G.o.d Of Death.

Casca.

Barry Sadler.

Tezmec stood frozen...

A burning phosph.o.r.escence, like the kind seen at sea that hovers over the masts of ships, enveloped the sacrificial stone. The jade mask glowed and seemed to throw out rays of emerald light. Tezmec held the still-beating heart in his hand. It was throbbing, moving. The golden knife dropped from Tezmec's grasp when another hand covered his.

Casca, his body enveloped in the green fire of the sea, stood holding Tezmec's hand stationary over the altar fire. And then Casca took his own beating heart out of the priest's hand.

"It takes a G.o.d to kill a G.o.d, and my time is not yet come."

"I am Casca. I am the Quetza.

"I am G.o.d!"

PROLOGUE.

Casca came to the Rhine at the same spot where he had fought his first battle against the German tribesmen known as the Suevii; the gra.s.s always seemed to be a little richer where blood had been spilled. In his mind he could almost make out the outlines of the fight, a smaller patch of green a hundred yards distant where the young men of the cavalry unit a.s.signed to Casca's unit had been pulled from their horses by long-hooked poles and had their throats slit with fishknives while they lay on the ground. That barbarian ambush had almost been successful. Only the legion's automatic response to danger and the immediate forming of the square had saved them all from being butchered and having their heads stuck on poles outside the longhouses of the barbaric tribesmen from across the Rhine.

Casca walked slowly, memories rushing upon him. Stopping, he bent over and picked up a piece of metal protruding from the earth. It was the handie of a knife, a knife stuck in something. Tugging gently, Casca freed it. The rusty blade came forth, almost completely eaten away but still strong enough to hold the piece of human skull it had penetrated so many years ago. Ours? Or theirs? Casca mused. He hooked his pack up higher and looked in the direction of the river. He walked toward it, his footsteps taking him back to that first battle when he was young and the copper taste of p.i.s.s-blinding fear was in his mouth. He knew that beneath his feet were the bones of men whom he had known and served with, some friends, some not, but all comrades. The legion ... the legion ... my only true .... . my father and my mother.. .. Here is where I killed my first man over a hundred and fifty years ago. The wheel turns. As I told the leader of the caravan out of Anatolia before we headed for Damascus, the wheels of the G.o.ds grind slow, yet they grind exceedingly fine. Every-thing is as it was and will be. The only exception is me. I am what I was and apparently always will be until the Jew comes again. I am the continuation of myself. s.h.i.t, where the h.e.l.l did I learn to talk like that? Continuation my a.s.s. I am what I am, and perhaps I get a little maudlin now and then. But life is still interesting. There are yet places to go, people to meet, women to love and .........

Casca drew himself erect, his hand on his belt. He looked across the river. The Jew said it: What I am, that I shall be. Cood enough. I am Casca, soldier of the legions, part-time slave-but I exist. Cogito, ergo sum. I will beat the Jew yet. My fortuees lie in' front of me... in life and adventure.

CASCA.

G.o.d OF DEATH.

Certainly I get feelings of sympathy for myself now and then, but, as He said, I am what I am. Therefore I shall live the life that my destiny demands. But as my Own man.

Absorbed in his interior monologue, Casca had reached the river.

The Rhine, dark and swift, flowed before him. He knelt at the same spot where he had slaked his thirst in the then b.l.o.o.d.y waters of that battle so long ago . . . his battle thirst after the Suevii had broken and run, and the legionnaires had slaughtered them all the way to the river and even in it. The pa.s.sing face of a young German boy ran before Casca's eyes . . . and faded. One he had killed? It grew hard to recall them all after a while. Casca sat by the bank of the great river looking across to where no Roman in his right mind would want to be. Germania. Terra incognita. The unknown lands of the fiercest tribesmen on earth. The Germans and the Parthians were the only peoples to stand against the might of Imperial Rome. But the Parthians were cultured and rich, with not only the heritage of the great Persian Empire, but with the sophistication of their first conquerors, the Greeks, under the young warrior, Alexander. The Germans were something else. Casca had the feeling they would always be a pain in the a.s.s to the rest of the world no matter how civilized they might eventually become on the surface. They had born in them, and nurtured by the first taste of their mothers' milk, a l.u.s.t for life that fulfilled itself only in battle.

By all the demon: of whatever reality there are, it seems as if the sage Shiu Lao Tze was right.

