War From The Clouds

Chapter Four

"Good evening, Don Carlos," I said, trying to sound flip even though my heart was pounding with a renewal of fear. "Are you doing your own surgery these days?"

The giant said nothing. He had something in his right hand, but I couldn't see what it was. Gun? Knife? Scalpel? He began to crawl into the hut, moving slowly toward me. The thing in his hand got scraped along the clay floor.

Even before the giant reached me, I could smell the overpowering odor of him. It was body odor to the Nth Degree, and it filled the small hut to overflowing. Was Don Carlos Italla soap-shy, along with his other talents?

"Eat, my friend," the giant said in excellent Spanish. "Eat and sleep again. Night comes and I do not talk at night."

He said nothing more. The thing in his hand was a bowl. In the bowl were vegetables cooked in a kind of savory broth that was not from an animal. The giant fed me the gruel with his massive fingers, poking tidbits through my lips. I was too hungry to consider the fact that those hands probably hadn't been washed in a year. And the gruel was excellent. It was also drugged.

In five minutes after eating, I was sound asleep again. When I awoke, sunlight had turned the clearing outside into a bright, shiny avenue. I could even make out flies and spiders on the walls and ceiling of the low hut.

And the giant came again to kneel in the doorway and peer at me.

It was not Don Carlos. I could see his face more clearly now and it was an old face, full of wrinkles, with a scraggly, undernourished beard. His eyes, though, seemed young and sparkled like agates. He also was not as big as I had thought last night. His bulk came mainly from several layers of coarse clothing that looked as though he might have woven the fabric himself.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"The question, Senor, is who are you? I found you on the trail, lying with your head in a bush and your body burning up with fever. I found nothing on you to say who you are."

"Well, I'm hardly someone to be staked out like an animal," I said, jangling the vine ropes that still held my arms, legs and head.

"There is no law," he said, "that says only the good and the friendly can be wounded and lost in the jungle. You could be one from the mountain. Your wound could have come from one of his enemies. Until I know who you are, you remain tied, as you say, like an animal."

I began to breathe easier then. He was obviously referring to Alto Arete and Don Carlos. Just as obviously, he was an enemy of Don Carlos. Even more obvious, he was a highly educated and articulate man. His Spanish was of the academic class.

I saw no reason to lie to this man. I told him who I was and described my mission to him. I told him about the Cortez family and how I had saved Elicia and Antonio, only to see Antonio's friends killed in an ambush while following my directions. The old man listened patiently, fixing his attention on each word, regarding me with those glowing eyes. The glow, however, seemed to become warmer as I talked. When I was finished, he remained in his crouch just inside the doorway. I hardly noticed the odor of his body now; I was becoming accustomed to it.

"So I am not an enemy," I continued. "I need your help. The people of Nicarxa need your help. We have only six days to stop Don Carlos from virtually setting the country on fire."

"Four days," he said. "You have slept for two days."

"I was afraid of that," I said. "Why did you drug me?"

He smiled through his wrinkles. "For the healing," he said. "I made a poultice of herbs for your wound, but you were thrashing about in your fever. You would have offset the good of the herbs. I gave you peyote to make your muscles calm themselves."

I didn't ask him how he got the peyote into me when I was unconscious. I had seen Indians in other jungles use primitive bamboo needles to inject themselves with medicines and drugs. I didn't even want to think of the contraption this man might have used to inject peyote into my veins.

"All right," I said, gazing from him to the vines tied to my wrists. "Will you help me? Do you trust me? Do you know that I'm a friend and not an enemy?"

"I will help by keeping you tied for yet another day. If you move now, you will open the wound. Next time, you might die on the trail."

I was starting to feel panicky. Two precious days had already slipped by. I had only four days to reach Alto Arete and stop Don Carlos. I needed time to organize Antonio and his remaining friends, enlist more loyal supporters and find a way through the impregnable defenses of Mount Toro and Alto Arete.

"I must move around a little," I said, pleading with the old man, "or my whole body will become useless. If I promise to stay here with you, to get my body in shape gradually and leave tomorrow, will you untie me?"

