In any event, the jaguar—whose purr motor now hummed and thrummed like a finely tuned racing engine—clearly did not want her to leave.
Still, she glanced at the river—only a few feet to her left—just in case her situation took a turn for the worse, and she needed a hasty exit.
She was again sorry she had turned her head.
Slithering toward her out of the water was a sixteen-foot greenish brown crocodile with a spectacularly long tail and narrow jaws, its exposed fangs glaring grotesquely in the afternoon sun.
Oh Christ, Coop, you’re in for it now.
Crocodiles were snakes—fast in warm weather, and right now even dripping wet, it was hotter on that riverbank than the hinges of hell. In the water, the croc could also rocket toward her like a high-tech torpedo locking on to a sub. Moreover, the croc’s bite was preternaturally powerful—six times stronger than that of a great white shark—all of which meant the river was out of the question.
He trundled halfway up the riverbank, dropped his snout six inches from her pain-racked ribs, then lowered his belly into the shallow shorewater. He observed her with casual insouciance, his stare empty as void, meaningless as the Martian moons.
But not . . . not . . . not . . . unfriendly.
What is it with these sissy killers, anyway? She wondered, Whatever happened to “nature, red in tooth and claw”?
A jaguar lying on her right, a croc on her left, an anaconda and an eagle overhead—they acted more like brothers-through-blood, as if they were totemic protectors, her secret sharers, her spirit guides.
Who were they?
What was going on?
What did they want?
Let the jaguar lie down with the lamb? Let the child sleep under the anaconda’s tree? Let the woman soar with the ravenous raptor and kick back with the bloodthirsty croc? she thought, grimly parodying Isaiah’s verses on the “peaceable kingdom.”
Exhausted, surrounded by Mexico’s most lethal killers, she realized she had no place else to go. Miraculously unharmed, the codex urn was still in its knapsack, so lying on her back, she tried to focus her eyes on the tree trunk. There was no getting away from the ferocious foursome above her and at her sides. The croc even blocked her egress to the river.
She was about to throw her head back and ask the heavens: Why me?
—when she heard the baying of the hounds and the shouting of the men.
She knew in her soul who they were: The infamous Apachureros—the “Breakers of Bones.” Mexico’s most feared narco-killers were back on her trail, this time tracking her scent with bloodhounds.
Time to haul ass, Coop said. No rest for the wicked, little girl.
Pulling herself to her feet, she painfully headed up the riverbank. Around the next bend she spotted a small creek, which branched sharply to the right. Frightened of the howling dogs on her back trail, she jogged toward the tiny tributary.
Reaching it, she immediately waded into its center. Heading upstream, she was determined to stay on the random rocks dotting the shallow brook like stepping stones. She hoped and prayed she would not leave tracks and that the water would cover her scent and that it would throw off the dogs.
Glancing over her shoulder, she noted to her amazement that the croc and the anaconda were following her up the stream with the jaguar wading right behind them.
Again, she threw back her head to once again ask the eternal question: Why me?
—when to her dismay, she saw the bald eagle circling overhead.
Are these beasts planning to eat me after all?
Apparently not.
The croc and the anaconda shot past her on their way upcreek.
Then the jaguar raced past her.
Then the eagle rocketed out of sight.
They were taking off like bats out of hell.
Or rats deserting a sinking ship.
What the hell is going on?
PART XI
56
Two of Flint Shield’s warriors dragged me by the feet to the temple’s inner sanctum. At first I felt nothing but the sheer helplessness that the High Priestess’s nectar had induced. It wasn’t until my head banged along the steps that I first experienced pain.
Pain is good.
I needed something to snap me out of the mind-numbing, strength-robbing drug the High Priestess had plied me with. Pain told me I was alive. Maybe it even intimated I could fight back. But my arms and legs still felt numb, disembodied.
I heard the High Priestess arguing with Flint Shield, then crying out with pain. He hit her and told her to shut up.
“He knows where the codex is. I’ll be gone from your temple as soon as he tells me what he knows.”
Why the High Priestess thought Flint Shield would only question me and then let me go was puzzling. Did she think he would leave me alive to sound the alarm that he was still in the city?
In the middle of the room was a fire encircled by rocks. I smelled the smoke, felt the heat. Then I heard a muffled agonizing moan and smelled burning flesh.
Turning my head, I saw the source of the moans and of the stink.
The Master of the Library was lying on the floor not far from me, his mouth gagged. The smell came from his feet. They were roasting in the fire.
“What has he told you?” Flint Shield asked the man tending the fire.
“Nothing. He says he doesn’t know where the codex is; he just keeps saying Jeweled Skull knows.”
“Did you ask him about this fool?” He kicked me to leave no doubt whom he meant.
“He said he doesn’t believe Pakal Jaguar knows where the codex is located.”
“Pull his feet out—he won’t be feeling any pain in them by now. I’ll put our oracle’s feet to the flames, and if the librarian is still alive after I’m through, their heads will go into the fire next—to make sure they’ve told me everything.”
