“Yield,” the god boomed in Iqiohr’s mind.
“No.” Iqiohr couldn’t give up. What fate awaited him if he did? Death? Being trapped in his own mind?
Pain lanced through him as the spear pierced his chest and he fell to a knee, narrowly missing one of the mirrors.
And what of his Esne if he let this god win?
Summoning strength from love, Iqiohr ignored the wrath and weapons of the god and shoved with his mind, imagining a jaguar paw swiping through the air.
Tezcatlipoca teetered on the edge of one of his mirrors.
His Esne. The thought of her bolstered his strength. She'd been his only friend. The only one he could count on unconditionally.
Another swipe sent the god tumbling in.
Iqiohr blinked, coming back to reality. The body before him lay shriveled and dormant, empty of life and magic. He pulled his knife out and staggered away from the body of the last Scorpion Mage as it burned in white flames. One hand on the walls, Iqiohr careened down the corridors to his chamber.
His Esne. He needed her and the happiness she brought him. Something to hold on to while the mages inside him tried to rip him to shreds. They were not done, and neither was the god. He had to lock them down somehow.
The door to his chambers hung on one hinge. His Esne screamed. The jaguar snarled. A man shouted. Ahuizotls barked.
A white glyph lit up on his skin, and energy infused him. He lifted one leg and kicked the door the rest of the way off its hinges. It flew across the room and smashed into one of the men pinning his Esne down on the floor. The door caught the man and lifted him off her chest. Her dress was torn down the front and pushed up her legs. Blood welled from her lip and one eye swelled.
Freed of one man, she twisted out of the grip of the other holding her arms. Iqiohr took two steps and launched himself at the second man, punching his Mage-Maker blade into the second heart that day. The blade glowed white as it drained the man of magic.
The jaguar fought three ahuizotls, their eyes glowing white. The cat had taken several bites, but all his attackers bled heavily from gouges in their sides. One ahuizotl barreled into the cat while another slapped the hand on its tail over the cat’s face.
“No!” His Esne grabbed the bed and pulled herself to her feet, aiming for the roiling mass of claws and teeth.
The man who had asked for his Esne yesterday stood in the corner, holding out one glowing hand, controlling the ahuizotls.
Iqiohr reached out with his new power and snapped the link. The guardians of the lake answered to him now.
Freed, the ahuizotls shook their heads and darted from the room, leaving the jaguar laying motionless on the floor His Esne fell to her knees beside the cat.
The acolyte held his hands up. “The Scorpion Mage told us to come here. He said —”
Fury took Iqiohr’s breath away. “I am the Scorpion Mage now, and I have no use for you.” He pulled on the glyphs etched into the other acolyte, forcing the man to his will, making him lurch forward. When he was within a step, Iqiohr brought up his Mage-Maker blade one more time. This time, the man drowned in magic before Iqiohr let him die as an empty husk.
With the need to act gone, Iqiohr turned to his Esne, desperate for a connection to keep him present, but she focused on the cat.
Iqiohr knelt beside her. “Look at me.” He gripped her chin tight and turned her head so she had no choice.
She obeyed, but she didn't see him. Only the mage. Tears brimmed in her despair and doubt filled eyes. That wasn't what he wanted. Not what he needed. In desperation, he surged forward, shoving all the other mages back, but she still didn’t see him.
He released her, unable to watch her not seeing him. His Esne collapsed onto the dying feline. His breath rattled in his lungs and his wounds bled freely. She buried her face in his neck, hands fisted in his fur as sobs shook her body.
“He saved me. He tried to fight them all.”
His gaze fell to the fading cat. Reaching out, he placed his hands flat on the soft fur and sifted through all his thousands of new glyphs. There. One for healing.
Iqiohr summoned the sigil to his fingertips and pressed it to the jaguar’s side. A white glow spread from his hand over the cat. The jaguar coughed, expelling water from its lungs. Bites and injuries from trauma healed, and the white aura receded.
The cat rolled to his stomach and nudged Iqiohr with his big head, then laid it in his Esne’s lap, giving her hand a lick with his sandpaper tongue.
