And of course, he said, the adders in Teotihuacan had fresh dust each peace season, and that was why theyd been able to safeguard the city so well for so long. They could see threats coming from a long way away, both in space and in time. But it wouldnt last much longer.
2 Jeweled Skull paused. And when he paused, he really paused. Even though he was bare-chested under all his bling, you couldnt see him breathe.
I sat. I took a long drag. Damn, thats strong. Whew. Well, thatll turn you upside down, shake the change out of your pockets, and spend it on Night Train.
I under you have a question, I said. Is it true that the last sun of Teotihuacan hasnt yet been named?
He said not so far as he knew. But I can see in your worm, he said, that the city will not last another two katunob.
I clicked.
When the empire is gone, the Ocelots will suffer, 2JS said. Still, it will be too late for us.
No kidding, I thought. I only had about seven months left before my brain turned into Fluffernutter.
There was another of those insufferable pauses. My legs were going numb despite their training. Maybe I should ask for another shot of something.
You over me, why was there stoning around Star Rattlers house?
He said he didnt know exactly. But the problem went back a long way. Star Rattler was the greatest of a class of beings who werent just not human, but who werent even related to any ancestors. I suppose you could call them gods, but that doesnt get the distinction. The ancestors were gods, too, and so were important living people. In fact, as somebody once said, everything was full of little gods. Maybe a better word for the Rattlerand for the Earthtoadess, the four Chacs, and a bunch of lesser critters like mountains and lakeswould be elementals. Each one had a shrine and sucklers and followers in every major town. But right now, in 664, the Rattlers cult was growing faster than any of the others.
And, as you probably know, it continued to grow. Later on, Von Humboldt called the Rattler the Maya Dragon. Morley called it the Feathered Serpent and Salman Rushdie called it the Snakebird. The Rattlers Yucatec name, Kukulkan, became pretty well-known, and its Nahuatl name, Quetzalcoatl, became so famous its even a character in Warcraft.
Since the Rattlers body was the Milky Way itself, its offering societies werent connected with any single house or color. Theoretically, they embraced all of them. So there was an internationalism associated with the cult that made it a bit of a subversive element. Even so, it still had royal support. In Ix, and I suppose in any Maya city, any person of substance would be a member of several temple societies besides his own ancestors, and certainly all the Ixian greathouses donated to the Rattler. Star Rattlers mul in Ix was small, but it was old, well-groomed, and rich.
But in Teotihuacan the Rattler was an especially big deal. And it was an increasing annoyance to older entrenched interests. Supposedlyand the news was delayed by about twenty daysthe Rattlers children were pledging more and more oblationers, that is, followers, every day. The two great Teotihuacano synodswho owned the two giant pyramids, the ones the Aztecs would later call the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moonstill allowed the cult to operate, but theyd been increasing restrictions on it, and apparently that was what had set off the riot. After that, the forty Rattler adderesses had basically become political prisoners, under permanent house arrest in their compound at the south end of the city.
Hmm, I thought.
Is the Lady Koh loyal to the Ocelots? I asked.
There was another pause. It stretched out and out, like scamorza cheese out of a hot pizza. Suddenly 2JS laughed. It was the first time Id heard him laugh, and it was such a charming, Santa Claus chuckle, and I started laughing myself.
She was more closely related to the Ocelots, he said. On the other hand, they had sent her off to Teotihuacan when she didnt want to go.
Hmm. Maybe she missed the tropics, I thought. Most people from the tropics who arent in the tropics miss the tropics.
Yeah. Maybe the thing was to try an indirect approach, to come at the Ocelots from outside.
Okay, Jedster. Go for it. Hes got to feel you can really do something, something essential, something that could bail us all out. Otherwise, why keep you alive? And he cant get away. But you can.
I suggested to Ahau 2 Jeweled Skull that maybe I underneath him should visit Teotihuacan.
[40]
At the ninth of the orchidsthat is, the first watch of the night, just after sundown2 Jeweled Skull presented me to the Harpy 11 Viper Caravan Society. It was a new organizationor you might call it a new brotherhood or even a new corporationthat had been created ostensibly for an unscheduled trade run, with the real purpose of getting me to Teotihuacan.
We sat on feather mats on the burned-over peak of a low conical hill that was sheltered between two higher folds of the sierra. We were still close enough to Cacao Townwhich was what they called 2JSs capital villagethat there was a whiff of chocolate in the air. I faced southeast. The nineteen other blood members of the societybloods usually traveled in katob, that is, vingtaines, companies of twentysat facing me in a semicircle with their legs and arms crossed. Much later, the Oglala Sioux in the cast of Buffalo Bills Wild West would sit in a similar way, and it would come to be called Indian style. But when these people sat, it wasnt just sitting. It was a state of compact readiness, like a compressed volute spring. 2 Jeweled Skullthe Bacab of the East, Fathermother of the Harpy House, Torturer of Jed Chump DeLanda, and All-Around Big Chalupasat next to me, on my male, right, side. 3 Blue Snail, the dwarf cantor, waddled in front of him arranging bundles on an offering mat. He spoke in his wise-child voice:
All of us underneath him hear:
Our carver,
Our Fathermother,
Modeler, dissolver,
2 Jeweled Skull
May speak to us.
