City of the Snakes (38 page)

“I need one?”

“Yeah.”

“May I ask why?”

“To hide the bulge of your vest.”

In response to his raised eyebrow, I fill him in on the finer details as we pad the several blocks to where Ama’s waiting with all we’ll hopefully need to give us a fighting chance against the accursed
villacs
.

A
ma and my father both know their way around the upper levels of the tunnels, so we make quick time, avoiding the milling Snakes and
villacs
, circling around them through smaller, seldom-used passages. Usually these tunnels would be guarded at some point along the line, but in all the confusion they’ve been left unprotected.

The temperature drops as we descend and torches become scarce. Often we have to navigate through pitch-blackness, linking hands, Ama or Wami leading the way, relying on instinct and memory. When I ask during a pause if they’re sure of our direction, they insist they are, though neither knows how. I ask how much farther they can take us, but they can’t say. They can only look ahead to the end of any given tunnel.

As we progress, Ama comes more into command, her knowledge of the tunnels sharper than Wami’s. We move steadily lower, down countless sets of stairs and steeply angled corridors. The priests must have been working on this system for hundreds of years. I’m stunned the city hasn’t collapsed in on itself, built on such riddled soil. They must be incredible architects to carve out and maintain all this.

After a long period of blackness we come to a cavern lit by several torches. Five tunnels branch off it. We examine them in turn, Ama and Wami venturing a little down the maw of each, waiting for the click of
recognition that has guided them this far. But it doesn’t come. The tunnels are alien to both. Neither knows which way to go.

We squat in the middle of the cavern, debating our next move. Ama loosens the straps of the vest she’s wearing and slips in a hand to massage her back. The vests are lined with explosives, a gift from Bill. The detonators are strapped to our wrists, a pair for each of us. Small bands of hard plastic with a button in the center. They have to be pressed in turn, first the left, then the right within three seconds, to set off the charges. The explosion of each vest will destroy everything within a fifty-foot radius on open ground. Down here in the confinement of the tunnels they should be even more effective.

The vests are both our safeguard and our last resort, to be used to threaten our way out of a tight situation or take our enemies down. My father wears his reluctantly and says he’ll use it only as a bluff, but I think, if pushed, he’d rather detonate it and kill a few priests than succumb to their rule again.

I won’t hesitate to set off the charges. I’ve come here to die. I haven’t really considered the possibility that I might get out alive. It’s destroy-as-much-as-I-can time, consequences be damned.

“What now?” I ask, checking my watch—06:08. It’ll be dawn soon in the world above. I wonder idly what sort of a day it will be, and how the various participants are faring in the war to control the east.

“We have markers,” Wami says, jingling his stash of poker chips. We’re each carrying a large packet of chips. Even though we’ve been dropping them along the way, the bags are still more than half full. “We take the tunnels in turn, marking our path so we can find the way back, and see where they lead.”

“That could take forever,” I grunt. “The
villacs
will note my absence soon and wonder about it. They might figure out what we’re up to.”

Wami shrugs. “We knew the plan was makeshift, that we would have to rely on luck. Personally I am surprised we made it this far. The fates have been kind to us. We should not insult them by complaining.”

“We don’t have to go forward,” I note. “We could backtrack. There might be a way around this cavern.”

“I doubt it,” Wami says. “All paths lead here. I do not know why I think that, but I do.”

“Then I guess there’s nothing else for it.” I extract my bag of poker chips and move to the mouth of the nearest tunnel. “Shall we try this one first?”

Ama looks at me, frowning. “I’ve been here before. And I’ve been beyond. I remember a huge cavern, pillars rising from floor to ceiling, a raised circular stone like the
inti watana
, and…” She stops, shaking her head.

“Do you know how to get to it?” I ask eagerly.

“No, but…” Her frown deepens. “We should stay here. I have a feeling that if we wait long enough, we’ll be shown the way.”

