Quetzalcoatl transformed into a three-hundred foot feathered serpent — the largest size he could manage for a short time. Turquoise and jade scales on his underside reflected the sun. Blue, green, yellow and orange feathers formed a ruff around his neck, ran down his back, and matched the longer flight feathers of his wings, except those ended in blood red tips. His powerful flapping to keep aloft created waves that swept over Tezcatlipoca’s head and sent their canoe drifting.
The enormous crocodile lunged straight up, mouth open wide. Quetzalcoatl drew his coils up tight, narrowly escaping her snapping jaws.
Tezcatlipoca’s jaguar form did him no good here. Heart pounding wildly, he splashed through the water to the canoe in hopes of retrieving another spear from the cache of weapons strapped to the bottom.
His movement and noise attracted Cipactli's attention. Her massive body receded into the lake, and golden eyes focused on easier prey. She aimed her broad snout at him. The greenish-grey armored skin down the length of her spine seemed to go on forever. With lazy but powerful side-to-side flicks of her long tail, she glided through the water toward Tezcatlipoca.
The monster was toying with him — she could catch him in a second if she wanted to — then he’d be crushed and swallowed whole..
Two more clumsy, desperate strokes, and he gripped the edge of the akalli. He stretched one arm under the upside down canoe, fingers scrabbling for a weapon. There! He closed his hand around two wooden shafts and yanked them free.
Cipactli opened her maw, revealing rows of sharp teeth.
“Brother!” Quetzalcoatl stopped rising into the air and fell on top of the crocodile’s head, struggling to bind her in his coils as she submerged and spun in a death roll. His wings flailed in the water, but he held on tight. Cipactli's many mouths bit into his flesh, sending blooms of red into the lake.
With a deep inhale, Tezcatlipoca dove towards the fight. He cut through the water, kicking straight for the crocodile's head like an arrow in flight, and thrust a spear forward.
It glanced off Cipactli’s thick, armor-plated skull.
Maybe the old gods were right, and it was best to leave this beast alone. How could two young gods hope to kill a monster like this?
No. He was meant to rule the world! And there could be no world while the crocodile ate everything.
Tezcatlipoca struck again, opening a cut on the softer underside of her jaw as she twisted. Swimming closer, he attacked a third time, and this blow struck true, impaling the beast through her eye.
She thrashed in death throes, nearly throwing Quetzalcoatl away. His coils tightened.
It was working!
Lungs desperate for air, Tezcatlipoca swam for the surface, but the crocodile snapped her jaws a final time, catching his foot in her teeth.
A scream escaped his mouth, traveling to the surface with the last of his air. He flailed, but couldn’t escape the powerful teeth trapping his foot. Dark blood spread through the blue water. His vision went black at the edges and narrowed to pinpoints. I’m sorry, brother. We almost did it. Water poured into his mouth.
Quetzalcoatl released the carcass and surged toward Tezcatlipoca, catching him and rising to the surface. He squeezed his coils, pushing the water from his brother’s lungs.
Tezcatlipoca sucked in a breath as they broke the surface and floated together.
Exhausted but triumphant, Tezcatlipoca turned to his brother. “We did it, brother.”
Quetzalcoatl righted the canoe and helped his brother inside, then transformed into his human shape and pulled himself aboard. “Your foot.”
Tezcatlipoca’s right leg ended at the ankle. But the Smoking Mirror God dismissed his brother’s concern. He conjured smoke, shaped it into a replacement limb, and solidified it into obsidian. “Good as new.”
Working together, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl used their god magic and the body of Cipactli to create a tree-shaped in the middle of the lake. A tunnel from each bough of the tree, three on each side and the largest at the top, led from the island to caves at the bottom of the lake, where other gods could make their homes.
“This will be the heart of the empire, Quetzalcoatl. You should become the First Sun and create the inhabitants of our new world.”
“You struck the killing blow, Tezcatlipoca, which allowed us to create Aztlan. You should become the most powerful of us.”
