The Serpent Dreamer

by Cecelia Holland

  “We have books,” Corban said. “They’re kept in special places, not for everybody.”

  “Wise,” said Tok Pakal. “Our books also are kept safe.” He nodded. “I am pleased to welcome you among us, Corban. I shall direct Erkan to feed you, and see you have a place to sleep, and tomorrow I would be pleased if you would ride with me.”

  “Ride,” Corban said, startled. He had seen no horses anywhere. He said, “Thank you. I will.” He resisted the urge to bow. Instead, he backed away, out of Tok Pakal’s influence, and looked for Erkan, because he was hungry.

  In the crowd around him, he saw Qikab Chan watching him with a scowl, and he remembered the big man’s hand almost breaking his arm and turned away, half-angry. He had to be careful here. He had to watch out who was great and who was nothing, which was not what it seemed, obviously. But he was close to their city now. They would take him there, eventually. He thought of Epashti and Ahanton, now probably well on their way home; against his will his heart tugged after them. Suddenly, keenly, too late, he missed them. Erkan was coming up to him, his hand out, speaking importantly. Corban let the little man lead him away.

  In the morning, the drums were beating a steady patter. Corban walked by the great line of them that stretched just behind the Itzen tents; the drummers, each wearing the short cloak of some rough tawny pelt over his left shoulder, pounded on the leather heads of the drums with clubs, held two to each hand. He stood to watch them. They wielded the clubs deftly, using one or the other, or two at once, by cocking their wrists as they struck. The flight of their hands back and forth held his eyes, the rise and fall and nimble twist of scores of arms in a row, like a dance.

  All around, the camp was stirring, full of purpose. Corban realized the drums gave signals, told all these people what to do; he listened to the pounding, trying to distinguish the words of this language. An Itzen in feathered armbands sauntered along behind the drums, overseeing them, but all the drummers were ordinary people.

  Little people, Tok Pakal had called them. And now the dwarf came bustling up to him. “Come along, Tok Pakal is waiting for you.”

  Corban followed him into the square in the middle of the Itzen tents. In the midst of swarms of people, two of the smaller tents were being struck; one sagged down suddenly, and the men around it whooped.

  In front of Tok Pakal’s tent there were no horses, in spite of what the chief had said, only the ungainly huge half-covered chair. The dwarf skipped on ahead of Corban and went nimbly up the side, into the seat where Tok Pakal was already sitting. The chief raised his hand to Corban. “Come sit with me, and ride with me, so that we can talk.”

  Corban looked around, and saw in the bustle and crowd of the square that there were three other chairs, two on the ground, but one being carried along; the chair rested on poles, and three men to a pole, front and back, bore it easily around. Corban hesitated, looking down at the front of Tok Pakal’s chair, where now he saw the sockets for the poles, and the dwarf called, “Come, Animal-Head! Come with us!”

  He climbed into the chair and settled himself carefully onto the seat beside Tok Pakal. Uneasy in the close quarters, he turned his gaze to the chair cover, painted inside with bright colors. Like the writing he had seen, the painting made close blocks of figures, but now he saw that these were drawings, people in fantastic headdresses, carrying snakes and birds.

  Then suddenly the whole chair lurched. He twitched, grabbing with both hands for the frame, as the chair swung up into the air and started briskly forward.

  The dwarf hooted. Corban caught himself sitting rigid, his body cocked forward, his hands clutching the side and the seat of the chair. He relaxed. The chair jounced along under him, the scene outside a blur. Closer, the backs of the men bearing the poles were already sleek with sweat. They wore pads of leather strapped on their shoulders, to cushion the heavy pole. Corban eased himself back into the seat beside Tok Pakal, letting go of the frame.

  Tok Pakal put his hands up to his head, lifted off his feathered headdress, and handed it to Erkan, who stood on the seat of the chair to put the headdress reverently on the shelf above. The chieftain was watching Corban intently.

  “You have no palanquins in your country?”

