Last resort, he thought, getting to one knee. He laid his hands flat on the cave floor, the talisman frozen crookedly between them. Placing one foot squarely on the brass medallion, Archie lunged to his feet.
The talisman came loose, tearing long shreds of skin from Archie’s hands. He scrambled away from it, then lost his balance and fell, remembering not to break the fall with his hands this time. Pain rolled his stomach into a somersault as Archie watched the bits of his skin stuck to the talisman shrivel like green leaves in a fire. His breath returned and he sucked in huge grateful breaths, the cold fading from his hands. The pressure lifted from his chest and his heart began to beat again, erratically at first but settling in a moment to a fast, excited hammering in his aching chest.
He could see. The talisman lay before him, its quetzal feathers gummed with blood and bits of wrinkled skin. Above and behind it Archie could clearly make out the passage leading out of the domes. He looked from it to his hands, which throbbed with pain far worse than what he’d felt when Royce had stabbed him, months ago now; his palms and fingers looked as if they’d been clumsily butchered. Touching bloody fingers to his face, Archie found that he was still wearing the mask. It had no weight now that it rested securely on his face, covering his eyes, and he was confused enough to wonder how it stayed attached.
I’m the Mask-bearer now, he thought, wondering if that was what Tamanend had meant all along. And it’s time to seek my peace.
As soon as he thought of Tamanend, something in the air shifted, as if an unthinkably vast face had swung toward him and begun watching him. Archie stood and looked around, but the presence—if there was any real presence—stayed just outside his field of vision. Its attention was hungry somehow, neither hostile nor encouraging but uncomfortably curious. Using the mask attracted its attention, Archie thought. It’s waiting to see what I’m going to do next, watching me like that man Wilson did in the Brewery basement. He repressed a shudder at the thought that Wilson—no, Pope—had been somehow an agent of Ometeotl.
Steen must have felt the same gaze when the rabbit exploded in that boy’s hands. He had said as much, warning Royce that the huehueteotl was watching and going to bizarre lengths to escape the Old God’s attention. Of course, Steen had reason to avoid the Old God—he was working in Tlaloc’s service.
This enemy is your ally, Tamanend had said. But he had also warned Archie that this ally was not entirely to be trusted. The knife in Archie’s belt grew warm, and he decided that the less attention he drew at the moment, the better.
If he was lucky, removing the feather talisman had blinded the chacmool to his whereabouts. But he had, in essence, traded the talisman for the mask, and given up some of his own flesh and blood to do it, and Archie had no idea what sort of allegiance that exchange had committed him to.
Outside the Old Brewery, Archie remembered, Steen had insisted that Royce and the Geek follow directly in Archie’s footsteps. The two Rabbits had lived long enough afterward that Archie decided to give the same tactic a try now.
Ally or not, he thought, I believe I’d rather proceed without anyone watching, just for now. He searched the floor and caught the trail of Stephen’s footprints leading out of the domes. Perhaps the huehueteotl would see Stephen instead of him, Archie thought. He fell into Stephen’s trail and followed it into the maze separating him from the chacmool and Jane.
The feeling of being watched fell away as Archie retraced Stephen’s path through the nameless canyon passages. The trail persisted even over bare rock, and Archie realized that he wasn’t seeing actual track, but presences. Stephen’s prints took the shape of bare feet, recording the passage of the man rather than the impact of his bootsoles.
I’m still blind, Archie thought. It’s not my eyes I’m seeing through. Whose, then?
He felt the Old God’s attention return as he worked his way through the long crawl back to the junction Stephen had called the Pass of El Ghor. Every time his flayed palms touched the damp gravelly floor, Archie’s stomach flipped and pain rose up like a roaring in his ears, but behind the stabbing agony he could feel the patient gaze of the huehueteotl, like a weight on the back of his neck. Would this happen every time he wasn’t able to follow Stephen exactly? What if Stephen hadn’t gone back to the chacmool, how could Archie escape the Old God’s Eye then?
And why did he want to? This enemy is your ally. Tamanend had been maddeningly obscure, but he had never lied. Somehow the Old God’s attention could be turned to Archie’s advantage.
