Page 72 of The Lost Guardian

He hissed through his teeth at the sharp sting, allowing only a few drops to splash against the rock’s surface. The blood hit the water, causing it to move forward again, a crimson streak against the white slab.

Santiago went completely still, watching as a path began to form. He let his blood flow until the image grew no more.

For a long moment, nothing could be heard but the singing of birds and rustling of trees.

“It, uh, must be the iron in the blood,” Santiago realized, finally breaking the silence. “Interacting with something in the stone to make it…” He motioned vaguely.

Ali shot him an incredulous look.

“There has to be an explanation!” he insisted.

José laughed, utterly elated. “I didn’t believe it my first time, either, kid.”

Don’t call me kid.

“Believe what?” Santiago asked irritably.

“In magic.”

Santiago shook his head. He couldn’t believe those words had just left his academic hero’s mouth. “There’s no such thing.”

Even as he denied it, he knew his thundering heart would beg to differ. First the chakana expanding in a way that defied the laws of space…and now this.

He clutched at his grandfather’s pendant to ground himself, hating the way his pulse hammered in his chest.

“Magic or no, what is that?” Ali asked him, leaning forward to get a better view.

“It’s an adaptation of the Ceque system,” Santiago heard himself answer.

“I agree,” José said.

“I know I’ve heard that word.” She furrowed her brow.

“It means ‘rays’ or ‘lines,’” Santiago offered. This world he knew. He held it like a lifeline. “At the Temple of the Sun in Cusco, there’s a system of these ceques, beginning from their central point at the temple and then spreading out in imaginary straight lines toward the horizon. There are between forty and forty-two of them.”

“Why?” Ali cocked her head, a tendril of curling hair falling over her forehead. Santi had to look away.

“Oh, different reasons,” he answered, rubbing his eyes as if it might force the world before him to make sense again. “A way of dividing the empire into grids? As a calendar? To provide direction? Honestly, we can’t be certain.”

Ali perked up. “Directions?”

José nodded but left it to Santiago to continue. He’s such a good mentor. It’s too bad he’s stark-raving mad.

“Every ceque passed through a certain number of wakas, or shrines, along the way. We can then deduce that a person could be given directions based on a particular ceque and the progression of those shrines.”

“When you say shrines, you mean like statues? Temples?” Ali asked.

“They could be.” José chimed in now, leaning against the stone as casually as if he were about to order a drink. “Sometimes they were man-made, like buildings or effigies. But they could also be natural, like boulders or streams.”

“So they could say something like ‘take this path to the waterfall, and when you see the lumpy boulder, you’re headed in the right direction’?” she asked.

“Correct. ‘Follow this road west; if you hit the abandoned gas station, you’ve gone too far,’” Santiago mirrored.

“Okay, so this is a version of a ceque,” Ali said, scanning the furrows in the stone. “And your blood is showing us which path to take?”

Santiago looked back down at the image his blood had left. The path had drifted into smaller, almost imperceptible etchings at different points, showing three small petroglyphs he would have otherwise missed:

Five circles with lines extending from their center.