Aztlan: The Last Sun

by Michael Jan Friedman

  “Mazatl’s . . . father?”

  His light-colored eyes danced. “Very good. And my second victim should sound familiar as well. His name was Patli—the father of Yaretzi Patli. It was gratifying to take their lives, a pleasure to serve deities still worthy of my respect. But there was an Investigator . . . a clever fellow, like you. He had his suspicions about me. In time, he might have exposed me.

  “So I leaked word to First Sun that he was going to shut them down. I knew that their backs were against the wall, that they would move quickly and decisively. And they did, during the Fire Renewal ceremony, as I led the procession from the river to my sanctum. They stabbed the clever fellow in the neck. The wound proved fatal.”

  I felt a pit open in my stomach.

  “That was your father,” said Itzcoatl. “The hero credited with saving my life.” He laughed. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

  I felt my hands ball up into fists. But I didn’t go after Itzcoatl. Not yet.

  “It gets better,” he said. “Because after I received his body in the Hall of the Fallen, I did to it what I had done to Mazatl’s father and Patli’s father—I opened him up and placed a candle inside him, and dedicated his death to the dark gods—all before I burned him to ashes.”

  My throat constricted. Wherever my father was in the Lands of Death, he was writhing. He had been a devout man all his life. To know that his death had honored Itzcoatl’s pantheon rather than his own. . .

  Animal, I thought.

  “That bothers you,” the High Priest observed. “I knew it would. But I haven’t been all bad for you, Colhua. I did you a favor as well, with the help of Luc Olintecke.”

  “What favor?” I spat out.

  “I came across Olintecke a few cycles ago. He was working for a man named Xiuh, another former member of First Sun. I saw how devoted Olintecke was to the gods, and offered him a chance to serve me. He took it, gladly. As this Fire Renewal approached, I thought he would help me with the murders, especially since this time I wanted to leave the mutilated bodies out in public for everyone to see. But he was too honest, too forthright for me to even ask. Once again, I had to carry out the rituals on my own.

  “First the son of Patli. Then the son of Mazatl. That left only one more—the son of the third man whose death I had given to the elder gods.” He smiled. “You, Colhua.”

  I remembered that priests in ancient days had favored multi-generational sacrifices, considering them more appealing to the gods. Father and son, dipping twice into the same bloodline. Apparently, Itzcoatl’s gods were no different.

  “But you fell afoul of Molpilia and the Knife Eyes,” he said, “or so I learned from my contacts. That presented me with a problem. I needed someone to preserve you, to follow you and make sure you came to no harm. Who better to do so than a brute like Olintecke?

  “That night you were attacked in the tunnel at the rail station? Olintecke was there. He intervened, kept you from getting beaten even worse, though he himself was hurt in the process.”

  I had thought I heard footfalls as I woke up in the tunnel. And the second time I saw Olintecke, in the Merchant City, he hadn’t been able to run very well.

  So he hadn’t been following me with malice in mind. Far from it, he had been looking after me.

  “But Olintecke wasn’t as stupid as he looked,” said Itzcoatl. “Not nearly. In fact, he had two very impressive talents. One was that he could navigate the Mirror as if he had invented it. Using this talent, he broke through police protocols to learn more about the murders you were investigating.

  “When he came across the names Patli and Mazatl, his other talent came into play: an ability to recall details other men had long forgotten. It came to him that the fathers of both victims had died in the last Fire Renewal. Some additional research showed him something else: Of all those who had perished in that Renewal, only one had a son who was still living.”

  “My father,” I said.

  “Yes. Your father. Olintecke came to me with the information. He said you were in danger, all right. Real danger. But not from the cultists or the Knife Eyes, because they had had chances to kill you and they had refrained from doing so. There was someone who had murdered Patli’s father, Mazatl’s father, and your father—and now, it seemed to him, that person was killing their sons.

  “We needed to go to the police, Olintecke said, and tell them what was going on. I dismissed his theory, told him your enemies wouldn’t go so far as to commit murder. But he knew better. He said he would go to the police on his own if he had to—which was when I forbade him to say anything.

  “The moment I did that, he saw through me. After all, he had been with me for a couple of cycles, and he had come to know me in that time. So he got a glimpse of my involvement in the murders.

  “That put him in something of a bind. After all, he had sworn to obey me, and he had always borne that obligation with the utmost seriousness. He would rather have carved out his own heart than defied me. But he also couldn’t allow me to kill you as I had killed the others, because the idea of what I had done—what I was still doing—horrified him.

  “So what could he do? Nothing, I thought. But I underestimated him, Colhua. Olintecke threatened to kill you himself in order to keep me from making you a sacrifice. I couldn’t allow that, of course. So I ordered him to kill himself—an order he carried out with admirable efficiency.”

  Yet another death on Itzcoatl’s hands, I thought.

  “And now,” he said, “there’s just one thing left to do—kill you, cut you open, and pluck out your heart—with the crowd down there watching.”

  “Watching. . .?” I asked.