  “No,” Corban said. “We have . . . other ways of getting around.” Borne in the chair, they were moving rapidly out of the camp, to the north, the men at the poles trotting along under their burden.

  The regular pounding of the drums changed to a triplet beat. Corban glanced around the edge of the chair and saw the front of the army ranging along on either side, stretching away toward the hills on the left and the river on the right, and the other palanquins swaying and bobbing among them. The steady motion made the chair sway gently from side to side, and he began to feel a little sick to his stomach; he settled back into the depths of the chair.

  Tok Pakal was watching him with mild amusement, Erkan with open glee. The dwarf clapped his hands.

  “So you see! We have everything! We are the best people!”

  Corban grunted at him, his temper heating. “Where I come from,” he said, “we have beasts, like bison, only prettier, which we sit on the backs of, and they carry us around wherever we want to go.”

  Their faces went blank with disbelief. The dwarf gave a highpitched snort of laughter. “He’s lying. Isn’t he, Tok Pakal Chan?”

  Tok Pakal was staring at Corban, his lips pursed. He looked, down at the grinning dwarf, and laid one hand on his head. “We are always the best people, little man.”

  Corban turned his eyes away, out across the baking summer plain. He wanted to get down; the chair confined him, and he missed the steady work of walking. He could hear the drums beating another rhythm and he wanted to find out what they were saying, and inside the chair he could see very little.

  He remembered riding a horse; he had never liked that, either.

  Tok Pakal said, “Why did you come away from your own country?”

  Corban turned his attention back to the other man. The dwarf had fallen asleep, his great head on the chieftain’s knee. Tok Pakal lounged in the side of the seat, the shadow covering his face.

  Corban said, “I never belonged there, either.”

  Tok Pakal seemed to accept that. He shifted his weight slightly, looking away out of the chair, toward the sun-beaten plain. “We left, also. We ran, after we lost a war.” His voice was even, as if he recited this, an old story, boring but necessary. “Not I, my father’s father. We lost the war and ran away, and then where we came to, where we tried to build a new city, that went bad also, and we ran from there. Up the big river, until we came to a place where there was already a mountain, so we knew we had come to the right place.”

  Corban said, “Cibala.”

  The big man gave a sort of laugh. “Yes, so they call it now. We named it Xibalba, for the place of exile and death, but the little people couldn’t even get that right.” He shrugged, the sunlight tinkling on the gold collar around his neck. The collar was made of green and gold beads in rays spreading away from a medallion, or plaque, some creature figured in the middle, claws and teeth and mottled skin in the tight folded style of the Itzen. Corban thought, I understand him as slightly as he does me, I don’t even know what that animal is, but it must mean something great to him.

  He said, to know something, anyway, “Where did he come from—Erkan?”

  “Out somewhere to the west of here, on the plain. West of Cibala is endless plain. When I got him, he was just a tiny boy, and he was all bruised. They had beaten him, terrified and starved him.” His voice went tight with indignation, and then softened to a silky murmur. “Now he is greater than any of them.” His hand moved over the head of the sleeping dwarf. His gaze remained on Corban, his eyes full of considering.

  Corban said, “In your stories, is there a tree?”

  Tok Pakal frowned at him, puzzled, considering dispelled. “Yes, of course, the great tree at the center of the world. You see it figured in the sky, every
night.”

  “And a serpent,” Corban said.

  “Yes, of course. You know our stories?”

  Corban said, “No. Sometimes I wonder how well I know my own. What was the name of the place you left?”

  “That was Mutul, the greatest city in the world. And the only right place for us. Someday we will go back.” His hand cradled the dwarf ‘s shaggy head. “Maybe not until the Fifth Age, but we’ll go back.”

  Corban said, “I will never go back.”

  Tok Pakal laughed, his eyes crinkling. “Not now, anyway. But, you know, everything eventually returns where it was. The world is made so. Every night, in the sky, you see that confirmed.” He gave the dwarf a little shake. “Up, my little friend—run and find us something to eat.”

