The Seven Serpents Trilogy (21 page)

“The city,” I said, “is evil. This temple is evil. The mortar that holds it together, stone upon stone, is evilly mixed with men's blood.”

The sounds of the chanting crowd grew, then died away, became loud and then clear, until I could hear but one word,
Kukulcán
. Two of the priests, Hexo and Xipan, were clapping their hands and repeating the word.

The dwarf whispered, “The name that the crowd chants and the priests mumble is not Julián Escobar. It is Kukulcán, Archer of the Skies, Lord of the Dark Arrows, Rider of the Wind of Knives.” He paused and stretched out his hands toward the temples and the far sea. “Together we will build a city grander by far than this, grander than Ilium or Carthage. Grander than Rome in the days when Caesar ruled.”

As the dwarf whispered these words, a girl not much older than Ceela was placed upon the stone altar and sacrificed. Her heart was flung away. A moment later, she sighed.

There came into my mind at this instant, while the girl's sigh still hung in the air and I realized that she had been sacrificed for me, the scene where Satan took Christ unto an exceeding high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, say ing, “All these things I will give thee, if thou will fall down and worship me.”

Below, as the girl's heart fell through the air, the multitude was silent.

I heard the voice of Christ. He said, “Get thee hence, Satan.”

Chalco was now mumbling my name. I was surprised to hear it from his lips.

The scene on the high mountain, the scene on the parapet—the sacrificial stone, the
nacom
and his bloody attendants, the three high priests—all of it faded. Suddenly there rose before me in a blinding vi sion the city conjured by Cantú, the dwarf—gleaming temples and spacious ports that sheltered caravels from all the ocean seas, high walls built to withstand every foe, piled goods gained from far-flung trade, treasure wrested from the tyrants of a hundred towns.

The dwarf touched my arm. “Who are you now?” he asked. “Escobar or Kukulcán? Seminarian or Lord of the Shield That Mirrors the Sky, God of the Red House of Dawn?” He tilted his head and glanced up at me. With the same sly calculation I had often noticed, he studied my face. Not waiting for an answer, he an swered me: “The seminarian, I can see, is dead.”

I could not deny him.

John the Baptist's fiery ring shone brighter now against the mottled sky. The sound of wooden drums, conch shells, trumpets, and many voices grew. From the copal pots that circled the great temple, gray smoke and the smell of sweet incense rose around us. Cantú smiled and did his little dance. The gold ornament he wore around his neck, a serpent coiled and biting itself, glit tered even on this sunless day.

 

T
HE
F
EATHERED
S
ERPENT
IS THE SECOND BOOK OF A CHRONICLE BASED
upon the legend of Kukulcán, god of the Maya, who came to Yucatán in southeastern Mexico during the ninth century AD. Kukulcán was not born a god but became one because of his humble and compassionate life. He ruled over the great nation of the Maya for several centuries, then mysteriously disappeared, promising to return.

In
The Captive,
the first book of this chronicle, a young Spanish seminarian is cast away among the Maya and by chance assumes the guise of Kukulcán.

The Feathered Serpent
continues his story.

 

O
NCE MORE, LEST IT BE FORGOT,
I
SWEAR IN THE NAME OF THE COCK
that crew for our holy apostle St. Peter, by the bronze horse of Toledo, by the six blind bishops of Valladolid, and now in the name of Kukulcán, Feathered Serpent, Lord of the Twilight. I swear that what I write here is the truth.

The mountain of St. John the Baptist was crested with snow, but out of its mouth still rose a ragged plume that the wind caught and spread across the jungle in a fiery mist.

A thousand canoes lay tethered along the sea wall. As many more rode at anchor in the calm waters of the bay. Some could be seen in the strait between the bay and the mainland cliffs.

Behind me rose the red stone walls of the god house.

Far below the terrace on which I stood, in the plaza at the base of the great temple, the multitude chanted my name. The chanting grew loud and faded away. The sweet smell of copal burning in a thousand braziers drifted upward. Conches wailed and drums beat.

