from the face of the rock, giving the impression that it was growing right out of the wall itself. Its age was immediately apparent, the wind and weather having dulled and rounded the carvings’ once-sharp corners and fine lines. That didn’t subtract from the sublime beauty of the structure itself.
Something about it looked familiar, but Annja dismissed it as her general familiarity with ancient ruins the world over. There were only so many different types of building materials and so many different ways of putting them together to create monuments and buildings of this size and scale. Really, it was unsurprising that ruins in the jungles of Guatemala resembled those of Papua New Guinea.
And yet...
There was something different about this place. It was only when she got closer and could see the faded remains of the paintings that covered the front of the temple—representations of elephants and lions and men around a campfire—that she understood where she’d seen it before. Nearly identical paintings covered the interior walls of the temple in the elephant graveyard.
Clearly the two were connected. But how? And why?
She wanted to stop and study the symbols covering the stone, to try to understand, but Bent Nose pushed her along in front of him, and bound as she was she had no choice but to go along. Her dismay soon turned to excitement, however, when she realized that they were headed inside the mysterious temple.
She might be chasing “monsters” all over the world on behalf of a cable television show, but she was, at heart, an archaeologist, and what she was seeing now was the kind of find that only came once in a lifetime.
Just beyond the doorway were four warriors. They were standing in the shadows and Annja didn’t realize they were there until they stepped out to greet Bent Nose and his companions. The guards—what else could they be?—were curious about her, but Bent Nose seemed reluctant to talk and eventually moved her over to a table in the corner that held a stone bowl filled with pitch-soaked torches. Soon the room was filled with a warm, flickering glow.
Bent Nose stopped to confer with two of the men that had been guarding the entrance, giving Annja a chance to look at the paintings decorating the walls. Unlike those on the outside, these had been protected from the elements and still retained much of their original gloss and color. They were extraordinary samples of ancient art and Annja longed for a video camera to record their details.
The paintings ran along the wall at about chest height and it only took a moment for Annja to understand they were telling a story, each panel leading into the next. She quickly scanned what she could see, trying to piece them together.
The first few panels showed a peaceful people living in a small village on the banks of a great river. Wildlife was plentiful, it seemed, as there were many pictures of elephants and zebras mingling with the people and in some of the pictures it seemed the two were working together. The overwhelming sense Annja got from the montage was peace and prosperity.
The village grew into a stone city in the next few panels, the mud-and-thatch houses replaced by multistory buildings of stone. There were several depictions of the Elephant Temple, as she had taken to calling the building where she had found Humphrey’s final clue, and the animal itself seemed to play a role in daily life for these people.
But then the tone and tenor of the images changed to dead elephants and dead people. In each were what appeared to be another group—perhaps another local tribe—that were depicted as the cause of suffering. To Annja it looked like a neighboring tribe had come in and begun to kill the elephants, and the people of the city fought to protect them.
Then the last three images caught her eye.
The first showed the city on the plain, deserted and abandoned. Sticks littered the ground, which seemed odd to Annja, until she realized that they weren’t sticks at all, but bones.
Elephant bones.
Her thoughts flashed back to the other temple. Is that how the elephant graveyard started? In the aftermath of a war? Was that temple all that was left of the city in these images?
The second last image showed a long line of people, refugees from the ruined city, stepping into a dark hole in the trunk of a massive baobab tree.
In the final image, the tree stood alone. The hole in its trunk was gone, as were all the people. It was as if the tree had swallowed them whole.
The Vanished Tribe.
A chill ran up her spine.
The story told in the line of images before her reminded Annja of the creation myth of the Anasazi Indians. According to legend, the Anasazi, or Old Ones, entered the Fourth World—the earth—through a hole in the sky in the Third World. They settled in the American Southwest, building beautiful cliff cities and enjoying a thriving culture. Many years later the Anasazi moved on again, this time opening a hole in the bottom of the Fourth World in order to reach the Fifth. The fact that the Anasazi culture seems to have vanished practically overnight made this particular myth all the more believable for those who bought into such things.
Annja tried to remember what she could about San religious beliefs and mythology. She knew they had two gods, or godlike beings—one that lived in the east and one that lived in the west. Unfortunately, that was about the extent of her knowledge. The legend pictured on the wall in front of her might be an incredible find, something that hadn’t been seen before. Then again, it might be common knowledge for any anthropologist who spent time in the field with the San.
Another thought occurred to her. Were these people even part of the San culture? They weren’t, after all, known for building permanent structures, never mind a city like the one pictured. Could they be a precursor to the people who would later become the San?
Not for the first time Annja wished she could communicate directly with these people. She had so many questions she wanted to ask and not being able to was driving her crazy. Things would have been a lot easier if Henry was still with her.
She was thankful they split up when they did. There was no way he would have been able to keep pace with her and more likely than not would have resulted in Porter catching both of them. Hopefully Henry had gotten away.
Annja was so
deeply lost in her thoughts that she didn’t realize Bent Nose had finished his conversation. He stepped between her and the wall, startling her. He said something angrily to her in his language and then stepped toward her, shooing her back with his hands.
Bent Nose called out to the others, who held the torches high and moved deeper into the temple.
They passed through several chambers one after another, too quickly for Annja to get a good look around, though it was clear from the amount of dust that the building hadn’t been used for its original purpose in a long time.
When they reached the last chamber Annja got her biggest shock of the afternoon.
A stylized painting of a giant baobab tree covered the entire rear wall, its outstretched branches seeming to flicker and wave in the torchlight as if blown by wind. And in its center, just like in the earlier painting, loomed a gaping hole. As they drew closer, Annja realized that it was the opening to a cave. The same cave that had apparently swallowed an entire tribe of people.
Without hesitation Bent Nose led Annja and the rest of the group to it.
She felt her pulse kick up a notch as they stepped through the entrance. The torchlight splayed over the close walls and she saw that it wasn’t a cave at all, but rather a tunnel running deeper into the mountain. To Annja’s experienced eye it looked as if the passage had formed naturally but had then been expanded by years of painstaking work. There were sections where the surface of the walls had been smoothed out, and she could even see the impact of hand tools on the rock itself.
They followed the tunnel for what felt like another fifteen minutes. It twisted and turned with easy regularity, and twice even doubled back on itself for several dozen yards, but in the end it kept them moving down. The incline wasn’t steep, just a few degrees, but it was steady and after a time Annja guessed that they had descended about seventy-five, maybe a hundred, feet, beneath the surface.
