“How much time?” Anna asked.
“Just under two hours. The digital timers are set to blow at eight o’clock.”
Nate frowned at the tree. “Then we’ll either have to find another way out of this valley or seek some type of shelter.”
“Forget shelter,” Kostos said. “We need to be as f**king far from here as possible when those babies blow. Even without the additional incendiaries placed by Favre’s men, those nine napalmers are enough to fry this entire plateau.”
Nate took him at his word. “Where’s Dakii? Maybe he knows another way out of here.”
Kouwe pointed to the entrance to the Yagga. “He went to check on the status of his shaman.”
Nate nodded, remembering the poor man who had been shot in the gut by Zane. “Let’s go see if Dakii knows anything helpful.”
Kouwe and Anna followed him.
Sergeant Kostos waved them on. “I’ll keep examining the bombs. See if I can come up with anything.”
Once inside the tree’s entrance, Nate again was struck by the scent, musky and sweet. They followed the blue handprints up the tunnel.
Kouwe marched at Nate’s side. “I know escape is foremost on everyone’s mind, but what about the contagious disease?”
“If there’s a way out,” Nate said, “we’ll collect as many plant specimens as time allows. That’s all we can do. We’ll have to hope we stumble on the correct one.”
Kouwe looked pensive, not satisfied with Nate’s answer, but had no other rebuttal. A cure discovered here would do the world no good if they themselves didn’t survive.
As they continued to wend their way up the tree, the sound of footfalls echoed down to them. Nate glanced to Kouwe. Someone was coming.
Dakii suddenly appeared around the corner, winded and wide-eyed. He was startled to find them in front of him. He spoke rapidly in his own tongue. Even Kouwe couldn’t entirely follow it.
“Slow down,” Nate said.
Dakii grabbed Nate’s arm. “Son of wishwa, you come.” He tugged Nate toward the upper tunnel.
“Is your shaman okay?”
Dakii bobbed his head. “He live. But sick…very big sick.”
“Take us to him,” Nate said.
The Indian was clearly relieved. They hurried up at a half trot. In a short time, the group entered the healing ward at the top.
Nate spotted the shaman in one of the hammocks. He was alive but did not look well. His skin was yellowish and shone with fever sweat. Very big sick, indeed.
As they approached, the prone man sat up, though clearly it pained him immensely to do so. The shaman waved to Dakii, ordering him across the room on an errand, then stared at Nate. He was glassy-eyed but lucid.
Nate noticed the ropes lying on the floor under the hammock. Even gravely injured, the man had been bound by Favre.
The shaman pointed at Nate. “You wishwa…like father.”
Nate opened his mouth to say no. He was certainly no shaman. But Kouwe interrupted. “Tell him yes,” the professor urged.
Nate slowly nodded, obeying Kouwe’s instinct.
The response clearly relieved the suffering man. “Good,” the shaman said.
Dakii returned, burdened with a leather satchel and a pair of footlong lengths of reed. He held the gear out to his leader, but the shaman was too weak. He directed Dakii from his hammock.
Obeying, Dakii lifted the pouch.
“A dried jaguar scrotum,” Kouwe said, pointing to the pouch.
“All the rage in Paris,” Nate grumbled.
Dakii fingered open the pouch. Inside was a crimson powder. The shaman spoke from the bed, instructing.
Kouwe translated, though Nate caught a word here and there. “He describes the powder as ali ne Yagga.”
Nate understood. “Blood of the Mother.”
Kouwe glanced at Nate as Dakii tamped some of the powder into the tips of the two straws. “You know what’s about to happen, don’t you?”
Nate could certainly guess. “It’s like the Yanomamo drug epena.” Over the years, he had worked with various Yanomamo tribes and been invited to participate in epena ceremonies. Epena, translated as “semen of the sun,” was a hallucinogenic drug Yanomamo shamans used to enter the spirit world. It was strong stuff, fabled to bring the hekura, or little men of the forest, to teach medicine to a shaman. When Nate had tried the stuff, all he had ever experienced was a severe headache followed by swirls of color. Furthermore, he was not particularly fond of the drug’s delivery system. It was snuffed up the nose.
Dakii handed one of the loaded straws to Nate and one to the shaman. The Ban-ali leader waved Nate to kneel beside the hammock.
Nate obeyed.
Kouwe cautioned him, “The shaman knows he’s about to die. What he is offering is more than a casual ritual. I think he’s passing the mantle of his responsibility to you, for the tribe, for the village, for the tree.”
“I can’t take that on,” Nate said, glancing back at Kouwe.
“You must. Once you’re shaman, the tribe’s secrets will be open to you. Do you understand what that means?”
Nate took a deep breath and nodded. “The cure.”
“Exactly.”
Nate stepped to the hammock and knelt.
The shaman showed Nate what to do, but it was similar to the Yanomamos’ ritual. The small man positioned the drug-loaded end of his reed straw to his own nose. Then motioned for Nate to bring his lips to the other end. Nate’s job was to blow the drug up the other’s nose. He, in turn, positioned his own straw to his left nostril. The shaman brought the other end to his mouth. Through the straws, the two men would simultaneously blow the drug into each other’s sinuses.
The shaman lifted an arm. They both took a deep breath.
Here we go…
The Indian brought his arm down.
Nate exhaled sharply through the reed, while bracing for the jolt to his own sinuses. Before he even finished blowing on his end of the straw, the drug hit him.
Nate fell backward. A burning flame seared into his skull, followed by a blinding explosion of pain. It felt as if someone had blown the back of his head off. He gasped as the room spun. The sense of vertigo overwhelmed him. A pit opened in his mind, and he was falling. He tumbled, spinning away into a darkness that was somehow bright at the same time.
Distantly he heard his name called, but he couldn’t find his mouth to speak.
Suddenly his falling body shattered through something solid in this otherworld. The darkness fragmented around him like broken glass. Midnight shards fell away and disappeared. What was left was a shadow shaped into a stylized tree. It appeared to be rising from a dark hill.