Cantú, the dwarf, spoke something in my ear. It was lost in a sudden outburst from below as another, the fifty-first prisoner, was led forth.

The black-robed priests placed the victim upon the altar stone. They laid him down gently, as if he were a young and beloved brother, and held him there facing the murky sky. He was a mere boy, with thin wrists and ribs that showed through his skin. In his hair was a scar let bloom.

The sacrificial priest came out of the shadows of the god house, grasping his obsidian knife. He plunged the knife into the boy's chest and quickly drew out his steaming heart. The sun was hidden, but he thrust the heart aloft toward the place the sun should be. Then he dropped it, still beating, in a votive vase among other hearts that had ceased to beat.

Four priests took the body from the altar stone. They tossed it down the steep flight of steps, toward the pile of bodies at the base of the temple. On its downward flight it lodged among the steps. Priestly ushers promptly rushed out and with a shove sent the body careening on its way.

The boy's lost flower lay behind on the terrace, and I picked it up. It was like those I had seen months before, the morning I had landed on the island. Indeed, the first thing my eyes had met when I crawled out of the raging sea was a bed of these scarlet flowers growing among the grass. The one in my hand held the wild scent of that stormy day.

I glanced down at the temple steps. Some glistened freshly red, some showed brown where old blood had dried. Copal smoke tightened my throat, and the terrace began to tilt beneath my feet. The dwarf put out a hand to steady me.

“Let us go while the crowd still cheers,” he shouted above the waves of sound. “For silence follows all cheering, even that which honors a god's return.”

“Julián Escobar a god?” Unbelieving, I said the words aloud. “A god, the Feathered Serpent of the Maya!”

“
Vámonos
,” the dwarf said and grasped my arm in his tight little fist. “Let us go.”

I did not move.

I tried to shut out the monstrous sights around me. I gazed away from them at the sunless sky, the fiery mountain, the jungle and the sea and the far cliffs of the mainland. I tried to close my ears to the sound of chant ing, the tormented drums and wailing conches. But the barbarous scene drew me back.

I caught the glance of Chalco, the high priest, stand ing beside the altar stone, with the obsidian knife in his hands.

Through slits in his jaguar mask he was watching me, his eyes cold and unmoving. They said to me, You are an emissary of a scheming king. You have come to our island city to do his evil will. For this reason, before the sun goes to its nightly rest, the sacred knife will remove your heart, as you have seen the hearts of others re moved.

It has been observed that in times of danger—as the sword descends, the wild beast springs, serpents poise to strike—at those perilous moments a man's whole life swiftly unwinds before him, like a thread from a spinning spool. This may be true, but
my
life did
not
unwind as I felt these threatening words.

Instead, the barbarous scene faded and for an instant I was again a castaway. I stood on the beach and watched while Don Guillermo Cantú, the dwarf who now crouched beside me, was lifted from his canoe by two strong Indians and deposited at my feet.

Once more I listened while, speaking in his high-pitched voice with the bearing of a Spanish
caballero
, he said, laying the plot that in a few days' time had brought me to this terrace where I now stood, “Your choice,
amigo
, is simple. You accept the role I have chosen for you, or you die.”

I heard myself say to the assembly of priests from the back of my stallion, Bravo, speaking in what I knew of the Mayan language, using the words the dwarf had given me, imposed upon me by threats of death, “I have come back after many years in eastern lands. I appear, as you can see and as I promised, in a different body, the body of a young man, blue eyed and white of skin. I come to rule this kingdom once again. My name is Kukulcán.”

The beach, the flotilla of canoes that brought me to the city, my triumphal ride through the cheering crowds, all were gone. Once more I faced the high priest with his dripping knife and the phalanx of helpers in their black, blood-spattered gowns, ready and anxious to do his bid ding.

Bravo was tethered behind the door of the god house, not ten paces away. I could mount the stallion and flee down the long corridors of the temple into the square, to the safety of the multitude that now chanted my name. I faced the high priest. I did not move. It was not courage that held me there, but the words of Cantú, the dwarf, when hours before we had first looked down upon the city from this pinnacle. “Together we will build a city grander by far than Ilium or Carthage. Grander than Rome in the days when Caesar ruled.”

