The Serpent's Daughter (9 page)

“Take this, Madame. Let me buy the car. If you sell your house, together it should be more than enough to get home again.”

“It is yours, and bless you,” said the woman without counting the bills. She picked up a jerry can from beside the door and handed it to Jade. “There are a few liters of extra fuel in here.”

Jade went into the alley and fastened the can to a sideboard. She’d just finished when a calloused hand touched her shoulders. She jumped and spun around, landing in a crouch, her right hand slipping the knife from its boot sheath. The man in front of her raised his right hand directly in front of his face, palm out, fingers spread. It might have been an expression of peace, but something about the action seemed familiar.

“Who are you?” Jade asked in French. “What do you want?”

“I can help you get to Marrakech.” The man stepped forward one pace into the dim light. Both hands were empty.

“You! You’re the man who showed me the tunnels in Azilah.” She sprang forward, gripped the man by the neck with her left hand and pushed him against the wall, her knife at his throat. “What have you done with my mother?”

The man closed his eyes and held one hand in front of his face, muttering something in a language Jade didn’t recognize. “By all that is holy,
Alalla,
” he said in French, but using the Arabic equivalent of “Madame,” “I have done nothing with your mother.”

“Then why are you following me?”

The man opened his eyes but kept his head turned so he never met Jade’s piercing stare. “I have been told to bring you back with me. I heard you talk with this woman. You want to go to Marrakech. I can help you.”

Jade relaxed her grip on the man’s neck and stepped away, her knife still poised for defense. “Why should I trust you? And what did you mean when you said you were told to bring me back? Back to where?”

“To … to Marrakech.”

Jade scowled. “How convenient,” she mumbled to herself in English. “Look me in the eyes!” she commanded. “Did you leave a note for me in my room?” She pushed the knife tip closer to the man’s throat.

The Berber forced himself to meet her intense gaze. “No. I swear by all that is holy, I left no note for you.”

Jade studied his eyes. He didn’t look aside when he answered. If anything, he seemed terrified to look at her at all. Either he was telling the truth or was
very
experienced in lying. She wasn’t convinced she could trust him. Still, she reasoned, it might not be such a bad idea to go with this man. If he was an enemy, it was better to have him in her sight than dogging her steps. If he was a friend, well, she needed all the help she could get right now.

She released him and motioned with the knife for him to precede her. “I will take you with me, but do not try to trick me.” She picked up her carpetbag from the cobbled pavement and tossed it to him. “Go crank the car.” She tucked her knife into her belt where she could retrieve it instantly and climbed in on the right on the driver’s side.

The Panhard started up easily enough and, after her companion climbed into the passenger’s side, Jade drove out of the alley. She maneuvered the silent streets uphill to the Kasbah, paid the gatekeeper to let her out, then exited from the
Bab el Kasbah
. Once outside the gate, she headed downhill, the great souk with sleeping camels and donkeys to her left and the Atlantic to her right. “What is your name?” Jade asked in French. She noticed he kept his eyes averted again.

“Bachir.”

“Well, Bachir,” she continued in French, “I am not taking you to Marrakech or anywhere else until you answer some questions.” Jade stopped the car and turned to him. “Who sent you to find me and why? How do you know who I am, how did you find me in Azilah, and why did you leave before I came out of the tunnel?”

Bachir turned partway towards her, still avoiding her eyes. “I will answer all,
Alalla,
but not here. We must move on. You will be discovered if you stay here.”

As much as Jade hated to admit it, he was right. By morning, Deschamp would expect word from his watchdog. After he reported that she hadn’t come down to breakfast, someone would go up to her room. Then they’d know she’d slipped away. She searched her memory for anything she’d told him. Nowhere did she remember mentioning Marrakech. She’d received that message later.

“I agree, for now. But once we are safely away, I expect answers.” Bachir didn’t bother to reply.

