Bride of Thunder

by Jeanne Williams

  Xia’s silken tones brought Mercy back to herself, to what was happening, though haziness fogged her mind. She could remember the aromatic dust in her nostrils, the shrill voice of the Talking Cross, and vibrating, sensuous colors.

  Nothing more. Nothing till now. She lay in a hammock, watching Xia, whose slanting eyebrows rose higher. “Don’t sham. Yoyotli’s effects don’t last this long.”

  “That’s what you threw in my face?”

  Xia nodded. “Its use is what has always made sacrificial victims so complacent, why they seldom struggle against the knife.” Her laughter tinkled. “I thought you might struggle, shout what you knew about Pacal, so I decided to make sure there were no unruly outbursts. Now, stand up and be dressed, or I’ll drug you again.”

  The yoyotli could make her go without caring to her death. Resolved to stay aware, snatch at any opportunity, Mercy got out of the hammock. They were in a large room, bare except for hammocks and a few chests. There were guards at the door, through which Mercy glimpsed an arcade and supposed they were in the tatich’s palace.

  She felt slightly betrayed that Novelo, with whom she had spent many hours and whose liking she could sense, would drown her at Xia’s behest, but he wouldn’t be tatich if he shied at a little murder. He couldn’t be faulted, as a leader, for choosing Pacal’s bold miracle of holy war to Mercy’s quiet one of healing.

  Two women, at Xia’s orders, disrobed Mercy and anointed her with sweet-scented oil. “We have no fitting garments for a bride of the gods,” said Xia. “But this girdle of serpent skins will cover your loins, and the tatich has let me pick out jewelry from his plundered treasures. It’s a shame to waste it on a corpse, but we must make a good show; otherwise, the people might wonder why the powers wanted you.”

  Through the window Mercy watched the hinting of dawn as Xia decked her with necklaces of jade, abalone, coral, and shell. A feather-and-bead collar stopped just above Mercy’s nipples, which Xia stained crimson, ignoring Mercy’s protests.

  “We must give people something to look at! By all gods, it’s difficult—you’re scrawny as a reed!” Her nails dug in savagely. “How Zane could want you is a riddle! Perhaps you are a witch!”

  “Why are you helping Eric Kensington? Don’t you care that such a revolt will be put down? Do you want La Quinta destroyed?”

  Xia’s smile sweetened even more. “La Quinta will be part of my reward. Zane, if he lives, can be my mayordomo if he serves me well—in all ways.”

  “Don’t you care at all that you’ll cause the deaths of thousands of your own people?”

  Xia lifted and dropped one slim shoulder. “Those people took my only child from me so they could have their savior! I wept and cried and pleaded, but he went on the cross, anyway! My little boy! When I thought he was dying, it was as if the human heart left my breast and one of jade was left there. I learned then that all that counts is power.”

  “So you’ll condemn many mothers to weeping? Sacrifice men by the hundreds?”

  “I will be priestess of Pacal, the most important woman in Yucatán. Then I can have my son with me without fearing for his life or my own!”

  “But,” said Mercy slowly, “will he want to be with you?”

  Xia was small, but a blow with the full force of her body behind it made Mercy stagger. “He’ll be a cacique greater than Jacinto Pat or anyone since the Spaniards! Even if Mérida and Campeche don’t fall, we’ll hold all the country outside.”

  “Till armies come from Mexico.”

  “We’ve defeated them before. We will again.”

  “This time they won’t be called to the mainland to fight for or against an emperor, the United States, or Texas. Those wars are over. After what’s happened to Maximilian, it’ll be a long time before any European power interferes with the Mexican government, which will now have a chance to put its house in order—and part of its house is Yucatán.”

  “A part that keeps detaching itself,” reminded Xia, “even without the Mayas.”

  “It’ll be different now. Since independence, Mexico’s been fighting other powers. But now its borders are settled with the United States, Europe’s backed off, and the next years are bound to see a knitting together of the country and subjection of rebellious parts.”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “Don’t.”

