I had seen a codex only once before, and I edged forward for a closer look. My mentor, Ajul—who was the village storyteller before he died and who encouraged my own storytelling—had a book and explained to me how paper was made and bound into a codex. Unlike others in our village, he was not born there but had traveled and lived in many places before he came to the village in the autumn of his years.
Fig tree bark produced the raw material for paper. Its inner layer was stripped off, then boiled in lime water. After it was softened, the material was pounded—first with flat stones and rolled over cylindrical ones—until it was thin and wide.
Flattened bark was spread out in layers, heated with warm stones, and worked until the paper was so strong and smooth that the scribes could write on both sides. After being trimmed, a large single sheet could be bound into a codex that would be about four hands square.
The codex-makers then painted both sides of each page with a thin plaster made from powdered limestone and water, after which they could draw the pictographs that composed our language.
When the paper was ready, the scribe drew whatever was desired upon it, whether it be the tales of the gods, the history of my people, or the accounts of a merchant. They used brushes made from animal hair and goose quills.
The word-pictures were painted on the paper with colored inks, black ink made from soot, reds and greens and yellow from dyes obtained from plants and insects.
The pages were tied to a wood frame and covered in animal skins. A merchant’s account book would be covered with deerskin, while the skins of rare animals adorned the more precious volumes. The most prized of all codex-jackets was, of course, the sacred jaguar’s hide.
Our writing was done with pictures, sometimes called glyphs, a single one of which could convey more meaning than the object itself. When placed alongside other glyphs, however, they could mean something diametrically different. A snake or a jaguar, a heart or a hand, when grouped together, could mean something utterly irrelevant to the images with which the glyph was aligned. The writing was read in the direction that the characters faced, and the scribes typically drew them facing right.
I was standing close enough to the great lord, when he unfolded the pages, to recognize the codex’s images. It told how the Creator Gods made the first man out of maize dough.
I knew immediately that it was in error.
“Your Lordship—”
“Silence!”
The command came from Lord Janaab’s captain of the guards, Six Sky.
“You never speak to His Lordship without being spoken to first.”
The commander raised his whip to strike me and stopped when His Lordship told him not to beat me.
“What is it?” Lord Janaab demanded of me.
“I—I—” The words dribbled out of my mouth as Lord Janaab and the guard captain gazed at me.
“What is it?” the lord demanded again. “Why do you stare at my papers? This is the inscription that will go on the sacred stone I had your villagers provide.”
“It is not accurate, my lord. It says the Creator Gods made the first men out of maize dough. The arms and legs were made of dough, but the flesh was made from the flesh of the maize itself.”
“How do you know this?”
“Our village storyteller had traveled far and wide during his long life. He knew more tales than any two other keepers of our history. He read and taught me the sacred glyphs, and his readings were unfailingly correct.”
Lord Janaab stared at the writing. “Yes, now that I think about it, you’re right. And it is good that you tell me this. Misrepresenting a god’s sacred acts could easily provoke divine retribution.”
He gave me a long look. “We will pass many villages on our way to Mayapán. When we do, look at the buildings and tell me if you find fault in any of the sacred writings they have put on their temples and buildings.”
7
After another hour’s march, we took a rest stop. We were surprised when we stopped so soon, but also relieved, for it permitted us to find shade and get the glare of the Sun God off our heads for a bit.
Six Sky told me, “Lord Janaab commands your presence.”
Our lord had spared the commander, because he was not present when his guards fled the jaguar.
The king’s builder was seated under the shade of a tree. As I approached, he told me to sit down by him. He ordered his servant to give me a leaf containing slices of papaya and mango, then waved the servant away. As his aide approached, he waved him away also. Whatever the great lord wished to say to me, he did not want others to hear.
“The gods act in mysterious ways, do they not, Pakal?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Just look at the surprises you have brought me in so short a time.”
“Surprises?”
“When you saved my life from the most savage beast in the One-World while my own guards ran in terror, I thought that you had been chosen by the gods because they approve of my work making monuments that shout their glories. No doubt the gods do approve of my work and saved me to continue it, but then you surprise me again by pointing out a mistake in the tribute to the Creator Gods.”
“Yes, my lord.”
I had no idea what he was getting to, but he was a man who could end my life with a wave of his hand, and I hoped that whatever other surprise I gave him did not displease him.
“Now I find that not only were you the village storyteller, but that you were taught many tales by the man who held that position before you. What was his name?”
“Ajul, my lord.”
“Yes, Ajul, that is what I was told. Tell me, Pakal Jaguar, did this Ajul know many tales?”
“He was amazing. Those villagers who had traveled to other places, even to Mayapán, said that they had never heard anyone who knew so many tales or told them so well. The traveling storytellers who came to the village were never as good.”
“What did Ajul do when other storytellers came to the village?”
“What did he do?” I thought for a moment. “He would stay in the forest until they were gone.”
“Why did he do that?”
“He said he didn’t want them to hear his stories and didn’t want to hear theirs. He said his tales were true and pure, and listening to others might cause him to make mistakes.”
