by M. G. Herron
Feeling with his hands, Rakulo found stone beneath him and pushed up, or what seemed to be the direction he knew as up. The wall tilted, showing him a stone door with no handle, and he fought to hold himself steady. His stomach lurched, he choked, and more liquid splashed from his mouth to the floor.
His fingers came away from his mouth dark and sticky. Blood. Then he remembered what had happened.
Three men had rushed him, Maatiaak snarling at their center. A heavy club smashed into his face and down he went. Then they were on top of him. Fists pummeled into the small of his back. His hair caught and ripped on a cracked stone as they dragged him to one of these low stone dugouts, a place for crazy people and criminals, and where the sacrifices were kept while they went through the dreamwalking experience.
Was this the same room that had held Eliana?
Something in the air seemed to rupture, and a wetness seeped out and down the left side of his neck.
That can’t be good, he thought, reaching up to touch the warm blood. But his equilibrium had returned after his ear popped, and the nausea faded away.
A distant humming cut through the faint voices outside. Rakulo started, thinking it was Xucha’s demon in the cell with him. But the room was black and bare. No shining orbs like deadly moons, only stone walls carved up with drawings and claw marks from generations of prisoners past.
No demon. Only himself in a low stone room. When he stood, his thick, tangled black hair brushed the low ceiling.
Rakulo turned his mind inward and realized the humming came from inside him, from his injured ear, and it wasn’t the same sound as the demon made. But there was something else beyond that noise. If he focused, he could make it out. Something loud and angry. He approached the door and put his right ear, the one that hadn’t ruptured, close to the door.
He made out thumping, shouts, the sound of a club against flesh. A cry, a heavy thud, some noise that Rakulo imagined like ripping cloth. He felt queasy again, and not because the dizziness had returned.
And then there was a great war cry, a vibrating ululation followed by a hail that pattered against the wall. Something heavy struck the other side of the door, which shuddered in its frame. Another volley came, dozens of strikes of stone against stone within the space of two seconds. Then a pause. Silence. Rakulo stepped back from the door, crouching with his back to the corner. He tensed, ready to spring.
The door opened.
A slight, athletic figure called to him from outside, and he recognized her shadowed shape and two others.
“Are you okay?” Citlali asked.
“Yes,” Rakulo said. “At least, I think so. I can walk.
“Can you run? We’ve got to move fast.”
Rakulo stepped into the moonlight. Citlali was one part of the triad and stood back to back with Quen and Thevanah. Both women held a bow nocked with an arrow, and empty quivers at their sides.
“I only have one arrow left,” Thevanah growled.
“I’m all out after this one,” Citlali said.
“We have to make it to the treeline before your father’s men find out it’s a distraction.” Quen hefted a spear in his thick paws. “Let’s go.”
Citlali took off at a run, and Rakulo jogged after them. Thevanah reached back and raked him with her long fingernails to adjust his course, like a mom adjusts a toddler finding its walking legs. He realized he was wobbling as he ran.
Eventually, Rakulo caught his stride. They weaved between stone buildings, some of which had caved in years ago and left stones scattered across the path. Rakulo recognized the way, and placed himself mentally at the northeastern end of the courtyard, hidden behind the Temple of the Warriors. Beyond that, a short field stretched to the foot of the great pyramid. The north road led to the Well of Sacrifices. They turned the other way, southeast, where a gate with a low stone arch led into the jungle, back toward the caves. Soon they passed through the gate, and Rakulo swept a familiar hand along the ivy that seemed to coat the whole structure like a net.
His ear ached worse with each breath he took. Rakulo kicked his toe on a jutting floor stone, and stumbled. Thevanah caught him, pushing him upright and away as one of the older warriors, a man loyal to Maatiaak, came around the corner and barreled into Citlali, sending her sprawling.
Quen roared and brought the shaft of his spear down on the man’s neck. The attacker crumpled and fell, and lay still. They all braced for another attack, but none came. They stood for a moment, breathing hard.
