Beneath the waning light of a blue dusk a curious group of men made their way along a rocky defile far south of the newly conquered city of Tenochtitlan, once capital of the far flung Aztec Empire. Squat men with cotton loin cloths, pierced ears and lips containing precious stones and jade and turquoise collars and armlets walked alongside somewhat taller, grim forms with helmets of rusting metal and bloody, notched swords thrust into leather scabbards burnished shiny on their edges from much use.
A full moon trod the jagged hills in the East as if seeking to roll away from the stench and plague that flowed out of prostrate Tenochtitlan two days journey to the north which had succumbed to the Spanish only two weeks prior after a long and terrible siege. Though the Aztec corpses which choked canal and street had been buried by the surviving indians on the orders of their new conquerers, the smell was still enough to sicken a hearty man.
Together this group of men were an amalgam of two worlds which had conquered the most brilliant civilization in the North of the New World, an Aztec empire of elegant complexity rich in salt, sea shells and gold and smoky sacrifice as well. Dusky forms burnt dark by southern suns tramped one alongside the other, Spanish soldiers and natives of Anahuac.
The Mexicans consisted of men of Cholula and Tlascala, both allies of the small army of Hernan Cortes during his siege and subsequent sack of the Mexican capital, though the Cholulans proved to be reluctant allies. The difference between the two indigines was that, before the arrival of Cortes, the Cholulans had been under the thumb of the emperor Moctezuma and regarded the Tlascalans as enemies while the Tlascalans, never conquered by the Aztecs, regarded the Cholulans as the lackeys of an emperor the Tlascalans themselves hated.
The group of Mexicans numbered fifty in total, evenly split between the two Mexican nations while the Spaniards, called teules by the natives, numbered but seven, led by a man of Seville, Pedro Alfonso Guzman y Jesus de Castro. De Castro had been ordered to head south of the great fallen capital of the Aztecs and reconnoiter the lay of the land in order to learn what mineral riches and indian nations and towns existed. De Castro was a lean and taciturn man, emaciated from having the vómito fever on the coast and from the travails they had all gone through during the 93 days of the close siege of Tenochtitlan by the Spaniards and their indian auxiliaries. A permanent musket burn darkened de Castro's face beneath his right eye beside a hawk's nose and golden, lanky and oily curls of hair crept forth from beneath his helmet. De Costa was often teased that the powder burn resembled a rabbit laying on its side. De Costa hoped to collect gold to the south, gold that had been denied him by the greed of Cortes and other leaders of the Spanish army.
De Castro had brought with him his newly acquired native mistress he condescended to call Maria who had gone over from the Aztecs to the Spanish as part of the loot just after the conquest of the city and had decided to remain with the Spaniard whose fortunes must surely be considered to have a better future than those of her Aztec noble husband. Maria had been brought along not only as companion but as interpreter as she had already learned enough Spanish to make herself useful to her new master and lover. Maria was a woman of large, watery, almost black eyes and long straight hair so black it shown blue by candlelight. Her skin was a light brown since the wives of Mexican nobles seldom condescended to show themselves in full sunlight. She was of slender, almost willowy build and of above average height - all in all a hauntingly beautiful woman in either the new world or the old.
The remaining six Spaniards consisted of De Costa's second-in-command, two crossbowmen, a arqubusier and two who bore the long copper headed Chinantlan pike, all armed with swords of good Toledo steel that would carve out a terrible empire of gold from the Valley of Mexico to the jungle haunted limestone temples of Guatemala to the mountain fastnesses of Peru. These Spaniards were the hardened veterans of almost inconceivably long marches, deprivations and battle, their skin scolded and leathered by wounds, lack of rest, food and water and by occasional sickness. Only love of adventure and greed of gold surpassed the almost superhuman qualities of these scions of the Iberian Peninsula, a land racked with war for eight centuries as it sought to divest itself of Moorish conquerers from Africa in one almost unending battle for dominance. This was the morning of the 16th century after the birth of Jesus and it was an age of great national competitions and holy warfare and there were no men in the world of greater steel and superhuman resolve than the warrior class of Spanish conquistadors that emerged from the bloody crucible of the Spain that faced off against the sons of Mohammed.
The Cholulans were led by a fat cacique noble named Maxictlan, a man who had seen to it that the company of Cholulans under his command had done as little as possible to assist in the siege of Tenochtitlan and had proven almost worthless, eventually used to scavenge food to feed the Spanish and their native allies. Maxictlan's eyes were as heavy lidded as a frog and he was possessed of a great flat nose, receding forehead and great lips, pierced through top and bottom with ornaments of turquoise and jade. A band of copper wire adorned with red shells was set low above his eyes, serving to confine his thick raven locks and shade his round eyes from the sun and from his pierced ears hung shrimp fashioned of copper as no Nahuatl carried gold in the presence of a Spaniard.
Maxictlan deigned to talk to none of his men other than a priest named Cucoc, an older man with a great beak of a nose, beady eyes and long black hair that hung to his waist and so matted that to put a comb through it would have been an impossible task. His teeth were filed to points and he had great plugs fashioned from agate in his ear lobes. Both Maxictlan and Cucoc hated and feared the Spaniards and their terrible resolve, fearsome cannon and half-mythical horses. Maxictlan feared for the future of himself and his people and Cucoc had already been forbidden to practice ever again the religion of his sires that stretched back to the mists of fabled antiquity. Both men wore draped, serapi-like cotton garments, open at the sides, the priest in black, Maxictlan in white, the edges embroidered in colorful thread.
The Tlascalans were led by a noble more or less equivalent to a European knight, Xotaxat, a man tall for his people with unusual violet eyes and forbidding, slender countenance. His long black hair was less straight than his fellow Tlascalans and braided into many different lengths emanating from a knot of hair on the top of his head. His teeth were inlaid with small spots of black obsidian and the brows above his eyes pierced with slender, short lengths of turquoise. Xotaxat looked down on the Cholulans as a nation of effeminate priests who he disparagingly referred to as 'salt thieves'. His Tlascalans were grim and proud men who displayed tattoos of herons on the shaved sides of their heads. They wore loin clothes of the cotton long denied them by the hostility of the Aztecs, looted from Tenochtitlan and marked with graffiti belittling their hereditary fallen foes.