It was these ringing words that held me, that helped me face the high priest until he turned away and gave his stone knife to one of the acolytes. I raised my hands to the multitude. Solemnly I swore, speaking slowly and using Mayan words.

“To all of you,” I said, “to every man and woman and child among you, I will bring the word of God and the tender voice of Jesus Christ, His son. This I pledge.”

My words hung in the smoky air. They did not reach the multitude. Only the priests heard them and they un derstood nothing of what I said.

The dwarf plucked at my sleeve again. “We leave, señor.”

I followed him through the massive doors of the god house. The stallion shied as the door opened and he heard the sound of drums and conches and the cheering crowds. He was impossible to mount, so I took him firmly by the halter.

The dwarf lit a copal torch and led me down the same winding corridor up which we had climbed before. We came to the vault where skulls were stacked in white, endless rows, to the storehouse filled with skulls arranged neatly one beside the other.

On our way to the god house, when we had passed these cavernous rooms, in which no light shone save that from Cantú's torch, I had thought little about them. But now that I had witnessed the slaying of more than fifty prisoners and realized that the skull of the young girl whose moans had hung in theair and the youth with the scarlet flower would be brought here, I stopped and called to the dwarf. He came hurrying back.

“Señor Cantú,” I said, “my first command will close these vaults and seal them forever.”

“In that case, mountains of skulls will accumulate,” he replied. “They'll fill the city square and choke all the inhabitants.”

“My next order will end the sacrifices. There'll be no need for storerooms.”

The dwarf 's lips closed in a tight little smile. “A rash thought. Remember that you're in no position to give orders that govern the very life of the city. Not yet.”

He trotted off into the darkness and I followed close upon his heels. The air was stagnant with the gathered smell of centuries. Water dripped from overhead and lay in oily pools underfoot. A noisome creature, somewhat larger than a bat, flew past in the direction of the os suaries, brushing my cheek.

I crossed myself, saying aloud, “O, God of hope, fountain of all mercies.”

The temple walls pressed upon me. From all sides I heard the scurrying of soft feet. Cantú's torch shone small and far beyond. Still praying, I followed its flickering light.

 

W
E CAME TO THE DOOR BY WHICH WE HAD ENTERED THE TEMPLE A
brief two hours ago, but Cantú set off in the oppo site direction. Anxious to be quit of the noisome dark, Bravo again snorted and set his feet. It took all of my strength to turn him about. By this time the dwarf had disappeared, except for a spark of greenish light no larger than a firefly.

The corridor continued for most of a furlong, rising and descending, often doubling back upon itself. Jagged stones had fallen from the roof and lay heaped in our path. The air was thin and choking dry. My feet sank into a powdery dust that must have gathered there for centuries, so deep that the stallion's hoofs made no sound.

I found the dwarf waiting at an arch whose lintels were carved with mouths agape. seven knotted serpents standing on their tails, with heads raised and

“Leave the horse behind,” he said. “We have ladders to descend.”

Reluctantly I grounded the reins. Unwillingly I followed Cantú through the arch into an empty room.

Plaster had fallen from the ceiling and lay scattered over the floor. In the center of the room was a small opening covered with planks which with some effort the dwarf slid aside. Holding the torch aloft, he stepped into the opening and descended a ladder, motioning me to follow.

Down three sets of ladders in a zigzag descent, well below the surface of the earth, we came to a second arch, smaller than the one above, guarded on both sides by stone jaguars. The torch shone through the opening. My eyes were blinded. The four walls squirmed with light, as did the floor beneath my feet.

“The crypt of an ancient lord,” he said. “Who he was, I do not know. No matter. There it is in all its splendor.”

He pointed toward a huge sarcophagus at the far end of the room. In front of it were two objects, one on either side, that seemed to be piles of rotting clothes. As I ap proached, I saw that beneath the clothes were bones, skeletons with spears clutched in their hands.