He didn’t blame Quen for his reaction, but Rakulo didn’t want to hurt anyone. These were his people. They had locked him up, but they had been misled by Maatiaak and under Xucha’s power—they couldn’t help what they were doing. It wasn’t their fault.
And in that moment, Rakulo realized he had some empathy for Maatiaak, even though the man had betrayed him. Why had Rakulo tried to fight the inevitable? As he bent at Citlali’s side to help her up—to help Maatiaak’s only daughter, who had defied her father to free him—the answer came to him in a flash. He fought Maatiaak because he had not known Xucha was behind the deception. Now that Rakulo knew, it made all the difference in the world. His enmity for Maatiaak washed out like a tide. Maatiaak was just a shadow being controlled by the vengeful god, casting his darkness in the direction Xucha pointed.
It could have been anyone. That it happened to be Maatiaak was only a coincidence. He was not the enemy.
“I’m fine,” Citlali said as she regained her feet. She was breathless and favoring her ankle, but otherwise intact. There was a rally of cries from the southwest road now. Citlali gestured, and Quen and Thevanah walked on into the forest, away from the stone city, peering around trees and carefully ahead, searching for unpleasant surprises.
“What was that noise?” Rakulo asked, when the ululating cry sounded from a new location in the jungle behind him.
“A distraction.”
The noises faded behind and the forest swallowed them. They found shelter among its folded leaves. It was another hour hike to the caves. The tiny flying bugs were thick here, but Rakulo was tired enough not to mind except they kept sticking to the blood on his neck. His ear still throbbed, and his face began to ache as the adrenaline faded. They finally reached the limestone ridge, and Citlali limped on ahead of him.
His bare feet kicked aside some leaves and he explored the pockmarked stone underfoot with his toes, familiar as a field he’d tilled with his own hands. He counted the caves, then turned left, walking carefully along the uneven stone path. A shadow separated itself from the forest, and a concealing coat of leaves revealed itself to be a man.
“Gehro!” The rest of his warriors emerged from behind the trees all around him, and for a moment Rakulo was filled with a shining pride. They had been so silent even he had not heard them.
His hand went to his ear and he rephrased that. He had not heard them because it was not easy for him to hear. A cold panic took him. He fought to regain control. Gehro approached and lay his hand on Rakulo’s neck.
“It’s nothing.” Rakulo pulled away from Gehro.
“Come inside, you’re bleeding. Let me look at you.”
“In a minute,” he said. He turned back to his people. They were true warriors now. Despite the pain in his ear, Rakulo embraced and exchanged low words with each of them in turn. His heart grew heavy as he made his way around. Three comrades were missing. Apart from Tolen, who would never smile again, Pojuti and Hopolix were also absent. After he’d congratulated each of the survivors on their first battle—reminding them that it was no honor to fight their own people—he asked Quen and Citlali what happened to his two missing warriors.
“Pojuti was already upset about Tolen,” Citlali said.
“When she found out you were missing, she insisted we go to the stash and get the bows and arrows,” Quen said. “She cornered Maatiaak at the cliff’s edge, and shot him.”
“By herself?”
Quen averted his gaze. Citlali met his eyes in a chal
lenge. “No. She had help.”
“Her arrow went into Maatiaak’s shoulder, but then he charged at us anyway. I pushed a few of them away, but Maatiaak hid behind one of them. He dodged me and hit Pojuti while she was pulling drawing back the bowstring. She fell.”
Rakulo paled. “Dead?”
“She went bravely.”
That meant she didn’t scream. Rakulo nodded. If the gods were kind, she would have died on impact. If they were not, she would merely be severely injured by the fall and drown slowly as the waves washed her over rock breakers and into the cliff face.
Gehro put his hands over Rakulo’s shoulders and led him toward the fire. Rakulo began to lower himself where several others were gathered, faces soft-seeming and comforting in the light of the flames. Gehro tugged him along, prevented him from sitting down.
