Eye of the Forest (17 page)

“Reckon he’s more than just a warrior,” said Sicky. “All that gold and feathers on him. Reckon he’s a king, maybe.” He pointed at some of the other alcoves where yet more Incas were now being slowly revealed. “Them Incas used to carry the mummies of all their dead kings around with them,” said Sicky. “I wouldn’t be surprised if these are them. And now we know what that smell was. This place. It’s a crypt.” Sicky shouted back across his shoulder. “Better hurry up with that machete, Muddy. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to have company soon.”

“Oh, Sicky,” said Philippa. “They’ve been dead for at least five hundred years. Besides, even if they did come to life, which they won’t, you’ve got a djinn here to protect you. Nothing’s going to happen to you so long as you’ve got me around.”

“Okay, miss. All the same, I’ll feel better when I’m out of here. Don’t like being around no dead people. In case it’s infectious.”

Philippa assumed he was making a joke. “It’s not at all infectious,” she said, scolding him.

“That’s what you think,” said Muddy. He swung the machete again and wrenched a huge length of creeper away from the door and the wall. And he kept on pulling, even as he found the creeper extended all the way up to the roof, to a spot only a few feet away from Groanin.

Groanin felt the creeper he was holding on to shift ominously. “I say,” he said. “What’s that you’re chopping, Muddy, me old mate?”

Muddy hacked at another creeper. “Just the green stuff that’s jamming this door,” he said.

“Well, be careful,” said Groanin, and felt the creeper he was holding shift again.

He was just about to shout a warning to Muddy when the creeper suddenly came away from the roof and, like Tarzan swinging through the jungle while holding on to a liana — a kind of creeper — Groanin started a rapid and pendulous descent.

“Look out, miss!” he yelled as he swung down from the roof, for it was clear that he would surely collide with Philippa. “Look out, I say!”

Too late Philippa turned to see what she was being warned about. Groanin’s heavy swinging body struck her like a wrecking ball. The impact carried her clean off her feet and into one of the alcoves, where she collided with one of the mum-mified kings and then lay still.

Groanin, who was unaffected by the impact, picked himself up off the floor and ran to Philippa’s side. Much to his relief she was breathing, but unconscious. And gathering her up in his arms, he kicked the Inca king’s mummified body aside, carried her out of the sinister alcove, and laid her down by the door that Muddy had found earlier. There, Groanin set about trying to revive her, patting her cheeks and then her hands, and even fanning her with his jacket.

Sicky knelt down beside Philippa and took her pulse. “That was quite a collision,” he remarked. “Like a crunch tackle in American football. This little djinn girl will be out cold for a while, I reckon.”

“She’s alive at any rate,” said Groanin.

“She’s not the only one. Look.”

Muddy pointed to the alcove recently vacated by Philippa where the mummified Inca king was now on his feet. His movements were slow and jerky as might have been expected after five hundred years of immobility. But his intention was clear enough. He was arming himself with the bow and arrow that had been placed with him in the alcove. More of the Inca kings were coming back to a kind of life, as well, and they, too, were collecting their primitive weapons.

Primitive but effective. An arrow flew through the air, narrowly missing Groanin’s ear.

“I say, steady on,” yelled the English butler. “You’ll have someone’s eye out with that thing.”

“I think that’s the general idea,” said Sicky. “Maybe you shouldn’t have kicked him.”

“It’s not my fault he’s come back to life,” said Groanin as another arrow flew through the air. “Do something.”

Sicky, who had finally succeeded in removing the last piece of
Hevea
tree rubber the Xuanaci had used to cover the magical tattoo on his stomach, now thought to show this to the advancing Inca warrior kings in order that they might be turned to stone.

“Cover your eyes,” he told the others, and then showed the marauding Inca kings his intimidating belly.

It didn’t work. None of them were turned to stone. And it was plain to see why. Their dead-looking eyes didn’t see things the way ordinary human eyes saw things. Either that or his stomach was still too dirty for the tattoo to work its Gorgonlike effect.

“Oh,” said Sicky. “Now we’re in for it.”

Muddy brandished the machete in his hand. “I’ll give them a taste of this if they shoot any more of them arrows at me. I’ll fix them old kings. Kill a few. See how they like that.”

“That might not be possible,” objected Sicky. “If they be dead already.”

“Good point.” Muddy hacked the last creeper from the door and tried to haul it open.