Both Cholulans and Tlascalans were armed with bows and arrows, obsidian and flint bladed knives, spears, slings and terrible clubs, the maquahutl, with razor sharp bits of black volcanic glass set in the edges that could rip a man to shreds and attached to the wrist by a thong. Some few wore quilted cotton vests that did service as armor, at least until the swords and shot of the Spaniards arrived on the continent.
De Costa's second-in-command was a wiry terrier of a man of indeterminate age and with gray laughing eyes, prematurely gray hair to match and a pug nose. He hailed from Santiago de Compostelo and was named Jaime de Domingo but his good friend De Costa called him Santi. Santi glanced behind him at the fat, splay-footed cacique from Cholula as he marched beside de Costa and remarked, "That fat dog of a princeling will have to be watched like a falcon, Pedde."
"You can only call me Pedde when we're both drunk", replied De Costa with a smirk.
"Yes, senor de Costa. That fat dog of a princeling will still have to be watched."
"I know, I know. Sandoval made especial mention of it at after mass before we left Chalco, Santi. The Tlascalans have the job of watching the Cholulans which they are more than willing to do since they despise them and Maxictlan most of all of. I trust Xotoc; Maria has spoken to him and he knows my mind in this matter."
"Pedro, it is almost dark and we have to camp. There is not a flat area for one man to sleep let alone the lot of us and darkness comes swiftly in this high thin air."
"Maria says the Cholulan cacique has told her that this defile opens out to a flat topped ridge but I would have hoped to have reached it by now", replied de Costa.
"My friend Pedro de Costa, perhaps that over-stuffed lark is leading us into an ambush. How would a Cholulan know more about this area than Maria?"
"Maria is originally from north of the Valley of Mexico and Maxictlan says Cholulan troops have accompanied the Aztecs on punitive and slaving raids along this little used route. Word of our steel and thunder and the fall of the great capital have reached to the south; I have no fear of ambush. Many towns in the south have already sent emissaries to Cortes pledging fealty. We are here to see that they pledge their gold as well and find the streams from which they wash it."
"This is why you are my captain and I am your sword, Pedro," said Jaime. "I think with my steel."
"Not only with your steel. Stop staring at Maria's hind end", said de Costa.
"Those flowers on her belt look like they are alive in a field when she walks", answered the smaller man.
"I will gently place you under a field if you don't stop staring at her hips", said de Costa.
"You are very funny for such a grim man," muttered Jaime.
Without turning around Maria said, "My name in Nahuatl means, 'I form round bouquets of flowers.'"
With that, de Costa called for a halt and asked Maria to bring Maxictlan before him.
When Maxictlan stood forth De Costa asked Maria to find out where and when this defile ended.
The Cholulan replied that it had been many years since he had taken this way as a young man and he was not as certain of where he was as he had been earlier in the day. "The moon is near to full", added Maxictlan, "there is light to walk by for some hours yet."
"We have marched all day and I don't like being in such a confined and broken space at night", answered de Costa.
Through Maria, de Costa asked Maxictlan how many more hours to escape the flat gorge.
"I am not sure, not many I think", replied the fat cacique.
De Costa frowned. "Well, we will rest awhile and I will think on this."
A yellow moon lost color as it grew smaller and rose higher in the fading twilight of the tangled sierras.
*
Alone with Cucoc, Maxictlan glanced meaningfully at the priest and said not a word. Cucoc asked, "Do you think they are suspicious?"
"The teules do not believe in our gods and one does not fear what one believes to not exist", said Maxictlan.
*
De Costa didn't like these hills. The soft rock had been whipped by the thin winds into organic and suggestive shapes that belied their natural origins. To De Costa, the entire highlands was as sullen and brooding as its inhabitants. Even the strong, dry sun at these heights couldn't wash away the chill he still could not dispel at the remembrance of his fellow Spaniards who'd died lonely and obscure deaths at the top of a Mexican teocalli after having fallen captive to the Aztecs, their still beating hearts ripped out of their rib cages to insane drumbeats and yelps of Aztec passion.
De Costa and the other Spaniards had more than once had to watch their countrymen sacrificed atop a high Aztec temple after they had been taken prisoner during the close fighting at Tenochtitlan. Watched helpless from a distance, so close and yet unable to help as the Spanish captives had been forced to dance with feathers in their hands and then murdered, their lifeless bodies thrown down the temple steps to waiting butcher's knives below. Some remains had been found later on an altar, the entire skins of the Spaniards faces, with the beards still hanging to them. The skins had been dressed in the same way as the leather the Spanish used for making gloves.
This land of the Mexicans seemed tilted and wrong somehow and his feet never once had felt as if they were firmly on the ground since he'd entered the high passes that led to the Valley of Mexico. The pine studded volcanic ridges outlined against the dusk of Anahuac seemed like watchful sentinels aware of his own wrongness to this land.
At night down in the valley at the lake, wrapped in Maria's curves he could not deny, De Costa never dreamt any more; there was only a blackness between closing his eyes and opening them together with an unshakable conviction that something was not quite right nor ever would be again. Having fled Spain for adventure and gold, De Costa now wished he could flee those twin empty cups for the heat and gardens of Seville. After the close and interminable siege of Tenochtitlan, the daily noises of which still made his ears ring, De Costa felt like a man waiting to hear a sound to offset the screams of death and the concussion of flintlock and cannon. The soundless clouds in the sky or the wind whispering among the grasses now seemed like a form of furtive thievery.
