The examination room was a simple affair: a stone altar with grooves to evacuate the blood; a wooden chest holding a collection of obsidian knives; and at the back, a smaller altar of polished ivory dedicated to Mictlantecuhtli. I set the owl's cage on the floor, near the altar.
I recovered a small, sharp obsidian blade from the chest, and made my offerings of blood to my god: three quick slashes across the back of my left hand, blood flowing onto the altar. "We come for the truth," I said, softly. "Blind not our eyes; deceive us not. We come for the truth."
I touched the tip of my obsidian knife to the altar. A small jolt passed from the handle of the knife to my palm: a sign that some of Mictlan's magic had suffused the blade.
Yaotl and Neutemoc had already laid Eleuia's body on the stone altar. Bluish blotches marked her stomach: the same place as the stretch-marks of her childbirth.
Ceyaxochitl's cane tapped on the stone floor, until she found her place. She watched me like a vulture awaiting carrion.
I put the tips of my fingers on Eleuia's purple lips, and gently forced them open. The touch was cold, numbing. Froth had adhered to the inside of her mouth. Not sufficient – many things other than drowning could cause the foam – but a good start.
I retrieved a clean cloth from the chest and wiped off the foam. Then I pressed down on her chest, forcing her to exhale.
Foam bubbled up, replacing what I had removed. So Eleuia had drowned: she had been alive before entering the water. Interesting. I would have expected her captors to throw her dead body into the lake, not for her to be dragged down by the ahuizotl.
"Well?" Ceyaxochitl asked.
I shrugged. Not much to say at that point. "She died of drowning. The ahuizotl is most likely what killed her."
I turned my attention to the bruises. They were by no means abnormal: as the body bumped against branches and other obstacles, it was bound to gather quite a few of them. But something about their pattern…
I felt them, carefully. The skin was bluish-black and swollen, resilient to my touch. But bruises inflicted after death didn't swell, and they seldom turned blue-black.
Not all of the bruises were the same age. I stepped back, lifted one of Eleuia's arms. There was… a gradation: some of them were blue-black, bordering on a greenish colour, some of them were barely turning blue; and a few were still red marks on the skin.
My stomach churned. She'd been beaten up, consistently and regularly: in three days, the oldest bruises had had time to start discolouring, but the most recent ones were only burst vessels, the blood barely coagulating.
"Someone tortured her," I said, slowly.
Neutemoc's face turned white and harsh, like a shell.
"They took her, and then they beat her, again and again."
"What for?" Ceyaxochitl asked.
I shook my head. "I don't know. I thought – she had a child, in the Chalca Wars." Even though I didn't see what the child would have had to do with all of this. Unless Eleuia had tried to blackmail Mahuizoh?
"Yes," Neutemoc said. "I remember." His gaze was distant. "But it was stillborn, Acatl."
"That's what Eleuia told you."
Neutemoc said, "I was there, Acatl. I saw her bury the body. Trust me. He could never have lived."
"You're sure?" I asked.
Neutemoc's lips were two dark lines in the oval of his face. "Yes," he said. "I'll bear witness to that, if you wish."
"No need," I said. Huitzilpochtli strike me down. The child had sounded like too great a thing to be ignored – and Eleuia herself not above doing whatever she had to do to ensure her future. But if he was dead…
What could her abductors have wanted from Eleuia?
I ran my fingers on the bruises. Perhaps I was mistaken. But no, there were too many of them, and they were too large to have been caused by random objects dragged by the currents. The way they were spread, too: few parts of Eleuia's body weren't covered in them. It spoke, not of rage, but of a cold-blooded method, from the summoning of the beast to Eleuia's deliberate, methodical torture. My stomach churned again. Who were those people?
Mahuizoh? He had loved her, if I believed my witnesses, or at any rate, had had affection for her. Surely he wouldn't…
My fingers, probing, found a raised area on Eleuia's cheek: a smaller bruise, barely old enough to have discoloured.