I share a glance with my father. “I do not like it,” he says. “We will be targets if we stay. I would rather keep on the move.”

“She’s led us this far,” I remind him. “You ran out of ideas several levels up.”

Wami scowls, then nods curtly. “Very well. We will wait. But if a way does not present itself within the next few hours, I will search for it myself or abandon this crazy quest. I do not intend to grow old down here in the dark.”

A strained silence embraces us, interrupted only by the occasional sputter or spit of the torches. I sit by Ama but she’s distracted, sniffing the air, studying the walls and tunnels, waiting for something but not sure what.

An hour passes. Two. My father hasn’t moved. He sits with inhuman poise, eyes closed, head bowed, breathing lightly. I try to mimic his appearance but I’m too edgy. My eyes keep flicking to Ama, Wami, the tunnels, my watch.

As the third hour draws to its close, Ama stands and moves to the mouth of one of the tunnels. My father’s eyes open slowly and he gazes at her. When she turns, she’s smiling. “They come.”

“Who?” I ask, hurrying to where she’s standing.

“You can’t hear them yet. But they’re coming.”

“Who?” I ask again.

“I don’t know. But they’ll lead us where we wish to go.”

My eyes scan the cavern in search of a hiding place, although I know from the last three hours that there isn’t one. “Will we hide in a tunnel?”

“We do not know which they will choose,” Wami notes.

“If we pick the one they take, we run on ahead. With luck they won’t—”

“No,” Ama says softly. “We stay and present ourselves. This is where we were always meant to come when we were ready.”

“I will not surrender myself to the priests,” Wami says stiffly. “You may greet them if you wish. I will move on ahead, hide and follow later.”

“No,” Ama disagrees. “Stay or be excluded. Only the invited may progress. They’ll know you’ve been here. If you don’t offer yourself…” She smiles tightly. “We both know what they can do to Ayuamarcans when we displease them.”

Wami growls a curse but makes no move for the tunnels.

“Another thing,” Ama says, sliding out the pair of knives I fitted her with at the start of our trek. “We must disarm ourselves. They won’t accept us otherwise.”

“Does that include our vests?” I hiss.

She pauses. “I’m not sure. We can’t take knives or guns. By rights we should leave the vests too, but… No. Let’s chance it. If they frisk us, we’ll have to take them off, but I don’t think they’ll expect such weapons. We might be able to sneak them in.”

I lay my knives and pistol on the floor. “Are you doing this or not?” I ask my father, who’s standing unhappily in the middle of the cavern.

“Only a fool voluntarily abandons his weapons,” he says.

“We still have
these
,” I grin, flexing my fingers. “I’ve never seen an armed
villac
. If you can’t take care of them with your bare hands…”

He smiles and disarms. “Very well, Al m’boy. Hand to hand it shall be.”

With all our weapons on the floor, laid out in neat rows, we squat and wait for the guides promised by Ama to appear.

Forty minutes later they come. Judging by the echoes of their footsteps, there are three of them. “You two take the left,” Wami hisses, moving to the right of the tunnel entrance and pressing close to the wall.

“No,” Ama says calmly. “We’ll wait for them in the open. They must believe that we pose no threat.”

Wami grits his teeth but he does as Ama says, deliberately positioning
himself to my side, giving Ama the cold shoulder. I’m as unsure about this as he is—the plan was to grab a priest and torture Raimi’s location out of him, not give ourselves up—but I trust Ama. I just hope that trust isn’t misplaced, that she’s not a pawn of the priests sent to betray us from within.

A few minutes later a trio of
villacs
enters the cavern. I’m pleased to note that the middle priest is the English-speaking one who introduced me to this subworld the day I first met my reincarnated father. “Pleased” because it means we can make him talk in our language if we have to resort to torture.

The
villacs
stop when they sense us and the hand of one streaks to a pouch tied to his waist. Then they recognize us by our scent or our auras and their faces relax.

