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Sky Knife

Tom Doherty Associates

"Red Jaguar of the East! Jaguar of Life, Jaguar of Morning! Protector of the innocent, prince of the powerful, terror to our enemies—hear our prayer!"

Sky Knife shuddered as Stone Jaguar's words rang throughout the Great Plaza. Stone Jaguar's face was hidden behind a mask of feathers and shells and the voice that spoke from behind the mask boomed eerily into the night. Kneeling as he was just to the left of Stone Jaguar, Sky Knife could see the sweat drip down the man's neck. Sky Knife was glad he didn't have to wear a mask, too.

Though the night was hot, Sky Knife felt a cold tendril creep up his back. Sorcery. Tonight, Stone Jaguar would make sacrifice, for the old katun had ended and a new one would begin. Stone Jaguar would petition the gods for luck, enough luck to carry the city of Tikal through the next twenty years until this katun's end.

"Black Jaguar of the West! Jaguar of Death, Jaguar of Night! Prince of merchants and all those who travel. Punisher of the evil, terror in the dark—hear our prayer!"

Stone Jaguar threw his arms out wide, and his jaguar skin cloak blew back slightly in the sorcerous breeze. The bone and jade bead fringe of the cloak swung dangerously near Sky Knife. He drew back to avoid being touched by it; it would be bad luck indeed for the sacred cloak to touch a mere temple assistant during the ceremony.

Sky Knife himself was dressed in a simple cotton loincloth that had been dyed blue. Blue was the color of water, of luck, and honor. Solid blue garments could be worn only by those who participated in sacred ceremonies, to remind the gods of the luck they brought to Tikal.

"White Jaguar of the North! Jaguar of Rain, Jaguar of Evening! He Who Walks Among the Fields! Prince of the corn, protector of the farmer, terror to the unjust—hear our prayer!"

Sky Knife brushed sweaty palms against his bare thighs as a glow bathed the temple. The light was a sickly orange that flickered and changed in intensity so quickly it nauseated him. Sky Knife tried to ignore the musty, unwholesome smell that always accompanied the temple glow. It was as if it had crept up from a tomb full of rotting corpses.

Stone Jaguar stepped back and Death Smoke, also covered from head to toe with fine ornaments of shell and jade, stepped to the smaller north altar and placed a cigar upon it. Death Smoke spread his hands wide, closed his eyes, and clapped his hands together. The end of the cigar burst into flames. It sputtered for a moment, and a trickle of black smoke wafted up. Then the cigar glowed brightly red. Sky Knife relaxed as the cigar continued burning. Not only was tobacco sacred, but the death gods could not bear its smell. They would be driven away from the ceremony and their bad luck with them.

"Yellow Jaguar of the South! Jaguar of Heat, Jaguar of Day! Prince of the wise, vengeance of the strong, bringer of drought, terror to the unlucky—hear our prayer!"

Stone Jaguar finished the fourth and final invocation with a shout. A cold, dank gust of wind hit Sky Knife, and he shivered. That had never happened before. Sky Knife glanced up toward Stone Jaguar, but the priest merely waved his left hand and the strange wind died down to a ticklish breeze.

"Let the sacrifice come forth!" boomed the voice of Stone Jaguar.

A musician at the base of the pyramidal temple struck a tortoise shell with a stick in a slow, measured rhythm. The hollow tok-tok sounds echoed around the Great Plaza. The crowd gathered in the plaza was absolutely silent as a second musician, this one shaking a gourd filled with small pebbles, joined the first. No one besides the musicians dared make noise—for any quarrelling or other uproar would bring bad luck on the ceremony and drive all the good luck away.

As one, the crowd raised open hands to their chests, palms out, and hummed a single, low note. Heart pounding in excitement, Sky Knife did the same. It was the call for the sacrifice. The people of the city—old and young, men and women—sang for the sacrifice to stand forth.

Across the plaza, a flash of blue. Sky Knife's heart jumped in anticipation, staring at the spot where the sacrifice would first appear. Moments later, he did.

The young man was swathed in lengths of blue cotton. Blue paint stained his face, hands, and feet, as befitted his status as an unmarried youth. Head held high, the young man stepped forward into the plaza. He was preceded by young girls who flung flowers in his path.

The young man walked slowly, in time to the rhythm of the turtle shell drums. When he reached the base of the great pyramid, he paused and bowed to the priests and attendants on the temple platform above. The sacrifice mounted the red-painted first step of the temple—past which only the priests, attendants, and sacrifices could go without bringing disaster to the city.

Sky Knife shivered in excitement. The smell that had nauseated him before changed the moment the sacrifice touched the pyramid. Now the subtle smell of sweet, ripe fruits and the spicy scent of flowers wafted about him, blown by the sorcerous breeze. The sickly orange light stopped its flickering and shone steady and white.

