Son of Sun (Forgotten Gods (Book 2)) (9 page)

The sun sat fat and low in the western sky, a flaming orange orb, seemingly a hundred times its normal size. Was it being closer to it on top of these mountains that made it look so large, or the fact that it held my destiny so firmly in its portentous hands?

I couldn’t be sure.

What I did know was that I had already risked my life once by the time I entered Machu Picchu. It would have taken a week I didn’t have to hike to the sacred city the way the Incas used to do it. Instead, I opted for a rattletrap bus ride through hairpin turns and great gully washed ravines all the way to the top of the 8,000 foot mountain. After forty-five minutes on a bus that wouldn’t have been deemed fit for live stock back home, I arrived, stepping from the bus on weak knees and all but kissing the ground.

Exhausted as I was, seeing Machu Picchu for the first time was nothing if not spiritual, just as Rhea had said. She had put me on a train bound for Aguas Calientes, Machu Picchu’s lifeline in the valley, and told to be ready for the most moving experience of my life.

I had laughed to myself at the time, thinking Rhea’s mother-earth-hugging ways were endearing, but totally ridiculous—until the clouds blew away and sunshine rained down like gold on the sacred city. When I focused my eyes for the first time on the venerated village spilling over a peak so high it sat above the cloud bank, it stole my breath away.

I had prepared myself for a great architectural feat, like the pyramids or the Parthenon. This city, given its age and location was a wonder of the world, and would have been impossible to build even with modern technology. A fact that gave rise to myths that Machu Picchu had been built with help from extraterrestrials.

Almost
. I thought to myself, as a tour guide discussed the false rumor. No one would have believed me if I told them this city was so amazing because it was home to the last remaining son of Sun—a god, not an alien.

A vast and intricate city terraced down great green slopes. Nearly a hundred workers bent to the task of caring for its immaculate grounds just as the Incas had centuries before. Spanning nearly five square miles of mountaintops, the retreat in the clouds harmonized so perfectly with the virginal terrain it looked as if it had been birthed from the same colossal collision that formed the Andes millennia ago.

Thick stone walls, grey and weathered with age, marched straight as pins in squared rows. Symmetrical buildings, clustered by size, lined streets of grass so green I could have been in Ireland.

Agrarian terraces formed a semi circle around the city, falling off the side of the mountain, stone wall after stone wall, each one lower on the mountain slope than the one before it—giving a home to life sustaining crops of potatoes and corn. The grey walls just as precise as the ones in the city, interrupted only by vibrant grass and vegetation kept green a the near constant sprinkle of afternoon rains.

The grey stone looked velvety to the eye, worn and weathered like river rock. Dotted among the incessantly green foliage grazed a flock of black and brown llamas—the only inhabitants to survived whatever force wiped out the humans. Breathtakingly beautiful in its simplicity, I was not the only one who stopped, gaping at yet another awesome vista, every time the tour guide scooted us along to another spot.

No wonder this was where the son of the sun chose to live. I couldn’t imagine a place more resplendent or closer to his creator. And yet the mountain did seem to breathe beneath my feet, just as Rhea had said. There was a secret hiding in those ruins. A secret I knew, but one that only cast the average unsuspecting tourist into a deep and lulling peace that radiated through the body so forcefully it made your bones hum. It was a sacred place. Once home to the gods.

Serenity swam in the air, every lungful washing the cares of the world away. The city’s only neighbors were cumulous clouds and towering mountain peaks, adding to its seclusion. Despite the enormous crowd that toured the area everyday, and the one resort located near the entrance, the place was quiet, allowing nature’s symphony of birds and gentle breezes to fill the ears. Everyone talked in hushed whispers like they had discovered some secret they didn’t want to share, or feared their voices would break the trance and the dream they had stumbled into might disappear.

On the highest mound of the city, perched so precariously on the slope that it almost seemed to hover above the unseen valley on its own, sat a temple. Great walls rose up to meet the sun, and when the small square windows caught the light just right, sunshine bathed the temple’s interior with warm golden light.

“The Temple of the Sun,” our tour guide announced with great pride and mysticism in his voice. “This is where the Inca worshipped the sun god, Inti, their one supreme god.” He walked around the oval shaped walls, stones stacked one on top of the other, until he came to a great triangular stone rising from the ground. “This is the altar of the Inca’s great Condor god. Sacrifices were made here to honor the dead and ask the great Condor to transport their souls to his father, Inti. Only the richest and most noble of Inca would have given offerings here,” he over annunciated in badly broken English.

My stomach flipped and I knew my search had ended.

As the tour moved to the king’s quarters, I lingered and wedged my body between two rocks, down into the pit where priests had stayed, knowing I must hide until the park was deserted to look for Chassan.

From my hiding place in the priest’s darkened quarters, I watched the sun dance its way across the sky. Each hour scattered the light more diffusely through the square window on the west side of the structure. When the light burned out, I waited still, holding my breath as a pair of guards walked the streets with flash lights to be sure no stragglers remained once the park closed.

When I was certain they were gone, I shimmied from between the rocks and made my way over to the Condor’s altar.

All afternoon I had struggled with my decision as I lay hidden in the rocks. But, I knew what sacrifice I had to make if the condor god was going to answer me.

According to Rhea, gods required gold.

With shaking hands, I unfastened the clasp of my bracelet—the clasp I hadn’t known existed until it had fallen off days ago. Cradling the golden circle to my chest, I thought of him. Remembering the curve of his dazzling smile and the gleam of his emerald eyes, the way my life had never seemed right until he came into it, and how it seemed suddenly perfect when he placed the bracelet on my arm. It seemed a small gift, but it was all I had to offer the gods.

