Sky Knife Read online

  To the south of the Great Plaza, on a small hillock, stood the southern acropolis, home of the priests and attendants to the temple. No red-painted step marked the acropolis’ boundary, for no disaster would rain upon the city if anyone besides the priests entered, but still, the people of the city gave it a wide berth. As soon as Sky Knife climbed the first step, he left the crowd behind.

  Sky Knife pushed aside the blue cotton drapery that hung over the main entrance and stepped inside. A fire burned inside the main room, which was shallow, but wide. Stone benches lined the walls. The meager light from the fire lit the center of the room, but the corners and vaulted ceiling were left in the shadow of midnight. Sky Knife turned away from the fire and walked toward the dark entrance of Blood House’s personal quarters; as a priest, Blood House’s quarters were close to the airy, open front room. Attendants were crammed into smaller, smoky rooms deeper in the stone structure.

  Blood House’s quarters were dark. The feeling of unease that had plagued Sky Knife all night blossomed into a terrible dread. He retreated to the fire and pulled out a flaming brand. He walked back to Blood House’s quarters.

  Blood House lay on the stone bench that served as his bed. His hands were clamped down on a tobacco leaf that had been pressed against his bare abdomen. His tattoos, which normally stood out in stark contrast with his lighter skin, now seemed blurred, as if Blood House were bruised over his entire body. Blood stained Blood House’s face around his mouth and nose. In contrast to the blood that stained Sky Knife’s arms, which was dark and sticky now, almost dry, the blood on Blood House’s face was bright and wet.

  Sky Knife, trembling, stepped closer. He touched Blood House, but the priest’s skin was clammy and cold. He did not seem to be breathing. In the flickering light from the small tongue of flame Sky Knife carried, it was difficult to tell anything at all for sure, but inside he knew. Blood House was dead. No wonder Cizin had appeared. The god of death gloated over the bodies of priests as he gloated over no other—for they knew the secrets of the gods, and kept the rituals pure and holy. How sweet it must have been for Cizin to breach the wall of good luck around the temple and appear on its very summit. How terrible for the city of Tikal.

  Grief tugged at Sky Knife’s heart. Blood House had been a good teacher, a mentor to Sky Knife. The priest had had a gentle soul and a kind way that had helped Sky Knife in his first frightening days at the temple, when his grief over his parents’ deaths had been new and raw. Stone Jaguar was a hard but fair man, a man Sky Knife could respect, but Blood House alone had been someone Sky Knife could not only respect but admire.

  Sky Knife brushed away the tears that rained on his cheeks and pushed his grief away. He put the flickering light as close to the body as he dared, looked at the tobacco leaf, and tried to think around the hard knot of sorrow in his heart and mind.

  From around the edges of the tobacco leaf dribbled a dark, sticky liquid. A tobacco leaf over tobacco juice—Blood House had treated himself for some sort of bite or sting. Gently, Sky Knife lifted the edge of the leaf. Two small puncture wounds marred the priest’s skin.

  A bite. Bleeding, bruising. A relatively quick death. Sky Knife knew what had happened here. The snake called Yellow Chin had bitten Blood House. Yellow Chin lived in fields as well as jungle, but rarely entered the city itself, and never entered the dwellings of man if it could help it. Sky Knife shook his head. He knew Blood House had not left the acropolis all day—none of them had, until the time for the ceremony. So Yellow Chin had had to come here.

  Yellow Chin might still be here. Alarmed at the thought, Sky Knife swung his meager light about, looking for a small, brown and black serpent with the diamond pattern on its back. The room was cluttered with the copious garments Blood House had planned to wear to the sacrifice. Yellow Chin could be hiding in a fold in any one of them. Or behind the water jug, or any of a dozen other places in the dark corners of the room. Sky Knife backed out of the room slowly, unwilling to touch anything.

  Sky Knife turned and ran into someone. He yelped and dropped his makeshift torch.

  “What took you so long, boy?” asked the tremulous voice of Death Smoke. “Did you find Blood House?”

  “Yes,” whispered Sky Knife. He stepped away from the older man. “Dead. He’s dead.” Sky Knife’s voice cracked with emotion.

