I left them then, knowing I’d be traveling much faster and higher than either of them, and also, I went back to my château for my ax.

It was rather silly, my wanting my little ax.

I also stripped off the fancy velvet and lace, and put on a decent heavy leather jacket for the journey. I should have cut my hair for those jungles, but I was too damned vain to do that. Samson never loved his hair as much as I love mine. And then I set out for the Amazon.

Five hours before dawn in that great southerly region, I was descending towards the endless channel of deep darkness that was the Amazon rain forest with the silver streak of river winding through it. I was scanning for pinpoints of light, infinitesimal flickers that no mortal eye could ever see.

And then taking my best shot at it, I went down, crashing through the wet humid canopy, descending through crackling and breaking branches and vines until I landed rather awkwardly in the dense darkness of a grove of ancient trees.

At once I was imprisoned by vines and clattering branches in the understory, but I stood quiet, very quiet, listening, making like a stealthy beast on the silent prowl.

The air was wet and fragrant and filled with the simmering voices of the slithering, twittering, and voracious creatures around me everywhere.

But I could hear their voices too. Maharet and Khayman quarreling in the ancient tongue.

If there was a path in the vicinity leading towards those voices, well, I never found it.

I didn’t dare try to cut my way through with the ax. That would have made too much noise and dulled the blade. I just made my way slowly, painstakingly, over bulbous roots and through stinging brush, suppressing my respiration, my pulse, as best I could along with my thoughts.

I could hear Maharet’s low sobbing voice and hear Khayman weeping.

“Did you do these things!” she was demanding. She was speaking their ancient language. I caught the images. Was he the one who’d burnt the house in Bolivia? Had he done this? What about the carnage in Peru? Was he responsible for the other burnings? Was this his work? All of it? The time had come for him to tell her. The time had come for him to be honorable with her.

I caught flashes from his mind, opened up like a ripe fruit in distress: flames, anguished faces, people screaming. He was in a paroxysm of guilt.

And there came into my mind the badly concealed image of a boiling and smoking volcano. An errant shimmering flash.

No.

He was pleading with her to understand that he didn’t know what he’d done. “I never killed Eric,” he said. “I couldn’t have been the one. I can’t remember. He was dead, finished when I found his body.”

She didn’t believe him.