Sky Knife

by Marella Sands

  “And the guide came from where—the cenote?” asked Bone Splinter.

  “I don’t know,” said Sky Knife. “But we’re not finding any answers here. Let’s go home.”

  The three of them and their nagual left the cenote behind and went back to the sunbaked fields. After the stuffiness of the air in the jungle, the open fields, though hotter, were a relief.

  Sky Knife set his face to the sun and walked back to Tikal. The coati trotted along beside him.

  25

  The familiar sight of Tikal’s temples eased Sky Knife’s mind somewhat. The temples reminded him that, even though bad luck had come to Tikal, the gods remained, eternal and vigilant. Bad luck would fall away eventually. Only the gods were forever.

  Sky Knife went straight to the Great Plaza. Today it was almost deserted. It seemed the merchants really were leaving the city. The love-gift vendor remained in her prime spot on the eastern edge of the plaza in front of the great pyramid. Several other merchants remained, but only a handful of people milled about their goods. The plaza, normally a busy, loud place, was eerily quiet.

  “I don’t like this,” said Bone Splinter. “It’s as if the city is dead already.”

  “The city won’t die,” said Jade Flute. “I’ll ask the gods to save it.”

  “Why should you?” asked Sky Knife. He turned to the young woman. “You’re being sacrificed for no good reason. Why should you ask the gods for anything?”

  Jade Flute smiled. “That’s my secret,” she said. She winked at him. Sky Knife blinked in surprise and his heart beat rapidly. A wink—normally, a young girl would only do that to encourage some young man she thought attractive. Jade Flute had to be teasing him. She couldn’t be interested in a junior priest who should never have been more than a mere temple attendant.

  “Girl—what are you doing here?”

  Sky Knife whirled in surprise. Stone Jaguar strode across the patio of the southern acropolis, a solid blue skirt knotted about his waist and large blue-green jade ear spools in his ears. Jade necklaces of various colors dangled around his neck, and his wrists and ankles were heavy with shell ornaments. His hair had been freshly greased. A small green parrot with blue feathers on its forehead and shoulders sat on his shoulder.

  “Go on, back to the nuns,” said Stone Jaguar as he stepped down from the patio level. “You should be fasting and praying you will be found worthy tomorrow.”

  “It is you who should be praying, priest,” said Jade Flute, “that I do not ask the gods to strike you down.”

  Stone Jaguar raised his hand to hit her, but Jade Flute darted out of the way. She and her ocelot ran off toward the temple of Ix Chel. The sound of laughter drifted back behind her.

  “Foolish girl, she’ll ruin everything,” muttered Stone Jaguar. His nagual hissed. “With the nagual running loose, everyone should be more careful than ever. She’s not worthy of the honor.”

  “Then find another sacrifice,” said Sky Knife, “if her worthiness is truly an issue.”

  Stone Jaguar jabbed a finger toward Sky Knife. “Watch your mouth,” he said. “You haven’t the rank to question what I do.”

  “It doesn’t take rank to question your actions,” said Bone Splinter mildly.

  Stone Jaguar refused to be drawn into an argument with the warrior. He didn’t even glance toward Bone Splinter. “We have to continue your instruction,” he said to Sky Knife. “Death Smoke grows weaker by the hour. How he lasted this long is a mystery in itself. By tomorrow, you and I will be the only priests of Itzamna in Tikal, and you do not yet know any of the important things you should know. Come.”

  Stone Jaguar set off across the plaza. Sky Knife glanced toward Bone Splinter, then followed. The love-gift vendor waved to Sky Knife as he passed. He nodded to her, relieved to see she was all right.

  Stone Jaguar stopped short of the steps to the northern acropolis. He waved to Sky Knife to stand beside him. Bone Splinter stepped up as well, but Stone Jaguar turned to stare at him. After a few moments, Bone Splinter bowed slightly and stepped back. One step. Sky Knife fidgeted, sure Stone Jaguar would be angry at Bone Splinter’s continued refusal to be awed by the priest. But Stone Jaguar accepted Bone Splinter’s slight retreat and turned to Sky Knife.

  “Since the temple has been violated, I was sure the acropolis would be next, so I have left it under the protection of Itzamna,” the priest said.

