Lord Janaab casually mentioned that the librarian would come along to see that I was not given a false book as the codex.
Why would the librarian recognize an ancient text he had never seen? I didn’t dare ask the great lord. The reason the man was being sent was obvious—he was to spy on me.
The presence of the guards added another dimension, a more sinister one—I was not to be trusted. A handful of royal guards would offer little protection against a band of hungry Mayan bandits or Aztec warriors protecting Huemac the Hermit.
The king did not trust me with the Dark Rift Codex.
Lord Janaab had never trusted me. Even when I roamed the city checking inscriptions, he’d spied on me. My connection to Ajul, in his eyes, made me suspect.
Eyo! I could have told Lord Janaab that his suspicions about my loyalty were not groundless paranoia but heightened awareness. My fidelity to the great lord had lasted about as long as his gratitude to me for saving his life.
I didn’t know what I would do if I had the codex in my hand. Return to Mayapán and give it to the great lord for the king? Collect the incredible reward that I was being told would be mine if I succeeded?
Leave it in its centuries-old hiding place?
The High Lord’s mistrust and the presence of the librarian and the guards made me wonder if their instructions were to cut my throat as soon as I had the codex in my hands.
The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that the librarian and the guards would view me as a liability.
I had learned in my progress from ignorant stoneworker to a royal agent that even loyal agents were intrinsically expendable and that those in power would kill them on a whim for no reason at all.
And never think twice about it.
Ajul had served Mayapán well, but when he refused to do their bidding about the codex, he’d fled for his life.
I had to wonder how many common people could be fed from the storehouses of maize and beans that were being hoarded for the royals and nobles.
61
I had one last question for Lord Janaab before I joined the procession of the princess. “The sacred white jaguar. I thought the king had only the one that attacked you.”
“The one you saw belonged to the War Lord. The king had always been envious that his liege had one and he didn’t. But the king also believed that the white jaguar I gave him provided more power than the one the War Lord had. The War Lord’s died of old age. Mine died in battle.”
“And now he has both,” I said.
From hearing Lord Janaab’s description of how the king got the hide of the jaguar I killed, it was apparent that the High Lord had taken all the credit for providing the skin to the king.
62
I left Mayapán with fifty warriors and a hundred servants and porters to carry the possessions of the princess and see to her needs.
I saw to my own needs when the guard captain told me that one of his men would carry my weapons.
In other words, I would travel weaponless.
“Lord Janaab’s orders,” he said. “He doesn’t want you to tire on the long trip.”
Or flee, I thought.
The High Lord had gone to the royal palace that morning to consult with the king about a plot by nobles in the western region to break off and ally themselves with Cobá.
“Lord Janaab gave me different instructions,” I said. That was true, though none of the instructions related to my weapons.
The guard captain hesitated.
“Do you doubt my word?” I gripped my sword.
“Of course not, Pakal Jaguar.”
I carried my weapons with me when we left the city.
Koj greeted me with a false smile of feigned friendship moments before we set out, reminding me once again of the rat he was when I had given him a kick at the Royal Library.
“I am honored to serve you, Pakal Jaguar,” the rodent dissembled.
“I can’t tell you how much it means to me to know that you will be at my back,” I lied.
The princess rode on a litter carried by slaves. And there was a litter for me.
“For your comfort,” Koj said.
“So I don’t tire,” I added, not pointing out that I was stronger and in better physical condition than even the best of the warriors in the procession.
Eyo! They wanted to strip me of weapons and imprison me in a litter so I couldn’t run.
“But I spend my days walking and will not find the journey ahead a trying one. Why don’t you take the litter?” I asked the pudgy rat.
He was only too happy to ride in the litter in my stead.
Did they think I was going to flee the moment the city walls were at my back?
Where was I to run?
63
The city had organized a great Mayapán parade celebrating the marriage of the princess to the leader of a neighboring principality. The union was supposed to reinforce peace and harmony in the region, but I saw little cheer or enthusiasm on the people’s faces as we marched through the city to the west gate—no sense that prosperity was just around the corner.
To avoid offending the king, nobles and wealthy merchants ordered their slaves and servants onto the streets. Even so, they could not fabricate the festive atmosphere the parade would have generated in better times.
“People are too frightened of the future to be full of cheer,” I confided to the rat as I walked alongside his litter.
As to the bride, I’d seen prettier faces on beached carp, but I kept that critique to myself.
When the great lord told me that Koj would be my companion on the journey, the mention of the library assistant’s name had made me wonder how much he had to do with the Master Librarian being kidnapped and tortured. He was in a good position to betray his master and had already proved willing to do so when I visited.
I decided that regardless of how the search for the codex turned out, Koj would not return to Mayapán. Hearing him talk like a fawning parasite of a courtier strengthened my resolve to avenge the death of the gentle old blind man.
