The Ring Of Sheba Read online

  Joao smiled coldly. “Then it would be best if we killed Lukamba and the Portuguese quickly when we find them.”

  “Douse the torches.”

  Ngola thrust his own torch into the wet sand. The flames hissed as they drowned. Then he turned and followed the tracks into the dark expanse of the jungle, thankful the moonlight was finally bright enough to allow that.

  Now that the scudding clouds had cleared, the full moon beamed down on the coast, but its attention filled Ngola with dread. Many evil things, legends often said, were possible under the light of a full moon.

  3.

  The Risen Dead

  Carrying a Baker rifle in one hand, Ngola tracked the trail of the slavers easily through the brush. The Portuguese crew followed an old game trail and their boots had scored the ground, marking their path.

  Ngola moved at a near-run, eating up the distance quickly, and he knew he was gaining on his quarry. The earth turned up by the boot marks was fresher, still damp to the touch. He felt certain he was only minutes behind them now. The way led uphill and he wondered what had made Lukamba and the Portuguese certain that The Scorpion was nearby.

  He also wondered why they had come at night.

  Unless what they have to do can only be done in the darkness.

  The thought jangled uncomfortably in Ngola’s mind and he glanced spitefully at the huge moon. Vodun magic was fierce and strong, and Lukamba was reputed to be a master of the dark arts. On Haiti, houngans, mambos, and bokors had wielded the spirits to work their magic. The houngans and mambos sought to cure and use their powers for good, but the bokors brought the loa into the world to kill their enemies. The French landowners hadn’t been able to stand against them, and even their fallen dead had risen once more as zombies to fight against them.

  Ngola had seen such supernatural entities, and had sometimes fought with them. The zombies could be hard to kill.

  *

  Less than a half-hour later, torchlight gleamed higher up in the mountain where the Portuguese had traveled. The weak golden glow pooled against low-hanging trees that barely held the heavy darkness at bay. Faint wisps of an old man’s voice lifted in song pealed in the distance.

  Ngola held up a hand to halt his warriors and studied the land. Drury stood tensely at Ngola’s side. The Irishman didn’t care for vodun magic either, and the Irish had their own brand of mysticism and fey spirits that wished only ill for men, so Drury knew firsthand what dark forces could do before he’d come to West Africa.

  “Colin and I will go take a look to see what the Portuguese are doing,” Ngola told his crew. “The rest of you wait here.”

  Without a word, his men melted into the jungle so cleanly it was like they’d folded up their shadows to carry with them.

  Taking a fresh grip on the Baker rifle, Ngola started up the mountain, avoiding the game trail he’d been following and staying within the trees. Drury followed only a few steps behind, moving as sure-footed as Ngola.

  *

  Cautiously, Ngola crept along the final few feet to a ridge that overlooked the hollow filled with torchlight and chanting. He lay on his stomach, Drury only a short distance away, and surveyed the events taking place.

  A hundred feet distant, Lukamba danced slowly over a barren area where no trees or grass grew. The bokor was thin, stripped down to skin over bones. He shook a feathered staff in his right hand. Strings of human teeth clacked against the wooden walking stick. A half skull from a great ape or gorilla covered the top of his head and hung down his face to his mouth. Long fangs framed his hollow cheeks. The yellowed bone gleamed dully in the moonlight

  The old man’s voice was surprisingly strong, but his words were unintelligible. They sounded ancient and hurtful, blunt weapons that had been designed to maim and destroy. Back in Haiti, and in other parts of Africa, Ngola had seen the dark things such words could call up.

  Despite the distance that lay between them, Ngola shuddered just a little, and the hair on his forearms lifted slightly, sensitive to the shadowy forces the bokor summoned. He watched intently, scouring the clearing for his wife and son.

  The Portuguese sailors stood to one side. Light from the blazing torches they’d driven into the ground played over the slavers and glinted from their heavy brass buttons, helmets, swords, rifles, and pistol butts. They stood close together, not talking, and many of them gazed fearfully at Lukamba.