Everything is a great circle qnd repeats itself like that endless line of slaves in the mines of Greece, never ending, always coming back to the beginning. Or is it the end? Perhaps beginning and ending are both the same.

The night was close upon him, and the water looked too d.a.m.ned cold for swimming across in the dark. Tomorrow is time enough. Building a small fire, Casca waited, letting the warmth of the red embers reach deep within him. The piece of donkey meat he was cooking crackled and sizzled. The rich smell of the roasting meat made his mouth salivate. In antic.i.p.ation, he smacked his lips. Ahh~ There's nothing like a nice hot piece of young a.s.s to set a mans mouth watering....

As the meat turned crisp and juicy, Casca reached over and cut off a slice and filled his mouth with the strong taste of young a.s.s. He gulped the meat down, pulled his cloak around him, rolled over, and went to sleep facing the fire.

Tomorrow, Germany...

When the dawn came and Casca awoke, there was the same type fog rolling across the river as had surrounded the ghost like images of the Suevii floating across the Rhine on logs so many years ago. But this time it was Casca's turn to enter the whirling waters.

The coals of his fire had long since died. Grumbling as he rose, he walked to the water's edge, scratching his a.s.s. He farted and joined his stream with that of the mighty river. Goingback to his campsite, he stirred the dead coals hopefully and looked questioningly at a piece of the donkey flesh that remained, but it was now black and charred. Restraining a belch, he mumbled, "No way. There's no way I'm going to eat a piece of cold burned a.s.s this early in the morning."

The ground fog swirled around him and the trees. The dawn became day. The rising sun burned off the mist, a few rays breaking through the surrounding trees to give a sense of impending warmth.

"Well, s.h.i.t," he said aloud, looking at the river, "I might as well get it over with. The sooner I get across, the sooner I can dry off." He dragged a log to the river's edge, tied his gear, a chunk of donkey meat, and his pack to it, and shoved off into the frigid, dark waters, gingerly at first as he waded in, cursing at the icy cold. "Ooh! Ah! d.a.m.n, that's cold!" As the Rhine slowly advanced up his legs, his s.c.r.o.t.u.m tried to climb up even higher to avoid the chilling advance, but, as nature wills it, his b.a.l.l.s could only go up so far. Then he was in, and the coldness became warm as he struck off and began paddling across, letting the current take him. It really didn't make a d.a.m.n where he landed, so he let the river do the work.

The waters finally took him to where his feet could touch bottom. Groaning, he pushed the log to the edge of the bank and began to take his gear from it before leaving the water himself.

"Ho, little man! What do you here?"

The speaker, unexpected as he was, seemed to exemplify that popular image of German barbarism. He stood six-foot-three, and he was two hundred and fifty pounds of meat-stuffed flesh if he was an ounce. He wore a horned helmet, and his sweeping mustache would have made a walrus proud.

"Ho, little man!" he repeated, his voice the thundering bellow of an oversize Germanic ox. "Do you ash.o.r.e come? I can see that you are not of the tribes, so therefore you must pay before entering this land. As I am a reasonable man, I will take only your pack and weapons, leaving you your clothes. They would not fit anyway. Fair enough? Or do you wish to dispute me over the matter?" With this he drew a monstrous long sword that must have weighed forty pounds and swung it easily through the air, the slicing blade whistling. He used just one hand and then brought the sword down, resting the point at his loong-wrapped feet.

"Well, what will it be, my wet little t.i.tmouse? Though you are larger than most of your sickly ilk, I can see by your rags that you are a Latin. May Wotan p.i.s.s in your soup.

Oh, no, thought Casca. This is all I need to start the day off. Getting a firm footing on the slippery bottom, he raised himself up to a full height of five-foot-ten-which still seemed small, woefully small, in comparison to the huge barbarian.

"Now, listen to me, lard guts," he said in German. "I have had just about enough of your mouth and this river. Take your large, overstuffed carca.s.s away and leave me in peace, or I'll ruin your love life by braiding your legs. Verstand, sheiss kopf?"

"s.h.i.t head you dare call me? Glam Tyrsbjdrn a s.h.i.t head? Come out of the water, you dago mouse, and I'll teach you some manners.

"p.i.s.s on your fur mouth. I'm no dummy. If you want a piece of my a.s.s let's make it even. Either you back off and let me out of the river, or come in and get your feet wet, turnip d.i.c.k."

