City of the Gods

by Stargate

  "Do you think the skull will transport the warriors?" Dabruzzi asked when he joined them.

  Daniel shook his head. "I'm not sure. They may have renounced the Goa'uld as their gods, but they still carry symbiotes."

  People poured into their side of the cavern and clustered around them, strangely silent, watching in wonder as the light from the skull spiraled out around Sam's head.

  The bubbling hiss of magma changed tone, and a deep rumble echoed through the cavern. Everyone braced themselves in expectation. Another large quake hit, but this time, it didn't stop. It got worse, a lot worse. The light coming from the crystal skull vanished, and the makeshift pedestal collapsed, sending the skull rolling across the floor and towards the magma pit! Sam lunged after it. A shrill cry came from one of the children. The face of the little girl that White-owl was carrying suddenly contorted with grief, but Daniel could no longer hear her screams above the noise as the walls of the cave shuddered and cracked. Hundreds of skulls and gold decorative pieces began smashing onto the ground and falling into the pit.

  "Alice!" squealed Wodeski. It was the first sound he'd made since Jack had punched him. "Let me up, let me up! The floor's burning!"

  Daniel was more concerned with the sudden surge in the magma. It rose from the depths, hissing and contorting like a living being, a mythical dragon, perhaps. No surprise that the Aztecs - indeed, every human civilization since the dawn of man - associated it with a malevolent deity.

  A tiny black animal darted between Daniel's legs. Hands grabbed him roughly and pulled him back from a newly opened crack in the ground. Jack was shouting in his ear, while basalt rocks and gold objects rained down on them. The heat hit him like a blast furnace when magma spewed over the edges of the pit and across the ground - which began splitting into heaving black islands over the fiery sea.

  Teal'c and Dabruzzi grabbed two of the children who had not made it to Sam's side of the cave, and vainly tried to push back the crowds - who were still trying to get in through the tunnels. Daniel snatched up another child and lifted her onto his shoulders. "Hang on tight!" he called to her. Sooner or later, someone would fall and be crushed.

  Then Daniel heard his own voice crack in disbelief. "Oh, God, no!" The floor where Sam, the other children and Marines had been, was gone. In its place was an ever-widening river of magma that effectively bisected the cave. He looked across to the tunnel leading up to the Stargate. A cluster of worried looking faces stared back at him. "Sam!" he cried in relief. "You okay?"

  "Yeah!"

  But Daniel could see her expression through the shimmering waves of heat.

  "Skulls?" Jack yelled.

  "Gone, sir!" she called back. "Both of them. Along with Can, Bradley and two jaguar warriors."

  Daniel spun around and confronted Wodeski, who was once more in Teal'c firm grip. "The skulls! Where did you put them, Professor?"

  "Let me go. You're insane!" Wodeski screamed. The floor beneath them continued to buckle and crack. "You can't use them in here, you'll burn us all alive!" He pounded Teal'c's chest. When that didn't work, he lunged at the child Teal'c was carrying in his other arm.

  A rending crack tore through the cave, and the crowd surged forward. A woman with a baby on her back and a toddler in one arm slipped towards the magma river. Teal'c released his grasp on Wodeski and lunged for the woman just as Daniel snatched the child from her hands. The little girl already on Daniel's shoulders wrapped her arms around his head, desperately clinging on. Momentarily blinded, Daniel couldn't see what happened next, but he heard Teal'c's bellow of rage.

  Someone pulled the girl from Daniel's shoulders, and he could see again. Atlatl hoisted the child onto his own back. Through the noise of hissing magma, bucking rocks and screams, Daniel heard him call, "This way!" The warrior pointed to the stone steps that led to the tunnel to Xalo.

  Daniel turned to Teal'c, who held the woman and her baby in one arm, and the toddler in the other, and yelled, "Wodeski?"

  Teal'c's face was a mask of self-recrimination. "He escaped."

  Not that it mattered any more. Their one chance of using the skulls had depended on this cave - which was fast filling with magma. Without a resonating chamber, the skulls were useless.

  Atlatl and his men helped the children across the remaining patch of solid ground towards the stairs. With people still pouring into the cavern, and the magma still rising, it was now the only way out.

  "Get out of the damned way!" Jack ordered.

