A Serpent In Turquoise

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Epilogue

Prologue

Tenochtitlan, Valley of Mexico. Spring, 1520 A.D.

“T his Cortés is a man, I say, and not a god! All this foolish talk in the marketplace that he is the Quetzalcoatl—pah!” The high priest spat into the brazier’s flames. “You have only to look at his eyes, how they glow when he sees our gold! He burns for it like a boy in rut. He’s no sort of a god. He’s a soulless, hairy dog of an unbeliever, come to rob the Aztecs of all but their clouts!”

“If you say so, my lord.” Like most traders, the pochteca was a practical man. He believed in a fair weight of cacao beans, and the sheen of parrot feathers. A leather pouch clicking with turquoise or coral. He’d leave the gods and their savage requirements to the bloody priests. One had to make a living in this world before he faced the gods in the next, he knew, though he’d never dare give voice to such an opinion.

“I do say it. But though this Cortés is a man, he brings our ruin. The city will fall.”

The trader grunted in surprise. “I heard Cortés had fled, he and his men. After they murdered King Motecuhzoma. That they’d been driven from the city and were running for the east.” The pochteca had returned only this morning from a profitable venture to the western ocean. He’d barely had time to bathe himself, then hurry his laughing young wife to bed, before the summons had come from the temple. From the high priest of Quetzalcoatl himself!

“Cortés will return, with more warriors than the fire ants. We have asked the one true Feathered Serpent, the real Quetzalcoatl, and so he says. Tenochtitlan will fall. Our men will be trampled like corn stalks beneath the hooves of their terrible beasts. Our women will be driven weeping into slavery. Our children will be meat for their sacrifice.”

The pochteca swallowed a protesting laugh. One didn’t laugh at a priest and live. “The god says this?” he asked weakly. Or his old women priests putting words into the Quetzalcoatl’s mouth? Tenochtitlan was the finest, largest city in all the world, home to two hundred thousand of the bravest. Floating like a lily on its lake, the imperial capital could be approached only by guarded causeways or by canoe. To think that it could fall to a handful of rude, hairy, sweat-soaked foreigners? What nonsense.

“Already our end has begun. The strangers send a poison through the air before them. The people to the east of here breathe it and die—an illness of coughing and fever and spots on the face. The city will fall, says the Serpent. He says that if His children would survive this plague, they must return from whence they came. To Aztlan, the Place of the Herons.”

“Aztlan,” the trader repeated without inflection. Aztlan was no more than a tale to tell children. A fading dream of a homeland somewhere far to the north. Hundreds of rainy seasons ago the Aztecs had abandoned that city, but nobody remembered where it was located or why they’d fled. They’d marched south for year upon year till at last they came to an island in a lake, where they spied an eagle perched on a nopal cactus, devouring a serpent. There they’d stopped and founded Tenochtitlan, which became the navel of their empire.

But the pochteca had ventured north and west as far as a sensible man might walk in four moons of hard walking and he’d never heard a whisper of Aztlan. If such a place existed, he’d have learned of it. It would have markets same as any city, markets hungry for all the goods he traded and sold. A real city couldn’t live on air. If ever the Place of the Herons had existed, it must have crumbled to dust. Its birds had flown.

“We return to Aztlan, those of us who have the vision and foresight to know what’s coming. The courage to do what must be done. And you will lead the way.”

The pochteca found spit enough to speak. “I, my lord? I—I don’t deserve such an honor. I’m only a poor pochteca, a lowly merchant in obsidian and—”

“You will go before us, guiding an expedition that carries the temple treasure and the Feathered One himself. You will take your men and such priests and soldiers as I choose, to serve and guard the Quetzalcoatl as you travel.”

His wife. Her feet were dainty as a deer’s, softer than turkey down. And she was only beginning to swell with their first child. She’d never be strong enough to make a journey to nowhere, trudging north over mountain and desert for the gods knew how long—for years and dusty years?

Besides, the priests would never allow him to bring along a mere woman on a sacred journey. They valued only sacrifice, never human love. “Of course, my lord, if this is your wish. I’d be honored to do it. But first I’ll need to go home, pack my gear, summon my men.” If an entire people could flee, if a temple could pick up its gold and its gods and take to the road, then so could a single family. He’d take her west toward the ocean this very night. He knew a village on the coast; its people were openhanded and friendly, with gods that demanded fish and flowers, not beating hearts.

The priest smiled for the first time, a lipless turtle smile below eyes black as dried-up wells. “Ohhh, no need to go home! I’ll send the slaves for whatever you require. We have much to discuss here tonight.

“This then will be your mission. You will find Aztlan. There you will raise a temple to house the Feathered One and his treasure. You’ll prepare for the coming of His children.

“As soon as your expedition is safely on its way, I will call in the nobles and tell them my plan. Those who are wise enough to heed Quetzalcoatl’s warning will gather their people, their slaves and their goods. We will follow no more than one moon on your heels, two at the most. And, Trader? Never fear. I’ll keep your charming young wife safe, under my own hand.”

“Very good, my lord.” He felt the tears welling, warm as blood behind his lashes.

Chapter 1

State of Chihuahua, Mexico. July, present day

F ourth in line for his bimonthly haircut and shave, Anson McCord lounged on the barber’s porch, which overlooked the town of Creel, swinging hot spot of the Sierra Madres. Last approximation to civilization, north of the Copper Canyons.

