Shallows of Night - 02 (40 page)

‘You forget, my “brother”,’ Cabal Xiu said calmly, ‘that there
are
no others but us. Yet.’

‘Oh yes. Not since the Sundering. Not since the ending of the fourth age. Yes, my “brother”, you, the devout one. With every beat of my heart there is pain for the Majapan who worshiped us, for without them the rebirth—’

‘Enough blasphemy from you!’ Cabal Xiu was trembling and stiff-legged he took another step forward. Uxmal Chac’s left hand went to his right hip. His fingers closed over the cold stone of his weapon. Flesh jumped as his muscles tensed.

‘Is there not something you must attend to?’ Kin Coba said softly.

They were as still as statues for a moment.

Orange light licked and flickered across dark cool flesh and tawny fur.

Then Uxmal Chac turned his back on them and strode from the building. The clatter of his leather sandals down the stone steps echoed into the humid night.

Cabal Xiu sighed, his body relaxing.

‘He may be right, you know,’ he said.

‘Would that it were so.’

He turned to the glyph wall and spoke, sounding, at times, as if he were reading:

‘So many
katun
since the destruction of the Majapan, our beloved race, so many barren
katun,
with only the promise of the Book of Balam, keeping us here, waiting, waiting for the
katun
of Ce-Acatl to come again.’ He gestured and Kin Coba moved silently to stand beside him, staring up at the wall of glyphs. ‘It comes now. At midnight the
katun
of Ce-Acatl returns; the primary; the beginning of the sixth age; the time of the Majapan’s return.’

Within one arch’s deep shadow Ronin gestured to Moichi to follow Uxmal Chac while he stayed to listen.

‘He may return to see if we are in our rooms,’ he whispered in Moichi’s ear. ‘We will meet in your chamber later tonight.’ He returned his attention to the pair in the light.

‘The origins of the Majapan are steeped in mystery,’ Cabal Xiu continued. ‘They carried with them the knowledge and the power of an age before the birth of man. Then the Majapan lived in a land of heat and jungle bordered on all sides by a great fathomless sea filled with monstrous creatures. From their gods, they received great gifts and knowledge but they were cursed for they came into being at the end of the Old Time and, as the time of man grew nigh, vast upheavals of the earth and the sea and the sky occurred.

‘And the priests, who foretold these cataclysms, for even then was the Book of Balam in existence, now went among the Majapan and, gathering them all upon an immense plain near the shores of the writhing seas, bade them construct ships, speaking to them thusly: “Now you shall build strong ships to sail upon the seas for the land of our birth will soon be no more. If the Majapan shall survive, it will be in another land.”

‘And the people were terrified, for they were not good sailors and had no love for the water and they milled about, contending amongst themselves. Thus the priests said unto them: “Fear not the high seas nor the leviathans of the deep, for the true danger lies here. Now will our land turn red and black and belch smoke and sulphur and the blood of the earth shall pour forth. Then will our land split asunder and hurl itself into the fathomless caverns of the earth for all time and the seas will wash over it like two hands clasped together.”

‘Thus spake the priests and the Majapan listened and set themselves to build the ships of their salvation. And they went then to their ships, gathering up their children and their food and leaving all other manner of possessions behind. And the priests took up their sacred scrolls and left and the great wealth of the Majapan was left behind.

‘So the Majapan set out from their doomed land, which already burned at its heart with the ending of the Old Time, and they were divided by the priests. One quarter went to the north, one quarter to the south, one quarter to the east and one quarter to the west.

‘Thus the Majapan came to this island, this vast jut of limestone ledge, thrusting up from the floor of the sea. And here they founded Xich Chih, the city of their forefathers, the true city.

‘Only here were the Majapan not assimilated into the birthing cultures of man, who spawned upon the world like maggots. Only here the Majapan remained unadulterated. And when they saw the Chacmool, they knew it at once for what it was: the personification of Tzcatlipoca.’

‘And now,’ breathed Kin Coba, her voice rich and tremulous upon the thick air, ‘in the
katun
of Ce-Acatl, in the dawning of the sixth age, the first of the Majapan have returned to their sacred city, where this night Tzcatlipoca may be reborn to once again see His Xich Chih.’

