Heart of Fire Read online

  Both Pepe and Eulogio went stiff, their faces frozen as memories of ancient tales stirred, brought to life by the sight of these stone warriors.

  For a long moment no one said anything, overawed by the immensity of the hall, the gravity of the silent stone guards. Even Rick, who revered nothing and whose interest in ancient cultures was nil, seemed to sense something—a solemnity, perhaps. There was no hint of danger; rather it was as if they had intruded on a sacred place, a place meant for peace.

  Jorge walked over to the foot of one of the figures and stared up at it. Tentatively he reached out and fingered the stone. “Who are they?” he finally whispered, his voice full of wonder and curiosity. Even though he had whispered, the vast expanse of the hall caught the sound and amplified it, so the words were perfectly audible.

  Jillian was still trembling and leaning against Ben’s strength. “I think they really must be . . . the Amazons,” she replied in the same wondering tone, as if this was more than she could take in. Ben knew just how she felt. He still hadn’t completely recovered from his initial shock on seeing them.

  Her mind was whirling, trying to cover all the angles, consider all the ramifications of what the existence of these statues meant. How had these women warriors come to be here, in the South American jungle? The Amazons were myth, nothing more. They were supposedly a tribe of warrior women who had once a year bred with a neighboring tribe of men in order to produce offspring, and who had fought for Troy in the Trojan War. No proof had ever been found that even hinted at their true existence, any more than proof of Atlantis had ever been found. Both were just myths.

  And yet. . . here they were. In a place where there was no logical reason for their existence. How could the mythology of ancient Greece have somehow reached deep into these jungles, when there were entire tribes who had never seen a white person, or been exposed to any form of outside civilization until only a few years before? How could these statues be based on Greek mythology? Or was it just a similarity? Had tribes of warrior women once existed on both continents?

  A tantalizing possibility was that somehow the Greek tales were based on the Anzar. Who knew how long the Anzar had existed? Perhaps, untold thousands of years before, some ancient wanderer had come across these female warriors and returned to his own land with the seeds of a myth.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, I know. That’s close to what I thought when I saw them,” Ben said. “The sepulcher is at the far end.” He used his flashlight to show the way, but the hall was too long for the light to penetrate to the tomb.

  The party trooped down the huge stone hallway, dwarfed by the dimensions of the hall itself as well as the rows of silent guards. Any talking was still done in whispers, as if anything louder would disturb the sanctity of the place.

  Then they reached the sepulcher, and the combined beams of their flashlights played over the tomb, over the bas-relief on the top. Jillian caught her breath at the male features etched in stone: strong, roughly handsome, calm and sure even in the long sleep of death. This was a man who would give his life without hesitation, without doubt, in defense of the woman he loved. This was a man for whom a woman would grieve a lifetime, around whom legends were woven. There was no hint of where the queen’s tomb might be, but in the niche over the sepulcher was the place where she had left her heart, the heart of a warrior, to stand guard over her beloved through all eternity.

  An empty, dusty niche.

  Unable to help herself, trembling with relief, she turned her face into Ben’s shoulder, and his arms came strongly around her. Thank God there was no Empress, she thought, no huge red diamond to endanger their lives with its worth. Kates wouldn’t be interested in the statues, no matter how revolutionary they would be to the world of archaeology. They were of stone, without inherent value except as what they represented, and taken out of the context of the Anzar they were worthless. Each would weigh hundreds of pounds, probably half a ton or more, so they would be impossible to transport even if they did have a monetary value. Later on, once their existence was recorded and their context known, they would, like the Mona Lisa, be beyond price, but in this case value depended on the world knowing about them exactly as they were now, in their original setting.

  Kates had shone his flashlight across the floor, looking at the footprints Ben had left earlier. He walked to the sepulcher and peered behind it.

  “Watch out for snakes,” Ben said casually.

  Kates squeezed behind the tomb and shone the flashlight on the niche for closer observation. He ran his finger through the dust.

  “Evidently there was a real Empress stone,” Jillian said, finally finding enough strength in her legs to stand away from Ben. He seemed reluctant to release her, keeping his hand on the small of her back. “But there’s no way of telling how long it has been gone or who took it. Since nothing else has been disturbed, it’s likely the Anzar took it with them wherever they went.”

  “Well, if this goddamn tomb is so important, why didn’t they take it with them, too?” Kates demanded. He was in a savage temper, and restraining it with difficulty.

  Jillian eyed the sepulcher. It had to be eight feet long, or more. “There’s no telling what it weighs, and it would be impossible to move it through the tunnel, anyway. From what I’ve seen, the Anzar didn’t die out; it looks as if they left this place, carrying their personal goods and treasures with them. All that they left behind, other than a few pots, was this temple.”

  “What good is a stone tomb?” Kates yelled, his face twisting with rage at finding his dream of riches turn to nothing but dust. “And these goddamn stone statues?”

  “You knew this trip was a gamble,” Ben said coolly. “Nothing in the jungle is a sure thing.”

  Kates looked ready to explode, a muscle in his jaw trembling and his fists clenched. He was sick at the thought of the money he’d spent, the money he owed . . . the people he owed it to. His eyes fell on the tomb. “Maybe there’s something inside,” he said.

  Jillian jerked visibly at the idea of disturbing the sepulcher. “Not likely,” she forced herself to say. “They didn’t leave anything of value that we’ve been able to find. No gold, no silver; nothing.”

  His tenuous control broke again. “Goddamm it, there has to be something!”

  “Look around,” she said sharply. “Do you see anything with even silver plating? There’s nothing. If there was a treasure, they took it with them. It’s gone. Maybe the Anzar were absorbed into the Incan culture; maybe that’s what made the Inca culture so rich. Whatever happened, there’s nothing here now.”

  He looked dazed, sick. “There has to be,” he mumbled.

  She waved her hand, indicating the surroundings. “Not that I can see.”

  Kates turned away and walked hurriedly toward the entrance, the beam of his flashlight bobbing. Dutra followed, but the rest of them remained in the temple, still awed by what they had found.

  “Shouldn’t you be taking some pictures?” Ben prompted, smiling at her.

  Amazed that she could have forgotten, she began fumbling with her camera, but her hands were shaking so much she couldn’t hold it steady. “I can’t,” she finally said raggedly, looking up at him. “I’m shaking too hard. Can you do it for me while I take notes?”

  He took the camera from her, while she described how it worked. It was an “idiot” camera, with automatic everything, so simple to use anyone could operate it—assuming the idiot could hold it steady, which at the moment was beyond her. All Ben had to do was aim and press the button. The automatic flash and focus would take care of everything else.

  He took several of the tomb, then walked from statue to statue while Jillian scribbled hasty notes by the light of a flashlight clumsily tucked under her arm. What amazed her even more, now that she noticed it, was that the statues all had subtly different features. That made her think these were statues of actual women, perhaps women who had in truth stood guard over the warrior’s tomb. Th