like none I have ever seen. I unleashed the rapa.'
Night fell and Renco and I repaired to the roof of the citadel to keep watch over the town and look for this animal that they call the rapa.
Unsurprisingly Bassario went off to a shadowy corner of the great stone fortress and sat with his back to the room, doing whatever it was that he did.
From the roof of the citadel, I looked out over the village.
Now, it must be said that after our journey through the forests, I had become accustomed to the sounds of the night time jungle. The croaking of frogs, the droning of insects, the rustling of the high branches as monkeys scampered among them.
But there were no such sounds here.
The forest surrounding the village of Vilcafor was absolutely silent.
No animal made a sound. Not a living thing stirred.
I looked down at the bodies that lay strewn all over the main street.
'What happened here?' I inquired of Renco softly.
At first he did not reply. Then at last he said, 'A great evil has been unleashed, my friend. A great evil.'
'What did your uncle mean when he said that the temple they found might have been “the Temple of Solon”? Who or what is Solon?'
Said Renco, 'For thousands of years, many great empires have inhabited these lands. We do not know much about these empires, except what we have learned from the buildings they left behind and the stories that have been passed down through the local tribes.
'One popular tale among the tribes of this region pertains to a strange empire of men who called themselves the Moxe, or Moche. The Moxe were prolific builders, and according to the local natives, they worshipped the rapa. Some say that they even tamed the rapa, but this is disputed.
'Anyway, the fable that the local tribes most like to tell about the Moxe concerns a man named Solon. According to legend, Solon was a man of remarkable intellect, a great thinker, and as such, he soon became chief adviser to the supreme Moxe emperor.
'When Solon reached old age, as a reward for his years of loyal service, the emperor presented him with a hoard of fabulous riches and bequeathed to him a temple to be built in his honour. The emperor said that Solon could have the temple built at any location he desired, in whatever shape or form. Whatever he wanted, the emperor's best engineers would build.'
Renco stared out into the darkness.
'It is said that Solon requested his temple be built at a secret location and that all his riches be placed inside it.
Then he instructed the emperor's most able huntsmen to capture a pack of rapas and place them inside the temple with his treasure.'
'He put a pack of rapas inside the temple?' said I incredulously.
'That is so,' said Renco. 'But to understand why he did that, you must understand what Solon wanted to achieve. He wanted his temple to be the ultimate test of human conduct.'
'What do you mean?'
'Solon knew that word of the immense treasure inside his temple would spread quickly. He knew that greed and avarice would drive adventurers to seek it out and plunder its riches.
'And so he made his temple a test. A test of the choice between fabulous wealth and certain death. A test designed to see if man could control his own wanton greed.'
Renco looked at me. “The man who conquers his greed and chooses not to open the temple lives. The man who succumbs to temptation and opens the temple in search of fabulous wealth will be killed by the rapas.'
I took this in silently.
'This temple that Vilcafor has spoken of,' said I, 'the one situated atop a giant finger of stone. Do you think it is Solon's temple?'
Renco sighed. 'If it is, then it saddens me.'
'Why?'
'Because it means that we have come a long way to die.'
I stayed with Renco a while on the roof of the citadel, staring out into the rain.
An hour passed.
Nothing emerged from the forest.
Another hour. Still nothing.
At which time, Renco instructed me to repair to the citadel and sleep. I happily obeyed his command, so fatigued was I from our long journey.
And so I retired to the main body of the citadel, where I lay down on a mound of grass. A couple of small fires burned in the corners of the room.
“ I rested my head in the hay, but no sooner had my eyelids touched than I felt an insistent tapping on my shoulder.
I opened my eyes and found myself looking at the ugliest face I have ever seen in my entire life.
