by Betina Krahn
“Don Alejandro!” one of the hardbitten mercenaries with Castille came running up. “We found their camp. We’re searching it now.”
Hedda evaded the professor’s grasp and went running toward their camp. By the time she reached it, Castille’s men had already demolished one tent and were scattering their belongings from pillar to post. To one side, more men were holding Itza and Ruz, who had tried to defend the camp and bore bloodied faces to attest to the fact. She tried to go to them, but was caught and held by the burly Yago. The professor arrived then and seemed shocked by the destruction.
“Well?” Castille demanded of Yago as he strode up.
“Nothing except for a crate of guns. No trace of any scrolls.” The henchman shook Hedda hard to quiet her. She bit her lip to keep from crying out and the professor roared at him to release her.
Castille stepped in front of the professor and slammed him across the face with a riding crop, drawing blood.
“I won’t ask again,” Castille said icily. “Where is she?”
“Gone!” The professor doubled over, holding his face and searching blindly for a handkerchief to absorb the blood. “She’s gone. The old medicine woman took her and the butler to find the stones.”
“Where?”
“She wouldn’t say. She wouldn’t take us—just O’Keefe and Goodnight.”
Castille cast an eye over the wreckage of the camp. “Take the guns,” he ordered Yago. “Who are they?” He pointed his crop at them.
“Guides.” The professor dabbed at his face. “From Tecolutla.”
“The ones we heard about.” Castille settled back into his cold, calculating mein. “If they’re so good, then they should be able to help us find her quickly.”
“You’ll never find them,” Hedda protested, and he looked at her.
“Don’t be tiresome, my dear. Of course I will. And I’ll claim the jaguar’s great treasure. Is that not right, professor?” He watched Hedda’s expression change and saw her look at Arturo in disbelief. He smirked at the professor. “You naughty boy. You didn’t tell her about that either, did you? Well, no matter. You can make it up to her—if you must—with your share of the gold.”
Twenty-eight
Cordelia was shaken awake the next morning by Yazkuz, who rattled on excitedly in a slurry of languages that made no sense to her or Goodnight.
They had camped in the cave last night, foregoing a fire, and when they drifted to sleep the old girl was still sitting, facing the collapsed far wall of the place, chanting and waving the smoking bundle of herbs she had collected earlier. It was a vigil of some sort, they surmised: an attempt to connect with the Jaguar Spirit for some help. And though they wanted to show respect for the old girl’s efforts, they were both too exhausted to keep up with her.
They sat together earlier munching on jerky and the very last of the tortillas they had brought, sipping water from the spring outside and listening to Yazkuz’s droning.
“She’s in a trance of some kind,” Cordelia said, glancing around the corner at the old woman’s rail-straight back and uplifted face. “I’ve seen it before. In Morocco. They have some men there who put themselves into a state and then lie down on a bed of nails.” When Goodnight looked askance at her, she raised a hand. “I swear. Saw it with my own two eyes. Ask Hedda.”
“That wasn’t in your article on Morocco,” he said.
“They made me cut it out. ‘Too disturbing for our women readers,’ they said.” She frowned. “How do you know what I wrote about Morocco?”
“I read your article.” When her frown deepened, he looked away. “I read all of your articles from—you know—that folder you gave Hardacre.”
“Really?” She raised her brows in surprise. “I didn’t think anyone bothered to look at them.”
“I did,” he said, looking like he might say more, but then changed direction. “So, what happens if we can’t find out the ‘secret’ to this place?”
“That will be a problem.” She sighed. “I’ll just have to take the news back to Samuel P. and hold his feet to the fire about my Africa funding.”
“More adventuring, eh?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Is that what you truly want?” he said, his voice oddly resonant.
“Of course.” She tried to stuff conviction into her voice.
“You’d never consider other options? I mean, can you imagine yourself riding camels through the Sahara at eighty? Packing gun on one hip and an ear trumpet on the other? Adding a few prunes to the couscous you cook over a dung fire?” She clamped a hand over her mouth to contain her laugh.
“You really did read the articles, didn’t you.”
“When you’re eighty, Hedda will be a hundred and two. Think about it.”
“Poor Hedda,” her grin faded. “Surely she’ll have better things to do.”
“Maybe you will, too.”
She shook her head, feeling strangely emotional, fastening her gaze on their lone lantern. “What about you? What will you do when you go back?”
“I’ve found a few species worth investigating. And Yazzie, there, has put me onto some things. I’ll get back to working on medicines, sooner or later.”
“That’s what you truly want?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said briskly. Firmly. “Nothing I want more.”
Silence fell at the end of that pronouncement.
She bit her lip inside. Hard. It was a minute before she could respond.
“Then I hope you get it, Goodnight. I hope you get your true desire—your medicines and all the success and acclaim that should go with them.” She drained the water in her cup, but it was a minute before she could actually swallow it. “We’d better get some sleep. I have a feeling tomorrow will come early.”
She lay in her blankets, her head propped on a roll of clothes from her pack and listened for his breathing, trying to make the ache in the middle of her chest go away. And she fell asleep listening to Yazkuz’s drone and Goodnight’s gentle snore.
