Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
The clashing was hypnotic and he held his ground. The lizard seemed transfixed by the replicated movements of the battle. Ronin retreated and the lizard scuttled forward. Locked together, he allowed the crocodile to push him further back. This time the lizard scuttled further along the stone until it was just behind his foe.
Abruptly he pressed his attack, exerting great force, shoving the crocodile backward along the step. One bare foot struck the lizard, who squealed, terrified, and squirmed.
The crocodile stumbled for an instant.
It was all Ronin needed.
Slamming a mighty blow with the flat of his sword against the side of her face, he sent her flying. She cried out as she tumbled downward, her mask slipping off as she hit the top of one of the great stone Chacmools at the base of the Sacred Pyramid. A crack like thunder.
Ronin swung up onto the fourth step.
‘The third move is complete,’ Ek cried from above. ‘Lizard defeats crocodile.’
While he gained the fifth level.
Uxmal Chac: flint moving against him now; the light of the low platinum moon, which frosted the swaying tops of the massed trees in the west, shot dazzlingly from his adversary’s high metallic mask.
The night was waning. Would the dawn bring Tzcatlipoca?
Jagged blue-green lightning banded the Sacred Pyramid; a distant growling had begun from the interior of the Temple of Tzcatlipoca at its summit.
Ronin felt the pain in his shoulder intensify as his sword met the crescent flint blade of Uxmal Chac. But he urged his body onward, his iron will forcing the agony down into insignificance.
It is my time now, he thought wildly and he yelled the battle cry of his unknown ancestors, a call of power and determination, of strength and perseverence.
Uxmal Chac appeared confused by the cry, his attack brought up short. His great arms lifted his weapon high over his head; as he began the massive downswing, he tried to change direction, perceiving the flight of Ronin’s long blade. A blur, it was within his guard, slamming aside his vertical blow, and clove his high mask down the center.
Great yellow and blue sparks flew from the violent contact, and bearing down, Ronin drove the sword further, through bone, tissue, more bone, and the body of Uxmal Chac dissipated like smoke upon the air. A clapping, as of dry stones crashing.
He vaulted to the sixth level.
‘Ah, no!’ Ek’s voice no longer recited toneless liturgy. And, from below, Ronin heard the desperate cry of Kin Coba as she pulled her broken body up the Sacred Pyramid’s central stairway:
‘It is true then. What was written in the Long Count, in the Book of Balam, cannot be changed—’
Got it!
‘No!’ cried Ronin, stalking the sixth level. ‘I was born in the
katun
Ce-Acatl. I was driven from Xich Chih with my Father in the
katun
Ce-Acatl. And, as the Long Count and the Book of Balam foretold, I have returned in the
katun
Ce-Acatl!’
‘What?’ Ek threw up his hands. ‘What madness is this? What do you know of Atsbilan, warrior?’
‘All!’ cried Ronin. ‘For I am He-Who-Sets-The-Sun!’
Ek screamed: ‘Impossible! It cannot be!’
Ronin raced along the stone step on the sixth level, his eyes intent on Xib, the skull, coming alive on the seventh step. A fresh breeze had sprung up and as it reached him he turned and in the east saw the horizon, entirely visible at this elevation over the distant treetops of the immense jungle, saw the faint edges of pink and pearl gray streaked there as if by an artist’s brush, presaging dawn.
‘Return!’ cried Kin Coba. ‘Reassemble!’
Crouching, the skull advanced.
Ronin made the seventh step.
‘Oh, Tzcatlipoca.’ Ek raised his arms toward the black heavens. ‘Master of the moon and the pole star and the deep of night, is this truly Atsbilan or is it some imposter?’
It was what frightened them. He used it.
‘It is I, Ek! Atsbilan has returned! Who else but He-Who-Sets-The-Sun could prevail against the forces of Tzcatlipoca in the sacred game?’
He closed with the red aspect and, as he did so, the skull drew forth an ebon rapier, ivory-handled, its blade thin and flexible.
The two unequal blades flashed, crossing.
‘Destroy him!’ sobbed Kin Coba. ‘He must not reach the ninth step!’ Her spine splintered, still she strove to crawl up the central staircase, a ruined jaguar, noble even in death.
He used both hands to maneuver his sword against the lightning-like rapier as the grinning skull in his red robes caused the air to whine with the complex patterns of thrust, feint, thrust.