"Turnip d.i.c.k!" Glam turned first red, then white, then purple with rage. Stamping his fur-wrapped feet like a human version of the old forest ox of the Auroebs, he bellowed, "I would come in after you, but I am no fish and cannot swim. So come out where I can put my hands on you. I am going to shove my right fist up your a.s.s so far that I will grab you by the jawbone and pull you inside out."

"Big deal, big mouth," Casca scoffed. "Sure you're tough with that oversize meat cleaver. If you didn't have that, you'd be like a castratto-which you may be anyway. I keep hearing your whimpering turn into a falsetto, you louse-ridden eunuch."

"By the bones of Ymir from which Odin and his brothers created the world, I will show you that I need nothing but my own hands to complete your education, Roman boy!" With that, Glam threw his monstrous long sword from him with such force that it almost severed a two-foot pine, the point burying itself in the wood. "There, you lousy dago! Now will you come out and fight?"

"You got it, sausage breath." Casca splashed his way out of the river while Glam stomped and waited, chewing his mustache in antic.i.p.ation of settling the afront made to his honor. Turnip d.i.c.k indeed!

As Casca came out, Glam turned and threw a long, looping punch that Casca easily dodged. Using the art of the yellow sage Shlu Tze, Casca blocked with his right arm and gave a quick, inside snap kick to the b.a.l.l.s. Glam, between clenched teeth, tried with both hands to comfort his bruised groin. While he was involved with coddling himself, Casca went into a reverse roundhouse kick with his heel that knocked the big German into the Rhine unconscious, face down. Bubbles of air started welling up as the German drowned. Casca watched for a second, then, grumbling about being a sucker, he waded out into the river and grabbed the soggy tribesman by the hair and raised his face out of the water. Holding Glam by the hair of the head with one hand, Casca began a firm cracking slap across the face with the other. Glam sputtered, spitting out a quant.i.ty of the sacred Rhine.

I'm nought" he burbled. "Enough! I surrender. your slave. Just get me out of the water."

I "All right, but one wrong twitch and I'll do what said about your legs."

"No, master. I, Glam, son of Halfdan the Ganger, may be many things, but I keep my word. You win. Just remove me from this miserable river and set my feet on solid earth."

The Norseman's helmet had gone to the bottom, so Casca got a firmer grip on the shoulder-length hair and hauled Glam to where he could pull himself out of the river to the edge of the bank and lie down. This the German did, his lungs trying to turn themselves inside out. While he finished this process, Casca returned and hauled his gear out. Sitting on a moss-covered log, he took a dry rag and began to wipe down his short sword, for he was a warrior, and a warrior takes care of his weapons.

By the time Casca had finished cleaning his gear and drying himself off as best he could, the sun was giving indication that the day would be bright and warm. Glam drew himself erect and strode to stand in front of Casca. Tensing, Casca took a firmer grip on his blade, but Glam suddenly dropped to his face and lay down in front of Casca. Taking Casca's right foot, he set it on top of his head. "I swear by the Aesir and Odin Ailfather that I am your man in all things until you release me from my pledge."

Tossing Casca's foot off, Glam jumped back. "Well, now that that is over, where do we go from here, master?"

Casca looked up at the fur-draped and water-dripping giant. He grumbled, but there was a laugh behind his voice trying to break through. "For someone who's just made himsell a slave, you're not very d.a.m.n humble."

"Humble?" Glam asked in surprise. "Why in the name of the sacred oak should I be humble? I am the finest fighter and bravest man in the northlands from Scandia to the Danube. Sure, I'm your slave. But who said anything about being humble?" He beckoned to Casca. "Come by the fire, little master, and take the chill of the river off your bones. We'll take a bite of your smoked a.s.s, and you will learn how fortunate you are to have a man like myself as a friend and companion."

"Friend and companion? What the Hades happened to your being my slave?"

Nonplussed, Glam continued somewhat testily, "Well, if you want to be rigid in your thinking, that's so. But I thought we might modify our relationship a little bit. It is only because I find myself liking you in spite of your parentage that I would be willing to make such an offer, because, knowing myself, I know that I would be an unhappy slave and as such would most likely cause you a great deal of trouble and concern. But as a friend and companion...

-Ahh!-that's something else. In that happy condition I would put all my intelligence and resources at your disposal; Now, wouldn't that be better than having an unhappy slave that you couldn't trust?"

