"I should have helped you," Dr. Henry Patton said. "I don't know why I didn't."
His two students had followed him at a much slower pace, looking as dazed and confused as their teacher.
Riley bit back an angry accusation. None of this was the archaeologist's fault. Maybe he had the means and knowledge to understand the properties of a hallucinogenic plant and the entire expedition, but what would be his motives? What could possibly be any of their motives?
She swept a weary hand through her hair, exhausted. She hadn't dared to sleep in the last four nights, not since entering the rain forest. Not since that terrible whispering had begun. The endless buzz was enough to drive any sane man crazy, and clearly she was the least affected of their group.
The three guides and the rest of the porters circled Raul, restraining him with ties of some kind. He continued to chant that guttural, unfamiliar language, sometimes murmuring, sometimes shouting, and kept trying to move toward Annabel's hammock. His cousins were forced to tie him to one of the trees to keep him from attacking her again. His hand was clenched in a fist as though he still gripped the machete handle. He swung his arm back and forth through the air in a disturbing pantomime.
"What is Raul saying?" Riley asked Jubal, once the excitement died down and everyone returned to their hammocks. She nodded at the porter tied to the tree and watched Gary's expression. "I can see that both of you recognize the language." She looked Jubal right in the eyes. "Don't deny it. I see the looks you two give one another. There's no doubt that you know what he's saying."
Jubal and Gary turned almost simultaneously to glance over their shoulders at Ben Charger. It was obvious they didn't want to talk in front of anyone else.
"Let me give you a hand clearing away these bats," Gary said.
Riley deliberately began to make a sweep of the dead and dying bats surrounding her mother. It was ugly, sickening work. Both Jubal and Gary pitched in, which was a good thing because she would have followed them back to their hammocks for an explanation.
Ben worked with them for a few minutes, kicking the roasted bodies away from Annabel's hammock, but when Gary began digging in the vegetation to dispose of them all in a mass grave, the engineer called it quits.
"I don't think you'll need me any more tonight. Things seem to be settling down."
Only then did Riley realize the terrible buzzing in her head had faded away. Although she couldn't hear it anymore, she could tell by the red eyes and the frowns on the faces of the others that it hadn't stopped altogether. "Thank you so much for your help. I wouldn't have gotten them all without you. You acted fast."
Ben shrugged. "They went right for her. I wasn't going to stand by and let her get hurt. I'm a light sleeper. If anything happens again, give a shout and I'll come running."
Riley forced a brief smile. "Thank you again."
Ben rubbed his temples, scowling as he turned away from her. Riley helped push the remains of the bats into the hole Gary had dug, waiting until Ben was out of earshot before she turned to Jubal.
"All right," she said, "he's gone. Now tell me what Raul was chanting. And what language was he speaking? It's certainly not native to this country or any tribe here in the Amazon."
Jubal slipped his gun into some kind of harness beneath his loose jacket. Riley found it interesting that he hadn't put it away until Ben had left.
"The language is an ancient one," Jubal said. "It originated in the Carpathian Mountains, but there are very few who still speak or even understand it today."
She frowned at him. "The Carpathian Mountains? How in the world could a poorly educated porter from a remote village in the Amazon come to know and speak an ancient European language that even I've never heard of ? Never mind. We can talk about that later. For now, I want to know what he was saying."
Jubal looked over her head at Gary.
"Don't do that. Look at me, not him. I know you understand what he said," Riley insisted. "That man was trying to kill my mother. And the whole time he kept saying 'Han kalma, emni han ku kod alte. Tappatak ηamaη. Tappatak ηamaη.'" She repeated the phrase with perfect pitch, intonation, sounding exactly like Raul. "I want to know what it means."
Jubal shook his head. "I don't know the answer to that. I really don't, Riley. I'm not as good at the language as Gary is, and I don't want to make a mistake. I think I got the gist of what he was trying to say, but if I mistranslate and alarm you ..."
"The man came after my mother with a machete. I don't think it's going to be more alarming than that," Riley snapped and was immediately ashamed of herself. She needed this man's help. Gary, Ben and Jubal had no doubt not only saved her mother's life, but probably her own as well. "I'm sorry. You helped defend my mother, and I appreciate that. But I'm afraid for her and I need to know what I'm dealing with."
Gary moved around Annabel's hammock to stand in front of Riley. "I'm sorry this is happening to both of you. You must be very frightened. It sounded to me, and this is a loose translation, that he was chanting 'Death to the cursed woman. Kill her. Kill her.' That's as near as I could make out." He looked at Jubal. "Did you get the same thing?"
Riley knew he'd switched his attention to Jubal in order to give her time to recover. She'd suspected the translation would be something threatening-but still, she felt as if someone had punched her in the gut and driven every bit of air from her lungs. She forced herself to breathe as she looked up at the night sky through the canopy, a film of hazy leaves. Who would target Annabel? She was an amazing, kind woman. Everyone she met loved her. The attack didn't make sense at all.
"Raul has definitely spent his entire life here in the rain forest. He truly doesn't have that much contact with outsiders, none of the villagers do. How would he ever pick up such a nearly extinct, clearly foreign language?" Riley struggled to keep the challenge out of her voice.
Without a doubt this man had saved her life, but Jubal Sanders and Gary Jansen researched plants. They both admitted they'd come to the Andes in search of a plant that was supposed to be extinct everywhere else and that the plant was native to the Carpathian Mountain range in Europe. If this language had originated in that same area, what were the plant and language doing in South America? And what a coincidence that everyone in their traveling party was experiencing the same hallucination all wrapped around this ancient language both men understood?
Jubal shook his head. "I have no explanation."