Secret Of The Slaves

“Hasn’t it occurred to you I’ve looked after myself in some pretty rough parts of the world?” And more than that, of course, but she wasn’t sharing that information. With any luck he’d never find out.

“Well—I don’t see a film crew anywhere,” he said. “Not to mention network security staff.”

“You’d be surprised how sparse that is for our show,” she said. “Anyway, look. If it makes you feel better, I happen to have long legs. I know you noticed.”

To his credit his gaze never wavered from hers. “Yeah.”

“So if anything bad happens I can run away real fast. Satisfied?”

He frowned at her a moment. Then his face unclouded and he laughed. “I get the feeling I have to be.”

They stopped at a blue-painted door set into a wall missing some chunks of stucco. He nodded. “After you.”

She pushed her way into darkness.

5

The first thing that hit her, along with the earth-burrow coolness, was the smell. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, particularly. But it was a complicated one. A skein of smells, a tapestry, woven out of elements familiar, hauntingly reminiscent and outright strange. Some were organic, some chemical and astringent.

“May I help you?” a voice said from the shop’s dim depths.

A beaded curtain rustled. A woman emerged into the front room among close-packed shelves and counters. She was tall, possibly taller than Annja, although the red-and-yellow turban around her head added a few inches. In the gloom it was hard to be sure.

Annja glanced sideways at Dan. “We’d like to talk to the shop owner,” she said.

“That’s me,” the woman said. She seemed to glide forward without moving her feet, doubtless an illusion caused by her long skirts, which brushed the warped boards of the floor. “I am Mafalda. How may I help you?”

As she came close enough to distinguish detail, Annja realized that she was a very beautiful woman, seemingly no older than Annja, with mocha skin and eyes that might have been dark green.

“You’re Americans,” Mafalda said.

Annja smiled.

“What can I do for distinguished visitors from so far away?” Mafalda seemed to be slipping into a familiar role, which Annja guessed was half mystic, half huckster. She probably had one mix for the tourists and another for the locals.

Annja looked openly to Dan. Though never spoken, the arrangement seemed to be that while she was in charge of the scientific and research aspects of the expedition, he spoke for their mutual employer Moran. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the arrangement, but Sir Iain was paying her very well.

“We understand you might have some information about a hidden city,” Dan said.

“Who told you that?” the proprietor asked. Shrewdly, Annja thought.

“Someone back in the United States,” Dan answered blandly.

Mafalda seemed unimpressed with that response. “Lost-city rumors crawl all over the Amazon like bugs,” she said, unwittingly echoing what Annja had told Sir Iain in his Manhattan headquarters. “They have done so ever since the days of the first explorers. I don’t deal in treasure maps. Perhaps you should seek elsewhere.”

Shooting an exasperated look at Dan, who only shrugged, Annja said, “Perhaps if you’d be so kind as to show us what you do deal in, please, we’d better understand how we might help each other.”

It occurred to Annja that their employer might be playing his cards too close to his well-muscled chest. Unless he simply had no better information to share. But he must have had some reason to send them here.

After favoring Annja with a quick, cool glance of appraisal, Mafalda smiled slightly. “Of course. If the lord and lady will follow me.”

“Lord and lady?” Dan echoed quietly.

Annja sniffled. He cocked his head at her.

“I’m allergic to something in here,” she said.

Mafalda, who had waited coolly for the whispered exchange to end—suggesting some experience with tourists—began her tour. “I serve the practitioner of candomblé. I have here everything needed for the toques, the rituals, whether public or private.”

“What’s candomblé? ” Dan asked as Mafalda led them through narrow aisles with bins of sheaved herbs, colorful feathers and beads.

“It’s a widespread folk religion in Brazil,” Annja said. “It’s basically a combination of Catholicism with West African beliefs.”

“Like voodoo?” Dan asked.

“That’s right,” Annja said, nodding. She dabbed surreptitiously at a droplet that had formed at the end of her nose and sniffled loudly again.

“We believe in a force called axe, ” Mafalda said, leading them into an aisle with a number of tiny effigies that reminded Annja of Mexican Day of the Dead figurines. There were also racks of odd, twisted dried roots and vegetables and sturdy cork-topped jars with not-quite-identifiable things floating in murky greenish fluids.

“Mind the jacaré, ” Mafalda said as an aside.

“Huh?” Dan said. “What’s jacaré? ”

He bumped his head on something hanging from the ceiling. He did a comical double take to find himself looking into the toothy grin of a four-foot stuffed reptile hung from the ceiling.

“One of those,” Annja said. She had found a travel pack of tissues in the large fanny pack she wore, and was in the process of blowing her nose. It made a handy cover for her grin. “An Amazon caiman. There’s a specific species named jacaré, but people around here mostly call all crocodilians that.”

Dan cocked a brow at Mafalda, who wasn’t bothering to hide her own toothy grin. “Decorating with endangered species?”

“We’re more endangered by the jacarés, ” their hostess said promptly. “They eat many Brazilians each year.”

“Is she serious?” Dan asked.

“Oh, yes,” Annja said.

He shrugged, shaking his head.

“You were telling us about axe, ” Annja prompted Mafalda. She had no idea if it had anything to do with their mission—to find some lead, however tenuous, to the mysterious hidden city named Promise—but she was fascinated, personally and professionally, with the local folk religion.

“Oh yes.” The turbaned head nodded. “ Axe is the life force. It permeates all things.”

“So your toques involve evoking this life force?” Annja asked.

The woman led them on toward the front of the cramped store. “Somewhat. Mostly we invoke the orixás. ”

The word was unfamiliar to Annja. “What are they?”

Mafalda flashed a quick smile. “Our gods,” she said, “Olorum is the supreme creator, but he doesn’t pay so much attention to us little people. So we don’t trouble him. The orixás, though, they’re the deities who deal with us humans. So they’re the ones we have to worry about keeping happy.”