By the time the big Cerman had ended his monologue Casca was desperately trying to control a fit of laughter. Choking it back, he cleared his throat. "Good enough, my monstrous friend. We will be comrades until the time when our roads must part. Until then, we will be true to one another in our actions and trust. Is it agreed?" He held out his hand.

Glam nodded his head vigorously up and down. "Ay~ Roman, that it is. And think not that I am ungratefuI for your releasing me from my bonds on slavery, for certainly I was miserable all the time of my servitude."

Casca laughed out loud in spite of himself. "By Mithra, man, you were a slave for only less than an hour. How much misery could you acquire in that short a time?"

Glam responded in wounded tones, his mustache starting to bristle up. "It is not the length of bond-age. It is the emotional pain of the condition that counts. And I-" he visibly swelled "-I have soul of a poet. The soul, if-regrettably-not the words."

"Stop. Enough already, you great barbarian. I accept your reasoning. Just spare me the story." Glam nodded in agreement, and Casca went on. It was best to get their relationship straight from the begininng. "Firstthings first," he said. "My name is Casca. And I'm no ones dummy. I've been around a long time-longer than you might think. I know most of the tricks of the trade. In fact, I've invented a few of them. I have been a soldier in the legions, and I have hired out my sword as a mercenary to those who could pay the price. The only thing I won't do is fight a fight I don't believe in. There is enough action around, that I don't think we have to sell our souls to the s.h.i.tmongers. So, if you want to come with me, let's understand things. I am the boss, and we play by my rules." He locked eyes with the big German. The intent with which he spoke allowed for no smart answers. His tone was absolutely serious.

Uneasily, Glam looked away for a moment. There was something about this stranger that was disturbing, something for which there was no ready answer. A power? What could it be? But he looked back full in Casca's eyes and said, "Good enough. You are the leader until our road ends."

The road Casca and Glam took was, for the most part, a good one. The two rapidly found a fondness for each other that went far beyond the relationship of master and servant. Glam, with his boisterous humor, was almost as good as he thought he was-though he never got used to the idea that the smaller Roman had whipped him without even using weapons. That summer of A.D. 210 they walked through the great dank forests of Germania. Casca kept his Roman armor out of sight in his kit bag. The sight of the hated Roman cuira.s.s might lead to more trouble than they wanted. The trail through the woods had the rich smell of life, of green and growing things. The sun broke through the treetops with shining, hazy blades of light and hsalf~ the floor of the forest so that it glowed with green fire. The feel of such spots was most welcome for in the morning and in the afternoon a chill would come.

Glam taught Casca the way of the Nors.e.m.e.n. Here were few towns in the style of those found in the lands and provinces of Imperial Rome. But there was no shortage of people; they merely chose not to live one on top of the other. Glam rambled through these woods resembling in his fur robes and shuffling gaiit one of the brown bears that inhabited these regions. He was a strange partner for Casca the~~jn an, this northern barbarian, but they heeme> friends and comrades. Their lives were intertwined and their loyalties tested by battles and time. Glam told Casca of immense lands that ran from the frozen sea to the mountains that held up the sky. Here the tribes roamed at will, and those with great chieftains had tens of thousands of warriors at their call. To Glam this was the best of all lands, the women more beautiful, the men braver, the beer stronger. The two wound their way slowly, bearing north, ever northward.

Glam grumbled about the way the tribes on the Roman sides of the Rhine, the Danube, and the Elbe had become but pale shadows of their former glory when they had been worthy foes.. Now they aped the Roman in all things and were, to Glam's thinking, little better than falsetto-voz'ced castratti like all those from Italia, present company exeluded, of course, he hastily added as he caught Casca-- thoughtfully eyeing his crotch. Glam instantly recalled Casca's threat to braid his legs and thus end his s.e.x life ... to the detriment of untapped legions of fair maids..

Glam changed the subject and went more into a travelogue. Indicating the general area to the east with a broad sweep of his hand, he said in his most officious voice: "There. Over there are trackless lands that have never seen the foot of man. Others where only the wildest savages live, half man, half horse, great hordes of them ... Small gnomes whose legs are bent so badly they can hardly walk on the ground because they've spent so much time on horseback that their legs have grown crooked. And there are others almost as bad. Hundreds of thousands of them. Still they are only specks on the great steppes of Scythia and the even more desolate region that runs untold leagues beyond. Mark my words, Casca. One day we will have more than our share of trouble coming out of the east. If those devils ever start to move, they won't leave enough gra.s.s behind them to feed a family of gra.s.shoppers.

