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Could it be? Or did he just want it to be?
“Do you have binoculars?” he asked, eyes still trained on the river. If he blinked, he might lose it forever. Distantly, he heard Ali rummaging in her pack, then something hard and roughed was slipped into his outstretched hand.
“They’re not very good.”
Santiago didn’t care; he brought them up to his eyes, fiddling a little to get the horizon into focus. Then he scanned, searching…
And nearly jumped out of his skin. The rock formation at the edge of the river didn’t just resemble a snake head.
It was carved that way. He saw slitted eyes and sharp-looking fangs protruding from a yawning mouth.
Slowly, Santiago lowered the binoculars.
“What?” Ali asked, tugging at his hand. “Santiago, what’s wrong?”
There are several ways to get to the underworld from our world, he thought. The idea formed in his head too fast to fully grasp it. There are connections between Kay Pacha—our world—and Ukhu Pacha. Caves, for instance, could be an entrance, since they’re disturbances in the earth’s surface. They can lead you underground.
“Santi?” Ali asked, reaching out to touch his arm.
Another passage is through springs, a connection between the worlds, he thought. Hot springs?
He turned to look at her. His mind spun.
He needed to talk it through.
“Please say something,” Ali said, tugging on his sleeve.
“Do you know how the Inca believed you could reach Ukhu Pacha?” he asked.
His voice was eerily calm. He heard himself, as if from a great distance, body detached from mind.
He went on. “Caves and springs. Both are pathways from our world to the land of the dead,” he said, trying to find the right words. There was a connection here—he was sure of it.
Ali picked up his meaning instantly.
“We’ve seen both,” she breathed, understanding dawning in her eyes.
Santiago nodded. “We have.”
“And the Milky Way, too. It has a bridge to the world of the dead,” she added. “Which is what led us to the celestial llama.”
Santiago hadn’t even thought of that. “Yes!”
“They’ve been leading us to the underworld,” she said, eyes alight, nodding to herself as much as him. “It makes sense. We’re searching for the tomb of a dead emperor. We’re trying to find his home in the afterlife. The connection between his earthly form and spirit.”
“Spooky, and it totally sounds like something his followers would do.” Santiago rocked onto his toes. “The chakana is a symbol of the bridge among all three planes of existence,” he realized, gripping his pendant in his fist. “All three pachas. It connects them all, and we’re trying to connect ourselves from Kay Pacha here to Ukhu Pacha.”
“What about the Ransom Room?” Ali leaned in, and Santiago was briefly distracted by the shimmering calculation in her eyes. “That’s where Atahualpa’s end began…”
He nodded, picking up her thread. “The moment that set his death—and all the rest of this—into motion!”
“The ceque needed blood, a sacrifice.” She grinned, and Santiago nodded again.
“Another connection to the afterlife,” he agreed. “Then the cave, a path to the world of the dead, and the Milky Way, which pointed us in our next direction.”
“Even the heliacal star fits.” Ali practically bounced up and down now. “They thought of it as the ‘rebirth’ of the star. And Ukhu Pacha may be the plane of the dead, but it’s also the place of new life.”
“That led us to the hot springs, sort of.” Then Santiago’s eyes shifted toward the snake-head boulder.
