Kingdom of bones, p.32
Kingdom of Bones, page 32
To either side, the pair’s aardwolves paced them, brushing through the ferns fringing the gravel path, often vanishing completely out of sight. More wolves and the remaining pygmy hunters followed behind their group.
As they hiked, the cliffs to either side had slowly pulled back, allowing a thick forest to grow between them. A canopy crested over the trail, turning the path into a tunnel. Still, the foliage was thin enough to show peeks of a brightening morning. Occasionally the loose stones underfoot became solid rock cut into steps. The trail climbed slowly higher, leading them deeper into the labyrinth of this mountainous region. More pillars dotted the path, like ancient road markers. They grew taller as the march continued, looking quarried from the same rock as the cliffs.
“I think those were once the bases for arches,” Benjie whispered. He pointed to the next set of pillars. Their tops did seem to bend toward one another, but the spans between them had long crumbled away.
Gray nodded. He glanced back to where Kowalski and Faraji trailed them. He tried to picture a road of stone arches leading through this chasm.
As he faced back around, Benjie nodded to the taller man ahead of them. “If this trail truly does lead to some lost kingdom, do you think he could actually be a descendant of Prester John?”
Gray had wondered the same.
The king heard this inquiry and drifted back to them, allowing the old hunter to take the lead. “I am not,” he answered crisply. “The lineage of Prester John faded centuries ago, long before my time. If there’s any of that bloodline still flowing, it would be found in Molimbo’s people.” He gestured toward the pygmy leading them. “They’ve lived in these forests and mountains for thousands of years. They’ve protected its secrets, acting as caretakers, while also being nurtured in turn.”
“But what about you?” Gray asked, glancing up and down his tall form. “You’re clearly not of this tribe.”
“I am not so lucky, though they took me in long ago, welcomed me into their fold.” He looked behind them. His eyes, slightly clouded by cataracts, stared off into a distance that wasn’t just measured in miles. “I was not born here, but in Muxenge.”
Faraji gasped, stepping closer. “That’s where I live. That’s my home.”
The man smiled a bit sadly. “Of course, I can tell you are Bakuba.” He placed two fingers to his forehead, then touched the same to his chest, a traditional Kuba greeting. “My name is Tyende. Joseph Tyende.”
Gray looked between boy and elder, recognizing the tribal resemblance now. The old man could be Faraji’s grandfather. He also noted how this supposed king had used the older term for the Kuba people.
“How did you come to be here?” Gray asked.
“The same as you, it would seem. By following the Reverend Sheppard.”
Gray’s brows rose. He wondered if the man had once been a tribal shaman, someone with access to the sacred ngedi mu ntey and the secrets it held. “You were able to decipher Sheppard’s clues and found this place, too.”
“No, you misunderstand. I came here with the Reverend Sheppard.”
Gray stumbled a step.
Tyende sighed, his expression sorrowful. “The reverend was my friend and teacher. It was he who taught me English, or rather finished my education after a few years at a British colonial school.”
Gray struggled to digest this information. According to the dates on the photos, William Sheppard had come on his quest in 1894. Even if Tyende was only a boy back then, it would still make him well over a hundred today.
“That’s impossible,” Gray muttered.
Even Kowalski snorted dismissively.
Tyende shrugged and gestured to the small hunter leading them. “Molimbo was already old when I first came here with the Reverend Sheppard. He claims Bala is his third blood-bonded fisi ndogo.”
As if summoned by her name, the aardwolf shifted out of the brush to trot several steps alongside the pygmy—then vanished away.
“Such proud beasts live only a century or so.” Tyende smiled at the old wolf shadowing them, his white fur nearly glowing, as if he were already a ghost. “Mbe is near the end of his life with me. He was only a pup when I first came here. I could cradle him in both palms back then.”
Gray frowned toward the old pygmy, who looked younger than Tyende, but according to this account, Molimbo was many times older. He remembered the myths surrounding Prester John, attesting to a miraculous longevity. According to those stories, the last recorded age of the lost Christian king was 562.
