Harbinger of the Storm

by Aliette de Bodard

  I bypassed the first such tomb, and the second. At the third, however, the silence was a little heavier than it should have been, and twisted a little more in my chest, like a hooked spear.

  Carefully I climbed to the top of the platform, standing above the earth with only bare limestone under me. There was only silence, stretching over me like flowing cloth, a familiar aching emptiness in my breast. And a little something, nagging at the back of my mind, an ache I had forgotten, something that wasn't quite right.

  But of course things weren't right. It was Mictlantecuhtli lying underneath that shrine, buried in the chamber under the steps of the pyramid, Lord Death, my own god, as unmoving and as powerless as the corpses I did my vigils for. There was something wrong about the thought. The gods might have been capricious and arbitrary, but They were still more than us, and, although none of this was new to me, to see Them as former mortals was… disturbing, to say the least.

  "Acatl-tzin–" Teomitl said.

  I raised a hand to silence him and knelt on the platform, drawing one of my obsidian blades. With the ease of practise, I opened my veins, letting the blood drip on my knife – and drew a quincunx on the platform. It pulsed, gently, as if to the rhythm of an alien heartbeat, the air above it shimmering as if in a heat haze.

  Then, standing in the centre of the quincunx – in the place that might as well be the centre of the universe – I started the invocation to Lord Death.

  "We all must die

  We all must go down into darkness

  Leaving behind the marigolds and the cedar trees…"

  Light blazed, outlining the quincunx in radiance; the wounds on my hands tingled, like coals in a brazier.

  "We all must die

  We all must leave our flowers, our songs

  All jade breaks, all feathers crumble into dust

  Nothing is hidden from Your gaze."

  In my previous spell of death sight, a veil had gradually descended over the world, until everything material seemed to grow dim and meaningless. But here, the only thing that seemed to happen was that the air grew sharper, burning in my lungs, and the shrines suddenly loomed larger, the inset black stones shining like inverted suns amidst the larger structure of limestone. And under my feet, under the stone, I could see the corpse in the pyramid, its bones as green as jade, its heart a shrivelled, bloodless lump amidst the exposed ribs, my patron god's mortal remains, from before He became a god, unnervingly small and pathetic.

  No, better not think about that.

  Teomitl was waiting for me at the top of the stairs, the magic around him shimmering, a beacon of jade light strong enough to blind. "And now?"

  I looked down. Dust shimmered over the Valley of the Dead, which had become an opalescent path like a spider's web. The procession of priests left a trail of magic, green with a red core, writhing like the tail of a snake, going towards the pyramid of the Moon at the end of the Alley, a looming mass of pale, cold light emitting rays like the thorns of a maguey.

  Aside from the priests, there was no sign of any human presence near the pyramid of the Moon. I looked towards the pyramid of the Sun, which had become an almost unbearably strong radiance, but could distinguish no sign of life, either.

  Odd. If I were Pezotic, our missing councilman; if I were so afraid of the star-demons I'd sought the protection of the Fifth Sun himself, then I'd have expected him to be near the pyramid of the Sun, which was the focal point of the complex. But there seemed to be no one there.

  So much for that brilliant idea. It looked like I was going to go back to Nezahual-tzin like a beaten coyote, my tail tucked between my legs. I didn't quite have Teomitl's level of contempt for him, but still… still it would rankle.

  Unless…

  I looked at the procession of priests again, and back at the third pyramid, the one dedicated to the Feathered Serpent. The priesthood was a long and difficult calling, and Pezotic wouldn't have been able to invent himself that kind of identity. However…

  I watched the procession for a while – feeling, again, that subtle sense of wrong, which had nothing to do with graves or with the rise of the Fifth Sun. One of the last priests, though he wore the same red-and-green clothes, didn't seem to fit in. I had noticed it, but in a vague, unfocused way, and it had bothered me. And now that I had the death sight on me, I could see that the trail of magic ignored him, the translucent, writhing snake going right through him, instead of rippling as it did around the other priests.