He considered the request, apparently saw the logic of it and leaned forward to untie the vines. I sat up slowly, feeling woozy and weak, fighting the dizziness that threatened consciousness. I sat there for a long time, pumping my arms and legs to restore circulation. One more day in that position and I wouldn't have been able to blink my eyes without making plans for it first.

Outside the hut, I couldn't open my eyes to the brightness. I squinted and moved around the clearing, inspecting my new home'. We were near the top of a mountain, on a level plateau. The old man, whose name was Pico, had come to this place thirty years ago and had cleared away the trees and brush to make a home for himself, a home that could not be seen from above or below, and was accessible only by a narrow trail that he took pains to conceal each day with fresh brush.

"I found you," he explained, "when I went to the bottom of my trail to gather bananas, coconuts, mangos and vegetables. Nothing edible grows at this height."

We ate another bowl of gruel and I found in it pieces of coconut and mango. As with last night, it was delicious. As we ate, the old man told his story.

He had been a professor of anthropology at Nicarxa University in his earlier years and had risen to the head of the department of Indian Culture, then had become involved in a plot to unseat a tyrannical leader. For his efforts, he was severely wounded, his family was killed and he was disgraced. He was also unemployed. He fled to the jungle and was captured by the Nincas who lived in the hills not too many miles from this clearing. He lived with the Indians for a time and became friendly with a young warrior who said he detested fighting and wanted to become a monk.

"Our friendship was short-lived," the old man said. "My friend, whose name was Ancio, became more fanatic as the days went by. I heard from others that he and a group of his followers were involved in some kind of sacrificial rites on Mount Toro. No one lived on Alto Arete then. There was no trail to the top of that magnificent column of rock in those days. But Ancio and his followers had found an ancient cave and were using it to make sacrifices to this new gow they had found."

"What were they using as sacrificial victims?" I asked. "Goats? Pigs? Sheep?"

Old Pico's face darkened and he closed his eyes. "The rumors said that they were using children from the Ninca tribe. Their own tribe."

The story didn't shock me because it didn't surprise me. History books are loaded with stories about human sacrifices, most of them children or young girls.

"The story goes that Ancio and his friends would take the children to the cave and burn them there on an altar of stone," Pico went on, opening his eyes and letting them glow like embers at me. "I learned certain truths about this when my own child was taken in the night."

"I thought you said your family was wiped out in the revolution."

He almost smiled. "My first family. When I lived with the Indians, I took a wife and she bore me a daughter. When the daughter was eleven years old, she disappeared. I asked Ancio about her and he said he knew nothing. I could tell by his eyes that he was lying. That was when I followed him and his friends and learned that he had indeed lied, and I came away a broken man. I had heard the rumors about him, about the sacrifices, but I had no proofs." He stopped, unable to go on.

"And you found those proofs," I said.

Ancio's head dropped, like a reluctant nod of assent. "The night I followed Ancio and his friends, they went up Mount Toro, along a difficult trail, and came to a deep place in the ground. I followed them down stone steps into a kind of well that had no water. I remember crawling then through a hole and coming out into a huge cavern deep inside the mountain. What I saw there has all but obliterated my memories of that night."

"What was it you saw there?" I asked. I was sitting forward, my skin tingling as I anticipated the horror of his story.

"It was over," he said. "There was nothing I could do. My daughter had been dead several days, yet they continued to ravage her lifeless body. As I watched, they poured oils over the bodies of several lifeless and ravaged young girls and set the torch…"

He stopped, his eyes glowing readily. He closed his eyes. I waited, but there was nothing more to be said. After a brutal death, his eleven-year-old daughter had been sacrificed to Ancio's new and vicious god. She had been burned in that cavern. Ancio raised his head and opened his eyes. He went on, intoning like a ghost:

"My fury was great, perhaps too great. A kind of shock overcame me. I crawled out of that cavern and went up the stone steps of the dry well. I rambled aimlessly on the trail through the whole long night. When daylight came, my fury was still great and so was my shock. It was then that I decided to leave the company of man. Before I left, though, I sought to close up that wicked cavern to prevent further sacrifices, further tortures of the innocent. I sought no revenge against Ancio. His god — or my god — would tend to Ancio's guilt and bring suitable punishment. But I did seek the cavern. I found nothing. In time, I came to this place and built my home. You are the first human I have spoken to in thirty years."

