by J; P Voelkel
There was a noise like the creaking of old bones.
Max peered through his fingers.
This was no tourist show.
The figure carved into the door was coming to life. Its outline was sparking and crackling with electricity. Its limbs were quivering. Its reptile eyes blinked.
Lord 6-Dog stepped forward. “Greetings to thee, Lord K’awiil, god of lineage and kingship.”
The figure carved into the door was coming to life.
The creature scrutinized the howler monkey with focused intensity. Yellow flames emerged from his snout, giving him a fiery mustache. Gray smoke puffed out of his tiny ears, and thick twists of smoke grew from his head, forming serpentine curls that writhed around him.
“I am the firstborn son of Lord Punak Ha and his noble wife, Lady Kan Kakaw,” continued Lord 6-Dog. “By the blood of my royal forefathers, I ask thee to grant me admittance to the temple.”
The snake that was K’awiil’s left leg stirred. It opened its hooded eyes. A tongue of flame darted out of its mouth. Slowly the head of the snake came out of the door, still at ground level, its body stretching behind it.
Max watched in horror as the snake wrapped itself several times around the howler monkey’s furry body.
“Lord 6-Dog!” yelled Max.
“I had forgotten how much you hate snakes, young lord,” whispered Captain Mo. “But don’t worry. It will not hurt him.”
The snake lifted Lord 6-Dog in its coils until he was level with Lord K’awiil’s forehead. Now Max saw that the polished surface was a mirror, an obsidian mirror. The reflection it gave off was dull and cloudy, as if behind smoked glass, but what it showed was unmistakably the black, leathery face of a howler monkey. Then, as Max watched, the image of the monkey morphed into a handsome Maya warrior in a jaguar-pelt cloak and feathered headdress.
Gently, the snake set Lord 6-Dog down. The coils and head retracted into the door. There was a grinding of stone and a rush of night air as the slab swiveled to allow Lord 6-Dog through.
Max went to follow, but the nearest suits of armor sprang forward and blocked his way with a forest of gleaming Toledo blades.
“Have you forgotten?” asked Captain Mo. “Only the high priest and the king may pass that way.”
“But I’m with Lord 6-Dog,” insisted Max. “Let me through!”
Captain Mo smiled at him fondly. “You never did have much patience with our rituals.”
“Can we get one thing straight?” said Max. “You don’t know me.”
“You’re right,” sighed Captain Mo. “None of us truly knows another. That’s why, for all but high priests and kings, there is only one way to pass through the Door of Truth. The mighty K’awiil must see your heart.”
Max swallowed nervously as Captain Mo picked up Lord 6-Dog’s discarded dagger and tested its blade with his thumb. “There can be no exceptions,” he was saying. “Even for you.”
Max turned to run but found himself surrounded by the phantom knights.
“Here,” said Captain Mo, passing him the dagger. “You will need this. It is not as sharp as obsidian, but I pray it will get the job done.”
“You expect me to cut out my own heart?” whispered Max, in horror. This guy was even more twisted than he’d thought.
Captain Mo stared at him for a moment, then he laughed. “Cut out your own heart, indeed; you always were a joker! No, the blade is for hacking through the roses out there. You’ll be surprised at how overgrown it is. I leave it like that for camouflage. If I had known you were coming, I would have trimmed it back.”
Feeling foolish, Max tucked the dagger into his belt. “So how do I get through the door?”
“As I told you, K’awiil, the god of lineage, needs to see your heart.”
“You mean, what’s in my heart? What kind of person I am?”
“Exactly. Just tell the truth, and you will pass the test.”
“But what if I was an imposter?”
“You are worried about security? Have no fear, the Lord K’awiil cannot be fooled. I pity any liars who present themselves at the Door of Truth. Shall we begin?”
Without waiting for an answer, Captain Mo launched into his swaying, dancing, chanting routine.
Once again the carving of K’awiil came to life, and once again the snake slithered forward, flicking its tongue of flames. With astonishing speed, it wrapped itself around Max’s waist and raised its head until it was looking him in the eyes. It did not look impressed.
