The Captive King

by Susan Copperfield

  Yep, Sebastian had lost his mind. “How many did you kill, Sebastian?”

  “I couldn’t let anyone know what I planned. Even Dr. Olheimer, as he read the final words, plunged into the depths of my sea.”

  Dr. Sebastian Hoover was going to get a very unpleasant surprise when he discovered Dr. Olheimer’s talents; it would take a lot more than a fall to kill him. I didn’t agree with Dr. Olheimer about a lot of things, but he had a stronger waterweaving talent than Sebastian, and he had enough of a touch of earthweaving he could preserve the temple and everyone within if he’d gotten any warning at all.

  I had no doubt he would’ve felt Sebastian’s magic and worked his own.

  I hoped I’d find Dr. Olheimer and the rest of the team alive and well; spreading word of Los Horcones’s demise at Sebastian’s hands would be my first task after I escaped. “And he translated the entire wall before his death?”

  “The entire thing,” Sebastian confirmed.

  “And all you’re going to do is make me bleed on this altar every day?”

  “It doesn’t look like I need much, according to the translations. It won’t be pleasant for you, but I brought everything I need to treat you after each sacrifice.” Sebastian pointed at a suitcase tucked in the corner. “I thought you’d enjoy translating the writings during the wait. I brought you journals to take notes, and I’ll be generous: I’ll allow you to keep your notes. I know how much you treasure your work. It would have been my wedding gift to you, but it still can be, for all you’re with another man. No matter. I still get what I want, and I’ll be able to have any woman I want. You’re no jewel, especially not now. No one else can ascend with the temple destroyed.”

  It was a good thing I’d flared, else I would’ve attempted to end his life then and there, and I didn’t care how badly I’d be shocked trying. “Gee, thanks.”

  “It’s true. You’re no beauty, especially since you’ve shaved your head.”

  Since arguing with the insane would make me the crazy one, I shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll find the perfect woman for you.”

  He didn’t need to know I believed the perfect woman would bend him over an altar, rip out his still-beating heart, and give it to the gods he wished to join. Maybe I’d be nice and make that perfect woman truly perfect for Dr. Olheimer, who had a severe case of chronically single.

  It would be a bit of poetic justice I could live with. It was hard for people like us to find someone who understood we lived as much in the past as we did in the present.

  Chapter Nineteen

  While I listened to Sebastian regurgitate the bucket of lies Dr. Olheimer had fed him, I took notes. The longer Sebastian spoke, the more I believed Dr. Olheimer had known the exact purpose of the writing and had deliberately misled Sebastian to prevent the tribes’ magic from being revived.

  Thanks to me and my haphazard flailing and teleportation from temple to temple, I’d begun the true process. The method was right; every fifth glyph matched a different challenge.

  Sebastian would be greatly disappointed when he learned the writing was truly a matter of interpretation. He would never rise to become a god.

  Even if he did as instructed by the ancient writings, no one would obtain the secrets of the teotzin. Dr. Olheimer had lied to Sebastian from the very first glyphs.

  To people long dead, Sebastian completing his final task would make him like the teotzin, bringing good fortune to those who would never be sacrificed as long as he ruled. He had no city to rule, no reason to pursue the blessings of the divine, and no reason to delve into the secrets of the teotl.

  He’d been played. I hoped a future would come where I could find Dr. Olheimer and make him a little shrine, and I’d do it in his beloved Mayan, declaring him like the teotzin for his attempts to protect a culture he didn’t even like.

  Before our discoveries near Joya de Ballesteros and Los Horcones, my Nahua and his Maya had been bitter enemies and nothing more.

  Everything had changed with a splash of Ch’olti’ added in for good measure. One day, I hoped to figure out how the Ch’olti’ factored into the triad of cultures.

  It would take a lifetime or more, especially when I had other duties to consider. The entirety of my life had shifted on its axis.

  I was no longer an archaeologist above all.

  I was someone’s wife, although I’d have to give Landen yearly sympathy cards for putting up with me. I was someone’s queen. Could I send a sympathy card to the citizens of an entire kingdom? They’d deserve one.

