‘Fant!’ she called sharply, suddenly annoyed. The dog jumped, then slunk over, dropped at her feet, and lay there twitching.
The man pulled back his hand. ‘So we know why I am here,’ he said, ‘but why are you? You should be below, should you not?’
‘It’s a better view from here.’
‘Not for Intitepe. The fire king has good eyes but not even he could judge you up here.’
Her annoyance, at this man’s calm, at Fant’s meek surrender to him, was with her still. ‘Perhaps I do not wish to be judged,’ she replied. ‘I am, after all, not a llama.’
She turned back to the temple below, to the men leaping ever more frenziedly to a rising tempo in the music. His voice came. ‘No,’ he replied softly, ‘that you are not.’
She didn’t look, but felt his eyes on her, over her. She sat, drew her legs up to her chin and her skirt as far over them as it would reach, wrapped her arms around them, focused on the crowd, swaying in time, clapping, chanting, part of the ceremony too, filling with a tension, yearning for a release.
He spoke again. ‘I must return. I have a small part to play in what follows and the king does not like delays. He can be most ill-tempered about it.’ Atisha didn’t turn, but saw him rise out of the corner of her eye. ‘Will you come with me? There is still time to put yourself in the fire king’s vision.’
She still did not look, just said, ‘I am not dressed correctly. I am not wearing enough paint.’
A soft chuckle came. ‘As long as I have known him, I don’t think I’ve ever known Intitepe’s choice to be swayed … by paint.’ A pause, then, ‘Maid?’
It was a command to look, and though she wanted not to, she found she couldn’t resist, just as Fant had been unable not to lay his head on this man’s hand. And when she’d turned he asked, ‘What is your name?’
She didn’t want to tell him. But again she found she couldn’t stop herself. ‘Atisha,’ she said.
‘Atisha.’ He bowed his head. ‘It has been an honour.’
He was gone, slipping through a bush. Fant rose, shook himself from nose to tail tip, went to the bush he’d vanished through, lifted his leg and pissed. ‘Oh,’ Atisha said, ‘aren’t you brave now?’
She looked again to the temple below; but her eyes were unfocused, and for a long while she saw only a blur of leaping shapes; even the music, still rising in pace and pitch, appeared foggy to her now. He took my name, she thought. He didn’t give me his in return.
The music played ever more frenziedly, the tumblers kept tumbling. Then, suddenly, loud cymbals crashed, the music ceased, bringing focus to her ears and eyes. The athletes moved to the back, and three priests came forward. Two of them held a mountain sheep, a full-grown ram, dragging it to the waytana and up a ramp to the stone’s red-stained summit. There the beast stood, its thick horns curling like a crown, king of its world and fearless despite the crowds. It had been kept for the years since its capture in idleness, groomed and hand fed, only for this moment.
The third priest wore long purple robes and an ocelot mask. In his left hand he held a staff of blackwood, his own height tall, surmounted by a face that matched his mask. In his right hand he held an obsidian dagger. Handing his staff to a servant who crouched nearby, he raised the dagger high.
The crowd was utterly silent. The earth seemed stilled, with only the faintest of breezes sighing though the stone columns. The high priest nodded and the two others threw the ram onto its back. Only now did it struggle. But the men were strong and skilled, splaying the beast’s limbs, avoiding its sweeping horns. Stepping close, the high priest plunged the dagger down.
Blood spurted in a great arc, reddening the faces of the other priests, reaching the front ranks of the maidens pressed below, who groaned but did not cry out. For a few moments the only sounds were the squeals of the dying beast and the breeze which had strengthened and was now moving in the flags.
The priest delved, sliced … then ripped the heart out. He turned back to the crowd, raising the organ high into the air as the animal behind him shuddered into stillness. When its last twitch came, the priest lifted the heart yet higher then hurled it into the brazier. Coals spattered, flames shot to the sky. Yet the smoke that came was not grey but yellow and red. The crowd cried out at that, and the priest, taking back his blackwood staff, raised it high and shouted, ‘Colours of fire, colours of the sun, colours of the burning mountain. The gods have spoken.’ Then rapping his staff three times onto the stone of the platform, he began to intone the prayer all knew.