  Sky Knife was momentarily confused by the reference of the violation of the temple, until he remembered the obsidian point he had found there. Someone who wasn’t afraid to dare the wrath of the gods by going onto the temple probably wouldn’t let the legends about the acropolis stop them, either. Protecting it was a wise move.

  Stone Jaguar held his hands out in front of him, palms out. In a calm tone, he chanted, “Hail, Itzamna, giver of life, giver of luck. Release this sacred area from your protection until I deliver it to you again. Hail, Itzamna, giver of life.”

  To Sky Knife, nothing seemed to change. He had expected Stone Jaguar’s hands to glow blue as they did during a sacrifice, but the other priest’s hands remained unchanged. Stone Jaguar dropped his hands and grunted. The parrot flew into a tree and stared down at them. “All right,” said Stone Jaguar. “We can go in now.”

  The cracked stones of the patio and the twisted tree roots that grew out of them seemed even more menacing today than before. Sky Knife watched his step and carefully avoided stepping on any roots.

  Sky Knife turned back to the plaza before entering the acropolis. Bone Splinter stood at the bottom of the steps to the acropolis, watching Sky Knife. The tapir and the coati watched him also. The warrior nodded to him. Sky Knife waved and then plunged into the darkness of the acropolis.

  It took a moment for the significance of the darkness to register with Sky Knife. It was dark—the glow of the chic-chac did not light his way. Sky Knife stopped and his hands flew to his neck. The serpent was still there, but it was cold now. So cold. Sky Knife thought it was dead, but he felt it move slightly. Its tongue touched his hand briefly.

  “Sky Knife—where are you?” demanded Stone Jaguar.

  Sky Knife walked forward into the room where he had saved the chic-chac’s life. Bright blue fire blazed over his head in the highly vaulted ceiling.

  Stone Jaguar spread his hands. “What is the perfect number?” he asked.

  “Four.”

  Stone Jaguar nodded. “There are four directions, four Bacabs to hold up the sky, four great chacs to bring the rain, four great chic-chacs to guard the waters of the world. Four is the number of completeness.”

  Stone Jaguar dropped his hands and pointed toward the firepit in the center of the room. A blue tongue of flame flashed upward, then retreated and burned, bright and hot, in the bottom of the pit.

  “Sit.”

  Sky Knife approached the pit and sat next to it. Stone Jaguar sat opposite him.

  “There should be four priests to instruct you,” said Stone Jaguar. “I am grieved I am the only one left to teach you what you should know.” Stone Jaguar smoothed his skirt down over his knees. “I am Ah nacom, He Who Sacrifices. I am not qualified to teach you everything Death Smoke could about being Ah kin, He Who Divines the Will of the Gods. But I will try.”

  Stone Jaguar reached into a bag and pulled out a handful of copal. “Death Smoke can divine the will of the gods through the spirit of copal,” he said. He threw the copal into the sorcerous flames. Thick white smoke billowed out of the firepit all around Sky Knife.

  “Breathe in the smoke,” said Stone Jaguar, “and let your mind rest.”

  Sky Knife closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. The musky odor of the copal filled his nostrils. His fingers tingled and thought suddenly seemed unimportant. Sky Knife let his mind drift and his awareness of his surroundings fade.

  “Beware!”

  Sky Knife jerked, heart pounding, and opened his eyes. He looked around for the source of the voice, but saw nothing but white smoke tinted blue by the so
rcerous fires above.

  “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “You should be relaxing, not talking,” said Stone Jaguar.

  “But the voice…”

  “Voice?” shouted Stone Jaguar. “What was that about a voice?”

  “I … I heard someone say ‘beware,’” said Sky Knife. “It sounded as though the person were right beside me.” His heartbeat slowed slightly but Sky Knife could still feel its pounding in his ears.

  “A deep voice? A shrill voice? What?”

  Sky Knife thought for a moment. “Neither,” he said. “I can’t put any quality to it. It just was.”

  Silence.

  “Stone Jaguar?” asked Sky Knife, afraid the other man had deserted him in the smoke.

  “Amazing,” said Stone Jaguar.

  Sky Knife waited to see if Stone Jaguar would say anything else. The serpent at his throat stirred briefly and he stroked it.