Sweat ran down Max’s face as the snake’s hot breath scorched his skin and waves of pungent smoke from its nostrils burned his throat and stung his eyes.
“Say after me,” whispered Captain Mo. “Greetings to thee, Lord K’awiil, god of lineage. May my heart be tested by the Serpent of Truth.”
Max repeated the words, and the snake licked the air as if to taste them.
“Captain Mo!” blurted Max. “I’m not who you think I am!”
“That,” said the captain, “is for the Serpent of Truth to decide.”
The snake opened its mouth, wide, wider, impossibly wide, until Max could see nothing but the great black hole of its gullet, ringed by row upon row of needle-sharp teeth.
“Put your left hand in the serpent’s maw,” Captain Mo instructed him.
“But what happens to the liars …?”
With a jerk of his head, Captain Mo indicated a line of oil paintings on the wall behind him. They were all of Spanish noblemen with pointy beards and ruffled collars. Max saw, with a shock, that each one had a bloody, shriveled stump where his left hand used to be.
Max’s shaking knees betrayed his terror.
“Still so afraid of snakes,” clucked Captain Mo fondly. “Allow me, young lord,” and he thrust Max’s hand into the snake’s open mouth.
“Aggggghhhhhhh,” screamed Max as his left arm was sucked almost out of its socket. The pain was intense. He tried to pull back, but that made it worse. He could feel the rows of teeth penetrating his skin and the snake tongue tasting his blood. He closed his eyes, and his brain swirled in raging colors of yellow, gold, and orange.
The first questions appeared in his mind.
Friend or foe?
Toucan or tapir?
What is your treasure?
Red or black?
How many steps?
Sun or moon?
What is loyalty?
Butterfly or moth?
When is never?
Zenith or nadir?
What is all?
More and more questions crowded into his brain, like impatient commuters in a subway station. Then they were off, still pushing and shoving and jostling one another as they hurtled at top speed into his bloodstream and careened around his body, interrogating the very essence of his being. His veins throbbed and his head was pounding. No one could answer so many questions. Already his hand seemed to be paralyzed. He could feel a band tightening above his wrist as if the tourniquet were being applied before the amputation began.
No one could answer so many questions.…
He took a deep breath. Trying to ignore the relentless inquisition, he concentrated on convincing this cosmic lie detector that his motives were true. He thought about Lord 6-Dog and how they had worked together to defeat Tzelek on the Black Pyramid. He thought about meeting the god Itzamna in the Green Pyramid and communing with Chahk, the rain god, in the Red Pyramid. He thought about Lola’s adopted family in the village of Utsal: Chan Kan the shaman, Eusebio the boatman, and Och, the little boy whose hero worship he had won and lost. Most of all, he thought about Lola. He saw her open face, her smiling brown eyes, her glossy hair.…
The pain began to ease.
He could move his fingers again.
He opened his eyes.
He was no longer in the corridor with Captain Mo. He was in a sinuous, pulsating, pink, fleshy tunnel that was possibly, almost certainly—but how could it be?—the snake’s gullet. He was being propelled through the darkness, as
if on a moving walkway at the airport but with convulsing muscle under his feet in place of hard rubber matting.
A door opened.
There was an intense smell of roses.
Max was pitched forward.
He fell.
Onto grass.
In front of two hairy feet.
He looked up.
“What kept thee?” asked Lord 6-Dog.
Chapter Ten
MISTAKEN IDENTITY
Hardly daring to look, Max lifted his left arm. It still had a hand on the end of it. The Serpent of Truth had let him pass unharmed, even though Captain Mo had clearly mistaken him for someone else.
“You could have told me,” he said.
“Told thee what?” asked Lord 6-Dog.
“Oh, let me think. Maybe that I was going to be swallowed by a giant snake?”
Lord 6-Dog shrugged. “Thou didst pass the test. That is all that matters.”
“But who did that guy think I was?”
“May we talk about this later, young lord? We have a mission to fulfill.”
“I just think you should have warned me, that’s all.”
“I warn thee now, be always on thy guard.”
“Why?” asked Max suspiciously. “What’s next?”
“We must go up.”
