Alexander C. Irvine (36 page)

So you have
come to me at last.

I had no other choice, Archie said. The knife shifted in his grasp, sliding deeper until he could feel its point pricking into the wall of his heart. He tightened his grip, but his hands were already slick with blood.

You’ve been watching me, Archie said. I didn’t go anywhere; I brought you here.

Look around you.

Archie did, and could make no sense of what he saw. The cavern still enclosed him, the chacmool and Jane held their tableau in front of the bas-relief of Tlaloc on one wall, the fire still blazed up from the floor, but behind that scene was something else. A dark sun cast the fire’s shadow on a floor of patterned sand, throwing a blackness so intense it hurt Archie’s eyes. Behind the blackness a jungle grew from the sands, its breezes heavy with the smells of earth and decay.

Sharing space with Jane on the altar was Archie himself, naked save for a green quetzal feather cloak thrown back to expose his breast. Over him stood a woman, her colorless skin shining in the black light of the sun. She held an obsidian knife against his breast; its tip pushed ever so slightly into the hollow beneath his sternum. Looking down, Archie saw nothing, despite the growing ache in his shoulders as he struggled to hold the knife in place.

Where is this place? Where am I? he said.

Omeyocan,
the woman said, only she had become a man, his hair long and straight and blacker than the impossible light.
The Place of Duality. You are in my place, Archie Prescott, where everything is at once itself and what it is not.

At her words, the objects in the room became indistinct, fading to outlines, and stars appeared where the roof of the cavern had been.

All except Ometeotl, who stood at the center of a reality that shifted faster than Archie could blink.
See, you have come to me,
Ometeotl said, and the god’s words wrapped themselves around a shape that coalesced into a stone altar bearing Archie’s spread-eagled body.
You have offered yourself to me.

I have offered you something much larger than myself, Archie said. On the altar he could see his lips moving. You’ve been kept from the world because your worshipers died away.

I
am kept from nothing,
Ometeotl replied. Leaning over the altar, he pushed on the knife.

Archie grunted as his hands slipped another fraction. The smell of his own sweat rose into his nostrils, lingering for a moment before sharpening into the pungent odor of woodsmoke.

You will slip, Archie Prescott, and then I will have
eztli
to drink. You have a strong heart,
yolteotl,
strong nourishment.
Ometeotl smiled.

If you drink from me, you lose the chacmool. Tlaloc will have this world, and you will have only my life.

I
am Lord of Time,
Ometeotl growled.
If this new sun is born under Tlaloc, I will wait for the next.

And what if no man like me waits for you there? Archie’s arms began to go numb. Lord of Time or not, he thought, time was passing in his body, and he didn’t have much longer.

Then I will wait yet another sun.

With no one to sacrifice to you, no one to remember you. You’ll grow very hungry. Have you ever been so hungry? Only half a sun has passed, and you are already starved. You ignore your enemy of ages to toy with my one life. After I am dead, Tlaloc will eat well; will you feed on your own heart? You’ll certainly taste the smoke from Tlaloc’s fires.

Ometeotl’s anger drained all the light from the stars.
I
will taste your life.

Archie cried out as the knife slipped deeper into his chest. Fresh pain pierced him with every heartbeat, and the trickle of blood over his hands grew into a steady stream. Only the last two fingers of his left hand held the knife back from burrowing into his heart, and the smell of the rotting jungle choked off his breath.

Is my sacrifice worth so little? he cried. I offer you my life and you won’t even kill your worst enemy to save my daughter.

Is that your boon, Archie Prescott?
Ometeotl lilted, like a young woman teasing a suitor.
You would have the chacmool destroyed and your daughter saved from the knife?

Yes, Archie sobbed. In return for my life, that’s what I ask.

That has already been done,
Ometeotl said.
Did you think I would shrink from my rival? You know little for one who speaks so well, and your time for speech is past. Even at your end, you know so little of yourself.

Archie felt the knife begin to sink still deeper, working itself free from his bloody grasp. Sold my soul to the devil, he thought dully. Tricked into a bargain, and now he’s come to collect.

As
soon as
Da stabbed himself, everything changed. The fire blazed up and turned dark, spilling shadows into every crevice of the cave. At the same time, the chacmool looked up from Jane to the statue carved into the wall.