“Thank you, Iqiohr.” His Esne threw her arms around his neck, no longer afraid.
“Look at me.” The words came out as a growl, but she seemed to hear the unspoken plea in them. She tipped her face up, eyes soft now.
Her fright and sadness turned into the devotion and love he'd seen last night. “I see you, Iqiohr.”
With a roar of triumph in his mind that locked down the other mages, Iqiohr became the Scorpion Mage.
HE’D DONE ALL THAT for her. And now she had forsaken him. This was not the first betrayal he’d had to deal with, but this one bit deep.
“Let me show you,” Tezcatlipoca whispered. “Let me show you how to deal with those who would betray us.”
AFTER TLALOC DESTROYED the world with fire and the humans escaped as birds, he removed his coveted jaguar skull from the throne and retreated down the tunnel to the bottom of the lake to enter Tlālōcān, allowing Tezcatlipoca to watch as the rain god lived in misery and obscurity in his realm of unending Springtime. It was a small amusement. A pleasant diversion when Tezcatlipoca’s preparations for the Fourth Sun grew tedious. Until today.
Today, the smoking mirror eyes in the jaguar skull revealed Quetzalcoatl, his treacherous brother, betraying him again.
“It has to be you.” The feathered serpent paced back and forth on the green grass field in front of Tlaloc, hands waving in the air. “You're the best choice.”
No insipid grin on the rain god’s face as he crossed his arms, leaned against a thick tree trunk, and shook his head. “No. I agreed to rule the Third Sun. Look what happened last time. My wife and unborn child kidnapped. They are still missing! Who knows what happened to them? If Tezcatlipoca took them, and we all know he did, even if we can’t prove it, nothing good. The world destroyed in fire. I can't do that again.”
Tezcatlipoca laughed. The Esne and the son lived, and would as long as they had a purpose. A search for the next Esne was already underway. The boy, with the power of gods, bred with the witch blood of an Esne, could provide the perfect vessel for the next Scorpion Mage.
Quetzalcoatl came to a stop and pointed at Tlaloc. “And that's what Tezcatlipoca thinks too, so he won't see you as a threat.”
Tlaloc's goggle-eyes rounded. “I was never a threat to him!”
They were all threats to his power. Look how easily they bartered it away! But Tezcatlipoca could afford to be patient.
Quetzalcoatl gripped Tlaloc's shoulders. “The Fourth Sun will begin. We can't stop it. The world wants to continue. This nothingness isn't natural. But we have to guide it. We can't let Tezcatlipoca take power. He's not the god he used to be. The sorcery he dabbles with that leaches him of color and forces him to change bodies all the time — it has devoured all the good in him. The brother who created the world with me no longer exists.”
Dabbles! Tezcatlipoca growled as he stalked through his hall of floating obsidian mirrors. He wasn't ready for the Fourth Sun. His army, made from a combination of mage and blood magics, didn't have the numbers to win a war yet.
“You take power then. I don't want it.”
Nor did that weakling deserve it!
Quetzalcoatl shook his head. “It can't be me. I'm too much of an overt challenge. Nothing will rile him up so much as me — the brother he thinks betrayed him — ruling as Sun again.”
“You did betray me, brother.” Tezcatlipoca's fists clenched. “You are still betraying me. Over and over again.”
“You don't even have to be the Sun. Chalchiu
htlicue has agreed to rule. All you have to do is sit in the chair beside her. Think of it as atonement, if nothing else. Make the Fourth Sun better than you left the Third.”
Tezcatlipoca stopped in mid-step. So that was who they’d chosen to offer the power that should be his. Chalchiuhtlicue. The Jade Skirt. Goddess of storms and fertility, patroness of childbirth. The germ of an idea took hold. Patience. He would need to be patient. Let her rule the Fourth Sun. For a while.
“Low blow, Serpent.” Tlaloc sighed. “I suppose I owe the world something. I'll do it because he’s already taken everything from me. I have nothing left to lose. But it won't last. Your brother is true to a scorpion now. He will find a way to sting us somehow.”
“If we're expecting it, maybe we can mitigate the damage.”