  At their feet, the four women and six children crouched or lay fearfully on the ground. Ropes bound their hands behind their backs.

  Kangela knelt in the back of the group. Despite her situation, she looked proud and regal, her head high and her eyes watchful. Athletic and womanly, her hair cut short and neat, dressed in a colorful blouse and skirt, the sight of her made Ngola’s heart swell.

  The first time he’d seen Kangela, he’d thought she had the face of an angel, though he was not so convinced of the Christian Heaven. He’d been wounded near unto death and had felt the life slipping from him, certain he would never wake from the black void. Then Kangela had been there, beautiful and tender and giving. She had nursed him back to health though the rest of her people had told her she should surrender Ngola to the jungle predators because he was an outsider and no one knew what evils he would bring to them.

  He had loved her at once because she’d been like no other woman he’d ever been with. She was strong and tender, compassionate yet—under the right circumstances—without mercy. No one in her village was a better hunter, and she had taught Ngola much about moving stealthily in the jungle because he had not been used to such ways while a slave in Haiti or a sailor in the British navy.

  Emeka, their son, lay halfway draped across his mother’s knees. He was four years old, still small and innocent, his hair wild and his body so thin as he grew. Seeing him bound as he was hardened Ngola’s heart still further against those who had taken him. Emeka only wore a loincloth and he looked vulnerable among the armed men. Fear filled and widened his eyes.

  Unconsciously, Ngola edged the Baker rifle forward as he shifted his gaze to Lukamba.

  The bokor ended his litany in a high-pitched shriek and struck his staff against the barren ground as if demanding an answer or response.

  Drury laid his hand upon Ngola’s shoulder and whispered almost inaudibly. “Wait, my friend, I beg you. We need to plan this, not simply leap into it if we are to save them.”

  Restraining his murderous impulses, but only just, Ngola nodded and drew the rifle back. He scanned the thick jungle, looking for other ways to close in on the Portuguese slavers. If he and his crew succeeded in driving Salazar’s blackhearts away from the captives, then the women and children would have a chance of surviving the encounter.

  Lukamba screeched a command and threw his open hand down to hover only inches above the ground. He tugged again and again, as if he had hold of a rope. Even a hundred feet away, Ngola felt the sudden chill as the warmth was sucked from the air.

  Glowing, malignant purple embers dropped from Lukamba’s palm and fell to the earth like rain. The embers winked out of existence as soon as they touched the ground.

  At first, nothing came of the bokor’s effort. Then cracks tore through the earth like festering sores and something pushed up, like a seed breaking free of its tomb to reach for the sun.

  Only there was no sun, and the thing that shoved free of the ground had been dead for a very long time.

  Cursing to himself, Ngola watched in rising horror as the dead creature clawed up from its lost grave. At first, as he sighted the misshapen head and the uneven shoulders, Ngola believed the thing might be the corpse of a monkey or chimpanzee, then he realized that the shambling figure was that of a dead child.

  “God in heaven, protect this wayward servant.” Drury’s whisper was louder than he’d intended, but his words didn’t travel far.

  Besides that, the attention of the Portuguese slavers was focused on the bizarre resurrection taking place before them. Some of the slavers crossed themselv
es in the Catholic fashion. Many of them took steps back and peered fearfully at the surrounding jungle. Captain Salazar, surely the handsome and broad man wearing a fierce mustache and neatly trimmed beard and dressed in finery and a cloak, stood his ground but he half-drew the cutlass that hung at his side.

  Lukamba lifted his hand and pointed at the Portuguese captain.

  “Stay your hand if you would live, Captain Salazar.” The bokor’s voice was soft and dry as dust. “If the ogbanje senses that you mean it any harm, it will kill you.”

  The gruesome creature lifted its shattered head and sniffed the air like a hyena. It remained half-crouched, swollen knees bent and desiccated flesh wrapped loosely around the bones. Tattered remnants of a loincloth hung from its waist.

  “What is that loathsome abomination?” Salazar demanded. He didn’t draw his steel, but neither did he lift his hand from the weapon’s hilt.

