Charlie Morgan, ever practical and self-confident, believed she now had the resources, no matter how meager, to take on the gunmen and whatever else lay in that forbidden
zone. Now all she had to do was find Max Gordon in that twisted jungle that ensnared its secrets like a poisonous spiderweb.
Like startled birds, two of the children ran. Somehow they had freed themselves. They ducked and weaved as warriors threw their spears and gave chase for a couple of hundred meters. The kids sprinted for some boulders where bushes hid what must have been a way through. Cries of encouragement turned to alarm, and then screams. Tree Walker and Setting Star tried to break free in their anxiety, but a Serpent Warrior yanked the rope round their necks and pulled them back in line.
“Why have they stopped chasing them? What’s wrong?” Max asked Flint.
“There’s a hummingbird god up there. These kids are too young to know about it.”
Tree Walker gave a final scream of warning—but it was too late.
Max saw the two escaping children suddenly thrown to the ground as if a massive invisible hand had slammed them down. Everyone fell silent.
It made no sense. What had killed those children? He stepped forward; the warriors threatened him with their spears, but he continued walking slowly. They kept him encircled but moved with him, calling for instructions from their warrior leader.
“Don’t be crazy. Boy! You ain’t no jungle god! They’ll kill you if they have to,” Flint warned him.
The Serpent Warrior’s leader ran forward and shouted a command. The spears jabbed closer. Max stopped. He had pushed his luck far enough. But now that he was closer to the children, he could hear a gentle hum of something in the trees.
The children’s bodies were scorched. Red welts across their arms, chests and legs. Max realized that the hummingbird god was an electrified fence hidden from sight. There was a power source somewhere, fueled by what? Was a generator powerful enough? Maybe there was something hidden underground or in one of those caves he could see. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with ancient superstitions—this was modern-day technology being used.
Hours later, after stumbling along pathways hidden by the high canopy, a broad expanse of cleared forest, trapped on each side by mountains, opened up before Max and the others. Layers of mist and smoke hung in the air, seeping upward to escape the treetops. Shafts of sunlight angled into a collection of pyramid-like buildings. Max had been pushed through the trees into a lost city.
He scanned the ground as quickly as possible. How to escape when the time came? Water channels that led down from the mountainside to irrigate fruit and vegetable gardens seemed the best bet. Get across those, through the trees and climb! Young legs, fear and desperation could take you a long way in a hurry.
As the procession of captured children was stopped by the warriors, they saw women—also tethered—tending the vegetable garden and looking at the war party’s victims with expressionless faces. Their half-raised eyes told Max they
dared not look too closely. It was fear that kept them under control.
Like bullying nightclub doormen, the guards chivied the children toward an overgrown entrance, an archway that looked like a short tunnel. Its stonework was intact, but, like an unrelenting virus, the jungle clawed at every stone, slithering across the limestone buildings, strangling them in a relentless embrace.
Max was still surrounded by his captors, so he was first through the archway, followed by Flint, Xavier, Tree Walker and Setting Star. Younger children were crying but were being comforted by the older ones. Max could hear the gentle, soothing tones of the Mayan language, which suddenly stopped as the prisoners emerged from the tunnel.
The main area was bigger than a couple of football fields. To the left and right were sloping stone walls, dotted with scowling gargoyles: squashed faces of ancient gods that reminded Max of the totem pole he had climbed in the British Museum—a couple of lifetimes ago, it seemed. Above these walls, steps rose up to create a low, flat-topped building. At the end of the field was a stepped pyramid that Max reckoned was fifty or sixty meters high. Smoke curled from the top, obscuring the summit. There were other buildings, most of them so ancient they were little more than ruins. The complex must have once been very impressive, with its brightly painted colors on smooth lime-plastered walls, but they were now worn away to reveal the underlying blocks, the structures subdued by the elements and the jungle. He could not recognize any of them from his mother’s photographs. Despair
squeezed his insides. He had to shake off any soul-destroying depression, or he would be helpless. There must be other buildings he had not yet seen.
Howler monkeys bellowed their supernatural-sounding cries from the dense vegetation that skirted the buildings, like gatekeepers to hell welcoming the condemned.
