Rebecca Lim - Fury

Mateo looks down sharply at what’s left on my plate, on Uri’s, after we’ve redistributed most of our food to the two of them. But though he’s clearly dying to point out that we must have worked up some kind of appetite after hiking for almost three hours straight without stopping, he doesn’t. Perhaps out of a natural sense of tact, or to maintain the growing fiction that there’s nothing remotely screwy about either Uriel or myself.

When the two men are done eating, Uriel rises immediately and his voice is commanding as he says, ‘When we reach Machu Picchu, Mateo, leave us. Take as many of the other guides and porters and tourists with you as you can. Make directly for the car park you talked of last night, the buses to Aguas Calientes. Do not linger .’ Uriel doesn’t actually add: If you want to live . But it’s in his voice.

Mateo nods, looking troubled as he stows the remains of our meal in the pack. ‘There will be hardly anyone on the mountain today. It should be easy, what you ask for.’

‘A good day, then, for us to pay a visit,’ Uriel replies calmly, hoisting the pack onto his broad shoulders. He turns and looks at Ryan for a moment. ‘As for you, do as your “will” dictates. Just keep yourself alive, or there will be no living with this one,’ he indicates me brusquely, ‘ever again. Got that?’

Then he turns and walks away swiftly, silently.

For a time, our route through the forest is meandering, almost easy. But then the paved roadway transforms back into a steep staircase that’s exposed once more to the elements. We find ourselves battling uphill through a curtain of rain upon a slick and infinitely more treacherous surface: Mateo in the lead, followed by Uriel, then Ryan and I, side by side, because to be any other way, we’ve come to realise, feels wrong.

‘I don’t even know what day it is today,’ Ryan mutters, his hands balled into fists in his pockets in a vain attempt to keep his fingers warm.

‘Friday,’ I say unerringly.

‘Friday in Peru,’ he mumbles in disbelief.

I hear him give a gasp as the forest to our right suddenly falls away into thin air and we’re staring down a huge cliff face into absolute space. Then we enter more ruins — like standing stones situated upon the crest of a ridge — and Mateo calls out from just beyond them, ‘Inti Punku! The Gateway of the Sun!’ and we look left through the gate, and down, and we see it at last.

A sprawling complex of ruined stone buildings that lies across the saddle between two mountains, a sheer drop on two sides into deep valleys, a towering mountain peak at its back. The city of Machu Picchu.

As we look down in awe, the rain abruptly stops. The absence of sound is almost disorientating, the silence so intense it feels as if I’ve momentarily lost my hearing. The heavy pall of cloud that hangs low over the mountain peak framing the city seems suddenly lit up from within, as if the sun is trying desperately to break through.

The cloudy sky is steel grey shot through with silver as we begin our descent down a narrow walkway paved with large flagstones. The zigzagging scar of some modern roadway defaces the steep hillside to our right, a bus — tiny from this distance — travelling back down it. We begin to pass outlying walls and buildings, and it’s around 1 pm when we hit the heart of the city. There are stone structures in almost every direction, situated along wide plazas or separated by a multitude of walkways, fountains, ramparts, lookouts, dividing walls, most open to the sky. It’s impossible to get a feel for things, or to know what we’re even looking at, but I understand what Uriel meant when he said the place reeked of blood and power. The city fell silent centuries ago, but if I listen hard enough, I can almost hear ritual and violence emanating from the stone itself.

The path seems to end at a great three-sided structure, and as Ryan and I reach Uriel and Mateo, I glimpse a few people moving about the complex. I see flashes of colour, feel shifts in energy eddying around me, but nothing I can really put my finger on. Just a pervading sense of menace.

‘Where to now?’ Ryan wheezes.

Uriel scans the area uneasily. ‘Everywhere. We walk every inch of this place until we feel something, see something. He’s still here, I know he is. They haven’t moved him.’

‘That doesn’t strike you as weird?’ I ask quietly.

He shakes his head. ‘I was always supposed to return, Mercy. It was always a trap. In the end, there will be no hiding what we are. All we’ve done by coming here on foot is to buy ourselves a little more time, some slight advantage. The “ gringo ” was wiser than I gave him credit for.’

Behind Uri’s back, Ryan raises his eyebrows and I have to smile.

‘Luc’s forces will have to work out who we are before they can deal with us,’ Uriel murmurs. ‘They have to find us first. And while they’re looking, we need to locate Gabriel.’

‘It’s a pretty big place,’ Ryan says.

Uri sighs as he considers the elevated structures to the west of us, then below us to the east. ‘There’s no scientific way to do this. We take as long as it takes to find him.’

His eyes fall on Mateo, still standing there, listening to us talk.

‘Go with our thanks, Mateo,’ Uriel says quietly but commandingly. ‘Find your compatriots, tell them to get their charges back down to the buses. It is no longer safe for you here.’

Mateo nods and starts to walk away, before turning and saying hesitantly, ‘The children made me promise to ask what it was that brought “Ayar Awqa” to Machu Picchu. What should I tell them, señor ?’

Uriel and I exchange glances, before Uriel replies softly, ‘Tell the children that he came to seek his brother, upon the mountain.’

Mateo’s eyes widen in surprise. ‘Lost?’ he exclaims. ‘Here?’

‘If someone were to be held here, against his will,’ I say, because it has to be worth a shot, ‘where would he be?’

‘How could he know?’ Uriel says exasperatedly. ‘Let us waste no more time, Mercy. What slight advantage we have is slipping away.’

‘Held how?’ Mateo asks.

‘Bound in some way,’ I reply. ‘Tied up.’

Mateo’s face clears immediately. ‘But that is easy. It is like a riddle, a puzzle, yes? Like you, like him.’ He indicates Uriel. ‘I will take you there, follow me.’

The three of us look at each other, scarcely daring to hope.

Mateo descends quickly through street after street of ruins, until we find ourselves loosely ringed around a strangely configured stone that’s been roped off to prevent people touching it. It’s irregular in shape, with a diameter wider than a man is tall; a broad, stepped area, almost like a bench, cut out of one side; a protuberance of rock — like a blunt finger — pointing up out of it towards the sky. The stone stands above a frightening precipice, framed by cloud.

Uriel says suspiciously, ‘What is this?’

‘Its name is Intiwatana,’ Mateo answers eagerly. ‘You understand our language, señor , so its meaning will be clear to you.’

‘But not to me,’ Ryan says apologetically, taking a drink from the bottled water in his pack.

‘It means, literally, “sun-tying-place”,’ Uriel murmurs, walking around the curious stone. ‘The instrument to which you tie up, or hitch, the sun.’

‘How can you be sure this is the place?’ I ask Mateo, feeling nothing more than that general sense of unease.

‘This stone has magical properties,’ he replies. ‘It was built so that on certain days of the year, when the sun stands directly above the stone, it casts no shadow at all. If your brother is like you, then this is the place.’