Groanin made another vain attempt to revive Philippa. “Miss Philippa,” he said urgently. “We need your help. Quick. Before these zombies make pincushions of us.”

“It’s no good,” said Sicky. “Maybe you should apologize. After all, it was you who kicked that old king back there.”

Groanin sprang up and bowed gravely toward the warlike Inca kings. “Esteemed sirs and princes,” he said in an extremely servile fashion. He was British after all and no one can speak to a king or a queen quite like an English butler. “Your Highnesses. Your Majesties. Your Imperial Majesties. Please, forgive this intrusion. Begging your royal pardon, but I think there’s been some kind of mistake. We are not your enemies. Just unwitting travelers. We had no intention of disturbing your privacy. But if we have offended you, then please accept our respects and abject apologies and our unworthy assurances that it will not happen again.”

An Incan spear clattered onto the flagstones and skidded sharply toward Groanin’s shoe. And recognizing the futility of further conversation, the butler turned and pulled hopelessly at the door.

“It’s no good,” said Muddy. “This door is still stuck fast.”

“We’ll all be stuck fast unless you can get that flipping door open, Muddy.” Making a fist, Groanin hammered loudly on the door. “I say! Is there anyone there? Please, someone, could you open the door? I say, open the flipping door!”

S
houldering their backpacks, John and Nimrod moved up the trail, hacking their way through the thick jungle for several hours until they came to the spot where, earlier on, as two fierce jaguars they had fought and killed the
giant
giant anaconda. The place was easy enough to recognize. There were broken bushes and trees and, in a hollow on a rock, a large pool of blood.

The two djinn did not linger, however, to savor their earlier triumph. At Nimrod’s insistence, they pressed on so that they might reach the Eye of the Forest before nightfall. And, after another hour or two of walking and a series of jungle clearings, finally they found it. Or rather Nimrod did, for the stones of the doorway were so green and overgrown that they might easily have missed their square silhouettes in the encroaching Amazon darkness. And to John’s tired eyes, only the neatness of the extremely large and old trees that surrounded these stones looked in any way
remarkable. But, too tired to take much in, the two djinn quickly erected their tents and tumbled into them.

The next morning, John awoke feeling desperately hungry and with an intense sense of anticipation. Nimrod had already cooked a hearty breakfast of bacon, sausage, and eggs, and as soon as it was eaten they set about exploring the curious, decaying edifice, which was obviously Incan in its proportions and detail, and a foot or two smaller than any ordinary doorway in a normal sort of house. Most curious of all, on one side of the ancient door was a bolt secured with a giant knot that appeared to have been fashioned from braided human hair.

“They must have been quite small, the Incas,” remarked John.

“Yes, I think they were, probably,” said Nimrod.

“Are you sure that this is it?” asked John.

“Yes,” Nimrod said flatly, “quite sure. There was a set of coordinates on the map that Faustina gave Frank Vodyannoy. An exact latitude and longitude. And this is the place. Look.” He showed John his handheld satnav unit as it confirmed what he had just said.

“Only it doesn’t look anything like the photograph that was in the newspaper,” said John. “For one thing, the door’s not really shaped like an eye at all.”

“No, it’s not,” said Nimrod.

“And unlike the door in the picture, this one appears not to be made of wood but metal. To say nothing of the
giant knot securing it. I mean, that wasn’t even in the photograph.”

“I must confess to never having actually seen the Eye of the Forest before, until, like you, I saw it in the newspaper,” said Nimrod. “Or at least until I thought I’d seen it in the newspaper. But you’re quite right, of course. This does look very different from what we saw in the
Herald Tribune.
As you say, that one was shaped like an eye, and this one clearly isn’t. It’s noticeably rectangular.”

John hacked carelessly at the vegetation covering the stone doorway, which led nowhere but to the jungle on the other side. The noise and movement of his machete disturbed a flock of parakeets overhead that made a sound like the slashing violins in a Hitchcock movie. To his suspicious ears, the monkeys in the trees almost seemed to be laughing.

“It’s also curious, wouldn’t you say,” John continued carefully because he could see that Nimrod was a little annoyed about something, “how there’s no evidence of any expedition having been here at all? No one has even attempted to strip these ruins bare of creepers with their machetes. Which they would have done to take a picture, right?” John’s keen eyes scanned the forest floor. “Either they did a very good job of hiding their tracks or they were never here at all. In fact, I’d say no one has been here for several hundred years.”

