The Wizard of Time (Book 1) (10 page)

The banter between the others took its usual form, with Teresa teasing Rajan, Marcus teasing everyone, Sema trying to mother them into better behavior, Ling grousing about too much noise at the breakfast table, while Ohin remained sternly silent and watchful. It was all moving too fast, Gabriel thought to himself.

Only a few days ago he would have been sitting in English class with his friends. He had been an average kid living an average life in 1980. Yesterday he was jumping back and forth through time with a man born in Africa over 1500 years before he was. A man who could bend time around himself like others would wrap a blanket around themselves. And Gabriel had done the same. And today he was going to be jumping from millions of years in the past to an Aztec city in 1487 CE to find a sacrificial dagger. It made his head and his stomach reel. Sema must have sensed his inner turmoil.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t feel ready for it,” Sema said, leaning over so that only Gabriel could hear her voice. “You are very young, and this is much earlier in the training for a mission than usual.”

 “I’m okay,” Gabriel whispered back. “I’ll have to go on a mission sometime, and this one sounds easy.”

“They all sound easy,” Sema said. She frowned, realizing that her statement was not exactly reassuring. “You’ll be perfectly safe with all of us around you.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Gabriel said, suddenly realizing it was true. “I’m more worried about making a mistake.”

“I can’t imagine that will happen,” Sema said with a gentle pat on the arm.

After breakfast they gathered outside in the Horseshoe Cloister to listen to Chimalli tell them a little more about the Aztec Civilization. He was of obvious Mesoamerican decent: handsome, with short-cut grey hair, the features of his face sharp, his cheekbones high. His eyes shone with the same intelligence and humor he displayed when speaking.

“As you probably know,” Chimalli said, “my people are the Nahua, and in the Nahuatl language Azteca means ‘the people of Aztlan,’ which is what we called our portion of the world. Although some believe it refers as much to a mythical place as to the lands where the Nahua people thrived and built what would later be called the Aztec civilization.” 

Gabriel had read something similar the night before. He had also learned that Chimalli’s name meant ‘shield’ in the Nahuatl language. Ling had said this was fortunate since he might shield them from their ignorance. Even though they had spent hours studying in the library the night before, Gabriel felt he had only scratched the surface of Aztec history. Normally a team would have days to prepare for an operation and make sure they knew its history before they traveled.

“As Ohin told you,” Chimalli continued, “we believe a Malignancy Mage has made a connection between a concatenate crystal and an Aztec sacrificial dagger, and we suspect that link was made shortly after the reconsecration of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan, or the Templo Mayor, as it is known in Spanish, in 1487 CE. Tenochtitlan is the capital city of the Aztec empire built on an island in Lake Texcoco. As you hopefully learned from your hasty studies, the reconsecration took place during the reign of King Ahuitzotl. The Aztec kings were known as the
tlatoani
, or ‘Great Speakers,’ of their people. The supreme leader Ahuitzotl took power after his brother Tizoc died mysteriously. There are those who believe that Ahuitzotl had his brother poisoned so he could assume the throne.

“One of Ahuitzotl’s first acts was to expand the Great Temple, building over the previous temple to create one even larger. Just as other kings had done before. The reconsecration of the Great Temple took place the year after King Ahuitzotl came to power.”

“I lived twenty years before this time,” Chimalli said, “but I have a good idea of what happened during that period from meeting with others who lived through it and from at least one visit there myself. The moment we will be traveling to is at the end of four days of the reconsecration of the Templo Mayor. Over the course of those four days, at least ten thousand people were sacrificed to the Aztec gods at temples throughout the city. There are some estimates that suggest as many as eighty thousand died in those four days.”

Gabriel read about humans sacrifices the night before, but he still couldn’t get his mind around a number that large. Over ten thousand people killed by having their hearts ripped from their chest with obsidian and flint daggers, only to have their bodies tossed down the side of the temple to pile at the bottom where their heads would be cut off and placed upon skull racks. It bothered him deeply, and he hoped that he wouldn’t be seeing any of it. He wondered how Chimalli could be so calm about it.

