“Is it time now? I think I’ll miss this body, now that it’s been healed. But is it time?” Scabs cracked as she spoke, and when she smiled her bottom lip split open and began to bleed. Stephen could see her nearly hidden eye rolling under a crust of dried blood, peering past him in hopes that the chacmool had come with him. When that shattered gaze returned to him, Stephen had to force himself not to run.
“Yes, it’s time,” he said. “Time to finish your travels.”
She stood, keeping the feather cloak wrapped tightly about her. “Hooray, it’s time,” she said, and all of the voices in Stephen’s head echoed her.
Archie had no idea how long he screamed for Stephen before his voice gave out and he sank to the floor, still choking out wordless guttural whispers. There was no time where there was no light. He lay on his side, feeling carefully about him to make sure he wasn’t on the lip of some invisible abyss, and gave up.
I will die here, he thought, the chill of the cave seeping into him. If I stay here, I’ll go mad and die of thirst. If I move, the rock will open under my feet and my body will lie in a hole, decaying into a stringy curiosity for some scientist a hundred years from now.
I’m buried alive again.
He couldn’t move. If he explored the floor around him, he would find that there was no floor, that Stephen had led him onto a narrow spire with nothing but emptiness all around, burying him in space, in a bubble encased in stone.
Ridiculous, of course; he’d seen the cavern in the light of Stephen’s own lamp, and knew that he was near a wall, a solid wall that curved into a solid floor that extended beneath the domes towering over him.
But it was cold like his grave in the Brewery, and where there was darkness, there was no knowledge. Outside the sun might be shining, but here the only real thing was the dark.
If the sun is shining, it’s Sunday. And if it’s Sunday, Jane’s going to die tonight.
The thought came unbidden, and Archie tried to reason it away. She’ll die quickly, he answered. That’s more than I can hope for. He shivered, feeling the cold settle deeper into his body.
You want to die quick? Get up and walk. Fall down a hole. Shrivel up like the chacmool did, waiting for someone to find it.
“Don’t make me do that,” Archie moaned hoarsely. “I don’t want to know if there’s nothing there.”
What did Stephen say?
“Nothing.”
What did Stephen say before he left?
“What does it matter? He left.”
You want to go crazy before you die, Presto? Do you want to die shivering and sobbing in the dark? Do you?
“Don’t,” Archie said.
Do you?
“He—he dropped something.”
What did he say?
The words ground out between Archie’s teeth. “He said, ‘If you are what I think you are, this’ll lead you out.’ But he lied about everything else—why should that be true?”
He also said he could have killed you. Was that true?
“Don’t make me do this. I’ve done enough.”
When the chacmool cuts out your daughter’s heart, will she think so?
“She’ll die quickly.”
She’ll still die. What if Stephen was telling the truth? What if you could have gotten out? You’ve spoken to the dead, Presto. What will you say to Jane when she’s one of them?
“Don’t make me do this,” Archie moaned again, but he was already crawling across the floor, feeling ahead inch by invisible inch.
Steven didn’t light his lamp as he led Jane into the cave. The blindsight the chacmool had granted him a taste of had returned the day before, when he’d put out the lamp and left Prescott. It was a gift, he knew, a reward for the work he’d done so far. He served the master, and the master granted his favor. It was the kind of thing Dr. Croghan would do.
Thinking of Croghan, Stephen wondered how he would explain his absence. He hadn’t specifically committed to giving any tours today, but even if no visitors had requested him, Stephen knew there would be trouble. If nothing else, Croghan would be angry that he’d missed Sunday service at the church across the river. The doctor liked to have his slaves in church.
Well, I will be in church, Stephen thought, watching Jane— he still couldn’t call her Nanahuatzin—step eagerly ahead of him. It seemed she could see in the cave too. Different church, and I’ve got my very own Messiah walking next to me.
Besides, Croghan’s bluster wouldn’t matter come morning, would it?