Amused with the idea they thought his actions would ever be predictable to the likes of them, Tezcatlipoca let his thoughts whirl with how to cause the damage they sought to mitigate. It wouldn't do to disappoint them. He would have them scampering one way while he moved in another.
The day of the eclipse, he set the stage in the temple atop Serpent Mountain. Corpses lay in a heap, the altar and floor awash in blood. Human organs scattered everywhere. Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue stopped in shock when they topped the stairs on the side of the pyramid.
Tezcatlipoca, drenched in scarlet, lifted his bloodstained white knife in one hand, a human heart in the other. He spread his arms wide and bowed at the waist magnanimously. “Welcome. I have ensured your reign starts off the right way.”
Sacrifices weren't new. Every god and goddess demanded or accepted them for power. But Tezcatlipoca had ensured these were particularly messy.
The rain god’s goggle-eyes grew so large Tezcatlipoca thought they would pop off his face. Tlaloc paled and half-turned, like he would run away, but the regal Jade Skirt led the way to their thrones.
Beautiful and eternally young of face and body, her chin-length black hair held off her face with a blue and white headdress trimmed with amaranth seeds and tassels. A blue shawl covered her shoulders and her jade skirt clung to her hips. The new Sun and her consort took their thrones, and the Fourth Sun began.
Everyone watched for Tezcatlipoca to move against Chalchiuhtlicue as the Fourth Sun world continued. Centuries passed, and he ignored her to concentrate on building his army. Nearly a thousand soldiers strong now. Over twice as big as the largest army his enemies could muster, stored in the bowels of Serpent Mountain for the day he needed them.
Lulled into complacency, none of the gods predicted Tlaloc's disappearance. During the furor that caused, Tezcatlipoca insinuated himself into Chalchiuhtlicue’s life, placing mage glyphs on her to make her pliable to his will.
The Jade Skirt had come to love her consort and fell into despair as time went by without his reappearance. The day had come to end the Fourth World. Tezcatlipoca whispered foul thoughts of Tlaloc into her ear.
He thought you weren't good enough. Why else would he abandon you?
He never cared for you. He didn't even like you.
You could never compare to the goddess of sex. He told me.
It took a few years, but eventually, she snapped.
Fifty-two years of rain flooded the Fourth Sun world all at once when she wept. While Quetzalcoatl and the other gods were distracted using their magic to turn humans into fish, Tezcatlipoca kidnapped the Jade Skirt.
Tezcatlipoca took his latest prisoner and retreated to his underground lair, hidden deep within Serpent Mountain to continue a very special project — one more likely to succeed now that he had the goddess of fertility and childbirth in his possession.
Feathers. So common. So beautiful. So harmless. He ran the soft bundle through his fingers, adding his blood and that of warrior sacrifices to the iridescent green plumes. Using mage energy to sink the glyphs containing the Jade Skirt’s magic in blood, he infused the feathers with a white glow. When the brilliance receded, a bundle of shiny green feathers lay in his palm. Now all he had to do was choose his victim. A goddess who had birthed four hundred sons in one night, perhaps. Coatlicue — the Serpent Skirt. Creator. Destroyer. Mother of gods and mortals. The perfect choice. Now he just needed the perfect time.
The Fourth Sun hadn't been right, but he would be ready for the Fifth.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
NORRIX
THE DOOR SLAMMED BEHIND Myth as she ran.
From him.
Again.
Back to the bastard mage who had brainwashed her into thinking she was nothing more than a sex toy or brood mare.
His Dragă. A woman he could see settling with, starting a family.
Why, when she was free and offered safe passage, had she chosen the mage?
The vampire side of him raged, wanted to roar and destroy the world. His vision sharpened, and he curled his hands into fists. It took everything in him to let her leave, even though he’d planned for that. Every instinct urged him to lock her up, to take away her ability to make this bad decision and keep her away from the mage, but that was exactly how he treated her. Norrix would never make her feel like she was less than everything to him.
Let her go so you can follow her straight to that bastard’s lair and kill him.
He’d had her blood. A lot of it. He could track her across the world.
