Curse of the Ancients (8 page)

“Wait,” Sera said, “there’s another codex?”

“A very poor one. A learning experience, you might say — though that alone took us years. We call it our trial codex. I wanted it destroyed, but King Itchik insisted he keep it for reasons of nostalgia.”

She looked at Pacal, a short old man with bad teeth. There was something very familiar about him. Every time their eyes met she had a strange déjà vu feeling, not a Remnant exactly, but close.

“How’d you see Venus without a telescope?” Sera said.

“Telescope?” Pacal asked. “What is that?”

“Uh, never mind.” Sera chided herself in her head. Of course he wouldn’t know what a telescope was. “Don’t mind me. I tend to make up words when I’m tired.”

Pacal stared deep into her eyes, and Sera felt herself tumbling toward that déjà vu feeling again. Only this time she saw the face of a man from her past. A man she hadn’t thought about in years. She had been three years old, playing in the yard at her uncle’s place, when a large van pulled up. Several men got out, and the leader walked onto the property and talked to Sera’s uncle. They had a long, spirited conversation and then the man walked over to Sera; he’d smiled big and knelt down so he could stare deep into her eyes. He was an older man with long gray hair tied back into a braid and a dark leathery face — the kind you might see at the top of a totem pole.

He’d rubbed his chin, still smiling, and said, “You’re going to be special, Sera. I can see it in your eyes. But you must understand, there is always a price to pay for being special. You must have strong shoulders. Do you have strong shoulders, Sera?”

She’d nodded but didn’t say a word.

He’d stood up and said, “Good.” Then he left in the van with the other men.

When Sera’s uncle came over to her, he’d said, “You see how rude he is? He didn’t even introduce himself.”

“Who was he?” Sera had asked, looking up at her uncle.

“Your grandfather,” he’d told her.

That was exactly who Pacal reminded her of. The man who said she would be special. Her grandfather.

Sera pulled herself out of her memory and asked Pacal, “So, why is Venus such a big deal anyway?”

Pacal picked up his fine-tipped brush and began painting a ceiba tree on the last panel. “We have learned much from Venus,” he said. “This planet tells us when it’s best to plant each crop and when we need to prepare for battle.”

Sera tried to decide what she thought of basing real-life decisions on the path of a planet. It reminded her of kids at school who always wanted to know what sign of the horoscope everyone was. Sera had never understood that superstitious approach to life. She’d always been about hard science. But Pacal still seemed smart.

“And this section here describes the work we’ve done with the calendar,” Pacal said, pointing to the fifth panel. “Using the Long Count system, we’ve calculated the dates far into the future.”

Sera wished she could explain all the amazing things that happened from Pacal’s time up to the modern day. He seemed like the kind of person who would want to hear about everything. But she couldn’t go down that road. She had to keep the conversation on the calendar. “So, at any point does your codex mention a curse?”

“A curse?”

“Yeah,” Sera said. “A curse that says we’re headed toward a Cataclysm and the only people who can save us are the SQ?”

“There is no curse in our codex,” Pacal said.

Sera tried another approach. “So, what happens when you get to the last date of your calendar? Will the world come to an end?”

“Oh, no,” Pacal said, laughing now. “That will only mark the end of a cycle. A new cycle will begin immediately after. We hope it is a time of even greater learning.”

They talked about other knowledge the scribes had shared in the codex, and something slowly happened in Sera’s brain. She stopped listening quite as intently and started thinking about the error messages on the Infinity Ring again. She still had no idea what the date was. But the Maya kept track of time by another system. And it was an extremely detailed system based on decades of scientific observation and record keeping. That meant raw data, which she could cross-reference with the data stored in the Ring.

Sera slipped the Ring out of her satchel and stared at it. Pacal continued to paint the ceiba tree. At one point he looked up at the Ring and furrowed his brow, but instead of asking any questions he went back to his codex.

After a few minutes, he cleared his throat and said, “Can I offer a word of advice, Sera?”

“I’m all ears,” she answered.

“I’ve come to believe that everything is of this earth. Including you and me. The most complex human invention already existed in the soil. We do not make up new things out of thin air; we simply find already existing elements, born of this earth, and place them in new combinations. Progress is merely organization and creativity.”

Sera nodded, trying to process what she’d just heard.

Pacal put down his paintbrush and reached into his bag. He turned his back on her. “And one other thing,” he said. “Never forget the importance of laughter.” He turned back around wearing a wooden clown mask, stuck his thumbs in his ears, and wiggled his fingers. “I usually only pull this out when I want to entertain small children.”

Sera definitely wasn’t expecting this. “So, wait . . . I’m like a small child to you?”

“The best part of all of us is a child,” he said.

Sera cracked up a little. It was funny to see the village wise man goofing around with a silly mask.

A few seconds later an alarm went off in her head.

The clown reference in the riddle. Maybe they’d already found the snake charmer
and
the clown. Before Sera could fire off all her questions for Pacal, though, Itchik pushed open the temple doors and led the four visitors from Calakmul into the room, saying, “And here, my friends, is the surprise I told you about.” He pointed at the codex. “Our greatest achievement of learning.”

The four men stood there nodding and staring at the codex as Pacal pulled off his clown mask and shoved it back in his bag.

Itchik guided the visitors deeper into the temple, saying, “Pacal will describe for you all that our codex explains.”

Sera saw that one of the men was looking at the Ring in front of her. She couldn’t worry about that now, though. She was too busy reviewing all their previous coordinates. There was astronomical data there, which she cross-referenced with the codex’s detailed information on Venus and the moon. She was able to deduce a likely date: July 25, 638. Her hypothesis was confirmed when she reprogrammed the Ring settings and the error messages disappeared.

