Dai-San - 03 (9 page)

His gaze swept back to the fresco.

‘So there was no war.’

‘The Majapan way.’

‘And all the tribes abided by your rules.’

‘All feared—’ She paused as if she had committed a transgression.

‘Feared what?’ He watched her face now, half in shadow, searching for some hint of emotion, some small betrayal, in the eyes behind the mask.

‘A—god. A god we once worshiped.’ Her voice had turned somber. ‘But,’ she continued more brightly, ‘that was in the time-that-was; it is not important now for that false god was banished from this land many
katun
ago.’

An overgrown building, partially destroyed; a headless statue; a plumed serpent.

‘Only the Chacmool has reigned in Xich Chih,’ she said. ‘His priests devised the sacred ball game-’

‘So the Majapan avoided bloodshed by playing the game,’ said Ronin.

Her head swiveled and the light caught her eyes, shining, tawny, like perfect topazes.

‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ said Kin Coba, startled and indignant at the same time. ‘The heads of the losing team were delivered into the arms of their tribal chieftains as a warning against further aggression. Their steaming hearts were used to fertilize our crops. The Majapan were a very practical race.’

There was a small silence while he digested this, then:

‘You mean the Majapan never lost a game?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Never.’

A peculiar depression had descended upon him. In an effort to break it, he said: ‘What lies behind that Chacmool mask, Kin Coba?’

Her slender hands, which had been in her lap, rose into the still air, a silent explosion, more truthful than words could ever be.

‘Do you wish,’ she said, ‘to possess me?’

He thought her choice of words curious.

‘You mean make love.’

‘If that is what you desire.’

He reached out, ran his finger tips up from her knee, along the inside of her thigh. Her eyes glittered.

‘Not with that mask.’

‘Then you shall not have this.’

Her strong fingers took his hand, lifted it higher. He felt her heat, steamy as the jungle at midday. Her other hand moved along his prone form.

‘And you
do
want it.’

She lifted herself up and pulled at his leggings, freeing him. Then she knelt over him, descending slowly, her eyes closing, the lids fluttering. She gasped. She lowered her torso and he felt the heat of her heavy breasts and the fluttering of her stomach. He put a hand up to her face but her firm fingers entwined in his and she pulled his hand down to the side of one breast. Her hips moved downward.

He grappled with her in the humid night, inhaling her strange, pungent musk, wondering what she looked like, the coupling like a great wrestling match as their bodies lacquered with sweat and saliva, in a rising cadence, while he felt again the rushing down a claustrophobically metamorphosing corridor-tunnel-funnel.

And at the precise moment when she cried out and her body trembled, he felt her cruelty wash over him like a fetid tide and he felt himself recoil, an image in a fleeting mirror. Her fingernails gouging at his flesh, the imprisoning grip of her powerful thighs, her torso arching up above him, her breasts swaying, the nipples long and hard.

Inside, in turmoil, he tried to grapple with the rancorous emotions that had begun to bellow loudly in his inner ear. He felt pleasure pool itself far away in his loins.

Her hips grinding in a circle, her breath loud and sensuous. He lifted his hands and squeezed her breasts. She moaned. And thrust against him. And his hands went to the mask, lifted it from her shoulders and, even as he heard a deep growling, a harsh shout from outside, he stared upward, outward from the glowing gems of her eyes.

Impaled.

Deep in the spangled night, Moichi loped from shadow to shadow, his eyes intent on the tall figure of Uxmal Chac as he swept away from the low pyramid.

Unreasonably, Moichi had expected him to head for the great stepped pyramid to the west but, instead, Uxmal Chac turned right, off the causeway, toward the far side of the city.

Glittering, secretive, it stretched away from him, filled with the knowledge of the ages. There it crouched upon the plain, an incipient life hovering somewhere close.

In all of Xich Chih, there was only one round building, small and relatively unadorned, and it was to this that Uxmal Chac now went.

Moichi could see, as they approached, that the edifice was somewhat over one hundred meters high, a circular tower, resting on two terraces set one upon the other; the lower broader one was of grass, the higher, of stone. Stairways, centered on one side, led up to the tower, which had three doorways, set at precise though unequal distances from each other.

Beneath the lintel of a neighboring doorway, depicting a priest surrounded by hieroglyphs, Moichi watched intently as Uxmal Chac mounted the two stairways and stood directly in front of the tower’s first doorway, at the extreme left, staring up into the night sky. After a time, he held something dark to his eye.

