Six Sacred Stones Part 35

"Such a valley has never been found, an unfortunate fact that has only added to the overall historical opinion that Stanley made up most of his adventures."

"So..." Zoe prompted.

"So, I believe Stanley was telling the truth he just got the details of his route wrong- something he did quite a lot. That's why no one's ever found this valley. But if we can reconstruct Stanley'sactual route from landmarks and land formations mentioned in his book, we just might get lucky."

"Can't say I've got a better plan," Zoe said.

"Me neither," Lily said. "Let's do it."

THE CONGO.

Formerly known as Zaire but renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1997, the Congo is the third largest country in Africa, almost as big as India. Yet only 3 percent of its vast land area is cultivated, meaning 97 percent of the Congo is pure jungle, much of which remains unexplored to this day.

It is a brutal land-from the dangers of the mighty Congo River to dense jungles teeming with snakes and hyenas, not to mention the chains of active volcanoes in the wild southeast-the dark heart of the Dark Continent.

Following Wizard's directions, Zoe took them south.

They flew for three days, stopping occasionally at abandoned UN depots to steal food and helicopter fuel, until they entered the leastpopulated area of the country-perhaps the entire continent-the Katanga Plateau in the deep south.

Dotted with volcanoes, mountains, and lush river valleys, it was as spectacular as it was remote. Giant waterfalls plummeted from mountain clefts. Fed by constant humidity, the layers of mist that shrouded the valleys remained in place all day long.

As she flew, Zoe keyed her radio scanner so that it continuously monitored all frequencies, military and commercial, allowing her to keep track of any radio activity in the area: Congolese Army patrols, UN people and maybe...

"-Wolf, this is Broadsword. Just picked up a rogue signal south of Kalemie. Huey signature. Could be them-"

"-Check it out-"Wolf's voice replied.

Wolf's people were close behind.

Then, late on the third day, after following a dozen false leads, Wizard spotted a mountain that had been mentioned by Stanley in his book, a mountain with twin waterfalls.

"That's it!" he called excitedly over the roar of the rotors. "Zoe! Cut southwestward!"

Zoe did so, bringing the chopper low over a densely forested river valley that was itself fed by three small fastflowing mountain rivers.

"Bring us down at the junction of the rivers," Wizard called.

They landed on the riverbank, the strutless Huey landing lightly on its belly. Then, cautiously, they stepped out of the chopper.

It was Lily who spotted them first.

"Nowthat is cool..." she breathed, gazing at the nearby jungle.

Alby came up beside her. "What-oh my..."

His jaw dropped.

There in front of them, stretching away into the hazy mist, was a forest of enormous trees.

Ghostly gray in color, they soared to a height of two hundred feet, their interlocking upper leaves forming a canopy through which the Sun couldn't penetrate.

But it was theirtrunks -their wide, huge trunks-that seized the children's attention.

Each gigantic trunk, dozens of them, rank upon rank, all at least thirty feet in diameter, had been beautifully carved into the shapes ofmen.

Some depicted old chiefs, others warriors and priests. All were stern in appearance, fierce, warlike.

And they were old,really old. The great trees were faded with age and strangled by countless vines, vines that seemed to constrict around the figures like giant coiled snakes.

The figures stretched away into the mist, an army of sentries standing guard over time itself.

The air was still, the dense jungle silent.

Wizard came up alongside Lily, put a hand on her shoulder.

"The Valley of the Arboreal Guardians," he said softly.

"So where do we go now?" Solomon asked.

Alby had Zoe's digital camera slung around his neck. He raised it and took a series of quickfire photos of the incredible carved forest.

Wizard recited Hieronymus's scroll: "'At the valley of the Arboreal Guardians/At the junction of the three mountain streams/Take the sinister one.' It seems pretty clear. We proceed to the junction of the three streams near here and take the sinister fork."

"The sinister one?" Solomon said.

Lily smiled. "I don't think it's supposed to be scary, Solomon. In ancient Latin,'sinister' or'sinistra' means left. We take the lefthand tributary."

While the others were staring in awe at the huge carved forest, Zoe was exploring the riverbank upstream.

Something had caught her eye about fifty yards in that direction and she wanted to see what it was.

She came around a bend in the river......and stopped dead in her tracks.

"Oh,s.h.i.+te ," she breathed.

No fewer than thirty riverboats lay before her, crumpled and broken, halfsunk in the river. Derelict boats of various types and ages. Some were recent designs, others were World War IIera patrol boats, others older still: 19thcentury modular riverboats of the kind used by Henry Morton Stanley. There were even a couple of semidestroyed seaplanes and one crippled helicopter with the insignia of the Angolan Army on it.

Zoe froze.

It was a collection of vehicles that had arrived at this place and never left.

"s.h.i.+te.We just walked into a trap."

She spun, calling, "Lily! Wizard! Get back to the chopp-"

It was at that moment, however, that their helicopter exploded.

THE EXPLOSION echoed throughout the valley.

Wizard, Solomon, and the kids all spun as one to see the chopper burst out in a ma.s.sive fireball.

Zoe came running back along the riverbank, staring at the flaming wreck of the Huey.

Then a branch snapped on the opposite bank and she whirled to see a dark figure slither out of the water and disappear into the foliage.

A native.

Then it hit Zoe.

The Neethahad been found over the centuries, probably on many occasions. By explorers, by accident, even by one Angolan patrol, it seemed. But if an outsider who found the tribenever got away to tell the world about them, then the Neetha would forever remain the stuff of legend.

And what better way to distract a recently arrived visitor than with these spectacularly carved trees-the great statues absorbed the visitor's attention while the tribe's saboteurs sank their boat or disabled their chopper.

And now they've trapped us, too,Zoe thought.

"Christ," she said. "How could I have been so-oh, d.a.m.n."