Gray studied Molimbo more closely. If all of this were true—and not some exaggeration or lie—then he understood why Tyende believed the bloodline of Prester John still flowed through the veins of this pygmy tribe.
Gray turned to Tyende. “If you came with the Reverend Sheppard, why did you stay? Why did you remain behind?”
“I consider it an honor now,” Tyende said. “And I do venture outward in rare occasions, even once returning to Muxenge. But after so many years, I felt a stranger there.” He swept his staff around him. “Here is my truest home. Where I took a wife, who sadly passed, but who gave me two strong sons—who themselves had children and grandchildren. So, you see, I’ve had a good life, better than I deserved.”
“What do you mean?” Gray asked.
Tyende shook his head, his gaze downcast. “You asked me why I remained behind. I’ve not truly answered it. Even now shame weighs down my tongue.”
“Then what kept you here?” Gray pressed again.
Tyende looked over, his expression pained. “Penance.”
Gray wanted to know more, but the Kuba elder thumped forward with his staff, leaving them behind.
Tyende offered only one last comment, tossed back at them. “You will understand better soon.”
The hike reached another staircase, cut into switchbacks that climbed a tall ridge. They continued in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Gray struggled to put all the pieces together in his head. By the time, they reached the top of the rise, he had more questions than when he had started up.
Tyende waited for them at the summit, leaning on his staff, bathed in sunlight as the trail crested over an open spine of rock. He looked exhausted, then again, he was over a hundred years old. He lifted an arm as Gray and the others reached him.
Gray looked out from the high vantage point. A wide forested basin opened ahead, circled by peaks and ridges. Their jagged outlines were barely discernible above the thick jungle that filled the valley to the brim. From this height, the canopy looked dense and impenetrable, its dark emerald nearly black.
“Here is what you came to find,” Tyende said. “Molimbo’s people call it Utoto wa Maisha. The Cradle of Life. The Kuba named it Mfupa Ufalme.”
“The Kingdom of Bones,” Gray said.
Tyende stared across the expanse. “Both names are equally true. As you will see.”
The man set off again, descending into the valley along another steep staircase.
Gray followed, passing out of sunlight and back into shadows. He stared down the steps that vanished into the darkness below. If there were any answers, they’d be found down there.
But can we discover them in time?
7:45 A.M.
After nearly an hour of descending the ridge, Benjie wondered if the stairs would ever end. The course zigged and zagged, delving ever downward, proving the valley was far deeper than he had imagined. By the time they reached the last step, he estimated they had traveled a mile down into the valley.
During their descent, the jungle had continued to grow taller around them. Massive trunks—some a dozen feet in diameter, many even larger—marched off into the darkness. The trees formed a colonnade that held up a multilayered canopy. Only a few emerald-hued slivers of light reached the valley floor.
It was so dark that Gray finally broke out his flashlight.
Benjie was happy for the additional light.
Two of the pygmies also gathered up torches from a neat stack at the base of the stairs. They lit the oily brands with strikes of flint. One was passed to Molimbo to help guide them. Benjie suspected the torches were more for the newcomers’ benefit.
“It is not far from here,” Tyende promised.
“Where are you taking us?” Benjie asked.
“First to the scourge,” the man answered cryptically. “To understand, you must know the temptation that lured so many to their doom.”
Kowalski grumbled, “I’m more than happy to skip the doom part of this tour.”
Tyende ignored him and set off. Molimbo once again took the lead, holding aloft his torch. The other pygmies drifted to either side. Their aardwolves dispersed wider, vanishing into the gloom.
The group set off across the valley. The darkness had smothered most of the undergrowth. All around, the valley’s black loam looked rich and fecund, formed by centuries of leaf rot and decomposition. The air was cool and damp, almost clammy. It smelled of wet foliage and a moldy sweetness, all undercut by a musky rot.
Still, nature took advantage of this sunless world. Rafts of fungi climbed the massive tree trunks. Pale mushrooms sprouted everywhere. Some rose waist high, with caps stretching a yard across, their undersides frilled by gills. Elsewhere, basketball-sized puffballs littered the dark floor.
