Tales of the Emerald Serpent (Ghosts of Taux)

by Scott Taylor

  Hunhau preferred a safe and long life. He bet on the games, but not to excess, enjoyed women and wine, in moderation, and prudently collected bits of blue shell for his own death mask, having accepted that his meager skills wouldn’t attract an apprentice. On mornings when the conditions were right, he’d trundle along the quay, as this morning, and descend to the sand to gather driftwood.

  Wizard’s Fog... Hunhau shivered in the lingering damp, glad to see it lift even if that brought others to the sand. Now to see if the little breeze had been tease or promise. He lifted his mask to better look around. The clean sea air was potent, but didn’t vex his stomach the way bilge and sailor-stink and that fusty odour from the sails did.

  “Saints Great and Lesser,” he gasped.

  The exposed beach was strewn with wood of all shapes and sizes. Treasure for the taking!

  And he was here first.

  He picked his way through a delicious agony of choices, mind awhirl. Had a distant storm tossed shipwrack this way? Or had one of the dreadful waves that followed a disturbance of the earth washed an entire village out to sea?

  Perhaps the Saints, despite his neglect, chose to smile on him. “I’ll pray,” he promised. To all of them, just in case.

  All too soon, despite raising his standards well beyond what ordinarily he’d have taken and been glad of, Hunhau staggered happily beneath his overfilled basket, arms laden as well.

  He should go back. The light of the rising sun glittered like a sword across the water, the mist a memory. He should go back and would, he promised himself.

  After one more…

  The maskmaker followed the curling line of wet sand, bright red crabs scuttling out of his way, and there it was, kissing land’s edge mere steps ahead, a piece of driftwood already bent to fit a face, with the finest grain he’d seen.

  Hunhau tossed aside the armload he’d collected and hurried to claim his prize, though there was no one else in sight.

  But it was no more wood than the swirl of silver and blue pushing it closer was wave.

  What he’d thought driftwood lifted with rare grace to become a head, and what surely, – oh surely! – had been ocean an instant before, like the spray salty on his lips, sculpted itself into pale shoulders and arms, and shaped the curved form of a woman from the froth.

  A woman who gasped and fell forward, outstretched hands holding her from the sand, face hidden behind a sodden fall of hair. Hair, Hunhau noticed with dismay, that became water where it touched the damp sand, as did the white and gold cloth of her garments. No shipwrack, this. No hapless victim tossed from the seawall by murderer or Moon Priest. Those bodies he’d seen, bloated and grotesque, half-eaten by crab and seabird. They’d not bothered him, other than the stench. When he could, when there was a face still, he’d fashion a death mask as best he could from a plank or scrap of cloth, for he was a kindly man at heart.

  This creature was nothing so safe or simple. His eyes lifted reluctantly to where the Star Tower pierced the sky beyond the seawall. Wizards lived there. Only there. And never left.

  Until, he feared, now.

  Heart in his throat, Hunhau replaced his mask and eased a careful step back, then another.

  “Tell me, good man. Am I dead?”

  Masks could hide a face and its expression, as her strange hair did now; the voice was harder to disguise. Hers was melodic and low, free of fear, as gentle as the lap of wave over his sandaled feet. It held him when he would have fled.

  “I don’t know,” Hunhau answered honestly. “I’m but a maskmaker.”

  “Maskmaker?” She made an odd sound, like a seabird, her shoulders shaking. “Well met. I’ve need of your services.” With that, the woman of the sea lifted her head, hair flowing aside, to show him her face.

  Hunhau shrugged off his basket, precious driftwood spilling on the sand, and put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s a healer you need. Come. Easy now,” he said as he helped her stand. At his urging, she took a step on feet – he noticed numbly – she hadn’t had before. He swallowed. “How could this…?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. “Will you help me?”

  Knowing what she asked, the maskmaker bent his head and sighed with true regret. “If I could, I would. I’m sorry. My masks have no magic.”

  “From now on, they will,” she told him, and he heard the sea.

  “I’ve worked with worse,” Ghanan said firmly. He hadn’t, ever. Couldn’t imagine worse. But to be a stonemason in Taux, where every stone was blood-soaked and soul-stained, meant facing the unthinkable or not be paid. “Might take an extra few days,” he added in a thoughtful mumble, making a show of leaning close to examine the wall in question.

