Obsidian & Blood

by Aliette De Boddard

  "So we take Echichilli outside?"

  "The Duality House," I said, curtly. It was either that or the shrine of Huitzilpochtli at the Great Temple; but Quenami had made it abundantly clear that the Southern Hummingbird was all but powerless, merely awaiting a new agent to invest with His powers. "It's always a safe haven."

  It would be, even with Ceyaxochitl's illness.

  What we needed was to buy time, to slow down the star-demons.

  We needed The Wind of Knives: the keeper of boundaries, the enforcer of the underworld's justice.

  He'd have come on His own, if the boundaries between the Fifth World and the underworld had been breached. But the stardemons came from the Heavens, which were not His province.

  However, He could still be summoned, by the adepts, or the foolhardy.

  With any other minor underworld deities, I would have drawn a quincunx in blood, and stood chanting at the centre. But I had once merged my mind with the Wind of Knives, to bring down a god's agent in the city; and the link had remained.

  As we ran, I slashed my earlobes, and let the blood pool into my hands, warm and pulsing, an anchor into the Fifth World. I sent my mind questing high above the deserted city, past the Houses of Joy and the warriors' banquets, past the peasants' dwellings squatting at the river's edge and the myriad reed boats bobbing at their anchor, down, into a dark cenote where rainwater pooled, away from the sunlight and the warmth of the Fifth World.

  There was a shock, as if I'd run into a wall. Acatl, a voice like the keening of dead souls said. You are timely. The boundaries are breached. I am coming.

  I could feel Him, gathering darkness into Himself, emerging from the cenote, wisps of shadows and fog trailing behind Him. He was flowing up the canals like a miasma, covering in instants what would have taken hours for a man on foot.

  "Bad news," I said to Teomitl.

  "What?"

  "The boundaries are breached." The summoner, whoever he was, was already in the process of calling down a star-demon into the world.

  Teomitl's face shifted, became the colour of jade. "Then I'm summoning the ahuizotls."

  The ahuizotls were Jade Skirt's creatures, small and wizened beings which lived at the bottom of Lake Texcoco, dragging men down into the water to feast on their eyes and fingernails.

  I shook my head. "They won't be effective." The palace was on the main island of Tenochtitlan, as far away from the water as it was possible to be in a city of canals and boats. Even accounting for the ahuizotls' supernatural speed, they wouldn't be here for a while, assuming they managed to get past the wards at the palace entrance.

  "Do you have a better plan?"

  Then again, the Wind of Knives probably wouldn't be here on time, either.

  At length, we reached a courtyard much like Teomitl's, a quiet, secluded place where only a few slaves swept the ground. I glanced upwards: the stars remained in the same position, and there was no gaping emptiness. For once, we were on time.

  The Wind of Knives was in my mind, a pressure like water against a dike, a whistle like the passage of air through obsidian mountains, a grave voice tearing at me like a grieving lament. Acatl. I am coming. He was flowing up the stairs of the palace now, the guards scattering in His wake like a flock of parrots.

  Almost there…

  I knelt, and collected more blood from my earlobes to trace a quincunx on the ground. "Acatl-tzin!" Teomitl said, exasperated.

  "You heard me," I said. "The boundaries are breached. I'd rather have protection."

  I started a litany for the Dead:

  "In the region of the fleshless, the region of mystery

  The dead men go forward

  They crawl on bleeding feet, on bleeding hands

  Forward into darkness

  Away from the Fifth World's reach."

  A veil fell over me, darkening the courtyard, and the stars in the sky receded, became as insignificant as scattered bones. The world shifted and danced, and the faces I glanced at – Teomitl's, Manatzpa's – seemed those of old men. Teomitl's voice came to me, tinny and weak, the veil leeching all resonance, all warmth from his words.

  Gods, I hated that spell.

  "Acatl-tzin!"

  "Let's go," I said.

  Teomitl pulled the entrance-curtain aside and strode in, barely holding it long enough for me to enter in turn.