  "That's him," I said to Teomitl. "Our missing councilman."

  Teomitl was down the steps, obsidian-studded sword drawn, before I could stop him.

  TWENTY

  The Missing Man

  To his credit, Teomitl approached the procession silently enough, but Nezahual-tzin's guards, trooping after him with no stealth or subtlety, gave him away. The procession came to a swaying stop, the priests turning with angry looks on their faces, the magic of the Feathered Serpent gathering around them.

  Pezotic just ran. He must have known that we were after him, and that there was no easy escape.

  Teomitl sprinted after him. The guards stopped to argue with the priests, waving what I assumed was Nezahual-tzin's authority. In the time it took me to finish rushing down the stairs, I could see that it seemed to be working, or at least to be mollifying the priests. They had stopped looking threatening, and the trail of magic was back to its original state.

  Since matters appeared well in hand, I went after Teomitl.

  By the time I caught up to him he had Pezotic down in the dust of the Alley of the Dead, and was standing over him, his macuahitl sword resting on the other man's chest, the obsidian shards just cutting into the skin.

  "Acatl-tzin, there is your suspect." He stood as rigid as a warrior before his commander.

  "Teomitl, I don't think this is necessary…"

  "He's a coward," Teomitl said. "He's shown this clearly enough. I'm not letting him escape."

  I got my first good look at our missing councilman. Pezotic was a small, hunched man, with a face not unlike that of a rabbit, round and harmless, with soft features that made it hard to notice him at all. He wore the priests' green-and-red clothes uncomfortably and his hair was matted haphazardly with blood, not the regular offerings of a priest, but the panicked gesture of a man seeking to blend in.

  And he smelled of fear – reeked of it, from his shaking hands to the sallow tint of his skin, from his sunken eyes to the subdued, almost broken way he moved. Something, somewhere in the past, had touched him, pressed on him, and he had snapped like a bent twig.

  "I don't know what you want," Pezotic said. "But you don't have the right–"

  Teomitl pressed on the macuahitl sword, enough to draw blood. I could see it pulsing along the obsidian shards embedded in the blade, blazing like water in sunlight. "We want to know what's going on," he said. "And don't lie. We know you ran away from the palace. We know you were frightened for your life. We know something happened."

  Pezotic's eyes widened, and the fear grew stronger. I hadn't thought it was possible, but in the death sight, I could make out a yellow aura around him, exuded from his body like noxious sweat. "You don't know anything," he said.

  "People are dead," I said, and saw him flinch, not in surprise, but because he was imagining what could have happened to him had he stayed behind. "Three councilmen. Ocome, Echichilli. Manatzpa." And Ceyaxochitl, but that was a wound I carried on my own, an event like a cold stone in my belly, but one that wouldn't affect him.

  "This has nothing to do with me," Pezotic said. I wasn't surprised, not even disappointed. My opinion of him hadn't been high to start with.

  "Then why did you leave?"

  "I go where I wish."

  "You're a councilman." Teomitl shook his head. "You don't."

  Pezotic's lips stretched, in what might have been a smile if fear hadn't washed away every distinctive feature of his face. "I approve new buildings in Tenochtitlan. I have no doubt they can find some
one to replace me, Teomitl-tzin."

  So he knew who Teomitl was, but hadn't admitted it beforehand. "We're not here on petty errands of who does what and who replaces whom. What I want to know is who is summoning star-demons in the palace, before the whole council dies."

  His lips moved, a smile again, but I'd never quite seen the like. Sick pleasure, and some kind of vindication, and… "What do you know, Pezotic?"

  Teomitl's face shifted, became the harsh one of Jade Skirt again, as distant and uncaring as the goddess Herself. "He knows exactly what's going on."

  "I don't," Pezotic said, far too quickly and smoothly to be the truth. "I swear I don't – let me go, please."

