The Smoke Hunter

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  For my family—the whole big, crazy lot of them.

  Thanks for never doubting I could make the impossible happen.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Producing a first novel is a bit like giving birth: You can do it on your own, but it’s a heck of a lot harder. This book owes a great debt to the following people:

  My readers—Jasmin Hunter, Danica Carlson, and Andrew Rea—for invaluable feedback and enthusiasm.

  Michael Kimball for being one of my first and biggest fans.

  My agent, Howard Morhaim, for his advice, support, and expertise.

  My editors, Beth deGuzman and Caroline Acebo, for falling in love with this story and helping painstakingly shepherd it from a wild mess to the book you see before you.

  And most important, my husband, Dan, for his unshakable faith in me, and my daughter, Tula, for having the courtesy to remain in utero until I completed my first draft.

  Prologue

  Cayo District, New Spain, 1632

  FOR THE HUNDREDTH TIME, Friar Vincente Salavert sank to his knees and prayed, begging forgiveness. He knew now that he, and no other, had been the agent of death for thousands—among them hundreds of women and children, the innocent and the helpless.

  His prison cell was little more than a hole in the ground, a gated underground chamber at the end of a long, dark tunnel. No sound from the world beyond reached him here, nor a single glimmer of light. In the black and the silence, time stretched and contracted, becoming meaningless. He countered disorientation with the regular rhythm of prayer.

  Prayer was all he had left. There could be no escape from this pit. When he next saw the glory of sunlight or the pale glimmer of the moon, he would be marching to his death.

  It had begun with a whisper. Salavert first heard it six months ago in the mission of San Pedro de Flores, a primitive outpost on a stinking swamp of a shoreline, plagued by mosquitos and disease. The New World, they called it. Salavert preferred the old, but it was here where God’s great work needed to be done. An entire continent deprived of the love of Christ, and Salavert could be the one to bring it to them.

  He had crossed the sea, carried by visions of the thriving population of a new continent hungry for salvation. The reality had been starkly disappointing. The villages that sprouted up around San Pedro de Flores like a fungus held only a huddled mass of small, dark people, most of them sick, all of them filthy. The rest of the population of this “New World” was scattered through the thick, humid wilderness that surrounded them. Four days slogging on muleback through the jungle might bring him to a collection of farms with perhaps a hundred souls, most of whom would refuse to hear the Word of Christ, or pretended to listen, only to return to their old gods as soon as Salavert and his brothers had departed.

  He had been near despair when the rumors first came to him, stories of a great city hidden in the unexplored vastness of the mountains. Some described a metropolis of marble palaces and gleaming temples, a paradise where even the poor laborers drank from jeweled goblets and the kings slept in rooms tiled with gold. Others spoke of a land of demons disguised as men, horrors that lived on the raw flesh of children, painting the steps of their temples with blood.

  Some called it the White City. El Dorado, others said. A place of gold and death.

  No one, of course, had seen it for themselves, or even claimed to have met one who had. It was a river of story without a source, something that haunted the jungles of New Spain like the ghost of one who had never lived.

  That did not stop it from sinking hooks into Salavert’s imagination. Day after day, he worked to bring the light of Christ into the minds of the pitiful groups of natives who found their way to the mission. But if he could find a place inhabited by more than a scattered, impoverished few, imagine what an effect he might have. He would bring God’s Word to the heart of a native king, and like a Constantine of the New World, he, in turn, would impose it upon his people. With one blessed act, Salavert could be responsible for bringing thousands of souls to the faith.

  He had tried to inspire his abbot with this vision, but the man remained stubbornly blind to its potential. The great cities that peppered the jungles had been abandoned centuries ago, he said. They were all ruins, buried in thick vegetation and avoided by the small tribes of natives, who called the places haunted. Only far to the north, in the land of the Aztecs, had such metropolises remained alive and thriving, though, of course, Cortés had seen an end to that. Now even the halls of Tenochtitlán were silent, save for the beating wings of swallows nesting where princes and warriors once walked.

  The abbot believed the rumor was only another dream of the gold-hungry that would drive them to lonely deaths in the wilderness. Try as he might, Salavert could not convince him otherwise. Then God saw fit to call the old abbot into his arms, and the brothers chose one to replace him whose mind was not so closed.

  The new abbot gave Salavert permission to seek out the truth behind the rumors, along with two of his brothers in Christ and a dozen new converts to serve as bearers. They trekked north, moving from village to village, following stories of the fabulous city.

  It eluded them every time, seeming tantalizingly close, only to fade once more into obscurity, until at last Salavert reached the dark mountains where no Christian foot had ever stepped. What lay beyond was a mystery even to the wildest of natives, and the region was vast enough that he could wander through it for a lifetime and never cross the same path twice.

  He had plunged into it, trusting faith to lead him to his destiny, but it seemed that God had abandoned him. Sick and starving, Salavert and his brothers remained lost in a verdant hell for weeks, until at last he had known they must find civilization or die.

