The Jaguar Trials Page 13

Erskine’s hand was still round Ben’s throat – but the man wasn’t going to get the gold icons off him, no way! He’d fight for them if he had to!

  Yara and Raffie started forward, but Luis swung his rifle in their direction and they stopped in their tracks.

  “You tried to kill us!” Yara’s face was pale.

  Luis gave an arrogant grin. “Do you think I would have missed, unless I’d wanted to?”

  “Enough wasting time – I saw the moths’ migration as well, Jaguar Boy. I made the connection. I know we only have until nightfall! Now give me the icons!” Erskine snatched at Ben’s pocket and in the scuffle that followed, the strap round Ben’s neck got snapped and the compass fell.

  Erskine let go and Ben fell back hard, then scrambled over to his friends, eyeing the gun and watching the professor.

  Erskine bent to the ground, then slowly lifted the compass, gazing at the needle as if mesmerized.

  Ben could see that it was still spinning rapidly.

  Raffie nudged Ben with his elbow. “I worked it out!” he whispered, not taking his eyes off Erskine. “It’s all the magnetic iron in the rock. This whole mountainside looks like it’s made of it! Sends the compass mad.”

  Erskine looked up from the compass at the crashed plane, as if the memories of what had happened were only just coming back to him. “North should always be north,” he muttered to himself. “South should always be south. Those are facts one can depend on.”

  Ben exchanged looks with Yara and Rafael.

  Erskine pointed at one of the deep fissures in the rock gully. “That’s where they flew out from! They got into our engines.” Erskine screened his eyes as he stared up into the sky, at the clouds pulled into thick wisps. “There were bats everywhere!”

  Bats? Ben thought. Had Erskine totally flipped? Even Luis had lowered his rifle a fraction and his eyes narrowed. He seemed to be watching the professor’s every movement.

  And it was only at that moment that Ben registered what was on Luis’s back, rolled up and strapped to the hunter’s pack.

  He felt his stomach twist.

  An animal skin.

  A black jaguar skin.

  My jaguar.

  He gaped. But how? He’d destroyed all the traps; triggered the pit. Then he remembered with a jolt of shock – the very first trap he’d seen Luis with. There had been five traps, not four. How can you have been so stupid?

  The enormity of it hit Ben then. The majestic head; the intelligent-looking face. Saving the animal from the rapids; releasing the jaguar from its cage… What he had felt when the jaguar first looked at him.

  An unbearable pain rippled through the wounds on Ben’s arm. He stumbled forward a few steps. He saw the symmetry of the dark diamonds between the empty eye sockets. It was as if a piece of himself was roped on to that pack.

  “You killed the jaguar!” Ben’s shock turned to raw anger. “That’s the jaguar I freed! You had no right!”

  Erskine ignored him. He appeared not even to hear what Ben said. The man stared at the crashed plane, as if seeing it for the first time. Then he strode past Ben, over to the wreckage, and went inside.

  Through the front windscreen, Ben watched as Erskine reached the cockpit. The man hesitated and then started pulling manically at the front panels, wrenching at the controls to free one of the bodies, ripping away debris, peeling off the metal as if they were sheets of dead skin.

  “What’s he doing?” Raffie whimpered.

  “He is truly out of his mind,” whispered Yara.

  All three children stood rooted to the spot. It was alarming to watch. Erskine was calling out as he worked, the same word, over and over. “Father! Father!”

  When he came back out, he was holding a skull.

  Raffie gave a frightened hiccup.

  Ben stared. Erskine was cradling the skull in his two hands. The professor ran a finger, almost lovingly, around the empty eye sockets.

  Again Ben felt that same stab of pity. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “about your parents.”

  Erskine looked right at him. Fixed him with a cold stare. Then he raised the skull above his head, and flung it hard against the gully wall.

  Ben and his friends gasped. Shards of bone and fragments of rock flew in all directions.

  Then Erskine turned to them. “You want to know how I survived while my parents didn’t?” he challenged, looming over them. “There wasn’t a single mark on me.” Ben saw that he was almost smiling; it was stomach-turning to see. “Not a cut; not a bruise; not one mark. How do you explain that?” he demanded.

