Aaron Elkins - Curses!

At the south end of one of these walls-the one nearest the folding chairs-is a flight of stone steps to the top. Julie and Gideon made for them and sat down on the lowest one as the plaintive melody died lingeringly away.

"Welcome,” boomed an accented, echoing voice, “to the lost and mysterious world of the ancient Maya. Tonight you will learn of the early days of our fathers and forefathers, the days before the foreigners came, the days of the sacred places: of Zubinche and Timozon, of Zizal and Cumcanul, and of the great city known as the Mouth of the Well of the Itzas…CHICHEN ITZA!"

The slow, cadenced words slid away into the jungle on the moist breeze, and they were left in black silence.

Then, louder, the voice echoed once more. "Behold," it boomed, "behold the wonders of our ancestors!"

A crash of drums, and the Castillo leaped abruptly out at them like a colossal faceted crystal, drenched in flaming light, seemingly glowing from within. The grand stone staircase was a deep sapphire blue, the massive bulk of the pyramid a paler, under-the-sea turquoise. The Temple of Kukulcan on top was parrot green, its interior-seen through the rectangular entryway-a boiling, riveting crimson. The stars, the jungle, the rest of the structures vanished against this brilliance, as if a huge backdrop of black velvet had been rung down.

At the sight there was a distant, collective gasp from the rows of spectators, and Julie impulsively clutched Gideon's hand.

"I'm not sure,” she said, “but I think this may be freaking me out of my pants."

Gideon laughed. He himself had felt another slow chill riffle up between his shoulders and stir the hairs at the back of his neck. This was accompanied by a mild sense of guilt. Professional anthropologists were not supposed to get goose bumps from hokey, overloud extravaganzas consisting of bogus music, sham history, and meaningless colored lights.

"I'm going to watch the rest from the top of the steps,” he told Julie. “Want to come?"

She looked behind her at the narrow, rail-less flight of stone steps, steep even by Mayan standards. “Up those? In the dark? Are you kidding?"

"Well, I think I'll go. The view should be terrific."

"Be careful, will you?"

He was, mounting gingerly on all fours and leaning his right side into the wall, as most visitors did even in the daytime. The staircase was at the very edge of the wall; on his left was a murderously sheer drop down to a broad stone platform. The scene from the top was everything he'd hoped, giving him a view of every building in the plaza as the show continued, the lights moving from one ruined structure to another. He settled down on the top step to watch, leaning back on his elbow, only half listening to the windy monologue.

"…the terrible god Chac Mool, who received the dripping hearts freshly torn from the sacrificial victims…"

The sonorous voice vibrated and soared as the lights picked out the expressionless face of the reclining Chac Mool figure atop the Temple of the Warriors and then moved to the grim Platform of the Skulls. “…whose heads were then impaled on this, the tzompantli, for the glory of the ancient gods."

Gideon himself was sprawled at the side of one of the more famous structures of Chichen Itza: the Temple of the Jaguars, which the conquering Toltecs had superimposed on top of the existing rampart of the old ball court as a shrine to themselves. Inside, wall paintings showed their subjugation of the city. The entrance was a small portico facing into the ball court and away from the other structures, its heavy lintel supported in the dramatic Toltec manner by two snake-columns-thick stone pillars in the form of feathered serpents, with their fanged, three-foot-high heads as the bases and their upraised tails supporting the roof.

At the edge of his sight Gideon could see the reflected lights playing over the fantastic heads of the snakes only a few feet away as the show progressed, so that they seemed to writhe and strain-a further agreeable titillation of his highly unprofessional goose bumps. All in all, he was enjoying the show a great deal.

"And so at last we say farewell to these lost days of grandeur,” the voice intoned in its measured singsong. “Farewell to the Toltec and the Maya. to Quetzalcoatl and Kukulcan. Farewell to…CHICHEN ITZA!"

The brazen din of horns and drums swelled to an earsplitting finale and the entire western half of the complex jumped into eye-searing relief; blue, green, orange, red, gold, violet. A few feet from Gideon, half-seen, the great feathered serpents surged realistically from the shadows.

He turned his head sharply. Had there been something else? Behind the columns, hadn't there just been some sort of movement, a…

The music and floodlights went off abruptly, plunging everything into blackness and silence. He could see nothing. But someone was there, standing in the portico. Gideon tensed, straining to listen.

"Who's there?” he said. "Quien es?"

Nothing. Only the pulsating afterimages of the lights, the echoes of the horns. He stood perfectly still, waiting; blind and deaf.

And then a chilling, smooth, chinking sound, metal against metal, soft and sinister. A chain? Someone shifting a heavy chain in his hand? There was a furtive scrape of shoe on pavement.

Gideon had not yet stood up, but now he spun instinctively away from the intruder, rolling onto his right side, toward the edge of the wall. Something rammed heavily into his shoulder, the impact muffled by his own rolling movement. A foot-he thought it was a foot-caught him painfully behind the ear, then kicked again at his head.

He twisted farther away, but he knew he was frighteningly close to the end of the wall. Sightless, he grabbed at the pavement with his left hand to steady himself, but it wasn't there; his arm dropped sickeningly down into nothing. He was at the very edge, sprawled on his belly, hanging over a sheer forty-foot drop to a ledge of stone. His fingers scrabbled down over the vertical surface, managing to find a rough outcropping to brace himself against. His other hand, the right, was jammed under his body. A foot dug into him again, this time over the kidneys, with nauseating force, and then yet again, thumping against his ribs, thrusting him onto his belly, urging him over the edge and onto the rocky terrace below.

Gideon pressed himself into the stone pavement with all his strength, trying to keep from going over. He pushed down against the outcropping, jerked his right arm out from under him, and twisted onto his left side, facing the figure he still couldn't see.

At the same moment he heard the chainlike sound again, and a whirr and then a leaden chink as something smashed into the pavement two inches from his eyes, where his head had been an instant before. His forehead was spattered with tiny chips of stone. A hand grabbed roughly at his collar, twisting the cloth. Gideon lashed blindly up and caught his assailant across the hip with his forearm. It was a frantic, backhanded swipe, delivered without much force, but it told him just where the figure was, and his next blow was struck at the middle of the chest, or where he hoped the middle of the chest was. This one had the full power of his bunched shoulder muscles behind it. He felt the semi-rigid sternum under his fist, heard the resonant, solid thump of the impact.

"Ow!” With the shocked gasp there was an outrush of warm, winey breath on Gideon's face. The clutching hand let go of his collar and the figure staggered back-a couple of steps, from the sound of it.

Gideon pushed himself quickly to his feet, crouching, fists still clenched, ready for the next rush. He still couldn't see, and all he could hear was the throbbing of blood in his ears. He was nauseated and unsteady, not sure how far away he was from the edge. He licked his lips. His throat was parched.