  The dwarf got up, and skittered off. Corban settled back again, pulling this all into his mind.

  He understood a lot more now, the tattered wall of the tent now, the bits of cloth, the patched chair he rode in; they had brought all this matter with them, from Mutul to the next place of exile, then somehow through the wilderness to Cibala, all the way losing pieces and trying to fix their gear, without the means to fix it properly. And in Cibala they had made something like what they had left, or at least, what they remembered of what they had left.

  But like Corban, they were still looking for the sacred city.

  He had thought he was almost there. Now he realized he should have known better, somehow, that something was wrong with his thinking.

  How much farther will I have to go? She promised me. But now he wondered if he really understood what she had promised him, or even what he had asked of her. He tried to remember exactly what she had said, but the words escaped across the zones of language. She had told him he would find something, in the west. He blinked, drowsy, the end of the promise suddenly loose and flopping, unconnected in his mind; thinking was too hard, and the motion of the chair lulled him; soon he was asleep.

  Near the height of the day, with the thunder rumbling in the distance, they stopped, and the other palanquins approached Tok Pakal’s and formed a square, with an open area in the middle, the way they had set their camp up. Corban got gladly out of the chair, happy to stretch and move again.

  Tok Pakal himself arose. Somebody brought his animal bench from the back of the palanquin and set it in the center of the open circle, and he sat down on it; somebody else came up with a big screen of feathers on a pole, and shaded him with it. Erkan came running up and stood by his knee, and the other Itzen gathered around him.

  Corban recognized many of them now. The older man with the nose ring came up quickly to Tok Pakal and murmured to him, one hand on his chief’s shoulder. Among the others was Qikab Chan, who caught Corban watching him and glared back. Corban kept his eyes on him, refusing to look away, and the big man started a step toward him, but then the others were pushing closer to Tok Pakal, and Qikab turned back among them.

  They were talking in their own language, and Corban could not understand them. In their midst, Tok Pakal was the only one sitting, massive on his animal bench.

  He was another man, here, than in the palanquin. He spoke in a loud, cold, important voice; he looked over their heads, distant and disdainful, although they bowed and put out their hands to him like beggars. He sent them this way and that way, and they went, bowing. Corban drifted off, before anybody commanded him again.

  The palanquins were drawn up on a little rise in the plain, with the great army spread out around it. For a while he watched the Itzen laying out their camp. They began with a ceremony, in which everybody in a rapt silence watched Tok Pakal set three stones on the ground; then with whistles and yells gangs of little people rushed around throwing up the tents. The Itzen themselves all went off to a place just outside the camp, in the swale below the rise, where there was a tree. Corban went the other way.

  The tents were going up like blossoms flowering into the air. Behind them, the drummers, in their shoulder capes, were dragging their oversized kettles into a single long line that curved around the outside edge of the Itzen square. This line seemed to mark the boundary between the Itzens and the rest of the army. Many of the drummers had gone somewhere, leaving their mallets behind, and all the Itzen were at their council. Corban stood by the end of the line of drums, looking out across the plain.

  People filled it from the foot of the first hills to the bank of the river, people in endless rows, stirring and bustling and sending up a general unceasing clatter of voices all blending together into one featureless drone. Little campfires already studded their lines, sending up crinkles of smoke. They passed baskets up and down, and jugs of water. Even from here, he could see that many were women, and he saw children; he thought of Ahanton, and his chest hurt suddenly. He wondered who they were, this swarm of camp followers, if they were the families of the leather men.

  These were the little people, he realized, with a gust of anger. They had no tents, no shelter, they were in the open, unprotected, with the thunder rolling closer, and the heavy clouds of a storm climbing higher into the western sky. His ears pricked up suddenly. More than thunder. He heard drums again. He wheeled around, toward the Itzen tents, as all around him the drummers came rushing back to their posts.

