by Rob Jones
“I don’t see why not,” Selena said. “It opened easily enough, but not sure how.”
“I see how,” said Decker, angling a flashlight beam at the wall encasing the slab. “There’s a system of ropes and pullies here. It operates a fairly simple counterweight rig. When you pushed the tiles in the correct order it was a bit like a tumbler lock letting the rope slide down and in turn pulling the door on these rollers. From this side, we can just put our shoulders against the end of it and push it right back over. There’s no way they can get the necessary purchase to open it again from the other side.”
Diana frowned. “That means we’re safe, right?”
“Sure…”
The flashlights carried by the armed men bobbed into sight as they regained their courage and turned the final bend in the tunnel. One of them shouted in Spanish and then their weapons lit up the darkness once again.
Riley and Charlie tucked in behind the stone archway and returned fire as Decker, Acosta and Selena pushed the heavy stone slab along the rollers and closed the doorway back up.
“That was too close for comfort!” Diana said.
“And here they come!” said Selena. “I can hear them outside.”
They heard the men approach the entrance, screaming and shouting in Spanish. Someone was kicking the stone door, another pounding on it with his fists. Then another opened fire on it. They all heard the pointless shots ricochet off into the tunnel behind them.
“Not a chance,” Decker said. “This slab weighs way too much. No way are they shooting through it.”
“Are you sure?” Diana asked. “If they get in, we’re dead.”
“Don’t count on it,” Riley said. “I’m not going down without one hell of a fight.”
“Me neither,” said Charlie.
“The only way they’re getting through that door is if one of them knows how to read Maya script, understands the ancient counting system and can work out the riddle,” Selena said. “Which is highly unlikely, given what a bunch of monkeys they looked like back in the jungle.”
“We can’t be certain though,” Atticus said. “We should press on while we have an advantage.”
And with that, they turned their flashlights into the pitch-black of the main burial chamber and started searching for Montesino’s mysterious doomsday machine.
They didn’t have to look for very long.
11
“Over there!” Atticus said. “On the altar.”
He shone his flashlight on a carved stone slab and walked closer toward it, his heart full of anticipation. Then, his hopes were dashed. The altar was empty and there was no sign of either the priest’s grave or Montesino’s strange device. Carved into the wall behind it, a giant bas-relief of Huracan stood silent sentinel over the chamber.
“Gosh!” Selena said, looking at the carvings on the altar. “This is odd.”
“Just what I was thinking,” said Atticus.
The rest of the crew joined them around the massive stone slab. “What’s odd about it?” Decker asked.
“First, there’s no sign of anything Montesino wrote about. Second, these carvings seem to be describing the infamous snake kings of the Kaanul Dynasty.”
“And this is odd, why?” asked the American.
“Because the Kaanul Dynasty were based quite far north from here, in an area roughly comprised of Mexico’s Campeche state and northern Guatemala, not here in this part of Belize.”
Riley was frowning. “Wait, what the hell was that about snake kings?”
“They weren’t actually snakes, Riley,” Selena said with an eye roll. “Do try and be sensible.”
“Sure, but when someone says snake kings in a place like this, your imagination tends to start whirring.”
She frowned. “Well, just relax. The snake kings were just normal men who idolized snakes. The worship of reptiles and snakes was all too common around the ancient world. No one knows exactly why.”
“So it’s definitely not because humanity was seeded on the Earth millions of years ago by a race of hyper-intelligent interdimensional reptilian overlords who still to this day rule over us?”
“Riley?”
“What?”
She put her hands on her hips and fixed her eyes on him. “We’re back to you having to shut up again, aren’t we?”
“Is that a ‘no’ on the lizard kings, then?”
“It is a solid no on the time-travelling lizard kings or whatever drivel you just spouted. As I just said, and I think both patiently and with great aplomb – many ancient cultures worshipped reptiles and snakes. The tombs at Holmul that I mentioned earlier back in the Jeep also contained a strange pendant devoted to the sun-god which we think offers a clue about these mysterious snake kings.”
“And they’re absolutely not real snakes?” Riley asked with a grin.
“I thought we established you had to be quiet now?”
He made a gesture pretending to zip up his lips and took a step back.
Selena said, “The ruling family who we call the snake kings are called that because they used a very unique snakehead as their dynasty’s emblem.”
“But why did they choose that particular emblem?” Charlie asked.
Riley hissed. “Because they were half-reptilian, mate!”
“Oh, do stop being such a tit,” Selena said.
“Hey!”
“I can’t answer that specifically, Charlie,” she said. “Different families used different creatures from the natural world to represent them. More interesting is that one of the jade pieces – a beautiful piece, half cormorant and half sun-god, bore the name of one of these snake kings, even though his dynasty ruled an area hundreds of miles away.”
“So what?” Riley asked.
Acosta gasped. “Such ignorance! This finding tells us so much about the ancient Maya kingdoms! The extent of their political and diplomatic influence, where they traded… the list goes on.”
Riley shrugged. “Just a question, mate.”
Acosta shook his head and mumbled in Spanish.
