by Jeff Posey
“Yes. You wear it. You have power. That makes others wish to wear it. Far to the south, where these tiny bells are made, a small pouch of bluestone beads would be worth a lifetime of labor by most men.”
“So you want to use your trained killer children to steal our bluestone,” said Tókotsi. “And carry it to the Motherland.”
The Pochtéca chuckled. Tókotsi was all South, all about the superiority of Másaw as a guiding spirit. Of course it would be so. “No. But that’s always an option. We’ve beaten your warriors, even your best warriors without much effort so far.”
“Is that a threat?”
“You wanted to know my bargaining power. That’s part of it.”
“You have more than children behind you?”
“Oh, I don’t need them anymore,” said The Pochtéca, leaning down to watch a line of ants work in the grass nearby. He admired how they carried such enormous burdens. If only orphaned children could carry as much. “The children you speak of have business of their own. I simply had the pleasure of traveling with them. I am here for trade. My shirt of many bells for your store of finished bluestone. Once I am back in your Motherland, I will send trading parties back, and we will both grow rich and as big as the Fat Man.”
It wasn’t much of an offer, The Pochtéca knew. Tókotsi already had a rich life. He could easily order The Pochtéca killed now, and then he would likely be able to find the shirt of bells hidden in the palace without much difficulty. The only thing that might trouble him, The Pochtéca assumed, would be the unknown factor of what Tókotsi called “killer children.”
“I care nothing for your trade,” said Tókotsi, handing back the two bells. The Pochtéca took them and closed his fingers over them. He could tell by the way Tókotsi looked that he lied. He wanted those bells. “And there are no killer children here in this canyon. Our warriors have taken care of that. You have nothing to bargain.” Tókotsi rocked forward to stand, but the sound of drums reverberated from the palace and they both turned to look.
“They can’t do that without me!” said Tókotsi.
“They have not been themselves since children started killing them with flute music,” said The Pochtéca. He let his eyes glance to the top of the altar where smoke rose in billows from the bonfire. He hoped Lightfoot, Tootsa, and Peelay had made it into position. He saw no evidence they had. “And this lovely palace, that should be for you, don’t you think?” The Pochtéca felt he had nothing to lose at this point. His only shot was to talk his way out of it. “Not that imposter of a High Priest. And that pathetic Pók.”
Tókotsi’s brows bunched down and his lips pressed together, but he said nothing.
The Pochtéca looked at the palace. A man who must be the High Priest was leading the woman in bluestone and the albino, followed by Pók, strutting and waving his bandaged hand. The Pochtéca felt a jolt. Pók was preparing to sacrifice Nuva and Chumana on the altar. He carefully controlled his voice to hide his emotion. Tuwa would be about to burst. He looked up at the top of the altar again. This time he made out the silhouette of a misshapen man. He smiled. “Pók becomes more comical every day,” he said. “He makes everyone in this canyon think you’re losing control.”
Tókotsi’s nose flared and his lower lip stiffened. “I’ve never been spoken to in such a manner!” Tókotsi started once again to rise.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said The Pochtéca, pulling his red hat out of his vest. He raised it high, waved it, and then placed it with a jaunty slap onto his head. “Now. It’s out of our hands. Yours too, I’m afraid. Your power just came to an end. Sit and watch. If you stand, this will be your last day on Earth.”
Tókotsi’s eyes widened and he looked around as if he expected something to happen. But nothing did at first. The quiet moment grew long and The Pochtéca worried they had missed his signal. Tókotsi looked at him as he would a foolish child. And then the crowd stirred and a few watchers gasped. The Pochtéca looked up to the altar, fearing that Pók had killed Chumana or Nuva before they arrived at the top. But no. Peelay danced wildly on top of the highest altar. Two guardsmen reached for him, and only then did he began to play his flute.
The guardsmen cringed and put their fingers into their ears. A scuffle broke out below at the entrance to the altar pathway. The Pochtéca saw Tuwa and Choovio burst through the guards there and rush up the path. At that moment a woman from somewhere raised her voice in a piercing trill. Women from all directions joined, and then Tókotsi’s Southern Guardsmen began to fall, stabbed from behind. Several tried to fight, but managed only a few blows.
From the cliffs above, the close ones on the south side, and the far ones on the north, came high whoops and the sound of more women trilling their voices. Hundreds, maybe thousands of voices pierced the canyon. The air seemed to vibrate with it.
