Alexander C. Irvine (32 page)

If Jane’s here, she’s cold, too. And she doesn’t have Stephen to guide
her.

“She …” Archie swallowed the rest of what he was going to say. Who was he answering, anyway? No one had really spoken.

No time to start hearing voices, Prescott, he told himself. And certainly no time to start answering them.

“You say something, Mr. Prescott?” Stephen’s voice was muffled in the narrow crawlway. Archie could see his feet in what little lamplight showed between his body and the walls.

“Right behind you,” Archie said through gritted teeth. He leaned into the hole, found handholds on the muddy walls, and hauled himself toward the glow of Stephen’s lamp.

P
rescott came out
of Winding Way looking like there were demons on his tail, breathing fast and shallow. Quite a few visitors reacted to their first crawl like that, but there was something different about Prescott’s fear. He’d carried an edge of desperation with him into the cave, and Stephen had seen it creep closer to the surface when Prescott had looked down into Bottomless Pit. He’s come this far on sheer force of will, Stephen thought, to find his daughter. How long is that will going to hold out?

“Let’s go a little ways up ahead, then we’ll stop for a bite,” Stephen said. Prescott nodded, and they walked through the arched passage called Great Relief Hall. The name seemed appropriate now. Prescott relaxed visibly now that he could stand upright.

Following a bend to the left, Stephen led Archie into River Hall. The floor sloped away to the left, down to Echo River. But Stephen pointed the other way, upward and off to the right. “Big dome up that way, if you want to see it,” he said.

“No,” Prescott said. “Is that water I smell?”

“Echo River,” Stephen said. “We should have a look down there, see if it’s flooded bad.”

“Is that where you found that mummy?”

“Not right there. Sometimes the river blocks off the way to get there. It’s a good place to stop for lunch, too.”

At the bottom of the slope, Stephen stopped, looking at the still black pool they called the Dead Sea.
Why am I leading him on like this?
he thought.
Whatever I’m going to do I should just do it.

The chacmool wanted Prescott dead. It had made that very clear, and Stephen could have killed him a half-dozen times already. A little shove on the edge of Bottomless Pit would have done the trick. Or Sidesaddle.

So why hadn’t he done it? Hiding the girl had been a hell of a lot more dangerous. If discovered, that would have earned Stephen a quick trip to the nearest tree branch—if he was lucky enough not to be burned alive instead. But if Prescott had taken a misstep over a pit, no one would have thought anything was amiss; Stephen didn’t know of anyone who had recently died in the cave, but it was always a possibility. The simple truth of it was that he couldn’t kill Prescott. The man didn’t deserve to die.

Not even for a new world?
the chacmool’s voice asked him.
Is his life worth slavery for your children’s children?

Stephen smelled the smoke of Tlalocan. Men in chains or dead men feeding altar fires, are those my only choices? he thought. Murderer or slave? No. Prescott didn’t need to be dead, just out of the way. The cave was huge. A man could easily be lost in it for days, going in circles even if he had light to guide him.

Prescott called out, interrupting Stephen’s reverie. “What’s down here?” he said, dropping to his knees in front of the branch passage that led to the bottom of Bottomless Pit.

Damn, Stephen thought. Why’d I bring him this way? But he knew the answer to that question.
Because you needed a reason, that’s
why.

Stephen had hoped that the chacmool’s fears about Prescott were groundless, but now Prescott had perked up like a dog seeing a squirrel both times he’d passed a direct path to the Mummy

Room. He could sense the chacmool somehow, and it knew that. More than knew: the chacmool feared Prescott.

“That hole, I’m not sure where it goes,” Stephen lied. “It’s a big cave. Lot more passages I haven’t been through than ones I have.”

Something odd struck him then, as he walked back to where Prescott crouched. The front of Prescott’s coverall was moving. It twitched as if something alive was inside, trying to get out. Had that been happening when he’d looked down into Bottomless Pit? Stephen was certain he would have noticed if it had, but then again it was awful hard to not look at one of those torches, throwing light on walls no man had ever touched.

That’s how he does it, how he senses the chacmool. Some kind of charm around his neck.

“Is this where you found it?” Prescott asked, like he hadn’t heard Stephen before.

