The Codex

64

Borabay led the way through the forest, and his three brothers followed, moving in single file. Their way was lit by that strange phosphorescence Tom had seen earlier; every rotting stump and log was etched in faint green light, shimmering like ghosts in the forest. It no longer looked beautiful — only menacing.

After twenty minutes a broken stone wall loomed ahead. Borabay stopped and crouched down, and suddenly there was a flare of light and he stood up holding a burning bundle of reeds. The wall leapt into view: It was made with giant limestone blocks, almost obscured by a heavy mat of vines. Tom glimpsed a bas-relief — faces in profile, a row of hollow-eyed skulls, fantastical jaguars, birds with huge talons and gaping eyes.

“The city walls.”

They walked along the wall for a moment and came to a small doorway with vines hanging down across it like a beaded curtain. Pushing the vines aside, they ducked through.

In the feeble light Borabay reached out, grasped Philip’s arm, and drew him toward him. “Little brother Philip, you brave.”

“No, Borabay, I’m a dreadful coward and a hindrance.”

Borabay gave him an affectionate slap on the arm. “Not true. I scared out of shit there.”

“Scared shitless.”

“Thankee.” Borabay cupped the brand and blew on it, brightening the flame. His face glowed in the light, making his green eyes golden, highlighting his Broadbent chin and finely formed lips. “We go to tombs now. We go find Father.”

They passed through the doorway into a ruined courtyard. A staircase mounted up the side. Borabay flitted across the courtyard and climbed the stairs, and the others followed. He turned right, walked along the top of the wall, cupping the brand to obscure the light, and descended a staircase on the other side. There was a sudden shriek in the trees above and a commotion, the treetops thrashing and snapping. Tom jumped.

“Monkeys,” whispered Borabay, but he paused, his face troubled. Then he shook his head and they went on, passing through a jumble of toppled columns into an inner courtyard. The courtyard was full of fallen blocks of stone, some measuring ten feet on a side, that had once formed a gigantic head. Tom could see a nose here, a staring eye there, an ear elsewhere, poking up helter-skelter from the riot of vegetation and snaking tree roots. They climbed over the blocks and passed through a doorway framed by stone jaguars into an underground passageway. The air moving through the corridor smelled cool and moldy. The brand flickered. The flame revealed they were in a tunnel of stone, the walls crusted with lime, the ceiling bristling with stalactites. Insects rustled and skittered across the damp walls seeking refuge from the light. A fat viper jerked itself into an S-coil with its head raised in striking position. It hissed, swaying slightly, its slitted eyes reflecting the orange flame. They gave the snake a wide berth and went on. Through cave-ins in the stone ceiling Tom could see a scattering of stars though the swaying treetops, lashed by wind. They went past an old stone altar littered with bones, out the far end of the tunnel, and across a platform dotted with broken statues, heads and arms and legs emerging from the tangle of vines like a crowd of monsters drowning in a sea of vines.

Suddenly they came to the edge of a vast precipice — the far side of the plateau. Beyond stretched a sea of jagged black mountain peaks, faintly backlit by starlight. Borabay paused to light a fresh brand. He tossed the spent torch over the cliff, where it flickered and disappeared into the blackness below. He led them along a trail skirting the edge, then through a cleverly hidden gap in the rock that seemed to lead over the sheer cliff. But as they came through the gap a trail appeared, chiseled into the cliff, becoming a steep staircase cut into the very rock of the mountain. It switchbacked down the cliff and ended at a terrace — a stone balcony of sorts — paved with smoothly fitted stones, made by an undercut into the cliff, which rendered it invisible from above. On one side the jagged cliffs of the White City mesa mounted up. On the other side was a sheer drop of thousands of feet into blackness. Hundreds of black doors riddled the cliffs above, with precipitous trails and staircases connecting them.

“Place of tombs,” said Borabay.

The wind shivered and gusted around them, bringing with it the sickly-sweet smell of some nightblooming flower. Here they could not hear the sounds of the jungle above them — only the rising and falling of the wind. It was an eerie, haunting place.

My God, thought Tom, to think that Father’s up in those cliffs somewhere.

Borabay led them through a dark doorway in the cliff, and they now ascended a spiral staircase cut into the rock. The cliff face was honeycombed with tombs, and the staircase passed open niches with bones inside them, a skull with a bit of hair, bony hands with rings winking on the fingers, mummified bodies rustling with insects, mice, and small snakes, disturbed by the light and retreating back into darkness. Several niches they passed contained fresh corpses, emanating a smell of decay; there the rustlings of animals and insects were even louder. They passed one corpse on which several large rats were crouched, eating.

“How many of these tombs did Father rob?” Philip asked.

“Only one,” said Borabay. “But it was richest one.”

Some of the tomb doors were smashed, as if broken into by grave robbers or shaken loose by ancient earthquakes. At one point Borabay stopped and picked something up off the ground. Silently he handed it to Tom. It was a shiny wing nut.

The staircase turned and ended on a ledge halfway up the cliff face, about ten feet wide. There was a massive stone door, the largest they had seen, which faced outward across the dark sea of mountains and the starry night sky above. Borabay held the burning brand up to the door, and they stood looking at it. All the other tomb doors had been unadorned; this one, however, had a small relief carved into its face, a Mayan glyph. Borabay paused, then took a step backward, saying something in his own language, like a prayer. Then he turned and whispered.

“Father’s tomb.”