Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana #1)

Sixteen

Ellie hopped back down to the deck and waited in silence as Adam studied the markings above the tunnel. They were clearly man-made… weren’t they? Admittedly, she was looking at them from four feet below—but when she shifted the position of her lamp, the hollows deepened, looking even more like a visage challenging them from the stone.

There had to be something worth investigating in the tunnel. The markings were clear evidence of site use, probably ritual in purpose. Why else would they be there?

Ellie itched with the need to investigate it.

Bates’s expression wasn’t promising. He eyed the divots a little grimly.

Ellie’s heart sank a bit, but she rallied against it.

“I know it’s risky to enter an unknown cave system without the proper equipment,” she hurriedly offered. “At the very least, we should have ropes and chalk, and perhaps a climbing harness. I recognize that there wouldn’t be any time for a legitimate survey of the interior—not if we’re to reach our own destination before the rains arrive. When I say it all aloud, I can hear that it all sounds a bit foolish, but—”

“You wanna go anyway,” Bates filled in quietly.

She did. She wanted to go terribly badly. The need was so intense that she had to take a breath to brace herself against it.

“It’s only that I’ve never actually been so close to something like this before,” she admitted.

Bates looked down at her. His expression was uncharacteristically serious.

“I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”

His words sounded a little bit like a warning… but they also weren’t a refusal.

Ellie’s hope sparked irresistibly, dancing around in her chest.

“I can assure you, I’m quite capable of moderating my expectations,” she promised.

She waited, burning with impatience but holding her tongue, as she sensed that to press him further wouldn’t help her cause.

He looked up at the face in the stones like an old acquaintance that he wasn’t entirely happy to see.

“Hell with it,” he concluded, then killed the throttle and jumped over the side of the boat.

Ellie pressed herself to the rail with a burst of alarm and leaned out after him.

“Mr. Bates!” she cried.

“Toss me the rope,” he called back.

Ellie hefted the heavy coil and threw it over the side to where Bates stood chest deep in the black water. The Mary Lee, pushed by the current with her engine quietly idling, was already moving away from him.

Bates caught the rope, quickly wrapped it around his arm, and hauled back on it. The line went taut where it was still tied to the cleat at the bow. The boat halted and swung gently into the wall of the wave, bumping against it softly.

“What are you doing?” Ellie demanded.

“We’re exploring, aren’t we?” he replied. “I need someplace to tie us off.”

Bates leaned back against the pull of the boat, bracing his feet against the riverbed.

“Don’t you have an anchor?” she pressed.

“I had one,” he retorted a little crossly. “I lost it.”

“How does one lose an anchor?”

“There was this four-foot iguana, and a block of cheese, and—”

“Never mind,” Ellie cut in, certain that she did not want to hear any more.

She climbed out onto the edge of the bow where Bates had nailed in her plank, and raised the lantern high.

“Pull us forward—just six yards or so,” she ordered.

“Right,” Bates grumbled. He turned to slide the rope over his shoulder and across his chest. “Surely you can manage hauling one measly little steamboat upstream in the dark for a while. Can’t you, Mr. Bates?”

There was a distinct note of sarcasm to his words.

He dragged himself forward, gripping the wall of the cave with the hand that was not holding the rope in place. The current did not seem particularly strong, but he was still a single man, nearly submerged, trying to move an entire boat.

Ellie pushed herself out onto the plank.

“Would you like me to get in and help you?” she offered from above him.

He jumped as he glanced up at her.

“Jesus!” he exclaimed. “No—you’re half a foot shorter than me. The water’d be up to your neck.”

“A little more to the right,” she ordered instead, pointing out over the water. “I believe you will find a boulder there that will serve.”

The boulder was a truncated stalactite, which must have broken off in some other part of the cave and washed down when the water was higher. Bates managed to work the rope around it, then tied it off. The Mary Lee pulled taut against the line.

“There,” Ellie said neatly as she sat back up on the plank. “That ought to hold us.”

“As long as nothing comes floating along to punch a hole in the hull,” Bates replied wryly. He extended his arm up toward her. “Gimmie the light.”

“Why should you have it?” Ellie replied a little defensively as she handed it over to him.

“Because you’re about to go for a swim,” he replied and neatly tugged her off the plank.