“That is a lot of people being sacrificed in a short period of time,” Chimalli said. “That is more than might have been sacrificed in an entire year.”  He paused for a moment and looked at those around the courtyard. “Any questions?”

Gabriel looked at the silent faces of the others. No one said a word. The thought of the sacrifices seemed to have silenced everyone.

“So why are we sitting around like a pile of rocks?” Marcus said. “This isn’t Stonehenge. Let’s find this bloody dagger and be done with it. If we’re quick about it, we can be back in time for lunch.”

“We can always be back in time for lunch,” Gabriel said, feeling good about the mission and meeting Chimalli

“Figure of speech, Lad,” Marcus said with a grin.

“Is everyone ready?” Ohin said. There were nods all around as everyone stood up. “Prepare your appearance.” Ohin shimmered and suddenly wore thin leather sandals, a loincloth, and a
tilma
, a three-cornered cloak of rough spun cotton. Gabriel focused his mind on the concealment amulet around his neck, the air shimmering around him as he matched Ohin’s attire. The other men suddenly appeared to be wearing the same sort of clothes while the women wore simple dresses and sleeveless shirts. They all looked like themselves, but he knew that anyone who saw them would think they looked like Chimalli, a native Nahua. From the quality of their clothes, they would be taken as nobles if someone saw them. Only nobles wore clothes made from cotton. Common citizens wore clothes fashioned from the coarse fibers of the maguey plant, a cactus-like plant that grows throughout the region.

They gathered into a tight circle holding hands. As long as there was a chain of people touching, they would all be safely swept along with Ohin when he made the jump through time.

“Is anyone not ready to go?” Ohin asked.

“Last chance to use the bathroom,” Teresa said with a smirk. Gabriel laughed, but no one said anything. Ohin took a shard of pottery from his pocket and held it in his hand. Gabriel knew that the shard was from Tenochtitlan and that while it would get them to the right place, Ohin would need to navigate carefully to put them near the time of the four days of sacrifice for the temple. Gabriel stood to Ohin’s right, holding Teresa’s hand. Sema held Ohin’s left hand and he gestured for Gabriel to take his right. As he did so, Gabriel could sense the shard of pottery, and an image of a great city came to his mind.

“We go,” Ohin said simply. The sun was gone, blackness sweeping around them, the cloisters disappearing, and then everything was a brilliant white.

They stood in the center of a broad, earth-packed street in the middle of a massive city, looking up at an enormous stone pyramid nearly two hundred feet tall. Two sets of wide steps, over a hundred stairs each, led to the flat top of the pyramid where two box-like shrines capped the structure. Although they were nearly half a mile away, Gabriel could make out people at the top of the Templo Mayor, the great pyramid. And something rolling down the steps. And something piled at the bottom.

Gabriel gasped. The sacrifices were happening now.

“Too early,” Chimalli said.

“Obviously,” Teresa said with distaste.

“One moment,” Ohin said as the darkness came again, followed by the brilliant white light.

When the white light faded, they stood in the same spot, but it was nighttime. Torches illuminated the temple, and lights from oil lamps glowed throughout the city. The half-moon in the sky above draped the city in a ghostly blanket of pale light.

“We are a few days later,” Ohin said, letting go of Gabriel’s hand. Everyone in the circle did the same. “From what I can sense, the dagger is still at the temple. In the shrine at the top of the stairs.” Ohin began to walk toward the Great Temple.

Although there were two hundred thousand citizens living in the city, few people were on the streets at night. Those few employed by the city to sweep the streets clean each night were the exception. Gabriel was not worried about the people they passed. Not only would the magical amulets make them appear to be noble residents of the city, but as long as Sema was nearby, her Soul Magic would ensure that no one would notice their passing.

As they walked along the street, Gabriel marveled at the architectural brilliance of the city’s planners and builders. The streets were uniformly straight, laid out on a grid of smaller lanes crossing four wider main avenues. These four avenues led to the heart of the city, to the sacred plaza of temples and the Great Temple in particular. As they walked, Gabriel could see a grid of canals that crossed the streets. Long strips of floating fields called
chinampas
bordered the canals. Corn, vegetables, and flowers filled the fields, each about the width of a street.

