“In a moment, I’ll be down there,” he said, unconsciously speaking aloud. “Down into Chichen Chikin, the Mouth of the Western Well.”
CHAPTER V
Aid from an Enemy
The effect of Markham’s words on Tutul Xac was electrical. The bronzed jaw dropped, the thin face taking on an expression of dazed incredulity. The lifted arm, already starting the downward plunge of the sacrificial knife, halted. A flame of malevolent hatred poured from the priest’s black eyes.
“You—know!” Tutul Xac whispered. “You—translated the Maya tongue!”
Markham had not the slightest idea what he had said or done to arouse the surge of emotions but some innate cunning urged him to play his advantage.
“Of course,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Not Chichen Likin, the mouth of the eastern well, but Chichen Chikin.”
“Oh, gods!”
There was suddenly a crawling worm of doubt and fear in the depths of Tutul Xac’s eyes. He bent above Markham, his lean body trembling inexplicably.
“You had no knowledge of our tongue in your mind when I probed its depths that day in your office! Whence came your knowledge now? I could not have overlooked it then. I searched deep into every corner—or almost every corner—before you forced me out.”
Suddenly Markham saw what lay behind Tutul Xac’s frantic fear. His unconsciously casual use of the only two Maya names he knew had made the priest think that Markham actually knew the language. But at the time, Tutul Xac, calling himself Smith, had probed Markham’s mind, there had been no such knowledge present.
Or had there? That was the question that gnawed at the priest’s certainty. He had allowed Markham to drive him from his search before he was quite finished, though he believed then that he had examined every cell of knowledge that mattered. Now doubt was eating like a canker into the priest’s assurance.
Markham saw the flicker of unfamiliar emotions in Tutul Xac’s eyes and the realization of their cause gave him a quick surge of hope. If he could only finish the thing he had unwittingly begun—
“You weren’t so clever,” he said softly. “You only read what I wanted you to read that day and were foolishly contented. You completely overlooked the real knowledge in my brain because I hid it from you.”
Tutul Xac jerked up the golden knife, his face working insanely with the fury of his rage.
“If there was any further knowledge, as you claim, it will die now!”
“All,” Markham whispered, more calmly than he felt, “except that part of my knowledge which I have already passed on to other scientists who began working at once to defeat you. You saw, that day, that my interest in the earthquakes was not a sudden impulse but the outgrowth of months of intensive study and research. Do you think I am fool enough to lock such a secret away from those who might aid in—”
“You lie!” Tutul Xac screamed interrupting, his thin lips writhing. “If you have such hidden knowledge as you claim, prove it! Speak to me now in my own tongue—in the tongue of the True Man!”
Markham’s heart sank. If he failed to respond in Maya, Tutul Xac would know that he was lying and would rip out his heart without further delay. But Steve Markham knew not a single word of Maya beyond the names he had used so opportunely. He wet his lips.
In that instant, he felt the sensation. Out of nowhere, a strange word implanted itself in his mind—a word he had never heard before in his life. Haltingly, his lips pronounced the word.
Another word-vision flashed into its place and he spoke that. With gathering speed, a long and, to him, utterly-meaningless sentence rolled from his lips.
“Kukulcan!” Tutul Xac cried. “It is true!” Quick! What other knowledge did you conceal from me? Who else knows of your mission here? Who else is working to defeat the Great Attainment?”
“Don’t be an ass!” Markham said coldly, reverting to English. “Do you think I’m fool enough to tell you so you can kill me?”
“You are the fool! I’ll probe your mind again, dig into every corner. And this time, you will not be able—”
He whirled, barked a harsh command. Below, the humming ceased again. Warriors sprang up the steps, unfastened the golden chains that bound Markham to the altar. Strong hands set him on his feet.
“To the inner temple!” Tutul Xac commanded. “And guard him with your lives.”