The Pochtéca pulled a hand flake-knife from his vest. He had never killed a man before. He had seen it done many times, and others, even children, had done it for him. But he would if he must. He looked at Tókotsi, who returned his gaze with a mixture of hatred and astonishment.
“You have nothing left to bargain with that I can see,” said The Pochtéca, reaching to pull Tókotsi’s knife from his belt.
Rise Above the Altar
Tuwa sprinted up the pathway past the double line of guards who plugged their ears with their fingers and looked up at Peelay as if he might strike them dead. He charged the guard at the first switchback, who unplugged his ears and raised his club. Tuwa lowered his left shoulder and prepared to crash into the man, who pulled his elbows in to defend his ribs. At the last moment, Tuwa changed direction. He pushed himself away on the guard’s chest, who responded with an ineffective swing of his club. He left him for Choovio and didn’t look back.
The guard at the next and last switchback raised a long war club with both hands. The flute music stopped. Before Tuwa could react, a mason’s polishing stone crashed onto the guard’s head from above. He collapsed. Tuwa looked up. Lightfoot met his eyes with a nod as he lifted another stone. Tuwa kicked the limp guard off his switchback platform. His body slid and tumbled down the face of the altar mound leaving a trail of blood.
Tuwa turned up the last switchback and came to the top altar platform. One guard knocked Peelay’s flute away and held him by the neck, and the other gave Lightfoot a vicious blow to his chest, a thunderous retching sound coming from his mouth. His collapsed body joined the guard Tuwa had just kicked down the altar.
Choovio came up beside Tuwa. They both breathed hard. “Four behind us,” said Choovio. Tuwa didn’t look back. He couldn’t take his eyes from the face of Pók. He saw Chumana and Nuva in his peripheral vision, but he focused on Pók. He clenched his flake knives in each hand. Pók would die.
The shouting and trilling of the women ceased, and the canyon went quiet.
Chumana and Nuva were tied to low posts set into the ground and Pók stood behind them, brandishing a short, blunt arrow with a wide stone head. Pók lifted his bandaged hand high like a torch before him and shook with rage. Or pleasure. Tuwa couldn’t tell and didn’t care. Behind him, Tuwa heard crunching steps. The four guardsmen. A moment later a sharp point poked him in the back, a warning, and his eyes watered. He spun away, but another guardsman blocked his arm, and then knocked Tuwa’s hands down hard. He dropped the flake knives and the warrior raised his club over Tuwa’s forehead. To his left, he saw Choovio in the same situation. He cut his eyes to Nuva, who smiled unnaturally. He noticed movement behind Chumana. From a wide crack between paving slabs, he saw Tootsa’s wide-eyed face.
Pók sauntered to stand before Tuwa.
“Well, well, look who we have here. Risen like a warrior god from the trash heap. They’ll make songs about you. It’s enough to make a father proud.” He smiled, and for the first time Tuwa got a good look at his teeth, all filed to dull points.
Pók raised his hands and addressed the crowd. Warriors were down everywhere. Women held pointed sticks, most of th
em bloody. Some had begun making their way up the switchback pathway to the altar.
“I heard you. I heard you. I heard you.” He turned in three directions and called out in a clear, ringing voice. Pók had ample practice performing on this altar. “Now you hear me.” He repeated it twice more.
“Thank you for what you have done for me and this canyon. Now we can continue our work of building higher for the gods without the interference of the Southern Alliance and its guard of thugs. You will all be rewarded with a new High Priest.”
Pók pointed his good hand at The Builder wearing the full garb of High Priest. “Place your hat and robes on the white witch,” he stage whispered. “Make it look ceremonial.”
The Builder hesitated, and Pók took two steps to him, his good hand raised in threat. The Builder blanched and began a rough but elaborate and showy transfer of power to Nuva, still tied to the stake.
The women of the canyon quieted, and murmurs of trills and cheers rose and fell. Pók stood before Tuwa and watched the crowd, while Tuwa looked at Nuva. Her face never changed from an otherworldly smile. Had she given up? Gone mad? He swept his eyes to Chumana. Her head and mask hung low. Had she given up too?
