Burial Ground (27 page)

A golden skull rested on a deep shelf,
situated so that it leered out at them from the shadows. It was
roughly the height of a human skull, but that was where the
similarities ended. It had an elongated snout filled with sharp
teeth that laced together like those of a caiman, and twin ovular
nostrils at the tip. The eye sockets were oblong and far too large
proportionately. Fitted into each was a dusty, multi-faceted
bluish-green stone that seemed to absorb the light into its core,
where it radiated with what could have passed for sentience.

"What's all that stuff underneath it?"
Merritt asked.

"I can't tell," Sam said. She leaned closer
and blew away the coating of dust.

She coughed and recoiled as the gray cloud
billowed around the skull.

"Feathers," Merritt said. He reached over
Sam, withdrew one from the shelf, and held it up so he could better
see. The sunlight caused it to shimmer with an emerald hue.

He turned and looked at Galen, who still
held a nearly identical feather in his hand.

11:18 a.m.

Dahlia leaned over Jay's shoulder and
studied the odd tableau from the perspective of the camera. She had
been struggling to keep up with the group. Her legs ached and her
lungs burned, but her exhaustion was now forgotten as she directed
her cameraman.

The spotlight affixed to the digital
recorder highlighted Sam and cast her elongated shadow onto the
unusual sculptures. Motes of dust swirled in the diffused beam.

"Get every inch of this place as she's
talking," Dahlia whispered. "We can create a transcript of
everything she says and do a voiceover in post-production."

"These statues are actually anthropomorphic
wooden coffins called
purunmachus
," Sam said. "They're
nearly identical to the ones at Karajia, north of the fortress at
Kuelap. The Chachapoya would first mummify and bundle their dead in
several layers of cloth, and set them on a short stone wall. Then
they built the framework around the remains using long wooden
poles. From there, they used a mixture of clay and straw to sculpt
the body and the head."

"So you're saying there are corpses inside
each of those?" Merritt asked.

"Yes, but not just any corpses. These were
important men, likely their most decorated warriors. The
purunmachus
were constructed to look like them so that they
would be honored and remembered."

"What's with the skulls staked to their
foreheads?" Jay asked.

"No one is really sure. The prevailing
theory is that they're the skulls of an especially reviled enemy
and were displayed as trophies, or perhaps to ward off future
aggression. It's a tactic they're believed to have borrowed from
the Jivaro, who were notorious headhunters."

"And the golden sculpture?" Colton
asked.

"Zoom in on it," Dahlia whispered to Jay,
who did as she asked.

"The
purunmachus
at Karajia didn't
have anything like it, so I can only speculate." Sam paused. She
nibbled on her lower lip as she formulated her thoughts. "The
foundation was obviously built to incorporate it, so it wasn't a
later addition or an afterthought. It's the focal point of the
whole display and must have been extremely important, even sacred,
but its design doesn't reflect the typical Chachapoyan style. You
can see from the faces on the
purunmachus
themselves that
their motifs were generally more abstract, while the skull
sculpture is completely realistic. And they were renowned for their
textile skills, not their metallurgy, which would indicate that the
idol was crafted during the years following their conquest by the
Inca. Even then, it appears far beyond even their considerable
skills."

"How much do you think it's worth?" Jay
asked. Dahlia pinched his arm. Hard. "Ow. Jesus, Dahlia."

"It's priceless," Sam said, with a note of
disdain.

"What about the other buildings?" Merritt
asked. "The levels are barely high enough to crawl through. Were
they built for midgets or something?"

"They're
chullpas
, burial buildings,
similar to those at Revash, near the town of Santo Tomas de
Quillay. They mortared stones together with mud to form the
framework, then plastered over them like the
purunmachus
.
They used logs lashed together with vines to create the unusual
sloped roofs, and sealed them in adobe as well."

"So they're full of dead bodies, too,"
Merritt said.

"I'm sure. You have to understand that the
Chachapoya revered their dead. Being interred in such a manner was
a great honor. Not everyone who died received this kind of
treatment. This is truly a sacred site, and an archeological
discovery of incalculable significance. We could spend the next
decade poring through these tombs and still not learn everything
there is to know."