  Beneath the half-skull that masked the upper part of his face, Lukamba smiled genially at the dead thing, like an old grandfather would at a favorite grandchild. He moved slowly, balancing his staff in the crook of his arm as he took a knife from his waist. He drew the blade along a weathered crease in his palm. Blood wept from the small incision. Knotting his hand into a fist, he held it above the creature.

  A long, barbed tongue shot from the dead thing’s mouth and caught blood drops as they fell from the bokor’s fist like slow rain. Tentatively, the thing reached up for Lukamba’s hand with its own. Lukamba allowed the thing to latch onto his fist, and there it nuzzled like a pup to a teat.

  “This is an ogbanje,” Lukamba said. “It is a restless spirit. They are called ‘children who come and go,’ because they are born into a family, then die at a very young age only to be reborn and die again so young. They are creatures of misfortune and bring heartbreak again and again to those to whom they become attached.”

  The thing suckled noisily, paying no attention to the Portuguese.

  “Once an ogbanje has been identified in a child,” Lukamba went on, “the child’s body is broken and mutilated and buried so it cannot come back only to die again.” The bokor smiled as the creature continued to feed. “Sometimes that breaking and mutilation and burial is not enough. As you can plainly see. Then, if a bokor is strong enough, he can raise them and they will be even more fearsome.”

  Salazar’s eyes narrowed and his jaw firmed. “Where is the treasure you said was here?”

  Lukamba shook his hand and freed it from the ogbanje’s grip. The creature dropped to its knees and sniffed the dirt for stray drops that might have fallen. It whined piteously as it searched.

  “The treasure is close, Captain. Be a little more patient. I need the ogbanje to lead us there.” Lukamba held his hand to the ground again and again, drawing up other ogbanjes from different areas within the barren clearing.

  Within minutes, three more broken shells of dead children joined the first. Four small craters scarred the clearing. The ogbanjes milled around Lukamba like hounds at the bokor’s heels. Their plaintive keening formed a constant undercurrent of noise that hurt Ngola’s ears, as nerve-wracking as a steel blade grating against another. Lukamba allowed each of the new ogbanje in turn to feed from his hand for a moment before he shook it away.

  “Have you heard of these cursed creatures?” Drury whispered to Ngola.

  “I have heard of them, but I have never before seen them.” Ngola quelled the primitive fear that threatened to run rampant in him.

  He had witnessed magic before, good and bad, and had learned to both fear and hate it. Houngans and mambos had healed wounds and chased away evil spirits from the sick in Haiti, though Ngola had never seen those incorporeal entities and only assumed they truly existed.

  “What will Lukamba do with them?”

  “I do not know.” Ngola pushed that from his mind and concentrated on how he was going to save the prisoners.

  The people back at the Portuguese ship were safe enough for now, and would be safer still as soon as they sailed. But the women and children—Kangela and Emeka—below remained at risk.

  Two of the ogbanje stepped away from Lukamba and shambled on their disproportionate legs toward the Portuguese. The slavers drew back fearfully, many of them raising pistols and rifles.

  Salazar held up a gloved hand. He spoke in a quiet, deadly voice. “Do not fire. Do not attack them. If you do, should you survive the wrath of these dead things, I will kill you myself.”

  The men put their weapons away and stepped back, leaving the prisoners at the mercy of the dead creatures.

  The ogbanje walked among the women and children. Nearly all of them cried out fearfully, calling on their gods to save them, and even beseeching the slavers for help.

  Kangela remained quiet and watchful. When one of the ogbanje closed in on Emeka, Kangela headbutted it and knocked the undead thing away. The ogbanje squalled in pain and rage and set itself to attack.

  A sharp command from Lukamba froze the ogbanje in its tracks. It protested shrilly, but ducked its dead eyes and returned to the bokor’s side where it clung to one of the old man’s skinny legs.

  “All right, Captain Salazar, we may continue.” Lukamba gave a command in his native tongue and the four ogbanjes scuttled ahead of him, disappearing quickly into the shadows.

