Obsidian & Blood (141 page)

 

I did two things before coming back to Huchimitl's house: the first was to stop by the registers and check on the death of Tlalli. There was not much to go on. The date of death was listed as the seventeenth day in the Month of Izcalli or Resurrection, in the year Thirteen Rabbit – four years ago. An ironic time to die, if nothing else, for Izcalli is the month when the plants are reborn from their winter beds, and a time to rejoice in the coming of spring.
  Search as I might, I found no additional mention of that death, which meant that it had not been found suspicious. I exited the registers in a thoughtful mood – for, in spite of what I had just read, I didn't think Tlalli's death was irrelevant. It was too much of a coincidence that the curse on the house had started just after his death.
  Which left me with the second thing: if no one was going to tell me what had happened four years ago, I was going to have to look into the past myself.
  I stopped by the marketplace and made my way through the crowd to the district of animal-sellers. There I bartered for a peccary and the hide of a jaguar – a transaction that had me hand over most of the cacao beans in my purse to a beaming vendor. It did not matter. Though not wealthy in the slightest, I’ve always lived comfortably on the gifts the families of the dead make to me.
  The peccary was small: barely reaching my knee, it followed me docilely enough on its leash, but kept rubbing its tusks with a chattering noise, an indication that it was unhappy. Peccaries were aggressive; I did not look forward to sacrificing this one, but it was necessary for the ritual I had in mind.
  The slaves in Huchimitl's house had been given instructions to let me enter; the tall, sturdy individual who stood by the gate raised his eyebrows when I passed him, but said nothing.
  I went straight to Citli's room, deliberately avoiding Huchimitl – the last thing I needed was her trying to prevent me from investigating her husband's death.
  On my first visit, I had noticed a small hearth by the bed; it was by that hearth that I settled down. From my belt I took three obsidian knives and laid them on the ground. I threw into the hearth a handful of herbs that soon filled the room with a sharp, pungent smell; I laid the jaguar hide on the ground and coaxed the peccary onto it.
  Citli watched me with interest but did not speak. I said, all the same, “I need to do this if you want help.” He may have nodded, but it was hard to tell with the smoke that had filled my eyes.
  As I had foreseen, the peccary attacked me when I raised my knife; I narrowly avoided the sharp tusks, then buried my blade deep into its throat. Blood fountained up, staining my hands, pooling on the jaguar's hide. I spoke the words of the ritual, calling on Quetzalcoatl, God of Creation and Knowledge:

 

 

