Forward into darkness
Away from the Fifth World's reach."
A veil fell over me, darkening the courtyard, and the stars in the sky receded, became as insignificant as scattered bones. The world shifted and danced, and the faces I glanced at – Teomitl's, Manatzpa's – seemed those of old men. Teomitl's voice came to me, tinny and weak, the veil leeching all resonance, all warmth from his words.
Gods, I hated that spell.
"Acatl-tzin!"
"Let's go," I said.
Teomitl pulled the entrance-curtain aside and strode in, barely holding it long enough for me to enter in turn.
The room stretched before us, as long and narrow as a fishing boat, interspersed with carved columns. Its walls were painted a vibrant ochre, engraved with leaping deer and jaguars.
Near the centre, Echichilli was seated on reed mats a halfconsumed meal before him maize flatbread, tomatoes and the bones of fowl.
"Manatzpa?" His wrinkled face looked puzzled. "I thought–"
"Later," Manatzpa said. Teomitl had his macuahitl sword out, the obsidian shards glinting in the reddish lights of the brazier. "We need to get you out of here. Now."
I'd expected Echichilli to protest. He certainly had not been shy about his opinions beforehand, but he remained silent, his eyes fixed on the nibbled fowl-bones. "Venerable Echichilli?" I asked.
He smiled, revealing a few yellowed teeth stuck haphazardly in his mouth. "I think it's too late for that, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?" I asked. But, as I did so, a cold wind lifted the entrance-curtain, and I felt the hole in the Fifth World widen. Something pressed down upon us. Cracks appeared in the roof, fragments of adobe rained down, and the stars shone through the cracks. One of them was falling, straight towards us, growing larger and larger…
"Teomitl!" I screamed.
The rattle of shells filled the room and a shadow stood before us, its hundreds of eyes shining malevolently in the dim light. No, not eyes but stars, scattered at the knees, elbows and wrists of a vaguely humanoid creature – stars that, if you looked into them for long enough, were also demons, smaller monsters with talons and fangs and necklaces of human hearts…
It brought with it the emptiness of the night sky, a cold so intense that my teeth seized up, chattering unstoppably. My limbs shook, started to twist out of shape, and all I could feel was the frantic beating of my heart.
Its eyes, the deathly blue of stars, rested upon me for a while, and I felt as if fingers were closing around my throat, as if hundreds of cold stones pressed against my skin. My veil of protection buckled and shattered, leaving only a cold feeling. My vision started to blur, my corneas burning as if someone had thrown chilli powder into my face.
Where was the Wind of Knives?
The star-demon's gaze moved away; I was not its target. My limbs, now utterly out of control, twisted each in a different direction, leaving me on my knees, struggling not to fall further.
Manatzpa had risen, arms crossed against his chest. "This isn't your place." His voice rang with confidence. How he could still be standing, facing that?
The star-demon made a sound which might have been laughter. I heard only the rattle of shells, of yellowed bones shaken together in a grave, my own bones, grinding in the agonising mess of my chest.
"Manatzpa." Echichilli's voice was quiet. "Some things cannot be fought against."
Manatzpa's face twisted in uncharacteristic anger. "You say this like you approve."
I didn't hear Echichilli's answer. My legs were quivering, threatening to slip away from me, and it took all my concentration to remain upright.
The star-demon was moving, flowing towards the two councilmen with the inevitability of a flood. Manatzpa's hand strayed towards his knife, but the clawed hands batted him aside as casually as a child might hurl a toy. He flew towards the wall, hit it, and slumped at the feet of the frescoes, bleeding from a dozen cuts.
That left only Echichilli. The old councillor stood, watching the star-demon come with an odd, melancholy smile on his face. "For everything a price," he whispered. He bowed his head, and did not move.
The Duality curse us, why wouldn't he fight? Why wouldn't he use magic, anything to save himself from the gruesome death facing him?
I slid my hand towards one of my obsidian knives. It was like moving through thick honey. My fingers kept jerking out of the way, and my progress was agonisingly slow, finger-length by finger-length, knuckle by knuckle, every movement a supreme effort.
The star-demon's body blocked my sight of Echichilli. Its back was a dark cloak rippling in the wind, shimmering to reveal row upon row of skulls. Shells as white as bone, sewn into the hem, rattled as it moved.
My fingers hovered over the handle of the knife, closed over empty air. The Duality curse me, I needed…
Echichilli screamed once, a sound abruptly cut off by the wet sound of flesh being torn apart. Hundreds of droplets splayed into the room; organs and blood, spattering my face and hands.
No…
I managed to close my fingers over the knife. The familiar emptiness of Mictlan arced up my body, stretching into my lungs and throat. The sensation of twisting diminished. I pulled myself upwards on shaking legs, the knife handle digging into the palm of my hand, a persistent, known pain that anchored me back to the Fifth World.
"Acatl-tzin." Teomitl had got up with me, his hand still affixed to my shoulder. Chalchiuhtlicue's magic wrapped around him gave a green, rippling cast to his cloak and headdress. "They're coming."
