The King's Gold: An Old World Novel of Adventure (The Red Lion)

424 Pages·2008·1.84 MB·English

by  Yxta Maya Murray

t h e

K I NG ’ S G OL D
sS
AN OLD WORLD NOVEL OF ADVENTURE
Y M M
X TA AYA U R R AY
To my father, Fred MacMurray,
and
Edward St. John
IJKL

The [Aztecs] shouted to Cortés a great fury, inquiring why he wanted to
destroy their gods. . . . Some of [the divinities] were in the form of fear-
some dragons . . . and others half-man half-dog and hideously ugly.
So the door to [Montezuma’s treasure house] was secretly opened,
and Cortés went in first with certain captains. When they saw the quan-
tity of golden objects—jewels and plates and ingots—that lay in the
chamber they were quite transported. . . . A number of soldiers had
loaded themselves with this treasure, and some had paid for it with
their lives. Cortés now proclaimed that a third of it must be returned to
him, and that if it was not brought in it would be seized. Cortés gained
some of it by force. But as nearly all the captains and the King’s officials
themselves had secret hoards, the proclamation was largely ignored.
—BERNAL DIAZ, The Conquest of New Spain (1570)
Alchymy . . . proposes, for its object, the transmutation of metals, and
other important operations.
—SAMUEL JOHNSON, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha. Instead he saw other
faces, many faces, a long series, a continuous stream of faces—hundreds,
thousands, which all came and disappeared and yet all seemed to be there
at the same time, which all continually changed and renewed themselves
and which were yet all Siddhartha. . . . He saw all these forms and faces
in a thousand relationships to each other, all helping each other, loving,
hating and destroying each other and become newly born.
—HERMANN HESSE, Siddhartha (1951)

Contents

Epigraph iii
Book One
The Toy of Doom 1
1
I first realized that I was changing from a sedentary… 3
2
[Translated from old Italian by Lola Sanchez, with a smidgen… 15
3
The redhead and the blond stayed silent by the door… 20
4
The streetlights flickered in the windshield as we
passed through… 32
5
Hello! Handsome boy! And you must be Lola…what was it… 37
6
Marco thrust his letter once more into my hands. 53
7
I scrambled out of the tub, redialing to no avail… 63
8
When did you get here?” I almost brutally squeezed Erik… 69
9
My gaze flew above the forms of the impatiently waiting… 78
10
It’s the four cities,” I shouted through the room. “The… 93
11
We hurried out into the dark city streets, navigating the… 100
12
The scaffolding’s metal cage ascended three hundred
feet into the… 103
13
The walls of the crypt were covered with hundreds of… 111
14
Erik and I approached the helmeted slave. Blasej had tumbled… 123
15
An L!” Dr. Riccardi hissed excitedly two hours later in… 126
Book Two
The She-Wolf 135
16
At eleven a.m. the next morning, a considerably strung-out Erik… 137
17
The candlelight continued to burn up from the heavy red… 152
18
Lola!” Erik cupped his hands on both sides of my… 157
19
The wolf’s beautiful face glimmered inches from
my own. Made… 161
20
I fell under the earth. Dropping free into a black… 170
21
The creaking door was so heavy we could barely push… 175
22
The water from Erik’s bottle had glazed the pale points… 182
23
Erik, can you walk?” 190
24
You know, if Antonio Medici were suffering from a disease… 194
25
Antonio says there are three clues in here,
Erik—’having survived… 204
26
Dad—are you there?” I was fumbling with the cell phone… 211
27
My father’s voice crackled over the phone line as he… 220
28
Shining leaves spiraled down upon the three of us. Marco… 226
Book Three
The Invisible City 237
29
I think I’ve figured out the next step,” I said… 239
30
Okay, in the interests of full disclosure, I just have… 248
31
Erik and I exited our Fiat, wandering into the tumble-down… 255
32
It took a while for the flowers to burn, on… 260
33
A pallid wall and then only thoughts, fractions of thoughts. 263
34
It says Civitas Dei,” I rasped. 276
35
The early morning sun glittered like the finest jewel in… 280
36
I gaped at the death certificate. Yolanda was oblivious to… 287
37
The three of us circled the seated Marco, who looked… 295
38
Moving up beyond the barricade of the marble columns, we… 302
39
What is that?” Marco gasped the question in my ear. 307
40
Madam, where to?” 317
41
The green fields whisked by outside the train window as… 323
Book Four
The Shape-Shifting Wretch 333
42
I looked back from the approaching fairy city to Marco… 335
43
We ran into a cave filled with red-gold light. 350
44
Standing in a pool of people, we stared up at… 356
45
Tomas de la Rosa stood six deep back in the… 362
46
The boat motored softly through the black and pewter water. 366