  The throbbing in my head that I had first experienced in the courtyard resumed, growing stronger and stronger until my world seemed to have shrunk to that beat. The smoke grew thicker and thicker, billowing around me like the aura of Mazahuatl's curse. Now was the time I could seize control of the spell, and turn the years back until my visions showed me the day of Tlalli's death.
  But the spell would not yield to me. Years of visions passed by, showing me tantalising glimpses of the past.
  …a man's angry voice, and a man's shadow, raising a hand to strike at something I could not see…
  …a warrior stumbling in combat…
  …a girl with the wooden collar of slaves, her cheeks flushed with pleasure…
  …a mask of ceramic inlaid with turquoise – Huchimitl's mask, gradually materialising to cover the girl's face…
  And then nothing.
  I came to myself, crouching on the blood-stained jaguar's skin, the smoke from the herbs since long gone. Outside, it was night, and the Evening Star shone in a sky devoid of clouds. Citli was sleeping, racked from time to time by a coughing fit. I lifted the curtain, wincing at the small tinkle of bells, and went out.
  One thing would not leave my thoughts: the slave girl's face, a face that seemed oddly familiar.
  I walked up to the slave by the gates, and asked, “There is a girl slave, in this house?” I described, as best as I could, the face I had seen in my vision.
  The slave shrugged. “There are many girls in this house. Maybe the others will know – “
  “Yes,” I said. “Please.”
  He led me into the slaves' quarters. I found myself in a series of smaller rooms, adorned with faded frescoes. Within, several men were playing patolli, watching the game's board intently as the dice were cast – no doubt they had bet heavily on the outcome.
  One of the players looked up, quivering to go back to his game. I described, once again, the face of the slave I had seen in my visions, and he shrugged. “Ask Menetl. She's in charge of the female slaves.”
  I found Menetl in the girls' quarters, watching a handful of giggling girls as they painted their faces with yellow makeup. She was a tall, forbidding woman who clearly looked upon me as an invader in her little world. I was about to repeat my question to her, when I saw Xoco, crouching at the back of the room.
  Now I knew where I had seen the girl's face. It was there, in the old woman's features, tempered by age, by the glare of the sun, but still close enough to be recognised.
  “So?” Menetl asked.
  “I want to talk to her,” I said, pointing to Xoco – who rose, fear slowly washing over her face.
  “My Lord?” she asked.
  I motioned for her to follow me out of earshot of the others. We walked out of the slaves' quarters and back into the courtyard, which now was deserted.
  “I have something more I want to ask you.” I watched the way she shrank back into herself, and remembered how angry Huchimitl had been when she had guessed one of the servants had been talking to me. No doubt she would have reprimanded the slaves for that offence. “It's not about what you told me earlier.”
  Xoco looked at me, her hands falling to her side. Waiting.
  I said, “There was a girl slave, in this house. Four, five years ago?”
  “We see so many girls.” Her voice shook.
  “Don't lie to me. You know who I am talking about. Who was she?”
  The old woman stared at the ground for a while. “She was my daughter.” Her voice was low, dull. “Yoltzin. She used to run in the courtyard, daring me to catch her – it was when the master was still alive – he was always generous with his girl slaves – “ She looked up at me, her eyes wide. Even in the dim light I could see the tears in them. “Such a pretty child,” she whispered.
  “Yoltzin. What happened to her?”
  “She's in the heavens now,” the old woman said.
  “In the heavens?” Only warriors dead in battle, women dead in childbirth, or sacrifice victims ascended into the heavens. The rest of us fell into Mictlan, the underworld, to make our slow way to the God of the Dead, and to oblivion.
  “They chose her,” the old woman said. “Five years ago. The priests of Xilonen came here and took her, to be the incarnation of the Goddess of Young Corn on earth and bless the fields. The High Priest wore her flayed skin for twenty days afterwards, and the rains came sure and strong that year,” she said, and there was a note of pride in her voice.
  The priests of Xilonen – looking for a maiden sacrifice, as innocent as the Young Corn. And the girl. Yoltzin. Little Heart.
  Her image would not leave my mind – her face with such bliss on it, but it had not been the bliss of sacrifice. “You said the master had always been generous with his girl slaves,” I said, slowly. “How generous?”
  Xoco would not look at me.