“Up! Up!” Yazkuz now ripped the blankets back and yanked both of them up to sitting positions. Then she sank to her knees by Goodnight and gave him a smack on the cheek to wake him up and get his attention. “Handsome— listen me. Jaguar Spirit…he speaks… tells me a way. Come!”
“A way where?” Cordelia rubbed her eyes and reached for her boots.
Minutes later, Cordelia and Goodnight were standing in one of the dead-end passages, staring at what looked like a wide crack in the dark stone that extended from the wall up through the side of the ceiling.
“There!” Yazkuz pointed, grinning, then mimed climbing a ladder. “Up!”
“It’s a crack in the stone,” Goodnight said, trying to contain his disbelief. He measured it with his hands and turned to her. “It’s this big. We’ll never fit.”
She turned him sideways, measured with her hands and held it up to his body. There were at least two inches on either side, unless he took a deep breath. She turned to Cordelia and dragged her to the crack, pointing up.
“You.” The old woman nodded fiercely and gave her a little shove. “Jaguar say…go here… this way.”
Frowning, Cordelia slid sideways into the crack and looked up. It was gray and murky up there, nothing like light or an end to the opening. But then it wasn’t black either, like a pure cave would be.
“Give me a boost,” she said to Goodnight. “I’ll take a look.”
“This is the most idiotic…” He started to take her by the waist but she slid into the crack and asked him to stick his knee out for her to step on. He understood and gave her his knee and then helped pull her to a standing position on it, above him. She felt around on the cold smooth rock and found a small ledge—about an inch and a half wide. Using it she released Goodnight’s hand and pulled herself up so that her feet left his leg.
“Hey! What are you—” She was hanging by her hands, feeling along the rockface for a place for her feet. And there it was—an inch, n
o more. But it was enough.
“If this continues all the way up maybe we can climb this,” she called, boosting herself up with great effort to feel for another handhold. And there it was. Slightly less room this time, but still usable. She called for a lantern and as she clung to the sheer rock face, feet spread like a ballet dancer in first position on a narrow rim of stone, she told herself it would be a miracle if she could hold on even until he got back.
But she did hold on. And when he managed to pass her the lantern and she looked up, she saw that the split widened slightly above her and there seemed to be cracks and possible handholds and footholds up as far as she could see. And it was still gray in the distance.
“I think we should try it,” she called. “But first, ask her what is up here. I want to know what I’m climbing toward.”
There were several escalating exchanges before he got back to her.
“She says it’s a throne. The Jaguar’s throne,” he called.
“Here—take this!” she said, sliding the lantern onto the toe of her boot and lowering it. “Get your gloves and bring me mine—this rock is sharp. And bring all the rope we brought!”
Thus began a tedious climb that she regretted a dozen times over the next hour. As soon as she was up far enough, Goodnight entered the crack and began to climb, but his long legs and big feet weren’t nearly as flexible and didn’t fit the hand- and footholds she had located. He found himself spread eagle against the stone face with his legs turned to the sides. It was a hideously unnatural posture for an Englishman, he declared, and he was going to kick her posterior for hauling him into this madness—as soon as they were on something horizontal and stable and as soon as he could get his knees and feet to face the front again.
The tension and the strength required to both cling to the rock face and change positions soon had her muscles screaming and her fingers throbbing inside her gloves. She kept asking Goodnight how he was doing and his irritable snarls and complaints were her only connection with reality in that otherworldly darkness. Occasionally her hands slipped, but she was always able to catch herself by planting her feet and throwing her back against the wall behind her. That was how, in fact, she discovered a resting position that allowed her to take a break and let Goodnight catch up.
“How far do you think we’ve come?” she asked. His voice in the dark was comforting.
“We could calculate it. Let’s see—it takes two minutes to go three feet…we’ve been doing this for twelve hours now… we should be halfway to China.”
“Sorry,” she said, “China’s the other way. We’re climbing up.”
Several hundred feet? A thousand? Two thousand? How tall was the mountain above the canyon? They couldn’t be climbing farther than that.
“I just hope when we get up there we have enough rope to haul Yazkuz up, too,” she said grimly, and heard him groan.
“She weighs a bloody ton.”
“On the bright side—aren’t you glad I made you bring goatskin breeches?”
“Yeah, you were spot on with that, O’Keefe. If you’d only told me to bring a goatskin shirt as well.”
They began to climb again and conditions soon deteriorated.
“Goodnight.” Her voice developed a tremor. “We’ve got trouble.”
“What?” She could almost feel him go still beneath her.
“Water. These rocks—they’re wet.” She forced herself to breathe deliberately, trying to keep her heart from racing. “They’re getting slippery.”
“Shit.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“It’s a perfectly good Anglo–Saxon expletive. My mother said ‘shit.’ And there wasn’t a woman born who was more proper than my mother. This is a situation that positively cries out for a good, old-fashioned—”
“Aghhhhh!” Her hand slipped, her boot slipped, and she fell back against the back wall with a scream and slid some way before she hit something solid.
It took a moment for her to reorient and realize that the thing that had stopped her fall was him. And she’d driven him against the wall like a pneumatic hammer. It was a minute before she could inhale, much less speak.