‘Toluc, Fire Mountain,
Mother, father, brother God,
Seed giver, life giver, heat giver,
Hear our prayers.’
Atisha murmured the response with the crowd. ‘Hear all our prayers.’ Beside her Fant gave a little growl, as if responding too.
The priest stepped back. One of the twelve now walked forward, and the people gasped as one at the approach of their king who was also their god. Strange, she thought, leaning forward. I didn’t notice anyone in a condor mask before.
Other than that, he was no different from the other ball players, in his simple tunic. And yet he was completely different. For he was Intitepe, the Immortal, twin god with Toluc the volcano, and Atisha found herself standing with no memory of the action of it, wondering how she hadn’t distinguished him straight away from the others, so distinct was his power. She could see waves of colour surrounding him now, as if he had tethered a rainbow. When he raised his arms, purple, green, red, blue and violet wings rose with them, as if the condor would take flight. Suddenly, keenly, Atisha regretted her choice, the need to be apart, beyond another’s choosing. Beyond his. For the eyes of the condor, most far-seeing of all birds – else why did it rise in the sky so high? – were lowered now to the young women surging forward, with their arms thrust out in appeal. She could be among them but she wasn’t. She was, as she so often was, above, separate, removed.
Still, his words reached her clear and clean. ‘It is the time of choice,’ Intitepe said, his deep voice flowing. ‘A hard, hard choice, when the beauty and intelligence of the maids of this province are so multiplied before me.’
It was a formula, she was sure, repeated in all twelve provinces, every twelve years, when this moment came. And yet he said it as if for the first time.
He gave a sigh. ‘Alas, I may choose only one. And I have. I choose—’
The maidens pressed forward. Atisha leaned, as close to the cliff edge as she could without toppling over it.
‘I choose—’
His voice sang out. Two of the other athletes came forward, reaching up to each side of the condor headdress, laying their hands on it. Intitepe clasped his own hands before him, as if in a prayer to his brother in the sky, the sun. Then he opened them, and raised them over the crowd. All waited for them to lower in that breathless moment of choice. Instead, they kept rising, up, up, up above all the heads, colour flowing in continuous waves from each arm, focusing like a beam of irresistible power sent up the mountain.
‘I choose … You!’
The coloured waves hit her and she reeled, staggered back, somehow did not fall. Looked again to see the two men beside Intitepe remove the condor headdress in one sharp lift. She could see, clearly again now, the faces in the crowd all turned to gaze up at her in wonder, rage, shock. That shock a match for hers as she looked into eyes that she knew, even if she could not see them from there, were a special kind of grey. For they belonged to the man who’d sat beside her. The man who was also a god and who spoke again now.
‘I choose you … Atisha.’
The cramps hit her, in a gut-twisting, savage, sudden wave, and she cried out. A woman was there, instantly. Atisha did not know her, nor any other in the temple of birth. She knew why that must be. If the decision of the gods went against her, there would be no friend to pity her or, worse, attempt to g
ive her aid.
It did not mean they were unkind. ‘How goes it, little doe?’ asked the one with lines made by smiling and age around her eyes, crouching beside the couch.
‘I don’t know. Aaah!’ Atisha bent at the sudden force of the pain. ‘I think it may be close.’
‘Time to bring you to the pool, then.’
The pain doubled as they helped her stand, another older woman coming to support her on the other side. But when the wave eased a little, enough, Atisha pushed her gently away, bent and snatched up the one thing she’d brought from the palace to the temple – a puma, the length of her forearm, made from llama skin and its wool, and stuffed with river reeds.
The older woman smiled. ‘I can bring your poppet, child,’ she said.
‘Thank you. I have it.’
Tucking it under her arm, she let the women help her towards the pool. The pain was intense, but there was one tiny, tiny hope in it: the hardness under her arm, pressed into her side – for within the puma was a dagger with a razored edge.
