On that day, a cloud hangs low.

On that day, a mountain soars.

On that day, a strong man clutches the land.

On that day, things collapse into ruin.

Balam-Acab was fearful of the sentries, but he was also hopeful of succeeding in his mission. After all, if the gods did not want to be placated, if they were truly furious, they would have punished him before now. They would never have allowed him to get this far. Only someone favored by the gods could have walked through the darkness and not been bitten by any of the area's numerous, swarming serpents. In the daylight, he could see and avoid the snakes or else make noises and scare them away. But walking silently and blindly at night? No. Impossible. Without the protection of the gods, he should have stepped not on stones but on death.

At once the density of the darkness changed. The mist seemed less thick. Balam-Acab had reached the edge of the jungle. Hunkering, inhaling the fecund odors of the forest in contrast with the rancid, sweat smell of the sentries, he focused on the night, and suddenly, as if an unfelt breeze had swept across the clearing, the fog dissipated. Unexpectedly able now to see the illumination from the moon and stars, he felt as if night had turned into day. At the same time, he had the eerie certainty that when he crept from the jungle into the clearing, the sentries would not be able to see him. From their point of view, the fog would still exist. It would envelop him. It would make him invisible.

But he wasn't a fool. When he stepped from the jungle, he stayed low, close to the ground, trying not to reveal his silhouette as he hurried forward. In the now-evident light from the moon and stars, he could see and was disturbed by the extent of the work that the invaders had accomplished in the mere two days since he had last been here. A vast new section of forest had been leveled, exposing more brush-covered mounds and hillocks. Without the trees to obscure the skyline, the murky contours of considerably higher breaks in the terrain were also evident. Balam-Acab thought of them as mountains, but none of them was the mountain predicted as one of the signs of the end of the world in the ancient Chronicles of Chilam Balam.

No, these mountains were part of the spirit of the universe. Granted, they weren't natural. After all, this part of the Yucatan was called the flatlands. Mounds, hillocks, and certainly mountains did not exist. They had all been built here by human beings, by Balam-Acab's Mayan ancestors, more than a thousand years ago. Although the brush that covered them camouflaged their steps, portals, statuary and engravings, Balam-Acab knew that the elevations were palaces, pyramids, and temples. The reason they were part of the spirit of the universe was that the ancients who had built them knew how the Underworld, the Middleworld, and the glorious arch of the heavens were linked. The ancients had used their knowledge of the secrets of the passing sun to determine the exact places where monuments in honor of the gods needed to be situated, and in so doing, they focused the energy of both the Underworld and heavenly gods toward the Middleworld and this sacred precinct.

Wary of the armed intruders, Balam-Acab came to the tallest mountain. The excavators had been quick to clear the vegetation from the level ground, but whenever they had come to an elevated area, they had left it undisturbed, presumably intending to return and violate it later. He studied the shadowy bushes and saplings that had somehow found places to root between the huge, square, stone blocks that formed this consecrated edifice. If the bushes and saplings weren't present, Balam-Acab knew that what looked like a mountain would actually reveal itself to be an enormous, terraced pyramid, and that at the top there would be a temple dedicated to the god, Kukulcan, the meaning of whose name was 'plumed serpent.'

Indeed the weathered, stone image of a serpent's gigantic head -mouth open, teeth about to strike - projected from the bushes at the bottom of the pyramid. Even in the dark, the serpent's head was manifest. It was one of several that flanked the stairs that ascended through the terraces on each side of the pyramid. Heart swelling, reassured that he had managed to get this far unmolested, becoming more convinced that the gods favored his mission, Balam-Acab held the blanket-covered bowl protectively to his chest and began the slow, painstaking ascent to the top.

Each step was as high as his knee, and the stairway was angled steeply. During daylight, the arduous climb could be dizzying, not to mention precarious because the bushes, saplings, and centuries of rain had broken the steps and shifted the stones. He needed all his strength and concentration not to lose his balance in the dark, step on a loose rock, and fall. He didn't care about his own safety. Otherwise he wouldn't have risked being bitten by snakes or shot by sentries in order to come here. What he did care about were the precious objects in his knapsack and in particular the sacred, blanket-wrapped bowl he clutched to his chest. He didn't dare fall and break the bowl. That would be inexcusable. That for certain would prompt the fury of the gods.

