Page 41 of The Lost Guardian

It click, click, clacked counterclockwise, then click, clocked back the way it had come. Then the soft clicks became louder snaps, and the piece of stone was extending itself, expanding step by step, opening and opening again as if unfolding a piece of origami. José tossed the magnifying glass on a side table to place both his hands under the shuddering piece of antiquity, no longer able to support its weight and size with just one.

The mechanical noises finally fell silent, but the quiet left in their wake was somehow even louder.

“That’s not…” Santiago trailed off.

Possible, he finished in his head. That’s not possible.

“What is that?” Ali whispered, and Santiago looked at what was once his chakana more closely. It had expanded into a stone tablet, roughly the size of a laptop. In the center of the stone was an ancient-looking paper, covered in designs and letters both.

If it was a logographic language, it was none that Santiago recognized, and he knew quite a few at this point, but he could also see a spattering of Quechua throughout.

José set the stone tablet down carefully and fished out some gloves from a side table. Then he gingerly picked up the paper. As soon as the page was lifted off the open stone, it shuddered and folded back in on itself, until only Santiago’s necklace remained.

He picked up the pendant, running his fingers over the smooth stone surface. There were no fissures or grooves to indicate that it was ever more than a single piece of polished obsidian. Santiago slipped it over his head uneasily, then turned his attention to the strange relic in the professor’s hands.

“Post-Inca,” the professor muttered under his breath, and Santiago nodded.

“Of course,” he replied.

“Why is that obvious?” Ali asked.

“The Inca didn’t make paper,” Santi answered distractedly. “They had no use for it without a written language.”

“Then who wrote all that?”

It was precisely the question on Santiago’s mind. Where had this page come from? When had it come from?

“It looks like Runa Simi,” the professor replied, referring to the Incan language now known as Quechua. He turned the paper this way and that. “Along with supporting pictograms.”

“Can you read it?” Santiago asked anxiously. He was well-versed in Quechua, but the pictograms were beyond him.

“I—” José stilled, bringing his face closer to the strange writing. If Santiago didn’t know better, he would have sworn the older man stopped breathing altogether. For the first time since they had met José, he seemed unsure.

“What is it?” Santiago urged him.

“I just…” He hesitated, then laughed nervously. This unsettled Santi more than anything. “I’m not sure I’m reading this correctly.”

“You aren’t sure you’re reading it correctly, or you hope you’re not reading it correctly?” Ali asked him.

She’s good at reading people, Santi thought. It made him nervous—what had she already gathered about him?

“Very astute.” José carefully placed the paper back on his desk. “I have good news and bad news. Which would you like first?”

They both looked at Santiago, who felt very much on the spot.

“We could do with some good news,” he answered after an awkward pause.

The professor nodded, seeming relieved. Santi’s stomach dropped. He almost wished he’d asked for the bad. “Well, the good news is that you could not have come at a more opportune time. According to this record, when a Guardian dies, their remains must be laid to rest at Atahualpa’s tomb just before the Inca’s most important celebration.”

Santiago thought quickly. “Inti Raymi?” he asked.

“The festival of the sun?” Ali asked with a frown.

Santiago remembered how impressed he had been when she had identified the sun god’s mask at his museum, not yet knowing that she was Peruvian.

Santi did the math in his head, turning back to José. “That’s less than a week away!”

“Yes, that is the good news—you have not missed it!” José affirmed.