  Xia’s full lips curved. “It’s a pity you won’t know if your croakings come true. I’m surprised that Kensington agreed to your death, but apparently this escapade with the handsome batab quenched even his itch for you. He didn’t want to attend the ceremony, however. You’re to enter the cenote when the first ray of sun strikes it.”

  Xia shone with power and her full lips curved. “Don’t you remember water, Mercy?”

  “Why?”

  “The body remembers the way it died,” Xia said dreamily. “It thrills and dances in the presence of the element that caused it to disintegrate before. I remember fire. My flesh tingles, wants to spin into particles. I shall die in fire. But you, Mercy, doesn’t your body sense its doom? Come now.”

  Maybe there’d be a chance at the moment before sacrifice, when all eyes were on her, to shout out the truth about Pacal, tear off his mask and headdress. It would be hard for the wildest fanatic to believe such a fair haired man was Mayan. Mercy took a deep breath and moved for the door.

  As she passed Xia, the priestess’ hand came up. Fine powder burned Mercy’s eyes and nostrils. Yoyotli! She tried to cough it out, but a second casting filled her spasming lungs.

  And she was … floating.

  Leaves were edged with diamonds and gold, flowers expanded and contracted, and brilliant petals reshaped themselves to dance like living things. They were alive. The stamens pulsed, showering sun dust, and stems swayed languorously. Grass was jade and emerald, the red bark of the indio desnudo tree glowed in points of rosy flame, even rocks dissolved, laughing, into millions of spinning, whirling particles, freed to mingle with heaven-blue of morning glories, ruby chalices of frangipani, dragon heads of orchids, trailing plumes of air plants.

  Mercy flowed with the colors, entered and was with them, now a purle iridescent feather of a jay, now a yellow bloom of the cotton tree, or tendril of a vine. She felt sorry for the people, hundreds of them, following the body that was her temporary covering. These women, children, and soldiers couldn’t see the colors. They were too heavy to float.

  Curiously, Mercy examined the people nearest her. The woman’s head became that of a beautiful undulating snake patterned with jewels. The fat man in the lead was really an immense bull frog, and the men with him were toads and lizards, ridiculously garmented in men’s attire. The eagle-masked man wasn’t there, and she wondered how he would have looked with his feathers charged with the light and splendor now touching everything. Here and there a child flamed, or a baby burst into flower. A woman incandesced, and then a young warrior.

  The shallow cave before them reflected water sparkles on its glistening walls from a luminous oval pool that lay partly within, partly outside the cave. Rainbows shimmered above, around and deep inside the quicksilver surface.

  So beautiful.

  But there was something … something! The memory trying to pierce through the gossamer webs hazing her mind couldn’t do more than make itself felt as a vague disquieting, a wondering. It had seemed so important. Before she saw the colors. Before she could float.

  The toad men fastened a carved rock to her legs, a rock that didn’t fly into fragments and dance, a rock that was heavy, dragging at her legs in the instant before she was lifted. The serpent woman cried out words, her adder’s tongue darting back and forth, and the toad men let go of Mercy’s arms.

  The water exploded with sun as she fell into it.

  Again, her head ached as she awoke. She retched, nauseated, but only water ran from her mouth. At first she could see only black laced with flame in myriad arabesques that spun away to infinity when she tried to watch them, but gradually a pair of glo
wing eyes dominated the patterns and a face took shape.

  She retched again, bringing up bile and water. “So that’s what the sight of me does to you.” Eric’s coldly amused voice chipped at her eardrums, though he held her head and wiped her mouth with a clean cloth.

  When the paroxysm ceased, he began to dry her body, chafing her hands and wrists and feet till her shivering grew less violent. She was lying on blankets in a cavern lit by a lantern that cast fantastic monster shadows from the icicle-like growths hanging from the top and growing from the bottom, in some places almost fitting together like irregular teeth in an immense misshapen jaw.

  That’s where she felt she was—locked behind the teeth of a dark prison deep inside a hidden place, unbelievably in Eric’s power, yet, unbelievably, alive. Beyond that she was too nauseated from yoyotli and near-drowning to think.