None of that matters, Archie thought. He paused to pick a triangular pebble from the base of his thumb. If I have to carry the Old God on my back, I will.
But as soon as he came out of the crawl and picked up Stephen’s trail again, the presence faded, and Archie made his way laboriously along, passing through Purgatory with the quiet rippling of Echo River sounding all around him. God, I’m thirsty, he thought, but he didn’t dare stop. He had no idea how long he’d been cowering under the domes—for all he knew, the ceremony could already have taken place.
No, the Old God would have given up on him then; there must still be some time. But even if Archie had time for a leisurely lunch on the riverbank, he thought that the chacmool—talisman or no—would notice the moment he came into contact with the river.
Archie pressed ahead, cursing at the knot of pain tightening at the base of his spine. Stephen’s stride was shorter than his, and following the tracks forced Archie to take toddler steps even when the path was broad and level. His ankle was throbbing again, threatening to buckle with each step, and as fatigue slowed his reactions, he stumbled more often, once nearly slipping into the river. Would have solved my thirst problem, he thought, but through the mask he could see things moving in the river, things that took the shape of its spidery currents and waited for a certain interloper to make a misstep. Archie thought of the chaneque and wondered whose bodies and souls had been conscripted to watch for him from the water.
After the torturous trip through Purgatory, Archie was stunned to see the rowboat still tied up to its post on the rocky beach of Lake Lethe. It hadn’t yet occurred to him to worry about it; getting even this far had seemed impossible.
Stephen, he thought. But then how did he get back?
Even this good fortune, though, left Archie having to row back using his flayed hands. Quickly he tore strips from his shirt and bound his hands as best he could. Then he untied the boat and pushed off into the river.
It was only a short distance to the end of Lethe, and thence to the River Side-cut that led around most of River Styx, ending in a natural bridge. Archie worked into a steady rhythm after a few minutes, doing his best to ignore the ragged pain in his hands and chest.
Something tugged suddenly at his right hand, and he nearly dropped the oar on that side. He looked down and stifled a scream.
Maudie’s rudderman Alfonse was there, his bloated hands clamped on the oar and his teeth clenched on the bloody trailing edge of Archie’s bandage. Vacuous hunger animated Alfonse’s face as he chewed away at the bandage, pulling Archie’s arm toward the water. Below Alfonse drifted Punch and Judy, floating along in tandem, their legs dragged down by rusty shackles with chains that trailed away to invisibility.
Blood in the water, Archie realized. I can’t touch the water, especially not here.
He let go of the oar and swiftly unwrapped the bandage, then threw it as far as he could back the way he’d come. The bloody strip of cloth unwound over the river, landing like a clumsily cast fishing line.
Around it the water surged as the dead rose from the river and fought over this offering. Alfonse lost his grip on the oar and was dragged away by his clenched teeth, his eyes rolling back to stare at Archie as he faded into the dark water.
Before he got to the Side-cut, Archie thought he’d have one last try at coming up with a plan, or at least isolate some things he didn’t want to do. Bleed in the river, was one. Kill anyone, another. He looked over the side and saw tha
t the shapes in the river were again dispersed by its currents. His blood had given them form. That was important somehow.
But there was simply too much he didn’t know. If Stephen had somehow resolved his doubts, Archie would likely have to kill him to get to the chacmool. He had the knife, but the experience with Royce, the ghastly seduction of the man’s dying heartbeats reverberating in his mind … he wasn’t sure he could use it on Stephen, not knowing what he did now. If he had to become something like the chacmool to defeat it, the real battle would be lost.
The only person Archie hadn’t been afraid to threaten with the knife was himself. He remembered awakening with it in his hands at least twice, knowing that he could find his own heart and end his struggles. The incident aboard the Daigles’ keelboat seemed to confirm it: the knife could only be a defensive weapon. Archie had killed a man with it, and had nearly lost his soul as a result, but he had also used it to stave off what Peter Daigle had called his demon.
