Burning Tower (45 page)

Two lesser priests attended. They didn't wear masks; their faces were tattooed with the nose and whiskers of Coyote. Coyote's priest sent them elsewhere, into the city, and then he and Squirrel were alone in the temple.

“Where?” she asked.

“I'll throw some blankets on the altar,” he said, “but not yet. Do you know what this is?” He opened the urn.

She knew the smell. “Pulque.”

“Have you ever—”

“Yes, we found some in a village at the edge of the Empire. It's strong stuff. Dear, I'd better call before you get me drunk.”

“Call?”

“Feathersnake doesn't know that the ceremony's tomorrow. May I use the altar? I brought some colored sand.” She moved the cage and the urn to the ground, and then began drizzling sand onto the altar. “This will tell Coyote too.”

Coyote's priest watched quietly, amused, while Clever Squirrel called Mountain Cat. Afterward, she brushed the sand off onto the floor. She asked, “Now what?”

“Have you eaten prairie dog?”

“Sure. What, do you mean raw?”

“Squirrel,” he said soberly, “this is Coyote's ceremony before tomorrow's official proceedings. Other masked priests are holding other ceremonies. You don't have to participate, but you are Coyote's daughter.”

She laughed, over a thrill of fear. “What, would you lure another woman down here if I refused you?”

“Sure. They know me at the inn.”

“Well, what kind of weirdness are we talking about?”

“Eat, get drunk, make love on Coyote's altar.”

“Sounds good. May we cook the animals? You have a fire. Or are you locked into some specific format?”

Coyote's priest grinned. “I weave my spells just the way my own god has these past ten thousand years. I'm making it up as I go along.”

 

“Squirrel? Clever Squirrel, dearest, please pay attention.”

“Nnn,” Squirrel said. Her mouth was numb. She could barely move. The altar was hard and cold beneath two blankets, but she felt wonderful.

“The pulque is hitting you much harder than I thought it would. I should have known: magic never touches the stuff they make in the border towns, not until it reaches the Crater for blessing. This stuff is blessed up to the eyeballs.” A wild giggle. “I'm used to it and it still knocks me on my ass.”

“Mmm,” she said urgently.

“Marriage, yes, tomorrow. I don't know any way to sober you up. It would help if you could walk around. Burn it off. Can you stand?”

“Nnn.”

Coyote's priest started to speak, then stopped. Then the blankets on the altar were suddenly thrown to cover Squirrel. The priest's voice was muffled as he called, “This place is sacred. Enter at your peril.”

“Peril relieves boredom,” said a voice that rang within her skull.

She heard a wood-on-stone
thunk
below her. Coyote's priest had knocked his forehead to the floor, and this was the Emperor. But wild colors flowed in the dark below her blankets, and Squirrel was drifting off into dream.

At the name
Sandry,
her attention flew back. Coyote's priest was hiding a woman's presence, and he was talking fast.

“Sandry is a mighty warrior. Sareg is in awe of him. Regapisk says so, and Regapisk doesn't like him very much. I've watched King Arshur come to Sandry for advice. He sent Sandry to investigate the readiness of our military, and he accepted what he heard. Sandry is very fit to rule.

“We can send Arshur to the gods now,” said the earthly voice of Coyote. “Sandry is wonderfully qualified to be king. Not only an outlander but also a true hero.”

“I like that,” the Emperor said. “The news they brought made hard hearing. Let them suffer a little of what I suffered. Do you think King Sandry might be distracted by the women of Aztlan? Would Burning Tower seek revenge? With you? Even you would not be safe from the king.”

Wild chittering laughter. “Coyote loves danger more than I do….” And Squirrel faded into Coyote's laughter.

H
e woke alone. He would not see Burning Tower until he was led to her at the wedding. The king's servants dressed him in bronze armor copied from his own but inlaid with lapis and jade. It had tooled leather straps, and the breastplate was polished bronze.
No iron at all
, Sandry thought.
It's probably magical
.

He didn't trust magic.

His iron sword was nowhere to be seen, and there wasn't a bronze replacement. It didn't seem worth commenting on. High Captain Sareg led him outside. Arshur waited there, in an imperial chariot. The giant grinned and waved. A kneeling servant offered Arshur a golden goblet, and the king drank heavily.

