The Seven Serpents Trilogy (42 page)

He caught his breath and waited for an answer. When I remained silent, he said, “Oh, yes, I forgot that gods, unlike us mortals, don't suffer such misfortunes. He, he, he.”

Before we came to the village where Cortés had drawn up, we saw five riderless horses. Three were mares and two were geldings. We tied the mares behind us.

The dwarf clung to me with one arm, holding his bag of gold in the other, until I could bear it no longer and made him tie the bag to one of the mares.

Two staghounds were wandering around without masters, but we could not catch them, and two riderless horses ran from us.

There was not much of an army left. Most of it lay behind, piled up on the causeway or drowned in the shallow waters of the lake.

Through the trees I caught a glimpse of a small fireand Cortés standing by it among a handful of his officers, with Doña Marina at his side in her fawnskin boots and bright red dress. I felt a pang of regret that she would never again see the stallion she loved so much. But the feeling lasted only a moment, for who could say with certainty that she would not.

Cortés had been defeated, his army cut in half, his In dian allies scattered to the hills, where they would lick their wounds and have second thoughts about his invin cibility. Yet a man who could burn his ships behind him and boldly hack his way into the heart of the Azteca empire was not apt to give up at his first defeat.

We circled around the camp, keeping well out of sight, past a cluster of huts that were burning, and rode into Cholólan at noon. We traded one of the gold fig ures, a statue the size of my thumb, for a bundle of maize cakes, though it hurt Cantú to do so.

The dwarf said, “When do we reach the sea?”

“If we make nine leagues each day,” I said, “if all goes well, if the enemies Cortés has made along the way don't attack us, we should reach it short of a week.”

“What do you think about our caravel?” the dwarf said. “And the gold she carries?”

“I don't think about them.”

“You must think about something.”

“I think about all there is to do once we reach home.”

The memory of Tenochtitlán before the conquistadores began to tear it apart rode with me. I was bringing back the vision I had gone in search of and found. It glowed in my mind like a priceless gem, all radiance and shimmering color.

“There's nothing else you think of ?”

“I think about Cortés and how he will either gather up his army and return to conquer the Azteca, now that he's learned a lesson, or perhaps turn his back on them and strike out for the coast.”

“Either way, we'll see him again,” the dwarf said.

“Sooner or later.”

We avoided Texcála and came to the province of Xocotlán ruled by Ozintec, the young lord with the dyed red hair. We would have avoided this place also, had we any choice, but it lay in a steep canyon enclosed by mountains. There was no way around it.

Ozintec was surprised to see us; no doubt he thought that we had long since been stretched out on the sacrificial stone. Recalling that struck by our freakish looks he had tried to buy us from Chalco, I put on a bold front and said that we were on a mission for Hernán Cortés.

We were clothed in armor and astride horses, where my height and the dwarf 's short legs were not so notice able, yet the lord gave us long, covetous glances.

“Have you seen Chalco the Aztecatl?” I asked. “I carry an important message for him.” I had to repeat the lie before he answered me.

“Chalco, yes. He passed this way many weeks ago,” the lord said.

“On his way to the coast?”

“Yes, in that direction.”

“Alone?”

“Alone, no. He had for company sixty warriors from the province of Chalca, with many drums and trumpets. Also with many jars of moss.”

“
Tecuítcal
.”

Ozintec nodded, pushing back his long red hair. He was still bemused by the sight of the two freaks that Chalco had refused to sell him.

“You must come and eat with me in the palace,” he said. Behind him stood the stone racks I had noticed be fore, their thousands of bleached skulls neatly arranged in rows. Above them stood a temple whose steps and terraces were brown with dried blood.

“Come,” Lord Ozintec said. “I will serve you a feast of swordfish brought fresh from the sea, roasted duck, and boiled iguana.”

We had ridden hard since dawn, eaten nothing all day except two small cactus apples, and yet I did not hesitate to refuse his invitation.