Moichi’s gaze left him, clouded in the moonlight, swept upward. Toward which constellation did he look? Moichi asked himself. The Seven Sisters? The Great Bear? And where was the Serpent, the enormous constellation which had guided him to many a safe port from out of the uncharted sea?

For a long time Uxmal Chac regarded the heavens and then, apparently finding the answer to his unvoiced question among the hard points of unreachable light, stepped inside the tower for a brief moment before re-emerging. He went down the stairway, across the grass terrace, down again, and plunged into shadow.

At once, Moichi left the darkness of the doorway, moving away from the building, after the tall figure.

He found himself quite near the edge of the thick, entangled jungle. Turning, he could just make out the top of the great, stepped pyramid to the west. He heard the soft slap of Uxmal Chac’s sandals ahead of him and he went on. A series of low buildings stretched away from him.

Abruptly, a dark shape crossed his path, becoming visible as it loped from the dense shadows of the jungle. The platinum light was pellucid and he saw it clearly: the deep, unmistakable red of its glossy pelt, its bright yellow-green eyes cold and hard as flint, glowing as if from some internal energy source. Its long tail flicked at the humid air.

‘Chacmool,’ he breathed.

It leapt at him, its great dark head extended, jaws beginning to open, the talons of its forepaws raking the night. It growled deep in its throat and Moichi shouted in reflex as he drew forth a copper-handled dirk. Then the beast was upon him.

The jaws gaped wide, the head reared back, as the forepaws commenced to slash at his flesh. Light gleamed wetly along the curved surfaces of the Chacmool’s fangs. They dripped with saliva and something darker.

The beast lunged for his neck. He twisted aside and the teeth snapped together. He strove to free his right hand, to lift the long blade of his tightly gripped dirk into the Chacmool’s belly. It growled in frustration and doubled up its hind legs, attempting to scrape its long talons across Moichi’s exposed stomach and thighs.

There was dark movement behind and above him but he ignored it as he rolled on the white stones of Xich Chih enwrapped by the Chacmool. He strained and ground his teeth and, at last, he had freed his right arm. The opened jaws came at him again and he slammed his heavy copper wristlet against the fangs. The Chacmool screamed. He turned the blade of his dirk, silvered by the strong moonlight, and drove it towards the beast’s heart. The thrust aborted; his wrist immobilized. His body thrashed against the weight of the thing, his nostrils filled with its powerful scent, and he twisted his head to see what—

The Chacmool sank its teeth into his neck.

‘T
IME IS THE SLAYER.’

A series of masks, replicated.

‘Time is the healer. Time is the boundary. Time is the victor.’

Stone Chacmool guarded its lower reaches with opened jaws.

‘Our heads are bowed before your inevitable power.’

Uxmal Chac’s voice began as the last echoes of Cabal Xiu’s litany died away:

‘As it must be. As it was foretold in the Long Count, in the Book of Balam, of the Majapan.’ The note of triumph in his voice was unmistakable. ‘It is midnight. Now the
katun
of Ce-Acatl commences. It is the sixth age!’

Now they were maskless.

Uxmal Chac had a face that was long and thin. His nose was as the trunk of an elephant.

Cabal Xiu’s jaw was snoutlike. His mouth was lipless, his nose all nostrils.

Kin Coba’s eyes were triangular, their pupils feline slivers. Her ears, high up on her head, twitched at every sound.

The strange trio stood revealed on the nethermost step of the great pyramid which dominated the heart of Xich Chih. At their feet Ronin and Moichi lay, conscious but unmoving.

‘Think!’ cried Kin Coba, ecstatically, thrusting out her arms. ‘Remember! Do you feel it?’ She whirled in the night. ‘Our lost power begins to return! The Majapan, who spawned us in the Old Time will, at dawn, return to us once more! After an age of barrenness comes an age of plenty.’

‘These two shall return the Majapan to us!’ cried Cabal Xiu. ‘For on these steps of the Sacred Pyramid of Tzcatlipoca will come death.’ The distant trees seemed to shudder and shake and the stone city vibrated as his voice filled with energy and power with every word he uttered. ‘And life; life for Xich Chih once more!’

‘Now it begins!’ Cabal Xiu called out into the changing night, as, black-robed, he mounted the central stairway of the pyramid. Uxmal Chac turned to follow him but Kin Coba grasped his arm, took him to the side. Ronin strained to hear their conversation even though he could not turn his head.

