Rogue Angel 47: River of Nightmares (6 page)

Chapter 12

She’d never tasted anything so utterly awful. The liquid had gone down her throat, but was starting to crawl its way back up again. Gagging and fighting for air, she was suffocating on the ghastly concoction.

That she’d traded her classic waterproof watch for this ceremony...was madness. Thankfully, she’d told Marsha not to record any of this, to let her have a little privacy.

Let her die alone.

Annja leaned forward, saw that a large empty bowl had been placed in front of her, and retched. When she thought she’d given up everything in her stomach, she retched again.

And again.

The world spun and she felt sucked down with it.

She fell on her side and convulsed, her legs and arms gyrating despite her best efforts to control them, her face involuntarily rubbing against the dirt floor. Her tongue felt swollen and she tried to talk but only an unintelligible moan escaped with a line of drool. She tasted blood and more of the vile mixture she’d been all too willing to swallow.

Suddenly her chest felt as if it were on fire, and her head pounded. The thunderous rhythm of her heartbeat slammed against her eardrums.

What had she done to herself? She gulped in air and retched once more. Roux’s words teased her ears. “Be well, Annja. Watch yourself, all right?”

She wasn’t well, and she hadn’t watched herself.

Waves of fire and ice chased each other from her toes to the ends of her fingers, and then a cloud of black appeared and engulfed her.

As the imaginary wind screamed like a chorus of howler monkeys, she thought she heard the shaman cackle before oblivion claimed her.

* * *

S
HE
AWOKE
ALONE
.

The shaman and D’jok were gone, and whatever leaves had been burning on the plate were out. All traces of her vomit had been cleaned up, and she was dressed in her jeans and a long sleeve shirt that felt good against her skin.

Her stomach was empty, and the headache was gone. She listened, hearing the chattering of parrots and the shush of the trees rubbing against each other in a strong breeze, the bones clacking on strings in the doorway. No human voices.

Annja tentatively got to her feet, fighting the momentary dizziness, and shifting her weight back and forth to make sure she was okay. In the light that slipped in through the curtain she caught the details of the hut. She’d been so focused on the shaman before that she’d not noticed his surroundings. The place was perhaps ten feet square, spacious for a home belonging to only one man. There was a sleeping pallet at the back, shelves to the right holding an odd collection of things—dried plants, earthenware bowls, monkey and parrot skulls...things one might find in a medieval alchemist’s lab. But there were modern pieces, too, probably from the boatmen who traded with the tribe or who’d “paid” for a dream...and who actually got a dream, unlike Annja who’d only gotten a terribly upset stomach. There was a large aluminum cheese grater, a set of drinking glasses, a commemorative crystal paperweight with an image of the American flag in it, and on the top shelf a plaster bust of Julius Caesar—what dreams had been bought with those things?

Taming her curiosity, she didn’t touch anything. Annja stepped outside. It was morning, and she’d undergone the ordeal in the middle of the afternoon, so she’d been unconscious for well more than a few hours. She felt rested...felt better, actually, than she had in a long while. Maybe surrendering her watch hadn’t been too high a price.

She felt
good.

Someone had put shoes on her—her favorite tennis shoes. Twigs crunched under her feet as she retraced her steps from the shaman’s hut back to the earthenware tubs—empty now, though it looked like rainwater had gathered in the bottom of each. Then she went to the village proper, which was also oddly empty. A glance at the river...
Orellana’s Prize
was gone. Maybe it had just floated downriver, her camera crew looking for more footage.

Was this part of the ritual? Leaving her alone in some nameless village somewhere on an Amazon tributary after she’d drank the worst cocktail ever and got nothing from a supposedly mystical experience?

Nothing except an exceptionally good night’s sleep.

Padding to the shore, she saw a turtle bob its head up. The details she picked out on the creature were amazing, all the little ridges around its eyes and the variation of color, as if every shade of green that existed in the world had been dabbled on the head of the creature.

Annja listened for her heartbeat, but all she heard was the lapping of the river against the bank. She held her breath. What was the tiniest and most meaningful measure of time? A heartbeat? An inhaled breath? Was she suspended in that infinitesimal space between increments of time?

