Xibalba

CHAPTER 28

Isabella Beltran glowered at Carina. “You killed my uncle. What makes you think I would ever help you?”

The red-haired woman stared back implacably for several seconds. “I regret what happened to Hector, but he betrayed our gods. You must realize this.”

“You’re one to talk about betrayal.”

Carina ignored the accusation. “Hector failed his most sacred duty to usher in the new age. But it’s not too late to correct his mistake.”

“The Shadow?” Despite everything Hector had taught her about the Shadow and the role of the Serpent Brotherhood in keeping it a secret, she had always wondered if any of it was really true. Now she knew the terrible truth. “You actually want to start a pandemic?”

“Such was always the will of the gods. At the end of every age, they have swept away the failures and started anew.”

Isabella looked past the other woman, studying the other faces in the chamber. She didn’t recognize the gringos, but she knew the others — acolytes of the Brotherhood, just like Carina.

Traitors.

“Don’t tell me you agree with her? Did Hector teach you nothing? Our traditions are there to anchor us to our ancestors. They were never meant to be taken literally.”

None of the warriors would meet her gaze, but the gringo who had recognized her spoke up. “Miss Beltran, I can see why you might not want to see the world cleansed. You are criminal. A drug dealer. Your wealth and power were built on a foundation of undesirable people and anti-social cravings. But surely you must see that it’s not sustainable in the long term. There are just too many of them.”

“Them? You mean human beings?”

“Oh, please. They’re miserable cockroaches. That’s why they turn to your drugs. They know they’re miserable.”

Isabella stared at him for a moment. “Who the hell are you?”

“Call me Alex.”

She remembered that one of the gunmen had earlier called out another name. “Alex Scano. I’ve heard of you. How dare you call me a drug dealer? You’ve made more money selling pills to those ‘miserable cockroaches’ than I could dream of.”

“Ah, but the difference is that I’m ready to stomp them out. You’d rather keep them as pets. They’re parasites, Miss Beltran. An infestation that needs to be wiped out.”

“If you really feel that way,” Isabella said, holding his gaze, “then what are you waiting for? You have the Shadow already, don’t you? I know you found el Guia in Honduras.” She paused, setting the hook. “But you’re afraid to die like a cockroach, aren’t you? You’re here because you think you can find a cure to keep you safe.”

Alex turned to Carina. “This is a waste of time. Let’s just blow the wall.”

“Wait!” Isabella cried out. Although it had perhaps not been Scano’s intention, that was the one attack against which she had no defenses. “You don’t need to do that. There’s a way into the Houses of Xibalba.”

“And you will show us?” Carina said, her voice edged with suspicion. “Why the change of heart?”

“You said it yourself. Hector made me his heir. I am the high priestess of the Serpent Brotherhood, not you. I cannot let you destroy this sacred place. If you truly honored our traditions, you would feel the same way.”

Carina’s only answer was to gesture toward the still hot cooking stone. “Do it.”

Isabella shook loose of the grip of her captors, but instead of approaching the passage, she went to the stone figures at the periphery of the chamber. She chose one, placed her hands against it and spoke in the ancient tongue. “Morning, Hun-Came.”

She then moved to the statue beside it, and greeted it as well. “Morning, Vucub-Came.”

“Of course,” Carina whispered. “The test of recognition. I should have seen it.”

Isabella looked over her shoulder at the other woman. “Yes, you should have.”

Although she had never been in the chamber, Isabella knew this was the correct solution. Hector had told her this story when she was just a little girl, the story of how the Hero Twins sent Mosquito to bite the Death Lords in their Council chamber. The first two were revealed to be effigies of carved wood, but the third one cried out when bitten, which caused the fourth one to ask his brother what was wrong, not only identifying them as the real Death Lords, but naming his brother as well. In this fashion, Mosquito had learned the names of the Death Lords and reported back to the Twins, which allowed them to bypass the test.

Allowing the intruders free passage into the Houses of Xibalba might have seemed almost as sacrilegious as letting them blast their way in, but she knew that this was the simplest trial they would face.

The Lords of Xibalba might not have been real, but they were by no means defenseless.

“It worked!” Miranda called out. “You were right!”

Maddock let out the breath he had been holding with a relieved sigh, and climbed into the fissure. As Miranda had indicated, the way down was much easier than some of their earlier descents, with a veritable ladder of holds turning into an actual staircase down to the cavern where Miranda was waiting.

The beam of his light was reflected back in hundreds on glittering pinpoints, like sunlight dancing on a wind-rippled sea, only this sea was made entirely of glossy black obsidian shards, each one as long as Maddock’s arm from elbow to fingertip.

An area of a several square feet around Miranda was clear, revealing a flat floor perforated by hundreds of little holes, from which gleamed more shiny black points. It was all eerily reminiscent of the river of scorpions. Scattered amidst the thin razors of volcanic glass were no less than three human skeletons. There was a clear section about ten yards long off to the left, like the start of a path, but Miranda wisely had not started down it yet.

“As soon as I put my foot on the blades, they dropped into the floor. That way looks clear. But look at that.”

She indicated the wall about fifty yards beyond the clear path. The chamber was not a natural cavern, but more closely resembled the interior of the pyramid in the City of Shadow, with walls of stacked stone. There were rectangular doorways in each wall — Maddock counted ten in all, including the one through which they had entered — but that was not what Miranda was pointing to. One section of the wall was reflecting their lights back with a warm golden hue which Maddock instantly recognized.

“That’s another guidestone.”