“Palenque is not the great power it once was,” Koj said. “But the king wishes to cement a close relationship with the city so his dynasty will spread further over the One-World.”
My interpretation of the king’s motives was that he wanted a place to hide when Mayapán went to hell.
Koj also showed off his knowledge, telling me that I bore the same name as the great king of Palenque during its days as a mighty empire, Pakal B’alam, which translated to “Pakal Jaguar.”
I slipped away, walking alone, thinking about how so much had changed since I came to Mayapán. Things were even different on the roads. Porters transported goods on their backs, supported by tumplines across their chest for heavy loads, and forehead for lighter ones. A healthy porter could carry half his own body weight, but I noticed that the porters were skinnier than before, even though their loads were every bit as heavy.
The variety of goods had not changed—caravans of porters carried honey, maize, beans, peppers, woven cotton cloth, and cacao beans from the territories controlled by Mayapán. From the coastal kingdoms came dried fish, seashells, and salt. And from much farther south came jade and obsidian.
It all flowed along the roadways, but as times became leaner, the honesty level of merchants was strained. I heard more stories of dishonest methods than ever before. I already knew that the universal method of buying and selling when bartering could not be done was by payment in jade or cacao beans. But now I heard stories of how traders defrauded customers by scooping out the powder used to make chocolate drinks and filling the empty shells with dirt.
“Never accept cacao beans as payment without biting some to make sure they are real,” a merchant told me.
Slaves were always present in cities and on the road, but their numbers were now staggering. Whole families, whose village life had been devastated, had been sold into slavery. The legions of slave children were everywhere, because the
ir parents were too poor to feed them. The caravan slaves—as opposed to war prisoners—could not be mistaken for anything other than slaves. Their hair was cut down to the scalp, their bodies painted black with white stripes.
As Koj boasted about his soft life in the palace, I thought about how families starved while leftovers from the feasts of the king and lords were thrown to dogs.
I was angry enough to drag the rat-faced assistant librarian from the litter and kick him to death.
An impulse I controlled, though it was getting more difficult to resist the temptation.
When I was forced to sit near Koj during a roadside break, I complained about the slow progress. “We’re crawling along at a snail’s pace because the princess’ baggage is weighing down the porters.” I didn’t add that she should leave her possessions along the side of the road for poor people. “The constant stops are even more time-consuming than the onerous loads. We have to stop all along the way so villagers can admire her, and our soldiers can take food and goods from them.” All of which should go to feed their families, I muttered under my breath.
“We will make many stops along the way,” the haughty rodent said, “so the public can hail the princess and her marriage as eternal salvation.”
I was a little slow, but I finally got it. The marriage of the princess to a minor prince in Palenque was supposed to make up for the failed crops, pandemic famine, and pervasive lawlessness.
Very clever.
“Perhaps you might suggest to the princess that we travel faster and lighter. I constantly hear from merchants not only about peasants gathering together as bands of highwaymen, but that Cobá and other states are on the march.”
I was too conscious of keeping my head on my shoulders to repeat what one merchant told me: Mayapán’s neighbors sensed its weakness and were snapping at it like a band of wolves circling a wounded animal. At some point, they would stop snapping and begin ripping with sharp teeth.
The rat scoffed at my concerns. “We have nothing to worry about. We have fifty warriors protecting us.”
Fifty warriors.
A mighty army to a librarian.
The captain of the royal guard heard the librarian’s statement. He raised his eyebrows and walked away, shaking his head.
I could not resist the urge to put the bastard in his place. “The War Lord had five thousand warriors. And the enemy ate him.”
Eyo! I went too far. Koj’s jaw dropped, and his eyes bulged. I thought the poor rat was going to faint at my blasphemy.
64
We were two days out of Mayapán, still moving at a sluggard’s pace so the princess could feast at every village we passed—she was a big woman—and take food out of the mouths of starving people.
During one of these stops, however, I spotted the poison-arrow archers who had protected me on my journey to Tulúm.
As the long, slow column trudged along, I saw the slender feminine figure and her short, powerful companion atop a ridge.
They had not shown themselves to amuse but to arrange for a meeting.
A private meeting.
The assistant librarian was sound asleep in his litter, and the captain of the guards was entertaining one of the princess’ handmaidens with his exploits in wars, which were probably nothing more than skirmishes.
I made a pretense that I was going into the bushes to relieve myself.
The hillock they awaited me on was a steep climb and one I took at a good speed, hoping to keep my visit short enough to avoid suspicion.
Frankly, I did not think the guards capable of such vigilance.
I now got a good look at the two archers. A scarf shielded the woman’s face, but I had already divined her features. The man was not a dwarf, as I said before, but was so broad and short that he left that impression from a distance.
Because I knew the woman’s height, I could judge his size from afar, and I knew that he was much shorter than I, the top of his head would come only to my chin, but he was also considerably broader, so massive that he reminded me of the stout bottom of a large tree trunk.
