"Begone with them," the priest said with contempt. "But the king god stays here. Bring wine and bread for his sustenance in the Land of the Dead."

When the work was finished and the priest stood over the dead gods, his arms spattered, he listened to himself. The breath rushed heavily out of him, and his heart was still thudding with the kill. The muscles in his arms twitched. His fingers felt weak. The gods had given him the Sight, but he was not a peaceful visionary. The excitement of the kill instilled a feeling in him close to lust. There would never be a woman for him, he knew, because no woman could satisfy him as well as death in the moment he inflicted it. The first sharp thrust into a man's living body, stilling it forever, brought him more pleasure than a thousand courtesans.

Exercising all the control he could will, he placed the stone dagger carefully in its sheath on the column beside the slabs holding the bodies.

His head ached. A refrain, feeling like a black thread in his brain, began to voice itself, intruding and unwelcome.

The weapons. The shafts of fire.

The gods had been captured without the magic weapons that had driven the Olmec into defeat. Without them, victory would always belong to the favorites of the alien gods, to those who dwelled in the kingdom on the other side of the fire mountain Bocatan.

The priest's task was not yet finished. Before his people could come to power, he would have to steal the fire of the gods.

Unnerved after his ordeal, controlling each small step, the priest walked up the thirty-three steps out of the cave. Outside, rising above the cave, roared the waterfall that hid the shrine from view of the Olmec's enemies. The priest stripped himself beside the thundering waters, wincing as he pulled the white ray spines from his body. Then, his wounds bleeding freely, he stepped into the cold water to cleanse himself.