Evil Star (20 page)

What was he thinking? From the moment he had met Matt, his entire life had been thrown into turmoil. Despite everything, Matt was beginning to worry about him. Pedro had said nothing and had shown little emotion since the death of the man called Micos. Of course, he was used to violence and sud-den death. But he surely hadn't been expecting so much more of it.

The Pan-American Highway was long and very straight, running through the landscape as if it had been cut with a knife. For the first couple of hours, there was no real view out the window. The edges of the road were lined with garbage — old tires, pieces of plastic sheeting, tangled coils of wire, and mounds of rubble that seemed determined to follow them every inch of the way. Matt had never been anywhere like this before. He had seen garbage dumps in England. There had been parts of Ipswich that were run-down and depressing. But the poverty in this country was endless. It had spread like a disease.

The sun rose, and suddenly it was hot. Matt looked around him at the other passengers, a mixture of city people, farmers, Indians, and

— once again — animals. The woman sitting next to him was dressed in brilliant colors, with a bright red shawl tied around her Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star neck, and a floppy hat. Her skin looked like beaten leather. She could have been a hun-dred years old. She was examining him curiously, and Matt wondered if she had seen through the skin dye, the clothes, and the haircut and recognized the English boy underneath. He turned away, afraid she might try to speak to him.

Another hour passed. Then several more. It was impos-sible to tell how long he had been sitting there. Even worse, Matt was thirsty.

His mouth seemed to be full of dust and diesel fumes. He closed his eyes. Almost immediately he was asleep.

"We should have gone to Ayacucho," Pedro said.

"I know. I'm sorry. Why did you decide to come along?"

"Because of the man who died. Micos. He died because he wanted to help us. And at the end, when he only had one breath left, he told us to go to Cuzco. It was that impor-tant to him. If we didn't do as he said, his ghost would never forgive us."

"Do you know anything about Cuzco?" Matt asked.

"Not much. Sebastian went there once and he didn't like it. It's a long way away . . . high up in the mountains. Sebastian told me that you can't breathe properly because there isn't enough air. A lot of tourists go there." Pedro thought for a moment. "It's not far from a place called Machu Picchu, which is where the Incas used to live."

"What about the temple of Coricancha?"

"I've never heard of it."

The two of them sat in silence for a minute. But in this strange world, a minute could have been an hour or even a day.

"So who do you think he was?" Pedro asked. "He said his name was Micos but he didn't tell us anything else. And what about the man Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star with the big head? That was Salamanda. ..."

"Yes." Matt shuddered.

"I've never seen anyone like that. I mean, there are people in Lima with no legs and no arms and stuff like that. You see it all the time.

But he was a freak. A real freak. And he was evil. It was like it was oozing out of him. He made me want to be sick."

“Yes. I felt the same."

Matt glanced at the boat with the cat's-head prow. He thought that, quite soon, he and Pedro must leave the dream island. There was a whole dream world to explore.

"Listen, Pedro," he said. "I've been thinking about everything that's been happening. It's all happened so fast — the airport, meeting you, all the rest of it — I haven't had a chance to work it out. But now I have. And maybe I've been stupid. I may have got it all wrong."

He paused.

"Let's start with Salamanda. He's our enemy. He's the one who wants to open the gate. He must have paid some-one to kill William Morton and take the diary. But it wasn't Salamanda who snatched Richard. He more or less told me that himself. He seemed surprised we thought Richard was with him."

"Then who . . . ?"

"That's what I've been wondering. Richard and I arrive in Lima and we're met by a driver who says that he's work-ing for Fabian. He tells us his name is Alberto but he could have been anyone. He drives us to a hotel where Captain Rodriguez and the police are waiting for us. We're walking into a trap.

"But on the way, another bunch of people run into us. They shoot at Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star the driver and try to grab us. They take Richard, but I get away."

"They were trying to stop you! They didn't want you to go to the hotel because they knew the police were there!"

