The Hidden Fire (Book 2)

by James R. Sanford

  Lady Dorigano frowned. “Lerica, please, we’re at the dinner table.”

  Lerica picked her fork up and smiled thinly at everyone.

  Luscion Dorigano brought his hands together with a clap. “Thankfully, those days are long gone. In the five years we’ve been here, there has been only one accidental death, not even work related. A young man tried to swim the river last year and ran into an angel ray. It was terrible to see someone die like that.”

  “Jubi says that his people all become ghosts when they die,” Nikkin chimed in.

  This time, it was Kyric’s turn to feel a passing chill.

  “Jubi tells all sorts of stories,” said Lady Dorigano.

  “He says the word Enari means walking spirit, and that their ancestors can come out of the spirit world to guide them. And he says they’re very angry right now.”

  “These tribal people certainly have their superstitions,” said Merna.

  Aiyan let one hand drift under the table. He touched his locket. “Men wiser than I have said that we each have a spirit that can live beyond the bounds of our physical form. And that it is possible for a very strong spirit to live among us, here on Aerth.”

  Lady Dorigano made a face. “How can that be? When we die we go to Summerland and walk with the Lord and Lady.”

  Baleska smiled broadly. “Are you telling us, Sir Aiyan, that you believe in ghosts?”

  “I do believe in ghosts,” Aiyan said. “I do indeed.”

  CHAPTER 7: Secrets of the Jungle

  Kyric felt a soft warm hand grasp his own. It was Rolirra, pulling him up from the mud. A bright, glaring moon hung overhead, pouring shafts of white light through the canopy of trees. The forest stood silent. The drowned ones had gone.

  They found some higher ground and sat down in the crook of a buttress-root. “I feel that you are close to us,” Rolirra said. “As close as I can dream. Those that you saw are the Enari.”

  She crushed something that looked like a raspberry between her fingers and smeared it into his eyes. They throbbed painfully for a moment and he saw a strange light.

  “Now you will be able to see them on the other side. You must ask them to walk, to come out and show you the way.”

  The swirling light faded. He wanted to ask her how to do that, but he couldn’t move or speak. The forest was alive with color. He could see tree sap flowing in bright green arteries, and a million insects as amber streaks in the dark. The sky went from black to blue to yellow and back to black. It became too much. He leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes to the new light.

  He was up with the sun, the morning quickly getting warm. He sat on the edge of the bed remembering his dream, the bright horizontal sunbeams making him shade his eyes. They were runny and encrusted, like he had slept for days.

  When he found his way to the breakfast room, Aiyan was already there, watching Ellec and Dorigano finish their plates as they argued.

  “If I gave her passage,” Ellec was saying, “my guests would have to sleep on the open deck with the crew.”

  “Then they can stay here.” Dorigano turned to Aiyan. “I would make my full hospitality available to you and your ward.”

  “It seems that the countess requires transportation to Ularra,” Aiyan explained. “It also seems that the captain has not fulfilled his contract with the baronet. There is a second load of goods in Ularra awaiting delivery.”

  Ellec took a breath. “I have already discussed this with my friend, Captain Felka. He’s willing to carry your goods here in my place.”

  Dorigano finished his last slice of bacon and pushed his plate away. “He doesn’t know the river like you do, Lyzuga. And yours is one of the few ships that can carry thirty tons without running aground on the last bend.”

  “Felka can do it,” Ellec insisted. “The river is running very high.” When Dorigano didn’t answer Ellec looked to Aiyan.

  Kyric pretended to scratch an itch on his neck and gave Aiyan the Cor’el sign for ‘stay.’

  Aiyan smiled. “We would be honored to stay here as your guests, baronet,” he said. “We’ll hire one of the locals and do some hunting. It will be . . . interesting. You’ll be back before we know it, Ellec.”

  Ellec made a sound deep in his throat. “I thought you were eager to begin your voyage.”

  “Another week won’t make any difference.”

  “Can I stay, too?” It was Lerica. She had been standing in the doorway, listening.

  “No.” said Ellec. “Who would stand your watches?”

