As Coschocton Westcott and Kelli Alwydd had suspected it would, the second skull did indeed drive Kimiko Samms crazy. Struggling with her laptop, supplementing the information stored on her hard drive with disc after disc of data, the expedition’s forensics expert could find no medical condition compatible with a culture as ancient as that of the Chachapoyans that might account for the spectacular and unsettling hole in the cloven skull. Such an extensive, presumably violent perforation should have driven the cranial bone inward, or shattered the surface into small fragments. Due to the age of the subject material, she could not even determine if whatever had caused the inexplicable calcareous formation was the cause of its owner’s death.
“C’mon,” Kelli asked her one day, “surely somebody couldn’t walk around with a cranial deformation like that!”
The diminutive Samms was noncommittal. “People with far worse deformities have survived. The Elephant Man, lepers, Asian and African peoples suffering from severe elephantiasis, ancient dwarves and hunchbacks—you’d be surprised.”
“It’s not the circular bone ridge that makes me wonder, extreme as it is.” Standing alongside the anthropologist, Kelli examined the skull and its inscrutable rupture. “It’s the exposure of the brain.”
“People can live with that, too.” With the delicacy of a surgeon, Samms was using a fine brush to coat the interior of the skull with a stabilizing preservative. “Maybe not for long, but they can live.”
Kelli’s gaze drifted to the ingress to the big tent, the outside masked by the protective insect mesh that was all that presently restricted entry. “Whatever the cause of the initial trauma, it must have been hellishly painful. The mother of all migraines.”
Samms concentrated on her work. “We don’t know that. There are people with cranial deficiencies who, though they have to wear protective headgear all the time, live normal and productive lives.” Sitting back, she rubbed at her eyes, swatted away a mosquito that had slalomed the mesh screen, and smiled speculatively up at her visitor. In front of her, the laptop glowed insistently.
“Speaking of productive lives, I haven’t seen much of your tall, silent-type, warrior chieftain lately.”
They shared a mutual chuckle. His ethnic origins notwithstanding, the owlish, workaholic Westcott was about as far from either woman’s image of a warrior chieftain as could be imagined. Or as Samms had put it on a previous occasion, definitely not romance-novel cover material.
“He’s not my warrior chieftain, or anything else.” Alwydd’s prompt reply was convincing. “But he is the senior student on site, so everybody has to spend time with him.” She fiddled with a can of fixative. “That is, they do if they want answers to questions. Harbos is always busy.”
“So’s Westcott, from what I’m told.” The anthropologist indicated the overflowing folding table that had to serve as lab bench, research facility, and office. “I wouldn’t know, myself.” She grinned, a misplaced elf with short black hair, dirt-streaked face, and impressively elevated IQ. “I don’t get out much. People bring me bits of dead folk and from that I’m expected to explicate entire civilizations.”
“Easier than trying to explicate Coschocton Westcott.” Alwydd started for the mesh that separated the sterile, white interior of the tent from the green and brown world of bites and stings that lay in wait outside. “And he isn’t even dead.”
“Good luck trying to understand him.” Samms snapped her high-powered, self-illuminating magnifying glasses back down over her eyes. “Me, I’ll stick with dead people. Dead men might be full of contradictions, but at least they’re soft-spoken. And more predictable in their habits.”
“Cody’s predictable.” Alwydd drew the mesh aside and stepped out into the stark mountain sunshine. “He just doesn’t know how to relax.”
Hunched over instruments and skull, Samms replied without looking up. “Sure you want him to relax?”
Standing outside the tent, her expression scrimmed by the mesh, Alwydd stuck her tongue out at her seated, preoccupied colleague. “Funny lady. Stick to your bones.”
Despite her studied indifference, Alwydd found herself spending more time in Westcott’s company than could simply be justified by the need to know. Perhaps she was intrigued by his failure to fall all over her, as every other student on the site had already done. She loved a challenge, be it scientific or social. Or maybe it was because, despite his denials to the contrary, he was different. Or possibly it was nothing more than the ease with which they worked together. He was one bright guy, with a genuine insight and intelligence that did not arise solely from the study and memorization of standard texts. Or maybe she was just bored.
Not with her work. That was more than sufficiently fascinating in its own right. But aside from her studies, working on her paper, and keeping records, there wasn’t much to do at Apachetarimac. Not with the nearest town days away by mule, and the only city of any consequence another half-day’s jarring journey via minibus or jeep.
