The old woman placed her rough hands, the hands of a farmer as well as a holy woman, gently on Gaia’s shoulders. Even a priestess had to work to sustain life in the tribe. No matter how sacred their purpose, they still had to eat.
‘The elders will go with you to bring him back. Can you manage the climb?’ The Priestess looked at Gaia’s feet.
Gaia nodded, quickly braiding her hair and pulling her cowl over her head, leaving only her dark eyes and dimpled chin visible.
‘If this fallen man is the prophesied one,’ said the Priestess, ‘then he must be sacrificed to the mountain as has been foretold, but, Gaia, if he is not…’
The Priestess did not finish voicing her doubts, fearing what it would do to Gaia if this man was not the one from the prophesy. Gaia’s quick mind had no space for uncertainty in this matter, no crevices for doubt. This was her destiny. Her reason for existing. The Priestess sighed. Gaia may have been born an ancient star guide, but in the old woman’s eyes she was still a child.
‘Remember what you’ve learned. He must be examined on the mountain, Gaia, and if he is not the one, you must do what you have been trained to do. He must not return here with you. We must not be discovered until the prophecy can be fulfilled.’
The Priestess lifted down a long wooden case from a stone shelf. Her knees popping as she bent to lift a sword that rested inside on red satin, its silver hilt carved in the image of the puma with jade for its eyes and a collar of pure gold.
The Priestess eased the heavy sword into a leather sash fastened across Gaia’s chest. ‘If he is not the one, his head must return to the mountain.’
Gaia nodded. ‘But if it is him?’
‘Then as it has been foretold, you will assist his return to the stars.’
‘And mine?’ she asked, lifting her head, her eyes blazing, her hand resting on the hilt of the sword.
‘You will be his guide,’ the old woman replied.
9
A COPPER BELL forged at Chavin de Huantar had once hung over the entrance to the temple. Its chime would have brought everyone immediately, its particular pitch heard by a Cuari no matter where she was on the mountain. But when it had last been rung, a decade earlier, its chimes had sent Gaia into a madness that it had taken her months to recover from, and her sensitivity to the world was increasing the further she crossed into womanhood.
Instead, the Priestess sent two girls scurrying to call the rest of the Cuari from the mountain above the village. The pair dashed up into the mountainside. The women set down their tools, hitched up their llamas and all of them processed down the lush green slopes, their chatter like birdsong in the wind.
The Cuari gathered quickly and quietly in front of the Priestess. Propped at the old woman’s feet was a lavishly embroidered pouch, concealing something that was the shape and size of a head.
‘Mujeres de la montaña,’ said the Priestess, raising her arms to the sky, speaking in the language of their Cuari ancestors. ‘As the oracle has foretold, the deity has made his escape from the heavens. We must prepare him for his return to Uku Pacha so that time may be free.’
The Cuari glanced at each other, excitement in their eyes. A few whispered among themselves, one or two nodded and looked to the heavens in silent prayer. No one chanted or shouted or praised the heavens aloud. They were far too close to the temple and to Gaia for any vocal demonstrations of their faith.
‘Gaia will lead you to him,’ said the Priestess, addressing four of the strongest Cuari kneeling before. They were dressed in colourful tunics, with the tribal symbol, three interlocking circles, raised to a point tattooed on the backs of their necks. Their feet were bare, their hair neatly braided, their brown faces mapped with sun and suffering. ‘Remember that if he is indeed the one from the stars, he must be returned here before nightfall, before the heavens discover that he has gone.’
The Priestess lifted the heavy screen from the temple entrance and Gaia stepped out into the sunlight, her cowl protecting her eyes from the dazzling light. The entire village prostrated themselves in front of Gaia and the Priestess. A few of the younger women who had been children when Gaia had first gone into the temple had never seen her before, and they gasped at her ethereal beauty, their voices tickling Gaia’s toes. She looked across to the younger women and smiled broadly at them.