“It’s like we’re in the world’s largest root cellar,” Benjie whispered. “One long abandoned and left fallow. I’ve never seen such huge examples of Psilocybe congolensis.” He pointed to a swath of knee-high yellowish mushrooms. “They normally only grow as big as my palm. They’re notoriously rich in psilocybins and baeocystin, powerful hallucinogenics.”
Kowalski drew closer. “So, African magic mushrooms?” He gazed around. “Don’t think we need them. Feels like I’m already high. Like I fell into Alice’s Wonderland.”
Benjie stared around. He found himself jabbering away nervously. “Did you know, a couple years ago, the fossils of the world’s oldest mushrooms were found in the Congo, not far from here?”
Gray glanced to him.
Kowalski simply shrugged.
Benjie nodded his head. “The fossils date back some eight-hundred million years. It’s believed that ancient fungi played a critical role in forming the first primordial soil, laying the groundwork, so to speak, for the first plants and later animals to colonize land.” He turned to Gray. “In fact, the oldest living organism is found in your country, in Oregon. Armillaria ostoyae, or the honey mushroom. It’s over eight thousand years old. It’s hyphae network extends three square miles, forming one organism, weighing thirty-five thousand tons. Making it also the world’s largest organism.”
Benjie forced himself to quiet down, knowing he was prattling on. His spectrum made it too easy to fall into a state of hyperfocus, to fixate on a single topic. Still, maybe this diatribe wasn’t entirely unwarranted. The team had come here searching for the source of a virus unlike any other, one that seemed capable of manipulating DNA, maybe of steering evolution.
Perhaps such details could prove important.
He was certainly right about another topic.
The group approached a tall stone arch that spanned the path, proving that the hundreds of pillars were indeed the remnants of ancient archways.
Similarly, as they had continued across the valley, the gravel underfoot had become flat cobbles set in an intricate pattern. The path was occasionally broken by roots of the surrounding trees, but there was no mistaking it.
Definitely an ancient road.
Benjie studied the archway as he passed under it. The rough-hewn bricks were black with age and covered in layers of moss, but a glinting caught his eye. Overhead, the centermost key brick was not stone. Unable to help himself, he reached over and guided Gray’s flashlight up.
Kowalski whistled appreciatively, recognizing it now, too.
It was a massive wedge of gold.
Benjie stared back along their trail, picturing the other hundreds of pillars. He tried to calculate the value of such a path, lined by arches topped in gold. Was this proof of Prester John’s wealth and maybe a connection to the legends of King Solomon’s mine?
Tyende turned to them, noting them lagging behind. His form was limned in torchlight, his gold circlet shining bright. “We are here,” he said.
8:03 A.M.
Gray hurried forward with the others.
Tyende stood at a Y in the road, where it split and diverged into two paths. Their guide took the fork to the right. As Gray followed, he glanced down the other trail. It vanished into the darkness, but he thought he caught a vague glimmer in the distance, nearly illusory. He rubbed his eyes, trying to discern its source. But it quickly dimmed as he continued after Tyende and Molimbo.
Gray focused forward again. They didn’t have far to go. The road ran for another hundred yards and ended at a cliff face. They came upon it abruptly as the forest abutted right against it, hiding the bluff nearly completely. The sheer rock was further masked by thick mats of damp moss, which served as the bed for a riotous growth of mushrooms and fungi.
Gray searched around, realizing that their trek had curved to meet the base of the valley wall. The cliff’s heights stretched to the right and left, disappearing into the darkness. He had no doubt it was an unbroken barrier. He frowned, unsure why Tyende had brought them here.
The old man must have guessed this question. He removed his circlet and examined it with a forlorn expression. “I am the last king of Utoto wa Maisha. Of Mfupa Ufalme.” He returned the crown to his head. “It is my burden. My penance to bear.”
Gray did not understand.