As he climbed, his knees aching, his body drenched with sweat, Balam-Acab mentally counted. It was the only way he could measure his progress, for the bushes and saplings above him prevented him from distinguishing the outline of the square temple at the otherwise pointed top of the pyramid. Ten, eleven, twelve. One hundred and four, one hundred and. He strained to breathe. Two hundred and eighty-nine. Two hundred and. Soon, he thought. By now he could see the top against the stars. Three hundred and. At last, his heart pounding, he reached the flat surface in front of the temple.

Three hundred and sixty-five. That sacred number represented the number of days in the solar year and had been calculated by Balam-Acab's ancestors long before the Spanish conquerors first came to the Yucatan in the fifteen-hundreds. Other sacred numbers had been incorporated into the pyramid - the twenty terraces, for example, which signified the units of twenty days into which the ancients had divided their shorter, two-hundred-and-sixty-day ceremonial year. Similarly there originally had been fifty-two stone images of serpents along the top of the temple, for time revolved in a fifty-two-year circle.

Circles were very much in Balam-Acab's thoughts as he gently set down the blanket, unwrapped it, and exposed the precious bowl. It didn't look remarkable. As wide as the distance from his thumb to his elbow, as thick as his thumb, it was old, yes, obviously very old, but it had no brilliant colors, just a dull, dark interior coating, and an outsider might have called it ugly.

Circles, Balam-Acab kept thinking. No longer impeded by his need to protect the bowl, he moved swiftly, taking off his knapsack, removing an obsidian knife, a long cord stitched with thorns, and strips of paper made from the bark of a fig tree. Quickly he removed his sweat-soaked shirt, exposing his gaunt chest to the god of the night.

Circles, cycles, revolutions. Balam-Acab positioned himself so that he stood at the entrance to the temple, facing east, toward where the sun each day began its cycle, toward the direction of the symbol of rebirth. From this high vantage point, he could see far around the pyramid. Even in the dark, he detected the obvious large area that the invaders had denuded of trees. More, he could distinguish the gray area that marked the airstrip a quarter-mile to his right. He could see the numerous large tents that the invaders had erected and the log buildings that they were constructing from the fallen trees. He saw several campfires that he hadn't been able to notice from the jungle, armed guards casting shadows. Soon more airplanes would arrive with more conquerors and more machinery. More gigantic helicopters would bring more heavy vehicles. The area would become more desecrated. Already a road was being bulldozed through the jungle. Something had to be done to stop them.

Cycles. Revolutions. Balam-Acab's father had told him that his name had a special history in the village. Centuries before, when the conquerors had first arrived, Balam-Acab's namesake had led a band of warriors that attempted to repulse the Spanish from the Yucatan. The struggle had persisted for several years until Balam-Acab's namesake was captured and hacked into pieces, then burned. But the glory of the rebel persisted beyond his death, indeed until the present generation, and Balam-Acab was proud to bear the name.

But burdened as well. It wasn't a coincidence that he'd been given this name instead of another. History moved in circles, just as periodically the Maya had again revolted against their oppressors. Stripped of their culture, yoked into slavery, the Maya had rebelled during the sixteen hundreds, again in the eighteen hundreds, and most recently in the early part of this century. Each time, they had been fiercely defeated. Many were forced to retreat to the remotest parts of the jungle in order to avoid retribution and the terrible sicknesses brought by the outsiders.

And now the outsiders had come again. Balam-Acab knew that if they weren't stopped, his village would be destroyed. Circles, cycles, revolutions. He was here to make a sacrifice to the gods, to ask for their wisdom, to pray for their counsel. He needed to be guided. His namesake had no doubt conducted this same ritual during the fifteen hundreds. Uncontaminated, it would be repeated.

He raised his obsidian knife. Its black, volcanic glass -'the fingernail of the lightning bolt' - was sharpened to a stiletto-like point. He raised it to the underside of his outstretched tongue, struggling to ignore the pain as he thrust upward, piercing. The only way he could manage the task was by clamping his teeth against his tongue to hold it in place so that the exposed, slippery flesh could not resist the blade. Blood gushed from his tongue, drenching his hand. He trembled from shock.