Lord 6-Dog lifted the flaming torch as high as he could, and Max saw that they were in a courtyard, at the foot of an ancient Maya pyramid. Its steps were completely overgrown with thickets of yellow roses.
“This is really it?” marveled Max. “I can’t believe they could transport the entire Yellow Pyramid from San Xavier.”
Lord 6-Dog looked sideways at him. “Of all the astonishing sights thou hast seen of late, it is the transportation of this pyramid—a mere exercise in engineering and shipping logistics—that strains thy credulity?”
“I just assumed it was a replica, that’s all. I can’t wait to bring Lola here.”
“First we have a job to do. We must find the Yellow Jaguar and use the throne of K’awiil to open the portal to Xibalba.”
“Without Lola? But we’re a team.”
“The jaguar hunts alone.”
“But Chan Kan told me—”
“If Chan Kan were here,” said Lord 6-Dog, “he would tell thee to accept thy destiny. Thou art in this place at this time for a reason. All of Middleworld is waiting for thee to climb these stairs.”
Still Max hesitated.
“Just trust me,” said Lord 6-Dog, losing patience. “I have a good feeling about this.”
Max looked horrified. “That’s what Hermanjilio said that night at Itzamna, just before he turned you and Lady Coco into howler monkeys, and Tzelek slipped through the gateway and hid out in Hermanjilio, who ended up nearly sacrificing Lola on the Black Pyramid.”
“Exactly,” said Lord 6-Dog, as if Max had proved his point.
“But everything went wrong that night—”
“Did it, young lord?”
Now that Max thought about it, he wasn’t sure. On the one hand, he was embroiled in some hideous plan for world domination hatched by the ancient Maya Lords of Death. On the other hand, he couldn’t remember life before he met Lola. He was a different person now. He had a mission.
“It’s an interesting question,” he mused. “If the world’s going to end anyway, at least I’m having an adventure, right? But I wish Lola was here. No offense, Lord 6-Dog. I mean, I’m glad you’re here, too.…”
He was talking to himself. Lord 6-Dog, having long since lost interest in the conversation, was now standing at the foot of the pyramid, surveying the steps from every angle. “We must clear a way to the top. These thorns are the very devil.”
In the flickering torchlight, Max saw the inch-long spines that made the beautiful yellow roses as menacing as barbed wire.
“Captain Mo gave me a knife,” he said.
“Then thou shouldst slash and I will burn.”
Lord 6-Dog put the torch to some foliage. The leaves sizzled and charred and generated a great deal of smoke, but they refused to catch fire. The smell of roses was replaced by acrid fumes. “Not good,” he observed. “Now it is thy turn.”
Max made a desultory slash at a swath of roses and winced in pain. “It’s impossible. These thorns—I’ll get ripped to pieces.”
As he inspected his wounds, a clutch of flower heads brushed their velvety petals against his bleeding hand as if to soothe it and then, to his astonishment, the vegetation curled around the dagger handle and pulled it away from him.
“Hey!” he protested. “I need that; come back with that!” But already the knife was lost in the tangled roses, which writhed like a bed of eels.
Yet there seemed to be a purpose in the collective slithering.
Feeling like the prince in Sleeping Beauty, Max watched openmouthed as the thorny briars untwined and peeled aside for him. Soon there was a pathway clear to the top.
“It seems thou art expected,” said Lord 6-Dog. “Ko’ox!”
“Ko’ox,” responded Max weakly as his monkey companion bounded up the steps, each one thinner and crumblier than the last. Eventually, wheezing and panting, Max hauled himself to the top.
“So here we are,” he said. He looked around him. On top of the pyramid was a ceremonial chamber, so completely covered in yellow climbing roses that it looked like a golden dome. “Er, where are we, exactly?”
“We are outside the Temple of Blood,” announced Lord 6-Dog. His voice trembled with emotion. “It was here that the kings and queens of the Monkey River were crowned.”
“Do you think the Yellow Jaguar is inside?”
“That is my hope, young lord.”
“I can’t even see the door through all the roses.”
