Page 86 of The Lost Guardian

“And this wall didn’t cast shadows in the daylight,” he answered. “Plus, the letters they spelled, they were too perfect.”

Ali nodded, not looking surprised. Santiago supposed that after Incan ghosts, shadows seemed anticlimactic.

But for Santi, who was still wrapping his head around all of this to begin with, it was yet another marvel.

“So we know that the Guardianes had magic,” she said, leaning forward. “Do you think you have magic?” The dancing of the campfire flickered in her eyes.

“No,” Santiago said with a chuckle. “I definitely don’t have magic. But someone, at some point in history, must have.”

“A Guardian and a shaman?” Ali asked. “That would make sense, considering find the shaman who sleeps in the west.” She pitched her voice as she repeated the riddle, sounding grave and mysterious.

They laughed together.

“You think the shaman we’re meant to follow is the one who set all of this into place?” he asked her.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t know that we’ll ever know the truth of that. Some things remain lost to history.”

Santiago nodded. Didn’t he know it. But if they were successful, they would uncover at least one of those things.

We’re really doing this, Santiago thought. We’re on our way to Atahualpa’s tomb.

Him. Santiago Rios. Maybe he wasn’t actually as boring as he let himself believe.

“So tomorrow, we travel west and try to find this shaman,” Ali said, interrupting his thoughts.

“I think so,” Santiago answered. “Or a depiction of a shaman.”

“Which would look like…?”

Santiago shrugged, having no answer for her.

“I hope we know it when we see it,” she responded.

So did he.

Ali yawned and stretched, and Santiago did his best not to notice the sliver of soft skin it exposed at her midriff. He poked at the fire with a long stick instead.

“We should probably turn in,” she said, standing. “We’ll leave at first light.”

“Okay,” he answered, rising too. For a moment, they faced each other, the brilliant expanse of sky and stars on one side, the dark cave and their shelters on the other.

“Good night, Rios,” Ali said, moving to her tent.

“Good night,” Santiago repeated, turning and making his way into his own.

Santiago wasn’t confident he’d be able to sleep, what with the excitement of their discoveries. But he’d underestimated his crushing fatigue. His head had barely hit the sleeping bag before he was completely oblivious to the world.

He wasn’t sure how long he lingered in that restful slumber, but he awoke suddenly, acutely aware of movement outside of his tent.

She said there were no animals, he thought.

What if one had smelled their dinner? What if it was a bear or, worse, a puma? He heard rustling and the soft padding of footsteps at the edge of the cave. Even inside his tent, Santiago could tell that the fire had long since burned out. The cold, damp, and darkness of their cavern pressed in around him.

A sound, almost like whispering, trickled in through the flimsy polyester fabric of his shelter.

What if it’s not an animal? Fear clutched at his flesh, sinking its claws into his skin. What if this mountain has ghosts, too?

Or worse…