The Captive King

by Susan Copperfield

  Wherever I was, I wasn’t in Mexico anymore.

  I could breathe, which was where the good news ended. Until I could recover enough to better use my talent, which involved a great deal of rest, I was stuck. While sand was easier to dig through, it—and the heat—would suck the moisture out of my body, slowly killing me.

  Well, not slowly. If I failed to escape from my sandy prison, I’d have a day or two before the desert baked the life out of me. It was one of the first survival rules we’d been taught. Water was life. The human body could withstand a great deal of abuse, surviving up to a month without food if there was potable water. Without water, death came swiftly.

  The professors usually quoted seven days as the limit. My favorite, Dr. Hartel, had told us the brutal truth.

  If we were out of water, seven days was a pipe dream. He put the realistic average at four, especially in the harsher environments we ventured into. The jungle was easier to survive in than the desert; jungle teams could last a long time living on the land as long as the predators stayed away.

  The Egyptian dig teams got an entire semester of survival courses. I’d gone to them out of curiosity. The jungle crews only got one class, and it boiled down to stick with the locals, a basic list of edibles, and a stern warning that almost everything in the jungle would be happy to eat us if given a chance.

  I needed to thank Dr. Hartel for his blunt honesty and recommendation to join the Egyptian dig team survival courses. He’d been the one who’d helped me conquer sand and its many grains without being overwhelmed.

  I could move a single grain of sand with my talent, or I could move entire piles of it all at once, all thanks to his effort and care. He wasn’t an earthweaver like me, but he understood how we ticked—and he had no scruples about shocking my ass if I didn’t do the work right.

  I’d been electrocuted more times than I could count thanks to him.

  But because of him, I’d survive.

  I owed him flowers, chocolates, and a gift card to his favorite bookstore. And I’d offer to babysit his menagerie of children and pets so he could take off with his wife for a few days.

  After I was done thanking him, I’d have to kick him in the shins, too. Thanks to his teachings, I’d condemned myself to a slow, painful death instead of the quick end asphyxiation offered. Knowing the terrain, having escape paths, and being aware of the nearest safe places were basics of survival. Waiting around for rescue only worked if someone knew you needed rescued—and you were already in a safe place that had everything you already needed for basic survival.

  Avoiding asphyxiation didn’t seem like much of a victory when I thought about the various ways I might—eventually—die.

  Fuckity fuck, fuck, fuck.

  If I got out of the sandy, hot hell I’d fallen into, I’d think long and hard about my life choices. First, I’d demand a copy of the recording that had dumped me into a death trap. Then I’d use it to defend my dissertation, but instead of taking my doctorate like a smart woman, I’d tell the University of Florida they could shove it right up their ass, transfer to a different school—a saner school, one that didn’t require me to venture into death traps to pass my dissertation—and get a PhD that way.

  I looked forward to abandoning my common sense and telling my soon-to-be former professors to take their doctorate and shove it up their asses.

  Once I was done torturing certificates and inserting them into places paper didn’t belong, I’d search for Landen and thank him. I’d thank him in many creative ways. I’d enjoy every minute I spent thanking him.

  I’d be really disappointed if Bachelor #103 was no longer available thanks to the stupid charity auction designed to turn nice men like him into happily married husbands.

  After I thanked Landen, I’d find a safer job. Maybe I’d become one of those on-site translators who charged a fortune to put up with potential death traps.

  My plan had several severe flaws, including the base requirement to withdraw before defending my dissertation to transfer credits to a different university. Since setting myself up for another failed defense wasn’t in the cards, I’d have to come up with a new plan.

  Maybe my new university would allow me to present my discoveries at Los Horcones despite it not falling under their jurisdiction. Modern magic rarely used vocal components; it was all about intent, will, and determination.

  Whatever had dumped me in a hot sand pit had used a verbal trigger; I remembered mangling the odd mix of Nahua, Ch’olti’, and Mayan before the discs had done something to me.