Crossing the hall, he pounded on Stryx and Ember’s door, barging past her when she opened it. “I gave Myth the knife. She wouldn’t stay. She’s leaving to go back to... to him!”
“She must have a reason, Norrix.” Ember shut the door, rubbed reddened eyes and paced in front of the sofa where Stryx lounged. “No one would go back to that life without a good reason.”
“Whatever mage she’s going to doesn’t want that knife for anything good, either,” Stryx remained settled. It was still odd that he was the calmest of all of them in the room. “You had her blood?”
Norrix nodded as he sat, bounced to his feet, then sat again. “I can track her, but following her will be faster.”
“I have to go back to Port Storm.” Ember held up her phone. “Viktoria kidnapped the man that the mage sent after her and interrogated him. She found out the Spider Mage poisoned Musette’s magic so he could kill other mages when they tried to take it. I have to get these possible antidotes to Musette as soon as possible. I want to go with you to save Myth, but if Musette got worse while I was gone, or...” She cleared her throat. “I can go with you if we go home first.”
“No.” Norrix wasn’t waiting around for that. If he left Ashana, however briefly, he could miss his chance to follow Myth. It wasn’t bad enough mages tortured and drained witches, now they were using them as booby traps? Had the mage Myth was running back to done something like that to her? That would explain why she had to return to him. He shook his head. “It’s all right. You need to be with your sister. I’ll go after Myth. The only thing is the keys. They can open any portal you’ve already been through, but in your case, that leaves you a few miles above the ocean.”
Ember frowned. “Oh. Even with my wings, I don’t think I can fly that far. Or carry someone.” She stopped mid-step in her pacing. “Wait. We have the magic carpet.” Her eyes drifted up to where the carpet floated out of reach, pressed to the ceiling. “Although I can’t say we trust one another quite yet. Stryx and I could still end up a few miles over the ocean.”
The carpet bunched and straightened with ominous whip-like cracks several times.
Norrix nodded. “Yeah. Don’t try to force obedience.”
“Surely there is a way to barter passage or open a different portal. We’ll ask Clio.” Stryx caught Ember’s hand as she passed and offered her a grin. “I’d bet she can give us a complete list of other ways to get home from here.”
Ember’s entire body relaxed at his touch and words. “You’re right. That woman has a list for everything.”
“Ask Baba Yaga to take you.” Relief coursed through Norrix as the idea came. She could use the same portal, which wou
ld leave Ember and Stryx close to home, and they could take all their purchases. “I saw her transportation in the hangar. She might want to go with you to see Selene about her ballerina.”
“Too bad we didn’t meet Santa.” Ember flopped onto the sofa. “Musette would have loved to hear about a ride on his sleigh.”
Stryx leaned forward. “When you find out where your Dragă is going, call us and we'll send backup. Jael, Melchior, even Drake if you need him. He’ll help with this.”
Drake meant explosions. Always an effective way to end a mage. “I love Plan D.” Norrix rose to his feet. “I’m going to speak with Clio now. I’ll ask her to send the pixies to Baba Yaga or Koschei with a message.”
The lobby was in space mode. The floor, walls, and ceiling gleamed onyx with silver twinkles. Moons hung in the background while comets and shooting stars soared across the expanse in front of a row of aligning planets.
Clio wore a bulky space suit and floated in the air, attached to the front desk by a tether.
Norrix marched straight to her and tugged her to the floor. “I need your help again, to know where she goes, please.”
Clio wore a crestfallen expression through the clear mask of her astronaut suit and her voice crackled over its speaker. “But I can’t track where our guests go when they leave. Only Zax can do that.”
He knew that, but knowing he knew that didn’t help. Norrix slammed his fist on the counter. “She chose to go back to a mage!”
A thick insulated glove landed on his arm. “Wait, Mr. N. She’s still here. I can’t track where they go when she leaves, but I can tell you where the gateway formed when she arrived. She might have a key that opens multiple portals, but if she returns to the same place...”
The mage had let Myth come here, but it was unlikely he would let her out of his sight for long. She would probably go back the most direct way, now that she had what she wanted, even if her key could open more portals. “Yes, please. Anything you can tell me.”
Myth's Legend: Norrix Page 20