Sabir smiled to himself, pleased at his capacity for lateral thought. After all, there was not a single mountain in the whole of the peninsula, nor a single volcano, nor a single hill worthy of the name. Surely the Maya would have had a race memory of travelling through the alpine lands of the northern Americas before they settled? Maybe they wanted to recreate the details of their journey in stone? Or perhaps they simply wanted to match the gods? Or was it subtler than that? Was it flattery they were after?
Sabir had reached the halfway stage in his ascent of the steps. Some instinct made him glance to his left. He realized that he was exactly parallel with the woman whom he sensed had been telepathically communicating with the Halach Uinic. He took a step towards her.
Acan put out a hand to stay him. ‘Adam,’ he whispered. ‘That is Ixtab. My mother. I told you of her. But we will see her later. You must come with me now. You cannot wait here. The Chilans are coming up behind us. They will be very angry if you disrupt the ceremony.’
Sabir shrugged off Acan’s hand. He broke clear of the ascending line of priests and made his way to where Ixtab was standing. He was frowning, as if someone had set him an unexpected puzzle. He was half aware that the Halach Uinic and his party had stopped their progress and were watching him, but he didn’t care. All of a sudden he knew exactly what he had to do.
He held out both his hands to Ixtab.
Ixtab smiled and took them. She nodded her head a number of times, as if something she had hitherto only suspected had now been proved true. ‘Welcome, Shaman. I have been expecting you.’
A fearsome energy seemed to be transferring itself from her hands into his.
‘Shaman?’ The energy flowing between Sabir and Ixtab’s hands now seemed to be stemming directly from him.
‘Why are you surprised? You have been fighting it for many years. Were you not told?’
Sabir closed his eyes. ‘A Gypsy curandero in the south of France. He told me. Earlier this year. In a way he even saved my life.’
‘There. I knew it. He was your messenger. He sent you here to us. If you had been born here, amongst us, it would have been I who would have told you.’ She stared at him for a long moment. ‘Your mother, too. She was a shaman.’
Sabir looked up sharply. ‘What are you talking about? My mother killed herself. She was disturbed in her mind.’
Ixtab shook her head. ‘No. She went unrecognized. She lived amongst people who did not understand her true function. She consumed herself. This can happen. You must not do the same.’
Acan had fallen in behind them. He was frowning. Things weren’t going quite as planned.
Sabir shook his head, as if by so doing he could physically discourage unwanted thoughts. ‘That’s not possible.’
‘But you know it to be true.’
Sabir allowed his eyes to play over Ixtab’s face. There was no room for doubt. What this woman said, she believed. And he believed it too. ‘I had no idea. She was too damaged by the time I was old enough to understand.’
‘She did not know it herself. You are not to blame. Your father loved her too much. She was swayed by that. She should never have married. Shamans should remain single. They are wedded to the truth.’
‘But you? You are married. You have a son.’
‘Two sons. And three daughters. But I am not a shaman. I am an iyoma. My duty is simply to recognize those whom the gods have marked out, and to guide those who are lost.’
‘Would you have guided my mother?’
‘If she had come to me. Only then. But I cannot search people out. This is beyond my power. Beyond anybody’s power but Hunab Ku’s.’ Ixtab glanced up at the Halach Uinic. She nodded. He nodded back.
Sabir turned to face the Halach Uinic. The Halach Uinic held out a hand and beckoned Sabir and Ixtab to follow him. Sabir turned to Lamia. She was staring at him with a quizzical expression on her face. He gestured to her, but she shook her head, and fell back in line behind Calque and the mestizo from Veracruz.
Sabir felt a sudden coldness overwhelm him. The feeling was so powerful that it was as if he had been touched by the shadow of his own death.
He turned to Ixtab. She was mentally urging him to climb the rest of the steps. This fact was so clear in Sabir’s head that it didn’t even occur to him to question it. He began dutifully to ascend. He had no idea what was happening to him, nor why he was behaving in the odd way that he was. Who was this woman? And why did he feel so connected to her? Why, moreover, had Lamia refused to accompany them? And what was the significance of the invisible triangle that now seemed to exist between him, Ixtab, and the Halach Uinic?
Instantly, in his head, three images appeared, just as they would have done in a dream. Together, they made perfect sense of everything he had been asking.
In them the Halach Uinic was the sky, Ixtab was the earth, and he, Sabir, represented the underworld.
74
‘We’re to do nothing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Exactly what I said. Madame, our mother, says we are to do nothing. We are to watch and wait.’
Vau, Asson, Alastor, and Rudra were sitting in the car with Abi. They had each stripped, oiled, and tested their chosen weapons. Rudra had found some old wine corks at the warehouse, and had seared the ends to produce a quantity of charcoal substitute. Each of the brothers had camouflaged his face, hands, and forearms, so that no pale skin showed outside the borders of their clothes.
Alastor was still fired up from his activities at the Balancanche caves. He sensed that his brothers were experiencing the same physical lift. This is what they were trained for. This is what they lived for. There was little sense in doing anything else. ‘But we’ve been watching and waiting for more than a week.’
‘Exactly. Now we must do more of the same.’
The brothers looked at each other.
Abi was driving, so he couldn’t immediately identify the focus of their attention. But he knew just what they were all thinking. And he knew that this was the moment, if any, to engineer an invisible coup against Madame, his mother’s, leadership. ‘You all happy with that? At least you’ll get to go to the party. Asson, have you got the girls’ guns?’
‘A Walther P4 for Athame, Berettas for Dakini and Nawal, and the Heckler and Koch for Aldinach. I’ve got that right, haven’t I? I’m not missing anything? Like why do we need weapons at all if all the fuck we are doing is fucking watching a fucking ceremony?’
‘You’re right, Asson. And you argue your point so eloquently. We’d better leave them in the car then.’ Abi was enjoying winding them up.
‘The hell with that.’ It was Alastor. The starved planes of his face were drastically exaggerated by the black stripes of his camouflage. ‘I’m not letting this work of art out of my hands. I felt naked all through the US and most of Mexico without a pistol. Now I’ve got this Glock I’m going to keep it. Seventeen rounds of 9mm Parabellum – muzzle velocity 375mps – effective range 100 feet. And it’s all mine to do with as I please. God Himself couldn’t separate me from this piece.’
‘And this from the man who got a straight left and right of Mexicans with two hidden fighting sticks?’ Asson was grinning. ‘Alastor might not look like much, but he packs a mean backhand.’ Asson’s grin faded away. ‘Abi, are you serious? She really wants us to hold off? But what have we been doing all this past week? Pissing in the wind?’
‘Is your face wet?’
‘Fucking streaming.’
‘Then you just answered your own question.’