Final Prophecy 04: Demonkeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lucius materialized in a long, narrow stone chamber that was lit by a row of burning torches running down either side. He’d zapped into a relatively open space at one end of the room; the other end was lost in the distance, obscured by countless rows of racked objects that blurred one into the next in the dim torchlight.

  Exhilaration slammed through him. The library!

  Then gravity caught up with him and he fell a good three feet to land face-first on the chamber floor. His chin cracked against granite and the breath left him with a hiss of pain as he pancaked it hard. He was also unexpectedly naked, which made the pancake thing suck more than it would have otherwise. Stone slapped his belly and mashed his ’nads, and he let out a grunt as he hit. But the pain didn’t last long in the face of the crazy-making wonder that surrounded him.

  He rolled onto his back, laughing and gasping for air. “I did it. I fucking did it!” Granted, the Prophet wasn’t supposed to physically—or metaphysically, for that matter—travel to the library, but maybe that was the sacrifice required for his having kept his soul intact. If so, that’s not going to be much of a sacrifice at all, he thought. Aloud, he crowed, “What glyph geek wouldn’t want access to a place like this?”

  The walls were carved in the Classical Mayan style, with figures turned in profile as they bent over codices, holding quill pens and feather-and-fur paintbrushes, or hammering away at chisels, carving stories into stone. And if those walls pressed too close, sparking a hint of the suffocating claustrophobia that had plagued him for the past half year, he’d learned to shove the weakness aside and focus on the things that mattered. Like the library.

  He’d finally gained access to the knowledge the Nightkeepers needed. Deaf gods be praised. More, there was a new and oh-holy-fuck problem facing them: namely that the Banol Kax had stolen the sun god and were planning on making a switcheroo in nine days. And although the information surrounding him dated only up to the fifteen hundreds, when the conquistadors’ pillaging of the so-called New World had prompted the surviving magi to hide the library and create the Prophet’s spell, the Nightkeepers were hoping—praying—that the cache would contain additional prophecies dealing with the end-time . . . including the role the sun god was supposed to play.

  “So all I’ve got to do is find those prophecies . . . or better yet, a spellbook entitled, How to Put the Sun Back into the Sky.” But, standing naked in the room he’d spent the past six months trying to find, and a decade prior to that dreaming of, even when he hadn’t known precisely what he’d dreamed, he looked around the narrow, jam-packed arcade . . . and realized that he didn’t have the faintest clue where to start. It wasn’t like there was a computerized, searchable cross-ref system already in place.

  The memory of putting together just such a system for the Nightkeepers’ archive caught him hard, bringing a blast of the mingled desire and frustration that had ridden him as he and Jade had worked together day after day. Back then he’d done his damnedest to get her to notice him as more than just a friend, only to find that, when he thought he’d gotten past the friends zone, it was only to friends with benefits. At the time, that wasn’t what he’d wanted or needed. And now . . .

  “It’s not important,” he said aloud, though that wasn’t entirely true. Jade was very, very important to him, whether as a friend or as . . . whatever they were now. But at the same time, he couldn’t focus on her, or on trying to figure out what sort of relationship they were going to have going forward. He was in the library.

  Reminding himself to breathe, he took a long look around.

  He was standing in a relatively open space at one end of the narrow room. There was a study area nearby with a low stone table and a couple of fixed benches. Three intricately carved stones were set into the floor beside the table, and several wall hooks held lush-looking woven green robes worked with brilliant yellow at their edges. In one corner, a deep wooden rack contained an assortment of quills, tools, fig-bark strips, limestone wash, and all the other necessities for making the ancient, accordion-folded codices of the Mayan-era Nightkeepers. There was a jaguar statue in the opposite corner; he thought it might have been a fountain at one point. It looked as though water would have emerged from a tiny spout halfway up the wall, then dropped into the open mouth of the snarling stone jaguar. The animal’s lower jaw formed a bowl that would have drained down the back of the creature’s throat, presumably to recirculate.