  The room stretched before us, as long and narrow as a fishing boat, interspersed with carved columns. Its walls were painted a vibrant ochre, engraved with leaping deer and jaguars.

  Near the centre, Echichilli was seated on reed mats a half-consumed meal before him maize flatbread, tomatoes and the bones of fowl.

  "Manatzpa?" His wrinkled face looked puzzled. "I thought–"

  "Later," Manatzpa said. Teomitl had his macuahitl sword out, the obsidian shards glinting in the reddish lights of the brazier. "We need to get you out of here. Now."

  I'd expected Echichilli to protest. He certainly had not been shy about his opinions beforehand, but he remained silent, his eyes fixed on the nibbled fowl-bones. "Venerable Echichilli?" I asked.

  He smiled, revealing a few yellowed teeth stuck haphazardly in his mouth. "I think it's too late for that, isn't it?"

  "What do you mean?" I asked. But, as I did so, a cold wind lifted the entrance-curtain, and I felt the hole in the Fifth World widen. Something pressed down upon us. Cracks appeared in the roof, fragments of adobe rained down, and the stars shone through the cracks. One of them was falling, straight towards us, growing larger and larger…

  "Teomitl!" I screamed.

  The rattle of shells filled the room and a shadow stood before us, its hundreds of eyes shining malevolently in the dim light. No, not eyes but stars, scattered at the knees, elbows and wrists of a vaguely humanoid creature – stars that, if you looked into them for long enough, were also demons, smaller monsters with talons and fangs and necklaces of human hearts…

  It brought with it the emptiness of the night sky, a cold so intense that my teeth seized up, chattering unstoppably. My limbs shook, started to twist out of shape, and all I could feel was the frantic beating of my heart.

  Its eyes, the deathly blue of stars, rested upon me for a while, and I felt as if fingers were closing around my throat, as if hundreds of cold stones pressed against my skin. My veil of protection buckled and shattered, leaving only a cold feeling. My vision started to blur, my corneas burning as if someone had thrown chilli powder into my face.

  Where was the Wind of Knives?

  The star-demon's gaze moved away; I was not its target. My limbs, now utterly out of control, twisted each in a different direction, leaving me on my knees, struggling not to fall further.

  Manatzpa had risen, arms crossed against his chest. "This isn't your place." His voice rang with confidence. How he could still be standing, facing that?

  The star-demon made a sound which might have been laughter. I heard only the rattle of shells, of yellowed bones shaken together in a grave, my own bones, grinding in the agonising mess of my chest.

  "Manatzpa." Echichilli's voice was quiet. "Some things cannot be fought against."

  Manatzpa's face twisted in uncharacteristic anger. "You say this like you approve."

  I didn't hear Echichilli's answer. My legs were quivering, threatening to slip away from me, and it took all my concentration to remain upright.

  The star-demon was moving, flowing towards the two councilmen with the inevitability of a flood. Manatzpa's hand strayed towards his knife, but the clawed hands batted him aside as casually as a child might hurl a toy. He flew towards the wall, hit it, and slumped at the feet of the frescoes, bleeding from a dozen cuts. Near him, Teimitl was on the floor, struggling to rise.

  That left only Echichilli. The old councillor stood, watching the star-demon come with an odd, melancholy smile on his face. "For everything a price," he whispered. He bowed his head, and did not move.

  The Duality curse us, why wouldn't he fight? Why wouldn't he use ma
gic, anything to save himself from the gruesome death facing him?

  I slid my hand towards one of my obsidian knives. It was like moving through thick honey. My fingers kept jerking out of the way, and my progress was agonisingly slow, finger-length by finger-length, knuckle by knuckle, every movement a supreme effort.

  The star-demon's body blocked my sight of Echichilli. Its back was a dark cloak rippling in the wind, shimmering to reveal row upon row of skulls. Shells as white as bone, sewn into the hem, rattled as it moved.

