Alexander C. Irvine (35 page)

Before he got
to the Side-cut, Archie thought he’d have one last try at coming up with a plan, or at least isolate some things he
didn’t
want to do. Bleed in the river, was one. Kill anyone, another. He looked over the side and saw that the shapes in the river were again dispersed by its currents. His blood had given them form. That was important somehow.

But there was simply too much he didn’t know. If Stephen had somehow resolved his doubts, Archie would likely have to kill him to get to the chacmool. He had the knife, but the experience with Royce, the ghastly seduction of the man’s dying heartbeats reverberating in his mind … he wasn’t sure he could use it on Stephen, not knowing what he did now. If he had to become something like the chacmool to defeat it, the real battle would be lost.

The only person Archie hadn’t been afraid to threaten with the knife was himself. He remembered awakening with it in his hands at least twice, knowing that he could find his own heart and end his struggles. The incident aboard the Daigles’ keelboat seemed to confirm it: the knife could only be a defensive weapon. Archie had killed a man with it, and had nearly lost his soul as a result, but he had also used it to stave off what Peter Daigle had called his demon.

What can I gain by turning the knife on myself?
Archie wondered. The question gnawed at his mind as he grounded the boat on Lethe’s muddy banks, watching carefully to make sure he wasn’t bleeding into the river.

At last Archie
crossed the natural bridge over River Styx and began working his way toward the Dead Sea and the crevice he was sure led to the chacmool’s lair. He picked up his pace, hopscotching along Stephen’s track, then stopped dead when he heard the whistled strains of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” carrying lightly down the hall ahead of him.

Riley Steen sat on a ledge over the emerging River Styx, dangling his booted feet in the water. He stopped whistling and inclined his head at Archie, smiling from behind a near-mask of mud and gore. “Good trick, Mr. Prescott,” he said with the air of a hunter complimenting his companion’s last shot. “I see you learned something the night of our Five Points excursion. Did you take the boat ride on this lovely river? Matchless experience, but too little light to gamble properly.”

“I thought you were dead, Steen.” Archie remained where he was. Steen’s derringer nestled in one meaty fist, not pointing at Archie but not aimed away either. Archie couldn’t understand why Steen was here waiting for him, or why the chacmool had allowed him to traipse through the cave all this time.

“Oh, in every way that matters, I am, Mr. Prescott. I see what the dead see, hear them speak. Quite a lively bout of wagering has sprung up regarding the odds of your success.”

“It has? What do dead people bet?” Keep him talking, Archie thought. Keep asking questions.

“Poems and songs, sometimes, but primarily jokes.” Steen chuckled. “The dead are tremendous pranksters. I’ve placed my own bet, of course, which is why I’ve dallied here so long.”

Steen splashed his feet in the river, shredding a delicate shape that had begun to coalesce around them, and shifted the derringer so it pointed more directly at Archie. “I’ll tell you a little tale, Mr. Prescott. When Beethoven premiered his Ninth Symphony, the
Chorale,
he was completely deaf and couldn’t hear the musicians. But he conducted grandly, even if his motions didn’t have much to do with what was actually happening onstage because his musicians were following the first-chair violin, and when the music had ended he kept right on conducting until that same first-chair violin got up and turned him around so he could see the ovation he was receiving from the crowd.

“Well, that’s exactly what has happened to me, Mr. Prescott. The musicians play my tune but ignore my conducting. Beethoven composed music he couldn’t hear, I’ve made possible a world that I never could have seen. But, even though Beethoven was ignored at the premiere, no one now forgets that it was he who composed the Ninth—and history will give me my due as well. Seeing as the dead see offers one a certain perspective. From that perspective I see that my importance to these proceedings is undiminished, even if I myself do not exist to enjoy the temporal fruits of their success.”

Lost in his own story now, Steen hadn’t noticed that the shape in the river had reformed. Archie could see it, though, a ragged human shape with one arm truncated at the elbow. John Diamond.

But Diamond has a body, Archie thought, or at least did a week ago. Was Steen bleeding into the water, and
his
nightmares taking form around his feet?

“If I allow you to disrupt the ceremony, and by some stroke of fortune you defeat the chacmool, no history will ever record what I have done. You will move on and forget this as best you can, and the nigger Stephen will keep all of these marvelous events a secret. I can’t allow that to happen, Mr. Prescott. I cannot allow these proceedings to fade unrecorded, and I cannot allow myself to disappear into the anonymity reserved for wandering madmen. I am dead, and history is all I have.

“Surely you understand.” Steen raised the derringer.