"Earlier you said that if the people in the
village below us were descended from the Chachapoya, we would find
their
chullpa
nearby," Leo said. "Judging by the amount of
dust covering everything, it doesn't look like this one's been used
anytime recently."

"True," Sam said. Her eyes glinted when she
spoke. "Then I'd imagine this one belongs to an older tribe,
presumably the one responsible for the headdress that Hunter
discovered. Their village can't be far from here."

"Let's see what's inside those buildings,"
Dahlia whispered. There would be plenty of time for research when
they returned to the States. What they really needed right now was
something to add a little spice to their film, and she couldn't
think of anything more exciting than being the first to explore a
five hundred year-old tomb.

Jay rose and followed her to the rear of the
chamber. She ducked through the entryway to her left and found
herself in a small room framed by plastered stones. The beam on the
camera cast her shadow deep into the structure, to where the
darkness was marred by the almost palpable columns of wan light
that slanted through the small windows. Pillars of fitted rocks
supported the wooden floor above her. Egg-shaped bundles of rotting
fabric lined the walls to either side of the central aisle. She
could sense the presence of the corpses inside the bundles. The
stench of decomposition was a physical entity crawling on her
skin.

She had to stoop to keep from splitting her
scalp on the low ceiling as she stepped aside and waited for Jay to
pass her with the camera. The beam showcased footprints in the
thick dust on the ground beyond where she had walked. They
obviously weren't the first to have been in here. It was comforting
to know they hadn't strayed from Hunter Gearhardt's trail.

Jay led her down the central walkway, which
connected all of the structures well beyond the furthest reaches of
sight. Between the smell and the confines, she was starting to feel
as though she were crawling through a dry sewer.

The outer blanket of one of the bundles to
her left had rotted away to reveal a second blanket underneath.
From her preliminary research, she knew that these funerary bundles
were created by wrapping the deceased in fetal position within
several layers of fabric. Each layer contained a stuffing of
objects that were both of personal importance and meant to help the
dead in the afterlife. She had read about bundles filled with corn,
pottery, hollowed gourds that held various grains, and different
ornate textiles. The stuffing from the outer layer littered the
floor at their feet.

Jay filmed the bundle a moment longer before
directing the camera at the ground. The light caused a shimmer of
green to pass across the mound of dusty feathers.

They pressed deeper into the dwellings,
passing from one to the next through constrictive stone thresholds.
There were bundles everywhere. They filled every inch of free
space, shoulder-to-shoulder. It reminded her of the scene in
Aliens
when Sigourney Weaver found the chamber with all of
the alien egg pods. She was just about to share her observation
with Jay, whom she knew would get a major kick out of it, when she
noticed that one of the corpse-filled bags had toppled into the
aisle ahead. It looked like some sort of rodent had gnawed through
the blankets to liberate a scattering of grains, kernels, and
feathers. Through the tattered fabric, she could see a desiccated
face in profile.

"Zoom in on that."

"Way ahead of you," Jay said. He brought the
beam to bear on the gaunt head. The skin had taken on the
consistency of parchment, the bones beneath sharply obtrusive.
There was only a hollow, dark pit where the eye should have been.
The lips had shrunken back from the bared, yellowed teeth, and the
nose was upturned like a pig's following the dissolution of the
cartilage. Thick scars bisected the cheek. She wished she could see
more, but the rest of the body was still shrouded.

"There's another one over there," Dahlia
said, pointing back behind them. When Jay turned with the camera,
she grabbed the edge of the fabric near the face and ripped
downward with a tearing sound.

"Christ, Dahlia," Jay snapped as he whirled
back around. "They'll have our heads if they find out you did
that."

"That's why I couldn't have it on film." She
smirked. "Besides, we aren't going to fully unwrap it or anything.
I just want a better look at what's inside."

"You're pushing your luck, you know."

She rested her hand on his shoulder and felt
him stiffen. His affection for her was readily apparent, which made
him far too easy to coerce. He was a dear friend and she hated to
take advantage of his feelings, but sometimes she just couldn't
help herself.