A hermit. A true hermit. I had heard of them and read of them, but I had never met one face to face. I had expected hermits to be silent men, taciturn to a fault, but old Pico seemed willing and ready to talk on and on through the days. And I had only four days to complete a truly impossible mission.

"There is something else in the rumors that you should know," Pico said. "It may not be of help, but you should know of it. It was said that the smoke from the sacrificial fires never came out of the mouth of the cave. It was said that for days after victims were sacrificed, thin plumes of smoke could be seen rising from Alto Arete."

I pondered that for a bit, then knew the answer.

"There's a chimney right up through the middle of the mountain," I said. "A kind of tunnel. There has to be."

"That is what the rumors say. One must not be too trustful of rumors."

But, I was thinking, hating myself for the complicated pun, where there's smoke, there's fire. Where there's smoke, there's also a chimney. A chimney right up through the center of Mount Toro, up through that massive column, and out through the top of Alto Arete.

I spent the day moving slowly about the clearing, even testing my legs on parts of the steep trail down. Most of the time, though, I sat near the hut with Pico and picked the man's brains for more information.

By nightfall, I had learned only that the Ninca tribe still lived in an area near the east slope of Mount Toro, and that Ancio was either their chief or had been killed for his zeal in making human sacrifices. I knew that one of my first moves was to find the Ninca Indians and talk to Ancio if he were still around. If I found that ancient cave, I very well might find a way past Don Carlos Italla's fancy defenses.

That's why I broke my promise to Pico and crept away in the night. I had promised to wait until at least noon and the next day. But my days were slipping away too fast, and I felt strong. I set out for the lookout point, hoping against hope to find Antonio there, alive and well.

Dawn was just starting to break when I neared the lookout point Elicia had shown me the night I took her to her cousin's hut. I would have reached it sooner, but I kept getting lost on Pico's crazy trail.

The wound in my side throbbed with pain, but it hadn't broken open and I was convinced that Pico's work would hold up. Unless, of course, I got into a scrap with a guerilla or a Cuban Marine. Needless to say, my long journey from Pico's hermit hut had been a wary one, avoiding all signs of civilization.

I eased through the foliage, approaching the lookout with caution. Antonio could have been captured and tortured, he could have told the Cubans that he was to meet me here. Then, again Antonio could be hiding there with his rifle at the ready, and could shoot me if I made the slightest noise.

It had always seemed silly to me when I'd read in books that people signalled each other in the night with special bird calls or hooting like owls. It didn't seem silly to me now. I wished that I'd worked out such a plan with Antonio.

It wasn't necessary. When I slipped into the clearing and scanned the open ledge, Antonio was fast asleep. A friend with him also was asleep. In the dim light of not-quite-dawn, they looked like two logs wrapped in blankets.

Just in case it wasn't Antonio and a friend, I lowered the heavy Russian Volska I'd been carrying and palmed Wilhelmina. I sat to one side of the trail and aimed at the first blanket-covered sleeper.

"Antonio, wake up."

The log raised up, the blanket fell away and there was Elicia Cortez staring down the muzzle of my luger, her eyes wider than saucers.

"Senor Carter," she exploded, much too loudly for comfort. "We thought you were dead."

Antonio stirred in his blanket and I thought perhaps he had also been wounded, worse than me. But he aroused, proving only that he was a sound sleeper.

As I told them all the things that had happened to me since Antonio and I had parted on that steep hillside with bullets raining down from above, Elicia kept watching my every move, hanging on every word. She also kept inching closer, as though I were a campfire and the air was cold.

"We have heard much of the hermit of Mount Toro," Antonio said when I was finished, "but you are the first man to have seen him in thirty years and to tell about it. The stories say that he cooks and eats anyone who comes near his cave."

"The stories are all wet," I said. "For one thing, the man is a vegetarian. He won't kill animals for food or for wearing apparel. For another, he doesn't have a cave — just a hut he built himself out of vines. Now, tell me about yourselves. How did you happen to wind up together? Where are your friends?"

Both faces went gloomy. Elicia stared at the ground, but remained at my side, touching me occasionally with a knee, a hand, an arm. Antonio told how he had found one of his friends, wounded and roaming aimlessly on a trail. The friend had died in his arms. He hadn't found any others.