Max kept looking, scanning each building, each frieze or sculpture depicting scenes from ancient life. He wanted one of the stone-frozen figures to point out where his mother had stood, had her picture taken—had smiled.
The prisoners were brought to a halt. Max’s guards moved away, leaving him separated from the main body of children. Flint was close to him and spoke quietly.
“These were sacred cities. All these buildings were aligned to the heavenly bodies so they could pinpoint planetary cycles. Y’see that smoke up there? That’s where the Vision Serpent is. That’s where they make sacrifices. They spill enough blood, it releases the
ch’ulel
. Then the shaman goes into a trance and sees the smoke take shape. He summons up one of their gods from the underworld.” He took a wheezy breath. “The Maya sacrifice prisoners of war by cutting their hearts out.”
Max gazed up. A figure stood at the top of the pyramid’s steps. Iridescent feathers plumed out from his clothing, swathed in bands of color. He held a staff of some kind from which swung an incense-laden censer, like a priest in a church. A dull ache spread across Max’s chest. He had brought this on himself in an effort to find the truth; now it stared him in the face—he was going to die.
A chattering flock of red macaws darted across the open
space, like droplets of blood splattering against the forest green. Something was happening next to one of the buildings. Other warriors had moved forward, like an advance party, but Max could not yet see who was following them. He heard a whisper. “
Chico
.”
Max dared a glance over his shoulder and saw Xavier huddled amid the others. His bound hands were raised slightly, trying to point at the new arrivals.
“Not all these guys are Mayan warriors. You see those tattoos? They’re gangster tats. No way these fellas have been here a long time.”
Max looked hard at some of the approaching men. Xavier was right—they looked more like gang members than tribesmen. Before he could give it any more thought, three or four men and a boy who looked very important, flanked by more guards, emerged from one of the darkened passageways between the buildings and walked toward them. They were dressed in a more refined manner than the men who had attacked them in the forest. Swathes of cloth, folded and tucked like skirts with leather belts, were wrapped round their waists, and they each wore what looked like a turban held by a leather thong, studded with green stones and decorated with bird feathers that half hid their shoulder-length hair.
A dozen or more men danced around these important newcomers. Flutes and chest-high drums vied with the shrill cry of clay whistles as ankle rattles whished like dry sand on a tin roof.
The royal-looking group kept their distance, staying about ten meters away from Max and the other captives, but
one of the warriors had approached the newcomers and knelt before them, and was explaining something. There was a look of concern on their faces. And then Max heard Tree Walker shout out to them in Mayan.
Flint heard him as well. “He’s telling them you are Eagle-Jaguar, that you cannot be harmed or it’ll bring great misfortune to this place. He’s trying to save you.”
Max looked into Flint’s eyes and knew that being saved was probably not going to be an option.
A guard moved quickly forward and hit Tree Walker with a stout stick across his back, knocking the boy to his knees. One of the fancily dressed people raised a hand and said something. Almost immediately, a young man ran into the arena carrying a ball slightly bigger than a basketball. The guards took over again, separated Xavier, Setting Star and Tree Walker and cut them free from the others.
Max looked at the boy who was with the dignitaries. He was probably a couple of years younger than Max, but there was something about him that he just couldn’t figure out. It was a brief moment of disbelief.
Max called out, “You! Wait!” The celebratory music stopped. He ran a couple of steps toward the younger boy but was stopped by guards who pounced, kicking his legs from beneath him. Max fell hard onto the grass and suddenly felt a spear against the base of his throat. He pointed up toward the boy. “That’s my mother’s,” he said. “Flint! Tell them that the necklace the boy’s wearing is my mother’s!”
Flint hesitated and saw the simple chain that bore the symbol of the sun. “You can’t,” he said. “They think you’re
some kind of supernatural creature. They’re going to give you a chance to live. If they know you’re just like the rest of us, they’ll take your head off right now!”
But the younger boy stepped forward, waved aside the guards and ignored a rebuke from the man who seemed to be the boy’s father. He knelt next to Max and spoke quickly, barely above a whisper. His fingers touched the small sun disk at his throat.