Balanced on the back legs of his rickety chair, he thumbed through a year-old National Geographic. A couple of gringo mountain bikers whizzed past, nearly coming to grief as a mule and rider sauntered out of an alley and stopped halfway across the street to admire the view. McCord turned the page, glanced down at the next article. Blinked.

The photo had been taken in the midst of green jungle. A long-legged blonde sat on the skull of a dinosaur roughly the size of a Volkswagen Bug. She wore a broad-brim fedora tipped low against the tropic sun. Its shadow hid all but her knockout smile. Whoever she’d been smiling at must’ve landed on his butt.

“Hello!” McCord murmured under his breath. “Aren’t you just something?” What he was feeling—hell, how could he be jealous of the fielder of that smile, when he’d never even met the woman?—call it wistfulness, or plain old-fashioned lust.

He dragged his eyes down to the caption. Central Borneo. Raine Ashaway of the professional fossil-collecting firm Ashaway All poses with the only known specimen of an opalized T rex. Photo taken by her partner in the historic find: O.A. Kincade.

“Good for you. Glad somebody’s finding what she’s looking for.” McCord scratched his bristly jaw. Come to think of it, a dinosaur expert might even have some advice regarding his own quest. He brought his chair down with a thump and rose, to stride into the barbershop. “Felipe, tienes papel?” Might as well drop her a note, while he was waiting.

New York City. October, present day

“I couldn’t find a kayak on the Somali coast, but I did meet a Frenchman who loaned me his windsurfer,” Raine Ashaway told her younger sister, who’d picked her up at JFK airport. For the past half hour, they’d been stopped dead in traffic on the West Side Highway, not a mile from the apartment that served as the east coast base for Ashaway All, whenever any of the family hit New York City.

Time enough for Raine to tell about her scouting expedition to Ethiopia. She’d found a promising dig site in the gorge of the Blue Nile. A rich fossil stratum of the proper period, if not bones of Paralititan himself. But the war was heating up again. Bringing in a field crew was unthinkable, for the present.

Done with that topic, Jaye had insisted on hearing about Raine’s detour, after her Ethiopian venture. Now she pulled her sunglasses down her nose, the better to give her sister the fish eye. “You windsurfed out to an offshore oil rig in the Red Sea?”

“Just the last few miles. I hitched a ride on an Arab fishing dhow. Paid ’em to take me as near as they dared sail to Cade’s rig. Asked ’em to wait for me.” Raine unclipped her ripply, pale-blond hair and shook it out on her shoulders. She kicked off her sandals, then twisted her long jet-lagged body around, so she could prop her shoulders against the door of Jaye’s ancient pickup.

“You’re lucky they didn’t blast you right out of the water! After Kincade’s rig was blown up by terrorists, they’ve got to be taking a dim view of drop-ins.”

“Actually, I was more afraid of the sharks. Red Sea sharks have this reputation…”

“Since you’re here, I take it you didn’t meet any. When did Kincade’s guards spot you?”

With flat seas and a light breeze, they’d seen her coming about a mile out from the rig. Backlit by the fast-sinking sun, her rainbow-colored sail would be hard to miss, if anybody happened to glance down from the platform. Apparently somebody had. An amplified warning like the wrath of Allah himself had thundered out overhead—in Arabic, but the meaning was crystal-clear: “Back off or take the consequences.”

But she’d come too far, loved him too well, waited too long to hear his voice to give up now.

She swerved the board to run parallel with the monstrous black tower, so that the sail wouldn’t block their view of her. She’d worn a T-shirt over her bikini top, but it was soaked with salt spray and it clung to her body. “See? No dynamite, no plastique, no Uzi, guys, just a woman who wants a straight answer.”

A wavering wolf howl floated down from above. She grinned, leaned back against her harness to wave, then swerved back to her attack line. If Kincade was aboard this rig—and her sources said that he was—then she and he were going to talk.

“So did you?” Jaye eased the pickup forward and braked again.

“A Brit met me down at the boat landing platform, all muscles and pressed khaki and a semiautomatic in a shoulder holster—a bodyguard. He informed me, oh so regretfully, that I seemed to be trespassing.” Raine tipped back her head to stare out the open window at a smoggy sky flecked with pigeons.

“What the heck is going on? That man was crazy for you.”

“Wish I knew. Everything seemed fine between us when I left for Ethiopia. But then I tried to call Cade when I reached Cairo, got his voice mail. Tried again from Addis Ababa, and his phone number had been cancelled. That seemed weird, but I called the Okab Oil number here in Manhattan. Left a series of messages with his personal assistant that he assured me he’d pass on. After that, I couldn’t call Cade, or anybody, for the three months while I was down in a mile-deep gorge.”

“Maybe you two were just not connecting. His first rig was bombed about a week after you hit the backcountry. His partner in Okab Oil was critically injured. It makes sense that he’d return to Kurat, pick up the pieces, rally the troops. How could somebody like Cade be a silent partner at a time like that?”

“Of course he couldn’t. But however busy he was, he had time enough to reach me on my sat phone.”

“Oh, Raine, I’m sorry.” Jaye inched the truck forward another few precious feet. “But what about Mr. British Muscles? Did he invite you up for tea?”