The great discoveries of the preceding century, of large and wonderfully fertile lands far to the north of his own domains, had fired his imagination, and he burned to lead his people to this new land of promise, where the gods were said always to smile, and the cornfields to yield bountifully. Nor had these hopes always been without foundation. Once he had an older brother, named Chac Chan, who was to have succeeded their father as True Man, but while on a communal deer hunt, this brother had been bitten by a poisonous serpent, the deadly wolpuch, from whose bitter sting none ever recovered, and had died, leaving Holon Chan next in line of succession. And now the time was come when the exacting demands of his position, the elaborate ritual, which would fill his every hour, and the cares of the council chamber, would deprive him of every vestige of personal liberty.