Obsidian & Blood (18 page)
Their chests gaped open: an uncomfortable feeling, given how close I'd come to sharing the same fate. My wounds itched under Teomitl's bandages.
I whispered a quick litany for the Dead, brushing blood from my wounds over their rotting foreheads – the best I could do outside my temple and without much living blood of my own. Later, I'd make sure someone picked up the corpses and brought them back to give them a proper funeral.
"We leave this earthThis world of jade and flowersThe quetzal feathers, the silverDown into the darkness we must goLeaving behind the marigolds and the cedar treesSafe journey, my friends, safe journeyAll the way to the end."
Dark splotches of blood marked the floor of the hut. I knelt, rubbed my fingers on one of them. It flaked. Completely dry, then. By the look of the corpses, they had been dead for some time anyway: at least a day, if not more.
There was something… A faint, very faint trace of magic within the hut. I closed my eyes. It was god-given, like the magic that had hung in Zollin's room, but somehow different. Less angry. More desperate. It seemed to emanate from the wattle-and-daub walls of the hut. Puzzled, I knelt to take a better look. In the blood was the faint imprint of a human hand; and faint scratches on the ground.
I picked up the fallen torch, started to dust it off, and gave up when I saw how much mud was clogging it. I teased a branch loose from the torch, cleaned it as best as I could before plunging it into the flames of the hearth. It took a long time for the fire to take hold. When it did, it was a small and sickly thing, pulsating weakly at the end of my improvised torch. I moved back to the hand imprint, shone the torch on the ground. By its side, the blood had formed patterns…
No, not the blood. Someone had started to trace glyphs for a spell. That was the reason the magic, spreading out from the incomplete pattern, had impregnated this area.
The glyphs, trembling in the torchlight, were the ones for "water" and "escape": both badly smudged, traced in a shaking, fearful hand, and the last one incomplete.
I closed my eyes. The beast had brought Priestess Eleuia here, after abducting her from the girls' calmecac. The attempted spell had to be hers, a desperate attempt to escape her abductor. But Eleuia was, quite obviously, no longer here.
My torch wavered, and finally went out. I bit back a curse.
"Anything?" Teomitl asked, shadowing me from the threshold. He was leaning on a crutch, his leg neatly splinted with dried branches.
"Blood," I said, with a sigh. "She was here."
"Blood," I said, with a sigh. "She was here."
Teomitl did the same thing I'd done: withdrawing a branch from the ruined torch, dipping it into the fire. He turned from one end of the hut to another, seemingly oblivious to the corpses. Of course, they'd only be peasants for him, not worthy of his attention.
"Mm," he said. "People came here."
"The peasants?" I asked.
"No," Teomitl said. "After the peasants were dead." He waved the torch towards the farthest end: outlined in blood were two foot prints, of different sizes.
"At least two people?" I asked.
"At least two people?" I asked.
"With sandals. So probably not peasants," Teomitl said. "And it wasn't long after the peasants' deaths, or they wouldn't have left marks."
Eleuia had been there, too, while the blood was still fresh; otherwise she wouldn't have left a handprint.
"They took her?" I asked.
Teomitl shrugged. "Probably."
"They took her?" I asked.
Teomitl shrugged. "Probably."
I glanced at the ground near the threshold, but we'd damaged too much of it with our battle. "And we still don't know where." Which was true, if frustrating. None of that would help me understand what was going on. "Very well. Help me out, will you? I have memories to access."
For the ritual, I needed a clean patch of land. One-armed and onelegged, Teomitl and I managed to drag the beast's corpse to the empty patch of earth before the hut. The wound I'd dealt it gaped in the moonlight, exuding faint traces of Mictlan's aura; of the magic that had coursed through me to bring the beast down.
I retrieved all my obsidian knives, and used one of them to draw a ragged circle in the earth. Then I withdrew to survey my handiwork. The circle looked as clean as I could make it. It would have to do.