The buildings of the city were made of adobe, some with thatched roofs. The homes each had two stone chimneys, smoke drifting up from many of them. Other larger buildings must have belonged to merchants or the wealthy. The city was divided into four districts by the main avenues. Each district was further divided into neighborhoods called
calpulli
, which were dominated by collections of families and merchants.

Gabriel could see other pyramids at the city center, some large and wide, some small and narrow. Each had its own purpose. Different pyramids for different gods. Down one canal he could see the water of Lake Texcoco that the island city was built upon. Down another street he could see a market plaza, empty at night. It was a beautiful city. So beautiful that Gabriel had trouble comprehending it. How could you be so smart as to build a city this incredible and think that killing thousands of people a year was a remotely intelligent thing to do? 

However, by all accounts, even though the Aztec people felt driven to conquer and expand their empire by blood, they were also a well-ordered and industrious society. They believed in hard work, respect for authority, and performing one’s duty. They even had schools where children learned history, dancing, and the rules of Aztec society, a society and a city that were alive and pulsing with creativity, but one also marked by constant death and destruction. It was a knot of ironies that Gabriel struggled to untangle.

Within a few minutes, they passed through the
snake wall
, a large stone wall surrounding the city center and adorned with serpent heads. The city center was entirely paved and Gabriel saw a courtyard where the Aztecs played
tlachtli
, a game in which players battled to pass a rubber ball through a stone circle using their hips. Not surprisingly, the losers were often sacrificed to the gods. Beyond the ball court, Gabriel could see the palace of the king. Several pyramids, in addition to the Great Temple, sat at the heart of the city. The smaller temple in front of the Templo Mayor was that of Quetzalcoatl, the wind and sky god, often depicted as a feathered serpent.

As they approached the foot of the Templo Mayor, Gabriel could see that the bodies had been cleared away, some to be eaten, he seemed to remember. He pushed that out of his mind. Two guards with spears stood at the base of the temple stairs, but they did not seem to notice anyone walking past them. There was also a large stone carving of a woman with her head, arms, and legs chopped off. The
Coyolxauhqui Stone
. Coyolxauhqui was an Aztec moon goddess and the stone depicted the method of sacrifice. Gabriel wondered why it was her image when the sanctuaries at the top were dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of the sun and war, and Tlaloc, the god of rain and fertility. Although there were no bodies, there were plenty of heads. Thousands adorned the skull racks that surrounded the base of the temple. He had been trying to ignore them by staring at the carved Coyolxauhqui Stone.

“Do we have to walk past all of those?” Gabriel asked, indicating the rows of severed heads.

“Never mind the heads,” Marcus said, looking at Ohin. “Are you going to make us walk up all those stairs?”

“I have no intention of making you do either,” Ohin said as he came to a stop. Gabriel’s time-sense told him what was coming, but the others seemed to be expecting it as well. The blackness surrounded them, the white light came, and then they stood on the flat top of the pyramid. Gabriel looked around. Everyone was there. He wondered how many people Ohin could take through space without touching them. It must take a great deal of power and experience. He also wondered how long it would take before he could manage it.

Two guards stood at the top of the temple. Between them burned a large fire near a stone altar where the victims of the sacrifices would be held down by the priests as their hearts were cut out of their chests. The guards both briefly moved their heads in the direction of the mages, but Sema touched the glass pendant at her neck and they turned away in unison, lying down where they stood and falling asleep.

“The dagger is in there,” Ohin said, pointing to one of the stone sanctuaries on the top of the temple. “The sanctuary of Huitzilopochtli, the sun god.”  The two sanctuaries had angular walls and flat roofs so they almost looked like miniature pyramids themselves. The one on the right was covered in red and black paint and decorated with human skulls. This was the sanctuary of the sun god, Huitzilopochtli. The sanctuary on the left belonged to the rain god, Tlaloc, and was painted in blue in white.

“They aren’t the only tainted artifacts in there,” Sema said. Gabriel tried to sense the dagger and any other artifacts, but he couldn’t. That too must come with experience and power, he thought. However, he did feel something. Something strong. Then he realized what it was.