She pumped her fist and shoved the Ring back into her satchel and stood up.

Pacal was now leading the four visitors through each panel. A second group of people shuffled into the temple as Pacal explained the calendar. A few locals. The other two scribes. “Sera,” someone said. She saw Riq step into view and wave her over to him.

As Pacal continued, Sera slipped around the visitors to get to Riq. “I’m so happy you showed up,” she said. “I have major news.”

“Me, too,” he said. “I just spoke to Kisa. She helped me understand the numerical part of the riddle. Apparently, there are two dates listed.”

“And?”

Riq seemed more excited than she’d ever seen him. “Sera, one of those dates is today.”

“Today?” Sera repeated.

“See? We were supposed to come here all along. Just like I thought. All we have to do now is figure out what’s significant about today.”

Pacal was now speaking about the path of Venus.

“That’s huge,” Sera said. “Speaking of the riddle, you’ll never guess what that Pacal guy just pulled onto his face a few minutes before you got here.”

“What?”

“A clown mask,” Sera said. “He has to be the clown from the riddle.”

Riq’s eyes grew big. “We’re finally figuring this thing out,” he said.

Sera nodded and said, “Which makes me think Kisa really is the snake charmer. We just need to figure out what that means, exactly. But here’s the best news of all.” She patted the satchel holding the Infinity Ring and said, “You’re looking at the girl who just figured out how to eliminate all those error messages.”

“Are you serious?”

Sera explained how Pacal’s description of the Mayan calendar helped her figure it out. “The point is,” she said, shoving Riq in the shoulder, “we can now leave whenever we want.”

“That’s . . .” Riq suddenly looked concerned. “I mean, great work, Sera.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“What? Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

Riq nodded. “Of course I’m sure. But we should probably concentrate on the significance of today’s date for now, right?”

“Definitely,” Sera said. She turned when she noticed two of the visitors heading for the door. One of them glanced at her before stepping outside the temple.

Sera held a finger up to Riq and moved toward the group of Mayas listening to Pacal. “Where did they go?” she asked Cocom.

“To meet up with the rest of their men,” he answered. “They said the storm set them back and they need to make it to the next village by morning.”

“They’re not even staying the night?” Sera mumbled to herself as she moved back toward Riq. “That seems sort of weird.”

It was twenty more minutes before Pacal finished explaining the final panel of the codex. The two remaining visitors were beyond impressed. They raved to Itchik, who had a big smile on his face, and they patted Pacal on the shoulder and then the smaller of them began folding up the codex, saying, “Yuknoom the Great will be honored to display this in the very center of our empire.”

Itchik’s smile quickly faded. “We can’t let the codex leave Izamal, of course. But King Yuknoom is welcome to send his own scribes here to make a reproduction.”

“Oh, no,” one of the visitors said, “the king was very specific about this. We are to bring back all of the great achievements we encounter on our journey.”

Itchik glanced at his own men behind him. “I’m sorry, friends,” he said, moving forward. “I cannot allow —”

“Stay where you are,” the larger of the two visitors said, pulling a large obsidian blade from a pouch on his belt and holding it out toward Itchik. “I will make this simple. We are taking the codex back to Calakmul with or without your consent.”

Sera and Riq looked at each other, wide-eyed.

The man pulled Pacal toward him and put the knife to his neck. “You don’t want us to harm the wise old man, do you? Understand, I have over two dozen men out there waiting for us. If anyone follows us there will be terrible consequences, including the loss of one of your own.”

All the local men, including Itchik, stepped back as the two visitors exited the temple, shoving Pacal to the floor. As soon as they were gone, everyone spoke at once, and Sera couldn’t understand a thing. She went over and helped Pacal to his feet.

“Silence!” Itchik shouted.

The room went quiet.

“We are not going to let anyone take our codex,” Itchik began. “And more important, nobody touches our precious Pacal. Now we need to organize a large group to go after these men. Cocom, go alert the warriors and have the cooks prepare several days’ worth of rations. Kan Boar, I need you to prepare a map with all the possible routes to Calakmul. A few of us will follow them now — because I’m not so sure about the extra men they claim to have — and others will cut them off from the front. Men, we will not return without our codex.”

Riq turned to Sera and said, “I’m going with them.”

“It’s not a good idea,” Sera said. “You said yourself, we need to stick together.”

“I know, Sera. But I have to help them right now. This may be the very reason we’re here.”

She nodded. “I’ll go check on Dak. I want us to be prepared to leave immediately.”

Sera watched Riq join the small group of Mayan men who were about to go after the visitors who had taken the codex. One of the men handed Riq a crude version of a sword. Riq turned and met eyes with Sera, and then turned back to the man giving instructions. Sera could tell something had changed in Riq. She just didn’t know what it was.

She slipped out the door and started toward the cave.

It was still light out but the sun was low on the horizon. She moved out of the village and began climbing the path up to the cave when a man suddenly stepped out in front of her. It was one of the visitors who had left the temple early, the one who had stared at the Infinity Ring.

Sera instinctively turned to run the other way, but she ran right into the arms of the other visitor who had left early. He spun her around to face the first man, who said, “We came here because we heard rumors about the wisdom of the local codex. But we will leave with more than that.” He pointed at Sera’s satchel and said, “Remove the device from the bag.”

“What device?” Sera said, trying to wiggle her way out of the other man’s grasp.

“You know the one I’m speaking of,” he said, moving toward her. “Remove the device, and show me what it does.”