“You should wash off, first.” The old man led him all the way into the darkness at the back of the cave.
“No, no,” Rakulo balked, suddenly afraid of what might be hidden back there.
The old man shushed him, slowing his step. “There’s a small stream of water back here. I’m just giving you a chance to wash the blood off your face. You look gruesome.”
Gehro let Rakulo scrub his hands and neck clean. He set to the task vigorously. Gehro left him and came back with torch a moment later. Rakulo’s mouth dropped open at the sight of all his blood coloring the clear, slow-flowing water.
The flame also lit the rest of the area. The stream itself was about five feet across, but deep. It flowed under the wall at the far end of the deep cave with about an arm span of clearance. The water flowed slowly, at its own pace, affected by the thrust of the current beyond but not swept up in it.
The pool would have been accessible by a person were it not for the low-hanging stalactites, many of whose delicately formed tapers bent nearly to the water, casting geometric shadows from the torch onto the light-dappled eddy.
Gehro set the torch into a pile of stones arranged to hold it. The old man used his hands to administer a stinking salve that smelled of garlic to the cuts on Rakulo’s face, and his swollen upper lip.
“Where does this go, Gehro?” Rakulo asked
“Did you not know there was a stream back here?.”
“I knew there was water, I just thought it was a pool. But look, it’s moving. So where is it going?”
“Don’t know. I tried asking a few times, but the stream is reluctant to speak with me.”
“Did I tell you that in our explorations we found other wells in the forest?” Rakulo leaned forward, excited again despite his wounds, for the salve Gehro applied had a numbing effect. “I swam in two of them to the northwest. The other one I found in the southwest corner near the wall, is very deep and only accessible by a long fall. We dipped a vine into the water to see how far it was, but we couldn’t reach it.”
Gehro regarded the low hanging stalactites with sardonic amusement, as if their existence was a practical joke the gods were playing on human transience. “That’s a long fall.”
Rakulo dipped his hand in the cool water, and tasted it. It was fresh, not salty like the ocean. Fresh like the other sinkholes they had discovered. Fresh like spring water.
He drew a line between the sinkholes on the map of the area he kept in his memory. There were no creeks or canyons deep enough to obstruct the flow of water. It was a long hike between the two points, through hilly and dense forest. But like the canoes, if the current went with him it would go smooth and fast.
Could this be what they were looking for? Did it connect to the ocean, perhaps on the other side of the sea monster?
And then he remembered thick tentacles convulsing around Yeli’s small shoulders. He jerked his hand up out of the water and laid it on his waist where his knife should be. The knife was gone. Maatiaak must have taken that, too.
Gehro sighed. “I’m sorry, Raku. Citlali told me what happened. I didn’t know what was out there, just that it was dangerous.”
Thanks for not saying I told you so. “It’s I who owe you thanks, Gehro. Thanks for providing the distraction. You saved my life.”
Gehro grinned, and made that yodeling sound in his throat, but softly, a reminder of its power that night. Trickery had freed him. Perhaps, sometimes, clever thinking was better than resorting to force. The shame of his first encounter with Maatiaak felt somehow tempered by that lesson.
Rakulo glanced back one last time at the quiet current of the underground stream, before walking back to the fire to be among his warriors.
17
Without Foundation
Eliana stood on the thick, lichen-coated trunk of an uprooted tree and surveyed the cleared stretch of ground between the cornerstones.
The storm that knocked over the trunk took place an indiscriminate number of years before her tiny party of explorers arrived. Yet, because of the way the water plunged down this little hillock on which the cornerstones were situated, and how the trunk was held six inches above the ground by two agave plants crushed beneath it, the trunk itself had been partially preserved. The wood was squishy under her boots.
A straight line that ran between cornerstones A and B—the two exposed monoliths closest to her position. Eliana now thought of that as “the front side.”
She had lettered the cornerstones, too. Oh, yes. And this side was the front because it would have faced out over the tree-crowded valley below.