"You have seen these people you talk of, Glam?"

"Aye, Lord Casca, I have. Several came as emissaries once to the king of the Alani when I was renting him the use of my sword as a bodyguard for a while. He was having family problems at the time and didn't trust his own men too closely. Yes, these ugly bowlegged little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds even conducted their treaties from horseback. I got one stewed on fermented mare's milk, which they drink, and learned a little from him. They are indeed going to be moving west sometime. Now there is only a trickle this way, but, from the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d I talked to, I learned that they have their problems, too. Even greater and more terrible tribes are pushing them out of the lands they inhabit on the endless prairies near the wall, 'The Wall That Goes on Forever'-at least that's what he called it, though I am sure he is a bit of a liar. A wall that goes on forever! Indeed!" Glam snorted through his mustache at the ideia "From what I saw of those beasts they would be extremely unpleasant to have as neighbors. They have absolutely no sense of appreciation for the finer things of life as we of the northlands do."

Glam squashed a particularly fat louse and blinked as the body popped between his thick nails. He ambled on, unaware that Casca was sore put to keep from breaking out in laughter at Glam's wounded sense of propriety and sensitivity.

He was the mainstay when Casca met Lida at Ragnar's Hold.

Lida.

Now there was something strange.

Glam knew all about women-as women. And he expected Casca to be like himself. But the thing between Casca and Lida, golden-haired, lovely, beautiful young Lida, daughter of Ragnar the Brutal One, was like one of those romances the poets sang about. From the moment their eyes touched, something pa.s.sed between them that was above and beyond the normal way of man and maid. Old Ragnar found out, of course. Old Ragnar, to whom even a daughter was only property that no man dared touch. In his insane rage when Lida had the temerity to stand up to him and say, "I have eyes only for Casca," he had blinded her with a torch jerked from the wall, crying, "Then, by Thor, you'll have no eyes!" And when he ordered Casca tossed into a dungeon to starve to death, even his hardened warriors were so frightened by Ragnar's enormous rage and brutal act toward his own daughter that they carried out his orders, smothering Casca by sheer weight of numbers before the Roman could find out what had occurred in Ragnar's rooms-for they sensed that if he knew, even the force of the Aesir would not hold him back.

Once secured in the dungeon, though, Casca had been told-by Ragnar himself whose sense of vengeance was as strong as his hate. Casca raged, but. even his great strength was of no avail against such great stones as enclosed the dungeon.

Old Ragnar was a mean old s.h.i.t, so used to having his way that he never doubted he would always have it. Casca stayed in the dungeon for six months until one day Ragnar, sure that Casca was long dead, gave orders for a new prisoner to be lodged there. But when the door opened, Casca came out, naked as a jaybird, nothing but bones and skin. He had eaten all his clothing-even the lacings on his leggings-along with every insect, bug, and rat that dared showed itself in the black cell. Water he licked from the walls where it condensed in drops. Surely there was not enough to keep any man alive two weeks, much less six months, but Casca lived.

He snapped the jailer's neck with one of his strange blows, took the man's weapon, and like some weird nightmare of a man, wild beard falling from his chin, he sought out and killed old Ragnar at his own table where the brutal old b.a.s.t.a.r.d was entertaining guests. Glam had been there, having found himself local employment in order to keep an eye on Lida. Casca had told him to wait, no matter how long, and from the things Glam had seen on the trail, he believed the strange Roman. Joyfully, Glam shouted and reached for his sword when this filthy, starved, weird-looking wretch leaped into the middle of Ragnar's tabel with an axe in one hand and a leg of mutton in the other. He scared the c.r.a.p out of everyone there, sending all but the st.u.r.diest warriors running for their lives. They thought he must surely be some demon out of the netherworid sent by Loki. Glam roared with amus.e.m.e.nt as he watched Casca bashing out the brains of old Ragnar with the leg of meat while whacking two of the household bodyguards with the axe-and never missing a bite. Glam's own joyful efforts to a.s.sist Casca helped speed up the demise of the few who dared resist them. For the rest, the sight of the lord being debrained by a hairy, filthy skeleton of a demon wielding a leg of mutton and a battleaxe was too much. They fled the house, leaving Ragnar's Hold to the madman. They were afraid of nothing human. But this was too much....

Forty years ago Lida was a golden-haired thing of light and silver. She moved like a summer breeze....