Tyende nodded to Molimbo, who turned and spoke to one of his tribesmen, the one carrying the second torch. The pygmy ran forward toward the cliff, clearly wanting to dispatch his duty quickly. Gray noted a few of the other hunters had reappeared but none drew any closer. Even the aardwolves hung back.
Faraji grabbed Gray’s sleeve and tugged hard. The boy pointed to the left, to a patch of mushrooms and a reef of fungi. Gray failed to spot what alarmed him and swung his flashlight in that direction. Only then did he spot the white glint among the pale growth.
“Mfupa,” Faraji warned.
Bones . . .
A skull glowed in his flashlight’s beam. Gray moved closer, recognizing that a skeleton lay buried among the mushrooms.
A gasp rose from Benjie, but the biologist was staring toward the cliff. The pygmy with the torch had come running back, but he no longer carried a flaming brand. He dashed past to join his brethren.
Back at the cliff, a fire glowed within it. As Gray watched, it swiftly spread outward, running along channels both inside and outside, pooling brighter for stretches, then extending again. Gray imagined thin troughs and gutters of oil fueling this fire.
As the flames spread, they revealed the truth hidden behind the moss and fungi. What appeared to be a sheer cliff was in fact a cityscape carved into the rock. The flames rose higher and to either side, revealing the true breadth of the place. It climbed tens of stories and stretched far to the right and left.
The firelight soon revealed how Gray had been mistaken a moment ago. The ancient city wasn’t cut into ordinary stone. Instead, the surfaces glinted and shone with a ruddy brightness. Gray took a step back, struggling to take in the scope hidden here. The city had been mined out of a giant vein of gold.
Kowalski swore, his face aglow with lust in the firelight. Gray couldn’t blame him. Even he had to fight down a twinge of avarice. Entire countries would be financed by what lay before them. The wealth here was incomprehensible.
Benjie pointed higher up the cliff. “Is that what I think it is?”
By now, the flames had crested higher, outlining a giant gold cross glowing above the city. Gray considered its presence here. Was the shape purely happenstance, or did it further support the myths of Prester John, a Christian king who founded an empire here?
Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing for sure.
Tyende noted their attention. “The Reverend Sheppard was equally disappointed to discover there was no lost kingdom still thriving here. It was as empty as you see it now, left to the ghosts of the past, those who only left their bones behind.”
Only now did Gray see the tumble of skeletons strewn about the base, as if washed against the cliff. He searched around and saw more skulls and jumbles of rib cages, leg bones, clawed hands. Some were yellowed by age, others polished white. Now spotted, more and more revealed themselves, all around them. They spread far and wide throughout the forest. Even more were likely layered under centuries of rotting leaves.
No wonder this place was considered cursed.
Even the pygmies knew to keep their distance.
“Over the decades,” Tyende said, “I tried to count the remains. I finally stopped when I reached fifty thousand.”
“What happened here?” Benjie asked.
“The Reverend Sheppard believed we’re looking at all that’s left of Prester John’s kingdom. I’ve had long conversations with Molimbo. The kingdom had fallen into ruin before he was born, but the tribe carries forward stories of that time. I’ve tried to piece together that history. As best I can tell, some six or seven centuries ago the kingdom was overtaken by interlopers, who came with crossbows and lances and war hammers.”
Tyende swept his staff toward the forest. “I’ve found a few metal bolts, broken pikes, and rusted chainmail, confirming such a story. From sigils on the armor, I’m guessing they were Portuguese conquerors, who came searching for Prester John’s gold.”
Gray remembered Father Bailey’s story of a group of Portuguese explorers from the fifteenth century who had returned from Africa, claiming to have discovered Prester John’s kingdom. Maybe they had, but clearly only a few of them had made it back.
Tyende frowned at the spread of bone. “But it wasn’t just the kingdom that the Portuguese discovered here, what they had to contend with. They woke what had been slumbering for ages. They tried to take what was not offered and were punished for it. For such an affront, they were afflicted with the disease that threatens now, falling into a deadly lassitude.”
