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forward cautiously.
Half a kilometer past the stelae the jungle
ceased, its death so abrupt that they found
themselves on the brink of cleared land before they
had realized what had happened.
They stood very still and stared at the incredible
expanse which swept majestically away before
them.
The rain had all but stopped and, from above
them, the sun shone, against the background of
dark gMy thunderheads, into the illimitable valley,
casting into brilliant white complex stone buildings
of immense size, a towering, pyramidal city linked
by uncurving stone causeways edged by low stone
causeways edged by low stone monuments.
The buildings were ornate, terrifyingly alien and
hypnotically familiar at the same time, and none
more so than that structure which dominated the
entire valley city.
It was an enormous stepped pyramid in the
stone city's center. It towered over all the other
buildings, bizarre and compelling. It was
four-sided, perhaps typical of this culture, with
central stairs running up each face, set within the
cyclopean steps. At its flat summit was a stone
slab, an oval striated green and black. It looked
like an altar.
"Ama-no-mori?" whispered Moichi.
An oval, thought Ronin, suddenly dizzy, on the
verge now, parting from the leafy shadows of the
jade sea, an enfolding talisman against the terrible
stone city crouched watchfully.
Waiting.
"It appears deserted."
"Yet, a feeling "
"I know."
"Where are the inhabitants?"
Everywhere he looked the great stone stelae and
buildings were richly carved with strange scenes
filled with myriad figures. Were these men or
gods? Or perhaps both, mingled on the grounds of
this site, for surely they saw depicted the aban-
doned, the defeated, the humbled, the sacrificed
overshad
42 Eric ~ Lus1;bader
owed by the fierce, the victorious, the revenged,
ensplendored and revered in stone three times the
size of man.
At the commencement of the central stone
causeway, wide and perfectly flat, they passed
between twin stone cats, giant jaws agape,
stretched forepaws many meters in length, rip-
pling shoulder muscles deeply etched, the mighty
relief of the massive chests sweeping in sinuous
curves up and away to the lifted rumps and
quiescent tails.
Just beyond these mammoth stone guardians,
two more stelae rose on either side of the
causeway, immense, covered in such high relief
and complex glyphs that it was impossible to
count the number of their sides.
Passing between these they saw a great stepped
plaza rising on their left. Pools on the stone steps,
remnants of the day's heavy rain, glistened in the
lowering sun. Here and there, as they moved,
their angle of vision changing, these shallow pools
broke into arcing pastel rainbows.
On either side of the plaza, to north and south,
were high structures with windowless stone walls,
vertical and sheer on their inner sides, sloping
outward on their opposite walls. A lone doorway
set in each vertical wall led onto the plaza.
"Strange," said Moichi as he halted before the
first steps of the plaza. He gazed all about him.
"The arch seems unknown to these people. You
see, Ronin" he pointed to the structures at
either end of the plaza "they use, instead, the
corbel vault to support their taller buildings."
Ronin's gaze at length swung away from the
plaza complex, west, along the flat causeway, and
he called softly to his companion. Before the
great stepped pyramid which rose above them a
quarter of a kilometer away, he could make out
three silhouetted figures, tall and black,
featureless against the diffuse mauve and copper
glare of the dying sun, slipping steadily into the
highest reaches of the towering jungle beyond the
stone valley.
"This way. Come on."
They were masked.
Two men and one woman with great feline
mantles covering their entire heads. These were
cunningly crafted, furred and spotted, with
triangular ears, black muzzles with long, stiff
whiskers, and cold, glittering eyes, the color of
gold or light green jade, translucent, glassy, and
somehow disturbing.
All three were extremely tall, fully two and a
half meters, the men with deep chests and long,
muscular legs. Their skin was the color of stained
teak.
DAI-SAN 43
The two men were garbed in gold and black
spotted fur cloths wound about their loins. They
wore sandals of black leather. Along their arms
were bands of gold of varying widths, beaten and
carved with fantastic designs. Ronin could pick out
a bizarre scene between several Readdressed
warriors and a multiheaded creature which he took
to be a god.
The woman was fully as tall as the men, her
great untangled mane of blue-black hair outlasting
the length of her grotesque mask; it rode to the
small of her back. She wore a short tunic of golden
fur that reached from her heavy breasts to just past
the juncture of her thighs. Her legs were long and
beautifully formed. She wore no gold on her arms
but rather a band of pink and white jade, not more
than a centimeter across, carved into an intricate
latticework design through which the rich copper
of her skin could be seen.
The man on the left stepped forward one pace.
"Welcome," he said, his voice distant and strange
through the grillwork of ivory fangs, "to Xich Chih,
the great city of the Chacmool."
"Time," said Cabal Xiu.
He was the shorter of the two men.
"It has ever been our greatest concern."
A light breeze ruMed the fur of his mask.
"Thus our history is written in stone to survive
the cataclysms of the ages."
To the north and south, low pillared edifices; to
the east, the jungle shivered, a high, almost
impenetrable barrier. On a stepped acropolis,
facing west. Across the wide, stone causeway,
another structure loomed, a stepped pyramid
perhaps one third the size of the giant structure
near the center of the stone city, made up of nine
successively smaller terraces. At the top was an
oblong building set on six thick columns, heavily
carved and worked. A set of wide steps along the
center of the near side of the edifice gave access to
the top.
"We have waited " Cabal Xiu paused as if
debating his choice of words. "We are waiting "
The absurdity of the situation, Ronin reflected
uneasily as his gaze swung back to the three
bizarrely disfigured creatures sitting before him,
failed to impress itself upon him. There was a
disturbing aspect to this trio that disallowed any
but the most immediately self-involving thoughts.
"Waiting for what?" said Moichi. "The end?"
The feline mask which covered Cabal Xiu's head
swiveled
44 Eric ~ Lustbader
in his direction. The ablate sun's dying rays fired
his eyes.
"Oh no." A line of crimson light fired his
whiskers and was gone. "That has already come."
In a hush, the sun left the land and the city of
Xich Chih was engulfed in amethyst and lapis
light. In reflection, the valley glowed, as if from a
frozen spectral fire kilometers distant.
"See to the rushes, Kin Coba," said Cabal Xiu.
The woman rose from her alabaster stone seat,
crossed the stone acropolis to the north building.
Ronin watched the movement of her buttocks, the
strength of her firm thighs.
She returned moments later with two reed
torches, smokily lit, which she set into stone
pillars on either side of the group.
"This is the Chacmool," said Uxmal Chac, the
taller of the two men, speaking for the first time.
He pointed to the low table between them. It's
top was the back of a cat, stylized and perfectly
flat. The stone from which it was carved was
either stained red or was naturally ruddy. Into its
sides and back had been sunk circles of green
jade, representing spots. The table's top was
strewn with fired clay bowls of dried white corn
and a heavy milky drink, spiced and certainly
alcoholic. "It is the Red Jaguar, which still roams
this land. It is unique in all the worlds for the
Chacmool never knows defeat until all life has [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]