“This way,” Kelly said, leading them toward the passage winding up the tree.
As Nate and Zane followed, the blue prints disappeared eventually.
Nate glanced along the plain walls, then back toward the entrance. Something was bothering him, but he couldn’t exactly put his finger on it. Something didn’t look right. Nate studied the flow channels in the wood, the tubules of xylem and phloem that moved water and nutrients up and down the trunk. The channels ran down in graceful, winding curves around the passage walls. But down below, where the passage bluntly ended, the flow channels were jagged, no longer curving smoothly. Before he could examine this further, the group had passed beyond the tunnel’s curve.
“It’s a long climb,” Kelly said, pointing ahead. “The healing chamber is at the very top, near the crown of the tree.”
Nate followed. The tunnel looked like some monstrous insect bore. In his study of botany, he was well familiar with insect damage to trees: mountain pine beetle, European elm bark beetle, raspberry crown borer. But this tunnel had not been cored out—he would stake his life on it. It had formed naturally, like the tubules found inside the stems and trunk of an ant tree, an evolutionary adaptation. But even this raised a new question. Surely this tree was centuries older than the first arrival of the Ban-ali to this region. So why did the tree grow these hollowed tubules in the first place?
He remembered Kelly’s muttered words at the end of last night’s group discussion. We’re missing something…something important.
They started passing openings through the tree’s trunk to the outside. Some led directly into huts, others led out onto branches with huts beyond. He counted as they climbed. There had to be at least twenty openings.
Behind him, Zane reported in on the Saber radio. All was well with the other teams.
At last, they reached the end of the passage, where it ballooned out into a cavernous space with slits cut high in the walls to allow in the sunlight. Still, the chamber was dim.
Kelly hurried over to her brother.
The small shaman stood across the room, checking on another patient. He glanced up at their approach. He was alone. “Good morning,” he said in stiff English.
Nate nodded. It was strange knowing these words were most likely taught to the man by his own father. He knew from reading his father’s notes that this shaman was also the Ban-ali’s nominal leader. Their class structure here was not highly organized. Each person seemed to know his place and role. But here was the tribe’s king, the one who communed closest with the Yagga.
Kelly knelt at Frank’s side. He was sitting up and sucking the contents of one of the tree’s nuts through a reed straw.
He set his liquid meal aside. “The breakfast of champions,” he said with his usual good-natured smirk.
Nate saw he still wore his Red Sox cap—and nothing else. He had a small blanket over his lower half, hiding his stumped legs. But he was bare-chested, revealing plainly what was painted there.
A crimson serpent with a blue hand-print in the center.
“I woke up with it,” Frank said, noticing Nate’s gaze. “They must have painted it on me during the night when I was drugged out.”
The mark of the Ban-ali.
The shaman stepped to Nate’s side. “You…son of Wishwa Kerl.”
Nate turned and nodded. Apparently their guide, Dakii, had been telling tales. “Yes, Carl was my father.”
The shaman king clapped him on the shoulder. “He good man.”
Nate did not know how to respond to this. He found himself nodding while really wanting to rip into the shaman. If he was such a good man, why did you murder him? But from working and living with indigenous tribes throughout the region, he knew there would never be a satisfactory answer. Among the tribes, even a good man could be killed for breaking a taboo—one could even be honored by being turned into plant fertilizer.
Kelly finished her examination of Frank. “His wounds have entirely sealed. The rate of granulation is amazing.”
Her expression must have been clear to the shaman. “Yagga heals him. Grow strong. Grow—” The shaman frowned, clearly struggling to remember a word. Finally, he bent down and slapped his own leg.
Kelly stared at the shaman, then at Nate. “Do you think it’s possible? Could Frank’s legs really grow back?”
“Gerald Clark’s arm regenerated,” Nate said. “So we know it’s possible.”
Kelly crouched. “If we could watch the transformation in a modern medical facility…”
Zane interrupted her, lowering his voice and keeping his back toward the shaman. “Remember, we have a mission here.”
“What mission?” Frank asked.
Kelly quietly explained.
Frank brightened. “The GPS is working! Then there’s hope.”
Kelly nodded.
By now, the shaman had wandered off, losing interest in them.
“In the meantime,” Zane hissed, “we’re supposed to gather a sample of the sap.”
“I know where it comes from,” Kelly said, nodding toward a channel carved deep into the wall. Shielded by the two men, she picked up the empty nut drained by her brother and pulled out the straw. She crossed to the wall and removed a small wooden plug. A thick red sap began to flow into the channel. She bent the nut’s opening into the flow and began collecting the sap. It was slow work.
“Let me,” Zane said. “You look after your brother.”
Kelly nodded and stepped to Nate. “The stretcher is still here,” she said, pointing an arm to the makeshift travois. “When and if we get the signal, we’ll have to move fast.”
“We should—”
The first explosion shocked them all. Everyone froze as the blast echoed away. Nate stared at the open slits high up the curved walls. It was not thunder. Not from blue skies. Then more and more booms followed. Beyond the roar, sharper cries arose.
Screams.
“We’re under attack!” Nate exclaimed.
He turned and found a pistol pointed at him.
“Don’t move,” Zane said, crouching by the wall, a tight and scared expression on his face. He held the nut, now overflowing with sap, cradled in one arm, and the 9mm Beretta in the other. “No one move.”
“What are you—” Kelly began.
Nate interrupted, immediately understanding. “You!” He remembered Kouwe’s suspicions: other trackers on their trail, a spy among them. “You goddamn bastard. You sold us out!”