Matt nodded. "That's right. Micos was one of them. I recognized him at the hacienda. He was there, with them, in Lima. And last night he must have somehow followed us to Salamanda's place. Or maybe he was always waiting for me to show up."

"Maybe he could have told you where your friend is."

"I wish he'd told us more. Who he was. Who he was working for."

"Maybe he didn't know he was going to die." Pedro thought for a moment. "This temple ..."

"Coricancha. If we can find it, maybe we can find Richard." Matt picked up a pebble and threw it into the sea. It made no sound as it hit the water. "How long will it take us to reach Cuzco?"

"They said twenty hours when I bought the tickets."

"Well, if we can sleep most of the time, at least we can talk."

“Yes." Pedro frowned. "What about this place, Matteo? Where are we now? How come we can understand each other . . . and remember everything when we wake up?"

"I don't know," Matt said. "When I met you here on this island, I hoped you'd be able to tell me."

"No chance. I don't know anything about anything. I'm just me. I do juggling and I steal from tourists. It's all a mys-tery, and how I got mixed up with you is the biggest mystery of all."

"Then let's get moving." Matt stood up. "I think we should get off this island. You've got a boat. We can take it."

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star

"Where?"

"There are five of us, Pedro. That's what this is all about. We have to find the other three."

The two of them went over to the boat and dragged it off the shingle.

Matt climbed in and Pedro pushed off. Sud-denly, the mainland looked a long way away. Matt looked up. The sky, still black, was clear. The huge swan hadn't returned.

The swan. Salamanda had been talking about it in his dining room.

"The swan must be in position five days from now. ..."

That was what Salamanda had said, but what did he mean? Did he have the power to enter this dreamworld? Was the swan in some way controlled by him?

Matt shivered. Pedro leaped in, water dripping from
his ankles and feet. The boat seemed to have a life of its own. Almost at once it turned away from the island and, picking up speed, it carried them out to sea.

• • •

The bus had stopped at a crossroads with a few ram-shackle buildings and stalls selling food and drink. The old woman who had been sitting next to him got off. Pedro, carrying two bottles of water and some more rolls, was able to join him. As the doors hissed shut and they set off again, Matt remembered the piece of paper that they had found in Salamanda's study and took it out again.

It had been photocopied from the diary. He was sure of it. The entire page was covered in lines, some of them form-ing shapes. There was a sort of rectangle that narrowed at one end. A drawing of what Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star looked like an elaborate spi-der. And there was writing everywhere, going in every direction, some of it so tiny that it would have been unread-able even if it had been in English. There were four lines in the very center of the page. They looked like a verse from a poem.

And in the bottom left-hand corner, a blazing sun and two words in capital letters:

INTI RAYMI

Was that Spanish? Somehow it didn't sound like it. What did the page mean and why had Salamanda felt the need to photocopy it?

Matt folded the page away. He would solve the mystery later, once he had found Richard.

Matt looked outside and noticed the countryside was changing. It was much more mountainous, covered in dense green vegetation.

The road, which had been straight before, now continued in a series of hairpin bends as the bus climbed ever higher. Matt remembered what Pedro had said and sniffed the air cautiously. It was definitely getting thin-ner. Even the color of the sky was different — a harder, more electric blue. There were farmhouses, thrown onto the upper slopes as if by chance, and strange fortresses, small and circular, made out of solid stone. It would be impossi-ble to grow anything here, or so Matt thought. But then they turned another corner and he saw that someone — the local Indians or some civilization before them — had carved fantastic terraces into the sides of the hills, shoring them up with boulders and then planting them with crops. It must have been the labor of a thousand years.

Then the bus reached the top of a valley and Matt saw the city of Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star Cuzco spread out in front of him. It was like nothing he had ever seen in his life.

It really wasn't like a city at all. There were no skyscrap-ers, no office buildings, no main roads, no traffic lights or even very much traffic. Cuzco was like something out of a storybook written a long time ago. Matt saw a central square dominated by two Spanish cathedrals and a sprawl of neat, white-fronted houses with terra-cotta roofs that continued for what looked like several miles to the foothills on the other side.

