Empire of Gold

‘It’s the third statue . . . ’ she whispered. Like the other two figurines cocooned in their case in her backpack, it was a crude but recognisably anthropomorphic sculpture, arms held out in such a way as to interlock with its near-twins when they were placed together.

Except . . . there was only one arm.

‘What—’ she gasped. There was less to the statue than met the eye. It stood sideways in the niche, its right side to her – but there was no left side. It had been sliced in half down its centre line. ‘No!’

‘Yeah, I thought you might not be happy about that,’ said Eddie as she plucked it from the recess and turned it over in her hands. ‘Why do you think they chopped it in two?’

‘No idea,’ she said, disappointment welling. For all the archaeological wonders of the lost settlement, the statuette had been her primary reason for coming here – but she now had no more clues to lead her to the rest of it.

Unless . . .

She switched off the flashlight. ‘Hold this for a minute,’ she told Eddie, passing the figurine to him. As the other expedition members filtered into the room, she took the other two statues from their case. No eerie light, but there was a mildly unsettling sensation through her palms, like the tingling of a very low current.

‘What are you doing?’ Osterhagen asked.

‘Seeing if maybe this isn’t the end of the line for the Incas.’ Nina slid the statues together shoulder to shoulder . . .

The others made sounds of surprise as the linked figures glowed, very faintly but just enough to stand out in the shadows. ‘Give me the other one,’ she said to Eddie. He slipped it between the pair. She used her thumbs to nudge it into position, the lone arm in place round its neighbour – and the glow subtly changed, strongest on one particular side of the triptych. ‘Eddie, you’ve got a compass, haven’t you?’

‘Yeah, of course.’

She turned the statues, the brighter glow remaining fixed as they moved. ‘What direction is it pointing?’

‘Why are they doing that?’ asked Valero, entranced.

‘They react to the earth’s magnetic field,’ said Nina, simplifying for convenience. ‘And they also point towards each other. That’s part of what led us here.’

Eddie, meanwhile, had checked his compass. ‘Southwest,’ he reported.

‘Huh. That’s why we didn’t realise it had been split into two parts – they’re both on the same bearing from Glastonbury, so we only saw one glow.’

‘Why isn’t it as bright as at Glastonbury?’ Macy asked.

‘The earth energy mustn’t be as strong here. Or maybe it was once, but the confluence point moved.’

‘Earth energy?’ demanded Osterhagen. ‘What confluence point? What is going on?’

‘It’s why the IHA’s involved, I’m afraid. But it means the other piece of the statue is somewhere southwest of here.’

‘Have to look for it later,’ said Eddie. ‘Time’s up, and we need to get the fuck out of here.’

‘Another minute, please,’ said Osterhagen, turning his attention to the alcove’s walls. He switched on a torch of his own, sweeping it across the murals. Becker and Macy followed suit, while Loretta brought out a camera and began taking photos. ‘These paintings . . . I think they are the story of how the Incas came to this place. Look.’ He indicated one section on the left-hand wall: a large building. ‘That is the Intiwasa at Cuzco, the Sun Temple – the Spanish destroyed the upper levels to build the church of Santa Domingo on it, but the base is exactly the same.’

Nina carefully put down the statues, then retrieved her light and examined the mural. Though simplistic, almost cartoony in the way everything was broken down into blocks of solid colour, there was clearly a story being told. ‘These figures outside the temple, the ones in different clothes – are they the Spaniards?’

Osterhagen nodded. ‘Pizarro’s messengers. Giving Atahualpa’s orders for his people to gather their gold and silver.’

‘And hide it from the Spanish . . .’ Nina moved her light across the walls. Opposite the representation of Cuzco was one of what she assumed was Paititi, a walled town surrounded by trees, above which was an image of the sun disc in the nearby temple – as well as a small shape that was almost certainly meant to be the half of the third statue.

Murals of other locations were spread out between the start and the end of the Inca exodus. A painted path connected them, marked along its meandering length with symbols: vertical lines broken up by dots. ‘These symbols,’ she said. ‘An account of the route they followed, maybe?’

‘I thought the Incas never developed writing?’ said Macy.

‘They didn’t,’ said Osterhagen. ‘Most of their history was oral. They had ways of storing numerical records such as censuses and taxes, though.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Tax records were of not the slightest interest to the young woman. She examined another part of the wall.

Nina was still concentrating on the markings. ‘I’ve seen this kind of thing before. My guess is that these give you distances and directions to follow. It’s a record of their journey to Paititi.’

‘And other places,’ said Macy with growing excitement, illuminating another painted scene above the recess. ‘Look at this!’

Even Eddie was impressed enough to delay yelling another, more forceful reminder of the time. ‘Thought you said El Dorado was just a myth?’

Mountain peaks rose above a city, buildings stacked seemingly on top of each other as they rose to a palace