The ahuizotls. I knew; and I also knew that they would be too late.
The Wind of Knives, however, wasn't.
His weight in my mind grew excruciating, like a white-hot spear driven into my head. Darkness flowed into the room, bringing with it the deep, teeth-chattering cold of the underworld, and He was standing by my side as if He had always been there. Light glittered on a thousand obsidian planes, caught on the black points like beads on a necklace's thread.
His hand rested lightly on my shoulder, balanced on a dozen obsidian shards as sharp as the points of knives and a tight, cool feeling spread from the points of contact, enough for me to focus again. "Acatl. I am here."
I managed to utter words, through chattering teeth. "You can… see."
"Yes," the Wind of Knives said. His voice was like the water of the cenote, dark, without warmth or sunlight. "I see."
Before I could say anything more, He flowed, fluid, inhuman, towards the star-demon.
The creature had turned, its pale head shifting between the Wind of Knives and Manatzpa, who had pulled himself on an elbow and was daubing Echichilli's blood into the beginning of a huge arc around himself, chanting all the while in harsh words I couldn't make out. The dim light glinted against the tears in his eyes.
The Wind of Knives met the star-demon with a screeching sound, obsidian blades sliding on shell rattles. They fought each other, flowing across the room in an embrace. Obsidian shards glinted. Here and there pale fragments of skin flashed blue in the darkness as they moved past, again and again, spraying drops of Echichilli's blood all over the room like warm rain. It was almost hypnotic, that play of colours, of darkness on light, if the consequences hadn't been so absurdly terrifying…
"Acatl-tzin!" Teomitl screamed.
With growing horror, I realised that the star-demon was coming straight at me. Behind it, the Wind of Knives lay pinned to the floor by something jagged and white – a huge fragment of shell under which the Wind struggled to free Himself.
Of course. It thought to kill me, and thus cut the Wind of Knives' link to the Fifth World.
It was almost close enough to touch, Its eyes held me, and my hands started to shiver and contract. I held onto the knife, to the stretched emptiness of Mictlan, the only part of my body that seemed not to writhe in pain.
Teomitl bypassed me, his macuahitl sword at the ready. He moved more slowly as the star-demon's gaze transferred to him, but his features became
harsher, the whites of his eyes glazing into green. His sword came up, hundreds of obsidian shards glittering in the light, ready for a strike.
The star-demon was faster. It sidestepped in a rattle of shells, and threw itself at me.
I went down in a tangle of flailing limbs, fighting to regain control of my own body. Up close, it seemed almost human, its face as pale as a corpse, with the bluish tinge of death, its cheeks swollen and tinged with black spots, its eyes without corneas or pupils…
The Wind of Knives was still down. Manatzpa was still chanting, but it did not seem to be having any effect on the star-demon. I was the only one who could save myself…
Fighting all the while, I raised the knife, sank it into whatever I could reach. It howled, but remained upon me. I watched its hands rise as if from a great distance. The fingers curled into claws as sharp as broken obsidian, tiny stars at the joints that were also the eyes of monsters. The claws fell, and swiped across my chest, opening my flesh in a flower of pain.
The star-demon howled, shaking its head. Through the growing haze, I saw Teomitl's face, transfigured into jade. He was going to strike again, and I couldn't remain inactive. I tried to roll over, but my chest felt as if it was splitting open. I raised my hand again, flailing, desperately trying to focus on what I needed to do. The blade of the knife quivered in a blur of black reflections as I drove it up to the hilt into the star-demon's chest.
The blade slid into its flesh without resistance, as if there had been no substance to it at all. Something warm and pulsing fell over me, a suffocating river that smelled of cold, dry earth, nothing like blood. Every one of its eyes closed for a moment, leaving us in darkness, and then they opened again, and its claws swept down, faster than I could follow.
Everything went dark in a burst of pain.
TEN
Aftermath
I woke up, tried shifting, and almost screamed when the pain in my chest flared again.
"Don't move, Acatl-tzin." Teomitl's face swam into focus, his skin dark brown again, all traces of the goddess purged from him.
I managed to shift my gaze down to see my chest swathed in a mass of bandages. That feeling of emptiness was still there, and I wasn't sure any more whether it was the hole left by Axayacatl-tzin's death, or simply a remnant of the magic of Mictlan that had arced through me as I stabbed upwards.
"If I'm still here, I imagine it's gone?"
Teomitl nodded. "Disappeared the moment it was stabbed. Couldn't have done it without the Wind of Knives, though."
The Wind. I could no longer feel Him in my mind. He had vanished at the star-demon's death.
I lay back, and breathed a sigh of relief.
Teomitl's face hovered between horror and fascination. "That's what we have to deal with?"
"A lot more of them, yes," I said. If only Quenami had seen that, even he would have had to admit that this was a genuine threat.
I pulled myself upwards cautiously. The surroundings were unfamiliar. Frescoes depicted the triumphant march of Huitzilpochtli across the marshes, our enemies trampled underfoot, the sorcerer Copil vanquished and his heart torn out, the founding of Tenochtitlan after two hundred years of wandering and our rise to glory. "Where–?"
