Jaguar Princess (28 page)

Though the color had changed and the pupils had begun to narrow into slits, they were still a woman’s eyes. And he knew that those eyes saw; they knew; they cried out in mute pain and fixed him with the desperate question he could not answer.

Why did you force this to happen
?

Rage born of shame gave his arms the strength to thrust her away. Shedding flecks of blood and shreds of skin, she came at him again as he scrambled back toward the hatchway. His hand went for the obsidian dagger at his waistband, but he had only half drawn it when she was across him.
The drop-door started to fall, and he thought Nine-lizard had knocked the prop away from outside, but before it was down, she forced herself into the gap and wiggled through.

A hoarse shout and thump from outside showed that she had got past Nine-lizard; then there was the sound of running feet echoing down the corridor.

Shaking as he had seldom done since childhood. Wise Coyote stumbled to his feet and pushed his way through the hatch, his hand tight on the hilt of the dagger.

He found Nine-Lizard on his back, bruised and winded, but not seriously hurt.

“She’s gone,” the old scribe said tightly. “She knew I tried to drop the door on her.”

Wise Coyote looked down the hall, where the echoes of those footsteps still rang.

“No!” Nine-Lizard clutched his arm.

“I said I would take responsibility for whatever happened,” Wise Coyote said harshly. “If I must kill her myself, I will. Perhaps that will be my punishment. Stay here, old man. You have endured enough tonight.”

Flinging his cloak about him. Wise Coyote strode down the shadowed hall after the footsteps.

HEEDLESS OF THE
pain from her skin-stripped limbs, Mixcatl reeled down the stone hallways of Tezcotzinco. She staggered and crashed into the walls, fighting to stay upright and make her legs carry her, even though they had somehow shifted so that her feet were becoming longer, her upper thighs shorter and more powerful, her shins elongated. In the black and white images of her memory. Wise Coyote’s face loomed, grimacing with surprise, then repulsion. Then Nine-Lizard, crying out with despair as she rushed him, then shot past him. The images whirled and swung, making her clasp her head with strangely clumsy hands and howl aloud.

Then came the prey smell. It enveloped her, seized her, dragged her down the hallway as if a chain had been cast around her neck. It should have been gone, she thought. Had not Huetzin said he would move the deer? But, outside this great cage of stone, prey wandered on the wide lawns. The scent crept through the chinks, beneath the hangings to entrance her with its blood-richness.

It was this smell, she knew, that had tormented and teased her until she could no longer withstand the urgency of the transformation. Saliva ran in her mouth, her belly cramped in the demands of hunger. Finding no exit from the cage of stone that had once been the palace, she flung herself angrily against the walls, as if she could batter a way through. The dull burning in her flesh sharpened to knifing pain each time she collided, but the intensity of her need swallowed up the pain.

And then she halted, going down on still-changing hands and feet, feeling the slight pressure of a breeze on the sensitized flesh of her face. Creeping, she rounded a comer and her night-keen eyes caught the edge of moonlight falling between a doorhanging and the stone threshold it covered. With one bound she was through.

The rough fabric against her raw flesh made her cry aloud with pain as it slid from her back and along the beginnings of a tail growing from the base of her spine. She tumbled from the patio down into the garden, came up into a crouch. Ahead, outlined in the hazy moonlight, were two long-legged shapes. Two heads lifted and two pairs of ears spread wide.

With taut slowness, she began the stalk, keeping the wind that blew from the deer at the side of her face so that the intoxicating smell kept coming to her. Now she could see the glint of their eyes, the sheen of moonlight off their coats, outline of proudly lifted heads, muzzles swiveling suspiciously.

They were stupid. Tame. So easy. So easy. She quivered and something behind her lashed as she crept forward in the first steps of her final rush at the deer.

A hoarse man-cry froze her in midleap. A heavy blow struck her back, sending her crashing back down onto the lawn. Whirling, she reared upright, forelimbs lifted, teeth bared. Again Wise Coyote’s face loomed in her memory, now strangely blurred and distorted. But the face before her was not the man she had struggled with a short time ago.

Huetzin!

It was not his name that sounded in her mind now, for she had lost all names and their meaning,
even her own. It was the smell of him, the memory of his touch and his voice that came forward to battle the wild rage that sent her charging toward him for daring to interrupt her kill.

The realization only slowed her leap, for the animal in her was now dominant. She landed on the man, bearing him to the ground. She saw his face as he caught sight of her, his eyes staring in terror, his mouth wide open. Again came the instinct to take him by the throat and squeeze hard until no breath was left.

