NINE

Fire and Blood

 
 

Teomitl, Manatzpa and I took the courtyards at a run, heedless of the hissing noblemen who barely made an effort to move out of our way. The sound of fighting got closer all the while – obsidian striking wood, obsidian striking obsidian, the familiar cries of the wounded and of the dying.

By the wall that marked the boundaries of the women’s quarter, a guard in the She-Snake’s black uniform lay choking in his own blood. Teomitl knelt by his side, assessing the wounds with an expert gaze. He shook his head. His face was still, strangely frozen in a moment between human and divine, half brown skin, the colour of cacao, half the harshness of jade, hovering on the verge of taking over.

”…by surprise…” the guard whispered. Froth bubbled up from between his lips. His gaze rose towards Tonatiuh the Fifth Sun who hung over the courtyard, swollen with the red of evening light.

”Spare your effort.” Teomitl’s voice was curt, an order that could not be refused. “Acatl-tzin?”

I shrugged. “We go in.” I reached up, and fingered the wounds in my earlobes. The scabs easily came off, and my fingers came with blood pooling at their tips.

I knelt by the dying man, and drew the glyph for a dog on his forehead, whispering the first words of a litany for the Dead, to ease his passage into the underworld.

 

“As grass becomes green in spring

Our hearts open and give forth buds

And then they wither

This is the truth

Down into the darkness we must go…”

 

Teomitl watched me in silence, though his whole stance was that of a snake coiled to strike, eager to draw blood.

”Let’s go,” I said, with a curt nod.

Inside, every courtyard was deserted, the entrance-curtains drawn. From time to time the pale faces of women peered at us through the cotton. The sounds of battle were dying out. Whatever had happened, it was over.

As we approached the courtyard where Xahuia had received me, the air became tighter, as if we were tumbling down a mountain towards denser climates – and magic saturated the air, an unhealthy, suffocating tang that crept over my whole field of vision. I could have extended my priest-senses, but I already knew what it was – Tezcatlipoca’s touch, a miasma that rose from the deep marshes, from corpses and from rotten plants.

Teomitl’s face seemed to be made of jade now, as he ran forward.

But, in the last courtyard, all that we found was an exhausted Yaotl, standing over three bodies. Two were Duality warriors, and the third I would have known anywhere, even without the aura of sorcery that hung around him.

Something had changed with the courtyard. It took me a while to realise that a new entrance-curtain had appeared where there had been only a frescoed wall. It opened in the midst of a fresco depicting the Southern Hummingbird. As the curtain fluttered in the breeze I saw that it was only the start of a series of holes pierced through several walls, a path that led through courtyard after courtyard, until…

”Where does it go?” I asked.

Yaotl nodded, grimly. “I sent the remaining warriors to check, but I would think outside.”

Manatzpa bowed, briefly, to Yaotl, and wandered near the entrance-curtain to get a better look.

”Of course it goes outside.” Nettoni’s voice was a spent whisper. “Don’t be a fool like them, Acatl.”

I knelt by his side. He had no wounds, and the strength of his magic was still gathered around him, potent enough to give me nausea. And yet… his face was as pale as muddy milk, his mouth curled back, showing the blackness of his teeth. “That’s where you sent Xahuia.”

His lips moved, as much a grimace of pain as a smile. “I told you. I was privileged to serve her.”

Axayacatl-tzin had told me otherwise; that they only served each other because their goals lay in the same direction. But he could have been wrong.

Nettoni grimaced again. “Not much point, in any case. You’d have caught me easily enough. Sometimes, you have to admit defeat.”

Teomitl’s hand brushed Nettoni’s forehead, and withdrew as if scalded. “Acatl-tzin.”

”She’s not a goddess of healing,” Nettoni said. The whites of his eyes were slowly filling with blood – red at first, and then darkening as if it was drying inside. “She’s never been. And She’s not your servant.”

”I’m not naïve enough to think She is,” Teomitl snorted.

We had other things to worry about than Jade Skirt’s motivations. “I think it’s your god we should be talking about, Nettoni. The one you tried to help.”