“Then we will create a monument for you on the largest bough at the top of the tree. It will be known as Serpent Mountain. For your other form.”
“I graciously accept.” Quetzalcoatl grinned. “A thousand feet high?”
“Why not two thousand feet?” Tezcatlipoca laughed.
When they returned to shore, the other gods agreed Tezcatlipoca would rule.
Tezcatlipoca rose in stature, becoming the First Sun. At the height of his power, he created gods and giants as his subjects and fed them with acorns.
For six hundred and seventy-six years he ruled — his army of jaguar warriors enforcing peace through blood sacrifice. His power grew until the beings he created worshipped him as the sun in the sky.
And life... grew dull.
“Begin.” Tezcatlipoca slouched on his throne as the ball game began on the court below. Two teams of four boys and young men dressed in loin cloths sprinted up and down the I-shaped court, fifty feet long and sixteen feet wide with sloping plastered walls painted white, trying to get the ball through the stone rings mounted high on the side of the walls. He'd long become bored with everything and upped the stakes. The losers sacrificed their hearts on his altar in the temple built atop Serpent Mountain.
He paid little attention to the game, instead watching the women. At a gesture, his jaguar guards stepped forward. Pointing at several choices, he ordered, “Retrieve them, and bring them to the palace.” There was some entertainment as men protested their women being taken. None of them argued too strenuously. They knew their hearts could be taken even more easily than their women.
When the interminable game ended, Tezcatlipoca remained on his throne as giants lifted the chair, carried him up the jungle-covered Serpent Mountain, then the steep stairs to the temple and settled him on the dais in front of the altar. The red-stained stone, still damp from the last sacrifices, awaited the next offerings.
Everything had become so tedious. Even creating new beings, conquest, and war held little appeal anymore. The losers from the game topped the steps and awaited their turn to have their still-beating hearts ripped from their chests. Here, at least, was something entertaining and of use, power in blood feeding him.
“Brother.” Quetzalcoatl stood before the throne wearing his wind breastplate — a wind jewel of conch shell cut in half. “You must temper yourself.”
“I can do what I like. I am the Sun!”
“The power has corrupted you. You are destroying the world we created. The people pray for relief.”
“Then they are weak.” Tezcatlipoca rose from his throne and turned his back on his too-soft brother.
“I am sorry, my brother.” Quetzalcoatl struck with a club.
Stunned at the betrayal of his treacherous brother, Tezcatlipoca pulled on his magic and the connection to his army of jaguars. He would destroy the world and everything in it before he let Quetzalcoatl take it from him. “Kill them! Kill the gods and giants.” He pulled himself to his feet and slashed with his obsidian blade.
A red line spilled blood down Quetzalcoatl’s breastplate before the wound sealed. He raised the club and struck again, but it was too late. The jaguars tore through the populace. Swearing, Quetzalcoatl abandoned the fight and went to battle the cats.
As Tezcatlipoca’s world darkened, a stranger approached.
Frail, body shriveled to skin stretched over bones, face little more than a skull, wispy white hair, and cloudy white eyes. Despite outwardly appearing weak, an inner strength carried the man. “I can heal your body and give you power to take back the world.”
“How?”
“Let go of your obsidian knife.” The stranger dropped a white knife aglow with carved symbols. “Take up this one.”
Tezcatlipoca unfurled his fingers from his obsidian blade and closed his fist over the hilt of the white dagger. Magic stung his skin, but he held on. The pain was power, filling him with a new kind of energy.
“Stab me here.” The man stripped off his shirt and pointed to a white glyph over his heart. “My magic can be yours. Our powers combined will give you the strength to rule the world.”
The blackness receded as the world became white.
BY THE TIME EACH MAN had staggered away to collapse on his knees, and Tezcatlipoca was done siphoning magic, he shone like the white sun he would become again.
First, the necessity of culling the weakest from the already near useless followers.
“Bring them in.” The lone guard opened the door, allowing four more to escort two prisoners into the room. They marched the captives in front of the throne and kicked them to their knees.
