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Still, they did much better with English than the standard English-speaker would do with the Yoruba dialect.

But Lourds wasn’t standard.

Lourds chatted easily and amiably with them in the Yoruba tongue. Even though it had been years since he last spoke it, the language came back to him almost naturally. He’d always known he was gifted when it came to languages. Not only did he generally have a quick grasp for them, but he also had a tendency for almost photographic recall when he needed them again, no matter how long it had been since he’d spoken them last.

The villagers made only a token attempt to get to know Natasha. She’d shaken her head at them and smiled at their many questions, but her attention remained riveted on the surrounding forest. She carried her hunting rifle slung over one shoulder and pistols at her hips. She wore her long hair back in a ponytail, and a cowboy hat shaded her face. Ice-blue sunglasses hid her eyes.

She looked more dangerous than any of the forest predators.

As Lourds talked to the villagers, he wondered again at how Yuliya’s sister could be so different from her. Then again, he had to be grateful that she was. Without her, they’d all be dead.

His attention was drawn away from Natasha as the crowd parted before an old man dressed in khaki shorts, sandals, and a white golf shirt. He carried a staff in his right hand. Gray-white cottony hair covered his head and his face.

The man stopped before them.

“Thomas, I’d like you to meet Oba Adebayo,” Diop said.

Lourds walked forward and met the man’s gaze.

“Oba Adebayo,” Diop said, “this is Professor Thomas Lourds. From the United States.”

Adebayo looked from Diop to Lourds. “What do you want?” he asked in heavily accented English.

“Only to talk to you,” Lourds said in the Yoruba tongue.

The old oba’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead in surprise. “You speak my language.”

“Some,” Lourds admitted. “Not as much as I’d like.”

“It has been long and long since I have heard a white man speak my language so well,” Adebayo said. “What do you wish to talk about?”

Lourds had given much thought to how to bring up the subject of the drum. He could have forestalled the discussion, but he’d figured that anyone wise enough to run a village and serve as a king to one of the oldest existing African cities would see through that ruse.

Instead, Lourds shrugged out of his backpack and sat it on the ground. “Let me show you,” he said. He knelt beside it, unzipped one of the outer pouches, and took out the pictures of the bell and the cymbal.

“These,” he said, handing the photographs over.

After a moment, Adebayo took the photos. He studied them in quiet contemplation as the livestock milled about and the children continued talking excitedly.

Then he looked up at Lourds. “Where are these things?”

“I don’t know.” Lourds stood and slung the backpack over his shoulder again. “But I want to know.”

“Why have you come here?”

“To hear the story.”

“You have wasted your time. You have come to the wrong place.” Adebayo handed the photographs back and turned away.

“Have I truly come to the wrong place?” Lourds asked softly. “I haven’t been able to translate much on those instruments, but I’ve found a warning on them: Beware the gatherers.”

Adebayo kept walking back to his small house. It had a tin roof and walls covered in children’s drawings, which Lourds assumed had come from Yoruba legends.

“Someone is gathering those instruments,” Lourds said. “Someone very ruthless. One of my friends was killed when it was taken. Whoever is behind that theft isn’t a good person.”

The old man pulled aside the vinyl curtain that hung over the doorway.

“He—or she—knows more about the instruments and the gathering than I do,” Lourds said. “I know that gathering the instruments is dangerous, but I don’t know why.” He paused. “I need help.”

Adebayo disappeared into the house. Lourds started to pursue him. Immediately a half-dozen young men stepped in front of the hut to block his path.

Helplessly, Lourds looked at Diop.

The old historian only shook his head. “If Adebayo doesn’t wish to speak to you,” Diop said, “then he won’t speak. Perhaps another day.”

Disgusted with himself, Lourds tried to think of something to say or something he could do. He looked back at the photographs of the bell and the cymbal.

“You’re supposed to protect the drum,” Lourds said. “I know that. But you’re also supposed to be a wise man. That’s why the messages are written on the instruments. You’re supposed to hand knowledge down to those that would take your place as the drum’s protector.”

The young warriors came forward and chased the children and animals back.

“You will go,” one of them said in English. He had a hand on the knife at his belt.

