Curse of the Ancients (18 page)

Riq tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He looked up, saw Dak, Sera, and María all straining to turn the rusted handle. He then looked all around the room and glanced down at the skeleton again. All of it seemed so surreal. Kisa’s presence. Her bones beneath the desk. He remembered the young girl he’d sat with at the mouth of the cave. She was so smart and pretty. She made him want to be somebody. And then, in the time it took to snap his fingers, Riq had warped to a different time, and the girl from Izamal had lived an entire life and grown old and died. He turned back to the letter, overwhelmed with emotion.

“Riq, come on!” Sera shouted.

“We got this bad boy open!” Dak shouted. “No thanks to you!”

Riq looked up from the letter, saw Dak, Sera, and María slowly pulling open the door. Behind it he saw yet another set of narrow stone stairs. “One second,” he managed to call out to them. And then he turned to the last paragraph of the letter.

“Come on, Riq!” Sera shouted again.

Riq looked up at her, his chest so full it felt like it might burst. The door was open, and Dak and María were already climbing the stairs.

“What’s wrong with you?” Sera said. “We have to replace the SQ codex and get back the Ring!”

Riq nodded, set the piece of wood back on the desk, and hurried toward Sera. Before he followed her up the stairs, he took one last look around Kisa’s secret room. He remembered seeing her for the first time inside Itchik’s hut. That strange feeling in his stomach when their eyes first met. Finally, he understood what it meant.

Riq turned and hurried up the dark stairs, knowing that nothing could stop him now. He was a Hystorian. Just like Kisa was a Hystorian.

And from this point on, he would be as committed to the mission as she had been.

D
AK HEAVED
open the heavy metal hatch, popped his head above the tall grass, and sucked in a deep breath of fresh air. The first thing he saw was smoke billowing into the sky. The monks were already torching everything. Then he noticed the sky itself, which was dull and gray and filled with angry-looking storm clouds.

The secret underground staircase had led to almost the exact spot where they’d warped in: just behind the observatory, in an overgrown patch of wild grass. Dak thought back to when they first arrived and how he’d hardly noticed the grass. Little did he know that it hid a secret passageway that would save their lives. He switched the codex to his left hand and reached down to help María up through the hatch. Then he helped Sera. He stared down into the darkness for a few long seconds, right hand extended, waiting for Riq. But the staircase remained empty.

He turned to Sera. “Where’s Lover Boy?”

At that exact moment, Riq came springing up out of the darkness.

Dak noticed the newfound look of determination on the guy’s face. Probably because he got to snoop through all of Snake Girl’s stuff. He made another mental note about that love seminar he wanted to lead.

“They’ve already started,” Sera said, pointing at the smoke.

“Let’s go fix a Break,” Dak said, and he took off running toward the square with the codex tucked under his arm like a football. When he glanced back a few seconds into his run, he saw that Sera, Riq, and María were right on his heels.

When they got to the village square, Dak ducked behind a tree to catch his breath and study what was going on. The others sidled up next to him.

There was a massive contained fire burning, its flames shooting twenty feet into the air. Many Mayan people were standing all around the fire, watching their history go up in smoke. Some were holding one another and crying. Others were shouting at the monks. A few were being led away from the square in shackles.

One monk stood at the center of the entire spectacle, waving around a codex as he shouted over the commotion about heaven and hell and the deceitfulness of the devil. Dak couldn’t believe the surreal quality of the proceedings. The raging fire and the billowing smoke. De Landa’s passionate preaching. The storm clouds hovering ominously over everything, occasionally lit up by a lightning flash.

Back home, Dak had always been drawn to the darker moments of history. He’d climb his favorite tree and read for hours about executions and wars and coups. He could still remember the day he encountered an article about de Landa’s
auto-da-fe,
which wiped out at least forty Mayan codices and over twenty thousand cult images. It had amazed him that a monk could be responsible for the torching of an entire civilization’s history. But only now did he understand the depth of the man’s actions. You just had to look at the faces of the Mayan people watching. It made Dak feel sick to his stomach.

“There they are,” Sera said, pointing to the right of the fire. “Bacab and his men. They’re coming.”

Dak saw them marching toward the village square, a few antiquated weapons cocked and loaded. He understood they’d be no match for the Spanish. Then he spotted K’inich, walking right alongside the brave Mayas, everyone oblivious to the fact that he was using this cultural genocide as an opportunity to advance the SQ agenda.

Dak turned to the others and shouted over the growing commotion, “The monk who’s preaching is obviously Diego de Landa.”

“And now it will all be burned!” de Landa shouted at the crowd. “And your souls will be cleansed of evil, making it possible for you to see the truth. There is no other way. I will keep only this one document, so future leaders of the church can know what led an entire people to live in darkness!”