  One day, if all went well, if I could find my way home, I’d become a mother.

  Those things had risen to more importance than my pursuit of lost lore, ancient relics, and history. I was certain I’d sometimes regret the sacrifice of my childhood dreams.

  Dreams and goals changed. Sometimes, I changed them myself as I learned more about the real world and escaped the chokehold of expectations. Sometimes, someone changed them for me.

  Landen had changed me, and despite myself, I’d changed him, too.

  I would continue what Dr. Olheimer had begun, confirming Sebastian’s beliefs so I might see the end of his madness one way or another. I’d test the cuffs around my wrists as my talent recovered from unearthing the ruins in Virginia.

  I’d find something I could do to free myself, assuming my ploy with the message to Montana didn’t work.

  My only ally was me, although I had no idea what I’d do with a journal, a pen, and the pictures of writings Sebastian had tried to destroy along with the men who’d trusted him.

  If I could get my hands on Sebastian’s gun, he wouldn’t live to regret it.

  Daddy hadn’t just taught me to get back up. He’d taught me a lot of things, and I’d held my first gun the day my momma had bought me my first bra. I still didn’t like firearms, I didn’t own one, and I didn’t want to own one, but I could use one if needed.

  My aim wasn’t great, but my daddy had taught me an important lesson from the get-go: if I fired at point-blank range, I wouldn’t miss.

  If I had to choose, I’d give Sebastian a good funeral. I had too much to live for, and I was willing to fight for it against all odds.

  Timing was everything to Sebastian, and several hours before dawn, he herded me to the temple site at gunpoint, deactivated the cuffs, and ordered me to get to work. While he didn’t understand the concept of willing, I went along with his wishes, reaching out with my talent to locate the altar he needed to stain with my blood to complete his ascension.

  At least he held his flashlight steady, almost as steady as he held his damned gun.

  I found the temple twenty feet down, surrounded by a pool of liquid mercury contained in a thin shell of cinnabar crystal. With one wrong step, he’d kill us both; that much mercury vaporizing would encase our lungs; we wouldn’t have time to die from mercury poisoning, as we’d suffocate long before the first symptoms hit.

  Like at the city in Virginia, the ground seemed eager to do my bidding and reveal its secrets, but the depth pushed the limits of my exhausted talent.

  Sweat soaked my shirt, and if I’d had hair, it would’ve plastered to my skull. As though angered by what we did, a cold drizzle fell, and in the way of those who no longer comprehended the world around him, Sebastian operated on instinct. He protected himself from the weather and left me to shiver while doing his work for him.

  I gave it a week before I contracted every single virus my home kingdom had to offer. I wouldn’t even need to worry about Sebastian cluing in I’d contracted mercury poisoning from somewhere. He’d assume I was making friends with pneumonia again.

  I needed to warn Landen I had an unfortunate habit of catching everything.

  With less than an hour to sunrise, I exposed the altar and the crystal containing the elemental mercury. A path of thicker red stone led to the limestone altar.

  True to Sebastian’s speculations, there weren’t enough stains or the taint of lost life polluting the site to account for ful
l human sacrifice. The droplets shouldn’t have withstood the test of time or marred the stone.

  How wonderful. More magic.

  I was so tired of dealing with strange magic capable of killing me if I took a single wrong step.

  “Make us a staircase down,” Sebastian ordered.

  I didn’t even have a chance to obey; the red crystal rose to meet me as it had in Nevada, gleaming in the beam of Sebastian’s flashlight.

  Sebastian handed me an obsidian ritual dagger, and I was so tempted to test if an ancient knife could win at a gunfight. I took the blade, contemplated my chances, and decided to wait. No, if I decided to go for his heart, I’d do it when he least expected it.

  Either the ancient magic would hold or it wouldn’t, so I walked down the staircase to the altar. The drizzle strengthened to a steady rain.

  The stains from hundreds of years ago washed away, leaving the limestone as pristine as the day it’d been carved.