Dozens of colorful birds flitted through the treetops of the thick jungle, soaring through the area Ross had painstakingly cleared with his machete, then on down into the valley, circling and darting through the air in search of the juiciest insects.
Lakshmi paced territorially around the perimeter of the monoliths through a tunnel of wild tamarind trees and tight-packed strangler figs. She stopped when a snake slithered by her feet, darting between a pair of bushes on the side of the dirt path they had worn with their repeated circumnavigation of the site.
“The cornerstones are well preserved,” Eliana said. “But what good is a building without a foundation?”
“And why here?” Lakshmi added. “Stone buildings weren’t easy to build a thousand years ago. What’s the significance of this spot?”
Eliana had no doubt that whatever this structure was intended to be, the stones had been carved and placed by the hands of a skilled mason. It was hard to imagine someone—or even several people—hauling the limestone blocks, weighing a ton each, this high into the dense jungle. Unless the forest had been less thick when this structure was built? Had the valley below them sunk in the last thousand years?
It had taken them a week to excavate the four monoliths and the broken limestone pieces from the encroaching jungle. Each piece of stone was labeled with a plastic orange triangle and numbered 1 through 237, down to the smallest fragment, a chip the size of her pinky nail.
Lakshmi stopped pacing. She bent down, picked up an orange triangle, and wrote 238 on it with a sharpie.
She turned to Eliana. Ross, Talia, and Tanner lounged on camp chairs nearby and regarded Eliana silently, waiting for her verdict.
“What are you thinking, boss?” Lakshmi finally said.
“It’s a job well done,” Eliana said, making eye contact with each of them. “Truly.”
Lakshmi snorted. “Shortest lecture you’ve ever given. What else?”
Eliana raised her hands and let them fall to her sides. She blew her cheeks out. “Why aren’t there any more carvings?”
The carving of the two moons was located on the inside of cornerstone A, on the wall facing cornerstone D. The carving was nothing more than two overlapping circles, but they were perfectly proportioned to the size of the moons that hung in the night sky over Kakul. One circle was incomplete, like it had a chunk taken out of its shoulder. Eliana was certain of it now. Would others see the moons as clearly as she did?
Not if they had never seen the moons. She must get back there, if just to convince them.
After cleaning off the m
oss around the carving, Eliana found two more shallow lines, like an arrow pointing up to the moons—drawing attention to them, she assumed. The two lines were far too simplistic to glean any other meaning from them.
Strangely, no carvings were found on any of the other stones despite much searching. No petroglyphs, no symbols, no lines, no art, no paint chips, indeed no markings at all to be found.
Foliage still stood in the middle of the rectangle made by the cornerstones—not because Eliana didn’t want to cut it down, but because it was impractical to do so. Three fan-shaped Guadalupe Palms grew in an isosceles triangle formation between the cornerstones. The rest of the area was thickly packed with ferns and low prickly agaves. She had combed through it herself a dozen times, wearing her boots and two pairs of jeans to protect herself from agave thorns and startled snakes while she hunted for stones. She was nearly certain they had found them all. The stones provided scant few clues to what this structure might have been used for.
“You’ve seen the other ruins at Lagunita and Tamchen. They were all intricately decorated, carved. Do you see any facades or reliefs here? Apart from the one carving of the moons, these are plain unadorned limestone blocks with a wall connecting them. And there aren’t as many as I thought there would be, either…”
They all stared at the line of stones in front of them, at the uneven row of orange triangles that extended around the perimeter.
“What if it was dismantled?” Lakshmi said.
Eliana cocked her head at her. “Explain.”
“Only this wall seems to have enough stones to connect the corners. The southern, eastern, and western walls all have big gaps. Maybe someone moved the stones, or took them and repurposed them elsewhere?”
“It’s possible. But Talia and Tanner scouted the area for five miles in every direction while we’ve been working on this.” Eliana swept her hands out toward the sloped land below and around them.
“What if it was a fort or something?” Tanner said. “The walls were knocked down in some kind of attack.”