  “Good seat-belt straps?” suggested Rafael shakily. “The angle of the impact?”

  “Because I was chosen!” Erskine retorted. “I was the first human to find my way to the gate of El Dorado since the Ancients closed the way.”

  “Who do you think you are?” asked Yara contemptuously. “Some kind of god?”

  At these words, Erskine broke into a real smile. It was a grotesque sight.

  Ben glanced at Luis, whose rifle was still directed at them. It was impossible to know what he was thinking.

  “That’s why I was led there,” Erskine ranted on, “and shown its gateway as a boy. That’s why the jaguar spirit led me to safety, until the right time came for me to enter the City.”

  “But you killed the jaguar!” It was Ben’s turn to shout now. “It helped you when you were a child, and you killed it!”

  “You really have no idea, Jaguar Boy, do you…” – Erskine looked at Ben pityingly – “what lies behind the gate.”

  “I know about the temple!” said Ben. “And the golden king’s mask!”

  “We read your research!” Rafael cried. “Or was it research you stole from other people you murdered?”

  “And what else do you know?” Erskine asked quietly. He went to Luis and tugged at the straps of the pack, taking off the jaguar skin and unfurling it.

  Dry-mouthed, Ben remembered words from Erskine’s research book: Of all the spirits, the most powerful is that of the jaguar… To clothe oneself as the jaguar is to become the jaguar…

  The pelt unfurled down Erskine’s back, the head with the empty eye sockets over his skull like a weird kind of crown, bared fangs covering his forehead.

  Raffie let out a nervy giggle, but Erskine silenced him with a look. “When I enter El Dorado and wear the golden king’s mask, my transformation will be complete.”

  Ben stared. Erskine seemed different now he was wearing the skin. Taller – stronger, somehow. What would happen if he got to wear the mask as well?

  That didn’t bear thinking about.

  “The mask has to stay in El Dorado,” Ben said hotly. “On the face of the true golden king.”

  “Yes!” cried Yara with passion. “Or the unquiet spirits can never be free!”

  “What do I care about the spirits?” scoffed Erskine. “What are they compared with the power that wearing the king’s mask will bring me?”

  He who wears the mask … the words shunted again through Ben’s mind … wears the power of El Dorado.

  Briefly, Ben’s eyes caught Luis’s, but the hunter’s face remained distant, unreadable.

  “Move!” With a nod from Erskine, Luis was forcing them on, the rifle at their backs. One by one they climbed up into the plane’s ruined cabin and lowered themselves through the tear in the fuselage, then out through the other side.

  They were frog-marched on, Ben in a daze as he led the group up the steepening slope. Whatever happened, he knew this much: they had to stop Erskine from getting the mask.

  On they climbed. The eerie silence was broken only by the wind whispering in the rock gullies above them, and the sound of their breathing.

  They headed into low cloud, and through its clammy mist, then broke out into unexpectedly bright afternoon sunlight.

  Ben stopped, blinking in the glare. Ahead of him was a man’s shape, motionless, facing him as they came up the gully.

  Dad? Could it be?

&n
bsp; He broke into a stumbling upward run, not caring about Luis’s rifle, not caring about the professor’s angry shouts, just hoping while not daring to, his heart thudding. “They’ve got a gun!” he shouted. “Dad!”

  But as he approached, he slowed down. The figure didn’t look so much like Dad any more. It’s face reflected the sun straight into his eyes, and he had to shield them from the dazzling glint as he stepped closer.

  He reached the end of the gully, and a sheer wall of rock, and came face to face with not one man, but two.

  “The view was so beautiful that none could take their eyes from their reflections.”

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  Two stone men, their faces painted gold. Ben stared at the tall sculptures, each half-embedded in the towering cliff that barred the way. They were so real-looking, he expected their eyes to snap open at any moment and the men to start breathing. Instead their lids stayed closed as if they were asleep. The only part of their devilish faces that wasn’t gold was their teeth, which were sharp white and bared – more animal than human.

  “The guardians of the dead,” Yara whispered by Ben’s shoulder.