Tezcatlipoca leaned forward, voice booming through the vast room. “I sent you on a simple assignment. All you had to do was obtain the knife before it went to auction. You failed.”
The obsidian knife was critical to commencing the Sixth Sun and the eclipse only days away. It would be another fifty-two years before an opportunity arose again, and the next eclipse wouldn’t be so dark.
He held up his palms, a small white scorpion in each. Turning his hands over, he dropped his pets to the floor. White magic flowed from him into his creatures, and they split. Two became four, four became eight, and they continued to multiply until hundreds of scorpions skittered down the steps and across the smooth marble floor.
Guards stepped back as a wave of scorpions engulfed the prisoners.
The Scorpion Mage turned to find the Esne obediently watching him. The mage Iqiohr was weak, but he had trained the Esne well.
The small scorpions only contained mild toxins for this punishment. The men would die, but it was less about killing them quickly, and more about seeing how many times they could be stung before they died. No matter how high the number rose, he was always disappointed in the results. These humans were so much more fragile than the giants and gods he created when he reigned.
Luxuriating in all his sigils full to near bursting, and his innate power as a god, nearing its zenith, put him in the mood for something a bit more dramatic. He had the energy to spare. Tezcatlipoca waved a hand at the entry doors. They slammed open, revealing the carved eight-foot scorpions glowing a brilliant white. One leg at a time, they came to life, crawling off the doors onto the floor.
His Esne tried to stifle its gasp. Even it hadn’t seen him at this peak of his magic before.
The multitude of his tiny creations dissipated, the magic used to make them returning to his body while the larger predators stalked the two men, lashing with their stingers and snapping their pincers at their prey.
Even stung, the prisoners screamed and staggered around the throne room in a futile effort to escape. One guard, not as agile as he should have been, fell under the attack.
He loosened his control over the scorpions, and things grew a bit more lively as they charged after their prey, right through the line of kneeling acolytes. Freed of his leash, the scorpions cared not who or what they crushed in their pincers. Chunks of flesh and bone disappeared into their maws. Humans screamed and scattered like flies from a corpse. The more ruthless among them shoved others in front.
Tezcatlipoca watched the ruthless ones. Gajo was among them. If the human were younger, he would be a suitable candidate for the next mage. The man murdered without hesitation, but magic already ate away his vitality. He’d been friends with the previous mage and came from excellent blood lines. A pity Gajo had never bred a witch. His appetites killed his bed mates more often than not. The nephew would have to do.
His amusement faded, and he sighed, willing the scorpions to finish their chase. He toyed with the Esne’s hair as it trembled. Perhaps another sort of entertainment —
No! Iqiohr gathered himself and shoved the god back. She is mine.
Tezcatlipoca laughed. It makes you weak. But he receded, letting the inferior mage take control. The time for a prolonged battle was in a few days — not now. No point in wasting energy. After the eclipse, he would use the Esne as often and however he liked. Settling for taking all the magic he could with him, he retreated.
Iqiohr gasped as he became physical once more. He looked to his Esne, found her eyes on him, and relaxed.
“Be gone.” He waved a hand, dismissing the men. The scorpions followed them out, scuttling backward up the doors to resume their places.
Remind it of its purpose, or I will. Even locked away, Tezcatlipoca’s voice echoed in Iqiohr’s head.
I will tell her what to do. Iqiohr would, because he needed that obsidian blade every bit as much as Tezcatlipoca.
And breed it. Or I will do that, too.
Iqiohr hoped when Quetzalcoatl was freed, he knew of a way to kill a god.
CHAPTER THREE
NORRIX
NORRIX RESISTED THE urge to slam the book shut and throw it across the room, closing the fragile pages with care and giving the soft leather cover a gentle pat instead. It wasn’t the book’s fault he couldn’t remember where the knowledge he sought lay, if it was actually in one of his libraries in the first place.
