by David Wood
Bell’s forehead drew into a frown of concern. “My apologies, Mr. Maddock. I really didn’t expect it to be quite so challenging.”
“Just imagine what it must have been like doing this in pitch darkness,” Angel put in as she joined them.
Maddock looked at her sideways. “Yeah,” he said slowly, trying to do exactly that. “I wonder...”
“Uh, oh,” Bones warned. “He’s thinking again. Stand back. Don’t get any on you.”
“What if we’re supposed to be doing this in total darkness?”
“Right,” Bones said slowly, the sarcasm unmistakable. “That’s a really good idea.”
“No, he’s right,” Miranda said. “Back in the cenote in Tulum, I got confused and didn’t know which passage to take. I was out of air and I knew I had to get it right on the first try, so I shut off my dive light. There was just enough daylight getting through to show me the way forward.”
“The operative word there being ‘daylight,’” Bones countered. “I don’t think there’s any of that where we need to go.”
“You’re missing the point,” Maddock said quickly. “These tests, the rivers, the cooking stone... We keep thinking we need to find a way to avoid them, but every time, the only solution is to play along.”
Bell nodded slowly. “In the Popol Vuh, the Hero Twins had to spend the night in the Dark House. They were given a torch but they knew it was a test, so they refused to use it.”
“That’s it then. It’s something we can test at least.” He switched his headlamp off, though there wasn’t a noticeable difference in the light level. “Turn off your lights. We’ll see what happens.”
Angel and Miranda immediately did, but Bones hesitated, giving Maddock a chagrined look before finally complying. When the last LED light winked out, darkness fell over them like a heavy, stifling blanket.
“This sucks,” Bones mumbled.
“Afraid of the dark, big bro?” Angel said.
“Give it a second,” Maddock said. “Our eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark yet.”
“They’re not going to adjust to this, Maddock. To see in the dark, you have to have at least a little bit of light.”
“Maybe we’re supposed to use sonar,” Angel suggested. “Echolocation. Like bats.”
“Shh,” Maddock hissed, trying to concentrate on piercing the veil of night with his eyes. He knew Bones was right. Night vision was one thing, but without some faint source of illumination, the pupils of their eyes would never dilate wide enough to let them see in absolute darkness. If he saw anything at all, it probably was just his eyes playing tricks on him.
“Okay,” he said after a moment, “It was worth a—”
“Does anyone else see that?” Miranda said, cutting him off. “On the ceiling? It looks like stars.”
Maddock had seen them, faint points of gleaming pale blue, but had assumed they were just an optical illusion.
“I see them,” Angel chimed in.
“That’s Serpens,” Bell exclaimed.
“You’re not actually suggesting that we can see the stars through solid stone,” Bones said.
“It must be some kind of phosphorescent lichen,” Maddock said. “There’s no way we would have ever seen that with our lights on.”
“It’s showing us the path,” Bell continued. “If we follow the Serpent Route, we’ll find the way out.”
“Wait!” Maddock shouted, quickly before the archaeologist could act on this revelation. “Nobody move. I’ll do this. Once I figure out where we need to go, we can turn on our lights again.”
“Why you?” Miranda asked. “You’re not Superman, you know.”
Maddock had to fight the urge to snap back at her. “You can go first next time, okay? For now, just keep it down and let me concentrate.”
Without waiting for her consent, he dropped to his knees and placed his palms flat on the rough stone floor. Raising his eyes toward the ceiling, he located the nearest “star” and began crawling toward it, testing the ground ahead of him as he went. He was doing fine, making good time, right up to the moment when he put his right hand out and, instead of finding solid stone, it just kept going. Unbalanced, he tilted forward suddenly, his chest slamming down against the edge of the chasm he had nearly plunged into.
Angel and Bones cried out to him almost simultaneously; she used his first name, and Bones used his last.
“I’m good,” he shouted, regaining his four points of contact and backing slowly away from the pit. Despite that assurance, the near miss left him a little shaken and the unrelenting darkness wasn’t making it any easier. Nevertheless, he eased forward, probing the floor to locate the rim of the hole so he could find a way around it.
After what seemed an eternity—probably a good thirty seconds or so—he was moving again, albeit a little more cautiously. He had to navigate around two more fissures, though finding them was a lot easier since both were venting hot fumes. The third hole he encountered was directly under the point of light that corresponded to the star in the Serpens constellation they had begun calling “the Serpent’s Maw.” Maddock thought he could feel a cool breeze rising from the chasm, but there was nothing else remarkable about it.
“I think this is the one,” he called out. “Turning on my light now.”
He shielded his eyes against the expected shock of brightness and hit the switch. Even with that precaution, the brilliance stung his eyes. Blinking away tears, he shone the light down into the hole.
The fissure was small by comparison to most of the others, more a jagged crack in the floor than a gaping hole. The sides were not sheer opposing faces, but undulated in and out, forming a series of easily discernible handholds and steps. Climbing down it would be a piece of cake, at least for everyone but Bell, and even he would probably be okay as long as there was someone to belay him.
The only real danger was the uncertainty of what lay below.