  “Xoco,” I said. “What happened four years ago has tainted everything in this house. You can't pretend it hasn't.”
  For the longest while, she did not speak. “They came,” she whispered. “A procession of priests like you, with feather-headdresses and jade ornaments. They asked if she was a maiden. Who was I, to shame her, to shame the master in front of the whole household?” Tears, glistening in the starlight, ran down her cheeks. “She was my daughter…”
  “I see,” I said, finally, embarrassed by such grief. “Thank you.” I watched her retreat inside the slaves' quarters, leaving me alone in the courtyard.
  The priests had checked Yoltzin's innocence, but there were ways, if one were prepared, to make it seem as though the maidenhood was intact. They were more commonly used before a wedding, to fool the go-betweens, because cheating the gods was a grave offence.
  The sacrifice had been a sham. Rain had come, because the gods can be merciful, and because Yoltzin had not been the only maiden in the Empire to be sacrificed to Xilonen on that day. Rain had come, but the sin had not been forgiven.
  With a growing hollow in my stomach, I thought of Huchimitl, alone in that house, with only the memories of her husband to sustain her – memories that were not happy or comforting. It did not look as though Tlalli had had much regard for her at all. It did not look as though she had ever been happy.
  I had been such a fool to let her go without a word. I had been such a fool to abandon her.
  I rose, came to stand at the heart of the courtyard. The buildings of the house shone under the light of the stars, white walls shimmering as if with heat, and once more I felt myself on the verge of vertigo. Once more the throbbing rose within me, the slow, secret rhythm linking the earth to the buildings, but this time I knew it to be the song of the corn as it slept in the earth. Pain sang in my bones and in my skin, and I knew it was the pain of a flayed woman, waiting for her skin of green maize-shoots to grow thick and strong.
  I whispered Her name. “Xilonen.” And Her other name, the one we seldom spoke: “Chicomecoatl.” Seven Serpents, the earth that had to be watered with sweat and blood before it would put forth vegetation.
  In my mind's eye I saw Her, coiled within the house, feeding the buildings with Her light. Gradually, She coalesced at the heart of the courtyard: a monstrous human shape with translucent skin the colour of ripe corn, with hollow eyes that swallowed the light and gave nothing back.
  “Priest,” She said, and Her voice, echoing around the walls, was amused. “You are clever.”
  “Not clever enough. I should have guessed that a curse that did not come from the underworld had to come from the heavens.”
  “Humans could have done this,” Xilonen said, still amused. “But they did not.”
  “Why do you punish them? They did not cheat you of your sacrifice.”
  Xilonen smiled, an utterly inhuman expression. “Let the sins of the beloved father fall on the beloved son, and onto his beloved war-son, and the sins of the husband be taken up by the wife. I was cheated of My revenge.”
  So Tlalli had died a natural death after all. “And is there nothing they could offer, that would make you forget?”
  Xilonen shook Her head. “They are Mine. They amuse me: Mazahuatl, that pathetic excuse for a warrior, refusing to acknowledge his bad luck on the battlefield. That arrogant, misguided mother who thinks they can fall no lower. Who thinks I have punished them enough, that I would not dare touch her son's prisoner. My son has enemies,” She said, mimicking Huchimitl's voice with a chilling, contemptuous precision. “They have no enemies but Me. And you think to bargain for either of them, priest? You serve no one.”
  “I serve Mictlantecuhtli, God of the Dead,” I said, drawing myself to my full height.
  The goddess recoiled at the mention of Mictlantecuhtli, He in Whose country nothing grows. I pressed my slim advantage.
  “There are rules, and rituals.”
  “They offered Me a tainted sacrifice.” Xilonen was growling like a jaguar about to pounce. “They cheated Me of my proper offerings. And you dare bargain for them?”
  “There is such a thing as forgiveness. Such a thing as ignorance.”
  “Ignorance is not innocence. I will not be cheated, priest, whether knowingly or unknowingly.” Her head, arched back, touched the sky; Her feet were rooted in the earth of the courtyard. She was utterly beyond me: wild, savage, cruel. She could have crushed me with a thought, had I not belonged to a god She had no mastery over.
  It had been a long time since my days in calmecac, a long time since I had learnt the hymns for every one of our gods and goddesses. I searched through my faltering memories, and finally said,