As Markham went down the long steps, he turned his head to look back. Behind the raging priest, he saw Tolkilla leaning against the lesser altar in an attitude of complete exhaustion. Her head was bent so that her long hair obscured her face.
And in that moment, Markham knew whence had come the word-visions of the Maya tongue that had saved his life. He let himself be marched down the pyramid’s steps, then, his mind a maelstrom of seething emotions.
At the base of the pyramid, a lane opened through the tight-packed, murmuring crowd and Markham was led through it down a broad avenue of smooth-polished stone. Presently, his captors turned toward a huge, richly-carved building of several stories, each story stepped back from the one below.
Markham was marched in between towering Feathered Serpent pillars and down a shadowy, statue-lined corridor to a massive door, studded with gold. A golden key in the hands of a warrior sent the door swinging inward to reveal a vast room tapestried in rich silks and furnished in gold and the silvery metal.
Markham was staring at the incredible luxury before him when a hard shove hurled him through the open doorway. Behind him, the door slammed with a solid thud. He got to his feet again, cursing. He made no effort to try the door for the finality of its closing impact was enough to discourage that.
Instead, he went across an ankle-deep silk rug to the windows—tall unglazed slits, too narrow even to admit his head. In the distance, he could see one of the silvery spires still quivering, still sending out its invisible force-waves of destruction. The sight of it mocked his complete helplessness.
Markham cursed his own futility. Here he was, within sight of the earth-shaking engine, yet as helpless in his golden prison as though he were still in New York, hammering the difference between igneous and sedimentary rocks into freshman skulls.
But stone walls were not his only prison. His mind, too, felt caged, hemmed in by an impenetrable circle of unanswered questions and unsolved riddles. Who were these bronze-skinned savages with a science beyond any known to civilization? Were they the survivors of that vanished Mayan civilization whose disappearance still puzzled archaeologists? It seemed obvious that they were, fantastic though such an answer might be. And what was the secret of the force employed in their weapons? What was the odd silvery metal, so different from anything he had ever seen, yet apparently so abundant here?
And interlacing every question, running an unbidden thread through every thought, was, to Markham, the greatest problem of all. What was Tolkilla’s true part in the drama? By her own admission, she had lured him here to be destroyed. Then, she had saved his life.
But whether she was, in truth, but an unwilling actor in the plot or a guileful sorceress, she haunted Markham’s brain with visions of her loveliness, her utter desirability.
For a long time, Markham remained by the window, lost in thought. Then, a faint sound penetrated his absorption and sent him whipping around with clenched fists upraised.
His breath whistled out through his teeth and his tight fists relaxed. Across the room, against what had been, a few moments before, nothing but bare wall, stood a table heaped with a variety of tempting foods.
Half expecting the vision to disappear, Markham moved toward it. He was painfully conscious of the thirty-odd hours since his last meal and his mouth watered as his greedy nostrils drank the savor of rich foods, the perfume of exotic fruits and rare wines.
His body trembled with desire for the food but he hesitated. It would be so e
asy to load those tempting dishes with deadly poison.
Then, he pushed the thoughts aside. Such a treachery was not in keeping with Tutul Xac’s egomaniacal character. Markham had a feeling that when the lean priest at last achieved his enemy’s death, it would be out in full view of the blood-hungry multitudes, part of some elaborate sacrificial ceremony. And there was still the matter of possible hidden knowledge within his mind, as yet unplumbed by Tutul Xac’s telepathic powers.
“To hell with it!” Markham decided aloud. “I’m hungry.”
He drew a couch over close to the table, relaxed on it gratefully and attacked the food.
“Markham! Steven Markham!”
The faint, tinkling whisper arrested Markham’s pleasure. He jerked up his head to probe the corners of the room with narrowed gaze. Then he realized that the whisper was not an audible sound but a thought-impression, originating inside his own brain.
Crudely, because telepathy was still a new experience, he formed an answer in his mind.