She took in the scent of the river and the damp earth, the flowers that hung on the vines draped from trees—more fragrant in this instant than the most expensive perfume. She exhaled, but the odors of the rainforest remained a part of her. Annja picked up a shiny rock with her left hand, the sword forming in her right. The ground damp, the rock wet, all evidence it had rained. But this was the rainy season...of course, it had rained.

She squeezed the rock against her palm and felt it warming, a piece of the world she’d claimed just for herself.

Was this a dream?

No. This had to be real.

If she was dead or dreaming she wouldn’t feel the rock, would she? Wouldn’t feel anything or smell anything. The sun would not be kissing her forehead.

“Watch yourself, all right?” Roux’s voice.

She spun, eyes searching the foliage and hut entrances. The old man had called her—called her before her phone had been stolen—said he was coming to Brazil. Had he somehow found his way here? Caught up?

“Watch yourself. Watch yourself. Watch yourself.”

Roux stepped out of the closest hut, squinting in the bright sunlight, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a pair of sunglasses. He looked to study the glasses a moment before putting them on and coming toward her.

Roux could not have gotten here so quickly. Annja released the sword and it fell. She stared at it, seeing her eyes reflected in the blade. The sword should have vanished. She’d mentally dismissed it. The blade should have been whisked away to the otherwhere.

“I
am
dreaming,” she said.

“Which is preferable to being dead,” Roux returned. “If you were dead, that would mean I’m dead, too. And last I checked I still had a pulse. I had a devil of a time finding you, Annja.”

She carefully studied him. There was something different about him. It took her a minute...he was younger, just a little, fewer lines on his face. Maybe it was because he was relaxed, the setting easing him. His shoulders did not look so square and stiff. “How did you get here, old man? More to the point, how did you find me?”

“How did
I
find you? Annja, you brought me here.”

“Not possible.” Annja sucked in a breath; Roux smelled faintly of some musky cologne.

“This is your dream, you brought me here. And where is here, Annja?” His bright eyes held an eagerness she’d never noticed in him before. She waited and watched as his hair darkened. Black now with gray highlights. The years were melting off him. He was getting younger by the minute.

“Madness.” Annja dropped her gaze from Roux and looked to her sword. This time instead of her reflection in the blade, she saw the eyes of a stranger. She fell to her knees and checked it closer. The reflection disappeared entirely, replaced by wavering shades of green. “What did I do to myself? What the heck did I drink?”

Roux stepped out of his shoes, and the shoes disappeared. Barefoot, the pads on his feet thick like a Dslala’s. He extended a hand. “I brought some people with me. I want you to meet them.” The calluses she’d remembered on his fingers felt fresher, coarser.

“People?”

“Venez avec moi, Annja,”
Roux said.

She picked up her sword and let him lead her. She could hear everything, the fabric of his pants brushing, the leaves rustling in the trees around the village, the water flowing behind her now. A glance back and she saw the turtle had come up again. The chatter of the monkeys and the parrots came so loud now it was hurtful to listen to. And when she thought about it, the odors of the village were overpowering, too. There was her sweat, the river, the rich fragrance of the loam, the scent of flowers, and the tantalizing aroma of fish cooking. The scent of Roux’s cologne was heavier as well.

He led her behind a hut where two incongruous stone benches were separated by a bowl-shaped depression filled with dark water. The benches had not been in the village when she’d toured it with Marsha and Ned. But they were familiar. It took her a moment to place them...exact replicas of the garden benches outside the Hôtel de Sully in Paris. Annja took a whiff of the liquid in the small pool—huito, the stuff that filled the first tub she’d immersed herself in.

She sat. “I don’t see anyone else, Roux. Who did you bring along to my dream in this nameless village?”

He sat next to her and pointed at the opposite bench. A heartbeat ago it had been empty.

“Cette épée, ma chère amie, a déjà tué par ma main,”
the newcomer said.
This sword, my friend, once slew men by my hand.

Who are you?
Annja thought.