The Priestess motioned Gaia to step forward and hold out her wrapped hands. She anointed each of Gaia’s fingertips with balsam oil in a blessing to the mountain for Gaia’s safe passage before handing her the head-shaped pouch, which Gaia accepted with a curt bow. Then, with the help of another Cuari, Gaia slipped the pack over her shoulders with great care, balancing its weight against the tilt of the sword in the sash across her chest. As a guide, Gaia knew she and the Priestess were the only living beings who could have any direct contact with the deity from the heavens. With all her heart, Gaia prayed he was the one – his presence among them, his return to them, would allow her to bring an end to her suffering without bringing dishonour to the Cuari from the gods.
Before Gaia and the elders began their ascent to the mountain’s flat top, one of the village women passed Gaia a pouch filled with water, two warm tortillas and a lump of goat’s cheese. Knowing they would not be stopping until they reached their destination, Gaia tore into the sparse meal as she led the procession up into the canyon towards the billowing smoke.
For anyone else the climb would have been a difficult one, but the Cuari had spent their lives on this mountain and they were as agile in their movements and as skilled in their climbing as any mountain lion, especially Gaia. She kept a safe distance ahead of the elders so that their odours and the low hum of their conversation caused her as little discomfort as possible.
When the narrow pass began to flatten out towards the plateau and a field of ice was visible like glass on the horizon, the temperature dropped drastically. The cold chimed in Gaia’s ears like distant goat bells. Despite the wax plugs, Gaia could hear a long low moan of anguish in an outcropping of rocks directly up ahead. Gaia tasted saltwater and her fingers tingled. She knew they were close to him.
Gaia raised her hands and stopped the elders, pointing up ahead to the sagebrush and the rocks where the man’s mangled legs and twisted feet were visible, twitching against the ground.
The Cuari stopped, not shocked at the sight of the shattered body and broken limbs caught between the rocks – they had seen enough slaughtered animals in their lives – but at the feral moaning that was emanating from the man. It was terrifying. If this man came from their gods, one of the Cuari elders thought, he was not happy about leaving.
Gaia was about to run forward when the same elder reached out and grabbed her from behind. Gaia flinched as if she’d been struck with a whip.
The elder pulled away her hands immediately. ‘Forgive my touch,’ she whispered. ‘But he may be dangerous.’
‘He will not be,’ replied Gaia. Her own voice tasted like ginger root on her tongue. Gaia was far too curious to see what the gods had sent to wait any longer. The elders drew their swords and formed a horseshoe round the rocks, making sure they could not look upon the man, but they could assist their guide if she needed protection quickly. Gaia tiptoed closer to the body. The mist had lifted from the mountain and the sun was at its peak, long shadows poking like curious fingers between the rocks.
Gaia untied the pouch and set it on one of the larger flatter rocks, halting a few paces from the soft brush where the man had landed. She stared down at him and prayed he was the god who would be the mountain’s salvation. And her own.
He was broken in too many places for Gaia to count, his body lying at odd angles, his arms dislocated from his shoulders, his head lolling to one side on a pillow of blood. The back of his skull had flattened in the impact. His face was so swollen that his eyes were slits sliced into his ballooned skin. Teeth had stabbed through his lips and they were still oozing blood.
This is not the prophesied one, Gaia thought. This is a mo
rtal man. She turned to the elders. ‘He is not the one the oracle foretold.’
Gaia leaned forward, and tilted the man’s head back, exposing the torn skin and ragged bone of his broken neck. Turning her body, she unsheathed her sword, holding it steady at her side. Living a life cloistered from the world had given Gaia all the time she needed to master most of her ancestors’ fighting skills. She was as adept with her sword as any knight had been. The jade on her hilt caught the sunlight, sending triangles of light bouncing off the rocks and a melody of flutes in Gaia’s mind.
The man moaned.
Gaia lifted her sword above her head.
In the seconds before Gaia brought down her blade, the man turned his head and Gaia watched in astonishment as his neck healed and the back of his skull filled out.