“We are honored,” I said. “It is kind of you to offer food to two exhausted and hungry men, but as I have said, we carry an urgent message from General Cortés to Chalco the high priest. You have met Cortés? Yes. Then you know why I wish to deliver his message with out delay.”

“I know,” said Ozintec. “I have seen him.”

Without further words we turned away and rode down the street, past the temple and Ozintec's palace.

A half-moon came up. By its light we rode long after dark. We did not stop until we had put a goodly distance between us and Ozintec.

In the morning we started off before sunrise on a winding trail that led downward into the hot lands. On the trail I discovered the footprints of marching men and among them the tracks of two horses, one being ridden and the other led on a short tether. Beside the tracks were the marks of a staghound.

“Chalco and his Azteca,” I said.

“How old are the prints?” the dwarf asked.

“Old,” I said.

“We should ride hard,” said the dwarf.

And we did, at a fast
pasotrote
, pausing only to snatch our breakfast from the fruit trees we passed.

Gold from Moctezuma's treasury jingled in the saddle pouches on the back of the dappled mare. The Azteca had a name for gold. They called it
tonatiuh icúitl
, which means “excrement of the sun.”

The day had turned warm, with a wind gusting up from the hot country. The sun glittered on the two vol canoes, one of them smoking and one crested with snow. To the east, toward the sea, the sky was blue, but with clouds far down on the horizon.

“Should I dismount and ride one of the mares?” the dwarf said. “The one that carries the gold?”

“You're a bad rider, Guillermo. Remain where you are and hold on.”

“As you wish, Lord Feathered Serpent, God Kukulcán.”

It was good to hear my name once more.

 

For Elizabeth

 

T
HE
A
METHYST
R
ING
IS THE THIRD BOOK OF A CHRONICLE BASED UPON
the legend of Kukulcán, god of the Maya, who came to Yucatán during the ninth century AD. Kukulcán was not born a god but became one because of his humble and compassionate life. For several centuries he ruled over the great nation of the Maya, then mysteriously disap peared, promising to return.

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

The Feathered Serpent
continues his story, first with the Maya and then the Azteca, during the days when Hernán Cortés and a few hundred soldiers conquered the mighty emperor Moctezuma, who could summon an army of a million warriors with one blast from a conch-shell horn.

The Amethyst Ring
follows the fortunes of Kukulcán, Lord of the Wind of Knives, after he leaves the Maya and joins Francisco Pizarro in the land of the Inca.

The ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu, with its secret Temple of the Sun, was never discovered by Pizarro. It was first seen some three hundred years later by an American explorer.

Francisco Pizarro, who killed tens of thousands of Indians during his conquest of fabulous Peru, was himself killed by a band of his enemies. Old and ill, he was surprised in his palace, fought his attackers from room to room, and only died by odd mischance, sword in hand. His body lies today in the city of Lima, in a small crystal casket. A wizened little man scarcely more than five feet tall, he has the puzzled face of a marmoset.

 

O
NCE AGAIN, LEST IT BE FORGOT,
I
SWEAR IN THE NAME OF OUR HOLY
apostle St. Peter, by the bronze horse of Toledo, by the six blind bishops of Valladolid, in the name of Kukulcán, Knight of the Red Jaguar, that what I write here is the truth, as I see it.

A
chubasco
struck us before we left the highlands. For two days the wind slowed our horses to a shambling walk. The rain drummed upon our armor like hunter's shot. Yet, except for brief evening prayer and fitful sleep, we never chose to halt until the storm blew away, and the sun's first shadow fell upon the coast of Yucatán.

We were on a narrow trail, trending downward along the face of a cliff toward a lagoon whose banks were lined with palm trees. Beyond their borders lay the sea, dull gray in the half-light before dawn.

At the sun's first glimmer, I roused myself to say in a shivering voice, “Let us pause,
amigo
, and give thanks. Now that danger lies behind us.”

“Danger,” snorted the dwarf, slipping down from his dap pled mare. “Danger! It still lies around us everywhere. In front of us. On all sides. In all directions.”

