The men around him slowed their working, turning to stare. They were astonished by his strange appearance, these figures like ghosts with their dark eyes staring out of chalk faces.
Their leader was sweating, his pale face caked with dust. Kuyoc could smell the fear on him. He was weak, a blade of grass that would flatten in the slightest breeze.
He could see the man thinking, struggling to come to a decision about Kuyoc’s fate. As though as small a man as this could control so great a matter.
“We don’t need more workers,” he said at last.
“I did not come to work.”
“Then what are you here for?”
He ignored the Englishman’s words. Instead he made a show of slowly circling the room, pushing back the anger he felt at the obliteration of the graceful limbs and faces. He paused before the remains of the painted doorway, looking down at the desiccated corpse that lay at the foot of it.
He knew who lay there. He had dreamed her face in the fullness of its beauty, the scar that marked her only adding to her nobility. She deserved more than what he was about to do, but there was no time for reverence anymore.
Callously, he kicked her remains. The move exposed a part of the floor that had been concealed behind the body. A strange carving was set into the stone, surrounded by glyphs.
“Looks like a keyhole,” he said, pointing to it. “Needs a key.”
Once, he had held such a key. He had come across it around the neck of a corpse, a skeleton encased in the regalia of a high priest. It had lain in a rubbish heap at the outskirts of the city, along with countless other dead.
He had taken the dark circle of stone and placed it in his pocket. There had been something about the object that sang to him, whispered promises of desires fulfilled.
The dreams had begun shortly after. They had shown him the secret door in the roof of the temple sanctuary. The mechanism that once controlled it was long rotted away, but a hammer had sufficed to break it open. The dreams led him down the long, twisting staircase into this room of glittering mysteries.
She had shown it to him. She had led him here, to the place where she had died. She had shown him the hidden door, and the secret that lay on the other side, the danger buried in the heart of this ruined place.
That key was gone. Kuyoc had destroyed it himself, shattered it into sharp fragments.
He had hoped then that it had been the only one, but fate was not so kind. He was pained, therefore, but not surprised when the Englishman reached into his pocket and removed a medallion of dark, shining stone.
He saw how he held it, cradling it as though it were something precious.
The Englishman heard its song as well, Kuyoc realized.
The foreigner pressed the medallion into the carved space in the floor. It fit with a click, one magnet calling to another. He turned it and a hidden latch released. The slab of stone shifted with a rattling clank. He looked to the old man, amazement vying with suspicion.
“How did you know?”
Kuyoc shrugged, the reeds of his breastplate rattling.
“Lucky guess.”
He saw the question in the Englishman’s eyes, the flicker of doubt. Greed and the urgency of his purpose overrode it.
“Watch him,” he ordered a pair of armed men. Then he set the rest to push.
The slab in the floor slid aside on well-oiled machinery, revealing a set of steps descending into the earth. The men poured inside, lanterns in hand, and Kuyoc accepted that this battle would not be won easily. But that was all right. He had come prepared to do what must be done. Silently he followed his enemy down into the bowels of the temple.
22
ELLIE WAS COLD. The air in the dark tunnels she moved through was cooler than that aboveground, significantly so, and her clothes were still damp from the plunge into the cenote. The torch lent feeble enough light, never mind warmth. But for all the discomfort, her overwhelming feeling was one of excitement. She and Adam were moving inside of one massive artifact, a ritual maze built by hands vanished centuries ago.
They were undoubtedly the first human beings to see these tunnels in hundreds of years. Even then, this would have been a sacred precinct, known only by the most holy and powerful. The path of kings, and she was walking it.
Adam led the way. His clothes were also damp—what was left of them, at any rate. He had already sacrificed his shirt to the scratch on her arm, and his trousers sported a new tear down the side. The sight of him in the torchlight, traveling with her through this ancient and mysterious place, was moving, to say the least.
Her thoughts turned to the cenote—or, more specifically, to what Adam had done to her in the cenote. That kiss. It had not been like the kiss that she’d once received from a determined if dull suitor. That experience had been less exciting than a night at home with a new issue of the Journal of the Anthropological Institute.
No, Adam Bates’s kiss had been something else altogether. There had been heat, an explosive heightening of the senses, and some hitherto unknown pressure building inside of her like steam in the boiler of the Mary Lee.
They had gone straight from that to navigating deadly submerged currents, dodging scorpions, and leaping across acid streams. Following him down the twisting, narrow tunnel, only the crunch of their footsteps and the quiet crackle of the torches breaking the silence, was the first moment she’d had for reflection, to pause and consider the whole business—what she thought of it, and what it meant.
The latter question was a rattling one. It was impossible to consider what the kiss had meant without stumbling across the uncomfortable question of what she hoped it had meant. What did she want the significance of that embrace to be? The answer was clear enough but confused the devil out of her.
She wanted it to mean that he was deeply attracted to her, that both her mind and her body inflamed his passion. She wanted that because the unsettling truth was that his presence was having precisely that effect on her. It was all she could do to keep quietly walking behind him and not reach out to demand a more thorough introduction to the world he had revealed to her in the cenote. But where would that lead?
