Abruptly Balam-Acab smelled them, their tobacco smoke, their gun oil. Nostrils widening, he paused to study the darkness and judge distance as well as direction. In a moment, he proceeded, forced to leave the ancient, hidden pathway and veer farther left. Since the new conquerors had arrived to chop down the trees and dynamite the rocky surface, to smooth the land and build an airstrip, Balam-Acab had known that the disaster predicted by the ancients was about to occur. Just as the first conquerors had been predicted, these had as well, for time was circular, Balam-Acab knew. It turned and went around, and each period of time had a god in charge of it.
In this case, the thunder of the dynamite reminded him of the thunder of the fanged rain god, Chac. But it also reminded him of the rumble of the area's numerous earthquakes that always signified when the god of the Underworld, who was also the god of Darkness, was angry. And when that god was angry, he caused pain. What Balam-Acab had not yet been able to decide was whether the new conquerors would make the god of the Underworld and of Darkness furious, or whether the new conquerors were the result of that god's already excessive fury, a punishment for Balam-Acab and his people.
All he could be certain of was that placating rituals were demanded, prayers and sacrifices, lest the prediction in the ancient Chronicles of Chilam Balam again come true. One of the signs, the sickness that was killing the palm trees, had already come true.
On that day, dust claims the earth.
On that day, a blight covers the earth.
On that day, a cloud hangs low.
On that day, a mountain soars.
On that day, a strong man clutches the land.
On that day, things collapse into ruin.
Balam-Acab was fearful of the sentries, but he was also hopeful of succeeding in his mission. After all, if the gods did not want to be placated, if they were truly furious, they would have punished him before now. They would never have allowed him to get this far. Only someone favored by the gods could have walked through the darkness and not been bitten by any of the area's numerous, swarming serpents. In the daylight, he could see and avoid the snakes or else make noises and scare them away. But walking silently and blindly at night? No. Impossible. Without the protection of the gods, he should have stepped not on stones but on death.
At once the density of the darkness changed. The mist seemed less thick. Balam-Acab had reached the edge of the jungle. Hunkering, inhaling the fecund odors of the forest in contrast with the rancid, sweat smell of the sentries, he focused on the night, and suddenly, as if an unfelt breeze had swept across the clearing, the fog dissipated. Unexpectedly able now to see the illumination from the moon and stars, he felt as if night had turned into day. At the same time, he had the eerie certainty that when he crept from the jungle into the clearing, the sentries would not be able to see him. From their point of view, the fog would still exist. It would envelop him. It would make him invisible.
But he wasn't a fool. When he stepped from the jungle, he stayed low, close to the ground, trying not to reveal his silhouette as he hurried forward. In the now-evident light from the moon and stars, he could see and was disturbed by the extent of the work that the invaders had accomplished in the mere two days since he had last been here. A vast new section of forest had been leveled, exposing more brush-covered mounds and hillocks. Without the trees to obscure the skyline, the murky contours of considerably higher breaks in the terrain were also evident. Balam-Acab thought of them as mountains, but none of them was the mountain predicted as one of the signs of the end of the world in the ancient Chronicles of Chilam Balam.
No, these mountains were part of the spirit of the universe. Granted, they weren't natural. After all, this part of the Yucatan was called the flatlands. Mounds, hillocks, and certainly mountains did not exist. They had all been built here by human beings, by Balam-Acab's Mayan ancestors, more than a thousand years ago. Although the brush that covered them camouflaged their steps, portals, statuary and engravings, Balam-Acab knew that the elevations were palaces, pyramids, and temples. The reason they were part of the spirit of the universe was that the ancients who had built them knew how the Underworld, the Middleworld, and the glorious arch of the heavens were linked. The ancients had used their knowledge of the secrets of the passing sun to determine the exact places where monuments in honor of the gods needed to be situated, and in so doing, they focused the energy of both the Underworld and heavenly gods toward the Middleworld and this sacred precinct.
Wary of the armed intruders, Balam-Acab came to the tallest mountain. The excavators had been quick to clear the vegetation from the level ground, but whenever they had come to an elevated area, they had left it undisturbed, presumably intending to return and violate it later. He studied the shadowy bushes and saplings that had somehow found places to root between the huge, square, stone blocks that formed this consecrated edifice. If the bushes and saplings weren't present, Balam-Acab knew that what looked like a mountain would actually reveal itself to be an enormous, terraced pyramid, and that at the top there would be a temple dedicated to the god, Kukulcan, the meaning of whose name was 'plumed serpent.'
Indeed the weathered, stone image of a serpent's gigantic head -mouth open, teeth about to strike - projected from the bushes at the bottom of the pyramid. Even in the dark, the serpent's head was manifest. It was one of several that flanked the stairs that ascended through the terraces on each side of the pyramid. Heart swelling, reassured that he had managed to get this far unmolested, becoming more convinced that the gods favored his mission, Balam-Acab held the blanket-covered bowl protectively to his chest and began the slow, painstaking ascent to the top.
Each step was as high as his knee, and the stairway was angled steeply. During daylight, the arduous climb could be dizzying, not to mention precarious because the bushes, saplings, and centuries of rain had broken the steps and shifted the stones. He needed all his strength and concentration not to lose his balance in the dark, step on a loose rock, and fall. He didn't care about his own safety. Otherwise he wouldn't have risked being bitten by snakes or shot by sentries in order to come here. What he did care about were the precious objects in his knapsack and in particular the sacred, blanket-wrapped bowl he clutched to his chest. He didn't dare fall and break the bowl. That would be inexcusable. That for certain would prompt the fury of the gods.
As he climbed, his knees aching, his body drenched with sweat, Balam-Acab mentally counted. It was the only way he could measure his progress, for the bushes and saplings above him prevented him from distinguishing the outline of the square temple at the otherwise pointed top of the pyramid. Ten, eleven, twelve. One hundred and four, one hundred and. He strained to breathe. Two hundred and eighty-nine. Two hundred and. Soon, he thought. By now he could see the top against the stars. Three hundred and. At last, his heart pounding, he reached the flat surface in front of the temple.
Three hundred and sixty-five. That sacred number represented the number of days in the solar year and had been calculated by Balam-Acab's ancestors long before the Spanish conquerors first came to the Yucatan in the fifteen-hundreds. Other sacred numbers had been incorporated into the pyramid - the twenty terraces, for example, which signified the units of twenty days into which the ancients had divided their shorter, two-hundred-and-sixty-day ceremonial year. Similarly there originally had been fifty-two stone images of serpents along the top of the temple, for time revolved in a fifty-two-year circle.