The Demon of the Air

by Simon Levack

  I hugged my blanket uneasily. There had been many omens seen in Mexico of late. The Emperor had described some of them to me but there had been others: two-headed men, a disembodied female voice crying out in the streets at night, lightning striking the war-god’s temple. “It could be. An omen of what, though?”

  He let out a breathless, croaking laugh. “That’s an easy one to answer! Take a leaf out of the Emperor’s book—get a sorcerer to tell you!”

  “Very funny.” At last the shivering was beginning to subside. I rolled over, intending to sleep, but the old man was not finished.

  “No, I mean it,” he persisted. “Why not hire a sorcerer to interpret the bird? It might be the answer to all your questions.”

  “I don’t know any sorcerers—not real ones, anyway.”

  “No problem. There’s a man I used to go to, name’s Crocodile, he lives in a village down near Coyoacan. Just mention my name and he’ll—”

  I sat upright once more. “Did you say Coyoacan?”

  “I know it’s a long way, but if you start early enough …”

  “Coyoacan.” The name recalled my brother’s face, and the thing hidden in its shadows when he had mentioned it. I shivered, although I had forgotten the cold.

  “Of course,” Costly went on, “he doesn’t come cheap. The genuine article never does.”

  “I haven’t any money, you know that.”

  “Then use some of mine. There’s some good cotton in that chest over there, easily enough to pay for a consultation.”

  The chest he meant was the small reed box that contained our possessions. In my case they were pathetically few—a single worthless souvenir from my days as a priest, a couple of badly worn maguey fiber capes and breechcloths and little else. Costly had a little more: some money in the form of cloth and cocoa beans and a couple of bone nose-plugs, as I recalled. The money was what he had saved, as most slaves did if they could, against the day when he might be able to buy his freedom.

  “I can’t take that,” I said.

  He sighed. “Yaotl, what do you think I’m going to do with it? Buy myself back from old Black Feathers? What good would that do me? I can’t walk and there’s no one out there to look after me. I’d starve—I might as well be a slave and eat. I was …” I heard him swallow, as if trying to get rid of an obstruction in his throat. “I was going to leave it all to you anyway, so you might as well take some now. Consider it an advance on your inheritance!”

  I could not think of anything to say.

  I had spent years fetching and carrying for the old slave, putting food in his toothless mouth, giving him his medicine and cleaning up the results, turning him over in his bed when he was too weak and stiff to move himself and above all listening to his incessant complaints, and in all that time it had never occurred to me to expect anything more from him than what he had already done. Yet what made my eyes sting now was not his generosity in leaving me all he possessed. It was the thought that if I ever came into his money, it would be because I was never going to hear the old man’s whining voice again.

  “Thank you,” I managed eventually.

  The only answer was a loud snore.

  THREE EAGLE

  1

  I left my master’s house before dawn, without speaking to anyone. The Chief Minister had not got up and I wanted to be gone before he learned I had defied his order to rest. I took some of Costly’s money with me, although I had no intention of paying any of it to a sorcerer.

  Handy, the commoner, lived in Atlixco, a parish in the east of the city. It was right on the edge of the lake and, but for the dyke that shielded the city from storms on the great salt lake beyond it, would probably have been awash in brackish water three or four times a year.

  I arrived at the house early in the morning, to find the place already in uproar.

  There appeared to be children everywhere. The youngest, yelling and whooping, chased turkeys and little dogs around the courtyard, in an elaborate game whose object seemed to be to herd the creatures between two human thighbones, stuck upright into the ground, and into the bathhouse. Two older lads stood nearby, trying to look grave and grown-up, even though they were transparently yearning either to join in the game or to break it up by seizing the bones—the proudly displayed remains of the two enemy warriors Handy had captured with his own hands—and using them to beat their siblings unconscious.

  The youngsters looked at me just long enough to register my existence and then ignored me altogether. Their older brothers tracked me curiously as I crossed the courtyard and made for the family’s private rooms.

  The big commoner stood in his doorway, wearing an even older cloak than the one I had first seen him in and a harassed look.

  “Lively lot!” I congratulated him. “Are they all yours?”

  He glanced over my shoulder. “I don’t know. How many did you see?”

  “I think seven.”

  “In that case no—a couple of the youngest are my brother’s. We’ve got nine,” he went on apologetically, “but the oldest girl’s married and her sister and two of her brothers are at the House of Youth. Snake and Buck won’t be far behind them—that’s if I haven’t suffocated the whole brood by holding them all head down over burning chillies first, of course! Excuse me.”

  He was back a moment later, having righted one of the thighbones, pulled a couple of small children off an even smaller one, dragged a fourth child out of the bathhouse and roundly scolded the two eldest.

  “You won’t believe it, but we’re expecting another one! You can see why I have to spend so much time and money on sorcerers, with all these birthdays to interpret.”

  “Ah, that’s what I came about.”

  “Birthdays?”

  “No, sorcerers. I’ve got to go and see one.”

  “What, you want me to recommend …”

  “No, I know who I want to see: a man from Coyoacan. But I’ve got a lot of money with me for his fee, you see, so I was wondering if you could come with me—just in case I run into trouble on the way. I’ll pay you, naturally.”

