Evil Star (24 page)

It was still cold. Dawn had broken, but there was still no sign of the sun. Matt shivered in the morning air as he took stock of his surroundings. The night before, he had got the impression of jungle

— thick undergrowth and mountains. But nothing could have Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star prepared him for the sights that were all around him now.

He seemed to be on the edge of the world. The heli-copter landing pad had been carved into the side of a fantastically steep hillside.

Looking up or looking down, all he could see was green — a spidery tangle of trees and bushes with vines and creepers knotted among them and continuing, it seemed, forever. Atoc had said they had a long walk ahead of them, but Matt couldn't even see where they'd begin. There was no way up. The foliage seemed impenetrable. And yet if they climbed down, they would surely fall into a brilliant green vortex. The area where they were sitting was flat. Everything else was vertical. It was as if the whole world had been tipped onto its side.

Atoc and the two Indians were already awake, putting together a breakfast of bread and cheese. They had lit a small bonfire with a kettle hanging over it, but the water had not yet boiled.

Atoc walked over to him. "Did you sleep all right, Matteo?" he asked. Like Pedro, he was using the Spanish version of his name.

"We take food soon... ."

"Thank you."

In the daylight, Atoc looked younger and less threaten-ing than he had in the shadows of Cuzco. He also looked even more like the man he had known so briefly as Micos. He had to know.

"There's something I want to ask you," Matt began ner-vously.

"I will tell you what I can."

"When I was in Lima, I met someone who was very much like you.

And he was there again in lea."

"Micos."

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star

“Yes." Matt wasn't sure how to continue. “Your brother?"

“Yes. Do you know where he is?"

"I'm sorry, Atoc. I'm afraid he's dead."

Atoc nodded slowly as if this was what he had expected to hear. But his dark, brown eyes filled with grief and he stood, completely silent, as Matt told him what had hap-pened at the hacienda.

"I'm so sorry that he died because of us," Matt said.

"But I am glad that if he had to die, it was for you," Atoc replied. He took a deep breath. "Micos was my younger brother. There were two years between us.
Micos
in our lan-guage is
monkey.
He was the funny one, always in trouble.
Atoc
is
fox.
I was the one who was meant to be clever. And yet when we were playing once, when I was eight years old, I threw a stone at him and I almost took out his eye.

He had a scar . . .just here." Atoc raised a finger and drew a crescent moon next to his eye. "My father took his belt to me for that.

But Micos forgave me.

"He wanted to help you, Matteo, because he believed in you. You are one of the five. He will not be sad that he died if he knew that you were safe. So it would be wrong for me to be sad, too. There will be more deaths. Many more. We must grow used to it."

He turned his head and looked into the distance, his eyes focused on something far away.

"Now I shall walk alone for a few minutes," he said. "But when I return, we shall forget what has been said and we will not speak of it again."

He walked away into the undergrowth.

"Matteo . . . !" Pedro had woken up and was calling to him from the Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star tent.

Behind them, a trickle of white smoke from the bonfire rose uncertainly up into the morning sky.

************************************

Atoc had eaten with them. Whatever grief he might be feeling, he didn't show it. "We leave now," he said and sig-naled to one of the Indians who came forward, carrying two new pairs of sneakers.

“You cannot walk in those shoes."

Matt gratefully removed the rubber tire sandals he had been wearing since Lima. Somehow he wasn't surprised that the new sneakers fit him perfectly. All of this had been planned. As he pulled them on, he noticed Pedro holding his own pair with a look of complete awe.

It occurred to him that the Peruvian boy had probably never owned a new piece of clothing in his life.

When they were both ready, Atoc reached into his pon-cho and produced a handful of dark green leaves and what looked like two small pebbles. “You put this in mouth," he explained, first in English and then, for Pedro, in Spanish. He wrapped the pebble in the leaves, forming a small bun-dle. "The leaves are
coca"
he went on. "The stone we call
llibta.
The two mix with saliva in mouth and give you strength."

Matt did as he was told. The coca leaves tasted disgust-ing and he Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star couldn't imagine how they would work, but there didn't seem any point arguing.

They set off. The two Indians went first. Matt followed, with Pedro just behind him, tripping several times as he got used to the new footwear. Atoc went last. Matt had rather hoped that they would be heading downhill, but it seemed that their path was going to be up all the way. The jungle wasn't as impenetrable as it had seemed.

Someone, a long time ago, had cut a staircase. The steps were almost invisi-ble, uneven and covered in lichen, but they wove between the trees, twisting up the face of the hill.

"If you need rest, you say," Atoc said.

Matt gritted his teeth. He had walked only a few steps and already he needed to rest. It wasn't the steepness of the slope. The air was even thinner than it had been in Cuzco. If he walked too fast, his head would begin to thump and he would feel the burning in his lungs. The secret was to mea-sure out a careful pace, one step at a time, and not to look up. That would only remind him how far he had to go. He turned the
llibta
over in his mouth. Now he understood why he needed it. He just hoped it would actually work.

The sun climbed higher and so did the heat. Matt could feel the sweat trickling down his back. Everything was wet. Once, he reached out to steady himself against a tree, and his hand sank into it like a sponge. Beads of moisture hung in the air. Water dripped through his hair and ran down the sides of his face. Pedro stopped and took off his pon-cho. Matt did the same. One of the Indians took them, his face making it clear that he would accept no argument.

Matt didn't mind. He was using all his strength just to keep going.

He must have already climbed five hundred steps. And the staircase showed no sign of ending.

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star Something bit him. Matt cried out and slapped his arm. A second later, he was bitten again, this time on the side of his neck. He almost wanted to cry... or swear... or scream. How much worse could this journey get? Atoc caught up with him and handed him a cloth filled with some evil-smelling ointment.