He smiled again, and it looked like the death-grin of a skull. “That I tried to help? In many ways, I was as ineffective as you were, Acatl.”

”We put Xahuia to rout, and killed you. I hardly think that’s ineffective.” I kept nothing back; there was no point in being polite or kind – not to a dying man, not to a servant of the Smoking Mirror.

He snorted. His eyes were now as black as obsidian, glimmering with the same harsh light. “Then perhaps I’ve been more ineffective than you.”

”You killed Ceyaxochitl.” Yaotl’s voice was harsh. “You poisoned her, you son of a dog.”

Nettoni smiled again. “Have you understood nothing?” His hand closed around my wrist before I could pull away – his touch burnt, and cuts blossomed everywhere he touched me. “You fool…”

I tried to free myself, but every movement I made widened the cuts. I sucked in a breath against the myriad pinpricks of pain climbing up my arm. “Let me go, the Southern Hummingbird blind you!”

Yaotl and Teomitl moved, each seizing their obsidian weapon, but Nettoni just smiled, his face taking on the harsh cast of one possessed by the gods. The shadow of black and yellow paint hung on his features, and, like Axayacatl-tzin, I could guess at the shape of a feather-headdress, crowning him in glory. “You’re a fool, then… But even fools can learn… Do you not see, Acatl? Do you not see?”

Teomitl’s macuahitl sword swung down, connecting with Nettoni’s arm just below the elbow. It sheared through the skin and bone as if through air. Blood spurted in a warm fountain that sank into my clothes. The smell of sacrifices filled the air. Nettoni’s face went a little paler, but his smile did not diminish.

”Not too late…” he whispered, “My Lady…” The blood flow was pouring from him into the beaten earth, power shimmering over it. He whispered a string of syllables I could not understand, and then his eyes closed, as if peacefully asleep, and the light fled from him. His hand and lower arm fell, limp – the fingers opening up, were studded with shards of obsidian like a sword, but, as I watched, even they faded away, until nothing but the severed hand of a corpse remained.

The sense of coiled power, of wrongness, died with him. I breathed in a burning gulp of air, feeling lighter already.

”Acatl-tzin.” Manatzpa was frowning down at me. “We have to hurry.”

I couldn’t understand his urgency. “The Duality warriors have got a head start on us. If they can’t find Xahuia, then it’s likely we won’t. I’m touched by your confidence, but…”

He cut me with an impatient shake of his head. What in the Fifth World was wrong with him? “Didn’t you hear, Acatl-tzin?”

”I heard a lot of allegations, and most of them were too cryptic for their own good.”

His eyes were wide in the dim light. “The name he said, at the end… Echichilli. Echichilli is in danger.”

 

Not for the first time we found ourselves running through the deserted courtyards of the Imperial Palace. This time, though, we had Teomitl with us. My apprentice might not have had any idea of how to steer a boat or negotiate at the marketplace, as he had amply proved in the past year, but he did know the palace layout by heart.

Night had fallen. The stars overhead glittered down upon us like the eyes of a thousand monsters and the hole at the centre of the Fifth World was growing larger and larger, a sense of emptiness that pulsed in my chest, in my hastily bandaged wounds.

”Do you know where he is?” I asked Manatzpa, after what seemed like the tenth near-identical courtyard.

He made a short, stabbing gesture with his hands. “My rooms. That’s where he was meant to wait for me.”

”It might be a false alarm,” I said. “A plan to get us away from the hunt.”

”He doesn’t need that.” Teomitl’s whole stance radiated an unearthly confidence – in the straightness of his back, in the calm shake of his head. “He’s beaten us on that already.”

We had left Yaotl behind, to continue the hunt for Xahuia. But whether Nettoni had cared for Xahuia or not, or had been allied with her and chosen to sacrifice himself in order to further the chaos in the Fifth World, if he had been the one to organise her escape, he would have gone about it methodically, secure in his god’s favour. I very much doubted we would find her or her son.