  Even more magic. While tempted to stomp my feet and howl curses at the sky, I sighed and waited for sunrise.

  The rain tapered away to nothing as the first rays of light cut through the darkness and penetrated the hole, touching the altar.

  “Cut yourself and drip your blood onto the stone,” Sebastian ordered. “Otherwise, I will help you bleed.”

  I picked the ball of my left thumb and pressed my skin to the blade until several drops of blood welled up from the wound. Holding my hand out, I waited for several drops to splash onto the damned limestone.

  Green, gold, and red shimmered and curtained over the surface of the altar.

  “You’re done. Come back up, bring the sacrificial blade with you, and set it on the top step. You will wait for me to pick it up before you come closer.”

  I obeyed.

  The crystal staircase dissolved behind me, but fortunately for me, Sebastian wasted no time reclaiming his dagger.

  “I can’t take any risks,” he said.

  It was as much of an apology as I’d get, but instead of accepting it as a good woman might, I shrugged.

  Sebastian kept his word. He viewed my self-inflicted cut as acceptable, applied an antibiotic to the wound, and bandaged it. Then, rewarding me for my cooperation, he gave me an hour to translate the writings on the wall, watching me with undisguised interest.

  He didn’t ask about my notes, which I wrote in modern Nahuatl to deter him from sneaking peeks. The only thing accurate about Sebastian’s plan to become a god was the location, something Dr. Olheimer had likely confirmed because it was too easy to Sebastian to verify for himself.

  If I ever met the man again, I would praise him for his intentional linguistic butchering. He’d translated the glyphs truthfully, but he’d gotten creative with the interpretations. It was a masterful tiptoeing of the likes I’d never seen before.

  Every single glyph translated had showcased the challenge of interpreting ancient texts, emphasizing the nuances of meaning, such as difference between teotl and teotzin. Dr. Olheimer had catered the story to Sebastian’s madness in a way that might let me, Sebastian’s target, survive.

  I wondered if Dr. Olheimer had known his duplicity would save my life.

  “Take a shower,” Sebastian ordered, pointing at a door in the back of the trailer. “I won’t have your mud wrecking my bed.”

  I wasn’t going to touch his bed even if it killed me. “I’d rather sleep in a chair, thank you.”

  “Don’t argue.”

  I flinched at the hardness in his tone, and well aware he kept his gun close, I headed to the small shower. None of my normal threats would work, so all I could do was hope the lock was enough to persuade him to stay out and leave me alone.

  It was.

  I assumed magic was the reason I enjoyed a warm although brief shower, and he’d even left a bathrobe for me along with enough underwear to stock me for a year.

  Premeditated kidnappings sucked, but at least he hadn’t skimped on the bras. I didn’t want to know how he’d gotten the right size, as it’d likely lead me to punching him in the face for invading my privacy, but I’d take what I could—for the moment.

  It was when I emerged from the shower, running the towel over my head to dry the stubble I had, that he showed me the other reason for his confidence.

  Sedation was a damned good way of ensuring I stayed put. He stabbed me with a syringe, depressed the plunger, and waited.

  I fought against the drug for as long as I could, but within a few minutes, it won, dragging me into slumber.

  I remembered the weeping willow; it wasn’t far from Scranton, and it had been one of my favorite places in the world. The last time I’d been there, my parents had been on a surveying assignment, and I had done as I always did during one of their ventures.

  I’d visited my tree.

  Technically, the tree was part of a park, but when I’d been two, I’d planted it myself. It was my first memory. My parents had, like every other parent anywhere near Scranton, participated in the effort to restore the old forest to its rightful glory.

  Most children picked fruiting trees, leaving my weeping willow as the lone rebel in the orchard. Every fall, those from the nearby towns flocked to enjoy the fruits of their children’s labor.

  I hadn’t picked any of the apples. I had hidden beneath the elegant boughs of my weeping willow.

  A cold autumn wind blew, stealing my tree’s leaves and leaving me unguarded from the snow dusting the ground. It was too early for snow, but it fell all the same, defying the flow of the seasons.

