The Seventh Stone (7 page)

Thaddeus turned over the crucifix. Its back was enameled with primary blues, reds and greens, clearly an Iberian influence. He could make out what looked like a spear, and the words “Lux et Veritas.” “Light and Truth,” he translated from the Latin.

“
My ancestor try his best to keep his vow,” Ambar said. “He travel to Rome and to the Vatican. He is an Arab, and he fight many bandits and hateful people on the way. The Swiss Guards do not let him pass through the gate. They threaten him. He show the Guards the crucifix and the letter. They yell and point to him their swords. They accuse
Abd al-Aziz
of stealing the letter and crucifix from the priest. One guard go to kill him.
Abd al-Aziz
fight them. He escapes.”

“
Your ancestor was the one in the Vatican guard’s report I found about an Arab with a stolen crucifix and a letter,” Thaddeus said. “So I was right. He returned here.”

Ambar nodded. “For many years, the letter and crucifix is the burden of my family. We wait all the time for one worthy. Professor Thaddeus, you are that man. The letter and the crucifix are yours now.”

The room spun dizzily around him. “I’ve got to get these to safety or your ancestor’s courage will have been for nothing.” He pushed up on his elbows, only to collapse onto the bed.

Ambar’s hand gripped his shoulder, her craggy fingers surprisingly strong. “I will do it,” she said in English. “I will keep my family vow to Salvatierra to deliver his dying message. Where?”

Blackness flooded towards him. Like Salvatierra, his mission could not end, even if he should die here, alone, so far from home and family. “To my daughter,” he said, “before it’s too late.”

CHAPTER
9

Salvatierra made a quick sign of the cross. They would now reap what they had sown in this new world. It was a world not full of gold, but abundant in a native people that the Spaniards, not the jungle, had forged into savages. These savages formed the human chain ringing the perimeter of the clearing. They tensed when they saw him, crouching, strengthening the links. Each began stomping his bare, calloused feet on the pounded earth in a slow, threatening rhythm, injecting an unholy life into the skeletons marked in blood on their bare, brown skin. But still, he could not keep his gaze from wandering beyond this threat of brutal death, or worse.

For there he saw what he had suffered through days and death to find. A magnificent temple towered above the far side of the clearing. The temple filled the canyon pass, fifty feet wide and one hundred feet high. It was buttressed against the steep canyon walls, its central roof a series of pyramidal steppes. On either side of the temple, trees and vines clung upon a cliff that extended deep into the jungle to his right and left, like a fortress wall built by God. The man they sought, and the Breastplate, waited within that temple.

Young Elias crept to his side. He gripped the blunderbuss, careful to keep it aimed towards the ground. “Is it true, Father Salvatierra, what the stories say, that beyond this temple is the Garden of Eden? Perhaps the Breastplate will show us the way to paradise.”

“
I fear it is not a portal to Eden,” he said, “but the gates of hell.” The temple completely blocked the pass to the valley beyond. The only entrance into the pyramid was a tapered opening into a narrow, dark tunnel. The two geometric carvings above and to each side of the stone lintel that topped the entrance were stylized eyes, threatening all who would be bold or impudent enough to enter. The entrance was the icon’s mouth. From the look of the worn, wet rock, it had once poured forth the life-giving waters of a small river from the hidden canyon that lay beyond. Now, no more than a trickle dribbled through the mouth to moisten the clearing. The river bed, winding into the jungle to their right, had dwindled into a muddy waste. Somewhere, deep inside the temple, the river had been dammed. Above the front of the temple, the rocky outcroppings on either side of the pass were rounded smooth and bare of vegetation. “The temple is the face of a demon,” he said, “and those rocky outcroppings the shoulders of its wings.”

“
Demon’s wings,” Elias whispered. Truly, it looked like the shoulders of Satan lording over the jungle below.

Captain Diaz unsheathed his sword. “Stay alert, men.” With his left hand, he snatched his knife from its scabbard.

