The Smoke Hunter

by Jacquelyn Benson

  It was a mirror, he realized—the mirror. The Smoking Mirror, glass of Tezcatlipoca. The Eye of the Gods. The object he had been sent here to retrieve at all costs, an object he now knew was no mere curiosity.

  It was Power, shining on the ground before him.

  Tentatively he approached it. It lay in a shallow declivity carved to fit it. A moat surrounded it, feeding into a channel that ran to a narrow crevice in the floor of the room. Both were stained a dark, rusted hue—blood, Dawson realized.

  The whole arrangement suddenly became clear to him, the realization fueled by the horrific scenes on the walls around him.

  Sacrifice. It made perfect sense. The ritual virtues of blood were not strange to the Mayans and the Aztecs. Blood celebrated victories, placated angry deities, and it also opened the gates of prophecy. The blood of animals, of enemies—the precious fluid of self-mutilation…

  It was no small leap to deduce it. The mirror would be fed, the priests offering it birds, beasts, maybe men. In exchange for life, it granted them knowledge.

  The idea made him ill.

  He forced himself to move closer, crouching down beside it. The disk wasn’t embedded in the floor of the cave, but only rested on it. It was at most an inch thick. Not that it mattered. It was still enormous.

  How the devil am I supposed to get this to England?

  “Get the photographic equipment,” Dawson ordered, and a pair of his men turned and hurried up the ramp, glad for an excuse to leave. A few others were eyeing the big stone sarcophagi greedily, but most hung near the entrance, looking uneasily at the murals covering the walls. Dawson could understand why. A longer examination of them revealed depictions of even more horrific brutalities.

  He forced his mind back to his work. They would need images of everything, and the camera was much faster than waiting on the skills of an artist. The books, the walls, the coffins, and the mirror—all of it would be photographed in situ before they began packing it up. His employer had asked only for the mirror, but the scholar in Dawson insisted that as much of its context as possible be preserved as well. If the object was worth all this trouble, then the information would undoubtedly be appreciated eventually, and so would the man who had thought to save it.

  He called for a camp stool and began taking notes. The surface of the mirror was clean. In fact, not even a speck of dust marred its perfection. But then, perhaps the cave was very stable. Certainly there had been no humans here to shed their skin and hair into the atmosphere.

  Or had there? He noted that the stained surface of the channel around the mirror was darker in one place. And there, at the base of the nearest pillar, just in its shadow… Dawson rose and walked over to it. It was the corpse of a bird, a particularly spectacular macaw. Dawson could see the wide, dry flap where the creature’s throat had been cut, skin turned to leather by the atmosphere of the cave.

  Why was this one bird left when the rest of whatever victims had once been offered to the mirror had clearly been removed? Had they been in such a hurry at the end? Or…

  Dawson bent over the bird, peered more closely at its feathers, its delicate bones. How long had this corpse been here? Was it less faded than the body they had found in the chamber above? What if they weren’t the first ones to find this place since its abandonment? He thought of the broken stone that had given away the entrance to the temple’s secrets. If someone else had stumbled across this place, someone superstitious enough to try the mirror’s magic…

  He stepped back, frowning. He glanced around the room, his gaze stopping on the figure of the strange Mayan, who sat at the foot of one of the sarcophagi with eyes closed as though napping.

  It was only the merest suspicion. And the man was unarmed. But Dawson told himself he would watch the newcomer carefully.

  The chamber Ellie stood in was not far across, but it stretched wide and dark to either side. And it was a cold space, startlingly cold. The impact of the frigid air was heightened by the dampness of her clothes, which quickly wicked away her natural heat, starting her shivering.

  Before them, a narrow bridge of land stretched from the door through which they had entered to the exit, which was clearly visible. On either side of the bridge were the still, greenish waters of a pair of underground lakes. Any doubts she may have had about whether the chill of the room was a trick of contrast with the warmer, closer space they had just left were put to rest by the sight of the ice rimming the still waters of the ponds.

  “Where are we now?”

  “I’m guessing the Rattling Room.” Adam’s words came in a fog of breath. “The Room of Shaking Cold.”

  “It’s certainly that,” she noted.

  “They must be tapping into some subterranean air current, something from farther up the mountains,” Adam said, answering her unspoken question.

  “But it’s summer,” she countered. “It wouldn’t get this cold even at the highest altitudes.”

  “Well, they’re getting it from somewhere,” he retorted.

  That she could not argue with.

  “Shall we try the door?” she offered.

  “Can’t hurt.”

  They crossed along the narrow land bridge, the waters utterly still on either side, reflecting back the light of their torches. The exit was like the others had been, a door of solid wood lacking a visible knob, latch, or hinges, carefully fitted into the opening.

  Adam glanced around the cavern, keen eyed. “There must be another lever hidden in here somewhere.”

  “Hidden where? There aren’t exactly many places we can get to.”

  The waters of the two ponds were flush with the cave walls on either side of each doorway. There were no other paths or ledges to explore, only a platform before each door and the bridge that connected them.

  She saw him frown. His gaze moved from the bridge to the pale waters beside it. She read the thought before he voiced it, and fear leaped up into her throat.