They removed her shift, lowered her into the pool. The water was beautifully warm and eased, for a brief moment, the terrible pains in her back. A moment to pray again.
Please, Alam, goddess, please, she said, but only in her head, the thought directed inwards.
Yet even as she prayed for her child, Atisha also prayed for something different – strength and courage. She knew that, over the years – the centuries! – and in this same place, others would have prayed the same; others might also have hidden, beside the birthing pool, an obsidian dagger. There were no tales of any succeeding in using it.
Perhaps that means it is my time, she thought, and prayed again.
The cramps returned, harder, much harder. She let out a cry – and heard its echo, slipping her again into memory. For the last time she had made love to Intitepe had been in this same pool. Most of the time the building was used for pleasure, not royal birth. Aztapi, the blue moon, had risen and fallen six times since that night …
She’d been atop him as she liked to be, as he liked her to be, the pressure that had been building within her for the hours that they had made love, that had been released in smaller waves before, let go now in one huge surge, like the mountain of water that would sometimes crash upon the coast after an earthquake. Her cry was loud, unrestrained; his shorter, quieter – for the pool opened to the sky and the valley below and he had told her once that he did not think his people wanted to hear their god making love and taking the same pleasure in it as ordinary people.
She loved hearing him, feeling him, seeing the release in his slate eyes. Since coming to the city, after the great ceremony of joining, they had made love often. Though not, at the beginning, often enough; for he had eleven other maidens to accommodate. Yet as the blue moon waxed and waned, she’d been sent for more and more frequently, until it became clear to all that she was ‘the One’. He still occasionally took another, had to, to keep the peace in the marana, the house of Chosen Women. On those nights Atisha slept alone and, sometimes, usually, wept. Always, though, he sent for her the next day, and she forgot her tears in their joys, and their joined bodies.
Sometimes, too, he went away. His empire was vast, and in far corners of it farmers got angry or minor lords ambitious. A while before he’d been going to deal with one in Palaga, the northernmost province, and he did not know for how long. She’d wept at the news; couldn’t bear the thought of not touching, of not being touched, before he left. So she came to him when she should not have – for all in the house of women knew their most fertile times and were careful. Now, after three full passages of aztapi he’d returned and sent for her straight away. To her great joy. To her greatest fear.
Because tonight was different. While making love with him, she’d been as lost as she ever was, could almost forget. Now, slipping down beside him into the pool, she could only remember.
‘My heart,’ Intitepe said, opening his arms. She went straight to her place, her cheek against his shoulder, his left arm enfolding her. Pressed against him so she could feel his heart, its rapid beat, slowing, slowing. ‘Do you see it?’ he said, and she looked up at him, as he nodded again towards the sky. She followed his gaze, tried to pick the one light out of the myriad there this night. Frowned. He laughed, and reached a finger to stroke away the lines on her forehead. ‘Remember, my love. Find the Spider, its left eye, the leg below that. Do you see?’
‘Yes.’
‘Follow the leg down, past the cluster of seven monkeys?’
‘I see them.’
‘There. The brightest one. The one I named for you. At-i-sha.’ He drew out her name, relishing it. ‘You are immortal too now, for you will for ever be remembered in the skies.’
When he’d first told her, first helped her trace the stars and find the one he’d chosen for her, she’d been overjoyed. Now, with what she had to tell him tonight, joy had gone. Yet she couldn’t speak of it. Not yet. So instead she said, ‘I hope my star is far enough away from all the others you have named. I wouldn’t want you getting confused when you look at it in a hundred years and think of someone else.’
Sometimes, when she dared to raise his past, he would get … not angry, he was rarely that, but distant, distant as those stars. Now, though, that laugh came again. ‘Ah, my puma,’ he replied. ‘I knew from our first conversation upon that hilltop that you would never simply accept and let things pass.’
‘As other star-named women have done?’
