The Smoke Hunter

by Jacquelyn Benson

  She didn’t know the language. No one did—no one living, at any rate. But she had no doubt that what she’d just heard was a word.

  More than that: a name.

  Adam was staring up at her from the base of the statue, his eyes wide with astonishment.

  “They’re instruments,” Ellie repeated weakly. He responded by yanking the lever at the base of the statue.

  There was a loud ticking sound as ancient gears moved forward. The door at the far end of the room rose an inch from the floor.

  Adam raced over to it. He wedged his fingers into the narrow gap and hauled, the cords standing out on his neck.

  The door didn’t budge.

  Ellie half slid, half fell off the statue, ignoring him as she hurried to the next figure in the circle. This one was scaled like a lizard, glossy, inhuman eyes glaring red in the torchlight. She pulled herself up, feet scrambling for purchase. She found the pipe at the back and blew.

  Nothing.

  “Fake,” Adam said from below. He moved past her to the next figure, climbing as Ellie descended.

  “How the hell does this work?” he shouted down.

  “It’s like a flute. Blow across it, not into it,” she called as she dropped back to the ground.

  She stumbled against the next statue, catching herself. It was so very hot. The clouds of steam were a veil she fought through, one that invaded her brain, making it hard to think.

  A clear, haunting phrase sounded behind her, cutting through the fog.

  “We have a winner,” Adam announced from his perch.

  Just find the pipes, she ordered herself grimly, and started to climb a giant skeleton. But at the top of this statue, there was no pipe. Only a broken stub of wood, the mouthpiece snapped off centuries before.

  “This one’s broken,” she called, her voice cracking.

  “Skip it and move on. If we reach the end and the door is still closed, then we’ll know whether or not to pull the lever.”

  She nodded, though Adam was no longer looking, and worked her way back down to the floor.

  The rest of the circle passed in a blur. Every success ticked the door up another hairbreadth, but it was still not enough for anyone larger than a child to squeeze through, not enough to relieve the mounting pressure of the steam that poured into the room.

  Finally, only one figure remained, the largest in the room. The face before her was human but twisted. The sickly yellow skin was crossed with fat horizontal lines of black. Wings rose from behind it, and one arm was replaced by a coiling serpent. In the center of its chest was a black disk, flat and shining. The strange preservative caught the torchlight and threw it back, casting eerie reflections.

  It was a face she knew. The god of the medallion. The Smoking Mirror.

  Her head throbbed. Her muscles ached. Nausea welled in her guts, the heat choking her. And it seemed like the monster before her shifted, turning its black eyes to her, and smiled.

  It will swallow me whole, she thought distantly.

  Then she shook herself. She was hallucinating. The heat had nearly overcome her. She needed to move.

  She scrambled up the statue, her limbs sluggish, as though she fought her way through water. At last she reached the top and stared down numbly at the back of the statue’s neck.

  There was nothing there.

  Just as with the skeleton on the far side of the circle, the delicate wood was broken here as well. There was no mouthpiece, no way to make the monster sing.

  “Princess, we need to hurry.”

  Adam looked up at her from the base of the throne. Sweat streamed down his chest. His eyes were hollow.

  “This one is broken, too.”

  She slid down the statue, landing awkwardly on the floor.

  Adam’s eyes were closed.

  “Two broken. The door’s still stuck,” he muttered. “At least one of them must be real. How the hell do we know which one?”

  The light danced around her. It seemed like all the gods of hell had turned to gaze at her, their faces contorting into monstrous grins.

  Hallucinating. She was hallucinating.

  “We have to choose,” she said thickly.

  “And if we choose wrong? We can’t afford for it to get any worse in here.”

  She stared at him across the lever. The rest of the room was dissolving into twisting, ghoul-haunted shadows. Only Adam seemed solid, exhausted and gleaming in the torchlight.

  Then even he faded, the darkness at the edge of her vision narrowing to consume him. She felt the tendons of her knees quiver, then give way. She slipped toward the floor.

  There was a sharp curse. Strong arms caught her, gathered her up. She felt Adam’s body shift as he gave the lever before them a sharp kick, snapping it into place.

  She was only vaguely aware of the crunching of ancient gears, but the blast of cool air that followed—that she felt in exquisite, almost painful detail.

  She was carried into it. The heat melted away, replaced by blessed cold. Then she was half spilled to the ground as Adam sank down beneath her, letting her fall to his side as he slumped against the wall of the next chamber.

  He was barely visible in the flickering light coming through the doorway, the remnants of the torches they had abandoned. Steam poured through the opening, but Ellie could already see it thinning.

  Adam leaned back against the wall of the cave, eyes closed.

  “How did you know?” Ellie asked.

  “Know what?”

  “Which one was real.”

  He shrugged. “I figured a fifty-fifty shot was better than a one hundred percent chance of getting cooked.”

  The implication dawned on her.

  “You guessed?”

  “Didn’t have time to flip a coin.”

  She felt both horror and admiration.

  That had been close—far too close.

  The caves that surrounded them were more than an initiation. They were a death trap. The tests they would have to pass to get through this maze were meant to take the life of anyone unworthy. Only someone with a lifetime of training in the myths and sacred knowledge of this culture should be able to pass.