  A second bowl rested between the recumbent jaguar’s paws; it was marked with a looping glyph that resembled a thumbs-up gesture made by a stubby-fingered hand. The glyph, which translated to “sa,” represented corn or corn gruel, but was more generally taken to mean “food.”

  Okay. Food and water. He got that. If he was lucky—or as smart as he liked to think he was—he’d be able to figure out how the rest of the place worked.

  He prowled the study area, trying to get a mental picture of the magi who had set it up. If he could understand how they ordered their workspace, maybe he could guess at how they had organized the contents of the shelves. He badly wanted to dive right into the stacks, but held himself back, knowing his own ability to hyperfocus and lose track of things. Odds were that unless he went in there with a plan, he’d get sucked in by the first codex he laid hands on, regardless of its contents. So he behaved, staying in what passed for his analytical brain.

  Everything was bright and new, dust free and fresh seeming. Magic, he thought, knowing that also accounted for the torches that burned steadily without emitting smoke or noticeably impacting the oxygen level in the room. Almost as an afterthought, he snagged one of the robes and shrugged it on; it proved to be a loose-fitting ceremonial garment worked with quills and feathers down the back, in the geometric pattern of repeating “G” characters that was often associated with the gods, or places of sacred thought. The realization humbled him with the reminder that he wasn’t just a guy on a mission; he was the latest in a long line of scholars who had served the library. He might not be a mage, but he’d kick the shit out of anyone who tried to take the title of “scholar” away from him. He’d damn well earned it.

  “And now it’s time to earn it all over again,” he said, staring at row upon row of racked artifacts and codices and noting the total lack of distinguishing marks on any of the shelves. “But I’ve gotta ask: Is there any way to find what I’m looking for without cataloging every bloody artifact myself?”

  With a sudden lurch, his body seesawed into motion without his volition, walking him stiff- legged to an open space near the stone table. Shocked, Lucius cursed under his breath and tried to stop moving but couldn’t, tried to change direction, but couldn’t do that, either. He flashed back hard on the memory of his body doing things his mind couldn’t control. Godsdamn it! But before either panic or rage could fully form, the compulsion drained away and he found himself standing beside the study table, near where the three carved stones were set into the floor.

  Magic, he thought, wonder shimmering through the loathing that came with being controlled, compelled. “Don’t do that again,” he warned, though he wasn’t sure whether he was talking to his own body or whatever force had briefly animated it, divorcing his flesh from his soul. Gods, what was it about him? Was he so loosely connected to himself that it was easy to pull that shit? One of these days, would his consciousness take a walk without his corpse, and that’d be the end of things?

  Okay, now he was freaking himself out. Focus, moron . Forcing himself back on task, he studied the carved stones. There were three of them arranged in a triangle, all engraved with familiar glyphs. His bare toes were touching the left- bottom stone of the two-dimensional pyramid. The stone at the apex was carved with the so-called “snaggle-toothed dragon” glyph, that of gaping jaws framing an open space. It was one of several glyphs for way.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. That could be how I get out of here.” It might be as simple as standing on the stone and saying the word, or it migh
t involve a blood sacrifice. He wasn’t ready to leave yet, but it was good to have a starting point when the time came.

  He stared down at the two other carved insets. The one on the left, the one he’d first stood on, was an intricate glyph: a large, rounded square flanked with two rounded rectangles, one ending in a fanlike shape. Each of the main shapes had shapes within shapes, curling and looping back on one another in the Mayan tradition, which was as much about beauty as writing. “Yilaj,” he said softly, translating the three phonetic symbols spelling out yi-la-ji. It meant “was seen.” The other stone bore a stylistic reptile’s face in profile, with a closed eye and an appended symbol for a second syllable, written phonetically. Ma ilaj. “Was not seen.”

  Ohhh-kay, he thought, trying to parse it out. He had was seen and was not seen. Positive and negative. Or . . . yes and no.

  Lucius’s breath shuddered out of him as he remembered the last thing he’d said before his body walked him over to the “yes” glyph. He tried it again. “Is there a trick to help me find what I’m looking for in here?”