  The big man looked dubiously at me. “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

  “You know—thieves.”

  I had spent much of the night mulling over the answer to this question, and in the end had decided to lie. It would be too difficult to explain what I expected to find at Coyoacan when I did not know myself, and I did not want my brother’s dark hints to put Handy off. Besides, I thought, if I started mentioning warriors and the Chief Minister he would only ask for more money.

  He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Coyoacan’s a long way. It’d take the best part of a day to get there and back. I mean, I expect I could do it, but …”

  I sighed. “All right. How much do you want?”

  However much it was, it was going to be worth it. If Lion had been telling the truth about Coyoacan, then there was no knowing what might happen, and I might need a strong right arm.

  Coyoacan lay on the mainland at the southwestern corner of the lake, just at the end of a causeway.

  We took Handy’s sons, Snake and Buck, with us. “No scholars, either of them,” confided their father, “but then neither am I, and they’d cause more trouble if I left them at home.”

  I was aghast at the thought of taking the boys, but their protests against being left behind effectively drowned out my own. “They’ll be all right,” Handy said when I remonstrated with him. “It’s not as if anything’s likely to happen to us. I feel quite bad about taking your money for this, really.” He was in a good mood, apparently looking forward to his day out. I felt an urge to tell him the real purpose of the trip but I suppressed it. After all, I told myself, he was probably right, and nothing was likely to happen. I did not want him turning back and leaving me to go to Coyoacan on my own.

  To change the subject, I asked him about the letter he had delivered for my master.

  “No idea what it said. I told you, I can’t read.”

 
; “Where did you take it?”

  “Back to Pochtlan—the house of that merchant, Shining Light.” He hesitated at my sharply indrawn breath. “I suppose it was a reply to the letter I brought him.”

  “Who did you give it to?”

  “A household slave—miserable old bastard. I asked him what the letter was about, just out of curiosity, but he said his eyes were too far gone to read anything.”

  The boys did not make a promising start, slouching sulkily behind their father and quarreling over whose turn it was to carry the bag with our lunch in it. They were just too young for the House of Youth, and no doubt that is where they would rather have been, hero-worshipping their older brothers, learning how to handle a spear or a sword and hanging on every exaggerated word of some scarred veteran’s exploits. They plainly did not think taking a long walk with their father and an unkempt slave was a good use of their time.

  There was not much traffic on the road. A few individuals sauntered or ran, according to their business. We passed a caravan on the last stage of its long journey from the South, weighed down with exotic goods, the bearers sweating under tumplines that chafed their shoulders and bit into their foreheads. Trotting briskly in the other direction, so that we had to move smartly out of their way when they caught us up, was a squadron of warriors. They were mostly unblooded youths, judging by their plain cloaks and the loose locks of hair at the backs of their heads, although their captain was a veteran, a Shorn One. They were off to war or to threaten war: they had heavy packs slung over their backs on top of which their gaudy feathered shields and wooden swords bounced awkwardly. The obsidian blades set into the swords’ shafts glinted in the sunlight. The big floppy straps on the Shorn One’s sandals clapped noisily on the road.

  “Grand sight, eh?” Handy broke our silence as he and his sons stood gazing after the warriors. The boys’ mouths were agape. “They’ll keep the tribute houses filled up. Wish I was young enough to go with them. Handy with a spear, I was. Still am. You should have seen—”

  “I know,” I interrupted him too sharply. “I’ve seen enough warriors’ handiwork, believe me.” I watched the little cloud of dust the squadron had kicked up spreading and settling back on the road. I had been like them once, dreaming of a Flowery Death in battle or on the sacrificial stone. Then, like all young priests, I had gone to war and seen what it was really like: the trussed captive wriggling helplessly at my feet, the wounded man holding his severed arm and grinning at it in disbelief, the eagle warrior lying dead in the mud, his gorgeous plumage blackened and matted with blood. Above all I remembered the confusion, the captains shouting themselves hoarse and nobody listening, the bewildering sense that life’s rhythm had been suspended and Tezcatlipoca alone knew who had won and whether it mattered.

  War, I thought, was for young men who had no time for the future and old men who had forgotten the past. The rest of us just had to grow up.

  2

  According to the old slave, Costly, Crocodile’s village lay just outside Coyoacan. Skirting the town itself, we found ourselves walking up a gentle slope, between narrow fields edged with tough, fleshy, broad-leaved maguey plants. The maguey had been planted in rows running across the hillside and their robust leaves and strong roots shored up the earth above them to form shallow terraces. Scattered among the fields were thatched huts made of mud bricks.

  “Not much happening,” Handy said to me.

  I glanced warily up toward the crest of the slope and down toward the town and the lake. “I can’t see anyone at all,” I said. “Should it be busy at this time of year?”

  “It’s always busy,” the big commoner assured me. “You should try some honest toil in the fields! Look over there—there are some winter squashes they haven’t got in yet. They’ll lose them if they don’t get a move on.”

  The fat vegetables lay, apparently neglected, among their tangled foliage. Just beyond them was a low, dark mound that I took to be earth until I saw a dark plume lifting from its surface in the breeze, and recognized the blackened and pulverized remains of mud bricks embedded in its surface.

