Dark Lightning Read online

  Even in late afternoon, the scorching Mediterranean sun still beat upon the mud-covered buildings of the city. Sweat poured down the back of Ugo’s neck and glistened on his forearms. His intense gaze left the window, and he once again bent to his task, his jaw set with a fierce determination.

  Tonight, once he’d completed his masterpiece, he would finally gain his long-awaited freedom. For the first time in many years, Ugo allowed himself the luxury of a smile. The barred window, the heavily fortified shop door, even the cannonball bolted to the iron chain clamped around his remaining ankle—none of it could possibly hold him back now. The means to escape this wretched life of forced servitude, so far from his native village and his people, so removed from his beloved homeland with its green forests and everything he’d once known, was being shaped under his skillful hands.

  The rounded stump of Ugo’s severed leg ached fiercely from kneeling all day, but the old slave was used to the pain. In fact, he was more or less grateful for it.

  Long ago, when Ugo was a young man of seventeen and slave to a salt trader in Timbuktu, he’d been caught attempting to run off with Arewa, a servant girl from the sultan’s household. Ugo thought he would be killed on the spot, but his master’s greedy wife persuaded her husband to have Ugo’s foot lopped off rather than his head. It was his extraordinary carving skill (and the heaps of gold his talent stood to earn for his master) that saved him from the executioner’s blade that day.

  The girl had fared much worse. The sultan, who’d recently taken Arewa as one of his concubines, was furious to discover she’d been slipping out of the palace to meet with a lover. Pregnant with Ugo’s child, Arewa was stripped naked and dragged screaming into the marketplace where she was sold off like chattel, and Ugo found out later, eventually loaded onto a slave ship bound for the New World.

  He never saw her again.

  It all had happened so very long ago, but he could still feel her anguished gray eyes burning into his as she clung to him before being torn from his arms by the sultan’s soldiers. His beautiful Arewa…his love…brave and fierce. Like a lioness, she’d fought back against her captors so savagely that Ugo feared she would lose the baby.

  Her memory stirred his blood now, and he touched the small carving of an eagle he wore on a cord around his neck. He’d given Arewa one just like it—slipped it to her through a sympathetic fellow slave in the marketplace as she awaited her turn on the auction block.

  He’d also given her a message: Keep this near you always. It will protect you until we’re together once more.

  After his leg wound healed, Ugo was sent to work for his master’s brother in Tangier. He begged and pleaded with his new master to sell him, thinking he would follow Arewa across the great sea. Of course, Ugo’s carpentry skills were far too valuable for that, and instead he was beaten and kept chained to the workroom wall for days or weeks at a time, where he remained even now.

  As he carved another groove in the dense mpingo, or ebony wood, Ugo wondered, as he had on countless occasions over the decades, what had become of Arewa.

  Ugo was an old man and thus something of an anomaly—for a slave to survive past fifty years was rare—but guessed the girl had perished long ago. Consigned to a life of hard labor and living among white men and their deadly diseases, Arewa wouldn’t be expected to live more than a few years in the fledgling colonies of the New World.

  But somehow, Ugo was sure that part of her had lived on.

  The baby. Quite possibly our child survived…

  Leaning down, Ugo picked up a slice of ivory tusk and placed it into the notch he’d made, to check the fit. He didn’t comprehend the English words he labored to inscribe across the front of the wooden chest, but their meaning was unimportant to him.

  What mattered wasn’t visible to the eye, but was buried beneath the false bottom of the chest’s interior. The intricate mechanized workings of the machine that Ugo had so carefully concealed within were the culmination of years of clandestine, scholarly study and decades of careful planning.

  To his master and everyone else, the enormous chest was merely a decorative object, a receptacle for rich white nobles to store their expensive commodities such as spices, sugar, salt, tea and coffee.

  But to Ugo, the chest was a conjuring tool—a device to summon the spirit of Dark Lightning. If all went well, according to Ugo’s plan tonight, the spirit would appear to guide him away from Tangier and his long enslavement, back to his home across the desert.