Sky Knife's spirits raised in joy. All the signs were good. Sky Knife prayed that they would remain so. He had no idea how the gods would plague Tikal if the sacrifice were found wanting—and he didn't want to know. Everything had to go perfectly. It had to.

As the sacrifice mounted the stairs, he shed the lengths of blue cotton behind him as a moth sheds its cocoon. Finally, naked, he stood on the thirty-sixth and last step. He bowed again to Stone Jaguar. Shells on the jaguar-skin cloak chinked together as Stone Jaguar spread his hands wide.

Sky Knife and the three other temple attendants stood. Sky Knife's feet tingled as he straightened up; he didn't usually kneel on the stone temple platform as long as he had had to tonight.

The tingling passed quickly. Sky Knife and the other three attendants took their places around the circular altar on the platform. The sacrifice lay down on the altar. Sky Knife, acting tonight as the Attendant in the West, grasped the young man's left shoulder and pinned it to the stone below. The other attendants, each one at a cardinal point, held the young man down by shoulder and knees.

Claw Skull and Death Smoke threw copal onto the burning coals in the stone bowls on the back corners of the temple platform. The heavy, musky smell choked Sky Knife even as it seemed to make him see and hear more clearly. He took a deep breath of the strange, heady odor caused by the copal, tobacco, and the sorcerous temple smell.

Sky Knife suppressed a sense of unease: the fourth priest, Blood House, was not in evidence, and the ceremony could not wait. Normally, four priests, four attendants, and the sacrifice formed a complete set of nine. With Blood House missing, there were only eight people on the temple. Although on occasion the ceremony was performed with fewer than nine, it seemed inappropriate to Sky Knife that this special ceremony should be short. Too much was at stake for anything to go wrong.

"All gods above the earth! All gods beneath the earth! Itzamna—Lord of All! Accept this life—that which was freely bestowed by you is now freely returned!" Stone Jaguar raised his right hand. In it, he held an obsidian blade some eight inches long, hafted onto a handle made from the wood of the sacred ceiba tree. The blade glowed a bright, bright blue. Sky Knife looked away.

The sacrifice shifted slightly. Sky Knife pressed down on the shoulder and glanced at the young man. Sweat marred the young man's face, leaving streaks behind in the blue paint.

It always happened. No matter that the sacrifice came of his own will, chosen among the dozens who had applied for the honor. It still always came down to this. Fear. Upon seeing the knife, they were always afraid. Afraid of the glowing blade. Afraid of the pain. Afraid of failure.

If the gods did not find this young man's sacrifice worthy, if even one thing went wrong, Tikal would suffer twenty years of bad luck. The young man had reason to fear. With so much at stake, how could he not doubt, just a little, his own worthiness?

Sky Knife wished there was something he could do to make it easier for the sacrifice—he always did. But there was nothing he could do. What the sacrifice did, he had to do alone.

Sky Knife glanced up toward the sky. The Jade Necklace, a brilliant constellation of seven stars, touched the high point in the sky. The new katun would begin at any moment.

With a final shout Stone Jaguar plunged the blade down into the sacrifice's stomach. Sky Knife bore down hard on the sacrifice's shoulder as the young man jerked and screamed.

Blood spurted out of the gaping wound onto Sky Knife, the other attendants, and the platform. But a glowing blue haze surrounded Stone Jaguar now, and the blood did not touch him.

Stone Jaguar withdrew the knife, transferred it to his left hand, then plunged his right into the wound and thrust his hand up under the sacrifice's ribs. The young man screamed again as Stone Jaguar grabbed his heart. Sky Knife broke out in a cold sweat—no matter how many times he attended a sacrifice, he never got used to this moment, when the sacrifice felt Stone Jaguar's fingers enter his chest and squeeze his heart. The high, ear-splitting shriek was like no other sound Sky Knife had ever heard. The young man's final scream pierced Sky Knife right down to his gut.

But that was the last. The sacrifice's sufferings were—as always—over quickly. Stone Jaguar withdrew his hand from the sacrifice's chest. In his clenched fist, he held the young man's heart. It quivered and convulsed rhythmically.

Not a drop of blood defiled Stone Jaguar. He lifted the heart toward the heavens. The heart continued to beat, powered now by Stone Jaguar's sorcery.

"Accept now this sacrifice!" shouted Stone Jaguar over the shrieking of the gale that suddenly descended upon the temple. Sky Knife hunkered down against the cold wind that battered him from all directions. His shoulder-length black hair slapped his face, got into his mouth and eyes.

Tendrils of light—all colors of the rainbow—rained out of the sky and twisted around themselves, around the sacrifice's body, up to Stone Jaguar. The swarming colors climbed his arms and poured into the spasming heart.

