Read Online Dai-San - 03 by Eric Van Lustbader - Free Book Online
Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
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great stepped plaza rising on their left. Pools on the stone steps, remnants of the day’s heavy rain, glistened in the lowering sun. Here and there, as they moved, their angle of vision changing, these shallow pools broke into arching pastel rainbows.
On either side of the plaza, to north and south, were high structures with windowless stone walls, vertical and sheer on their inner sides, sloping outward on their opposite walls. A lone doorway set in each vertical wall led onto the plaza.
‘Strange,’ said Moichi as he halted before the first steps of the plaza. He gazed all about him. ‘The arch seems unknown to these people. You see, Ronin’—he pointed to the structures at either end of the plaza—‘they use, instead, the corbel vault to support their taller buildings.’
Ronin’s gaze at length swung away from the plaza complex, west, along the flat causeway, and he called softly to his companion. Before the great stepped pyramid which rose above them a quarter of a kilometer away, he could make out three silhouetted figures, tall and black, featureless against the diffuse mauve and copper glare of the dying sun, slipping steadily into the highest reaches of the towering jungle beyond the stone valley.
‘This way. Come on.’
They were masked.
Two men and one woman with great feline mantles covering their entire heads. These were cunningly crafted, furred and spotted, with triangular ears, black muzzles with long, stiff whiskers, and cold, glittering eyes, the color of gold or light green jade, translucent, glassy, and somehow disturbing.
All three were extremely tall, fully two and a half meters, the men with deep chests and long, muscular legs. Their skin was the color of stained teak.
The two men were garbed in gold and black spotted fur cloths wound about their loins. They wore sandals of black leather. Along their arms were bands of gold of varying widths, beaten and carved with fantastic designs. Ronin could pick out a bizarre scene between several headdressed warriors and a multiheaded creature which he took to be a god.
The woman was fully as tall as the men, her great untangled mane of blue-black hair outlasting the length of her grotesque mask; it rode to the small of her back. She wore a short tunic of golden fur that reached from her heavy breasts to just past the juncture of her thighs. Her legs were long and beautifully formed. She wore no gold on her arms but rather a band of pink and white jade, not more than a centimeter across, carved into an intricate latticework design through which the rich copper of her skin could be seen.
The man on the left stepped forward one pace.
‘Welcome,’ he said, his voice distant and strange through the grillwork of ivory fangs, ‘to Xich Chih, the great city of the Chacmool.’
‘Time,’ said Cabal Xiu.
He was the shorter of the two men.
‘It has ever been our greatest concern.’
A light breeze ruffled the fur of his mask.
‘Thus our history is written in stone to survive the cataclysms of the ages.’
To the north and the south, low pillared edifices; to the east, the jungle shivered, a high, almost impenetrable barrier. On a stepped acropolis, facing west. Across the wide, stone causeway, another structure loomed, a stepped pyramid perhaps one third the size of the giant structure near the center of the stone city, made up of nine successively smaller terraces. At the top was an oblong building set on six thick columns, heavily carved and worked. A set of wide steps along the center of the near side of the edifice gave access to the top.
‘We have waited—’ Cabal Xiu paused as if debating his choice of words. ‘We are waiting—’
The absurdity of the situation, Ronin reflected uneasily as his gaze swung back to the three bizarrely disfigured creatures sitting before him, failed to impress itself upon him. There was a disturbing aspect to this trio that disallowed any but the most immediately self-involving
On either side of the plaza, to north and south, were high structures with windowless stone walls, vertical and sheer on their inner sides, sloping outward on their opposite walls. A lone doorway set in each vertical wall led onto the plaza.
‘Strange,’ said Moichi as he halted before the first steps of the plaza. He gazed all about him. ‘The arch seems unknown to these people. You see, Ronin’—he pointed to the structures at either end of the plaza—‘they use, instead, the corbel vault to support their taller buildings.’
Ronin’s gaze at length swung away from the plaza complex, west, along the flat causeway, and he called softly to his companion. Before the great stepped pyramid which rose above them a quarter of a kilometer away, he could make out three silhouetted figures, tall and black, featureless against the diffuse mauve and copper glare of the dying sun, slipping steadily into the highest reaches of the towering jungle beyond the stone valley.
‘This way. Come on.’
They were masked.
Two men and one woman with great feline mantles covering their entire heads. These were cunningly crafted, furred and spotted, with triangular ears, black muzzles with long, stiff whiskers, and cold, glittering eyes, the color of gold or light green jade, translucent, glassy, and somehow disturbing.
All three were extremely tall, fully two and a half meters, the men with deep chests and long, muscular legs. Their skin was the color of stained teak.
The two men were garbed in gold and black spotted fur cloths wound about their loins. They wore sandals of black leather. Along their arms were bands of gold of varying widths, beaten and carved with fantastic designs. Ronin could pick out a bizarre scene between several headdressed warriors and a multiheaded creature which he took to be a god.
The woman was fully as tall as the men, her great untangled mane of blue-black hair outlasting the length of her grotesque mask; it rode to the small of her back. She wore a short tunic of golden fur that reached from her heavy breasts to just past the juncture of her thighs. Her legs were long and beautifully formed. She wore no gold on her arms but rather a band of pink and white jade, not more than a centimeter across, carved into an intricate latticework design through which the rich copper of her skin could be seen.
The man on the left stepped forward one pace.
‘Welcome,’ he said, his voice distant and strange through the grillwork of ivory fangs, ‘to Xich Chih, the great city of the Chacmool.’
‘Time,’ said Cabal Xiu.
He was the shorter of the two men.
‘It has ever been our greatest concern.’
A light breeze ruffled the fur of his mask.
‘Thus our history is written in stone to survive the cataclysms of the ages.’
To the north and the south, low pillared edifices; to the east, the jungle shivered, a high, almost impenetrable barrier. On a stepped acropolis, facing west. Across the wide, stone causeway, another structure loomed, a stepped pyramid perhaps one third the size of the giant structure near the center of the stone city, made up of nine successively smaller terraces. At the top was an oblong building set on six thick columns, heavily carved and worked. A set of wide steps along the center of the near side of the edifice gave access to the top.
‘We have waited—’ Cabal Xiu paused as if debating his choice of words. ‘We are waiting—’
The absurdity of the situation, Ronin reflected uneasily as his gaze swung back to the three bizarrely disfigured creatures sitting before him, failed to impress itself upon him. There was a disturbing aspect to this trio that disallowed any but the most immediately self-involving
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