Mazatl helped him up the driveway. “Not much longer,” his son admitted. Pushing sixty himself now, Mazatl’s hair was iron-gray, and cut in the same fashion as his father’s. “No more tires in the stores. All the rubber stockpiles have been turned over to the military.”
“No shipments from Quecha, obviously.”
“No shipments from anywhere. The top producers used to be . . . Malay, and I think Siam?” Mazatl shrugged, and paused at the front door, looking down at the mat. “Huh. I don’t know of any Judean customs for welcoming the new year like that.”
Ehecatl looked down. He’d had cataracts removed and his lenses replaced in the last year, courtesy of the local Judean doctors. The procedure had been available in Nahautl, but even with full medical coverage as a retired Praetorian, it had been expensive. Here, it was far less so. He blinked, however, unsure of what he was seeing. A single pomegranate on a plate, with a sprig of white flowers beside it, and a lit candle. “Good way to burn the house down.”
Mazatl reached down and picked up the plate, and a piece of paper flew away; Ehecatl caught it, and saw Hellene letters there. A language in which he was fluent. In honor of Sigrun Stormborn. His son shrugged, and knocked at the door now, continuing in their previous conversation, “So, yes . . . people are digging in the landfills for old tires, and trying to re-use the rubber, if only for patches.” He looked back at the compact, economical lines of the Mehyman, and told his father, “I’m going to reserve it for emergencies. Like getting one of the children to the hospital.” Mazatl had started his family relatively late; his eldest was twenty-three . . . and was off serving in the JDF. Ehecatl wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d been a Jaguar warrior; his son had been a Jaguar warrior. His grandson was a bomb-disposal technician for the JDF. Then again, what is there to be proud of, in being a Jaguar warrior lately? he thought, tiredly. My proud brothers, reduced to kidnapping people in the night to be butchered.
Mazatl had just raised his hand to knock, when the door opened. Adam ben Maor stood framed there, and smiled, offering Ehecatl his hand. “The meeting of the old soldiers’ club is now in session,” ben Maor said, but then frowned at the plate in Mazatl’s hand. “Did you bring that?”
“No, it was on your front step,” Ehecatl supplied, and watched irritation cross ben Maor’s face, followed by what looked like resignation. “It’s not a form of practical joke, is it?”
“Sig has a centaur admirer,” Adam replied tersely, and took the plate out of Mazatl’s hand with his free one, bracing the door open with his shoulder as he continued to lean on his cane. “He comes and leaves her little tokens of his affection once or twice a year. On the new year and in Aprilis.” The sarcasm dwindled as he went on, leaving his words oddly sorrowful.
Mazatl frowned as the door closed behind him. “I can’t imagine Sigrun tolerating a stalker. She’d kill anyone who tried to invade her privacy like that.”
Ben Maor grimaced. “He’s not a stalker. He’s in her debt, or something. He puts a candle, a piece of fruit, or a loaf of bread on the step, and leaves. Never rings the bell. About all I’ve gotten out of Sig is his name—Nikolaos. I did a little background checking through the Praetorians back in ’92 or so. He’s lived very quietly since coming to Judea. He started off working at the asylum where Sophia was kept, then enlisted to work with the centaurs in the Caledonian Wood. Goes into Little Gothia and talks to people about a . . . death-goddess, apparently.” Adam tossed the pomegranate at the counter, blew out the candle, put it and the plate in the sink, and looked at the flower for a moment, before tossing it into the garbage. “Have a seat,” he invited, gesturing them towards the living room.
