The Bloodgate Guardian (5 page)

Dr. Charles Merritt might have kept secrets from his closest friends, but his private study was as familiar to Jaid as her own. In that respect, father and daughter were very much alike, and he’d taken great pains to familiarize her with his methods over the years. She knew exactly how his mind worked, as well as his system of filing and documentation. Within an hour, she was ready to fill in the other two archaeologists.

She wasn’t prepared for a stranger to join them. Sam introduced Dr. Efraín Reyes as a sponsor of the Museo Popol Vuh in Guatemala City. Wiry with fierce, dark eyes and steely gray temples, he didn’t look comfortable in the tailored suit. His shoulders were tense and he moved as stiffly as a knight in full armor.

“At last, the famous Dr. Merritt!” Dr. Reyes gave her an equally stiff smile while shaking her hand enthusiastically. “Your father has spoken of your skills at great length. I look forward to hearing more about this mysterious find.”

She shot Sam a hard look. She already felt as though she’d betrayed her father’s trust by telling his research partner his secrets; how could she tell a complete stranger the details? Let alone when there was so much she didn’t understand. “Thank you, Dr. Reyes. Did you know my father well?”

“Alas, no, and please, no formalities, not between partners. Please call me Efraín.” He gave her another tight, small smile that barely moved his mouth at all, although his eyes crinkled deeply. “Your father is a very…dedicated…man. He only rarely leaves his research. Will he join us this night?”

Sam blinked and stuttered. “I’m afraid not, Dr. Reyes. We actually…er…don’t know where Charlie has gone. Not exactly.” Pinned by the smaller man’s dark eyes, Sam implored for her assistance with a panicked look.

“My father would never leave the site voluntarily.” Efraín turned those piercing eyes on her, and she barely veiled the emotions roiling in her: disgust, that this man suspected her father of petty stealing; irony, that her father had indeed stolen something, but not for profit; and worse, bone-crushing grief for all those years she’d ached for him to tear himself away from his research to be with her, and only his disappearance had brought her to his dig. “I’m hoping to shed some light on his research that will help us understand his disappearance.”

Efraín stared at her with narrowed eyes, and she tensed, waiting for him to shout for those heavily-armed soldiers to rush inside and drag her to prison until she told him everything. He surprised her, though, with a slight incline of his head, his manner thawing. “I would be honored to assist in whatever manner I may. I look forward to hearing of your father’s research.”

On the worktable, Dr. Charles Merritt had constructed a complex diagram. Two saw-toothed wheels, one larger than the other, lay on the table interlocked.

Automatically, she slipped into lecture mode, even though her “students” were old enough to be her parents. “How familiar are you with the Maya calendars?”

Madelyn had composed herself, although her eyes were still puffy. “We know the basics. I’ve watched Charlie mess around with this thing and never really got what he was doing.”

Sam merely shrugged, while Efraín’s eyes glittered with what she hoped was excitement and not malice. Again, she wished she could read people better. Did her father trust this man? How many of his secrets did she dare expose? Yet if she kept back too much, he could die.

I may never see him again.
Swallowing back another wave of tears, she flipped on the projector and brought up the digital photographs she’d taken of the codex.

They didn’t do the gorgeous hand-written pages justice. If she closed her eyes, she could see the glorious colors, the heavy yet elegant sweeping strokes of each glyph imprinted on her memory. With the pages locked firmly in her memory, she didn’t need to see the codex to make her translations, but she was fascinated by it and its author, surely a man, a very powerful mystical man.

“This codex was found in the main temple’s floor beneath a small panel very similar to one Dad had found in Chich’en Itza thirty-some years ago. At first, he thought this was some kind of Maya Book of the Dead, but after I translated the cover, we called it the
Bloodgate Codex.
”

Efraín made a small noise, barely more than a puff of air sighing beneath his breath. She glanced at him questioningly, but his attention was riveted on the screen. His fingers were curled tightly, fists braced on his thighs. Did his palms itch to touch the fragile, ancient pages and trace the inked glyphs with loving care? Or did he long to whisk the precious book away from careless Americans where it would be safe in his museum?