  My fingers hovered over the handle of the knife, closed over empty air. The Duality curse me, I needed…

  Echichilli screamed once, a sound abruptly cut off by the wet sound of flesh being torn apart. Hundreds of droplets splayed into the room; organs and blood, spattering my face and hands.

  No…

  I managed to close my fingers over the knife. The familiar emptiness of Mictlan arced up my body, stretching into my lungs and throat. The sensation of twisting diminished. I pulled myself upwards on shaking legs, the knife handle digging into the palm of my hand, a persistent, known pain that anchored me back to the Fifth World.

  "Acatl-tzin." Teomitl had got up with me, his hand still affixed to my shoulder. Chalchiuhtlicue's magic wrapped around him gave a green, rippling cast to his cloak and headdress. "They're coming."

  The ahuizotls. I knew; and I also knew that they would be too late.

  The Wind of Knives, however, wasn't.

  His weight in my mind grew excruciating, like a white-hot spear driven into my head. Darkness flowed into the room, bringing with it the deep, teeth-chattering cold of the underworld, and He was standing by my side as if He had always been there. Light glittered on a thousand obsidian planes, caught on the black points like beads on a necklace's thread.

  His hand rested lightly on my shoulder, balanced on a dozen obsidian shards as sharp as the points of knives and a tight, cool feeling spread from the points of contact, enough for me to focus again. "Acatl. I am here."

  I managed to utter words, through chattering teeth. "You can… see."

  "Yes," the Wind of Knives said. His voice was like the water of the cenote, dark, without warmth or sunlight. "I see."

  Before I could say anything more, He flowed, fluid, inhuman, towards the star-demon.

  The creature had turned, its pale head shifting between the Wind of Knives and Manatzpa, who had pulled himself on an elbow and was daubing Echichilli's blood into the beginning of a huge arc around himself, chanting all the while in harsh words I couldn't make out. The dim light glinted against the tears in his eyes.

  The Wind of Knives met the star-demon with a screeching sound, obsidian blades sliding on shell rattles. They fought each other, flowing across the room in an embrace. Obsidian shards glinted. Here and there pale fragments of skin flashed blue in the darkness as they moved past, again and again, spraying drops of Echichilli's blood all over the room like warm rain. It was almost hypnotic, that play of colours, of darkness on light, if the consequences hadn't been so absurdly terrifying…

  "Acatl-tzin!" Teomitl screamed.

  With growing horror, I realised that the star-demon was coming straight at me. Behind it, the Wind of Knives lay pinned to the floor by something jagged and white – a huge fragment of shell under which the Wind struggled to free Himself.

  Of course. It thought to kill me, and thus cut the Wind of Knives' link to the Fifth World.

  It was almost close enough to touch, Its eyes held me, and my hands started to shiver and contract. I held onto the knife, to the stretched emptiness of Mictlan, the only part of my body that seemed not to writhe in pain.

  Teomitl bypassed me, his macuahitl sword at the ready. He moved more slowly as the star-demon's gaze transferred to him, but his features became harsher, the whites of his eyes glazing into green. His sword came up, hundreds of obsidian shards glittering in the light, ready for a strike.

  The star-demon was faster. It sidestepped in a rattle of shells, and threw itself at me.

  I went down in a tangle of flailing limbs, fighting to regain control of my own body. Up close, it seemed almost human, its face as pale as a corpse, with the bluish tinge of death, its cheeks swollen and tinged with black spots, its eyes without corneas or pupils…

  The Wind of Knives was still down. Manatzpa was still chanting, but it did not seem to be having any effect on the star-demon. I was the only one who could save myself…

  Fighting all the while, I raised the knife, sank it into whatever I could reach. It howled, but remained upon me. I watched its hands rise as if from a great distance. The fingers curled into claws as sharp as broken obsidian, tiny stars at the joints that were also the eyes of monsters. The claws fell, and swiped across my chest, opening my flesh in a flower of pain.

