But their true commander was still to come.
A fork of lightning splintered through the night sky and the rumbling deepened. One after the other, thirteen more figures in the form of men appeared on horseback, dressed in rusting armour and rags. Each one of them was a giant, ten feet tall. There was a flash of lightning – the entire sky blazed – and in that instant their shapes changed. Now they were skeletons, on skeleton animals. Another flash and they were ghosts, creatures made of smoke and air. They made no sound and moved like shadows, rippling across the desert surface. Once again they seemed to shimmer and become solid and stood in a semi-circle, waiting. It was colder than ever. Their breath was turning white, curling around their lips.
And at last the King of the Old Ones rose from the desert floor.
Matt trembled. The king was larger than any of the creatures that had appeared so far. If he had wanted to, he could surely have stretched up and touched the clouds. Each one of his finger nails would have been larger than Matt himself. It was difficult to see very much of him. Darkness clung to the terrible creature like a cloak hiding him. The King of the Old Ones was too gigantic to be seen, too horrible to be understood.
Very slowly, he became aware of Matt, scenting him in the same way that a poisonous snake might sense its prey. Matt felt the creature turn its eyes on him. He began to search for any of the power that might still be inside him even though he knew he would never have enough. There had to be five of them. But he was on his own.
Matt got to his feet.
“Go back!” he shouted. His voice was tiny. He was nothing more than an insect. “You have no place here.”
The King of the Old Ones laughed. It was a hideous sound, deep and deathly, like thunder, echoing all around.
A quarter of a mile away, lying beside the helicopter, Pedro heard the sound and turned to where he knew Matt must be standing.
“Matteo…” he whispered.
Matt heard him. The prophecy had been wrong. He wasn’t quite alone after all. Pedro was near by and if there were two of them, that doubled his power. With renewed strength, he got to his feet and lashed out, sending all the energy he had left towards the huge creature that was standing in front of him. The whole desert rippled. The King of the Old Ones screamed and fell back a pace; feeling his pain, all the other creatures screamed too. Later it would be said that the sound had been heard all over Peru, though nobody had been able to say what it was or from where it had come. It seemed to Matt that he was winning. The Old Ones were withering in front of him, shrivelling like scraps of paper in a bonfire. Pedro was with him and if the two of them could just continue a few seconds more…
But Matt had taken his power to its limit and it was burning him up. He saw two suns, searing his eyes. Something huge and black, bigger than the night itself, rushed in on him and struck him down. He was thrown backwards, crashing to the ground. Blood trickled from his nose and out of the corners of his eyes.
The King of the Old Ones, badly wounded and weakened, took one last look at the limp body, then calling his hordes around him, folded himself into the night.
THE HEALER
The doctor was a small, neat man with light-brown hair and glasses. He was holding a scratched and battered leather case that was too full to close properly. His name was Christian Nourry and he wasn’t Peruvian, but French, working with the Red Cross in some of the country’s poorest towns.
“I’m sorry, Professor Chambers,” he said. “There’s nothing more that I can do.”
“Is the boy dying?”
The doctor shrugged. “I’ve already told you. This is outside my experience. Matthew is in a deep coma. His heartbeat is far too slow and there seems to be very little activity in his brain. My guess would be that he is unlikely to recover. It would help me if you could explain how he got himself into this state.”
The professor shrugged.
“Well, in that case I can’t say for sure what’s going to happen. There is one thing I am sure about, though. He’d be a lot better off in a local hospital.”
“I don’t agree. There’s nothing a hospital can do for him that we can’t do here. And we’d prefer to keep an eye on him.”
“You mentioned another boy. What about him?”
“Pedro? He is in hospital. He broke his ankle and they had to put it in a cast. We’re expecting him back this afternoon.”
“What have these two young people been doing? Fighting a war?”
“Thank you for coming, DrNourry.”
“Well, call me day or night. I’ll come immediately.” The doctor sighed. “I think you should prepare yourself. It seems to me that he’s hanging onto life by a thread – and that thread could snap at any time.”
Professor Chambers waited until the doctor had gone, then went back into the house. Inside, everything was cool, the air circulated by fans in every room. Slowly, she climbed a wooden staircase and went into a large, square room with rush mats on the floor and bright plaster walls. Two open windows looked over the garden. There was a sprinkler just outside, rhythmically pumping water onto the lawn.
Matt was lying in bed with his eyes closed, covered by a single sheet. There was an oxygen mask strapped to his face, and a plastic bag hung over him with a saline drip connected to his arm. He was very pale. The rise and fall of his chest as he breathed was so slight as to be almost imperceptible. Professor Chambers thought about what the doctor had just said. Matt didn’t just look close to death – he looked dead already.
“What did he say?” Richard asked.
The journalist had been sitting beside the bed for the past thirty-six hours, apart from a few hours in the early morning when the professor had forcibly sent him to get some rest himself. He had aged ten years since the two of them had driven out to the desert and found Pedro, lying in the wreckage of the helicopter with a broken ankle and the beginnings of a fever, and then Matt, sprawled face down in the dust. There were deep lines in Richard’s face and his eyes were bloodshot. Nobody knew what had happened in the desert but it was obvious to Professor Chambers that he blamed himself for allowing the two boys to set off on their own.
“It’s not good news,” she said. “He doesn’t think Matt’s going to make it.”
Richard let out a single breath. He could see Matt’s condition for himself but he had been hoping against hope for good news. “I should never have let him come to Peru,” he said. “He didn’t want to come. He didn’t want any of this.”
“You should get some lunch. It’s not going to help Matt, making yourself ill.”
“I can’t eat. I don’t have any appetite.” Richard looked down at the silent boy. “What happened to him out there, professor? What did they do to him?”
“Maybe Pedro will be able to tell us.” Professor Chambers glanced at her watch. “I’m going to the hospital to pick him up this afternoon.”
“I’ll stay with Matt.” Richard ran a hand across his cheek. He hadn’t shaved for two days and he had the beginnings of a beard. “When I first met him, you know, I didn’t even believe him. I thought he was just a kid with an over-active imagination. So much has happened since then. And now this…”
There was a commotion outside in the garden. While the two of them had been speaking, a car had drawn up and the driver was unhappy about something. He was shouting and one of the gardeners was trying to sort him out. Professor Chambers went over to the window and looked out. The car was a taxi. The driver was demanding payment. She frowned.
“It’s Pedro,” she said.
The two of them hurried out of the room, reaching the foot of the stairs just as Pedro came in through the front door, supporting himself on crutches. He was still wearing hospital pyjamas. There was a brand-new plaster cast on his left foot.
“Que estas haciendo aqui?” Professor Chambers exclaimed. She spoke fluent Spanish. “What are you doing here? I was coming for you this afternoon…”
