Words of Love - By Hazel Hunter Page 0,38

seeing. She was pulling a barbed rope through her outstretched tongue–she was letting blood. The bowl at her knees would be lined with paper that would catch the drops that fell and then later they’d be burned as an offering. As Jesse reached out a hand, she felt Brett’s arm tighten on her waist. He had recognized it as well. The barbs in the rope were cactus spines.

Suddenly, all of the myriad other symbols and glyphs in the room fell away, completely unimportant. Beneath the princess, the final riddle glyphs pulsed into Jesse’s awareness.

“My son, show me the light complexioned woman with her skirt bound up who sells squash,” it read but that’s not what it meant.

“Who sells squash,” Jesse repeated. “But not squash. Not that cah.”

“What?” Frederico said from behind them.

“Not that cah,” Jesse repeated.

“What’s she saying?” Frederico said, his voice echoing in the chamber.

Jesse’s mind raced. Cah was also the white, flint, knife blade but white was also north.

“Nothing,” said Brett, as he and Jesse turned to face him.

Frederico was glaring at them and the pistol was still pointed at her.

“Where’s the Red King?” he said, nearly panting with anticipation.

Brett pointed to the blue jade wall behind him.

Frederico stood to the side so that he could keep them in his peripheral vision. Recessed into the blue panel was the outline of the blue jade tablet he held. Frederico’s eyes got big.

“Where is north?” Jesse whispered to Brett but Frederico had heard in the deathly quiet chamber.

Although he’d been approaching the blue wall, he stopped and looked at her.

“Why do you want to know?” He eyed them both. “What’s important about north?”

It was the only safe place to be, Jesse, thought, but she couldn’t say that.

“On the map,” Brett quickly said. “I had bet that the Red King would be in the north.” He looked at Jesse. “But I was wrong. North is behind us.”

“So the Red King is in the south,” said Frederico, glancing at the blue wall and down at the puzzle piece in his hand.

“Exactly,” said Brett.

Brett understood. Something awful was about to happen and Brett understood.

“Exactly,” Frederico echoed.

Slowly, he brought the tablet forward. As he fit it into the slot with a clicking sound, she felt Brett’s arm tug her backward and they pressed into the north wall, the white one.

An awful, high-pitched, grinding sound filled the chamber. Frederico jumped back and looked up at the panel. He started to turn to them as the floor under him suddenly tilted.

Jesse felt Brett clutch her to his chest.

The stone slab where Frederico stood was rapidly pivoting, tilting into vertical position as Frederico slid down it into the cavity that waited below. He screamed as he fell and then his scream was suddenly cut off.

Jesse covered her own mouth so she wouldn’t scream as well. But the grinding noise hadn’t stopped. Like a domino effect, the first floor panel triggered the next, in the middle of the room. It pivoted as well and rose to a vertical position. She felt Jason brace himself against the back wall as they waited for their floor panel to do the same but finally the grinding stopped.

Her ears rang in the sudden silence and neither of them moved. The upright middle floor panel in front of them blocked their view of the new cavity that had opened.

“Stay here,” Brett said as he let her go.

“No way,” Jesse said, as she clung to his waist.

Brett looked down at her.

His face, bruised and with a black eye, looked as rattled as she felt but he managed to smile at her.

“Right,” he said, squeezing her tight.

As he leaned, trying to see around the vertical panel, he slowly led them around it. Cautiously, with small steps, they moved toward the new hole in the floor. Brett led them to its edge and they looked down together.

They both gasped.

The first thing she saw was the jade mask. Staring up at her with inlaid eyes of black and white, a perfectly smooth blue mask stared up at the ceiling. It presumably sat on the face of a skeleton lying on its back, but the bones were completely covered with green jade ornaments, jadeite armor, dark green pectoral ornaments, and strands and piles of beaded jewelry of every color. Above the head lay two gold tablets engraved with glyphs and, surrounding the upper body, were the most exquisite incense burners and pottery she had ever seen, perfectly preserved. On each side of his legs were two skeletons, curled