  Skeletal and sweating, Salavert climbed to the crest of a high mountain ridge. There he fell to his knees and uttered one final plea that he would be chosen for this great work: the saving of an entire city from devil worship and damnation. He put his very soul into the prayer, along with every ounce of his will and the last of his hope.

  And he was answered.

  In something like a dream, glimpsed through a haze of weakness and desperation, the clouds before him parted and the light of heaven gilded the face of a near mountain, across which wove a dark and distinctive line of stone as black as smoke.

  It was the sign he had prayed for. Salavert ran, stumbling, back to his brothers, and told them that they must proceed. The entrance to the city was at their feet. God had pointed the way.

  They had doubted him. He read it in their faces. They thought the long weeks of hunger and isolation had finally made him mad.

  They were wrong.

  He could still remember his first glimpse of the city, how they had staggered out of a narrow ravine to see it glimmering before them, a place even more magnificent than the rumors had promised. Stone towers rose from the dark green of the jungle canopy, shining like the purest white marble. The streets gleamed like rivers of snow. Truly, there was no place on earth so near to paradise.

  Or to hell.

  They killed the bearers first, opening their throats with blades of obsidian. The ranks of prie
st-kings in their barbarian finery watched as blood poured down the steps of the temple like a rich red carpet. Salavert was imprisoned with his two brothers in Christ, thrust into a pit where time had no meaning, where all of his awareness was filled with the smell of earth and decay.

  They took Brother Marcus first. The light of their torches burned Salavert’s eyes, already so accustomed to the darkness. They bound the monk’s hands and led him down the tunnel. He had prayed as he went, calling out to the Lady of Mercy to protect him.

  Salavert could not say how long it was before they returned for Brother Ignatius. The younger monk had gone mad by then, the darkness seeping into his brain. He leapt at the guards as they entered, fighting them like an animal with teeth and nails as Salavert had pressed himself to the far corner of his prison, an instinctive horror forcing him away from the disfigured faces of the soldiers.

  The image remained with him long after the guards had carried Ignatius away, his screams echoing down the tunnel behind him. Salavert knew the meaning of the oozing sores that wept down his captors’ cheeks. He recognized the pestilence.

  He had been a mere slip of a boy when smallpox had burned through his native Valencia, leaving piles of corpses in its wake. That his expedition was responsible for bringing it here was impossible to deny.

  The disease would spread like wildfire. Some would burn with fever, faces swollen and unrecognizable. Others would bleed, life pulsing from every orifice. He had seen what the disease did when it ravaged the villages near San Pedro de Flores. It was murder, carried in the breath or a touch.

  But here, in the White City, perhaps it was something else. That he had been called here, Salavert had no doubt. But the people of this place were steeped in a darker wickedness than he ever could have suspected. It occurred to Salavert that instead of the Word, God might have sent him to bring a scourge to this city that would cleanse it of its evil in a way that none could resist or overpower.

  The instrument of redemption he had been chosen to deliver was not prayer but death.

  Though time was next to meaningless in the darkness of his pit, Salavert felt that the visits of the guards who brought him food and water seemed to be growing further and further apart. The faces of the men who came changed constantly, and increasingly he saw not only the marks of disease on their skin, but fresh wounds, as though they came to him by way of some ongoing battle.

  Salavert had long since accepted what his end in this dark place must be. He would join the ranks of the holy martyrs, making the ultimate gift to Christ. But as he waited in that long, unending night, it occurred to him that instead of blood on the temple steps, his fate might lie in a slow death by starvation, forgotten in a pit beneath the earth.

  The notion filled him with unspeakable horror.

  When at last the light glimmered against the tunnel walls, stabbing his unused eyes with pain, he felt not fear but relief.

  He emerged, blinking against the agonizing brightness of the day, to find that the city he had seen when he arrived had gone. In its place was a vision of hell.

  Bodies were strewn across the ground. They were not the victims of disease, but of the sword. The air was dense with smoke, an acrid burning that told him both the fields and the dead were aflame. Salavert recalled the wounds on the faces of the men who had been tending to him and realized that God, in His wrath against the people of this city, had visited them with war as well as plague.

  His escorts pushed him past the carnage, crossing the square to where the great pyramid temple loomed like a pale ghost in the smoke.

  The building was massive. Salavert had seen great monuments before, among them the cathedrals of Valencia and Seville. Next to this, those towering tributes to the glory of God seemed like children’s toys, slight and full of air.

  When last he had looked upon the temple, its stairs had run red with the blood of the natives who had accompanied him and his brothers from the mission. How long ago had that been? Weeks? Months? It was impossible to say, and hardly mattered anymore.

  The climb was endless. He had grown feeble during his long imprisonment and staggered up each step, the guards—weakened themselves by disease—all but carrying him by the time they reached the pinnacle.

