Obsidian & Blood

by Aliette De Boddard

  I heard – something, a buzzing of flies, a grating of bones against bones, my name, spoken in a low but insistent voice. Dragging my gaze upwards, I caught a glimpse of Acamapichtli's pale face, turned towards me, one of his hands extended, pointing at something, the place where the knife had gone over the edge?

  He was gesturing to me, but understanding him was too much work, and Itzpapalotl would be back, anyway. I had to–

  It came to me then with preternatural clarity, that it was indeed the knife he was pointing to, that he carried a second one with him, and meant to give it to me. But he was too far away; and I knew, with the certainty of those about to die, that I would never make it.

  I tried to move towards him, as if through tar, even though I knew it was futile.

  Itzpapalotl laughed, Her voice infinitely distant, echoing in what little remained of my mind. "You delay the inevitable." Her shadow fell over me and I felt the shift in the air; She was moving to pick me up, to throw me over the edge.

  Over, it was over. Why had I ever thought I could be a warrior, that I could fight a goddess with no weapons and no rules, nor hope to win?

  That I could–

  She had said–

  No rules.

  She had said everything was fair on the battlefield.

  And She had Her back to Acamapichtli, whose hand was holding a second knife.

  In the moment She bent over me, the moment Her claws dug into my skin, deeper into my wounds, I did the only thing I could, putting what little strength remained into my voice, I screamed.

  "Acamapichtli! Throw it – now!"

  As She swung me up like a broken doll I heard the hiss of the knife and prayed to whoever was listening – to the Duality, to Lord Death, to the Feathered Serpent – that it would fly true.

  It did.

  There was a thud and Itzpapalotl screamed again, a sound that seemed to echo in the bones of my ribcage, filling my lungs and stomach with a buzzing like a knife against bone. The world spun and spun as She lost control, and faded into darkness.

  It seemed to last but a moment, but when I regained consciousness I found Acamapichtli propped over me. "What… happened?" I tried to pull myself upwards, and gave up. Everything ached, but I couldn't feel the searing pain of wounds. Gingerly I touched my arms and felt nothing but my skin and the scars that had been there before the fight.

  "A trick," Huitzilpochtli said, but He didn't sound displeased. "It seems priests can still surprise."

  Itzpapalotl was sitting on the stone altar, nonchalantly staring at Her hands. She, too, appeared unharmed, and in the gaze She directed towards me was nothing but the wary respect between warriors.

  "I don't understand," I said, and then it hit me. "Nothing was real."

  "Everything is as real as I make it," Huitzilpochtli said. "It is My world, after all."

  It wasn't a comforting reminder, though I guess I appreciated the knowledge that I wasn't going to bleed to death. "Does this satisfy you?"

  His attention shifted from me to Quenami. "A smooth speaker, a fighter and a resourceful man. I see." There was something like amusement in the air, but more that of a parent for a child. "Yes, I suppose it does. A bargain is a bargain."

  I let out a breath I hadn't even been aware of holding. As He had reminded us, we were in His world, and the rules were what He made them, if He had wanted to break His promise, He could have done so without trouble.

  Something landed on the ground beside me, but before I could see what it was the platform and the shrine were fading away, and everything grew intolerably bright.

  We were back under the pyramid where everything had started. Itzpapalotl was with us, a dark, amused presence at our backs, and Teomitl too, rising from his crouch at the edge of the stairs. "Acatl-tzin!"

  He was there and he was whole, thank the Duality. I looked around at the other high priests. Acamapichtli's wounds had closed, though he remained pale and moved with the stiffness of the unhealed, and Quenami had recovered his finery. My knives appeared to be back in their sheathes. Just to be sure, I laid a hand on one of them, and felt the familiar emptiness of Mictlan arc through my whole being, a comfort that I'd thought I'd never have again.

  I looked down, then, at what the god had given us, but even before I did, I already knew that the immobility at my feet, that peculiar, dry and stretched smell, could belong to nothing but a corpse.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Creation

  "He's dead," Quenami said, accusingly. He turned to Acamapichtli, as if the priest of the Storm Lord held the answers to everything. "You said –"

  I knelt, touched it – felt not skin, not even the cold, clammy one of a corpse, but something that might as well have been cloth or leather – nothing beat underneath, nothing warmed it from within. It gave slightly, under my touch. "It's not real," I said.

  "Of course it's real," Acamapichtli said. "It's a soul. What did you expect, flesh and blood?"

  It didn't look like the sad, bedraggled spirits I conjured, not even like Axayacatl-tzin's soul, which I had conveyed down into the underworld. Just like something that had once been alive, and from which all life had been stripped.

  "It's still a corpse," Quenami said. "However you look at it."

  I felt a hand on my shoulder, claws, resting lightly on the skin, though not breaking it. Itzpapalotl. "This is a place of power, priest. The heart of the Mexica strength in the Fifth World."

  Quenami stared at Her for a while. "Surely you're not suggesting–"

  "What was broken can be made whole, given enough blood."