  “Oh, you and Pallan can manage it.” Her eyes sparkled for a moment. “And this way, you and Baleska will have more space at the captain’s table.”

  Ellec thought about it, the corner of his mouth turning up just a tad. “Well, I suppose it’s alright. But do me a favor: let those ladies show you how to wear a dress.”

  She shrugged. “They’re afraid to talk to me.”

  “I’m not surprised.” He downed a last gulp of coffee and stood. “Very well, Luscion, tell the countess to make ready. We sail this afternoon.”

  “Yeah. Them art hating,” Jubi said in his atrocious Avic.

  Aiyan switched to Cor’el. ‘Your ancestors are angry?’

  Jubi grunted and signed. ‘They gather in the swamp where their bones rest. They stir the waters. They make the father of crocodiles slap his tail.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shook his head. ‘It is not for me to say. We have an elder who can say. She is a —.’ Kyric didn’t know the sign. He cocked his head at Aiyan.

  “Speaker,” Aiyan said to him. To Jubi he said-signed, ‘Can you take us to her?’

  “Yeah.”

  It was late in the day. Aiyan and Kyric had slipped away while Lerica and the Doriganos said their goodbyes and watched Calico disappear around the bend in the river. When Kyric explained that his dreams were connected to these people who believed their ancestors returned as ghosts, Aiyan said, “I was curious as well. Just a feeling.”

  Jubi was the only native overseer on the plantation. They had found him in the grove west of the house, instructing two older boys on how to trim the shade trees.

  ‘Can you take us now?’ Aiyan signed.

  Jubi nodded. He said something to the boys and led Aiyan and Kyric down to the river, to where a rather broad canoe rested in the grass. He pushed them across the river with a long pole, standing up the whole time, beaching the canoe on a wide apron of earth near the settlement. Dark-eyed children and silent women stared at them as they walked past the stick and mud huts. A few older boys played kickball with an animal bladder in the patchy lane. Beneath an awning, near the huge grinding stone in the center of the village, an aged and fragile woman sat on a blanket.

  ‘She is too old and stiff to make Cor’el,’ Jubi said-signed.

  Aiyan nodded. ‘Will you please offer her our respects, and ask her if she will speak the anger of the dead.’

  After a brief exchange with Jubi in their native tongue, she had him light a block of incense she kept in a bowl. It smelled awful, worse than burning dung. They sat like that for some time, the smoke getting thicker and the woman holding her head askew as if listening. With a start, her eyes rolled up into her head, and she swayed from side to side. A passing cloud blotted out the sun. She spoke.

  ‘They are angry,’ Jubi translated. ‘They wait, and they do not walk.’

  ‘What is making them angry?’ Aiyan said-signed.

  ‘I hear my ancestor,’ came the reply. ‘I shall ask him why.’

  She made a curious humming whine, not very loud, then suddenly she lost her stiffness. She began signing vigorously, her elbows bending freely, her fingers and hands subtle and quick. Her word-sounds came out low and gravelly — a man’s voice.

  ‘We are the spirits of the drowned. We look through a veil of tears.’ Her face twisted into a mask of deep grief. She sobbed as she signed. ‘The slaughter of angels. The rape of dreamers.’

  ‘Ask them if they can show
us,’ Kyric said-signed. ‘Ask them if they will walk.’

  The speaker raised her head. ‘We will come out to show you. We will walk. We will walk. We will appear in the folds of the mist.’

  The stars in the eastern sky had begun to fade away as they crept down the hill, Kyric holding his bow, Aiyan sloshing with extra water skins. They hadn’t bothered to tell anyone that they were going to the swamp this morning. The mention of ghost hunting would have brought ridicule, and bird hunting might have brought joiners, so they had slipped away before anyone was up. Kyric had been surprised at Aiyan’s willingness to go to the Enari village only on the basis of his dreams. He had been vague, and told him almost nothing of Rolirra.

  They made for the rowboat tied to Dorigano’s dock. When they got there, they found Lerica already sitting in it, manning the oars.

  “I knew you two wouldn’t wait until dawn,” she said. “Early worm gets the fish and all that.”