  I still wasn’t sure what I’d felt when the red light had flashed, but it had left my stomach a cramped mess.

  There’d be time for woolgathering after I escaped. I forced myself to relax, slowing my breathing and waiting until I no longer shook from fatigue. The sand roasted me, but I’d endured worse in the humid jungles on a bad day. The sand would be lighter, easier to work with, and less taxing. Unlike heavy, moist soil, I could dig my way out one grain of sand at a time. As long as I remained conscious, I could work. It’d be slow and painful, but only time separated me from freedom.

  Since doing something beat doing nothing, I began to work, concentrating on where my tunnel ended. Sand had many risks, including its tendency to collapse, but my talent could glue the grains together and hold them in place. I reinforced the bottom first to create a strong foundation. I’d let gravity do most of the work for me, creating a secured hole large enough for me to slid through. With a few shakes, I’d dislodge the excess and use my magic to shunt the rest of it away.

  Had I been stronger, had I held my temper at Los Horcones, it would’ve taken minutes instead of hours. I wouldn’t complain; I’d been stupid, and I deserved to pay the price for it.

  The sun had fallen by the time I wiggled free of my sandy prison, and a starry sky, untouched by humanity, stretched as far as I could see. The shadows of mountains loomed overhead in the moonlight.

  I stood in a wasteland of some sort, dry, acrid, and devoid of life.

  Wherever I was, I definitely wasn’t in Mexico. I eliminated South America, too. Most monarchies had worked hard to preserve the rainforests and jungles, and when they weren’t preserving the trees, they were reclaiming farmland from the deserts one acre at a time.

  Even Mexico, hit the hardest by the long-term droughts, had few desolate places left.

  The Royal States hadn’t fared as well, too busy fighting with other kingdoms to reclaim desert land for agriculture. I could think of several kingdoms with large swathes of uninhabitable land, including California, Texas, Nevada, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

  On a whim, I checked my pockets for my shit phone, which barely worked on a good day. When I pulled it out, I discovered the display had cracked. It didn’t surprise me it didn’t turn on; sometimes it didn’t because it hated me as much as I hated it.

  Nothing in Dr. Hartel’s lectures told me what to do when I was stuck up a shit creek without a paddle. Or a boat.

  Damn it.

  If I wanted to survive in the desert, I needed water. While I wasn’t a waveweaver, I was the next best thing. In truth, my middling talent hid useful secrets. I didn’t need to control water to find it, and I could purify it by drawing out the unwanted impurities.

  Decaying matter, minerals, and bacteria fell under the domain of the earthweaver, and when I wanted it bad enough, I could turn sludge into potable water.

  It just took time, effort, and determination.

  A lot of people didn’t realize dirt wasn’t just eroded stone; it was decaying organic matter, bacteria, and living organisms, an entire ecosystem we viewed as mud.

  Everything unsafe for me to drink, I could make safe.

  Fear had kept me from telling anyone about that part of my talent. I was already crushed under the heel of the greedy for my ability to move so much ground in a day. If anyone learned I could purify a camp’s water supply, I’d never be allowed to help with the digs directly. I’d be expected to
clear out the site so the other archaeologists could learn its secrets.

  Sitting on the dry, cracked slope covered with sand, I pressed my palms to the ground, closed my eyes, and concentrated. A temple lurked beneath me, a three-step ziggurat, and like the one at Sebastian’s dig site, there were five altars. The taint of shed blood shivered across my senses.

  The sense of death was far stronger than in Mexico, stronger than anywhere else I’d been. How many had lost their lives on the temple’s five altars? If I trusted my talent, the number was in the thousands.

  For the first time in my life, I wanted to turn tail and leave the ruins for someone else to discover.

  Shuddering, I reached deeper in search of water, and I found it below the temple, an underground river slicing across the desert before dipping deeper into the Earth. I withdrew before my talent went rogue and followed the water to a place I didn’t dare go.

  Many an earthweaver had gone mad trying to discover the deep secrets of the Earth, and I didn’t want to become one of them.