‘He has seen it, Uxmal Chac, the forgotten shrine and the—the statue.’

‘What?’ Uxmal Chac’s eyes blazed. ‘The one who followed you saw the statue of Atsbilan?’ He glanced at Ronin for a moment, then he shook his strange head. ‘It matters not. He-Who-Sets-The-Sun has been banished from this land for
katun
without end, just as his Father, whose name must not be uttered, was banished in the Sundering.’ He put a hand on Kin Coba’s shoulder. ‘Long has Tzcatlipoca reigned in Xich Chih and thus will it be forevermore. Now must begin the sacrifice which will return Tzcatlipoca to Xich Chih and, with Him, the Majapan.’

Kin Coba stared up into his face.

‘Yet I am frightened, for he has been to the place and perhaps he is the One—’

Uxmal Chac’s hand slammed into her face and she recoiled.

‘Are you mad? We are what we are, yes, but see how shabby we have become during all the
katun
without the shadow of Tzcatlipoca to make us great!’

‘I am Kin Coba,’ she said proudly, ignoring the blood which trickled down her cheek. ‘I do not need you to tell me what I am. But have you forgotten the rest of the Book of Balam’s foretelling, Uxmal Chac?’

His head twisted from her words as if they were alive.

‘Ah, wicked blasphemer!’ Uxmal Chac spat.

Above them all, Cabal Xiu neared the flat summit of the Pyramid of Tzcatlipoca.

‘How can you bow before one section of the Book while renouncing another?’ Kin Coba’s voice held a metallic thread. ‘Do you not see? It took me a while to understand too. You know what Cabal Xiu means to do. What will become of us then, if all of the Book is true?’

‘Leave those thoughts behind, Kin Coba. We have changed the Book of Balam, you know that.’ His hands gripped her arms. ‘Have you so soon forgotten how all of us fought Him and banished Him finally from the land of Xich Chih so that Tzcatlipoca might reign alone here for all time? Have you so soon forgotten our comrades lost in that titanic struggle?’

‘No,’ she said sadly. ‘I am forever scarred by that battle. But it is again the year of Ce-Acatl. He was created in the year Ce-Acatl; He bore Atsbilan in the year Ce-Acatl; we defeated Him in the year Ce-Acatl; and the Book declares that He shall come again in the year Ce-Acatl.’ Her hair streamered back from her slanted face; her eyes were feral. ‘You know that His coming means the end of Tzcatlipoca’s reign over Xich Chih. Without His protection, the balance we fear shall be restored and we shall perish!’

There came a cry from far above them and Ronin raised his eyes to the top of the stepped pyramid, saw the tall black-garbed figure of Cabal Xiu before the Temple of Tzcatlipoca, heard the deep booming voice as it echoed out over the waiting empty city:

‘Oh, Itzamna, Lord of Heaven, son of Hunab Ku, creator of the world, Thou art no more, dethroned by Chac.

‘Oh, Chac, Thou deserter of the true Majapan, friend of man, traitor to Tzcatlipoca, great was the power that sent you from us—’

It was a summoning of power and, as Cabal Xiu intoned, the Sacred Pyramid seemed to shine more brightly, as if the moon, hanging like a platinum teardrop in the black, spangled river of the heavens, had grown swollen with light and energy.

Ronin turned to the big man lying beside him.

‘Moichi, can you move?’

The navigator shook his head. No.

‘What have they done to us? The last I remember, the Chacmool—’

‘They knew our movements from the first,’ said Ronin quietly. ‘Perhaps even before we reached the city. Those eyes in the jungle—’

‘The Red Jaguars—?’

A dim crackling came from the Sacred Pyramid’s summit and they lifted their eyes. Cold flames, white and blue, had begun to flicker, twisting in awesome splendor from the Temple of Tzcatlipoca, throwing the figure of Cabal Xiu into sharp silhouette.

‘Oh, old and tired deities,’ the priest continued to intone, ‘thy time has ended, so the
katun
of the Long Count in the Book of Balam has decreed. Thy power has faded and crumbled—’

The flames writhed higher: liquid, silvered, unnatural. Cabal Xiu lifted his arms to the waiting moon.

‘The time is now come. It is once again the
katun
of Ce-Acatl. It is the dawning of the sixth age—’

Ronin blinked, for now it seemed that the black figure throbbed and grew.

‘Come, Xaman Balam!’