The Seventh Stone (8 page)

Contreras clenched his hands into fists. “You fool. You can only see today,” he said. “But I know the future. This will not end here. This world is young and my destiny will be fulfilled. It is a matter of time. If not me, then my heirs will rule the world and bring all to God’s light.”

Salvatierra found renewed strength in having removed the first stones. His plan crystallized in his mind.
He pried out the Tear of the Moon Emerald, stowing it in his pack. He pried away at the gold settings and removed the second row of stones, the Turquoise, sapphire and diamond. He did not dare succumb to the seduction of admiring the stones, but went directly to work on the third row.

Contreras grabbed an abandoned halberd from his headless soldier. Elias raised his weapon. Salvatierra held up his hand to stop the boy. With a deafening blast, Elias fired a warning shot above Contreras’s head, carving a hollow into the stone ceiling. The earth trembled. A mighty quaking began, as if God in fury was shaking His globe in His almighty hands. Small rocks tumbled from the rough hewn walls. Granite boulders crashed from above. The men shot out of the treasure chamber hallway, heaving burlap sacks heavy with gold and silver. Captain Diaz, almost as an afterthought, grabbed hold of Contreras and dragged him from the chamber into the tunnel towards the clearing.

With unequalled desperation, Salvatierra struggled to pry out the last stone, the flame-colored jacinth. He had removed seven of the twelve stones, the vision he had seen in his dream. Elias crouched by him. “We must go, Father,” he begged. Rocks pounded down around them. One smashed upon Salvatierra’s shoulder, crushing it. “Leave the Breastplate here. It will be buried, lost again to the ages.” Even in his dizzying pain, and holding his quickening breath against the stench, Salvatierra forced down his bile and clawed through the pile of heads, their skin slippery with blood. He shoved the Breastplate deep within them, and buried it beneath the faces of those men who would wield its power only to be struck down by it.

He fled for the tunnel, Elias on his heels. The savages wailed and chanted as Salvatierra dashed across the clearing into the edges of the forest, leaving the shaman at the mouth of the tunnel. Behind him on the horizon, the volcano roared, spewing smoke and thunder like a furious demon.

“
Go ahead of me, Padre,” Elias yelled over the din. “I will protect you.”

“
You will indeed be a guardian, along with our Circle of Seven,” Salvatierra called back. The energy emitted to his very soul by the stones in his satchel terrified and emboldened him. “We will carry these seven stones to the far corners of God’s Earth, and never shall they be together. The power of the Breastplate in the hands of evil will pitch mankind into hell, and no one will be able to save us.”

CHAPTER
10

Christa flicked off her headlamp. Her eyes adjusted. The full moon cast an eerie glow over the ancient cliff dwelling homes outside the chamber. It seeped through the open doorway, bringing with it the musky, primeval odor of the predators pacing just outside the open doorway. The padded thuds of paws crunched the gravel. Dark shapes crossed in front of the entrance, glimpses of sinewy muscle, rangy black fur, red, soulless eyes, a gray tongue licking jagged teeth. She swiped the sweat from her hands across her khaki shorts and snatched up the Mayan knife.

Joseph shifted behind her. For a man who didn’t make a sound walking, he was creating a downright ruckus. As if that made a difference. The wolves, beasts, whatever they were, knew they had trapped their human prey in the chamber.

“
The Skinwalkers will not cross the threshold into this human habitation,” Joseph said.

“
Except this place hasn’t seen a human in five hundred years.” Her heart hammered like a klaxon calling the beasts to dinner. “Until us.”

“
Turn away from the beasts. Just because you face what frightens you doesn’t mean you can stop it.”

“
At least I’ll see it coming. I’d like a little warning so I can see my life flashing before my eyes before my throat is torn out of my neck,” she said.

“
Then you’ll want to see this first.”

Reluctantly, she took her eyes off the open doorway. Joseph directed his headlamp beam into the niche that the Pakal stone had hidden.

She drew in closer. “It can’t be,” she said.

“
What is it?” Joseph asked.