  His body jerked and he took a step forward. Yilaj. Yes.

  Oh, holy flying fuck. He was in the middle of a Nightkeeper Ouija board, and he was the damned planchette.

  Pulse racing, he stepped off the carved stone and tried another question. “Is Jade safe?” He hadn’t meant to ask that, really. But he needed to know. His body jerked and he found himself standing on ma ilaj. No, she wasn’t okay. Shit. “Is she in danger?” he demanded quickly. Nothing happened. Realizing he hadn’t stepped off the indicator stone, he jumped to neutral ground and repeated the question. He found himself standing back on the “no” stone, which didn’t make any sense. How could she be unsafe, but not in danger?

  She couldn’t be. Which meant he’d screwed up the translation, or its intent.

  He looked back down at the glyphs for a moment, then got it. Stepping to neutral ground, he said, “Does ma ilaj mean you can’t answer the question?” Yilaj. Okay, at least he’d cleared that up. The library’s magic—or was this the Prophet’s magic itself?—not only had its limitations, it knew what they were. Cool, he thought, pulse starting to skim faster now, not from his dislike of his body being used this way, with or without his permission—though there was some of that—but with the sort of academic anticipation he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Back at UT, when the most important thing in his life had been finishing up his thesis, he’d felt the buzz every time he made even infinitesimal progress in finding the elusive screaming-skull glyph that was rumored to mark Nightkeepers’ involvement in the end-time. At Skywatch, he’d felt the buzz nearly every damned day at first, when he’d suddenly found himself surrounded by the people of legend and been given access to archived codices and artifacts that were purely unknown in the outside world. Since his return, though, there hadn’t been any buzz. There had been only failure and frustration. He might have grown into himself physically, but in doing so, he’d lost part of that other side of himself without even really realizing it.

  Now, standing in the library of the ancients, finally in a position to do something to help the Nightkeepers rather than hurt them, he felt the buzz. And he fucking loved it.

  Grinning, he stepped off the stone. He didn’t let himself ask again about Jade. She was safely back at Skywatch. And besides, the library didn’t know her status. Which brought up an interesting point, come to think. “Are you unable to answer because the question relates to current events rather than something contained specifically within this library?” Yilaj. He was getting the hang of this, he thought. But when he stepped off the “yes” stone again, he stumbled. As though it had been hovering at the periphery of his consciousness, waiting for him to notice it, dizzying exhaustion suddenly roared through him, graying his vision and making the floor pitch beneath him.

  “Knock it off,” he told himself, his words going slurred. “You’re not that guy anymore.” He was finished with being weak, finished with fading and giving up when people needed him most. He was a new man now. So fucking act like it. Granted, magic burned an enormous amount of energy—he’d seen the magi refueling like marathoners and then crashing hard after major spell casting—but he didn’t have access to food right now, so he was just going to have to suck it up and deal. It’d probably be a good idea for him to get going on his research, though. Either that, or figure out how to make the stone jaguar in the corner cough up some grub.

  Steadying himself through force of will, he stepped to neutral ground and took a moment to formulate his next question, eventually coming up with: “Can you tell me how the Prophet’s magic works?”

  Yilaj.

  “How?”

  No answer.

  He stepped off the stone, forced himself to focus through the whirling dizziness, and realized he hadn’t asked an actual question. He tried again: “How does the Prophet’s magic work?”

  This time it wasn’t so much of a surprise when his body did an about- face without his input, but it was still damned unsettling to have the scenery passing by him without knowing where he was going. He could feel his muscles interacting as he walked toward the racks, but couldn’t tell where the neural inputs governing those actions were coming from. Before, the demon had invaded his skull, pushing him into a corner of his own consciousness and eventually severing his connection with the outside world. Now the magic was somehow controlling his body without pressuring his mind. On one level, that was a relief. On another, it squicked him right the hell out, because if he couldn’t sense the invader, he couldn’t defend himself against it, either.