All along the seventh level they fought like fiends, using every ounce of their strength, every trick in their cunning combat vocabulary, their deadly dance as precise, as coldly geometric as the silent stone city crouched far below them. They whirled and lunged, twisted and circled, stalking the one instant of hesitation, searching for the one flicker of an eyelid indicating a break in concentration that would signal the death of one combatant.
The breeze from the east stiffened, tugging at the skull’s crimson robes, fluttering Ronin’s long hair.
Ek’s fevered cries rose again into the dying night:
‘Tzcatlipoca, hear the call of Your children, we who have served You faithfully and tirelessly through the endless
katun
of Time. We must be victorious this night for Your time in Xich Chih has come again! Once again it shall be filled to overflowing with Your worshipers, who will walk with the prowling Chacmool; who will serve You. Aid us now against Your enemy!’
The green and blue lightning crackled and it seemed to Ronin that Ek’s desperate cry was successful for surely now the skull’s attack grew fiercer and he grew stronger with each new thrust of his blurred blade so that Ronin was forced back along the stone step. Back and back under the murderous assault, dizzying him, impossible to stop. The skull loomed out of the mother of pearl night, the rapier on a deadly trajectory that nothing could stop.
A calling, distant, sparked in his mind as the rapier came on, a comforting sound like the gentle chatter of a great rainfall and he felt a trembling in the core of his being. Inside him, red and yellow lightning-like bolts of thought, currents of energy multiplying through him in geometric progression.
He attempted no parry.
The rapier rushed at his heart.
But merely, dreamlike, lifting his long sword obliquely, higher, higher still, until, with a harmonious sigh like the profoundest of musical chords, echoing away and away into the infinitude of the heavens, it reached the proper angle.
The blade seemed to ripple in pleasure as the first rays of the leading edge of the rising red sun shot along its length, running like molten metal. Ronin felt the vibrations of energy and his entire being seemed to expand with strength.
The long beautiful blade swam with pink and an intense bolt of light exploded from its tip, an extension of the solar engine filling the eastern horizon, lancing out along the line of the blade, striking the skull at the juncture of his throat.
‘Oh!’
Such a small, pathetic sound, coming from the lips of a god, lost now on the rising wind from the east. The mask ballooned out grotesquely, shattered like a glass goblet, and Xib’s acephalous body went heavily down the immense steps of the structure, tumbling, tumbling, in a swirl of scarlet and gray.
While Ronin, alight with power, vaulted to the eighth level, rolling, hurtling upward again to stand, at last, on the ninth step, the summit of the Sacred Pyramid of Tzcatlipoca.
Ek towered before him, his ebon robes filmy and ethereal, billowing about his lean body. He threw a crescent of flat stone at Ronin and it struck his sword so that it spun from his grasp, clanging against the stones of the pyramid’s summit.
But Ronin, lunging to his right, scooped up the huge brass brazier, burning brightly, lifting it from its base and flinging it in a hail of blue flame and red coals into Ek’s face.
With a peculiar dry popping, the face fired.
Ronin ran for his sword, sheathed it, and turning, beheld not the burning form of Ek but something else.
The body swayed as if, weightless, it was caught in the wind’s gusting crosscurrents.
Ronin stared.
From the blackened, smoking pit between the wide shoulders, there came a gnashing as of huge jaws working convulsively. A weird, unhuman cry billowed out into night’s swift close and the very air about the tall form wavered and shuddered so that, for an instant, Ronin could not clearly see what was occurring.
The air cleared. And Ek was gone.
Reunited, the four brothers from the Old Time had become the one: Xaman Balam, the Hand of dark Tzcatlipoca, forger of the Sundering, instigator of the rewritten Book of Balam, minister of the night.
Born in the west, where ever there was darkness, his robes were a black so deep that they absorbed light and his huge head, which crowned his wide, powerful shoulders, was the atavistic visage of the Chacmool, icon of his Master: red, ebon-spotted, pointed yellow fangs bristling from his avenging muzzle, his round yellow and black eyes fierce, unblinking.
And Ronin, with the groundswell of energy still coursing within him, yet knew that he could not hope to do battle with this nightmare god and emerge victorious. The power which confronted him now was awesome, his body shaking with the pulsing of its emanations.