“You tread heavily,” said Nimrod, “but what you say is quite true, John. It would seem that the
Herald Tribune
and,
more important, the djinn world, has been the subject of a hoax. It’s clear to me now that the photograph in the newspaper was a fake, and very likely a fake that was made by Virgil McCreeby.”

“Do you think he meant it to lure us here?” said John. “So that
we
could lead him to the Eye of the Forest?”

“I believe he did,” agreed Nimrod. “As usual it would seem that McCreeby is in search of power and gold. Perhaps both. The door itself is not without considerable intrinsic value.”

“What does
intrinsic
mean, when it’s at home?” growled John. He was beginning to feel very slightly aggrieved that Nimrod had prevented him from mounting a rescue mission for Philippa and the others on the strength of the urgency of finding the secret door to a lost city that looked very likely to remain lost for some considerable time to come.

“It’s valuable,” said Nimrod. He hacked some of the creepers away and, using the tip of his machete, began to scrape some of the mildew and mold off a small area of the door. “Look.”

To John’s astonishment a small patch of something bright and shiny was already becoming visible to his eye.

“Holy Peru,” said John. “It’s gold.”

“That’s right,” said Nimrod. “Solid gold. It was part of the trap Ti Cosi meant for the conquistadors who were, of course, obsessed with gold. That they might think that this was some kind of symbolic doorway to El Dorado, the fabled city of gold. Given the size and weight of this door I
should say that the gold alone is worth several million dollars.”

“But you don’t think McCreeby’s just after the door itself,” said John, “do you?”

“No. It’s what lies beyond this door that’s probably more important to a villain like Virgil McCreeby. And it must have something to do with those three gold disks.”

“You mean the tears of the sun?” asked John.

Nimrod nodded. “Perhaps he means to go through the door with those tears. It’s just a thought but it may be that he has discovered the details of the forgotten
kutumunkichu
ritual once carried out by Manco Capac.”

“So that he can learn the secret of making gold,” added John.

“He does have an excellent library,” said Nimrod. “Perhaps the best of its kind anywhere in the world. And of course making gold would be very much in keeping with his character.”

John looked at one side of the door and then the other. “Maybe this’ll sound dumb,” he said, “but this is a door that looks like it leads not much farther than the other side of the door.”

“If that were the case,” said Nimrod, “Ti Cosi would hardly have gone to the trouble of creating such a large and elaborate knot with which to bind the bolt.”

“Yes, but if the door was meant to be a trap,” objected John, “then why bother to secure it at all? Also, I can’t imagine that the knot would have presented much of a problem
to conquistadors armed with Toledo steel. No more than the more famous Gordian knot presented much of a problem to Alexander the Great. Instead of untying the knot, he just hacked it in two with his sword, right?”

“This knot was for the protection of the local natives,” explained Nimrod. “So that they wouldn’t go through the door by accident. The natives would never have dared cut or undo a sacred knot that had been tied by an important priest like Ti Cosi. That would have been sacrilege. No, the idea was that if the conquistadors showed up they would probably cut the knot and their greed for gold would do the rest. I mean, obviously they would have tried to remove the door and to do that they would need to step through it.”

“But what happens when you step through? Where does it go? And please don’t say ‘the other side’ or I’ll be forced to bang my head against one of those trees.”

“I’m not entirely sure what is on the other side,” confessed Nimrod. “To find out we would have to untie the knot, which I’m not going to do.”

“What? We come all the way here and we’re just going to leave it and go back home again? That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“On the contrary,” said Nimrod. “It makes perfect sense. It seems to me now that if McCreeby
has
lured us here, to the Eye of the Forest, very possibly with the intention of discovering its exact location, then the last thing I’m going to do now, John, is untie that knot. Even if I could.”

“But suppose McCreeby just cuts the knot in two like Alexander?” John shrugged. “It’s my impression of old Virgil that he might not be too bothered about committing a sacrilege or two.”

Nimrod sighed again and glanced around. “Yes. Perhaps that’s also true. It’s beginning to look as though Faustina was right and that that this site needs some protection other than a sacred knot and a few lupuna trees.”

John looked at the dozen or more trees surrounding the Eye. At least one hundred and fifty feet tall, each one of these trees was as big as a house at its base.

“I don’t see how a few old trees were ever going to stop a guy like Virgil McCreeby,” he said.

“These trees contain ancient spirits that are supposed to protect the rain forest,” said Nimrod. “Spirits that will haunt you if you don’t respect the trees or the
chacras
— the sacred forest clearings — they sometimes protect.”