“
An armillary sphere.” Saying it out loud did not make it feel more real. “It’s a model, of the heavens. European. Sixteenth century.”

“
Like the man who brought it here.” Joseph shifted in closer.

It was an armillary sphere, all right, its brass armature reflecting the headlamp beams through a silky weave of ancient cobwebs. “About six inches in diameter, twelve inches high, including the base,” she said. “Looks authentic.”

“
Take it out. Hurry.”

She reached in, swiped away the sticky cobwebs. “Could be another booby trap.”

“
Risk it.”

She grabbed the metal rings of the sphere. “Damn it,” she said, jerking her fingers away. “It’s tingling.” This was crazy. The nearest electricity was miles away. She grasped it again, tighter, and lifted it. “Heavier than it looks.” She reached in her other hand, cradled the pedestal base and drew the sphere out of the niche.

She blew off the fine covering of dust and swiped away the more stubborn cobwebs. The armillary sphere was shaped like a globe that an old-fashioned elementary school teacher might have in her class room, but the globe was only skeletal, formed with sequentially larger, interlocking brass rings, orbiting a small metal orb. A wide band circled the orb’s “equator.” An ornamental finial topped the “north pole.” The south pole of the rings perched on the tip of the center pole of a brass tripod, its three legs gracefully arched. Each leg was bolted to the corners of a black, six-sided marble base. Each of the base’s bottom six corners had a miniature golden clawed foot.

Joseph focused his beam on it. “Have you seen these spheres before?”

“
Only in museum display cases and Renaissance portraits, usually clamped in the hands of some notable scientist. The armillary sphere symbolized the epitome of wisdom and knowledge.” She squinted to make out the numbers and symbols engraved on the rings. “I’d date it to the last half of the sixteenth century, post Copernicus. You see here.” She pointed to the small solid orb at the core of the sphere, in the center of the concentric rings. “This is the sun. Before Copernicus, astronomers considered the Earth the center of the universe.”

“
Was it used for navigation?”

“
More as a model for teaching.” She traced her fingertip around the cool brass rings which formed the skeleton of the sphere. “This ring represents the planets, this one the constellations of the Zodiac.” Her touch released the tangy aroma of metal. “Turning the rings shows the relationships between the movements of celestial bodies. The European telescope hadn’t been invented yet. Before they could see that some stars were actually planets, they studied, and thought.” This was real. She felt it. She could see the rub marks made by the Spaniard’s fingers, so many centuries ago, caressing this one object that connected him to home. “This is it, Joseph, the container for the Yikaisidahi Turquoise.”

“
It does not hold the Yikaisidahi,” he said. “The Yikaisidahi remains hidden.”

“
But you told me Yikaisidahi is the name of a Navajo constellation, It Waits for Dawn,” she said. “The armillary sphere is a model of the heavens. And it’s been buried here for five hundred years. You said yourself that the Spaniard must have brought it here.”

He gestured for her to hand the sphere to him. He turned it, scrutinized it from different angles. “The base looks like it was carved from one piece of stone,” he said. “It is heavy. It feels solid.”

She cringed as he tested the strength of the tripod, tugging at the lip of the pedestal. “A 16
^th
century armillary sphere in mint condition is worth a fortune,” she said, “but if one of those rings gets dinged, you can knock a couple zeroes off that price.”

“
Its fortune lays only in its value as a clue to the location of the Yikaisidahi,” said Joseph. “That is why the Spaniard left it here, for whoever unlocked the secret of the Pakal to find the Turquoise. But why an armillary sphere?”

“
His native tongue was Old Spanish,” she said. “He no doubt became fluent in the language of the Anasazi cult who lived here. But he needed something that transcended language, and time. He needed to use the timeless, international language of science.”

“
Or of faith in the heavens,” he said. He handed the sphere to her. “We need to get this to your father.”

