A Book Of Tongues (22 page)

A shrug. “Then I will enlighten you. It costs me nothing.”
Stepping lightly into the circle again, she sat, cross-legged, and patted the wet dirt next to her. He lowered himself down across
from her, by aching degrees, assumed a similar posture — like she
was ’bout to spin some schoolyard tall tale, and with probably just
as much weight to it. But then again, why
would
she lie?

Hell, why
wouldn’t
she?
To get her way, fool. Same as everybody else.
“Once there was a girl of the Mexica — that great empire which
once lay to the south, where those lands you call Mexico are now.
Her name I no longer recall. She was born without flaw, and raised
to pay her family’s debt to the gods until — one day — her mother
took her to the temple. She was to be
cihuatlamacazque
, a god’s wife.
The girl lived her days in endless prayer, letting blood each morning
into the sacred brazier, so that the perfume of it rose up to please
her husband-to-be — He By Whom We Live, Enemy of Both Sides,
who the Maya called God K. He who the Mexica called . . . Smoking
Mirror.

“But one night the moon was eaten, and the people cried out in
horror. Such a thing was too dreadful to let stand; the star-devils
and small female gods might burn back onto the earth without the
moon to prevent them, snatching up children and eating them. In
their despair, however, a god — perhaps even the Enemy himself —
whispered in the temple
cluazvacuilli’s
ear that she should select the
girl who shone brightest and persuade her to allow herself to be
sacrificed. Then the moon would return. And this was done.

“That girl Became me, little king, and then I Became myself —
again and again, I Became. She was not the first, though she brought
me forth at last from the Maya gallery of gods to the Mexica one . . .
re-embodied, alive once more to receive my due, to eat the precious
blood spilled in
my
name from then on. To choose my
ixtiptla
for
beauty and strength, accept their willing deaths and clothe myself
in their bodies, over and over — as you see.” She ran both careless
hands down Adaluz’s curves at once, proprietary, shivering slightly
at the feel. “Neither the first . . . nor the last.”

Rook nodded, for lack of anything better to offer.
Keep talkin’
, he
thought.

“I do not know why Smoking Mirror did what he did for me, even
now. Perhaps, since he loves to fight, all he wanted was a worthy
opponent. Yet I cannot complain, for certainly I profited from it.
Because I was one of the oldest of the gods, one of the smallest —
because my cult was eaten away by time and forgetfulness — I
endured even after the Steel Hats came with their One-God babble,
when the greatest of the new began to fade away. They thought me
no threat at all, until they were too weakened to offer me resistance.
And then, after we had sunk back down into the Ball-Court once
more to wait for renewal, there in the dark when all other gods
forgot even their own names — ”

“You hunted them down, and ate them. Took their juice, like
Grandma tried to do with me. Didn’t you.”

“I did. And why are you so sure?”

“’Cause . . . that’s what
I’d’ve
done.”

She smiled. “See, then: we do understand each other.”

Darkness above, yet far greyer, the moon starting to fade.
Darkness below, all but infinite.

“My blood was shed by those who wanted gods,” Ixchel told Rook,
“and so I became one. I fed the engine, as it fed me. But as you are
now, so once was I.”

“The engine?”

She laid one hand over his eyes, death-cool enough to make
him shudder. “This world, with all its pleasures, its wellspring of
misery — light and heat expressed through blood, the only fuel
strong enough to keep everything going. Look.”

See:

A green, steaming jungle or an arid plain. Both. Maybe. Or
neither. White cities rearing up huge as Egypt’s pyramids, their
sides gingerbread chalet-stepped, plastered with gleaming lime —
all but their central staircases, each one the shining metaphorical
fulcrums of this alien word, atop which sat kings so hung with jade
and gold they could barely move, surrounded by priests in huge,
nodding masks and feather-cloaks, dancing, drumming, speaking
in tongues. And wooden-armoured warriors carrying swords
fringed with black glass, dragging endless coffles of prisoners tied
at the neck and wrists: grist for the mill, meat for the altar-stone.

The same four moves, over and over, done until no part of the
whole seems
real
as the whole itself, the object of all this sanguine
worship. The dance which does not —
cannot
— stop, or the whole
universe dies with it.