  I glanced behind us. Nezahual-tzin's guards were still arguing with the priests, but it was only a matter of time before they solved their mutual problems and turned their attention to us.

  I cast my stone in the darkness, then, hoping it would strike water instead of dry, sterile ground. "The Emperor and Tizoctzin were onto something, weren't they? Some plan to make sure Tizoc-tzin got the full approval of the council."

  His eyes moved away from me. "You understand nothing, priest."

  For some reason, it rankled that he couldn't even see who I was – to be sure, I attended Court only irregularly, and had never claimed to be indispensable. But still…

  "Show some respect," Teomitl said. His eyes were green from end to end, the irises and pupils subsumed in the tide of Chalchiuhtlicue's magic. "Acatl-tzin is High Priest for the Dead."

  Unsurprisingly, it didn't seem to faze Pezotic. I looked again. The conversation between the guards and the priests appeared to be winding down. We were running out of time. Not that we'd had much to start with.

  Time to give up on subtlety. "Fine," I said. I pointed to the guards. "Do you know who they belong to?"

  "Who you choose to ally yourself with is none of my concern."

  "Oh, it's going to be. Do you know Nezahual-tzin?"

  "A mere boy," Pezotic said. "Even if what you said was true, why should it frighten me?"

  "Because, boy or not, he's got the means to make sure you go back to Tenochtitlan."

  His face twisted then, opened up like a diseased flower. "You have no authority–"

  "You'll find Nezahual-tzin has. Teotihuacan would be wise not to anger one of the rulers of the Triple Alliance."

  "That's a lie. I'm here as a citizen of Tenochtitlan and a pilgrim devoted to Quetzalcoatl, and you can't take me away." Pezotic was speaking faster now, words merging into one another with barely a pause. "You or Nezahual-tzin, or whoever you claim to be speaking in the name of."

  The guards were coming our way now. Their leader called out to me. "Is that the man we're looking for?"

  I cursed under my breath. I didn't want Nezahual-tzin involved in this more than he had to, but I had little choice over the matter.

  On the other hand, as a means of pressure. "Yes," I said. "Let's get him back."

  Pezotic looked back and forth from me to the guards, from the guards to the priests, who stood still with carefully guarded faces, waiting to see how it would all play out. "You can't," he said. "You can't take me back there. You have to leave me here…"

  "Then talk." Teomitl withdrew the macuahitl sword, considered the guards with a cocked head. "Should I slow them down, Acatl-tzin?"

  I held up a hand to tell him to wait. They were strolling nearer, taking their time, secure in their numbers and might.

  Pezotic looked up at me, his eyes pleading in a sickening manner. I was no warrior, but the craven way he made himself the centre of the universe was disgusting. "Please–"

  When I didn't answer, he whispered, "If I go back to Tenochtitlan, I'll die."

  "Death comes to us all," I said.

  "Don't give me that, priest," he spat. "Death is nothing but oblivion, but what will happen to us all is worse than that. You know it. Those killed won't dissolve before Lord Death's Throne, or ascend into the Heaven of the Sun. We'll serve Him forever. That was the price."

  I signalled to Teomitl to go speak to the guards, hoping that he'd interpret my gestures correctly and not rush into attacking them. "What price?" I asked. "Manatzpa-tzin spoke of duty…"

  "Duty?" Pezotic spat again. His saliva glistened on the ground between my sandals, as disgusting as the trail of a snail. "We weren't asked, priest. None of us. It's not duty at all. That old clawless buzzard Echichilli got it into his head that he was going to help Tizoc-tzin, and Axayacatl-tzin agreed… and we weren't given a choice."

  Tizoc-tzin and Axayacatl-tzin. And Echichilli. The tar. The ten jars of tar Palli had tracked into the Revered Speaker's rooms. And the old, old death that was there, hanging over the place like a pall.