  The star-demon howled, shaking its head. Through the growing haze, I saw Teomitl's face, transfigured into jade. He was going to strike again, and I couldn't remain inactive. I tried to roll over, but my chest felt as if it was splitting open. I raised my hand again, flailing, desperately trying to focus on what I needed to do. The blade of the knife quivered in a blur of black reflections as I drove it up to the hilt into the star-demon's chest.

  The blade slid into its flesh without resistance, as if there had been no substance to it at all. Something warm and pulsing fell over me, a suffocating river that smelled of cold, dry earth, nothing like blood. Every one of its eyes closed for a moment, leaving us in darkness, and then they opened again, and its claws swept down, faster than I could follow.

  Everything went dark in a burst of pain.

  TEN

  Aftermath

  I woke up, tried shifting, and almost screamed when the pain in my chest flared again.

  "Don't move, Acatl-tzin." Teomitl's face swam into focus, his skin dark brown again, all traces of the goddess purged from him.

  I managed to shift my gaze down to see my chest swathed in a mass of bandages. That feeling of emptiness was still there, and I wasn't sure any more whether it was the hole left by Axayacatltzin's death, or simply a remnant of the magic of Mictlan that had arced through me as I stabbed upwards.

  "If I'm still here, I imagine it's gone?"

  Teomitl nodded. "Disappeared the moment it was stabbed. Couldn't have done it without the Wind of Knives, though."

  The Wind. I could no longer feel Him in my mind. He had vanished at the star-demon's death.

  I lay back, and breathed a sigh of relief.

  Teomitl's face hovered between horror and fascination. "That's what we have to deal with?"

  "A lot more of them, yes," I said. If only Quenami had seen that, even he would have had to admit that this was a genuine threat.

  I pulled myself upwards cautiously. The surroundings were unfamiliar. Frescoes depicted the triumphant march of Huitzilpochtli across the marshes, our enemies trampled underfoot, the sorcerer Copil vanquished and his heart torn out, the founding of Tenochtitlan after two hundred years of wandering and our rise to glory. "Where–?"

  "Manatzpa's rooms," Teomitl said. "A different part. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some ahuizotls to send away." He frowned. "The other high priests are at Tizoc-tzin's banquet. I've sent for a priest of Patecatl. He'll be here any moment."

  Healing spells required a heavy sacrifice to obtain, their cost all but restricted their use to the Imperial Family. "I'm not sure…"

  Teomitl's face was pale, but determined. "You're High Priest for the Dead in Tenochtitlan, Acatl-tzin. Of course he'll come."

  Of course. I lay back, feeling infinitely weary. "Thank you. Just go see to those ahuizotls before the screaming starts."

  I watched him leave and reflected that he could have sent the ahuizotls away from the room; this meant he had something else to do, something he didn't want me to be privy to. I wasn't sure I wanted to know, in my current state.

  A tinkle of bells at the entrance-curtain heralded the entrance of Manatzpa, who was carrying a tray with two bowls of warm chocolate. His own
wounds were bandaged, but he walked very carefully, as if the least sudden movement would take him apart.

  "I thought you worse off." I managed to pull myself up into a sitting position, wedged against the wall.

  He didn't smile. "We both have looked better." He set the tray between us, and sat down facing me. "But, no, it just knocked me out." His lips curled upwards. "A good thing your student is strong."

  There was an expression in his eyes I couldn't quite read; as if he had some strong feeling that he was trying to hide from me, either hatred or fear or… "He's your candidate, isn't he?"

  Manatzpa looked away. "He's young." His voice was toneless. "A minor, inexperienced member of the Imperial family, with only one prisoner to his name, and a reputation as an uncontrollable element dabbling in sorcery. And he won't have a chance to improve it before the coronation war."

  "So you won't vote?"

  "You already know what I think of the other candidates." Somehow my questioning appeared to have put him off. He pushed a bowl towards me. The bitter smell of cacao, mingled with that of spices and vanilla, wafted up to my nostrils, tantalising.