De Costa could not forget the scenes he had witnessed as he entered the precinct shrunk by siege where the last survivors of Tenochtitlan had held out, having resorted to eating grass and tree bark and insects towards the end for lack of food. Women laid on the ground, having scratched deep furrows in their faces for the dead baby on their chest whom they could not suckle. Men lay in the houses with ghastly wounds gone gangrenous from sword cuts or shot, their eyes filled with both deep hate and resignation as Cortes' indian auxillaries set fire to the houses around them. De Costa wondered privately whether St. Iago could ever truly manifest himself in such a land or ever again in his heart.
Although De Costa had thought himself grown used to deprivation and bloodshed in the eternal wars waged in Europe, he felt that a gibbering madness lay across this land and he no longer envisioned a future for himself but only saw what was in front of his eyes.
It was decided that the company would pass the night where they were, though a space of level ground even the size of a man to lay down on was not to be found. The tents could not be used and the Spanish crusaders would have to lie wrapped in their cloaks which they knew would become soaked from the damp airs of the night.
Fires were lit and food distributed in the form of cakes of maize, eggs of geese and some figs and cherries. De Costa sat some little distance from the others with his back against a huge boulder brooding on success. Maria and Santi appeared before him out of the dark with Maxictlan and Cucoc in tow.
Maria said, "Maxictlan wishes words with you my Senor."
"Let him speak", answered De Costa.
Maria arranged her skirts and sat cross-legged on the hard scrabble while Santi stood leaning against the boulder on the other side.
Maria interpreted the words of Maxictlan, "My lord, there is a tomb in these hills, the resting place of a great sorcerer. It is said that this tomb contains great quantities of gold and jewels. This resting place is held to be sacred and is feared by us and so I am certain it remains intact"
"Why are you telling me about giving over riches into my hands that you have so often sought to otherwise hide from us?"
"Cucoc reminded me of this tomb which is half legend and which I had only heard of in passing and forgotten. No Nahautl has seen this thing as it is forbidden by our gods and our fears to visit such a place. The man entombed was a magician of great repute in Tenochtitlan named Xelacoatl and was said to be so old that he came with the first Aztecs to the great lake valley of Mexico when their settlement was nothing more than some miserable huts on a marshy island in Lake Texcoco.
"His nahualli, his totem soul, was said to be a creature not of this earth. His magic was not our religion and this sorcerer Xelacoatl was seen to be a darker and more evil figure than even our smoky god Tezcatlipoca, the sower of discord, and the sorcerer came to be hated and feared by Moctezuma's father, Huitzilhuitli, because, like Tezcatlipoca, Xelacoatl was said to be a shape shifter who could take on a terrible elder form which came from behind the stars in the night sky. The Aztec emperor ruled by fear and Xelacoatl came to be even more feared than he. The waters of Lake Texcoco became sometimes violently agitated and strange lights appeared in the sky. Men and women disappeared from their houses or from canoes on the lake at night. It was rumored that those disappearances were accompanied by a charnal smell from the gates of death itself and the loud rustling of leathery wings and lurid red eyes. These disappearances were laid at the doorstoop of Xelacoatl. There were rumblings, rumors and fearful glances but little more.
"One night when Moctezuma was but a boy, his father sent forty archers to invade the dwelling of Xelacoatl, their arrows dipped in snake venom. One of Xelacoatl's retainers had betrayed the sorcerer through torture, seized when on an errand for his dark master and when it was known he was in a drugged trance of some diabolical communion with other-things, his supine body at the heart of his house was pin cushioned with arrows. Although enough poison was administered to kill a dozen men and which the arrows alone should have done murder, Xelacoatl merely continued in his trance, his chest seen to rise and fall in beats so slow as to be almost imperceptible. The candles burning in the room were seen to have a darkness at the center of their flame which began to flow outward towards the archers. According to the archers, one by one the arrows in the body of Xelacoatl were seen to decay and shrink while their copper tips pushed themselves up out of the bloody carcass of the sorcerer. A stench so great filled this sanctum of the sorcerer that the archers began to vomit and their eyes to water.
"The assassins of Xelacoatl were so terrified that they fled the dwelling and could not be persuaded to return. In the end, slaves had to be blinded, whipped and herded into the room of not death to quickly wrap the body of the dead alive sorcerer in swaths of cloth. A tomb of great stones was hurriedly built in these hills away from the commerce of men and the body sealed inside. No man of the people have been known to visit it since that time. The forty archers who crowded that room of death that night were said to have gone mad and frequently laughed for no reason at visions no one else could see.
"It is said that the funeral urns in the tomb of Xelacoatl were filled to the brim with blood into which gold and jewels were thrown in great abundance to placate the form inside a form thought to be not entirely human.
De Costa listened without interruption and when the fat cacique had finished his tale he looked up at where Santi stood who merely gave off with arched eyebrows and a slit of a grin.
"I am asking you again. Why are you telling us about this treasure? You have little cause to love us Spanish."
Maxictlan replied, "We Cholulans have merely traded one master for another and one is much the same as the other. Were you to prosper because of us, things would be no worse for us Cholulans and perhaps better."
De Costa looked up at the man who stood before him darkly limned by a nearby fire through eyes now as heavy lidded as the cacique's own. De Costa didn't believe the man for one second; the Cholulans had had a great degree of autonomy in the Aztec empire and the role of Cholula as a holy city gave them a status unmatched outside the Valley of Mexico itself. Most importantly, the Cholulans had been forced by the Spaniards to give up their religion and worship the cross and Virgin Mary, a thing De Costa knew was particularly hated by the class of nobles and priests of Cholula.
Still, De Costa's fortunes had come to nothing in the division of the spoils of Tenochtitlan; some cloth, precious stones of no great value and a few slaves constituted his entire "treasure". Cortes and his inner circle together with the men of the brigantines Cortes had set on the lake to discomfit the Aztecs had come away with the lions share of the gold and jewels.
De Costa looked at Maria and said in the Spanish Maxictlan could not understand, "Can I trust this man and his priest?"
"You cannot, my lord", replied the darkly beautiful woman at his side in apparently casual fashion, though her piercing gaze backed up her words.
