robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain (5 page)

"Is it over? The myths say that the time for heroes will come again. Look at the state of the world today. Could we not use a hero or two? Say, an Arthur with his dream of Camelot, or a Charlemagne to stand against the hordes seeking to tear down civilization. Or a Siegfried, slayer of giants and dragons. Consider what such a man could do today."

"There is not much call for dragon-slayers today. A knight in shining armor can't do much against an automatic weapon."

"Your view is excessively narrow. Such a man was not a hero because of mere physical capabilities. A man nearly deified in the memory of his fellows had to be more than a simple warrior. He would have had attributes and skills necessary to make him a great man, a leader. At their core such skills are as applicable today as they were then; people are still people. Such a man would be capable of changing any world he was a part of." Nakaguchi's tone became conspiratorial. "But such a man will need guidance to understand the changes since he last walked the earth, guidance that we must stand ready to provide."

Stand ready to provide? Despite the sun's heat, Pamela felt a chill. "You have found a sleeper."

"Very good, Ms. Martinez. Yes, we have found a sleeper, a man who has been in suspended animation through the power of magic. I believe that he is a man who can change the balance of power in the strange new world we face."

"For the good of Mitsutomo?"

With only the slightest hesitation, he responded, "Of course."

"And who is this sleeper?"

Instead of answering, Nakaguchi directed his gaze over her shoulder. She turned to see a heavyset man approaching. The man wore soiled fatigues and a battered hat and looked more than a little disreputable. He spoke, loudly, before he reached a normal conversation distance.

"It
's good you're here." The man spoke Mexican, but his accent wasn't that of the city. His dark skin and hooked nose said he had some of the old blood, so she guessed he was from the southeast part of the
country.
He gave her a quick, leering glance and spoke to Nakaguchi. "Traveling with amenities, Patron Nakaguchi?"

Did he know she understood him? Did he care?

"Ms. Martinez is an officer of Mitsutomo," Nakaguchi said.

"Sorry, senora. We see few company officers out here." He didn't sound sorry at all.

"Ms. Martinez, this is Joaquin Azana. Joaquin is the head of the discovery team. He is very well known in certain antiquities circles."

A polite way of saying he was a tomb robber. He certainly had the manners of one. He gave Pamela only the slightest of nods and focused his attention entirely on Nakaguchi.

"You want to see the site today, we must climb now, patron. There is little time to reach it before dark."

"Surely you have lights up there."

"Ai, yeah. Battery lamps only. Not enough for all night."

"Then we will bring more with us."

Azana shifted his footing. "There's not a lot of room up there. Best we come back down to the camp before dark."

"Afraid of the dark, Mr. Azana?" Pamela asked.

"No," Azana said rather quickly. "It is just the desk people. They will not fare well on the mountain in the dark."

Pamela tucked her hair up under her climbing helmet and tightened the strap. "Then we'd best be going, hadn't we?"

Azana looked from her to Nakaguchi.

"Ms. Martinez is right."

"Yes, patron."

They left the camp, walking in a disorganized clump until the path forced a more linear arrangement. Azana took the lead, with Nakaguchi second. There was a moment of tension when Hagen moved to follow on the heels of his boss, and Duncan stepped in his way. The little man glared, but subsided after a glance at Pamela. She took the third position and Duncan stepped in immediately behind her, leaving Hagen standing there. When Pamela looked back the little man was still standing there, glowering; the rest of Nakaguchi's people had filed past him.

Azana swarmed up the mountain like a llama and his previous concern for the "desk people" didn't seem to extend to making allowances for their slower speed. Nakaguchi followed close behind the Mexican and, not to be outdone, Pamela pushed herself to keep up. The Breathe-EZ™ acclimatization tablet she'd taken was improving her oxygen uptake, making the climb less dangerous than it would have been, but the headache starting to pound behind her eyes almost made her long for the altitude sickness she could have otherwise expected. At least then she could have passed out and taken a rest without losing face. As it was, she pushed herself, feeding the headache with her exertion. She wasn't overheating, though; the HiClimber suit was doing its job and keeping her body temperature comfortable.

The path, where there was a path, grew narrower and more treacherous. The climb became steeper and their pace slowed. Each time she looked back, Duncan's red-and-white HiClimber was farther and farther behind. One by one, Nak-aguchi's drones in their matching blue Rocker™ climbing suits passed him. An hour into the climb, he was trailing the entire group. Hagen, on the other hand, proved to be a superb climber, passing the other aides easily. He slowed his pace as he came up behind her.

"Nice suit," he said. He wore one of the blue Rocker suits, but she noted that his harness held some nonstandard accessories. "How'd you find out?"

"I've played these sorts of games before."

"I'll remember." He dropped back to leave her climbing room.

The Mexican angled around to the shadowed side of the mountain, leading the troop away from the warming sun. Almost immediately after she stepped out of the sun's direct rays, Pamela felt a warmth spreading from her fanny pack as the HiClimber's heater kicked in. It was cold up here, and only the HiClimber was keeping her from noticing just how cold.

The slope here was gentler, easier to take, but they still climbed for another half hour. If the trip down took as long as going up, she doubted they'd be back to the camp until well after dark.

Ahead she could see Azana sauntering across a high meadow. By the time she reached it, the Mexican was essaying an almost vertical climb past an old rockfall. Nakaguchi was close on his tail. Azana reached the top of the sheer stretch, clambered over a mound of small, loose rocks, and seemed to disappear into the mountainside. Nakaguchi dodged a couple of fragments that the Mexican had dislodged and followed, disappearing as well. Pamela trotted across the meadow and scanned the rock above her. No sign of them. She started up. As she neared the top of the old fall, she saw how the pile of small stones had kept her from seeing a small dark opening in the rock face. There was a cave.