  His eyes darted to his straw sleeping pallet in the corner. Beneath it, concealed under the dirt, was Ugo’s secret storage place. For ten years, little by little, he had stowed away everything he would need for his escape. All the alchemical compounds required to trigger the process of calling the spirit were there, waiting to be arranged inside the chest.

  The ragged cloth hanging across the workroom doorway wafted silently back and forth, a signal that his master, Najjar Aseem—the hunched, bird-like Arabian merchant who owned Ugo—was closing up for the night.

  Ugo quickly laid his tools upon a scrap of tanned leather and sat back with his gray head bowed. The master must not suspect anything.

  A claw-like hand wrenched aside the cloth, and Aseem hurried into the workroom. He chewed at a blister on his protruding lip and surveyed the chest’s elaborately carved lid with darting eyes, squinting in turn at the animal figures. Frowning, he whirled on Ugo and pounded a hairy fist on top of the chest.

  “How is it you are not finished yet?!” he snarled, his screechy voice echoing off the earthen walls. “You have labored upon the same article for weeks now. Weeks! The English agent’s ship is due in port any day. When he arrives, he will come to collect his commissioned piece, and it must be ready!”

  “Yes, master.”

  “In the name of Allah, what is taking so long?” Aseem demanded. “For days you use up valuable lamp oil working late into the night, yet you accomplish so little? You’re nothing but a lazy sluggard!”

  Aseem scraped the side of his pointed leather shoe against the floor and flicked dirt in Ugo’s face. Ugo flinched but said nothing. He was so used to his master’s insults that the remark barely registered.

  “This chest is meant to be a gift for someone in the English queen’s privy council!” the scrawny old merchant crowed. “With twenty other furniture sellers in Tangier—twenty—can you not comprehend how fortunate I was to obtain this commission?”

  Ugo raised his head slightly and nodded.

  “WELL?!” shouted Aseem.

  “Soon—I finish soon, master,” Ugo answered in perfect Arabic. “The ivory letters are nearly done. Then I will set the stones and rub oil into the wood. The chest will be complete in three days’ time.”

  Aseem grunted and ran his fingers over the white lettering above the front panels of the chest. Ugo watched fearfully as his master leaned forward and moved his scowling face around the head of an eagle on the front of the lid, inspecting it from every angle. He poked his thumb into the animal’s empty eye sockets, which stood ready to receive two rubies. Next, Aseem’s bulging black eyes travelled down to the iron lock mounted beneath the eagle. Ugo swallowed hard, knowing his unenlightened master wouldn’t be able to decipher the code he’d placed there—but if he looked inside…

  “What’s this?” Aseem demanded, pointing at the ring of alchemical symbols etched into the iron surrounding the keyhole. He turned an accusing eye on Ugo. “These markings near the lock—what is their meaning? What sort of savage gibberish have you inscribed here?”

  Ugo again bowed his head. “It is nothing,” he answered, struggling to keep his voice even. “Merely an artful design, master—something to please the eye.”

  Assem grunted again. “This is why you do not finish! You’re always crowding things with too many unnecessary details. Open it. I want to see the inside.”

  Ugo’s aging heart skipped a beat as he thought of the inscription he’d written in gold inside the massive lid. If Aseem su
spected in any way that Ugo, a mere slave, possessed forbidden knowledge of conjuring, he would instantly be put to death.

  “Er…inside, master?”

  Aseem aimed a sharp kick at the stump of Ugo’s severed leg. “Yes, you idiot! Get up and raise the lid at once.”

  “But the chest is empty, master. There is nothing to see.”

  Snatching up Ugo’s hammer, Aseem threatened to bash the slave’s head in. “OPEN IT!” he shrieked.

  Ugo struggled upright to obey his master’s command. With slightly shaking hands, he heaved the chest’s lid up about a foot and held it open so Aseem could peer inside.

  His master’s eyes grew even larger and his face turned crimson with rage. “But the inside is painted blue!” He threw down the hammer and yanked a roll of papyrus from within his robes, unraveling it. “The Englishman did not request any such thing!”