Cut the victim free, press him (or her) down. Let them rave with
prophecy, the gods’ favour. Feed them
pulque
, that they may die
drunk and happy, giving themselves over wholly.

With your stone knife, slice across the front of the chest starting
between the second and third rib, cutting across the breastbone to
the opposite side. After, break the bone transversely, with a sharp
blow and a chisel. A gaping hole opens, exposing the lungs, which
deflate like moonflowers at dawn.

While the heart continues to beat, reach into the chest and sever
the arteries and veins. Grasp the organ, and lift it from its bloody
cradle to the sky.

The blood is then deposited in a green bowl with a feathered rim,
into which a hollow cane — also feathered — is placed. Through this
reed, the gods suck their nourishment.

Again, and again, and yet again. Without cessation. Until those
once-white stairs run red and slick and steaming, a gigantic gutter
of constantly shed grue.

A machine,
Rook thought, forced to consider it through her eyes,
but still able to retain his modern perspective.
Men as parts, blood as
oil. Cogs and wheels.

To which she replied, equally silent:
Show me this . . . machine.
Then added, once he had —
Ah. Yes. Very like that, yes.

So that was the world she wanted to bring about again, in a
nutshell — the Mayan-Aztec Death Factory, a cotton gin of severed
heads and heart-smoke, built on whitewashed bones. And he was
going to help her do it, he supposed. Not so much in order to get
what he wanted as . . . not lose what he had.

“Look you, little king — our reign was long. Four worlds came
and went, cracked to pieces beneath us. We were well-fed indeed.
A thousand thousand fellow magicians died unborn, their powers
unrealized, to help keep us alive. But instead we grew fat, we
quarrelled, we squabbled — like children, but with less reason. We
could never bridle ourselves to work together, even at the very
end . . . which is the only way your Steel Hats and desert-prophet
howlers ever overcame us. We fell down to the Sunken Ball-Court, a
dreamy morass, all blended together, and now we do not even recall
who we once were, let alone how we might Become again. But the
one great truth which watching four worlds come and go has taught
me, is how that which
is
dead need not
be
dead forever, if the right
sacrifices can only be made.”

Here she drew a long breath, oddly ragged. Almost sad.

“Yet of a hundred gods, only I — as yet — remain awake, alive,” she
said, as though to herself. “Only I.”

“Not even that Smoking Mirror of yours, huh?”

Remote: “Not even he.”

Rook snorted, not overmuch inclined to sympathy. “So you
are
just a ghost, then,” he said. “A jumped-up Goddamn ghost, nothin’
more. You’re
me
, savin’ the meat.”

“Oh, but I am far more than
that
, husband. Now that I have fed
on my betters, if not my elders, I am six gods at once — two more
than Smoking Mirror himself — and the very least of them is far
beyond
your
comprehension. You have heard their names already,
remember?

“
Ixtab
, Mother of all Hanged Men . . . she was the one who first
made contact with you, who reeled you up and hooked you in.
Ixchel
,
Suicide Moon, Lady Rainbow — she of the Ropes and Snares —
bound you fast, spun her web around you, anchored you in time and
space.
Yxtabay
, She of the Long Hair, drew you into the wilderness,
to tie you tight in desire’s meshes, with
Tlazteotl
Filth-eater ready
at her left hand to redeem you of all the sins you’ve committed in
love’s name — to eat them up, then shit them back out. Then comes
Coyotlaxqhui
, the Broken Moon, who opened the door to bring me
up into your world. And
Chalchiuhtlicue
herself, with her spinning
serpent skirt, is the womb that birthed me into flesh once more, the
way she births and re-births the whole world. The way she drowned
the last sun in order to make way for this one, which will shiver
itself apart in earthquake and calamity.”

Rook looked at her askance. “The fuck you . . . look, shit.
Look
,
now . . .” His words ran out. Then, weakly: “. . . I never asked for
any
of this.”

Another laugh. “Did you not? Well, it does not matter. You were
to hand — the perfect instrument. Your utility will yet exalt us both.”