  Surely– A hollow was forming in the pit of my stomach, as cold as ice on Mount Popocatepetl, opening deeper and deeper with every one of his words. "What kind of help?" I asked. "Summoning the star-demons?" I stole a glance backwards. Teomitl looked to be arguing with the guards. Jade Skirt's magic wreathed him in green, watery reflections, but so far no one seemed to be attacking anyone. Good. The Duality only knew how long this could last.

  Probably not long.

  "Of course not. That would have been too dangerous." Pezotic looked up at me as if I were the worst of fools. I felt like shaking him.

  "Then what?"

  His lips narrowed. He closed his eyes, as if accessing a memory that was too much to bear – not hard to imagine, given what I'd seen of his mettle. "Axayacatl-tzin wanted to make sure that he'd leave a strong empire behind. That what Moctezuma-tzin had started, and what he'd continued, would go on for another reign, that of a strong Lord of Men, of a strong warrior."

  Unless he replaced Tizoc-tzin with another kind of man altogether, I couldn't see what could be done about this at all. "You're not making any sense."

  Pezotic smiled, that slimy expression again, of someone who knew the position of all the beans on the board and was intending to profit from the situation for all it was worth. "He wasn't a fool, and neither was Echichilli. They both knew that Tizoc-tzin's biggest problem wasn't the lack of support, or his unwarlike disposition."

  "Go on." The pit in my stomach was large enough to fit several levels of Mictlan in by now. I glanced at the guards, thinking we would be rounded up and arrested at any moment – but they stood gaping, watching Pezotic as if trying to make sense of his words.

  "What makes a good Revered Speaker, Acatl-tzin?"

  I could see only one thing which didn't relate to any of what Pezotic had mentioned before. I said, very slowly, hardly daring to breathe, "The Revered Speaker is the agent of Huitzilpochtli on Earth. He makes sure that we are safe from star-demons and the myriad other creatures trying to overthrow the established order." And, very slowly, because I remembered what someone – Acamapichtli, or perhaps the She-Snake – had once told me. "Tizoc-tzin doesn't have the Southern Hummingbird's favour. I still can't see–"

  "Favour can be gained," Pezotic said, bitterly. "With the proper tools."

  "I thought the Southern Hummingbird was weak– Oh." It had been before Axayacatl-tzin's death, and the jeopardy that had ensued.

  "Echichilli couldn't give Tizoc-tzin any human support. He was much too honest to bribe or threaten the council, no matter how great his influence with them might have been. But he thought he could plead with a god."

  He thought he…

  Oh no. But Pezotic was going on, regardless of what discomfort he was causing me; or was he all too aware of it, and glorying in the horror he could see, shocked into every feature of my face?

  "Echichilli gathered us all one night, in the Imperial Chambers, the whole council save Tizoc-tzin. He had traced a great glyph on the floor, that of Ollin." Four Movement, the name of the current age. "We all disrobed, and offering priests painted us with tar."

  Tar. Boats, Ichtaca had said, but I'd failed to make the logical leap. A boat implied a journey, and not necessarily one contained within the Fifth World.

 
; It had been a slow process – the tar spread over the skin, cutting the flow of air to the body – the hallucinations starting, the feeling of floating above the room and slowly going away, like a flock of birds released into the sky. Pezotic was scarce on details. I guessed he had no wish to remember the whole ordeal. Of all the painful ways to rejoin the world of the gods…

  "You didn't know," I said, slowly.

  "Not until we came back. But we should have known, shouldn't we?" His voice was bitter. "You can't have that kind of magic. You can't travel into the heartland of the Mexica Empire without sacrifices. And we were the sacrifices."

  Oh gods. I had been so wrong about this, from the start. I'd thought the star-demons were summoned by a devotee of She of the Silver Bells, and all the while I had ignored what was staring me in the face. She was trapped under the pyramid of the Great Temple; and the Moon, Her heavenly body, was nothing more than a pale parody of the Sun. She wasn't the one controlling the star-demons, not anymore.