Harbinger of the Storm

by Aliette de Bodard

The sun, though, never stopped shining.

  One step, and then the next; mud and grass and water, everything merging and blurring together. I felt Acamapichtli's touch, burning into my skin like the jaguar fang he'd once given me, but it was far away, an inconvenience in some other world. What mattered was walking – one hill after another, one pond after another, feeling the air grow cooler, seeing the light grow darker.

  My throat was parched, and soon everything seemed to burn. Was there no end to this land, nothing to bring us closer to the Southern Hummingbird and the souls He had stolen?

  Was there–

  "Acatl!" Quenami called, from some place faraway.

  I came to with a start, almost throwing off Acamapichtli. The right side of my face was wet. Saliva had run down my face, staining what little was left of the cloak, and my mouth was completely dry. I felt like a sick man waking up from a long illness – weak and dazzled, and unable to align two thoughts together. "What is it?" I asked.

  He pointed. The landscape had opened up ahead of us, a larger lake lay ahead with a single island at the centre; and, on the island, a larger hill with a stone structure at the top. It seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it for a while.

  "A smaller version of the Great Temple," Quenami said. His voice was lower, almost subdued: the loss of his regalia must have cut deep. That said... his arrogance and effortless dignity had been his only edge, just as Acamapichtli's strength had lain in his raw power, and mine in the mastery of Lord Death's magic, and in Teomitl's assistance. The sacrifices Itzpapalotl had asked from us were far from trivial.

  By the lakeside was a small village, huts of adobe, clustered together. We descended towards them. By then it was all I could do to hold Acamapichtli and keep my thoughts from fragmenting. Something was going to have to yield, and I wasn't altogether sure my mind wouldn't go first. It had, after all, already done so once in this land, back when Quenami had imprisoned me.

  The lake grew larger, reflecting the sky above which had darkened to the grey of a storm with the sun at its centre like a malevolent eye. Its depths would be cool, away from the burning sensation that seemed to have filled me up from the inside – fire in my lungs, in my belly, in my manhood…

  "Acatl!"

  Quenami was coming back from the huts, and I could not remember having seen him depart. "You have to see this."

  • • • •

  The huts were little more than awnings of wattle-and-daub over beaten earth – a shelter against sunlight, and nothing more. There were seven of them, arrayed in a circle around a focal point, and, where the centre should have been, a group of men sat, engrossed in an animated conversation.

  "The flowers come from the heart of heaven…"

  "That is accessory. What good are they, if they wilt and perish…"

  "All the more reason to enjoy the vast earth…"

  "They are–" Quenami whispered.

  Carefully I set Acamapichtli on the ground, wincing as the weight left me. I stretched, ignoring the fiery pain that flared up my body again, and hobbled to the circle.

  They were familiar faces: Manatzpa, Echichilli, all the members of the council I'd interviewed. One gave me pause, it was Pezotic. The last time I had seen him had been in Teotihuacan, under the guard of Nezahual-tzin's warriors. It seemed that the last inrush of star-demons into the world, which had taken both the council and Tizoc-tzin, hadn't spared him.

  They all sat as if nothing were wrong, discussing minor points of philosophy like matters of life and death. But their faces were different, their skins stretched over the pale shape of their skulls, their eyes sunk deep into their orbits.

  And Tizoc-tzin wasn't among them.

  "Excuse me," I said, pitching my voice to carry. "We're looking for Tizoc-tzin."

  "The Revered Speaker," Quenami interjected.

  Manatzpa's face rose towards us for a brief moment, but then he turned back to his neighbour. "As Nezahualcoyotl said, we are nothing more than feathers and jade…"

  "I should think we're more than that…"

  "Echichilli!" Quenami said. "We need your help. Surely you know what's happening." He grasped the old councilman by the shoulders, and forced him to look his way. "Surely–" He stared into Echichilli's eyes for a while, transfixed, before releasing him, horror slowly stealing across his features. "Let's go, Acatl.

  It's not here we'll find the answers."

  "I–" I said, and then I caught Manatzpa's gaze. A film seemed to have covered his eyes. His pupils were dull, like those of a fish dead for days, and nothing remained of the fiery, driven man he had been in life, the one who had killed Ceyaxochitl, the one who had almost killed me. Husks, that was all they were, what was left after the corn had been harvested – nothing of value, nothing that was real.

  Shivering, I hoisted Acamapichtli on my shoulders again, and followed Quenami down to the lake.

  He was pushing a reed boat into the water; when I arrived he looked up at me, all arrogance and impatience. "Well? Help me."

  "You're something," I said. "I've been carrying Acamapichtli all the while, and you're the one complaining." I didn't mention the fact that every moment we spent there weakened me, because he'd find a way to use it against me.

  Quenami snorted. "You could have left him behind."

  "And I could have left you behind." I wasn't quite sure why I'd been carrying Acamapichtli along all the while. We might have needed him at the end; even unconscious and wounded, he might have had some use. But–

  The Duality take me, I'd had a debt to him, and never mind that it was being repaid to more than its value.

  "Help me with the boat, will you?" Quenami insisted. Not for the first time, I fought the urge to shake some sense into him.