“Ajul taught you stories?”
“Yes, my lord, but more than that. My parents died when I was young, and Ajul became like a father to me.”
“What happened to your storyteller-father?”
“He died five years ago.”
“Where is his body?”
“His body? My lord, I don’t know where his body is.”
“Then how do you know he died?”
“He—he went into the jungle. We found his bloodied cape.”
“But you never found his body?”
“No, the headman said wild animals took it.”
Lord Janaab was quiet for a moment. I found myself tense. I didn’t understand why he asked questions about Ajul or why he was so curious about a simple village storyteller.
“Tell me, Pakal Jaguar, have you ever heard of Jeweled Skull?”
“Of course, my lord. Everyone has heard of the great storyteller.”
“What do you know about him?”
“That he was the greatest storyteller who ever lived.”
“He knew more stories than your Ajul?”
“I suppose so, my lord. They say that the goddess Ixchel herself taught Jeweled Skull all the tales of the One-World. It was our king’s father, when he ruled Mayapán, who gave Jeweled Skull his name as a tribute to the knowledge stored in his head.”
“Did you ever hear a story told by Jeweled Skull?”
My jaw dropped at the question. “Of course not, my lord. Jeweled Skull was taken by the gods before I was born.”
“Taken by the gods . . .” Lord Janaab mulled over my remark. “Is that what Ajul told you? That Jeweled Skull was
taken by the gods?”
“I—I don’t remember where I heard those words. It’s what we all know about the legend of Jeweled Skull. People say the gods took him so that he would tell stories to them.”
“All right, Pakal Jaguar. Return to your companions.”
I rose and started to walk away, when he spoke my name.
“Yes, my lord?”
“Have you ever heard of the Dark Rift?”
I blinked and tensed some more. My right knee started shaking.
“Of course, my lord. It’s the road in the sky that leads to Xibalba, the Place of Fear.”
“Is that the only Dark Rift you have heard of?”
I nodded, too scared to speak.
He dismissed me with a wave of his hand, and I almost ran to get away from him.
I had lied. The night before Ajul was killed by forest beasts, he had told me a story of the Dark Rift. In the morning, he claimed that the story was not true, that he had made it up under the influence of mescal, the nectar of the gods that steals people’s minds when too much is drunk. And he made me take an oath never to speak of it to anyone.
I never had time to fear the jaguar I had fought with my bare hands, but as we got back on the road to Mayapán, the conversation with Lord Janaab stayed with me. I felt as if I were once again threatened by a jaguar—but this time the beast was behind me, breathing its hot hungry breath on the back of my bare neck.
En route, worries about having lied to Lord Janaab dogged me, but as hours passed and no retribution was delivered from either the great lord or the gods, I relaxed.
8
At midday we stopped, and Lord Janaab joined a nobleman for cool drinks and fruit served in the shade of the local lord’s palace courtyard. It was easy to tell from the way the nobleman acted that Lord Janaab was of higher rank.
I stared in wide-eyed amazement at the palace. With their surrounding walls and interior courtyards, the building and grounds covered an area as large as the village next to it.
Six Sky scoffed when he saw my look of amazement.
“It’s a rat’s nest compared to the palaces of the king and great lords in Mayapán. Lord Janaab would not permit this oversized peasant’s house to exist in the king’s city.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Then you had better prepare yourself, because you will see marvels in Mayapán.”
I walked along the wall, reading the inscriptions—tales of heroes and kings, of wars won, prisoners sacrificed, blessings from the gods.
Just as Lord Janaab was having a story put on the stone slab, our tales had been written down in books, put on freestanding walls, and on the walls of buildings. We believed that tales that praised the gods would elicit favor from them. I had not gone fifty paces before I found an error in a tale. That the mistake concerned Chaac, the Rain God, suggested it could be a fatal one.
Rain was needed to grow crops, and Chaac provided it with his tears and by striking clouds with his lightning axe.
As with many of our gods, Chaac had multiple manifestations rather than only one, which is all we humans possess. Chaac had four representations of himself, one for each of the four cardinal directions.
While the men prepared for our march to the capital, I approached Lord Janaab and explained what I had seen on the nobleman’s wall.
“As Your Lordship knows, a colored manifestation of Chaac is on each of the four cardinal points—white at the north, yellow to the south, east is red, and west is black.”
“Yes, everyone knows that.”
“Apparently not everyone, Your Lordship, because there is an inscription on the wall that has Chaac black to the east and red to the west.”
I started to tell him it had probably gone unnoticed, because it was a very short inscription at a low spot on the wall, but he snapped: “Show me!”
Lord Janaab ordered the local nobleman to accompany us to the wall. The man came along, frightened and apologetic even before I showed His Lordship the faulty inscription.
“You have an inaccurate tribute to the Rain God,” Lord Janaab raged at the nobleman.
“I’ll have it removed immediately—”
“That’s not good enough. You will return your palace, stone by stone by stone, to the earth and then burn everything that is not stone, including everything that was inside it.”