So she shadowed him when she could spare the time, admiring his skill with the tools of archaeology, his persistence and patience with something as insignificant as an unsculpted potsherd. And then one morning, when she awoke well before dawn, she decided to go and see if he wanted to join her in watching the sun come up over the east end of the citadel. That was when she found his tent empty, lights out, sleeping bag neatly zipped and stretched out on its cot. His predawn absence bemused her. Even workaholics at the site, of which Coschocton Westcott was not the only one, needed their sleep after a hard day of laboring in the cloud forest. Harbos insisted everyone be back in camp by a certain hour, but there was no monitoring of those who might want to arise and begin work before breakfast.
She ought to go right back to bed, she knew. But—where the hell was he? Making allowance for a possible call of nature, she waited outside the tent. Fifteen minutes later he still had not returned. A check of her watch showed the time: 3:20 A.M. . Even the Peruvian support staff, including those charged with preparing the morning meal, were not stirring yet.
Where in the name of Atahualpa’s ghost had he gone?
She had put fresh batteries in her flashlight just a week before. Thus armed against the night, with light and firm knowledge of the citadel’s layout, she still hesitated. Stumbling around the site in the dark was not a good idea, even for someone like herself who knew the location of every pit and preliminary excavation. Curiosity finally overcoming caution, she started out of camp and up the main trail that led to the citadel.
There was no moon that morning, and the stars were far away and little comfort. The beam of illumination that her flashlight cut through the darkness seemed spare and constricted. Twisting trees heavy with orchids and other epiphytes pressed close around her. Soft-footed creatures and things with no feet at all rustled in the brush on either side of the narrow path. Snakes hunted at night, she knew, and wolf spiders as big as tarantulas, with half-inch-long brown fangs and multiple eyes that gleamed like black mabe pearls. She did her best to avoid brushing against the suffocating vegetation lest she spook something small and hungry that might be living among the leaves.
The improbable wall loomed above her, a familiar if not entirely comforting presence she kept on her left as she made her way to the slender defile that was the main entrance. As she climbed up and into the citadel proper, the ancient stonework shut out the starlight around her. A quick sideways turn and then she was through the keyhole and standing atop the artificial stone plateau of the city.
Of Coshocton Westcott, or anyone else, there was no sign. Only muted whispers in the grass and the sleepily moaning branches of trees indicated that there was anything else alive within the ruins. This is stupid, she told herself. Really stupid. It would be more stupid still if in the darkness she tripped and hurt a leg, or worse, stumbled into one of the excavated pits. Picking her way carefully along the cleared trails, she made her way toward the site where she and Westcott had found the two skulls.
It was empty, a dark, brooding maw among the encircling stones. That did it. Turning on one heel, she began to retrace her steps. It had been a ridiculous idea from the start. Wherever Westcott went wandering before dawn, it was evidently not among the ruins of the citadel.
Descending back through the narrow entrance, she emerged at the base of the wall and started to turn back toward camp, when something flickering in the distance caught her attention. It came, not from the vicinity of the tents nor from within the citadel, but partway down the steep, grass-covered slope of the mountain. Frowning, she watched it for a long moment before she was sure it was a flashlight. It might still be a local farmer, hunting for a lost sheep or pig or steer. Domesticated animals occasionally wandered up to the top of the mountain in search of fresh forage, trailing tired, fussing locals in their wake. But the poor farmers who populated the slopes and valleys of the Calla Calla could not usually afford flashlights, much less batteries. Switching off her own light, she stood motionless and alone in the darkness, the massive limestone wall towering into the night sky behind her, and waited.
Eventually a figure appeared, a dark silhouette advancing through the night. When it grew near enough for her to be certain of its identity, she called out softly. “Little early for aerobics, isn’t it?”
Startled, Westcott’s light came up, shining into her face. She put up a hand to shield her eyes. “Do you mind?” The beam was lowered immediately, and she switched her own on.
“Sorry. I didn’t see you standing there, Kelli.”
“No kidding. I thought you could see in the dark.”
His expression was typically noncommittal. “I was preoccupied.”
She nodded slowly. Neither of them moved in the direction of the camp. Overhead, a cavalry of clouds was advancing westward from the jungle, threatening to attack with warm, driving rain.
“Preoccupied with what?” In the absence of moonlight it was hard to make out his face.
“Nothing much,” he replied evasively. “Just looking around.”
“Down there?” She pointed down the slope. “Why? Is the view any better? It must be, for you to lose sleep over it. Funny thing, though: It’s been my experience that sweeping panoramas lose some of their aesthetic impact when viewed in the middle of the night.” She stepped past him. “If it’s that striking, maybe I ought to have a look for myself.”