  The guardian on the left had his arms straight against his sides, but one arm of the guardian on the right was outstretched – the palm of the hand held up towards the sky. The two stone men stood a couple of metres apart. Between them was a line of hieroglyphs, as if over some unseen doorway.

  The professor pushed roughly past to inspect the sentinels, and Ben felt the jaguar fur brush his face. “I remember: this was the place.” Erskine touched the closed eyelids and the sharp teeth. “This is the gateway to El Dorado!”

  Fleetingly Ben saw Erskine’s face reflected in the demonic face.

  The professor stood back and folded his arms. “Find the way through, then, Jaguar Boy,” he challenged. “Show us what you were chosen to do.”

  “Careful, Ben!” warned Rafael, shuffling back a little. “It’s bound to be booby-trapped!”

  ‘I’m doing this for Dad,’ Ben said, stepping forward, giving Erskine a defiant look. “And the unquiet spirits. Not you.”

  He tentatively pressed a hand on to the rock face between the guardians, then ran his fingers quickly over the smooth surface.

  There was going to be a secret lever, right? Like you saw in the films. Something to press or twist, maybe.

  Ben continued to explore, but there was no sign of anything other than the solid wall. He turned his attention to the guardians, and they were unexpectedly cold under his touch.

  Ben glanced at Luis, and saw the rifle still levelled at his friends. Erskine stood there watching him closely, but keeping a distance.

  What are you afraid of, Erskine? Ben felt wisps of mist cool his face as he continued his search. There had to be something! Shadows grew and shrank over the stone. The sun dropped a little lower, deepening the gloom.

  But Ben still had no clue how to open the doorway.

  “The hieroglyphs…” he heard the Professor say, and Ben turned to see him translating the symbols running from one guardian to the other.

  “ONLY BY SACRIFICE CAN THE TRUE GOLD BE FOUND.

  “Only by sacrifice…” Erskine muttered. He walked over to Luis and gestured to him to hand over the gun.

  Ben saw Yara look at him in alarm, while all the colour drained from Raffie’s face.

  Luis raised his eyebrows, but handed over the weapon just the same.

  Erskine swung the gun at the children, aiming it first at one and then at the other.

  The muzzle came to rest pointing right at Yara.

  “Local blood,” Erskine said, matter-of-factly. “It would be a suitable sacrifice.”

  Raffie gasped. Yara stood very still and straight, her fists clenched by her sides.

  A blood sacrifice. Ben gaped. Was that what Erskine thought he needed?

  There has to be some other way!

  But from the look on the Professor’s face, there was no doubt about his intentions. Ben gave a shout and rushed at Erskine. Adrenaline drove him towards the gun – but suddenly his legs were kicked from under him, and he slammed on to his back, whacking his head.

  Luis added a swift kick to Ben’s ribs. “Keep out of it, Jaguar Boy,” he growled.

  Ben lay there, fighting the feeling of passing out. The outstretched arm of the guardian loomed over him. Through blurred vision he saw the upturned hand.

  As he desperately tried to get to his feet, a thought came to him – something the shaman had said – what were the words again? The way to El Dorado is…

  Ben fought to think clearly. He heard Rafael’s frightened Portuguese; the sinister click as the gun was cocked. He saw Erskine’s finger hover over the trigger…

  “Don’t shoot!” Ben managed to sit up. “I’ve worked it out! Stop!”

  “Listen to the boy,” Luis told Erskine, and the professor lowered the gun a little, looking curiously at Ben.

  Am I right? Ben couldn’t be sure. With a grunt he stood and reached for the hand of the guardian.

  But the hand was too high. He tried to climb, but there were no footholds on the stonework.

  He suddenly felt Yara and Rafael close, one each side of him.

  “The way to El Dorado is in the hands of the ancestors,” he whispered to them as they hoisted him on to their shoulders.

  Ben came level with the guardian’s upturned palm. And that was when he saw them: carved into the hand, three grooves of different shapes. Wired with excitement, he quickly searched his pocket for the three gold icons.

  He glanced down and saw Erskine watching him, the gun still pointed at Yara, the jaguar teeth making little bloody scratches in the man’s forehead.