  I thought, for a moment, on what She was offering us. "We can't," I said. To put back together a body and soul…

  "You can't," Itzpapalotl said. "You send the soul down into death, and only you can call it back. But Huitzilpochtli is the one who severs the thread of life."

  And the one who could knit it back together.

  Quenami closed his eyes. "It is one of the forbidden rituals."

  "And with reason." Itzpapalotl inclined Her head. "But permission has been given, just this once."

  Teomitl looked from Her to Quenami, and then back to me. I shrugged, having only a vague idea of what he was talking about. Acamapichtli, too, seemed to be waiting for clarification.

  "We already have plenty of human blood," Quenami said. "We'll need hummingbirds for Huitzilpochtli, owls for Lord Death, and a heron for the Rain Lord…"

  "And explanations for us," Acamapichtli cut in, with just a hint of sarcasm.

  "We can put the soul back in the body." Quenami grimaced. "Actually, make a new body beforehand, too. But it's going to take the three of us." He turned to Teomitl. "Go get the remains, some maize dough, and the animals."

  "Acatl-tzin?" Teomitl asked. "Outside isn't the best place to be, right now. It feels as if something awful is going to happen."

  I had no doubt. The Southern Hummingbird might have put aside some of His grievances against us, but we still didn't have a Revered Speaker, we were still as vulnerable as we had been since the start.

  I sighed. I could have argued about Quenami's impoliteness, but I couldn't muster the energy. "Go. Take guards if you need them. We'll deal with this later."

  Quenami lifted his eyebrows. Clearly, he had no intention of discussing anything with me. He knelt in the disk again, and looked over the blood.

  Which left Acamapichtli and me, and I certainly didn't feel up to small talk.

  "How do you know all this, anyway?" I asked Quenami.

  He shrugged: a particularly expansive gesture, indicating I was barely worthy of his time. "I am High Priest of the Southern Hummingbird. I've had the secrets of my order handed down to me."

  "One does wonder why," Acamapichtli said, voicing aloud what I thought.

  Quenami turned, glaring at us. "For situations such as this, where a lighter – touch, shall we say? – is needed. Now let me work."

  "By all means," I said, not wishing to talk to him any more than I had to.
>
  By the time Teomitl came back Quenami had rearranged everything. What I thought of as the body of Tizoc-tzin – even though it had no material reality – was at the centre of the disk surrounded by a large quincunx drawn with the endlessly dripping blood of the chamber. A further circle surrounded the quincunx, encasing it within the grinning face of the Fifth Sun.

  Teomitl was followed by two slaves who carried a wrapped-up cloth from which came the smell of offal. He held the cages with the animals; the hummingbirds a blur of speed, obviously unhappy at being disturbed from their rest. The rabbits were more sedate, curled up at the bottom of the cage as if sleeping.

  "Put it here." Quenami pointed to one end of the circle, the one furthest away from the stairs. "And those here." He didn't bother to thank Teomitl or the slaves.

  He had given us the explanations in the meantime. Acamapichtli had pulled a sour face but had said nothing. He did not look as though he had much energy left to argue either.

  Quenami opened the cages and grabbed the hummingbirds before they could fly away, slicing their heads off with a practised gesture. Blood splattered on the ground. He smeared it into the circle, drawing the symbols for Four Jaguar, the First Age, ruled by the Smoking Mirror, the god of War and Fate.

  "O master, O lord, O sun, O war

  We ask of You Your spirit, Your word

  Your blessing…"

  Acamapichtli, meanwhile, was sacrificing the heron, and filling in the symbols for Four Water and Four Rain, the Third and Fourth Age, ruled by the Storm Lord and His wife.

  "For he who was bequeathed the turquoise diadem

  The earplug, the lip plug,

  The necklace, the precious feather

  He who was crowned Lord of Men…"

  I came last with the owl, drawing the last symbol, that of the Second Age, Four Wind, ruled by the Feathered Serpent, the age of knowledge and wisdom, now passed into legend. The symbol pulsed under my hands, as if seeking to stretch itself into something else.

  "Give him Your torch, Your light, Your mirror

  The thick torch that illumines the world

  Your heat, Your fragrance

  We place our trust in You,

  We the untrained, the ignorant…"

  Next came the maize dough, which Acamapichtli fashioned into the life-sized shape of a man. His hands shook, and the limbs of the figure came out crooked, a fact which made Quenami's face contort with anger, but he said nothing. I fully expected we'd pay for it later.

  The face was two holes punched into the dough, and something that might have been a smile: an incongruous sight, given how seldom Tizoc-tzin had smiled when he was alive. It ought to have looked sad and pathetic, this child's figure of a man, but it didn't. Light fell over it, swathing it in the colour of stone and blood; and the face, wrapped in shadows, seemed almost alive, some monster come from the underworld to devour us all.

  I'd expected Itzpapalotl to go away but She still leant against the wall furthest away from the stairs, out of the circle. If She'd been human, I'd have said She was curious, but I think it was something else that kept Her there – perhaps further orders from the Southern Hummingbird?

  "I give my precious water, I give my blood

  To the maize in the fields, to Grandmother Earth that was broke

  I give my spirit, I give the sun…."

