Curses!

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.

'Gideon!” It was Julie's voice, alarmed, from the front of the steps. He realized it was the second time she'd called. “What's going on up there? Are you all right?'

And now he heard his attacker stumbling away from him along the length of the long wall, footsteps quickly receding. Gideon started blindly after him, but with his second step he tripped over one of the serpent heads and had to grab it to keep from tumbling to the stony ledge below. He held on, panting and queasy. But his vision was beginning to return. In the distance, halfway along the wall, he could see someone fleeing over the ancient stones, hunched and apelike under the misty, flat ribbon of the Milky Way. Hunched with pain, he hoped.

'Yes,” he called to Julie. “I'm all right. I'll be right down.” But she was already on her way up, and by the time he was steady enough to let go of the sculpture and ease away from the edge she was there.

'Gideon—my God, what—'

'It's okay, Julie, I'm all right. The guy just scared the hell out of me, that's all. He's gone now.'

She scanned his face anxiously. “You're sure you're all right?'

He nodded. “Other than a sore spot where I got kicked in the head, an ache or two where I got kicked in the ribs, and a few bruises here and there, I'm fine.” He grinned, but it didn't feel very convincing. “Aside from feeling generally like hell, that is.'

'Sit down,” she told him, firmly taking his arm in both hands to guide him to a seat on the temple portico.

'Now,” she said, still holding his arm while she sat beside him, “what happened?'