The eyes rolled up, the face went slack, the limbs flaccid. The human fear smell that had added to her intoxication faded. It would be easy now to tear into his belly and sate the growing tyranny of her hunger. But, as with the boy in the plaza, something that had been forced into a corner inside her now screamed out in protest and she backed away, circling in confusion.

Her gaze traveled to the man’s face and she knew, in a distant way, that he had been overcome not by the power of her attack but the shock of her appearance. Miserably she put out a forelimb and tried to stroke his cheek, but her fingers had become too blunt and immobile for her to do much more than paw him, like a beast.

This man…meant…something to her, something murky that she could no longer understand but that still echoed in the remembered kindness of his voice, the gentle lightness of his touch. With a great effort to move beyond the trance of animal thought, she wished that he would wake again and stroke her with the same gentleness, but she knew that if he did wake, he would cry out in terror and flee screaming.

Panting in great shuddering gasps, she clutched Huet-zin’s head into the circle of her forelimbs and laid her face against his.

Another shout, above and behind her, made her start, but she would not release the man from her embrace. Looking up, she felt her ears flatten and saw the shadow of a club descend upon her head.

Wise Coyote let the club fall from his hand as he stood over his son Huetzin and the creature that had been Mixcatl. He had dealt the thing enough blows to kill it, yet it still breathed and kept its hateful embrace about Huetzin’ s neck.

The moonlight spilled over his shoulder onto the two bodies on the lawn. He did not want to recognize Mixcatl in the shape of the beast that lay on her side in front of him, but enough of her face was left in the cat muzzle that he could not help but know her. And the forelimbs, wrapped tightly about Huetzin’s neck, told what Wise Coyote did not want to know.

Though he had saved her from sacrifice by bringing her into his household, nurtured her talents, fed her hunger for knowledge and her need for guidance, she had turned from him to Huetzin. Though she might still serve as an ally against the Aztecs, his hopes of a loving sympathetic partner were destroyed. Gone too were the dreams of a jaguar queen who would bear him sons that carried the strength of the ancient blood. He had always been the builder, but now his plans had fallen into dust.

His hands closed about the dagger, lifting it high to plunge into the cat ribs of the creature. One stroke would end an accursed life and free both him and Huetzin from the web of fear and
madness in which they had been caught. One stroke, and Wise Coyote could not make it.

Tears of rage and grief burned in his eyes. It was not pity or love that made him lower the dagger but a more complex blend of emotions that seethed in him as he looked at Huetzin.
Fool! Betrayer
! He wanted to shout the* words aloud. All love for his son fled as he stared down at the youth, who lay as if peacefully sleeping within the embrace of the creature.

So you would love her, Huetzin. Then bear the wounds of that love
.

Another thing was there, a creature of vengeance that took over Wise Coyote’s body, closed his hands on the obsidian dagger as he bent over Huetzin. The dagger’s shadow fell on the youth’s face as the point descended.

No. It would be too easy to just kill you
.

With five short deep dagger-strokes that lay together like the claws of a jaguar. Wise Coyote ripped Huetzin’s cheek from eye to jaw. As Huetzin cried out, waking from the pain. Wise Coyote plunged his knife twice into the back of Huetzin’s hand, then yanked it free and stepped back quickly as the youth writhed.

He saw, too late, that his knife had struck Huetzin’s right hand, the one that guided the chisel. As he stared down at the blood welling from the wound, he realized what he had done. The rage seething in him turned to shock and then remorse.

He cursed the blind fury that had made him strike the youth’s sculpting hand.

When he wakes and sees his hand destroyed…I would have been more merciful to have slain him
.

A hoarse cry broke the trance of anger and grief that held Wise Coyote. He glanced back, saw Nine-Lizard stumble down the steps of the patio. Lights flared in the palace windows, telling him that servants had been roused by the noise.

The king tossed his knife into the waters of one of the fast-running streams that cut across the lawn. The current would sweep it far down from Tezcotzinco and wash it clean of his son’s blood.

He took a hempen rope from his waist, knotted it into a noose and slipped it about the Mixcatl-creature’s neck. With a yank, he broke her hold on Huetzin and dragged her away. Convulsively the youth sat up and stared with terrified eyes at the creature, a scream bubbling in his throat.

Nine-Lizard reached them. Wise Coyote thrust the rope end into the old man’s hand.

“Hold her while I see to my son,” the king said brusquely. He took Huetzin into his arms, cradling him, shielding him from the sight of the thing.

“It was the deer, wasn’t it,” Nine-Lizard whispered, kneeling beside him. The old scribe sounded puzzled. “I thought Huetzin had them taken away.”