“He has no idea he’s waving around a fake codex,” Sera said.

Dak held up the reproduction of Pacal’s codex. “We have to make the switch. Without him knowing, of course. Because he’d never trust us.”

“I’ll do it,” Riq said. “I’m the only one dressed like a monk.”

A shot rang out.

Dak spun around, saw one of Bacab’s men fall to the ground, holding his chest and choking on his own blood. Another shot was fired. Another man fell.

“They’re shooting people!” Sera shouted.

Bacab and the rest of his men scattered, taking cover behind trees and boulders and nearby huts. The scene grew louder with weapons being fired and people yelling and thunder pounding in the sky.

Dak turned back to his friends. “Listen to me!” he shouted. “Riq, same plan as in 638! You hide this one in your robe. I’m going to swipe the one de Landa’s holding. You chase me down like you’re one of them and we’ll switch, okay?”

Riq nodded.

“They’ll shoot you, Dak!” Sera cried.

“It’s far too dangerous!” María shouted.

Dak looked up when a light rain started to fall. “Kisa did her part,” he told them. “Now it’s time to do ours.” He winked at Riq and moved out from behind the tree.

Thunder crashed overhead as Dak snuck closer to de Landa and the fire. He could already feel the heat seeping into his skin. As soon as de Landa turned his back, still ranting about the devil, Dak darted toward him.

One of the Spaniards shouted at Dak. Another turned and fired an arrow that whistled past Dak’s left ear. De Landa turned around just as Dak got to him, but Dak acted quickly, knocking the codex out of his hand, scooping it up, and sprinting away.

Two more arrows whizzed past his head.

Then he heard Riq shouting in Spanish over the commotion, “I’ve got him! I’ve got the little thief!”

Riq leapt onto Dak, not only knocking him over but driving his face into the mud near the fire. “You will pay for what you’ve done!” Riq screamed in his ear, while at the same time slipping Pacal’s codex out of his robe. He traded with Dak on the sly, still screaming at him, and then he slugged Dak right in the jaw.

Dak lost his senses for a few seconds, and when he came to he was holding his face and shouting back at Riq in English, “Dude, that wasn’t part of the plan!” But then he looked up and saw three Spaniards aiming arrows at his head.

Riq threw Dak into a tight headlock and ripped Pacal’s codex out of his hands. “I have it!” he shouted at the other monks. “Here! Take this back to Brother de Landa! I’ll see that this thief pays with his life!”

One of the Spaniards reached for the codex and started toward the preaching man. The other two turned their attention elsewhere.

As Riq aggressively led Dak away, they both snuck glances behind them until they saw that de Landa had possession of Pacal’s codex and had resumed his preaching.

“You didn’t have to hit me in the jaw,” Dak said to Riq.

“It was the only way,” Riq told him. And then he glanced down at Dak, grinning slightly, and added, “Oh, and I’d prefer you didn’t refer to me as ‘Lover Boy.’ ”

Dak rolled his eyes, then ordered Riq to guide him closer to the fire so he could torch the SQ codex. “No one will ever read these lies again,” he said.

They only made it a few steps closer, though, before getting bowled over. Dak pulled his face from the mud again and looked up. It was K’inich, who shouted, “I saw what you just did!”

The SQ codex had fallen out of Riq’s robe, into the mud, and the three of them wrestled for it. “Give it to me!” K’inich shouted. “Now!” He punched Riq in the side of the face and reached for the loose codex, but Dak was too quick. He pounced on it, clutching it to his chest and curling his body into a ball. K’inich slugged him in the kidneys and the back of his head, and then Riq wrestled K’inich’s arms behind his back.

The rain fell harder.

Thunder exploded directly over their heads.

Dak squeezed the codex to his chest as Riq and K’inich fell on top of him, ripping and clawing at each other’s faces.

A monk suddenly hurried over with a raised gun, shouting, “Stop! Stop! Get off him!”

Dak relaxed some, assuming the monk was ordering K’inich to get off Riq, but when he looked up, he saw the monk cracking Riq in the back of the head with the butt of his gun.

K’inich scurried to his feet and handed over the Infinity Ring, shouting at the monk, “Throw it into the fire! I’ll take care of the codex!” He took the gun from the monk and stuck it into Dak’s ear, shouting, “That’s right! The SQ has men on
both
sides!” He shackled Dak’s and Riq’s wrists and began pushing them away from the square.

As they were led away, Dak turned and watched the monk hurrying toward the fire with the Ring.

“Sera!” Dak shouted.

She was beside Bacab now, who was aiming his crossbow at de Landa. He fired an arrow that narrowly missed. Two monks converged on de Landa immediately, pushing his head down and leading him toward a nearby hut. Dak saw that de Landa was still clutching Pacal’s codex.