Free Beneath the Dark Ice by Greig Beck Page A

itself.
    “Wow, are these the Mayan ruins you were so excited about back home?” asked Monica.
    “Yes. I mean no. Looks a little like Mayan but so much older. Even older than Olmec, thousands of years older, but still with some similarities. Mayan statues are usually carved to represent their rulers as being benign and all-knowing. These look to be in pain or great fear and I don’t know what these coils are meant to represent wrapped around them; wait, there’s picture writing.”
    Matt stuffed his torch into his pocket and rushed again to another section, trying to balance among the jumble of debris and take multiple photographs of the artifacts at the same time. The corner of the cave where they worked flared brightly and darkened in time with his camera motor drive.
    “You can read that?” asked Monica.
    “Pictoglyphs—picture symbols. It’s writing, but in a series of images—you don’t read it, you interpret it. I doubt anyone today could translate all of it. The problem is the symbols don’t represent letters; sometimes they’re syllables, words, sometimes sounds or even ideas. Primitive andcomplex at the same time, but still a whole phonetic language system. Looks like Mayan or Olmec, but the Olmecs had about two hundred characters, the Mayans even more. However, there are some images here I’ve never seen before. You know, there’s probably only two people in the entire world who could even attempt to read this, and one of them is in Central America right now.”
    “OK, I’ll bite, who’s the other one?”
    Matt had his torch back out. He shone it on his face and smiled. “Stand back, beautiful, this is where the magic happens. Ahhh, if I had more time I could probably draw out more of its meaning. The best I can do is to give you a guesslation, and at this point it’ll be heavy on the guessing part. Don’t blame me if I tell you it’s about a boy with a banana stuck in his ear though.”
    Matt ran his hands over some of the glyphs, and then changed to another section looking for a place to start. “Interesting. Some of these symbols look Mesoamerican. This single glyph here of two identical kneeling warriors is very similar to one in Mayan that represents a pair of demi-god brothers, from their original creation myth. They were called Hunahpu and Xbalanque and spent their life annoying or outwitting troublesome gods.” Matt scanned ahead along the carvings, narrowing his eyes at an image, his lips moving as if working a new word around in his mouth before continuing.
    Without turning he started to speak again. “OK, this might well be some sort of variation on one of the most ancient Mayan myths, but as there are so many different character sets I’m going to make a few pretty big leaps here. From what I can translate, it tells a story of a secret or hidden underworld.” Matt moved to the next row of symbols and continued. “Anyway, these monstrous underworld dwellers had a mixture of human, reptilian and other animal characteristics. That might mean bits of those animalsor they chose to change themselves into all of them at once. It also tells how the king sent an army to journey into a realm of horrors beneath the earth to defeat the enemies of ‘All People.’ Hmm, don’t know what this next one means, or this . . . Strange symbols. You don’t have a spare Rosetta Stone, do you?”
    Matt had turned around to shine the torch on Monica who mouthed the word
magic
and raised her eyebrows. He chuckled and went back to his translation.
    “OK, before they reach their destination they’re attacked and nearly all the army is captured or decimated by the ruler of the underworld—the
Qwotoan
. The only people who returned to tell the story were the brothers. Wow, see this? It’s a little like the Mayan numbering system. There’s a base number, and the dot over it represents it being multiplied by ten.” Matt pointed to a symbol with dozens of dots pressed into the stonework above it.