Xibalba

CHAPTER 9

While assisting Charles Bell at the cenote — and saving his life — technically satisfied the terms of the favor they owed to Tam Broderick, there was never a question in Maddock’s mind about parting company with the archaeologist and his daughter. Not while they remained in danger, and certainly not while the actual significance of the discovery in the cenote was still a mystery.

After leaving the cenote, they headed back to Tulum, but remained there just long enough to drop off their rental cars and pick up a new ride, a Chevrolet Tahoe with plenty of room for the five of them and all their gear. Then, they got back on the highway and headed south, away from the resorts on the coast where, or so Maddock hoped, Bell’s as yet unidentified enemies would be looking for him. They booked a single room at a budget motel and, after checking to make sure that no one was observing them, headed inside where Bell immediately brought out the golden disk and Miranda brought out her mobile phone.

“No bars,” she grumbled.

“Can’t call your boyfriend?” Bones said, trying — and failing — to sound casual about his inquiry.

Miranda shot him one of her trademark withering glances, and turned her back on him.

“Smooth,” Angel said, shaking her head.

Maddock took a seat at the table across from Bell. “So, tell me about the City of Shadow, and why that thing is so important.”

Bell didn’t look up but continued to study the disk, moving his fingers over the glyphs engraved on its surface like a blind man reading braille. “Like most other ancient cultures, the Maya believed in an afterlife in the underworld, which they called Xibalba.”

“I’m familiar with it. It was their version of hell.”

Bell inclined his head. “There are similarities, and not just with the Biblical hell, but other ancient traditions. Egyptian, Greek, Hindu — all of them describe a place where the dead experienced horrifying torments. Xibalba means ‘place of fear.’ The best description of it is found in the Popol Vuh—”

“Pope of who?” Bones interjected.

Maddock shot him an irritated look, as did Miranda and Angel. Bones was always irreverent, but he seemed to be trying harder than usual, probably in a misguided effort to impress Miranda.

Bell took advantage of the interruption and went into full professor mode. “Popol Vuh translates to ‘The Book of the People.’ It’s a collection of mytho-historical narratives of the Kiche Maya people of Western Guatemala. Oral histories, recorded and translated by an eighteenth century Dominican friar named Francisco Ximénez. Most of what we know about the beliefs and traditions of the Maya people, we owe to him and the Popol Vuh.”

Bell paused several times as he spoke, taking rapid shallow breaths, as if simply talking was an ordeal. Maddock had noticed him wheezing and panting during the earlier hike from the cenote and suspected the man had a serious underlying health issue, but unless it put them all at risk, it was not his place to ask.

“That said, we know that Ximenez’s own beliefs and the rules imposed by the Church clearly influenced his scholarly work. He said as much in the preamble. I suspect he may have emphasized the similarities between the Maya creation myth and the Genesis account.

“The book begins with the story of how the gods created men and animals. The first versions of humanity were flawed and the gods destroyed them with a flood of resin.”

“Sounds familiar,” Bones said, then caught himself. “Wait, what? Resin?”

Bell went on without missing a beat. “The account then turns to the exploits of Xbalanque and Hunahpu, the so-called ‘Hero Twins.’ They were the sons of Hun Hunahpu, a god-figure who was defeated and sacrificed by the Lords of Xibalba in the Underworld. The twins were brought to the surface world by their mother. When they grew up, they were summoned to the Underworld by the Lords of Xibalba to play the ball game.” He paused. “Are you familiar with the Mesoamerican ball game?”

Maddock nodded. “Sort of like a cross between basketball and soccer. Knock a ball through the hoop without using your hands or feet.”

“And the losing team would get sacrificed to the gods,” Bones added.

“Or sometimes the winning team,” Bell said. “It was considered the highest honor. Every pre-Columbian culture had some version of it, and it’s an important part of the myth. The twins travel to Xibalba, surviving various trials and murder attempts by the Lords of Death along the way, to ultimately defeat the Xibalbans and get their revenge.”

Maddock nodded again. “Okay, that’s the story. What’s it got to do with that?” He pointed at the disk.

“The Popol Vuh is the primary source of information about Maya traditions, but it’s not the only one. There are temple carvings and references in the three surviving codices — actual written accounts from before the arrival of the Spaniards. The one thing all the stories — written and oral — agree on is that Xibalba is a real place.

