Sun God (13 page)

Allowing his emotions to surface at last, he felt hot tears spring to his eyes and wash down his dusty cheeks. He cried like the frightened child he was, and as he wept, he crawled awkwardly on his bare stomach, his bound hands before him, toward the solace of the gold Sun Stone winking at him in the moonlight.

Every inch he crawled was pure agony. He was stiff and he hurt all over. His vision was blurred with his tears. His throat was dry and parched. In the night silence he could hear his own labored breathing. And a coyote yapping far off in the distance.

He continued to inch his way forward until, with a muffled groan of relief, his trembling fingers touched the glittering gold medallion.

He gave a weak shout of triumph as his long fingers curled securely around it. Tightly, as if his life and the afterlife beyond depended on it, he squeezed the symbolic Sun Stone.

Above him, bright twinkling stars filled the night sky. The full white moon climbed higher in the heavens. A lone nighthawk swooped gracefully upward, the moonlight silvering its outstretched blue-black wings.

Luiz saw neither the stars or the moon or the wheeling nighthawk. Salty tears drying in dirty tracks on his battered face, his slender, hurting body gave a tiny shudder of deep, consuming weariness.

And he passed out.

A
S YOUNG LUIZ’S TREMBLING
brown hands wrapped themselves around the Sun Stone, a sleeping woman, hundreds of miles away, felt those lean fingers close tightly around her heart.

That fierce gripping of her heart immediately awakened her. The woman sat up and clutched her bare left breast. Beside her, the lethal weaponry she kept ever at hand—a huge, slumbering, snowy white mountain lion—stirred, raised his ferocious head, and stared at her, his yellow eyes gleaming.

The woman pushed her long, raven-black hair from her dark eyes and looked warily about. All was as it should be. She was alone in her comfortable chambers. The wall torches that continuously illuminated the high mountain cavern burned brightly, casting the usual patterns of shadow and light upon the stalactites and stalagmites.

All was quiet save for the low, inquisitive growl of the great cat. The woman silenced him with a raised hand. Then she kicked off the soft, luxurious bed covers of fur and rose to her feet. Naked, she crossed the spacious rock chamber of her private quarters. The albino lion remained where he was, watching.

From a large, low wooden trunk the woman removed a flowing robe of soft white wool. She pulled the warm white robe down over her head, pushed her arms through the long, loose sleeves, and allowed the supple garment to settle over her slender curves and whisper down to her small bare feet.

She raised her long-nailed fingers up to free her thick, black hair from the robe. The dark tresses fell down her back to just below her waist. Not bothering to put on slippers, the white-robed woman moved across the huge chamber toward a tunnel. The big cat rose and followed.

Through the dim, winding tunnel the woman and the lion proceeded until they reached a much larger, now-deserted chamber where the ceiling of the cavern had been blackened from ancient fires built there by long-departed ancestors. At the room’s center, a low, smoldering fire burned even now.

Woman and cat moved purposefully toward the burning cedar chips. The woman raised her slender hands. She clapped them together three times in quick succession, the sound echoing throughout the vast, silent chamber.

Within seconds half a dozen sleepy-eyed men, wearing brief white loincloths and carrying an array of weapons, appeared. They stood mute in a semicircle, all eyes fixed on her.

In a voice calm and low, she gave them their instructions.

She told them to build up the fire until the chamber glowed with bright light and fierce heat. To bring from the chamber’s vault her talismatic black necklace. To fetch a handful of the amaranth seeds favored in Aztec rites, seeds the Spanish had outlawed. To light the hundreds of brown candles lining the rough stone walls of the chamber. To burn the dozens of sticks of incense resting in earthen plates. To get a large vessel of
pulque
so that she might drink enough of the liquor made from the milky juice of the maguey cactus to see what others could not.

At this last instruction, the tall, muscular warriors exchanged no skeptical glances, felt no apprehension despite the knowledge that
pulque
was “a whirlwind, a cyclone that covered everything with evil” and that only old people were allowed to drink as much as they wished.

The laws and taboos that restricted the behavior of others did not apply to the raven-haired, white-robed woman. A rite of some sort was to take place in the high mountain cave that night, and the woman’s loyal followers did not question her orders. They simply carried them out.

