Master of the House of Darts

by Aliette de Bodard

  TWENTY-THREE

  Blessings of Mictlan

  I took a swipe at the first ahuizotl, sending it leaping back a few paces – but not slowing it down, as its legs bunched up for another assault.

  I'd never liked the things – they might have been Teomitl's, but they were creepy, and that was saying a lot, since I knew most of the beasts that haunted each level of the underworld. But never mind that, my goal wasn't to kill them – with the power that coursed through Coatl, he could surely summon more with a mere snap of his fingers – but to complete the circle, and open the gate into Mictlan.

  The ahuizotl leapt again – I ducked, feeling clumsy next to its fluid grace. Power shimmered in the air around me – and over me reared a huge shadow. I guessed that Nezahual-tzin was calling on his patron god, the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl; I could also guess that Neutemoc, Mihmatini, Acamapichtli and Cozolli would be fighting the rush of ahuizotls. What I needed was…

  I evaded another leap of the ahuizotl – the Duality curse me, the thing was fast – and glanced around the courtyard. The blood we'd already spread shone in the sunlight, bunched up in three bundles, nowhere near the circle we needed.

  What we needed was…

  A distraction.

  I waved my knife at the ahuizotl – catching its attention, as well as that of two of its neighbours. As my gaze roved, I caught bits and pieces of the scene, what looked like Palli's flailing arms as he waved an obsidian dagger, and Matlaelel's face, as pale as muddy milk. Then I was diving for the entrance of the courtyard, but more of the beasts were flowing up, barring my passage, and at the last moment I altered my trajectory, crashing into the entrance-curtain. The bells danced above me, their voices shrill and unpleasant; a prelude to the rough, jarring sound the three ahuizotls made as they tore through the cotton.

  Having little choice, I retreated deeper into the shadows, holding my knife like a shield.

  The room smelled of copal incense and food gone stale – hints of cold maize porridge, of amaranth seeds and the faint memory of spices. And I knew there had been someone – two women. "I apologise, but–"

  A hiss came from the darkened centre. I steadied myself, preparing for the onslaught of the water-beasts – and met the glowing eyes of Chantico, She Who Dwelled in the House. Her hands wrapped around live coals, daring me to steal Her things.

  A fresco. It was only a fresco. The goddess couldn't be here. "Get out!"

  Too late. The ahuizotls were coming – one headed straight for me, and two others for the women. I couldn't spread myself so thin – it was all I could do to fend off one, struggling to stab the hand which terminated its tail – it leapt, bearing me down, and I was on the floor, squirming, while the hand swept down, aiming straight for my eyes – I raised the knife, whispering a prayer to Lord Death, and sank it to the hilt into the palm of the hand.

  I'd expected blood, but of course nothing like this flowed – only weak ichor, as thin and as brackish as marsh water. The ahuizotl cried out like a hurt child – the Storm Lord strike me if I was going to fall for that. I raised my knife again, and while it was still wailing, transfixed it between the eyes.

  It dropped like a log, trapping me underneath its corpse. The magic ebbed out of it in a painful tingling rush – the power of Chalchiuhtlicue was as much anathema to me as that of the Storm Lord Her husband, or of the Southern Hummingbird. I lay breathing heavily, struggling to collect myself.

  The women.

  I rolled the corpses of the ahuizotl off me, ignoring the ache in my arms, and stood up, fully expecting to see a pair of water-beasts feeding on corpse.

  Instead, I met the irate eyes of a woman who looked formidable enough to take down the gods. "And the meaning of this is?"

  I pointed to the dead ahuizotl – behind her, her attendant was kneeling in a quincunx glowing with the familiar heat of living blood, and the other two beasts lying dead at its centre. "Sorry. It was the nearest refuge. I thought…"

  I paused then, wrenching my mind into another alignment. My sister was a powerful priestess in her own right, and Xiloxoch had brimmed with the power of her goddess. Why had I thought of those women as defenceless? "I apologise for disturbing you – you'd best stay there. There are people trying to kill each other outside."