What can I gain by turning the knife on myself? Archie wondered. The question gnawed at his mind as he grounded the boat on Lethe’s muddy banks, watching carefully to make sure he wasn’t bleeding into the river.
At last Archie crossed the natural bridge over River Styx and began working his way toward the Dead Sea and the crevice he was sure led to the chacmool’s lair. He picked up his pace, hopscotching along Stephen’s track, then stopped dead when he heard the whistled strains of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” carrying lightly down the hall ahead of him.
Riley Steen sat on a ledge over the emerging River Styx, dangling his booted feet in the water. He stopped whistling and inclined his head at Archie, smiling from behind a near-mask of mud and gore. “Good trick, Mr. Prescott,” he said with the air of a hunter complimenting his companion’s last shot. “I see you learned something the night of our Five Points excursion. Did you take the boat ride on this lovely river? Matchless experience, but too little light to gamble properly.”
“I thought you were dead, Steen.” Archie remained where he was. Steen’s derringer nestled in one meaty fist, not pointing at Archie but not aimed away either. Archie couldn’t understand why Steen was here waiting for him, or why the chacmool had allowed him to traipse through the cave all this time.
“Oh, in every way that matters, I am, Mr. Prescott. I see what the dead see, hear them speak. Quite a lively bout of wagering has sprung up regarding the odds of your success.”
“It has? What do dead people bet?” Keep him talking, Archie thought. Keep asking questions.
“Poems and songs, sometimes, but primarily jokes.” Steen chuckled. “The dead are tremendous pranksters. I’ve placed my own bet, of course, which is why I’ve dallied here so long.”
Steen splashed his feet in the river, shredding a delicate shape that had begun to coalesce around them, and shifted the derringer so it pointed more directly at Archie. “I’ll tell you a little tale, Mr. Prescott. When Beethoven premiered his Ninth Symphony, the Chorale, he was completely deaf and couldn’t hear the musicians. But he conducted grandly, even if his motions didn’t have much to do with what was actually happening onstage because his musicians were following the first-chair violin, and when the music had ended he kept right on conducting until that same first-chair violin got up and turned him around so he could see the ovation he was receiving from the crowd.
“Well, that’s exactly what has happened to me, Mr. Prescott. The musicians play my tune but ignore my conducting. Beethoven composed music he couldn’t hear, I’ve made possible a world that I never could have seen. But, even though Beethoven was ignored at the premiere, no one now forgets that it was he who composed the Ninth—and history will give me my due as well. Seeing as the dead see offers one a certain perspective. From that perspective I see that my importance to these proceedings is undiminished, even if I myself do not exist to enjoy the temporal fruits of their success.”
Lost in his own story now, Steen hadn’t noticed that the shape in the river had reformed. Archie could see it, though, a ragged human shape with one arm truncated at the elbow. John Diamond.
But Diamond has a body, Archie thought, or at least did a week ago. Was Steen bleeding into the water, and his nightmares taking form around his feet?
“If I allow you to disrupt the ceremony, and by some stroke of fortune you defeat the chacmool, no history will ever record what I have done. You will move on and forget this as best you can, and the nigger Stephen will keep all of these marvelous events a secret. I can’t allow that to happen, Mr. Prescott. I cannot allow these proceedings to fade unrecorded, and I cannot allow myself to disappear into the anonymity reserved for wandering madmen. I am dead, and history is all I have.
“Surely you understand.” Steen raised the derringer.
At the same time, John Diamond rose out of the River Styx and dug the fingers of his remaining hand into the fleshy wattle under Steen’s jaw. Diamond started to fall back into the water, and Steen was dragged along with him, flailing his arms for balance as he pulled the trigger of the tiny gun.
The shot hit Archie squarely in the forehead, knocking him over backward. He lay blind on his back, thinking Stephen wasn’t the trap, Steen was the trap. Trying to sit up, Archie couldn’t find his balance and succeeded only in rolling onto his side, where he reached out for something to hold onto. Something to keep him from drifting away. Spasms shook his legs, and he flipped onto his back again.
Someone was shouting, the voices coming in a rush that mingled with violent splashes from the river. One sentence rose clearly out of the muddle, sticking in Archie’s mind: Guess I owe you a bad turn or two, Steen.