  “What?” shouted Death Smoke. “That can’t be—the ceremony went perfectly. There’s no room here for bad luck.” He shoved Sky Knife aside and mumbled the fire-calling incantation. Flames spouted into existence above Death Smoke’s head, filling the vaulted ceiling, and illuminating the entire room and Blood House’s quarters with a brilliant blue light.

  The blue drapery to the outdoors was swept aside and Stone Jaguar strode in, his jaguar skin cloak still in place. “What’s going on?” demanded Stone Jaguar. His searching gaze swept past Sky Knife, dismissing him. “Death Smoke? Claw Skull went ahead and kindled the new fire. It would have been unlucky to wait any longer. Where’s Blood House?”

  “In here,” called Death Smoke. “It would seem that the ceremony didn’t go as well as we thought. Yellow Chin has been here.”

  Stone Jaguar’s face wrinkled in a terrible frown and his face purpled in rage. Sky Knife backed up, unwilling to call attention to himself while Stone Jaguar was so angry.

  “Yellow Chin?” said Stone Jaguar. “The Bolon ti ku take the Yellow One and cast him into the lowest hell,” he hissed. “Itzamna!”

  Sky Knife’s gut twisted painfully as part of the import of Stone Jaguar’s words hit him. Yellow—the color of death, the color of evil. Of course it had been Yellow Chin who had come to do the bidding of Cizin, the Yellow One. Cizin wasn’t content to merely gloat over this death; he revelled in it. And had shoved the noses of the priests in it for good measure.

  Angry as Stone Jaguar was, he needed to know what Sky Knife had seen. “The Yellow One,” Sky Knife said softly. “He was here.”

  “Of course he was,” snapped Stone Jaguar. “He has taken Blood House.”

  Sky Knife fought the urge to run out into the night, away from the priest’s anger, away from the bad luck that undoubtedly clung to this entire building.

  “No,” said Sky Knife. He straightened his shoulders and spoke firmly. “He was on the temple. After the sacrifice. I saw him. Actually, I heard him first. He sneezed.”

  “Can’t stand the smell of tobacco,” cackled Death Smoke from the other room. “Thought I heard sneezing, too, but I didn’t see anything.”

  “He was on the temple?” roared Stone Jaguar. “Has our luck deserted us completely? Cizin here, and only an attendant with a bad luck name saw him?”

  Sky Knife lowered his gaze and dropped to his knees before Stone Jaguar. He knew his name was bad luck, even if his mother said she’d received instructions in a vision to name her child after the Knife of Stars that swung in a slow circle overhead during the year. Still, Sky Knife thought his work in the temple, his efforts to please the gods, merited him luck. To hear Stone Jaguar as much as blame him for Cizin’s presence rocked him.

  But then, Stone Jaguar had never been happy that the previous Ah men, Vine Torch, had sponsored Sky Knife to the gods’ service. Vine Torch had claimed Sky Knife was a good omen, that the iguanas who had ringed the house while his mother was in labor had been the servants of Itzamna come to pay tribute.

  So Vine Torch had promised Sky Knife to Itzamna. Although Vine Torch had died in the same sweeping sickness that had killed Sky Knife’s parents and one of his brothers, Stone Jaguar could not undo what had been done. He’d had to accept Sky Knife into the temple’s service.

  “Our luck may yet be salvaged,” said Death Smoke. “And bad luck name or not, I believe the young man will play a part in it. He was born to his name for a reason. His parents saw it. Vine Torch saw it.”

  “Have you seen this in the copal smoke, or are you just babbling?” asked Stone Jaguar. “Our luck has turned to evil, and you think an attendant can save us?”


  “I think the gods can save us,” said Death Smoke. “But perhaps not tomorrow or the next day. The gods, too, are slaves to time. They must wait for the time to be right.”

  “But how will we know when that is?” asked Sky Knife. Stone Jaguar glared at him, but said nothing.

  “We don’t know,” said Death Smoke. He came out of the other room and extended a thin, wrinkled hand toward Sky Knife, just as Cizin had. Sky Knife’s heart dropped in his chest and he fought the urge to bolt from the room. “But Itzamna, the Lord of All, knows. He will tell the gods, and all the chacs, high and low. He will tell the spirit of the copal, and the copal will tell me. He will not desert mankind, or Tikal.”

  “And what happens when news of our bad luck travels to other cities?” asked Stone Jaguar. “How long do you think it will take Uaxactun to start a war with us? Their sun-rotted king has been itching for the chance to attack.”