  Helplessly, Ngola watched as the Portuguese slavers herded the prisoners up and followed the bokor.

  “Get the men,” he whispered to Drury. “Follow the Portuguese.”

  Drury hesitated only a moment, eyes searching Ngola’s face, then he nodded. “Where are you going?”

  “To scout ahead for a place where we can set up an ambush.”

  “Give me a moment to talk to Joao and I’ll go with you.”

  Ngola shook his head. “One man will pass unheard and unseen. If there are two, there are more chances of being found out.”

  “If you get into trouble—”

  Ngola grinned mirthlessly, interrupting his friend. “If I get into trouble, you will know it. Rest assured. Now go. When I need you, the best you can do is be there to lead the men and save my family.”

  “You have my word.” Drury clapped Ngola on the shoulder and melted into the darkness that clung to the mountainside.

  Ngola looked over the jungle ahead, finding a jagged outcrop of rock towering above the trees to use as a landmark. Lukamba and the Portuguese headed in that direction.

  Getting to his feet out of sight of the slavers, Ngola ran along the ridge of the mountain, just short of the crest. Using the skills that Kangela had taught him, he passed through the jungle without leaving branches or brush trembling to mark his passage. He was a ghost among the moon-cast shadows.

  4.

  The Lost City

  At least a thousand yards ahead of Lukamba and the Portuguese slavers, Ngola spotted the rope bridge that spanned a large canyon. The roar of the river racing below reached him before he got close enough to peer down into the swirling depths.

  Hidden by trees and brush, Ngola stared down at the rushing river at least two hundred yards below the cliff’s edge. Jagged rocks pierced the white-capped water like broken fangs and glittering spray sailed over them.

  The bridge was narrow, at least a hundred feet long and only wide enough for one person to cross at a time. That would bottleneck the slavers and force them to cross one at a time. That could be useful, but once the women and children were on the bridge, they would be vulnerable.

  Ngola cursed. Staging an ambush there was too problematic. If he and his men crowded the Portuguese, the prisoners could be used as hostages, perhaps dangled over the long drop to the river if things went badly. And there was no time to get around the slavers and return with his men to set up the ambush.

  Glancing behind him, Ngola spotted the pale torchlight crowding out the night as the party of slavers approached the bridge. He felt certain they would cross the bridge. There was nothing else that would attract them on this side of the ravine.

  Across the
bridge, though, the mountain towered another thousand feet or so, spiking toward the dark sky, narrowing to a point like a spear. Trees and shrubs clung to the mountain’s exterior. Nothing there gave any indication why Lukamba trekked in that direction. However, the river below was wide enough to have permitted a sailing vessel at some point.

  Perhaps the myths about The Scorpion were true. If Ngola’s family had not been presently at risk, he might have enjoyed thinking about the possibility of riches awaiting the night’s efforts. Tonight, though, he planned only bloody revenge.

  Deciding he wanted to know more of what lay on the other side of the river now than to wait on his men and cross later, Ngola sprinted for the bridge with the Baker tight in his fist. Reaching the massive pole driven into the ground at the cliff’s edge, he turned without hesitation, but with considerable trepidation, and trotted across the bridge.

  The wooden slats spaced inches apart clacked and shifted beneath his boots, but they held his weight easily, surprising him greatly. It looked like no one had come this way in years. Moss and small plants had taken root in the braided rope cables and some of the wooden slats.

  He reached the other side without being seen, glanced around till he found a game trail off to his left, then followed that for a moment. Inside the brush, the game trail crossed an old stone avenue obscured by the forest.

  The jungle had overgrown the stone pathway to a large degree, but there was no doubt that the way had been cut through the brush and trees at one point. And there was no doubt that no one had come this way in years, perhaps generations. The road was eight feet wide and laid with four-foot squares of thick, white rock slabs that had been quarried and placed with care.

  Stepping onto the nearest stone, Ngola slammed his foot against the surface and found it hard and firm. Grass and roots disturbed the lay of some of the stones, shifting them up at angles and partially covering them, but the direction could be easily discerned.