“He'll be too drunk to fight that bird,” Sandry said.

Sareg grinned. “The bird will be no more sober.”

Sandry's chariot had been cleaned and decorated, but it looked small and mean compared with the magnificent royal and imperial chariots. There were spears, all polished, and each spearhead covered in jewels and leather. The bowcase had its own cover, also jeweled. No one said anything, but it was obvious: only those sworn to the Emperor's service carried weapons anywhere near the Supreme One.

Blaze the stallion and Boots the gelding stood in harness, their tails braided, red ribbons in their manes. Soon to be gifts to the Emperor. There were escorts in the heavier war chariots of the Empire.

Arshur led the way. People came out of their houses to cheer, and many followed in a procession to the palace. The sun was two hours high, still low enough to cast long shadows. The cloudless sky promised a hot day, but for the moment there were cool breezes from the west along the river banks.

“Where does the river go?” Sandry asked.

“Ten leagues west, it joins another river, the Rainbow,” High Captain Sareg said. “And that flows south and west through a most magnificent canyon. I have been there. It is amazing! I am told that it then turns south and flows into the great sea at Crescent City, but I have never been there. The Emperor's domains end at the canyons.”

The road led along the river. The water seemed fresh and cool. “Do all the rivers lead to the great sea?” Sandry asked.

Sareg shook his head. “We are at the roof of the world. A few leagues into the rising sun, there are other rivers that flow eastward to places no one we know has ever been.”

Sandry smiled thinly.

“You are amused?”

“I am,” Sandry said. “The world is huge even to you. Think how large it is to me. It was only a year ago that I first traveled beyond the borders of Tep's Town basin!”

 

They came to the base of the temple and drove into a tunnel below the great piazza of the palace. They could hear the cheers of the crowd above. Music swelled, trumpets and drums rising to a climax as the crowd sounds grew more frantic.

“He comes, he comes!”

There was a long hush, then more trumpets and drums. Then for a long moment there was silence, then the scrambling sounds of thousands falling to their knees.

“Rise and rejoice, my people! I bring you a king!” There was no mistaking the sound of that voice, or the joy of the people of Aztlan at hearing it. Thousands cheered. The trumpets and drums began again.

Arshur's chariot led the way up the ramp to the piazza. A wall of smoke seemed to form ahead of him. Then as his chariot went out onto the piazza, the smoke swirled away and the great voice boomed. “People of Aztlan, Arshur the king!”

The crowd went frantic. While they were yelling, Sandry drove out behind Arshur onto the piazza. Few seemed to notice. All attention was on the king.

“This way,” Sareg said urgently. He directed Sandry toward a high dais. It was flanked by two others not quite so tall. The flanking platforms were filled with costumes and masks and guards, cloaks and wizards and priests, a riot of magic and color. The central high dais held only one man. At Sareg's urging, Sandry left the chariot and went up the stairs onto the raised dais. At the top, he knelt and touched his head to the floor in deference to the Emperor.

“Get up, Sandry. It's your wedding day. Stand beside me. Look happy. Rejoice.”

The Emperor wasn't wearing armor. He was dressed in silken kilts and a bright blue and green silken tunic that hid his scars. He wore a high crown of intricately carved gold, and a cloak of flowers. Thousands of flowers, all tiny, all woven into silk netting. It flashed in the morning sun as he lifted his arms to show himself again to the crowd. Sandry found the cloak was impressive enough, but disappointing compared to what he had been led to expect. The Emperor moved back into the shade of the dais.

The crowds continued to cheer as Arshur rode around the piazza in his great heavy chariot.

“Let them cheer the king,” the Emperor said. “He looks like a king, your giant.”

“Yes, Supreme One.”

The Emperor smiled. “Impatient?”

“I have attempted patience for a year, Supreme One.”

“And it palls,” the Emperor said. “At my age patience is natural, but I can remember youth.”

“You look as if you have never lost it, Supreme One,” Sandry said with sincerity.

The Emperor grinned. “So. It will shortly be your wedding day.”

“Not precisely as I had foreseen it.”