  Despite the Sun’s warmth on my back I felt a sudden chill.

  “What happened here?” I asked slowly.

  The big commoner’s brow creased in an expression of concern as he looked at the heap of ash. “It probably belonged to whoever was growing those squashes. I expect someone kicked over a hearthstone and the Old, Old God took offense and burned the place down.”

  I laughed nervously. “I hope it wasn’t Crocodile’s.”

  “Me too, after coming all this way. We’d better have a look around. Maybe we can find someone to tell us where this sorcerer lives.” He raised his voice to call his sons to order, but they took no notice. They were busy bickering and pushing each other about.

  “I’ve carried this bag for long enough,” Buck snapped at his brother. “Now it’s your turn. Go on, pick it up!”

  Snake replied by aiming a sly kick at his brother’s leg and then, very prudently, running away. I could not help smiling as I watched him go. He was the younger and, I suspected, the smarter of the pair, and he had my sympathy for that. I had been a little bit like him once.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with those boys,” Handy grumbled. “The sooner at least one of them gets some manners beaten into him by a Master of Youths, the better.”

  “Leave them to it,” I said. “Let’s find our man and get it over with.”

  “All right. You two!” he called. “We’re going up the hill. Mind you look after that bag or we’ll all go hungry!”

  I kept looking over my shoulder as we climbed the slope toward the nearest house, as if I expected to see someone following us, but apart from the two boys chasing each other between the rows of maguey plants there was nobody in sight.

  The house was a shabby affair of crumbling mud bricks and moldy thatch, with a soiled cloth screen in the doorway that flapped listlessly in the breeze because no one had bothered to secure it at the bottom. The back and sides were surrounded by trash: shattered plates, maize husks, chipped obsidian knife blades, gnawed bones, a broken turkey pen. At the front squatted an old woman, her face tanned by a lifetime in the fields to a leather mask that gave nothing away as she watched us walking up the hill.

  “Crocodile? Never heard of him.”

  Handy looked at me. I looked away, in case the sense of foreboding I felt showed on my face.

  “You must have,” the commoner said. “He’s a sorcerer. He lives here.”

  “There are no sorcerers here,” the old woman snapped. “Never have been. You got the wrong village. Go away.”

  Handy took a step backward, repelled by her sheer hostility. “What’s going on here, Yaotl?”

  I shot a nervous glance at the heap of ash down the hill behind us. Was it my imagination, or had something disturbed it? The plume I had seen earlier had become a large black cloud that hid the ruin itself. My stomach lurched as I realized there was no sign of either of the boys.

  I turned back to the old woman. “Who lived in that house?”

  The leather mask stayed fixed in place. Only her eyes responded to my question. They blinked once.

  She hesitated for what seemed like ages before saying, slowly and quietly but distinctly, “I can’t remember.”

  Handy and I stared at each other. We both opened our mouths to speak at the same time, but shut them again when we heard a sharp, shrill cry from the hillside below us.

  “Father!”

  3

  Handy got there first, as might have been expected, racing across the fields while I was still trying to work out where Snake’s cry had come from.

  By the time I caught him up the three of them were standing in the middle of the burned-out house. The two boys looked safe and healthy, apart from being coated from head to foot in dark gray ash. Snake was grinning and his older brother was scowling. Their father stood between them. His face had changed from an anxious parent’s to that of
a judge trying to arbitrate a particularly intractable dispute.

  “I found it!” Snake was saying.

  “But you wouldn’t have if I hadn’t pushed you into that heap of ash!” his brother retorted indignantly.

  “What have they found?” I asked.

  Handy handed it over without speaking. I hefted it in my palm. It was surprisingly light and burned almost black but there was no mistaking it.

  It was the lower jaw of a human.

  “No wonder they never got those squashes in,” I remarked.

  “Should we look for the rest?” Snake asked.

  His father looked dubious, but his brother was already rooting around in the ash and rubble after a souvenir of his own. Before either of us could restrain him he had let out a triumphant whoop and was tugging enthusiastically at another blackened fragment. This one was a collarbone.

  “Handy …”

  “I know,” he said. “I don’t like this either, but there’s no stopping them now!”

  “Why hasn’t someone picked up the bones?” I asked. I would have expected the dead man or woman’s family to have had the remains cremated or at least put in ajar and buried nearby. To see them casually tossed about disturbed me. A warrior killed or taken in battle could expect his grinning, fleshless skull to molder on a skull-rack and his thighbones to end up on show in his captor’s house, swelling his glory, but someone who had died in a stupid accident such as a house fire deserved gentler treatment.

  Assuming it had been an accident.

  “This happened a while ago,” I added. “Hasn’t anyone been here since?”

  “Perhaps there isn’t anybody—maybe the dead man had no family.”

  “Or maybe his family didn’t dare come looking for his remains.”

  The other man was not paying me much attention, however. He was watching with a mixture of pride and exasperation as his boys turned their quarrel into a race to see who could gather up the most human fragments in the shortest time. “Look at those two! If I could get them to work that hard in the fields we’d never be hungry again!”