It was the pattern of an object that had hit her, engraved into her flesh: a wound that dated from not too long before her death. I knelt, and stared at it. Unfortunately, the blood had spread and partially erased the contours. It had a shape: hints of curves, of stylised lines meeting to form the point of something else…
"Neutemoc?" I asked. "Does this mean anything to you?"
Neutemoc turned Eleuia's face to the light; carefully, as if afraid she'd crumble under his touch. He stared, for a while, at the eyeless hollows, at the small pattern on her cheek. His face was expressionless but his fingers had clenched into fists. "There was no reason," he muttered. "What kind of man…?"
I knew what he was thinking, because I felt the same nausea welling up in me, tightening until I could barely breathe. "Neutemoc."
At length, he shook his head. "No," he said. "That mark is too badly damaged, Acatl."
Ceyaxochitl's cane tapped on the stone floor. "Let me see," she said.
Neutemoc stepped aside, without a word.
Ceyaxochitl, unlike Neutemoc, probed Eleuia's flesh like a buyer investigating the fitness of a dog. A faint trace of magic hung in the air: she was calling on the power of the Duality to aid her sight. "Hum," she said. "It is very deformed."
"Spreading blood," I said. "She was alive for some time after that bruise."
"How long?" Ceyaxochitl asked.
"Not very long," I said. "So?" I felt sick. In my years as a priest for the Dead, I had seen death; I had seen cruelty. But never had I seen it so methodically applied.
And yet they had released Eleuia, or she had escaped. Unless… unless they had summoned the ahuizotl to kill her, thinking to hide their crimes. Possible. It was a risk – no one summoned the Jade Skirt's creatures without paying a price – but possible.
Ceyaxochitl stared at the mark for a while. "I have seen something like it. But I can't remember where."
"Can you find out?" Neutemoc asked.
"Yaotl will take a copy of it," Ceyaxochitl said. "I can't guarantee I'll remember, but maybe someone at the Duality House…"
Neutemoc said nothing while Yaotl sketched a copy of the mark on a maguey paper. He was watching Eleuia like a man dying of thirst, as he must have watched her while she was still alive. I couldn't help thinking of Huei's anger; and how, ultimately, it had been justified.
FOURTEEN
Two Knights
Ceyaxochitl and Yaotl left soon after that, claiming pressing business at the palace. Neutemoc remained where he was, staring at the corpse, in what seemed to be a particularly bleak mood.
I stopped Ceyaxochitl at the door. "I don't suppose you could summon someone from Tlalocan?"
Her eyes held me, expressionless. "From the Blessed Land of the Drowned? You want to summon Eleuia?" Finally, she sighed. "No. The Duality is the source and arbiter of all the gods, but They have no power over where the dead go. And you…"
I could summon the dead, but only those who belonged to my god, Mictlantecuhtli. Eleuia, who had drowned, belonged to Tlaloc, and I couldn't summon her without the Storm Lord's blessing. But there was another way. "If she won't come to my call, I could go to her."
Ceyaxochitl raised her eyebrows. "Risky."
In a god's world, I would be an exile, my magic diluted, my body weak. And there was a risk, no matter how insignificant, that I would meet Father's soul: a small thing compared to the stakes, but not something I was looking forward to, by any means.
"I know," I said. But Eleuia would know why she had died, and who had abducted her. It was the most direct way to find out the truth.
"I really have to be at the palace," Ceyaxoc
hitl said. "But if you're not back in three hours, I'll know what happened."
I nodded. By trying to enter Tlalocan, I would subject myself to Tlaloc's whims. If I hadn't come back in three hours, there wouldn't be much Ceyaxochitl could do, except perhaps succeed where I had failed.
After Ceyaxochitl and Yaotl had left, I went back into the room. Neutemoc was still staring at Eleuia's body, with a naked hunger that made me sick. He obviously hadn't been listening to a word we'd said, and what he was thinking of was quite obvious. It rankled. Here I was, endangering my life, and all he could think of was Eleuia? Not even Huei, or his children, or his family?
