The Crystal Skull by Manda Scott

Author:Manda Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407039893
Publisher: Transworld

17

New Spain: southern lowlands, October 1556

BATS. EVERYWHERE BATS . A shrieking, flittering tide that filled the clearing from treetop to treetop, blotting out the afternoon sun and bringing on such darkness as would have been unbearable, but that the soul of the heart-stone sang a paean of homecoming to drown out the noise and cast blue light, filling the false dusk with the piercing clarity of dawn.

Lost in the blinding sound, Cedric Owen swayed, and bent and lowered Fernandez de Aguilar to the ground at last, after half a day of carrying him up an ever-steepening jungle path with Diego hacking a route through the undergrowth ten yards ahead.

De Aguilar did not wake as he was laid out in the long grass of the clearing, but then he had not wakened for anything, not for the shrieks of the birds through the day or the coughing jaguar or the terrified mule whose bray had startled the bats into flight, nor for any part of the three-day journey that had brought him here, to this clearing halfway up a mountain in the heart of the jungle with nothing to show why the trees had not grown here, but the bats and the singing of the heart-stone.

‘This is the place,’ Owen said, straightening. ‘I can feel it.’

‘Then we make camp.’

Already, Diego was crouched on his heels, cutting a circle of turf for a fire. Carlos and Sanchez, his brothers, who had accompanied them, were tying the mules and hunting for firewood. They passed Owen without a word, although he thought that all three native men looked at him more favourably since he had lifted de Aguilar and carried him these last few miles. He was not certain of it; the surprise – and the hurt – was that he cared enough to notice.

For something to do, Owen bent and felt the pulse at de Aguilar’s neck and at his one remaining wrist. Of the three wrist pulses, the liver was still thready and the heart erratic, which told him nothing that he did not already know. Since daybreak, he had carried the Spaniard slung over his shoulders, and had listened to the man’s breathing worsen as fluid gathered on his lungs and a mild pneumonia became, over the span of hours, a dangerous one, for which Owen could do nothing but massage water into his throat, and perhaps a little valerian and willow bark, in the knowledge that he did it for himself, to feel useful, rather than in the belief that they would be of use.

Checking for snakes, he set the satchel with his heart-stone at the side, and pulled from its depths the small bag of medicaments that he carried. Around him, the tide of bats dispersed whence they had come and life returned to the jungle, noisy and colourful as it had been the past three days. Everywhere, small jewelled birds flitted amongst the branches, sharpening the air with their calls. In the deeper depths, larger things flew and stalked and cried and killed.

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