  He smiled again. “There are cameras in the walls. They’ll go on in a moment. Then everyone, all over the Mirror, will see the power of my gods—and the weakness of yours.”

  “And you think you can take me down?” I asked. “Why? Because you have a knife?”

  I hadn’t been able to bring my hand stick to the ceremony—a condition of being part of the High Priest’s Honor Guard. But I was still a police officer. I’d had training.

  “You believe I’m soft because I’m a priest,” said Itzcoatl. “It will be my pleasure to demonstrate otherwise.”

  Just as he spoke, I saw a tiny camera protrude from the wall with a mechanical whirr. Then I heard other such sounds around me, coming from what must have been similar mechanisms.

  “Excellent,” said the High Priest, his lips pulling back in a wolflike grin. “We can get started.”

  And with his obsidian knife held low, he came for me.

  True to his word, he wasn’t a pushover. I barely avoided his first slash. The second one sliced my tunic open.

  Fast, I thought.

  Then he moved even faster. This time, he nicked my chest—though it could have been worse. Then he did it a second time with his backhand. And he kept coming.

  I was in trouble. Obviously, Itzcoatl hadn’t spent all his time praying.

  Maybe when I was playing in the ball court, I could have kept up with him. But not now.

  My tunic was turning red with blood—that is, where I still had something resembling a tunic. And I was running out of room as the High Priest backed me toward the wall behind me.

  “Police!” came a sudden bellow from the hallway outside the doors to the sanctum. “Open up!”

  Necalli, I thought. He couldn’t have shown up at a better time.

  Itzcoatl stopped and glared at me, his eyes wild with realization. “You knew.”

  “I found a list on Olintecke’s body,” I said. “It had three names on it—Patli’s, Mazatl’s, and mine. But above Mazatl’s name, there was another one—Acacitli. I did some research and found out who Acacitli was, and when he had died. Then I checked and saw that Patli’s father had died in the last Renewal as well.

  “So I asked myself . . . who could have sacrificed everyone on that list, both father and son? Who could have performed a ritual dismemberment of them without anyo
ne’s knowing? And who would have the opportunity to sacrifice me as well before the end of the Unlucky Days?”

  “Flimsy evidence,” said the High Priest. “How could you be sure?”

  “I couldn’t,” I said, “which is why—after no one went after me during our procession—I had to come up here and give you a chance to incriminate yourself.” I pulled out the recording wire I’d been wearing, which had been transmitting our conversation back to the Interrogation Center. “Thanks to this.”

  Itzcoatl’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. With a cry of rage, he charged at me.

  Had he remained focused, he probably would have had me. But I was able to take advantage of his anger. Sidestepping his charge, I grabbed his robe and added to his momentum.

  As he crashed into the wall, he lost control of his knife. It clattered away, giving me the opening I needed.

  But as I pounced on Itzcoatl, hoping to finish him off, he lashed out with his foot. It caught me in the jaw, spinning me around.

  He’s not just quick, I thought through a haze of pain. He’s strong too.

  Then he showed me how strong—as he got up, put his shoulder into me, and sent me crashing to the floor. Before I knew it, he was on top of me with his hands around my throat. He began to squeeze.

  “Police!” This time the cry was louder, more urgent, and it was followed by a pounding on the door.

  The High Priest had managed to ignore Necalli’s shouts, but the pounding seemed to bother him. Distracted, he turned his head away from me for a moment.

  Taking advantage of the opportunity, I hauled off and drove my fist into Itzcoatl’s jaw. His head snapped around like the business end of a whip, but he didn’t release his hold on me.

  I hit him again. And again. But still he hung on, trying to crush my windpipe with his bare hands.

  My vision started to narrow, darkness closing around the edges of it. I was running out of time.

  “You’re finished,” the High Priest growled. “I can’t wait to tear your heart out.”

  I’m not giving in, I thought.

  My father had taught me that when I was little. It was what made me a champion in the ball court. Not my speed or my strength, or the accuracy with which I struck the ball. It was my refusal to give in.

  That came from him.

  With one hand I reached out and grabbed Itzcoatl by the ear, so he couldn’t move his head. Then, with the other hand, I punched him in the throat.

  That made him release me—and a little room to move was all I needed. Grabbing him by the front of his robe, I threw him off me. Then I scrambled to my feet.

  To his credit, the High Priest did the same. He was gasping hard, one hand clutching protectively at his throat, but he wasn’t done yet.

  That was fine with me, because I wasn’t done with him either. Like a bull I lowered my head and charged, and rammed him square in the center of his chest. Together, we sprawled across the room.

  The difference was that I saw the marble altar in time to avoid hitting it. Itzcoatl, on the other hand, struck it full force with the back of his skull.

  I was ready to hit him again, whatever it took. But he didn’t get up again. He just lay there, moaning, a tiny puddle of blood gathering beneath his shaven head.

  A moment later, the doors to the High Priest’s sanctum flew open and Necalli burst in, followed by a half-dozen officers.

