CHAPTER SIX
Lucius materialized
in a long, narrow stone chamber that was lit by a row of burning
torches running down either side. He’d zapped into a relatively
open space at one end of the room; the other end was lost in the
distance, obscured by countless rows of racked objects that blurred
one into the next in the dim torchlight.
Exhilaration slammed
through him. The library!
Then gravity caught
up with him and he fell a good three feet to land face-first on the
chamber floor. His chin cracked against granite and the breath left
him with a hiss of pain as he pancaked it hard. He was also
unexpectedly naked, which made the pancake thing suck more than it
would have otherwise. Stone slapped his belly and mashed his ’nads,
and he let out a grunt as he hit. But the pain didn’t last long in
the face of the crazy-making wonder that surrounded
him.
He rolled onto his
back, laughing and gasping for air. “I did it. I fucking
did it!” Granted, the Prophet wasn’t
supposed to physically—or metaphysically, for that matter—travel to
the library, but maybe that was the sacrifice required for his
having kept his soul intact. If so, that’s not
going to be much of a sacrifice at all, he thought. Aloud,
he crowed, “What glyph geek wouldn’t
want access to a place like this?”
The walls were carved
in the Classical Mayan style, with figures turned in profile as
they bent over codices, holding quill pens and feather-and-fur
paintbrushes, or hammering away at chisels, carving stories into
stone. And if those walls pressed too close, sparking a hint of the
suffocating claustrophobia that had plagued him for the past half
year, he’d learned to shove the weakness aside and focus on the
things that mattered. Like the library.
He’d finally gained
access to the knowledge the Nightkeepers needed. Deaf gods be praised. More, there was a new and
oh-holy-fuck problem facing them: namely that the Banol Kax had stolen the sun god and were planning
on making a switcheroo in nine days. And although the information
surrounding him dated only up to the fifteen hundreds, when the
conquistadors’ pillaging of the so-called New World had prompted
the surviving magi to hide the library and create the Prophet’s
spell, the Nightkeepers were hoping—praying—that the cache would
contain additional prophecies dealing with the end-time . . .
including the role the sun god was supposed to play.
“So all I’ve got to
do is find those prophecies . . . or better yet, a spellbook
entitled, How to Put the Sun Back into the
Sky.” But, standing naked in the room he’d spent the past
six months trying to find, and a decade prior to that dreaming of,
even when he hadn’t known precisely what he’d dreamed, he looked
around the narrow, jam-packed arcade . . . and realized that he
didn’t have the faintest clue where to start. It wasn’t like there
was a computerized, searchable cross-ref system already in
place.
The memory of putting
together just such a system for the Nightkeepers’ archive caught
him hard, bringing a blast of the mingled desire and frustration
that had ridden him as he and Jade had worked together day after
day. Back then he’d done his damnedest to get her to notice him as
more than just a friend, only to find that, when he thought he’d
gotten past the friends zone, it was only to friends with benefits.
At the time, that wasn’t what he’d wanted or needed. And now . .
.
“It’s not important,”
he said aloud, though that wasn’t entirely true. Jade was very,
very important to him, whether as a friend or as . . . whatever
they were now. But at the same time, he couldn’t focus on her, or
on trying to figure out what sort of relationship they were going
to have going forward. He was in the library.
Reminding himself to
breathe, he took a long look around.
He was standing in a
relatively open space at one end of the narrow room. There was a
study area nearby with a low stone table and a couple of fixed
benches. Three intricately carved stones were set into the floor
beside the table, and several wall hooks held lush-looking woven
green robes worked with brilliant yellow at their edges. In one
corner, a deep wooden rack contained an assortment of quills,
tools, fig-bark strips, limestone wash, and all the other
necessities for making the ancient, accordion-folded codices of the
Mayan-era Nightkeepers. There was a jaguar statue in the opposite
corner; he thought it might have been a fountain at one point. It
looked as though water would have emerged from a tiny spout halfway
up the wall, then dropped into the open mouth of the snarling stone
jaguar. The animal’s lower jaw formed a bowl that would have
drained down the back of the creature’s throat, presumably to
recirculate.
A second bowl rested
between the recumbent jaguar’s paws; it was marked with a looping
glyph that resembled a thumbs-up gesture made by a stubby-fingered
hand. The glyph, which translated to “sa,” represented corn or corn gruel, but was more
generally taken to mean “food.”
Okay. Food and water.
He got that. If he was lucky—or as smart as he liked to think he
was—he’d be able to figure out how the rest of the place
worked.
He prowled the study
area, trying to get a mental picture of the magi who had set it up.
If he could understand how they ordered their workspace, maybe he
could guess at how they had organized the contents of the shelves.
He badly wanted to dive right into the stacks, but held himself
back, knowing his own ability to hyperfocus and lose track of
things. Odds were that unless he went in there with a plan, he’d
get sucked in by the first codex he laid hands on, regardless of
its contents. So he behaved, staying in what passed for his
analytical brain.