“Also, my friend, in our very bones. We have eaten it. Breathed it.”

“Bones?” The dwarf gave the word a scornful ring. “I have none. My bones became jelly long since.”

“Since that morning high priest Chalco left us standing in the square,” I said. “With the wind crawling up our legs.”

“Aye, and never came back. The
bastardo. El bastardo loco
never showed his ugly face again.”

“Likewise when Moctezuma curled his thin lips and said to me, ‘Do you believe that the warrior who takes a prisoner and then watches him die upon the altar should know that sooner or later he will follow him into the hereafter by the same kind of death? That he should say to this man, “Today it is you, tomorrow it is me.” ' And went on to describe the Azteca heaven—flowers bloom everywhere, butterflies dart about, happy warriors fight mock battles with mock weapons under cloudless skies, while fountains play and singers sing like little birds.”

“I greatly prefer our Spanish hell to the Azteca heaven,” the dwarf said.

“We will likely have some of both long before this is over,” I said.

We could joke now. In the dawn's light we could smile grimly at each other about things we had barely mentioned before, and then only in whispers born of fear.

“All of it happened fast, like a bad dream,” the dwarf said. “Like a nightmare. Dante could write a great poem about it. If I see him—and the chances are excellent that I will—I'll present him with the details.”

“There are many,” I said. “Many to sort out, the good from the bad, the useful from those of no use.”

“May God grant you the time to do so,” the dwarf said.

In truth, I had done little else from the hour when we left Don Luis de Arroyo dead at the foot of the temple, his heart removed, and Hernán Cortés crouching at a skimpy fire, licking the wounds he had suffered that night at the hands of the Azteca—little else as we fled for our lives through wind and rain than digest the horrible events of the past.

There was nothing wrong with the idea of making a journey to the capital city of the Azteca, there to learn from Moctezuma himself how his country was organized and run. I had seen much, I had absorbed much, during my months in Tenochtitlán. My head was crammed with ideas, some new, some as old as Rome. And of these, one was overriding. The Azteca nation was based upon power and flourished because of it. With one single blast on a conch-shell horn, Moctezuma could summon half a million warriors to his side. Cities and towns and villages trembled at his name, even his shadow. They paid him tribute in full measure and on time, whether the harvest was good or not good, on pain of destruction and death.

And then, overnight, as Hernán Cortés marched into the city, the scene changed. The world turned upside down. Most of what I had learned I had learned for naught. The mighty emperor whom I had come to observe, perhaps even to make an alliance with, to copy, was dead, dead at the hands of his own people.

“Señor,” I said to the dwarf, who was busy inspecting the ropes that secured the sacks that held a fortune in gold, which he did every hour or two, “señor, our task when we reach the island, if by chance we do, will be to stop digging in the jungle for lost temples and lost cities. We start at once upon fortifica tions to save the city we have.”

“That,” said the dwarf, “or set our sails for home, for Seville, that marvelous city of perpetual spring beside the silvery Guadalquivir, hopes and dreams fulfilled.”

“You will see much,” I said, “before you ever see Seville again.”

The dawn brightened on the lip of the sea. On the trail below an odd-shaped tree caught my eye. It was growing in a crevice without any sign of earth to support it, most of its roots exposed and clinging to the rock. The trunk had been shaped by the wind and grew to the height of my horse's back. A tortured limb, covered with sharp thorns, branched out on each side of the trunk near the top, and this is what gave the tree an odd appearance, the perfect form of a cross.

I reined in the stallion. “Let's pause, Don Guillermo. Let's take a decent moment to give thanks to Her who has brought us here. Perhaps more than a moment, now that the danger has lessened.”

I knelt before the cruciform tree, the dwarf kneeling beside me, and we prayed together, reciting the litany. But as the sun rose out of the sea, he took a thorn from one of the branches and pricked his thumb. The drop of blood he held up to the sun. It glistened like a jewel.