  The old Nahua woman with her jade necklace slid through the snow to stand before me, her head tilted to the side as though puzzled by me.

  I puzzled me, too. “I never learned your name,” I told her. In retrospect, I should’ve spoken in her native tongue rather than in mine.

  “Coszcatl,” she replied.

  Jewel. Yes, she was a great jewel of her people. Atlalmina would’ve fit her equally well, for only the greatest of women were worthy of her tomb and the man who had loved her enough to create a true treasure for her and her alone.

  “I am Summer. Xōpantlah.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Xōpantlah.”

  “Coszcatl,” I greeted in return.

  “Your people haven’t taught you how to use your gift, your prize won from the hands of the gods.”

  I understood her as though she spoke in English, but some Nahuatl slipped in.

  She spoke of teotzin, not teotl.

  She believed the gods were real, which came as no surprise to me at all. Everything the tribes had accomplished, they had done so on the back of some god or another, chasing after both concepts with a steadfast determination, one that had outlived them—and would continue to do so for however long magic remained in the world.

  When I said nothing, she continued, “You triumphed, but still you die.”

  At first, I wasn’t certain if she meant Sebastian or the cinnabar, but then I thought it through. She likely cared nothing for Sebastian and his misguided attempts to become one of her gods. She knew the meanings of the writings—she’d probably helped to write them.

  Sebastian would fail.

  There were no gods anymore, for there was no one left who believed in them.

  She spoke nothing but the truth, which bothered me. I didn’t want to die, not with Sebastian for company, my blood staining his altar for his twisted ambitions. The truth sucked. “I die,” I agreed.

  What I died from was up for debate, but I had a growing list, which didn’t bode well for my future.

  “You don’t have to.”

  I liked the sound of that. Going home to Landen and checking off all those new items on my bucket list one day—or year—at a time sounded like a dream come true, a dream within a dream.

  I really wanted to punch Sebastian in the mouth for daring to threaten my hopes for my new future.

  “It would be foolish to die if I didn’t have to.”

  A smile twisted her old, wrinkled f
ace. “There’s no one to teach you how to master what you have earned, is there? The old ways died with us.”

  “That’s probably true. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry for what you didn’t do. It was not your hand that brought our ruin. We were but one season among many. Yours is but one season among many. While I will hope your season is long and fertile, it will end like every other.”

  Coszcatl wielded words as most did swords, and I wondered just how formidable a foe she would’ve been during her reign, a queen among men. I didn’t understand what I’d earned, although it had something to do with the cinnabar and mercury eating away at me.

  Some of my confusion must have showed on my face, because Coszcatl pulled out a red crystal from her clothes and held it to me. “You’ve walked where the gods have walked. You’ve bled where they have bled. You’ve given your vow, witnessed by gods and mortals. This is your reward. It is yours and yours alone. The one who wishes to gain from your hard work will not triumph.”

  She meant Sebastian, of that I had no doubt. “He has gone mad.”

  “He failed the first test, and this is his punishment for his wrongdoings.”

  I sighed. “Uexcaitoa.”

  Cursed. Forsaken. Perhaps, if it was with him as it was with me, doomed.

  She cackled, a grating sound. “No. You are rewarded. He is not. In that, you are right. He is as you say.”

  Poor Sebastian. I hadn’t liked him and his pushy ways, but it pained me to see him fall so far. “Some reward.”

  “It’s only because your people have lost much and gained little. I will teach you. I have seen your heart and your worry for the ones that man has betrayed, the one who faces his curse without the dignity of a true warrior. Not all live, but most do, and what was lost will be found, but that is not your test. You have already succeeded at your test. But let my words calm your spirit. The one who misguided the cursed one lives, and he will find his reward in the eyes of my lost people, although he will find his beliefs challenged.”

  Dr. Olheimer would not be happy when a fistful of Nahuatl punched his beloved Mayan in the gut and sprinkled Ch’olti’ on top. “You’re sure?”