“Before I was brought to this valley, I was taught in a school. I understand you. I speak English. This was your mother’s?”
“Yes,” Max said.
The boy looked stricken. “I cannot help you unless you win the game. Stay silent or they will kill you now.”
He got to his feet before Max could ask any more questions. The boy pointed at Flint and spoke in Mayan. Then he turned and joined the others, who walked back to the archway. As Max got to his feet, the boy looked back once and then turned away again.
Max felt a surge of hope. There was someone here who might help him but, more importantly, who also knew of his mother.
Xavier and the others had been pushed into the arena as Flint explained what he had been commanded to tell Max. They were in what was called a ball court, and what looked like a basketball was solid latex. The hard rubber was heavy, and it would bounce high and fast. In this game it was forbidden to use hands or feet—only knees, shoulders, chest and elbows. This ancient game had one purpose—to choose a
victim. Once the game started, it would end only when somebody allowed the ball to touch the ground. Then that person would die a horrible death by having their heart cut out.
Flint gazed back toward the pyramid. They could see that the boy and the others had joined the shaman.
“Chac Mool,”
Flint said. Max stared to where the group stood next to a reclining sculpture that looked like a creature sitting back on its haunches and elbows, its stomach a broad flat surface. Max realized the stains that colored the ancient limestone were blood. “That’s the sacrificial stone,” Flint said.
“ ‘Into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of Hell rode the six hundred …,’ ” Max muttered quietly.
“That’s not Shakespeare,” Flint said, a little uncertainly.
“No. But it’ll do,” Max replied.
Then someone blew a whistle. The game of death was on.
Riga had followed the tracks that Max and the others had left. Every scuff mark told a story, and when he heard the war cries and drums, it was as easy as a stroll in the park to locate the boy he hunted. Skirting the river, he gained high ground, ignoring the discomfort of the wound in his leg, letting the pain be something to beat at every step.
He saw the curtain of bloodred mist that rose from the valley floor as the hot lava sizzled through the wet ground. Like a dragon with bad breath, it continued its hissing roar unabated, as if its tongue were licking the jungle floor.
By the time the warriors had tied their captives, Riga was almost in sight of them. The earth tremor had caught him unawares. Some rocks around him were shaken free and went
smashing into the gorge below. It happened so quickly he nearly tumbled from his precarious perch. Pain shot through his thigh, and blood seeped into his trousers—the jolt had torn a couple of stitches. He knew he should not let the wound become infected; it might easily prove fatal in this tropical heat.
If he went back through the cave, he could find a way out and get medical help. But then Max would escape him forever—a thought he considered for hardly an instant. He could find plants to keep the wound clean.
Using a small pair of binoculars to track the warrior group’s movements, he watched as they disappeared under the rain forest’s canopy. It seemed they were heading for that scalding river of fire.
Tightening his sweat rag across the wound, he gripped his rifle and made for the dragon’s tongue.
The ball bounced. Xavier ran like a midfield player and took it on his chest as if preparing to drop it and kick a long pass, but the weight of the ball thudding into him forced the boy to crash down onto his back.
“Don’t let it touch the ground!” Max yelled as he ran forward.
Xavier squirmed, arching his hips, pushing his face into the pungent-smelling rubber that now felt as though it was crushing his rib cage. Max was right there and saw Xavier push his body up with his hands and feet, keeping the ball clear of the ground and trying to flick it toward Max’s uncertain stance. How to stop it from touching the ground? As the
ball came clear of Xavier’s body, Max went down on his knees, felt the grass burns cut into his skin, ignored it, caught the ball on his shoulder and pushed himself up as hard and fast as he could, forcing the ball onto the sloping walls, allowing the others to run and take the rebound.
Tree Walker, more muscular than Xavier, used the top of his bicep to hit it back on the sloping wall toward Setting Star, who pivoted like a gymnast, took the ball onto her knees, fell back and flicked it above her head. It was too low, its weight making it impossible to move with any great degree of skill. It would not be long before trying to push the solid ball of rubber would exhaust or injure them.