Heart of Light (57 page)

War would never come here. Something told her this place had stood for millennia, and would still stand.

Wamungunda led them to a handsome stone house, only slightly larger than the others. At the door, they dismounted, and two smiling boys took Samson off to a field.

Wamungunda said something and Kitwana translated. “He says Samson can wait for us there. He wants us to come in.”

Inside, it was clean, with fresh breezes blowing through the door and one window. He had a table and two simple benches. “Sit, sit,” he told them all, his words almost clicks, his smile showing how proud he was of that one English word. His wife busied herself setting in front of them a drink made from fermented cow milk and something that looked like chunks of orange fruit pulp roasted in a mass, but that, on tasting, was a lot like bland and sweet cakes.

Kitwana ate one and then three in quick succession. He begged Emily's and Peter's pardon, then spoke rapidly in what he said was his native language and easier for Wamungunda to understand. When he was done, he was silent a moment, then turned to Emily. “I told him everything,” he said, “since I joined the Hyena Men. And I asked about the jewel. I'll now translate what he says.”

Wamungunda nodded slowly in confirmation and spoke. And Kitwana echoed him in English, clearly translating his words verbatim. “Before you came,” he said, “I got a message from . . . the spirit of the shrine. It told me you would be coming, and that the avatar of the mother of worlds had chosen you as her protectors.

“You see,” he said, speaking simply, “when the first jewel was stolen from the eye of the goddess, the white king seemed to believe all the power he could get from it was free, and that it meant nothing how he used it. He was wrong. Those jewels were spelled, in the beginning of time, to anchor the possibilities of the world together.

“Every time there is an event where there could be two outcomes, the world can split and create another world, identical yet different, like pages in a book. Once there were enough people in the world, this ability became dangerous. Our ancestors knew this and, being wise, bound it all with magic and put it in the rubies. And mounted them, in turn, into the eyes of the great avatar, the first statue sculpted by mankind.”

Kitwana ate a small cake pensively and went on, translating his father's liquid words. “But when the other eye was gone, the anchor was gone, and some splinting occurred. The world started separating from itself, like an onion being peeled layer by layer. If the second eye goes . . .” He shrugged. “Reality will splinter. All life will become impossible, because there won't be a single part of the world in accord with itself. Each part will be different, and in a different reality from all others.”

“How do we know you're telling the truth?” Peter Farewell asked.

Kitwana translated and Wamungunda gave Peter a long look, then smiled and spoke. And Kitwana translated. “You don't. But you will. The avatar has chosen you to be its protectors. It says the jewel won't be safe here, because too many people will know where it is. And since the statue has only one eye, it lacks the power to hide itself from the world as it did in ages past. The two of you are to guard it and to restore its other eye to it.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” Emily asked. “Of all the jewels in the world . . . The Soul of Fire vanished years ago. It is possible it's been cut into smaller pieces or destroyed.”

“The avatar says it exists still. And it can be found and reconsecrated,” Wamungunda said through Kitwana's translation. “It says that Kitwana and you, my dear,” he smiled at Emily, “will be—”

At that moment a young man came to the door, shouting. Wamungunda rose quickly, and Kitwana himself half rose before turning back to speak to Emily. “He says people have arrived by flying rugs. Several people. Two of them are a blond Englishman and a woman of the Masai. They are coming to look for an ancient jewel.”

“Nigel?” Emily asked.

The young man at the door looked at her. “Nigel Oldhall,” he said in a horrendous accent. “And Nassira of the Masai.”

Emily looked at Kitwana and found him staring at her. It had been a beautiful dream while it lasted. Since their mind-merge, Emily had felt she knew Kitwana better than she had ever known anyone else. She had felt that Kitwana was . . . oh, not so much the man for her as another half of her that had gotten separated somehow, and thrown to the other end of the globe.

As much as it would shock her friends and relatives back in London, Emily Oldhall would have been happy, contented, to be allowed to live here, in Africa, with the man of her choice, and never again hear of society or the ton or even of the British Isles.

But as easy as it would have made everything, she had never really wished Nigel dead.

GIVING IT ALL UP

Nigel should have been more upset when he saw
Emily and Kitwana together. Not that they were doing anything improper. Merely standing side by side, him regal in his leather apron and she small and bedraggled in her much-stained and torn dress.