Here and there streaks of water, last remnants of the hard rain, passed to platinum in the moonlight. Each carved stone block was moved to eerie calligraphy by the swift interplay of light and shadow; a numinous history hewn into each surface. It is a city of the dead now, Ronin thought, as he followed the fleet figure of Kin Coba through the dappled city. Perhaps time and solitude have turned them mad, for these three, the keepers of Xich Chih, were apparently not Majapan. What were they, beneath the Chacmool masks, he wondered, as he moved from shadow to shadow, down the pyramid’s side, along the bright stone causeway. Would they, naked, resemble the figures in the pictoglyphs which encrusted the architecture of Xich Chih?

A dreamscape it was. Great stone heads seemed to float in air, thrusting out as they did from shadowed walls, immense oblique plazas with sloping sides, crowned by crenellated tops, endlessly tiered buildings with walls made unsolid by the concentration of hieroglyphs.

He lost her in a shaft of deep shadow into which she disappeared. He went after her, cautiously, silently, the stones his enemy now, for they would echo his pursuit if he were not careful. The path she had been following ran beside three buildings, along a narrow defile for perhaps another hundred meters beyond the pocket of shadow within which he now stood.

He was still for a moment, watching and, perhaps even more acutely, listening for her muted footfalls. All about him the chronicles of the Majapan hulked mutely, savagely; a history in stone, waiting.

Moving slowly along the defile, he caught a glimpse of movement. But now he hesitated, unsure whether to follow or to return to the house on the acropolis. After a moment’s deliberation, he moved onward, swifter now that he had reached a decision.

Down the defile and then sharply left, into a cleft of darkness, all sight gone for long moments.

Something had changed. Abruptly, the nature of the darkness had altered. It was at once thicker and more expansive and he realized that he was out from the buildings. He looked up but could see no stars, no moon.

He heard again the muffled sound in front of him and went on. There were trees now in patches of deeper darkness and as his eyes slowly adjusted to the werelight he saw that he loped through an outthrusting of the jungle which surrounded the city.

Now and again he thought he saw a glimmering ahead, as of some reflected light, but always it was rather close to the ground, certainly less than two meters from the floor of the forest. Who or what was he following? He had had an intuition that he had lost Kin Coba somewhere within the defile. Then why had he come here?

The jungle gave grudgingly onto a moon-dappled glade and he paused just outside the lip, drenched in shadow. He heard nothing but the whining of the nocturnal insects, the sighing of the trees.

He went swiftly down the aisle of the clearing, around an abrupt turning and saw, bathed in indifferent moonlight, the black and white edifice, strewn, collapsing, etched into the far side of the glade.

It was set off the ropy jungle floor by short pillars in the shape of an undulating serpent in a repeating squared off ‘s’ shape so that each wave of its body formed part of the foundation. It was the first time that he had seen this creature represented in the city. The building’s central stairway had fallen away in several places.

The building itself had twelve doorways and over the thick lintel of each was carved the same serpent, with plumes or wings as if it were flying.

One entire side of the building was choked with the inevitable influx of the returning jungle. Green moss across the steps like an unkempt carpet.

Something flickered at the periphery of his vision and he went closer. The white spark came again and now he saw that before the building stood a statue under the shadow of an overhanging tree. As the wind swung the heavily laden branches, a sliver of moonlight caught the statue’s top.

It was incomplete. Someone had deliberately hacked away the head. It towered over him, perhaps six and a half meters high.

It was a warrior.

With breastplate and high boots, thickly muscled arms. Two scabbards hung at its waist, one filled, the other empty. One arm was raised. That, too, had been vandalized. It ended in a severed wrist.

A cool wind fluttered the massed treetops some meters away; the night insects were calling to each other. No other sounds.

For long moments he stood staring in dumb fascination at the statue, hearing, perhaps, some dark, faraway call. He felt an unknown power seeping into his body as if from the glade itself or his proximity to the stone structures. Too, he became aware of an incipient urgency.

Then he turned slowly away, into the rustling, steamy shadows of the jungle.

He lifted his eyes for one last look.

Somewhere close, above his head, feathered wings spread and took off into the clear, calm night.