She landed in the dark river with a splash. The water was colder than she had expected—significantly more so than the sunny bank where she had taken her dip earlier that morning. Bates easily yanked her back up to the surface.

He grinned at her as she spluttered—the utter cad.

“I was perfectly capable of getting into the water myself,” Ellie protested darkly.

“Where’s the fun in that?” he replied. “Come on.”

Without waiting for a further reply, he pushed through the river toward the narrow opening of the tunnel.

The water rose to Ellie’s chin, forcing her to use her arms to pull herself forward.

“Shouldn’t we at least have taken off our boots?” she protested as she joined him under the arch that held the petroglyph.

“Not unless you wanna risk cutting your foot open,” Bates replied. “Here—there’s a step up and it gets a bit shallower.”

He reached down to grip her arm and half-hauled her the rest of the way into the tunnel. Ellie scrambled up the wet, slippery slope and awkwardly regained her footing. The water now only came as high as her ribcage. The current had softened.

Bates stood close to her. Water dripped down his face from his soaked hair. The limited halo of the lamp cast an intimate circle of pale light around them.

“Are you ready for this?” His tone was oddly serious.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Ellie retorted.

“Never mind.” He shook his head a bit grimly and led them on.

Black walls rose up to either side, glistening with moisture. The ground beneath Ellie’s feet gradually shallowed until she was wading through water that sloshed at her thighs.

The space around her opened up into a larger cavern dominated by a still, silent pool. The glow of the lantern penetrated only so far, leaving the extent of the space cloaked in shadows. The water she stood in was achingly clear. Little eddies of crayfish darted around her boots and minnows wriggled as they investigated the cuffs of her borrowed trousers.

The lake was punctuated by the smooth pillars of stalagmites, some of which rose to meld with the ceiling roughly twenty feet overhead. To her left, a rippling bridal veil of layered limestone descended almost all the way to the ground, the immense bulk of it impossibly suspended in the air.

The space looked like a fairy Atlantis emerging from the silent waters.

Ellie’s breath rose with excitement.

“Which way should we go?” she asked.

Bates frowned as he examined the bed of the lake.

“How about we follow the breadcrumbs?” he replied.

“Breadcrumbs?” Ellie echoed, confused.

Bates pointed down through the water to where little flakes of some dark material rested on the sand under the surface. They formed a path that led toward the nearer shore.

Ellie dropped to a crouch for a better look.

“Are those… charcoal deposits?” she asked wonderingly.

“Pine torches, probably,” Bates replied. “They flake off little pieces as they burn.”

Alarm burst through her.

“Bates, we are standing on part of the archaeological record!” she burst out.

“How else do you propose we get around?” he replied, cocking an eyebrow at her as he strode forward. “Watch out for spiders.”

He sounded as though the notion actually intimidated him.

Ellie hurried after him, doing her best to skirt around the trail of charcoal fragments without losing the lamplight he carried with him. They wove through the elegant pillars of stone.

One of the stalagmites caught Ellie’s eye.

“Bates—look!” she exclaimed.

The stone pillar was identical to the others that rose from the water around it, save that its surface had been chipped with the form of a vaguely anthropomorphic figure.

“It’s a stela. A very primitive one, but here—arms.” Ellie pointed out the roughly hewn lines. “Feet. Torso. And there’s the face,” she finished, moving her finger up.

“Skull,” Bates automatically corrected her.

“Sorry?” Ellie blinked at the simple assemblage of dots and lines.

“Eyes,” he said. “Jawbone. Teeth. You see this guy all over the place.”

“May I?” Ellie asked as she reached for the lantern.

He released it to her, and she moved closer, shifting the angle of the light to better reveal the rough shapes in the stone.

“Yes,” she agreed thoughtfully. “I suppose it could be Schellhas’s God A. Of course, the god appears in profile in the Mayan codices, and this figure is facing us.” She raised the light to look around the still, haunted atmosphere of the cave. “Perhaps this was used as a ritual entrance to Xibalba, with the Death God serving as guardian.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Bates agreed easily.

“Are you familiar with Mayan mythological literature?” Ellie asked hopefully.

It wasn’t often she found someone with whom she could discuss Mayan mythological literature.

“Nope,” he replied cheerfully.