She hoped her hunger was merely for sensual experience. The alternative was too frightening. It seemed to her it could only go terribly wrong. Admittedly, Adam had proposed to her, but his motives had hardly been romantic.
Did she want them to be romantic?
Marriage would mean everything she had fought all her life to avoid: the loss of her freedom, her independence, her control over her own destiny.
Or would it? a tiny voice inside her asked.
The question sparked a tremulous but potent little flame, a shocking hope.
He is different, the tiny voice said.
He couldn’t give a toss for the strictures of society, and she had seen already how he treated her as an equal, an intelligent and capable partner with inexperience, not gender, her only handicap.
Maybe it would be just like this, the little voice offered.
Just like this, but with more of what she had tasted in the stirring waters of the well. Ever so much more…
Except that, until that moment in the well, she’d been fairly certain he despised her, and with good reason. Did the embrace mean she’d been wrong about that? Or had it just been an irresistible impulse, fueled by a close brush with death?
The whirlwind of thoughts was building to an intolerable buzzing, an overwhelming need to ask, though she hadn’t the foggiest notion what the question was.
She realized that they had stopped. The tunnel had ended with a wooden door. It was fitted neatly into the opening with mortared stone, held closed with a simple latch.
Adam glanced at her. “Shall we?”
She studied his face, trying to find an answer in the way he looked at her. It was a futile effort.
Instead, she lifted the latch and pushed open the door.
They stepped into another chamber. Lining the walls in an evenly spaced circle
was a ring of monsters, massive figures seated in thrones as tall as her head.
There were thirteen altogether, each with a visage out of a nightmare. They were silent, still, and fearfully lifelike.
“What are they?” she asked. The question was barely above a whisper, as though she feared that speaking louder would cause the terrible heads to swivel and fix them with grisly stares.
“The Lords of Xibalba,” Adam replied. He, too, spoke in hushed, reverent tones. “The gods of death.”
He explained the rest to her as they moved slowly toward the center of the room, pausing to inspect the great statues in the flickering torchlight.
“This must be the council chamber.”
“So it’s in the story?”
Adam nodded. “The brothers had to get past it in order to continue on their journey.”
“And how did they do that?”
“They had to tell the real gods from the false ones.”
The light of his torch flickered eerily across the snarling face of one of the great statues. “Some of the figures in the room were statues, perfect replicas of some of the lords of death. If one of the twins addressed a piece of wood instead of a bona fide deity, it constituted an insult, and the gods would have the excuse they needed to tear them apart.”
“If they’re gods, why did they need an excuse?”
Adam smiled thinly.
“Rules, princess. There are always rules. Even for gods.”
The light of their flames danced across the carved faces. There were jaguars with bloody jaws, grinning skulls, and a figure that held its own decapitated head on its lap. The artistry was vividly lifelike, the painted colors still bright and fresh.
The exit was at the far end of the gallery, another door of wood closely fitted into the rock. As they approached it, Adam handed her his torch.
“Hold this.” He stepped back and unleashed a powerful kick at the boards. They barely shuddered. In the firelight, the wood gave off an oily sheen.
Adam took back his torch and searched for hinges.
“They must be on the other side.”
“So there’s no way to open it?”
“There’s got to be a way to open it. But it must have something to do with them.” He turned back to the circle of figures.
“It’s a test.”
“Looks like it.”
“But how does it work?”
He shrugged. “I’m open to suggestions.”
They moved quietly around the room, studying the sculptures. Each one was elaborately decorated in carved, brightly painted robes. The artisans who made them had been fanatics for detail. Every nuance of their expressions was artfully rendered, and in the flickering, uncertain torchlight, they almost seemed alive.
“It’s got to have something to do with these,” Adam said. He had his foot on a lever of stone protruding from the base of one of the thrones. Ellie realized a similar mechanism could be seen on each of the figures.
“So, we think we’ve got a real god, we flip the switch?”
“That’s my guess.”
“And if we get it wrong?”
“Whatever mechanism was here, it’s been neglected for centuries now. Let’s just hope it still works if we get it right.”
Ellie felt uneasy. The place had the air of something built to last a very long time.
“What was the punishment in the story?” she asked as Adam inspected the lever, then moved on to study the elaborate robes and adornments covering the grotesque figure in the throne.
“They were roasted alive,” Adam replied, grasping the eye sockets of a carved skull on the throne. He used it as a hold to haul himself up. Bracing his feet on the polished surface of the statue’s knees, he stared the monster in the face.
It was some sort of animal. Dark fur was artfully rendered by the carved wood. Pointed ears rose from its head, and its snout was lined with razor-sharp fangs. Then Ellie saw the wings, wide and webbed structures that spread out on either side of the throne, blending into the wall of the cave.
It was a bat.