“Welcome, Flesh of Dreams,” the middle priest says, bowing. “And welcome, Dreams Made Flesh.” He nods at Ama and Paucar Wami in turn. “It is good that you found your way here. We have waited a long time for this.”

“We’ve laid aside our weapons,” Ama says. “We offer ourselves freely and ask to be guided to”—she hesitates, then concludes weakly—“wherever we’re supposed to go.”

The priest smirks. “Your memories are incomplete, as they were meant to be.” He faces me and his smile fades. “Are you prepared to accept your destiny, Flesh of Dreams?”

“Yes.”

He frowns. “You sound uncertain. Perhaps this is not the right time. Maybe you should return to the surface and come again when—”

“It’s now or never,” I cut in. “The city’s yours, or soon will be. If you’re to divide it up as you wish, this is the time to do it. Take me to Capac Raimi. Let me talk to him and see if we can reach an agreement.”

One of the other
villacs
says something in their own language. The middle priest replies, then addresses me again. “We would rather you had come to us in the cave of the
inti watana
, where our brothers could have borne witness to your pledge. But the most important thing is that you
have
come. We’ll lead you, and introduce you to the one who will look into your heart and judge your true intentions.” His blind eyes fall on my father and
his features darken. “This one is not desired. The woman was your guide and is welcome, but the killer was meant to have departed this realm. Send him away.”

“No,” I shoot back. “He comes with me. I promised him answers.”

“He is untrustworthy,” the priest warns. “He will turn on you.”

“Maybe. But he’s my father and I’m taking him.”

The
villac
cocks his head at his brothers, inviting comment. When they say nothing, he sniffs. “So be it. He is your charge. You will answer for any of his indiscretions.”

The priest walks to the second tunnel from the right. We start to follow but he stops us and enters the tunnel alone. A few minutes later he returns with three sets of white robes. “Undress and put these on. You can only be presented to the
Coya
in the attire of her chosen.”

“What’s a
Coya
?” I ask suspiciously.

“You will see once you have donned the robes.” He holds them out to us.

I stall, thinking of the explosives-laden vests. Then Ama presses against me and whispers, “They can’t see. Take off your clothes but leave on the vest.”

Smiling—it’s easy to forget that the priests are blind—I do as Ama says, and so does my father. I have a few uneasy moments when I take off my T-shirt—I keep expecting the priest to burst out with a sudden, “What the hell is
that?
”—but the vests go undetected and moments later we’re in the robes. I grab my packet of chips, slip the bug from the collar of my jacket—we’re all wearing miniature units—and attach it to my new garment. Wami and Ama do likewise.

“If you’re quite finished…,” the priest says, bemused by the delay.

“Ready and waiting, Captain,” I laugh buoyantly.

He moves to the tunnel on the far left and leads the way into a long stretch of darkness. Ama, Wami and I follow, the other priests bringing up the rear.

For half an hour we wind through twisting, unlit tunnels, our eyes as useless as the
villacs’
. As we turn yet another bend, I glimpse a dim light far ahead of us. I also fix on a dull thundering sound. I’ve been aware of it for several minutes but I only now realize what it is.

“That’s a waterfall,” I mutter, the first words anyone’s uttered since we left the cave with the torches.

“All must be cleansed before communion with the
Coya
,” the lead
villac
says. “You have nothing to fear. It is merely part of the ritual.”

A short while later we’re standing on a platform above a stream, facing the waterfall. It falls from a cleft high above us and gurgles away through a gully in the floor below the platform. A narrow wooden bridge runs to a ledge on the other side, passing beneath the falling water. There are torches on either side. I wonder why the blind priests bother with lights. I mean to ask, but before I can, the
villac
speaks.

“Do as I do,” the priest says, walking into the spray and spreading his arms. He turns in a slow circle, the water soaking him, drenching his hair and robes. Stepping out, he continues to the far side of the bridge and faces us. “Come.”