Old Glam snuffled in his beard. Even sightless she knew every inch of the Hold that was then heb~ and Casca's. Casca became the Lord of the Hold, and none disputed it-and lived....

Wiping a tear from his eyes, Glam thought, I Lted her, too, Casca. And she was beautifial to the end. A lovely lady with a heart for everyone and everything. Especially you, you lousy dago." This had been a good place for them. It took only a few fights around the neighborhood to show that this was no place to muck about with.

Glam shivered as he, saw again those clear white sightless eyes of Lady Lida. Forty years and she never knew Casca's secret.. .. That's the greatest miracle of all. I never saw a man love anyone as much as he did her. When she died, I thought for a moment he was going to have himself buried with her. But then he's a strange little b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Those touched by the G.o.ds always are. He has his fate to sodw, and personally I don't envy him. But the years have been good....

Laughing in his mead, Glam chuckled and muttered softly: "What was it he first called me? Turnip d.i.c.k? Ha!"

ONE.

Dr. Julius Goldman entered the magnificent doors leading into the sacrosanct interior of the Boston Museum of History. He was late. His footsteps clattered over the polished marble floor, his own sense of urgency seeming to precede him with the echoing sound as he pa.s.sed the priceless relics of antiquity, the emblems of vanished civilizations. Vases from China. Amphorae from Greece. Each a lonely and mute survivor of its past. Ancient weapons. Time-forgotten ornaments. Each seemed ready to speak, to tell some dark secret of the ages. Despite his haste, Goldman felt the atmosphere of the museum seeping into his brain.

He turned left down an exhibit hall leading toward his destination, the newly acquired exhibit of Mesoame rican art from Mexico. On the way, though, he approached a well-used and exquisitely preserved set of Roman gladiatorial armor, its great helmet and famed Roman short sword hanging expectantly in the silent museum as though suspended in time. Involuntarily his steps slowed, and he stopped in front of the carefully mounted pieces. A gash ran along the belly of the armor, exposing the leather wrappings beneath. Goldman wondered how the man who had been wearing it had come out. As he stood before the armor, images flashed in his brain, and a feeling of second sight came over him, a tumbling of memories lost and found and then gone again before awareness. He saw in his mind's eye a ma.s.sive stadium filled with people crying for blood. He saw men wearing the armor of the Secutor and the Mirimill one locked in mortal combat, straining to let the lifeblood out of their opponents, and not with any reluctance for they were glorying in their strength. Goldman felt himself part of the Roman games. The smell of the blood-soaked sand stank in his nostrils.

He turned from the armor and entered the Aztec exhibit. The museum had just opened and was practically empty, but Goldman had been here the previous week and he recalled with particular distaste seeing two aficionados of this pre-Columbian culture standing before these exhibits, indulging themselves in a form of controlled, vicarious, mental masturbation... as if by touching and looking at these relics they could claim some kinship with the ones who had actually worn and used the items. Their att.i.tude had been not dissimilar from the motorcycle gangs who wore the swastikas and emblems of n.a.z.i Germany-the iron crosses and German helmets-and somehow felt that owning and wearing such items imparted the strength and ability to inflict their will on others through terror.

Yet Goldman, too, felt a strange fascination emaflahng from the exhibits. The artistic level achieved in many of the items was astounding in its detail work. One item particularly arrested Goldman: a feathered shield of cobalt blue feathers with the emblem of the Jaguar G.o.d superimposed in tiny gold feathers. It must have taken over a thousand birds to make this one shield for some unknown n.o.ble.

Representations of the G.o.ds of the Aztecs stood in their cases, imperturbable, the countenance and dress showing the overwhelming Aztec fascination with death. Most horrible of all was Coatlicue, the mother of the Aztec pantheon. Her image towered over the others by the sheer force of her accouterments. Her dress was made of serpents woven together as if they were reeds. She wore a crown of two snake heads. This was set off by a necklace of chopped-off hands and hearts, while monstrous claws took the place of human feet. She and her children seemed to wait patiently for the time when they could again feed on the living hearts and blood of sacrificial victims. In their time, blood had fed them-and the Aztecs made sure the G.o.ds never hungered for long.

One G.o.d, a powerful priest-king, was the most powerful figure in their mythology. Quetzalcoatl-and his symbol, the feathered serpent-was honored in almost all of ancient Mexico's panoply of G.o.ds. Even the Toltec and the Maya knew of him. The Maya honored him under the name of the Kukulcan and told of his coming.

