Harbinger of the Storm

by Aliette de Bodard

  Least among them – I could see where Quenami had got his ideas about me. I swallowed the wave of bitterness that flooded me. Now was not the time.

  In answer I lifted the knife. "If the least among us is a warrior, doesn't it prove our worth?"

  There was silence for a while, that before a lightning-strike. The fire-snake hissed, as if climbing along wood, charring bones and flesh on a funeral pyre. At length, Huitzilpochtli spoke. "It might, at that." He sounded a little calmer, but the cruel amusement was still there, the inhuman pleasure He'd take from seeing us fail. He had resolved to withdraw from us; it wasn't something that could be changed in an instant. "Very well. Prove your worth, and I'll give your Revered Speaker back to you."

  Itzpapalotl moved, impossibly swift, to come before me, on the same side of the altar. "Priest," She said. She raised Her hands, unfolding Her claws one by one. They glinted in the sunlight of the heartland, drinking it in as they'd drink blood.

  In answer, I raised my own, pathetic knife, a knife that wasn't magic, that didn't have even the meagre powers of Lord Death, that couldn't protect me from the corrosion of the heartland.

  If my brother Neutemoc could see me like this, he'd appreciate the irony – that I, the failed brother, the shameful priest, should be the one to fight Her.

  From afar came a blast of conch-shells, and a slow beating of drums, and a din, like a thousand voices shouting the names of a thousand different cities at the same time. The air wavered, and the battle was joined.

  She was upon me almost before I could move. One wing brushed against my arm, opening up a flower of pain, and I was on my knees, one hand scrabbling to stem the flow of blood. Then She was gone, watching me from afar.

  "Pathetic," She whispered. "Is that the best among you?"

  "You should know," I said through clenched teeth, fighting the darkness that quivered at the edge of my vision. "You took one, and incapacitated the other."

  She laughed. "All is fair in war, as you should know."

  No, I didn't. I didn't know the rules of the battlefield or even of the training-ground. My world had been the calmecac school, the penances and the night-runs to watch the stars in the sky, in another lifetime where the stars were pinpoints of light faraway, unable to harm us.

  She moved fast, far too fast for me to outrace Her, especially in my current state. My only hope was to be ready for Her when She came. I hefted the knife carefully, watched Her, the way Her wings spread around and behind Her, larger than those of a bird, with obsidian knives hanging from their thin bones like obscene fruit…

  The wings merged into Her desiccated shoulders almost seamlessly; but there had to be some junction, some point of weakness I could exploit.

  She was upon me again, the breath of Her passage the only warning I got, about an eye blink before Her wings slashed me again. This time, instead of trying to remain standing, I threw myself to the floor, and rolled under the thin shape of Her legs.

  There.

  A small bump, where the obsidian blades sank back into the bones, a raised area of yellowed flesh, as taut as the paper of a codex.

  She was gone again, watching me, toying with me like a jaguar with its prey. "I've fought worthier opponents."

  "Teomitl?" I asked. "What have you done with him?"

  "Taken my sacrifice, what else?"

  A fist of ice closed over my heart. But no, I couldn't afford it, not any more weakness, not any more ways for Her to reach me. "He's alive, isn't he?"

  She didn't deign to answer me. But this time I caught the slight shift of Her skirts which announced Her move, the muffled rattle of seashells that heralded Her, as it did all star-demons.

  When She came upon me, I was already down, and rising to meet Her, my knife blade sinking into the flesh of Her back.

  She shrieked, raising Her hands to the sky, her cry steadily rising in intensity until I thought my ears were going to burst. When She turned back towards me, Her pupils had become vertical slits, Her eyes windows into chasms.

  "So… not so foolish after all, priest." So… not so foolish after all, priest." Her smile was wide, cutting – the obsidian blade of her tongue shone in the light.

  Her next attack knocked me on the floor. The knife, torn from my hand by Her left wing, skittered on the floor. As if in some distant nightmare I watched it totter over the edge of the platform and fall down with the inevitability of a heartbeat. I tore myself from Her embrace pain blossomed on my arms and chest as Her knives sliced against my flesh.

  I was on the ground, bleeding and dizzy, dizzier than before, though I hadn't thought it possible, watching, with a distant, nagging sense of worry, my blood pool into the grooves of the platform, quivering with a power that was denied to me, for the only god present here would not accept my sacrifice. The world was folding back onto itself like a rolled-up sacrifice paper. The air was almost too tight to breathe, searing my lungs, and darkness hovered at the edge of my vision.

  I heard – something, a buzzing of flies, a grating of bones against bones, my name, spoken in a low but insistent voice. Dragging my gaze upwards, I caught a glimpse of Acamapichtli's pale face, turned towards me, one of his hands extended, pointing at something, the place where the knife had gone over the edge?