"Santi, what do you think?"
"Pedro de Costa, this man is as stuffed with shit as his form suggests. Why should he give over riches into our hands?"
De Costa looked up again at the two Cholulans who had now begun to shiver in the cold night air, or perhaps their shivers came from fear and doubt. Although De Costa trusted the two men not one whit, he could not see how robbing a tomb could hurt him or particularly profit the Cholulans; perhaps they really did mean to simply curry favor. His schedule of march was entirely flexible and his only wish in terms of speed was to debouch from these haunted, empty and ragged hills down onto the plains and perhaps gold dust that lay beyond as soon as possible. Before his eyes De Costa saw the idols of the Cholulans, made from stone, vegetable matter and clotted blood and shivered himself and wondered how much these two men longed after their thrown down gods and how much their hearts had surrendered to the idea of Spanish hegemony.
De Costa asked the two Cholulans, "Have you told this story to other Spaniards?"
"We have not my lord. It is a tale little known outside the valley of the two lakes and told to outsiders such as ourselves infrequently and then only in hurried whispers. As I said, we had all but forgotten the tale ourselves til now."
Santi piped in, "These two are great liars as are all Cholulans and cowards to boot. How these two stand to profit from us becoming rich I do not know but they care no more for good standing in our eyes than does a scorpion."
De Costa had Maria ask the Tlascalan chief Xotaxat about the tomb minus the tale surrounding it and the copper noble said he professed no knowledge of it but echoed Maria and Santi in that the two Cholulans were not people who could be trusted.
De Costa discounted the notion that this could be an ambush of any sort; Sandoval himself had recommended this route although he knew not who had suggested it to Sandoval. Could there be traps for the unwary who entered such a tomb if it existed or was fear enough to keep people away? Since the two Cholulans could be made to enter the tomb ahead of the Spaniards the notion of pitfalls had to be discounted and in any event, how could the deaths of the Spanish profit the Cholulans? Was there revenge at work here or did they seek to escape to a land beyond the reach of Spanish arms, to once again worship their idols? De Costa was at a loss to account for how he could come to harm or the Cholulans to profit and the pull of riches was as strong and insistent to him as the woman curves and scent of Maria in the night.De Costa once again sat down away from the others with Maria, Santi and the two Cholulans and began to question them closely as to the location of this supposed tomb. A three hour walk up into the higher hills to the East it was said would bring them to the tomb.
De Costa made his decision. "Santi, tell the others that Maria, you and I together with the two Cholulans are going to reconnoiter the lay of the land and may not be back before dawn." Santi gave over a look of remonstrance but said nothing and quickly strode away. To the two Cholulans he said, "You will leave your weapons, all of them, here at the camp."
"Of course, my lord", they replied and the supercilious grins Maxictlan and Cucoc gave back once again made De Costa shiver.
*
The moon rode high in the sky three hours tramping up into the surrounding hills later. From their higher vantage point, De Costa fancied he could see smears of heat lighting over the edge of the great body of water said to lie to the West, though some scores of leagues away. They were high up the side of a barren slope that rose in long terraces with some clumps of grasses and scrub that may once have constituted a volcanic crater, though now so eroded as to be unrecognizable as such. The air was thin and cold and wisps of breath were seen to come from their mouths and nostrils. The light of the moon was so strong that one could read by it and the lowlands away to the south and west were dimly visible as a rumpled and tortured landscape of the deepest possible shade of blue, with white wisps of fog lying serpent-like in the deepest ravines.
Their exertions in climbing had kept them warm but now, exposed to the wind that whistled up from the lowlands, the two Spaniards and Maria were wrapped in their cloaks. Nearby, a lone scraggly pine whipped its limbs about as if alive, casting shifting moon shadows onto the ground beneath it. Maxictlan and Cucoc stood ahead of them as still as their idols, a smear of phosphorescent white and deeper black against a blue black glow of sky empty of clouds and all but the brightest stars.
"Where is this tomb?" asked De Costa of the two Cholulans through Maria.
"It is here before us my lords", answered the fat cacique.
De Costa descried a passage he had not noticed before, open to the sky and surrounded by runnels made by rain in the slanting ground that rose to their left. The opening ran back into the hillside first as a sort of enclosed path and then disappeared into a dark tunnel that was high enough to walk in upright. Santi struck flint to the resin coated torches they had brought with them and De Costa said to the two Cholulans, "You will precede us into the tunnel", as he handed the priest Cucoc a torch, keeping one for himself with Maria having the third.
"As you wish lord", replied the cacique and he and his silent companion turned towards the opening followed closely by De Costa, Santi and Maria. De Costa sensed the disquiet from the two Cholulans in front of him and silently drew his sword and saw that Santi did the same.
Suddenly from behind them Maria gave off a long drawn out high pitched primal scream wherein De Costa could make out the words, "My lord!"
By Maria's torchlight De Costa saw behind them a fluttering line of white blocking the outside approach to the confined path from which they'd just come which at the point where De Costa and Santi stood was shoulder high on either side of them. De Costa saw bows being raised and acted on the instant.
De Costa and Santi were seasoned campaigners and neither stopped to think about the why or wherefore. They saw only armed men prepared to deal them death and knowing that speedy boldness coupled with resolve were their own weapon, both Spaniards were past Maria and amongst the bowmen in an instant with cries of "St. James", cutting their foes down with lightning swift strokes to the head and in less time than it takes to tell it, four indians were dead and dying at their feet. But beyond those four were a dozen more, armed with those clubs whose edges consisted of a double row of razor sharp obsidian glass. De Costa and Santi were only too familiar with these weapons as their own bodies were criss-crossed with scars dealt from such arms.
Hesitation was always the downfall of the peoples of Anahuac in their dealings with the Spanish and while the indians hesitated a split second at the sudden turn of events De Costa and Santi never paused and were once again on top of their foes, not giving them a single instant to think or even act, thrusting, parrying and cutting with their swords of good Toledo steel at heads, arms and legs. Four more indians were down in an instant.