Finally, he had returned to his parents' house, hoping that perhaps some of his friends had left word there.

"I wish I hadn't gone home," he said sadly. "What I feared would happen has happened. My parents are gone and a bunch of Cuban Marines are living in the house. I asked around, but the neighbors could tell me only that there was shouting and screaming in the night, two days ago. And there was shooting, then silence. I know, Senor Carter, that our parents are dead. Our property now belongs to Colonel Vasco."

And Colonel Vasco, I knew, would sell it at a high price to Cuban immigrants after the bloody revolution put Don Carlos in control and made both Nicarxa and Apalca allies of Cuba. Antonio had reason to be fearful that his parents were dead. "This may sound ungrateful to the memory of your parents," I said, "but we haven't time to mourn them properly. Our greatest chance is to find the Ninca tribe, get to that sacrificial cave in the mountain and hope to God the chimney is big enough for us to climb up through it."

"I know a shortcut to the Ninca lands," Antonio said, brightening in spite of his grief for his parents. "Are you ready to travel?"

I had traveled all night, but I had also slept and rested for more than two days. I was ready. To make certain, Elicia insisted on carrying my rifle. She would have carried me, if she'd been strong enough. She couldn't seem to show me enough attention, to touch me enough.

It became more and more obvious as we moved along dark trails toward the Ninca lands that Elicia had fallen in love with me. Recalling how I was when I was her age, I wasn't about to underestimate that love. It was real and it was intense. But I didn't fee! the same about her. Ever since my mind had made the connection between Elicia and American high school girls, I had thought of this girl the way a father might feel about a daughter. I had even begun to entertain a fantasy that I might somehow spirit her out of this troubled country and find her a foster home with a friend in the States.

There, I thought in my typically American way of thinking, she could finish out her schooling, live in peace, perhaps fall in love with a handsome blond boy on the football team and settle in suburbia with a couple of cars, a dog and mortgage. And, of course, kids.

We were resting beside a clear-running stream along about noontime when Elicia brought me a container of water, sat beside me and gazed up into my eyes. Antonio was off downstream, looking for edible fruits and vegetables.

"I have not thanked you for saving my life," she said.

"I didn't save your life, Elicia," I said, remembering that night when the Marine with the enormous organ had tried to rape her. "I merely stopped…"

"You saved my life," she said emphatically, placing her slender brown hand on my knee. "I had promised myself that very day that, if the Marines came again and did that to me, I would cut my own throat. What I was living, what I have been living the past three months, has not been life. It has been a kind of horrible death, full of terror and disgust, and no joy. I still feel the disgust."

"For the Marines?"

She looked at me curiously. "No, for myself."

"Why would you be disgusted with yourself? You did nothing wrong?"

She gazed at the ground and took her hand from my knee. "You do not think I am soiled? You do not think I am something for disgust?"

"Good God, no. Why would I think that?"

She didn't respond and I began to think how similar rape victims are the world over. They cannot control what has happened to them, they were unwilling victims of one of man's oldest invasions of privacy, yet they always seemed to feel guilt, or, in the case of Elicia, self-disgust. It was a phenomenon that never ceased to amaze me. I had no words to console the girl, or to change her mind about herself. But I still couldn't remain silent.

"Virginity is important to you, isn't it?" I asked.

Her head snapped up and she looked into my eyes for a time. Then, she looked away and muttered an almost inaudible "yes."

Then, you must consider yourself a virgin, Elicia. In your mind, you are. You gave nothing of your own free will. It was taken from you. In God's eyes, you are still unspoiled, if that's the way you must look at it."

A fraction of a smile crossed her lips, and then she was sad again. She looked at me, holding my eyes with hers.

"For many months before the Marines came, she said, speaking as though to a priest, in confession, "I had certain thoughts, certain feelings, that I could not control. In spite of all that has happened, I still have those thoughts and those feelings."

I understood perfectly. The girl was a woman, she had thoughts and feelings about sex. She had had them since she was at least twelve or thirteen. Because she had had them, she felt that what had happened to her was God's will, that she hadn't had her virginity taken from her. She believed her previous thoughts had actually caused the rapes to occur.