Usually, these evenings were quiet, and passed with the two older Praetorians playing chess and talking desultorily about current affairs. Sometimes, the others joined them. Tonight, Kanmi Eshmunazar and his wife Minori were present, as was Saraid, Matrugena’s spirit-wife. Ehecatl was unnerved by Kanmi. He remembered Eshmunazar looking precisely like this, over thirty years ago. And the man had been supposedly dead, buried, and declared a posthumous Hero of the Empire. People have been reported killed in action before who turned out to be alive, but the people who reported him dead are all sitting in this room, and have unimpeachable judgment. Ehecatl supposed that it might have all been a lie designed to shroud Eshmunazar in an even deeper-cover assignment, or to protect him from retaliation by the rest of the Carthaginian extremists he’d been investigating. He figured he’d never get the full story, or an explanation for his youth, or Minori’s equally-young appearance. Might just be what happens when a sorcerer gets above a certain threshold of power. Probably a good thing they don’t publicize it, if true. Potentia ad Populum doesn’t need more reasons to hate magic-users. Saying that they have the secret to eternal life would probably get every sorcerer lynched.
He didn’t entirely resent it, but he was curious. But he’d cast a few feelers for information, to be dodged, gently, adroitly, and had left the topic alone out of respect after that.
Now, Ehecatl eased himself down into a chair beside Minori carefully, and picked up the dice cup left in his spot at the table. “Sigrun isn’t joining us?” he asked. He hadn’t seen his oldest friend in probably eighteen months. Maybe longer. He missed being able to make her roll her eyes at jokes about her chicken-suit. At least she got all his jokes. Most young people didn’t, these days.
“She’s busy,” Adam returned, shortly, and Saraid rose in a lithe flow of limbs, to help him with a tray that he’d been trying to carry in on his own.
Conversation over the rattle of the dice cups turned to reminiscing. There was no one in the room who hadn’t been a Praetorian, or worked with them; they all had clearance to hear most of the stories. Not that Rome’s secrets mean a damn anymore, Ehecatl thought. My people are at war with Rome and the Quecha and, gods help them, the Gauls, too. I’m a refugee in a completely different land of rebels. What are they going to do if I tell a few stories? Torture me to death, instead of giving me a firing squad? So the tales flew back and forth. “Next thing I knew, I looked up,” Eshmunazar told Mazatl, glancing at Ehecatl as he did so, “and Tototl has your father flat on his back on an altar and is reaching into his chest with his bare hands—no knife! No blood!—and is trying to pull his heart out to sacrifice him to Tlaloc.”
Mazatl turned to stare at his father. “I had no idea. You never told me this.”
“I wasn’t supposed to talk about it. Aside from which, if I did say anything, I was still living in Nahautl.” Ehecatl tossed his cup of dice, and frowned at the results. “If that kind of thing got out, we’d have had riots. Or I’d have been taken in and interrogated much more vigorously.”
“You did have riots. I was stuck in the Tenochtitlan airport during the first wave of them,” Adam reminded them all, shaking his head. “There were a couple of decades in between, when people didn’t know what it looked like, when a g . . . when an entity died. They didn’t know to look for earthquakes, or mutations, or madness, or whatever.”
“In most respects, your bringing that stalactite down on Tlaloc’s head shouldn’t have worked. You’re not god-born, and it was a fairly ordinary piece of stone,” Kanmi said, looking up.
Tlaloc was overextended, Saraid replied, and rolled the dice. Also, an avatar confers both power and vulnerability. Manifesting gives a spirit better control over our powers in the mortal realm. We can do more in this physical realm with a body . . . but having a body also subjects us, in part, to the limitations of physical reality. She gestured at the dice. Gravity. Energy. Force. Chance. Taking an avatar provides a spirit with a soul-bound conduit. A stable connection both to the Veil and here. Idols are binding points. Stable connections. But bind your essence into an inanimate thing, and that thing can be broken. An avatar can be slain, or the human host, if valued, can become a hostage to a greater power.
The conversation left a pall on the room. Kanmi finally said, clearing his throat, “I never had to ask, Ehec
atl, why you didn’t come after any of us for revenge for Tlaloc’s death, the way some of your countrymen would probably like to. I always figured that his priest rooting around in your chest was a good enough reason for you to not care about the whole situation.”