“The two biggest mistakes of my life,” said Pók in a casual voice, “were not killing you before I tossed you off that cliff, and not keeping you and raising you as my own.” He stepped close to Tuwa, face to face. “Can you imagine what we could have been together? You’re a gifted warrior. I could’ve trained you to be great.” Pók looked him up and down. “It’s not too late to join me.” He moved his injured hand higher against his chest. “Though I’ll be hard to convince.”
Pók’s eye went to Choovio, who wore a bemused smile. “So this must be the loyal dog of my disloyal son. Ready to step in and die for his child master. It looks like he’s taken a beating for you already today. But look at that smile on his face. I’ll bet he’s still primed to fight.”
“I’ll fight you,” said Choovio.
“Oh yes, I’m sure you would,” said Pók, stroking his bandaged hand. “But it wouldn’t be fair, now would it? Unless, of course, you’d be willing to let one of my men cut off your thumb?”
Choovio offered his hand to the nearest guardsman, thumb up.
Pók smiled. “You, too, would have made a good warrior.” He looked from Choovio to Tuwa. “It’s amazing that the worthless Village of Twins and that pathetic skywatcher grandfather of yours managed to produce two people like you. Right under my nose. Literally.” He began to laugh. The Builder had nearly finished the final handoff. He had saved the hat to last. He stood on tiptoe before Nuva and placed the white hat on her head.
Pók strode forward and thrust his good arm toward Nuva. “I give you,” he called to the crowd. “Your new High Ruler. The White Priestess of Center Place Canyon!”
The canyon erupted into noise again, more raucous than before, trills and cheers and echoes like waves. During the bedlam, Tootsa popped out and began sawing the binds at Chumana’s hands. A guard saw him and stepped toward him with a raised club. Tootsa frantically finished sawing, and then tried to run under the warrior’s legs. As he did, he raised his hand with the knife to the warrior’s stomach.
When he came out the other side, the warrior twisted to follow him, but his insides began to spill out. Tootsa had sliced him open. The guard slipped and fell. A ripple of reaction went through the crowd, causing Pók to turn around.
The guard holding Peelay released him and kicked the knife from Tootsa’s hand. He grabbed the boy by the hair and between his legs, and made to toss him from the altar. Tootsa wiggled mightily.
Behind the guard with her hands cut free, Chumana stood tall. Everything about her seemed to rise in slow motion. Her mask turned up to the sky, high and proud, and each hand held a hem of her bluestone gown until she looked like a fan of feathers from the tail of a male prairie grouse the color of a mountain lake above tree line. The polished bluestone flashed in the sunlight, while Nuva stood, her hands still tied, in the High Priest’s clothing, her eyes also lifted toward the sky, that eerie otherworldly grin on her lips.
The guard holding the still-squirming Tootsa glanced at Chumana and almost stumbled off the platform in surprise. He dropped Tootsa, who caught himself on the steep altar front like a monkey from the southern jungles and scrambled up to the platform behind Pók, who faced Chumana.
Tuwa felt the pocket of his vest where he kept spare flake knives. He had one more. Chumana approached Pók as Peelay crawled along the wall behind Nuva, and Tuwa removed the knife from his pocket. The remaining guardsmen leaned forward, watching Peelay, Pók focused entirely on Chumana. They seemed to be locked in a private, slow battle. One that Tuwa intended to disrupt.
“Now you’re an assassin without a weapon,” Pók said to Chumana, brandishing the stubby arrow. He took a step toward her.
Then he stopped and looked at Tuwa. “Oh, the delicious dilemma you’re in, you shadow of your mother’s worthless spirit. You can try to save this fraud of a goddess, in which case she will watch you die. Or you can stand there like the less-than-nothing piece of dog excrement you are and watch her die.”
Pók took two steps toward Chumana and raised the fat arrow in his right hand for a roundhouse swipe at her throat.
Tuwa charged, but Choovio lunged ahead of him. A guard stabbed at him with a knife and Choovio pulled him down into a heap. The one holding Tuwa relaxed his grip for a moment, and Tuwa put out his leg and tripped the man, pulling him down. Tuwa jumped to his feet and vaulted over the fallen guard toward Pók.
