When Horn Lance found Thirteen Sacred Jaguar the ahau was in the process of Spiritually caring for the kukul atop its pole. Standing behind his right shoulder stood Burning Ant, his head raised, hands up in the supplicant’s position.
The carved effigy of the War Serpent always sent a shiver down Horn Lance’s spine. He had been there the day Waxaklahun Kan’s ch’ulel had been ritually invoked and had taken possession of the standard.
Horn Lance himself had led the war party that had captured more than a hundred human beings from the city-state of Mayapan. On the day of the ritual, he had offered his own blood and pain. But it had been nothing compared to Thirteen Sacred Jaguar’s offering as he first pierced his hands, thighs, and tongue, then pulled a knotted cord through the wounds. As tears had leaked from the man’s tightly clamped eyes, his blood was collected by the priests, spattered on juna, and burned in a sacred offering plate.
At the same time the priests continued to torture the naked, blue-painted captives from Mayapan, beating them, breaking their jaws, wrenching their joints out of socket. Only when Thirteen Sacred Jaguar fell into a drug-induced trance, his voice plaintively calling past his swollen tongue to Waxaklahun Kan, did the priests order the warriors, Red Copal and Shaking Earth, to drag the captives one by one to the altar.
Atop the stone bench carved in the shape of a supplicant warrior, the blue-painted captives were sliced open, their beating hearts cut loose from the arteries and veins, and pulled from inside spastically quivering rib cages.
Blood. So much blood. An impossibly crimson and vibrant offering of itz: the Power and essence of life. He’d never forget the smell of it as it mixed with the heady clouds of burning pom. The slick and clotting pools through which the warriors and priests waded.
Images clung to his souls, flickers of memory as limp bodies, blue-painted and gore-splotched, tumbled lifelessly down the blood-bright stone stairs to the plaza below. Had he actually seen the hideous Lords of Death rise from the soil to feast on the rubbery corpses? Or was that just a figment of his imagination, a vision made whole in dreams?
As Horn Lance had stood by Thirteen Sacred Jaguar’s side that day—his own souls swaying in the Power Dance of balche, morning glory, and powdered mushrooms—he’d felt it: blood, death, and pain amplifying Thirteen Sacred Jaguar’s rasping pleas. They had attracted Waxaklahun Kan’s ch’ulel. Following the blood, the War Serpent had been drawn inexorably to the carved image of itself. As the priests slathered the kukul’s open mouth, opening a link between the Spirit World and this, the god’s essence had taken possession of the standard.
Horn Lance had felt it happen. From that moment on, every time he was in the kukul’s presence, it served as a reminder of the incredible Spirit Power and magic the Itza controlled.
Poor Cahokia. In comparison with the Itza, let alone the Yucatec, Puuc, and their neighbors, how could the Cahokians ever hope to evoke the same ch’ulel from the Lords of the Sky, Earth, and Underworld?
In Cahokia, a hundred people might be sacrificed once a generation in the dangerous ritual to reincarnate the Morning Star’s soul into a living man’s body. But the Itza routinely cut the living hearts out of a thousand human beings in a day just to manipulate the divine scales. Only through an orgy of suffering, torture, blood, and death would the gods be forced to respond by bringing rain, health, prosperity, and good luck.
Cahokians were ignorant of the underlying truth: The whole of Creation teetered, eternally struggling for balance between pleasure, health, comfort, prosperity, joy, and success on one hand, disease, pain, suffering, war, death, and misery on the other.
The beautiful terror.
“Are you ready, Ahau? The time has come to prepare yourself. I have water for your bath. Your clothing is laid out, and your mask and cloak are being made ready.”
Thirteen Sacred Jaguar turned, an expression of peace on his face. It slowly shifted to one of distaste as he focused his attention from the kukul’s Power to the duties of the day. “What of the sacrificial combat? Is that prepared? Have the Cahokians swallowed the bait?”
“They have, Ahau. Warriors have petitioned from all over Cahokia. Five have been chosen to face our warriors. They are the best of the best, Lord. Men who have killed at least ten opponents in man-to-man combat.”
Thirteen Sacred Jaguar smiled thinly. “And they have no concept of the macuahuitl?”
“None. They’ve spent their lives with either the bow, war club, or war ax. As you like to say, they are like monkeys. And this afternoon they are about to face men for the first time.” Horn Lance inclined his head slightly.
“I still dislike the notion that we cannot call it what it is. They are ch’ab, a sacrifice. A gift to the Lords of Death.”