"The thoughts and feelings you had and are still having," I said, "are natural thoughts and feelings. Every human and every animal alive has those feelings. They shouldn't be sources of guilt, though. In God's eyes — and in mine — you're still a virgin, still unspoiled, or whatever the word is."

She moved closer, seeming to understand what I was trying to say. Or wanting to understand so badly that she was fooling herself.

"I know what thoughts are natural," she said, "and what thoughts are not. What I am feeling now, for you, is natural. If I am a virgin still, I want you to be the one to receive the fruits of my virginity."

Not even an American high school girl, with all her modern boldness brought on by the national yen for honesty and forthrightness, could have put it more plainly. And very few American high school boys would have turned down such an offer. But I was years away from high school. And I couldn't give as much as I would take.

My silence was my answer. Elicia sat gazing up at me for several seconds, then her eyes fell. I let her think it all out. She would consider all the possibilities. Perhaps I thought of her with disgust, had even lied when I had said that she was still unspoiled, that she had nothing to be ashamed of. Perhaps I thought her beneath me, since I was an obviously important American government agent and she was a lowly Nicarxan peasant girl. Perhaps…

"You think me still a child," she said in a low voice, cutting my speculations short. "Well, I am not a child. I have experienced much growing up in the past three months. And yesterday was my birthday. I now am eighteen, legally a woman."

"Happy birthday, Elicia," I said, smiling.

She frowned. "Make with jokes," she said, turning the frown to a womanly look of shrewd knowledge. "All right. Time will pass and you will learn the truth about me, about my womanliness."

She got up without another word and went to help Antonio search for lunch.

When we stopped for our evening break, Antonio and I searched for food while Elicia disappeared into the jungle. She had spent the afternoon trying to impress me with her womanliness. Each time I neared her on the trail, she lowered the bodice of her blouse to expose more of her ample breasts. She bumped against my hips with her wide hips. She carried more and more of our belongings, including all of Antonio's stolen firearms. Now, as we neared exhaustion and she was showing signs of weariness from all the extra effort, she had disappeared.

I found a narrow trail leading down to a grove of banana trees and followed it. I had picked a number of ripe bananas when I heard the splashing just beyond the grove and a wall of vines. I put down the bananas and went to investigate, the Volska rifle slung over my shoulder.

The splashing continued and, when I reached the wall of vines, I heard a low singing. It was Elicia. Her sweet, clear voice rose on the dark jungle air, singing an old Spanish love song:

I wondered if she knew that I was near, was listening, perhaps even peeking at her in the stream. No, I decided. She had no idea that I was near. Her singing was too soft, meant only for her ears. She wasn't putting out a mating call, not yet.

I turned away from the wall of vines, knowing what lovely sight and lovely activities lay beyond it. I had seen this girl in the nude, under extremely vicious circumstances. Seeing her in the nude here, in the stream, and knowing what was going on in her mind and her body, would have spurred me to foolish and damning actions. I may be a killer and an important government agent, but I am no heel. Not on purpose, anyway.

Dinner was a delight. Antonio had found all sorts of fruits and vegetables to add to my bananas. Elicia, however, was the most pleasant of all. She had bathed in the stream and had found orange blossoms to rub against her skin. She smelled good enough to eat, and I had the distinct feeling that she would be better than the fruits and vegetables we were eating. I had trouble keeping my eyes off her, but I decided to merely enjoy the fragrance and the nearness of her, and let it go there.

We rested only two hours after dinner and went on in full darkness. I lost my sense of direction and had no idea which side of Mount Toro we were on. Antonio seemed to know exactly where we were going and, in spite of Elicia's continued game of playing woman and bumping into me in the darkness, giving me the full benefit of her womanly fullness, we made good progress.

It was nearly midnight when Antonio stopped ahead of us on the trail and held up a hand for quiet. We hunched in the jungle, unable to see much more than our hands before our faces. I was about to ask Antonio why we were stopping when all hell seemed to break loose on the trail.

First came a high, discordant warbling, as though a thousand maniacs had just had their cages rattled. Next was a thundering and thrashing all around us, not unlike a stampede of heavy animals. Perhaps elephants or rhinoceroses. We were struggling to get our weapons lined up when lights appeared from all around us and the swarm descended.