  Acamapichtli sliced both his earlobes, and let the blood drip into the eyes and the mouth of the dough figure.

  "Eyes to see the Fifth World, the five directions

  A mouth to give thanks

  A mouth to fashion the flowers, the songs…"

  In the chest cavity, where the heart should have been, there was only a small hole, like that of a flute. Acamapichtli moved away to stand at the base of the body, and left the way wide open for me.

  Quenami inclined his head. I walked through the circle to the dead soul and carried it back to the dough figure. Then, bending over, I carefully laid one atop the other. Tizoc-tzin sank into the dough like a man swallowed by quicksand, and the dough shifted, the manikin taking on his features, the bloodied mouth closed in a scowl, an eerie resemblance to the man's favourite expression. It almost seemed as though he was going to speak up; to accuse us all of slighting him. But the only sound was that of our breaths, slow and regular, and Itzpapalotl's claws raking the stone to the rhythm of some unheard hymn.

  Quenami placed himself over the opening in the chest, Acamapichtli near the crotch, and I at the head, over the blood-filled mouth.

  "We leave this earth

  This world of jade and flowers

  The quetzal feathers, the silver

  Down into the darkness we must go…"

  The words that came to me were the ones I had spoken to the She-Snake a lifetime ago, and they were out of my mouth before I could call them back.

  "Let the Revered Speaker be no exception."

  I bit my lip, but it was too late. Quenami hissed, his gaze narrowing in my direction, but he couldn't speak for fear of breaking the ritual.

  I went on regardless, less assured. I hadn't thought it was possible, but I was shaking as hard as if Itzpapalotl had been looking at me with the full force of Her gaze.

  "But some return

  With sunlight shining on them

  With moonlight and starlight to show the way

  Some return, some go back home

  To the three-legged hearth, to Old Man Fire's face

  And the song of maidens, and the laughter of children…"

  I knelt and pressed my lips against the dough. It was cool, like something that had rested in the shade for far too long, with the faint, acrid taste of rot. I was vaguely aware of Quenami and Acamapichtli getting ready for the rest of the ritual, for giving the body life, and tying the soul back to it, but even that faded away, as the dough breathed back into me, and harsh light flooded the chamber, until the underground room seemed but a memory.

  Over me towered the round, grinning face of Tonatiuh the Fifth Sun – bloodied tongue lolling out, His red hair framed by the signs of the calendar, giant stone glyphs arrayed around Him like a crown. His gaze, His endlessly burning gaze, rested on me, and I slowly became aware that I held Tizoc-tzin's soul in my arms.

  It was small and misshapen, like the body, and the light of the Fifth Sun made it seem transparent, as if it would wash it out of existence at any moment.

  Somewhere beyond me was Acamapichtli, carrying the living body. Quenami stood in the centre, waiting for us. "Now, Acatl."

  I walked, or flew, to him, and so did Acamapichtli, and we were as one. They were pressing against me, Quenami with his insufferable arrogance and conviction that the universe owed him everything, and Acamapichtli, already thinking of ways to turn the situation to his advantage. There was an over-ambitious priest in his temple that he needed to get rid of, and this would be the perfect opportunity…

  And Tizoc-tzin.

  Small and pathetic and made of fears, of envy, of an uncontrollable ambition that had, as Teomitl had said, eaten him alive. I sought for a man, cowering behind that mask, and could find nothing. No face, no heart. Doubts and fears and suspicion, was this the man we had raised as Revered Speaker? No wonder Itzpapalotl was still waiting, waiting for the Empire to fall, for Her mistress to be free. There was no other place he could take us, he and Quenami and Acamapichtli, all working for their own gain.

  Something was wrong. Something…

  They were calling my name from far away, and I still held the soul clutched tightly in my grasp, in the Fifth Sun's light, a light that was growing in intensity, promising the heat of the desert, the scouring touch of pyres. What was I thinking? It was the Fifth World at stake. Surely I could force myself to–

  But I couldn't. Here, in this time, in this place, in the heart of our strength, no lies were left. I couldn't be one with the other priests, for they were my enemies, and I couldn't bring Tizoc-tzin back, for I had despised him beyond words when he had been alive.

 
I thought of Ceyaxochitl, making her slow way into darkness. It wasn't fair. Why was Tizoc-tzin – as unworthy of an exception as they came – chosen to be lifted out of death, while she remained in Mictlan? Why did he get to have everything he wanted, in spite of all the damage he had done, all the lives he had carelessly spent, from Ceyaxochitl's to Echichilli's?

  Why?

  I couldn't.

  "Acatl!"

  I–

  Surely there had to be a way, something I could do. I tried to release Tizoc-tzin's soul, but it wouldn't budge. I tried going to Quenami and felt everything that separated us, every reason I despised him, he who had intrigued and schemed and thrown me into jail and almost executed me. I tried going to Acamapichtli, and saw his power-games and how little he cared about human life, that he would sacrifice anyone and anything standing between him and what he wanted, including my own brother. And I couldn't forgive either of them, or even claim to understand their acts.