Further away, in the field where the beast had fallen, its blood had shrivelled the maize, leaving a patch of emptiness oozing Mictlan's power. In that place, nothing would grow for many years.
Father, I thought uneasily, would have been angry at the way we'd damaged the harvest to come. The family might be dead, but the land would revert to the clan; and another married couple would soon cultivate this field, wondering why nothing would grow there.
Father wouldn't have tolerated this. But Father was dead. I had… I had run away from his drowned corpse, seeing in every feature of his face the disappointment that I'd turned out as I had. It was the single vigil I had never undertaken, and it still itched at the back of my mind.
Father was dead, buried into the bliss of Tlalocan, the Land of the Blessed Drowned. I had other things to worry about.
Teomitl's taut pose suggested the question he dared not ask: "And now what?"
"Stay out of the circle."
He made a quick, angry gesture. "Surprise me."
Ignoring Teomitl's taunt, I knelt inside the circle. With my good hand, slowly, methodically, I widened the wound in the beast's belly. The entrails came steaming out, exuding not the smell of bowels but the wet, musty odour of a grave long unopened.
I drew another gash, this time nearer the ribs, and went looking for the heart.
It was a small, pathetic thing when I finally pulled it loose: the size of a human one, as unmoving as the jade heart now was.
I arranged the entrails in an inner circle within the one we'd already cleared. Then I cut the small, stylised shape of a reed, my day sign, into the flesh of the heart. It barely bled, as if death had emptied the beast's veins.
Finally, I came to stand in the centre of both circles, holding the heart in my good hand. It was as smooth and as warm as the flesh of a young child.
"This is the day that saw me born, this is the name my father gave me," I whispered, and the heart twitched under my fingers.
I wrapped my hand around the heart, and went on,
"I am the knife that severs lifeI am the blade that stole this breathMine is the heartMine are the eyes that see in darknessMine the muscles and fangs that claim life."
It was as if a veil had been lifted from the world: suddenly I saw the whole of the Floating Garden. In the hut were the corpses I had already feasted on. By my side was a young, impatient warrior whose heart beat so strongly: such a treat, it would be such a treat to open his chest and feast upon it. But I couldn't. I had other tasks to take care of.
"Mine are the eyes that see in darknessMine the heart that longs for other heartsMine the memories of the true hunter."
The world flashed, then went dark. When I opened my eyes I wasn't in the chinamitl any more but tumbling through an open gateway, into a house that was hauntingly familiar.
The sun hadn't yet set. I shied away from the light, growling softly, longing for the coldness of the Eighth Level, for the dry, clean smells of Mictlan. Here everything hurt, from the light to the sharp odour of maize wafting through the door.
A man laughed, high above me. I couldn't see his face: just a warm, beating heart with many years of life ahead of it. "Such a powerful one. A very impressive summoning, my Lady."
Another voice, deeper and graver. The heartbeat of this one was strong, brash. I salivated at the thought of devouring it. "Don't gape. It is adequate for the task."
A sullen laugh.
"My Lady, you know what we need," the voice said, turning to the third person, the one who hadn't yet spoken: an angry heart, all twisted out of shape by hatred. "Wait for night. And remember, do not kill. We need her alive."
"I know exactly what you need," the woman said. And the voice… The voice, too, was hauntingly familiar.
No. It could not be.
She knelt to grasp my head, raising my gaze towards her face. Her smell was intoxicating: anger and hatred and envy, all swirling around something else I couldn't name – and her heart… Such a young, delicate heart…
"This is what you will do," she said.
And there was no doubt left; none at all. For the voice, unmistakably, belonged to my brother's wife, Huei. I must have closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I was lying in the middle of the circle, sprawled over the beast's body. My chest ached fiercely under the bandages.
Teomitl's scowling face entered my field of vision. "I told you–"
"Not to move around. I know," I said, taking the hand he offered me, and rising. Around us, the moon cast its light on the desolate Floating Garden: the place where I'd accessed the beast's memories was now nothing more than a circle of charred ashes, blackened earth which would take years to heal. Mictlan's magic was anathema to life; and the beast had been bursting with it.