  He was gesturing to me, but understanding him was too much work, and Itzpapalotl would be back, anyway. I had to–

  It came to me then with preternatural clarity, that it was indeed the knife he was pointing to, that he carried a second one with him, and meant to give it to me. But he was too far away; and I knew, with the certainty of those about to die, that I would never make it.

  I tried to move towards him, as if through tar, even though I knew it was futile.

  Itzpapalotl laughed, Her voice infinitely distant, echoing in what little remained of my mind. "You delay the inevitable." Her shadow fell over me and I felt the shift in the air; She was moving to pick me up, to throw me over the edge.

  Over, it was over. Why had I ever thought I could be a warrior, that I could fight a goddess with no weapons and no rules, nor hope to win?

  That I could–

  She had said–

  No rules.

  She had said everything was fair on the battlefield.

  And She had Her back to Acamapichtli, whose hand was holding a second knife.

  In the moment She bent over me, the moment Her claws dug into my skin, deeper into my wounds, I did the only thing I could, putting what little strength remained into my voice, I screamed.

  "Acamapichtli! Throw it – now!"

  As She swung me up like a broken doll I heard the hiss of the knife and prayed to whoever was listening – to the Duality, to Lord Death, to the Feathered Serpent – that it would fly true.

  It did.

  There was a thud and Itzpapalotl screamed again, a sound that seemed to echo in the bones of my ribcage, filling my lungs and stomach with a buzzing like a knife against bone. The world spun and spun as She lost control, and faded into darkness.

  It seemed to last but a moment, but when I regained consciousness I found Acamapichtli propped over me. "What… happened?" I tried to pull myself upwards, and gave up. Everything ached, but I couldn't feel the searing pain of wounds. Gingerly I touched my arms and felt nothing but my skin and the scars that had been there before the fight.

  "A trick," Huitzilpochtli said, but He didn't sound displeased. "It seems priests can still surprise."

  Itzpapalotl was sitting on the stone altar, nonchalantly staring at Her hands. She, too, appeared unharmed, and in the gaze She directed towards me was nothing but the wary respect between warriors.

  "I don't understand," I said, and then it hit me. "Nothing was real."

  "Everything is as real as I make it," Huitzilpochtli said. "It is My world, after all."

  It wasn't a comforting reminder, though I guess I appreciated the knowledge that I wasn't going to bleed to death. "Does this satisfy you?"

  His attention shifted from me to Quen
ami. "A smooth speaker, a fighter and a resourceful man. I see." There was something like amusement in the air, but more that of a parent for a child. "Yes, I suppose it does. A bargain is a bargain."

  I let out a breath I hadn't even been aware of holding. As He had reminded us, we were in His world, and the rules were what He made them, if He had wanted to break His promise, He could have done so without trouble.

  Something landed on the ground beside me, but before I could see what it was the platform and the shrine were fading away, and everything grew intolerably bright.

  We were back under the pyramid where everything had started. Itzpapalotl was with us, a dark, amused presence at our backs, and Teomitl too, rising from his crouch at the edge of the stairs. "Acatl-tzin!"

  He was there and he was whole, thank the Duality. I looked around at the other High Priests. Acamapichtli's wounds had closed, though he remained pale and moved with the stiffness of the unhealed, and Quenami had recovered his finery. My knives appeared to be back in their sheathes. Just to be sure, I laid a hand on one of them, and felt the familiar emptiness of Mictlan arc through my whole being, a comfort that I'd thought I'd never have again.

  I looked down, then, at what the god had given us, but even before I did, I already knew that the immobility at my feet, that peculiar, dry and stretched smell, could belong to nothing but a corpse.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Creation

  "He's dead," Quenami said, accusingly. He turned to Acamapichtli, as if the priest of the Storm Lord held the answers to everything. "You said–"

  I knelt, touched it – felt not skin, not even the cold, clammy one of a corpse, but something that might as well have been cloth or leather – nothing beat underneath, nothing warmed it from within. It gave slightly, under my touch. "It's not real," I said.

  "Of course it's real," Acamapichtli said. "It's a soul. What did you expect, flesh and blood?"

  It didn't look like the sad, bedraggled spirits I conjured, not even like Axayacatl-tzin's soul, which I had conveyed down into the underworld. Just like something that had once been alive, and from which all life had been stripped.

  "It's still a corpse," Quenami said. "However you look at it."

  I felt a hand on my shoulder, claws, resting lightly on the skin, though not breaking it. Itzpapalotl. "This is a place of power, priest. The heart of the Mexica strength in the Fifth World."

  Quenami stared at Her for a while. "Surely you're not suggesting–"

  "What was broken can be made whole, given enough blood."

  I thought, for a moment, on what She was offering us. "We can't," I said. To put back together a body and soul…

  "You can't," Itzpapalotl said. "You send the soul down into death, and only you can call it back. But Huitzilpochtli is the one who severs the thread of life."

  And the one who could knit it back together.

  Quenami closed his eyes. "It is one of the forbidden rituals."