Everything was bright
and new, dust free and fresh seeming. Magic, he thought, knowing that also accounted for
the torches that burned steadily without emitting smoke or
noticeably impacting the oxygen level in the room. Almost as an
afterthought, he snagged one of the robes and shrugged it on; it
proved to be a loose-fitting ceremonial garment worked with quills
and feathers down the back, in the geometric pattern of repeating
“G” characters that was often associated with the gods, or places
of sacred thought. The realization humbled him with the reminder
that he wasn’t just a guy on a mission; he was the latest in a long
line of scholars who had served the library. He might not be a
mage, but he’d kick the shit out of anyone who tried to take the
title of “scholar” away from him. He’d damn well earned
it.
“And now it’s time to
earn it all over again,” he said, staring at row upon row of racked
artifacts and codices and noting the total lack of distinguishing
marks on any of the shelves. “But I’ve gotta ask: Is there any way
to find what I’m looking for without cataloging every bloody
artifact myself?”
With a sudden lurch,
his body seesawed into motion without his volition, walking him
stiff- legged to an open space near the stone table. Shocked,
Lucius cursed under his breath and tried to stop moving but
couldn’t, tried to change direction, but couldn’t do that, either.
He flashed back hard on the memory of his body doing things his
mind couldn’t control. Godsdamn it! But
before either panic or rage could fully form, the compulsion
drained away and he found himself standing beside the study table,
near where the three carved stones were set into the
floor.
Magic, he thought, wonder shimmering through the
loathing that came with being controlled, compelled. “Don’t do that
again,” he warned, though he wasn’t sure whether he was talking to
his own body or whatever force had briefly animated it, divorcing
his flesh from his soul. Gods, what was it about him? Was he so
loosely connected to himself that it was easy to pull that shit? One of these days, would
his consciousness take a walk without his corpse, and that’d be the
end of things?
Okay, now he was
freaking himself out. Focus, moron .
Forcing himself back on task, he studied the carved stones. There
were three of them arranged in a triangle, all engraved with
familiar glyphs. His bare toes were touching the left- bottom stone
of the two-dimensional pyramid. The stone at the apex was carved
with the so-called “snaggle-toothed dragon” glyph, that of gaping
jaws framing an open space. It was one of several glyphs for
way.
“Now we’re getting
somewhere. That could be how I get out of here.” It might be as
simple as standing on the stone and saying the word, or it might
involve a blood sacrifice. He wasn’t ready to leave yet, but it was
good to have a starting point when the time came.
He stared down at the
two other carved insets. The one on the left, the one he’d first
stood on, was an intricate glyph: a large, rounded square flanked
with two rounded rectangles, one ending in a fanlike shape. Each of
the main shapes had shapes within shapes, curling and looping back
on one another in the Mayan tradition, which was as much about
beauty as writing. “Yilaj,” he said
softly, translating the three phonetic symbols spelling out
yi-la-ji. It meant “was seen.” The
other stone bore a stylistic reptile’s face in profile, with a
closed eye and an appended symbol for a second syllable, written
phonetically. Ma ilaj. “Was not
seen.”
Ohhh-kay, he thought, trying to parse it out. He
had was seen and was not seen. Positive and negative. Or . . . yes
and no.
Lucius’s breath
shuddered out of him as he remembered the last thing he’d said
before his body walked him over to the “yes” glyph. He tried it
again. “Is there a trick to help me find what I’m looking for in
here?”
His body jerked and
he took a step forward. Yilaj.
Yes.
Oh, holy flying fuck. He was in the middle of a
Nightkeeper Ouija board, and he was the damned
planchette.
Pulse racing, he
stepped off the carved stone and tried another question. “Is Jade
safe?” He hadn’t meant to ask that, really. But he needed to know.
His body jerked and he found himself standing on ma ilaj. No, she wasn’t okay. Shit. “Is she in danger?” he demanded quickly.
Nothing happened. Realizing he hadn’t stepped off the indicator
stone, he jumped to neutral ground and repeated the question. He
found himself standing back on the “no” stone, which didn’t make
any sense. How could she be unsafe, but not in danger?
She couldn’t be.
Which meant he’d screwed up the translation, or its
intent.
He looked back down
at the glyphs for a moment, then got it. Stepping to neutral
ground, he said, “Does ma ilaj mean you
can’t answer the question?” Yilaj.