“Where are you? Who is it? Is it Tolk—”
“Sh-h-h! Do not speak a name or try to answer. There are other minds, alert for treachery. I risk everything to give you this warning. Eat but lightly of the food and do not allow yourself to fall asleep afterward. Too much food dulls the senses, which is the purpose of the feast before you. And in the mid-state between waking and sleeping, the mind becomes powerless to resist invasion. Be careful—”
The whisper was gone, the last tinkling echo whisked away from his brain. Markham stared longingly at the tempting platters still untouched. Presently he sighed heavily and arose from the table.
Grimly, he carried the heaping platters, one by one, across the room and concealed their contents behind the draperies, underneath couches and chairs, in every possible hiding place he could find. When at last he finished, the table was mute evidence that a feast had disappeared.
Now, unless he were being spied upon, either telepathically or visually, through slits in the walls, it would appear that he had fallen into the trap and gorged himself to a state of lethargy.
Finally, Markham crossed to a soft couch, piled high with silken pillows. He stood before it for a moment, stretching and yawning audibly.
After a moment, he stretched himself on the delicious softness of the deep cushions and closed his eyes.
CHAPTER VI
The Upper Hand
Markham’s first warning that he was no longer alone in the luxurious room came when his ears caught the faint, sibilant whisper of muted breathing somewhere close by. He dared not open his eyes to investigate, but every muscle in his body tensed at the unmistakable feeling of an alien presence above his couch.
The breathing grew closer, louder. A fringe of silk caressed his hand. Close, so close that Markham could feel the feather-touch of exhaled breath against his cheek, Tutul Xac’s voice began a soft, soothing murmur.
“Sleep, oh weary one. Sleep in dreamless peace, but sleep lightly, gently, with your mind relaxed. Open your mind, oh sleepy one, that I might enter and converse with it.”
Markham felt the first nauseous impact of the priest’s uncanny, telepathic probing of his mind.
“Tell me,” the priest droned softly. “Tell me all the knowledge that lies hidden in your mind.”
Markham opened his eyes, staring straight into the flaming eyes of Tutul Xac, not six inches above his.
“Not today, brother!” he snarled. His arms whipped up, encircled the priest’s thin body and jerked it down upon him.
The element of complete surprise in his attack gave him the victory. Two terrified guards in the doorway stood frozen, afraid to unleash their force rays for fear of hitting Tutul Xac. And Markham took good care to keep the High Priest’s squirming, clawing, writhing figure as a shield between him and the door.
But he had his hands full. There was an unbelievable strength in the priest’s wiry body and an insane desperation that further multiplied the power of his muscles. Kicking, clawing, butting with his head, he used every trick at his command to break Markham’s strangling arms.
“You will die a thousand terrible deaths,” he promised in sobbing gasps of fury. “You will be tortured upon the highest altar with instruments of agony unimaginable to your feeble science.”
“Nuts!” Markham snapped inelegantly. “Your neck can be cracked just like anyone else’s. And it will be in another minute.”
He whipped his legs around the priest’s body in a crushing scissors-lock, holding the writhing figure as in a vise. His right hand fumbled out and found a heavy cord of the bed draperies. He forced a loop of it around Tutul Xac’s throat and drew it tight.
The priest’s face darkened, his eyes bulged and his tongue came out between his teeth. Abruptly the resistance melted from his body.
“Tell your guards,” Markham hissed in his ear, “to drop their weapons and turn their backs. And don’t forget I can understand every word you say to them. One phony order—”
He tightened the strangling loop a trifle to emphasize his bluff.
With a supreme effort, Tutul Xac managed a nod. Markham grinned with relief and eased off on the choking pressure. The priest coughed a string of stuttering syllables that Markham fervently hoped were the right commands.