Reaching out quickly, he caught her upper arm with one hand and held her back. The gesture was as uncharacteristic as it was unexpected, and her surprise was evident in the slight uncertainty in her tone. “Excuse me?” she said, slowly and deliberately.
He let go of her arm. She could feel him studying her, there in the darkness. “Okay.” His reluctance was obvious. “I’ll show you. But you have to promise to keep it a secret.”
“Oho! Dug up something special, have we?” She was relaxed now, having found him out. “When did this happen? Yesterday? Last week?”
He was shaking his head as he turned to lead the way downward. “I’ve been coming here, early every morning, for weeks.”
She paralleled his descent, careful where she put her feet. The grass was damp and slippery, and the grade dangerously steep. “That’s not very sociable of you. I thought you were the ultimate team player.” She made clucking noises with her tongue. “Dr. Harbos will not be pleased.”
He was not as defensive as she expected. “I wanted to make sure of what I had before I told anyone else. I found it. It’s my discovery.”
He was more emphatic than she had ever seen him. Then he did have emotions. “Well, I won’t give you away.” Looking downslope, she could see nothing but grass and the occasional tree. The ground cover began to give way to bare, loose rock. Despite her caution and her good hiking boots, she slipped once or twice. Westcott had no such difficulty. But then, she reminded herself, he was familiar with the terrain they were covering.
Featureless darkness loomed ahead. She felt a strong, upward welling breeze on her face, signifying the proximity of an unclimbable sheer drop. No wonder no one else had explored this way, she thought. Another twenty meters and they would need climbing gear; ropes and pitons and harnesses. Just when she was afraid he was going to lead her over an unscalable cliff, he stopped and turned abruptly to his left. A short walk brought them to an uncomfortably narrow ledge below which the mountain fell away to farms thousands of feet below. Raising her own light, she looked for him.
He had disappeared.
She experienced a brief but intense moment of genuine panic before she heard his voice. “Keep coming, Kelli. This way.” The beam of his flashlight suddenly emerged from the side of the mountain.
The ceiling of the tunnel was low, in keeping with the modest stature of the Chachapoyans, and she had to bend slightly to keep from banging her head on the rock overhead. In front of her, Westcott was in worse shape, forced to bend almost double as he walked. Revealed by her light, telltale marks on the walls showed that the sides of the tunnel had been hewn out of the solid rock with simple hand tools.
The passageway emerged into a natural limestone cavern. Stalactites were still in evidence, hanging like frozen draperies from the roof, but there were no stalagmites. These had all been cut away to leave behind a floor as flat and smooth as any in the citadel. A portion of that fortress, she realized, must now lie directly above them. Raising her light, she searched for Westcott. Inadvertently and unavoidably, her questing beam fell on one of the enclosing walls. She let out an audible gasp.
As her light swept the wall, it revealed row upon row of finely chiseled designs and pictographs, the most eroded of which was infinitely better preserved than anything in the citadel overhead. For the first time, the neatly etched abstract decorations of the Chachapoyans were complemented by bas-reliefs of people, animals, and their surroundings. It was an unprecedented record of Chachapoyan life before the Incan conquest, perfectly preserved from damaging rain and wind in the confines of the cavern.
“This is the greatest archaeological discovery in this part of the world since Cuelap.” Her awed words fell like raindrops in the still air of the cave.
“I know.” His guileless reply was matter-of-fact. “Even the local people don’t know about it. It’s lain here, hidden away from the outside world, for at least five hundred years. Until I found it.”
Utterly spellbound by the wondrous carvings, she let her light trail along the wall, its beam revealing one marvel after another. “The farmers have been all over these mountains. Maybe they kept this place a secret, but they must know about it.”
He shook his head. “The entrance was sealed and, as far as I could determine, untouched.”
She blinked and looked toward him. “Sealed? With what?”
“Stones. Not Chachapoyan.” In the darkness, his face was hidden from her. “Incan. The Incas who conquered Apachetarimac and gave it its name closed this place up. I can show you a couple of the stones. The style is unmistakable: right angles on the inside, inclined on the outward-facing edge. Unfortunately, most of them rolled over the cliff below the entrance when I removed the first few.” His voice fell slightly. “I was lucky I didn’t get swept over with them.”
“Why would the Incas seal this place up and leave the rest of the citadel exposed?” Her flashlight winked off, leaving her momentarily without illumination. She slapped the plastic tube hard, several times, and the light came back on. If they lost both lights in this place . . .