"Midges," he explained. "We call them
puma waqachis.
It means . . . 'insects who make the puma cry.'"

"I know how the puma feels," Matt groaned. He scooped up some of the ointment and rubbed it into his skin. It mixed instantly with his sweat. Matt felt it trickle down his stomach and around his hips. His clothes were sticking to him like a second skin. Another midge bit him on the ankle. Matt closed his eyes for a moment, then set off again.

They stopped twice for water. The Indian guides had plastic bottles in their backpacks. Matt forced himself to drink only a little, aware that all five of them had to share the same supply. The sun was high above them now and he began to wonder if there was something wrong with his vision. The forest seemed hazy and out of focus.

Then he realized that in the heat, all the moisture was turning to steam. Soon he was completely wrapped in a dense white fog, barely able to see the man in front of him.

"Stay close!" Atoc called out. His voice came from nowhere. He could have been on another planet. "Not far now..."

They emerged from the cloud forest suddenly and unex-pectedly.

One moment, Matt was fighting his way through the undergrowth, the next he had emerged on the edge of a huge canyon. The sky was clear. A vast mountain range stretched out in front of him, many of the peaks covered in snow. Matt was close to exhaustion. He was Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star soaking wet and had a vicious headache. But even so, he felt a sense of elation. He had never thought mountains could be so huge. Some of them seemed to be touching the edge of space. Looking down, he saw that it was raining in the can-yon. But the rain was below him.

He had climbed above cloud level.

“You see .. . ?" Atoc pointed to one of the mountains. From where they were standing, it looked a little like a human head.

"Mandango," he explained. "The Sleep-ing God."

Pedro had caught up with Matt. He stood panting on the edge of the abyss. He rasped out a few words in Spanish. Atoc smiled for the first time since he and Matt had spo-ken. "He says he feels terrible,"

he translated for Matt. "But you look worse."

"Where now?" Matt gasped. He couldn't believe they had climbed all this way up just to go down again.

"It is not so far," Atoc said. "But take care. It is very far if you fall "

Atoc wasn't exaggerating. A single, well-defined path led down the side of the canyon. Somehow Matt knew that it must have been cut into the rock face by hand. There was something completely unnatural about it. The path was flat and the surface was almost as polished as the streets of Cuzco. The one thing it wasn't, though, was wide. In places there was barely a meter between the wall and the hideous drop over the side. If Matt had taken one false step, he would have fallen . . . and fallen. He felt as far up as he had been in the helicopter. Perhaps he was that high. He saw a herd of sheep or llamas grazing in the pampas at the very bottom of the canyon. To him, they were no more than pinpricks. There were no trees here to protect them from the sun, and Matt could feel it burning his face and arms. He was nothing in this immense landscape. He could be soaked by the rain or fried by the sun. In his entire life, he had never Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star felt so insignificant.

They walked for more than an hour, descending all the time. Matt could feel the pressure changing in his ears. How long had it been since breakfast? He had no idea, but he knew he couldn't go on much longer. His legs were ach-ing and his feet — despite the new sneakers — were getting blisters. They turned a corner and Matt saw that the path had brought them to a platform of solid rock with steps leading down on the other side. He took a deep breath. It seemed that their journey was over.

They had arrived.

There was a miniature city built, incredibly, on the edge of the canyon. It wasn't a modern city. Parts of it reminded Matt of Cuzco, and he knew at once that it had been built by the same people, surely around the same time.

First, terraces had been cut into the rock. These were the foundation of the city, and there must have been fifty or sixty of them, jutting out of the mountainside like giant shelves. Some of the terraces had been planted with crops, some were dotted with grazing sheep and llamas. The city itself consisted of temples, palaces, houses, and storerooms, all built out of blocks of stone that must have been carried at some time through the cloud forest and over the mountains. A great rectangle of grass ran through the cen-ter: a meeting place, a sports ground, the focus of everyday life. Matt knew instantly that there would be no electricity here, no cars, nothing from the modern age. And yet he wasn't looking at a ruin. The city was alive. There were peo-ple everywhere. They lived here. This was their home.

"What is this place?" he whispered.

"Vilcabamba!" Pedro replied.

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star Atoc nodded slowly. "The lost city of the Incas. Many great men search for it. For hundreds of years, they search. But none have found it. Vilcabamba cannot be found. It cannot be reached."

"Why not?" It seemed easy enough to Matt. After all, they had reached it without too much difficulty. The path that had brought them down the side of the canyon must be clearly visible. Anyone could follow it here. "The path ..." he began.

Atoc shook his head. "There is no path," he said.

"No. What I'm trying to say is . . ." Matt took a couple of steps back and looked round the corner again.

Impossible ...

The path wasn't there anymore. He couldn't go back the way he had come. The canyon wall was a sheer, vertical drop with no way up or down. The path that they had just taken, which they had walked down for more than an hour, had vanished.

"Do not ask questions," Atoc said. "You have friends who wait for you."

“Yes. But..."

The Indian rested a hand on his shoulder and together the two of them walked round the corner. Pedro and the
-
other men had already gone ahead. Matt saw them walk through a stone archway and into the crowd. At the same time, a man appeared, climbing up the steps toward them. He was in a hurry. And he was white.

The man drew closer and Matt felt a huge surge of pleasure and relief. He shouted out and ran forward.

It was Richard Cole.

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star

Chapter 15 Last of the Incas

"I can't tell you how glad I am to see you," Richard said.

"Everyone's been very kind to me. These people are ... well, you'll find out for yourself. But ever since that mess in Lima, I've been worrying about you and telling myself we should never have come here. I blamed myself for that and I was afraid I'd never see you again."