Okay, at least he’d cleared that up. The library’s magic—or was
this the Prophet’s magic itself?—not only had its limitations, it
knew what they were. Cool, he thought,
pulse starting to skim faster now, not from his dislike of his body
being used this way, with or without his permission—though there
was some of that—but with the sort of academic anticipation he
hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Back at UT, when the most
important thing in his life had been finishing up his thesis, he’d
felt the buzz every time he made even infinitesimal progress in
finding the elusive screaming-skull glyph that was rumored to mark
Nightkeepers’ involvement in the end-time. At Skywatch, he’d felt
the buzz nearly every damned day at first, when he’d suddenly found
himself surrounded by the people of legend and been given access to
archived codices and artifacts that were purely unknown in the
outside world. Since his return, though, there hadn’t been any
buzz. There had been only failure and frustration. He might have
grown into himself physically, but in doing so, he’d lost part of
that other side of himself without even really realizing
it.
Now, standing in the
library of the ancients, finally in a position to do something to
help the Nightkeepers rather than hurt them, he felt the buzz. And
he fucking loved it.
Grinning, he stepped
off the stone. He didn’t let himself ask again about Jade. She was
safely back at Skywatch. And besides, the library didn’t know her
status. Which brought up an interesting point, come to think. “Are
you unable to answer because the question relates to current events
rather than something contained specifically within this library?”
Yilaj. He was getting the hang of this,
he thought. But when he stepped off the “yes” stone again, he
stumbled. As though it had been hovering at the periphery of his
consciousness, waiting for him to notice it, dizzying exhaustion
suddenly roared through him, graying his vision and making the
floor pitch beneath him.
“Knock it off,” he
told himself, his words going slurred. “You’re not that guy
anymore.” He was finished with being weak, finished with fading and
giving up when people needed him most. He was a new man now.
So fucking act like it. Granted, magic
burned an enormous amount of energy—he’d seen the magi refueling
like marathoners and then crashing hard after major spell
casting—but he didn’t have access to food right now, so he was just
going to have to suck it up and deal. It’d probably be a good idea
for him to get going on his research, though. Either that, or
figure out how to make the stone jaguar in the corner cough up some
grub.
Steadying himself
through force of will, he stepped to neutral ground and took a
moment to formulate his next question, eventually coming up with:
“Can you tell me how the Prophet’s magic works?”
Yilaj.
“How?”
No
answer.
He stepped off the
stone, forced himself to focus through the whirling dizziness, and
realized he hadn’t asked an actual question. He tried again: “How
does the Prophet’s magic work?”
This time it wasn’t
so much of a surprise when his body did an about- face without his
input, but it was still damned unsettling to have the scenery
passing by him without knowing where he was going. He could feel
his muscles interacting as he walked toward the racks, but couldn’t
tell where the neural inputs governing those actions were coming
from. Before, the demon had invaded his skull, pushing him into a
corner of his own consciousness and eventually severing his
connection with the outside world. Now the magic was somehow
controlling his body without pressuring his mind. On one level,
that was a relief. On another, it squicked him right the hell out,
because if he couldn’t sense the invader, he couldn’t defend
himself against it, either.
Then he passed the
first rack and discomfort gave way to some serious gawking. If he’d
been moving under his own steam, he would’ve stopped at a row of
carved heads with the smashed-in, crooked noses of pugilists or
ballplayers. Or he would’ve poked through a rack of
accordion-folded codices, almost certain to find stories,
histories, maybe even poems and songs. Only a tiny fraction of the
vibrant culture of the ancient Maya had survived through to modern
day on Earth, and at that, most of the info came from versions of
oral traditions that had been written down by Spanish missionaries
in the fifteen hundreds.
Lucius’s soul sang
the “Ode to Joy” at the sight of so many codices in one place. His
body, though, kept walking until it stopped at the eighth rack in.
Unbidden, his hand reached out to touch a stack of fig-bark pages
that weren’t folded accordion-style, but rather were bound along
one side with bark strips that had been soaked and bent, then
threaded through holes bored down the left side of each
page.
For all that it was
made of fig bark, the thing looked like a spiral-bound notebook,
jarringly modern in the ancient surroundings. The cover was
unadorned, giving no hint to the volume’s contents.
A tremor ran through
Lucius, though he wasn’t sure if it was foreboding or another
onslaught of the fatigue he knew he wouldn’t be able to ignore for
much longer. He was back in control of his body, though; having
gotten him where it wanted him to go, the magic had snapped out of
existence. Which, given how the human Ouija routine had worked,
suggested that the volume he was touching would tell him about the
Prophet’s power.
“Cool. User’s
manual.” If he was lucky.
Getting a geeky high
off the buzz of discovery, he carefully turned back the cover page,
wincing as bark grated against bark and the spiral binding stuck.
Beneath the cover, the first page held a few lines of text done in
black ink. That deep in the stacks, the torchlight was pretty
diffuse, making it difficult at first for him to make out the
glyphs. Then he realized it wasn’t the torchlight that was messing
him up; it was his frame of reference. The writing wasn’t in Mayan
hieroglyphics. It was in English, and it read, I’m fading, my soul dying here as my body dies back on
Earth. So pay attention, because if you’re reading this, then
you’re already in deep shit. What I’ve written down here could save
your life . . . if it’s not already too late.