Empire unusual suggested

CHAPTER ONE
VISIONS OF A
PARALLEL WORLD
"How will you go back?" said the woman.
"Nay, that I do not know. Because I have heard,
that for those who enter Fairy Land, there is no going back.
They must go on, and go through it."
R. Macdonald Robertson
Selected Highland Tales
So Man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown.
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal,
'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
"From Ghoulies and Ghoosties, long-leggety Beasties,
and Things that go Bump in the Night,
Good Lord, deliver us!"
Old Litany
ON JUNE 15, 1952, in the jungles of Yucatan, an archaeological
expedition led by Alberto Ruz Lhuillicr and three companions
made a remarkable discovery. The team was investigating the
impressive Palenque monuments, located in the state of Chiapas,
on the site of a well-known Mayan city that scientists were busy
restoring and mapping in systematic fashion. Yucatan is a region
of constant humidity and high temperature, and the tropical
vegetation had caused considerable damage to the temples and
pyramids erected by the Mayas, whose civilization was marked by
the genius of its architects and is thought to have declined in the
first centuries of our era, disappearing almost completely about
the ninth century—that is, at the time of the Charlemagne Empire
in Europe.
One of the most impressive constructions on the Palenque site
is the "Pyramid of Inscriptions," an enormous truncated pyramid
with a long stairway in front. The pyramid is of a somewhat unusual
design, for on the top is a large temple. The purpose of the
monument was unknown until Lhuillier and his companions suggested
that it might have been built as a tomb for some exceptional
king; or illustrious priest. Led by this idea, they began to search
the temple at the top of the pyramid for some passage or stairway
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