The cavern lit up again as the rest of the group switched on their lights and came to join him.
“Should we send the camera down?” Angel asked.
Maddock shook his head. “No time. Bones, rig up a hasty belay. I’m going to climb down and check it out.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Miranda said. When Maddock returned a blank look, she added. “You said I could go first.”
“I did?” Maddock shook his head, more in exasperation than anything else. Maybe Bones was right. This was definitely a lot easier with his regular crew backing him up. “Fine. Knock yourself out.”
“I think what he meant to say,” Angel said, “is ‘be careful.’”
Miranda gave her a big smile, and then promptly sat down on the cavern floor, her legs dangling out over the edge. With no apparent hesitation, she lowered herself into the fissure, and began climbing down as if descending a ladder.
Maddock leaned close to Angel and whispered in her ear. “She’s just doing this to impress you, you know.”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Angel whispered back. “But you know, you don’t always have to be the first one through the door.”
“I let Bones go first sometimes.”
She touched a finger to his lips, shushing him.
Miranda’s head and shoulders emerged from the fissure a few seconds later. “I don’t know if this is the right one after all. The climb down is easy, but the bottom is a death trap.”
Bell knelt beside. “Describe it.”
“It’s like the River of Scorpions, only a lot worse. The floor is covered with shards of obsidian, sticking straight up. They’re everywhere. If we try to go down, we’ll get sliced to ribbons.”
“So much for that idea,” Bones said. “Back to the drawing board?”
Bell shook his head grimly. “This is the correct passage,” he said. “The chamber below us is another test. The House of Blades.”
“How did the Hero Twins beat that one?” Maddock asked.
“Uh, they told the blades not to hurt them. T
he blade points lowered and they were unharmed.”
“Maybe there’s a specific phrase in the Mayan language that will make the blades retract into the floor,” Bones suggested. “How do you say, ‘Hey Siri, lower the knives,’ in ancient Mayan?”
“I doubt they had the technology to pull that off,” Miranda said, rolling her eyes. “Or maybe you believe in magic?”
Maddock stared down into the fissure. “Did you actually step on any of the blades?”
Miranda stared at him like he had two heads. “Are you kidding?”
“It might be a test of courage. Your boot soles will provide some protection. And if the points are close enough, it will distribute your weight, just like a swami on a bed of nails.” He grinned. “Want me to go first?”
She shot him a withering look, and started down again. A few seconds later, her voice welled up from below. “I’m about to step onto them.”
Maddock braced himself for a cry of pain or a stream of curse words. Instead, there was just a loud snick.
CHAPTER 28
Isabella Beltran glowered at Carina. “You killed my uncle. What makes you think I would ever help you?”
The red-haired woman stared back implacably for several seconds. “I regret what happened to Hector, but he betrayed our gods. You must realize this.”
“You’re one to talk about betrayal.”
Carina ignored the accusation. “Hector failed his most sacred duty to usher in the new age. But it’s not too late to correct his mistake.”
“The Shadow?” Despite everything Hector had taught her about the Shadow and the role of the Serpent Brotherhood in keeping it a secret, she had always wondered if any of it was really true. Now she knew the terrible truth. “You actually want to start a pandemic?”
“Such was always the will of the gods. At the end of every age, they have swept away the failures and started anew.”
Isabella looked past the other woman, studying the other faces in the chamber. She didn’t recognize the gringos, but she knew the others—acolytes of the Brotherhood, just like Carina.
Traitors.
“Don’t tell me you agree with her? Did Hector teach you nothing? Our traditions are there to anchor us to our ancestors. They were never meant to be taken literally.”
None of the warriors would meet her gaze, but the gringo who had recognized her spoke up. “Miss Beltran, I can see why you might not want to see the world cleansed. You are criminal. A drug dealer. Your wealth and power were built on a foundation of undesirable people and anti-social cravings. But surely you must see that it’s not sustainable in the long term. There are just too many of them.”
“Them? You mean human beings?”
“Oh, please. They’re miserable cockroaches. That’s why they turn to your drugs. They know they’re miserable.”
Isabella stared at him for a moment. “Who the hell are you?”
“Call me Alex.”
She remembered that one of the gunmen had earlier called out another name. “Alex Scano. I’ve heard of you. How dare you call me a drug dealer? You’ve made more money selling pills to those ‘miserable cockroaches’ than I could dream of.”
“Ah, but the difference is that I’m ready to stomp them out. You’d rather keep them as pets. They’re parasites, Miss Beltran. An infestation that needs to be wiped out.”
“If you really feel that way,” Isabella said, holding his gaze, “then what are you waiting for? You have the Shadow already, don’t you? I know you found el Guia in Honduras.” She paused, setting the hook. “But you’re afraid to die like a cockroach, aren’t you? You’re here because you think you can find a cure to keep you safe.”
Alex turned to Carina. “This is a waste of time. Let’s just blow the wall.”
“Wait!” Isabella cried out. Although it had perhaps not been Scano’s intention, that was the one attack against which she had no defenses. “You don’t need to do that. There’s a way into the Houses of Xibalba.”
“And you will show us?” Carina said, her voice edged with suspicion. “Why the change of heart?”
