Son of Sun (Forgotten Gods (Book 2)) (11 page)

“If you knew there was no way back to him, would you
honestly
welcome death rather than live without him?”

Completely caught off guard by his strange question I let my gaze drift down to my plate again, absently fingering a piece of mango as I thought. It wasn’t exactly the question I was thinking he would ask me. I was expecting him to come right back at me with another zinging reason for why I should leave, something I was beginning to see was endlessly entertaining for Chassan.

I don’t know why it took me so long to answer him. Life held little meaning for me without Dayne. But death was never really an option I had given much thought to when I proclaimed how impossible life was without him. But wasn’t that what I was actually saying in a round about way—if I couldn’t have a life with Dayne I didn’t want one at all? Maybe it was a careless thing to say, and sitting across from a man who dealt in death daily made it suddenly seem rash.

Chassan on the other hand knew more about loss and death than I could ever hope to know. After all, he was death incarnate in a way. He had seen first hand the ways in which people die. Old age would at least be a fulfilled way to go. Accidents would be mercifully swift. Disease would be painful, but probably eased with drugs.

Dying of a broken heart, however. That would be the most impossible way to go. Yet, I was sure Chassan had seen the utter devastation of having one’s heart ripped—still beating—from their chest. I closed my eyes at the thought and felt my heart quiver with the realization of losing Dayne forever.

“Yes,” I answered softly, nodding my head and wiping the tear that had sprung to my eye with the back of my hand.

Chassan inhaled sharply when he saw my tears, diverting his gaze up the room to where the massive throne sat in all its glory. I followed his gaze, and for the first time noticed four smaller, less opulent thrones set to the side of Inti’s.

Four chairs for four brothers. Yet only one son of sun remained. Chills raced over my body and I bowed my head to my plate, realizing I may never leave his mountains.

“Pick something,” Chassan ordered as he held back a thick tapestry to reveal not another bedroom, but a pirate’s bounty of treasure.

“For what?” I half stumbled into the room, blinded by the glare of delicious jewels and delightful trinkets.

“We have to make an offering where we’re going.” He let the curtain fall shut as he joined me in the room, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed in boredom.

“Where are we going?” I asked, only half paying attention to him. My focus was on a long golden staff, its head a giant carved emerald the color of Dayne’s eyes.

“To the lands of the Q’ero, descendants of the last Incas.”

“I thought the Incas were wiped out by Spanish Conquistadors?” I questioned, marveling over the treasure laden tables.

“Most of them were. Some of them escaped and retreated to the safety of the mountain tops where they still live today. They do not trust outsiders. I am only allowed among them because I return the treasure offerings of their ancestors.”

“Don’t they suspect what you are?”

“They do not ask. As far as they know, I am a wildlife photographer who happens to be very lucky at stumbling upon relics of the great Incan Empire in my journeys.”

“Why are we going there?”

“You cannot learn to use your powers where human eyes may see. It is the only place remote enough.”

“Couldn’t we just stay here?” I was falling victim to Paititi’s enchantment just like Rhea and her band of amateur archeologists. Streets of gold, endless rooms of jewels, a king’s ransom and pirate’s bounty all at my fingertips? What wasn’t there to love about such a magical place?

“No.” His answer was short and clipped, leaving zero room for discussion as he turned to lift the heavy curtain away, bringing fresh air wafting into the room. “This place is rank with the blood of the dead,” he glowered over his shoulder, turning from me as if the air in the room was hard for him to breathe.

As I picked up a golden chalice I noticed it was splashed with a dark brown stain on one side. I scraped my fingernail over the stain and part of it flaked away. My heart stuttered in my chest as my nostrils caught a faint metallic scent.

“Is this…?” I held the chalice out for Chassan to see the stain I asked about. His face was stone cold and he nodded once, his lip already curled in disgust. The chalice clattered against the cold floor when it fell from my hand and skittered to Chassan’s feet. I wiped my hand down my pants leg as I practically ran from the room, disgusted by the thought of a dead man’s blood on my hands.

“Wait!” Chassan called out as I sprinted past him.

