Demonkeepers (29 page)

When he finished, it seemed that the world itself had gone silent, save for the whine of gnat wings.

After a moment, he said, “That’s random enough that I’m willing to bet it’s a snippet from the library, especially given how well it lines up with both the triad prophecy and what we’re going through now. If she asked the library, for example, what information the Nightkeepers needed most from her, that might have been the answer.”

“Was there anything else in the box?” Nate asked.

“It was empty except for the notebook. My guess is that the stars may have removed their sacred texts from it, maybe in preparation for the attack. But there’s more.” He lifted the box from where he’d left it sitting on the table, and turned it in his hands, so the orange daylight made the shadows dip and move across the carved wooden surface. “I translated the glyphs on the outside of the box. It’s another prophecy, this one about the library, and presumably the über-Prophet who is supposed to arise during the triad years. Paraphrasing to modernize the grammar and clean up the end, where the grammar gets a little wonky, it reads: ‘In the triad years, a mage-born Prophet can wield the library’s might
.
’ ” He shook his head. “By becoming the non-Prophet, I must have blocked the true Prophet from being formed at the end of last year. So I think we can consider that a prophecy of the null-and-void variety.”

“Is there such a thing as a voided prophecy?” Sasha asked. “It seems to me that all of the prophecies the ancients have left us have factored into things in some way or another. Maybe not the way we’ve expected them to, but they’ve factored.”

“I don’t see how this one could,” Lucius answered. “I’m not mage-born, and there’s no mistaking that part of the translation.”

Sasha looked thoughtful. “Maybe that’s not all of the prophecy.”

“Gee. Why don’t I go to the library and check? Oh, that’s right. Because I fucking
can’t
.” He exhaled. “Sorry. It’s just . . . Shit. Sorry.” Sasha hadn’t done anything to deserve his mood. “You’re right; it’s certainly possible that there was another box that continued the saying. That might account for the funky way this one ends, glyph-wise. But that’s pure speculation, and we’re running out of time. I don’t think we dare waste the time searching for something that might be a figment of our imaginations.” He paused. “Besides, there’s another option. Something we can try relatively easily, right from our own backyard.” Lucius hooked a thumb over his shoulder, past the training hall to the high parallel walls that had been built back when Skywatch was originally constructed in the twenties. “I hope you’re all up for a game.”

“ ‘Play his game,’ ” Michael repeated. “You think the prophecy is talking about the Mayan ball game?”

“I know it is,” Lucius said with bone-deep certainty. “The entire game was one big metaphor for the sun’s daily journey, first across the sky, then through the underworld. It stands to reason that it would be a way to reach Kinich Ahau.”
I hope
. Because if this didn’t work, they were pretty much screwed.

“It’s like volleyball, right?” Sven asked. “Bounce the ball back and forth, no holding, and keep the ball off the ground using the nonhand bodypart of your choice.” He paused. “But I thought the point of the game was to sacrifice the winners. Are we sure that’s a good idea?”

“We’ll do whatever it takes if it means gaining access to the only god not currently trapped in the sky,” Strike said implacably. “We need the gods—or at least
a
god—to form the Triad. No god, no Triad. No Triad, no hope in the war. Are you following?”

Yeah
, Lucius thought inwardly,
I’m following
. Because they didn’t just need at least one god; they needed the damned Triad spell, and they didn’t have a clue where to look for it. They had exhausted all the possible searches on earth. Which left them with “not on earth” as their last option.

Aloud, he said, “Although sacrifice was sometimes part of the game, it wasn’t necessarily the winners who died. Sometimes it was the losers, and sometimes there weren’t any deaths at all. It depended on who was playing, and why. But that’s getting ahead of things. Strike asked me to give you guys the quick four-one-one on the ball game, so here it goes: First, to understand the game, you’ve got to keep in mind that it’s the progenitor of almost all modern ball games. Before its evolution, game balls were always made of wood or leather, and fell dead when they hit. That changed when the Olmec figured out the trick of mixing the sap from latex trees and morning glory vines to create a bouncy, elastic rubber polymer.” He paused. “For the record, that was good old human ingenuity, circa 1600 B.C., not something you guys taught us.”

He got a couple of snorts for that, a couple of nods.

“Anyway, because rubber seemed to have a life and mind of its own when it bounced but was otherwise inanimate, it was considered spiritual, sacred. It was used in medicines, burned with sacred incense as a sacrificial offering, made into human-shaped effigies, and poured into spherical wood or stone molds and turned into balls.” He held his hands a little less than a foot apart. “We’re not talking hollow basketballs, either. They were heavy as hell, though sometimes their makers lightened them up by using a sacrificial victim’s skull as a hollow center, and layering rubber around it. Regardless, these things could do some serious damage, which is why body armor evolved along with the game.”

He passed out a couple of pictures he’d printed off his laptop; they showed photos of various ball game scenes. “Here are some pics to give you an idea. Some were painted on slipware.” Including the scene that had been showing on-screen when he’d brought Jade back to his cottage. Their eyes met when he sent that one around; her cheeks pinkened. “Others are from the actual ball court walls.” These included the famous scene from the great court at Chichén Itzá: that of a kneeling ballplayer being ritually decapitated, the blood spurting from his neck turning into snakes. “Finally, here are some some three- D models that were made of clay.” He sent around the last of the printouts, showing replica “I”-shaped courts, with armored teams facing off over the ball, referees keeping an eye on out-of-bounds, and fans sitting up on top of the high walls. “In a couple of them, you can even see piles of fabric and other trade goods, sort of the A.D. 1000 version of a stadium concourse.”