More damage to the harvest. Just what I needed. I tried to remain focused on this – to forget what I had seen – but I couldn't.
Huei.
My brother's wife had summoned the beast.
Why?
She hadn't seemed… I shook my head. She had seemed sincere; but, then, like Neutemoc, she had moved away from me in four years. She was no longer my only ally in my brother's house, but something else entirely.
It wouldn't matter. A chill was working its way into my bones. Summoning a beast of shadows carried its own penalty. The Wind of Knives would soon appear in Tenochtitlan, to kill Huei for her transgression.
What would I tell Neutemoc, when he came home to find his wife dead? Neutemoc was innocent of everything save adultery; but that thought didn't bring me any relief.
No. There had to be some explanation. Something. Anything that would explain the utter failure of Huei's marriage.
"We need to get back to the city," I said to Teomitl.
He rowed me back to the shore in silence. As the oars splashed into the lake, I kept wondering when I would feel the first touch of cold on my spine. Seven years ago, I had merged my mind with the Wind of Knives to bring down an agent of Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, and that mind-link had never quite died. When the Wind entered the Fifth World, I would know.
Teomitl was too tired to row farther than he had to. And I was not in a state to row either, with my injured arm. We left the boat at the edge of the Floating Gardens and walked north, back into the city of Tenochtitlan proper.
Teomitl didn't speak until we were walking once more on the familiar streets of the Moyotlan district, with the grand adobe houses of the wealthy rising all around us. "Where to?" he asked. He was leaning on his crutch, his face transfigured by eagerness. I hated to dash his hopes, but there were things I couldn't let him see.
"Home, for you," I said. I did not want to face the Wind of Knives; to face the darkness and the coldness, to plead for Huei's life even though I knew the Wind could not be swayed. But this was something that I would do alone. I would not drag someone else into it. The Wind of Knives would merely cut them down like maize, dispassionately judging that they had no right to speak with Him.
"What?" Teomitl asked. "You promised–"
"No," I said, hating myself for my cowardice. "I allowed you to come with me. But what happens now is something you're not prepared for."
No, not prepared for. That while my married brother was busy courting a priestess, his own wife, Huei, plotted with shadowy figures to get her revenge.
"I'm prepared," Teomitl said, sullenly.
"You're in no state to fight."
"I'm prepared," Teomitl said, sullenly.
"You're in no state to fight."
I could have predicted his next remark. "Neither are you."
"No," I said. "But there are other ways to fight." Even magical weapons would shatter against the Wind of Knives, and nothing would stop or sway Him. How could Huei have been so foolish?
Teomitl was still watching me. "Go home," I said, as gently as I could. "I'll call on you the next time there is something, promise. But this isn't the right time."
"I don't see why," Teomitl said. But he looked down, at his splinted leg, and sighed. "You'll summon me?"
"Promise," I said, praying that the next time I was involved with the underworld, it would be safe enough for him to accompany me. "Go home, and take care of that leg."
"Very well," Teomitl said, grudgingly. "But I'll hold you to this, Acatl-tzin." He started limping towards the Sacred Precinct, then turned, a few paces from me. "And don't forget to be careful with those wounds!"
His attitude – thoughtless arrogance, the strange, buoyant mood that propelled him through life – was not only that of a warrior, but that of a nobleman's son. Where had Ceyaxochitl found him?
Left to my own devices, I walked back to Neutemoc's house. I made my way through the network of Tenochtitlan's canals – under deserted bridges, past houses lit up by late-night revelry, where snatches of music and loud laugher wafted into the street, a memory of what I couldn't have.
I prayed that there was still time left to avert the disaster.
TENMictlan's Justice
Despite the late hour, Neutemoc's house was still lit, though the only sounds that pierced the night were the lilting tones of a poet reciting his latest composition. Cradling my bandaged arm in my good hand, I walked to the door.
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