So it had been John Diamond. An image arose in Archie’s mind: Diamond’s puzzled glance at his mutilated arm, as the chaneque vomited out its life in Blennerhassett’s abandoned study.
How did Steen get to Blennerhassett’s? Archie thought. I have to get to Kentucky. But don’t touch the river.
“Ahh, God,” he cried out, seeing again the explosion that destroyed Maudie, thinking of the three slaves grasping vainly at the sunlight just beyond their reach. He lost consciousness then, slipping into the waters with dying slaves clutching at his ankles and Helen’s ghostly face riding in pale flame on the receding surface.
Light awoke him, real light that stabbed into his ringing head. Archie flinched away from it, clutching at his forehead. His hands stung as they touched his face, joining a chorus of agony from his face, his chest … his entire body hurt.
“Mr. Prescott.” The voice was Stephen’s. Archie couldn’t help but smile, even though the movement ground his broken nose painfully. Blood trickled onto his lips.
“Come to finish me off, Stephen?”
“Get up, Mr. Prescott. No time for you to be hurt.” Stephen dangled a watch in front of Archie’s face. He couldn’t focus on it. Reflected light from its case dazzled him.
Stephen put away the watch and took hold of Archie’s shoulders. “Twenty minutes before midnight, Mr. Prescott. Got to go.” He hauled Archie to his feet and held him upright until Archie could stand shakily on his own.
“I’ve been shot, Stephen. In the head.”
Stephen bent down and picked something up off the cave floor. Archie saw that it was the mask, or rather half of it. It was cracked cleanly down the middle, the broken edge marred by a hemispherical gouge. “Never seen a man so lucky to be shot in the head,” Stephen said. “Now come on.”
“Steen shot me,” Archie said as Stephen led him around the Dead Sea. “Where’s Steen?”
“Gone down River Styx,” Stephen answered. “John Diamond too.”
They stopped in front of the Bottomless Pit branch. Archie recognized it; his wits were beginning to return. “Reckon we’ve seen the last of them both,” Stephen said. “Now follow me. You hear, Mr. Prescott? Follow my light.”
Follow the light, Archie repeated to himself. Steen was dead, Royce and the Geek as well. Three men on whom he had sworn mortal revenge, but he’d actually killed none o
f them. Royce would surely have died from the wound Archie had given him, but it had been Steen who actually finished him. Archie supposed he should feel cheated, but he didn’t. Revenge seemed irrelevant when one’s head still rang from the impact of a bullet that should have been fatal. He was lucky to be alive. But then, how often had that been the case during the past few months?
He followed Stephen automatically, wincing whenever he had to use his hands to negotiate the cramped passage. Ometeotl’s Eye returned then—or Archie noticed it again, he wasn’t sure which. The light, inquisitive pressure on the back of his neck seemed to lessen the pain from his hands and chest, but his nose was still bleeding freely. Blood dripped from the end of his chin, spotting the muddy floor as Archie focused on the one task remaining before him. One last adversary to overcome, and then …
Then would take care of itself. Jane was all that mattered now.
Stephen clambered out into an open space, then turned to wait for Archie. Reaching the end of the branch passage, Archie saw that it emerged well above the bottom of the pit. A rough hill of breakdown sloped away into darkness to Archie’s left, reaching as high as the passage mouth only at the near wall. Stephen crouched under a leaning block of stone as large as Riley Steen’s wagon. He held a finger to his lips, then helped Archie climb down next to him.
“You have to take it from here, Mr. Prescott,” he said, just above a whisper. “I’m sorry for what I did, but I did it for the same reasons you’re doing this.”
Stephen lay on his stomach and set his lamp on a level space a few feet below. “Stay to the left. The light’ll give out before you get there, but you won’t miss the way in.” Archie nodded, imagining the hungry glow of the sacrificial fire set to consume his daughter’s life. He stepped down next to the light, then picked his way slowly down the ancient rockslide, leaving the light entirely behind.
Alexander C. Irvine Page 37