I took deep breaths and begged Kukulkán to give me back my mind and strength. I began to imagine that I was back in the village of stonecutters, where I was the strongest man in the village with powerful muscles that could lift a stone slab that no two other men could raise.
My fellow workers would stand back and chant until I lifted the piece that we needed, and then would break into cheers and laughter.
Once a year on a festival day, there would be a contest of strength, and I had won it from the time I was eighteen years old.
I lifted the heaviest pieces only by reaching deep down into myself and asking the gods for assistance.
That was what I needed now—a helping hand from the gods, fueling my weakened arms and legs.
Flint Shield let out a yell of surprise. “Are you insane? You almost cut me!”
“You promised not to kill him,” the High Priestess said, waving an obsidian dagger. “He’s protected by the gods.”
“Get out of here, you stupid old woman.” Ripping the dagger out of her fist, he began to drag her out of the room. “Put his feet in the fire!” he yelled back to the man who tended the fire.
The man reached down and grabbed both my feet. I jerked my right foot out of his grasp, cocked it back, and slammed it into his chest. He flew backwards into the fire himself.
I rose dizzily to my feet, the room swirling around me, but my strength returning. The two men who had dragged me into the room were grappling with me, and I threw one against a wall. The rage, which burned in me now, fueled my strength. I grabbed the second man by the throat and lifted him off his feet. Stepping forward, I rammed his head into the wall. When I heard his skull crack, I let him go, and he slid down the wall, leaving a bloody streak all the way to the floor.
The door, through which Flint Shield had dragged the High Priestess, flew open, and he stepped in, a bloody blade in his hand. I grabbed a dagger dropped on the floor by the man I’d battered and went for the War Lord’s son. He stepped back through the door, slamming it. I heard a bar drop into place on the other side as I threw myself against it, but the door held.
&
nbsp; Still in a rage, I slammed into it again and again until I broke through and found myself in another almost bare room. The High Priestess was on the floor in a gathering pool of blood, her throat cut.
As I reentered the room, which Flint Shield had converted into a torture chamber, the man who had tended the fire rushed me. I kicked him in the stomach and smashed him across the head with my elbow. He went down, and I dragged him to the fire and pushed his face into the hot ashes, leaving him screaming and convulsively jerking on the floor.
The blind old man was breathing shallowly as I knelt beside him.
“It’s me, Pakal Jaguar.”
He grabbed my arm with a shaky hand. “I told them nothing.”
“It’s all right,” I said.
He spoke again, so low, I had to bend down with my ear almost to his lips to hear him. “Tell Jeweled Skull that his old friend told them nothing.”
“I will tell him,” I said.
His mind slipped away, and he talked to someone, maybe Jeweled Skull, about artwork in some long-forgotten codex. His mind was gone, and there was nothing of life left in him save suffering.
I gently cradled the old man in my arms for a moment. “I’ll buy you a yellow dog,” I told him, “to guide you through Xibalba.”
I slipped my arm around his neck and squeezed until all life was gone from him.
Flint Shield’s fire-tender was still moaning. I stamped on the back of his neck until he stopped squirming.
The man whose skull I had cracked was dead, but the third man was still alive. He was getting up, and I battered him back down.
“Tell me where Flint Shield hides,” I said.
He tried to fight back, and I pounded his head on the floor for a moment and asked the question again.
“A different place each night,” he said.
“That’s an unfortunate answer for you,” I said. “You might have lived if you had helped me find him.”
I cut his throat and went looking for Sparrow.
I went through the innards of the temple, kicking doors open, shouting at terrified priestesses.
“Where’s Sparrow?” I demanded over and over.
I received nothing but fearful replies that they did not know.
“The High Priestess,” one of the priestesses asked, “is she all right?”
“She died bravely,” I said, “protecting my life. How long has Sparrow been gone?”
“For days.”
“Was she taken by a man?”
“No, she left on her own. The High Priestess let her come and go, while none of the rest of us could. I don’t know why.”
The reason was that Sparrow was her daughter, but I said nothing.
And I didn’t believe the High Priestess when she said that Sparrow had left with a man.
I got out of the temple as news of the trouble within was spreading.
57
The captain of the king’s guard was waiting for me at the entrance to the great lord’s palace.
“The king commands your presence,” he said.
“May I tell Lord Janaab?”
“He is already with the king.”
Before my journey to Tulúm, I had twice entertained guests at a royal feast with stories. My impression of the king was that he was a short, sullenly ill-tempered man, but perhaps with his own brothers and nobles wanting his throne, he didn’t have much to be cheerful about.
I waited in the great hall with two guards while the guards’ captain went to find Lord Janaab. As had been my habit, my face was colored to hide my claw scars, and the claw necklace was tucked inside my shirt. I was glad I didn’t attract attention because much of the conversation buzzing about the room concerned the events at the temple. Everyone wondered what had happened.
