Harbinger of the Storm (3 page)

So, probably not personal. I didn’t feel any of the hatred which accompanied summonings done for vengeance. “Anything else?” I asked.

”Ocome was always trying to work out which side would win, so he could join them and be elevated still further.” Teomitl spat on the ground. “No face, no heart.”

”And lately?”

”He’d been supporting Tizoc,” Teomitl admitted grudgingly. “Though it hadn’t been for long.”

Great. A professional waverer. His death was a message, but it could easily have been to Tizoc’s side as to any of the other factions. Continually shifting allegiances meant Ocome must have made many enemies – not much to be gleaned from here, not until I had a better idea of the sides involved.

”Hmm,” I said. I fingered a spot of blood on the ground thoughtfully. Outwardly, everything seemed recent, except for the magical traces, which had faded much faster than they should have. “How long ago would you say he died?”

Teomitl had been standing by the entrance to the courtyard, looking away as if lost in thought. He turned towards the room, quietly taking in the scene, utterly unfazed by the gore. But then, he was a warrior who had already seen two full campaigns. He, too, had seen his share of mutilated bodies.

”They’re clean wounds, and the blood is still pretty fresh. Two, three hours ago?”

The man had died in battle, no matter how unequal it had been. As such, his soul was not bound for the oblivion of the underworld but into the Heavens to join the dead warriors and the women lost in childbirth.

However, something bothered me about the body. The magic should not have been so weak. There could have been some interference from the wards, but the way it read seemed to indicate that the body had barely been alive in the first place – as if he’d come here wounded or already dying.

I supposed he could have been torn apart after his death; and, given the state of his body, we’d never know if he’d died before or afterwards. But most supernatural creatures didn’t mutilate dead bodies. They found their thrills in the fear of the hunted, their power in the suffering of the tormented. Dead men could neither fear not suffer.

A human could have managed this, I guessed, but not easily. It would have taken time, and a great deal of dedication.

I could, however, think of a particular creature whose habits fitted this all too well, down to the fading magic over the remains.

And, the Southern Hummingbird blind me, I didn’t want to be right. The star-demons couldn’t be here, in the palace, not yet…

”I need your help,” I told Teomitl. “Come over here.”

He bounded over to me in a clink of jewellery and stood over a relatively clean patch of stone. He had magic wrapped around him like a cocoon, an intricate network of light that marked Huitzilpochtli’s protection. It was that magic which I planned to tap in order to ascertain whether the councilman’s soul had indeed fled into the Heavens. And, if it hadn’t…

No, better not to think on the consequences of that now.

For the second time in the night, I slashed my earlobes open, and spread the blood around us in a quincunx, the fivefold cross, symbol of the beleaguered world of mortals. Then I started a chant to Tonatiuh, the Fifth Sun, the Southern Hummingbird’s incarnation as the supreme light.

“Dressed in yellow plumes

You are He who rises, He of the region of heat

Those of Amantla are Your enemies

We join You, We honour You in making war…”

I slashed a wound in the palm of my hand, extended it to Teomitl, who had done the same. As we held hands, our blood mingled, trickled on the ground as one.

“Dressed in paper

In the region of dust, you whirl in the desert

Those of Pipitlan are Your enemies

We join You, We Honour You in making war…”

Light blazed across the pattern, spreading inwards, until it seemed that it would smother Teomitl for a bare moment, before his protection sprang to life again, an island of light within the light. Everything else faded into insignificance: the room, the frescoes, the grisly remnants outside and inside the circle. The colours were swept away, merged into the light; the faces of the gods and goddesses became the featureless ones of strangers.

The air was growing warmer, the ground under our feet was the red sand of the deserts, and a dry, choking wind rose in the room.

In the light was the huge visage of Tonatiuh the Fifth Sun, His war-painted face melding with that of a beast, sable hairs sprouting around His sharp nose, His cheeks still bearing the scars of His original sacrifice, His lolling tongue dripping blood. His eyes, slowly opening, were twin bonfires wrapped around the huge, hulking shape of a human being: the god Himself, still burning after all that time, endlessly burning to offer light and warmth to Grandmother Earth.

His gaze rested on us – a touch more searing than that of the wind – before moving away.

The wind died down, the desert retreated into the yellow stone of the room; the world sprang back into painful focus.

I exhaled burning air, gasping for the freshness of the mortal world. Teomitl’s knees had buckled, and he was slowly pushing himself up again, with angry pride on his face. “Not a careful god,” he said.

”No,” I said. Teomitl pushed himself hard, but in return he demanded high things from everyone around him, gods included. “But that’s bad.”

”What?”

”He wasn’t looking here,” I said, trying to forget the icy void opening in my stomach. “No more than at any other place. It’s not sacred ground. No soul has ascended into Heaven from here.”

Teomitl looked puzzled. “The body…”

”I know,” I said. In my head was running a chant we learnt in the House of Tears, the school for the priesthood:
The moon
hungers to outrace, to outshine the sun; the stars hunger to come down,
to rend our flesh; the stars hunger to fall down, to steal our souls…
“It’s a star-demon, and it has his soul.”

”That can’t be–” Teomitl started. “They…”

They couldn’t come here, not unless summoned; and, even then, it would require at least the lifeblood of a human being, spilled by a strong practitioner, in honour of a powerful god. We had a sorcerer loose in the city, one who wished no good to the Mexica Empire.

And then another, horrible thought stopped me. What if it was no sorcerer?

What if She’d got free?

”Come on,” I said to Teomitl. “We have to check something. I’ll explain when we get there.”

To my apprentice’s credit, he followed without demur, though I could feel him struggling to contain his impatience as we strode out of the palace.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

”The Great Temple.” I headed back towards the Serpent Wall, though not before looking up. The stars were still there, still reassuringly far. It had to be a freak occurrence, had to be someone taking advantage of the current power vacuum to loose fire and blood upon us.