Nonetheless, he continued thrusting upward. Only when the obsidian point came completely through his tongue and scraped along his upper teeth did he remove it. Tears welled from his eyes. He stifled the urge to moan. Continuing to clamp his tongue with his teeth, he lowered the knife and raised the cord stitched with thorns. As his ancestors had done, he shoved the cord through the hole in his tongue and began to pull upward. Sweat burst from his face, no longer from humidity and exertion but from agony. The first thorn in the cord reached the hole in his tongue. Although it snagged, he pulled it through. Blood ran down the cord. He persisted in pulling, forcing another thorn through his tongue. And another. Blood cascaded down the cord and soaked the strips of paper where the bottom of the cord rested in the precious bowl.

Inside the temple behind him, there were images of Balam-Acab's ancestors performing this ritual. In some cases, the king had impaled his penis, then thrust the cord of thorns through that organ instead of his tongue. But whatever part of the body was used, the objective was the same - through pain and blood, to achieve a vision state, to communicate with the Otherworld, to understand what the gods advised and indeed demanded.

Weakened, Balam-Acab sank to his knees as if he worshipped the blood-soaked strips of paper in the bowl. As soon as the cord of thorns had been pulled completely through his tongue, he would place it in the bowl with the strips of paper. He would add more paper and a ball of copal incense. Then he would use matches - the only adulteration of the rite that he permitted - and set fire to his offering, adding more paper as necessary, the flames boiling and eventually burning his blood.

His mind swirled. He wavered, struggling to maintain a delirious balance between consciousness and collapse, for his ancestors would not have performed this rite without assistance whereas he would have to rouse himself and proceed alone through the jungle back to the village.

He thought that the gods began to speak to him. He heard them, at the edge of hearing. He felt them, felt their presence, felt-

The tremor spread through him. But it wasn't a tremor caused by shock or pain. The tremor came from outside him, through the stones upon which he knelt, through the pyramid upon which he conducted his ritual, through the earth beneath which lay the god of Darkness to whom he appealed.

The tremor was caused by the Shockwave from dynamite as a crew continued their devastation despite the night. The rumble sounded like a moan from a restive god.

He raised a book of matches, struck one, and dropped it onto the strips of paper that lay above his blood in the sacred bowl.

Circles.

Again time had turned.

This holy place was being defiled.

The conquerors had to be conquered.

FOUR.

1.

When Buchanan wakened, he was soaked with sweat, his lips so parched that he knew he had a fever. He swallowed several aspirins from the first-aid kit, almost gagging, forcing them down his dry throat. By then, it was after dawn. He and Wade were in Merida, 322 kilometers west of Cancun, near the Gulf of Mexico side of the Yucatan peninsula. Unlike Cancun, Merida evoked an Old World feeling, its great mansions dating from the turn of the century. Indeed the city had once been called the 'Paris of the Western World,' for in former, richer times, millionaire merchants had deliberately tried to make Merida like Paris, where they often went on vacation. The city still retained much of its European charm, but Buchanan was too delirious to care about the tree-lined avenues and the horse-drawn carriages. 'What time is it?' he asked, too listless to peer at his watch.

'Eight o'clock.' Wade parked near a not-yet-open market. 'Will you be okay if I leave you alone for a while?'

'Where are you going?'

Wade answered, but Buchanan didn't hear what he said, his mind drifting, sinking.

When he wakened again, Wade was unlocking the Ford, getting in. 'I'm sorry I took so long.'

So long? Buchanan thought. 'What do you mean?' His vision was bleary. His tongue felt swollen. 'What time is it now?'

'Almost nine. Most stores still aren't open. But I managed to get you some bottled water.' Wade untwisted a cap from a bottle of Evian and tilted it toward Buchanan's parched lips.

Buchanan's mouth seemed like a dry sponge, absorbing most of the water. Some trickled down his chin. Frustrated, he tried again and this time managed to swallow. 'Give me more of those aspirins.' His throat sounded as if it were wedged with stones.

'Still feverish?'

Buchanan nodded, grimacing. 'And this bitch of a headache won't stop.'

'Hold out your hand. I'll give you the aspirins.'

Buchanan's left hand felt weak, and his right hand suddenly became spastic again. 'Better put them in my mouth.'

Wade frowned.

Buchanan swallowed the aspirins with more water.