Not entirely to De Costa's surprise, six of the remaining eight turned and fled, the other two being hotly engaged with the two Spaniards. Santi the terrier was up against a brute of a man whose arms and legs reflected the light of the torches like burnished copper. Santi parried two mighty blows of the razor edged maquahutl, one of which glanced off his helmet and rang his head like a bell. He thrust his opponent in the throat then clove in the man's head with his own mighty downward cut and down the man went like a marionette with its strings cut.
De Costa for his part cut off his man's weapon wrist as a blow was aimed at him and sliced him sideways beneath the chin. For a moment the man stared at his stump of a wrist and seemed to mouth some words as if talking to his missing hand and then calmly turned around and walked away, the bubbling sound amidst his sudden death chant betraying the ebbing of his life's blood.
Beads of sweat broke out on both Spaniards faces as they stared out into the moonlit dark. Their enemies seemed to have beat a hasty retreat. Turning to the tunnel mouth the Spaniards saw neither Maria or the two Cholulans. Maria's torch lay where it had fallen just outside the tunnel's entrance.
The two Spaniards swept up the torches and without a word to each other or hesitation, De Costa and Santi plunged into the dark tunnel holding the torches high above them. The sides of the tunnel were rough cut with little evidence of artificial origins. Possibly it was an ancient lava tube, widened to suit the purposes of the Aztecs.
About a hundred feet in, the floor of the tunnel changed to rough man-made flag stones set into some type of mortar. Only a few feet onto the area of man-made flooring the Spaniards must've tripped some mechanism because the entire section of flooring suddenly cantilevered downwards. Sliding forwards on the slick flagstones there was nothing for it but to jump and both men put their all into one mighty leap to the other side. In the sudden rush of air occasioned by their jump both their torches guttered out and in that same instant a shrill scream of "My Lord" was heard further down the shaft.
De Costa hit with brutal force hip high onto the sharp ledge and began to pull himself up in what was now pitch darkness. A sudden cry from Santi told De Costa his friend was in trouble. Throwing forward both his sword and the guttered torch, De Costa felt to his left and came upon the hand of Santi, still clinging stubbornly to his sword. He appeared to be hanging from the ledge with both forearms. De Costa grabbed Santi's wrist and with one mighty heave pulled his diminutive companion up and over the edge and both men fell back from the pit to safety.
Santi and De Costa lay there a moment in the dark breathing hard from their exertions in silence.
Santi said, "Thank you, Pedde."
De Costa replied, "Don't call me Pedde."
"I won't then", said Santi. "Not until we're both in our cups by a warm fire and with round girls on our laps."
"Where's your flint, Santi? Let's get these torches lit."
"I dropped my torch into the pit."
"Mine is right here", replied De Costa and it was but the work of a moment to set it alight. Both men sat on the flagstones a moment listening but there was no sound from further down the tunnel but the aura of menace was palpable.
The section of flooring slowly rose back into place with a loud grinding sound but not before the two Castilians peered into the pit and saw the sharpened spikes arrayed at the bottom.
They regained their feet and stood without moving. Slowly, they began to once again move forward. "There's more to this than meets the eye", whispered Santi.
"Those Cholulans know this place Santi, otherwise they could never have avoided the pitfall."
"And they somehow arranged an ambush for us. This has all been planned from the start, but to what purpose?"
Suddenly two dark shapes loomed man high on either side of the tunnel. The torch revealed them to be two hideous figures carved from black basalt. Only their emerald jeweled eyes revealed any color. They reminded De Costa of the gargoyles of Valencia coupled with a drawing he'd once seen from Egypt, a reclining lion with the head of a man. Crouching menace carved into stone they were, with great claws splayed onto the floor at the end of arms scaled like a snake's and with wide fanged mouths. The length of the statues was about eight feet with sharp edged stylized wings flowing back over the body.
"Not another step", cautioned De Costa. Between the two statues was barely space for one man at a time. De Costa slowly moved the torch about, closely examining the floor and then the ceiling but without spying any man made appurtenence.
"If there is a mechanism, it must be in the flags since that is the only part a man is sure to touch", said Santi.
Once again De Costa examined the flag stones in front of them, this time getting carefully onto his knees. He quickly noticed that the dust of the floor was disturbed in front of and on the other side of two flag stones near the front of the statues and also near the rear. On those two sets of flags, the dust was undisturbed.
"They obviously passed this way", said De Costa and if it is the flags that set off some trap, it is a safe bet the flags with the disturbed dust are safe to walk on."
"How safe?", said Santi.
"You go first", replied De Costa.
Santi's grey eyes glittered red in the torchlight, whether from grim amusement or the love of adventure.
"What if it's some kind of double mechanism?", Santi mused.
"While we're standing here figuring that out, Maria may be getting her throat cut or worse", De Costa remarked as he moved forward, carefully preparing to step only on the flags whose dust was clearly disturbed.
"What could be worse than getting her throat cut? She's not exactly a virgin."
"Grim sorcery, fool", said De Costa as he reached back and flicked Santi on his cheekbone with a finger. Santi yelped and said, "You don't believe in tales of sorcerers do you?"
"It's easy to believe anything walking towards a haunted tomb in the black bowels of a volcano in this mad land."
De Costa stepped gingerly past the long statues and Santi followed as De Costa held out the torch for his friend once he imagined himself past the danger point. Once through, both men once again faced the blackness of the arrow straight tunnel.
"Do you think they fled down this tunnel because there's another entrance or because they had no choice?" "I don't know, Santi. If it's the latter they may be relying on the traps to destroy us. Otherwise they have no choice but to ambush us somehow."
No breath of air moved to indicate that there was a second entrance to the tunnel and the two men moved forward by the light of their single torch with naked steel in their hands. If there was indeed a tomb here it was as quiet as its namesake and no sound emerged from the darkness ahead to indicate that any living thing other than themselves occupied the darksome tunnel.