"Manatzpa's rooms," Teomitl said. "A different part. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some ahuizotls to send away." He frowned. "The other High Priests are at Tizoc-tzin's banquet. I've sent for a priest of Patecatl. He'll be here any moment."
Healing spells required a heavy sacrifice to obtain, their cost all but restricted their use to the Imperial Family. "I'm not sure…"
Teomitl's face was pale, but determined. "You're High Priest for the Dead in Tenochtitlan, Acatl-tzin. Of course he'll come."
Of course. I lay back, feeling infinitely weary. "Thank you. Just go see to those ahuizotls before the screaming starts."
I watched him leave and reflected that he could have sent the ahuizotls away from the room; this meant he had something else to do, something he didn't want me to be privy to. I wasn't sure I wanted to know, in my current state.
A tinkle of bells at the entrance-curtain heralded the entrance of Manatzpa, who was carrying a tray with two bowls of warm chocolate. His own wounds were bandaged, but he walked very carefully, as if the least sudden movement would take him apart.
"I thought you worse off." I managed to pull myself up into a sitting position, wedged against the wall.
He didn't smile. "We both have looked better." He set the tray between us, and sat down facing me. "But, no, it just knocked me out." His lips curled upwards. "A good thing your student is strong."
There was an expression in his eyes I couldn't quite read; as if he had some strong feeling that he was trying to hide from me, either hatred or fear or… "He's your candidate, isn't he?"
Manatzpa looked away. "He's young." His voice was toneless. "A minor, inexperienced member of the Imperial family, with only one prisoner to his name, and a reputation as an uncontrollable element dabbling in sorcery. And he won't have a chance to improve it before the coronation war."
"So you won't vote?"
"You already know what I think of the other candidates." Somehow my questioning appeared to have put him off. He pushed a bowl towards me. The bitter smell of cacao, mingled with that of spices and vanilla, wafted up to my nostrils, tantalising.
"And you know…"
He made a quick, stabbing gesture with his hand, and grimaced as he was reminded of his wounds. "I know, Acatl-tzin, I know. But, as I said before, I'd rather have a good leader than the first that came to mind."
"Even after seeing this?"
For a moment, anger stole across his stately features. "I won't forget what happened to Echichilli, or leave it unpaid. But I'll stand by what I believe."
Perhaps I was deluding myself, then. If even such a measured man as Manatzpa could bring himself to wait, having seen what a star-demon could do, then how would I stand a chance of convincing Quenami or Tizoc-tzin that we had to choose a Revered Speaker now?
Manatzpa drained his bowl in one gulp. He still appeared angry; at my questions, or at Echichilli's death? "I disturb you. I'll leave you to your rest. We'll have visitors soon enough."
Left alone, I drank my own chocolate, enjoying the familiar hint of bitterness taste on my tongue before the chilli overwhelmed it. Manatzpa's rooms were as devoid of furniture and ornaments as Teomitl. No wonder he liked his nephew enough to support him for the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown.
All the same…
Something felt wrong, and I couldn't have said what. A premonition, such as the ones the adepts of Quetzalcoatl sometimes received? But I did not worship the Feathered Serpent, or claim any more than a distant allegiance to Him. Perhaps just the wounds and the lightness in my whole body, which would have been enough to make any man feel moody? But, no, it wasn't that.
My mind could not seem to focus on anything. It drifted, watching the frescoes blur and merge into each other. Huitzilpochtli's blue-striped face loomed larger and larger, shifting into the grin of a star-demon, and the darkness swarmed over me and swallowed me whole.
In my dreams, I stood on one of the hills around Tenochtitlan, garbed as a High Priest in my cloak embroidered with owls and the skull-mask over my face.
By my side stood other High Priests, Quenami in jaguar skins and Acamapichtli with his heron-plumes, and others, lesser ones I could not recognise. Above us were the stars, blinking slowly and coldly; and they were coming down, one by one, trails of light against the dark sky, growing larger and larger, until we could see the eyes in the joints of their elbows and knees, feel the cold of their passage. The sun had faded into darkness, and the earth underneath rumbled, splitting itself apart…
There was a chant, in the background, harsh, sibilant words in a language that I had heard before and couldn't place. And then, as everything split apart in a shower of sparks, I could finally make it out.
"From darkness I call you
For the broken, for
the discarded
For the imprisoned, wailing in the world below
The world is desiccated bones, twisted and gaunt faces
It is the time of my mastery
The opening of my reign."
And I knew, too, where I had heard them: they were the words of the invocation Manatzpa had been attempting to make to defend himself against the star-demon – words no one but a devotee of She of the Silver Bells should have been able to use.
I woke up with a start, my heart hammering painfully against the confines of my chest. I felt stiff and sore; but when I attempted to move I only felt the dull, distant pain of healed wounds. It looked as if the priest of Patecatl had indeed come, and healed me while I was asleep – leaving me whole but weak and drained of everything. Great.
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