Outside, away from the overhanging foliage, the vast geometrical plain was lit below the black bowl of heaven by the full moon and the myriad dancing stars. Away to the east, far down near the horizon, the wide belt of thickly clustered stars stretched in an attenuated arc. Far, far away was fragrant Sha’angh’sei and the yellow citadel to the north, Kamado, where the Kai-feng had already commenced.

In the building on the north edge of the acropolis, Ronin closed his eyes, waiting for Moichi to return.

Angrily he stalks the corridors of a corroded, forgotten house. The way is narrow and dark so that he is continually forced to peer ahead in order to guide himself. Because of this, he has no time to look into the doorways which parade past him mockingly on either side, although this is what he wishes to do. Or perhaps not. But in any case, as he strides along, his anger grows, a deep, fierce, nonrational rage. He sees himself in a mirror then and recoils from his image, stumbling away.

He plunges onward, downward into blackness, along the corridor. There are no others. Soon the doorways end and solid walls rush by him as he begins to run, faster and faster, his boot soles echoing, echoing like drumbeats, a strange cadence to some long hidden song. This is not prudent, he thinks in the lightlessness. Chill take it! As the rage burns like a spreading fire. Out of control; a rush of doom like black, leathery wings. Faster he rushes down the narrow corridor.

Down and down all in a blur as he feels slightly vertiginous. And now he realizes that the ceiling has been lowering. Stooped and bent uncomfortably, he stumbles forward. Faster.

He trips, tumbling head over heels through the blackness. Fetched up suddenly, his arms flung over his head, his fingers gripping tightly.

He hangs, suspended in space, grasping a bar which is the nethermost lip of the corridor-tunnel-funnel, arcing downward like a spout, trying to spit him out. And down.

Hot and sweating, he holds desperately on while below him a space of incalculable depth and width. Yawning.

Great clashings and groanings issue forth from the deep. A dimly seen scaffolding somewhere below him, too far to drop, perspective dwindling it to the width of a sword tip.

Explosions, dull and booming, rising towards him, painful to the ears.

Still he peers downward, fascinated, terrified, unable to break his gaze away.

A writhing form appears, glutinous, tentacled, writhing upon a translucent ellipse. A great dark form materializes from out of the deep. Formless, it bends over the monstrous creature, encysting it within its corpus. The tentacles emerge with the thing’s great head, shivering. Two eyes burn, lidless, their pupils jagged shards of obsidian.

Then, far too rapidly for him to comprehend, the face flickers with changing features, ten thousand within each instant until a single eye is formed long enough for him to be lashed to its baleful unblinking gaze, bound and broken and helpless.

Heat like a cry. His eyeballs seared, his struggling body cooked and blackened; burning, burning. And a stench, rising …

‘I heard you cry out,’ she said, bending over him. He stared sightlessly at her great furred head, grotesque, distorted shadows racing across its pelt in the flickering, dim light of the reed torches in the corridor beyond his doorway.

Ronin rose to one elbow on his straw pallet, wiped the sweat from his face.

‘Are you ill?’

‘No. No,’ he said slowly, still far away. ‘A dream only.’ His voice sounded thick and furry.

‘A dream.’

‘Yes.’

Kin Coba knelt beside him.

He stared at the fresco on the wall in front of him. Men in plumed headdresses ran at each other across a rectangular field bordered along each long side by obliquely angled stone stands surmounting sheer walls. From each side wall, at the field’s center, at a height of perhaps five meters, protruded a carved stone ring.

‘What are they doing?’

Her head turned with a rustle.

‘The Majapan play the sacred ball game.’

The sloped stands rose on either end to form a clawing Chacmool.

‘They were originally farmers,’ she said softly. ‘The Majapan loved the land, the huge harvests of maize and beans and fruits. But always there were other tribes, fierce, powerful, decadent in their religion. Thus the Majapan were forced to become warriors.’

He watched the wan light caress her naked thigh.

‘Yet they would have no part in war. Thus the priests devised the sacred ball game and the Majapan constructed the courts, and the tribes who would war upon them were forced to pick a team of their best warriors. Nineteen men, each side was allowed, and they played the sacred ball game upon the stone courts in complex and ritualistic patterns, using flat stone paddles. The object was to get the ball through the stone ring while effectively blocking the opposing team from doing the same.