Ehecatl pushed his various matchstick markers towards the center of the table. They never played for coin. “Tlaloc was a dualistic god. Life and death. I nodded towards his altar on his holy days. But I spent a lot more time praying to Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca.” He grimaced.
Saraid’s head came up. You are aware that Tezcatlipoca is now deceased? Her tone was delicate.
Ehecatl’s mouth tasted bad, and he wanted to spit. “I’m aware. I’m also aware that he attacked some god of Valhalla while they were conducting their people through Nahautl.” He marked the uneasy glances between the rest of them, at that, and wondered at it, a little.
Adam shook his head. “I remember talking about Tezcatlipoca when we were in Nahautl. I told you then that I spent a good bit of time in India, talking with people who worship Shiva,” he said, frankly. “I’ve never quite been able to understand how good people can worship dark gods.” He held up a hand, almost as weathered as Ehecatl’s own. “They said that they were propitiating Shiva. Asking him not to do bad things. Keeping him happy. Sounds like extortion to me.”
Ehecatl snorted and rolled his dice. “Only you, ben Maor, would call worship extortion. Next you’ll find evidence of deities blackmailing humans, because the gods know what we’ve done.”
They know what those who are bound to them know, Saraid corrected, gently. There is a difference.
Beside him, Mazatl sighed. “Worshipping Tezcatlipoca was certainly partly propitiation. But also . . . with all due respect, and keeping in mind that I’ve lived in Judea for over twenty years?” He paused, and gave Adam a keen look. “To us polytheists, monotheists seem to be ignoring half of creation, or just hoping that it will go away, if they close their eyes tightly enough. Night isn’t evil. It’s part of the universe. Death isn’t necessarily evil, either. Worshipping a deity of night and death isn’t going to make those things go away. It’s about respect.” He paused. “Tezcatlipoca wasn’t necessarily evil. I can’t speak to his motives in the attack on the Goths, but he was always near to a Jaguar warrior’s heart. I’ve prayed to him when I had to get somewhere under cover of night. Usually something like ‘Let the spells worked into my skin hold and don’t let there be someone with a tame spirit around.’” He glanced at Saraid. “No offense.”
None taken, Saraid replied with equanimity. I would not consider myself particularly tame.
Everyone at the table chuckled as she playfully bared her teeth. “Personally,” Ehecatl said, “I honor Quetzalcoatl, since he is the most merciful of my gods. And I honored Tezcatlipoca because he and I both stalk the night.” His smile became wistful. “Or rather, we did.”
After that, talk turned to current events as the power flickered periodically. “I keep watching what little news there is from Nahautl,” Ehecatl admitted, swirling his cup of wine. “It’s not looking good for my people. If I were thirty years younger, I would go back, and I would . . . organize a resistance. There are good people in the Jaguar and Eagle warriors. And they’re being turned into butchers. If their families could be protected, they’d turn against all of this.”
Mazatl shook his head. “I wouldn’t ask anyone to go there right now. Our people have gone mad, Father. This kind of madness has to run its course, like a fever, and burn itself out.”
“Our people don’t have time to wait it out!” Ehecatl snapped, thumping one hand on the table, and then winced. His skin was fragile these days. He’d probably pay for his temper with a bruise on the side of his hand.
At that point, Saraid flinched. Sigrun calls to me. She says there is trouble in Novo Gaul, on the Nahautl border. She is bringing someone with her, a refugee. One who is injured. The spirit frowned, her ears suddenly tilting back. Why does she bring him here?
Minori lifted her head and Kanmi looked at the ceiling, both looking as if they were, like Saraid, involved in some unheard conversation. Expressions rippling across their faces, and then the whole house shook. Pictures swayed gently on the walls, and the back door, off to their left, burst open as three figures entered the house. Ehecatl didn’t recognize the female figure in the black-silver armor, but whoever she was, she was clearly a goddess. A visor with eyes that were pieces of the moon concealed her face, and she carried a spear that blazed with blue light in her right hand. A massively tall man leaned on her shoulder. He had a protruding lower jaw that looked like muzzle, and the upper half of his face was covered in a mask that connected to a tall headdress decked with dazzling green-blue feathers, and he wore an elaborate breastplate of interlocking gold rings over the bare skin of his chest. Below, a kilt, again made of feathers, accompanied by armbands and coiling ankle ornaments of pure gold.