One hour after the woman had been pulled from her sleep by the hand gripping her heart, she lay lounging before a fire so large and hot it caused perspiration to drench her slender body, the long white robe to stick to her heated flesh. The white lion lay close beside her, shooting flames of the fire reflected in the depths of his huge yellow eyes.

From a golden goblet the woman drank thirstily of the forbidden
pulque
, nibbled on the amaranth seeds, and idly fingered the black necklace at her throat while a thick, blue haze of incense sweetened the stifling hot air of the chamber.

The half-dozen warriors did not join her at the fire. They kept their places a discreet distance away as if standing at military attention, not so much as raising a hand to wipe the sweat dripping into their eyes.

The woman suddenly sat up straight.

Her black eyes widened and she stared into the leaping flames. She saw within them a young, dying boy alone under a full desert moon. With a vividness that mere mortals could not begin to imagine, the woman saw the injured youth lying unconscious, his bare back bloodied, his jaw swollen and purple, his skinned fingers clutching the gold medallion.

And her heart.

Tears sprang to her eyes. Tears of anger. But tears of joy as well. He needed her. For the first time in all these years, her beautiful son needed her. She would bring him here to be with her. She would shelter him in this high mountain cave in Mexico.

She would not let him die.

The woman tossed away the gold goblet of
pulque
and dropped a handful of amaranth seeds back into the golden dish. She rose to her feet, unbothered by the heavy white robe clinging to her wet body.

Speaking softly, but with authority, she issued specific orders to her apostles.

They swiftly obeyed, not caring that the woman was known as
La Extranjera—
Strange Lady. They knew her by another name.

The goddess Xochiquetzal.

Pedrico Valdez’s lathered buckskin stallion, sensing his rider’s sudden urgency, stretched out into a thundering gallop.

It was nearing sunrise and the pair had been riding all night. Both were winded and tired. And determined.

Now as the one-eyed Orilla houseboy spotted something black lying near a huge Spanish dagger plant, he felt his pulse race. That emotion was telegraphed to his responsive steed and the weary stallion labored to transport his master quickly forward.

Pedrico dropped the reins and dismounted a few feet from the suspicious black object. His breath short, he fell to his knees and lifted the pair of men’s black trousers, the knees torn and ripped, the wrinkled, dirty fabric soiled with dried blood.

He shook his head no.

The bloodstained pants could belong to anyone. This was Mexico, a long way from Orilla. The trousers couldn’t be Luiz’s.

Pedrico had almost convinced himself it was so until he saw, beneath the giant dagger, a pair of gleaming black cowboy boots. One sat upright. The other lay on its side in the sand. A small silver adornment on the boot glittered in the light of the rapidly rising sun.

Then he knew.

Pedrico dropped the torn black pants and reached for the boot. He lifted it, muttering “No, no, no” as he saw upon the boot’s pull strap, inlaid in silver, the SBARQ brand. Only the proud young Luiz Quintano owned such a pair of boots.

Clutching the boot to his chest, Pedrico rose. He stood looking all around him, fearing that any second his eyes would fall on the murdered boy’s body. He saw nothing. He stooped, picked up the matching boot, and carefully secured them behind his cantle.

Pedrico Valdez remounted his waiting stallion. He sat in the saddle and looked out over the forbidding stillness of a brutal land already growing hot though the sun had barely risen. Miserably he wondered wherein this hard, dried-out land of fierce suns he would find the remains of the handsome young Aztec.

Pulling the wide brim of his sombrero low over his one eye, Pedrico headed south.

When Meg Sullivan entered the foyer of her New Orleans home one chill Saturday afternoon in early November and her eyes fell immediately upon the letter in the silver calling-card basket, she was genuinely reluctant to open it. It was the third message she had received from Amy in as many weeks.

The first—the telegram telling of Walter Sullivan’s death—had been an unexpected blow from which she had still not recovered. Not a week later a short letter had arrived from Amy saying that Don Ramon had been killed in an accident and his son, Luiz, had disappeared.

