Harbinger of the Storm

by Aliette de Bodard

  "Of course," Nezahual-tzin said. "But she'd understand."

  "You lie." Teomitl's face was all harsh angles, his skin slowly whitening to the pallor of jade.

  The worst was, I didn't think he was lying. He and Xahuia – and Tizoc-tzin, and Quenami, and even the She-Snake – seemed to operate by a different set of standards, as alien to

  me as the ways of the southern tribes.

  "Of course not," Nezahual-tzin said. "You're a fool, pup. I'm ruler of Texcoco. I do what is best for my city, and that includes not going to war against Tenochtitlan. Making, how would you call them, peace offerings to the new Revered Speaker?" His teeth, when he smiled, were the same uncanny white as his eyes.

  "Why help me escape then?" I asked, and then realised that he had been caught in the same accusation as I. "Of course. You weren't welcome in Tenochtitlan either, after my arrest."

  "No," Nezahual-tzin said. "But it will change, when I come back."

  "As long as Tizoc-tzin doesn't find out you helped me."

  Nezahual-tzin smiled, in that smug way I was coming to hate. "I'll explain to him it was the only way to get his brother to reveal his true allegiances. And he'll have both of you back; and that will matter more to him than alienating a valuable ally. The forms will have been respected. I will have made my amends for dealing in magic on his territory."

  "We're not bundles to be passed on!" Teomitl snapped.

  I noticed, from the corner of my eye, the warriors getting closer, circling us like vultures hoping for an easy kill. Teomitl's skin shone with sweat, and with something else – the otherworldly light of Chalchiuhtlicue, Jade Skirt.

  "Everyone is a tool, at one point or another. Better get used to it, pup, or your life will be brief." Nezahual-tzin watched the warriors converging on us with the distracted interest of a man pondering the words of a poem. "Briefer than it could have been, at any rate."

  Above us were the stars, an oppressive reminder of the stakes if I ever needed one. "You're intelligent enough to know what is upon us," I said.

  "Of course I am. As you said, Tizoc-tzin will claim the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown. The Southern Hummingbird's power will once more flow into the Fifth World, and that will be the end of this incident. Meanwhile, I'll have worked my way back into favour at the Mexica Court."

  "With our deaths." Teomitl's face was frozen, halfway to divine light. Sweat dripped on his cheeks.

  Nezahual-tzin laughed. "Don't bother. The ground you're on is blessed by the Storm Lord, and your goddess won't have any hold here."

  He might have been right – and it was my duty to see the Fifth World preserved, beyond any selfish grievances I might have. No, the Storm Lord's lightning strike me, I couldn't do this. "You do know how I escaped."

  "With our help." Nezahual-tzin shook his head, contemptuously.

  I snorted. "You do have tremendous faith in your abilities."

  "I serve a god."

  "So does the She-Snake," I said.

  "The She-Snake? I don't see what he has to do with anything."

  "The She-Snake said…" I swallowed, remembering darkness all around us, the rustle of something large and malevolent which hated all life, all movement, all sound, and wouldn't rest until everything was silent and dark. "He said that Tizoctzin wouldn't be able to channel the Southern Hummingbird's favour into the Fifth World." He'd said, too, that Quenami might have a trick, a way of bending the rules to his advantage. But Quenami had miscalculated before.

  "You're lying."

  I met his gaze head on, staring into the numinous white of his eyes. "I'll swear it by my face and by my heart, or by any god you name."

  Nezahual-tzin didn't move for a while, his eyes still on me. There was a chasm, deep inside them, colours, swirling amidst the white like oil on water, a spiral that opened and drew me in…

  I came to with a start, the air burning in my lungs. Nezahual-tzin was standing next to me, one hand on his macuahitl sword, another holding up my chin. His touch was as cool as shadowed stone; and I could barely hear his breath. Teomitl had shifted, caught by surprise; but he'd been too late, his sword barely drawn.

  "All right. I believe you." Nezahual-tzin released my face, and took a step away from me. I fought the urge to reach for the knives at my belt. It would only show weakness.

  The warriors remained where they were, while Nezahual looked up into the sky, his eyes on the largest star, the Evening Star, which belonged to the Feathered Serpent, the only one which would not fall upon us, when the time came.

  "From here to Teotihuacan, it's a two-day trip." The Birthplace of the Gods was on the same side of the lake as Texcoco, but much further to the north, on the banks of a large river that descended from the nearby mountains.

  "By land." Teomitl's voice was defiant.

  "You almost collapsed on the way here."

  "You're accusing me of weakness?"

  It might have been comical in another context. "Look," I said, fighting to control the mad beating of my heart. "This isn't the best time to quarrel."

  "I'd like matters to be clear," Teomitl said. He looked straight at Nezahual-tzin, who equably returned his gaze.

  "You're right, let things be clear. I think you're a naive, impulsive fool who keeps overstretching himself. You no doubt think me arrogant, manipulative, and heartless."

  That, if nothing else, shocked Teomitl into momentary silence. "It changes nothing to the original offer."