Not to worry, she told herself. There seemed to be only the one passage, and it ran in a straight line back to the outside. A check of her watch showed that dawn was approaching. Surrounded by something rather more exciting than newly exposed bones or a couple of broken pots, she was reluctant to leave, and said so.
He was already moving toward the passageway. “Come on. We don’t want to be missed at breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry,” she replied truthfully, having stumbled across nourishment of another kind. “If you’ve been coming here for weeks, you must have formed at least a few preliminary hypotheses about this place. Why is it separate from the rest of the citadel? What about its function in Chachapoyan culture? What was all this for?” She swept her light around the sizable chamber. “And why did the Incas seal it up? I know you’ve been thinking about it, Cody. Yours is not an idle mind.”
He coughed slightly. “Persistent little bird, aren’t you? Sure, I’ve been formulating theory. But I am hungry.” Bending low, he started back up the tunnel. “I’ll share everything I know, I think, and what I suspect, if you’ll just keep this quiet and not tell Harbos or any of the others.”
“Sure thing.” She followed behind him as he led the way out. “If you’ll let me work with you.”
He stopped so suddenly, she almost ran into him. For the second time, accidentally, his light flashed blindingly in her face. “I guess I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“No, you don’t.” She enjoyed the feeling of control. “Not unless you toss me over the nearest cliff.” His response was to go silent. “Don’t be funny,” she finally ordered him. “I’ll keep your secret, and when you think the time is right to reveal all this to the rest of the group, I’ll be there to support and confirm you as the discoverer. Also, you’ll benefit from my expertise, which is different from yours.”
She thought she could see him nodding to himself. “I could sure use some help. Not to mention the company.”
“Then it’s settled.” Reaching out, she prodded him with her flashlight. “Maybe I lied. Maybe I’m getting a little hungry, too.”
He ventured a hesitant smile. “You’ll find that putting in three or four hours of work before anyone else is up does wonders for the appetite.” Pivoting once more, he resumed following the tunnel outward.
True to her word, she uttered not a whisper about the passageway, the cavern, or their astonishing contents. Every morning she arose in pitch darkness, smothered the alarm, dressed silently and efficiently, and joined Westcott. Following the trail that had been cut to the citadel, they moved quickly and in silence, not talking or switching their lights on until it was time to begin the mildly treacherous descent to the tunnel entrance.
The first several days they were underground together Cody spent showing her the rest of the exposed reliefs and pictographs. Much more, he felt, lay concealed behind a collapsed wall of crumbled rock.
“Look at this,” he instructed her, pointing upward. She expected to see more pictographs and reliefs. Instead, there was a noticeable dimpling in the ceiling, filled with broken stone. “I believe that to be the bottom of a shaft leading up to the citadel. Somewhere above us there must be an unexcavated chamber that holds the surface opening to this cavern.”
She eyed the collapsed stone uneasily. “I don’t think I want to spend a lot of time standing underneath that. What if our work here loosens the fill and it all comes crashing down?”
“I don’t think that will happen. It’s apparently been stable for centuries. Besides, I don’t think it’s a natural collapse. I think the shaft was plugged by the Incas, just like the entrance to the tunnel.”
She frowned. “Why would they do that?”
He was kneeling beside his collection of tools for digging and cleaning. “When we find that out, we’ll know why they sealed the entrance to this cave.”
Bending, she knelt to work alongside him with dental pick and whiskbroom. “Couldn’t have been much of a seal if you were able to take it apart all by yourself.”
He gently brushed debris from a relief showing men and women working in a field. “Maybe something else kept people away. A taboo, priestly warnings, royal edict from Cuzco—sooner or later, we’ll find out.” His confidence was infectious.
Two weeks passed before they stumbled across the second tunnel. Narrower than the first, it proved a difficult passage even for Alwydd. She was amazed at how lithely her much taller companion wriggled wormlike through the cramped corridor.
They emerged into a second, smaller chamber. Unlike the one that now lay behind them, the new discovery bore all the hallmarks of artificiality. No broken speleotherms presented themselves for examination. This was a room that had been hollowed out by hand, the result of back-breaking physical effort on the part of hundreds of hands working over many dozens of years. No shaft, blocked or otherwise, marred the polychromed ceiling.
Disappointment followed discovery. No one had ever found a Chachapoyan royal tomb, and the room seemed a perfect candidate. Their lights did not flash off gold or silver, turquoise or lapis lazuli. They did, however, reveal a large round stone situated in the center of the room. Unlike the surrounding limestone, it was dark granite. Somehow, it had been carried or dragged from elsewhere to this improbable site.
