Matt Archer: Redemption Part 12

Dorland fell in with us after the man packed his snake into a basket and slung it on his back.

"We think this is a good idea?" he asked.

Lanningham nodded. "This has happened to us before."

"In Africa," I said. "You weren't with us when we met Zenka the first time, but Lanningham was, and Zenka knew me right off. It happens."

"Weird," Blakeney said. The static was worse than before. "Was he waiting for you?"

"No idea," I said. Maybe it said something about how strange my life had become because I wasn't bothered by a man saying he learned English in case I showed up.

"Sir? Do you know about the snakes hunting people in the city?" I asked him as we walked.

"I know snakes, and those things are not snakes," he said, casting a dark look over his shoulder. "They are unnatural and should not exist. But to your unasked question, I know where they are."

"Where?"

He sighed. "My father wishes to see you first. He's waited a long time, and I don't want you to risk your life before he has that chance."

Let's hear it for confidence in your local wielder. "We can't stay long. We're supposed to be hunting."

"The things are dormant during the day," he told me. "You have time."

The man led us from the square to an older part of the city, where less garish stores lined the streets, and small stone houses were tucked into alleyways. It was into one of these houses we were invited.

"I'll stand watch," Lanningham said, taking up post by the single door. "Stay on com."

I acknowledged him with a nod, then followed my host inside. The house was a single room. On one end, there was a cook stove, a dining table and built-in shelves holding dried fruit and bread.

On the other, a series of a mats lined the floor. There, a really old man reclined, and when I looked at him, his face lit up and he smiled through a thick white beard.

He murmured something and I turned to Dorland, who shook his head. "Not French."

The man's son leaned down to listen to what he was saying. "He asks if he may touch your hands."

Dorland tensed.

"What?" I asked.

"That's what the little boy out there asked," he said. "Not for you to touch him, but to touch your hands."

Now our friend from the square chuckled. "Must've been my grandson. We put him there to watch for you."

"Why does your father want to touch my hands?" I asked.

"He wants the chance to read them," the man said. "It's not every day he is able to touch a legend."

Static crackled in my ear. Blakeney, laughing. "Don't let it go to your head, Archer!"

"Can't get uppity if it's true, sergeant," Lanningham growled from outside.

Thinking this was getting too weird for everyone involved, I sat on the mat across from the old man. The wrinkles on his face were carved deep, and now that I was close, I noticed he didn't have any teeth. He had to be at least ninety.

I held out my hands tentatively, not sure if I'd need to guide him or what, but he reached for them right away. Holding my right hand-my knife hand-in both of his, he flipped it over and drew his fingers over my palm. It tickled and was more than a little awkward.

This went on for a couple of minutes before the old man started telling his son a long-winded story. The son nodded gravely the entire time before turning to me.

"He says he was right. You are the one he's been seeking. Our family is old, and a tale has been handed down to us, from the time of the Jinn."

I must've looked confused, because Dorland rolled his eyes. "He means genies."

Now it was the man's turn to roll his eyes. "I meant the Jinn. These are not the friendly, wish-granting cartoons you Westerners think of, but powerful spirits. Some are good, some are neutral, some are evil. In the case of my family, a Jinn appeared to an ancestor, telling him of a boy who would walk unafraid in the dark, aided by light eternal. The Jinn told my ancestor to remember a verse for the boy, should he come, and to carry it from father to son until the time was right." He leaned forward and pointed at my hands. "You, Wielder Archer, are that boy. And you wear light at your hip."

My right hand drifted to my knife's handle, sheathed in my thigh pocket. I felt both hot and cold and I knew Dorland's eyes were trained on the back of my head. The silence on the radio let me know both Lanningham and Blakeney were very interested in how this played out, too.

"What message would you give me?" I asked, not the man from the square, but his father.

The old man recited something that sounded like a poem, and his son murmured it along with him, then translated it into English: In darkness walks light; in light, darkness The warrior, the blades Broken, joined, remade Light, once bound, will rise To reclaim the heavens And, redeemed, the rift between them mends Forever A strange recognition of these words, from deep within my bones, rose. I'd never heard them, but I knew them. Like I'd been born knowing them.

And I wasn't sure I liked what they were telling me.

Trying to control my growing concern, I asked, "Was the Jinn evil or good?"

The old man reached out to pat my leg. "He just was."

I let out a half-hysterical chuckle. "So you speak English, too?"

"A little." The old man sounded delighted by the joke. "You'll find what you seek in the waste tunnels under the city. The creatures come out at night and people are afraid. Show the fearful what light can do to things that are dark."

Sewers, exactly like Mamie said. I wondered if she'd known this was where I'd end up, in the home of a man whose family had been touched by magic generations before. If this was the something she wanted me to find here in Morocco.

I stood and laid a hand on the old man's head. "I will. Consider your message delivered and your mission from the Jinn fulfilled."

He let a long sigh. From the sound of it, it was a sigh he'd held for most of his life. "You honor our house."

"You honor mine," I said, then turned to leave before he could see how my knees were shaking.

Lanningham and Dorland didn't say anything as we walked back to the square. Blakeney didn't call in, either. I wondered if they were digesting the same thing I was.

What, exactly, had to be broken then remade? The blades?

Or the warrior?.

PART TWO.

Fire Burns.

Chapter Sixteen.

All I could think as we scurried to the parking garage to pick up Blakeney was what the prophecy might mean.

Mamie had been so sad and quiet around me, ever since she read Ann's mind that first time in D.C., when we discovered Ann had sold us out to Congress. What had my sister seen? Me, lying broken and bleeding?