For the first time, Pók’s face looked angry rather than in calm control. He leaned hard toward Chumana, who held her ground without recoil. Tuwa sprinted and raised his flake-knife high. He thought he wouldn’t make it and leaped with all his might, panic and anger surging through him, and brought his knife down wild and hard just as Pók’s swipe approached Chumana’s throat. Tuwa’s blade connected with Pók’s hand with a bone-jarring jolt that tore something from Tuwa’s hand, just as his blade sliced between the bones of Pók’s wrist. It cut cleanly all the way through. The hand-arrow with Pók’s severed right hand still gripped around the shaft bounced off Chumana’s mask.
Pók fell into Chumana, who kept her balance by stepping back. Tuwa pounced on top of Pók, his forehead bouncing off the stone platform. He saw stars swimming and felt warm liquid flowing from his nose. He gritted his teeth and turned, preparing to kick Pók into submission if he hadn’t already given up. The fingers of Tuwa’s right hand slipped in warm blood on his blade, and he struggled to glance back at Chumana, who removed her mask. Her hair was tangled and wild as she looked at Pók in a mixture of contempt and anger. Peelay picked up Tootsa’s knife and cut through Nuva’s binds. She spread her arms wide and looked to the sky, seemingly oblivious to the humans on the platform. Pók tried to stand. Choovio had his elbow in the throat of a downed guardsman, who gurgled. Another guard pulled at Choovio to get him off the man. Pók floundered without his right hand and couldn’t push himself up. Tuwa pushed himself into a sitting position with his right hand, which slipped and he felt the blade squeeze away. He managed to roll onto his back and kick Pók hard in the chest. He took a deep breath and kicked him again.
Pók gasped. “Curse your pathetic….” Tuwa kicked him in the face. Blood spurted from Pók’s wrist and now his nose, and the wound on his other hand where he’d lost his thumb bleed freely as well. He opened his mouth, the blood staining his pointed teeth, as if to say something else, and Tuwa kicked him again. And again. And then again. He never wanted to hear another sound from the man. Finally, Pók lay limp. Tuwa tried to hold himself up, his heels still propped on top of Pók, but he slipped again on his right hand. He gave up and lay back, holding his right hand in front of his face. His forefinger was gone. Sliced off. Along with Pók’s hand. His own blade had somehow twisted or turned as it collided with Pók’s wrist and cut through Tuwa’s knuckle, which glistened white in the sunlight in spite o
f the copious blood that flowed around the wound.
Nuva walked forward, her hands raised high. The guardsmen gripped their weapons, but hesitated. Pók came to, shook his head, and gripped his wrist hard with his remaining four fingers to slow the bleeding. Chumana’s face looked fierce, making her seem older and unlike the girl Tuwa used to know.
The women in the canyon went wild. Nuva and Chumana held hands and raised their arms, while Tuwa carefully stood on shaky legs.
Pók grinned up at him. “I see you’re losing body parts now, too, you miserable boy. You’ve ruined everything.”
Tuwa wanted to raise a club over him or hold a knife to his throat. He wanted to make that final kill. To watch the life flow from the eyes of this man who had killed his mother and his grandfather. But his body wouldn’t respond. He felt as lifeless and heavy as stone. It was all he could do to stand. Holding his bleeding hand. Staring at Pók. Who lay without struggle. Holding his bleeding stump.
Pók sneered. “You less-than-nothing piece of….”
Tuwa raised his leg to stomp the life out of Pók. To crush his head like a gourd. It felt good. It felt very, very good. But a sudden image of Grandfather held him back, pulled him back like Choovio had done. Stop. Pók watched him with the slightest of grins. He wanted to die. He wanted the son he failed to kill to end it. Now. Make it be over. But Tuwa did not have the spirit of his father. He had the spirit of his mother. And of his Grandfather. He lowered his foot and took a faltering step backward.
“I was wrong,” Pók said, blood spattering as he spoke. “You would not have made a great warrior. You have the weak spirit of your mother.” Tuwa watched him as Pók’s head sagged, his face white even as it was smeared with his own blood. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and his head fell onto his chest.
Tuwa didn’t know if all other sound stopped or if his ears simply roared with his own thunder. He looked around. Chumana kept her arms raised high, her night-black eyes on him. The Builder without his High Priest costume backed away. Peelay and Tootsa leaned against the back wall, gripping each other’s arms. Pók lay on the ground without moving, a puddle of crimson blood growing beneath him. Choovio still knelt holding his arm against the throat of a motionless guard. The other guardsmen backed away, their weapons held low.