  He took off the clinging snakeskin girdle, smoothing her thighs, spreading his broad hand over her belly in a claiming gesture. Covering her with a blanket, he took off the necklaces, collar, and bracelets.

  “Quite a dowry to the gods,” he chuckled, “though Xia chose it for show more than for value, of course.”

  “Does … does she know?” Mercy’s tongue felt huge and she moved it and her lips with difficulty.

  “That you’re alive?” Eric shook his head. “That’s my secret.”

  “And I suppose I have you to thank for being sacrificed!”

  “The grotto cenote was my idea, yes. I knew about this hidden cave with a lower passage connecting it to the water. One of the general’s men had told me about it; it’s where I rested while he and Xia went on to the tatich. Xia was for burning you, but I persuaded her this way was more traditional and would have greater impact. All I had to do was wait in the passage till I saw you in the cenote.” He laughed softly, his face a golden mask in the yellow light. “We’re well matched, my love, both of us resurrected from seeming death. I’m sure you never expected to see me again. When I finally got back to the ruins of the House of Quetzals, Celeste told me, with very convincing tears, that you were dead from the black vomit.” He placed a finger across Mercy’s lip, “Don’t tax yourself to conjure up an excuse for her. I won’t strangle the bitch since she and Thomas are married by now, and I left him in charge of getting the estate back in operating condition. With the house burned and you lost, I wanted only one thing, revenge on Marcos Canul, and knowing that Xia was ambitious, I thought she might help. I went to her, and you can see the stakes we’re playing for now.”

  “You could pay off your grudge at Canul without setting fire to the whole country!”

  “But this is so much more interesting.”

  Pillage and death and fire and blood? Just when the people on both sides and in the middle of the War of the Castes were beginning to prosper, when there was a tacitly agreed-upon boundary, peace with pride for the Cruzob? Mercy swallowed the appeals. They’d mean nothing to him.

  “You must know that Mexico can’t tolerate a complete takeover by the Mayas. The only way it could work would be for the tatich to make an alliance with some European power. And then the United States would interfere. Better than any of the Cruzob, you know all this!”

  He shrugged. “Yes, but Juárez would make many concessions before using troops and money in another costly war. He’s Zapotec himself and won’t mourn deeply for the rich Creoles of Mérida and Campeche who so readily joined the empire and supported a foreigner against him.”

  The idea of the Cruzob negotiating formally with Mexico, paying lip service to the central government while existing as a separate entity, hadn’t occurred to Mercy. It was possible. Yucatán, because of its isolation, was regarded by its citizens and those of Mexico as almost another country.

  If the Cruzob could take ladino strongholds now, present Juárez’s newly forming government with an accomplished fact and a face-saving and economically useful alliance, Juárez could hardly be blamed for accepting what would take another tremendous effort from his war-weary people to change.

  “A bold stroke?” demanded Eric.

  “Worthy of a butcher!”

  His eyebrows raised mockingly. “Why, my love! I expected you to support the oppressed Mayas, as you were so fond of doing at my estate!”

  “If the tatich or general of the plaza or even Xia had planned it, I could understand their feelings. But you’re in it for your own benefit. You’ll be making war on your friends in Mérida, your own aunt!”

  “Not by blood. I’ll do my best to see that she’s protected. And I’m sure that any ladinos who don’t pose a threat to Cruzob rule will be allowed to leave the country.”

  “If they survive the fighting.”

  “There’s that, of course.”

  “I can’t believe you!”

  His eyes changed. “You will.”

  Roughly, he dried her hair, draped a dry blanket around her, and held a gourd of corn gruel to her lips. For a moment, Mercy wanted to push it away, but she stopped herself. She drank. As long as she lived there was a chance she could expose him to the Mayas or warn La Quinta. She must stay as strong as she could. If his plan worked, if Zane died, if it seemed she’d be Eric’s prisoner forever, she’d do anything to escape that.

  If she got the chance, would she kill him? The thought entered her mind with no accompanying revulsion. The horror he calmly planned to loose on Yucatán must be stopped in any possible way.

  She’d kill him if she could.