  Little faces stared back. Whatever the use of this subterranean corridor before the curse, it hadn’t been anything sane. The stones, well-dressed and true to his knowing eye, were separated by rows of hand-sized figurines, crammed together like obscene mortar. Those at head-height stared out from hollow eyes, their noses cut away, mouths set in sorrowful lines or agape in agony. Those above were carved with death’s heads, each skull given a smile. He didn’t look down. The lower rows were jammed with limp little corpses, each tortured pose too realistic for comfort.

  Zotz didn’t appear to mind. The child sat on her stool, where he’d asked her to wait during this adult business of claims and contracts. Her hands lay limp, palm-up, in her lap; her dull gaze trailed along the rows of figurines, back and forth, her face empty of expression.

  “It must be done quickly.” Gamesmaster Ixchel kept her eyes on the plaster-strewn floor, though that view was hardly more reassuring, the plaster being blood red. Someone -- or several someones -- had chiselled that covering from the walls. If they’d hoped to make the space more palatable, Ghanan thought, they’d failed. The stone voices were louder than ever, whispers rattling hoarse and wordless at the edge of torchlight, assiduously ignored by the living. “Those coming after you will need their time to work,” she continued. “All must be ready well before the games. You’ve seen our plans.”

  Before the discovery of this corridor running beneath the Black Gate’s Ullamalitzli Tournament Field became general knowledge, the Gamemaster of the Golden Jaguar District had swept in to claim it. Ghanan had indeed seen her plans, laid out in an opulent, scale model kept locked away and well-guarded. They called for luxurious private and common rooms for players, with connected baths and saunas, storage for gear, and a large space for hosting what Ghanan guessed Ixchel hoped would be intimate victory celebrations. For one team. Hers. Visitors would have to make do with accommodations elsewhere in the Black Gate, or beyond, and so be at disadvantage.

  “Remarkable,” Ghanan acknowledged with a courteous nod. Ridiculous and sure to be untenable for the athletes once seepage from below exceeded the pumps, and damp rot set in, but such people didn’t want his honest opinion, only his sweat. Their plans weren’t his problem; cleansing the place so plumbers and other tradesfolk didn’t run screaming in horror was.

  No matter how.

  The stonemason stepped gingerly through the fragments and dust. “Once this is cleared away, I’ll start work.”

  “The stones stay,” insisted Tlacolotl Vash. By his build and manner, the man could have been a fishmonger straight from the docks; certainly his rough clothing and scuffed boots said no different. But around his neck was the scarf that marked him a Red Pillar, one of the city’s ruling merchant elite, and a pair of heavily-armed, blue-cloaked Sturgeons waited by the stairs leading up, their hard gaze never leaving the stonemason. Tlacolotl gave the walls an impatient look. “Replacing any is out of the question.”

  It always was, but Ghanan couldn’t argue with what gave him a living. Generations of the Tolem had spent their fortunes to bring stone across the sea, building their city here where none belonged. Maybe they’d liked the view. He shrugged. To those now living in Taux, the stones were priceless.

  Once they stopped screaming.

  �
�I’ve worked with worse,” he repeated. Though not, until now, within the Black Gate District. The reason most people had settled – and still lived – within the original massive stadium had been the relative quiet of its stone. Fewer had died there on the grim day that ended the great city’s prior life a half-century earlier.

  Too many had died down here.

  Ixchel looked up. “Stonemason Ghanan comes with the highest recommendation, Tlacolotl,” she said stiffly, eyes aglitter. “Our Jaguars will prepare and recuperate in magnificent, private splendour. They’ll be victorious. We begin a dynasty!”

  Tlacolotl looked unimpressed. “Secrecy,” he growled. “That above all. If our competitors get wind of what we intend here…”

  “You work alone. Isn’t that right, Ghanan?”

  “My daughter assists me,” he replied. His hand found itself on Zotz’s shoulder and his mouth smiled of its own accord. She didn’t look up and Ghanan, freed, lifted away his hand. “Your secrets are safe,” he said wearily. “Zotz is mute.”