Not until the two warriors, baleful and hesitant, laid down their flat metal cases and turned to face the door did he draw a full breath of relief. Then, panting and unsteady from his exertions, he rolled Tutul Xac’s figure off and got to his feet. He was careful to keep the thin body before him as a shield, his hand keeping the cord loop uncomfortably tight as a silent warning. For a moment he hesitated, turning over half-formed plans in his mind, platting his next move.
And in that moment, a change came over Tutul Xac’s face. The black eyes seemed to flame and draw inward. Then, they closed and a vein crawled in each of the priest’s hollow temples. Droplets of perspiration formed across his dark forehead, evidence of terrific concentration.
But these things Markham could not see because he was holding Tutul Xac so that the priest’s face was turned away. He could only see, a moment later, when he reached a decision and jerked his captive into motion, the faint smile of mocking triumph that now wreathed the thin lips. That smile bothered him vaguely, but he forgot it in the press of more immediate menace.
“If anything happens to me,” he promised grimly, “your neck goes first.”
“Of course,” the priest choked. “Enjoy your slender advantage to the utmost. When again it is my turn to be the captor and you the captive, expect no mercy from me.”
“You mean if—not when,” Markham corrected.
Steering the strangely unresisting figure ahead of him, Markham crossed the room and picked up one of the flat cases discarded by the guards.
“How does this thing work?”
“Draw upon your vast store of knowledge,” Tutul Xac sneered, “and discover for yourself.”
Markham turned the blunt muzzle toward a nearby wall and pressed the golden lever as he remembered seeing the guards do when he was struck down on the ledge. A stream of blazing golden light lanced from the muzzle. Where the light struck the wall, the polished stone glowed and smoked.
“Heat!” Markham exclaimed in satisfaction. “Now I know you’ll behave, brother, with this in your back.”
He shifted his grip so that he could hold the deadly case against Tutul Xac’s back with his right hand, retaining his grasp of the strangling cord with his left.
“Now, get moving. We’ll go down the street and back to that pyramid with the altars and the vibrating shaft on top. And if anybody makes a move to attack me on the way, you won’t live long enough to see what this heat gun is going to do to your pretty little earthquake machine. Tell your guards to march ahead and behave.”
For the first ti
me, Markham saw a fleeting glint of fear in the obsidian eyes. Then the emotion was gone or successfully masked and the mocking smile again touched the thin, cruel lips. He translated Markham’s order to the guards without resistance.
The journey back through the shadowy corridors to the broad avenue was uneventful. No lurking figures stirred in the shadows and no deadly heat-rays licked out from behind the towering statues. The two guards kept ten paces ahead, marching stiffly. Only their glittering eyes betrayed the raging fury in their souls. Tutul Xac marched quietly, but his quiescence was like that of a coiled serpent that waits patiently for its prey to venture within striking range.
Markham’s nerves crawled with a premonition of disaster as he stepped out between the towering Feathered Serpents into the light of the declining sun. For the entire population of Chichen Chikin waited in the street, filling the broad avenue from end to end, meeting him with a concentrated gaze of mass malevolence that struck the pit of his stomach like a tangible physical blow.
In that moment, Markham knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that every person congregated there had been expecting his appearance. That somehow, Tutul Xac had communicated with the populace and told them what had occurred.
“If anybody makes a move to attack me or to rescue you, you’ll die,” he warned tensely, tightening his grip on the garroting cord for emphasis.
“Of course,” the priest said, his black eyes mocking his captor’s concern.
“Tell them to turn around and march down the street ahead of us. All of them! I’m not taking chances on a heat-blast in the back from behind one of those buildings. And remember that if anything happens like that, even reflex action will be enough to make me press, this trigger.”
Tutul Xac barked a command, and the glowering mob fell obediently back, retreating down the avenue as Markham and his captives moved forward. At the base of the sacrificial pyramid, they hesitated. Before Markham could give an order, the priest snarled a few words and the crowd pressed back still further, leaving the stairway up the pyramid’s side clear and unobstructed.
The Adventure Novella MEGAPACK® Page 18