  "Ask politely, and perhaps I'll consider it." I put Acamapichtli into the craft, and moved to push with Quenami.

  "It's for our survival, Acatl. If you can't see past that…"

  If you can't make an effort, I thought, but didn't say. There was enough with one of us being petty.

  Of course, I rowed. Quenami probably hadn't lifted an oar since the day he'd entered the priesthood; the way he wrinkled his face made it clear even the fate of the world wasn't enough for him to demean himself.

  I said nothing, but it was hard.

  I had been rowing since childhood and it should have been easy, but the wood of the oar quivered in my hands and I felt more and more light-headed with each oar-strike. Every drop of water against my skin seemed to burn, and the island in the centre seemed to blur and shift with every passing moment.

  We were perhaps halfway across the lake when Acamapichtli woke up. "Where–" he whispered.

  "The heartland," Quenami said.

  "What happened?" I asked, but he shook his head, and closed his eyes again. It didn't look as though he was going to be much use, after all.

  If I had thought the heartland was bad, the central island was worse. The moment I set foot on it, I felt a jolt travel through my chest, a particular tightness, growing steadily worse. There was something in the ground, something in the air, something that didn't want me, that would wash me away like a flood washed away boats and nets. Acamapichtli seemed to weigh as much as a slab of stone, and I could barely focus on the path, for there was a path this time, snaking upwards around the hill. I watched the earth, step after step, I watched the water that filled the footsteps of whoever had come before us clawed and monstrous, a trail I had seen before but couldn't seem to focus on…

  Step after step, agonising breath after agonising breath, fire in my lungs, rising up to fill my brain, confused images, of seven caves gouged into the hillside, torn open by some giant beast, of fountains where herons bathed in a blur of white, of an old woman in rags, sweeping the threshold of her house and watching us pass by with bitter satisfaction in her eyes, and then the scene shifted, and her face was that of a skull, her hands were claws, and the broom she held was made of human femurs, bound together with thread as red as blood. />
  Up, and the seven caves faded away, and small shrines appeared by the hillside, mounds of earth with pyramids on them, shimmering with light, their staircases dripping with blood even though the altars were empty…

  Up, and a flock of herons took flight, cawing harshly, shedding white feathers as they went, and then skin, and then blood-red muscles, until only their skeletons remained, and darkness in the hollow of their eyes…

  There was a sound on the edge of my hearing like the buzzing of flies on a corpse, the grating of bones. After a while, I realised it was my name, coming from infinitely far away, but it didn't matter, not anymore…

  That sound again, and everything scattering, fading into darkness.

  "Acatl!"

  I lay on something hard, and my cheek hurt. I moved, my hand coming to rest against my skin, it felt like stretched paper, nothing living anymore. "Quenami?"

  He still had his hand up, braced for a further strike against me, and Acamapichtli was lying prone at his feet. His eyes were open, his mouth working around words I couldn't recognise. Raising my gaze, I saw that we were on a stone platform with a simple altar, encrusted with so much blood the stone seemed to have turned red. "How–"

  "I dragged you here." He sounded exasperated. "That's not the point."

  "Then what is?"

  And then I saw Her. Itzpapalotl stood waiting for us at the entrance of the shrine – casual, relaxed, Her claws flexed, Her obsidian wings in repose. And behind Her…

  He was tall, impossibly so, with the body of a youth, tanned skin and raised muscles, and a face streaked with deep cobalt blue, coming up so high it seemed to merge with the sun in the sky. In His left hand was a huge snake, and, every time it writhed, flames flared up, licking its scales; in His right hand was a macuahitl sword decorated with paper banners, the same ones carried by warriors during the annual sacrifices, and the feather headdress that stretched behind him was a circle of yellow feathers, pale and blinding.

  I flattened myself against the ground in the lowest form of obeisance, ignoring the dizziness that flared up again in me. The floor was blessedly cool, a steadying influence. I didn't have to move after all, just to focus on speaking out. Beside me, Quenami abased himself as well. Acamapichtli attempted to move, but fell back with a groan.

  "Priests," Itzpapalotl's hollow voice said. "You have come in the presence of the Lord of Men, the Southern Hummingbird, the Slayer of the Four Hundred, He who makes the sun rise, He who follows the path of war. What do you have to say for yourselves?"

  There was silence, for a while. We slowly raised ourselves up, remaining on our knees, our gazes turned away from Huitzilpochtli. One did not meet the eye of a Revered Speaker, much less that of the god who had invested him in the first place.

  "My lord," Quenami's voice quivered at first, but then he appeared to gain confidence, stretching himself up as if he still had all his finery. "We have come for the body of our Revered Speaker, that we might not find ourselves cast in darkness with the star-demons."

  I recognised the tone and cadence of a ritual, and fell in step with him. "We have come for the body of our Revered Speaker, that it might be restored to its rightful place on the sacred mat."