“You said it yourself. Hector made me his heir. I am the high priestess of the Serpent Brotherhood, not you. I cannot let you destroy this sacred place. If you truly honored our traditions, you would feel the same way.”
Carina’s only answer was to gesture toward the still hot cooking stone. “Do it.”
Isabella shook loose of the grip of her captors, but instead of approaching the passage, she went to the stone figures at the periphery of the chamber. She chose one, placed her hands against it and spoke in the ancient tongue. “Morning, Hun-Came.”
She then moved to the statue beside it, and greeted it as well. “Morning, Vucub-Came.”
“Of course,” Carina whispered. “The test of recognition. I should have seen it.”
Isabella looked over her shoulder at the other woman. “Yes, you should have.”
Although she had never been in the chamber, Isabella knew this was the correct solution. Hector had told her this story when she was just a little girl, the story of how the Hero Twins sent Mosquito to bite the Death Lords in their Council chamber. The first two were revealed to be effigies of carved wood, but the third one cried out when bitten, which caused the fourth one to ask his brother what was wrong, not only identifying them as the real Death Lords, but naming his brother as well. In this fashion, Mosquito had learned the names of the Death Lords and reported back to the Twins, which allowed them to bypass the test.
Allowing the intruders free passage into the Houses of Xibalba might have seemed almost as sacrilegious as letting them blast their way in, but she knew that this was the simplest trial they would face.
The Lords of Xibalba might not have been real, but they were by no means defenseless.
“It worked!” Miranda called out. “You were right!”
Maddock let out the breath he had been holding with a relieved sigh, and climbed into the fissure. As Miranda had indicated, the way down was much easier than some of their earlier descents, with a veritable ladder of holds turning into an actual staircase down to the cavern where Miranda was waiting.
The beam of his light was reflected back in hundreds on glittering pinpoints, like sunlight dancing on a wind-rippled sea, only this sea was made entirely of glossy black obsidian shards, each one as long as Maddock’s arm from elbow to fingertip.
An area of a several square feet around Miranda was clear, revealing a flat floor perforated by hundreds of little holes, from which gleamed more shiny black points. It was all eerily reminiscent of the river of scorpions. Scattered amidst the thin razors of volcanic glass were no less than three human skeletons. There was a clear section about ten yards long off to the left, like the start of a path, but Miranda wisely had not started down it yet.
“As soon as I put my foot on the blades, they dropped into the floor. That way looks clear. But look at that.”
She indicated the wall about fifty yards beyond the clear path. The chamber was not a natural cavern, but more closely resembled the interior of the pyramid in the City of Shadow, with walls of stacked stone. There were rectangular doorways in each wall—Maddock counted ten in all, including the one through which they had entered—but that was not what Miranda was pointing to. One section of the wall was reflecting their lights back with a warm golden hue which Maddock instantly recognized.
“That’s another guidestone.”
“But are we supposed to walk toward it, or in the direction it’s looking?”
The latter choice would mean intentionally stepping onto more of the obsidian blades, but there was no guarantee that the cleared section would stay that way.
“Whatever we do, we should stay together,” Maddock said. He ducked back into the stairwell. “Come on down. It’s safe.”
“Ha!” Bones’ disbelieving laughter echoed down at him. “Sure it is.”
Nevertheless, in a matter of just a few minutes, they were all gathered on the floor of th
e Blade House. Bell studied the alignment of the guidestone on the wall for a few seconds before giving his opinion. “It’s just a guess, but if this is a test of courage as you suggest, then taking the easy way is probably not the right answer.”
“That’s my feeling as well,” Maddock said. He turned to Miranda. “Is it my turn again?”
She scowled at him, and then answered with action rather than words, raising her foot above the obsidian blades.
As soon as she transferred her weight onto that foot, there was another loud click, and another section of blades, about five yards long, retreated into the floor. Simultaneously, the blades in the cleared section they had not chosen, shot out of the floor. There was one other change, which Angel noticed first. “The guidestone is gone.”
Maddock turned his head to look and saw that the golden plate had indeed disappeared, but even as he was processing this news, Bones called out. “Found it. Right there.”
The guidestone—or more likely a second one exactly like the first—now shone out from a different wall, almost perpendicular to the newly cleared section.
“There’s our answer,” Maddock said. “Go where the guide dog is looking.”
“Unless it’s some kind of trick,” Bones said. “What if they change the rules halfway through the game?”
“The Death Lords were cruel,” Bell said, “but not particularly devious. The tests described in the Popol Vuh were rather simplistic. Of course,” he finished, “Anything is possible.”
“Way to inspire confidence, doc,” Bones grumbled, but he pushed past Maddock and Miranda, oriented himself away from the newly revealed guidestone, and stepped out onto the blades....
Which promptly vanished, along with the golden plate that had shown the way.
They proceeded cautiously, following the gaze of each new guidestone as it was revealed. As they moved through the maze of blades, the temperature dropped noticeably until it was chilly enough to raise gooseflesh on their arms. The frigid air was issuing from one of the doors, which not surprisingly, was exactly where the guidestones seemed to be leading them.