  In the pause that followed, the stones whispered and gibbered. The Sturgeons shifted uneasily and the Gamesmaster’s skin paled beneath its paint.

  “You’d make your own child endure what’s here.” The Red Pillar’s voice was cold. “A child like this.”

  Escape beckoned, as it always did, as if it were possible.

  But it wasn’t. Words spilled through unwilling lips. “Zotz has talent for the work,” Ghanan heard himself reply. “It’s both of us or none. Her mother’s passed and I won’t leave her alone.”

  Alone was how he’d found her. Two years ago, he’d stepped in an alley for a leak and there she’d been, naked but for mud, her hair a filthy mat. No street waif, disputing with rats for kitchen leavings; such he’d have taken to the priestesses of Shera, the Saint who cared for hearth and home, and those who had neither. This child picked at the stone wall, what remained of her fingernails leaving trails of blood behind.

  She’d stopped when he touched her shoulder, stopped and looked up with eyes like charnel pits, brimming with the faces of the dead.

  He’d have run, had he been able, but his cursed knee had locked and he’d staggered in place, bile rising in his throat.

  Her lids had closed, then reopened over dull, ordinary eyes that dismissed him before the child -- or whatever it was -- went back to pawing at the stone.

  He’d have run– and should have. Saints knew now he wished he had. But without the witness of those impossible eyes, curiosity had trapped him. She didn’t scrabble at random. Her bloody fingers pried at subtle flaws in the stone, flaws he’d recognized.

  They were those he sought when trying to muffle the voices in the stones for his clients.

  Ignoring the sick lurch under his heart, Ghanan had put an ear to the cold stone, braced for the screams and madness.

  Silence.

  He’d pulled back to stare at the child. His clumsy attempts to chip and patch achieved nothing like this. What she did, however and to what purpose, cleansed the stone for good.

  She’d lifted a foot and crabbed sideways to reach the next in the row.

  To this day, Ghanan didn’t know why he’d taken hammer and chisel from his belt, why he’d gently pushed aside her bleeding fingers to carefully chip the next spot of fracture.

  Why he’d stood watching as she pressed her mouth to the exposed surface, sucking and swallowing like a babe at breast.

  Why he’d ever thought to take her home...

  “Of course you mustn’t leave your daughter,” Ixchel said graciously, her eyes fixed longingly on the stairs to the surface. “This space will be ready for you by midday tomorrow. Do what you must, stonemason. All that matters is having these rooms finished and ready before the games.”

  Ghanan bowed, trapped once more.

  “Should be interesting games this season,” Tohil commented. The big Sturgeon leaned against the wall; though in the shade, sweat beaded along the raised tattoos on his black skin and dripped from his earrings. The quilted cotton armour and blue overrobe of his station weren’t gifts in midsummer, not in Taux, but no Sturgeon patrolled the streets without them. “Bet on it, my friend. Our Snakes can’t lose.”

  Hunhau handed Tohil a flask. “I’m confused,” he said, amused. “Or you are. What happened to “Drop every gutless player in the swamp?’”

  They’d spent many a night in the Emerald Serpent contemplating suitable fates for their once-beloved team. The Black Gate’s Snakes’ pathetic showing last year still rankled.

  “Things’ll be different.” Tohil took a deep swig, drawing the back of his hand across his full lips, then stared at the flask in mock amazement. “Sigfried’s Saintly Beard. I know it’s water but how can it taste better than beer?”

  The maskmaker reclaimed his flask. “Because you’re hot. Now what’s this about ‘our’ Snakes?”

  “Not that you heard it from me,” Tohil began, meaning he’d heard whatever it was from another who wished to stay anonymous, and likely several others before that. Rumour, in Taux, was a many-legged beast. “But there’s been some rooms found – beneath the main field itself. The Gamesmaster plans to house her oh-so-mighty Jaguars there. Rooms of cursed stone,” he added sagely, as if his wide shoulders weren’t resting on the very same substance. “They’ll get no rest there.”

  “Stone can be cleansed,” the maskmaker pointed out. Sunlight silenced the voices of Taux’s former, unfortunate inhabitants; various measures could mute them. The Raised Market was full of those claiming to remove them entirely, as well as bunions and the evil eye for an extra fee.