And blue-green fluid dripped from wounds all over his body.
Ehecatl barely noticed the black form of what looked like a lindworm slip in the door behind the pair. All he could take in, at the moment, was the tableaux in front of him, and the fact that those around him weren’t reacting in astonishment as complete as his own.
“You’re out of your mind.” Adam said, standing, one hand slipping to the small of his back. “Sekhmet’s camped out at the border rather than enter Judea, and you bring another entity right into our living room? What happened to etiquette?”
The black-armored goddess tossed her spear aside and stripped off her visor . . . revealing the face of Ehecatl’s old Praetorian associate, Sigrun Caetia. Ehecatl’s mind reeled for a moment as cognitive dissonance assailed him. He couldn’t reconcile Sigrun with the power radiating out of her. “He came to us for refuge. Obsidian Butterfly has injured him gravely,” she said, tersely, and Ehecatl’s eyes, already wide, went more so. “I couldn’t take him to Valhalla. He’s still part of a group with whom we’re technically at war. I don’t have the right to grant him asylum. That’s up to Odin and Freya. And he should be safe here from his fellow gods. They’re not going to take the chance of coming here.”
“Mercury did!” Adam snapped, as Kanmi moved to take the man’s other arm, and helped Sigrun half-carry him to a couch.
Kanmi flipped a dismissive hand. “None of the others have even made the attempt. I think they fear the god of Abraham too much. Mercury just thought he could disguise himself well enough, and flee quickly enough, to make the assassination attempt work.”
“Assassination?” Mazatl asked, weakly. “What assassination?”
The others were too deep in their own concerns to hear.
You could have brought him to your realm, Saraid said, moving to rest a hand on the man’s forehead, green light radiating out of her pale fingers. Ehecatl stood to let them have more room, and stared down at the man’s masked face, his mind moving slower than was its wont. He saw blue-green blood oozing out of claw-marks. Recognition crept through him, two steps behind the rest of the conversation. This is not human. This is . . . a god. Except . . . I know him. The eyes behind the mask opened for a moment, gleaming like stars in the heavens. This is Quetzalcoatl. This is the West Wind and the Morning Star. I am looking into the face of the Feathered Serpent.
Very slowly, Ehecatl knelt, bowing his head, and after a stunned instant, Mazatl did the same.
Conversation swirled over his head, as if this were an everyday occurrence. “I could have taken him to my realm, but I’m still a part of Valhalla. This is the best I can do till Freya and Odin agree. And he should be safe here from Ītzpa . . . eh. I shouldn’t say her Name.” Sigrun and Saraid were standing over the man now, expressions taut. Sigrun looked up and said, sharply, “Lassair! I need you here. My healing and Saraid’s might not be enough.”
The god’s eyes had closed again before the firebird burst into existence in the room, and then assumed her humanoid form—this time, a tall, slender woman with amber-tinged skin and tang
les of red hair. Her eyes were as carnelian as Ehecatl remembered, and she leaned in, taking Quetzalcoatl’s massive hand in two of her own. I can only heal by entering the body, Lassair reminded them all. This is his avatar. I doubt he will let me in. The body is currently unconscious, but he is very much awake within, though weakened.
If you want to live, Sigrun said, her lips not moving, you will let us aid you, Quetzalcoatl. I apologize that I am neither Freya nor Eir.
“Excuse me,” Ehecatl said, and got no response. He then added, more loudly. “Sigrun!”
Her head snapped towards him, and she looked startled. “Ehecatl? What are you—” She blinked. “Oh, gods.”
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