”Then why warn us at all?” He hadn’t cared a jot for us; for any of us. He was Texcocan, and he had tried to destroy us. Unless… unless he’d hoped we would die with Echichilli, thus giving him his revenge from beyond death.

I didn’t like the explanation, but nevertheless I had to make room for it, in order to be ready.

”I don’t know why he warned us,” Teomitl said, frustrated. “Can you let me focus on where we’re going?”

I bristled, but now wasn’t the time to berate him for his lack of respect. “And once we’ve found them, then what?”

He turned, briefly, looking genuinely surprised. “I thought you’d know.”

I hadn’t really had time to think about it either. It was night, which meant the outside would afford us no extra protection. “There are enough wards on the outside walls to blast even a beast of shadows into oblivion,” I said. “For all their power, I don’t think the star-demons will be able to cross that line.”

”So we take Echichilli outside?”

”The Duality House,” I said, curtly. It was either that or the shrine of Huitzilpochtli at the Great Temple; but Quenami had made it abundantly clear that the Southern Hummingbird was all but powerless, merely awaiting a new agent to invest with His powers. “It’s always a safe haven.”

It would be, even with Ceyaxochitl’s illness.

What we needed was to buy time, to slow down the star-demons.

We needed The Wind of Knives: the keeper of boundaries, the enforcer of the underworld’s justice.

He’d have come on His own, if the boundaries between the Fifth World and the underworld had been breached. But the stardemons came from the Heavens, which were not His province.

However, He could still be summoned, by the adepts, or the foolhardy.

With any other minor underworld deities, I would have drawn a quincunx in blood, and stood chanting at the centre. But I had once merged my mind with the Wind of Knives, to bring down a god’s agent in the city; and the link had remained.

As we ran, I slashed my earlobes, and let the blood pool into my hands, warm and pulsing, an anchor into the Fifth World. I sent my mind questing high above the deserted city, past the Houses of Joy and the warriors’ banquets, past the peasants’ dwellings squatting at the river’s edge and the myriad reed boats bobbing at their anchor, down, into a dark cenote where rainwater pooled, away from the sunlight and the warmth of the Fifth World.

There was a shock, as if I’d run into a wall. Acatl, a voice like the keening of dead souls said. You are timely. The boundaries are breached. I am coming.

I could feel Him, gathering darkness into Himself, emerging from the cenote, wisps of shadows and fog trailing behind Him. He was flowing up the canals like a miasma, covering in instants what would have taken hours for a man on foot.

”Bad news,” I said to Teomitl.

”What?”

”The boundaries are breached.” The summoner, whoever he was, was already in the process of calling down a star-demon into the world.

Teomitl’s face shifted, became the colour of jade. “Then I’m summoning the ahuizotls.”

The ahuizotls were Jade Skirt’s creatures, small and wizened beings which lived at the bottom of Lake Texcoco, dragging men down into the water to feast on their eyes and fingernails.

I shook my head. “They won’t be effective.” The palace was on the main island of Tenochtitlan, as far away from the water as it was possible to be in a city of canals and boats. Even accounting for the ahuizotls’ supernatural speed, they wouldn’t be here for a while, assuming they managed to get past the wards at the palace entrance.

”Do you have a better plan?”

Then again, the Wind of Knives probably wouldn’t be here on time, either.

At length, we reached a courtyard much like Teomitl’s, a quiet, secluded place where only a few slaves swept the ground. I glanced upwards: the stars remained in the same position, and there was no gaping emptiness. For once, we were on time.

The Wind of Knives was in my mind, a pressure like water against a dike, a whistle like the passage of air through obsidian mountains, a grave voice tearing at me like a grieving lament. Acatl. I am coming. He was flowing up the stairs of the palace now, the guards scattering in His wake like a flock of parrots.

Almost there…

I knelt, and collected more blood from my earlobes to trace a quincunx on the ground. “Acatl-tzin!” Teomitl said, exasperated.

”You heard me,” I said. “The boundaries are breached. I’d rather have protection.”

I started a litany for the Dead:

 

“In the region of the fleshless, the region of mystery

The dead men go forward

They crawl on bleeding feet, on bleeding hands

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.