Free Dai-San - 03 by Eric Van Lustbader Page A

Majapan. What were they, beneath the Chacmool masks, he wondered, as he moved from shadow to shadow, down the pyramid’s side, along the bright stone causeway. Would they, naked, resemble the figures in the pictoglyphs which encrusted the architecture of Xich Chih?
    A dreamscape it was. Great stone heads seemed to float in air, thrusting out as they did from shadowed walls, immense oblique plazas with sloping sides, crowned by crenellated tops, endlessly tiered buildings with walls made unsolid by the concentration of hieroglyphs.
    He lost her in a shaft of deep shadow into which she disappeared. He went after her, cautiously, silently, the stones his enemy now, for they would echo his pursuit if he were not careful. The path she had been following ran beside three buildings, along a narrow defile for perhaps another hundred meters beyond the pocket of shadow within which he now stood.
    He was still for a moment, watching and, perhaps even more acutely, listening for her muted footfalls. All about him the chronicles of the Majapan hulked mutely, savagely; a history in stone, waiting.
    Moving slowly along the defile, he caught a glimpse of movement. But now he hesitated, unsure whether to follow or to return to the house on the acropolis. After a moment’s deliberation, he moved onward, swifter now that he had reached a decision.
    Down the defile and then sharply left, into a cleft of darkness, all sight gone for long moments.
    Something had changed. Abruptly, the nature of the darkness had altered. It was at once thicker and more expansive and he realized that he was out from the buildings. He looked up but could see no stars, no moon.
    He heard again the muffled sound in front of him and went on. There were trees now in patches of deeper darkness and as his eyes slowly adjusted to the werelight he saw that he loped through an outthrusting of the jungle which surrounded the city.
    Now and again he thought he saw a glimmering ahead, as of some reflected light, but always it was rather close to the ground, certainly less than two meters from the floor of the forest. Who or what was he following? He had had an intuition that he had lost Kin Coba somewhere within the defile. Then why had he come here?
    The jungle gave grudgingly onto a moon-dappled glade and he paused just outside the lip, drenched in shadow. He heard nothing but the whining of the nocturnal insects, the sighing of the trees.
    He went swiftly down the aisle of the clearing, around an abrupt turning and saw, bathed in indifferent moonlight, the black and white edifice, strewn, collapsing, etched into the far side of the glade.
    It was set off the ropy jungle floor by short pillars in the shape of an undulating serpent in a repeating squared off ‘s’ shape so that each wave of its body formed part of the foundation. It was the first time that he had seen this creature represented in the city. The building’s central stairway had fallen away in several places.
    The building itself had twelve doorways and over the thick lintel of each was carved the same serpent, with plumes or wings as if it were flying.
    One entire side of the building was choked with the inevitable influx of the returning jungle. Green moss across the steps like an unkempt carpet.
    Something flickered at the periphery of his vision and he went closer. The white spark came again and now he saw that before the building stood a statue under the shadow of an overhanging tree. As the wind swung the heavily laden branches, a sliver of moonlight caught the statue’s top.
    It was incomplete. Someone had deliberately hacked away the head. It towered over him, perhaps six and a half meters high.
    It was a warrior.
    With breastplate and high boots, thickly muscled arms. Two scabbards hung at its waist, one filled, the other empty. One arm was raised. That, too, had been vandalized. It ended in a severed wrist.
    A cool wind fluttered the massed treetops some meters away; the night insects were calling