As with the woman, his weapon of choice was a bow and arrow, which I already knew, but even at a distance, I saw the end of a long battleaxe poking up, which was strapped to his back.
I imagined that a large number of enemies would fall if he waded into a battle, swinging the axe with the power of his massive frame after taking down the enemy with his arrows.
As I got closer, I saw he was mostly torso, with long thick arms, huge hands, and short legs like trunks. He had a broad, ugly face, with fat lips and a flat nose three fingers wide, reminding me of the glyphs I’d seen of the great Olmec heads, statues of heads as tall as buildings built by a now vanished civilization that left behind nothing but figures in stone and mystery.
What first struck me was that the gods had smiled upon him or he would long ago have been painted red. Some people had features that made them especially desirable to the sacrificial priests. These holy men believed the Water God especially favored wavy hair, because it reflected the water’s ripples. Dwarfs had a short, stumpy stature, as had many gods.
Even though he was not an actual dwarf, mighty priests would have lusted after his blood.
The mystery woman contrasted him. Tall and slender, she had first reminded me of an antelope. She seemed ready to vault a wall when I saw her without the robe, in which she was now cloaked head to foot.
Underneath the loose-fitting garment would be the bow and the lethal dartlike arrows she and her companion in arms fired with murderous precision. While men openly carried weapons, if she was armed with anything more than a small dagger, that blade would draw attention.
Only a small area around her eyes was exposed, but those eyes were the same ones I had seen on the High Priestess and the same ones I had seen on Sparrow.
I knew that behind the disguise stood a beauty with firm, lithe muscles, who surpassed all the priestesses of the Temple of Love.
A woman I loved.
Standing together, Axe and Sparrow—one short and massive, the other narrow and thin—reminded me of a massive war club with an obsidian blade.
As I approached, Sparrow gave up the disguise and pulled the hood back to expose her head.
“Do you have names? Besides the one I know you by,” I asked, referring to Sparrow.
“Sparrow and Axe are good enough.”
Staring at her, knowing I had been deceived, even manipulated, anger rose in me—but I controlled it. There were things I needed to know.
“Why have you, who protect me, become shadows?”
“We are not protecting you,” she said. “Our duty is to the Dark Rift Codex. If it becomes necessary to kill you to protect it, we shall do that.”
“Are you part of the secret society sworn to protect the codex?”
“Just thank the gods that we are keeping you alive.”
Arrogant, I thought. Not the tender, loving, and seductive Sparrow I had lain with, but a strong-willed woman who was determined at the onset to get across to me that she was in charge.
Apparently, Axe did not have a tongue or was reluctant to use it, because he stood stoically and said nothing. Even standing, he appeared menacing.
“Since you know everything, you must know why I am on my way to find the codex.”
“You have been sent to fetch it for the king, and you will be rewarded with wealth and position if you act like his dog and bring it back to him clenched in your teeth.”
“Ah . . . I see you don’t trust me.”
“Why should we?”
“And why should I trust you? The last time we met, you were using your body to try to get information from me. When that didn’t work, your mother used hers, along with some torture.”
She tried to keep her features stiff and formal, but I could see that my accusation struck home. “I am not like my mother. I was not even raised by her.”
“I know. You were raised by your father. Where is Jeweled Skull?
Hiding in a small village somewhere, filling another youth’s mind with tales of gods and heroes?” I challenged her with a narrow look. “Are you going to deny that you’re the daughter of Ajul?”
“I am not answerable to you for anything. I am here to take charge of you and lead you to Tenochtitlán. And to make sure when the codex is found, it will not be turned over to the king.”
I laughed. “Take charge of me? A wisp of a girl? And this tree stump who is no doubt strong but appears to have a weak mind? Has someone told you that I need you for a master?”
“You have little chance of making it to the land of the Aztecs and even less of retrieving the codex.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t know the ways of the world. You are still a villager in heart and mind. You have fallen into one trap after another. We saved you from one; my mother died saving you from another.” She held up a hand to stop my protest. “I know, she drugged you because she was afraid of Flint Shield, but the point is that your vision of the world is too small. You need guidance.”
“Where is Ajul?” I asked again.
“Jeweled Skull passed beyond the sorrows of this world and has now passed his duty to protect the Dark Rift on to me and Axe.”
“Tell me about the society that protects the codex.”
“You will be told that when you earn our trust.”
“And what will you do to earn my trust?”
“We saved your life.”
“Saved my life and directed me to the Master of the Library. But I am still waiting to hear a reason for this effort on my part. I know that there must be some purpose in your acts. You want me to go to Tenochtitlán, you want me to find the codex or you wouldn’t have appointed yourselves as my protectors. But what is your purpose?”
“We are protecting the codex. That is enough for you to know.”