"I have luck to spare," she said. "You ought
to know that by now. And what would any of them do anyway? It's not
like they'd send us packing. They need us, Jay. So are you going to
film this or what?"

The light again zeroed in on the corpse.

Dahlia gasped.

She didn't know what she had expected, but
this was the furthest thing from it. The dead man's legs had been
bent, pinned to his chest, and bound in place with a frayed rope.
The left arm was jaggedly fractured mid-shaft, and the skin had
curled back from the bone into a liquefied black sludge, presumably
the source of the foul, gangrenous stench. The entire left half of
the ribcage had been destroyed, leaving a gaping hole framed by
pointed fragments of bone. The flesh that surrounded it was
ruggedly torn and peeled back in leathery straps.

"That must have been one big, nasty rat,"
Jay said.

There was a shift in the shadows inside the
broken ribcage, and, as if on cue, a gray rodent poked its whiskery
face out, its eyes glowing red.

Dahlia screamed. She whirled and sprinted as
fast as she could toward the entrance. Her head struck the low log
ceiling repeatedly, but she hardly even felt it. All she could
focus on was the distant rectangle of light.

She burst through the opening and nearly
slammed into Galen, who shuffled aside just in time.

Jay emerged a few seconds later, laughing so
hard that tears streaked through the dust on his cheeks.

"It's not funny," Dahlia snapped. She
punched him in the arm.

"Oh, but it is, princess. It is." He raised
the camera to capture the expression of terror on her dirty
face.

So the rodent had surprised her. Big deal.
Ha, ha.

"That was the biggest rat I've ever seen in
my life. It was the size of a dog."

"You keep telling yourself that. Just wait
until you see the playback," Jay said. He could barely catch his
breath through the laughter. "Then you can tell me again how big it
was."

Dahlia huffed and turned away. The heat of
embarrassment flushed her cheeks.

Galen crouched directly in front of her
before the golden skull as though praying to the obscene idol. His
hand trembled as he reached out and removed a dusty feather from
beneath it. He held it up and blew on it---once, then again. His gaze
fell upon the shiny skull, and the color blanched from his
face.

"What is it?" she asked.

He looked up at her and blinked repeatedly
as though abruptly awakened from a dream.

"Not yet," he mumbled. He rose and shook his
head. "Not until I'm sure."

He cast one last glance back at the skull
before wrapping his arms around his chest and shuffling out of the
cave and into the sunlight.

12:03 p.m.

Sam reluctantly allowed herself to be guided
away from the ancient burial site. There would be limitless time to
study and excavate the
chullpas
and
purunmachus
in
the years to come. For now, the lure of the lost fortress ahead
kept her moving. She could feel it out there, calling to her,
drawing her with its promise of mystery. What wonders would they
find inside its fortifications? Was the golden headdress really an
anomaly, or were there indeed more treasures that would unlock the
secrets of a culture long thought extinct? She imagined the
National Geographic
features to come, the articles she would
be able to place in every industry journal, the documentary that
would chronicle their expedition and bring the elusive Chachapoya
to the forefront of the world of anthropology.

She hadn't been this excited since the days
when she had explored the uncharted wilderness with her father as a
child. His enthusiasm had been contagious, and for a long time it
had more than compensated for living out of tents, isolated from
the life that normal children led. She could thank him for her love
of history and its misunderstood societies, for granting her
glimpses of the professional adventures to come, but at the same
time she felt she owed the world a debt on his behalf. He had been
a good man and an even better father. It was the decisions that he
had made along the way that couldn't be taken back...or forgiven. He
had discovered ruins that made front page news around the globe.
However, plundering the sites of their artifacts left them
incomplete when the scholars arrived in his wake, like playing
Scrabble without the vowels. And he had never seen anything wrong
with it. To him, that was part of the job. He and Leo invested
their money into finding and securing the treasures, which were the
payoff for their hard work. Now, instead of those artifacts of
inestimable cultural value filling displays in museums, they rested
on the shelves of wealthy businessmen, or they'd been melted down
and sold, or they simply sat in crates in the dusty warehouses of
antiquity dealers. It fell to her to make amends, and she would
start right here and now. Nothing would leave these sites without
being properly logged and catalogued. This she swore.