My master came and took me to a quiet corner where we would not be overheard.
“Quickly, tell me what happened at the Temple of Love.”
“Flint Shield set a trap for me. He planned to torture me to get the location of the codex.”
I told him everything. He dismissed the death of the librarian as insignificant. When I told him that the High Priestess had first entrapped but then attempted to save me, he cut me short.
“She was finished anyway. She knew it. She had been plotting with the War Lord and his son, using her body and those of her priestesses to get information for them and to persuade potential allies to betray the king. The king would have accused her of crimes and had her painted red.”
An official pulled Lord Janaab aside. He still had not told me why we were meeting at the royal palace. Was I to be punished for not killing or capturing Flint Shield?
After a whispered conversation, the great lord returned to me. “We are meeting with the king privately rather than in his public reception room. When we enter, I will bow, but you will kneel and look to the floor. Do not look up until he commands you. Do not speak unless he indicates he wishes you to say something. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lord.”
I doubted that he would speak to me in private to learn the details of the fight I had with Flint Shield. That, too, Lord Janaab could explain. My instincts told me the discussion was going to be about the Dark Rift Codex.
Eyo! I had nearly been murdered twice over; others had been killed in my presence, and still I knew little about the legendary book. But how was I to explain that to the king?
With plots to kill and dethrone him swirling around him like flies around droppings, he would frown on the fact the indispensable Dark Rift Codex was still lost.
Escorted by the captain of the guards, we passed through the great reception public hall, a room many times larger than Lord Janaab’s own reception area. The guard captain led us through a series of hallways that were easily barred. The route was puzzling until I realized that it was designed to slow down attackers who rushed from the public area to the king’s inner chambers.
We entered an opulently decorated chamber where the king sat on a jaguar throne. Unlike the stone throne on which the High Priestess sat, this one was made entirely from pieces of jade.
It had to be one of many thrones he had. The value of each must have been worth more than this poor, stupid villager had imagined all the treasures of the One-World to be worth.
It also occurred to me that he could buy maize for all the hungry in his kingdom for the value of just one of his thrones.
On the wall behind him was also something rare and prized: the hide of a white jaguar.
Lord Janaab bowed, and I dropped to my knees.
“Stand up, Pakal Jaguar.”
I rose and looked up at the king. Beside him stood a thin, hatchet-faced adviser.
I had seen the man going from the royal palace to the observatory. He was the king’s stargazer, an astronomer who divined the Star God’s will.
The astronomer stared at me intently, like a buzzard eyeing a piece of bloody meat.
“Tell me what you know about the Dark Rift Codex,” the king said. “Speak of everything you have heard. Leave out nothing. Do you understand?”
I understood. I started at the beginning, carefully repeating every conversation I had had with Lord Janaab, certain that the king was already aware of them.
When I was done, he confirmed it.
“You disappoint me. Everything you have told me, I have already heard. I believe you know more, but you withhold it from me. You don’t want me to harbor such opinions.”
He was telling me that if he didn’t like my response, he would have me put to the question in his torture chamber.
“I know nothing more about the book.”
“Jeweled Skull treated you as his son and heir to his storytelling, yet you deny that he told you about the most important legend that ever existed? Is this what you want me to believe?”
I didn’t dare share with him what Jeweled Skull had told me, not after lying to Lord Janaab.
“It is true,” I said.
“What do you say, Lord Jana
ab? Does he speak the truth?”
“He was put to the question and never faltered,” my master said.
Ha! What else could he say? That his servant was a lying bastard he couldn’t get the truth from?
The king looked at me for a long moment. “They say you are an oracle, Pakal Jaguar. If you are one, can you tell me how a war with Cobá would fare if I warred against them?”
The astronomer at his side visibly flinched at the question, and I realized I was having another snake shoved in my face.
The king was planning a real war, not just a Flower War, to avenge the humiliation suffered by the War Lord being captured and sacrificed. It was a smart move because the war would distract people from the problems the kingdom faced and distract his enemies from their plots against him.
Short of a complete debacle, it was a good political move.
But I said nothing of these thoughts. “I am not an oracle, my king, despite what I have heard about myself on the streets. I do not speak to the gods or know their wishes or how they would react to the things we do.”
“Then how do you explain what is said about you?”
I didn’t dare volunteer that people in his kingdom were so desperate, they called me a soothsayer because they sought someone who could tell them what the future held. “I am observant. I see things because I look.”
“Tell me about something you see in this room. Not a thing that is obvious.”
“The white jaguar, my king.”
“What about the white jaguar?”
“It’s not the one I killed.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it has all its claws. And the one I killed is missing this one.” I pulled the necklace out from my shirt.
He nodded with approval, and the astronomer bent down and whispered in his ear. The king called Lord Janaab to him, and the whispering continued.
I was still tense as I awaited whatever decisions or machinations were being discussed. Was I to be rewarded or punished? Allowed to live or tortured unto death?