  “As to…” Tohil straightened, his slouch gone.

  Hunhau glanced down the row of litters. Which had caught his friend’s professional interest? There were several of the vehicles parked, their sturdy bearers lounging nearby, kicking a sepak ball back and forth, or dozing, but it would be more surprising to find the laneway empty, given this was the side entrance to The Silk Purse, the most infamous brothel in Taux.

  Two years past he’d brought the woman from the sea here, aware that the Purse’s house physician was, if not the best in Taux, then by far the most practiced and discrete. Two years, her wounds fully healed, yet still she came, each 7th day morning. Hunhau asked for no explanation, nor did she offer one.

  For like the sea, Cenoté brimmed with secrets.

  Like the sea, her gifts were extraordinary and unexpected. The flask at his hip, ever full of sweet, cool water. The mask he now wore. The outer surface resembled the one his old master had made for him, but inside? No plugs crammed his nostrils or constricted his breathing. The air that passed through the holes at eyes, nose, and mouth was fresh and free of odour, no matter where he was. Cenoté had poured water from her cupped hands onto the wood, that was all.

  Magic of the purest sort. Hunhau breathed it, drank it, and counted himself fortunate by every measure to have befriended it.

  It hadn’t been a litter that caught Tohil’s eye. The side door had opened and a servant bowed as she ushered a tall woman into the brighter light. Plumes fluttered along the street as litter bearers quickly found somewhere else to stare.

  Cenoté.

  Her height was remarkable, despite the scholarly stoop of years spent hunched over worktable and book, and now in their shop. Painstaking and attentive, gifted with strong, delicate hands, she’d been a brilliant apprentice for less than a month.

  From then on, Hunhau had been the one striving to learn.

  “You can tell me more about the Snakes’ chances the next time we meet,” he told his friend, snapping fingers to rouse their litter bearers. The four young men pulled on their masks, their heads transformed to those of sea eagles, white feathers trailing over their bare shoulders, and took their places.

  Cenoté moved with unconscious grace, the cane an extension of her slender arm. When required to venture from the shop, she wound strips of cloth around her head to cover her blue-green hair and donned a shapeless robe. Though she
cared nothing for her appearance, Hunhau understood its importance in Taux’s busy streets, where everyone watched and judged. He nodded to himself, satisfied by the rich fabric that flowed around her well-sandaled feet.

  If not by her mask.

  She wore the grotesque thing with such sure dignity, it might have been crusted in diamonds. The ugly chunk of grey seasoned wood was secured to her face by paired leather straps; uneven holes, wave-worn rather than carved, gaped like dark wounds over her mouth and eyes. Taux being what it was, at first there’d been a flurry of copies, gossipmongers having claimed the mask must hide a beauty so rare and exquisite it would drive men mad if revealed. Young ladies had demanded crude masks of their own, to imply the same.

  The fad, not surprisingly, passed quicker than most. The curiosity about what lay beneath her mask had taken longer to fade. Hunhau preferred it not be awakened again.

  Tohil saluted Cenoté as she neared. “Greetings, good lady.”

  The mask tilted a shy acknowledgement.

  “We’d best be going.” Hunhau took Cenoté’s elbow to urge her to the litter.

  With a quickness belied by his bulk, the Sturgeon was there first. “Was she there?” he asked in a low voice. “Did you get an answer?”

  Safe behind his own mask, Hunhau rolled his eyes. This game was getting old. “Cenoté’s not your messenger, Tohil,” he scolded. “And no courtesan’s going to give you so much as a “good morning” without coin. Leave be.”

  “It’s all right, Hunhau.” Cenoté’s soft voice interposed. “Plums-By-Moonlight did indeed reply. ‘Jugglers, cheese, and peacocks.’ Does that make sense to you, Tohil?”

  She spoke to empty air as the Sturgeon took off down the lane as if pursuing an unlicensed tax collector, the bearers staring after him in astonishment.

  “It must have,” Hunhau commented dryly. “Let’s get you home.” Whenever they went out, there was a vulnerability about her, as if the very walls of Taux seethed with what she was and made ready to shout it. Nothing ever happened, but he worried, that was the truth.