While slowly moving forward De Costa and Santi at all times examined the floor, ceiling and sides of the shaft, fearing they had not seen the last of pitfalls and traps.
"Hold!", said Santi.
De Costa saw what Santi did at the same instant. Two black slits shoulder high were on either wall of the tunnel, a flat hand thick and two hands high. Closer examination showed two more slits cleverly hidden below the others by the roughness of the walls near the floor of the tunnel. They were an arm's length beyond the upper openings.
"It's almost as if the upper slits are meant to be obvious so that one will crouch down to avoid whatever might come out of them, only to fall prey to the bottom slits", said Santi.
Once more, painstaking examination was made of the flagstones and none had their dust disturbed opposite the slits.
"Perhaps the upper slits are false and the lower ones kill somehow", said De Costa.
"Or maybe they both do", answered the terrier.
"Take care to only step on the disturbed flags and we won't learn."
"Wait", said Santi. "These flags are a little obvious by now. What if the upper slits contain some mechanism that has to be applied at the same time one steps on the safe flags?"
"I hadn't thought of that", said De Costa. Time was not on their side and the more they stood bewildered in front of these deadfalls the further away went their enemies with Maria.
More suspicious now, De Costa looked again at the ceiling and found another slit even more cleverly hidden by a supposed roughness of the rock of which the tunnel was composed. Now he was doubly and triply cautious, but what to do? What was the answer to this puzzle?
"Speed", said Santi.
"What?"
"Speed. We'll run past this obstacle as fast as we can, side by side. We can't stand here all night. These traps are designed for those who blunder onto them unawares, not for a man with resolve to pass."
"St. James be with us", replied De Costa.
"I'll sing a 'Te Deum' on the other side", laughed Santi.
Both men backed up a few paces.
"On the count of three", said Da Costa.
On three both men ran forward and the rush of air once again blew out the torch. Behind them in the dark they heard a scraping followed by an enormous blow onto the flags. Once again lighting the torch they gazed in awe at three thin slabs of fashioned green rock like giant straight swords whose ends emerged from north-south slits in the ceiling, two of which they had not seen and cut on their bottom ends like the blade of an axe, now resting on shattered flags.
"Someone doesn't like visitors", said Santi.
"Or something disturbed, or awakened", replied De Costa.
"You are a superstitious lout my captain."
"But still your captain. Onward."
With that they moved forward once again, their vigilance redoubled, sweat standing out from their foreheads with the strain of thinking of silent and quick death with any false step.
"That torch will give our friends ample warning of our approach", remarked Santi.
"That can't be helped. We have our good sword arms and that will have to serve for a trump card."
Something glittered by the reflected light of their torch ahead of them in the dark. Closer approach resolved it to be a barrier completely blocking the tunnel. The door, if it was that, was carved from side to side and top to bottom with tiny skulls in relief. Flecks of gold were infused into the rock which was of a dark blue composition entirely different from the rest of the tunnel.
"Another puzzle but we don't know if it's just a door of some kind or another deadly trap", said Santi.
"At least we know the Cholulans are unaware of our approach", replied the Captain.
"At least until we pass this barrier. We don't know what's on the other side or where our friends are", said Santi.
De Costa applied the torch all around, desperately seeking out signs of a mechanism that would result in their deaths if inadvertently tripped. Seeing nothing he once again turned to the door and examined the hand wide skulls. De Costa was rewarded with seeing that some few of the skulls had a dark area around their edges, as if they could be pushed inwards. They were arranged in a pattern of five across at their center with four more above and below, then three, then two, then one and one more above that top and bottom.
"There are nineteen skulls that look like they can be pressed inwards. No doubt this pattern makes sense to the people of Anahuac but to us it means nothing", exclaimed De Costa in frustration.
"They are probably meant to be pressed in some kind of sequence that..."
Santi got no further as two arrows glanced off the door in front of him, shot from the blackness behind them. At almost the same instant, an arrow lodged into Santi's back and another sliced into the flesh of De Costa's upper left arm.
In a flash both men realized their mysterious assailants that had fled the mouth of the tunnel were back, perhaps all six of them and they had the advantage of killing from a distance and the protection of darkness. Another arrow shot past them into the door and a second took Santi in the side as he had turned and then he was down.
De Costa dropped the torch and ran at full speed back down the tunnel. He felt an arrow whiz by his face and another clatter harmlessly off the side of his helmet and then he was on his tormenters. De Costa almost ran full into a copper spearhead that gleamed out of the darkness, lit by the feeble torch on the floor by the barrier. He batted it aside with his sword and gave over a back hand stroke to the shoulder of his assailant and down that man went.
Over his fallen body De Costa flung himself at another man. Thrusting ahead of him in the dark he was rewarded with a cry of pain. A blow from a club caught De Costa on the side of his shoulder and only his stout leather jerkin stopped the obsidian blades from sinking deep into his arm. De Costa thrust once again at waist height and felt his sword sink deep into vitals, unaware if this was the same man he stabbed the first time. Dimly De Costa saw another blow from a maquahutl descending towards him and he barely stepped to one side and then delivered a downward cut of his own that bit into flesh accompanied by a cry of agony. This man was down and another loomed out of the dark to replace him. This time an arrow was thrust into his face and caught De Costa in the cheek. At the same time someone who'd fallen grasped De Costa about both legs so that he couldn't move.
Suddenly a body surged over his back and he heard twin cries of agony and the sickening sound steel makes when it bites deep into flesh. Santi had come and De Costa used the hilt of his sword to strike downward until he felt the satisfying crunch of metal on bone and then his legs were free. Their eyes now accustomed to the light, De Costa and Santi dimly saw five bodies lying about them and the sounds of running in the darkness before them. A cry and a thunk echoed back through the darkness. Leaving Santi there, De Costa retrieved the torch by the barrier and made his way back.