  When built, I wondered if the temple had been surrounded by water, a nod to Tenochtitlan, the first city of the Mexica tribe many would remember as the Aztecs, now known as Mexico City. Water meant everything to a civilization. Without it, the people died. With too much of it, the people died. Famine had brought ruin to so many Mexica tribes, as had flooding and disease.

  A thriving civilization balanced all things, and the Nahua were a good reminder of what happened when something went wrong. Change happened no matter how hard we fought it, and the Mexica tribes had been unable to prevent the conquistadors from waging their war. To the natives, war and death had been a way of life.

  They’d just waged their wars in a different way.

  To the Nahua, dogs were companions, not beasts of war. A single horse could break the morale of an entire tribe. Other students in my classes had laughed at the idea of men believing horses were dragons and dogs were the avatars of the gods, but I had done more than learn their language.

  War dogs had been a sign that the gods had abandoned the tribes. Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl were well-known gods, twins in so many ways, and when carved into stone, they often resembled dogs as much as they resembled serpents, birds, and monkeys.

  I could only imagine the terror of the tribes when they believed their enemies rode their gods into battle against them.

  There’d be time to think about the fall of the native populations after I figured out where I was, made a plan to reach civilization, and dig to the water below. Only then would I reevaluate my life choices. Watching paint dry might be a viable option. It’d be a hell of lot safer.

  If I ever saw Matt again, I’d compliment him on his wisdom.

  I made two critical mistakes.

  First, I treated the sand like I did dirt, a novice error. I knew better. I’d used the principle to prevent myself from asphyxiating. The granules required very little effort on my part to move.

  Second, I didn’t pay enough attention to where I stood.

  Rather than relocating the sand in batches and tunneling to the water below, I blasted it sky high, undermining the formerly solid ground beneath my feet. I dropped into the resulting hole, splashing into the frigid water. Before I’d realized I’d submerged, the current sucked me under the temple.

  Luckily for me, the underground river had no use for idiots and spit me out. I smacked into stone, and water beat down on me from where it geysered up through a hole in the floor. A pale, golden glow radiated from a carving in the wall, a monstrous head crowned with feathers.

  Quetzalcoatl.

  I could understand why the tribes might mistake a war mastiff for an avatar of their god. Dragon, beast, or serpent—the stylization left enough room for doubt of the nature of the Nahua god responsible for the wind and the pursuit of knowledge.

  The water pounding down on me drained from the room through slits in the stone. The water numbed me and smothered my talent, but I couldn’t detect the tell-tale hot and cold of someone else’s talent bumping against mine.

  Even when I staggered to my feet and touched the glowing carving, I felt nothing.

  The Nahua had had magic, too, magic so alien to mine I couldn’t detect it. There was nothing else the glow could be. Had their version of an illuminator imbued the stone with their talent? How had it survived so many years?

  I could spend the rest of my life trying to make sense of the geysering river and the glowing form of Quetzalcoatl. I’d be paying homage to him at the same time, too.

  Yesterday—the day before?—the idea of confirming magic’s existence in history would’ve enthused me. Instead of joy, I dealt with an aching head and back along with a bucketful of regret. If I didn’t want to starve to death, I needed to escape the temple.

  It was then I noticed the discs hadn’t abandoned me; the glossy black stones were wrapped around my wrists. On the right side, the Nahua calendar greeted me. The Maya calendar showed on the left.

  They, too, glowed with the same golden luster.

  When had the damned things wrapped around my wrists? I could guess at the how of it: more magic. All I’d have to do was show up for my dissertation defense; I was living proof ancient cultures had used magic in some form or another. Did I even want to accept the legendary pass? Sticking to my guns and transferring seemed like the saner and safer option.

  Shaking my head at my folly, I cupped my hands together to catch the water raining down. It seemed purer than anything I’d guzzled down in Mexico or Guatemala, and if there were nasty bacteria lurking in it, I couldn’t detect them with my talent.

