Obsidian & Blood (49 page)

  No, better not to think on the consequences of that now.

  For the second time in the night, I slashed my earlobes open, and spread the blood around us in a quincunx, the fivefold cross, symbol of the beleaguered world of mortals. Then I started a chant to Tonatiuh, the Fifth Sun, the Southern Hummingbird's incarnation as the supreme light.

 

 

  I slashed a wound in the palm of my hand, extended it to Teomitl, who had done the same. As we held hands, our blood mingled, trickled on the ground as one.

 

 

  Light blazed across the pattern, spreading inwards, until it seemed that it would smother Teomitl for a bare moment, before his protection sprang to life again, an island of light within the light. Everything else faded into insignificance: the room, the frescoes, the grisly remnants outside and inside the circle. The colours were swept away, merged into the light; the faces of the gods and goddesses became the featureless ones of strangers.

  The air was growing warmer, the ground under our feet was the red sand of the deserts, and a dry, choking wind rose in the room. 

  In the light was the huge visage of Tonatiuh the Fifth Sun, His war-painted face melding with that of a beast, sable hairs sprouting around His sharp nose, His cheeks still bearing the scars of His original sacrifice, His lolling tongue dripping blood. His eyes, slowly opening, were twin bonfires wrapped around the huge, hulking shape of a human being: the god Himself, still burning after all that time, endlessly burning to offer light and warmth to Grandmother Earth.

  His gaze rested on us – a touch more searing than that of the wind – before moving away.

  The wind died down, the desert retreated into the yellow stone of the room; the world sprang back into painful focus.

  I exhaled burning air, gasping for the freshness of the mortal world. Teomitl's knees had buckled, and he was slowly pushing himself up again, with angry pride on his face. "Not a careful god," he said.

  "No," I said. Teomitl pushed himself hard, but in return he demanded high things from everyone around him, gods included. "But that's bad."
  "What?"

  "He wasn't looking here," I said, trying to forget the icy void opening in my stomach. "No more than at any other place. It's not sacred ground. No soul has ascended into Heaven from here." 

  Teomitl looked puzzled. "The body…"

  "I know," I said. In my head was running a chant we learnt in the House of Tears, the school for the priesthood:
The moon hungers
to outrace, to outshine the sun; the stars hunger to come down, to rend our
flesh; the stars hunger to fall down, to steal our souls…
"It's a star-demon, and it has his soul." 

  "That can't be–" Teomitl started. "They…"

  They couldn't come here, not unless summoned; and, even then, it would require at least the lifeblood of a human being, spilled by a strong practitioner, in honour of a powerful god. We had a sorcerer loose in the city, one who wished no good to the Mexica Empire.

  And then another, horrible thought stopped me. What if it was no sorcerer?
  What if She'd got free?

  "Come on," I said to Teomitl. "We have to check something. I'll explain when we get there."

 

To my apprentice's credit, he followed without demur, though I could feel him struggling to contain his impatience as we strode out of the palace.
  "Where are we going?" he asked.

  "The Great Temple." I headed back towards the Serpent Wall, though not before looking up. The stars were still there, still reassuringly far. It had to be a freak occurrence, had to be someone taking advantage of the current power vacuum to loose fire and blood upon us. 

  "You want to pray?" Teomitl shook his head. "This hardly seems the time, Acatl-tzin."

  "I'm not planning to pray," I said. The Sacred Precinct opened up in front of us. Directly ahead was the Jaguar House, reserved for elite warriors, still lit up, with snatches of song and perfume wafting up to us. And, further down, the mass of the Great Temple, looming in the darkness like a mountain. "I'm going to make sure we don't have a bigger problem on our hands."

  "In the Great Temple?" Teomitl asked. "It's just a shrine." 

  I shook my head. "Not only that."