For most of his life, he'd known how it would be. “I've been to a hundred weddings, Great One,” he told the Emperor. “I knew a dozen girls who might grow up to marry me. Now I'm with a foreign woman in a land strange to both of us, following customs—”

The Emperor waved dismissively. “Burning Tower told Buffalo Woman the essentials. We'll follow the woman's custom. Isn't that always best? But first, the king must earn his crown. We can't get animals up to Mesa Fajada,” he said, “so the bird must die down here, and after you're wedded, we'll come down again to present the beasts and other gifts.”

Sandry nodded. There was a good view of the long Valley of Aztlan from the dais. Behind him were the wall and the great Temple Mesa Fajada. Baskets rose and dropped constantly between its base and the wooden platform near its summit. His eyes flicked left, right. Left was the river, broad and shallow, somewhat muddy, cleaner than rivers in Tep's Town or Condigeo. It flowed on to the west and out of sight. Downstream and across the river was the king's palace. Not far beyond the bridge to the palace was Flensevan's shop, now hidden by houses.

Downstream and to the right, nestled against the walls of the canyon, was the palace where he and Burning Tower would spend their wedding night. They'd been shown all this before, in what wasn't quite a rehearsal.

Out on the Great Plaza, Arshur had finished the first of his circuits in his chariot. He was passing by the kraals, carefully separated, but the animals were aware of each other. Spike, alone in his kraal, faced two terror birds. Sandry's chariot was led over there. The stallion and the gelding stood in harness, but they'd been given food and water and shade. They'd be all right. They seemed very aware of the birds and Spike.

 

The crowds were still cheering. Arshur's driver looked up to the Emperor, got a sign in the form of a minute wave of the ringed and jeweled right hand, and took another turn around the piazza. As he did, the music rose and swelled. Sandry looked for its source, but it was hidden. Magic? Or artists hidden in the
kivas
let into the piazza? He couldn't tell.

The chariot came around to the dais. The Emperor stepped forward again. “People of Aztlan, Arshur the king!” His voice boomed through the piazza and the stands above, through the five hundred rooms of the palace beyond. It wasn't so much loud as all-pervasive, impossible to ignore, and it seemed to Sandry that it would be heard in Crescent City and Condigeo.

The Emperor gestured, and priests came forward. They wore cloaks of tiny feathers, and long-billed masks. Hummingbirds, Sandry thought. That should be funny, but there was no humor in this. Arshur, urged by his guards, stepped down from his chariot. One of the priests knelt to him and handed him a golden goblet. Arshur took it impatiently and drank.

The other hummingbird priest knelt and held out a great bronze sword. Arshur took it and grinned, balanced it on extended fingertips, swung it in practiced moves. His scarred muscles rippled in the sun. They'd dressed him well, leather and silk kilts, leather harness holding a jeweled breastplate more symbolic than protective, a lot of Arshur's scars and tattoos showing.

“He's drunk,” Sandry muttered.

“Well, of course,” the Emperor said. “He drinks more than any king in my memory.” He stepped forward into the sun and raised his arms. The music stopped and the crowd fell silent, an eerie silence across the entire piazza. One of the stallions nickered.

Arshur looked around to see that he was alone. He waved the great bronze sword and shouted something Sandry didn't understand. Ten manlengths away, a cage door swung open and a terror bird came out blinking into the sunlight.

The bird didn't look drugged. It looked hungry.

Arshur shouted and waved his sword. He grinned widely, but he no longer looked drunk. The bird approached him warily, and they eyed each other. Then the bird rushed at Arshur.

Arshur pivoted on one foot, turning and leaning just far enough that the bird's gaping teeth snapped on empty air. Then Arshur laughed and struck at the bird with his sword, hitting it on its back just behind the neck. Feathers flew, and blood. As the bird ran past, Arshur leaped after it, slashing at its leg.

The bird was limping now, and frightened. It looked around the walled piazza. The gates, both those into the
kivas
and those into the seating stands, were all closed. Men with spears ready stood at the base of each dais. There was no place to run. The bird turned back toward Arshur.

“Interesting,” the Emperor said.

“How, Supreme One?”

“Well, we've always had the priests control the birds. This one's just drugged. Not too well drugged, at that,” the Emperor mused. “Good thing your giant is a warrior.”

Arshur feinted toward the bird. It dodged, then darted forward to snap at the king. Arshur whooped. The bird ran past as Arshur pivoted again, and when the bird ran on to smash into the wall beyond, it no longer had a head. The crowd went mad with cheering.