I turned, still holding my breath as I waited for the stench of death to leave the air.

He stooped to retrieve the chalice at his feet, letting the curtain fall closed. The cup in his hand was inlaid with sapphires along its base, pearls on the cup and rubies at the rim. I wondered if a trinket like that wasn’t enough to buy our passage into Q’ero lands, already dreading the thought of having to go back in that chamber of death.

He fumbled in the pocket of his khaki hiking shorts, shaking his head and sighing, as if what he was about to do was physically painful for him. Gripping the chalice tighter in his hand, he steeled his face and breezed passed me. When his hand brushed mine he pressed something small into my palm without a word and continued down the hallway.

I gasped when I opened my fingers and stared at the familiar golden circle of my bracelet. In the excitement of last night and this morning I hadn’t really thought about the fact that he still had it. Part of me didn’t really think I would get it back. It was an offering after all.

“My bracelet!” I half yelled, half whispered in excitement as I curled it into my chest and began to follow him down the hallway.

“What need do I have for such an insignificant offering?” Chassan waved his hand in the air, continuing to cover the length of the hallway with long, sweeping strides. I was running to keep up with him.

“Thank you, Chassan. This means more than the world to me,” I said in a small voice as I fastened it back in place.

“Agh!” He grumbled and waved his hand again, refusing to acknowledge that he had done something nice for someone.

“So, why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden?” The mental question slipped out of my mouth before it registered in my brain.

“Nice?” He stopped and turned to me so quickly I ran smack into the solid wall of him, staggering backward on my feet. “No. I’m tolerating. Don’t confuse me with someone who cares.” With that he wheeled back around and stalked off, leaving me reeling to keep my balance and understand this Rubik’s-cube of a man I was going to spend the next three weeks with.

There was no road
or path navigable by humans leading to Paititi. Its entrance was cleverly hidden under a thick rock ledge, shrouded in the secrecy of an ever-present cloud bank. A security measure that was pretty useless considering only the hardiest of plants could survive at such elevation. When we stepped through Paititi’s crevice opening onto slick black rock, I was too concerned with not plummeting to my death to consider how hostile and unforgiving the terrain would be to humans.

A mile from the entrance, we picked up a barely there trail at an abandoned campsite. Popping out of the lush jungle terrain so tightly packed on the mountain slope there were times when Chassan literally had to pull me between obstacles, we stumbled into the tattered remains of old teepee style tents and rusty metal relics of ancient camping gear.

“What’s this?” I asked, picking my way through the debris in the muddy clearing.

“The closest anyone ever got to Paititi. They did not have the gear they needed to breathe at this elevation. Everyone perished.”

I marveled at how easily Chassan spoke of death. He neither feared or revered it like humans. Never spoke of the dead as if they warranted any regard from him. He merely spit it from his mouth, as casual and inconsequential as breath. Death seemed to hang like an old sweater on these mountains. Everywhere I turned it was lurking in the shadows.

“Couldn’t breathe?” I jerked my brow into a low line when I realized what he said. “Why didn’t you tell me? What if I couldn’t breathe?” I stammered, wondering why he had failed to mention something as important as the lack of oxygen before we left Paititi. Was he trying to kill me after all?

“Do you doubt what you are?” Chassan’s eyes narrowed as he cast a glance over his shoulder at me. His incredulous glare making it clear how ridiculous my question was.

I stopped in my tracks, watching Chassan’s shirt strain over his back muscles as he took a machete from the holster on his belt and began hacking at the forgotten trail.

Did I doubt what I was?

No. I knew I wasn’t like Mattie and Sam or Rose and Phin. But the thought of not needing the one thing they absolutely
had
to have to live gave a finality to my life as a human I wasn’t exactly prepared to face following an angel of death through the jungles of Peru.

For eighteen years I’d thought I was just some pathetic freak who’d be better off marooned on a deserted island than allowed in normal society. It had been easy in Ireland—thoughtless almost—when I learned for the first time what I really was. Dayne had fit so seamlessly into my old life because he was trying to appear human himself. But what about the rest of them? What about the ones, like Chassan, who obviously didn’t care very much for human life. Would accepting what I was be so easy when I had to let go of all that made me human? I wasn’t so sure.

