‘I thought we take rest?’ the guide complained, Carrasco translating.
Hiram did not reply as she scrambled up through the foliage and hacked away at the dense vines as he forged a path toward the light. As he brought the machete crashing down upon the densely packed vines the blade shuddered and he heard a ringing sound as it struck stone. Hiram slid the machete into its sheath and grasped at the vines with his bare hands as he pulled them away from the dark, moss covered surface of a rock wall.
Hiram stared at the wall before him, his chest heaving with the exertion and his eyes wide as he scanned the surface and saw the unmistakable signs of human engravings in the bare stone. The wall stood as high as his head and seemed to vanish to either side through the dense jungle. Built from stones that appeared to have no mortar between them, the rocks rested upon each other in perfectly dovetailed shapes as though purposely cut to fit.
Carrasco scrambled to Hiram’s side and stared at the engraved stones.
‘This is it,’ he said. ‘This is the place Arteage spoke of.’
Hiram searched along the wall as he followed the engravings. Images of shamans and sun gods, geometric patterns and spirals adorned the cut stone, and as Hiram made his way along he finally found what he was looking for. He grasped as he looked upon an image of the sun beaming down upon a figure that bore a wide angular head that was more conical than a human skull. The figure was dressed in ornate clothes that bore no relation to other engravings Hiram had seen across Peru by other cultures.
Hiram reached into his satchel and produced the figurine he had been holding just moments before and he held it up alongside the engraving. The bizarre proportions of the figurine matched the icon before him in the rocks.
‘You see,’ Carrasco said. ‘This is the place.’
Hiram drop the figurine into his satchel and reached up to the top of the wall as he dug his boot into a groove between the ancient stones and hoisted himself up. He rolled onto the surface above and came to his feet to see another wall of similar height above him. Hiram grabbed the nearest, thickest vine he could see and clambered up onto the top of the next wall, and then the next beyond it, and then four more before he broke out the forest canopy and realized he was standing on a massive plateau. Behind him, he realized that the series of walls were in fact terraces of perfectly joined stone, almost certainly for agricultural use.
Hiram turned and took a single place forwards and then dropped to his knees as he stared upon the sight of majestic grandeur that greeted him.
Atop the mountain ridgeline and veiled within trees and vines was a vast citadel that stretched as far as he could see, an immense city of terraced fields, stone temples and brickwork houses all forged from the solid stone of the mountain. Hiram turned and stared out across the immense mountain ranges of the Andes, ribbons of cloud drifting across the forested peaks as though he had ascended toward heaven itself.
Carrasco, a shorter and stockier man than Hiram, finally managed to scale the walls and breathlessly joined him on the terrace. His skin was sheened with sweat but his eyes were alive with delight as he surveyed the enormous city.
‘We found it,’ he gasped.
Hiram got to his feet and pushed the hat on his head back from his forehead as he surveyed the city and noted the large temple dominating the terraces ahead. Enshrouded in vines, creepers and trees, Hiram could nonetheless detect the angular lines of its walls, a building that could only possibly be the dwelling of the most powerful members of the civilization that had built this tremendous city.
‘We must keep going,’ Hiram said.
Pablito appeared and tugged at Hiram’s shirt as he shook his head. Hiram frowned down at the child, who gabbled an excited statement and then turned and fled down the terraces and vanished back into the jungle.
Hiram made to move forward, but Carrasco’s hand on his arm forestalled him.
‘Wait,’ Carrasco said. ‘Pablito said that nobody has returned from this place, that it is haunted by the ancients who lived here. This is a sacred place, not to be intruded upon.’
Hiram pushed Carrasco away with a scowl of irritation. ‘I know what is said, and most of what is said is nothing but hot air. Either you are with me or you remain with the cowards further down the hillside. What will it be, Carrasco?’
Carrasco’s broad shoulders slumped as he glanced over his shoulder at the forest descending away from them into the plunging depths of the mountains. The Urabamba River flowed somewhere deep between the precipitous mountain slopes, veiled now by thick banks of cloud. Hiram knew that Carrasco would not want to go back down having come so far, and Carrasco reluctantly nodded.
Hiram made his way up the terraces, seeking paths where the vines had not crept in and the growth of trees had been hindered by the stone walls and passages that wound between the countless buildings entombed within the jungle. Hiram had no doubt whatsoever that what he had found was at least a palace and perhaps the fabled last resting place of the Inca civilization, placed as it was upon the precipitous peak of the mountain and virtually invulnerable to any form of attack from below.
The temple ahead loomed above them, ranks of steps carved from solid stone and laced with thick vines and creepers leading to an entrance as black as night. Hiram climbed without fear, Carrasco following directly behind him as they reached the top of the steps and hesitated before the entrance. Hiram reached to his belt and unclipped a hefty flashlight that he tapped and tested before switching it on and aiming the beam into the gloom. He resisted the temptation to glance at Carrasco for support or advice, knowing that any sign of weakness might send his companion running back down the slope. Instead he straightened his back, lifted his chin and strode directly into the darkness.
The cloying heat of the jungle gave way to a cool, almost cold breath of stale air as though the interior were haunted by the long-dead breaths of its savage architects. The interior of the temple was clad with vines much as the exterior was, but these creepers were thinner and weaker, even the power and absolute patience of nature struggling to pierce the perfectly built walls. Hiram’s flashlight beam picked out an altar of some kind that was engraved with various geometric designs associated with the Inca. Hiram noted evidence of scat all around, much of it desiccated, revealing that the temple had been open to the elements for perhaps centuries. As he approached the altar he noted a larger engraving on the wall behind it. Clad in moss and draped in creepers, he could nonetheless see the unmistakable shape of a distorted human face staring out at him from the depths of prehistory.
Hiram slowed as he reached the altar and as he looked down at it he realized that it was not an altar at all. A stone block, perfectly shaped and smoothed by countless hands, the block was capped with an ornate tombstone, a sarcophagus the likes of which Hiram had not seen since observing similar constructions excavated in Egypt. As he stared down at the top of the sarcophagus and aimed the flashlight beam at it, so the shape of the form within leapt into life as the engraved surface was illuminated.
Hiram knew without doubt what lay within the sarcophagus, fully recognised the distorted shape of the skull and those baleful wide eyes that he had first seen in the bizarre figurines he had collected as far away as Paracus, on Peru’s Ica coastline. Believed by the local inhabitants to be an ancient depiction of gods, Bingham had taken a chance that they were more than just depictions.