It was
everything
I had.

If it meant finding my way back to the only life that mattered, it was worth it. Wiping a tear from my cheek with the back of my hand, I placed the golden bracelet gently on the rock, the barely there moonlight caressing the fat wishing pearl in its rays. Kneeling, placing both hands on either side of my offering, I began to pray. To whom I’m not really sure. Maybe to God, maybe to Dayne, maybe to whoever was listening to a lost girl on a mountain top in the middle of a strange country.

I asked for my life to come back to me. For Dayne to come back. In that most holy of places, with no one around to see me, I finally let the tears I had been holding back fall. Tears of fear for where I was and what I was doing. Tears of loneliness for the life and love I had lost. Tears of hopefulness, that maybe, just maybe, I had finally found a way to bring it all back.

“Chassan, if you can hear me, come to me. Please,” I sniveled, wiping at my nose and then sitting back on my heels, still staring down at my bracelet on the stone, bathed moonlight.

Nothing.

I’m not sure how long I sat there. Still as death, shivering in the chill of a mountain evening. The moon was high in the sky when my legs had officially ceased working and turned to numb stumps beneath me. Hope drained from my body, quickly replaced with cold desperation.

I hung my head in my hands, shaking it back and forth in defeat.
How could I have been so wrong, again?
This is where Ceila told me he lived. Why wasn’t he here?

Slowly, I rose on legs pricked with pins and needles and limped from the Temple of the Sun, out into the abandoned streets to clear my head. Was I missing something? What had I done wrong or misunderstood? As I stood there in the darkness an eerie scraping sound began to emanate from the temple. A sound of boulders being rolled away after centuries of rest. Stealing my way along the outer wall of the temple, I found a small window cut into the stone, a peep hole just big enough for me to see.

Moments passed before a thunderous clap of splitting rock echoed over the Andes, ringing around the neighboring peaks and boomeranging back to the city. My ears thrummed with the sudden clash of sound, quickening my pulse and causing my breath to come faster and shallower. Once again, hope sang in my limbs.

This was it, Chassan was answering my call.

Quietly, I felt my way along the stone wall to the entrance of the temple. What I saw peering out from the darkness when I next focused on the condor’s altar made my stomach lurch up my throat in fear before it crashed to my heels to hide.

Sitting in the moonlight on the stone altar was a great bird, my bracelet clasped between two of its razor sharp talons. Hot chills raced over the length of me. Condors were massive birds, that much I knew. But, this bird was easily the size of a small commuter jet.

Feathers as black as the night wind he had stolen in on. A shock of smaller golden-white plumes ringed its head and neck. A strangely hooked bill perfect for tearing into flesh and feasting on the dead. And his eyes! Sinister orbs of hollow nothingness...the color of the sun...glowing ominously orange against a black sky.

I gulped in cold fear, hoping his massive topaz eyes didn’t find me as they ticked all around, like two staccato marbles bouncing from stone to stone. His head jerked with the motion of his eyes as if it was connected to his body by rubber bands. When they finally came to rest on me, my throat twisted so tightly I could neither breathe nor scream. I was paralyzed with fear, but he was my only hope.

I swallowed and called on every bit of strength my body possessed, spurred on by the sight of my bracelet in his grasp.

Cautiously stepping into the temple’s tiny circle, I approached him, my hands out to my sides as if to tell the beast I meant him no harm. His eyes blazed hot fire, recoiling from me as if my presence alone were defiling him in some way. He fluttered his massive wings, creating a mini tornado inside the temple with their awesome power.

Another breath later, he lifted off the altar, taking to the air, his powerful wings pumping, sending wind whirling over Machu Picchu so violently the llamas bleated and scatter in fear.

“Wait!” I called out, slapping a hand over my mouth when my voice shattered the silence. I rushed after him, running from the temple and through the grassy streets in the darkness as he began to gain altitude over the city.

With every dipping flutter of his wings he rose higher, higher, higher still. My heart exploded in my chest when I caught the glimmer of my bracelet still clasped in his talons. The cold fear that had consumed my body turned to burning rage.

No way!
I screamed in my mind, teeth clenched so tightly my jaw ached. If he wasn’t sticking around to answer my questions, he certainly wasn’t taking off with my bracelet. Flying wasn’t something I could do just yet, but I knew I could run, and I knew I could jump.

Every cell in my body turned on at that moment, running after my bracelet as it called to me from his clutch. Faster and faster my feet hit the ground, running through the city, leaping stone walls, tracking his course from the ground in a way that was pure instinct and not a bit of sight. I wasn’t losing the only thing I had left. Grim Reaper or not, this beast wasn’t taking my bracelet!

In mere seconds, my toes touched the last speck of dirt in Machu Picchu. With superhuman strength I pushed off, leaping into the air, soaring higher and higher, arms outstretched, reaching for his talons to snag my bracelet back.

I must’ve caught him off guard.

When my hands closed around his massive, tree trunk legs his flight pattern dipped and swirled, nearly sending me careening into the river that flowed 8,000 feet below. I held on for my life, because if I fell there would be no one to catch me.

Peering at me between his legs with a glare that turned my blood to ice water I almost let go, but self preservation or anger took over, keeping my fingers securely clasped—one on my bracelet, one on his leg.

With a great sweeping dip, he circled in the air and turned his course back to the city. As he lowered his body to the ground, my feet found grass again and I began running, still holding onto the bird, refusing to let go.

An instant later, an engulfing flash of bright light burned my retinas and the world went dazzlingly white. I fell to the ground, clutching my eyes and trying desperately to wipe the blindness away.