“Understand that even the most elaborate myths may contain seeds of truth. For all its fanciful aspects, the myth of the Hero Twins is basically describing a power struggle between rival societies — one that worships the Lords of Death, and one that worships the Sun and Moon. Strip away gods and magic, and the Popol Vuh is the story of Post-Classical Maya culture rising from the ashes of a great collapse.

“The Maya civilization existed, in one form or another, for three and a half millennia, so as you can imagine, their society underwent some dramatic evolution, and unfortunately, our knowledge is woefully incomplete. We know that the civilization reached its peak during the Classical period, from 250 BCE to 900 CE, but then abruptly collapsed, particularly in the south where entire cities were abandoned.

“You’ve probably heard people say that the Maya civilization vanished without a trace, or something to that effect. That’s an exaggeration of course, but something unusual happened in the tenth century that undid a thousand years of progress. The Maya certainly didn’t disappear though. Over the next five hundred years or so, they regrouped, particularly here in the Yucatan, and while they never regained the full glory of the classical days, they were doing quite well right up until the Spaniards came knocking.

“The Popol Vuh is generally thought to be a symbolic account of how one of those Post-Classical Maya cultures — the Kiche Maya — defeated rival societies, whom they subsequently vilified as demons. If that’s true, the so-called Lords of Xibalba may have been the all-too-human rulers and priests of a rival society.”

“But you think there’s more to it than that,” Maddock finished.

“I do. And this… ” He patted the disk. “This is going to help me prove it.”

“How?”

“This artifact is from the Classic Maya period. The Maya people comprised many different language groups. The dominant language was a form of Ch’olti — we call it Classic Maya. It was probably used throughout the Maya territory as a lingua franca, or possibly just by the educated class. We know a great deal about spoken Maya languages because of the work of Spanish scholars who recorded a phonetic alphabet, and because many of those languages are still spoken today, but the study of Maya written language is more problematic because there are only a few surviving examples, and not all of them are in the same language.”

“Sort of like how English and Spanish use the same alphabet?” Maddock said.

“Exactly. But thanks to some recent discoveries, we’re making progress. And because this disk uses a Classic Maya form of written language, we know that it predates the rise of the Kiche Maya possibly by hundreds of years. It confirms that some aspects of the Hero Twins myth were known before the collapse.”

Bell tapped the figure in the center of the artifact. “This is a representation of the Maya Lightning-Dog. We don’t know the names of deities from the Classic period, but the iconography is ubiquitous across Mesoamerica. The Aztecs called him Xlotl. He was the god of lightning and storms, but is also associated with the cardinal directions. A guiding deity, and the escort for the souls of the dead, showing them the way to Mictlan, the Place of Shadows. In the Popol Vuh, the twins sacrifice a dog belonging to the Lords of Xibalba—”

“They killed a dog?” Bones interjected. “Not cool. You never kill the dog.”

“Didn’t the Cherokee eat dogs?” Maddock said, grinning.

Bones glared at him.

Bell smiled. “They brought it back to life to show their power over death itself, an action that ultimately enabled them to defeat the Lords of Xibalba. But I believe that myth, like all the others, is a symbolic description of real events. A real journey to Xibalba.

“The prominence of the dog icon tells me this disk is a map. A guidestone, pointing the way to what I call the City of Shadow.”

“If it’s not meant to be the literal afterlife,” Maddock pressed, “then what is it?”

“Perhaps it refers to a rival civilization, unknown to history, which caused the collapse. We’ll know for certain when we find it.” Bell shrugged. “I can only translate part of it here; the rest is fairly complex. But I’m certain that we’re on the right track.”

“It still seems like a bit of a leap,” Maddock said.

“I say we go for it,” Bones said. “We've followed fainter trails than this.”

“True enough.” Maddock said. “I can see why treasure hunters and tomb raiders might want to find this place, but why is Tam Broderick interested?”

Bell spread his hands in a gesture of ignorance. “You would have to ask her. I can only surmise that she is privy to some piece of vital classified information.”

Maddock knew from experience that Tam would play her cards close to the vest, revealing only enough to get them started. She probably had what she thought were good reasons for secrecy, but it was aggravating nonetheless.

He nodded. “I guess we’ll have to figure it out once we find the City of Shadow.”

“Yes,” Bell agreed. “Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to finish deciphering the guidestone without some help.”