  “I thought it would please the white noble if I…” Ugo started to say before Aseem shoved him roughly to the floor and the chest lid slammed shut.

  “That is very expensive pigment, you fool! You dare to do this without telling me?!” Aseem threw the papyrus aside and unsheathed his knife. “If you’ve stolen from my coffers…”

  Ugo pretended to cower on the ground. “No, master!”

  “Then where did you get it?!”

  “A tanner’s servant in the marketplace! I traded him some small wooden bowls I carved from scraps. I didn’t tell you because I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  Once per month, Ugo was allowed to leave the shop and browse the marketplace for supplies. He’d never tried to escape, for he would never get very far with only one foot before he was found.

  “A WHAT?” his master cried in shock. “You ignorant savage! I loathe surprises! I should carve a hole in your sorry gut for this!”

  Ugo furtively glanced at his straw pallet and bowed low, his forehead scraping the dirt. “I’m sorry, master.” If only Aseem would tire of berating him soon so Ugo could finish the chest and leave this place forever. I can take a beating. But above all, Aseem must not find the jars…

  As if in answer to Ugo’s prayer, his master abruptly fetched the roll of papyrus from the floor and scurried toward the passageway. “Get back to work—you’re wasting time!” he snapped, putting his knife away. He reached into his robes and produced a miniature leather pouch bulging with red rubies. “You have one day. Finish the ivory lettering and set the stones. I will return to check on your progress in the morning. Fetch more lamp oil if you require it.”

  Ugo bowed again. “Yes, master.”

  Aseem flung the pouch at Ugo’s head and swept the cloth aside, disappearing from view.

  Ugo picked up the stones. If he worked very hard, he could finish just before dawn—and then he would make good his escape. The food left for him hours before by the kitchen servant still lay untouched under a cloth. He picked up a stale crust of flat bread and contemplated it for a moment—his last meal as a slave. He used the bread to scoop up the meager serving of lentil beans from a clay pot and devoured them hungrily.

  Now that he was close to freedom, Ugo allowed himself to think about home. It had been thirty long years since he’d left his village far to the south across the Great Desert. Were any of his family still alive? Would anyone recognize him? What if a war had taken place and his village no longer even existed?

  He thought back to the day his life had changed, the day he’d killed the great python that almost crushed the life from his young half-brother, Munachi. That day, as they’d walked back to the village, people were murmuring all around them.

  “He has killed a sacred python and offended the Earth Goddess,” said a man.

  “His father will need to make the proper sacrifices, or we shall all be subject to the wrath of the spirits…” said another.

  Back in the village, Ugo watched the other children huddle at the far end of the marketplace, throwing him anxious glances. He stared at the piece of gnarled teakwood in his hand, seriously doubting his victory over the snake. What had he done? Everyone seemed so upset, so fretful. Can I ever be forgiven? What of Munachi’s mother? Is she not grateful that I saved her only son from the python?

  Then, Ugo was seized by a far worse thought: What if I can’t become chief because of this?

  Moments before, Ugo had seen his mother disappear into the hut of her father (who was a village elder and known for being very wise) to deliver the distressing news. They emerged from his hut now, and his grandfather summoned Ugo and the others to gather around him. Munachi joined in, still shaking from his brush with death in the forest.

  Ugo’s mother also drew close to Grandfather and nervously scanned the staring faces of the villagers. “Father, what are we to do?!” she whispered to him. “People are saying the python is a very bad omen, but we’ve already slaughtered all of the goats and chickens in preparation for tomorrow’s marriage feast. We have nothing left to offer as a tribute.”

  “After the ceremony is finished we can consult the Oracle,” said her father. “She will determine what is to be done. In the meantime, a round of folktales will soothe the souls of the people. Now, go and tell your husband what has happened. But fear not, my daughter. It will be all right in the end.”