  "The ahuizotls? I'll apologise for not wanting to be in the middle of the lake when you falter."

  I finally managed to intervene. "Then we'll make regular stops. Nezahual-tzin, this isn't time for tarrying."

  "A day," Teomitl said, defiantly. "A day and a half, at most."

  At length, Nezahual-tzin nodded. "You're right. The lake it is, then. I'll have boats prepared. Come."

  Teomitl and I exchanged a glance as we walked between the warriors. His gaze was still the murky colour of the lake's waters, in which flickered the distant radiance of the goddess. "Acatl-tzin…"

  "I know," I said, curtly. Nezahual-tzin might be on our side for the moment, lending us his resources. But all of that wouldn't prevent him from selling us, once he was sure the Fifth World was safe.

  We needed an escape plan, and we needed it fast.

  NINETEEN

  The Fifth Sun's Birthplace

  The journey to Teotihuacan was tense, but mostly eventless. When we stopped for our first and only night, Teomitl, palefaced, glared at Nezahual-tzin, who glanced aside elegantly as if whatever Teomitl thought of him didn't matter. Of course, it only made Teomitl glare all the more fiercely.

  Meanwhile, I kept my hands on my obsidian knives, wondering how to escape Nezahual-tzin's vigilance. A distraction would serve us well, but the only distraction I could think of was summoning a creature from the underworld, and with the balance of the universe already skewed, there was no telling what that would do. Most of the other spells I knew were either for tracking or for examining a dead body, neither of which would be any use in the current situation.

  I managed to catch Teomitl while Nezahual-tzin was preparing for his evening meditations. "How are you?"

  He shrugged, in what was meant to be an expansive way but soon turned pained.

  "You overreached again," I said.

  "I've been better," Teomitl admitted reluctantly. He crouched on his haunches in the dry earth by the riverside, watching the water flow across his outstretched hands. "Not that I'm going to give him the satisfaction of seeing that."

  "He probably already knows."

  "I'll take my chances. What are we going to do next, Acatl-tzin?" He looked up at me, a student waiting for his master's instructions.

  "We might need the ahuizotls," I said, slowly. The beasts frightened and repulsed me, and I'd have taken any other solution, but it looked like we had little choice left.

  Teomitl grimaced. "So far from the lake… I don't know, Acatl-tzin. They're not river creatures."

 
; "I know." They feasted on the drowned within the lake, lived within murky waters, not the clear clean ones of the mountain streams. "But I can't summon anything from the underworld, not at this juncture in time."

  "Hmm." Teomitl looked at the river water for a while, as if he could discern starlight within its depths. "We'll have to see, then. Hold ourselves ready."

  I glanced at Nezahual-tzin, who sat cross-legged near our campsite, his eyes closed, his face relaxed and inert, like a mask of flayed skin. There was a good chance he knew exactly what we were going to do, and a small but not insignificant one that he was somehow listening to every word we said.

  "Yes," I said finally. "We should be ready."

  We arrived in Teotihuacan, the Birthplace of the Gods, the following morning as the Fifth Sun crested the nearby mountain. The first thing we saw looming out of the morning haze were the pyramids, the towering monuments left by the gods in the beginning of this age. They were massive, as large – or even larger – than the Great Temple, mounds of ochre stone dwarfing their boundary wall, their white steps like a beacon of light.

  The city itself was away from the religious complex, in a curve in the banks of a river. It was a much smaller affair than Tenochtitlan or even Texcoco, a profusion of temples and houses of adobe, with barely any ostentation. The streets were narrow but straight, set in the same grid pattern as all the cities of the valley. I kept expecting to see canals, but we were on dry land, and the only water was in the mud squelching under our sandals.

  It was, and had always been, a place of pilgrimage, and as a result many residential complexes had been turned into temporary accommodation. Nezahual-tzin settled us into a mid-sized one – two courtyards, seven rooms spread around them – before dragging us out again to the nearest temples to ask if anyone had come looking for a powerful protection spell.

  When we came back empty-handed, he snorted, and retired into the adjoining sweat-bath.

  "The same ritual?" Teomitl asked.

  "Why waste energy trying something else?" I couldn't quite keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

  "Acatl-tzin?"

  "He's not thinking properly," I said. "There is a much easier way of finding our missing councilman."

  Teomitl looked at me blankly. I sighed. "Think on it. Whatever happened at the palace, it had them all frightened for their lives. Pezotic came here looking for safety–"

  "Oh," Teomitl said. He walked to the gates of the compound, and stared at the pyramids in the distance. "The safest place is the religious complex, isn't it?"

  The complex was mostly pyramids, but not only that. Under the massive limestone structures the gods had buried Their physical bodies, the ones they had sacrificed to give the Fifth Sun His nourishment in blood. If any place in the Fifth World was brimming in magic, if any place was safe, under the gaze of every god in the universe, it was that complex.