Flames scoured the statue, burning away the rings around its eyes, its feathered headdress, the skulls dangling from its hand. Another shape began to emerge, without decoration, a giant shape of a man.

The statue stood, towering above the chacmool, and the cave groaned as the wall behind the figure stretched. It stepped through the fire, and the flames leaped onto it, clinging to it and giving off that awful shadowed light as they ate through the ropy strands of molten rock attaching the statue to the wall.

“Ometeotl, Tezcatlanextia, in teyocoyani,”
the statue grated. It began to grow, splitting as it did. Flames filled the cracks like mortar.

A wave of heat washed over Jane, sucking away her breath, and the feathers of her cloak sprang into a thousand individual flames. She rolled off the altar stone, landing heavily on her side, shrieking and beating at the fire. Her lovely cloak was thrashing about her, raging in every direction away from the burning statue as each of its feathers exploded in tiny puffs of smoke.

Jane’s eyebrows singed away as the flames leaped from the feathers to the scaly clumps of scab that covered her hands.
No, I was healed,
she thought.
The chacmool healed me, and the journey …
But the scabs stayed, blackening under the flames that leaped among them and crawled under the cloak to sear the hard shell of scab covering her back.

Then her face caught fire, and through the flames in her eyes she watched as the statue caught hold of the chacmool and tore out its shriveled heart.

Do you
feel
the knife moving closer? As you move closer to me.
Ometeotl was losing shape. All Archie could see was a burning curiosity, like William Wilson’s when he’d said
Where was your soul?

The knife dug into the wall of his heart.

Archie’s vision slipped and he felt a blast of heat on his face, carrying the sharp stink of burning hair and flesh.
Jane,
he howled, and on the altar his body arched, the obsidian blade sunk nearly to the hilt in his chest.
Helen,
he thought.
I
tried.

Would you see your daughter a final time?
Ometeotl asked, and Archie did—she rolled on the cave floor, wreathed in shadowy flames. Behind her stood a burning colossus, the wall of the cave stretched and buckled behind it like a molten stone umbilicus. Flames licked at the chacmool, and Archie’s ears ached with the sizzle of rain falling into fire. His vision misted over, as if steam had filled the cave, and through the blinding fog Archie caught a momentary glimpse of Jane, standing whole and unscarred as the dark light blew about her like wind.

You see she lives,
Ometeotl said.
Few last visions are so kind.

The chacmool squalled in the statue’s grip, dangling by its throat from one burning stone hand. A blaze of burning light gouted from the statue’s mouth as it gulped down the chacmool’s heart, and as the burst of fire rose to the cavern’s ceiling, Archie saw Helen’s face.

The stone tendrils holding it to the wall snapped, and a hole appeared, opening on a tunnel that led straight to hell. Or Mictlan—he could see deserts, and mountains that clashed together, and a little red dog waiting patiently to show him the way.

Archie began stumbling toward Jane, each step jarring the blade sunk in his breast.
Jane,
he tried to shout, but the only sound he could make was a wheezing moan. Shadows grew and hid Jane from him, closing him off with the presence of the
huehueteotl.

Now you come to me. Omeyocan will be your home.
The darkness closed around Archie, and he heard Wilson say
Easy, now, easy.
The chacmool’s dying feline screams became the sound of rain falling on fire.

Oh, I’m burning
,
I’m burning, I don’t want to die this way.

Jane watched the chacmool struggle, watched its limbs curl like a dying spider’s around the crater torn in its chest. And she was dying, too, she must be. When she breathed fire came out, like fog would on a cold night.

But it didn’t hurt, and it seemed that through her right eye she could see herself being scrubbed clean of some filth, something that had been clinging to her and that she hadn’t been able to see.

The floor shook as one of the statue’s arm broke off in a burst of molten droplets. It began to fragment, the fiery cracks in its form yawning wider and brighter. Behind it she could see a hole in the wall, and in the hole the faces of the dead crowded to watch her.

“Jane,” Da said. His voice was barely a whisper, but it cut into her through the deafening roar of the statue’s collapse. He staggered toward her, both hands clasped desperately around the hilt of the knife in his chest.

I’m sorry, Da. I’m sorry for how I thought about you before, she wanted to say. I knew you’d come for me, I did.

But there wasn’t any time.

“Da, don’t touch me—you’ll burn,” she said. But she ran to him anyway, then shrank back as tongues of fire leaped from her to play about the knife and curl under his clenched jaw.