“No, like I said, I’ve never been down there. Come on, Mr. Prescott. The place you want to see is farther ahead.”
And please don’t you call this bluff. Don’t make me do something
I
don’t want to do.

Prescott looked up at him then, saw Stephen’s gaze focused on the front of his shirt, and clapped a hand over whatever was wriggling inside. “It’s a—a magnet,” he stammered. “Must be some strange metals near here. The mummy, it reacted strangely to magnetism, so I thought …” His voice trailed off.

Sure, we’re under three hundred feet of limestone, and he’s got a magnet that jitters like water on a hot griddle, Stephen thought. “Come on, Mr. Prescott, what you want to see is up here,” he said, trying to keep the urgency from his voice. He reached out and laid a hand on Archie’s shoulder.

A dam broke in Stephen’s mind, and a torrent of voices exploded into his head. All of them, laughing and yelling like they hadn’t spoken in years, their words flying by too fast to catch. Stephen reeled away from Prescott, numbed by the endless clamor in his mind and one single thought cutting through:
He brought them back. The chacmool hushed them, but Prescott brought them back.

The rush of voices faded to a murmur as Stephen broke contact with Prescott, but they didn’t go away completely. Like they had from the moment he’d first stepped into the cave as a seventeen-year-old boy, the voices flowed in a steady undercurrent through Stephen’s mind, a muttered chaos of languages that made him feel at home again.

How can I kill him now?

He realized he was staring at Prescott, and fumbled for something to cover up his strange behavior. “Lost my balance there.”

“Ah,” Prescott said, his face giving nothing away. “Right. Well, let’s go see the ch—”

“This way,” Stephen said. He helped Archie to his feet and led him deeper into the cave.

Steven
continued
poi
nting
out and naming the cave’s prominent features, but he seemed distracted, performing the role of guide almost as an afterthought. And the names began to sound like grim jokes: River Styx, Lake Lethe, Purgatory.

Even the boat ride along the River Styx and Lethe gave Archie a chill, with Stephen rowing quietly and the water like liquid night.
I’m so glad he isn
’
t
poling,
Archie thought.
I
don’t think I could take it.

After they had left the river complex behind them and begun a gentle ascent, Archie asked Stephen how much farther they had to go.

“Oh, I imagine it’s another four miles yet. You tired, Mr. Prescott?”

“No, just curious. How long will it take to get there and back?” Stephen appeared to consider the question. “Should be out right around sunset,” he said finally.

Archie was glad that the river had proved low enough that they could continue past it, but he wasn’t fool enough to think that he could retrace the route they’d taken without Stephen’s help. I’m going to have to tell him soon, Archie thought. He saw the talisman moving on my chest—he must know something out of the ordinary is going on. Probably I should have told him right away, and just taken my chances. It was too late for that, though; there would be quite an interesting conversation whenever they did stop for lunch.

The aspect of the cave began to change around them as the riverine passages dropped away behind. The spacious, ovoid passages that made up the greater part of the Main Cave had given way to narrower, high-ceilinged canyons. In crevices, Stephen pointed out gypsum flowers, tiny delicate tendrils of stone that looked like a million snowflakes all in a row. At times Stephen and Archie straddled protruding shelves on either side of such a passage and made their way ahead with the floor lost to sight below.

Archie had a growing sense that while the halls nearer the entrance were laid out in some kind of comprehensible pattern, these winding canyons formed a many-leveled maze. Several times he thought they passed a section of cave that he’d seen before, only to have it dip or curve in an unexpected way. The floor grew muddy again, and small pools gleamed occasionally in the light of Stephen’s lamp.

Abruptly the passage they were following doubled back and shrunk into a crawl. Archie hesitated, feeling panic begin to nibble at his composure again, but Stephen reassured him. “This one’s quite a bit longer than Winding Way,” he said, “but it’s not so tight. And what’s on the other end makes it worth your while.” With that he scrambled in, pushing the lamp ahead of him.

Archie followed, his knees already raw, locking his gaze onto Stephen’s light so he wouldn’t freeze at the thought of the ceiling an inch above his head. There was plenty of lateral room, though, unlike Winding Way, and he fell into a rhythm—elbow, knee, elbow, knee, and don’t look up.