  A slight figure waited for him there, made larger by the elaborate feather headdress and jade breastplate of a priest.

  But this was no priest. It was a mere woman, done up in priest’s clothing. Her face was familiar, and Salavert realized he had seen her before, standing at the back of the assemblage of great men who had presided over the slaughter of his bearers. Her place in the crowd was that of some minor functionary, no one of importance, but the jagged scar that marred the skin of her cheek had marked her in his memory.

  Now she wore the finery of the high priest, which sat overlarge on her, as though meant for a bigger man—which he was certain was the case. Around her neck hung one of the medallions of dark stone he had seen on the most prominent of the men who had watched over the sacrifices, a symbol of rank he was sure she would never have attained if not for the plague.

  The implication was clear: This woman—this girl—was all that was left of that grim assembly. The elders he had seen before, men who had reeked of power despite being demon-haunted heathens, were all dead. The small, scarred woman before him was all that remained of the rulers of this city.

  His impure heart revolted at the thought. Was he really to be martyred by a mere female? The notion filled him with disgust. Yet God would think no less of his sacrifice for its being made at the hand of a woman. It was only his pride that rebelled, and pride was sin.

  At least the woman would not hold her blasphemous position for long. Her face was flushed with dark purple patches and small pinprick sores, symptoms Salavert knew indicated a less visible but more virulent form of the disease. It would end in blood, her vital fluid hemorrhaging from every orifice—a horrific way to die.

  God had not spared His hand in this place.

  The woman made a sign, and the two guards pulled a black hood over Salavert’s head. The cloth stank of another man’s fear, enclosing him once more in the darkness.

  He was pushed forward into what must be the narrow sanctuary at the top of the temple, but he did not remain there. Instead, he was dragged along an obscure and tortuous path—up ladders, down sharply twisting stairs, through echoing chambers, and along the length of a long, slippery tunnel. The air around him grew cool, filled with the smell of damp, and he knew he was being taken into the very bowels of the temple.

  At long last, they halted. The bag was pulled from his head, and to his profound surprise, Salavert found himself inside a cathedral.

  It had been formed by the hand of God from the very earth itself. The cave was massive, filled with soaring pillars and graceful veils of stone. The stone around him glittered in the torchlight, sparkling like stars. Tombs surrounded him, enormous stone sarcophagi engraved with ancient pagan figures. It would have been a sublime vision, if not for the paintings covering the walls.

  Their artistry was undeniable. The colors were rich, the figures startlingly lifelike, but the scenes they depicted were images from hell itself, portraits of violence and horrifying decay.

  They failed to hold his gaze. Instead, his eyes were drawn to a dark pool that lay in the very heart of the cavern. No, not a pool, he realized. It was a great flat disk of stone. The surface was polished to gleaming perfection, reflecting phantom glimmers of the flames that illuminated the space around them.

  It was a mirror. A massive black mirror made of stone instead of glass.

  Dark, ruddy stains marked the ground that surrounded its still, flawless surface. With the instinct of a cornered animal, Salavert knew he was looking at the remnants of centuries of blood. The implication was as clear to him as the painted horror on the walls of the cave.

  They had made sacrifices.

  A primal fear choked him, banishing all his martyr’s resolve and leaving in its place only the pure,
animal urge to flee.

  He screamed, the sound echoing off the delicate frills of stone, but the guards held him fast, dragging him to the mirror’s edge as the small priestess began her incantation.

  The droning, singsong tones of her chant melded with the fading echo of his terror, the cave transforming her worship and his cry into a symphony.

  She took a small, wicked blade of obsidian from a sheath at her waist, and Salavert began to recite the last contrition, grasping frantically for some semblance of self-control. He must meet his God in peace and acceptance, not howling like a beast at the slaughterhouse. Still, sweat dripped down his body beneath the remains of his cassock, and he stumbled over the words that should have been as familiar to him as his own name.

  But the knife did not move for his throat. Instead, the priestess drew it across the skin of her own palm. She whispered something, a few phrases laced with grief and desperation, the tones very like those of a prayer. Then she knelt at the edge of the dark glass and pressed her bleeding hand to the surface.

  There was a hiss like water on a hot pan. Smoke welled up from between her fingers. The priestess leaned into it, breathing deeply. Her eyes glazed over.

  The air around Salavert seemed to grow colder, and the monk was overwhelmed by the awareness of something at work in that unholy cathedral—something old and powerful. Something that had nothing at all to do with God.

  Her eyes still unfocused, the woman extended her free hand, uttering a single word of command. To Salavert, it seemed as though two voices spoke, both priestess and something that was more than an echo.

  He wanted to run, but the guards were strong, and they dragged him to her side, forcing him to his knees. He closed his eyes, trying to prepare for the inevitable blow, but instead her small hand grasped the neck of his robe. With shocking strength, she pulled his face into the column of smoke that rose from the place where her blood met the mirror’s surface.