She managed to get over the piled rocks without kicking any down on Hagen, who had just reached the base of the fall. Nakaguchi hadn't shown such consideration for her.

The cave entrance was barely a meter high. Piled stones stood in the corners of the opening, suggesting a breached wall. She guessed that the cairn over which she clambered had been made from stones that had once walled over the opening. She crawled into the darkness to join Azaiia and Nakaguchi. There was more room inside, enough to stand up. She did, brushing dust from the knees of her HiClimber. Azana was just turning on a battery lantern.

The light reflected from the walls in thousands of tiny sparkles from the minerals embedded in the stone, revealing a cramped space, barely bigger than a public washroom. It smelled of dust. Scattered about the floor were more stones, many encrusted with what looked like hardened mud. Adobe? More stones still embedded in an earthen matrix were part of a second wall still partially closing a narrow cleft in the far wall; there was enough debris to have completely filled the gap. The lantern's light didn't reveal anything beyond the partial wall; she could only see deep darkness through the narrow slit.

"This is where the offerings were?" Nakaguchi asked.

Azana
nodded.

Nakaguchi examined a mud-encrusted rock. "The second wall was intact?"

"As I told you, patron. Solid and undisturbed. Only the ritual holes."

Stone grated outside the chamber and Azana jumped. Ha-gen's short, broad shape appeared in the entrance. He stepped inside, further crowding them, and swept the chamber with his gaze, a disapproving frown on his face. He picked up one of the encrusted stones and poked at the hardened mud. His frown grew deeper.

"Well, Mr. Hagen?" Nakaguchi asked.

"Looks plausible," he declared. "Been inside?"

"Not yet."

"It'll be awhile before the others get up here."

Nakaguchi nodded. "Show me the inner chamber," he ordered Azana.

Azana edged past him, the lantern throwing strange shadows on the rough walls of the chamber. They had to squeeze sideways to move through the opening into the mountain. Azana led them through the darkness, his lantern the sole, feeble source of light. Pamela didn't like the idea of following Nakaguchi into the darkness, but it was preferable to staying behind and waiting for him to come back and tell her secondhand what he found; he was not exactly a reliable source. Pamela slid down the goggles of her helmet and dialed up the light amplification circuits. It helped some. The lantern now provided enough illumination for her to see where she was going. She was careful not to look directly at the lantern.

When the sounds of Azana's passage began to echo, she knew they'd come to a less closed-in area. She was relieved. New light blossomed as the Mexican turned on a second lantern. Pamela quickly slipped off the goggles; there was no need to be blinded.

Azana had led them to a nearly circular chamber almost ten meters across. The walls had been smoothed by human hands and plastered over. They were covered in paintings and glyphs that looked a lot like some of the decorations she'd seen in Mexico City. The paintings were old; a glasslike sheen of calcite lay over some of them where mineral-bearing water had seeped from the rock. It was clear from the tools lying about that some work had recently been done to uncover one of the more obscured paintings.

"They look Aztec," she said.

"They are," Nakaguchi answered absently. He seemed absorbed in examining a particularly convoluted glyph. Hagen took up a lantern and stood by his shoulder, grumbling.

Pamela didn't understand. What were Aztec paintings doing here? "Wasn't this Inca territory?"

"As much as it was any tribe's," Hagen said.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked him, but the little man ignored her.

Nakaguchi abandoned the glyph and moved to a door-sized patch of almost undecorated wall. A dark circle was centered in it about ninety centimeters from the floor and there were three smaller dark circles at the bottom, touching the floor.

Nakaguchi ran his fingers along the wall's surface and then across—no, into—the central dark circle, revealing it to be a hollow.

"It is intact," he said dreamily. "The oracle hole. The paths of the lesser life. Everything."

"As I told you, patron. The workers will not break the wall. Olivares has told them this is a bad place, great magic."

"What would this Olivares know about it?"

"The workers, they say he is a sorcerer."

"A what?" Pamela asked. She didn't believe she had heard correctly.

"A sorcerer," Azana repeated.

Two years ago she would have laughed in the man's face. Now, she held her tongue.

"And is he a sorcerer?" Nakaguchi asked.

"I would not know, patron."

Hagen looked up from the glyph he'd been studying. "Dynamite the cave," he said abruptly.

Nakaguchi snorted. "Don't be ridiculous."

Pointing at the glyphs, Hagen asked, "Can't you read it?"

"Well enough."

Pamela was surprised. "What does it say?"

"It says that this is the place where the feathered serpent awaits death," Nakaguchi replied.

"Dynamite the cave," Hagen repeated, this time more insistently.

"No," Nakaguchi snapped.

Pamela found the split between the two interesting.

In a more reasonable tone, Nakaguchi continued. "If it hadn't been for your help, we would never have found this cave. Now you want to destroy it?"

Hagen glared for a moment, jaw working beneath his beard. "I thought you understood the danger that the sleepers pose."

"I understand the power they offer."

"You're a fool."

"And you're in danger of losing your job."

Perhaps with you, Nakaguchi.
Pamela was beginning to see Hagen as a potential ally. But she needed a lot more information. "I asked once before, Nakaguchi. Are you ready yet to tell me who you think this sleeper is?"

"I thought I knew before. Now I am sure."

"And he is?"

"The Mayans called him Kukulcan. The Guatemalans called him Gugumatz. I suppose he is best known by his Aztec name, Quetzoucoatl. Their languages were different, but to all of them, he was the feathered serpent."

"Quetzoucoatl?" Pamela couldn't quite believe it. These sleepers were supposed to be men. Wasn't Quetzoucoatl a god?