Secret Of The Slaves. Alex Archer

I have here everything needed for the toques, the rituals, whether public or private.”

      “What’s candomblé? ” Dan asked as Mafalda led them through narrow aisles with bins of sheaved herbs, colorful feathers and beads.

      “It’s a widespread folk religion in Brazil,” Annja said. “It’s basically a combination of Catholicism with West African beliefs.”

      “Like voodoo?” Dan asked.

      “That’s right,” Annja said, nodding. She dabbed surreptitiously at a droplet that had formed at the end of her nose and sniffled loudly again.

      “We believe in a force called axe, ” Mafalda said, leading them into an aisle with a number of tiny effigies that reminded Annja of Mexican Day of the Dead figurines. There were also racks of odd, twisted dried roots and vegetables and sturdy cork-topped jars with not-quite-identifiable things floating in murky greenish fluids.

      “Mind the jacaré, ” Mafalda said as an aside.

      “Huh?” Dan said. “What’s jacaré? ”

      He bumped his head on something hanging from the ceiling. He did a comical double take to find himself looking into the toothy grin of a four-foot stuffed reptile hung from the ceiling.

      “One of those,” Annja said. She had found a travel pack of tissues in the large fanny pack she wore, and was in the process of blowing her nose. It made a handy cover for her grin. “An Amazon caiman. There’s a specific species named jacaré, but people around here mostly call all crocodilians that.”

      Dan cocked a brow at Mafalda, who wasn’t bothering to hide her own toothy grin. “Decorating with endangered species?”

      “We’re more endangered by the jacarés, ” their hostess said promptly. “They eat many Brazilians each year.”

      “Is she serious?” Dan asked.

      “Oh, yes,” Annja said.

      He shrugged, shaking his head.

      “You were telling us about axe, ” Annja prompted Mafalda. She had no idea if it had anything to do with their mission—to find some lead, however tenuous, to the mysterious hidden city named Promise—but she was fascinated, personally and professionally, with the local folk religion.

      “Oh yes.” The turbaned head nodded. “ Axe is the life force. It permeates all things.”

      “So your toques involve evoking this life force?” Annja asked.

      The woman led them on toward the front of the cramped store. “Somewhat. Mostly we invoke the orixás. ”

      The word was unfamiliar to Annja. “What are they?”

      Mafalda flashed a quick smile. “Our gods,” she said, “Olorum is the supreme creator, but he doesn’t pay so much attention to us little people. So we don’t trouble him. The orixás, though, they’re the deities who deal with us humans. So they’re the ones we have to worry about keeping happy.”

      “Makes sense,” Dan said.

      The tall woman had led them back to the cash register, which was a modern digital model, Annja noted, Beside it stood racks of CDs with colorful covers. Dan picked one up and scrutinized it. “You have a sideline selling Brazilian jazz?” he asked. “These don’t look like New Age meditation CDs.”

      “They are for the capoeira, ” Mafalda said.

      “The martial art?” Annja asked.

      Mafalda laughed. “It’s more than a martial art.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Do you know the story of the slaves?” Mafalda asked. Annja felt Dan tense beside her. Her own quick inhalation turned into a sneeze, only half-staged.

      “Some,” Annja said cautiously.

      “Well, the slaves weren’t happy being slaves. So they practiced to rebel. But the masters would not permit this. So the slaves had to create a way of training that they could practice under the masters’ eye without their suspecting.”

      “Hiding in plain sight,” Annja said.

      Mafalda nodded, smiling. “Exactly. So they hid their warrior training as a type of dance used in religious rituals.”

      “And so in turn capoeira practice got worked into the actual rituals?” Annja asked.

      “Perhaps. Today capoeira is all these things—a form of fighting, a dance, candomblé ritual.”

      “I see.” Annja skimmed the rack until a cover caught her eye. A very dark, very skinny man was performing a trademark capoeira headstand kick in front of a rank of colorfully dressed dancers shaking what appeared to be feather gourd rattles. “I’ll take this one, please.” It seemed a gracious thing to do, a way to keep open lines of communication with their uninformative informant. Also she was curious.

      Mafalda rang up the transaction. She wrapped the CD in fuchsia paper and taped it neatly.

      “Some of the slaves did fight back, you know,” she said as she handed the parcel to Annja. “They escaped and fled into the forest. There they fought. Some died, some won their freedom.”

      “The Maroons,” Dan said.

      “Yes,” Mafalda said. Her manner was suddenly very grave. “The ones about whom you asked—they do not like strangers seeking after them. Capoeira was not the only weapon they created unseen beneath the world’s nose. And their reach is very long.”

       6

      “Was it just me,” Dan said, sipping strong coffee the next morning at a green metal table at an open-air waterfront café near their hotel, “or did that woman seem scared to tell us about the Maroons?”

      “It wasn’t just you,” Annja said. She took a sip of her own coffee. “But she seemed more scared not to.”

      “So did we learn anything?” he asked.

      “They have a long reach.”

      Dan set down his cup, shaking his head. “This is all starting to sound way too Indiana Jones.”

      She smiled. “What would you call a quest for a lost city?”

      He laughed but shook his head again. “The real world doesn’t work like that.”

      “Doesn’t it? I thought terrorizing people to get results was thoroughly modern. Doing it long-distance, even.”

       “Touché,” Dan said without mirth. “It just struck me as far-fetched.”

      It would have me, not so long ago, Annja thought but did not say.

      The café stood near a set of docks servicing riverboats somewhat larger, if not markedly more reputable looking, than the small craft Annja and Dan had seen crowding the river the day before. Dockworkers were swaying cargo off a barge with an old and rickety-looking crane. The stevedores were big men, mostly exceedingly dark and well muscled.

      Although it was relatively early in the day and they were both lightly dressed and sat in the shade of an awning, Annja could feel sweat trickling down her back.

      “It’s not, really,” she said, sipping her coffee. “Farfetched, I mean. If you think about them just like any other…interest group or faction. A lot of governments go to extremes to protect their secrets.”

      “Corporations, too.”

      “Sure. Other groups, as well. These people’s ancestors fled to escape slavery and then persecution—attempts to recapture them, reenslave them. That could account for their being a little paranoid.”

      “But didn’t Brazil abolish slavery—what? Over a hundred years ago,” Dan said.

      “In