And what was this "remade" bit? Would I have to destroy my knife somehow? Re-forge it? But how would we even do that without releasing Tink and her brothers to the void once more?

I stumbled, then caught myself even as my brain tripped over that thought. Is that what the verse meant? That I'd have to give up my knife, and Tink, to finish this war? How could I survive without her?

My thoughts hiccupped again. When had I gotten so attached to Tink that the idea of having my brain to myself was painful, rather than a relief.

Was I going a little crazy?

Then I realized this wasn't worth worrying about, not yet, and a detached calm washed over me. My grandma used to say "don't worry about tomorrow when today is smacking you in the face." My mom had some choice words about the difference between courage and acquiescence. Both pieces of advice had always served me well. Today, I had monstrous, man-eating serpents to deal with. Tomorrow, it would be another problem. Then another. And another. I'd worry about this other stuff when it was staring me in the face.

Until then, I had work to do and I wasn't about to lie down and cry about it.

"Archer, you okay?" Lanningham asked, breaking nearly twenty minutes' silence. "You've been pretty quiet since we left that house."

"Just thinking," I said. "Snakes, battle plans-stuff."

He and Dorland exchanged worried glances, but didn't ask again. We walked up to the parking garage, an ornate structure behind an even more ornate hotel. All I could say is that Morocco liked its style. The high arched entryways mixed with square corners and the sandstone colored walls were tastefully lit up by thousands of lights. On our way through to the Humvee, I got a peek of a lush garden and pool through a barred security gate.

"Wish we were staying here instead of that generic hotel near the warehouse," I murmured. I could do with a few minutes peace in this place once I washed the blood of the hunt off my hands.

"Consider it done," Lanningham said, whipping out his phone. He dialed as we walked, then put the phone up against his ear. "Davis, change of plans. We need a reservation at the Les Jardins De La Koutoubia hotel .... Yeah, I'll hold."

Blakeney was waiting for us and popped open the storage hatch so he and Dorland could load up. "How heavy do you want to go in?"

"No idea," I said. "We know where they were, but nothing tactical."

"Well, we're going into the sewers, so grenades might not be a good idea," Dorland said. "Too much fire power plus low grade concrete equals a cave in, and I don't want to be caved in with a bunch of wastewater and man-eating snakes."

"Ditto." Blakeney handed Dorland a flamethrower. "This might be a good idea, though."

Dorland sighed. "Only if we're sure there's not a bunch of methane down there." He gave me an irritated look. "Can we flush the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds out? If we go underground, the three of us will be dead weight to you."

"Bullets might work," I said. "Head shots killed those spiders in Australia."

"First time for everything," Blakeney said, nodding. "But I'm not sure we should trust our luck to hold."

Yeah, because it never did.

"I know it is," Lanningham was saying as he came over to the truck. "Put the colonel on." He covered the phone with his hand. "Davis is worrying about the price."

"Tell him I'll pay for it," I said. I had enough money to fund a college education-and then some-saved in the contractor account the Army set up for me. Given what awaited us at the end of this war, who knew if I'd even make it out alive, let alone go to college? I might as well spend my savings on something stupid.

Lanningham shook his head and uncovered the phone. "Yes, sir. I understand that .... " The lieutenant raised his eyebrows. "Sir, I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it was necessary. ... Yes, he is. Yes, sir. Thank you."

I wondered what Uncle Mike had asked him and why Lanningham was so h.e.l.l-bent on fulfilling this whim for me.

"Colonel Tannen take care of us?" Dorland asked.

"Yeah." Lanningham glanced at me "He said the Moroccan government offered to pay for some of our expenses, so we might as well take them up on it."

Rock on. "Okay, then, let's get to work."

After some additional argument, during which a number of tourists walked by, their eyes wide as we decked ourselves out in weaponry that could lay waste to the hotel-or a city block-the others finally decided we'd run a quick scouting mission into the sewer tunnels to see if we could use ordnance or explosives to drive the snakes above ground to give us more room and opportunity to kill them off. And we were doing all of this in a crowded tourist city.

Suddenly, I kind of missed desert ops. And having Uncle Mike as C.O.

"While y'all were coming back, I had Davis put me in contact with the public works here," Blakeney said. "We'll find an access point to the main sewer system at the southwest corner of the Jemaa el-Fnaa."

"Nice work, sergeant," Lanningham said.

"I ain't just a pretty face, sir."

"You can say that again." Dorland grinned. "I'm the only pretty face around here."

"Hey!"

Relieved they were joking around, I decided to pile on. "And I'm the brains of the outfit."

"If you're the brains of the outfit," Lanningham said, giving me a little shove, "we better lock ourselves in the Humvee and hope those snakes don't come for us."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, sir," I said. "All right, who's up for a little nighttime stroll?"

"Hooah!" Blakeney crowed, causing a gaggle of women in sunhats to jump and scurry to the hotel.

"Stop scaring the wildlife," Dorland said. "Let's go."

We were halfway to the square when the crowd started moving against us. Some people were pus.h.i.+ng and shoving. Others were flat out running. Every one of them looked terrified. Screams broke out and a few people went down under the crush. We fought our way through slowly, as if we were swimming in an ocean of wet cement. I feared that, like concrete, the crowd would set into a solidified ma.s.s and we'd never break free.

Dorland began shouting in French. Whatever he said was taken up by the people nearby and soon the message was being relayed deeper and deeper into the crowd.

"What's going on!" I yelled, so he could hear me over the din. "Something happen?"