I asked, angrily, "This is what you'd have destroyed your marriage for? This flesh?" I made a sweeping gesture towards the altar, encompassing Eleuia's small, reduced body: the whitened flesh, the wrinkled fingertips… the missing eyes.
"It wasn't about carnal lust," Neutemoc snapped.
I walked to face him, words I couldn't hold any more welling up in me. "Wasn't it? You had everything, Neutemoc. It's not my fault if you tried to throw it all away."
"You can't understand."
"No," I said. "You're right. I can't even start to fathom it." I knelt on the ground, and gently traced the outline of the glyph for "water" on the stone: the mouth of a jug, out of which issued the serpentine shape of waves.
"What are you doing?" Neutemoc asked.
I shrugged. "You'll see." I retrieved the owl's cage from the altar, set it in the centre of the room, and withdrew the cloth that was covering it. A deafening, angry screech came from the bird in the cage.
"You're going to do magic here?" Neutemoc said.
I didn't answer.
"Acatl!" he said.
I raised my eyes briefly. "Yes," I said. "And I'm going to need you here, watching out."
"What for?"
I went back to the altar, and picked the jade plate and the spider carving. "I'm going to enter the World Beyond. To speak to Eleuia."
"Can't I come?" Neutemoc asked.
Gods, could the man think of nothing else but his would-be mistress?
"No," I said, curtly. That would be risking two lives instead of one. "You stay here."
I withdrew the owl from its cage and slit its chest. Blood spurted out in a rush of quiescent magic, its pungent animal smell mingling with the bittersweet odour of decomposition from Eleuia's body. I retrieved the owl's heart, and set it on the jade plate, above the First Level.
"Every year Your banners are unfolded in every direction
Every year you turn again to the place of abundant blood
Coming forth from the place of clouds
From the verdant house, from the water's edge…"
Magic blazed, closing the water-glyph pattern. It was if a veil had been thrown over the room, hiding Neutemoc and the altar, and the stone walls. The ground under my feet shifted, started to become mud.
"Coming forth from the beautiful place
From the misty house, from the verdant house
From the bliss of Tlalocan…"
Beyond the water-glyph, meadows were coalescing into existence, covered with the whiteness of maize flowers, lit by the warm afternoon sun. Somewhere, children were laughing, with such careless innocence that my heart ached.
"Coming forth from the water's edge
From the verdant house, from the bliss…"
Something pushed at me: two cold, dripping hands laid upon my shoulders. Startled, I lost my balance within the water-glyph and set one hand outside of the line of blood.
The meadows wavered, and were lost. The children's laughter slowly faded into insignificance. The golden light lost its warmth and colour, turning instead into a harsh, white radiance that out lined the bones under my skin. No. No. There was nothing left now; nothing of innocence, nothing of comfort. I could have wept.
The veil across the water-glyph hadn't returned either. Puzzled, I looked around me. I'd expected to return to the temple if my spell failed; but this was clearly no Fifth World place. Under my feet, the earth was black, and utterly dry. In fact, it wasn't earth. It was dust.
"Acatl," a voice said, behind me. "What a surprise."
Trying hard to contain the frantic beat of my heart, I rose and turned.
The harsh, white radiance came from a dais made of bones: skulls, arms and legs, ribcages poking out at odd angles. And on the dais… Mictlantecuhtli, Lord Death, and His wife, Mictecacihuatl, watching me as one might watch an unworthy insect.
I wasn't in the Fifth World at all. Somehow, I'd found my way into the deepest level of Mictlan.
Because there was nothing else I could do, I bowed. "My lord. My lady. I wasn't expecting to be here either."
Lord Death smiled: an eerie expression, stretching across His sunken cheeks. "Understandable. But one place leads to another."
"Tlalocan?" I asked.