  Then he passed the first rack and discomfort gave way to some serious gawking. If he’d been moving under his own steam, he would’ve stopped at a row of carved heads with the smashed-in, crooked noses of pugilists or ballplayers. Or he would’ve poked through a rack of accordion-folded codices, almost certain to find stories, histories, maybe even poems and songs. Only a tiny fraction of the vibrant culture of the ancient Maya had survived through to modern day on Earth, and at that, most of the info came from versions of oral traditions that had been written down by Spanish missionaries in the fifteen hundreds.

  Lucius’s soul sang the “Ode to Joy” at the sight of so many codices in one place. His body, though, kept walking until it stopped at the eighth rack in. Unbidden, his hand reached out to touch a stack of fig-bark pages that weren’t folded accordion-style, but rather were bound along one side with bark strips that had been soaked and bent, then threaded through holes bored down the left side of each page.

  For all that it was made of fig bark, the thing looked like a spiral-bound notebook, jarringly modern in the ancient surroundings. The cover was unadorned, giving no hint to the volume’s contents.

  A tremor ran through Lucius, though he wasn’t sure if it was foreboding or another onslaught of the fatigue he knew he wouldn’t be able to ignore for much longer. He was back in control of his body, though; having gotten him where it wanted him to go, the magic had snapped out of existence. Which, given how the human Ouija routine had worked, suggested that the volume he was touching would tell him about the Prophet’s power.

  “Cool. User’s manual.” If he was lucky.

  Getting a geeky high off the buzz of discovery, he carefully turned back the cover page, wincing as bark grated against bark and the spiral binding stuck. Beneath the cover, the first page held a few lines of text done in black ink. That deep in the stacks, the torchlight was pretty diffuse, making it difficult at first for him to make out the glyphs. Then he realized it wasn’t the torchlight that was messing him up; it was his frame of reference. The writing wasn’t in Mayan hieroglyphics. It was in English, and it read, I’m fading, my soul dying here as my body dies back on Earth. So pay attention, because if you’re reading this, then you’re already in deep shit. What I’ve written down here could save your life . . . if it’s not already too late.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The barrier

  When the disorien
tation of transition magic cleared, Jade was standing in a sea of gray- green mist that came up to her knees. The fog camouflaged the soft, slightly squishy surface underfoot and stretched in all directions to the distant horizon, where the gray-green mist met the gray-green sky.

  She wasn’t quite sure how she’d gotten there, but she was definitely in the barrier.

  Each Nightkeeper perceived the magic in a slightly different way, depending on how his or her brain worked. Strike saw his teleportation as a thin yellow thread connecting him to his destination. Sasha perceived the life forces of all living beings, their ch’ul, as different kinds of music. Jade, being more practical than poetic, thought of the barrier as a big-ass chat room. The gray-green mist was the lobby, and it wasn’t all that hard to get in if you knew what time the room would be open—the cardinal solstices and equinoxes, and a few other days of astronomical barrier activity—and what address to type in—the proper spell and blood sacrifice. The chat lobby was moderated by the bloodline nahwal, a group of dried-up stick people with apple-doll faces, who harbored the collected wisdom of each bloodline without the attendant personalities. Like god-mods in an exclusive chat room, the nahwal were sometimes visible to all of the barrier’s visitors at once, like during the Nightkeepers’ bloodline ceremonies. Alternatively, they could pull a specific mage into an offshoot room for a private chat, or they could kick users out of the chat entirely, either sending them back to their corporeal bodies or stranding them in limbo.

  Jade didn’t mind being in the barrier; it was one of the few places she ever truly felt like a mage, and an asset. One of her greatest contributions to the Nightkeepers’ cause had been when her ancestral nahwal had given her a private message during one of the cardinal-day ceremonies, warning her that the Nightkeepers needed to collect the artifacts bearing the seven demon prophecies. The heads-up had allowed them to defend the barrier against Iago’s first major attack and had made Jade, albeit briefly, part of the team.