Elicia let out a piercing scream. Antonio bellowed. I was opening my mouth to add to the general hubbub when strong hands grabbed my arms and pinned them behind me. I got out one yell before a rough cloth sack was yanked down over my head. I felt the cord being tied, a little too tight for comfort, around my neck. Other hands were on my legs and feet and torso. One probing hand even found the bandage over my wound and sent rivers of pain through my nervous system.

And then, as though a switch had been thrown, the jungle was silent. We were carried along the dark trail for the better part of an hour, circling around to cause us to lose our sense of direction, then dumped onto hard ground. When the sack was taken from my head, I found myself tied to Elicia and Antonio, side by side, in a thatched hut much like the one Pico had put me in. The ceiling, however, was considerably higher, and a bunch of half-naked Indians were standing around us in a circle. Flame torches were attached to hangers on the walls, well out from the flammable thatching.

From the circle of Indians stepped an enormously fat man with all sorts of flowered and feathered regalia adorning his body in strategic places. Most of him was exposed and he looked as though he had been wrapped in a macadam parking lot. I had never seen such expanses of human skin on one skeleton.

"I am Botussin," he said in a deep, rich voice with only a touch of growl in it. "I am chief of the Ninca." He motioned toward a tall, lithe brown man who was incredibly handsome, who wore a single eagle feather in his long hair and whose privates were covered by a soft lambskin pouch. "This is my son, Purano, heir to my throne. Now, you will provide us with your names and the reasons why you have invaded the Ninca lands, then you will be handed over to our spearchuckers, for execution. You talk now."

He pointed a fat finger at me. Frankly, I was getting a whole lot tired of being tied up and asked to spill my guts about who I was and what I was doing. I could feel Elicia's trembling body against me. Her fear helped me to keep a level head. This fat man meant business and I had damned well better take that business seriously. He couldn't have cared less about what I was tired of. But I really didn't know where to begin with Botussin, just how much I should tell him. For one thing, I didn't know the sentiments of the Ninca Indians in all that was happening in Nicarxa. Nobody had bothered to ask them — and that included our intelligence people whose information had caused me to be sent down here on this wild and woolly caper.

I decided to shorten the distance between what I wanted and what I hoped to get.

"We are here to learn about the cave that Ancio used more than thirty years ago," I said.

I couldn't have gotten more dramatic results if I had plucked a pubic hair out of one of their spearchuckers. That entire circle of half-naked brown men went almost white at the sound of Ancio's name. The chief himself staggered back and looked as though I'd just scored on his huge belly with a sledgehammer. Even the strong, silent son, Purano, appeared stunned, but he held his ground and glowered at me.

"How," the chief began, faltering, stuttering, "how you know of such things? How you know of sacrificial cave, of the devil Ancio?"

There was no reason not to tell him, since the whole country seemed to know of the hermit, Pico, so I told him the whole story, keeping it as short as possible because time was getting more precious by the minute. I down-played the impending war that Don Carlos Italla was plotting from his high place in the clouds and, of course, my role in trying to stop him. I didn't want to complicate the subject for the old chief. As it turned out, he was capable of digesting much more complicated concepts. He was obviously capable of digesting everything.

When i was finished, the circle had quieted down considerably and all the bodies had returned to their original brown hue. The chief motioned to his son and Purano hastily left the hut and came back with a low wooden stool. The chief settled on it and I marveled that he didn't settle all the way to the ground. That stool literally disappeared in the folds of his buttocks. The others, including Purano, stood around with their arms folded, waiting for the chief to continue this absorbing conversation.

"Pico speaks truly," the chief said, "but he knows nothing of that which happened after he left for his hiding place in the mountains. I will tell it all to you, from the beginning."

And he did. Using his soft growl and his still melodious voice to best dramatic effect, he spun a tale of horror that would have done proud any of his ancestors who had stood around campfires in the dead of night frightening the young and the sensitive with horrifying stories of yore.

It seems that Ancio had found an ancient map made up by a long-forgotten ancestor and had used the map to find the entrance of the sacrificial cave. When the tribe had given up human sacrifices more than two hundred years ago, the men had sealed up the cave and had destroyed all visual evidence of its existence, such as maps or descriptions of its locations, even recorded stories of what had taken place there. Even the tribal storytellers were reluctant to mention the cave in the succeeding generations.