  “It is in the hands of the gods,” said Death Smoke.

  “In the hands of the gods or not, we must tell the king,” said Stone Jaguar. “He must be prepared for whatever happens now that the katun has begun so terribly.” Stone Jaguar arranged the jaguar-skin cloak, then looked at Sky Knife. “You will come with me. Get a cloth and clean yourself.”

  “Me?” asked Sky Knife, his voice barely more than a squeak. Still, he moved to obey. He grabbed a cotton towel and rubbed his arms vigorously. The dried blood flaked off easily. “Why me?”

  “You saw Cizin,” said Stone Jaguar with a frown. “An omen that strange can’t be unimportant.”

  Sky Knife’s knees trembled. The king! Storm Cloud, King of Tikal, was a figure larger than life. Born in the north of a princess of Tikal who had been wed to a foreigner to cement an alliance, Storm Cloud had grown up the youngest of many brothers, each royal, each ambitious. Fifteen years before, when Sky Knife was still an infant, Storm Cloud had come to his mother’s people and had demanded the kingship. Though his army was small, and his claim tenuous, he had not been opposed.

  Sky Knife had never been in the king’s presence before—he didn’t have the status to even consider it. He was merely the son of a farmer, born in a simple house in the middle of his father’s milpa. Fear rose in Sky Knife’s throat and choked him. He couldn’t move.

  Stone Jaguar grabbed Sky Knife by the shoulder and propelled him out the door. Sky Knife stumbled into the blackness of the night, the weight of his fear as heavy and as oppressive as the humid tropical air.

  3

  The crowd of revelers hadn’t thinned a bit, and the plaza was brighter for the many new fires that had been started. Stone Jaguar strode on ahead and pushed past a group of tattooed men, potters, to judge by the damp clay smell that clung to them, and walked eastward toward the house of the king. Sky Knife hurried along in his wake.

  Just before the steps of the king’s house stood a tall, rectangular slab of stone, a stela, elaborately carved with the date of the king’s accession to the throne and an image of the king in his ceremonial regalia. In the torchlight, Sky Knife could make out few details, though the date, 8.19.4.7.13 4 Ben 1 Xul, was easy enough to read in the dim light.

  Stone Jaguar bowed briefly before the stela, then walked straight up the stairs. Sky Knife knelt at the stela and touched his forehead to the ground before it, then stood and jogged after Stone Jaguar. Warriors with their slings and spears in hand stood on each step and watched, but did not interfere. Still, the skin on Sky Knife’s neck crawled, as if the gazes of the warriors could pierce his very soul.

  Stone Jaguar needed no introductions, and no one seemed concerned that a temple attendant followed him. Warriors merely stared impassively, their bare chests glistening with sweat in the torchlight. Sweat streaked Sky Knife’s body as well, but it was a cold sweat. The king. He was going to meet the king in the king’s own house.

  The house was similar, but larger, than the acropolis where the priests and the attendants lived. Long, narrow rooms with steeply vaulted ceilings were lined with benches. Colorful cotton blankets covered the benches and the walls had been painted in brilliant reds and blues. In the flickering torchlight, the images of gods and the king’s ancestors walked on the walls, their stern stares ever watchful, ever forbidding.

  Stone Jaguar stopped. Sky Knife stood behind him, waiting.

  “Tell the king I am here on important business,” said Stone Jaguar. A warrior nodded, turned, and brushed past a heavy cotton drape. The warrior on Sky Knife’s left shifted his weight slightly. Sky Knife didn’t dare stare at the warrior, but flicked his gaze toward the tall man several times, awed to be in the warrior’s presence.

  Sky Knife was taller than many men in Tikal, but the warrior was a head taller than Sky Knife. His earlobes, stretched carefully over time, were wrapped about red-painted spools of wood encrusted with nacre from seashells. Grease coated his hair and plastered it flat to his skull, showing off its fashionable elongated shape. A long, aquiline nose jutted forth from his face, making his skull appear even longer and his eyes slightly crossed.

  Sky Knife suppressed a surge of envy; the warrior had a face women would sigh over, lust after, dream of. Sky Knife’s small nose was the plainest part of his plain face. His forehead did not have that perfect slope, and his eyes, no matter how hard he tried, absolutely refused to cross. None of the young women remarked on him, or watched him in the marketplace, or let him know by shy glances that they found him attractive.