They emerged from the foliage at the base of the huge carved trees: darkskinned tribesmen, their faces covered in harsh white warpaint, their yellow eyes bloodshot. Foul bony growths protruded from their foreheads and jaws, giving them a gruesome, less thanhuman appearance.

Proteus Syndrome,Wizard thought.Deformities caused by diet and worsened by years of inbreeding.

There were maybe sixteen of them and they held bows and guns in their hands. They crept forward in a low manner, cautious but strong.

As they approached from all sides, Zoe, Solomon, and Wizard instinctively formed a circle around the two children.

"I think our search is over," Solomon whispered. "It appears the Neetha have foundus ."

THE REALM OF THE NEETHA.

THE REALM OF THE NEETHA.

KATANGA PROVINCE, CONGO.

DECEMBER 14, 2007, 1930 HOURS.

SURROUNDED by Neetha warriors, Zoe and the group were forcemarched up the left hand river fork-a winding walk through dense foliage and past some rocky rapids. At one point in their journey, Wizard tripped on a root and fell he rose to his knees only to find a knife pressed again his throat, a Neetha guard gripping him in the apparent belief it had been an escape attempt.

"Quwanna w.a.n.go,"the Neetha man hissed. Wizard froze as his captor slowly pressed the blade against his throat, drawing a thin line of blood. Zoe and the others all held their breath...but abruptly the guard released Wizard with a rude shove. No one else lost their footing after that.

As night fell, they came to a great cliff that rose high above the jungle.

A large crack in the otherwisesolid natural wall loomed before them, a dramatic ravine perhaps twenty yards wide.

Plugging the base of this ravine was an imposing manmade structure-a huge stone fort lit by flaming torches and constructed of enormous cubeshaped boulders. Hundreds of sharpened elephant tusks flanked a steep stone stairway that led up to the structure, all pointing aggressively outward.

The only gap in the fort was a great gateway at its base. At least twenty feet high, it was built in the shape of an animal's jaws bared wide. A fastflowing river gushed out from its lower half and tumbled down a ca.n.a.l in the center of the stone stairs-so that there seemed to be no actual footway that allowed access through the gateway.

Ten Neetha warriors manned a platform in front of the gate. With them, snarling and grunting and straining on leashes, were hyenas.

"Tamed hyenas?" Zoe breathed in horror as they climbed the stairs.

Wizard whispered, "Hieronymus claimed that the Neetha used hyenas as hunting dogs, but his claims were dismissed as fanciful. He said they rear hyenas from cub age and train them using a terrible system of beatings and starvation."

Solomon hissed, "If a hyena could be tamed, it would be an incredible a.s.set. Their sense of smell is second to none. You could never hope to escape a pack hunting you."

"A trap back at the river. Destroyed boats and planes. Hyenas as guard dogs," Zoe said.

"What the h.e.l.l have we got ourselves into?" She gripped Lily's hand a little more tightly.

They came to the great gate at the top of the stairs. One of the sentries there blew a horn, and suddenly a wooden bridge fitted with steps was lowered from inside the arch structure. It slotted into place so that it straddled the flowing river rus.h.i.+ng out from the gate's yawning mouth.

Dwarfed by the terrible archway, surrounded by their fearsome guards, Zoe and her team stepped onto the drawbridge and disappeared inside the gate, entering the realm of the Neetha.

They emerged inside the ravine.

Sheer vertical cliffs rose dramatically on either side of them, soaring toward the sky.

At the top of the ravine, four hundred feet overhead, the trees of the rain forest had been deliberately bent, forced to grow inward so that they formed a canopyover the ravine, blocking it from outside view. To an observer flying overhead, the ravine-already hidden among three extinct volcanoes-would have been indistinguishable from the sea of green jungle above it.

During the daytime, Zoe figured, dappled light would s.h.i.+ne through the canopy, but right now, thin shafts of moonlight cut through it, illuminating the gorge in a haunting bluish glow.

As she gazed up at the enormous walls, Lily saw that they possessed a strange kind of movement: a constant trickle that flowed down the uneven rock walls, feeding the clumps of twisted vines that had attached themselves there. Among the snakelike vines were all manner of real snakes, speckled African rock pythons, black mambas, and various others slithering in and out of every available orifice.

"Do yousee them?" she gasped.

Alby nodded vigorously, terrified. "Yuhhuh."

The ravine before them stretched away into misty darkness, twisting and bending, blocked in places by stone forts that prevented an intruder from moving in a straight line.

Likewise, the gorge's base was made up of difficulttopa.s.s substances.

Mostly, it was just water, a flowing stream that ultimately flowed out through the gate.

But along the way, this stream pa.s.sed through two dense reed fields, three mud ponds, and one foul stinking bog inhabited by several semihidden Nile crocodiles.

As the group emerged from the great gate, the lead guard blew another horn and a huge cogwheel at one of the forts upstream was turned by a slave gang. Without warning, a series of stone platforms that had previously been hidden beneath the waters of the stream rose up from beneath the waves right in front of Zoe's team, instantly providing a zigzagging walkway that allowed one to proceed up the ravine unhindered.

"These people are most able," Solomon said, "for a tribe of cannibals untouched by civilization."

"Just untouched byour civilization," Wizard said.

"Wizard," Zoe whispered, "what's going to happen?"

Wizard stole a glance at the children, made sure they couldn't hear. "We're marching to our deaths, Zoe," he said. "The only question is how long the Neetha keep us alive before they eat us one severed limb at a time."

But then he was shoved onward by the guards and thus they progressed through the dark ravine, pa.s.sing the various fortifications until they turned a final bend and emerged into a wider s.p.a.ce, lit by grim firelight.

"G.o.d in all creation..." Wizard breathed as he beheld the realm of the Neetha.