He led Jane along the route her father had taken the day before, around Giant’s Coffin and past Bottomless Pit, where she stopped and looked longingly down. “We’re very close now, aren’t we?” she said eagerly. Her scabs had begun to bleed a faint light, a sickly glow that reminded Stephen of the decayed gleam that morning’s dawn had brought.
“Very close,” he agreed, and they went on.
The mud from the Winding Way didn’t stick to the feathers of her cloak, and she came out into Great Relief looking like she’d been freshly bathed. She stared to chatter, prattling constantly about missing her body but looking forward to the next part of her journey. Half of what she said was unintelligible, muffled by the scabs that limited how far she could open her mouth. She didn’t seem to notice, and Stephen stopped listening—the voices were growing louder, and some of them were mimicking everything she said.
She pushed ahead of him, leading the way up the branch from River Hall to Bottomless Pit. By the time he reached the pit she had already gone into the Mummy Room. She fell silent, and he had to stop and take a deep breath before he ducked through the triangular opening after her.
Real light burned in the Mummy Room, illuminating the massive carving on the wall, the altar stone before it. Jane stood facing the chacmool, her disfigured face transformed by an expression Stephen had seen on voodoo women when the loas started talking.
The chacmool stroked her scabbed-over cheek, strings of light dripping from its clawed fingers. It didn’t look human. Tufts of fur sprouted from its pointed ears, and its skull had lengthened, growing a thick feline muzzle. Its cloak twitched, the feathers hardening briefly into scales, then fluttering like feathers again.
It turned to Stephen. Jane stayed where she was, half of her face smiling broadly. Her eyes were closed. She swayed slightly, in time with the ripples in her own cloak.
“Stephen,” it hissed. A forked snake’s tongue flicked out between feline fangs. “You have done well.”
It touched him lightly on the forehead and Stephen gasped as the voices in his head fell silent. “But not all is well,” the chacmool purred. “Prescort lives.”
Stephen felt like his mind had been laid bare by the chacmool’s touch. “He’s—he can’t get here,” Stephen stammered. “He’s lost. I’m the only one who could find him again.”
The chacmool growled and pressed its claws into Stephen’s brow. “Find him then,” it rasped. “And this time do as I told you.”
Its claws withdrew, leaving trickles of blood from four shallow punctures.
“Do not fail me, Stephen,” it said. “Your dreams are not yet secure.”
The blindsight had left him. No: it had been taken away, by the same touch that had blown the voices away like leaves before a strong wind. Stephen stood among the breakdown rocks on the floor of Bottomless Pit, remembering the flush of excitement he’d felt when he’d first stood there. Before he’d discovered the Mummy Room, before he’d somehow brought the mummified chacmool to the surface, before he’d delivered a little white girl into the hands of her killer. And now he had to find Prescott and kill him. The chacmool would know if he didn’t.
Stephen wiped at the blood on his forehead. When was it too late to turn back? Now, he decided. The chacmool’s claws could as easily have torn out his throat, and they definitely would if he didn’t do as it said. So now, he thought, I will be a murderer. Take that last small step.
He lit his lamp and made his way back to River
Hall, wondering how he would face Charlotte. Wondering if she would know. Will I lose my love for this?
The chacmool was testing his loyalty. After he killed Prescott, it would find another test. When would it end?
Near the Dead Sea, Stephen saw something on the floor. He picked it up and saw that it was half of a raw potato. How had it gotten there? A strange smell hung about it, one he remembered but couldn’t place.
He sniffed at the potato and the smell came to him, among a flood of associations from a Christmas pageant Dr. Croghan had put on the year before. It was myrrh.
“Chacmool giveth and the chacmool taketh away, eh, Rebus?”
Stephen saw John Diamond’s head poking from the Dead Sea. “I gave Prescott the mask, dead man,” he said. “It’s not my fault if he doesn’t take it.”
“Hedging your bets? Sorry, Johnny, that’s no good.” Diamond climbed out of the pool and stood dripping. Stephen saw that he was missing most of one arm and part of the other hand. He stood awkwardly, as if one of his legs was shorter than the other, and strips of skin had peeled away from his bald skull.