  “That’s madness.”

  “Nowhere else to look,” he replied. He knelt down and began to untie the laces of his boots.

  “The water temperature must be near freezing. You’ll black out if you’re in there for more than a minute.”

  “I’m not planning on hanging around.”

  “There’s got to be another way.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  He looked for her response, but she had none.

  “We can’t spend much longer in here. Not like this.” He nodded toward her damp clothes, then went to work on his boot. She knew that stubborn cast to his expression. It would be futile to try to reason with him. What she needed was to think of an alternative before he got those boots off and tossed himself into the deadly waters.

  She turned from him, examining the door frantically. There had to be some kind of trick, but the surface revealed nothing. No holes, no gears, nothing that could hide a secret release.

  Logic was not going to avail her here, she realized. She didn’t have enough time for precision. In another moment Adam would be plunging into those ice-cold waters, and she wasn’t sure he would make it out again. She needed a leap of intuition.

  She took a long, deep breath, forcefully clearing her mind, shoving back her awareness of the sound of Adam tossing the first boot aside. She gazed at the door, the whole of it.

  What’s different?

  She glanced up. There was a dark black stain flaring up from the top of the door, shadowing the stone. Smoke, she thought. There has been a fire here.

  Fire defeats cold. She noted the oily sheen on the surface of the wood as, behind her, Adam moved to the water’s edge.

  “One minute. I won’t be any longer,” he said.

  Ellie did not bother to turn to him.

  “You may want to step back,” she said, and tossed her torch at the door.

  It was as though she had thrown it into kerosene. Flames roared up and out, the entire surface exploding with heat. Adam grabbed her and pulled her along the bridge.


  “Head down,” he ordered as the smoke poured across the chamber. But the space was wide, and the same mysterious system that spilled cold air into the chamber functioned to ventilate it, so that where they stopped by the far door, the air remained clear even as the blaze continued.

  It took no time at all for the treated wood to crumble, giving way. The door collapsed onto the ground, where it continued to crackle and smolder.

  They crossed the bridge to the remains of the door, and, after retrieving his boots, Adam used his hands to scatter some water over the hot embers that glowed in the tunnel mouth, cooling them with a hiss of steam. He shook the droplets off and thrust his hands under his arms for warmth, then looked down at the icy pond.

  “Pretty glad I didn’t have to go for a dip in there,” he commented. “How’d you figure the door would go up like that?”

  “Women’s intuition, Mr. Bates. You should learn to listen to it every once in a while,” she replied haughtily.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered, with a telltale crinkling of his eyes. Then he gestured widely at the opening. “Ladies first.”

  She proceeded into the tunnel, the damp sleeve of her shirt pressed to her nose to cut the still-lingering smoke. The way twisted once, then back before the low-ceilinged passage ended at a closed door. This one had a latch that was clearly visible. Ellie put out a hand to open it, then hesitated.

  “What other tests were in the Popol Vuh?”

  “Damned if I know,” he replied easily.

  “Didn’t you read the whole book?” she demanded.

  “Ages ago. And the trials of Xibalba were only a small part of it. Hell, even the twins made it through only a handful of them.”

  “Whatever is behind this door was meant to possibly maim or kill us. It’d be nice to have a little bit of warning.”

  “We’ll manage,” he tossed back, and, reaching around her, pulled the latch. The door swung wide and their torchlight spilled into a high-ceilinged chamber, quiet and smelling of dust. Another basket of torches sat at the entrance. Adam lit one to replace the one she’d sacrificed in the Rattling Room. They lifted both high and their combined light fell across a pile of bones.

  They were all in a jumble, skulls and femurs and smaller, more obscure bits and knobs, stacked in a heap at the base of a near pillar. Some were clearly animal. Ellie thought she recognized dogs and monkeys. Others—fewer, but assuredly present—were human.

  “What did that?” she asked quietly, feeling fear tickle at the back of her neck.

  “I think they did,” Adam replied. His tone was solemn. Ellie turned and saw that he was gazing down at a pair of skeletons that lay a few steps farther into the room.

  They were intact, perfectly arranged on the floor of the cave. The bare ribs gave onto gracefully angled limbs, the backbones extended out in a long curve that had once been a tail. In the skull, rows of wicked fangs glimmered dully in the torchlight.

  “Jaguar.”

  Adam confirmed it with a nod. He moved forward a few steps and his flame illuminated another of the long-dead beasts, crumpled under a ledge of stone.

  “They must have been trapped down here with no way outside. They would have to have been fed, watered. And when there was no one left to do that…”

  “They starved,” she finished for him. The notion made her stomach clench. Surely even in the chaos, someone could have remembered, could have taken a few extra moments to open the door, to give them a chance.

  Adam touched her arm.

  “Let’s go.”

  The room was large, broken here and there by tall, graceful pillars. The sound of their footsteps echoing off the high walls as they walked reminded Ellie of passing through a cathedral. The hollow echoing was the same. It was appropriate. The place was, after all, a tomb.