Standing again, Archie found himself smiling. His fear had broken, or been transformed into exhilaration. After all, how many people had done what he was doing? Some, to be sure, but crawling through miles of muddy cave was hardly a commonplace activity. And the subterranean beauty was growing on him, seducing him by its stark, gloomy grandeur. “There’s no other place on earth like this, is there?” he said.

Stephen grinned. “You think that now, wait another few minutes.”

Over the next mile or so, they passed three giant domes, each one causing Archie to stop dead and gape at the sheer size of them. They towered farther than the lights could reach, and dropped away below the rocky lip Archie and Stephen traversed, their far walls barely shadowed. “Good place for a bite to eat, don’t you think?” Stephen said at the last dome. They had climbed down into it, stopping at a level place with tremendous stone blocks standing like monuments around them.

“Oh, yes,” Archie breathed, and Stephen unshouldered his bag, taking out paper-wrapped roasted chicken and a block of cheese. He nipped at his flask and offered it to Archie, who again declined. There was something about this place that made him want to experience it without the filter of spirits.

Now I’m beginning to understand how a man could spend so much time down here, Archie thought. Perhaps I’m beginning to understand Stephen a bit. This hint of common ground cheered Archie, giving him a feeling of camaraderie. It was time to explain a few things; Stephen would understand.

“Have any … well, strange things been happening near here recently?” he asked.

“Cave’s always full of strangeness,” Stephen replied between bites of chicken. “Get people under the ground, away from light, it’s like sailors alone at sea. They start seeing things. People tell me all the time they can see in the dark when I put out the light. Maybe they can. I can’t, but there’s times in the dark when I feel like a bat must feel, making pictures in its head when it can’t use its eyes. You ever been in absolute dark, Mr. Prescott? Dark with no glow from a star or gaslight or anything else? Five-miles-deep-in-a-cave dark?”

Archie shook his head.

“Tell you this, you can feel it. Feel it touching your skin. Even the tiniest light takes all the weight from darkness, but down here it’s
heavy.
Pushes in from every direction. I read Plato once, you know that? The allegory of the cave.” He savored each syllable. “Bet you didn’t think slaves could read.”

“I know quite a few whites who can’t,” Archie said, but Stephen didn’t seem to hear him.

“Plato said that the people chained in the cave saw only shadows of the real things outside. Well, I been chained to this cave since I was a boy, and I get the feeling sometimes that the shadows down here
are
what’s real. All that up there,” he said, waving at the darkness over their heads, “they’re the shadows. They hide what’s real. It stays buried down here like it’s waiting to be born.”

Archie began to feel that Stephen was playing a game with him again, that he was intoxicated by the reversal of power that had taken place sometime since they’d left the surface.
What has he seen? What does he know?
Archie wanted to stand up and shout, “Where’s the chacmool, Stephen? What has it done with my daughter?” But he was helpless, completely at the mercy of Stephen’s knowledge of the cave, and all he could do was nod silently and wait to see what Stephen would do next.

“I’m not a scientist,” Archie said.

“I know. What are you, Mr. Prescott?”

“I’m looking for my daughter,” Archie said in a rush. “She’s been—stolen away, and I think she’s here. I know she’s here.”

The words hung in the air for a long time. Archie waited for Stephen to react, certain now that he knew something. But how much? What was his role in all of this? He fell back on Tamanend’s words again, picking them apart in the hope that they would offer some guidance.

Seek the Mask-bearer. He is torn, and you must give him peace.

Give him peace. Why was he torn? What could Archie do to give him peace? Stephen remained silent, brooding over the struggling glow of his lamp.

Now or never, Archie thought. “Stephen, I need to see the room where you found the chacmool. It has my daughter, and I mean to have her back.”

Seconds passed, stretched into the sort of moment in time that could only occur when important words hung unspoken: a moment pregnant with an awful imminence. Archie was conscious of everything around him: the invisible vastness of the dome over their heads, the smell of smoke from Stephen’s lamp, the chill of the rocks on which he sat, the sound of his own voice in his head saying again
I
mean to have her back.
Still Stephen sat, as if he had become mummified himself, rooted to the cave floor by the passage of that endless moment.

Finally he stood and shouldered his satchel. Gesturing with the lamp, he said, “Up here. There’s something up here I think you should see.”