“Slipping … soon,” he gasped, but the voice came from behind Jane. She looked over her shoulder and saw him lying on the altar, his chest gouged and bleeding. The statue bent over him, bits of itself falling onto his body, the chacmool dangling like a broken doll from its remaining arm.

And in the flames rolling from the gateway to hell Jane saw her mother’s face.

She looked back and Da was still standing before her, dying even as he tried to step closer. Blood, black in the awful light streaming from the hole, soaked the entire front of his coverall and pooled about his feet.

A strange calm settled over her and she said, “No, Da. You’re not slipping. Let go and let me help you.”

He didn’t appear to hear her, but his hands dropped limply to his sides. His body jerked as the knife sank all the way in, and an anguished wail rose behind her.

Don’t look at him there,
she told herself.
He’s not there. He’s right in front of you.
But he was fading before her, being taken away to that other place where he lay on an altar with his beating heart exposed to the hungry god.

“I’ll help you, Da,” Jane said gently. She took hold of the knife in both hands and pulled it from his breast.

Omeyocan drained into
itself like a whirlpool, crushing Archie into himself again as his double was swept away with the jungle and the patterns in the sand. He felt cold stone under his feet as things took their shapes again, and gratefully he fell onto that stone.

He felt the Old God slipping away, sliding free of his mind as the knife had from his chest.
Another Sun will rise, Prescott,
a fading voice warned.
Another Sun, and I will drink from the skulls of your descendants.

Archie’s ears roared. No, the roar came from outside, from the bas-relief of Tlaloc as it crumbled outward from the wall, burying the altar and the body of the chacmool that lay draped over it. All of this he saw in a flash, then the fire was extinguished and the last of its light siphoned away by the wind of Omeyocan’s passing.

The floor shifted, then heaved as huge rocks crashed invisibly down from the shuddering ceiling.
Have to get out,
Archie thought, but he didn’t think he could stand. Each breath he drew felt as if the knife was being thrust back into his heart.

“Light, Da!” Jane shouted in his ear. “Light over here!” She hauled on him, and with her help he was barely able to stand. Now he could see the light as well, the faintest glimmer showing in the low arch that led out.

Another rockslide roared behind them, raising an invisible cloud of choking dust. Jane pulled him toward the light and he stumbled after, wincing every time a falling slab of limestone crashed around them. Larger blocks were falling now, heavy enough that Archie’s ears rang with echoes of each impact. He held blindly onto Jane’s tiny hand, marveling at its strength. She led him as she would a child, once jerking him aside as a fragment of the ceiling smashed itself to pebbles where he’d been standing the moment before, stinging him with flying shards. They crouched to enter the passage out, and Archie saw Stephen waiting for them at the bottom of Bottomless Pit.

The entire cave shuddered around them, shadows dancing crazily from Stephen’s lamp, and a blast of wind from the collapsing cavern behind them threw Archie off balance. He fell against the wall and felt it shift under his weight. A broad section tilted against him, forcing him backward as it fell slowly over to jam itself diagonally across the passage. A vast echoing groan rolled through the cave, and with it a shower of small stones.

A narrow crevice was all that remained of the exit to Bottomless Pit. Archie dropped to his hands and knees to see if they could squeeze through, and light from Stephen’s lamp caught him full in the face. He heard Stephen shouting, “The girl! Mr. Prescott, give me Jane!”

No,
Archie thought, reason choked off by panic and the thickening cloud of dust that gritted in his eyes.
It’s one last deception, one last trick.

But Jane scrambled ahead without looking at him, catching Stephen’s hand and pushing herself through with froglike kicks at the enclosing tock. Archie tried to follow her and found himself caught, his head and one arm through the crack but his progress arrested by a sharp ridge that pressed down on his other shoulder. “Stephen!” he shouted. “I can’t get through!”

For a single heart-stopping moment Stephen didn’t turn around, and memories of the tomblike blackness in the domes closed in around Archie. But no, he saw Stephen had just been hoisting Jane to safety on the same fallen chunk of rock that Archie himself had paused on before entering the chacmool’s sanctuary. That done, Stephen turned and dropped to his knees in front of Archie.