“Some must have escaped or were missed,” Wise Coyote answered, feeling dead inside. “I saw one near the house. Huetzin tried to stop her from attacking it and she savaged him.” He looked
back over his shoulder and hissed, “Servants are coming. I want them to know nothing of this. Drag her into the bushes while I carry my son to his room. To them the story will be that Huetzin was attacked by a mountain cat but it was driven off.”

He saw Nine-Lizard nod mutely, then haul the unconscious form of the half-transformed thing behind an oleander bush.

The youth in his arms was panting and moaning, with occasional small terrified cries.

“Hush,” the king said softly, though the words caught in his throat. “You are wounded, my son, but you will live.”

The youth’s head lolled and moonlight gleamed on his blood-smeared cheek. Tears were rolling down and mixing with the welling crimson as Huetzin moaned, “It wasn’t Mixcatl. Tell me that she did not turn on me.”

But silence was the only answer Wise Coyote could give as he bore his son into the palace.

After Wise Coyote had seen to Huetzin, he went to another chamber where the form of a young woman lay on a pallet. Perhaps it was the shock of the attack that made Mixcatl’s transformation reverse itself, but whatever the reason, he was grateful.

Inside, Nine-Lizard knelt by Mixcatl, rubbing salve on her limbs and dabbing fever sweat from her brow. The king hesitated on the threshold, remembering the enraged, distorted creature she had become.

With a gesture, Nine-Lizard invited him in. “She will be too weak to transform for several days. It is safe.”

Wise Coyote sat down near the pallet. He had known that leaving Mixcatl unconfined was risky, but he could not bear the thought of putting her back in the wooden cage.

“How fares Huetzin?” Nine-Lizard asked.

“I have given him into the care of his mother. She is skilled at nursing the wounded. I myself have lain under her care.”

“Did she ask what happened?”

“I gave her the explanation we agreed on—that the youth startled a great cat who was stalking his deer,” Wise Coyote answered.

“Those facial wounds will not heal without scars. Be grateful that the young man is not prey to vanity. The bite wounds on his hand…” Nine-Lizard shook his head.

The old man did not have to finish his sentence for Wise Coyote to know what he meant. It would be many seasons before the young sculptor’s maimed right hand could again hold a stone-chisel, if ever. And Wise Coyote would have to look upon his son as Huetzin struggled, knowing that it was his knife that had crippled the youth, not Mixcatl’s teeth.

For an instant he wanted to confess to Nine-Lizard what had happened out on the darkened lawn,
then he closed his eyes. No. To admit to the act would be to admit the savagery in his own soul and a cruelty that rivaled that of the Aztecs.

Instead he thrust the thought from his mind and seized upon another.

“She nearly completed the transformation this time,” he whispered, fixing his eyes on the girl, who moved restlessly on her pallet. He could see that his eyes and tone of voice betrayed a feverish eagerness that he strove to conceal. He could also see that it disgusted Nine-Lizard, although the old scribe said nothing.

“Tlatoani, you know what should be done,” Nine-Lizard said in a low voice, looking away. “The Jaguar’s Children are ready to take Mixcatl and train her properly in the use of her gifts. I have asked them to send someone for her.”

“I did not give you permission to do so,” Wise Coyote said tightly.

“Then what will you do? Keep the girl imprisoned until the full power of her heritage comes through? Each time she transforms, she will be stronger and more dangerous. The tragedy that happened tonight will pale beside that yet to come. My king, I beg you to give up this ill-fated plan. Let Mixcatl go back to her people who are ready to reclaim her. For her sake…and yours as well.”

“If I do release her back to those who call themselves the Jaguar’s Children, will they return her to me when she is able to perform the role that I have asked of her?”

Nine-Lizard met Wise Coyote’s eyes with the same unsettling steady gaze that the king had come to hate over the past few days.

“I cannot speak for them,” he said coldly. “I doubt that they would want her to engage in such a charade as you propose. How can I make you understand that Mixcatl and others like her are not gods; at least not the kind you seek.”

“That may be true, but what matters is that IIhuicamina and those blood-smeared priests of his will believe.” Wise Coyote paced the floor beside Mixcatl’s pallet.

“And you would turn him aside by walking before his people with a woman who can turn into a jaguar at the snap of your fingers.”

Wise Coyote felt anger flare, but he kept his voice level. “To them she will be a goddess, and I her favored one. Other kings have risen to rule the Triple Alliance on less that that.”

“She will be but a performing animal,” Nine-Lizard snapped back. “And you, though you may not intend it, will become a tyrant. Neither one of you deserves such a fate.”

At this Wise Coyote lost his temper. “Be quiet, old man, or I will have your tongue cut out!”

He saw Nine-lizard pale in shock and anger.

O Tloque Nahaque, I am becoming everything that I hate in other kings
.