“My entire palace? Great lord, please—”
“Do it, and hope the king himself does not decree that your family’s blood nourish the God of Rain.”
“I’ll send slaves, fifty—”
“A hundred,” Lord Janaab said, “and if that does not satisfy the king, your own blood will be required.”
Lord Janaab stared at me after he sent the nobleman hurrying to gather slaves to paint red.
“Amazing. In one morning, a mere youth from a small village finds errors in tributes to the gods.”
“Yes, my lord. My memory is good.”
“Your recall is amazing and of far more value to me than your employment as a guard. The kingdom is in dire straits. Our crops will not feed our people despite the legions of sacrificial victims whom we have offered up. We keep feeding the gods blood, but we still lack rain. I fear our buildings are desecrated with blasphemous errata and that the gods are venting their rage. When we get to Mayapán, you will check all the inscriptions in the city.”
“There must be thousands of them, my lord.”
“Many thousands. It will take you months, perhaps even years, but it must be done. You will have my authority to command any inscriptions that are inaccurate destroyed.”
“I—I don’t know what to say. I have never been to a city, and I don’t know if I could find them all.”
“Of course you can. You fought a jaguar with your bare hands—though you will find beasts worse than those in the jungle when you bump heads with the citizens of Mayapán.”
PART II
9
While Coop watched the Apachureros through the twin boulders’ crevice, Reets studied the stand of pines, inside of which Hargrave and Jamesy were preparing their assault.
Finally, from behind the trees, Hargrave discreetly waved his Yucatán Lions baseball cap at them.
Twice.
She nudged Coop. “They’re ready,” Reets said.
“We walk up to those bozos,” Coop said, “and say what?”
“We’re looking for our friend?”
“And ask if they’ve seen him,” Coop said.
“Your Spanish is better than mine,” Reets said. “Hell, you even speak Nahautl, and Lord only knows what language those cholos are babbling.”
“They sure don’t look Spanish.”
“They don’t even look Indian,” Reets said.
“If I don’t understand them, I’ll fake it.”
“In the immortal words of Gary Gilmore, before he went in front of the firing squad: ‘Let’s do it.’ ”
Rechecking the loads, they coughed loudly to cover the sound of the racking slides. After throwing the ponchos back over their shoulder-slung weapons, they rounded their boulders, waving at the bandits, smiling brightly, gawking at them like lost tourists.
“Hey, amigos!” Coop shouted in Spanish, raising her hands. “You seen our compadre, Jack Phoenix?”
The bandits turned, leveling their AK-47s at them.
Just as Jack Phoenix emerged from the tunnel.
He had started to wave the dead snake dangling from his right fist, when, blinded by sunlight—from five straight hours in pitch-dark tunnels—he quickly lowered his head and shielded his eyes with his right forearm. Coop noticed that under his left arm he clutched a crimson container. For some bizarre reason, he continued to grip the serpent’s head in his right fist.
Coop quickly understood that since Jack was surrounded by bandits, Jamesy and Hargrave could not fire their DU 000 buck into the group without killing their friend.
Coop also intuited that under his arm was the red ceramic oblong urn,
and she knew instantly what it contained: the 2012 Codex—Quetzalcoatl’s final prophecy—which Phoenix had e-mailed them about.
My God, Coop thought. Jack, you’re screwed this time. If Jamesy and Hargrave empty all that triple-aught buck into the mob outside the tunnel, they’ll shred not only you but also the greatest archeological find of all time.
That she could now envision Quetzalcoatl’s 2012 Codex in the hands of the Apachureros disheartened her even further.
Slipping a hand under her poncho, she surreptitiously changed the PDW’s selector from autofire to semi.
The Pach were so close to Phoenix, she’d have to cherry-pick her targets.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Reets do the same thing.
10
From a distance, Hargrave stared at Jack Phoenix crawling out of the tunnel. A bowie knife in his teeth, swinging a goddamn diamondback in his right fist, some kind of flat red container under his arm, Phoenix was covering his eyes with a forearm and painfully pulling himself to his feet.
He looked like hell. Decked out like themselves, in army surplus fatigues—the cargo pockets likewise bursting at the seams with gear—his dirty cut-off T-shirt bore the inscription BEER ISN’T JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE.
His left shoulder, however, was ballooning lividly.
Even Hargrave was shocked. Looks like a malignant melon, he shuddered.
Furthermore, the women were out from behind the boulders, irrevocably exposed, waltzing up to the bandit gang in plain view as if they were strolling into a church.
Dropping the shot-spreader and the fragmentation grenades, Hargrave mounted a flashbang grenade—a steel hexagonal tube with a perforated casing—on his shotgun’s muzzle.
Jamesy, who had just eliminated the two sentries, was crawling back to the tree stand, his cut-off camouflage T-shirt covered with their blood. One glimpse of Phoenix and he, too, mounted a flashbang grenade in his weapon’s muzzle.
Oh, what the hell? Hargrave thought. The flashbangs will at least distract those assholes.