At the same time, John Diamond rose out of the River Styx and dug the fingers of his remaining hand into the fleshy wattle under Steen’s jaw. Diamond started to fall back into the water, and Steen was dragged along with him, flailing his arms for balance as he pulled the trigger of the tiny gun.

The shot hit Archie squarely in the forehead, knocking him over backward. He lay blind on his back, thinking
Stephen wasn’t the trap,
Steen
was the trap.
Trying to sit up, Archie couldn’t find his balance and succeeded only in rolling onto his side, where he reached out for something to hold onto. Something to keep him from drifting away. Spasms shook his legs, and he flipped onto his back again.

Someone was shouting, the voices coming in a rush that mingled with violent splashes from the river. One sentence rose clearly out of the muddle, sticking in Archie’s mind:
Guess I owe you a bad turn or two, Steen.

So it had been John Diamond. An image arose in Archie’s mind: Diamond’s puzzled glance at his mutilated arm, as the
cha
neque
vomited out its life in Blennerhassett’s abandoned study.

How did Steen get to Blennerhassett’s?
Archie thought.
I
have to get to Kentucky. But don’t touch the river.

“Ahh, God,” he cried out, seeing again the explosion that destroyed
Maudie,
thinking of the three slaves grasping vainly at the sunlight just beyond their reach. He lost consciousness then, slipping into the waters with dying slaves clutching at his ankles and Helen’s ghostly face riding in pale flame on the receding surface.

Light awoke him,
real light that stabbed into his ringing head. Archie flinched away from it, clutching at his forehead. His hands stung as they touched his face, joining a chorus of agony from his face, his chest … his entire body hurt.

“Mr. Prescott.” The voice was Stephen’s. Archie couldn’t help but smile, even though the movement ground his broken nose painfully. Blood trickled onto his lips.

“Come to finish me off, Stephen?”

“Get up, Mr. Prescott. No time for you to be hurt.” Stephen dangled a watch in front of Archie’s face. He couldn’t focus on it. Reflected light from its case dazzled him.

Stephen put away the watch and took hold of Archie’s shoulders. “Twenty minutes before midnight, Mr. Prescott. Got to go.” He hauled Archie to his feet and held him upright until Archie could stand shakily on his own.

“I’ve been shot, Stephen. In the head.”

Stephen bent down and picked something up off the cave floor. Archie saw that it was the mask, or rather half of it. It was cracked cleanly down the middle, the broken edge marred by a hemispherical gouge. “Never seen a man so lucky to be shot in the head,” Stephen said. “Now come on.”

“Steen shot me,” Archie said as Stephen led him around the Dead Sea. “Where’s Steen?”

“Gone down River Styx,” Stephen answered. “John Diamond too.”

They stopped in front of the Bottomless Pit branch. Archie recognized it; his wits were beginning to return. “Reckon we’ve seen the last of them both,” Stephen said. “Now follow me. You hear, Mr. Prescott? Follow my light.”

Follow the light
, Archie repeated to himself. Steen was dead, Royce and the Geek as well. Three men on whom he had sworn mortal revenge, but he’d actually killed none of them. Royce would surely have died from the wound Archie had given him, but it had been Steen who actually finished him. Archie supposed he should feel cheated, but he didn’t. Revenge seemed irrelevant when one’s head still rang from the impact of a bullet that should have been fatal. He was lucky to be alive. But then, how often had that been the case during the past few months?

He followed Stephen automatically, wincing whenever he had to use his hands to negotiate the cramped passage. Ometeotl’s Eye returned then—or Archie noticed it again, he wasn’t sure which. The light, inquisitive pressure on the back of his neck seemed to lessen the pain from his hands and chest, but his nose was still bleeding freely. Blood dripped from the end of his chin, spotting the muddy floor as Archie focused on the one task remaining before him. One last adversary to overcome, and then …

Then would take care of itself. Jane was all that mattered now.

Stephen clambered out into an open space, then turned to wait for Archie. Reaching the end of the branch passage, Archie saw that it emerged well above the bottom of the pit. A rough hill of breakdown sloped away into darkness to Archie’s left, reaching as high as the passage mouth only at the near wall. Stephen crouched under a leaning block of stone as large as Riley Steen’s wagon. He held a finger to his lips, then helped Archie climb down next to him.

“You have to take it from here, Mr. Prescott,” he said, just above a whisper. “I’m sorry for what I did, but I did it for the same reasons you’re doing this.”