“Charlemagne.” He patted a sword that appeared in his lap. “Joyeuse.” He was dressed out of date and rather plainly. He wore a gray linen shirt and matching breeches. Over the top he wore a dark tunic trimmed with a pale silk fringe, everything looking expertly hand-stitched. He was in his sixties or seventies, tall, and with a thick neck and a nose that belonged on a bigger man’s face. His hair was snow white, and there was an abundance of it. The curls stirred in the wind. He had on a heavy fragrance that warred with Roux’s and disturbed her nostrils, and under that was the scent of dried blood.
“Joyeuse, très chère amie.”

Charlemagne was long, long dead. Annja remembered D’jok saying that she might be talking to ghosts. Why would her mind conjure up this man? He looked solid, though, and he cast a shadow. Her mind had fabricated a very real image.

“Et vous êtes?”

Annja was fluent in French. “I am Annja Creed,” she said in answer to the question.

“Vous possédez une épée de Jeanne d’Arc.”
His eyebrows rose.

“I don’t know why I have Joan of Arc’s sword,” Annja said.
And I don’t know why you know it’s Joan of Arc’s sword. And I don’t know why I’m dream-talking to King Charlemagne.

“Cette épée...c’était le mien.”

It was Annja’s turn to raise her eyebrows.

“Jamais mon préféré. C’était Joyeuse.”

He’d just told her that Joan of Arc’s sword could have belonged to him. But Joyeuse, the blade in his lap, had been his favorite and he carried it until his death. He was not sorry that he’d never wielded Joan’s sword in combat.

“I don’t understand,” Annja said. “You could have had this sword? This one?”

“I’d even like to think it was once mine. But I don’t believe it was ever truly meant to be my sword—though it was offered to me and I held it in my hands. A good balance, that sword.” Charlemagne spoke English now, a language he couldn’t possibly have known during his lifetime. But since this was her dream, she supposed she could make the characters speak whatever language she wanted. “God-touched, that sword is young woman. In my heart I knew it was meant to be Joan’s all along. You know, it once belonged to my grandfather—Charles Martel, and so I could have inherited it. I don’t know who had it before him. Maybe God. Maybe an angel. I held it when my hands were young and the blade felt too heavy for them to carry it. Too heavy and yet not heavy enough. My grandfather...he asked if I could change the world with the sword. I was too young to consider such a proposition, and so I handed it back. A boy does not fill his head with notions of saving France or changing the world. A young boy is interested in far more simple things.”

“The story is true then,” Annja said. Or true as far as her vision was letting her believe. “Of it being Charles Martel’s, then Joan’s.”

“Briefly mine between.”

“Briefly.”

“My grandfather was a righteous man. He took that sword and put it in a place where someone willing to change the world would find it.” Charlemagne stood and stretched, rotated his head as if working a kink out of his neck. “Joyeuse better suited me in any event. It helped me save enough, eh? Change enough things, don’t you think? Joyeuse and me are in the history books.”

He extended a hand and she hesitantly took it, keeping hold of her sword with the other.

“Let us walk, would you mind?” His eyes twinkled. “Indulge an old man and a king, eh? I’ve not been out for a walk in a long, long time, and I’ve not seen such a beautiful forest. Perhaps we will find a deer. I love to hunt deer. Perhaps if we see one you will summon up a bow so that I can shoot the deer. Roast venison. Ah, my favorite. My doctors...they told me to avoid roast meat. But boiled venison is not near so tasty. Had I listened to them, I might have lived longer. Though I might not have enjoyed it quite so much, young woman. Besides, I think I lived just long enough.”

The blood Annja had smelled on him, it could have been from an animal. Deer perhaps? It had a bit of a gamey odor.

“While we walk, I think I will regale you with a tale of one of my many great battles. Perhaps you would like to hear about that final push I devised to conquer Saxonia and to convert the barbarians to Christianity. That...that is a very good story. And you, Annja Creed, you must have equally good tales since you have the sword that was once, very briefly, mine.”

The rainforest closed around them as they stepped past the final group of huts. An eerie silence took over.

“Vous possédez une épée de Jeanne d’Arc?”
Charlemagne asked, slipping into French again.

“I don’t know why I have Joan of Arc’s sword,” Annja replied.
And I don’t know why I’m dream-talking to King Charlemagne.