”You want to pray?” Teomitl shook his head. “This hardly seems the time, Acatl-tzin.”

”I’m not planning to pray,” I said. The Sacred Precinct opened up in front of us. Directly ahead was the Jaguar House, reserved for elite warriors, still lit up, with snatches of song and perfume wafting up to us. And, further down, the mass of the Great Temple, looming in the darkness like a mountain. “I’m going to make sure we don’t have a bigger problem on our hands.”

”In the Great Temple?” Teomitl asked. “It’s just a shrine.”

I shook my head. “Not only that.”

Teomitl started to protest, and then he shook his head. His gaze turned towards the bulk of the Great Temple pyramid, looming over the rest of the Sacred Precinct. A fine lattice of light rose around the stone structure, flowing over the stairs and the double shrine at the top two mingled radiances, the strong sunlight of Huitzilpochtli the Southern Hummingbird, and the weaker, harsh one of the Storm Lord Tlaloc, tinged with the dirty white of rain clouds.

Teomitl’s face twisted. A pale, jade-coloured cast washed over his features, until he seemed a carving himself. He was calling on the magic of his other protector Chalchiuhtlicue, Jade Skirt, goddess of lakes and streams. His gaze went down, all the way into the foundations of the Great Temple “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

What mattered was not the temple, it never had. What mattered was what it had been built on, Who it had imprisoned since the beginning of the Mexica Empire; a goddess who was our worst enemy.

• • • •

It was the Hour of the Fire God, the last one before dawn; and the priests of Huitzilpochtli were already climbing the steps, preparing their conch-shells and their drums to salute the return of the Fifth Sun. The priests of Tlaloc the Storm Lord, much less numerous, had gathered to offer blood in gratitude for the harvest.

Neither order paid much attention to me or Teomitl; their heads turned, dipped in a bare acknowledgment – tinged with contempt in my case, for they knew all too well what their own High Priests thought of me.

We climbed up the double set of stairs that led to the platform at the top of the pyramid, feeling magic grow stronger and stronger around us, the Southern Hummingbird’s magic, a fine mesh of sunlight and moonlight slowly undulating like satiated snakes, descending around us, mingling with Teomitl’s protection, resting on my shoulders like a cloak of feathers. It hissed like a spent breath when it met Lord Death’s knives at my belt, but did not do anything more. A relief, since Huitzilpochtli’s magic, like the god Himself, could be violent and unpredictable.

Atop the temple were two trapezoidal shrines, one for each god, from which the pungent reek of copal incense was already rising into the sky. Slightly before the shrines the stairs branched. On a much smaller platform to the right opened an inclined hole, the beginning of a tunnel that descended into the depths of the pyramid. The entry was heavily warded, with layer upon layer of magic, bearing the characteristic, energetic strokes of Ceyaxochitl, the old woman who was Guardian of the Mexica Empire, and the subtler ones of the previous priest of Huitzilpochtli. They parted around us, though with a resistance like the crossing of an entrance-curtain.

Beneath us was a flight of stairs going down into the darkness. A stone chest with its lid flipped open held torches, and a single flame was lit at the entrance. We both took a torch and set it aflame before going down.

It was damp, and dark, and unpleasantly cool. The deeper we went, the more the magic tightened around us – as if a snake, once pleasantly settled around the shoulders, had suddenly decided to constrict. Our breaths rattled in our chests until each inhalation burnt, and each exhalation seemed to leech heat from our bodies and from our hearts. Even Teomitl’s light from his protective spell grew weaker and weaker; I could see him slowing down before I, too, adapted my step to his. Together, we moved through the growing thickness, moment after agonising moment.

We passed many platforms on our way. The Great Temple had been rebuilt several times, each incarnation grander and more imposing than the last, wrapping its limestone structure around the shells of all its predecessors. Altars shone in the darkness, faint smudges on them, the memories of previous sacrifices.

At last we reached the bottom of the stairs, the foundation of the Great Temple, and entered a wide chamber, its walls so covered with carvings that the eye barely had time to settle on one figure before another caught its attention.

At regular intervals lines had been carved into the stone, slight depressions linking the floor to the top of the temple, channelling the blood of sacrifices all the way down to pool on the floor. It reeked like a slaughter yard – even worse than an ordinary shrine, for there was almost no way for the air to escape such a confined space.

The floor itself was a huge painted disk, three times as large as the calendar stone that hung in the shrine above. It lay on the floor – in fact, it
was
the floor, for it filled most of the room from wall to wall, with only a little space for an altar at the further end. The carvings on it were almost too huge to be deciphered. I could see bits and pieces of them; an arm bent backwards, a severed foot, a gigantic head with a band and rattles, separated from the dismembered torso. There was a feeling of movement, as if all the pieces were still tumbling down from the original sacrifice. Blood coated everything, its power pulsating in the air above the disk like a heat wave.

I knelt by the disk, and carefully extended a hand to touch the

edge. There was a slight sound, like the tinkle of silver bells, and I felt the stone warm under my finger, the only warmth in the room, beating like a human heart, pulsating with Her anger and murderous rage, an urge to water the earth with my lifeblood, to tear me from limb to limb and inhale my dying breath, to scatter my essence within Herself until nothing remained…

”Acatl-tzin?”

With difficulty I tore myself from the stone and looked up at Teomitl. “She’s still sealed here,” I said. Otherwise I wouldn’t just be remembering Her rage, I would be dead. The wards still held. The blood magic, renewed with the daily sacrifices of prisoners, was still as strong as ever.

I’d have breathed more easily, had the atmosphere of the room allowed it.