For here stood death and now life was beyond all imagining.
Xaman Balam’s great animal jaws hinged open and sound emerged that no mortal was ever meant to hear. It tore at his eardrums like flint knives.
Thus the last great god of Xich Chih spoke and Ronin shuddered, weak before the first intimations of a power beyond understanding and, as Xaman Balam strode toward him he drew his sword, preparing to fight, looking inward, setting his soul for death’s dark journey.
And Xaman Balam came on, his arms jerking upward, the talons at the tips of his fingers curling into the palms. Ronin gripped his useless sword more tightly, tensing his muscles for one last impotent blow, raising the blade.
But the god had halted and it took Ronin several moments to realize that the god had abandoned his attack and was, in fact, in the act of supplication.
Ronin turned to face the rising sun.
It was the brightest of lights, coming from the east, as if a piece of the sun itself had broken away. Writhing in the air, it bloomed as it approached with incredible velocity.
Rippling.
And Ronin saw now that it was a great serpent, covered in enormous feathers of every color in existence. It headed directly for the summit of the Sacred Pyramid of Tzcatlipoca. Xaman Balam stood immobile as if mortally stricken.
And from just below them, Ronin heard a voice:
‘Oh Xaman Balam, here is our end! Atsbilan’s return has brought his Father back, just as the Long Count foretold!’ It was Kin Coba, her face filled with awe and pain, pale and beautiful and hideous.
‘Kukulkan is come again to Xich Chih! We are destroyed!’
The great serpent’s head, so like the broken stone carvings surmounting the lintels of the small temple with its headless statue, hovered above Xaman Balam, the enormous body in constant motion. The fluttering of its plumes were like a whirlwind.
And now its rippling coils lowered and wrapped the dark god in their feathered embrace, squeezing, squeezing, until the huge, fierce jaws gnashed and the Chacmool head arched back in agony and the feet were lifted from the cool stone of its beloved pyramid.
Xaman Balam cried out, a piercing howl that rent the skies.
Still Kukulkan drew his coils ever tighter about the terrifying figure.
Then Kukulkan spoke:
‘Sheathe your sword, my son.’
Ronin obeyed and, at the same instant, he lifted forth his Makkon gauntlet, his hand outstretched, palm upward, as if in friendship.
It filled with ruby light, building, building, until the color was so deep that he could not look into its depth.
Only then did the light leap from his extended finger tips, splashing like acid into the round eyes of the Chacmool-headed god.
Heatflash.
B
LUE. WHITE. BLUE. GRAY-WHITE,
mottled. A rushing in his ears; cool air against his body, a balm to his aches and lacerations.
Weightless.
His eyes closing in weariness. Mind floating.
His hands gripped the soft, trembling plumes. A vast fluttering. Fans of Tenchō, so far away. A great rippling.
His eyes opened by force of will. Day. Because it was still light. Time enough to sleep when darkness falls.
He stretched, peering downward. A break in the cloud layer, marble parting. Far, far below him the flat sea arced away from him, following the curvature of the world. The hot sun’s reflected light, chopped up into pin points of dazzling whiteness, dancing along its surface, caused him to think of a cauldron of molten gold. Searching for a black speck, invisible within the gold. Where are you now, Moichi?
Thus Ronin rode Kukulkan, the Great Plumed Serpent, out from the crumbling limestone, the cracking wood of the humped island upon which was built the stone city of Xich Chih, gone now in a swift, fireless quake. The seething blue-green sea, rushing to claim new territory, extended its shifting, twilit domain.
Xich Chih was adrift now on the tides.
And above his head, the pearl gray undersides of clouds, forming and shredding in the winds aloft. Solid-seeming, cities in the heavens, they part at the coming of Kukulkan, a great articulated rainbow, rippling through the skies.
And Ronin, drunk now with the exhilaration of life, of this race, grips the pulsing sides, the tufted plumes warm against his skin, and spreads wide his arms in exultation, the blood singing in his veins, light pulsing behind his eyes, a part of this flying colossus, whom Kin Coba called the Creator of the Sun, before she died.
Crawling like a severed insect up the wide stone stairway. The sky lightening now, the moon, refusing to set in this latitude, nevertheless on the wane. For now it was the earth which darkened like the night as great clouds of black smoke poured from widening gaps between the buildings of Xich Chih.