Jade put the car in gear again and followed the track to Azilah. The acetylene headlamps didn’t work and they drove in the dark with little more than the sound of the surf to their right until the moon rose half an hour later. Three days past full, the still-swollen orb spilled its creamy light across the road from behind her left shoulder, illuminating every hole and bump. When she reached the far side of Azilah without meeting or overtaking another living soul, Jade decided it was time for some answers.

“Now, who sent you?” she asked, still driving west.

Bachir kept his eyes ahead. “The
kahina
.”

CHAPTER 7

The stories of the Berbers’ origins are as fanciful as a tale from
Arabian Nights
.
Some people claim they were chased from Israel when David overthrew
Goliath. Others align them with ancient Egyptians or the Phoenicians. No one
asks the Berbers. They call themselves Imazighen, or in its adjectival form,
the Amazigh people. It means the “free people.”

—The Traveler

THE PANHARD SLID SIDEWAYS as Jade hit the brakes. In her head she again heard the voices in the tunnel and the word
kahina
. Her hand gripped her knife hilt and her voice dropped to a low rumble. “Who, in the name of all that is holy, is this
kahina
?”

“She is our leader,
Alalla
.”

“My name is Jade. So, this
kahina
of yours leads the Berbers? ”

The man’s chin went up, an expression of pride. “That is what others call us. It is an insult. We are not barbarians. We are the Imazighen.” To Jade’s ear, it sounded like
Im
-ah-
Zirren
, the
r
sound being made as a deep, throaty rasp. “My own tribe traces itself back long before even the Roman people came. Our leaders were mighty people.”

“I see. And what was your
kahina
doing in the Azilah tunnels?”

The man’s ruddy face paled and he gripped a silver talisman around his neck. “She was not in the tunnels,
Alalla
Jade.” He brought his left hand up as an open-handed shield between himself and Jade as he muttered something in his own language.

“Why do you do that?” asked Jade, as she raised her hand in imitation of his. “There was another Amazigh man and a boy outside Azilah. The man did that and he also hid the boy’s eyes and mumbled something like an incantation. Why?”

“This sign is the hand of the
kahina
. It has much
baraka
because the hand has five fingers. Five is a holy number,” replied Bachir. “It is protection against the evil eye and he would say, ‘five in your eye’ to stop you. He feared that you would look at his son’s eyes and make him ill with the evil eye. Tell me,
Alalla
Jade, about your walk in the tunnels.”

Jade hesitated, not sure whether or not she could trust this man. Raised in relative isolation on a New Mexico ranch, Jade always approached strangers with caution, viewing them as possible threats until proven otherwise. Her opinion of people in general hadn’t changed during the war, but she had learned to read character more readily. That, and that blasted, odd shrapnel wound in her knee didn’t ache. It always seemed to hurt when something was trying to kill her. She decided in Bachir’s favor, mainly because she needed an ally right now.
But if he tries anything, the evil eye is the least of his worries.
“I went inside and found an Arab man dead, stabbed in the back.”

“Is that all?” Bachir seemed to suggest that the dead man was of no consequence to him.

“Is that
all
?” echoed Jade. “Isn’t that enough?”

“You were inside a long time,” he explained. “Did you not go in deeper?”

“Yes, I did. I heard voices and I followed them. I thought my mother was with them.”

“These voices, what did they say?”

“Nothing to do with my mother.”

Bachir persisted. “What did they say?”

Jade felt her irritation rising. When this man told her he’d been sent to take her to Marrakech, she naturally assumed it was to lead her to, or help her find, her mother. But he didn’t express interest in any details pertaining to her mother’s kidnapping.

“They said foolish things,” she snapped. “There was a man and a woman. The woman wanted the man to take something from her, a …” She searched for the correct word in Arabic or French to convey a talisman and decided on “charm” in Arabic. As she said it, she heard Bachir’s sudden gasp. “The man did not want it. He said something about the woman’s death. He called it Elishat’s charm.”

Bachir muttered soft phrases under his breath, and Jade saw him grip something under his robe. Clearly the man was spooked. “What else did you hear,
Alalla
Jade?”