“Someone else will come,” Lourds said as he reluctantly gave ground before the warriors. “Soon. Someone else will come and take the drum from you. Can you stop what happens when the instruments are gathered?”

Adebayo’s head poked back out the door. “Can you?”

“I don’t know,” Lourds admitted. He had to be honest, even if it was to plead ignorance now. The four-by-four’s fender pressed into his hip and blocked any further movement backward.

“Do you know what the writing on the bell and the cymbal say?” Adebayo asked.

“No. I was hoping you could help.” Lourds felt the tiniest trickle of hope in the air, but he dared not reach for it.

Anger showed on the old man’s face. “Let him pass,” he growled to the warriors. “I will talk to him.”

Gradually, the warriors pulled back.

“Come,” Adebayo said. “I will tell you what I can of the Drowned Land and the God Who Walked the Earth.”

Hidden by the brush over a thousand yards from the village, Gallardo kept watch on the proceedings through high-powered binoculars. For a moment it had looked like Lourds and his companions were about to be given the boot.

If that had happened, Gallardo wasn’t sure what he would have done. He still wasn’t certain what Lourds was doing here so deep in the forest.

He pulled his hunting rifle up to him and took the protective caps off the scope lenses. Peering through the scope, he sighted in on the Russian woman’s head.

Killing her would be easy.

After a moment, he slid his finger over the trigger and started to squeeze. Only at that moment, she moved and disappeared entirely from the scope’s field of view.

Gallardo cursed quietly.

Then he heard Farok laughing softly.

Turning to the man, Gallardo scowled.

“This woman,” Farok said without making any attempt to hide his amusement, “has really gotten under your skin, hasn’t she?”

“Yes. But she won’t stay there. Not for long,” Gallardo promised.

Inside the small, one-room house, Lourds found only sparse furnishings. The old man sat in a rocker and left Lourds and Diop straight-backed chairs that looked, and were, uncomfortable.

Shelves lined the walls and held little knickknacks that could have been purchased at a tourist store. There were also maps and several American and British magazines years out of date.

“Tell me about the bell and the cymbal,” Adebayo said.

Lourds did, but he compressed the tales to the bare-bones facts and the trail that had ultimately led him to Nigeria. As he talked, a young woman brought in freshly squeezed mango juice and Jollof rice.

Lourds had enjoyed the meal before while he’d visited in West Africa with his professor. The rice was flavored with tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, chili peppers, salt, and curry that colored the end product reddish. Thin slivers of roasted chicken, beans, and a vegetable and fruit salad filled the plate.

The aroma of the food awakened Lourds’s hunger when he didn’t think he’d be hungry. Breakfast had been hours ago.

“You have related the stories on those instruments to the great deluge,” Adebayo said.

“Yes.”

The old man ate as he talked. “You know many peoples talk about the flood that God called down to destroy the world to erase the wickedness he found here.”

Lourds nodded.

“God has many names for many different peoples,” Adebayo said. “Call him what you will, but for many the stories are all the same.” He paused and pointed outside the door. “Once my people were great fishermen and traders. They were proud and mighty. When they sailed, they sailed to all parts of the world. Did you know that?”

“No,” Lourds said.

“Well, it is true. I hear how some of the white teachers begin to talk about these things again, but many don’t like the idea that the African man would know so much. Part of my people’s banishment was their downfall from that. When the water drank down the Drowned Land, most of my ancestors and their ships drowned as well.”

“What happened?”

“The people on the island angered God.”

“How?”

“They wanted to be gods themselves and they refused to be his children any longer.” Adebayo sipped the mango juice. “In those days, all the people were one. They shared one tongue.”

“One language,” Lourds said. The thought excited him. With the prevalence of the Internet in the world and the interface provided by the binary language and translation interfaces, the world had nearly reached that point again. As a linguist, he rejoiced in the openness, even as part of him mourned for the unique languages that were fading from the human consciousness.

Adebayo nodded. “This is so. God caused the ocean to rise up and take down the land where all the people lived. But he was merciful and spared the lives of some of them. This is how the Yoruba people came to these lands.”

“What of Oduduwa?”

“He was the ship’s pilot. The man who brought us to these lands. He was also the first protector of the drum. Men fought over the drum, though. Oduduwa took his army south and west of where their ship had landed in the north. My grandfather told me that Oduduwa landed somewhere in what is now known as Egypt. That is where the first war for the instruments was fought.”