Santi had thrown aside the indians weapons out of reach of the writhing forms on the tunnel floor and De Costa pushed past him with the torch and soon found the sixth indian lying on the floor unconscious. The native had apparently forgotten about the rock blades blocking the passage in his panic to escape and had run full into them, knocking himself out. Without adieu De Costa sent this native into the nether regions and when he returned to his friend he saw that Santi had done the same to the others and was about to dispatch the first indian who'd tried to impale De Costa with his spear when De Costa said, "Hold". The man was crouched on the floor leaning against the wall, his shoulder half cut through and blood streaming into his face from the blow of De Costa's sword hilt.
"Are you okay, Santi?"
"No", he replied. "Turn around." De Costa did so and without any ceremony Santi pulled out the arrow that had gone deep into the fleshy part of his arm. De Costa cried out in pain and tears came instantly to his eyes.
"Now, do the same for me." Santi had pulled away the arrow in his waist but couldn't reach the one on his back. De Costa said, "One, two..." and pulled out the arrow from Santi's back in one swift motion.
"What happened to three?"
"That's for not giving me time to bite down on something. I might've bit my own tongue off when you pulled out that arrow."
"Are you all right, Santi?"
"No, Pedde", replied his friend. The stout leather shirt had not allowed the arrows to bite mortally deep but blood flowed all too freely from the slits in Santi's vest.
De Costa moved with his torch down the tunnel and grasping the surviving indian by the hair unceremoniously dragged him on his knees to the barrier in the tunnel.
"Do you speak Spanish?", asked De Costa of the indian. His reply was a blank stare above a grimmace of pain and hate and knowledge that his life was at an end.
Da Costa roughly took the native by his black hair and thrust his face at the sequence of skulls. "What does this mean?"
The indian gave no reply but a slight widening of his eyes told De Costa all he wanted to know. De Costa made motions as if pressing the skulls in a sequence and then thrust his sword into the gaping shoulder wound of the native. After several minutes of screams and thrusts, a bloody hand reached forth and pressed several skulls. De Costa never knew what the sequence meant but the native did. The indian slumped forward as the barrier pivoted with a grinding noise on its center, allowing space to pass on either side. De Costa sent the indian to some kind of afterlife with a single thrust of his sword to his back and Santi roused himself from where he'd been leaning against the wall holding his waist and together the two passed through to the other side.
On the other side of the barrier the motif of the skulls was repeated on either wall for some little distance and then the tunnel finally widened out into a dim and vast echoing space much taller than wide. Opposite them on the other side of that space, steps led up to a wide arched opening with a lintel of ghoulishly carved green stone. Through that opening shown a wan light and together Santi and De Costa climbed the carved steps and faced a scene De Costa would never forget, try though he might.
The Spaniards saw a wide oval chamber lit by torches and on a green mass of stone near the back wall that could have been a tomb was Maria, naked and lying on her side. Her wrists were bound behind her and her ankles tied to her wrists so she couldn't move. Her hair had been wadded up and stuffed in her mouth and this was held in place by a leather thong. She rolled her eyes in terror and pleading at the same time. From a hole in the ceiling directly above her the rays of the full moon at its zenith bathed her in a wan glow.
In front of this tomb or altar were six enormous sealed ceramic urns the color of mottled turquoise and in front of these knelt the priest Cucoc, his back to the Spaniards. Cucoc was muttering something in Nahuatl and holding sideways before him some kind of staff. Behind Maria stood Maxictlan and he held what appeared to be a section of his collar to Maria's throat. The collar on his piacular neck had been a weapon in disguise when pulled apart. One half he held in the center while twin copper blades curved out from it like the horns of a bull from either side of his hand.
"Does nothing deter you cursed Spanish?", he cried in his own tongue.
Only then did De Costa notice what was behind and above the fat cacique. In an enormous alcove crouched - something. De Costa began to feel the edges of reality peel away and a laugh bubbled to his lips unbidden. Beside him he heard a laugh tinged with madness spill from Santi's lips and he noticed his friend held a bow and quiver of arrows taken from their assailants. A mass of darkness twice the size of a man crouched deep in that alcove above and behind Maria and Maxictlan and De Costa knew that it was alive and aware of him. Da Costa's mind reeled at the hint of vast dimensions of space and time that seemed to comprise its insubstantial center where the darkness was blackest and there was the suggestion of wings and smoky red eyes in what De Costa took to be its long head. It seemed as if there was a heat shimmer about its outline, the kind one sometimes sees rise from hot sand. Despite it's awareness and parody of life the thing in the alcove did not move. There appeared to be a barrier of some kind of transparent amber colored substance covering the front of the alcove.
The Spaniards and Cholulans were at an impasse and could not speak to each other. De Costa had no idea of what was happening here. Obviously the two Spaniards had not been meant to enter the hill and what Maxictlan's end game was was known only to the two Cholulans.
"Blood is the life and you will pay this price for defiling Cholula, the Holy City of Anahuac", said Maxictlan and at that the priest kneeling before the altar or tomb raised the staff and loudly started some new kind of chant.
Next to him, Santi reeled slightly against him and De Costa knew that his friend had lost too much blood. Suddenly Santi stood up straight, laughed the laugh of a madman and launched an arrow straight into the back of Cucoc who slumped forward without a sound.
"No!", cried Maxictlan, "It is not time! You destroy our protection!"
For an answer Santi sent another arrow into the slumping form of Cucoc and the staff the priest had held rolled away onto the floor as Santi notched another arrow.
With that, the amber barrier popped like a bubble and a sound as of the humming of a thousand cicadas burst forth and the thing in the alcove flowed down out of it's resting place. Maxictlan shrieked like a woman and ran off to one side. The thing from the alcove flowed down onto Maria and her naked, struggling form could be seen in the center of the thing as through very thick, dark glass.