We listen,
Below him
We wait crouching,
We attend.
2 Jeweled Skull said:
I one address you many next to me.
And everyone except me answered:
We underneath you answer you above us.
Will you accept this gift,
Take on this burden?
2 Jeweled Skull asked. His voice wasnt louder than anyone elses, but it seemed to carry farther and to echo back from distant invisible cliffs. Id known he was famous as an orator, but until now I hadnt understood why.
There was a pause for the bloods to examine me. I stared at them. Making and holding eye contact was a martial art around here. If you did it, you had to be ready to fight. They stared back. Hun Xoc and his younger brother 2 Hand sat together at the far right of the line. Theyd been Chacals first and second backcourt men, and they were the ones whod looked out for me in the deer hunt. Hun Xoc and 2 Hand were two of only four people in the caravan who knew, roughly, what had happened, that is, that Id been Chacal and now I was somebody else. The other bloods had seen Chacal play, but they hadnt seen him close up, and so far, none of them seemed to suspect anything. The old dude on their left was named 18 Dead Rain. He was our Steward of Burdens, which was like the chief financial officer. He was chubby, smooth-skinned, and apparently good-natured. The schlep on his right was the remembrancer, a different one from the one 2JS had in his cave. He was a short, slight guy with bulgy eyes and monkey markings. Then on the extreme left there was a wiry character, with receding eyes and sun-stretched skin, named 12 Cayman. He was 2JSs nieces husbands brother and his main title was Steward of Long Things. It basically meant master of arms, like the war leader, and he was also the nojuchil, or company captain. He had unattractive snaggle teeth and two lumps on his shoulder where bits of flint points were still embedded in his flesh. The sides of his torso were dotted with memorial tattoos for a high-ranked brother killed in a raid on Motul. There was a r
umor that he could see in pitch darkness because his grandfather had been a badger. He was the oldest one in the group. Then, on his right, there was a lesser blood in oblationers colors named Hun Aat, or just Aat, that is, Penis, who was an acolyte to 3 Blue Snail. He was the fourth person who knew about the Chacal thing. Hed be our ritualist and official sun adder. How much does he know about the Game? I wondered. Probably not even as much as 7 Prong. God, what a bunch of losers. Okay, who else … damn, this moment-of-silence bits going on a little long, isnt it? Maybe theyre really going to come up and start poking me and find something wrong and reject me. This whole things dead in the water. Hell, hell, hell, and
Suddenly the bloods spread their right hands over their left shoulders in an extended salute and spoke, almost in unison:
We underneath you,
We do not deserve this gift,
But we will cherish it,
We will look after him.
Whew, I thought. Glad weve got that straight.
So then, now these are
Your own elder brothers
Your own younger brothers.
2 Jeweled Skull said to me,
Follow them, serve them,
Dont weaken, dont shame me.
I answered:
I underneath you
Will pass their tests.
You are accepted. Were finished,
2JS declared.
I stood and turned 360 degrees counterclockwise, offering myself to each of the five directions, and then crouched to the ground, with both hands on my forehead, submitting to my family. The Steward of Long Things walked forward first and presented me with my blowgun. Thanks, just my size. Next I got a fresh, mint-scented stalking wikal, which was kind of a midlength cloak made of quilted cotton. Everybody wore them when it got cold. The word poncho doesnt quite get it, because theyre round or octagonal, and the slit goes all the way to the edge, but the word cloak sounds like there would be a bit of tailoring to it and maybe a hood. Well, Im going to call them mantas. Mine had a red-and-black border of interlocking talons, like the rest of the Harpy bloods. Its core was some kind of bamboo, but it was wrapped in deerhide thongs woven into my name and genealogy signs. The stewards main carver had been awake for two days getting it ready. After that each of the remaining bloods stepped up and gave me somethinga pair of complicated rubber-soled sandals, a pair of ear spools, a network of deerskin straps and harnesses, a black right-wrist cuff, a string of twenty blowgun darts with their tips stuck in baby pinecones for safety, a traveling mask, a jar of skin poison, a jar of oral poison, a pouch for my nonsacred personal stuff, a pouch for my sacred personal stuff, a plain blanket, everything but a quetzal in a prickly pear tree. Finally, 2 Jeweled Skull gave me a spear with an eagle-feathered ferrule cushion, which meant that in addition to being a blowgunner I was also a member of his family guard. A pair of bearers entered the circle, hoisted 2 Jeweled Skull up on their shoulders, turned him through the four terrestrial directions, and then started off down the hill to the east. As soon as they got out of eyeshot, we were free to go. The bloods stood and arranged themselves. My acolyte came up to me and hunched his body into a ball, which was like kowtowing. It was the first time Id seen him, but I knew that his provisional name, until he became a blood, was Armadillo Shit. He was thirteen years old. Maybe I should call him a squire instead of an acolyteexcept that makes it sound like I was something like a knight or samurai myself already, and I really wasnt. Not yet. Maybe I should just call him my personal assistant, except that doesnt get how much he was like an altar boy. Well, actually, I guess Im kind of embarrassed to call him what we really called him and the other acolytes. But I suppose since weve made it together this far, Ill just spill it, so to speak. They were called aanatob, fellators. The reason is that when you were on a raid, or hunting or whatever, you werent supposed to have sex with anyone or anything because it could deplete your manly whateverness, and, even worse than that, the smell of it could tip off your enemies prowling uays and, even worse than that, if you left semen lying around in strange orifices, your enemies might find it and use it to cast scabs on you. However, most of the bloods youd have on raids or hunts, or on caravans, which, ritually speaking, were the same as hunts, were men between the ages of fourteen and twenty. So you can imagine the rule was tough to enforce. And so, every so often, the interns had to take care of our carnal appetites. That way wed keep everything in-house, as it were. Its one of those Secrets of the Warrior Lodge kindsa things.