Perhaps because this G.o.d was so different from the others, Goldman lingered before his emblem. The fascination of the museum had gripped him.

Part of his mind told him to hurry toward his appointment. Part held him here, immersed in the aura of the land of the feathered serpent.

The Aztecs had inherited Quetzalcoatl along with several other G.o.ds when they conquered the Valley of Mexico and its inhabitants. There, at the ruined city they called "The City of the G.o.ds," Teotihuacan, they had found the great temple of the feathered serpent and of TIaloc, the rain G.o.d. Goldman considered the irony of the Aztec inheritance. Many of their names for the G.o.ds, many of their words for daily terms came from a b.a.s.t.a.r.dization of the captured people's tongue-and with the words had come a fateful legend-that of the return of Quetzalcoatl. From the conquered people the Aztecs had learned of the great metropohs that had once stood there and how it had fallen to disease and curse when the inhabitants had lost faith with Quetzalcoatl. Their shamans had then foretold that Quetzalcoatl would return in "one reed," which occurred every fifty-two years. And the Aztecs, taking over the calendar of their predecessors from the few remaining survivors, had also taken over not only the legend, but the predicted time of Quetzalcoatl's return "from the sea."

So it was in the year of Our Lord, 1519, on Good Friday-or one reed, as the Aztecs reckoned-that a fair-haired man set foot on the sh.o.r.es of Mexico. Hernan Cortez had arrived with his men, in suits of shining armor, with horses, with weapons of steel. To the Aztec king, Moctezuma, it was the fulfillment of the ancient legends, for the original priest-king had been fair of hair and had come from the sea. The legends had said that he would return in the same manner as his first appearance.

Moctezuma, believing that Cortez really was the returning Quetzalcoatl, waited too long to resist the Spaniards. It was his belief, not his lack of power, that caused his defeat, for when he had ascended to the throne he had ordered 30,000 people sacrificed to celebrate his becoming emperor. There were only several hundred Spaniards, and Moctezuma could have destroyed them easily. The legend's power was fatal; not until Moctezuma's own son, Qualtemoc, ordered his father killed, was the power of the Aztecs used. They promptly drove the Spaniards from the Aztec capital city, Ten ocht.i.tlan. Though many Spaniards escaped, not all did, and for the next several weeks the terrible G.o.ds of the Aztecs fed on the blood and beating hearts of Europeans.

But the Aztec triumph was short-lived. The gold of Moctezuma was an irresistible lure, and the doom of the proud Aztec nation was inevitable. Greed-coupled with the religious fanaticism of the Spanish Jesuits, those devoted followers of the Inquisition as ordained by the pious Torquemada-conquered. Goldman pondered the paradox of the Jesuits. Here were men who felt themselves...o...b.. soldiers of their crucified G.o.d, Jesus, and in His name, and in the name of pity and love and mercy, they did not hesitate in their holy duty. In a religious fervor that approached ecstasy they were able to burn thousands of heathen sinners alive at the stake. This was done, of course, in order to save the: heathens' immortal souls-to open the way to the glories of heaven for these heathen. By no means did the Jesuits consider their acts to be acts of cruelty. On the contrary, what they did was done from love. Ironic, Goldman thought, that the Spaniards convved themselvsesn so different from the Aztecs. For, of course, the heathen Indians had sent their sacrificial victims to their G.o.ds in order to deliver their prayers...

And while the priests of the gentle Jesus had burned the unredeemed alive, the soldiers of Cortez had raped and looted-and destroyed the remnants of a great people, all in the name of glory: glory and loot for themselves and for the King of Spain. The story was an old one, and a common one, and for a moment Goldman, thinking of it, lost the sense of mystery that had engulfed him in the museum. He turned away from Quetzalcoatl and walked past other relics and art objects, and then he saw the one for whom he had cancelled his day's appointments and had rushed through the packed, hornhonking, morning traffic of Boston.

The man's back was to Goldman, and he was leaning over a gla.s.s display case, but there was no mistaking who it was. The back was broad, and the muscles beneath the conservatively cut suit seemed almost ready to burst through.

Making his way past several other display cases and standing slightly behind the man, Goldman started to clear his throat in order to announce his presence, but, before he could, the man at the display case spoke, his voice deep and steady: "Welcome, Dr. Goldman. It is good of you to come at such short notice." And with that he straightened from the display case and turned to face Goldman.