“Better find your tomb, dead man,” Stephen said. “Before you can’t get there.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about that. Tomb’s all around. You worry me, Rebus.” Diamond grimaced, working at a loose tooth with his tongue.
“Why’s that?”
“You going to kill Presto? You are. Why?”
“You know why. You knew what this was all about before I did, and you just played games.” Stephen remembered the potato and tossed it away.
“No games. Dead man do what he can. You playing games with yourself. Why you going to kill Prescott?”
Stephen paused. “Were you a slave, Diamond?”
“Nope. Born free. Not that way now, though.”
“Then you don’t know. A man, a man just like me, owns me. Owns my wife. If I have to kill a man to change that, I’d be a coward not to.” Stephen’s voice began to rise.
Diamond raised one of his truncated arms, then chuckled. “Sorry Johnny—Rebus—can’t shush you proper. But you don’t want the chacmool to hear us.” Diamond worked the tooth free and spat it into the Dead Sea. “New world, eh?” he finished.
Stephen nodded. “That’s what’s at stake.”
“Got it. Question you haven’t asked yourself, Rebus. Chacmool makes promises, then it’s gonna kill you if you don’t do what it says. How’s that different from your master now?”
“It’s not about me, dead man. It’s about my children, every othet Negro child that hasn’t been born.”
“Hm. You think that little girl’s the only one going into the fire? Who the rest gonna be, Rebus? You think He Who Makes Things Grow won’t want your daughter’s heart?”
“That—”
“I asked you this before. Listen this time. What makes you think its world,” Diamond waved toward the passage leading to Bottomless Pit, “gonna be any different than the one you got?”
Stephen couldn’t answer.
“You think on that, Rebus. You think on that while you go to kill that Presto.”
Diamond walked away down River Hall, leaving Stephen alone staring into the water of the Dead Sea.
Each rock Archie grasped seemed a small miracle to him, a solid bit of certainty holding firm against the void around him. He belly-crawled slowly, painfully, in what he hoped was the right direction, shying away from slight dips in the floor that might suddenly drop away. The knowledge that he could be moving deeper into the cave ate at his fragile will, but he forced himself to keep moving. If he was going to die, he was going to die moving.
His left shoulder brushed a solid vertical surface and he laid both hands on it, reaching up and out to both sides. It was a wall, thank God. If he had set off in the right direction, it would lead him to the entrance, where Stephen had dropped the wooden object before abandoning him. A new world, Stephen had said as he left. Archie wondered if Stephen had seen this new world, had heard the meaty crackle of burning hearts and seen the pillar of smoke from the sacrificial fires. What had the chacmool shown him?
“If I see him again, I’ll ask,” Archie croaked. He was terribly thirsty. His tongue felt swollen and it stuck to the roof of his mouth. “When I see him.”
Archie stood, hunching against the wall. He reached over his head and felt only emptiness. He was still in the main domes, then; the passage leading to them narrowed toward the ceiling, and he thought he could have found the sloping roof without jumping. Not that he had any intention of leaving his feet.
His control slowly returning, Archie began to look at the darkness as a problem to be solved. I’ve been buried alive, he thought. What do I have to fear from being lost in a cave?
The thing Stephen had dropped had to be near the entrance, but not against the walls; Stephen had been coming back from throwing torches when he put out the light. Archie would have to leave the wall to find it.
Slowly expanding vertigo twisted in his stomach at the thought. But what was the alternative? He couldn’t just follow this left-hand wall all the way back to the river. Far too many intersections and slippery slopes lay between here and there. The only way he was going to survive was if he found the thing Stephen had left for him.
Archie supposed that he owed Stephen a certain amount of gratitude. After all, Stephen could certainly have killed him any time. Stranding him in these remote domes had been an act of direct defiance, particularly since Stephen had left a way out. And why had he done that, if the chacmool’s promised new world was all he had to believe in?