“Oh,” Ellie said a little sadly.

Bates glanced down at her from where they stood thigh-deep in the still, cool water.

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” he prompted.

“I wouldn’t want to bore you,” Ellie returned carefully.

“Think I’m too thick to follow it, huh?” Adam replied, scratching the side of his head.

“What? No—it’s not that at all!”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve actually got some Mayan mythological literature kicking around my room. I try to grab books on local history when I get a chance. I mean—I’m out here stumbling across the stuff all the time. Least I could do is have some idea of what it’s all about. I’ve just never been a great one for reading.”

His tone was casual, but he didn’t look at her as he said it, squinting at the skull of the Death God instead.

“But you went to Cambridge!” Ellie protested.

“Never said I was particularly good at it.” Bates flashed her a deliberately charming grin as he walked away from the pillar. Ellie hurried after him.

“Are you claiming that you made it through Cambridge without reading a book?” she pressed skeptically.

“Didn’t say I didn’t read any of them,” Bates countered a little defensively. “I read books. I’m not illiterate. I just…” He sighed and looked away over the lake. “My buddy Fairfax—he can sit down for hours just tearing through pages. Doesn’t even need to take a note. It’s just all there in that weird head of his. I can’t do that. I try to pick up a book, and after maybe five or six minutes, I’m thinking about something else—what they’re gonna serve for dinner, or that my leg itches, or that I left a lamp lit somewhere. And I’m slow,” he added pointedly. “So five minutes of reading doesn’t get me very far.”

“But you speak Latin,” Ellie pressed.

She was having trouble wrapping her mind around it. Books were like breathing for her—an extension of her being. She hardly had to think about the fact that she was reading when she did it. The words melted into a stream of beautiful knowledge pouring into her mind.

“Sure,” Bates agreed, pausing shin-deep in the pool to face her. “Spanish, too, and a fair bit of Kriol—though I don’t usually speak it. My friend Charlie told me to leave the Kriol to the Creoles or I’d be making an ass of myself. But I can understand everything he’s saying when he speaks it. I’ve even picked up a bit of Yucatec Mayan and a little Mopan. I’ve always had an ear for things. But you don’t learn a language from reading books.”

“Don’t you?” Ellie countered, confused.

“How would you know what it sounds like?” Bates protested.

“I see,” Ellie said carefully.

He laughed a little darkly.

“Look—I can’t tell you what a Xibalba is, but I’ll keep you from wandering into the wrong snake or eating something that leaves you heaving your brains out for the next forty-eight hours. I might be an oaf, but I’m a reasonably useful one. Afraid you’re going to have to live with that. We’re a little short on scholars around here.”

Ellie had the uncomfortable feeling that she had unwittingly brushed up against one of Bates’s soft spots. She was actually surprised to find that he had any. He had always seemed utterly confident in every situation she’d found him in.

There was nothing at all wrong with not being particularly good with books—as foreign as that might be to Ellie. She was grateful that Bates was who he was. She didn’t need a scholar nearly as much as she needed someone who understood how the bush worked.

She tried to think of a way to tell him as much, but everything that came into her head sounded a bit patronizing—and so she fell back on the safer topic of Mayan mythological literature.

“Xibalba is the Mayan underworld,” she said as she caught up to his longer stride. “It’s described as being the underground home of the gods of death, made up of a series of caves with deadly traps designed to separate the worthy from the unworthy.”

“What kind of traps?”

Ellie worked to pull up memories of a book she had read five or six years ago on a whim.

“There’s… some kind of trial in the council chamber of the gods,” she recalled. “Then a cave of razors… a cave of ice. Jaguars. ‘The House of Gloom,’ which I believe is some sort of room of eternal darkness.”

“Sounds fun,” Bates concluded wryly.

“Xibalba is supposed to lie beneath the mythological city of Tulan. Tulan crops up in both the Popol Vuh and the Annals of the Cakchiquels—”

Bates stopped walking and gave her a look.

“Er… the mythologies of the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel Maya, respectively,” Ellie clarified. “As recorded by Spanish scholars in the seventeenth century.”

“And Tulan?” he prompted as he sloshed his way out of the lake onto the shore.