  None of which they possessed.

  Adam climbed to his feet. He ducked through the low doorway back into the council chamber and returned with one of their torches. It was burning dangerously low, but another basket beside the door provided replacements. As the new flames caught, Ellie took a careful look at their surroundings.

  The space around them was narrower than the others they had passed through. A jumble of rock formations protruded from floor, walls, and ceiling to create a sort of half-finished jigsaw. Moving in any visible direction would mean ducking and dodging, twisting around and under massive obstacles.

  It was impossible to discern a path or make out more than what lay a few yards away through the maze of stone. The location of the exit was a mystery.

  “Which way do we go?” she asked.

  “We start left and follow the outer wall until we find a way out.”

  Torch raised, Adam ducked around a thick pillar, resting a hand on a narrow, oddly twisted stone. He jerked back with an exclamation of pain.

  “What is it?” Ellie said, hurrying to him.

  “Damned sharp rock,” he retorted. She saw him give his hand a pained shake and she caught it, then flashed him a warning glare when he started to pull it free.

  “Don’t move,” she ordered, then muttered a curse of her own. His palm had been sliced neatly across, nearly four inches from side to side.

  “It’s a scratch,” he declared firmly when she looked up at him, wide-eyed.

  “It needs stitches,” she countered. He would not talk his way out of this so easily.

  “You got a needle?”

  She turned her shoulder to him.

  “Tear off the sleeve,” she ordered.

  “What?”

  “My sleeve. Tear it off,” she repeated impatiently.

  H
e was still staring at her with a sort of numb, shocked look.

  “Oh, very well,” she snapped, tugging at the sleeve herself. Her efforts seemed to give Adam the picture. He snapped out of the trance he’d been in and ripped the seam with one sharp yank with his good hand.

  “Thank you,” she said curtly, taking the fabric from him. She lifted his hand and bound the wound, tying the makeshift bandage tightly.

  “That will have to do for now,” she announced, then frowned. Adam was staring at her bare shoulder.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Stay still.”

  He slipped carefully past her and took a closer look at the stone that had wounded him. Peering around him, Ellie could see the dark stain where he had been cut, and something else, an odd patterning to the rock. It was a sort of regular faceting. She frowned, studying it more closely. There was something familiar about the look of it.

  “It’s been knapped,” Adam said.

  “Knapped?” she echoed, frowning.

  “Like a piece of flint. Someone made this sharp on purpose.”

  Ellie raised the torch and took a closer glance at the other rock formations. Once she knew what she was looking for, it was easy to see them: bladelike edges, man-made, glinting from every surface of the cave. Adam followed her study, and his expression darkened.

  “Xibalba was supposed to contain a room called the House of Razors,” he said, brushing a fingertip carefully across one of the knifelike edges.

  “Another test.”

  He nodded.

  Ellie eyed the uneven ground, covered in tumbled stones. All it would take was one misstep, and either of them could fall against knives of stone. The slice on Adam’s hand could easily have been a severed artery.

  “How do we get through it?”

  “Very carefully,” he replied.

  The place was a maze. The stones of the floor shifted precariously under her feet, and more than once Adam’s quick reflexes were all that kept her from tumbling against some razor-sharp blade of rock. Low archways forced them to make awkward contortions, ducking and weaving beneath glittering edges of stone. After the fourth time she’d been forced to crawl across the floor to avoid some knife-sharp obstacle, Ellie stopped.

  “Where’s the bloody door?” she demanded.

  “Over there.” Adam nodded. Ahead of them, the ground gave way on either side. Only a narrow ridge remained, lined on either side by a dark pit.

  Ellie moved closer, letting the light of her torch fall on what lay below. Daggers of rock like the fangs of some enormous beast shone back at her.

  On the far side, a wooden door sat in the flat face of the cave wall.

  Adam turned her face to his. His words were calm and even, as though he were speaking to a horse about to bolt.

  “You’ll want to move slowly. Don’t. It’s harder to stay balanced when you’re standing still. Hold my hand, and walk like there’s a temperance group with a petition behind you. Got it?”

  “What happens if one of us—”

  “Time to move.”

  Adam grasped her arm with his uninjured hand, pulling her onto the ridge. Her instinct roared at her to pull back, but doing so would only upset his balance. There was no choice but to let him drag her forward.

  She could feel the peaked stone crumble under her boots. They tilted on it like the fulcrum of a seesaw. She forced herself not to look at the stone daggers below her, instead following as Adam hauled her along.

  Then it was over.

  She stood on solid ground on the far side of the pit, looking at another heavy door set into the wall of the cave.

  Then she noticed something odd about their exit.

  “Shouldn’t there be a latch?”

  Like the last door, this one had no visible knob or hinges. There was only the smooth, oiled surface of the wood.

  “There must be a release mechanism here somewhere. Look for it.”

  Adam turned his attention to the door, feeling along the frame. Ellie was drawn to the surrounding walls of the cave.

  There was an opening to the right of the doorway. It seemed no more than a shadow at first, but she lowered the torch for a closer look. The hole was deep and narrow, no wider than eight inches across. When she held her torch at just the right angle, it seemed to her she could see something on the far side of it.