“Huh.” Michael flipped through the pictures. “It was really a ball game, the way we think of it.”

“Definitely. But like so much of life in the Mayan-Nightkeeper culture, it also had a strong set of symbolic elements. Although the game itself existed before the Nightkeepers arrived, things got far more organized after 1300 B.C., when you guys showed up. The Egyptians had formalized games with rules and scoring, amphitheaters, and such. Odds are, those came from the Nightkeepers, and the First Father brought them along for the ride to this continent.”

“Including the sun connection?” Nate asked without looking up from the pictures.

“Yep. On one level, the ball itself represents the sun, the ball court the underworld. You’ve got two teams—or sometimes just two opposing players—competing to control the sun.” Lucius paused, trying to decide whether the parallel with their current situation was creepy, prophetic, or both. “Different versions of the game had different ways for players to gain or lose points, depending on how they returned, or failed to return, the sun ball to the other team, up to a match point of fifteen or so. Because teams could lose points as well as gain them, evenly matched games could last for days. But in a twist that’s more billiards than volleyball, if a player got the sun ball through a vertical-set hoop high up on the ball court wall, it was an instant win. Eight ball, corner pocket. Game over; hit the showers.”

Sudden understanding lit Jade’s face. “The hoop represents the dark spot in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, which they thought was the entrance to Xibalba.”

“Exactly, which makes the symbolism twofold. In the context of the sun passing through the entrance to Xibalba, the game reenacts Kinich Ahau’s daily journey into and out of Xibalba, even as the arc of the ball itself symbolizes the sun traveling across the sky. From the perspective of the dark center of the Milky Way, putting the ball through the hoop represents the sun traveling through that dark center, which is the astronomical event that’s going to coincide with the winter solstice of 2012, precipitating the barrier’s collapse.”

There was a moment of silence before Brandt said sourly, “When you put it that way, seems kind of dumb we haven’t been playing the game all along.”

Lucius tipped his hand in a yes/no gesture. “I’m distilling out the points that relate to Kinich Ahau, but there are a ton of other connections within the game: to reptiles and birds, to harvest festivals, different gods and events, even to the class system itself. Chichén Itzá had seven ball courts located at various positions relative to the different temples and neighborhoods, which were stratified by socioeconomic status. If you give me enough time, I could probably make an argument for tying the game to almost any god or prophecy you cared to throw at me.”

Brandt pressed, “But you think this connection is solid?”

He nodded. “I do. In fact, I think my subconscious has been trying to tell me about the connection for a while now. I kept gravitating toward ball game artifacts, when the game had never been that big a deal for me before. So, yeah. The connection is solid.”

The other man nodded. “Then I guess we’re playing. What are the rules?”

“In the ancient versions of the game, serves were typically made with the hands or forearms, returns with the hips, legs, and feet, which were protected with light armor, some of which got pretty elaborate. In addition to the shin and body protectors, there were hand stones, which worked on the same principle as brass knuckles, adding weight and force to the return hit, and yokes, which covered the hips, lowered the player’s center of gravity, and increased the power of a body hit.” Lucius sketched in the air as he spoke. “There were face masks and helmets, of course, because the balls were heavy enough to do some major damage. And there were other pieces that were largely decorative, which the players wore for the opening ceremonies and then stripped off for the actual game.”

Michael grinned. “Sounds like a cross between a WWF grudge match and the Super Bowl.”

“Mix in some major religious overtones, and you’re not far off,” Lucius agreed. “The ballplayers were the rock stars of their day. Even after retirement, they were revered for their wins, and some became the boon companions of their kings. To be buried with your ballplayers’ gear was a huge sign of power and respect.”

“How much of these raiments survived into modern day?”

“Of the original stuff, very little. Most of it was made of wood and leather, some of rubber itself. None of that lasted long, given the climate. The artifacts we’ve got now are mostly pottery replicas, like the ones in the pictures I passed around.” He paused, grinning. “However, rumor has it that there’s a pile of modernized equipment in the back of one of the storerooms, along with a couple of experts who are going to show us how it’s done.”

That got him a few confused looks, until Jox, Carlos, and Shandi all rose from their places at the far end of the table and came around to its head. Carlos was carrying a banged-up cardboard box. All three
winikin
, it turned out, had played seriously before the massacre, and had been among those responsible for teaching the younger generation the moves of the ritual game.
What has happened before will happen again
, Lucius thought. Circles within circles, past, present, and future.

Jox stepped forward, with the other two behind him, looking grim, efficient, and suddenly very coach-like. “Everyone ready for the rules of the game the way your parents played it?”

Almost in synchrony, the magi turned and looked at the tall parallel walls of the ball court. “I guess I always thought of it as another artifact,” Brandt said. “It’s just always
there
, you know? Like it’s watching over us.”

“And now maybe it’s going to do more.” Jox nodded to the other two
winikin
; they dug into the box and started handing out thin booklets that were heavy on diagrams, light on text, and laid out the basics. Lucius had snagged one earlier and already had it memorized. He’d even run through some of the moves, which had come back to him with an ease that had surprised him. He’d never been much into sports before. Then again, that was before.

“We’re just going to study pictures?” Rabbit asked from the far end of the table. Lucius glanced over, surprised to see him and Myrinne at the outskirts of the group. He hadn’t noticed the young couple’s arrival, and he wasn’t used to Strike letting the girl sit in on meetings. More, it seemed, had changed than just Rabbit’s level of pyrokinesis.

“Only briefly.” The corners of Jox’s mouth kicked up. “Then we’re going to practice.”