He has doubts, Archie realized. He’s torn between the chacmool’s promises and its cruelty. After all, he must know it’s going to kill Jane. He said as much.
This is a test, isn’t it? He wants something else to believe in. See the Mask-bearer, Tamanend said. He is torn, and you must give him peace. Solve the problem, Archie thought. If he was going to find the Mask-bearer, it had better be soon. And he would need the mask to do it. So he was looking for a mask. Good. The idea of searching for an object—a mask, wooden to judge by the sound it made hitting the ground, probably near the way out of the domes—focused Archie, made it a little easier to hold blind terror at bay. I can do this, he thought.
But giving the Mask-bearer peace … how can I give Stephen peace?
“Don’t be stupid, Archie,” he said aloud. “The man’s a slave, and the chacmool’s a Negro, isn’t it?” But if freedom was the chacmool’s promise, what could Archie offer in this world?
Archie remembered the clergyman’s speech, back in New York the previous fall. Blackbirders stealing children. Ironic. He’d had his own daughter stolen and hadn’t even known it then, hadn’t known how much he had in common with the Negro father chasing through the Five Points after his vanished daughter. How very much he hadn’t known about himself. He thought of the three slaves aboard the Maudie, drowned by their shackles. I never knew their names, Archie thought. Alfonse, Punch, Judy: those aren’t real names. No one should have to die that way, and each of us is a little bit to blame.
“All right, Stephen,” Archie promised, his voice fading into the domes. “If that’s your peace, I’ll do what I can to give it to you.”
And if I don’t get out of here, that will be exactly nothing.
So there was a mask lying among the rocks somewhere on the floor. Archie placed his back squarely against the wall and took two shuffling steps away from it. He did an about-face and took the same two steps, finding the wall exactly where he had left it.
“Here we go.” This time he took four steps, then turned to his left and counted five steps before the floor began to rise. The passage out must be dead ahead, he thought, unless he’d gone in the wrong direction. But that didn’t really bear thinking about, not at this point. Archie turned left again, took a step, and went sprawling as his foot caught a rock protruding from the floor. He stayed where he’d fallen, getting his bearings as best he could. The floor under him sloped sligh
tly down to his left; the wall should still be in front of him, then. Not wanting to stand for fear of knocking himself unconscious on an overhang from the entry passage, he taised himself to hands and knees and began a slow crawl toward where the wall should have been.
His hand fell on something smooth, and his heart skipped a beat. He felt the object with both hands, picking it up and turning it this way and that. It was a mask, of polished wood; he could feel the grain under his fingers.
If you are what I think you are, this’ll lead you out, Stephen had said. Archie assumed that meant he had to put it on, but it had no straps, or even eyeholes. It was simply a convex piece of wood, with a protrusion where a nose would be and a narrow slit of a mouth. Well, he could always hold it to his face; it was heavier than he thought it should be, but not so heavy that he couldn’t hold it up to save his life and Jane’s. And God knew how many others as well, he thought, remembering a sky stained brown by smoke from the chacmool’s fires.
The mask fit snugly over Archie’s face, and he held it there, wairing for something to happen. After a moment he realized he’d closed his eyes when he put it on; he opened them, feeling his eyelashes brush against its inner surface.
Shock blasted through him as the feather talisman froze to his chest. Shriveling cold spread into his chest and a terrible squeezing sensation settled around his heart, cutting off his breath. Archie ripped open his coverall and seized the talisman, his fingers instantly numbed by the contact. He cried out as he tore it loose, feeling a patch of skin come with it. It stuck to his hands, sending waves of freezing pain up his arms to his laboring heart.
He tried to fling it away, couldn’t. His head began to swim and he pitched forward, breaking his fall with his frozen hands.
The impact tore the talisman partly loose, and Archie scraped it frantically along the floor. The back of one hand banged against a rock; Archie raked the talisman along the rock’s edge, bloodying his hands as each pass loosened it a bit more. His labored breathing whistled through the mask’s mouth slit, and he could hear his heart, slow and ponderous like the drumbeat of a military funeral.
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