She laid her cool palm on him again, this time at temple, and let her
silver voice’s tone drop accordingly, slow and soothing, murmuring,
plausibly, “You want to keep your own power, as is understandable.
Yet you want to save your lover, too — from himself. From
you
. The
old woman lied to you, little king, perhaps without knowing it.
Nothing must be given up. These things are not incompatible, so
long as one of the magicians involved is — something more.”

“And how would
that
happen, exactly?”

“A man who beds with a goddess becomes a god, or dies. Or both.”

“Oh, is that so? Well, I don’t think I’m much cut out to be a god,
really. Hell, I wasn’t even barely fit to serve one, by the end.”

“Perhaps. Things might differ, however, were the god you
served
one . . . you already loved.”

And at last, all at once, he saw what it was she’d had — always,
from the very beginning — in mind.

Not him at all, not ever.

Oh, you cheatin’ bitch.

Rook schooled himself hard, and drawled: “Hate to tell you,
Moon-lady, but — if you’re lookin’ in
Chess’s
direction, you may not
have exactly struck pay-dirt. ’Cause he just ain’t much of a one for
beddin’ women, full stop.”

“Oh, all men burn to return to their mother’s womb, little king —
even your wild boy. Desire has nothing to do with it. The universe’s
very spark will pull us together; I will mark him as my bridegroom
and he will come, raving. Like you, he will be unable to help himself.”

“I don’t want him hurt,” Rook repeated, stubborn. “Or —
to
hurt
him.”

“But if you
had
to, Reverend, to reap the greatest gain? For both
of you?”

He didn’t answer — couldn’t.

“Aaaah,” she breathed once more, hungry as ever. “And that is
the god-seed buried in
you
, husband — the deep-laid root of the
calabash, poking its way between the rocks and blossoming with
succulent fruit. Hun Hunaphu’s severed head, crying out amongst
the bark and leaves to be born again, at any cost.”

Rook closed his eyes. And thought, helpless:
The gods are chosen
for their youth, their beauty. They live on blood and worship.

Chess could do that. He’d be happy with people fearing him, as
always, and even happier with people having to
love
him, or the sun
goes out.

(In the machine, one cog is as good as another.)

She whispered: “The king is priest, too — always. Did I not
mention? And as
his
high priest, you would lose nothing. Nothing
but blood, in its season.”

“I’d give him that anyways, gladly.”

“As you say.”

His heart beat on, a hammer on flint, drawing sparks.

“What’ll I have to do?” Asher Rook asked, at last — eyes kept
firmly closed, so he wouldn’t have to see the pleasure in Dread Lady
Ixchel-Adaluz’s awful, answering smile.

That tripping giggle, ringing out — icy, abyssal bells.

“You won’t enjoy it, little king,” she told him, softly — like that
was any sort of news.

Rook sighed. And said: “Tell me anyway.”

Xiuhtecuhtli, the Old God, is also Huehueteotl, the gatekeeper of
Mictlan-Xibalba’s tunnels. There he appears as an elderly man, bent
over and carrying a brazier, or small stove, on his head.

But sometimes he is accompanied by another: either the Mayan
god K’awil, “God K,” who is drawn with a sacrificial knife in his
forehead and one leg replaced by a snake, or perhaps Tezcatlipoca —
the Smoking Mirror — whose right foot is replaced by an obsidian
mirror.

Tezcatlipoca is associated with hurricanes, the north, rulership,
divination, temptation, jaguars, sorcery, beauty, war. At times he
is called Night Wind, Possessor of the Sky and Earth, and — most
threateningly — We Are His Slaves.

Tezcatlipoca ruled the first world that ever existed, before it
was destroyed by Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl created the second
world, which Tezcatlipoca subsequently destroyed. Yet they worked
together to create the fifth and present world, along with their
“brothers” — Huitzilpochtli, god of war, and Xipe Totec, the god of
maize. These four gods — Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli
and Xipe Totec — are referred to respectively as the Black, the White,
the Blue and the Red Tezcatlipoca.

In fact, some even believe that
all
other gods and goddesses are,
ultimately, only aspects of Tezcatlipoca.