“Brethren,” he said, “the words seem clear, and yet so strange is this writing that I fear my learning is at fault, and that I had best give it to others to decipher.”
“No; read, read,” they cried again, almost angrily.
Then he read:
“This is the voice of the Nameless god that his prophet heard in the year of the building of the Sanctuary, and graved upon a tablet of gold which he set in a secret place in the symbol of the Sanctuary, to be declared in that far-off hour when the lost is found and the signs of the Day and the Night are come together. To thee it speaks, unborn daughter of a chief to be, whose name is the name of a nation. When my people have grown old and their numbers are lessened, and their heart is faint, then, maiden, take to thyself as a husband a man of the race of the white god, a son of the sea-foam, whom thou shalt lead hither across the desert, for so my people shall once more prosper and grow strong, and the land shall be to thy child and the child of the god, east and west, and north and south, further than my eagles wing between sunrise and set.”
Now, as Mattai read, the face of Tikal grew black with rage, and before ever the echoes of his voice had died away, he sprang from his seat crying:
“Whoever it was that wrote this lying prophecy, god or man, let him be accursed. Shall the Lady Maya—for her it must be whose name is the name of a nation—be given in marriage to the white dog who awaits his doom without that door, and shall his son rule over us? First will I see her dead and him with her!”
Then one of the oldest of the Council, a man named Dimas, who, as I learned afterwards, had been foster-brother to Zibalbay, rose and answered wrathily:
“It seems that these things must be so, Tikal, and beware how you utter threats of death lest they should fall upon your own head. We have called upon the god, and the god has spoken in no uncertain voice. The Lady Maya must become wife to the white man, Son of the Sea, and then things shall befall as they are fated.”
“What?” answered Tikal. “Is this wandering stranger to be set over me and all of us?”
“That I do not know,” said the Councillor, “the writing does not say so; the writing says that his son shall be set over us, and as yet he has no son. But this is certain, that the Lady Maya must be given to him as wife, and in her right he well may rule, seeing that she is the lawful heir to her father, and not you, Tikal, although you have usurped her place.”