Secret Of The Slaves. Alex Archer

Annja said. “It’s like a whole different country, huh?”

      “Excuse me,” a voice interrupted.

      At the quiet, polite feminine query in English both looked up. Two young people stood there, a very petite woman and a very tall man. Both were striking in their beauty and in their exotic appearance. Both wore light-colored, lightweight suits.

      “Are you Americans?” the woman asked.

      “Are we that obvious?” Dan asked.

      The young man shrugged wide shoulders. He exuded immediate and immense likeability. “There are details,” he said in an easy baritone voice. “The way you dress. The way you hold yourselves. Your mannerisms—they’re quicker than ours tend to be, but not so broad, you know?”

      “And then,” Annja said with a shrug, “there’s our tendency to gawk at naked women in the café.”

      The man laughed aloud. “You were most polite,” he said.

      “She probably would have appreciated the attention,” the woman said. “We Brazilians tend to take a lot of trouble over our appearance. Clearly you know that beauty takes hard work.”

      “You’ve probably noticed, we don’t have much body modesty hereabouts,” the man said. “But you were wise to be discreet. Brazilians also tend to think that Americans confuse that lack of modesty with promiscuity.”

      “They’re probably right,” Dan said, “way too often.”

      “Please, sit down,” Annja told the pair. She was not getting threatening vibes from them. And she and Dan were drawing blanks so far. Any kind of friendly local contact was liable to be of some help. At least a straw to clutch at. “I’m Annja Creed. This is Dan Seddon. He’s my business associate.”

      Dan cast her a hooded look as the woman pulled out a chair and sat. The man pulled one over from a neighboring table. Annja saw that they both had long hair. The woman’s hung well down the back of her lightweight cream-colored jacket, clear to her rump. The man’s was a comet-tail of milk-chocolate dreadlocks held back by a band at the back of his head, to droop back down past his shoulders.

      “I’m Xia,” the woman said. “And this is Patrizinho.” The pair looked to be in their late twenties, perhaps a year or two older than Annja.

      “Pleased to meet you,” said Annja, who was accustomed to the Brazilian habit of going by first names alone. “What do you do?”

      “We work for an import-export firm,” Xia said. “Mostly we are consultants. We help foreign merchants negotiate the labyrinth of our trade laws and regulations.”

      “They’re quite bizarre,” Patrizinho said. “Some of our people take perverse pride in having them that way.”

      “And you?” Xia asked. “Are you here on vacation?”

      Annja glanced at Dan. To her surprise he sat more tightly angled back in his chair than slouched, with his legs straight under the table, arms folded, chin on clavicle. He frowned slightly at her but gave no indication she shouldn’t discuss their real purpose.

      “We’re here doing research for an institution in the United States,” she said, parrying an internal stab of annoyance at Dan. “I’m an archaeologist and historian by trade. My partner is a representative of the institute.”

      “It’s a humanitarian institution,” he said. “We’re here doing research on quilombos. ”

      Patrizinho raised his brows. “Not many Americans I’ve met know anything about them.”

      A male server appeared. Patrizinho ordered fruit juice, Xia some bottled water.

      “What’s your interest in the quilombos, then?” Xia asked.

      “We understand that some of them actually managed to survive as independent entities until Brazil became a republic,” Annja said.

      “True enough,” Patrizinho said. “Some of them still exist as recognized townships today.”

      Annja glanced at Dan, who seemed to be sulking. “We’re trying to track down reports that there might be a settlement derived from a quilombo far up the Amazon, which has declined to join Brazil or, perhaps, the modern world.”

      Patrizinho grinned and tapped the table with his fingertips. “Hiding like Ogum in the forest!”

      “What’s that?” Dan asked sharply.

      “An old expression.”

      “A lost civilization,” Xia said. “Do you really think that’s possible in today’s world? With airplanes and satellites everywhere. Wouldn’t it turn up on Google Earth?”

      Annja shrugged. “We aim to find out.”

      For a moment they sat without exchanging words. A breeze idly flapped the red, green and yellow awning over their heads. From somewhere came strains of Brazilian popular music, faint and lively.

      Since their newfound acquaintances weren’t jumping in to offer clues to the location of the lost City of Promise, or even expand on local legends to the effect, Annja said, “Patrizinho, your mention of Ogum puts me in mind of a question both Dan and I had.”

      “What’s that?” he said.

      “We keep seeing people wearing these T-shirts. They’ll say something like Cavalo Do Xango or Cavala Da Iansã, around images of colorful-looking persons. I know those phrases mean, basically, horse of Xango or Iansã. We’ve seen them for Ogum, too. But who are they, and why do other people wear shirts saying they’re their horses?”

      “Those people are orixás, ” Patrizinho said. “You know what that means?”

      “We’ve heard the word,” Dan said.

      “Xango is the thunder and war god. Iansã is his wild-woman wife, also known as Oyá, goddess of winds and storms—and the gates of the underworld. If somebody is a horse for one of them, that means they regularly serve as host or vessel for that spirit.”

      “You mean like in voodoo,” Dan said, perking up a bit, “where ritual participants are ridden by the loa? ”

      “Pretty much the same,” Xia said. “In fact many people here worship the very same loa. Sometimes they’re even taken over by Catholic saints, they say, although the saints are usually identified with specific orixás. ”

      “People advertise the fact that they regularly get…possessed?” Annja asked. For all that she liked to think of herself as a tolerant person—and she’d spent enough time among enough people in strange and remote places to have what she thought pretty good credibility for the claim—the notion creeped her out considerably.

      “They believe it’s an honor, to be chosen by the god or goddess,” Patrizinho said.

      Xia checked an expensive-looking designer watch strapped to her thin wrist. “We’d better get on our way, Patrizinho,” she said, rising. “It’s been lovely meeting you, Annja, Dan. Perhaps we’ll get a chance to see each other again.”

      Patrizinho stood, too. With a serious expression he said, “We should warn you to be wary of people who proclaim themselves horses for Ogum, or of Babalu. They are the gods of war and disease, respectively. They are dangerous, cranky spirits. Not to be trifled with, you understand.”

      Dan smiled a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve never been real afraid of gods and spirits.”

      “Horses,” Xia said dryly, “tend to mirror their masters’ personalities. So perhaps you should keep an eye on them. ”

       7

      Annja opened her eyes to darkness—and the cold conviction she was not alone.

      The night throbbed with a samba beat from the small hotel’s nightclub