“Hey!”
“I can’t answer that specifically, Charlie,” she said. “Different families used different creatures from the natural world to represent them. More interesting is that one of the jade pieces – a beautiful piece, half cormorant and half sun-god, bore the name of one of these snake kings, even though his dynasty ruled an area hundreds of miles away.”
“So what?” Riley asked.
Acosta gasped. “Such ignorance! This finding tells us so much about the ancient Maya kingdoms! The extent of their political and diplomatic influence, where they traded… the list goes on.”
Riley shrugged. “Just a question, mate.”
Acosta shook his head and mumbled in Spanish.
Then, Atticus spoke. “Look over here, Lena! Look at the colors! This azul maya is as fresh as they day it was painted.”
“Azul maya?” Charlie asked.
“Maya blue,” Atticus said. “It’s a very unique pigment made by the ancient Maya. And unless I’m very much mistaken, these are references to the same divine power, the same Stormbringer that Montesino wrote about.”
Selena stepped away from Riley and Charlie and walked over to her father. Raising her flashlight beam to add more light to his, she gasped when she saw the glyphs he had been studying.
“My God! You’re right.”
“What does it say?” Decker asked.
She ran her hand over the intricate carved glyphs on the stone wall behind the altar. “Um, let me think. It starts with a warning, telling anyone searching for the power to give up and turn back before it’s too late.” She blew some dust away from the bas-relief carvings. “And these glyphs here say whosoever shall persist with the hunt will be wrenched asunder by the mighty power of the gods.”
“Excellent,” Riley said. “I don’t know about you guys, but that is just what I wanted to hear today.”
“What is asunder?” Diana asked. “I am not sure I know the meaning of this word.”
“It’s archaic,” Atticus said. “And sometimes literary, so I’m not surprised you don’t know it, my dear. It means apart.”
“So they are saying…”
Charlie sighed. “That if we don’t pack up our little backpacks and fly away with our tails between our legs, the gods are going to rip us into pieces.”
“But whatever can that mean?” Diana asked. “Ripped apart by what?”
Selena tapped the stone wall. “By the Power of the Gods, I suppose. The Stormbringer. Exactly what that means, I don’t know. They don’t elaborate here, and Montesino was also strangely reluctant to describe it.”
“Maybe he was too terrified,” Acosta whispered. “Too scared even to write down what he had seen in any further detail than he managed in the Codex. This is what I think. Whatever he witnessed all those centuries ago struck such a terrible fear into his heart, he could not bring himself to detail it in the Codex beyond a few simple sentences. This is my belief.”
“It’s as good a theory as any other we have,” Atticus said. “That’s for sure.”
“These glyphs here say the power must not be removed from the altar,” Selena said.
Charlie shone his flashlight on the flat, smooth altar stone. “Unless we’re talking about the power of invisibility, I’d say it’s a little late for that.”
Decker stepped into the light. “Excuse me for being dumb enough to ask the obvious question, but if this power is so goddam awesome, shouldn’t we at least be able to see what it is? I mean, look at this place! It’s empty! Totally empty. We’re exactly where Montesino told us to come in the Codex and yet there’s nothing here except a bare stone altar and a warning carved into a wall. C’mon…”
“C’mon what?” Selena asked. “You’re not suggesting he made it all up?”
“Right now, all I know is we’re in danger. Don’t forget about the guys who just tried to blow our heads off! They’re still out there.”
“And we’re still in here,” Diana said. “Without a clue to the location of this divine power.”
“But that’s not true,” Atticus said. “We do have a clue.”
12
Selena turned to him. “Would you care to repeat that, father?”
A broad smile appeared on his face. “The last line of glyphs here has been added at a later date, don’t you think?”
She studied the carvings he was pointing out. “I suppose it’s possible.”
“It’s more than possible, Lena! These last few glyphs were added by a totally different stonemason, and they seem to offering us some sort of indication about what happened to the Stormbringer.”
“What is it?”
“Some sort of map, and it says the Underworld holds the key!”
Atticus lowered himself to his knees and started brushing sand and dust away from the tiles to reveal a large stone seal carved into the floor. Perfectly circular, the seal was around twenty inches across and carved from pure jade. When they had removed all the sand and made the entire carving visible, they saw it was sitting at the heart of a complex image carved into the floor tiles, stretching all the way to the wall behind the altar.
“But it’s just gibberish,” Selena said. “Read it again! The glyphs make no sense at all, Dad.”
“Are you sure about that?” he said with a devilish smile on his face.
She turned and stared at them again, frustration obviously rising inside her. “All right, I give up.”
“That’s no good!” Atticus said. “Unless you’re giving up-side down!”
Her mouth fell open a little. “Ha! The glyphs are upside down!”
“And back to front. Now, try again.”
“My goodness!” she said. “This is brilliant! Amazing! Enlightening!” She stopped and stared at her father, paling. “Terrifying!”
The faces of the rest of the crew froze.
“Why that last one?” Charlie said. “I was okay with brilliant and amazing and enlightening. I really liked enlightening. But not terrifying.”
“I agree,” said Diana. “What is so terrifying?”
Selena and Atticus fell silent,