  A group of fire priests and eagle warriors, who had arrived from another tunnel, blocked the path. Oblivious to the heaving ground beneath their feet, their sharpened obsidian-bladed club-swords gleaming in the surreal light, the warriors set upon the remaining Marines without mercy.

  "Son of a..." Daniel heard Jack's expletive a fraction of a second before the P90 exploded in his ear. The attacking warriors were flung back and into the rippling magma. A momentary flame was the only sign of their passing; the liquid river engulfed them whole.

  For all the ritualized violence they had witnessed since they'd arrived, the vicious slaughter of the Marines was the first serious attack on them. "I said," Jack shouted at the fire priests still blocking the steps. "Move!"

  But they would not move.

  "Being killed by a god is the fastest way to Heaven," Daniel called. "You're going to have to shoot them!" He saw the look on Jack's face. The warriors who'd taken out the Marines were dead, but these guys were unarmed, and just stood there like incensed mules.

  "Your god orders you to move," bellowed Teal'c. "If you do not, he will deny you entry into any Omeyocan!" The quake continued and more magma oozed through the buckling, fractured ground.

  "If he is truly Quetzalcoatl, then let him defeat Mictlantecuhtli!" a fire priest spat defiantly.

  Jack reluctantly raised his P90. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the shaking stopped. Except for the hiss of the receding magma, the skull cave was filled with an awed silence.

  "What just happened?" Jack said, turning to Dabruzzi.

  "Momentary respite." The volcanologist dragged his arm across the rivers of sweat cascading down his face. "Level of activity is still increasing."

  Half of his head gleaming a florid gold from the light of the magma, the other half, a verdant copper from the bioluminescence, Teal'c yelled, "Kneel to your god!"

  The shocked fire priests all but fell onto the burning ground. Atlatl pierced Jack with an oddly curious look, but then he was up the steps, grasping the hand of another child as he ran. Jack lifted two more children into his arms and followed.

  While Dabruzzi and the jaguar warriors helped the remaining children negotiate the crumbling steps, Atlatl was pushing others through the trapdoor, at the top. Another quake hit just as Daniel and Teal'c reached Dabruzzi. The cracks in the ground widened, revealing slivers of dark red. Dabruzzi almost lost his footing on the way up. Teal'c determinedly gripped the woman with her baby. Juggling the toddler and his staff weapon in his other hand, he leaped up on the stumps of protruding rock, nimble as a mountain goat. Daniel, who was directly behind, felt the last of the steps collapse beneath his feet. Atlatl reached down, snatched his shoulders, and with a powerful jerk, lifted him and the child he was carrying onto the edge of the platform. Seconds later, the last fragments of the steps fell away into the ever-widening river of magma.

  Daniel scrambled to his feet. Below, people continued to pour into the skull cave, desperate to follow Quetzalcoatl to Omeyocan. Teal'c was in the tunnel above, lifting the children that Dabruzzi andAtlatl were handing to him. Jack was looking over the edge of the platform, but there was no way across the magma river to Sam and the other kids.

  His face screwed up against the waves of heat, Jack shouted, "Carter! Plan B!"

  "Sir?" she yelled back.

  "Take the kids to the Stargate."

  "It's a twelve hour walk!" Daniel objected. "And how's she going to dial out, assuming, of course, they haven't all frozen to death before they
get that far?"

  Jack swung on him. Face drenched in sweat and beet red from the heat, he snapped, "You got any better ideas?"

  Sam was cut off from them, and they were all cut off from the city. Daniel bit his lip and winced. There was no other option.

  Atlatl joined them. "Where do you wish me to take the children and women, Jack Quetzalcoatl?"

  A cry from below caught their attention. There were still hundreds ofpeople in the lower level of the skull cave. Unable to return through tunnels surging with people desperate to get in, they were now caught on a narrow ledge between the wall and the swollen magma river. One man, a well-dressed noble, tried to jump across to where Sam and the other children stood. He didn't make it.

  Daniel thought he should have been immune to horror by now, but watching as people fell into the magma, begging Quetzalcoatl to save them from Mictlantecuhtli, made him ill. God only knew what it was doing to Jack. He had promised to save Atlatl's people. Instead he was forced to stand by impotently as one by one they died ghoulish deaths.