“Are you all right?” she finally managed to get out.
“Peachy. Just peachy.” He was gritting his teeth. “If you’ll just take your elbow out of my ribs, I might be able to breath again someday.”
She was able to find footing and brace against the back wall with her legs out in front of her—sitting on air. Her muscles were on fire. Her fingers felt mushy inside her wet gloves.
“I don’t know how much more of this I can do,” she said quietly.
Out of the dark came a wicked chuckle.
“What’s the alternative? Four hundred, six hundred feet straight down?”
“Shit,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut, trying hard not to visualize that.
“Damn, O’Keefe. You’re starting to sound just like dear old Mum.”
Slippery rocks or not, they had to go on. She was able to right herself and find another handhold. Despite the fact that her muscles felt like jelly, she managed to climb, being more careful in her use of handholds, working to make her wet gloves grip more tightly. The water seemed to be flowing more readily down the rock, and a bit sideways, which meant, they seemed to be turning—which made no sense at all.
She started to say something about it, but the rock she’d grabbed as a handhold suddenly broke loose, she let out a cry, and a blast of rock and water came pouring down from the rock face above—all in the same moment. She heard the rock hitting the back wall and Goodnight shouting, but the roar of the water pouring down on her made it impossible to make out what he said. The water flooding down was pushing her, forcing her back and down—battering her.
She had to tuck her chin in the gravity-fed torrent to get space to breathe. Then with an instinct for survival inscribed in her very muscle and sinew, she began to pull herself up, straining, fighting for every inch of vertical gain. She groped blindly for holds, gasping for air, and just when she thought she could go no farther, her fingers touched a niche—a substantial one. Then another. And another. Step by torturous step, she hauled herself up into that raging downpour until she was even with it—and finally her head was above it. She sucked in air—real air—and felt like yelling in triumph. But there was more to go before she would be out of the water. And there was still Goodnight to get past that waterfall.
“I’m all right,” she called down. “I pulled a rock loose and there’s lots of water, but if you keep your head down, there are good holds. Be careful!”
She looked up and suddenly the gray wasn’t so dark.
“Hey! It’s getting lighter! I think we’re near the top!”
Forcing herself to be more careful, now that she was woozy with fatigue and racing toward what seemed like the finish, she found climbing holds in the last few feet and finally threw her arm over the edge of the rock face, onto a horizontal surface. She could scarcely believe it. It was a minute before she could pull herself up, swing her leg over, and roll out onto the rough rock.
Then she thought of Goodnight fighting his way through the water and flopped over onto her belly to stick her head over the edge and call encouragement to him. At first all she heard was water falling a great distance. Then she heard him coughing and muttering and closed her eyes in a prayer of thanks.
“Up here! We’re here!”
“Where’s here?” he called back.
She glanced around for the first time and realized she was in a cavern.
“Well, it’s not exactly a throne room.”
It wasn’t long before he threw an arm across the edge of the rock face and dragged himself out onto the level surface. They lay for some time, half conscious, grateful just to be breathing. Then she sat up and pulled the ropes from his waist and hers and began to connect them. It looked like a pitifully short piece of rope, considering how long they’d been climbing.
They looked over
the edge into the abyss and called out to Yazkuz. There was no answer. Having no idea how far they’d come, they tied the joined rope around Goodnight’s waist and tossed the free end into the dark well. To their surprise, they soon felt a tug and had to brace against some rocks and fight for every inch to raise her. A small eternity later, she was climbing out onto the surface with them, perfectly dry and looking as fresh as if she’d just awakened from a nap.
“See?” She tapped her temple with a canny look. “Jaguar Spirit knows.”
Cordelia looked at Goodnight, bewildered.
“Maybe she really is a witch,” she muttered as they watched Yazkuz dust herself off and look around.
Twenty-nine
The cavern they were in contained a large depression filled by a spring, probably the source of the water they’d encountered. Yazkuz spotted a haze of light above and headed for it, beckoning them to follow. The closer they came to the opening, the brighter the light grew and the more they squinted.
They stepped out into the dazzling bright sun like unearthed moles, squinting and shielding their eyes—then disbelieving everything they saw.
They were in a massive natural bowl formation with gray stone walls that rose to blue sky with no hint of mountains or anything beyond. It was huge, a quarter of a mile across— half filled by a clear, pristine lake and half with a tropical paradise filled with lush vegetation. In the middle of that startling environment sat a radiantly white, perfectly preserved smooth-sided pyramid. An ancient Mayan pyramid.
They stumbled forward, mouths open.
“What is this place?” Cordelia asked, not really expecting a reply.
“Jaguar throne,” Yazkuz declared with uncharacteristic reverence.
As they left the cavern that was part of the rim of the caldera—for that was surely what this was, she said, and Goodnight agreed, an extinct volcanic crater—they stepped from stone onto soil and into a veritable garden of paradise. All around were flowering plants like hibiscus and trumpet flower and heliotrope in full bloom, huge ferns, fruit trees, coconut palms, and tall, stately firs. The air was sweet with the fragrance of jasmine laced with a hint of cocoa. Birds were singing and there were butterflies everywhere.