“There was a war over the instruments?”

“Yes. Many men died to possess them. Oduduwa did as God bade him and kept the drum separate. Four other peoples,” Adebayo held up four crooked fingers, “were also given instruments.”

“Who were those people?”

“Those who became known as the Egyptians kept the bell. More people spread to the frozen north.”

“Russia,” Lourds said.

Adebayo shook his head. “I do not know these names. These names did not exist in those days. And no one was supposed to talk to each other after the instruments were given out.”

“Why?”

“The instruments have the power to unlock the way,” the old man said.

“The way to what?”

“The Drowned Land.”

Lourds thought about that. “But if God caused those lands to sink into the sea, how would people reach them again?”

“I hear many stories,” Adebayo said. “I hear that men have walked on the moon and on the bottom of the sea.”

“On the moon, yes,” Lourds replied. “And on the bottom of the sea. But we haven’t been able to go everywhere.”

“Maybe the Drowned Land is not in the deepest part of the ocean.”

“Which ocean?”

“What is now called the Atlantic Ocean. In those days, it had another name.”

“Not the Indian Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea?”

“The sea to the west,” Adebayo confirmed. “The story has always been told so.”

“Who made the instruments?”

“God made five men come together. He gave them their own language which they could not teach to others. He said that the five instruments they created under his direction would become the key to reopen the Drowned Land.”

“How?”

Adebayo shook his head. “God did not give them that knowledge. He told them only that when the time came, a way would be made for them to reach that which was hidden from the eyes of men.”

“What was hidden?”

“Power,” Adebayo said. “The power to destroy the world again, and this time God would not save them.”

“Why didn’t God simply take the power away?”

“I don’t know. My ancestors have suggested that God would not destroy that which he created.”

“But he destroyed the world.”

“Not completely. You and I are here now as proof of that.” Adebayo sipped juice. “My ancestor told me the story also goes that God left the power here to test his children again. That he sowed their own seeds of destruction among them.”

“To see if they had learned?”

Adebayo shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“But this story,” Lourds said incredulously, “isn’t even known.”

“Many of the people who knew this story spread lies about it so that others would not hunt for the instruments and no one would believe. They stripped the faith in God away so they would be the only ones who knew. Many wars are fought in this world over the name of God.”

Lourds silently agreed with that.

Adebayo continued. “Two of the instruments, the bell and the cymbal, were lost in early times to men who wanted to claim the power left in the Drowned Land. The Yoruba people have always protected the drum.”

“Do you know where the flute and the pipe are?”

“We are not supposed to know.”

Lourds thought for a moment. Something wasn’t ringing true. There was some conflict that was in front of him that was evading his grasp. Then his mind closed on it.

“You knew that the bell and the cymbal were lost,” Lourds stated.

“That was many years ago.”

“But . . . you . . . knew,” Lourds said.

Adebayo said nothing.

Lourds decided to take another tack. He took the pictures of the bell and the cymbal from his backpack again. “These instruments both have two inscriptions on them. One of the inscriptions on both is in the same language.”

“I know.”

“Can you read either of them?”

Adebayo shook his head. “It is forbidden. To each people there shall be an individual language.”

“Then what is the language of the inscriptions that are in the same language?”

“That,” Adebayo said, “is in the language of God. It shall never be known to his children.”

The announcement stunned Lourds. The language of God? Could it really be? Or was it simply a language that had been forgotten?

“Do you have the drum?” Lourds asked.

“Yes.”

“May I see it?”

“The drum is a holy relic,” Adebayo said. “It’s not some tourist trinket.”

“I know,” Lourds said as patiently as he could under the circumstances. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to make Adebayo turn the drum over to him so he could see it. “I’ve come a long way to see that drum.”

“You are an outsider.”

“So are the men hunting these instruments,” Lourds argued in a soft voice. “Those men are trained killers. They won’t stop at anything to get what they want. They know about the five instruments.”

“No one knows about the five instruments except the Keepers.”

“Someone knows about them. Someone has been looking for them for a long time.” Lourds took a deep breath. “I know about them. I know enough about languages to know that the cymbal had a language on it that came out of Yoruba.”