Streaks of blue leaped from the sacrifice into the sky. Orange and red swirls danced around the temple. Where they touched Sky Knife, they tickled.

The wind gained in intensity. Sky Knife leaned on the sacrifice, refusing to be swayed. Then the colors, the noise, all descended upon the heart and entered into it. The glow around Stone Jaguar brightened until it hurt to look at him. Sky Knife blinked, but would not look away. The fate of his city hung in the balance. Would the sacrifice be accepted? He couldn't not look.

With a loud crack of thunder, the heart in Stone Jaguar's hands exploded into a thousand colored shards. They rained upon the temple, upon the crowd waiting below. The shards sparkled like stars and the entire plaza was lit as if it were noon rather than midnight.

Sky Knife hugged blood-soaked arms to his chest, laughing with joy. The gods approved. The sacrifice had been accepted.

Sky Knife said a silent prayer of gratitude to the soul of the sacrifice. Not that it needed his help or his gratitude; acceptance would mean the soul would reside forever in the blissful paradise of the seventh, and highest, heaven—the heaven reserved only for true heroes.

The young man was just such a hero. Without him, this night would have ended in disaster. Sky Knife was grateful for the young man's bravery. His courage had conquered the bad luck that lurked everywhere, waiting to victimize the city and its people. The sacrifice's bravery was worthy of song, and of paradise.

Sky Knife relaxed as the light in the plaza died and the glowing shards of heart faded into wisps of colored vapor that dissipated into the darkness of the night.

Stone Jaguar's sorcery had snuffed all the fires in the plaza. Tonight, a fire would be kindled in the gaping, bloody hole in the sacrifice's chest, and all the new ceremonial fires would be taken from it.

Sky Knife reached out to the body of the sacrifice and smoothed the young man's hair. The body was still warm. Sky Knife touched the body a last time in farewell and turned away.

A sneeze caught his attention. Sky Knife looked back toward the altar and his heart stopped cold in his chest. There, just behind the altar, stood a terrible figure. Its fleshless face and chest exposed bleached, white bone, while what skin it had was covered in black and yellow blotches. The figure convulsed with a second sneeze. Slowly, it raised its fleshless hand and pointed at Sky Knife. Dread and terror lanced through Sky Knife. He knew what this was—this was Cizin, the god of death. Cizin.

Before Sky Knife could react, the figure leapt off the top of the pyramid and was gone, only the sound of another sneeze remaining behind to give witness to its presence.

Sky Knife dropped to his knees in horror. If Cizin were strong enough to appear here—especially now, with the sacrifice still warm on the altar—something was wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong.

Sky Knife glanced toward the others on the temple, but the others laughed and smiled, apparently unaware of the evil thing that had just visited them. That Sky Knife was the only one that had been granted the eyes to see Cizin terrified him. Who was he to see the god of death if the priests could not?

He wasn't sure what the omen meant, except he knew it to be bad. And bad omens left bad luck behind in their footsteps.

"Sky Knife," said Death Smoke. He was a skinny, white-haired man. Sky Knife stood on shaky legs. Death Smoke's breath stank, and the rotting black stumps of his teeth disgusted Sky Knife, but Sky Knife swallowed his feelings and stepped toward the old man.

"Yes, Ah kin?" he asked. Technically, Sky Knife should be allowed to address Death Smoke by his name rather than his title now that the ceremony was over, but Death Smoke was touchy about such things.

"Blood House—where is he? He should be the one to kindle the new fire." Death Smoke's breath hissed out of his throat when he finished speaking. It brushed against Sky Knife's face, sickeningly foul.

"I don't know," said Sky Knife. "I'll look for him if you wish."

Death Smoke dismissed Sky Knife with a wave. "Go," he barked.

Sky Knife dashed down the steep thirty-six temple steps—four terraces of nine steps each—as fast as he dared. At the bottom of the steps, he walked into the joyous crowd. The men and women of Tikal drank pulque and ate delicacies the merchants had prepared for this special occasion: turtle soup, roasted river snails, and, most prized of all, wild pig baked with sweet potatoes.

Sky Knife pushed his way through the crowd and tried to ignore the gurgling in his stomach. In preparation for the ceremony, all priests and attendants had not eaten for a day. The overpowering, heavy smell of the pulque and the food only made him feel more hungry. Sky Knife waved away a pulque vendor, and hurried south toward the acropolis.

Even more than his hunger, Sky Knife was tortured by his awful vision. His heart was in his throat. He knew bad luck was coming—he needed to tell someone, so that the priests could prepare for the bad luck to follow. Blood House was a man of great wisdom. In the six years since Sky Knife had lived with the priests, Blood House had always been kind and patient with him. Blood House would know what to do.

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Excerpted from Sky Knife by Marella Sands. Copyright © 1997 Marella Sands. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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