  He smiled, slipping his hand inside the blanket, fondling her breast. She tensed, then began to shake uncontrollably. “Still cold?” he asked. “Or so eager?” His fingers stroked her nipples and searched hungrily along her loins and thighs. She knew resistance was futile, but this deliberate toying drove her frantic.

  She jabbed at his eyes with her thumbs and brought her knee up sharply, but he only laughed and pressed her down with his weight. “Like a frightened virgin? I know you better than that, my sweet. Fight all you want. It forces your body to me in a maddeningly seductive way. Is that what you want to do—tempt me?”

  “I hate you!”

  He held her spread beneath him, raised to stare into her eyes. “You still love the noble Falconer?”

  “Yes!”

  He smoothed her contemplatively with his hands before they tightened on her flanks with ferocity that made her gasp. “Then what are these stories about you and that batab who brought you to Chan Santa Cruz?”

  “He was taking me to La Quinta as soon as he served his month at the shrine.”

  “You believed that?”

  “Yes! He was grateful to me for keeping you from beating him to death!”

  “And you were grateful to him? How grateful?”

  “It’s none of your concern!”

  “But it is. We had to argue a long time with the tatich to persuade him to give you to the water. He thinks Dionisio would even kill him over this, so, of course, the batab must never get that chance. He’ll be accused of treason as soon as he returns and macheted in the plaza.”

  Numb at this new horror, Mercy felt lifeless, a mere husk, scarcely knowing when Eric’s questing grew more urgent. She roused at the pain of entry, screamed as he thrust, but his mouth shut off her cry. He took her in a brutal, punishing way till she lay half-fainting.

  “Did that batab have you?” He panted, slackening a moment, staring down at her as he rocked back and forth, apparently enjoying her pain.

  She stared at him wordlessly. He withdrew, then plunged so deep she closed her teeth against a moan. “Did he have you?” Eric asked again, poised above her.

  Mercy closed her eyes, dismissing him, trying to capture again those colors, that floating, when not even death had mattered. She hadn’t realized Eric had been quiet a long time before he spoke against her ear.

  “The batab will die. So will Falconer. That will mean that I’m the only living man to have you, the only one who’ll ever possess you again. I have you now. That’s all that matters. I have you
now and you’ll never get away!”

  As if the claim released something in him, he gripped her and pumped swiftly to his release, then lay collapsed beside her with one great arm pinioning her.

  Shifting her gaze around the cave as much as she could without moving or arousing him, Mercy looked for a weapon. Some hemp sacks leaned against a stalagmite that looked like a guttering, half-burned taper. On another rock were gourds and a pail. Eric must have a knife and rifle, but she couldn’t see them.

  A faint hope stirred in her. He’d have to appear at Chan Santa Cruz. Unless he tied her up, which wouldn’t be too practical if he had to be gone for hours at a time, she’d certainly try to escape through the cenote. She could swim enough for that.

  And then? If she went to the city, her “resurrection” should gain her a few minutes, a chance to bring Pacal’s authenticity into question. That didn’t matter to the cynical leaders, but it would, vitally, to ordinary Cruzob. But what if she were silenced before she could speak? Going to the shrine meant almost certain death. She was willing to die to avert a race war, but she didn’t want, in vain, to give up air, sky, sunlight, and her love.

  Try to get to La Quinta or some place from which an alarm could be spread and then return to Chan Santa Cruz with enough of an escort to guarantee attention while she proclaimed the truth about Pacal? That had the over-whelming advantage of alerting the whites of their danger no matter what success she had with unmasking Eric.

  The fearful part was that Dionisio should certainly return several days before she could reach La Quinta and come back here. If he came, unwarned, into the city, he would surely die.

  It was an agonizing choice. And before she could even make it, she had to get out of this cavern. Eric’s arm weighed heavier each second. He was crushing the breath from her, the life. But when she tried to slip out from under it, his arm tightened and he drew her closer and said, almost as if he knew what she’d been thinking, “You’ll never get away.”

  After what seemed to be hours, but which couldn’t have been more than half of one, he yawned, shook himself awake, looked at her, and laughed exultantly.