  Kyric shook his head. “We have to get to the swamp in time for the morning mist.”

  “Better climb aboard then.”

  Aiyan simply shrugged. There was nothing for it, so they stepped in and let Lerica row them across the river. Kyric slung his bow, and they quick-marched along a well-trodden path between two rows of coffee plants, the sky turning to violet as they broke out of the field and walked down a long slope to the edge of a wetlands thick with cypress and stagnant pools. A rotting odor came from the swamp.

  “Don’t you even want to know what we’re doing?” Kyric asked Lerica.

  “I saw you coming back from the Enari village yesterday. Had a little chat with old Jubi myself.” She shook her head, her eyes flashing with that spark she carried. “You fellows are not as subtle as you think.”

  Aiyan gave her a mischievous glance. “We could say the same about you, Miss Panthrum.”

  Though the trees, they could see mist rising from a shallow pond choked with lily pads. It was rising from a dozen places now, everywhere that water pooled, hanging on the motionless morning air.

  Aiyan held very still, his eyes narrowing. He pointed. An Enari woman stood behind a veil of hanging moss. She stared blankly, as if she didn’t see them, then turned and walked away.

  “Come on,” said Aiyan, moving to catch up with her.

  “She’s a ghost?” said Lerica. “I thought you could see right through one.”

  “She’s not just one of the village women,” Kyric said.

  They turned to one another, both saying at the same time, “How come you can see her?”

  “Anyone can see the invisible,” said Aiyan, “if they know how. There is a way of looking, out of the corner of your eye.” He shook his head. “Never mind, we don’t have time for that now.”

  They hurried after her, pushing through fledgling buttonwoods, and wading stretches of muddy water, never closing the distance, but never falling behind as she followed the edge of the swamp in a curving course to the southwest. Bug-eyed lizards stared at them from the limbs of buttress-root trees as they passed. They were well past the Enari village and heading due south when something moved to their left. Lerica sprang ten feet sideways.

  “It’s only a crocodile,” Aiyan said, drawing his sword. “Just back away easy, Kyric.” He looked at Lerica. “No need to be jumpy.”

  The ghost, or whatever she was, led them onto a game trail and they made good time after that, at times having to cut their way through dense walls of shrubs and vines as they pushed through to another trail.

  “Don’t touch the vines with the white flowers,” Lerica said.

  “Another poisonous plant?” Kyric asked.

  “Like poison ivy, only worse.”

  They crossed a dozen tiny streams, too shallow to hide any deadly Terrulan fish, and at length they stopped to rest, the figure they trailed becoming a shadow behind a patch of bamboo. The bark of a nearby tree seemed to move, then Kyric saw that a colony of beetles swarmed over every inch of it. He tried not to think of the dream beetles.

  The sun hung directly overhead. “We’ve been at this for hours,” said Lerica. “We need to turn around now if we’re to make it back before nightfall.”

  Aiyan shook his head. “Do what you want, but I’m going on. There are hidden places in this forest. I feel that we are near to one, and I will follow that perception.”

  They pushed on, Aiyan in the lead, no longer seeing the spirit woman. The undergrowth began to thin, and they moved easily through a copse of silk-cottons, soon crossing a wide stream bridged by a fallen tree. The banks of the stream were too straight, too uniform. It was a canal.

  Aiyan led them along an overgrown trail, feeling something close, his stride lengthening. Then they broke out of the trees and it all lay before them.

  It was a dome sitting on a perfectly square island in the center of a perfectly square lake nearly three miles across. The dome was a hundred feet tall, and cracked, the structure beneath it hidden behind a ring of trees and shrubs. The ruins of smaller domes sat at each corner of the island, and other square structures were visible above the undergrowth.

  The lake had risen higher than the surrounding land, with only a grassy dike to hold it back. They climbed up on it to get a better view of the ruins. The ground was soft, the crest just a couple of feet above the waterline. Crocodiles lurked in the weedy shallows at the corners of the lake.

