He has also begun to notice another effect of the blood-shilluk: When he goes too long without using the gift, he experiences sharp stomach cramps.
At last he decides that he is simply not going to grow stronger as long as he remains where he is, possibly being drained by a Newyorkcity magic spell. Despite his terrible weakness, Veil resolves to move on at nightfall.
Later in this dream-day Veil is aroused from his stupor by the sound of a voice. A woman is speaking his language.
Reyna.
He should trust her. He should go to her. She will help him.
No.
Overwhelmed by loneliness and longing at the sound of his own language, Veil begins to weep soundlessly. He has never been so sick or weak, and he comes very close to removing the woven cover over his head and revealing himself.
No.
If the Newyorkcities can cast a spell to drain his strength, Veil thinks, they may also be able to raise spirits from this jungle of the dead to try to trick him. Even if the voice is really Reyna's, there is always the possibility that she means to betray him. The voice could be but a part of the trial set by the Nal-toon, and Veil feels that he cannot afford to take a chance.
No.
Veil wriggles even deeper into his trench. He holds the Nal-toon tightly in an attempt to banish his loneliness. Faced with the possibility that he is being hunted by spirits, he is now firmly resolved to move at nightfall, no matter how weak he is. He must get to the airplane that will take him home.
Chapter Eleven
Veil waited, back braced against a tree trunk and hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans, as Reyna slowly approached through a field of small, uniform grave markers. She looked pensive, Veil thought, but not as distraught as she had appeared earlier. Throughout the morning they had walked, together and apart, through Calvary Cemetery, with Veil playing a recording of Reyna's voice while Reyna called out—and sometimes sang—in the K'ung tongue. They had made no attempt to track Toby, only to announce their presence. Then Reyna, fearing that Veil's presence would frighten Toby, had gone off alone.
She had been gone almost an hour and a half, and from the way she walked, Veil felt certain she had found something.
"He's been here," Reyna announced as she came up to Veil, wrapped her arms around his middle, and rested her head on his chest. In her voice was relief, mingling with anxiety and fatigue.
"You're sure?" Veil asked.
"Yes," she said, freeing one arm, turning and pointing to the north. "He came in around Fifty-first Street, just below Queens Boulevard. I found one of his footprints on some bare ground. He's sick, so I guess he can't help being careless."
"That's good news," Veil said quietly. "Just so long as he doesn't become too careless."
"Um-hmm." Reyna again wrapped both arms around Veil, and he eased them both down until they were sitting on the ground. For a few minutes Veil thought the woman might be sleeping, but then her voice came to him, muffled slightly by the material of his light jacket. "I don't know whether or not he's seen any of my totems, but I saw one of his. It's a spirit-totem erected to show respect for the spirits in a place of the dead. Toby recognized this as a cemetery."
"But no sign of Toby himself?"
Veil felt Reyna shake her head. "I found the place where he went to ground. There's a stream beyond the woods behind me."
"I know. I saw it."
"That's where he rested—near the bank." She paused and looked up at Veil. "There were feces and vomit around the site, as you would expect," she continued with a slightly puzzled frown. "What's surprising is that the feces aren't as loose as you'd think they would be in somebody suffering from typhus or dysentery—or both. We know he's very sick and badly injured. Lord, the very fact that he can still walk at all is amazing. He must have a very high fever and be in terrible pain."
"It could be the heroin," Veil said as he absently stroked Reyna's hair.
"What?"
"The heroin, Reyna. Toby may have accidentally found how to use it in a way that can benefit him. It's true that it wouldn't take much of it to kill him, but it's also true that if he, say, sniffs a small amount at a time, he'll get the benefit of its medicinal properties. Heroin is an unbelievably potent anesthetic, of course, but it also tends to dehydrate. It would tighten his bowels somewhat. In this case, the crap inside that idol could be Toby's salvation— at least for a time."
"But how could he know to sniff it?"
Veil shrugged. "It comes from the Nal-toon, right? It's a divine gift, so he has to do something with it. It tastes like hell, so he must have tried smelling it and gotten some into his nose. Bingo."
"If that's true, Veil, then it's another miracle."
"Mmm. What do you think the chances are that he'll come back there?"
"No chance. If Toby intended to use that place again, he'd be there now—during the day. He was there last night, but he's someplace else now. Sick or not, Toby feels that he must keep moving as best he can." Reyna sighed, rose to her feet, and brushed off her jeans. "Rest time is over. I'm going ahead."
"Let me come with you," Veil said, rising. "I'm not the tracker you are, but I'm not bad."
"Indeed," Reyna replied impishly, rising up on her toes to kiss him. "You're not bad at anything. Still, you'd only frighten him, and I don't want you getting a spear in the belly button. Sick as he is, he probably hasn't gone far.
You wait here, I'll be back."
Veil glanced at his watch; it was almost six-thirty. He cursed softly under his breath, then set off at a quick pace through the field of grave markers. He passed through a stand of trees, jumped over a stream, and hurried toward the southeast end of the cemetery. He sighed with relief when he saw Reyna sitting on the edge of a low stone wall that marked the border of the cemetery. Behind her, traffic moved by on Fifty-eighth Street. Stripped of the muffling effect of the trees inside the cemetery, the air was filled with the groaning hum of rush-hour traffic on the Queens leg of the Long Island Expressway.
"I was worried about you," Veil said as he sat on the wall next to Reyna. "You've been gone all afternoon."
"I'm sorry," Reyna replied, squeezing Veil's hand. "I've been waiting. I think you passed Toby somewhere back there. I wanted to come back and get you, but I was afraid to take a chance that he might get spooked and slip out ahead of us at this end."
Veil raised his eyebrows slightly, then shaded his eyes from the slanting rays of the setting sun and looked back the way he had come. "You're sure he's still back there?"
"Not a hundred percent, maybe ninety. After I left you I did a quick walk-through to this end. I figured that if I found sign here, it would mean that he was still ahead of us and we wouldn't waste time looking any longer in this cemetery. Anyway, as you can see, there's a lot of bare ground down here at this end. I couldn't find any tracks."
"Granted that he's sick, hurt, and moving very carefully, it's still only a mile, maybe less, from the stream to here. You'd think he would have come farther during the night."
Reyna twisted around to look at the expressway and the embankment beyond. "I know. Just because I couldn't find sign doesn't mean that he's still back there."