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The padre thinks it’s a cursed realm full of the hungry spirits of the damned…
She shook off the thought. This was hardly the time to indulge in superstition.
“This was an animal kill,” Velegas concluded as he carefully his hands on a scrap of cloth. “But I cannot tell you what animal.”
“Surely, it must have been another jaguar,” Dawson protested. He looked slightly ill as he eyed the crimson violence.
Velegas flashed the professor a glare laced with tired contempt.
“This is a female. Male jaguars may fight, but a female?” The tracker shook his head. “Something else killed her.”
“Some other animal just happened to kill a jaguar on a Mesoamerican altar stone?” Ellie retorted skeptically.
“Not here,” Adam cut in from where he stood a few feet away. “Somewhere else. There’s a blood trail.”
The knot of men by the stela shifted, allowing Velegas to push through. The old tracker crouched down in the underbrush and sharply studied the dried leaves.
“It was dragged,” he concluded.
“By what?” Dawson exclaimed nervously.
“Or who,” Jacobs cut in smoothly.
“You think a person put this here?” Dawson stammered. “What, as some sort of… threat?”
Ellie’s gaze drifted once more to the stela as she picked out more details of the beautifully engraved image.
The hands of the king-or-god were extended toward the people who bowed as his feet. In one hand were more of those square, not-Mayan characters. Ellie felt as though she could almost tease out the meaning of the glyphs—a bow, a shield, a staff.
His other hand was pierced by a sharpened spear of bone. Blood dripped from the wound.
An uncomfortable recognition sparked through her.
“This is the story of Tulan!” she blurted.
“I beg your pardon?” Dawson spluttered. He looked at Ellie as though she had just started spouting Sumerian.
“The City of Seven Caves?” Ellie clarified. “As referenced in the Popol Vuh and the Annals of the Cakchiquels? The kingdom that was the origin point for both Mayan and Aztec culture, according to their own myths and stories. Or perhaps you aren’t familiar with it.”
“Of course I am familiar with it,” Dawson retorted stuffily. “I am quite a bit more than merelyfamiliarwith it, though I fail to see how some slip of a—”
“University College, London graduate,” Adam cut in. His gaze shifted to Ellie. His eyes were warm. “I believe that’s the term you were looking for.”
Dawson gaped from Adam to Ellie. He reminded her a bit of a beached fish.
“The bas relief is depicting Tulan’s gifts to the seven tribes,” Ellie continued as she pointed out the symbols on the stone. “War. Kingship. Sacrifice.”
Ellie studied the figures that knelt before the king. They were far smaller and more humble in their ornamentation, but there was still a sense of grace and respect to how they were depicted.
She wondered who was telling the story depicted on the stone. If she was right, and it was an account of the gifts of Tulan, then those kneeling figures would have been the heroes—the founders who came to receive Tulan’s blessings and carry them back to their people.
The man who dominated the carving had human features, for all that his feathers and accouterments were clearly those of one of the more well-established Mayan deities—Aztec as well, she quickly recalled. Quetzalcoatl and Kukulkan shared much of their symbolism.
“But why build it here?” she mused aloud as her mind spun. “Why leave the story of Tulan in the middle of the forest?”
“Because it’s a boundary stone,” Dawson snapped. He drew himself up self-importantly as he tugged on his field jacket. “Because we are on the borders of Tulan.”
“We arewhat?” Ellie whirled to him as the significance of his comment cut through her fascination with the stone.