It was only when they had left the bus and began to make their way on foot toward the center that Matt was able to get the measure of the place. Cuzco was a beautiful city of archways and verandas, wrought-iron lamps, cobbled streets, and pavements so highly polished that they could have been indoors ... in a museum or a palace. Every building seemed to be a restaurant, an Internet cafe, or a shop piled high with textiles, jewelry, and souvenirs. There was poverty here, too. Matt saw a tiny boy, barefoot and dirty, asleep in a door-way. Old women sat in the street, blinking in the sunlight.

Shoeshine boys looked for trade around the churches. But the poverty seemed almost picturesque here —just some-thing else for the tourists to photograph.

And there were tourists and backpackers everywhere. As they entered the main square, Matt heard English voices and his immediate instinct was to throw himself into the arms of the first person he met. He needed help. A rich English tourist was the perfect answer. At the very least, they would help him reach a British embassy and they in turn would arrange his flight home.

But even as he started forward, he knew he couldn't do it. First of all, there was Richard. If Matt left the country, he might well be Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star condemning the journalist to death. After all, he was the one they wanted. Not Richard. He couldn't just abandon his friend.

And then there was Pedro. Whatever happened to Matt and however much he hated being there, he had managed to find one of the five.

They were meant to stay together. It was as simple as that. Running away wouldn't help anyone. Despite everything, Matt knew he had to see this through.

He stood back and watched as the group walked past, following a woman waving an umbrella. He fell in with them. At least it gave him a little comfort to hear his own language.

"Cuzco has always been known as the holy city," she was
saying. "It was certainly holy to the Incas, who made this the center of their empire. They were ruling here in 1533 when the Spanish conquistadors, led by Francis Pizarro, invaded. The Spanish destroyed much of the city and built their own palaces and cathedrals on what was left, but even today you will see a great deal of Inca influence. In particu-lar, you should look at the amazing walls, fitted together without the use of cement. We'll have plenty of chances to examine Inca building methods this afternoon, when we visit the temple of Coricancha. . . ."

Coricancha. That was where Matt had been told to go. He was tempted to follow this woman now — but there was no point. He had imagined something small and hard to find, but it seemed that the temple was a major tourist attraction. And anyway, he was meant to be there on Friday evening at sunset. What day was it now?

Matt had no real idea. He had just spent an entire night in a bus.

That would make it Wednesday or Thursday. He hardly knew where he was and he had no idea when he'd arrived. In a way, he was just like Pedro:
desplazado.
Utterly displaced.

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star The woman with the umbrella moved off. The tourists obediently followed. Matt turned to Pedro, who was stand-ing in the square, looking lost. Of course, he had barely been out of Lima in his life and in many ways the city of Cuzco must have been as strange to him as it was to Matt.

"We need to find somewhere to stay," he said.

Pedro looked blank.

"A hotel. . ." Matt added. He knew they couldn't afford one but it was the only word that Pedro would understand.

Pedro shook his head. He looked doubtful.

Matt rubbed a finger and thumb together. The univer-sal symbol for money. "Somewhere cheap," he said.

They walked together out of the square and along a straight, narrow street with a wall about five meters high on one side. Matt knew nothing about Peruvian history or architecture but he guessed that the wall must have been built by the people that the tour guide had been talking about — the Incas. It could have been made as long ago as a thousand years, when they were in command of the city. The stones were huge — each one must have weighed a ton. But at the same time, they were all irregular in shape, with seven or eight edges. Somehow they had all been locked together without cement.

The first hotel Matt and Pedro came to refused to take them. It was a small, rough-looking place filled with stu-dents and backpackers, smoking and sipping beer in the open courtyard. Matt crouched in the street beside the door, once again disguising his height, while Pedro spoke to the receptionist — an elderly woman with suspicious eyes. He had money, but she wasn't having any of it. The money, she said, was certainly stolen. Why would two Peruvian beggar boys Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star want to stay in a tourist hotel unless it was to rob the other guests?