Stephen lay on his stomach and set his lamp on a level space a few feet below. “Stay to the left. The light’ll give out before you get there, but you won’t miss the way in.” Archie nodded, imagining the hungry glow of the sacrificial fire set to consume his daughter’s life. He stepped down next to the light, then picked his way slowly down the ancient rockslide, leaving the light entirely behind.

Dangling his feet from a canted ledge, Archie found a level sandy floor. He looked up and behind him: the faintest glow from Stephen’s lamp shone far above, but Archie was in complete darkness. He paused, his progress interrupted by a powerful feeling that his success very much depended on his reasons for entering the cavern that lay hidden ahead of him. Were his reasons so similar to Stephen’s? The chacmool had promised Stephen freedom, but it had done its best to kill Archie after their first brief encounter in Barnum’s Museum. Why it had let him live that night was a mystery to Archie, unless it was out of some bizarre deference to his being Jane’s father. Or perhaps that idea wasn’t so bizarre. Even with his connection to the chacmool severed, Archie knew he had some sort of power. Stephen had recognized it, and given him the mask because of it. I’m still suspended between the two, Archie thought. Tlaloc and Ometeotl. I have to throw in with one or the other.

But he’d done exactly that, he realized, when he put on the mask. Tlaloc had rejected him then, and the talisman had nearly killed him. And with Tlaloc against him, Archie had no choice but to turn toward the Old God. But beware, Tamanend had warned: Ometeotl was as hungry as Tlaloc, for he had been as long without sacrifice.

Archie stood, realizing what he had to do. Tamanend was right. Events had drawn into focus around him, and if he didn’t act, Ometeotl’s Eye would burn him like an ant under a magnifying glass. He drew the knife and held it in front of him, feeling with his other hand for invisible protrusions in the walls or ceiling. His hand found a triangular opening in the wall and he ducked though it, holding his breath as he followed the faint glimmer of firelight that began to light the way.

“Nanahuat
zin, precious jade,
it is time.” The chacmool plucked a feather from its cloak and laid it in a bowl-shaped depression in the floor between the feet of the fanged statue. Reaching into the statue’s mouth, it removed a small green stone and set it on the feather. A bright flame sprang up and grew to fill the bowl, burning soundlessly and without smoke. “Now you begin the next journey, to Tlalocan.”

“I’m ready,” Jane murmured. She lay on the square stone, feet toward the flame, her head slightly raised by the stone’s angle. “I’ll miss my body, I suppose.”

“Much more awaits you, Nanahuatzin. He Who Makes Things Grow calls to you, and you must leave your body behind.”

Reaching again into the statue’s mouth, the chacmool found a wide-bladed stone knife. It passed the blade four times through the flame, and with each pass its form changed a little, became less human and more like the thing she’d imagined the night the two sailors had died outside her door.

That was also the night it had begun to heal her. The night it had chosen her. A flush of gratitude brought happy tears to Jane’s eyes. She smiled as they trickled across her smooth cheeks; oh, how she wanted the journey to begin. She thought of the maps in her little den, of all the places she’d determined to go. Now she would be going someplace grander than New Orleans or San Francisco, or even Zanzibar. No map could ever show it, and she had been chosen to go there. Her cloak rustled, feathers lifting to brush at her tears.

The chacmool came to her side and raised its cupped hand over her. The tip of the stone blade pointed out past its clawed fingers. “Nanahuatzin, you go now to He Who Makes Things Grow, and a new world will rise in the wake of your journey. You go to Tlaloc,
macehuales imacpal iyoloco,”
it purred, so very like a cat. She’d always wanted a cat.

“Macehuales imacpal iyoloco,”
she repeated, resting in the sounds the words made.

“Yollotl, eztli; ompa onquiza’n tlalticpac,”
the chacmool purred. It raised the knife over her breast.

“Jane.”

It was her father’s voice, and Jane felt a surge of impatience that he had come just now, to interrupt the start of her journey. He hadn’t wanted her when she was ugly; did he think he could just be nice when she was healed and whole again? “My name is Nanahuatzin,” she said crossly, turning her head toward him so he would see she was angry. He stood before the entrance holding a knife, and she felt a twinge of pity at the stricken look twisting his face.
Poor Da,
she thought,
someone’s broken his nose. Look at it bleeding.

“You can do nothing, Prescott,” the chacmool said, its words distorted by its feline muzzle and forked tongue. It lowered the point of the knife until it pricked Jane’s skin, and she gasped a little. It was
cold.
“She goes to Tlaloc.”

“She comes to me,” Da said, and despite being cross with him, Jane cried out when he turned the knife inward and plunged it into his own chest.