  "It's huge," Teomitl said. "We can't possibly–"

  "Magic could help." Not the huge, strenuous magic that came straight from the gods, and that either Teomitl or Nezahual-tzin practised almost as a second nature, but the small spells, the ones anyone could learn, the faithful tools that had served me so well over the years. One in particular…

  I could have waited until Nezahual-tzin was more advanced in his meditation. But, with such heavy stakes, I couldn't afford to play games. I was no Tizoc-tzin, and no Quenami. I had sworn to uphold the balance of the universe, and so I would.

  "Come on. Let's go see him," I said.

  To say that Nezahual-tzin was less than taken by the idea would have been an understatement. His grimace grew more pronounced as I explained myself, until I came at last to a faltering halt.

  "That won't work," he said.

  "I don't see why not," I said.

  "You're counting on the complex being mostly empty."

  "It is," I said. "Except for pilgrims, and it's not the season for them."

  "Still…" Nezahual-tzin scratched his chin, as if his beard were bothering him. "The death-sight doesn't work like that, Acatl."

  "You've never cast it," I pointed out. He had so much power he didn't bother with such small spells.

  "I know." Nezahual-tzin said. "You'll be able to see all living beings within the radius of its effect, but that's not going to allow you to discriminate."

  I had my own idea about this, too, but I saw no need to explain. He would have found it mad. Our Revered Speaker had grown too used to magic coming with barely any cost, to the point where he barely could envision functioning without it. As High Priest of a god who interfered very little with the mortal world, I'd learnt when to use spells, and when to refrain from shedding blood.

  "Fine. If you don't believe it will work, will you at least allow us to try?"

  His eyes narrowed. I could tell what he was thinking: was this our ploy to escape him? And, as a matter of fact, it was our best chance yet, though the main purpose wasn't escape at all. "Look," I said. "I'm just trying to make this as fast as possible. It's in none of our interests to have the star-demons come down."

  Nezahual-tzin's gaze rested on Teomitl, thoughtfully. "You can try," he said at last. "It should keep you busy until I'm done. But I don't expect any results." He gestured to four of his warriors. "Go with them."

  Not unexpected. We'd have to see about those later.

  The wall around the complex was lower than the Serpent Wall which circled Tenochtitlan's Sacred Precinct. It had familiar elements though, the same snakes' heads on top of it, the same dark green carvings along its length.

  The warriors had deployed to form an escort around us and Teomitl, who, judging by his dark face, could hardly wait to attack them.

  We passed under a wide arch, and found ourselves in the religious complex. Before us stretched a long alley, bordered by dozens of smaller buildings like primitive shrines, and from every one of them wafted only silence, a heavy, oppressive atmosphere I knew all too well, the silence of the grave.

  The alley was called the Avenue of the Dead, and each of the small edifices held a body, the physical remnants of those who had once been gods, before They offered up Their blood to the Fifth Sun and gave up Their mortal nature.

  About halfway up the avenue was a pyramid, a huge, massive thing made of uncemented stone, every section of its construction visible. Even under the cloudy sky it shone like limestone in sunlight, like polished obsidian or chalcedony, the light pulsing to a slow, fierce rhythm like that of sacrificial drums. "That's where…?" Teomitl asked, seeing the direction of my gaze.

  I swallowed. "Yes," I said. Even this far, I could feel I wouldn't be welcome there. "That's where the Fifth Sun rose into the sky from His pyre."

  I tried to keep my eyes from the end of the Alley of the Dead, all the way past all those tombs, to the smaller but still massive pyramid which shone with a colder light, the one where the Moon, who was She of the Silver Bells, who was our bitterest enemy, had risen into the sky, hoping to challenge Her brother's radiance and dominion.

  "Right," Teomitl said. He shook his head. "And now?"

  "I'm not sure." I eyed the Alley of the Dead. Someday, I would know the place better, but I hadn't been High Priest for long enough to have come there for a formal celebration. On the other side, a white-and-ochre wall surrounded what looked like a complex within a complex. A procession was exiting through the main gates, priests in green and red, their hair matted with blood and their earlobes torn from years of penance, carrying a feather standard in the direction of the tombs. Priests of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent; the pyramid looming over the complex, not quite as grand as that of the Moon or that of the Sun, looked to be dedicated to the Feathered Serpent.

  I could have chosen this place for the spell, for Quetzalcoatl was neutral to me, unlike the Southern Hummingbird or the Storm Lord. But the Feathered Serpent was also Nezahualtzin's god, and I had had quite enough of the boy's peculiar brand of magic for the time being.

  "Come on," I said to Teomitl, and headed tow
ards one of the tombs. As I walked, it grew larger in my sight, and yet still remained small and pathetic, diminished like a corpse in death. Silence spread around me, the chants of the priests receding in the background, meaningless snatches in a language that no longer seemed mine. It wasn't the silence of the grave, but something different, something indefinable, like the quiet after a battle, like the calm after a death, when the priest for the Dead has just arrived, a sense that something of large import had happened here and wouldn't take place again, it was a memory of a moment like a held breath, now vanished into the depths of this age, a moment that wouldn't happen again until Grandmother Earth split apart and the Fifth Sun tumbled from the heavens.