“Where’d this come from?” I marveled when we burst from the rainforest onto a dirt road and Chassan made his way toward a black jeep parked underneath a shady tree.

“We can’t very well fly through the mountaintops in day light,” he answered as he slung his heavy pack into the back of the mud splattered Jeep Wrangler.

“So, you just bought a jeep?” With as much sarcasm as I could muster, I shrugged wildly as I walked to the passenger side.

“I bought a jeep,” he answered steadily. “I wasn’t sure you could hike all the way, and after last night I know flying isn’t an option for you either.”

I flopped down into the worn pleather seat, its smooth plastic warmed by the sun. Now that we were down to a normal elevation, summer had returned and I shed my fleece jacket.

“Thanks,” I offered softly. “That was nice of you.”

“Not nice,” he corrected as he fired the engine and placed a pair of sporty black shades in place. “Tolerating.”

We bounced down potholed roads for the better part of two hours without speaking. Chassan’s eyes stayed forward, focused on the road as he hummed a tune in his head, tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel in time. I was amazed he could be so normal.

My hair was blowing around like a tumbleweed in a prairie town, tossed by the winds that constantly swept down distance mountain peaks.

I had yet to see the real side of Peru Chassan was leading me deeper into. Airports and trains were generic at best—more often filled with strangers from foreign countries instead of locals. Machu Picchu, while breath taking, had been more of the same—tourists and hospitality workers who preferred Hollister and Abercrombie to traditional Peruvian attire.

The land was simple, untouched. Its beauty rugged in a way that you knew was formed by the hand of something greater than man. Some areas were worn by weather and the relentless sun, the rounded backs of those less obstinate terrains bowed in humble defeat.

These were the areas where the people lived. The little pockets of life, sandwiched into valleys where rivers could rage and crops could flourish. More than once we had to stop for an entire flock of sheep or alpacas to cross the road. Chassan yielded the right of way without a second thought, throwing a smile and friendly wave to the shepherds as they passed. As we ventured deeper into the mountains I noticed a shift in Chassan. As if his own forgotten humanity was waking up.

Life moved slowly, but desperately, for these people. Every task of their day essential for survival. The land gave them life, and they honored it for that. There were no McDonald’s to run to and grab a quick bite. No megastores to buy those little “necessities” that make life so much easier. Malls and supermarkets were days away, and automobiles were as scarce as electricity in the remote villages we traveled through.

There were two great contrasting forces I noticed as we drove.

The land was full of color, though muted to soft, almost out of focus hues. It seemed as if a good long rain shower might wash the land clean into a shimmering beauty that lay shrouded beneath a layer of dust.

Contrasting with the dull landscape were the brilliant natives, their clothing adding brilliant flourishes of color to the otherwise boring dirt road we traveled. Indigenous dress in Peru had all the flash of a Vegas showgirl. Brightly dyed ponchos and shawls rested over the shoulders of the people bent to their daily tasks. A chaotic rainbow of patterns so dizzyingly bright I caught myself smiling in wonder. On their heads, they wore funny little bowler hats to block the sun from their eyes or knitted skull caps with earflaps in the higher elevations.

Men wore black pants under their ponchos and women had heavy black skirts that fell to the middle of their shins. The kind of skirt that would fan straight out if they twirled around. Some of the women carried babies tied securely in the shawls on their backs like little papooses, others carried crops fresh picked from the fields. Some men had bags tied onto their belts, made for carrying the coca leaves that grew wild in this country.

They were tiny in stature. I’m sure some of them would have thought Chassan a giant with his impossible height and strength.

As we left the lower altitudes and began to climb the hills again I learned color wasn’t the only contrast in Peru. Where the populated areas were rolling and muted, the soaring mountains were anything but.

These were the intransigent victors of Peru, strong and stately despite the endless weather that roared up and down their slopes. They could not be broken, much like the spirit of the people that called their unforgiving slopes home. They stood tall and black, jagged as they rose unabashedly to the sun, defying whatever force had humbled the weaker valleys into submission.