 

 

  Xilonen was crouching at the heart of the courtyard, watching me, but Her face had taken on an almost dreamy expression.
  I went on,

 

 

  She was smiling at me now, the contented smile of a child. I was not fooled. There is a reason for all those rituals, for all those hymns. They know what things are pleasing to the gods, what things will appease Them. But it had been a great wrong Tlalli and Yoltzin had dealt Xilonen; and still She had quickened the seeds; still She had made the corn grow. She felt entitled to some compensation.
  “Will You bargain with me, Lady?” I asked, kneeling before her in the dirt.
  Her smile widened – though I could barely see Her, I could feel Her amusement quivering in the air. “You are tenacious, priest – and not unattractive.”
  To Chicomecoatl, who was also Xilonen, we gave the hearts of beautiful girls and boys, that they might forever serve Her in heaven. “Is that the price?” I asked.
  She smiled. “It is tempting, priest. But not enough.”
  “What else would you want?” I asked. “I have nothing else to give but myself.”
  “I know that,” She said, reaching out with Her gigantic hand. It shrank as it came near me, until it was only twice the size of mine. She cupped my chin in Her palm, and raised my face to look into Hers. Her touch was warm, slightly moist, like the earth after the rains. Her eyes held the depths of the night.
  I held on to my memories of Huchimitl, to what she had meant, and still meant, to me. For too long, I had preserved myself; for too long, I had denied my feelings for her. Now was the time for a true sacrifice. “Is that the price?” I asked again, through lips that seemed to have turned to stone.
  Xilonen's smile was that of a jaguar given human flesh. “Such a beauty,” She whispered. I saw myself in Her eyes, as I had been in my youth, tall and beautiful and arrogant, and then as I was now, older and greyer, kneeling before Her in abject obedience. “Yes,” She said. “It is most satisfactory.”
  My skin started itching, as if sloughing away, and then the tingling sensation became stronger and stronger, and I realised what I felt were hands, stroking my back, my chest, the nape of my neck; lips, slowly caressing my fingertips and earlobes until my whole body ached with a desperate need. It was not an unpleasant feeling; although some part of me, clamouring at the back of my mind, knew that it was not natural, that I had just sold myself away.
  “Acatl? No!”
  The sound pierced my torpor, and I realised it was a voice I knew, calling my name. Xilonen released me; I became aware of the dampness of the ground, crawling up my legs; of the light of the stars above.
  Of Huchimitl, who stood before the main doors, her mask glimmering in the cold light. It was an effort to raise my head and look at her.
  “He is not Yours,” she said, anger in her voice.
  Xilonen laughed. “He offered himself. Freely, to undo the great wrong your husband did to me.”
  “He is not Yours,” Huchimitl repeated.
  “Whose would he be?” Xilonen asked, mocking. “Yours? You could not hold him.”
  “No.” Huchimitl's voice was toneless. Calmly, she walked forward, until she stood before Xilonen. “If a life has to be sacrificed, let it be mine.”
  “Yours?” Xilonen laughed. “You denied yourself to Me all those years. You hid yourself from My face, cowering in your house, for fear that others would catch a glimpse of you and be forever marked. And you think you are a worthy sacrifice?”
  I could not speak. I could not drag myself upwards, to shut Huchimitl's mouth before she said the irreparable. I could just remain where I was. Watching. Listening. Unable to affect anything.
  Huchimitl's voice, when she spoke next, was very quiet. “You made me a worthy sacrifice,” she said. “You removed me from the human world.” And slowly, deliberately, reached upwards with both hands, and took away her mask.
  I heard it clatter to the ground. But it mattered little. I had thought it hid the ruins of the curse, that it would be the face of some monster, painful to look at.
  In a way, it was worse.
  There was a face, under the mask. It was no longer human. Every feature, transfigured, gleamed with a merciless light. The skin was the colour of burnished copper; the eyes shone like emeralds. The cheekbones were high, ruddy in the starlight, the lips parted to reveal blinding-white teeth, each like a small sun, perfect, searing. If it was beauty, it was the kind that would burn away your eyes: nothing ever meant for human minds to hold or comprehend. My eyes had started to water with that mere sight, and I knew I would be blinded if I had to endure it for much longer. No wonder Huchimitl had not been able to bear that face.
  Xilonen turned to stare at Huchimitl, Her head cocked as if admiring Her creation.
  “Am I not beautiful?” Huchimitl asked, throwing her head back. Even that mere gesture was alluring. I could not look away, even though my eyes kept burning, burning as if someone had thrown raw chilli powder into my face. “Am I not desirable?”
  Xilonen did not answer. Huchimitl came closer, hands outstretched, and laid her fingers on the goddess' arm. Even I felt the thrill that raced through Xilonen, making the whole world shudder.
  “My life for my son's, and his beloved war-son's,” Huchimitl said. “Is that not a worthy bargain?”
  Xilonen stared at her. She said, at last, “You are not amusing any more. You have accepted My gift.”
  Huchimitl cocked her head, in a gesture reminiscent of her creator. “Perhaps,” she said. “Do we have a bargain?” She gestured towards me, contemptuous. “He is nothing.” And this time I knew she was lying.
  Xilonen smiled at last, and the feeling of that smile filled the courtyard like a ray of sunlight. “Yes, he is nothing. But do not think you have fooled me into thinking you do not care either.” She laughed. “Nevertheless… we have a bargain.”
  The light around Huchimitl grew stronger and stronger, sharpening her features. I kept on looking, even though I knew that my eyesight would be forever dimmed. I kept on looking as she and the goddess vanished from the courtyard, taking away the unearthly light. I thought that, at the last, Huchimitl looked towards me, and that her lips mouthed some words. Perhaps, “I am sorry.” Perhaps, “I love you.” Something, anything to help me bear the grief that now burnt through me.
  The buildings were adobe, no longer stark white or wavering; the feeling of oppression had disappeared. I pushed myself to my feet, and met Mazahuatl's gaze. The young warrior was standing in the doorway, staring at the place where his mother had disappeared. Even with the memory of Xilonen's light clouding my sight, I could tell his dark aura had vanished. I could guess that Citli would walk to his sacrifice and join the Sun God in the heavens, and that Mazahuatl would receive his promotion.
  I did not care.
  “Mother?” Mazahuatl asked.
  “Remember her,” I said.
  I made my unsteady way through the courtyard, passed the gates, and found myself in a deserted street. It was not seemly that a priest for the Dead should grieve, or have regrets. It was not seemly to cry, either.
  I stood alone in the street, staring at the stars, and saw them slowly blur as tears ran down my cheeks.