  Teomitl started to protest, and then he shook his head. His gaze turned towards the bulk of the Great Temple pyramid, looming over the rest of the Sacred Precinct. A fine lattice of light rose around the stone structure, flowing over the stairs and the double shrine at the top two mingled radiances, the strong sunlight of Huitzilpochtli the Southern Hummingbird, and the weaker, harsh one of the Storm Lord Tlaloc, tinged with the dirty white of rain clouds.

  Teomitl's face twisted. A pale, jade-coloured cast washed over his features, until he seemed a carving himself. He was calling on the magic of his other protector Chalchiuhtlicue, Jade Skirt, goddess of lakes and streams. His gaze went down, all the way into the foundations of the Great Temple "Oh," he said. "I see."

  What mattered was not the temple, it never had. What mattered was what it had been built on, Who it had imprisoned since the beginning of the Mexica Empire; a goddess who was our worst enemy.

 

It was the Hour of the Fire God, the last one before dawn; and the priests of Huitzilpochtli were already climbing the steps, preparing their conch-shells and their drums to salute the return of the Fifth Sun. The priests of Tlaloc the Storm Lord, much less numerous, had gathered to offer blood in gratitude for the harvest. 

  Neither order paid much attention to me or Teomitl; their heads turned, dipped in a bare acknowledgment – tinged with contempt in my case, for they knew all too well what their own high priests thought of me.

  We climbed up the double set of stairs that led to the platform at the top of the pyramid, feeling magic grow stronger and stronger around us, the Southern Hummingbird's magic, a fine mesh of sunlight and moonlight slowly undulating like satiated snakes, descending around us, mingling with Teomitl's protection, resting on my shoulders like a cloak of feathers. It hissed like a spent breath when it met Lord Death's knives at my belt, but did not do anything more. A relief, since Huitzilpochtli's magic, like the god Himself, could be violent and unpredictable.

  Atop the temple were two trapezoidal shrines, one for each god, from which the pungent reek of copal incense was already rising into the sky. Slightly before the shrines the stairs branched. On a much smaller platform to the right opened an inclined hole, the beginning of a tunnel that descended into the depths of the pyramid. The entry was heavily warded, with layer upon layer of magic, bearing the characteristic, energetic strokes of Ceyaxochitl, the old woman who was Guardian of the Mexica Empire, and the subtler ones of the previous priest of Huitzilpochtli. They parted around us, though with a resistance like the crossing of an entrance-curtain.

  Beneath us was a flight of stairs going down into the darkness. A stone chest with its lid flipped open held torches, and a single flame was lit at the entrance. We both took a torch and set it aflame before going down.

  It was damp, and dark, and unpleasantly cool. The deeper we went, the more the magic tightened around us – as if a snake, once pleasantly settled around the shoulders, had suddenly decided to constrict. Our breaths rattled in our chests until each inhalation burnt, and each exhalation seemed to leech heat from our bodies and from our hearts. Even Teomitl's light from his protective spell grew weaker and weaker; I could see him slowing down before I, too, adapted my step to his. Together, we moved through the growing thickness, moment after agonising moment.

  We passed many platforms on our way. The Great Temple had been rebuilt several times, each incarnation grander and more imposing than the last, wrapping its limestone structure around the shells of all its predecessors. Altars shone in the darkness, faint smudges on them, the memories of previous sacrifices. 

  At last we reached the bottom of the stairs, the foundation of the Great Temple, and entered a wide chamber, its walls so covered with carvings that the eye barely had time to settle on one figure before another caught its attention.

  At regular intervals lines had been carved into the stone, slight depressions linking the floor to the top of the temple, channelling the blood of sacrifices all the way down to pool on the floor. It reeked like a slaughter yard – even worse than an ordinary shrine, for there was almost no way for the air to escape such a confined space.

  The floor itself was a huge painted disk, three times as large as the calendar stone that hung in the shrine above. It lay on the floor – in fact, it
was
the floor, for it filled most of the room from wall to wall, with only a little space for an altar at the further end. The carvings on it were almost too huge to be deciphered. I could see bits and pieces of them; an arm bent backwards, a severed foot, a gigantic head with a band and rattles, separated from the dismembered torso. There was a feeling of movement, as if all the pieces were still tumbling down from the original sacrifice. Blood coated everything, its power pulsating in the air above the disk like a heat wave.