One of the tribesmen shouted with an anger as sharp as the bloodied Spanish sword he jabbed into the air. He wore the grand, red-feathered headdress of their chief. Salvatierra translated his words. “We followed the demon to defend his new empire. We waited to hear from the Almighty God of his golden Breastplate and the Tear of the Moon Emerald. The demon Contreras promised the elixir for our families to cure them when they became sickened with the madness. He, like all Spaniards, only speaks the lies of a snake. He has killed our hearts.”

Diaz grabbed the shaman who had guided them here. He pressed the point of his sword against the shaman’s throat. “Tell them I will kill their holy man if they attack us.”

The chief gestured toward the entrance, his expression grim. Salvatierra’s throat grew dry as he translated. “Enter the temple of the demon’s empire,” he said. “Find your tribe in the demon’s belly.”

The shaman spoke, his voice calm, unequivocal.

“
The tribesmen will not attack,” Salvatierra translated. “They want us to take the devil, Contreras, from their midst. If they kill the Spanish demon here, his spirit will lay ruin to their land.” The shaman’s gaze turned to Salvatierra. “But we must not take the golden Breastplate. They will never let its power destroy others as it has destroyed them.”

Diaz turned and advanced toward the entrance into the pyramid, pulling the shaman with him.

Salvatierra crouched as he entered the dark, dank tunnel behind Diaz’s men. His shoulders brushed against the rough, stone walls. The men were swallowed into the belly of a beast which emitted an unholy odor that reeked like the breath of Satan.

“
I smell blood,” Diaz called back, recognizing the coppery stink. “Act quickly to kill all but Contreras. They think they have us at a disadvantage, forcing us to enter single file. We will show them how men fight.”

The earth shook them with a sudden lurch. Salvatierra fell to one knee. He foolishly covered his head with his arm. The weight of the temple above him would surely crush him if it collapsed. The men rushed forward. They funneled into an inner chamber, their battle cries wrenching the space as they attacked. But, as Salvatierra emerged into the chamber, he saw that the battle had already been waged.

Salvatierra covered his mouth with his hand but the stench of stone dust and death lay thick in his throat. Contreras’s men, all, were beheaded. Their dismembered bodies bristled with dozens of poison blow darts. They lay strewn about like flotsam. Their decapitated heads, with eyes pried open wide with terror, lay piled in a ghastly pyramid, an echo of the stone temple which had become not their treasure house, but their tomb.

Contreras stood before them, arms outstretched. A shaft of sunlight speared him from a hole carved from the ceiling, as if God had thrust down his judgment. It shone upon a man red with other men’s blood smeared upon his body. It shone upon a face mad with evil. It shone upon the magnificent golden Breastplate.

Salvatierra fell to his knees. Blinded by the Breastplate’s brilliance, he could not look away. “Lord, come to me in this den of evil,” he prayed. “Speak to me through the stones for I fear what I must do.”

The twelve sacred gemstones emblazoned the Breastplate, three across, four down. The sapphire, once worn by Saint Edward, encompassed the totality of blue in the heavens. Babur’s Diamond sparkled with the brilliance of all the stars that shine on a cloudless night. The red of the ruby known as Urim was the sunset, the golden topaz of its partner Thummim, the dawn. In the center, it was as if the eye of God watched through the green cat’s eye Emerald the natives named the Tear of the Moon. The Turquoise nearly sang of Turkish armies vanquished long ago. The jacinth glowed as if it imprisoned the flames of hell. The agate, amethyst, beryl, onyx and jasper—all magnificent, radiant.

Even as Salvatierra was sickened, elation seized him at seeing the Breastplate. This was indeed the sacred Breastplate of Aaron, thought lost long ago in the fall of the Temple of Solomon. The power to communicate with God lay within his grasp.

“
In God’s name, Captain Diaz,” said Salvatierra. “Do your duty.” The yearning to hold the Breastplate was unbearable.