  The warrior wore a skirt of brilliant blue-and-yellow-striped cotton that was wrapped around his waist several times and bunched together in a knot in front. Rope sandals, newer and far finer than Sky Knife’s, for these were decorated with cowrie shells, were strapped to the warrior’s feet.

  The warrior shifted his weight again and fixed his gaze on Sky Knife, who ducked his head and stared at his feet, heart pounding. His thick, straight hair fell forward in his face, obscuring his view. He didn’t brush it back, but let it hang as it was.

  The sound of the drape being pushed aside caused Sky Knife’s knees to tremble. This was it. He would be in the presence of the king.

  Stone Jaguar stepped forward into the next room. Sky Knife took a deep breath, pulled his shoulders back, and walked as confidently as he could, though he kept his gaze fixed on the middle of Stone Jaguar’s back.

  This room was slightly wider than the others, but was still a comfortable, familiar, shape. The paintings on the walls were intriguing, but Sky Knife got no more than a glimpse of a sacrificial scene before having to stop behind Stone Jaguar again. Stone Jaguar knelt. Sky Knife scrambled to his knees and lowered his forehead to the floor.

  “My king,” said Stone Jaguar in his deep, melodious voice. In this room, his voice seemed to carry in a way it did nowhere else—at least nowhere else that Sky Knife had heard it.

  “Stone Jaguar,” replied an even deeper, heavily accented voice. The accent jarred Sky Knife; he had not forgotten that the king had been born far to the north, but he had somehow not quite expected the King of Tikal to sound like a foreigner. Storm Cloud was king, father, and protector to the city. It only seemed right that he should speak as a native.

  “I have grave news,” said Stone Jaguar. “Cizin has been seen.” He recounted the events of the evening. Sky Knife kept his head to the floor and listened intently. To either side of him, he heard the rustling of clothing and the bright, clattery sound of jade beads clapping against each other as the king’s attendants moved about.

  “And this is the one who saw Cizin?” asked the king when Stone Jaguar finished.

  “Yes, my king,” said Stone Jaguar. A small draft hit Sky Knife in the face, and he realized Stone Jaguar had moved aside.

  “And who is he?” asked the king. “What is so special about him?”

  Stone Jaguar hesitated.

  “Well?” demanded the king.

  “My predecessor, Vine Torch,” said Stone Jaguar, “said that, though this boy was born to a farmer, he was destined to be more than a farmer. Vi
ne Torch said there were omens at his birth: shooting stars, parades of iguanas outside the house, yax-um feathers falling from the sky at his feet. He is the fourth son of a fourth son. And the Ah kin says the copal told him the boy was born to do work no one else could do.”

  Storm Cloud absorbed this for several moments. “So, boy,” he said at last, “omens tend to follow you, eh?” The king chuckled. Sky Knife tried not to tremble visibly.

  “You may look upon me, boy,” said the king.

  Sky Knife gathered his courage and straightened up, but stared at the chipped stone tiles of the floor in front of him.

  “I said, you may look upon me.” The deep voice held a hint of laughter. Sky Knife blinked and raised his gaze to the king’s.

  Except for the image of the owl painted on the wall behind him, the king and his court were wholly Tikal. The king sat cross-legged on a knee-high stone dais, which was covered with layer upon layer of blankets.

  Storm Cloud, King of Tikal, was dressed in a red cotton skirt covered in a pattern of green and yellow flowers. His chest, tattooed with the figure of his spirit animal, the crocodile, was covered by strings of beads and shells that hung from his neck. Jade ear spools swung gently from Storm Cloud’s ears. On his head, the king wore an elaborate crown of shells, jade beads, and short, brightly colored feathers. Long, iridescent blue-green feathers of the yax-um, the sacred bird that dwelt in the far mountains, were fastened to the crown. Some of them stuck up into the air, and some trailed down Storm Cloud’s shoulders.

  He was an imposing sight and he stared at Sky Knife as one might consider an insect. Sky Knife stared back, trapped in the king’s gaze, unable to look away. Sky Knife longed to put his head down on the floor again, to abase himself before this mighty figure.

  “Hm,” said Storm Cloud. He turned his attention back to Stone Jaguar, no trace of amusement in his manner now.