Free Heart of Fire by Linda Howard

out there like pollen. According to the tales you'll hear, there are a thousand lost cities in the interior. You'd think no one would be able to step on the riverbank without kicking a bone, but it just isn't so."
    "This tale is true."
    "What makes you so sure?"
    "My father found the city."
    "Did he bring back evidence of it?"
    "He died trying."
    "So you don't have any proof."
    "That's what I'm going to get" Pure stubbornness steeled her voice. "I'll find proof that he was right."
    "Or die trying."
    "You don't have to go, Mr. Lewis. But I am."
    "I'm going, I'm going. This is better than a circus any day.
    So why don't you tell me about this famous lost city. Just which one is it? I've probably heard about them all."
    "It's possible," she said grudgingly. "Have you ever heard of the Anzar or the Stone City?"
    He thought about it, pursing his lips and tapping them with his fingertips. Her gaze followed his fingers, lingered on his mouth, before she realized what she was doing and looked away. Had he done that deliberately, to draw her attention to his mouth? She wouldn't put it past him, but she didn't look at him to see if that wicked amusement was back in his eyes.
    "Can't say that I have," he said. "Want to tell me about it?"
    She quickly told him the legend of the Anzar and the warrior queen, and of her heart, which now guarded her lover's tomb. He began to look bored.
    "That isn't all," she said. "My father was an archaeologist too, and he had a passion for investigating old legends like that, to satisfy his own curiosity. All of the others he dismissed as just that, legends. But not the Anzar."
    "So what was it about that particular fairy tale that made such a believer of him?"
    Anger glinted in her eyes for a second, but she tamped it down. If her father's own colleagues hadn't believed him, why should someone who had never known him?
    "Do you know how the Amazon got its name?" she asked.
    He shrugged. "From the jungle, I guess."
    "No, the jungle was named for the river."
    "What about it?"
    "In 1542, a group of Spaniards set out to explore the river. It didn't have a name then. There was a Dominican friar with them, Gaspar de Carvajal. The friar kept a journal of what they saw. A lot of it is typical of the tales the Spaniards carried back to Europe: gold and treasure for the taking."
    "It pretty much was," Ben said. "When they found it. Look what they did to the Incas."
    "The friar told about gleaming white cities and royal highways paved with stone, which would describe the Incan empire pretty well even though it was a lot farther west. It's possible the friar was just repeating tales that he had heard. But then the friar mentioned something that was out of place, different from the rest of the stories being told. Carvajal said that they met a tribe of 'fair female warriors who fought as ten Indian men.'"
    "Don't tell me," Ben said, closing his eyes. "Let me guess. They found the Amazons, and that's how the river got its name."
    "Exactly."
    "Bullshit."
    "Most of it. Carvajal's journal is entertaining, but discounted by historians. It was the other tales, from different sources, that tied in and made my father curious."
    "Such as?"
    "He found five different sources for the Anzar fable. He couldn't find any connection between them, but the fragments of information fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. One tale was about the 'bloodless winged demons,' but that one also called them 'the devils from the great water.' It doesn't take much imagination to see the pale Spaniards coming ashore from their ships, with the white sails puffing in the wind like wings."
    "All right, I'll give you that." He looked bored. "That isn't much of a stretch."
    "The city of stone under the sea of green is obviously a city in the jungle, hidden by the canopy—so well hidden that the Spaniards couldn't find it."
    "All of this is an interesting mind game, sweetcakes, but don't you have any hard evidence? I suppose you're trying to build a