Mictlantecuhtli crossed both arms over His skeletal ribcage. "The dead all take the same path. It's only the end of it that differs."
"That still doesn't explain why someone pushed me out of Tlalocan."
He smiled again. "You seem to have lost the Storm Lord's favour, if you ever had it."
There was an obvious reason. "I annoyed His High Priest recently," I said.
Mictlantecuhtli shook His head. "By the look of it, I would say it's an older offence."
"I don't see which one," I said, finally. But it was a lie. I knew why. I knew the only vigil I hadn't undertaken; I still remembered Father's drowned body, lying in the emptiness of the temple for the Dead – and of how I'd run away, unable to face the reproach still etched in every one of his features. Some things I just could not find the courage for.
Lord Death said nothing. He wasn't a god who judged, after all. He just received all the dead no other god had claimed. He wasn't fussy.
"There is no way in, then?" I asked.
"Not into Tlaloc's dominions," Mictlantecuhtli said. "If you've lost His favour, it's likely you've also lost Chalchiutlicue's."
I'd never been a worshipper of the Goddess of Lakes and Streams, and She wouldn't forgive my unfulfilled vigil. Father, after all, also belonged to Her.
"I was trying to find a priestess. Eleuia," I said, finally. Mictlantecuhtli, after all, was my patron. He would perhaps be inclined to offer hints. "Something is going on."
"In the Fifth World?" He asked. "Something is always going on. But it doesn't concern Us."
"It concerns the other gods."
"The Old Ones?" Mictlantecuhtli said. "And the newer ones – the upstart?"
"Huitzilpochtli."
Mictlantecuhtli ran His bone-thin fingers on the fibulae and femurs that made His throne. "Yes. The Imperial upstart and Tonatiuh, His incarnation as the Sun-God." He sighed, an uncannily human sound, although not a feature of His death-head's face moved. "My dominion is here. My power is here. Why should I look elsewhere? Let the others squabble over the Fifth World. I see no need to."
"So you don't know?"
"No," Mictlantecuhtli said. "I don't know what Eleuia would have known, or why she died. I presume that's what you want."
"Yes," I said. "But–"
He smiled again. "All I can offer is My knives, and some advice. Be careful of what you meddle in, Acatl. Cornered animals have a way of turning on you."
"I don't see what this has to do with anything," I said slowly, not daring to question him further, not in His dominion.
Lord Death shook His head. "Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. I think you can find your own way back, Acatl."
I'd never been this deep into the underworld, though I had caught glimpses of Mictlantecuhtli Himself before. I knew, theoretically, the path I would have to follow: back through the City of the Dead, the Plain of the Shadow Beasts, and through every level, until I could cross the River again and go back into the Fifth World.
"I–" I started.
I could feel Their amusement. "The gate is that way," Lady Death said, Her bony face stretched in
a rictus grin. She gestured, and a cold wind blew around us, raising the dust at Her feet. Underneath was stone: cold, unyielding. And as the dust lifted, it revealed the carved pattern of a quincunx, pulsing with magic.
I stepped towards it but Mictecacihuatl caught my arm in a grip as unyielding as the embrace of death. Her bony hands probed my flesh, cold, unresponsive. I tried not to wince as Her pointed fingers slid into my wounds.
"You've bled much," She said. "Mostly in Our service."
I didn't speak. I was trying not to let Her see my pain.
Mictecacihuatl smiled: a grin that revealed yellowed teeth, as clean as animal-picked bones. "I suppose that after going all the way down here, you deserve something for your pain."
Light blazed around Her, sinking under my skin. Something tightened, impossibly compressing my bones, pressing my flesh against my rib cage – stretching me thin, as if on a funeral altar. The smell of rot grew strong, and then faded into the dryness of crumbling bones, of the dust at my feet. My wounds were closing one by one, not so much healing as being drained of pus, of blood, and each wound closing hurt worse than it had opening. I struggled not to scream.
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