“
In the name of His Majesty King Phillip the second,” said Diaz, the words strong but his voice dry and weak. “I arrest you, Alvaro Contreras, for treason. You will surrender all bounty and you will return to Spain in chains aboard the
Espiritu Santo
to stand trial for treason.” The crew’s eyes revealed their desire to seize the traitor, but their revulsion held them in check.

Contreras raised his bloodstained hand. It held his Bible. He pointed it to a dark recess of the chamber and the entrance of a passageway carved through the canyon wall. Salvatierra could see the wink of gold, silver and Emeralds in the torchlit cavity at its end. The chamber they were in, but for this side tunnel to the treasure room and the passage back to the clearing, was a dead end. If the temple had been a portal to a Garden of Eden and a river of life, or to a hell beyond imagining, a wall now blocked them from it.

The men, giddy with the thought of treasure, or simply desperate to escape this horrid tomb, raced down the stone passageway to the treasure. Salvatierra could hear their cheers, and the captain’s voice. “We are rich, men,” his voice echoed. “This bounty will fill the coffers of the
San Salvador.”
It was his flagship, sister ship to the
Espiritu Santo
.

Only Elias and the shaman stayed behind with Salvatierra, Contreras, and the corpses. “Remove the Breastplate,” Salvatierra said to Contreras, “and give it to me.” Even he dared not approach the madman.

Contreras merely smiled.

Elias targeted him with his blunderbuss. “Do what the Father says.”

Contreras removed the Breastplate. He flung it away. It landed on the pile of lifeless heads with a sickening clank, toppling over the topmost head, sending it tumbling to the dirt floor. Contreras laughed.

Salvatierra raced to the Breastplate, holding back the bile as he lifted it, the metal warmed from the sunbeam and heavy in his hands. The wonder of the stones chased away earthly sickness. They were magnificent, but more. God forgive his unworthiness, he could feel their power.

Contreras’s cackle faded and he spoke. “Go ahead, priest,” he said. “Put it on. Wear the Breastplate of Aaron and become one with the Lord.”

His heart pounded, his lungs felt as though they were being crushed. He focused on his dream, a message sent from the Lord. “I must destroy it,” he said. Hot tears stung his eyes. A sharp buzzing pierced his ears.

“
Destroy it? You would not dare commit such heresy!” Contreras advanced, pointing his Bible at Salvatierra like a deadly weapon. “The Breastplate is the work of God! With it, we can do more than save the souls of this savage land. We can save the world.”

“
I saw the villages.” Salvatierra could not take his eyes off of the Breastplate, but in his mind he conjured the image of the young mother murdering her baby. “In the hands of man, it can annihilate the world.”

“
As after the great flood, the world will be born again,” Contreras said. “The gems of the Breastplate reveal the secret to my domination.” He pointed to the vast stone wall before him. “Don the Breastplate. Stand upon this platform. Call God’s light to shine upon you. You will hold the powers of the Heavens in the palm of your hand.”

The stream of sunlight piercing the chamber had shifted as the sun traversed the sky above. Its outer edge shone now on the grisly pile of disembodied heads, glinting on the gold earring of one man, and in the vacant blue eye of another. “I know the will of God.”

“
Heretic! I have worn the Breastplate. I have spoken to God. He told me you were coming. I know you made a promise to the pope. You vowed to return the Breastplate of Aaron to a Christian land, to the Vatican.”

“
Murderer, you cannot tell me of priestly vows.”

“
The inquisitors will flail you alive if you defy the Vatican and destroy the Breastplate.”

Salvatierra snatched a knife from the scabbard of the headless body next to him. He could feel his will weakening. He had to act now. He pried the sardius, known as Urim, and the topaz, known as Thummim, from the Breastplate and stuffed the gems into his satchel.

Contreras moved to attack. Elias snapped up the Blunderbuss, aimed it at Contreras’s chest. “I will stand by you, Padre Salvatierra,” Elias said. “I swear it.”