Meg reached out a gloved hand and picked up the small blue envelope. She sat down on the stairs and opened it. Her hands shook a little as she unfolded the neatly written letter.

Dearest Aunt Meg,

After all the tragedies, I finally have good news. I’m getting married. In less than a week—on Saturday night, November the 8th—I’ll become the bride of Tyler Parnell.

I wish more than anything that you could be here to share in our happiness. We plan to make our home out here on Orilla; isn’t that wonderful?

Love,

Amy

Meg Sullivan slowly lowered the letter. She closed her eyes and sadly shook her head. It didn’t take much of Meg’s intuitive common sense to know that the one person she loved most in all the world was concealing a broken heart behind brave words.

She opened her eyes and sighed wearily.

Today was Saturday, November 8. The wedding day. Too late even to send a wire asking Amy to wait, to reconsider her hasty decision.

Her temples suddenly pounding, Meg Sullivan rose and climbed the stairs, her dreams for Amy’s lasting happiness forever gone.

In Sundown, Texas, on that warm November Saturday night, Miss Amy Sullivan, exquisitely beautiful in a gown of white antique satin, walked down the aisle of the Catholic church on the arm of her brother, Baron. In a candlelight ceremony that lasted less than ten minutes, she took the name of a beaming Tyler Parnell.

Tyler Parnell was the happiest of grooms. He now had everything he wanted. A pretty, naive young wife who happened to be one of the richest women in all of Texas. He would live the rest of his life in splendid ease at Orilla with nothing more required of him than to keep little Amy pregnant, happy, and submissive.

Smiling as his blond bride stood at his side facing the robed
padre
, Tyler Parnell was confident he’d have little trouble fulfilling his end of the bargain. It had been amazingly easy to persuade her to marry him. Even Baron was pleasantly surprised that she had agreed so readily.

When he had asked Amy only a week ago, she was the one who had suggested they not wait, that they be married right away. He foresaw no problem in having her sign over her portion of the vast land she’d inherited.

Land that was worth a fortune.

Or had been.

Until then.

On that same November evening an elegantly robed, exotically beautiful black-haired woman came out of her comfortable quarters deep inside a high mountain cave. With a huge white mountain lion at her side, she walked through the strong, cold winds that pressed her robes to her slender frame and sent her waist-length black hair flying wildly about her head.

Undaunted, she climbed to where the high mountain mists enveloped her, kissing her face with its chill dampness and swirling around her like great clouds of smoke so thick it couldn’t be penetrated by the human eye.

But this woman could see through it.

Could see well past the tumble of basalt rocks and steep volcanic mountains and pinnacles of sandstone and sheets of solid granite. Could see across towering mountain ranges and verdant valleys and parched deserts.

Could see all the way to far-off Texas and to a cold, clear river. A river fed by deep artesian wells beneath tons and tons of stone. A swiftly flowing river that had changed an arid wasteland into a verdant rangeland.

Had made men rich.

Staring unblinkingly through the mystical mists, the angered goddess Xochiquetzal drew her delicate brows together.

And the river ceased to run.

Ten Years Later

Orilla
,
April 1866

A
MY SULLIVAN PARNELL WAS
lonely.

Achingly lonely. Had been all day. Ever since early morning when she had stood on Orilla’s railroad spur and watched her only child wave madly from the train’s window as the locomotive’s heavy wheels began to turn on the steel tracks.

With Juana as her chaperone, her adorable, energetic nine-year-old Linda was off to New Orleans for her first-ever visit—without her protective mother—to Auntie Meg’s. Now, at midafternoon, Amy wandered aimlessly about the big, empty hacienda, wishing she had never allowed Linda to go. How was she to survive the long, lonely summer without her precious baby?

Hating the silence that surrounded her, Amy went into the kitchen looking for company. Magdelena was there alone, kneading dough. She looked up when Amy entered. Her dark eyes snapped with indignation and Amy realized immediately that she’d find little camaraderie here. Magdelena gave the floured bread dough a vicious pounding. Amy knew the reason.

“Magdelena,” said Amy, “do I really deserve the
mal de ojo
—the evil eye?”