  Like the last one, the door on the far side was closed with a simple latch. Opening it was not meant to have been the challenge. Getting there at all would have been the meat of it, when the guardians of the place had still been alive and hungry.

  The tunnel into which the door opened quickly narrowed, lowering within a few yards to the point where the pair of them were forced to crawl, torches awkwardly suspended in front of them. It felt as though they were moving deeper into the bowels of the cave system, farther than ever from a way out.

  Then there was the smell. It was faint at first, just a noxious hint to the atmosphere, but it grew stronger and richer as they progressed, until at last Ellie followed Adam through the mouth of the tunnel and stood, only to feel her feet sliding out from underneath her.

  Adam grabbed her arm, tugging her upright before she could fall. She saw that he had braced himself against one of the stones. The floor of the chamber appeared to be covered in some sort of thick slime—a very smelly slime. She took a careful step to better balance herself and something crunched lightly under her boot. It was an altogether unpleasant sound. Glancing down, she saw what looked like small animal bones protruding from the sludge.

  “What on earth—” she began, but Adam cut her off with a hand clamped over her mouth. She started to protest, but he only shook his head, his expression deadly serious. He put a finger to his lips, then pointed up, straight to the roof of the cave.

  Ellie followed his gesture and felt her stomach knot. The ceiling, which was not nearly as high as she would have liked, was covered in hanging bodies of brown fur and thick, leathery skin.

  Bats.

  But these were not the pests that inhabited church belfries back in England. They were monsters. Ellie estimated that they were roughly four feet in length, with wingspans broader than a man’s outstretched arms. They clung to the roof of the cave with massive black claws. As she watched, one of them yawned lazily, revealing an array of knifelike fangs, yellow and wicked.

  She realized she had been hearing them since she came in, a sort of gentle sighing, the subtle stirring and murmuring of a thousand sleeping monsters.

  Adam yanked her back into the tunnel. They crouched there together, and she felt her hands start to shake.

  “What are they?” she whispered hoarsely.

  “They’re a goddamned myth,” he muttered. His voice was just the slightest bit unsteady. “Camazotz.”

  Camazotz. She remembered the name. Back in the caves they’d passed through on the Mary Lee, they had been an ancient painting scribbled onto the wall, a story told to frighten children.

  The creatures sleeping overhead were no myth. A myth wouldn’t reek of refuse and rot.

  “But how have they survived down here all this time?”

  “They must have a way out to feed.”

  Feed.

  It came to her in silent horror. She remembered the two slaughtered guards in the jungle, the blood staining the leaves, the look of wild terror in the eyes of a dying man.

  They came out of the night.

  The angels of death.

  The monsters that had caused that slaughter were sleeping in legions over her head.

  Because Death lives there. That was what Amilcar Kuyoc had said, back in the village. Death and his servants, who feasted on the flesh of trespassers.

  She forced herself to calm. Panic wasn’t going to help.

  “How did those twins of yours get past them?”

  “They didn’t,” Adam muttered.

  Her fear was as real and sharp as the stench.

  “Can we go back?”

  Adam’s answer was an eloquently raised eyebrow. Ellie winced, thinking of everything they had come through already. Cold, knives, acid, and poison. And at the end of it, a long, dark swim to a hole in the ground they could never escape from.

  No, there was only one way to get out of this alive, and it led through that room full of demons.

  “We’ll move quietly,” Adam said.

  Very damned quietly, Ellie thought in response.

  Still gripping her arm, he led the way as they crept slowly across the floor, feet sliding in the thick slime of guano and crunchin
g over small bones. Ellie winced with every crackle, painfully conscious of the mass of horrible brown bodies suspended over their heads.

  She thought of the jungle they had passed through, how conspicuously absent of animal life it had been. Of course. These things had been hunting it for centuries, feasting and breeding down here in the dark.

  She moved carefully, trying to watch the ground for obstructions or anything that might cause noise. The crackle of the torches, even the hush of her own breath, sounded painfully loud to her ears.

  She took another step forward, and the stone beneath her foot sank several inches into the ground.

  Ellie froze.

  “Bates!” she whispered fiercely. He turned back to her. “The floor just moved.”

  He came closer, so close that she could feel his body in the dark. His voice was low and dangerous.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean… that I think I’ve just stepped on some kind of mechanism.”

  His curse was barely a whisper, but was no less virulent for its lack of volume. She felt him kneel down, his hands running down her leg to her boot. They probed at the floor where she stood.

  “It’s square. Too regular to be natural. It’s dropped about four inches.”

  “Maybe it’s just meant to trip me?” Ellie offered weakly.

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  She thought of the other tricks the people of this ancient place had played on them. Doors dropping into place. Steam pouring from the ground. Ice and heat and monsters.

  Whatever the stone beneath her foot triggered, she knew with a sinking certainty that it couldn’t be good.

  Adam rose. She felt his hand on her shoulder as he looked steadily into her eyes.

  “First I’m going to pull you off of it. Then we’re going to run.”

  “That’s your solution?”

  “Do you have a better suggestion?”

  Ellie opened her mouth to reply, but words failed her. What was the alternative? Stay where she was until the beasts overhead woke up for a snack?