  Ugo’s grandfather then recited his favorite story about a spirit called Dark Lightning. “Dark Lightning is the brother of Sky Lightning. But while Sky Lightning moves through the clouds, Dark Lightning moves through the earth. Sky Lightning is bright, but Dark Lightning is invisible—dark like smoke from the cooking fires and the earth where the yams grow. And like his brother, Sky Lightning, Dark Lightning can travel great distances in an instant…”

  He went on telling stories until calm was restored and everyone had settled down to hear the old tales. Then one by one, the villagers drifted away and went about their daily chores, largely forgetting the incident.

  Later, when they were alone, Ugo asked his grandfather if Dark Lightning could be called upon by a mortal man. “Yes,” said his grandfather, “it’s possible to summon the spirit, though this can only be done by a powerful conjuror who holds the ancient wisdom. Sadly, our people no longer possess this exact knowledge. The power to call on lightning spirits has been lost over the generations.”

  “Oh.” Ugo hung his head.

  “In any case, I know of only one occasion, many years ago, where the spirit was called successfully,” his grandfather said. “It was done by a man who had journeyed here from a land far to the north from a city near the edge of the Great Desert—a place of great learning called Timbuktu.”

  Ugo’s eyes grew wide. The very name sounded magical—Timbuktu must be a special place indeed. “This man, what was his name?” Ugo asked.

  “That I do not remember.” His grandfather scratched his head thoughtfully. “But I’ve heard a story that he helped our people in a time of desperate need, when war and famine had driven many from their ancestral lands. He called on the Dark Lightning spirit to intervene on our behalf, and it sent away the invaders. Soon the people were able to return to their land and live in prosperity.”

  “What did he do then? Did this conjuror become chief over all the villages?”

  “No. One day he simply disappeared, and took his understanding of the spirit world with him. No one ever saw him again.”

  Ugo’s mind churned. He needed to find a way to get to this Timbuktu. “This land to the north…where is it?” he asked, his dark eyes suddenly burning bright.

  His grandfather waved a hand over Ugo’s head in a sweeping motion. “It is a very long way from here. Many days’ journey. No one knows for certain how far.”

  “Grandfather—if that man could do it, if he could master the conjuror’s ways, if he could command the Dark Lightning spirit,” said Ugo, “Could I not do the same?”

  Ugo’s grandfather laughed, then eyed him warily. “Ugo…you are much too young. The trip would be long and difficult, the way uncertain and fraught with many dangers.”

&nbs
p; “I want to go! I’m not afraid, Grandfather!” Ugo cried. “I must atone for slaying a sacred python. I want to protect my village.”

  His grandfather nodded gravely. “Yes, that is good. But you are not yet a man. Such a journey would be impossible for a boy of twelve years.”

  “But—”

  “Ugonnatubelm!” The old man abruptly stood and walked to the entrance of his hut, clearly disapproving of the turn their conversation had taken. “You have much to learn here before you can even think of going out into the world.”

  “Yes, Grandfather,” Ugo muttered.

  “Now, you must not stand about looking idle while so much is to be done,” his grandfather said sternly, dismissing him. “Wash the serpent’s blood from your feet, then go and help your family prepare for tomorrow’s feast.” Bending down, Ugo’s grandfather disappeared through the doorway of his hut.

  Ugo stood quite still for a long time, staring at some deep purple clouds gathering near the horizon. “If I learned to conjure the spirit of Dark Lightning, I could defend my village against invaders,” he muttered to himself, “and be one of the greatest chiefs the people have ever seen.”

  The next day, the attention of the whole village would be centered on his sister’s marriage ceremony—the perfect opportunity for him to slip away unnoticed. Ugo suddenly turned and bolted across the marketplace toward his mother’s hut.

  If he was going to leave for Timbuktu the following day, he had to prepare.

  FOURTEEN

  HAVEN CREPT ALONG in the Mercedes doing fifteen miles under the speed limit. She squinted through the torrent of rain washing over the windshield. How the heck am I supposed to find Hall Farm in this downpour?

  The thought of going out to Miss Crosby’s creepy barn in the storm and all alone filled her with dread. All I have to do is unlock the chest, slip the handkerchief into it, and go back up to the house. The task would take five minutes, tops. But with no electricity in the barn, it could be a terrifying five minutes.