Uneasy, she continued with a careful eye on him to judge his reactions. “I’m sure you know the end-of-the-age predictions made in the
Dresden Codex
, and the arguments over the years about which date the long count should start at. I’m not going to get into the GMT correlations or the various arguments, because, quite frankly, they’re all wrong, and it doesn’t matter anyway.”

A genuine smile flickered across Efraín’s face, lighting up his eyes and softening his hard mouth. It was quickly gone, but she’d seen it. That bit of warmth eased the knots gnawing away at her stomach.

“Wrong?” Sam frowned. “But Charlie always said the
baktun
was ending soon. That’s why he was so obsessed—he wanted to find the truth before the drop-dead date.”

“But we have no idea of the exact date,” Jaid said with a nod. “It could end today for all we know. Regardless, the world will not end. Look at the calendar rounds and you see immediately that the Maya believed that while ages come and go, everything is cyclical. A new age may indeed begin at the end of this
baktun
, but that mystical date has absolutely nothing to do with our findings.”

Bewildered, Madelyn stared at the calendar rounds. “Then why did Charlie care?”

“The Great Cycle will indeed end, soon, but the Maya could count and mark days well past that date. Their priests knew a terrible time was coming, foretold by the position of the stars, and many of them made a decision to bypass a very grim time in our history.”

Jaid hesitated, struggling to find the words. This is the part she’d never fully believed, no matter what the codex—or her father—said. “Dad believes that the end of the Great Cycle marks a time when the Maya will…return.”

“Return?” Sam looked as stunned as Madelyn. “From where?”

Even Efraín was pale, his dark gaze riveted on Jaid’s face. Did he believe too? But why would he? Everyone thought her father obsessed to the point that his career had suffered as a result.

“Which is the crux of the problem,” she whispered. If Dr. Reyes was a
Popol Vuh
expert, then perhaps she should test him with some quotes.
“‘We are going to the east, where our fathers came from. We are not dying…’”

He met her challenging gaze, his mouth quirking as though he knew very well what she was doing.
“‘We are coming back.’”

“That passage refers to Tulan Zuyua, right?” Sam leaned forward, kneading the hat on his lap. “Seven Caves, Seven Canyons is the name of the citadel where they received their patron gods.”

“Yes. People have questioned where Tulan Zuyua was for centuries. There are references to water and across the sea. Some people believe the original Maya truly did live in a lost city across the ocean, perhaps an island that later disappeared. Others place Tulan Zuyua on the shores of the Yucatan.”

“There are as many possibilities as the stars,” Efraín whispered, his eyes flashing in challenge.

“Indeed.” Jaid smiled back, relishing the opportunity to spar words with him. “The Maya timed their calendars to the stars. The World Tree, the Great Ceiba, was the Milky Way, connecting earth and sky. Once set, the Sun, then called Jaguar Night Sun, travels through Xibalba, paddling on a canoe that passes through the Milky Way until he rises again in the east. The hearthstones are Orion’s Belt in the sky. The Maya believed they were from the
stars
, not from some island in the sea. Water was a metaphor for space.”

Efraín’s gaze shuttered, his shoulders and mouth tight. He gave a little shake of his head. To discourage her from admitting the truth, or did he thoroughly doubt her sanity?

“So you’re telling me the Maya were aliens.” Mouth downturned,, Madelyn didn’t look amused at all. “We’ve heard those theories about the Egyptians too. I don’t buy it.”

“Not aliens, not exactly, although the idea certainly made for a great movie and a few good television shows.” Jaid mentally groped around for the right words. If she didn’t believe her father completely, then how could she possibly make a convincing argument? Why even bother? But he might have been right enough to open a portal in Lake Atitlan. “Remember that Seven Caves, Seven Canyons also refers to the passage to Xibalba. Have you seen the Candelaria Caves in the Chisic region?”

“I know where you’re going with this.” Sam leaned forward until he was barely on his seat. “There are also man-made caves beneath Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Sun.”

“And natural caves in this region. Look at the church in Santiago Atitlan. That was one of our first clues. They still do a rebirth ritual, modified to incorporate Christian elements, but the idea of the watery cave leading to the Underworld is central to the Maya religion. The other key to the puzzle is Chich’en Itza.”

“The Sacred Cenote,” Madelyn said slowly. Jaid could almost see the wheels turning in the older woman’s head. “They believed it was a portal to the afterlife.”

