Brian D'Amato - The Sacrifice Game

Left.

Hun Xoc. Damn. Don’t think about it.

The trench leveled out. This has got to be it, I thought. I spun around twice. The crest was laid out like a big rustic pyramid, with a cyclopean platform in the center and relatively straight hewn steps leading down to the four directions. There was a rough star of clothes and jewelry and human and animal gristle and bones on the platform, like the offerings had been laid out carefully but then picked over by the jaguars. Where’s the cistern? There wasn’t even any aqueduct.

I ran around the platform, kind of frantically. No well.

Stairs. Back down. No, up. Stairs too big. Everything wrong size. Clearing. Same one? Hump in the center. Maybe that’s it.

No, too small.

No, that’s it. I picked out the main feeder aqueduct that led into it from the spring source in the side of the mountain. I hadn’t seen it before because it was covered over with U-shaped limestone slabs, almost like a regular old pipe.

Okay, Tonto. Just across this little clearing here. One milpa. Fifty-four regular steps. Fifty-three if you stick out your chest at the tape.

Just go.

I’ve got about ten more beats of total freedom, I thought. In that amount of time I can do whatever I want.

Just don’t look like you’re going for the well.

Just go.

Okay.

I dashed out. They came out to meet me.

Thirty more steps. I was limping. I couldn’t feel my leg at all. Numb past the knee. Probably not anything fatal, I thought, they really want to bring you in kicking. Assuming they’ve got their act together. “We’re going to kill all the men, rape all the women, and steal all the cattle,” I yelled. “And for Gog’s sake, get it right this time. Disperse, ye rabble, die, ye scurvy scum, arrgghh, die!!! ”

I’ll never really get this down, I thought, I just can’t take it enough to heart. Twenty more steps. I could tell there were about a billion people around, or at least it seemed like a billion, but only one was really close. Keep going, he’s not on me. No, he’s on me. I had to turn around. Of course, it was Emerald Immanent, surprise, surprise. He just had to do his whole hero thing and add “Twice-Born-9 Chacal-Capturing” to the front of his name. If Emerald Immanent didn’t cover himself with glory they’d all just be on top of me all at once in about two p’ip’ilob, and they’d just take group credit for the offering.

Emerald Immanent, the Ocelots’ star striker, slashed at my bad leg with a long-handled hunting saw, trying to hobble me. I rolled behind one of the steles. It had about a fifteen-finger-width diameter and was coated in smooth, thick, black, white, and green paint like it had been dipped. There was the swish of air over a sharp surface and a dramatic constellation of sparks as his flints glanced off the stone. Tiny shards spattered through the air and one of them got into my right eye. Great, just what I needed.

“Kuchul bin ycnal,” Emerald Immanent growled. “You’re a runner.” It meant I’d abandoned the ball game because I was afraid we’d lose.

“Xejintic ub’aj,” I said. It meant “Vomit on yourself” but it was like saying “Bullshit.” I didn’t have any voice left, so I kind of stage-whispered it.

“Lothic ah tabay,” he said. “You were beat.”

“ You were beat,” I said. “Beat, beat, beat.”

I let go and bolted for the well. Someone had gotten ahead of me. I butted into him and twisted around him to the side of the cistern. My hands grabbed relief-work starfish-glyphs and I could feel the firm resonance of the hundreds of cubic tons of water on the other side. It was streaming fast despite the drought, still more than enough to serve the whole city. The rim was only at chest height. Just get over it, I thought. The guy grabbed my pigtail but it was still two-thirds fake and the extension pulled off in his hand. More people grabbed at me. I edged back and rolled up onto the wide lip, trying to look like I was panicking. The octagonal opening was only a rope-length across. I could feel negative ions blasting up out of it and I was all refreshed all of a sudden, somehow thinking clearly even though my body was a firecracker string of unbearable pain. They were dragging me down off the rim. You’ve got to act more, I thought. Otherwise you’ll be giving it away. It’s not enough to just dress up, you have to act. I wrenched up and back, shifting my weight to pull at least one person up with me. The blood got his elbow around my throat as I edged us off-balance and we tipped back into cold.

People used to tell me I remember everything, but of course there is too much of everything for anyone to remember. It’s really just that the type of things I do remember are different, like I might be able to quote the script of a movie I’ve seen, but I wouldn’t be able to say whom I saw it with. Movies and other things tend to exist in a sort of limbo memory space. And for a while after we tipped back into the Great Cistern, events for me shifted into that unmarked class of sliding space-time. Maybe in another way it’s like if you’re listening to something or watching a movie on a disk and you’ve hit the REPEAT button and then fall asleep in your chair while it loops over and over. You might remember the scenes perfectly clearly, but not how they fit together or which repeat you saw them on. It was like an in-and-out dozy state when you might be sort of remembering a dream while you’re dreaming it, or getting ready to dream it again and sort of seeing it coming and getting ready to remember it. It never quite seems to be happening at the time. Instead it’s like you’re visualizing what’s going to happen or trying to make sense out of what’s happened already, and even though the events are all clear enough they’re not correlated against any clocks, internal or external. I certainly remember that feeling of knowing we were irrevocably off-balance. I don’t remember falling or hitting the water. I think my heart stopped for a beat and a half. I realized the blood I’d pulled in with me was still choking me, and I remember reaching over with my right hand and finding a shard of obsidian that was still stuck in my left one. I got it out, tightened my fingers around it, twisted my arm back, found the protuberances of the blood’s left floating ribs, felt up the costal arch, and cut through under the base of the sternum. He reacted but his grip didn’t relax and I could tell I didn’t have much consciousness time left. I got the feeling we were still sinking instead of floating up, maybe because of all his quilted padding and heavy spondylus shell wrist cuffs and ankle cuffs and everything. I dug the knife in again, got the tips of four fingers inside his skin, finger-crawled up under his xiphoid process, and cut through the diaphragm up into his hot pericardial cavity. I was in the wrong position to get all the way up to his heart but I found the inferior lobe of his left lung instead and grabbed it. It felt like a wet sea sponge. I yanked on it and it mushed and collapsed, but it must have triggered some real alarm because the blood’s whole body spasmed so that I could push clear of him. I gasped at the release and a croquet ball of water forced itself down into my throat. It was about halfway pleasant because I really did need a drink but more pressed into my lungs and I got a blast of preconscious reptile panic.

Last thing, I thought. I dug the bag of earthstar powder out of my crotch and fumbled with the knots. I couldn’t get it open with my shredded hands. Some of the shard was still stuck in the metacarpals of my right hand, though, and I stabbed the side of the little bag, twisted a hole in it, and punched the bag inside out though the hole, releasing trails of numbing death through the water. I even managed to cut the bag off its thong and let it sink, although consciously speaking I’d forgotten that it had been weighted with pebbles. I floated.