have been ruined, insects swarm, and our soils are no longer fed by falling leaves. The animals and butterflies and plants given to us by the Holy Bearer have nowhere to go to continue their spirit lives. The animals bear no flesh for cooking.
I am not noble by birth, and so there is much I do not fathom about the ways of the gods that watch over us, there is much I do not hear that the gods would whisper in the ears of a king. But I do know Kanuataba was once home to the most majestic collection of ceiba trees, the great path to the underworld, in all of the highlands. The ceiba once grew denser than anywhere in the world, blessed by the gods, their trunks nearly touching. Now there are fewer than a dozen still standing in all of Kanuataba! Our holy lake has dried to nothing but dirt. The water made to shoot from stone shoots from the palace and temples no more. In the plazas, untouchables beg us to buy their useless, cracked pots and rotting vegetables, diluted spices for meats that only the nobles can afford. There are no agouti, kinkajou, deer, or tapir to season. The children of Kanuataba become hungrier with each change of the sun’s mighty journey across the sky.
Forgive me then, monkey scribe, whose ring I wear on my hand as the symbol of scribes past! Here in Kanuataba, I commence my record on the virgin bark paper I stole from the king. I have done little worth recording in the books of Kanuataba. I am the tutor to the king’s son, and I have painted forty-two books in the service of the court. But now I paint for the people, and the children of our children’s children, an honest account of what came in the time of King Jaguar Imix!
Two suns ago, following a night when the quarter moon hung low in the sky, twelve of the thirteen members of King Jaguar Imix’s royal council were convened. Jacomo, the royal dwarf, who is as lustful as he is small, was also present. I know dwarfs in the fields who love Kanuataba as much as any man of normal size. But this royal dwarf is something else, something terrible. Jacomo is a glutton, and I watched him chewing on the bark of a great tree and spitting vile liquid from his mouth back into the bowl in his lap. Lately I have seen him seduce women by promising crumbs from his beard, forcing them to pleasure him so that they may feed their hungry babes.
Of the thirteen council members, my friend Auxila, royal overseer of the stores and of zoology and agriculture, was the sole man not in attendance. Five suns ago, at our last meeting, Auxila angered the king, and it seemed most likely he was doing penance. Auxila is a good man, and as trade adviser to the king, he knows much of royal accounting, a burden I would never desire. To count a king’s purse is to know the limits of his power.
Galam, bearer of King Jaguar Imix’s decrees and daykeeper for ten turns of the Calendar Round, called the council to begin:
—By the word of Jaguar Imix, by the holy word, we commence this meeting in honor of the new sacred god, so named Akabalam. Akabalam is most powerful. Jaguar Imix decrees that we shall worship Akabalam forevermore.—
I am tutor to Prince Smoke Song, next ruler of Kanuataba, and I have memorized all the great books. Nowhere does a god named Akabalam appear in any of them. I asked the daykeeper:
—What form does the god Akabalam take?—
—When Jaguar Imix sees fit to explain more, Paktul, I will share it with the council. I cannot pretend to understand what his holiness knows about the world.—
Without explanation, then, we prayed and burned incense to this new god. I resolved to study the great books of Kanuataba and find the deity Akabalam on my own. To understand what god had revealed itself to his holiness, the king.
Galam the daykeeper spoke:
—I hereby declare the king’s intention to begin construction of a great new pyramid in the style of the lost civilization of Teotihuacan, which will someday be the place of his interment. The foundation will be laid in twenty days, less than a thousand paces from the palace. The viewing tower shall be built to face the highest point of the procession of the sun and will create a great holy triangle with the palace and the twin pyramid of red.—
My brothers each clapped twice to signify the glory of Jaguar Imix. But when my turn came to clap twice, I asked of Galam, holy messenger, whether the construction of a pyramid was most prudent when there has been no rain:
—The people of Kanuataba have nothing with which to nourish themselves, and even the mandatory laborers will starve as they carry the stones to the top. A temple in the plaza will require plaster that can-not be made without the burning of our most precious trees and plants to dehydrate the rock. Our flora diminishes by the day. The lake has dried up to nothing, and our reservoirs are dwindling.—
Then Jacomo the wanton dwarf spoke to me with anger:
—Be it understood, Paktul, that King Jaguar Imix has received a prophecy from the god Akabalam telling us to launch a star war, timed to the evening star, against distant kingdoms. We will bring back slaves and all their valuables. Our army has a new way to preserve food, salting its supplies more heavily than before, so that we may launch wars on lands even more distant. These cities are weakened by the great drought, and they cannot defend themselves against our mighty army. So now you understand why you dare not question the king!—
There would be no more argument. Jaguar Imix’s power emanates from his ability to communicate with the gods, and each member of the council enjoys rank according to their own abilities to summon the voices of these gods. This we call the hierarchy of divinity. If Jaguar Imix should hear the voice of a god decree that something is most true, and one of his minions should not hear this voice, he shall be considered a man who cannot speak with the gods. His rank in the hierarchy of divinity shall be lowered or stripped from him altogether.
But where will enough water and wood and plumage come from to build a pyramid thirty men high, as it is ordained?
His holiness claims the rain will come in five periods of thirteen days, when the evening star falls nearer to the moon. But will it?
Jaguar Imix would drink the entirety of the water stores if so much water could flow through him and sanctify him, for he believes that his sanctification is the route to our salvation. No royal king of Kanuataba divined by the gods can be evil—I have seen it myself on the stone inscriptions. But his holiness is incapable of admitting to fault. Jaguar Imix believes his power is as strong as the fear he can instill in the hearts of men.
How I wish I could still worship him as I did when I was a boy!
We of the council left the gallery and walked to the great steps atop the royal palace, where I stood and witnessed something to forever change what I believe.
The people outside the palace were chanting, and the blue-painted executioners were standing atop the south twin tower, beginning their rituals. The noise came and went, up and down, high and low. The voices of the royal executioners rose to a near-deafening pitch as the plaza came into my sights.
A small, aristocratic crowd stood at the base of the twin pyramid of white, along the north face, and clapping echoed throughout the plaza. The yellow, red, and gold paints that adorn the face of the great pyramid shimmered like the sun on a sea of blue, undulating as if the great beast that lives on the ocean floor had risen. The blue-painted men were at the top of the three hundred sixty-five steps, some holding censers bubbling with smoke.
The grand executioner spoke:
—This soul is commanded to the overworld by the Lord Akabalam!—
Akabalam, once more. The unknown god has demanded sacrifice again, this time in the form of a man’s soul!
When the grand executioner plunged his glistening flint knife into the man’s chest and ripped open his ribs, the man on the altar let out a wail that will forever ring in my ears. Through the cry that the man exhaled, the grand executioner reached into his body to pull out his heart. And the dying man’s words were heard by those of us above the fray, and they were an omen of things to come, as black as the end of the thirteenth cycle:
—Akabalam is falsehood!—
I knew whose voice it was. Auxila, my friend, trusted adviser to the king for three thousand suns, had been sacrificed. Ringing filled my ears. I watched his corpse go lifeless, and everywhere I saw omens in the clouds.
The gods called for such a sacrifi ce of a high noble not more than once in fifteen thousand suns. What chance was there the gods had ordained such a sacrifice five days after Auxila spoke out against the plans of the king?
Beyond the reaches of the noisy crowd I saw Auxila’s wife, Haniba, standing without tears and watching the executioners encircle the corpse once more, and my heart wept for her and for their children, Flamed Plume and