  "And with reason." Itzpapalotl inclined Her head. "But permission has been given, just this once."

  Teomitl looked from Her to Quenami, and then back to me. I shrugged, having only a vague idea of what he was talking about. Acamapichtli, too, seemed to be waiting for clarification.

  "We already have plenty of human blood," Quenami said. "We'll need hummingbirds for Huitzilpochtli, owls for Lord Death, and a heron for the Rain Lord…"

  "And explanations for us," Acamapichtli cut in, with just a hint of sarcasm.

  "We can put the soul back in the body." Quenami grimaced. "Actually, make a new body beforehand, too. But it's going to take the three of us." He turned to Teomitl. "Go get the remains, some maize dough, and the animals."

  "Acatl-tzin?" Teomitl asked. "Outside isn't the best place to be, right now. It feels as if something awful is going to happen."

  I had no doubt. The Southern Hummingbird might have put aside some of His grievances against us, but we still didn't have a Revered Speaker, we were still as vulnerable as we had been since the start.

  I sighed. I could have argued about Quenami's impoliteness, but I couldn't muster the energy. "Go. Take guards if you need them. We'll deal with this later."

  Quenami lifted his eyebrows. Clearly, he had no intention of discussing anything with me. He knelt in the disk again, and looked over the blood.

  Which left Acamapichtli and me, and I certainly didn't feel up to small talk.

  "How do you know all this, anyway?" I asked Quenami.

  He shrugged: a particularly expansive gesture, indicating I was barely worthy of his time. "I am High Priest of the Southern Hummingbird. I've had the secrets of my order handed down to me."

  "One does wonder why," Acamapichtli said, voicing aloud what I thought.

  Quenami turned, glaring at us. "For situations such as this, where a lighter – touch, shall we say? – is needed. Now let me work."

  "By all means," I said, not wishing to talk to him any more than I had to.

  By the time Teomitl came back Quenami had rearranged everything. What I thought of as the body of Tizoc-tzin – even though it had no material reality – was at the centre of the disk surrounded by a large quincunx drawn with the endlessly dripping blood of the chamber. A further circle surrounded the quincunx, encasing it within the grinning face of the Fifth Sun.

  Teomitl was followed by two slaves who carried a wrapped-up cloth from which came the smell of offal. He held the cages with the animals; the hummingbirds a blur of speed, obviously unhappy at being disturbed from their rest. The rabbits were more sedate, curled up at the bottom of the cage as if sleeping.

  "Put it here." Quenami pointed to one end of the circle, the one furthest away from the stairs. "And those here." He didn't bother to thank Teomitl or the slaves.

  He had given us the explanations in the meantime. Acamapichtli had pulled a sour face but had said nothing. He did not look as though he had much energy left to argue either.

  Quenami opened the cages and grabbed the hummingbirds before they could fly away, slicing their heads off with a practised gesture. Blood splattered on the ground. He smeared it into the circle, drawing the symbols for Four Jaguar, the First Age, ruled by the Smoking Mirror, the god of War and Fate.

  "O master, O lord, O sun, O war

  We ask of You Your spirit, Your word

  Your blessing…"

  Acamapichtli, meanwhile, was sacrificing the heron, and filling in the symbols for Four Water and Four Rain, the Third and Fourth Age, ruled by the Storm Lord and His wife.

  "For he who was bequeathed the turquoise diadem

  The earplug, the lip plug,

  The necklace, the precious feather

  He who was crowned Lord of Men…"

  I came last with the owl, drawing the last symbol, that of the Second Age, Four Wind, ruled by the Feathered Serpent, the age of knowledge and wisdom, now passed into legend. The symbol pulsed under my hands, as if seeking to stretch itself into something else.

  "Give him Your torch, Your light, Your mirror

  The thick torch that illumines the world

  Your heat, Your fragrance

  We place our trust in You,

  We the untrained, the ignorant…"

  Next came the maize dough, which Acamapichtli fashioned into the life-sized shape of a man. His hands shook, and the limbs of the figure came out crooked, a fact which made Quenami's face contort with anger, but he said nothing. I fully expected we'd pay for it later.

  The face was two holes punched into the dough, and something that might have been a smile: an incongruous sight, given how seldom Tizoc-tzin had smiled when he was alive. It ought to have looked sad and pathetic, this child's figure of a man, but it didn't. Light fell over it, swathing it in the colour of stone and blood; and the face, wrapped in shadows, seemed almost alive, some monster come from the underworld to devour us all.

  I'd expected Itzpapalotl to go away but She still leant against the wall furthest away from the stairs, out of the circle. If She'd been human,
I'd have said She was curious, but I think it was something else that kept Her there – perhaps further orders from the Southern Hummingbird?

  "I give my precious water, I give my blood

  To the maize in the fields, to Grandmother Earth that was broken

  I give my spirit, I give the sun…"

  Acamapichtli sliced both his earlobes, and let the blood drip into the eyes and the mouth of the dough figure.