Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24 "YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHGH!" The voices caromed through the clearing, bloodthirsty and loud. Amy was shrieking behind him. The singing had stopped. And then, nothing. No sound at all. Dan could feel his arms shaking. His fingertips were numb around the box. But he was still holding it. Around the clearing, Professor Bardsley's students had gathered, all of them staring downward. The Tomas were… gone. There are traps. Dan was shaking. "I— I don't believe it worked…" he murmured. Where the grassy field had been was now a

huge hole, at least ten feet deep and nearly the entire circumference of the clearing. From the bottom, among the throng of bruised and groaning Tomas heroes, Mr. Malusi lay dazed. "Dan, what did you just do?" Amy was pulling him from behind, shrieking. Numbly, Dan pulled out the rolled-up map. "Mr. Mondli gave us this. It's a topographical map. It shows this humongous trap. I don't know what they catch in here. Maybe rhinos." Professor Bardsley was wiping his brow with a handkerchief. "Brilliant, my boy. I don't know if we'd have made it without you!" "Without Shaka," Dan corrected. Move the body forward, then let the horns form outward to the side. Squeeze your enemy. "The buffalo horn formation worked in battle," Dan went on. "People still use the technique in wars. These guys weren't going where we wanted them to. We needed to get them to move. I just thought we could… learn from history, I guess." "Wait," Nellie said. "Is that Dan Cahill talking?" The Tomas were lying below him in a vast pit,

moaning, arguing, trying to scrabble up the nearly vertical sides. The students stood at the edge, singing another song in a foreign language with flowing harmonies. Professor Bardsley smiled. "French," he said." 'Mon coeur se recommande à vous.' Orlando di Lasso. One of your grandmother's favorites. And mine." "The box, Dan," Amy hissed. "Open the box!" Dan tried to yank the top off, but pieces of the cactuslike plant were still jammed into the crack. "Let me try," Amy said, smacking the top. She pulled it open and broken plant roots spilled out. But even more had grown into the box through the crack. The insides seemed like one solid- packed tin of plant root. "Whoa," said Dan, "it's like tuna." Kurt produced a pocketknife. "You may need this," he said. Amy stabbed the knife into the roots, chipping them away. "There's something in here," she murmured. "Yeah, pressed cactus," Dan said. "Not cactus." Kurt smiled. "That is umhlaba,

also known as inhlaba, a medicinal plant. You'd call it aloe. It helps with many ailments. It's fairly unique to this part of the world." "Dan, look!" Amy was pulling out a delicate piece of jewelry, a bracelet with gems that caught the sunlight, reflecting it in sharp pinpoints of light. She dropped the box and let the piece hang so it could be fully seen. A glittering arrangement spelled out SHAKA. "May I?" Professor Bardsley held the bracelet up to the light. He pulled out a small knife from his pocket and scratched one of the stones. "Dear God, those are diamonds. Do you know how much this is worth?" Dan reached out, running his fingers over the clear, cool stones. He recalled the words of the old man at the Shaka Museum in Durban: Churchill was obsessed with Shaka. That is why he traveled to South Africa. Not to report. Not to fight. To find out about the isipho. "Um, guys?" Dan said. "Do any of you know the word isipho?" "A Zulu word," Professor Bardsley said. "It

means gift." Dan's brain was swirling. Churchill had been on a mission. He was obsessed with the Tomas Clue. He had been jailed, had hidden in a mine— and none of that had stopped him. As the men walked ahead, Dan murmured to Amy and Nellie, "In his note, Churchill said he wanted the thing that was in the ground with Shaka— and remember what the guy at the museum said? He was after the isipho! This is the Tomas clue, Amy!" Diamond. The most magical of substances. Organic matter—plants, trees, animal remains— compressed by time and the earth's weight into the hardest, most brilliant substance known. He held the bracelet to the sun, through the dappled cover of the trees. The diamonds had been hidden for who knew how long, and yet they shot back the sun's light with a radiance that was nearly blinding. "We should have guessed," Amy said, taking back the bracelet. "Wars, apartheid— all of it happened because of the diamonds in the soil." "Everyone wanted it, and people were willing to

kill to get it…" Dan said. "Sounds like the secret to the thirty-nine clues." "You will pay for this," Mr. Malusi's voice called out from inside the pit. "You are thieves of identity and thieves of our property!" Amy wanted to throw something at him. She counted to ten and unclenched her teeth, holding tight to the bracelet. Taking it from Malusi would be the perfect revenge. But she realized something: She wasn't sure if it rightfully belonged to the Tomas, but it sure wasn't hers, either. Amy took a step forward. Kurt started to follow, but she motioned for him to stay and walked to the edge of the hole and looked down. "Um, about that shield you stole from the museum in Durban?" Mr. Malusi glared at her silently. "Maybe the Tomas still believe that one good turn deserves another," she continued softly. The bracelet was beautiful, and valuable. But the hunt was about knowledge, not possession. She gave the bracelet a look, then tossed it down