Letting her sword fall at her side, she dropped to her knees. Without knowing why, the elders followed their guide’s lead, and they too knelt.
‘Forgive me,’ she said to the man’s swollen face, his lips repairing themselves as she stared.
He howled again. With every small tear that healed, every bloody wound that dried up, some agonising, mind-blowing pain seemed to be shooting through his brain.
Recognising his suffering, Gaia reached into the pack the Priestess had given her. She slid out a gold mask like the helmet of a Conquistador, with a faceplate shaped like the sun soldered to it.
He seemed to be aware of Gaia’s movements and the soft melodic lilt of her soothing voice, and his howls quieted. Crouching next to his head, Gaia slipped two cacao leaves from her sword’s pouch.
She looked up at the sun. They didn’t have much time. The sun was already making its descent to the underworld, and when it reached Uku Pacha the gods would know this deity had escaped. They had to move quickly if they were going to get him safely to the village before night and prepare him for the mountain.
She gently opened his mouth wide enough for her to press the two leaves on his swollen tongue. She poured water into her hands from her canteen then trickled the cool liquid from her fingers into his mouth, lifting his head slightly so he could swallow. Dripping more water onto her wrapped hand, she mopped his forehead and bathed his swollen eyelids. Then she rubbed soft wax across his cracked lips. He moaned again, softly, less agitated this time.
Gaia thought he was trying to smile.
She stayed at his side until his anguished moaning ceased and the coca leaves had calmed him. When he was silent, she was aware that his legs had healed themselves, bone no longer cutting through his torn trousers. Gaia lifted the mask from the rock above him and eased the golden sun over his face.
Her task completed, she nodded to the elders that she was ready. The four women spread the sling open next to his body and then carefully rolled him onto the sturdy skin. Gaia noticed that his arms were no longer dislocated. The revelation that this man was able to heal his own body did not shock her. He was after all from the heavens.
Lifting the poles onto their shoulders and with Gaia leading their descent, the women raced the setting sun down the steep canyon pass to the village.
10
Langley, Virginia, present day
DARREN CROWDER HAD been a journalist before the Miracle, a good one. He’d been working on the health desk of the Washington Register, an online weekly read mostly by policy wonks and government agency bureaucrats. As tragic as it had been, the Miracle had given Darren and his colleagues lots of ‘I told you so’ opportunities as the events of those terrible months had exposed flaws inherent in America and the world’s healthcare policies. When people finally began to die again, two significant global changes occurred as a result: governments increased the personnel in their clandestine agencies in the hopes of avoiding another such event; and, within these agencies, they covertly invested resources to track the three families who were behind the near apocalypse.
Many months and far too many international tribunals and governmental hearings later, the anger and horrors surrounding the Miracle had dissipated, and blame had been spread evenly among governments, corporations, health organisations and NGOs for the catastrophic administrative and leadership failures that had led to such terrible lapses in global morality. Ordinary men and women just wanted their lives to return to some kind of normal. Their deaths, too.
Darren Crowder had been recruited for the Special Activities Division of the CIA. The Deputy Director had read and appreciated Darren’s work post-Miracle Day, and had personally hired Darren as an analyst. The new agency was known publicly (and any time the Deputy Director was within earshot) as the Office of Geo-Global Affairs; the rest of the time, it was known as ‘the Morgue’, because their mandate was the result of death’s comeback.
Looking across the crowded room, Darren decided that, although this was a branch of the CIA, the space had all the characteristics of a newsroom. Its mandate was unique but its approach was no different – smart men and women gathering information, raking through reports and records to uncover patterns and relationships. In the case of the men and women in this particular room, sifting to discover how deep the power of the three families ran, whether or not they continued to pose a threat, and perhaps the most important question of all, as far as Darren was concerned, who the hell were they?