“The woman said it was not her time to die. She talked about a daughter. I think the man was surprised about her daughter. I don’t think he knew she existed. Now, what,” Jade demanded, “does this have to do with my mother?”

“I do not know,” Bachir replied. “Did the woman give her name?”

“I don’t think so. But,” Jade added after a moment’s reflection, “I think the man did. He called her Dahia, but he also called her
kahina
. That means this Dahia sent you to find me?”

Bachir’s face paled to an ashy gray, as though the blood had drained from his head. For an instant he reminded Jade of the corpse in the tunnel, enough so that she forgot her irritation in concern for the man’s health. “Are you ill?” she asked.

Bachir shook his head. “Have you told me all?”

“Yes. But I was in longer than I thought. When that man and woman quit talking, I found I was standing in a circle of salt, and it was morning. The dead man’s body was gone, too.” She stared at the man, hoping to intimidate him as she often did others with her deep green eyes. Apparently she didn’t need to stare here. People were afraid enough about the evil eye, Bachir among them. He would not look at her. “You were gone when I came out. Did you take the body, Bachir? Did this
kahina
woman take my mother?”

“No.” He shook his head again. “I followed you inside once I made my protection. I carried iron and salt and burned white benzoin to frighten away the
jinni
. I saw the body and I saw by your light that you did not go the way the man pointed. When I found you, you were standing still as a rock, barely breathing, your eyes open and fixed on nothing. I put the circle of salt around you to guard you from the
jinni
. When I left, the body was already gone.”

“You put the salt around me?”

“Yes,
Alalla
. As I told you, the
jinni
prefer to live in the old ruins and tunnels. But they do not like salt or iron. I knew I had to protect you, but I feared I was too late.”

“If you were in the tunnels, Bachir, then you must have heard those people talking, too.”

“No,
Alalla
. I heard no one.”

“Then why did you leave?”

“I did not have enough benzoin to last very long. I went and hid in the back of the automobile.”

“Wait a minute,” Jade exclaimed, remembering the low-riding rear end on the first trip to Azilah. It occurred to her that the car didn’t ride that way this time. “You hid in the back and rode from Tangier, didn’t you? Then you jumped out when I came to Azilah. You were the person following me in Tangier.”

“Yes, but I did not ride inside. I hung on to the back, my feet on the metal crosspiece.”

“This woman in the tunnels, the one I heard, do you know where she went? Maybe she knows who took my mother.”

Bachir’s hands trembled as he again gripped whatever protection he wore under his striped cloak. “You heard the voice beyond the dead,
Alalla
Jade. The Dahia
kahina
led our people in rebellion against the Arabs six hundred and eighty years after your Nazarene prophet was born.”

CHAPTER 8

—The Traveler

NOTHING MADE SENSE ANYMORE, and as Jade grew more and more tired, she entertained the idea that she had actually died during the war and gone to hell. Why else would she be driving an old French car without lights through the Moroccan night with a lunatic Berber at her left? Any hope she had of getting assistance from him vanished as soon as he explained she’d heard a 1,240-year-old disembodied queen talk. Then he clammed up, turning his face to the blackness around them, the scalp-lock dangling behind his right ear. Eventually she saw his head droop, and heard a gentle snore. She’d debated shoving Bachir out the door at one point, then decided he might still prove useful as an interpreter, and left him to doze on.

The Panhard had half a tank of fuel when she left Tangier and a full spare can strapped to the sideboard. It wouldn’t be enough to get to Marrakech, though. The problem would be getting more. Most likely only the French authorities had any gasoline, and once Deschamp spread the word that she was on the run, she couldn’t very well afford anyone knowing where she’d gone.

For that matter, she needed to sleep. That’s why, when she finally made it to Rabat, she drove around and parked a half kilometer away from the city. Once again she enveloped herself in her black cloak and stole into the European sector, a siphon hose from the toolbox and the now empty fuel can in tow.