Then, Atticus spoke. “Look over here, Lena! Look at the colors! This azul maya is as fresh as they day it was painted.”
“Azul maya?” Charlie asked.
“Maya blue,” Atticus said. “It’s a very unique pigment made by the ancient Maya. And unless I’m very much mistaken, these are references to the same divine power, the same Stormbringer that Montesino wrote about.”
Selena stepped away from Riley and Charlie and walked over to her father. Raising her flashlight beam to add more light to his, she gasped when she saw the glyphs he had been studying.
“My God! You’re right.”
“What does it say?” Decker asked.
She ran her hand over the intricate carved glyphs on the stone wall behind the altar. “Um, let me think. It starts with a warning, telling anyone searching for the power to give up and turn back before it’s too late.” She blew some dust away from the bas-relief carvings. “And these glyphs here say whosoever shall persist with the hunt will be wrenched asunder by the mighty power of the gods.”
“Excellent,” Riley said. “I don’t know about you guys, but that is just what I wanted to hear today.”
“What is asunder?” Diana asked. “I am not sure I know the meaning of this word.”
“It’s archaic,” Atticus said. “And sometimes literary, so I’m not surprised you don’t know it, my dear. It means apart.”
“So they are saying…”
Charlie sighed. “That if we don’t pack up our little backpacks and fly away with our tails between our legs, the gods are going to rip us into pieces.”
“But whatever can that mean?” Diana asked. “Ripped apart by what?”
Selena tapped the stone wall. “By the Power of the Gods, I suppose. The Stormbringer. Exactly what that means, I don’t know. They don’t elaborate here, and Montesino was also strangely reluctant to describe it.”
“Maybe he was too terrified,” A
costa whispered. “Too scared even to write down what he had seen in any further detail than he managed in the Codex. This is what I think. Whatever he witnessed all those centuries ago struck such a terrible fear into his heart, he could not bring himself to detail it in the Codex beyond a few simple sentences. This is my belief.”
“It’s as good a theory as any other we have,” Atticus said. “That’s for sure.”
“These glyphs here say the power must not be removed from the altar,” Selena said.
Charlie shone his flashlight on the flat, smooth altar stone. “Unless we’re talking about the power of invisibility, I’d say it’s a little late for that.”
Decker stepped into the light. “Excuse me for being dumb enough to ask the obvious question, but if this power is so goddam awesome, shouldn’t we at least be able to see what it is? I mean, look at this place! It’s empty! Totally empty. We’re exactly where Montesino told us to come in the Codex and yet there’s nothing here except a bare stone altar and a warning carved into a wall. C’mon…”
“C’mon what?” Selena asked. “You’re not suggesting he made it all up?”
“Right now, all I know is we’re in danger. Don’t forget about the guys who just tried to blow our heads off! They’re still out there.”
“And we’re still in here,” Diana said. “Without a clue to the location of this divine power.”
“But that’s not true,” Atticus said. “We do have a clue.”
12
Selena turned to him. “Would you care to repeat that, father?”
A broad smile appeared on his face. “The last line of glyphs here has been added at a later date, don’t you think?”
She studied the carvings he was pointing out. “I suppose it’s possible.”
“It’s more than possible, Lena! These last few glyphs were added by a totally different stonemason, and they seem to offering us some sort of indication about what happened to the Stormbringer.”
“What is it?”
“Some sort of map, and it says the Underworld holds the key!”
Atticus lowered himself to his knees and started brushing sand and dust away from the tiles to reveal a large stone seal carved into the floor. Perfectly circular, the seal was around twenty inches across and carved from pure jade. When they had removed all the sand and made the entire carving visible, they saw it was sitting at the heart of a complex image carved into the floor tiles, stretching all the way to the wall behind the altar.
“But it’s just gibberish,” Selena said. “Read it again! The glyphs make no sense at all, Dad.”
“Are you sure about that?” he said with a devilish smile on his face.
She turned and stared at them again, frustration obviously rising inside her. “All right, I give up.”
“That’s no good!” Atticus said. “Unless you’re giving up-side down!”
Her mouth fell open a little. “Ha! The glyphs are upside down!”
“And back to front. Now, try again.”
“My goodness!” she said. “This is brilliant! Amazing! Enlightening!” She stopped and stared at her father, paling. “Terrifying!”
The faces of the rest of the crew froze.
“Why that last one?” Charlie said. “I was okay with brilliant and amazing and enlightening. I really liked enlightening. But not terrifying.”
“I agree,” said Diana. “What is so terrifying?”
Selena and Atticus fell silent, each taking another look at the glyphs. Acosta pushed forward through the small crew for a closer look.
“I’m no specialist in ancient Mayan glyphs,” he said, squinting. “But I agree. This does not look good.”
Riley sighed. “Would one of the eggheads in this room…”
“Hidden chamber,” Selena corrected him. “We’re in a hidden chamber, not a room.”
“Fine. Would one of the eggheads in this hidden chamber please tell the rest of us just what the hell is going on? Even I’m starting to get worried and I’m as hard as a six-inch tungsten nail!”