  “Bates?” she called. “I think I’ve found a lever.”

  He peered into the space.

  “It’s lined with razors,” he announced. “Might need your other sleeve by the time this is done.”

  He reached for the opening.

  “Of all the idiotic…” She caught his hand and pushed it back. She thrust her torch at him and began rolling up her sleeve.

  “If you think I’m going to stand here and let you—”

  “Your arms are twice as broad as mine,” she countered crisply. “This maze was designed for Mayans, or people very like them—a slight people. Now hold that as close as you can. I need to see where I’m going.”

  Adam was obviously unhappy with the situation, but Ellie knew he couldn’t argue with the logic of her point. She stood a much better chance than he did of coming through unscathed. And the man was battered enough already, she thought, giving him a quick look. His trousers were torn, skin scraped, hair wild.

  Not that it lessened his appeal one bit.

  She shook her head clear of the thought and focused on the task before her. That other edge had sliced Adam as neatly as a scalpel. She was sure these would be no different. She could not afford so much as a tremble in the wrong direction.

  Hand elegantly folded, she slowly, painstakingly threaded it into the gap. She realized that the torchlight would be of little use. She would have to rely on feeling, holding her arm carefully to the center until she had cleared the far side.

  She breathed deeply and steadily, trying not to think of how very easily this could go wrong. Cut the wrong vein, something that couldn’t be easily stopped up, and she might bleed to death here on the cave floor.

  Stop that.

  She paused, badgering her uncooperative mind until it begrudgingly cleared, then continued.

  Straight and still, nice and easy…

  After what seemed like an eternity, she felt her fingertips brush against a staff of wood, warm and smooth under her hand. Gripping it, she pulled it toward her, arm kept ramrod straight and carefully centered.

  There was a clicking of gears, then a shudder and a clang as the door gave way, creaking open a hairbreadth. Cool air poured into the gap. She let out a gasping laugh of relief, allowing herself that much release before returning her attention to carefully withdrawing her arm from the hole.

  At last, she was loose. Adam grabbed her hand and Ellie started, wondering whether he had noticed some new threat. Then she realized he was studying the bare skin, making certain she hadn’t been injured.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him.

  “I can see that.”

  They stared at each other in the torchlight, and Ellie felt her unanswered questions bubbling back to the surface.

  “Ready?” he asked, breaking the tension.

  “Of course,” she countered, and pushed past him into the next room.

  She lifted the flame and looked around the vast, empty space as Adam entered behind her.

  23

  THE GAP IN THE floor opened onto a short set of stairs, and from there a tunnel sloped gradually down. Dawson trudged along it with shoulders hunched to keep his head from bumping against the low ceiling. He kept a few steps behind one of the dust-covered workmen. He had seen enough of the technical skills of the vanished people of this city to consider booby traps a possibility, and preferred that someone else be the one to discover them. The workman, happily, was oblivious to that threat, being more concerned—based on the tight grip he kept on the crucifix around his neck—with the possibility of evil ghosts.

  Luckily for the hapless fellow, the tunnel was free of
hidden dangers. It ended at a pair of wooden doors that swung open without so much as a single lock, revealing a vast, dark space that smelled of damp and stone and time.

  The men came in tentatively, raising their lanterns.

  It was a tomb, but one utterly unlike any that Dawson had seen before. The chamber was a natural one, a vast limestone cavern threaded with delicate pillars. The walls were vividly painted, though their imagery was unsettlingly different from the graceful figures he had smashed to pieces in the room above.

  There, everything had been light and elegance. These paintings told another story—one of darkness and sacrifice. Some of the scenes they depicted were so lifelike they made his stomach lurch.

  He turned away, looking for something to distract his attention. His eyes fell on stacks of folded bark that sat below the murals.

  No, not just bark. They were books, Dawson realized, recognizing their similarity to those few that remained from the Mayans. The sight of them put the murals right out of Dawson’s head, sparking his archaeological fervor. These were more precious than any pile of gold might have been. All the wisdom of this place, all its secrets—they had survived.

  But the room was not meant to be a library. It was a graveyard. Massive stone sarcophagi rested in a circle around him, each one elaborately carved. Atop them, larger than life, were portraits of the powerful men who lay within. The greatest kings of this lost place, the masters of a hidden empire… and they were sharing a tomb.

  It was unheard-of. In no culture that Dawson had studied did the ego-mad leaders condescend to share their final monuments. Tombs were singular. Great men wanted their own memorials, bigger and more impressive than those that had come before. And here were more than a dozen of them, lying together as equals in this cave.

  Dawson knew better than to think it was by preference. There was only one reason such men would give up dreams of their own temples or pyramids, and that was because there was a greater power in this kingdom than their own. And that power, it appeared, lay in the center of the cavern in a round depression in the floor.

  It was a massive, perfectly flat disk, polished to a flawless gleam that echoed every detail of the room, from the lamplight of the workers to the stone pillars dripping down from the roof. Dawson could not tell whether the thing was made from stone or metal, only that it was cool and smooth as a lake on a windless day, and utterly, completely black.