He squatted down and shone the light into the space beneath it. The beam revealed a small round pit. A teepee of wood had been erected in the center, atop a bed of gray ash and black charcoal. He picked up one of the pieces of wood, half-expecting it to crumble to dust. It didn’t, but it was as light as balsa in his hand. Still, it was hard to believe that the wood had been there for hundreds of years. Maybe they weren’t the first ones to make it this far after all.
“It’s a fire pit all right.” He looked up at Bell. “So what now? Does the legend say how to pass the test?”
“You mean aside from not getting punked?” Bones said.
Bell shook his head. “In the Popol Vuh, Hun Hunahpú and Vucub Hunahpú, the father and uncle of the Hero Twins, journey into Xibalba and basically fail all the Council’s tests. They even sit on the cooking stone and get burned, but the Lords allow them to enter the Houses of Xibalba anyway because their plan all along was to sacrifice them later. The Court tests were just a joke to them. Later, when the Hero Twins arrive, they trick the Lords into revealing their names, and then when the Lords tell them to sit down on the bench, they simply refuse.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Miranda said. “There’s probably a secret door here somewhere. To unlock it, we have to figure out which of these statues are the real Lords of Xibalba.”
Maddock considered this for a moment. “I think you’re right about there being a secret door, but I don’t know if there’s a trick to opening it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember those three rivers in the City of Shadow? The only way to get past them was with sacrifice. And the paw prints lead right to the cooking stone.”
“What are you saying? That we have to sit on the stone?”
Maddock shrugged and then without waiting for further prompting, lowered his backside onto the shelf.
Nothing happened.
“Maybe you have to preheat,” Bones said.
Knowing Bones, it was meant as a joke, but Maddock knew his friend had hit the nail on the head. “That’s exactly what we have to do.”
“You’re not serious,” Miranda said.
But Maddock was serious. If there was one thing he had learned from his previous encounters with the ancient architects of Xibalba, it was that they were sadistic sons of bitches. He took the lighter he’d brought along as a CO2 detector, crouched down to the firepit and struck a light, holding it to the dry wood until yellow flames began rising. The smell of woodsmoke soon filled the air, but there must have been a chimney at the back of the recess, because the chamber remained relatively clear. After a few minutes. Maddock could feel a change in ambient temperature. The room was heating up. The mud on his clothes and skin was rapidly drying out, forming an itchy crust. As he stared at the stone shelf, his enthusiasm for meeting the test head-on began to wane.
“Stone takes a while to heat up,” Bones observed. “But once it does, it stays hot.” He grinned at Maddock. “Having second thoughts?”
“Second, third and fourth,” Maddock admitted. He touched a forefinger to the stone shelf. It was warm but not enough to burn him. Not yet.
Instead of sitting, he stepped up onto the shelf, reasoning that his boot soles would afford an additional layer of protection, provided they didn’t melt down. As soon as he transferred his weight onto his leading foot, the shelf shifted beneath him, dropping an inch or so. A low rumble shuddered through the stone and the back of the recess abruptly slid aside, revealing a dark passage behind the cooking stone.
“Open Sesame,” Maddock said, trying to sound triumphant, but mostly just feeling relieved.
“Awesome,” Bones said disingenuously. “We’re all going to hell.”
“Not if you don’t get moving,” Maddock said. He could feel the heat in his boots now and knew it would only get worse. “It might close if I step off, so go past me, one at a time. Bones, take point.”
For once, the big Cherokee did as instructed without comment, stepping up onto the shelf and pushing past Maddock toward the opening. He stopped at the back, shining his flashlight in to get the lay of the land, then stepped off the cooking stone and into the darkness. Maddock peered into the revealed passage, but aside from Bones’ silhouette, there was nothing to see.
Miranda went next, but lingered on the shelf to help her father move forward. She winced as the heat got to her, and began hopping from one foot to the other as Bell struggled to catch up. Maddock was sorely tempted to imitate her fire dance. The heat was well past the point of merely being uncomfortable, and he knew that soon it would actually do physical injury, but he was worried that too much movement on the stone slab might inadvertently cause the secret door to slam shut.
As soon as the Bells were past, it was Angel’s turn. As she brushed by him, she gave him a quick kiss. “Hey, hot stuff.”
“Hey, yourself.” Maddock tried to smile, but with his teeth clenched against the pain, it was more of a grimace.
He was about to follow when he saw something moving in the chamber they had just vacated. For a fleeting instant, he assumed it was just a trick of the light, that the flickering of the flames under the cooking stone was making the carved statues of the Death Lords appear to move, but it was spooky enough to prompt him to shine his light into the gloom.
It wasn’t a trick of the light.
Standing in the center of the chamber was a man, at least Maddock assumed it was a man. It was hard to know for sure, since his first impression was of reptilian scales. The figure threw a hand up to shield his eyes from the intensity of the light, giving Maddock another second or two to process what he was seeing.
It was a man all right. Beneath a layer of streaky mud, his nearly naked body was painted or tattooed with a pattern of scales. His black hair was pulled up in a sort of top-knot, similar to what was portrayed in Mayan glyphs.
Maddock recalled what Bell had said about modern Maya carrying on the old traditions and wondered if this man was the local shaman who had seen them sneaking into the cave.
Busted.
Despite the heat that was starting to cook the soles of his feet, Maddock raised a hand. “Sorry. I can explain.”
By way of an answer, the main raised a long reed to his lips, pointed the other end of it at Maddock and then puffed up his chest in preparation to blow.
Maddock ducked instinctively as a tiny projectile shot toward him, missing his cheek by scant inches.
The attack galvanized Maddock into action. He turned his back on the Maya warrior and bounded into the passage where the others were waiting. Even as he did, something clicked and he realized the significance of his assailant’s appearance.
“The Serpent Brothers!” he shouted. “They found us.”
CHAPTER 26
Maddock whirled around again, hoping to see the stone door sliding back into place, but the passage back to the council chamber remained open. The snake-warrior stood at the far end, carefully sliding another dart into his blowgun. Maddock’s warning however had not gone unheeded. Bones reacted instantly, drawing his pistol and firing down the passage before the man could shoot his dart. The multiple reports were painfully loud and set Maddock’s ears ringing, but through the haze of gunsmoke, he saw the Serpent Brother go down.
“You think he was alone?” Bones shouted.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Maddock replied. He kicked himself for having pushed the mysterious brotherhood down the list of possible enemies. Tam’s revelation about ScanoGen had distracted him from other threats. “Hopefully, that cooking stone is hot enough to keep anyone else from trying to get through, so maybe we’ve got a few minutes. In any case, I don’t think we’re leaving that way.”