  “I have never heard the voice,” said Stone Jaguar. “Sometimes, I thought Death Smoke only imagined it or I’d hear it too. But you heard it—the first time you listened. I thought your ease at learning to call fire was a fluke. Now I see I was wrong.”

  “But what does it mean?” asked Sky Knife. “Beware of what?”

  “The gods don’t explain themselves to men,” said Stone Jaguar. “The warning might not even have been for you personally, but for the priesthood, or perhaps Tikal in general. Death Smoke would smoke and fast after he listened to the voice, so that he could determine what the voice meant by its messages.”

  “It seemed very personal,” said Sky Knife softly.

  “I imagine it did,” said Stone Jaguar. “Try again.”

  “Again?” Sky Knife hovered between excitement and terror. A god had spoken to him—Sky Knife could barely imagine what that meant. He had never thought to be so honored. But catching the attention of the gods was not necessarily something Sky Knife had ever desired. Even Itzamna, Lord of All, could spread chaos and destruction in turn with giving life and security to men. Ix Chel his wife was a healer, but she also caused plague. The gods had many duties and wore many faces, not all of them beneficial to men.

  “Yes, again,” commanded Stone Jaguar. “Relax and open yourself to the gods.”

  Sky Knife closed his eyes, let out the air in his lungs, and then took a deep breath. He held his breath a moment and let it out slowly. His skin tingled as if the smoke caressed him with its feather-light touch. The touch of the smoke brushed up from his fingers to the backs of his hands. Up his arm to his elbows and then to his shoulders. The chic-chac tensed and squeezed Sky Knife’s neck weakly.

  Sky Knife opened his eyes and squeaked in surprise. He sat in a large room—larger than the one he had been in—lit by blazing globes of yellow light that drifted across the vaulted ceiling. Brightly painted murals displaying scenes of torture and sacrifice crowded the walls. The scene on the wall before him showed a priest offering the heart of a sacrifice. Tears of blood were shed by the people in the crowd below while Itzamna himself looked down from above.

  A slight rustling sound came from behind him. Sky Knife leaped to his feet and turned around.

  “Oh, Itzamna,” he whispered.

  In front of him stood an iguana the size of a tapir. Its tail stretched out behind it into the darkness of the corridor beyond. Its bright green scales sparkled in the light and its sides were marked by dark brown stripes that stopped just short of the ridge of spines that ran down the center of its back.

  The one eye the iguana had turned toward him was dark brown. The iguana blinked the eye slowly, the lid sliding from the bottom up.

  Sky Knife fell to his knees and banged his forehead against the floor. “Itzamna, Lord of All,” he whispered. “I am honored to be in your presence.”

  Sky Knife waited, but heard nothing. He raised his head slowly. The iguana lowered the dewlap at its throat and opened its mouth. Inside its mouth, its pink, slightly forked tongue wriggled from side to side. Slowly, the iguana shut its mouth.

  As Sky Knife watched, the brilliant greens and browns of the iguana’s scales faded to yellow. Even the brown of its eyes lightened until they were bright, bright gold.

  The iguana sneezed.

  Horrified, Sky Knife stood up and backed against the wall. This couldn’t be Itzamna. It was a trick, a evil spirit in disguise.

  “Itzamna curse you!” he cried.

  The iguana writhed and shrank until nothing remained of it but a small green worm like the ones in the fields. Sky Knife hesitated, but walked to the worm and stomped on it.

  Instead of a satisfying splat, cackling laughter rose from the floor. Sky Knife jerked his foot back, but it was too late. A yellow ooze surrounded his foot and quickly worked its way up to his knee.

  Sky Knife tried to shake the goo off, but it spread so quickly it was to his waist before he could shake his foot a second time.

  “No!” he screamed. But the ooze climbed higher, past his chest, to his neck.

  To his neck. It stopped. Sky Knife felt the chic-chac go rigid.

  All the feeling in Sky Knife’s body and limbs faded away. He sank to the floor. Terror burst from his gut and rushed up his throat. He screamed.

  Then a terrible pain in his throat blazed through his terror and shoved him down into a flaming world where only the sound of laughter could be heard.

  That, and a small, thin scream, almost too high to hear. Sky Knife screamed, too, knowing the sound for what it was in his soul. It was the dying scream of a rainbow serpent.

  26

  “Sky Knife! Sky Knife!”