“And so modest,” Selena purred.
He shrugged. “You know me, Lena.”
“Yes,” she said, sighing. “Unfortunately, I do. Anyway, the good news is, we know why Montesino’s divine power is not here.”
“Why?” Decker asked.
“It was moved.”
“Whoa,” Charlie said. “This logic is getting too complex for me. It’s not here because it was moved? I can’t follow this.”
“All right, Charles,” Atticus said. “There’s no need for your particular brand of impertinence. What my daughter is trying to say is that the Stormbringer is real, it exists, and that it was moved by a Maya priest after one of the snake kings tried to seize it for use in battle.”
“It says that?” Diana asked.
He nodded. “Clearly. It says here that the power of Huracan was removed to stop an insane snake king from trying to find it and abuse it.”
“Fair enough,” Riley said.
“And see here,” Selena said. “These glyphs are not only upside down and back to front, presumably to stop casual thieves, looters and ignorant, barbaric snake kings from finding the new location. They are also presented in obscure riddle form. However, I believe between my father and I, we have formed a good translation and should be able to discern the new location of the power. Starting here – this glyph here is a ceiba tree.”
Charlie frowned. “Doesn’t look like a tree.”
“Upside down, remember?” Selena said. “The ceiba tree is very special in ancient Maya culture. They believed the world was split into three basic levels – the heavens, the earth and the underworld. According to their religion, the ceiba tree grew through all three realms, with the roots starting in the underworld, the trunk coming up through the earth – this plane we are now standing on – and the canopy opening up in the heavens.”
“Fascinating,” Riley said. “Where’s the gold?”
Atticus gave him a look and took over. “The ancient Maya also believed that the world was constituted of what they called the four cardinal directions – east, west, north and south. The heart of all these, or the center, was where the ceiba tree grew. East was the most important because of the rising sun.”
Selena crouched down and ran her fingers over the carved ridges. “This glyph here appears to be Huracan, the god of storms. I’m guessing these lines represent his power. As you can all see, the image of Huracan is located in the roots of the ceiba tree.”
“In the underworld?” Diana said.
Selena nodded. “Exactly.”
“Great,” Decker said. “We’re going to hell. Anyone have a handbasket we can travel in?”
“Funny.” Charlie chuckled, turning to leave. “I hope you guys find what you’re looking for in hell. Send me a postcard if… I mean when you make it!”
“You’re going nowhere, Valentine,” Selena said. “Get your backside back here!”
“But I just want to drink banana daiquiris on Kantiang Beach! I don’t want to go to hell in a handbasket and find the power of the gods!”
“Then you signed up to the wrong crew,” Decker said. “Because that’s exactly what we’re going to do!”
“And not just anywhere in hell,” Atticus said grimly. “We’re going to the ninth level of hell!”
“Huh?” Decker said, suddenly less confident.
Selena got to her feet and brushed her clothes down. “The ancient Maya believed the underworld was made up of nine levels of hell. You can see this represented in their temples which very often have nine levels, Chichen Itza being the most famous example.”
“So we really are going to burn in hell!” Charlie said. “Imagine the endless, horrendous baking misery of all that heat and fire.”
“Sounds like February back on the station,” Riley said wistfully. “Damn, I really miss that place.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Atticus said. “But what you have just described is a Western or Christian
conception of hell. To the ancient Maya, hell is not about fire at all, but a cold, dark and dank realm.”
“What, like England?” Riley said.
Selena scowled at him. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, Corporal Carr.”
“Probably just as well,” said the Australian.
“Anyway,” Selena said. “Getting back to business, the Maya saw hell as a cold and dark place because it was down in the roots of the ceiba tree. And Maya mythology is all about people struggling with the gods of the underworld and creation and destruction. It’s a busy realm.”
“And now we’re going there to find the source of Huracan’s power…” Diana’s words trailed away into the gloom.
“But where is there? Decker asked.
“That’s easy enough,” Atticus said. “This part of the seal over here is a map and it seems to indicate where we can find the specific entrance to Xibalba.”
“And what is Xibalba?” Riley asked.
“The place of fright,” Atticus said. “It’s just the Mayan word for their underworld.”
“There’s that word hell again!” said Charlie.
“You might say that, but it’s not an exact translation.”
“So no demons then…” Diana said. “Thank God.”
“Well, there’s always the Camazotz…” Atticus mumbled.
Selena looked at him sharply. “Don’t tell them that!”
“Don’t tell them what?” said Decker.
Selena sighed. “The Camazotz were monsters found in Xibalba. The word means death bat.”
Riley slapped his hands together. “Excellent news! I’ve always wanted to fight death bats. Throw in some lizard kings and I’ve nearly got something to write home about!”
“Maybe we could get back to reality for a second,” Decker said. “Where is the entrance to this Xibalba place?”
Atticus said, “According to this, it’s in a cave inside Flower Mountain.”
“Flower Mountain?” asked Diana.
“It’s a sort of Maya paradise,” Acosta said. “I thought it was mythical… that it didn’t really exist, until now.”