  As I had no other choice, I drank.

  The first time I’d found a sweet spring, I’d believed magic had changed the water. Crisp and pure, it soothed my parched mouth, cool without being cold. I took care not to drink too much; throwing up being stupid might get me killed.

  Until I found food to go with the water, I needed to conserve my strength—and figure out how to escape the temple without setting off every damned trap in the place. Mesoamerican tribes weren’t as ruthless as the Egyptian or Chinese when protecting their sacred places, but they sometimes left lethal surprises.

  I’d never forget the three men who’d died at Site C. Greed had factored into their deaths, no matter how often I blamed myself for failing to locate the pit filled with a fortune of vermilion pigment, an artist’s dream come true.

  All of us had been exposed, some worse than others. I’d used my talent to protect most of us, but I hadn’t been able to stop the mercury poisoning from killing its victims.

  All three of them had sickened too much to travel within the first twenty-four hours. Within a few days, they’d gone mad, uncharacteristic psychosis setting in before memory loss, hearing loss, and seizures had erased the men they had once been.

  The cinnabar samples were still undergoing testing to discover what made it so much more toxic than it should’ve been.

  Knowing what I did, I had an answer no one would like: magic.

  If I assumed the Nahua used the new variant of cinnabar for their vermilion pigments, I’d have two weeks before death without treatment. I wasn’t sure if modern medicine could treat the beautiful but lethal toxins made by those long lost to history.

  If I fell prey to the cinnabar, I hoped someone would take mercy on me.

  Cinnabar was a real risk, but I was willing to bet there’d be other dangers in the temple. Traps might lurk in the stones, meant to kill, immobilize, or imprison. My talent would help me avoid those, although I wondered how the ancient magic would hamper my efforts. For all I knew, breathing might kill me.

  If I survived, I’d have to consider another option for myself. Contacting Landen and asking for his help seemed like a wise choice. My pride would die a terrible death, but I could live with a battered ego.

  Had I lived in the time of the Nahua, they wouldn’t have hesitated. The instant they’d found me inside their temple, they would’ve bent me over an altar and carved m
y heart out—or given me as a prize to an unwed warrior.

  It depended on if they believed I might bear strong sons and cunning daughters—and if I was the right age. Never before had I found my birthday so ironic. To most, July 26 was just another day. To the Nahua, it was an auspicious day full of good omens.

  If I had to place bets, they’d present my still-beating heart to their thirsting gods.

  The geyser continued to shoot water in the room, but magic prevented me from leaving the way I’d come in, although if I returned to the underground river, I would inevitably die. The current was too strong and would suck me deep into the Earth. I’d drown long before discovering where the water flowed.

  I went over every inch of the chamber without finding a way out, and it took my talent to discover there was a hallway behind the carving of Quetzalcoatl. Something dampened my ability to sense more than that, which unnerved me almost as much as being stuck in an ancient temple alone.

  To hide my growing fear, I planted my hands on my hips and glared at the Nahua deity. “I always liked your twin better.”

  Wind and wisdom were nicer than Xolotl’s domain, but the Nahua dog of death, the god of fire and lightning, symbol of misfortune and monsters, and the patron of illness and deformity, packed a harder punch. The wise bowed to Xolotl, for he guided all souls to the afterlife.

  He also protected the sun during the night, but no one liked to talk about that. It wasn’t glamorous enough. It didn’t showcase Nahua brutality sufficiently.

  I found it odd Quetzalcoatl lurked where Xolotl should’ve reigned supreme, albeit neither god had much sway over water.

  Pushing and prodding hadn’t worked on Quetzalcoatl’s head, so I gave pulling a try.

  The god’s head popped off, and a shower of vermilion billowed from the hole.

  A scream burst out of me, and my talent reacted to my fear.

  The brilliant red cloud hung in the air, inches away from inflicting a slow, torturous death on me. The rest of Quetzalcoatl’s carving melted into mud, slipped into the cracks in the floor, and disappeared.