  A crash of thunder sounded almost overhead. Two of the Itzen rushed by him, hurrying down toward the little people’s camp. Corban twisted, watching them; as they ran the leather men gathered to meet them. The first rolls of the drums boomed in his ears, and under his feet the ground began to thrum. The drumbeat forced its way even through the march of the storm. The waves of the drumrolls carried across the camp, and from all sides leather men were running toward the south and west, gathering together as they ran.

  Corban stood rooted where he was. The drums’ clatter picked up his heartbeat and carried it on, harder, faster. Rain began to slam against him, pelting his head, his shoulders. More of the Itzen ran past him, carrying spears and shields on their arms. He collected himself, excited; somebody was attacking them, he thought, under the cover of the storm, and he strode along the drum line, straining his eyes to see.

  Under a gray boiling sky, in a rushing of the wind, Ahanton pressed her back to the rock behind her. She sat at the peak of this ridge, which ran like a long toe down away from her toward the river plain, and she could see all before her. Down the hillside, all the grass bent flat in the wind, Miska’s long deep-dented back went farther and farther away from her. He had left her here; he would come back for her, when he was done.

  The hill below her was steep, its flank buckled and creased into gulleys. Down where the land opened out onto the river plain, she could see the men moving in the gulleys, Wolves, and those others, Bears, people she didn’t know. They knew her father. She watched Miska run down among them, going quickly from one group to the next, getting them ready. She saw the sticks of bows in their hands. She saw them crouching down in the brush, waiting.

  Thunder rumbled. The wind caught hard at the red and blue cloak and she pulled it closer around her, in spite of the heat. He had tried to get her to leave it. “You can’t run with this,” he said. She refused. She clung to it, terrified of losing it, and he stopped insisting.

  Now, down there, so small she only knew it was her father because she had never taken her eyes off him, Miska ran out onto the flat plain, four Wolves on his heels.

  The sky overhead split open with a roar like all the monsters in the sky coming out; she winced down, her ears hurt, and the flash blinded her. When she blinked her eyes clear she couldn’t see her father anymore, only the insweep of the storm, the darkening air rushing around her, fitful and damp, full of bits of leaves and dirt, all the grass and trees lashing.

  She pressed her back to the rock. He had said, “Stay here. You will be safe here, you can hide for a while if you have to, and I’ll come get you when we’re done.” She felt the rock slippery behind her, as if she were already falling. Out on the plain, where the black clouds boiled, a tree of lightning
crackled down, branch on flickering branch. The thunder shocked her ears; the lightning struck again, this time so close her eyesight went to pure white, and she felt the fierce sharp fingers of the storm run over her hair and arms. The rain pounded on her like clubs. All around her was only darkness.

  Under it, she heard another sound, a steady boom she had heard before, that stopped the breath in her throat and turned her rigid with fear.

  Her body tensed to leap up. She had run from it once. She had hidden and escaped. This time she could not run, her father would come here, she would not leave her father. She reached her hands down and knotted her fingers in the grass at her feet, to hold her there, and waited.

  The first rumble of the thunder sounded; Miska wanted to see if the thunder would cover the sound of the drums, and he trotted slowly toward the edge of the great camp on the plain, to let the storm come on a little. Ahead of him, the pounded dust of the plain stretched away to the first clogged rows of people, huddled on the ground before the storm, so that he could see all the huddled bodies beyond. The size again amazed him, the numbers; he wondered how they fed so many, how there simply were so many people.

  Then at the edge of the camp somebody was running toward him, and another behind that, men carrying spears. He wheeled to a stop, glanced behind him, and waved the other Wolves on after him.

  He had brought the four men of the lodges with him, his best fighters, but they were hanging back. Even Hasei and Faskata loitered out there, as far from him as he was from the spearcarriers. He waved at them to come on, and then he heard the drum begin.

  He spun around again. The spearmen had gathered just outside the camp, between him and it. They had strange, misshapen bodies, and their heads were bald. One of them had a drum, and was beating out a song on it.

  He yelled. The thunder crashed again but the drum beat on. Deeper in the camp, farther, he heard another drum pick up the rhythm, and from all around the vast camp, men were running this way.