Very dark granite, Cody thought. Closer inspection of the stone showed why.
“Bloodstains.” Raising his light, he played it around the intricately decorated walls. If anything, the carving here was even more refined than that which filled the larger chamber behind them. “This was a place of sacrifice.”
“Sure was.” The unflappable Alwydd was already checking her camera preparatory to methodically recording the succession of exquisite if bloodthirsty reliefs that lined the circular walls. “Let’s get to work. We’ve only got an hour before we have to be back in camp.”
As they began, they sensed nothing. The atmosphere did not grow heavy, the darkness did not press any closer, trying to strangle their lights. But around them, beneath them, above them, an ancient unwholesomeness stirred. It existed in a silent frenzy of expectation. As they toiled, Westcott and Alwydd occasionally made contact with a relief or ran speculating fingers over stones and stains. But never the right stone, or the right stain. Millimeters away from havoc and ruin and ultimate despair, they worked on unaware, their living, breathing, human presence driving an unseen host to fevered distraction. To the two who worked largely in silence, side by side, nothing was amiss in the archaic chamber. Nothing disturbed their work or interfered with their efforts. The only things that pressed close around them were their thoughts, the cool, damp mountain air, and the mold of ages.
So when old Elvar Ariola, one of the mule wranglers and camp assistants, went mad, they did not make the connection.
The food was very near. Nearer than it had been in a long, long time. Utchatuk trembled with anticipation, while all the others of her kind looked on with a mixture of envy and hope. If they could not feed, they could at least try to imagine the satisfaction and satiation of another. There had been so many missed opportunities, so many close chances.
Bending, Ariola reached for the dead, broken limb preparatory to tossing it aside, making a clearer path for the mule he was leading. Braying and bucking, the pack animal was resisting the reins for no apparent reason. The stream of barnyard Spanish the elderly wrangler spat at the animal had even less effect than usual. Muttering under his breath, he wrapped leathery, toughened fingers around the fallen piece of insect-gnawed wood.
He never felt a thing.
A vast, inaudible, imperceivable sigh swept over the mountaintop and rushed down into the deep valleys. Another had fed. And would continue to feed, for a long and satisfying while. The psychic ripple in the ether was not felt by any of the humans working at the site; not by the researchers, their superiors, or the locals who took care of the mundane details of camp life. But four hundred feet below, a farm dog began howling for no apparent reason, and in the cloud forest across the ridge, a flock of startled blue-headed parrots exploded from the tree in which they had been roosting. Otherwise, all was silent, normal, unchanged.
Except—the one who had been fortunate enough to feed was greedy. Having entered into and penetrated the food, Utchatuk should have settled down to a long and comfortable residence, in the manner of any successful parasite. Instead, she began to feed continuously, upsetting the natural balance of her unknowing host, undermining its stability. The others of her kind could do nothing with her. They could only remonstrate as best they were able, but were powerless to affect her directly. She continued to feed without pause, engorging herself on her host, shivering with delight at the sensations of satiation that coursed through her.
The result, of course, was that in a very short while she succeeded in severely damaging the host. Gravely unbalanced, it went mad. Only a few days had passed from the time Utchatuk had begun to feed until, clutching its head and rolling its eyes, the host flung itself screaming over the side of a sheer cliff in spite of the startled, last-second effort of other food to stop it. The result was tragic. For a little while the food congregated all in one place, confused and out of reach of any of those who would feed. Worse, in her haste to gorge herself, Utchatuk had failed to reproduce. She would leave none behind to follow her.
Tragic, yes—but hardly a crisis. There were many of the others, healthy and eager but at the same time patient and calculating. In the coming weeks, it developed that several more of them were granted the opportunity to dine. More sensible of their good fortune, they were tolerant of their hosts, and did not overfeed. Resisting gluttony, they sated their craving gradually, only damaging their chosen, unknowing organisms a little at a time, preserving them so they would continue to be able to provide unwitting nourishment well in the future. One of Utchatuk’s kind even succeeded in reproducing successfully, drawing admiring, undetectable hosannas from the others.
In this one place alone, there were dozens of them. Close at hand, hundreds more. And in the larger world—in the larger world beyond the green mountains and lush valleys, there were many millions. Their presence unseen, undetected, unsuspected by the multitude of oblivious, unaware, cattlelike food. It had always been so, always would be so. Millions of them.
Each one ever hungry, and ready to be fed.