She wasn’t possessed by a makol. She was pregnant, and she didn’t figure it out until it was already too late.”
Gods.
How was it that they had missed asking that question? Jade wondered. Or had it been asked and she skimmed over it, somehow guessing this might be the answer and not wanting to add it to the mix?
Nausea pressed hot and thick against the back of her throat. A baby. A sister. Her mother had sacrificed her unborn baby to the Prophet’s spell. And being a soul spell, it wouldn’t have freed the child’s essence to enter the afterlife. The baby’s soul would’ve been completely and utterly destroyed.
Poof, gone.
Lucius made a move to reach for her, but she shook her head and held him off. “No. I need to finish this.” If she didn’t keep going, she might lose it entirely.
“If you’re sure.”
She nodded and read: “ ‘Tell the harvesters they lost one of their own because of me, because I was too proud, too vain, too sure that the elders of the star bloodline were wrong when they said it wasn’t yet time for the last Prophet, that he wouldn’t be made until just before the triad years. They were wrong, I thought, when really I was the one who was wrong, and an innocent paid the ultimate price.
Her soul isn’t in the sky. It’s just gone, destroyed in order to propel me between the worlds. I still need to go back into the library again, gain what knowledge I can, and hope to hell it’s enough to convince the king not to march. I didn’t get any answers the first time because it took me too long to figure out the yes/no bullshit, which doesn’t work exactly like the stories said it would. I’m starving, but I ate all the bread, and the fountain ran dry, and . . . and I’m whining. I’ll stop now and rest so I can keep going. Sometimes it seems that all you can do is keep going. I love you. Your mother, Venus.’ ”
“Now she’s starting to sound more like she did in the other journal,” Lucius noted. “Less like she’s writing a thank-you note—or rather, an apology—to an elderly relative, and more like a strung-out, confused kid.”
“There’s one more line. Just a sentence scribbled at the bottom.” Jade scanned the sentence, and went still.
“What is it?”
“Information.”
He took a step toward her, his eyes lighting. “Does it say how to get me back into the library?”
“No.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “It says: ‘To reach the lost sun, play his game on the cardinal day.’ ”
“Oh,” Lucius said. “Oh, wow. Oh, shit. I know what that means.” Their eyes met, and they said, nearly in unison, “We need to get this back to the mansion.”
With the great room in the middle of being renovated, the residents of Skywatch gathered at the picnic tables beneath the big ceiba tree, mopping at sticky-humid sweat and bitching about the gnats that had made a sudden appearance in the normally bug- free canyon. Strike, who’d already been briefed on the discoveries, opened the meeting, then turned things over to Jade and Lucius.
Jade was pale and withdrawn, so Lucius did most of the talking. He described the clues that had led him to the hidden chamber, and summarized what they had found inside it. He finished by reading Vennie’s words verbatim from the pink notebook, ending with what sure as hell sounded to him like a prophecy: “To reach the lost sun, play his game on the cardinal day.”
When he finished, it seemed that the world itself had gone silent, save for the whine of gnat wings.
After a moment, he said, “That’s random enough that I’m willing to bet it’s a snippet from the library, especially given how well it lines up with both the triad prophecy and what we’re going through now. If she asked the library, for example, what information the Nightkeepers needed most from her, that might have been the answer.”
“Was there anything else in the box?” Nate asked.
“It was empty except for the notebook. My guess is that the stars may have removed their sacred texts from it, maybe in preparation for the attack. But there’s more.” He lifted the box from where he’d left it sitting on the table, and turned it in his hands, so the orange daylight made the shadows dip and move across the carved wooden surface. “I translated the glyphs on the outside of the box. It’s another prophecy, this one about the library, and presumably the über-Prophet who is supposed to arise during the triad years. Paraphrasing to modernize the grammar and clean up the end, where the grammar gets a little wonky, it reads: ‘In the triad years, a mage-born Prophet can wield the library’s might . ’ ” He shook his head. “By becoming the non-Prophet, I must have blocked the true Prophet from being formed at the end of last year. So I think we can consider that a prophecy of the null-and-
void variety.”
“Is there such a thing as a voided prophecy?” Sasha asked. “It seems to me that all of the prophecies the ancients have left us have factored into things in some way or another. Maybe not the way we’ve expected them to, but they’ve factored.”
“I don’t see how this one could,” Lucius answered. “I’m not mage-born, and there’s no mistaking that part of the translation.”
Sasha looked thoughtful. “Maybe that’s not all of the prophecy.”
“Gee. Why don’t I go to the library and check? Oh, that’s right. Because I fucking can’t.” He exhaled. “Sorry. It’s just . . . Shit. Sorry.” Sasha hadn’t done anything to deserve his mood. “You’re right; it’s certainly possible that there was another box that continued the saying. That might account for the funky way this one ends, glyph-wise. But that’s pure speculation, and we’re running out of time. I don’t think we dare waste the time searching for something that might be a figment of our imaginations.” He paused. “Besides, there’s another option. Something we can try relatively easily, right from our own backyard.” Lucius hooked a thumb over his shoulder, past the training hall to the high parallel walls that had been built back when Skywatch was originally constructed in the twenties.
“I hope you’re all up for a game.”
“ ‘Play his game,’ ” Michael repeated. “You think the prophecy is talking about the Mayan ball game?”
“I know it is,” Lucius said with bone-deep certainty. “The entire game was one big metaphor for the sun’s daily journey, first across the sky, then through the underworld. It stands to reason that it would be a way to reach Kinich Ahau.” I hope. Because if this didn’t work, they were pretty much screwed.
“It’s like volleyball, right?” Sven asked. “Bounce the ball back and forth, no holding, and keep the ball off the ground using the nonhand bodypart of your choice.” He paused. “But I thought the point of the game was to sacrifice the winners. Are we sure that’s a good idea?”
“We’ll do whatever it takes if it means gaining access to the only god not currently trapped in the sky,” Strike said implacably. “We need the gods—or at least a god—to form the Triad. No god, no Triad. No Triad, no hope in the war. Are you following?”
Yeah, Lucius thought inwardly, I’m following. Because they didn’t just need at least one god; they needed the damned Triad spell, and they didn’t have a clue where to look for it. They had exhausted all the possible searches on earth. Which left them with “not on earth” as their last option.
Aloud, he said, “Although sacrifice was sometimes part of the game, it wasn’t necessarily the winners who died. Sometimes it was the losers, and sometimes there weren’t any deaths at all. It depended on who was playing, and why. But that’s getting ahead of things. Strike asked me to give you guys the quick four-one-one on the ball game, so here it goes: First, to understand the game, you’ve got to keep in mind that it’s the progenitor of almost all modern ball games. Before its evolution, game balls were always made of wood or leather, and fell dead when they hit. That changed when the Olmec figured out the trick of mixing the sap from latex trees and morning glory vines to create a bouncy, elastic rubber polymer.” He paused. “For the record, that was good old human ingenuity, circa 1600 B.C., not something you guys taught us.”