But one ancestor had kept a detailed map and this map had been handed down in his own family, kept secret from others in the tribe. More than thirty years ago, an old man on his deathbed summoned Ancio to his side. The old man had no family to give the map to, so he entrusted it to Ancio, forbidding him on pain of death ever to reveal its existence, or to use it to find the cave. According to new tribal gods adopted two hundred years ago, any Ninca who entered the cave, or approached its forbidden entrance — even accidentally — would be burned to a cinder. That was the curse the new gods put on the cave.

The old man died and Ancio went secretly to the cave. He had already begun to think of himself as a god, so he figured he was immune to the spell. Sure enough, he found the cave, went inside and came out again. Not a hair had been scorched, which proved only that the spell of the devil was so strong in him that the new gods couldn't touch him.

In time, Ancio began to take young children there to make sacrifices to the old gods. Or, as Botussin put it, to the devil. Ancio soon enlisted others in his grisly scheme. Before long, the cave became the scene of sexual depravity as Ancio and his friends took young maidens there, abused them in every conceivable fashion and then burned them.

It was when other members of the tribe began to notice smoke rising from Alto Arete that they tumbled to what was really happening to the children and maidens disappearing with regularity from their lands. They didn't know that Pico had discovered Ancio's secret cave and the scene of his depravity. They thought at first that Pico was a victim, having stumbled across his former friend's secret.

But a month after Ancio's disappearance, twenty maidens disappeared from the tribal camp in one night alone. Among them were two of Botussin's daughters, princesses. They were ten and twelve years old. Purano was an infant and was thus spared. One of Botussin's daughters, the twelve-year-old, had the presence of mind to tear small bits of fabric from her garment and drop them on the trail. Botussin and his spearchuckers followed the colorful fragments and found Ancio's encampment on a slope of Mount Toro, where they had apparently stopped to enjoy the maidens prior to going on to the cursed cave.

In the ensuing battle, many of Ancio's friends were killed. He, however, got away with a few of his followers, leaving the map behind. Since the maidens were rescued safe and sound, Botussin did not follow. Ancio never returned, nor did any of his friends.

"If they should ever return," the old chief said in his soft growl, "the spearchuckers will have them. The tribal council has banished them all and has sentenced them to death if they are found."

"Has Pico also been banished and sentenced to death?" I asked. After all, Pico had been Ancio's friend and the tribe never knew why Pico had disappeared.

"No," Botussin said. "Although we knew nothing of what you have told us about Pico, we suspected that he had known of Ancio's activities. After all, his own daughter had disappeared and we all knew that she must have become one of Ancio's victims. Pico has suffered greatly. Although he is not Ninca, he is welcome in Ninca lands if he wishes to return. His enemies are our enemies, his friends our friends. You are obviously his friend or you wouldn't be alive to tell me what you have told me of Pico."

I wanted to clear up that point about Pico eating people who came into his territory, but there was something else of far more importance.

"The map," I said, wondering just how I should phrase the question. "Was it destroyed?"

The old chief took a long time answering that. He looked at the faces around the circle, but there was nothing I could read on those dark, stony faces. His gaze finally fell on his son's face. Slowly, Purano nodded. The chief looked back at me.

"My father was the chief when Ancio was banished from the tribe. It was his decision to keep the map. He entrusted it to me and I shall entrust it to Purano when I go away from life."

"May we see the map?" I asked. I could feel Elicia and Antonio suck in breath at my bold request. Given the knowledge of the Indian's superstitions, or religious beliefs, about that cave, I was a bit surprised myself at my boldness. But a great deal was at stake here.

Once again, the old chief studied his lieutenants' faces and once more it was Purano who gave the nod of assent. The old man responded with a signal and Purano left the hut. The chief nodded toward two guards near the door.

"Remove their bonds," he commanded. "They are friends."

Elicia, whose body had been tense with fear, sagged against me. I glanced at her and her eyes were full of love. I was really turning the girl on and all I was doing was trying to save our lives the best way I knew how. Soon, I would have to do something to kill that love. It couldn't lead anywhere but to a broken heart for her. Or could it? I felt something stir inside me as I gazed into her soft, brown, adoring eyes. It wasn't lust.