She said it sharply, and he moved away from her a little so he could look at her. His eyes held no laughter now. ‘I have told you that I name very few. Only the One, and not even many of them.’ He looked skywards again. ‘But you also have always known the sweet sadness of this.’ He sighed. ‘I am the fire king, immortal. Perhaps I age but if I do, so, so slowly, whereas you—’ He broke off and looked down at her again. ‘I cannot love you for ever. But I can love you completely now, Atisha. And see you for ever in the stars.’
‘I know. I know!’ she said fiercely, pulling him close again, feeling for his heart. She knew he loved her, as he had few others. So maybe, maybe it was time for her news? But still she couldn’t speak directly to it, not yet. She had to ask something first. Had to.
‘But you don’t only see love in the stars, do you? You see death there too.’
He stiffened, looked up. She thought he might try to push her away, so she dug in deeper. ‘You wish to speak of this now?’ His tone was cold. ‘After we—’
He did not like to talk of it. Tonight, she needed to make him. ‘Yes. I need to understand. That’s all I have ever needed to do, with everything. It is who I am. It is why I believe you chose me, over all the prettier girls.’ She reached up, took his jaw, turned him to her. ‘Tell me.’
The jaw in her hand clenched – but he did not turn away. ‘I have named a star for each of my dead sons.’
She had to make him say it. Tonight, she had to. ‘The sons you killed.’
He flinched but still did not look away. ‘The sons I killed.’
She was the one who had to look away. From the pain in the grey eyes she loved. ‘Why?’ she murmured. ‘I do not understand.’
‘Of course you do. Because of the prophecy.’ He did move away then, rose to look down on her, water running from his long, slim, muscled body. ‘You know this.’ Yet even though he knew she did, he repeated it anyway, as if repeating it made it even more true. His tone had none of his honeyed warmth now, was as frigid as the snows on the southern mountains. ‘Saroc, Priest-king and my immortal enemy, before I threw him into the mouth of Toluc, my brother god, to dissolve his flesh for ever, prophesied that a son of mine would do the same to me – just as I did to my own father.’ He took a deep breath. ‘So I hunted down and killed every one of my seven sons. Threw them into Toluc’s destroying flames – and named a star for each one. I took their lives – and gave
them immortality. For now they too live for ever in the night sky.’
She wanted him to stop. Could not let him. ‘And if a woman bears you a son, you give that baby to the flames too …’
‘I do not. The priest does. I—’ He broke off, looked hard at her, his jaw clenching. ‘By Atoc’s five wounds why do you talk of this now? Why?’
He was never angry with her – rarely with anyone, that she’d witnessed. What did a god who had everything need with anger? But she saw fury now, quailed before it, the flames in his eye, in his voice, his whole body rigid. She wanted nothing more than to sink back, touch him, calm him, begin to slowly make love to him again, lose herself in that, in him, under the stars. But death was in them now as well as love and she had to know. ‘So this is the last of it, that I don’t understand,’ she whispered. ‘Answer me this and I will let it be.’ She fixed him with her gaze. ‘If you believe in the prophecy enough to kill every son, how can you not believe that it will come true, despite all your killing?’
He was the fire god. Immortal, with the wisdom of five centuries of life lived, and the certainty of countless more to come. She knew he must already have considered this, every time he was forced to, as she had forced him to this night. And looking up into his eyes now, she saw that he had, for there was fear in them, a moment of weakness in one who never showed any. And his vulnerability in that moment overwhelmed her, for though he was a god he was also a man, just a man.
She rose up, engulfed him in her arms, held his frozen body tight to her, tried to melt him. Before she knew him she had accepted, as all in the empire accepted, those occasional sacrifices, the climax of great ceremonies. Indeed, she had believed, as all believed, that his brother gods in the sky had only sent him a son to be sacrificed. A price, a terrible but holy price to be paid for a realm without war, without slavery, with abundance for all. The babies made the lava of Toluc rich with their bones, their flesh, their blood; and the lava enriched the land.
Smoke in the Glass Page 4