  Acamapichtli coughed. When he spoke, his voice was so low I had to strain to hear it. "We have come… for the body of our Revered Speaker… that it might…" He stumbled there, closed his eyes and went on, a grimace of pain stretched across his features. "… that it might wear the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown… and lead us all to glory…"

  He fell silent. I heard nothing but our own breaths, smelled our fear. By coming into a god's land, we had placed ourselves at His whim. Nothing prevented Him from killing us with a thought.

  The air grew warmer, and tighter. Already in a weakened state, it was all I could do to breathe. "I took your Revered Speaker's life," Huitzilpochtli said, "and I had ample justification for it. Why should I restore him to you?"

  "My lord," Quenami said, "are we not your people? Long, long ago, you made us emerge from the caves in this hill, you led us to Tenochtitlan, to await with our bellies, with our heads, with our arrows, with our shields. You led us to found a city of battle, where the eagle flies and the serpent is torn apart."

  "I did." The god's voice was pensive, but I could still feel His anger. "And look what you became. Look at you, priest, and all your frivolous finery. Look at the luxuries you take for yourself, and look at what you'd do to keep them."

  Quenami fell back as if he'd been slapped in the face. He might have been, too. The anger of a god in His own territory would be strong. "Will you judge us on my character alone, then?"

  Huitzilpochtli made a sound like drums beating a charge. It was only after a while that I realised it was laughter with nothing of joy, but merely cruel amusement. "Of course not. It's the Revered Speaker we are judging here, are we not? That poor, pathetic wreck of a man with no taste for war, who dares to imagine himself wearing the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown? Who thinks he can buy My favour to get it?"

  The air was that before a storm, quiet and breathless, as if the whole Fifth World hung suspended. Quenami swallowed audibly. "My lord, Tizoc-tzin seeks only Your blessing, as is proper. He would not have dared to ascend to the Revered Speaker's mat without Your approval."

  "Of course he wouldn't." Huitzilpochtli's voice was dark, thoughtful. "I made the Empire, from its earliest days to the bloated monstrosity you have become. You would do well to remember that. And your master, too, that pathetic, gutless man unproved on the battlefield."

  "Tizoc-tzin knows the value of war–"

  "Your master sees war as a tool," Huitzilpochtli snapped. "As something that he can use to rise in power and to increase his prestige. He understands nothing. War is the gift I gave you, priest. War is the struggle of life and death, and the shedding of blood to keep the Fifth Sun in the sky, and Grandmother Earth satiated. War is everything."

  Of course He would say that. Of course He would think that. It was His nature, nothing more, nothing less. That was what Quenami couldn't understand.

  "I assure you," Quenami said, in a calm and measured tone. How could he speak thus, in the face of this? "Tizoc-tzin knows the value of war, and the debt and service we owe You. We all do."

  "Do you? Will you show me, then?" Huitzilpochtli's voice was cruel. "You who pretend yourself my High Priest, you who speak for all men, will you show me that you are a warrior?"

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Itzpapalotl's wings open, with a snick-snick sound like dozens of obsidian knives unsheathed at the same time.

  Oh no.

  Quenami said, flustered, "My lord…"

  "Acatl…" Acamapichtli was pulling at my cloak, weakly but insistently. He was lying on the ground, but his face, cut and bruised, was turned towards me, as pale as muddy milk, his eyes sunk into hollows deeper than the way into Mictlan. "The fool's going to do it."

  "It?" I asked, as stupidly as Quenami.

  He shook his head, with a shadow of his old impatience. "The last time Quenami fought in earnest was boys at the calmecac school, when he was a student. Look at him. Do you really think he can win anything?"

  "But why?" I asked.

  Acamapichtli smiled again, that mirthless expression I hated. "Why not? Because he does care, in the end? If it makes you happier, consider he's found the only way he can turn things to his gain."

  I couldn't imagine why that should make me happier. "And what do you expect me to do about it?"

  His eyes were on me, mocking, as cruelly amused as those of the god. I'd forgotten that he was my enemy, that he had almost seen my brother condemned to death, that he had intrigued for his own benefit, that he despised Teomitl and would be glad to see him gone. "I don't–"

  He grunted, shifted, and slid something towards me on the blood-stained stone of the platform: a single obsidian knife still in its sheath. I felt nothing of magic within it, not the touch of the Storm Lord, not even a minor spell to keep the blade sharp. It was as mund
ane as they came, the kind of knife used to extract the heart from a sacrifice's chest, polished to a cutting edge, but as brittle as fired clay. Carefully, I reached out for it. My hand closed around it, and the jolt of power from Mictlan I expected didn't climb up my arm. It felt wrong.

  I looked at Quenami again, who stood with his face unreadable, his hands clenched, and an expression I knew all too well – that of a man on a chasm, about to take the plunge.

  I would have loved to see him brought down and defeated; but, if that happened, we'd have failed. "My Lord," I said, rising, carefully, with the knife in my hand. The world spun for a bare moment, settled back into the bloodied limestone and the grey sky overhead. "I will take his place."

  I wasn't looking at Him, but I felt the moment His attention shifted from Quenami to me, a vast movement in the air, with the hissing crackle of flames as He hefted the fire-snake in His hand. "You, priest?" Laughter, like thunder overhead. "The least among them, and you fancy yourself a warrior?"