  Ben took out the bat. Sunlight gleamed off the gold as he tried to fit it into one of the depressions; he breathed out with a smile as it clicked smoothly into place. “It’s working!” he called down, and he saw Erskine smiling, craning to see.

  Ben slotted in the gold bird, then held the monkey over the final groove and pressed it home. He felt the faintest of vibrations through the air, as if something invisible was close by, moving ghostlike, through the air. Pain throbbed through his arm and he eased himself from Yara and Rafael’s shoulders and landed on the ground.

  There was silence. A deep, harsh silence, as if time itself had stopped and turned to stone.

  Ben waited, his breath catching. The silent stillness continued. There wasn’t even a breath of wind.

  But nothing happened.

  “Nothing?” said Rafael in dismay. “How can it not have worked?”

  Ben saw the smile fade from Erskine’s face, and a muscle in his jaw twitch with irritation. The man raised the rifle at Yara again, his finger back on the trigger.

  Rafael’s rapid pleading cut through the silence: “Don’t shoot her! Don’t shoot!”

  Without thinking, Ben sprang towards Erskine. He got between Yara and the gun… Stumbled. Fell. He heard Yara’s cry of fear.

  Then a crack like a gunshot ripped through the air.

  “On the summit of the pass through the mountain, we came to a halt.”

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  The noise vibrated painfully through Ben’s skull. He heard Raffie’s shocked wail. Ben twisted his body, desperately trying to get back to his feet.

  All he could think of was Yara.

  Yara…

  He felt someone crouched by him as he struggled to sit, someone helping him to get up.

  Yara?

  Ben gripped her arm, feeling a flood of relief. He frowned with confusion. “But I thought…”

  “You were ready to sacrifice yourself for me.” Her voice was hoarse, hardly more than a whisper. She gestured past him at the rock face, unable to get out any more words.

  Ben saw Erskine standing there with the rifle lowered; Luis with his mouth gaping. Raffie came close to Ben’s shoulder as he turned, and the three children pressed together, staring at the rock face; at what had made the noise.

  Where before th
ere had been a smooth cliff, now there was a thin crack in the rock, spreading upwards like a break through ice.

  The ground trembled, and the friends crouched, holding on to one another for support. The fissure widened. Loose chunks of rock tumbled from the splitting rock, and they stumbled back. There was a tremendous grating and scraping. The sound sent shock waves through Ben’s whole body, and he saw Raffie clamp his hands over his ears, Yara’s face crease up in pain.

  Then, as quickly as it had started, the noise stopped. The crack had become wide enough to pass through – with a strange grey daylight showing beyond.

  A flurry of emotion made Ben’s knees tremble. The doorway to El Dorado was open. The way is open!

  Erskine thrust the rifle back at Luis, then pushed Ben. “Go first!” he ordered.

  Ben took a step, but Luis slipped forward to block the gap.

  “Get out of the way!” Erskine’s voice was spiky with irritation. “Jaguar Boy must lead us!”

  Luis barred the way with the gun. Sweat patches stained his shirt. His scraggy face was grim and determined.

  This doesn’t look good. Ben edged back, his eyes gesturing to Yara and Raffie to do the same.

  Erskine ploughed forward – only to be knocked to the ground by Luis. In one smooth movement, the hunter hoisted the rifle up and trained it on the professor. “I’ve been taking orders from you long enough, old man.” Luis’s voice was thick with hate. “Only two of us are going in there, Prof.” His eyes flicked towards Ben. “Just me and him.”

  “Luis…” Erskine opened his hands in a pacifying gesture as he slowly got back to his feet. He took a step towards Luis – but in an instant the hunter rotated the gun and slammed Erskine in the face with the rifle butt, forcing him back.

  “Think I’m bluffing, old man?” Luis twitched the rifle, pointing back down the gully. “Take the other two kids with you and keep walking.”

  Erskine dabbed blood off his head with a handkerchief. “I agree you need Ben,” he said. “But what about the hieroglyphs?” He took a small, shaky step towards Luis. “I’m the only one among us who can read them. The gold will be impossible to find without first decoding the messages on El Dorado’s ancient monuments.”