“And the Lords of Death shall partake of their blood, Ahau. They understand that things cannot yet be done as they are in the civilized world we come from. That we can offer the Lords of Death the lives of these warriors in celebration of your marriage is miracle enough for the time being. As we change these people, bring them to an understanding of the true nature of Creation, the Lords of Life as well as the Lords of Death will finally receive their just due.”
At that moment, Red Copal leaned in to say, “War Leader? The woman you summoned has arrived. She awaits outside on a litter.”
“Have her seated on the veranda. And ask Dead Teeth to see to her needs. Tell her I’ll join her as soon as I can.”
“What woman?” Thirteen Sacred Jaguar asked.
“Her name is Wooden Doll. A well-respected paid woman of remarkable talents … especially in this backwater. But more to the point, one who has a deep and sophisticated understanding of the intricacies of Cahokian politics. I’ve asked her to accompany me today.”
“As you will.” Thirteen Sacred Jaguar glanced reverently at his precious kukul and then at Horn Lance. “I should not question you as I do. Since arriving in this land of wild and ignorant monkey people, it has been just as you said. Back home, you served my father and the multepal before you came to serve me. Now, it seems, to obtain our goals, I must accede and serve you.”
“Ahau!” Horn Lance protested, his hands out as a measure of his shock. “I never—”
“No, you’ve never exceeded your status or position.” Thirteen Sacred Jaguar stepped forward and reached out to push Horn Lance’s hands down. “But let us recognize this reality as it is: Here, for the time being, I follow your lead, take your advice.”
Again he waved down Horn Lance’s protest. “I understand that you are working to your own ends, my friend. As I look around this savage monkey world, I see little enough worth saving. So, tear it down in any way you wish. Inflict all the suffering you can upon those who once caused you harm. In the end, the darker their misery and defeat, the brighter our success and triumph. Each victory, beginning with this day’s marriage to that hideous woman, brings us closer to the day when the first fleet of Itzan canoes lands here with priests, scribes, and warriors to begin the true transformation of these savages.”
Horn Lance nodded, his thoughts racing. “We’ll know in ten days, Ahau. If, in that time, we have established ourselves in Night Shadow Star’s palace, if the other Four Winds Houses have begun sending emissaries, and if the people have begun to spread word of your Power, we can chance dispatching Split Bone and Dead Teeth back to Chichen Itza with a request for a major expedition.”
Thirteen Sacred Jaguar studied him. “A mere ten days? Isn’t that a bit presumptuous? We won’t even know if the new Natchez White Woman and Great Sun have secured their hold on political authority, let alone on the river Nations. Nor can we be sure if our standing here—”
“Think, my Lord.” Horn Lance pressed his hands together in a display of humility. “Given the distances involved, the risks and perils of the journey, the soonest we can expect our people to arrive is a full year away. And that’s if everything goes according to plan.”
Thirteen Sacred Jaguar stared thoughtfully at the kukul, as though reassured by its immense Power.
Horn Lance added, “Time, Ahau, is at once on our side, and our greatest enemy. On one hand, we need not succeed immediately.”
“And what if we fail before they can arrive?”
“The gaming pieces will have been cast, Lord. The fate of these ‘monkey people,’ as you call them, will be sealed. Your commission from your father and the multepal was to determine if my stories and the rumors were true. You’re here. In Cahokia. You’ve been face to face with the man pretending to be Hun Ahau. You have seen the sacrilege committed here, and how the Cahokians have perverted the sacred stories and gods. All Split Bone and Dead Teeth have to do is reach Chichen Itza and whisper what they’ve seen here. From that moment on, the multepal will move the god Witz and his mountain to reach Cahokia and cleanse its pollution from the world.”
Thirteen Sacred Jaguar’s young face lined in worry. “So much could still go wrong.”
Horn Lance dropped to his knees before the lord, bowing his head. “As long as you manage to get a message to Chichen Itza, Ahau, even if your soul has been devoured by the White Bone Snake and is being tortured in Xibalba…”
Thirteen Sacred Jaguar’s face brightened. “Like Hun Ahau, the sacred One Lord who reincarnated his dead father in the Underworld, I shall have won.”
“And Cahokia, like the Lords of Xibalba in the Third Creation, will be doomed.”
“Fetch me my box, good friend,” Thirteen Sacred Jaguar said with a relieved grin. “For this day I shall partake of the mushrooms, a pinch of powdered toad, and ground mescaline. Make me a tea. I want to watch this world through a haze of ch’ulel. It will make my victory that much sweeter.”