  Voice stiffly devoid of emotion, Jack pointed to the tunnel where Sam was waiting, and askedAtlatl, "Can we get to that tunnel?"

  "No, it goes only to one place, the Chappa'ai." Atlatl pushed his jaguar skull back off his dripping face. They were all slowly cooking to death.

  Jack's eyes narrowed. "What about the `gate?"

  "The Chappa'ai," Daniel corrected.

  "From this Road of Mictlan," said Atlatl, pointing to the tunnel overhead. "Another Road leads up to the hills. I am uncertain where it begins, although I have heard it is a two-hour walk from here, and a further three-hour walk overland, along a ridge to the Valley of the Chappa'ai. But at this time of year the cold winds sent by the tlaloque spirits will kill as surely as Mictlantecuhtli would bum."

  Dabruzzi joined them. "Cold's the last thing we're gonna be worried about outside. Like I said, Popo blowing is just the overture."

  The sour tension in Daniel's stomach wracked up another notch. Jack stared at Dabruzzi. "And?"

  "I can't say for certain, but it's gonna get mighty warm. Surface of the lake could melt, partially or completely, especially if the hot springs start feeding into it. On the upside, it might drain out, but then we'd have to wade through boiling mud." His face screwed up and he looked down at the magma. "Still, it's better than stickin' around here."

  Jack's frown deepened. "Okay, Atlatl, that's now officially Plan B." He spun around and called out, "Carter? We're going to take another tunnel. We should reach the Stargate in about five hours."

  Daniel saw her hesitation, then she called back, "Yes, sir!" Behind her, the little girl in White-owl's arms was screaming and trying to pull free.

  Another quake shook the skull cave. Magma surged out of the pit and across the crumbling floor. Shrill screams instantly cut off when the last of those in the cavern were engulfed. The sounds of massive rock falls followed, then dust billowed from the tunnels. The underground structure, possibly the entire pyramid, was collapsing.

  "Everyone out of here, now!" yelled Jack.

  The heat was unbelievable. When everyone was through into the next tunnel, Daniel and Jack looked down through the open trapdoor. Little remained in the cavern but black crusty scabs on a sea of churning magma.

  Something cool and wet licked Daniel's cheek. He turned to see two big dark eyes staring at him from a pocket in Jack's cloak. It was the same animal that had run between his legs. "Hey, there," he said, and stroked its bald head.

  "He belongs to one of the kids." Jack stood. "I was going to call him Toto, but Two-water says his name is Spiffy."

  It took Daniel a few moments to make the connection. "You mean Xipe." When Jack frowned uncertainly, he added, "Xipe is the name of a god."

  "I may be dense, Daniel, but I'm not dyslexic. It's a dog." Jack checked his weapon as they walked.

  Daniel's brief smile turned to a grimace. "Fire priests often wore the skins of sacrificial victims and danced to Xipe."

  Jack's hands faltered. His blackened and sweat-soaked face couldn't disguise his repugnance. "I am absolutely not going to ask why."

  "It was a fertility rite."

  "Did Freud know about these guys?"

  "The dogs were supposedly used as guides through the Underworld."

  "Underworld." Jack cast a furtive glance over his shoulder. "As in Hell?"

  "Uhm... something like that. Xipe represents the idea of rebirth after death. The dogs were considered to be apotropaic devices."

  Jack shot him a warning look. "Daniel."

  "Good luck charms to ward off the evils the owners would likely encounter in the Underworld."

  When they caught up with the others, Dabruzzi said, "At the rate the magma is rising it will flood these tunnels in three, four hours."

  "It'll take Carter twelve to reach the `gate with the kids."

  "Except that you blew up the tunnel," Daniel reminded him. "She's got to dig through that, first."

  "A few rocks is all. She's got a zat on her."

  Dabruzzi's expression darkened. "Is it uphill?"

  "All the way. But Carter's also got enough C4 on her to blow the tunnel behind them again."

  Daniel nodded. "Forming a dam to stop the magma."

  "I hope she knows that." Dabruzzi sounded doubtful.

  "This is Carter we're talking about." Jack's voice was falsely jocular. "She'll make it."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  am felt the eyes of the eight jaguar warriors on her. White-owl had finally calmed Two-water down, although the little girl was quietly inconsolable over the loss of Xipe. The other children, almost forty altogether, were in good shape. Half of them had done this walk before so they knew what to expect, but with minimal food and water it wasn't going to be fun.