“
We’re so close,” she said, “to finding the Turquoise. This sphere must hold the clue to its location. This may be our only chance. Just give me five minutes.” She turned the elliptical ring representing the Zodiac, forcing it a bit. It was stubborn with age. “The Spaniard who hid the sphere used a Mayan symbol. Mayans were advanced astronomers. Maybe it has something to do with the alignment of stars,” she looked up, “or with the pyramid roof.”

“
Those beasts will not give us even one minute more. And the others who are chasing us will not find the Turquoise without the sphere.”

“
You go. I’m not leaving this cliff dwelling without the Turquoise.”

“
And I’m not leaving you here to die.” He grabbed the sphere and strode quickly across the chamber. “Stay behind me.” He advanced to the portal, posture low, leading with his hunting knife. “And do not look into the eyes of a Skinwalker. If you do, they can rip out your soul.”

“
I’m more worried about our throats,” Christa called after him in a loud whisper, but he was already through the open doorway.

Just outside the chamber’s entrance, Joseph nodded to her to follow. She stepped across the threshold. She crouched, scanning the plateau. Nothing. The beasts had drawn back out of sight. It was preternaturally still. But she could smell a dank, musky odor. The moon edged the rim of the plateau in silver. The top of the steep toe and hand trail and their only way down was fifty feet, but could be a lifetime, away. A snarl, menacing, guttural, to their left. She swung to face it. Then another snarl, to their right. Dark shapes skulked towards them, one on each side. A third beast loped in front of them, cutting them off from the plateau rim.

She could see them fully now. They looked more powerful than wolves, their fur rangy and black, thick around their sinewy haunches, like an unkempt lion’s mane. Their ears were pointed, their eyes red, shining with cunning, not the vacant look of a hungry predator. And, most alarming of all, each beast’s face was unique. One had a shorter nose, the other, larger, rounder eyes. The lead beast snarled, exposing his long, sharp canines. He paced, crushing the sparse scrub weeds that had managed to grow in the cracks of the plateau rim.

“
We can make it,” she said. Her voice, hardly more than a breath, reverberated through the cliff dwelling. “Go for the edge of the cliff and the toe and hand trail. I’m right behind you. Get the sphere to my father.” She’d distract the beasts, give Joseph a head start to make sure he made it safely over the edge.

“
There is another way,” Joseph said. “My grandfather told me the story of the tunnels that lead back into the mountain from the lost city of the Yikaisidahi. We will search deeper into the dwelling, find the tunnel, and move downwards, always downwards. It will bring us to the canyon floor and the river.”

Tunnels, the word alone twisted her gut. “Legend,” she asked, “or truth?” She looked behind them. They were a good fifty feet from the nearest room entrance. The beasts had waited to flank them halfway between the safety of the cliff dwelling and the plateau rim. Clever. “Could be a dead end, if you know what I mean.”

“
For my grandfather, legend was truth.” He stepped back. The beast to their left loped around behind them, cutting them off from the rooms. It clawed hungrily at the loose gravel.

She quickly scanned for a way up from the cliff dwelling to the top of the plateau. Not a chance. It was an overhang, worse than vertical. “Just how many tons of rock are pressing down on these ancient tunnels?” she asked.

Joseph dropped to one knee. “Give me your pack,” he said. She slipped it off her shoulder and handed it to him. “The Skinwalkers are after the armillary sphere,” he said. He stuffed the sphere into her pack.

“
Those beasts are after dinner. I say we go for the plateau rim.” Anything but those tunnels. “You first.”

“
You must take it, back in the tunnels, to safety, to your father. Tell him. The Abraxas is with the Black Magic Woman, in San Francisco. He will know what to do.”

“
Abraxas? Black Magic Woman? No, don’t even explain that.” It wasn’t what Joseph said, but how he said it, like he wasn’t ever going to get the chance to tell her father that crazy message himself. “We are getting out of this,” she said, “together.”

He pulled the jeep keys from his jeans pocket, dropped them into her pack and shoved the pack at her. He pivoted and ran for the plateau rim. The dwelling exploded in sharp, staccato barks. The beasts rocketed out of the darkness. Powerful front quarters propelled them forward, their claws spitting out gravel behind.