“But are we supposed to walk toward it, or in the direction it’s looking?”

The latter choice would mean intentionally stepping onto more of the obsidian blades, but there was no guarantee that the cleared section would stay that way.

“Whatever we do, we should stay together,” Maddock said. He ducked back into the stairwell. “Come on down. It’s safe.”

“Ha!” Bones’ disbelieving laughter echoed down at him. “Sure it is.”

Nevertheless, in a matter of just a few minutes, they were all gathered on the floor of the Blade House. Bell studied the alignment of the guidestone on the wall for a few seconds before giving his opinion. “It’s just a guess, but if this is a test of courage as you suggest, then taking the easy way is probably not the right answer.”

“That’s my feeling as well,” Maddock said. He turned to Miranda. “Is it my turn again?”

She scowled at him, and then answered with action rather than words, raising her foot above the obsidian blades.

As soon as she transferred her weight onto that foot, there was another loud click, and another section of blades, about five yards long, retreated into the floor. Simultaneously, the blades in the cleared section they had not chosen, shot out of the floor. There was one other change, which Angel noticed first. “The guidestone is gone.”

Maddock turned his head to look and saw that the golden plate had indeed disappeared, but even as he was processing this news, Bones called out. “Found it. Right there.”

The guidestone — or more likely a second one exactly like the first — now shone out from a different wall, almost perpendicular to the newly cleared section.

“There’s our answer,” Maddock said. “Go where the guide dog is looking.”

“Unless it’s some kind of trick,” Bones said. “What if they change the rules halfway through the game?”

“The Death Lords were cruel,” Bell said, “but not particularly devious. The tests described in the Popol Vuh were rather simplistic. Of course,” he finished, “Anything is possible.”

“Way to inspire confidence, doc,” Bones grumbled, but he pushed past Maddock and Miranda, oriented himself away from the newly revealed guidestone, and stepped out onto the blades….

Which promptly vanished, along with the golden plate that had shown the way.

They proceeded cautiously, following the gaze of each new guidestone as it was revealed. As they moved through the maze of blades, the temperature dropped noticeably until it was chilly enough to raise gooseflesh on their arms. The frigid air was issuing from one of the doors, which not surprisingly, was exactly where the guidestones seemed to be leading them.

“This must be Shivering House,” Bell said as they reached the doorway. His speech was abrupt, clipped, as if he was having trouble breathing again. “Also called Cold House.”

“You think?” Bones said, grimacing. “Feels like being in a meat locker.”

“What did you expect from something called ‘Cold House’?” Miranda said.

“I figured it would just be chilly and damp. You know, like a cave.”

“As much as I hate to admit it,” Angel began, “my brother’s got a point. That’s not a natural cave-y cold in there. If feels like… well, a meat locker.”

Maddock sniffed the air. He earlier noticed a faint chemical odor, like cleaning fluid. It was stronger now; strong enough that even a mere whiff of it made him cringe. “That smell. Ammonia. It’s a natural refrigerant.”

“Natural?” Angel sniffed and then winced. “You’re kidding, right?”

“It’s true,” Miranda said. “Ammonia is a naturally occurring organic nitrogen-hydrogen compound. It was a very low boiling point, several degrees below zero, but at certain pressures it stays in a liquid state, acting as a very efficient refrigerant.”

“You’re a chemistry expert now?” Bones remarked.

“I know a lot about explosives,” she replied, for once without a trace of sarcasm in her voice. “Especially ammonium nitrate, which is made from, among other things, guano. Like you find in caves sometimes. But figuring out how to use it to chill the air… ” She shook her head. “We didn’t figure that out until the 19^th century.”

“You were saying something about ancient technology?” Bones said. “I keep hearing about how advanced the Maya were. They could have come up with something like this. Especially if they had some help from—”

“Don’t say it,” Angel pleaded. She hugged her arms to her chest. “There’s a Hot House, too, right? Sooner we get through this, the sooner we can warm up. Let’s save the wild speculation for later, okay?”

“Sounds good to me,” Maddock said. He turned to Bell. “Any helpful hints from the Popol Vuh?”

“The Cold House is described as a place of unimaginable cold, with rattling hail. As far as how to survive it goes, I’m afraid all it says is that the Twins dissipated the cold. It doesn’t say how.”

Maddock took a cautious step through the doorway and onto a ledge about four feet wide that ran parallel to the wall behind him. Directly ahead, the floor fell away at a forty-five-degree angle, sloping down into a hazy fog that completely shrouded the lower reaches of the cavern. The ceiling overhead was thick with a forest of dangling protrusions — icicles of frozen water that had formed atop mineral stalactites. The ledge, like the stalactites, was covered in a thin layer of ice.

“Well, I don’t know about hail,” Maddock said as the others filed in behind him, “but it’s definitely going to be cold. There’s nowhere to go but down, into that.”

He pointed down the slope and immediately felt his foot start to slide. He threw his hands out, flailing to arrest his fall. Bones’ caught him before he could hit the icy floor or pitch headlong down the slope, but not quite soon enough to preserve his dignity.

“Slippery,” was all he could think to say.

Angel edged close to the precipice and shone her light down, sweeping it back and forth across the slope. She trained the beam on one spot about ten yards to their right and few feet down. “That looks like a paw print. Maybe that’s the direction we should go.”

“Once we start down that slope, there’s no stopping,” Bones said. “How are we supposed to get down there without getting ourselves killed?”

Maddock straightened. “I’d say, very carefully.”