  "Alright," she said, trying to smile. Her face felt like it had been sandblasted and broiled. "Quetzalcoatl will meet us at the Chappa'ai, and we don't want to keep him waiting, so we better get moving."

  She ordered two of the warriors to bring up the rear, while the others dispersed among the children. Three of them picked up the youngest ones and began singing softly to them. Soon, all of the children took up the strange, wistful melody.

  "Major?"

  Turning to Welch, she said, "Thanks for saving my life back there, Sergeant."

  "I'm sorry I couldn't grab the bag with the second skull, too, ma'am." He tugged off his eagle warrior helmet and shook his head. His hair was saturated and the skin on his face was red and beginning to blister.

  "Chalchiuhtlicue," Sam corrected in a whisper. When the yellow crystal skull had fallen into the magma, she'd reached for the bag with the rose skull, but then the ground tipped, sending her over the edge until she was barely clinging on. Before the heat could do more than singe her hair and eyebrows, Welch had hauled her up. She'd screamed at him to forget her and save the bag. But he couldn't; he just couldn't let her go, not for a bag.

  "If it's all the same to you, Major, I can only wrap my tongue around Chalchi. What's going to happen when we get to the `gate? Isn't it still under ice and water?"

  They'd lost everything but the clothes they wore and their weapons. The only food was the pack of chocolate bars that White-owl carried, no doubt melted into a mass of brown sludge. She was about to reply when there was a commotion from behind. Weapons ready, they hurried back past the children.

  "Don't kill him!" White-owl cried out. "Quetzalcoatl will only accept those who renounce sacrifice."

  One of the jaguar warriors who had been bringing up the rear, had his arm around the struggling form of... "Heart-eater?" The warrior had drawn a thin obsidian knife to cut the boy's throat. "Put the knife down," Sam said in a carefully modulated voice. "There's not going to be any more killing."

  The warrior reluctantly released Heart-eater. The boy staggered forward and fell to his knees before her. "Goddess!"

  The whole godhead thing bugged Sam as much as O'Neill. Well, maybe not as much. The look on the Colone
l's face when he realized how much Atlatl had lost in the name of Quetzalcoatl was another memory she could have lived without.

  Her nostrils flared as she stared down at the apprentice priest. He smelled worse than ever but right now he seemed like nothing more than a terrified kid. "What are you doing here, Heart-eater?"

  "I.. followed you and Quetzalcoatl, Goddess." He dared to lift his head a fraction. "To the valley of the Chappa'ai."

  Sam frowned. The skin on her forehead pulled painfully. "You're lying. We blew up the tunnel."

  "I...saw that the Road you took was blocked, so I traveled a shorter Road of Mictlan to the Chappa'ai."

  She assumed he meant the tunnel the Colonel and the others were now taking, until he added, "There are many Roads of Mictlan to the Chappa'ai. All are connected, and some are much faster than others. Goddess, please, I have not yet made my vows as a fire priest to Tzcatlipoca. Ifyou would have me...I would become your priest instead."

  He had to be lying. He would have frozen to death in minutes dressed in nothing more than... "Where did you get this?" Sam bent down and swiped a finger across the now patchy black on Heart-eater's skin. It looked like pine tar, most likely distilled from the massive trees that grew up in the mountains.

  "The fire priests keep oxitl in a small cavern near the fire pools cave, where you found us."

  The heat and humidity of the hot springs probably kept it viscous. An idea began to take form. "How much oxitl is there?"

  "Enough for four, perhaps five people, Goddess."

  "How long will it take to walk to the Chappa'ai?"

  Heart-eater looked at the children. "Less than three hours."

  Sam considered their options. Only one person needed to get through to the SGC. Welch could stay with the kids in the hot springs cave while she covered herself in tar and dressed in every item of clothing she could find. She could blow a hole in the ice with a shaped C4 charge - there was enough stashed under her shirt - swim down the few feet to the DHD and dial out. By the time the Colonel, Daniel and Teal'c arrived at the `gate, a rescue team would have come back through with the necessary equipment to deal with a mass evacuation. "Okay, Heart-eater, show us this Road of yours."