While we were still rubbing our wrists and ankles trying to restore circulation, Purano returned with a scroll that looked like the world's oldest high school diploma. It was tied with a length of material that looked like a cow's artery. I learned later that it was.

Botussin dismissed all his lieutenants except Purano and the two of them gently spread the scroll out on the floor of the hut. Antonio, Elicia and I bent over it.

We couldn't make head nor tails of the thing. It was done in hieroglyphics. Nobody through the years had thought to transcribe it into more modern symbols. And there was a fragment of it missing, in the upper right hand corner. Much of what was left was so badly stained or faded that it might as well have been blank.

"None of us can read the map," Botussin explained. "The elder who died without heirs and entrusted the map to Ancio explained its hidden meanings to him. When he fled, he took the secret with him."

The map was obviously useless, but there was still a chance if the old chief were willing to help us. I put the issue to him.

"I'm afraid the map isn't of much use to us, Chief Botussin," I said, "and even though Pico has been to the cave his memories of that night have been virtually erased. We need your help, though. Don Carlos plans to touch off a bloody revolution in just three days. We have no time to search for the cave. We have to find a way to get up the side of the mountain. Will you provide warriors to help us?"

While he was considering the question, Antonio picked up the map and began to study the weird symbols and signs.

"You know something of such writings?" the chief asked.

"In our school, we learned of various Indian writings and cultures," Antonio said. "These look familiar to me. May we take the map? I would like to study it. Perhaps in time…"

The old chief sighed.

"You both ask much," he said in a weary voice. "I cannot help you with warriors in so hopeless a cause. Already, the most important religious leader of Apalca, a greedy monk named Intenday, has arrived in Nicarxa to meet with Don Carlos. Already, Intenday's caravan moves from the capital to the base of Mount Toro. Guards and soldiers are plentiful. I cannot lend warriors to be killed in attempts to reach the unreachable. You must understand our plight. So many of our maidens were killed by Ancio and his fanatic followers. When Purano was born, we had a large crop of male sons in that year. Today, Purano is past marrying age, yet he has not found a maiden suitable as a bride."

"What about those twenty maidens, including your own daughters, who were saved that night you discovered Ancio's encampment?" I asked.

"They were spoiled before we reached the encampment," Botussin said, matter-of-factly. "They could not become brides, thus could not produce offspring. Certainly none suitable for a prince of Purano's stature."

I thought the old man was being the utter fool, especially since I had noticed Purano giving Elicia a really thorough going-over with his dark, penetrating eyes, but I was in no position to mix in the tribe's cultural affairs. I let that subject drop.

"The map," I said. "May we at least take the map?"

Again Purano nodded and the chief said: "Take the map. Whether it serves your purposes or not, destroy it. I do not wish it to fall into evil hands."

Antonio was almost bowing in thanks to the fat old chief when a sudden thought hit me.

"You say an important religious leader from Apalca is on the way to see Don Carlos."

"Yes, his name is Intenday."

"How do you know such things?"

"We have ways. We keep informed of the activities of Don Carlos Italla. What he does will have devastating effects on the Ninca tribe."

"Will that religious leader be traveling alone, or with a group?"

"He will have his monks with him."

I knew then how to penetrate Don Carlos's tight security. I was ready to leap up and leave the Indian village instantly, but something the chief said held me.

"Why would the activities of Don Carlos have a devastating effect on the Nincas?"

"He hates us," the chief says. "He wants to destroy us. If you can find a way to get to him and not be destroyed in the process, I will supply warriors. Otherwise, we must keep our men here to defend the village when Don Carlos comes to kill us."

I was still puzzled. The old man wasn't making any sense.

"Why would he come to kill you? Why would he single out your tribe?"

"Because he is one of us. Don Carlos is a Ninca."

The puzzlement grew, and it showed clearly on my face. The old chief sighed again, seemed to sink deeper onto the stool and looked to his son for approbation. Purano, the silent, nodded once more.

"Don Carlos Italla," the chief said with a distinct growl, "was once banished and sentenced to death by the Nincas. Don Carlos Italla and the man you know as Ancio are one and the same."