  I knelt by the disk, and carefully extended a hand to touch the edge. There was a slight sound, like the tinkle of silver bells, and I felt the stone warm under my finger, the only warmth in the room, beating like a human heart, pulsating with Her anger and murderous rage, an urge to water the earth with my lifeblood, to tear me from limb to limb and inhale my dying breath, to scatter my essence within Herself until nothing remained… 

  "Acatl-tzin?"

  With difficulty I tore myself from the stone and looked up at Teomitl. "She's still sealed here," I said. Otherwise I wouldn't just be remembering Her rage, I would be dead. The wards still held. The blood magic, renewed with the daily sacrifices of prisoners, was still as strong as ever.

  I'd have breathed more easily, had the atmosphere of the room allowed it.

  "You're sure," Teomitl said. "It's…" He knelt in turn, though he was careful never to touch the stone. "If She were to break free…" 

  Then She would regain the control of the star-demons, the creatures She had made in the distant past. She would stride forth as in the days before the Mexica Empire, hungry for blood and human hearts, eager to erase from the Fifth World all memory of Her brother's chosen people.

  All gods were vicious and capricious, but Coyolxauhqui – She of the Silver Bells, who had once been goddess of the Moon – was the worst. The others could be cajoled with the proper offerings, bribed into protecting us; we were weak and amusing, but it was our blood that kept the sun in the sky, and our blood that kept Them satiated and powerful. Coyolxauhqui – She was war and fire and blood, and She would not rest until the Fifth Sun tumbled from the sky, and darkness covered Grandmother Earth from end to end, as in the very beginning.

  "I know," I said. "But She's not free." Not yet. It was not only the blood of sacrifices that kept She of the Silver Bells imprisoned, but also the Revered Speaker, the living embodiment in the Fifth World of Southern Hummingbird's power. 

  And, at present, we had no Revered Speaker. 

  "Come on. Let's go back up," I said. 

  The return journey was much easier, as we climbed the weight lifted from our shoulders, and the constriction in our chests and necks gradually eased. The air grew warm again, and we emerged under the grey sky before dawn feeling almost refreshed. 

  Unfortunately, that feeling of relaxation lasted for perhaps a fraction of a moment. "Acatl," a familiar, imperious voice said. "I had a feeling you might be the one getting past the wards." 

  Of course. I turned and beheld Ceyaxochitl, the Guardian of the Empire, the keeper of the magical boundaries, resplendent under her feather headdress. She leant on a cane of red polished wood that had to have come from the far south, deep into Maya land. 

  She did not look sarcastic, for once, but by the gleam in her eyes I knew I was in for trouble.

 

"Star-demons," Ceyaxochitl said, thoughtfully. She had dragged us back to the Duality House, where slaves brought us bowls of cocoa and a light meal of fried newts and amaranth seeds. We sat around a reed mat in a small room at the back of the House, which opened onto one of the more private courtyards, a garden of marigolds and small palm trees. It was silent and deserted even at this hour of the morning, when every slave should have been out grinding the maize flour for today's meals.

  As was her wont, Ceyaxochitl did not sit down. she remained standing, towering over us. The slaves finished laying out the meal on the mat, and withdrew, drawing the entrance-curtain closed in a tinkle of bells.

  "Star-demons are to be expected," I said. But it was much too soon for them.

  "Yes, yes," Ceyaxochitl said. "However, strictly speaking, the heart of the Great Temple is the province of Southern Hummingbird's High Priest, Acatl. Not yours."

  "It doesn't seem like Quenami is over-preoccupied with stardemons," I said, with a touch of anger.

  Ceyaxochitl sighed. "These are difficult times, Acatl. Fraught with intrigue."

  "I know. That doesn't mean I have to like it," I said. Especially not when it risked supernatural creatures in the palace, or in the streets of the city.