“Capital of a mythological city-state that supposedly predates the Mayan civilization. It’s described as a shining city of powerful kings where the various Mayan tribes came to gain wisdom, language, the ways of their religion... It was said to be the home of the Chay Abah, a magical scrying stone through which the initiated could receive the wisdom of the gods.”

“Sounds a bit like your Smoking Mirror,” Adam noted.

Ellie brightened.

“Yes—it does, doesn’t it?” she agreed “I should have made that connection myself. I mean, really—of course it must be! The two objects—Chay Abah and Smoking Mirror—serve nearly identical ritual functions in their respective sources—”

“So Xibalba?” Adam cut in, likely looking to head off any further tangents about Mesoamerican religious iconography.

“Right,” Ellie conceded. “You see, Tulan is also referred to as the City of Seven Caves—an obvious reference to Xibalba—and under that name, it also appears in the Aztec origin stories, which belong to an entirely different cultural and linguistic group. The convergence speaks to either a genuine common cultural ancestry or an interchange of myths and stories across both geographic and linguistic barriers and… well, it’s all rather fascinating,” she finished awkwardly and flashed him a smile as she resisted the temptation to delve into her personal theories about cultural transmission.

“So you think maybe the Maya here were trying to build themselves another Xibalba?” Adam offered, waving a hand to take in the vast interior of the cave.

“It is hard to say on the basis of one face petroglyph and a rudimentary stela, but the possibility is… intriguing,” Ellie admitted.

As they stepped from the shallow water onto the shore, Ellie turned to glance back out over the elegant cathedral of the cave. The chamber was quiet and still with an air of timelessness about it that felt haunted.

“Yergh!” Bates cried, jumping back.

He stomped down violently with his boot, then repeated the action, grinding his sole for extra measure.

“What was that? A spider?” Ellie asked as she took an uneasy step back.

“Assassin bug,” he reported, scraping his sole on the stone floor of the cave. “Definitely crunch those if you see them.”

“Are they very terrible?” Ellie pressed.

“I suppose they’re not too bad,” Bates replied. “If you don’t mind feeling like your legs are on fire for the next twenty-four hours.”

The notion was somewhat alarming.

“What do they look like?” Ellie asked.

“Like…” Bates’s voice trailed off as he raised his hand to point, only to realize there was nothing left to point at except a fat gray smudge on the floor of the cave. “Er, big gray bugs. Shall we?”

He led the way up the slope. His boots crunched on the stones.

“More breadcrumbs,” he noted, pointing out a further trail of torch debris.

They followed it along the shore of the subterranean lake until Ellie came to an abrupt halt.

“Oh!” she exclaimed.

The wall ahead of them was marked by a painting executed in thick lines of dark charcoal and red ochre. Angled wings extended to either side of the dark figure. Black smears against the stone framed a snarling visage with pointed ears and enormous, dagger-like fangs.

“Oh hey,” Bates said. “It’s Bat Guy.”

“Bat Guy?” Ellie echoed.

“I’ve seen him around, though usually when they draw him full size he’s got this big pair of…” Bates’s enthusiastic explanation trailed off. He glanced over at her awkwardly. “Well, he’s definitely a Bat Guy and not a Bat Girl, is what I’m saying.”

“I see,” Ellie returned as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “Perhaps it’s meant to represent Camazotz, one of the guardians of Xibalba that took the form of a giant bat.”

She gave the painted monster a closer study. The thick lines of its expression were admittedly a little intimidating.

“Maybe he’s guarding this tunnel,” Bates suggested. He nodded to a narrow, shadowy gap beside the painting.

“Another tunnel?” Ellie shot back, unable to completely keep the excitement from her tone.

Bates flashed her a grin.

“Only if you insist,” he offered.

Ellie crouched through the low opening. After that, the tunnel thinned to the point that she had to crawl after Bates, following the vague shape of his boots. His form blocked the majority of the lamplight as he carried it ahead of them.

They emerged into a slightly wider space, though the ceiling was still low enough that Ellie had to crouch to avoid hitting her head on it.

“Make it through okay?” Bates asked.

“Fine, thank you,” Ellie assured him.

She brushed off her shirt, which was now muddy as well as damp.

A fragile film of rippled stone suddenly cracked beside her. It dropped to the ground and shattered.