“Breathe out, Mr. Prescott,” Stephen commanded. Behind him, the lamp’s dancing shadows reminded Archie of shapes he’d seen in River Styx, less than an hour before. “Breathe out and push with your legs. Your chest is too big.”

He seized Archie’s flailing arm with both hands and set his feet against rocks on either side of the slowly closing crack.

A booming rumble like a peal of thunder sounded from behind Archie, and dust blew through the tiny space between Archie’s back and the leaning slab. Small rocks and gravel were beginning to pile around his feet.

“Breathe
out,
Mr. Prescott!” Stephen said again. “If the dust can get out, you can too! Come on now, set your feet and count three. One! Two!”

Archie kicked his legs, finding no purchase on the dusty floor.

“Three!”

Stephen hauled on Archie’s arm hard enough that something popped audibly in his shoulder. Archie expelled all the air from his lungs, feeling the crack press tighter around him and scrabbling madly for a toehold to push against. He squeezed forward a bit and grunted with pain and effort as the buttons popped off his blood-soaked coverall. His flayed chest scraped agonizingly on the rock.

“Da,
please!”
Jane cried. Another tremor shook the cave and the slab pinning him shifted the tiniest bit. Stephen hauled again, lifting himself off the ground and moving Archie another inch forward, and then Archie’s shoulder scraped through.

Stephen fell backward, losing his grip on Archie’s wrist and striking his head on a spur of rock between Jane’s feet. Jane leaped down and took his place, helping Archie wriggle forward until his other arm worked free and he pulled himself out of the tiny crack.

The cave continued to shift and heave, loosing cascades of rock and gravel from the walls and the dome over Bottomless Pit, out of sight far above. A single oblong boulder larger than a man’s head bounded down the breakdown pile and hit the wall over their heads. Stephen scrambled to his feet and caught hold of his lamp, then led the way up the breakdown. Archie pushed Jane ahead of him, staying close behind her to lift her over ledges she couldn’t easily scale herself.

Climbing the breakdown was like trying to dance in an earthquake, keeping time to each surge of the angry earth. The number of falling rocks increased, each one flashing suddenly through the hazy sphere of lamplight and booming away into the darkness below. What if the branch above had collapsed? The walls of the pit rose sheer from the top of the breakdown another hundred feet or more. If they couldn’t duck into the shelter of the branch passage, falling rocks would crush them sooner or later.

But the branch was there, and they ducked into it gratefully. Archie kept one hand on Jane almost continually as they crawled and squeezed their way back to River Hall, listening to the roar and rumble of the cave-in fade behind them. By the time they were able to stand, on the gentle slope above the Dead Sea, the cave was quiet. Archie looked at Stephen, rimed with gray dust, and wondered what to say. Something unresolved hung between them.

Jane broke the moment by stepping close to Archie and slowly, hesitantly, putting her arms around him. “I knew you’d come, Da,” she murmured into his chest.

Archie tried to answer her, and couldn’t. He stroked her dusty hair instead, feeling awkward and out of practice. A father again, he thought. It was going to take some getting used to.

As was being alive. Archie’s body still held the memory of the knife cleaving his heart, and even though he knew where he was, who he was with, nerve and muscle let go their belief in death only reluctantly. He worked a hand inside his torn coverall and found, next to the patch of missing skin from the talisman, a knobby scar about an inch under his left nipple. Omeyocan, he thought: I was and was not there, was and was not pierced, was and was not dead. The smell of his daughter filled his lungs, and he exhaled, finding that he could speak again. “As soon as I could, Jane. Soon as I could.”

She held him tighter, her arms trembling with exhaustion. He could see smooth skin in the meandering part of her hair, and her ear was whole again—more than his would ever be. The pressure of her face stung his raw chest, and his hands gave off jagged waves of pain each time he touched her, and he thought he would never again feel quite so much at peace.

After a long while, Stephen gave an embarrassed cough. “Reckon the pit isn’t quite so bottomless anymore,” he said. “Hope that trace still goes.”

He unscrewed the cap from his flask and offered it to Archie. “No, thanks,” Archie said.

“Bottoms up, then,” Stephen said, and drained the flask. “Come on,” he said. “If Dr. Croghan catches us coming out, we gonna have some fancy explaining to do.”

No one so strong, no one

so lovely

in all the things of this world

As the eagle

ready for flight

& the jaguar

whose heart

is a mountain

See how they carry

my shield now