We left the village, crashing along a track through the enclosing jungle, and began to climb.
As Hawk wrestled with the steering wheel, almost manhandling the bison through the steep terrain, he spoke to the girl.
She replied with monosyllables at first, hardly glancing at him. Then, as he gained her trust, she smiled and chattered more easily.
Over his shoulder, Hawk reported, “Qah says that Kee went with a group of Ashentay, whose time it also was to smoke the bones. They were impressed that she’d come so far by herself, and they wanted to know more about her life with us humans. I don’t think she told them she was living with me; some tribes might ask how that came about, and if they found out… well, they’d probably shun her.”
The fact was that, ten years ago, Kee had been left in the jungle by her family as an offering to the Koah tree; she was the youngest girl from a litter of twenty children, and therefore expendable, and great credit would accrue to her tribe when her spirit was absorbed by the holy tree.
Then Hawk had happened along and rescued her, and the rest was history.
He said, “I asked her how many of her tribe had undergone the smoking ritual over the years. She said perhaps a hundred, with around thirty fatalities.” He looked grim.
“Don’t worry,” Maddie said. “We’ll get to her before it starts.”
We held on as the bison rocked back and forth, riding the motion like sailors on a storm-tossed sea. The jungle swamped us, filtering the light to an aqueous gloom. I heard the eerie squeals of alien fauna and wondered if there were any predatory animals in the region.
Hawk answered my question. “We’re safe. The hoffa live on the southern continent and never get this far north. There are some nasty insects, though, and snake analogues… I just hope it doesn’t come to leaving the bison and walking.”
He spoke to the Qah, who replied.
He called back to us, “I asked her how far away the sacred site is, in distance, not days spent walking. She said twelve toha, say about eight kay. We should make it in a few hours. Before sunset, at any rate.”
The Fates must have been attending to his words. Two hours later the incline, already steep, reared to a forty-five degree slope and the bison growled, dug in, butted aside a few thick-boled trees, and finally admitted defeat. Hawk tried again and again, backing up and charging at the obstruction, then attempting to go around it, but to no avail.
“I think this is as far as we go,” he said. “The rest of the way is on foot.”
Qah leapt nimbly from the cab, manifestly relieved to be back in an environment she understood. She ran ahead, making light work of the incline, stood on a toppled tree trunk and stared ahead.
She called something to Hawk, who translated. “She says it’s not far from here. An hour or so. If we hurry, we’ll make it by nightfall.”
We hauled backpacks containing tents, water and food from the bison and followed our guide, Hawk first, Maddie and Matt coming after, and myself bringing up the rear. It was hot, the kind of sultry heat that has one drowning in sweat after about five seconds of exertion. I looked ahead, through the thick cover of foliage; the sun was making its slow descent towards the near, mountainous horizon.
The going, surprisingly, was not as difficult as I’d expected. We’d followed a narrow path in the bison, the vehicle widening it somewhat, and we continued on it now. The sandy trail climbed through the jungle, affording occasional glimpses through the canopy of the rearing peaks ahead.
The climb might have been easier than I’d feared, but I still found the going hard. Muscles which I’d forgotten I possessed began to protest, and my lungs felt as if they were being forced up through my gullet.
We’d been walking for an hour when Maddie looked over her shoulder and smiled. “You okay back there?”
I grinned heroically. “I’m still here, Maddie,” I panted. “Surely there can’t be much further to go?”
As if he’d heard me, Hawk called a halt. We gathered on a mossy rise and, after speaking with Qah, he pointed through a rent in the canopy ahead. “See that hill, projecting from the jungle? The waterfall to the right? That’s where we’re heading. Thirty minutes, no more.”
“Hallelujah,” I laughed. I broke out my water canister and took a long drink. The others did the same.
“The gym for you, my boy, when we get back,” Maddie threatened.
We set off again, our lithe guide skipping ahead, making the incline seem like child’s play.
The sun was slipping behind a jagged mountain peak when we crested a rise and saw, a few hundred metres ahead, a domed hill rising before us with a quicksilver waterfall cascading from the rocks to the right.
“This is it?” Matt asked. “The sacred site?”
I looked for signs of occupation, huts or temples or something, but the place seemed deserted.
Hawk said, “Behind the waterfall is the entrance to a system of caves. The rituals are performed in one of these caverns. Qah suggested that we spend the night by the waterfall; she said she’ll enter the caves and look for Kee…” He shook his head. “I told her we need to find Kee sooner rather than later. We’ll go into the caves and follow Qah to the sacred chamber.”
“And she’s okay with this?” Maddie asked.
Hawk nodded. “She seems to be. As far as I know there’s no precedent ever been set of humans entering sacred territory, so…”
“Let’s go,” Matt said.
We crossed the clearing, and the humidity seemed to lift as we left the confines of the jungle; a flagging wind lapped across the hill, and as we approached the waterfall its spray drenched us in a cool, jewelled shower.
Qah led us around the sink formed by the waterfall, and along a ledge behind its sheer crystal sheet of water. The rock underfoot was treacherous, and Matt, Maddie and I gripped each other’s hands as we inched along the ledge.
We came to a gaping rent in the rock and followed Qah within. Something glowed on the walls, mats and rafts of what looked like fungus, giving off a dull green luminescence.We followed a natural corridor in the rock as it dropped rapidly. I made out carvings on the walls, stick Ashentay figures and animals, and wondered what xenologists back on Earth would make of this alien treasure.
Ten minutes later I saw light ahead, brighter than the verdant gloaming of the corridor. Seconds later we emerged into a vast cavern.
I thought, for a second, that we had emerged into the twilight, that we’d somehow penetrated through to a valley fissure deep within the mountain. Then my eyes adjusted and I made out the rocky bounds of the cavern◦– perhaps a kilometre distant◦– and the fires, bonfires no less, situated at intervals around the perimeter and providing a bright rouge glow. Only then did I make out the long-house, raised on stilts above the ground and entered by a timber ramp. Positioned in the centre of the pitched roof was an opening through which poured a thick pall of smoke. It rose and hung beneath the natural ceiling of the chamber like a threatening storm-cloud.
I inhaled and smelled the sweet, almost familiar scent of the bone smoke.
Six
We were standing on a slightly raised gallery, looking down. A dozen Ashentay stood at the foot of the ramp to the long-house, and though they were perhaps only fifty metres from us, so far we had not been seen.
Then we heard an inhuman squealing, and three Ashentay males struggled from a pen behind the long-house. They were wrestling with a black-pelted beast the size of a rhino though more resembling a terrestrial pig, but for its deadly array of horns and a spiked tail which whipped back and forth as the creature attempted to escape.