Jaid nodded, jumping on the word. “You didn’t say Xibalba, or the Underworld, but the
afterlife
. The watery caves connected people with their ancestors, even those who’d successfully traversed the Place of Fright and now lived in the Milky Way at the heavenly hearthstone in the sky. The watery caves or cenotes were portals out of this world and time.”

“Portals to where?” Sam fell back in his chair, eyes wide and hands trembling. “Where did Charlie go?”

“Ah, now that is the question exactly. Dad thinks that at some point in the Classic period—perhaps even earlier, or multiple times—groups of Maya left this world. They foresaw the coming of the Spaniards, disease, the corruption of their beliefs, and they chose to leave this world for a new one.”

Efraín quoted from the
Popol Vuh
again in the stunned silence.
“‘We are not dying, we are coming back.’”

“It’s part of the legend in Chisic that the Maya simply went into the caves,” Madelyn added, her voice rising with excitement. “And in the Yucatan, they still believe that Kukulkan is coming back.”

Jaid shared a smile with them. She loved talking with people who got this stuff, who felt the same thrill of possibilities. She’d never felt closer to her father than when they talked about Maya mythology. “Absolutely! The end of the Great Cycle isn’t an end of the world harbinger of evil, but the Return of the Maya to our world. Supposedly, Kukulkan will indeed return, along with all the Maya who followed him.”

Deep in thought, Madelyn drummed her fingers on the table. “Are you saying the gods will return, or the people who left? Their descendants?”

“Dad thinks the gods were merely the first early people who were then deified. They’ve been living somewhere in a dimension that can only be reached through their portals and isn’t touched by time. This theory is built upon many different Maya customs and beliefs, not just one region or one tribe. It’s not even just the Maya, but all of Mesoamerica. The Aztecs had many of the same beliefs and shared many of the same gods with different names. We’ve accumulated pieces from Chich’en Itza, Santiago Atitlan, Tikal, Palenque, from Guatemala to Mexico City to the Yucatan. Only by looking at all the pieces, combined with this one crucial codex, can we begin to put all the pieces together.”

Sam had his hat twisted in his hands again and jumped up to pace back and forth. “Do you think the pieces were deliberately split up at the different sites and periods?”

“Oh, definitely. This is powerful magic. The Maya didn’t want just anybody learning the secret of these portals, because then their refuge, their original home world, would be at risk.”

Slowing his frantic pacing, Sam turned to face her. “So what exactly do you think Charlie tried to do?”

She remembered the howling winds, a fierce inland storm that had blown up from nowhere and disappeared as mysteriously. “He opened the portal in Lake Atitlan.”

At the mention of his name, Madelyn looked watery-eyed again. “How did you know it was a portal?”

If she started to cry again, Jaid would too, so she quickly turned away and scanned the titles on the shelf until she found
The Annals of the Kaqchikels
. “From legends recorded around the time when the Kaqchikels first came to the lake. That was one of our first ties from this codex to what we already knew, an important authentication. When they came to Lake Atitlan, their king, Fire Mountain, threw himself into the lake and transformed into the Queztel Serpent. The lake became dark and a whirlpool formed. The original tribe, the Tz’utijils, was so impressed with his magic that they gave the other tribe the north side of the lake.”

“You think he passed through the portal and returned as a god.” Efraín’s voice was so flat she couldn’t tell if he was questioning or mocking her. Nothing in his face betrayed his thoughts. Between Sam’s frantic pacing and Madelyn’s volatile emotion, he remained calm and still. Was he a threat, a challenge, or an ally?

Jaid ground her teeth with mute frustration. Her father would have explained it better, surely. None of them would question his expertise. His passionate belief in his theory was undeniable. “We don’t know exactly what happened. Perhaps he went through the portal and another man returned, a Maya ‘god’ dressed in the way of high royalty. Or perhaps Fire Mountain himself returned. We have no understanding of how time might have passed on the other side of the portal or even where, exactly, it leads. And that’s what worries me.”

She stared down at the complex Maya calendar rounds and her stomach gave a queasy roll. “I translated the basic mechanics of the rounds, and how we should manipulate the positions to control the location, but I haven’t finished the entire translation. Several parts seemed…”