  “Sorry,” he told me. “He must have set the doors to lock behind him. It took a while to override the mechanism.”

  I started to answer, but my throat hurt too much. So all I did was nod.

  “Lands of the Dead,” Necalli said, glancing at my face on his way to see to Itzcoatl, “I’ve seen corpses that looked better.”

  “Thanks,” I croaked.

  It had occurred to me earlier in the day that if Necalli were one of the Knife Eyes, he might leave me hanging in Itzcoatl’s sanctum. But he hadn’t. So more than likely, the investigation of the Knife Eyes would be an honest one, and—to my mind, at least—the force would be better for it.

  A few moments later, some of Necalli’s officers carried the High Priest out of his sanctum. He didn’t look so good either. His face was bruised and swollen, and he was dripping blood from a wound in the back of his head.

  “Come on,” said Necalli, clapping me on the shoulder. “Let’s get you to a doctor.”

  “Not yet,” I whispered. I pointed to the balcony doors. “I want to see what the Fire Renewal looks like from up here.”

  Necalli was going to tell me I was crazy. I could see it in his face. After all, I was pretty beaten up.

  But he had seen me beaten up before, not even so long ago. And maybe it occurred to him that I had earned a little leeway.

  Whatever the reason, he said, “Knock yourself out.” Then he left me alone in Itzcoatl’s sanctum.

  I went over to the balcony doors, opened them, and stepped out. Below me, in the torchlight, the people were still cheering. They didn’t know what had happened to the High Priest.

  Not yet.

  Over the cycles, the High Priest had emerged onto his balcony many times to address the crowd. But for me, stepping out there was a new experience. It made me feel the way I used to feel in the ball court when thousands of people were screaming my name, urging me on to feats that went beyond the limits of blood and bone.

  I waved to the people. They must have wondered why it wasn’t Itzcoatl up there, but they waved back anyway.

  Eventually, they would realize that the High Priest wasn’t coming out. They would disperse. And when they got home, they would see what had happened.

  Itzcoatl’s cameras had seen to that.

  Cualli, the First Administrator of the city, would release some kind of statement. Maybe Zazanya as well. They would try to give the people some solace, some comfort, some sense that nothing had changed.

  But that wasn’t true. Everything had changed.

  Our lives had been shaken to their foundations. Whatever people believed they knew about the priesthood. . .they would realize that it was a lie. A shameful lie.

  Not that all priests were murderers and madmen. Certainly, that wasn’t the case. But they were human. They were fallible. That was the lesson the people would learn—that the men they admired, even worshipped, were no more venerable than Zolin the fried salamander man.

  They weren’t better than anyone else. They were just people, a mixture of good and bad.

  And if the priests were flesh and blood, so were the men and women who carried out the edicts of the nobility. And ultimately, difficult as it was to contemplate, so was the nobility itself.

  That, without question, was the biggest change anyone could imagine.

  But the Empire had lasted a millennium, enduring the Spaniard Cortez and his kind, and plague, and famine, and rebellion. And now it had survived the Last Sun. Despite everything, I assured myself, it would go on.

  The next few days would be a challenge, to say the least, and a hardship, and a heartache. We had a mess to deal with, no question about it.

  But it wasn’t the end of the world.

  About the Author Michael Jan Friedman is the author of nearly 70 books of fiction and non-fiction, about half of them set somewhere in the wilds of the Star Trek universe. His first book, The Hammer and The Horn, was published by Questar, an imprint of Warner Books, in 1985. In the next couple of years, he wrote The Seekers and The Sword and The Fortress and The Fire, completing what has come to be known as The Vidarsaga Trilogy, as well as the freestanding novel The Glove of Maiden’s Hair.

  In 1992 Friedman penned Reunion, the first Star Trek: The Next Generation hardcover, which introduced the crew of the Stargazer, Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s first command. Over the years, the popularity of Reunion spawned a number of Stargazer stories in both prose and comic book formats, including a six-novel original series.

  Friedman has also written for the Aliens, Predator, Wolf Man, Lois and Clark, DC Super Hero, Marvel Super Hero,
and Wishbone licensed book universes. Eleven of his book titles, including the autobiography Hollywood Hulk Hogan and Ghost Hunting (written with SciFi’s Ghost Hunters), have appeared on the prestigious New York Times primary bestseller list, and his novel adaptation of the Batman & Robin movie was for a time the #1 bestselling book in Poland (really).

  Friedman has worked at one time or another in network and cable television, radio, business magazines, and the comic book industry, in the process producing scripts for nearly 180 comic stories. Among his comic book credits are the Darkstars ongoing series from DC Comics, which he created with artist Larry Stroman, and the Outlaws limited series, which he created with artist Luke McDonnell, as well as tales of Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, Fantastic Four, and the Silver Surfer. He also co-wrote the story for the acclaimed second-season Star Trek: Voyager episode “Resistance,” which guest-starred Joel Grey.

  Friedman lives with his wife and two sons on Long Island, where in his rapidly dwindling free time he enjoys running, kayaking, and playing single-wall handball.

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