She looked tired. Her hair was a mass of tangles. The sun of Africa had deepened the color of her skin beyond all fashionable bounds. She had never looked more beautiful.

Yet there was a certain expression in Kitwana's eyes when he looked at her, and in Emily's eyes when she looked at him. Nigel, just debarked from a one-person flying rug, which had brought them the rest of the way that the angel had told him to take, found the ground lurching under his feet.

He'd expected many things. To see Emily in love with Peter, perhaps, or Peter so wholly ensconced in her heart that the only honorable way out was to divorce her and let Peter marry her. But he hadn't thought to find her in love with an African, or an African in love with her. And immediately he decided that he was being churlish and dishonorable. After all, he'd been saved by and saved an African woman, and she was, in truth, his comrade-in-arms. He turned to where Nassira and Shenta were talking. Who was he to resent Emily's happiness, whatever form it took?

He'd divorce her, or else tell everyone that she'd disappeared in Africa. Let them think what they would, but let her be happy. Nigel realized now that as much as he loved Emily, his love for her had been that of a man for a younger sister. He'd never really known her well. He knew there must be a woman out there for him—but who she was and where Nigel would find her was a mystery. Instead, he said softly, “Hello, Emily. Sorry to run off on you like that. Nassira was trying to protect me from the dragon's wrath.” Then looking quickly at Peter, as he smoked, “Hello, Peter. I understand you are a dragon?” He would have asked what happened to his eye—as Peter's left eye seemed to be missing—but the question seemed unimportant. They'd all lost something. Or gained something. Or perhaps both.

“Oh, now and then,” Peter said, and smiled a little, though his eye showed shock at Nigel's lack of horror.

“And now, children,” Wamungunda said. Kitwana translated it neutrally, but Wamungunda's voice sounded as though they were, indeed, all in the earliest of infant classes. “We must go down to the avatar and find its will for you and for the ruby.”

He led them all determinedly back to his home, where he pulled up a stone in the floor. Below it was a spiral staircase. Nigel heard Kitwana gasp.

Kitwana went first. Peter followed him, then Emily and Nigel and Nassira. There the priest stopped the others from entering and Kitwana translated the words echoing down the stony vault. “No. These five have a mission and deserve to know what it is. They were chosen. The rest of us must wait.”

THE WORLD AND EVERYTHING IN IT

Down there were caves, immense and endless. Peter
wanted to smoke, but it would be like smoking in a cathedral. In fact, this had much the feeling of a cathedral—one carved out of living rock.

They passed two large chambers with oval arched ceilings that seemed to await millions of worshippers, then past them into a narrow hallway. Somehow, Peter had gotten ahead of Kitwana, and he walked unsteadily, leaning on the walls.

He'd had time to recover while on the back of the elephant, but not enough to be up to endless underground treks in caves of eerie beauty, where the pale, creamy walls glowed with a light that came from everywhere at once and nowhere.

He held on to the walls as he walked, but nothing prepared him for the cave the hallway led to. There, the glow was stronger, and it was coming from a spinning globe suspended in midair. The globe showed the world—its oceans and continents and the white glitter of its ice caps.

Peter stared for a moment, wide-eyed. The odd thing was that he could feel that this was, in some way, the real world. If he squinted at it, he could see the cities of men covering it, and the men like ants upon it. And anything that happened to this globe happened to the world out there.

Falling to his knees, unable to stand any longer, Peter crawled to the globe. “The thing is the image; the image is the thing,” he heard himself say, his voice intent and small. “I could crush all the oppressors in here, and the world would be free.”

He heard a tongue click behind him, so full of intent and derision that he turned to look. Nigel was behind him, shaking his head. “Leave off, Peter. If you kill tyrants, others will only rise up to take their place. There are always humans who want to have power over others. And some, perforce, will be intelligent enough to acquire it. You can't kill them all.” He paused and frowned. “Or you can, but then you'd be awfully lonely.”

Peter stared. “I could kill all the ones with magic.”

“They'll find some other tomfool way to make others' lives miserable. And their own.”

Peter heard a bark of laughter climb through his throat, and looked up at Nigel. “How you've changed.”

“Well . . .” Nigel said. “Killing lions while walking in Africa leaves you a long time to think.” He offered his hand and arm to Peter, to pull him up.

They skirted around the globe and walked on.