  Someone was calling him, but the sound was so far away and he hurt all over. Sky Knife resisted the pull of the voice, but it insisted.

  “Sky Knife! Come on, boy, snap out of it! What happened?”

  A stinging pain in his face. Someone had slapped him. Sky Knife opened his eyes in anger. Then he remembered.

  “The chic-chac!” he shouted. “Where is it?”

  Sky Knife sat up but the pounding in his head told him he’d made a mistake. He held his head in his hands like a man who had had too much pulque. Every movement sent more spikes of pain jarring into his skull.

  “Sky Knife?”

  Sky Knife took a deep breath before turning toward the voice. Stone Jaguar sat next to him, sweat glistening on his face and chest. The older man’s hair was wild despite the grease on it and his eyes were wide. Sky Knife blinked in surprise. Stone Jaguar looked terrified.

  “What happened?” asked Stone Jaguar. “What happened?”

  Higher ranked priest or no, Sky Knife had other priorities besides Stone Jaguar’s questions. “The chic-chac,” he said again. “Where is it? I thought I heard it die.” He felt his neck, but his fingers touched only smooth skin.

  Stone Jaguar pointed toward Sky Knife’s neck. “It … I … I don’t know how to explain. Wait.” Stone Jaguar got up and brought back a bowl of water. “Look.”

  Sky Knife leaned over the bowl. The serpent was still around his neck.

  “It’s a tattoo,” said Stone Jaguar. “I don’t understand what happened.”

  “I was attacked,” said Sky Knife. He couldn’t keep his hands away from the tattoo of the serpent. It looked so real.

  “By what?”

  “I don’t know. It looked like an iguana, then a worm. Then it laughed and became a yellow ooze that tried to consume me. Somehow, the chic-chac stopped it.”

  “Cizin,” growled Stone Jaguar. “He is still here.”

  Sky Knife paid no attention. Grief wracked him at the thought of the chic-chac dead. It had given his life for him. It had taken the poison of Yellow Chin and fought off the yellow ooze. And it had left its mark on his neck. Sky Knife didn’t know what the tattoo meant, but he knew in his heart it could not be bad. The chic-chac may have perished, but it had left something of itself behind. At least its love. Maybe more.

  Tears rolled down Sky Knife’s face and he choked back sobs. His chest felt tight. “Why?�
� he asked.

  “Why what?” asked Stone Jaguar.

  Sky Knife shook his head. He didn’t expect an answer. He could only be grateful that the rainbow serpent, an immortal being, had chosen to put his life before its own.

  Stone Jaguar smoothed his hair down. He spat into the blue fire in the firepit. “Cizin here, and the rainbow serpent dead.” Stone Jaguar’s gaze slid to Sky Knife’s neck. “Apparently dead,” he amended. Stone Jaguar sighed. In the flickering light of the blue flame, he suddenly seemed older and very worried. “Come back to the fire,” Stone Jaguar said. “You still have much to learn.”

  Sky Knife slid back to his place. The copal smoke had dissipated, but the thick musky smell remained in the room.

  “Normally, we work for days to get new priests to be able to sense the voice of the copal. Sometimes, we work for weeks and they never do hear anything. Apparently, the gods have already deigned to speak with you through the copal,” said Stone Jaguar. “So I won’t repeat that lesson.” He reached into the bag and brought out a cigar. He held the cigar to the blue flame until it caught and handed it to Sky Knife.

  Sky Knife took the cigar and put it to his lips. A tingle in his neck stopped him. He put the cigar down quickly.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Stone Jaguar.

  “I don’t know. I think there’s trouble.”

  “Trouble? Where? How?”

  Sky Knife shook his head and looked around the room. Shadows slid in and out of the blue balls of flame in the vaulted ceiling. The shadows merged at the western end of the room and fell to the floor.

  “Itzamna!” whispered Stone Jaguar. “What sorcery is this?”

  The cigar Sky Knife had put down smoked and then went out. Sky Knife stood, feeling naked without Bone Splinter to help him. The shadow in front of him whirled as if stirred by an invisible ladle. Slowly, it coalesced into a dense fog that took on the shape of a man.

  A man with a fleshless face and chest. A man whose skin was covered with black and yellow blotches.

  “Cizin,” muttered Stone Jaguar. “I curse you and all you’ve done to this city.”