“Fiddlesticks!” Ellie exclaimed as she stumbled back.

“Fiddlesticks?” Bates echoed incredulously—and then whirled at a sudden eruption of squeals and flapping wings coming from around the bend in the tunnel.

“Down!” he shouted, shoving Ellie to the ground and half-covering her with his body.

A storm of fist-sized black forms roiled out of the tunnel, screeching with alarm and whirling around the cavern like tiny missiles.

“Bats!” he called out, shouting to be heard over the din.

“I can see that!” Ellie retorted, flinching back as a few members of the disturbed colony swept closer.

She knew that bats were not objectively interested in humans. Somehow, the knowledge was less comforting when eighty or so of them were flailing around her head.

The stream of animals poured through the passage that she and Bates had just navigated. The colony moved as one undulating body of tiny claws and fluttering wings until at last the space around Ellie and Bates quieted.

“I believe you can remove yourself from me now,” Ellie noted, still pressed to the floor by the bulk of Bates’s body.

“Right,” he agreed and rolled away from her.

He came to his feet, retrieving the lantern.

“At least we know they’ve already cleared out of whatever’s next,” he offered.

“Very comforting,” Ellie agreed as she brushed a chunk of clay off the front of her shirt.

They picked their way along a steep, smooth slope that grew gradually higher and broader until they stepped through the entrance to another chamber.

The ceiling was high and lined with dripping rock formations. The floor formed a wide, smooth bowl. The lantern immediately revealed the whole extent of the chamber, which was roughly the size of Ellie’s drawing room back in Canonbury.

What she saw there struck her dumb with horror.

The room was a disaster. The ground was covered in a trampled carpet of pottery fragments and other debris. Larger pieces of earthenware lay against the wall where they had been deliberately smashed.

Nor had this destruction taken place centuries before. As Ellie moved closer, she could discern mineral deposits on some of the pot fragments.

The broken edges, however, were clean.

More than broken artifacts lay in the mess. The shards were thickly intermingled with shattered fragments of bone.

A pair of skulls lolled a few feet from her boots. One of them was cracked almost in two.

The sight struck her with both horror and a feeling oddly like grief.

“What happened here?” Shock stripped Ellie’s words raw.

“Looters,” Bates replied flatly from behind her. He looked out over the room with an expression of grim resignation.

“But they’ve… they’ve simply destroyed all of it,” Ellie protested in a strangled voice.

“Probably looking for amuletos,” Bates said as he crouched down and carefully lifted up the curved edge of a skull fragment. “Jewels and trinkets interred with the dead. Jade panels. Masks, polychrome vessels. Anything portable they can hawk on the black market.”

Ellie thought back to Bates’s oddly solemn hesitance to enter the tunnel.

“You knew,” she accused. “You knew it would be like this.”

“I knew it was a distinct possibility,” he replied as he set the skull fragment down.

“Because you’ve seen it before,” she filled in.

He met her gaze.

“Yeah.”

The ruined remnants of over a hundred vessels were scattered across the floor. Ellie could vividly imagine what they might have looked like had she and Bates arrived here first—a carefully stacked pile of jars, their interiors still glossed with fragments of the offerings they had once held. She might even have discerned a faint whiff of incense or spotted dried kernels of maize. All of it would have been a loving tribute to the dead—to the people carefully interred in the heart of this virtual underworld in order to bring them closer to the gods.

Had the bodies been intact, Ellie could have carefully and respectfully sketched out the arrangements of the bones, noting any indications of the age and health of those who had been left there.

They might have learned so much.

Rage rose up in her like a wave, inextricably entwined with a terrible sense of helplessness.

“How often is it like this?” Ellie demanded.

“Most of the time,” Bates flatly replied. “And if it’s not, that doesn’t last. I never know what I’m going to find when I make it back to a site—how much will have been defaced or carried off.”

“But that’s awful!” she burst out. “Surely someone must find a way to stop it!”

“Like who?” he retorted. “You think the guys at the top care about a bunch of bones? And I don’t know that it’d be much better if they did. The only people who do excavations around here are rich types with the connections to pull government strings, and they’re all just looking to add to their collections. Maybe if you’re lucky, some of the stuff ends up in a museum somewhere on the other side of the world.”