“We need to go somewhere civilized,” Miranda said. “Somewhere with cell reception and Internet.”

Bell shook his head. “The kind of help we need isn’t available online. There's only one person who can help us. Tony Griego at the National Institute of Anthropology and History. He’s the definitive authority on translating Mayan glyphs and the site administrator at Chichén Itzá. It’s just a couple hour’s drive from here.”

“Tomorrow,” Maddock said. “Right now, we could all use some rest.”

Bell conceded with a shrug and resumed inspecting the artifact, but Maddock suspected the older man was grateful for the respite.

He turned to Bones. “Flip you for first watch.”

Bones dug out a peso coin and balanced it on his thumb. “Call it.”

Angel cleared her throat. “Unless that’s a three-sided coin, you’re going to need to come up with a better system.”

“Four-sided,” Miranda added, stepping forward.

Maddock grimaced but tried to play it off. He turned to Angel. “Well, I was hoping you’d keep me company for my watch.”

Bones grinned at Miranda. “Tag team it? You know… wrestling?”

“You can keep dreaming,” she replied, caustically. “And you,” she pointed at Maddock, “should know better. Angel and I don’t need supervision.”

Maddock threw up his hands. “My bad. Everybody gets a shift. Do you want to make the schedule, or will you at least trust me to do that?”

Miranda shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”

Bones chuckled, then threw himself down on one of the beds. “Just wake me up when it’s my turn.” He laced his hands behind his head and immediately began snoring.

Maddock nodded to Miranda. “You want first watch? Your dad might appreciate the help translating that disk.”

Miranda nodded. “Sure. But I won’t be much use to him. He’s the expert. I just do the heavy lifting.”

The admission caught Maddock by surprise. “I thought you were… ”

“An archaeologist?” She shook her head. “Not me.”

“It’s not too late,” Bell called out. He laughed, but broke off in a fit of wheezing.

Miranda gave a tight sad smile. “He should be home,” she said in a low voice. “Teaching classes. Not out here in the middle of nowhere looking for lost cities. But try telling him that.”

“Why isn’t he?” asked Angel.

“Remember a couple years back how the world was supposed to end?”

“2012. The Maya apocalypse.”

“Yeah. Didn’t happen, right? Well, a couple years before that, Dad co-wrote a book with this New Age guru all about how the end of the Maya calendar wasn’t going to be the literal end of the world, but the beginning of… well, a new age. The other guy made all the wacky claims. Dad was just supplying the scholarly stuff. The book deal was supposed to pay for his retirement. It sold pretty well for a couple months, right up until January 2013, then… pffft.”

She made a little explosion with her fingers. “He tried to go back to teaching, but the university revoked his tenure. They called the book an embarrassment. Didn’t want anything to do with him. And then, because it never rains, but it pours, he started having trouble breathing. COPD.” She shook her head. “Can you believe that? He’s not even a smoker. They say it was probably from years of breathing dust in the field. He’s early stage III, so it could be worse. The meds help and he doesn’t need to carry around an oxygen bottle yet, but he can’t dig and dive like he used to.”

“So why is he out here?” Angel asked. “Is it just about the money?”

Maddock was glad that Angel was there to ask the question. Miranda would probably have taken offense if he had asked it, but she seemed a lot more receptive to Angel.

“Not really. There are other ways to make money. I think what he really wants is a shot at redemption. Finding Ciudad de Sombre will be his legacy, but he can’t do it alone. That’s why I decided to take a leave of absence from my job and come help him.”

“What do you do?”

Now Miranda hesitated, frowning, her gaze flickering from Angel to Maddock. “Well, the answer I’m supposed to give you is that I do consulting work for an international tech development company.”

“You’re a spook,” Maddock said. “CIA?”

Miranda’s mouth twitched a little, but she offered neither confirmation nor denial.

“Well that explains why you’re so badass,” he said, hoping she took it as a compliment. It explained a lot more, like maybe why Tam Broderick — a senior operations officer with the Agency — had taken an interest in Bell’s activity.

Miranda now grinned, her gaze returning to Angel. “It’s just a job. I was always badass.”

Angel’s laughter was loud enough to prompt Bones to growl. “Stop yipping, you freaking coyote. People trying to sleep here.”

“I guess you really don’t need our help,” Maddock admitted.

Miranda surprised him with a genuine smile. “No, it’s cool. I’m glad you guys are here.”