She thought back to the cave on the Sibun, the final resting place of a sacrificed girl. There had been paintings on the walls like this, dark winged figures with bloodthirsty eyes. What had Adam called them?
“Camazotz,” he said, frowning at the statue. Then he lifted the hand he had braced against the figure’s chest, rubbing his fingers together. “There’s some kind of oil on the wood.”
“Probably a preservative.” It would explain why the wood had held up so well over the centuries in the damp of the caves.
“It stinks,” he commented. Then he shifted his footing, leaning in for a closer look.
“You know, princess, I’d almost swear these teeth were—”
The rest of his words died as his boot slipped on the oiled knee of the statue. Adam tumbled to the ground, landing on the lever at the figure’s base.
It snapped backward.
“Damned preservative is slippery,” he said, brushing himself off. “Maybe I could hoist you up for a look. I’m almost sure those were real teeth in that—”
“Shh. Do you hear that?”
The hissing started low and sibilant, but as they listened, the volume grew, becoming unmistakable.
Adam stepped past her, frowning. He raised his torch and the flickering light fell across a crack in the floor of the cave. Steam was rising from it in thick white clouds.
He extended a hand into it, then pulled back with a quick curse.
“Let me guess,” Ellie said, her stomach sinking. “It’s hot.”
Adam grasped her elbow. “Let’s discuss it somewhere else.”
A grinding crack sounded behind them. Ellie turned to the door through which they had entered just in time to see a heavy slab of oiled wood drop into place.
A geared mechanism, she thought, judging the sound. It must have been triggered by the lever. More technology the people of this city shouldn’t have had.
“Fascinating,” she murmured.
“Damned inconvenient,” Adam retorted, striding to the door. He ran his hands over the surface. “Solid. I guess a handle would have been too much to hope for.”
He felt along the sides, then knelt, probing the place where the wood met the stone.
“It’s fitted into the walls and floor of the cave. There’s nowhere to get leverage.”
Her wonder at the cleverness of the device faded, and Ellie turned her attention to the rest of the room. It was not a vast space. The walls and ceiling were free of tunnels and fissures. Smooth, seamless stone surrounded them. With both doors tightly closed, it would not take long for the steam to fill the room. Already she could feel it getting warmer.
Not roasted, she thought. Poached.
Without much hope, she pushed the broken remains of the lever at the bat-god’s feet back into place. The steam continued to pour in.
Adam kicked a massive grinning monkey in the shin, cursing.
“If the trap still works, so will the release. We have to solve the puzzle,” she asserted. Her voice sounded calmer than she felt. “In the story, how did the twins get out of this?”
“They were saved by a mosquito.”
“A mosquito?”
“It offers them help. Comes into the council chamber and bites each of the lords of death in turn. The ones that complain it knows are real. The others are fakes. The bug goes back to the twins and reports the results.”
“A mosquito,” Ellie repeated flatly.
Adam paced the circle, glaring at the dark, immense figures. She could already see the sweat starting to bead on his brow. It was getting hotter.
“There has to be a trick.” He knelt at the foot of a grinning sculpted corpse, running his hands over the slick surface of the wood. “Something that gives away the real from the false.”
“It could be anything. It could rely on ritual knowledge on the part of the initiate, or a glyph hidden on the thrones. But we can’t read the glyp
hs.”
“Make them speak,” Adam retorted, grimly determined. He kicked the corpse god soundly, shouting, “Hey!”
Ellie closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, trying to force back the panic. The room felt like a sauna. London was never this hot, not even in the height of summer.
Make them speak.…
How hot did it need to get to kill them? First would come confusion, delirium. Then loss of consciousness. It was already getting hard to think. Could they plug up the gap in the floor? Slow it down somehow?
Make them speak.…
She stared at the grinning face of the death god in front of her. In the shifting torchlight, the shadows crawled across its face.
One shadow remained still, a dark circle at the base of the statue’s throat.
Ellie scrambled up the surface of the gruesome figure, slipping on the oiled wood. At last she managed to brace herself on the throne, bringing her face level with the monster’s own. It was hotter here near the ceiling of the cave, the wet air almost too thick to breathe.
She lifted her torch. The dark circle she had seen from below was a hole carved into the base of the figure’s neck. Acting on instinct, she shifted her grip and peered behind the creature’s head.
Something protruded from the back of the god’s neck, a slender wooden tube with an oblong cut at the far end. It looked like the mouthpiece of a flute.
Aunt Florence had once signed Ellie up for flute lessons, after she had proved herself hopeless at piano. It had been one of her last efforts to spark Ellie’s interest in something more ladylike than mummification techniques and Ancient Greek.
She’d been terrible at it, but she remembered enough to know how such a mouthpiece worked. Press your lips to the side, blow across… gently, gently…
She wedged herself awkwardly into the space between the statue and the throne. The wood of the pipe tasted bitter against her lips, and Ellie hoped sincerely that she wasn’t poisoning herself.
Then she blew.
The sound whispered out of the throat of the statue, an eerie, lingering note.
The Smoke Hunter Page 37