Bates’s words were tight, sharp, and laced through with frustration.

“Museums are places of public learning,” Ellie returned automatically, a bit shocked by the intensity of his response.

“Think Cedric Barrow is ever going to see one?” he pushed back. “Or Ximena and Diego Linares?” He gave a cold shrug. “Who knows? Maybe some of the stuff from right here will turn up in one of your museums. From what I’ve seen, they’re not too particular about how the artifacts they show off in their fancy cases got there.”

“You’re angry,” Ellie noted a bit numbly.

“Yeah—I guess maybe I am!” Bates’s tone rose to nearly a yell. “I guess maybe it’s occurred to me that if the museums weren’t so happy to buy whatever trinkets turned up on offer without asking the right questions about where they came from, there wouldn’t be so much of a market for looted antiquities. And maybe I wouldn’t have to keep stumbling across places like this!”

He waved a hand sharply over the destruction that lay before them, and then caught himself, dropping his arm back to his side. He sat down on the floor at the edge of the sprawl of debris.

“Sorry,” he said tiredly. “I’m making an ass of myself.”

Ellie knelt down beside him.

“No,” she said quietly. “You aren’t.”

He let his head fall back against the wall.

“I just… think it might be my fault,” he confessed.

“Your fault?” Ellie echoed with shock.

He turned his head and met her gaze with a look as devastated as the broken pots at her feet.

“I make the maps,” he helplessly replied.

Something inside Ellie’s chest twisted tightly.

She looked out across the terrible destruction of the cavern. The discovery should have been a moment out of a dream—Ellie’s first, real glimpse of the ancient past. She could have learned from what she held in her hands rather than just her endless piles of books.

Instead, all she could feel was loss.

“I stopped adding new sites to my surveys two years ago.” Bates closed his eyes as he rested his head against the stones. “I record whatever I can on my own and file the notes back at the Rio Nuevo. I’m the colony surveyor and I’m lying about what’s out there. And the worst part is, I’m not even sure it matters. Everything I do makes it easier for other people to get out into unexplored areas like this one… and everything I find still has a nasty habit of ending up like this.”

Ellie had no idea what to say. There was nothing she could say—nothing that would put the broken bones back together again.

“Thanks,” he said after a little while.

“But I haven’t done anything,” Ellie admitted awkwardly.

“You listened,” he replied.

He pushed back to his feet and held out his hand.

“We should go back,” he said.

“Right,” she agreed neatly, summoning up her fortitude.

Ellie let him help her up. Once she was standing again, he released his grasp.

It left her feeling oddly like she had just lost something.

They made their way back out of the tunnel and waded once more into the crystalline waters of the lake. The cavern was still and silent around her, its stones glistening with a timeless aura—a false one. The cave wasn’t timeless. The world outside had found its way in, and it had left a terrible mark.

Bates was quiet ahead of her as he led them unerringly back in the direction they had come.

As they passed the carved stalagmite they had seen earlier, a change in the angle of the light caught Ellie’s eye.

“Hold on,” she called out, raising a staying hand as she waded in for a closer look.

There was another carving on the stela. It had been carefully chipped into the opposite side of the stone from the roughly marked, skull-faced god of death.

The single mark took the form of a circle of swirling lines.

The light grew as Bates joined her by the stone, carrying the lantern.

“Hey,” he noted a bit uneasily. “Isn’t that your lollipop?”

Ellie gazed at the symbol, momentarily quieted by surprise. Slowly, she drew the medallion out from where it hung inside her blouse and brought it into the glow of the lantern. She turned it over, revealing the single glyph that marked the back.

“Smoke,” she said a little numbly as her eyes rose from the disk to the roughly carved sigil on the stone. “It looks like smoke.”

Bates scratched his head as he eyed the glyph.

“I still say lollipop,” he concluded.

“But why is it here?” Ellie pressed.

“I told you I’d seen it around before,” Bates pointed out.

“But why here?” she repeated stubbornly. “Why in a manufactured Xibalba on the back of the god of death?”

“Maybe he’s got a sweet tooth,” Bates offered.

“Smoke,” she asserted firmly.

“Lollipop,” Bates countered, mustering a flash of his usual cheerfulness. “Now how about we go find your magic pillar?”