Whew. Well, Im glad thats off my chest.
Anyway, Armadillo Shit packed up all my new loot, right down to the earspools. 12 Cayman signed for everyone to stand. The bloods saluted the directions of their ancestors villages and I copied them, feeling first-day-of-high-school self-conscious, and followed them through a makeshift ceremonial gate.
Without any discussion we trooped down from the crest of the hill to its flat eastward shoulder. The line of nonbloodswhat you might call the support staffstood packed and ready on a freshly watered path, in marching order:
Six forerunners, or advance scouts
Four snake watchers, who carried big brushes like leaf rakes, watering gourds, and rattles
A pair of formal messengers with long wooden flutes strapped over their shoulders, like heralds
Four flank scouts
Ten dedicated bearers with empty wicker back racks, like big yuppie toddler carriers
Nine porters in charge of the three big travois sleds
Five individual porters, each with a big cylindrical basket on his back held by a tumpline across his forehead. They carried emergency backups in case we lost the sleds
Two brothers from a strange little clan with an incomprehensible language whose hereditary job was carrying, buying, purifying, and distributing drinking water
One masticator, that is, someone between a taster, a chef, and an apothecary
Two dog handlers, each in charge of fifteen fat food/pillow dogs and ten hunting/watchdogs
Four people from a very low caste whom Ill call groomers. Or maybe scareflies is a better word, since their main job was to keep bugs away
A tailor or valet
A sandal maker
A mask steward, who was in charge of all regalia, not just masks
Two armorers, or spear smiths, in the service of 12 Cayman
A fire wrangler with his flints and drills and a basket of hot coals
A separate sandaler for the nonbloods
A separate cook for the nonbloods
Four people whom one might call untouchables. Two were nightsoil collectors with their twenty dogs. The dogs only job was to eat our excrement so that enemies couldnt get it and use it in curses. The other two humans were nacamob, sacrificers, standing apart from the rest of the line like a pair of crows waiting for a flock of red vultures to vacate a carcass. They would do any killing if necessary and also handle dead bodies. The four of them, and their porters, if any, would follow either in a separate boat or forty paces behind us and a little to the side, so they wouldnt pollute our path.
Nine outrunners, or scouts. Four of them were stalkers and the other five were what we called four-light couriers, that is, specially skilled stealth runners whod have the task of bringing the Game drugs and information back to 2JS from Teotihuacan. Supposedly they were able to run for four solid days and nights, with two of them carrying a spare sleeping courier on their backs, although I was sure this was an exaggeration.
Finally, there was a rear guard of four. Three would drop back in stages and watch for tails. The other would stay closer to the line to make sure no one had dropped anything, not even a hair bead. Hed also sprinkle chili pepper behind us to eradicate our trail, ceremonially and to some extent olfactorily.
So the total was 120 heads, not counting the dogs. So there were five lower
-caste supporters to each blood. Which actually wasnt quite first-class around here. But 2JS wanted enough of a squad to hold off attackers and let me escape, but not enough of an army to look threatening.
There was a pause. The ranks tightened.
18 Dead Rain signed something. The nineteen bloods and Ior I guess I should proudly say we twenty bloodsslipped into our places in the middle of the line, with 12 Cayman in the lead and the second-lowest-ranked blood at the end. I was the lowest-ranked blood, but I was breaking protocol by traveling in the middle of the body, with Hun Xoc ahead of me and 2 Hand behind. Our twenty-one acolytes formed up behind us.
Brian D'Amato Page 50