  “A great nation,” Lerica said faintly, “out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  They stood there for a moment, taking it in. Kyric tried to imagine the power of a nation that could build such a place — huge stone buildings in a forest where it was hard to find a small rock. He was no engineer, but he understood that constructing enormous domes required advanced mathematics.

  “It seems to be inlaid with carvings,” said Aiyan. “I wish we could get a closer look.”

  “We have to come back with a canoe,” said Lerica.

  “Much longer and you won’t need one,” said Aiyan, pointing to where a large swath of turf had been cut from the crest of the levee. “Looks like the summer rains washed over the dike a little. One more wet season and this will all give way.”

  Kyric swept his arm across the view of the ruins. “What does finding this place mean?” he said to Aiyan. “Why were you drawn here?”

  “I truly do not know. There’s no power or weird that I can feel. Perhaps it was a mistake.”

  “I hate to keep bringing this up,” said Lerica, “but we are a good ten or twelve miles from the plantation. Luckily, I’m very good at backtracking. If we move quickly we still have a chance to get back before dark.”

  Her eyes flashed darkly. “You don’t want to spend the night in the Terrulan jungle. There are creatures that only come out after dark. We would have to sleep in a tree and even then we wouldn’t be safe. I had to do it once. It wasn’t enjoyable, even for me.”

  Aiyan nodded, and they turned to go. The spirit woman was standing at the tree line, staring as before, but never looking straight at them.

  “Then again,” he said, “I’ve slept in worse places than a tree.”

  She turned and went into the forest, heading east, back towards the ocean, directly away from the lake and its ruins. Aiyan was determined to follow her. Kyric wasn’t going back without him, and Lerica wouldn’t go alone. They pursued the ghost.

  She led them through a grove of buttress-roots. Here the forest seemed more alive with bright birds and multicolored insects, and they crossed game trails that ran every which way It began to feel like they were on a slight downhill grade, and Kyric wasn’t surprised when they broke through some broadleaf plants and came to a bend in a narrow river.

  The spirit had vanished, but vaguely human shapes floated below the surface of the river, blurry and tinted green as the gentle current pushed them past.

  “Do you see them too?” Kyric asked Aiyan.

  Lerica answered. “We all see them.”

  They walked a course that roughly paralleled the river as it wound to
wards the sea. It widened as smaller streams joined it from the other side. Lerica suddenly stopped.

  “I smell fish,” she said. “Dead fish. A lot of them.”

  “Let’s go more carefully,” said Aiyan, lowering his voice. “And more quietly.”

  They crept forward, intersecting a game trail that angled in from the forest and turned to follow the river.

  “I just caught a whiff of wood smoke,” said Lerica.

  Aiyan nodded. “So did I.”

  They nearly tiptoed down the trail now, and as they rounded a sharp curve they surprised some creature about the size of a large dog. It whistled as it started and scrambled away down the trail.

  All of a sudden it fell into a wide hole with a thump, its whistle loud and frantic. It screamed and bayed as it thrashed uselessly.

  Aiyan ran to it drawing his sword. He put it out of its misery with a single thrust. His face fell grim as he knelt beside it.

  “This is no animal trap. We called them shoeboxes. You make the top strong enough so that you can cover it with dirt or leaves, and so little animals can pass over it. A man or a horse steps on and it collapses. We used to glue the leaves on so they wouldn’t blow away.”

  Kyric looked inside. The bottom was lined with long metal spikes. The animal, something of a cross between a pig and a tiny horse, had been impaled through its paws and its belly.

  Aiyan lifted his head. “We’re in danger.”

  “I hear men coming,” whispered Lerica.

  With a finger to his lips, Aiyan led them quickly back up the game trail. They hadn’t gone far when he pulled up sharply, holding his arm out to stop them. He pointed to a thin line stretched across the trail, then to a small tree next to it that had one springy limb pulled back. A pallet of sharp bamboo stakes had been lashed to its end.

  “Whip trap,” said Aiyan. “Set for someone coming from the other direction.” He was quiet for a moment.

  “Listen,” he said softly, “we could be in the middle of a whole patch of traps. Especially along this trail. We need to backtrack out the way we came in. I’ll take the lead — step exactly where I step.”