“If they can’t stop a few loggers from chopping them down, what chance are they going to have against a bona fide magus like McCreeby? Surely what this particular area needs is a propugnator. A perimeter binding. Like the one you made for our camp after we were attacked by the giant centipede.”

“Unfortunately, that’s not nearly so simple as it sounds.” Nimrod lifted his gaze to the treetops. “It turns out that there’s a good reason no loggers have ever come to this place. Just look again at your surroundings. Don’t they remind you of something?”

John followed Nimrod’s gaze and saw how the highest boughs of the trees — he counted sixteen lupunas — seemed to join in arches, creating a sort of vaulted roof above their heads. He shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “I guess it’s kind of weird the way these trees grow so neat and straight. Almost like pillars. And the way they all join up at the top. Sort of like they were designed that way.” He shrugged again. “I guess it reminds me of a church.”

“That’s exactly what it’s like,” said Nimrod. “You see, this is more than a
chacra.
This is a holy place. This is an
abadía de árboles,
an abbey of trees. I would no more use djinn power to make a binding within an abbey of trees than I would use it in a church, a mosque, or a synagogue. I don’t think God would like it.”

“We have to do something,” said John. “You said yourself this site needs some extra protection against Virgil McCreeby.”

“Yes, but what?” muttered Nimrod. He shook his head. “Light my lamp, but this requires some careful cogitation. I shall retire to my tent for a short time while I suspend consciousness and consider the matter through introspection.”

John nodded although he had no idea what Nimrod was talking about. But he was more used to that than he had been of old.

“Will you be all right on your own for a while?” asked Nimrod.

“Of course,” said John. “Maybe I’ll look at that book
about the
khipu.
Try to figure out what the one
el Tunchi
gave me means.”

“Good idea,” said Nimrod, and handed the book over to John, who then left him alone in his tent.

The boy sat down, leaned against a lupuna tree, and started to read.

Minutes passed and John felt his eyelids begin to droop. He’d never been much of a reader. The longest book he had ever read was a copy of the
Arabian Nights
given to him by Nimrod to which a djinn binding had been attached that caused him to stay awake long enough to finish it all in one sitting. But this book was different. It was all about mathematics, which had never been John’s strong suit, and it was soon patently clear that the writer only had the vaguest idea of how
khipus
worked.

Much clearer to John were his own ideas, if things dreamed when you are asleep inside a tree can ever properly be called ideas. Not that these were his own ideas any more than they were his own dreams, for everything that swirled around his soundly sleeping mind informing him about the
khipu
in his hand came from an ancient spirit deep within the lupuna tree. For although the wood of these trees is very hard, lupunas can easily absorb unwary people who fall asleep leaning against them, sometimes for a short period of time and sometimes for much longer. People have been known to disappear inside a lupuna tree for several centuries. But, recognizing John as a djinn — and a good djinn at that — this
particular lupuna tree absorbed him for only an hour or two. It was long enough for the tree spirit to pass on to John an understanding of what a
khipu
was and how it worked, as well as the true meaning and solution of the knot on the door of the Eye of the Forest. This was both complicated and simple at the same time.

John awoke again with a start, certain that he had heard something unusual. One glance at Nimrod’s tent told him his uncle was still cogitating within, like Achilles (although not nearly as bad-tempered), and that he was not the source of the noise. For a moment, all thoughts of the true meaning of the
khipu
gained from his time inside the lupuna tree were forgotten. And tossing the very learned book he had been reading aside, John stood up and walked around the campsite before finally he realized what it was that had disturbed his wooden slumbers. The door in the Eye of the Forest was shaking very slightly, as if someone on the other side was trying to open it.

Walking around the free-standing Eye of the Forest in a wide circle, John wondered if he should call Nimrod. There could be no doubt about it. Someone, or something, was trying to open the door. It was like a scene in a horror movie when a poltergeist or a ghost moves something inanimate, like a toy on a bookshelf. For as far as he could determine, John knew there was nothing on the other side of the door.

Ignoring his own goose bumps, John picked up his machete, went a little nearer, and tapped the door with the razor-sharp blade. “Hello,” he said. “Is anyone there?”

For a moment the door stopped moving, as if someone on the other side had heard him. That was, he thought, like a horror movie, too: the way an object became ordinary again when it ceased to move for no apparent reason.