But even as he spoke, the tangled stems that clambered over the temple and blocked the doorway sorted themselves into straight lines like a bead curtain and parted neatly in the middle.
“It’s too easy,” mumbled Max as he peered into the gloom. “It must be a trap.”
“Or a gesture of welcome,” suggested Lord 6-Dog. “Let us enter.”
“Wait! Is it true that the Yellow Jaguar cannot be taken, only given?”
“It is.”
“Then who will give it to me? Is someone in there?”
Lord 6-Dog shook his head despairingly. “After all that has been said and done, thou still dost not know who awaits thee?”
“Tell me, who is it?”
“Enter and meet thy destiny.”
At first, Max was blinded by the reflection of Lord 6-Dog’s flaming torch glaring back at them from every direction. The chamber’s stone floor and walls had been polished until they shone like dark mirrors. But as his eyes grew accustomed to the light, he made out a shape in the middle of the room.
Lord 6-Dog saw it, too, and held up his torch to illuminate it.
It was a large, elaborately carved wooden armchair.
Slumped inside it, under a veil of cobwebs, was a tiny old woman in a long, tattered black dress.
Her silver hair fell in two tight braids to the floor. Her high, sloped forehead was as wrinkled as balled-up tissue paper, and the sallow skin on her delicately arched nose was so thin, Max could almost see the cartilage beneath it.
Her eyes were closed.
“It’s not her,” said Max.
“Who didst thou expect?” asked Lord 6-Dog.
“Inez la Loca, the girl in the yellow dress who looked like Lola. But she was young. Could this be her grandmother?”
Lord 6-Dog jumped onto an arm of the old lady’s chair.
“Be careful, you’ll wake her!” cautioned Max.
“I think not,” said Lord 6-Dog. “This woman has long since passed over to the world beyond.”
“You mean … she’s dead?”
Lord 6-Dog nodded.
Max wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that the woman presented no danger or disappointed that she would not be handing over the Yellow Jaguar anytime soon.
“It could be another trick,” he mused, backing away. “Maybe she’ll leap up and karate-chop us!”
“I know not this karate,” said Lord 6-Dog. “But I know a corpse when I see one.” He lightly brushed away the cobwebs on the woman’s face.
“Come away,” said Max.
“Art thou not curious?”
“No,” said Max. “If the Yellow Jaguar isn’t here, I want to go.”
“Ah, but it is here. Come look at this.…”
It was Max’s first dead body. Against his better judgment, he approached the corpse. As he leaned over her to see what Lord 6-Dog was pointing at, he was shocked to notice the depth of sadness engrained on her wizened face.
“What are you looking at?” he asked Lord 6-Dog.
At the sound of his voice, the old woman’s sunken eyelids flickered open.
After centuries of silence, her voice was dry and crackly.
“I am looking at you, my love,” she said.
Lord 6-Dog jumped off the chair arm in surprise.
“I knew it!” said Max. “Another trick!” But it was too late. The old woman’s ice-cold, withered fingers closed tightly over his. He tried to pull away, but found he could not move.
“Do something,” he called to Lord 6-Dog. “She’s hurting me!”
“Rodrigo, I’m so sorry,” croaked the old woman, releasing Max’s hands. “Your Inez did not mean to hurt you.”
“You’re not Inez,” said Max accusingly. “Inez is young.”
She flinched.
I have been waiting for you for so long, Rodrigo … I am sorry if time has dealt harshly with me.”
“My dear lady,” Lord 6-Dog assured her hastily, “thy beauty still shines from within.”
She turned her rheumy eyes on him.
“Welcome, Lord 6-Dog, revered king of the Monkey River. On behalf of the immortal K’awiil, god of lineage, I am honored to welcome you back to the Temple of Blood.”
“The honor is mine, Princess Inez,” said Lord 6-Dog, bowing low. “But may I ask how thou didst recognize me in this lowly disguise?”
“If there is one thing I have learned, Lord 6-Dog,” she replied, her face almost cracking as it formed itself slowly into a smile, “it is not to judge by appearances. With his strange red hair and his pink skin that burned in the jungle sun, my Rodrigo was not the most handsome of men … but his was the truest heart.”