He pushed his chair away from the table — a twenty-foot expanse of dark wood, surface hidden beneath stacks of tomes and layers of scrolls, parchments, and tablets. Tens of thousands of years of information at his fingertips and he was of no use when it came to finding a way to help Musette awaken from the coma the Spider Mage’s poison had put her in.
He wasn’t supposed to interfere in the events he Witnessed, but everyone assumed everything destroyed anyway, so what he’d taken from past libraries was never missed, and the idea of leaving knowledge to vanish from history made his chest ache. All the things he’d managed to rescue now resided here, in a collection that far surpassed any in a museum. There was only one library that surpassed his, but it wasn’t located on this world.
But what good was it doing him now?
Shooting to his feet sent his chair tumbling. He raked his fingers through his tangled curly hair, locking his hands behind his neck as he paced in front of one of the long rows of bookshelves. Here in the magically preserved atmosphere of the largest library he maintained at the Ildum’s compound, each of the hundreds of bookcases stretched sixty feet long, thirty feet high and held knowledge in the form of relics and words in written form.
Audio files, a relatively recent development, were stored in a smaller library on several of Karov’s computers. The nerd in the Ildum assured Norrix the data was safe, but he wasn’t sure computers were completely trustworthy. Plenty of humans cursed them on a regular basis, and the gadgets stuck to the walls in Karov’s domain with sais and shurikens through them didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Plus, Norrix served the God of Scribes after all, not a God of Technology. But, he’d Witnessed the destruction of too many repositories — in Alexandria, Babylon, and Constantinople, the library of Ashurbanipal, the House of Wisdom, and the codices in Maya — to not have backups.
He was getting distracted. A starting point. That’s what he needed. But a strygoi in a coma induced by mage magic wasn’t something he’d seen before. At least, he couldn’t remember if he had. No one else knew what to do either, which reinforced this as a new event, but offered scant comfort.
Of course, Musette wasn’t a silver witch yet, only had the potential to become one.
A flash at the end of the table formed a small silver girl with long black hair. Soră, the embodiment of strygoi magic, skipped toward him, managing to miss all the books and scrolls. “Did you find me?”
The more the magic was shared, the stronger she grew. After the massacre a thousand years ago that left a single strygoi in the world, or so everyone thought, Soră was only starting to r
ecover to the point she could manifest.
“There’s only ever been one of you, Soră. That’s all any of us poor vampires can handle in the world.”
She laughed and catapulted herself into his arms. “More witches, silly. Did they escape, like me and Selene? How did Ember find my magic here?”
Norrix sighed. “I’m sorry, little one. I haven’t found any mentions of silver magic in this part of the world.” Which should have made it impossible for Ember to become strygoi a few days ago, since only a strygoi could pass on silver magic.
Soră put a small hand on his cheek. “We have to find out if there are more witches so we can save them before they get hurt like Musette.”
Damn my broken mind. He was useless to everyone this way. “I’ll keep looking. I promise.”
“I know you will.” She kissed his nose, leaving a warm buzz on his skin. “I have to go back to Selene now.” With another flash, she disappeared from his arms.
Norrix righted his chair and pulled another book toward him.
LIGHT-FOOTED STEPS hurried down the corridor, and Alaric burst through the ward into the room. Golden-haired and blue-eyed, the most mischievous vampire of the Ildum was always up to something, having retained most of his Fae nature even after being turned. The rest of the vampires contemplated murdering him frequently, but Stryx’s aunt, Requiescere, favored him, and no one dared test her commands for fear she’d sing them into death. Norrix had Witnessed an entire city vanish more than once — when she was in a good mood.
“Did you hear?” The Fae’s excited voice cut into Norrix’s thoughts. “Stryx and Ember are coming back from the mage’s island. Karov said they rescued more witches and a siren! Come on!”
So that was it. Another chance of conquest. The angelic-faced Fae didn’t view his encounters that way. He always thought it was love when women flocked to him, and the more the merrier was his rule.
Myth's Legend: Norrix Page 2