Darren’s computer beeped an alert. He typed in his access code and a satellite map popped up on his screen. At first he distrusted his own eyes. He couldn’t possibly be seeing what he was seeing. Zooming in on the image, he stared at the screen for a good ten minutes before saving the file to the department’s server, logging off and dashing into the narrow hall. Skipping the elevators, he took the stairs instead, leaping down three at a time.
Breathless, he rushed into the Deputy Director’s outer office. The Deputy Director’s assistant jumped up from his seat, attempting to block Darren’s entry into the inner sanctum.
‘I need to see the Deputy Director immediately.’
‘Let me see if he’s available.’
The assistant sat back down, waving Darren to a leather couch where he realised a young woman was sitting, flipping through a magazine, obviously waiting to see the Deputy Director. She looked familiar, but he dismissed the feeling, realising that everyone applying for a position with this unit had the same look about them: grey suit, grey expression. No one had a sense of humour any more. It was as if society had lost its ability to mock, to poke fun at life, because death had left for a while.
The assistant hung up the phone. ‘He’s in the middle of important interviews, Agent Crowder. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait like everyone else.’
‘This really can’t wait,’ said Darren, pushing past the assistant, who couldn’t get to the emergency lock on the Deputy Director’s door in time. Darren charged into the office, but not before he noticed the woman on the couch was still flipping through her magazine, unfazed by his brash actions.
Inside the expansive office with its view of the capitol building, the Deputy Director looked up, snarled, and with a wave of his hand dismissed a new recruit who was seated in front of his desk. His assistant shut the door with more emphasis than necessary.
‘You have to see this, sir,’ said Darren, placing his palm on the top-left corner of a wall-mounted computer screen. After his access was granted, Darren called up the file that he’d viewed at his desk.
‘This better be something,’ said Rex Matheson, the agency’s most recently appointed Deputy Director, stepping out from behind his desk and closer to the screen.
‘It’s from the Castenado operation in progress in Peru, sir, the one tracking our lead to the three families.’ Darren paused before adding, ‘And it’s way more than something. It’s someone.’
Isela
11
Southern Coast of Peru, Hacienda del Castenado, present day
THROUGH HER BINOCULARS, Isela watched plumes of dust trail behind the minibus as it climbed along the canyon road towards the hacienda. It would be close enough for her in ten minutes, max.
She peered over the top of the tower wall, signalling to Antonio who pushed off from the tree, and jogged inside the wooden gates of the hotel’s tropical courtyard. A few minutes later, the speakers on the pink adobe wall that faced the square emitted the lyrical strains of Andean charango music, the high-pitched guitar sounds loud enough for even the footballers across the airstrip to take note. The market came to life when the music filtered from the hacienda. The vendors opened their stalls, the women on the church steps haggling with each other for the best spaces.
Isela stared at the boys playing near the airstrip and realised that she could no longer see the approaching plane. Had it landed and she’d missed it?
No, that wasn’t possible. But if that wasn’t possible, where had it landed? The hangar, tucked into the trees next to the landing strip was where her father kept his planes, and she could see that it was still secured.
Focusing her binoculars on the tree line, Isela scanned the area at the start of the hiking path that led deeper into the canyon and up to the mountain plateau. Tourists usually took the other road, the one to Lake Aczuma, a man-made oasis that filtered the spring waters for the travellers who came to the hacienda for something more authentic than the hotel’s swimming pool and the guided tours of the nearby Inca ruins.
With the music blasting, the men and women dotted around the market place were suddenly livelier, their movements choreographed in response to the hotel’s demands to entertain arriving tourists. Not that these villagers didn’t benefit. The Hacienda del Castenado was the envy of many of the region’s bigger towns, with its community buildings, including a state of the art primary school completely rebuilt after the devastation of the 2007 earthquake, a disaster from which lots of villages in the area had never recovered.
But hotel or not, beneath the strains of the music and the colourful costumes of those crowding the square, Isela knew these peasants were all still slaves to the owner of the hacienda, her father, the drug kingpin and kidnapper extraordinaire, and her mother, the matriarch of the mountain.
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