De Costa saw Maria's body dissolve like the foundations of a mud hut exposed to water and as the thing flowed off the altar, all that was left was a loathsome puddle and just like that Maria was gone. Gibbering like a maniac, Santi launched arrow after arrow into the thing as it flowed down towards the two Spaniards. As the thing flowed over the great urns frost appeared instantly on their surface and they burst asunder. De Costa ripped off his cloak and threw it over the flowing darkness and then ran towards it with his sword upraised. He felt himself suddenly thrust aside and back 20 feet to land painfully on his wounded arm on the hard floor and he saw black spots before his eyes. Across from him he saw Santi lying with his back to a wall like a broken doll and the dark thing was flowing towards his friend.
De Costa in a flash of insight born of hopelessness painfully pulled himself off the floor and made for the staff that Cucoc had brandished at the alcove. Once he had secured it he used it like a pike and bounded towards the thing, burying the staff into where he imagined the being's heart or core might be. A flow of utter coldness enveloped him and then a deep humming sound filled the room. Santi lay against the wall laughing maniacally and at the other end of the room the fat cacique lay on his side, foam coming from his mouth as he twitched spasmodically. Of the thing all that remained to mark its passing was a large spot of frost on the flagstones.
De Costa's forearms felt as if the bone had shattered and he couldn't feel his hands. He pulled himself erect off the floor and retrieved his sword with clumsy fingers from where it had been flung out of his hand as he'd been tossed aside like a kitten. Looking once again towards the cacique, De Costa saw him stumbling towards him, his lidded eyes bulging with a look of utter hatred, brandishing his strange weapon. Both men laughed like lunatics and De Costa calmly sliced off the arm that held Maxictlan's weapon and then his smiling head.
De Costa looked to his friend Santi who still lay against the wall and they laughed both at each other and De Costa felt his sanity slipping away. De Costa walked on with an unsteady gait to his friend and helped him to his feet. He held Santi's head between his numb hands and they gibbered into each other's eyes like drunk children.
"Pedde!", exclaimed Santi.
De Costa let go of Santi and surveyed the scene. Where the urns had burst lay six piles of gems and objects of gold amidst dark red flakes of something; he couldn't bring himself to look at the altar even as laughter came unbidden to his lips. Still laughing De Costa gathered up his cloak and made a sack of it by tying it's corners together and stuffed it with all the precious treasure he could carry. A giggling Santi did the same with his own cloak on unsteady feet and streams of blood poured from his two wounds.
Thoughts by the Spaniards on what black rituals the Cholulans had planned in regard to the being that curled itself into the form of Xelacoatl or what that being was were superceded by a bubbling madness that threatened to overwhelm the sanity of the two Spaniards and by the glittering baubles and gold figurines they grasped at with eager hands, no longer even sure as to why they did so. On some unconscious level the soul of De Costa was even then mourning the loss of Maria and his own sanity in that far away land of Anahuac that had become ever more alarmingly tilted.
"These are very shiny", said Santi with a laugh from a face drained of color and De Costa noted the drops of blood on the floor surrounding his crouching companion.
De Costa noticed a glow in an opening to one side and going over to it he saw a corridor lit at long intervals by torches, presumably by Maxictlan. A breeze blew into De Costa's face, making the torches flicker in a way that was most suggestive and that De Costa knew meant something just beyond his grasp. De Costa stood there entranced until he felt a hand clasped on his shoulder and turned to look at Santi. He saw wide, gray eyes dilated to black and knew that they reflected the disconnection from reality in his own eyes which threatened to snap altogether under the weight of this dark sorcery.
"We're home free, Pedro captain! That wind means the outside. Come, Maria is waiting for us", he continued laughingly. In that moment De Costa knew they were lost and that this cursed land had indeed never been meant for them.
Shouldering their plunder they plunged into the long corridor, hoping it was an exit that Maxictlan had prepared for himself. The corridor seemed interminable and the torches became fewer and farther in between. At last in the distance De Costa thought he could see moonlight framed by the tunnel's sides. Santi was slightly ahead of him and then he was gone as the flagstones upon which he walked crumbled beneath his feet. De Costa leaped over the opening and seized a torch from the wall to look down into the abyss that had swallowed his friend. Twenty feet down he could just make out Santi impaled on a score of spikes. One last pale laugh escaped from his lips and Santi was no more.
In a daze at the fate that had overtaken Maria and Santi, De Costa continued down the corridor and finally out into the cool moonlit night. Turning and looking back down the corridor, De Costa saw Maria and Santi walking towards him in the far distance, extinguishing the torches on the walls with their bare hands as they came closer and closer and somewhere in the night De Costa imagined he heard the sound as of an immense door slamming to in the night. Closing his mind from the darkness that approached him out of the side of that mountain, De Costa turned with stinging eyes and made his way down the long ashy slope, the booty slung over his shoulder and mad bursts of laughter echoed across the silent landscape as he disappeared into a stand of tilted pines. At the zenith, the figure of a rabbit busily stirred its pot on the face of an Aztec moon and tendrils of fog came out of the pines and advanced up the slope.
*
Many years later in Guatemala in the town of Santiago de los Caballeros, an old man very well dressed sat on a bench in that town's central plaza. He had laughing eyes and a grim set to his mouth and long gray hair. Next to him sat a Mayan woman half his advanced age and dressed in the traditional huipile of that land of the very finest material and craftsmanship. Her hair was arranged in the then current style of a Spanish lady and a mantilla of black lace made in Vienna lay about her shoulders.
At their feet a child sat cross legged upon the ground playing with a doll from Spain in the form of a Spanish lady of the royal court.
At one end of town, on the outskirts in the near distance, could be seen ridges with stands of tilted pine and at the other, and in the farther distance, loomed the massive cone of Agua Volcano.
The little girl said to the old man, "Papa, you promised me I could have a dulce this morning if I was a good girl." The man replied, "Play with your doll, Maria," and a burst of mad laughter escaped from him until the woman next to him gently put two fingers on his lips and the man once again became silent. A faraway look came into the man's eyes as if he could see through illimitable distances past the madly tilted pine studded ridges.
THE END