  The woman rolled her eyes, in a way that suggested this happened all the time. "Men. We're sealing this place, so I won't say it twice. You'll want to head out."

  I certainly wasn't about to argue. Gingerly, I bowed to her, and walked out of the room – back into sunlight through the torn entrance curtain. I felt a breath at my back, and a hint of something large and angry beneath my feet – before the entrance-curtain fell again.

  The courtyard was a mess: the fountain had been blown to pieces, and the wind was lifting up a cloud of dust that prevented me from seeing much. But magic still glowed within, and I could follow the progress of the circle: it was three quarters complete, its largest missing chunk right behind Coatl's greenish radiance. Not surprising.

  I hefted my knife closer to me – feeling the stretched emptiness of Mictlan gather in my chest, the familiar sense that I'd never breathe again in the Fifth World – and went straight into the dust.

  Shapes moved: moaning faces, flailing limbs, as if I were back within the fever-dream, weighed down by four hundred thousand bodies. I felt the sickness, curled at the edge of my thoughts, questing for a way in. I'd had it once and survived, which gave me an edge, but I couldn't count on this.

  Also, the ahuizotls had to be somewhere, and I certainly didn't have an edge against them.

  I had gone perhaps three paces when I found the first body – blackened by the plague, blood streaming out of its orifices. It was the young offering priest, Matlaelel, the whites of his eyes completely red, blood welling up from under his nails and nipples. His mouth opened – blood had run down from his gums, staining his teeth – and his lips shaped a word I couldn't understand – my name, perhaps? I fought the urge to lay my hands on him, to whisper the litany for the Dead and grant him safe passage into the World Beyond.

  I said the words, regardless – because I was High Priest for the Dead, and it was my province, and because I had dragged him into this, and I owed him at least this.

  "We live on Earth, in the Fifth World,

  Not forever, but a little while…"

  Shadows moved within the murky gloom. I made for the only thing I could see, which was the gaping emptiness within the circle.

  "Acatl-tzin!" Palli's hand on my arm almost made me jerk in surprise.

  He was pale and wan, but more from loss of blood than anything else – and covered in the brackish ichor of wounded ahuizotls. Blood covered his hands, welling up from a dozen cuts.

  "We need to finish the circle," I said. "Coatl–"

  "Nezahual-tzin and your sister are keeping him busy," Palli said grimly.

  Mihmatini? I ought to have known.

  "Fine. Then we're headed for the other side of the courtyard. Can you see it?" I assumed Acamapichtli would be able to take care of his own problems; perhaps a mistake, but he certainly wasn't incapable.

  "Yes, but–" Palli's face was pinched with fear.

  I could have lied, made promises about how the plague couldn't touch him, but I had never had the ruthlessness for that. "We need to close that circle," I said. "Or more people will die. Not only us, but everyone here."

  Palli grimaced, but he nodded. "Let's go."

  As courtyards went, it wasn't a large one – at least, I was sure it hadn't been. As we fumbled around in the dust cloud, it didn't appear so small anymore. The shadows twisted and shifted, and even Palli seemed impossibly far away – I soon lost him, as veil after veil of reddish dust rose to cover everything. A dark silhouette loomed through the fog: a huge snake which had to mark Nezahual-tzin's location. My gaze swept left and right – where were the ahuizotls – surely they hadn't disappeared? But all I saw were the faces, slowly coalescing into focus, distorted with pain, the
ir mouths open in soundless screams – men, women and children, with the shadows of rich headdresses and jewellery.

  I couldn't tell at which point the nagging suspicion at the back of my mind coalesced into certainty as heavy as a stone in my belly – perhaps it was the woman, with the fine line of cuts across her face, or perhaps the child with sticky blood clogging his hair, gathered all in the place of the single wound that had dashed his brains out, or perhaps the dour warrior who looked hauntingly familiar, until I realised he could have been Yayauhqui's father.

  Tlatelolco. The dead of Tlatelolco, weighing us down like stocks on a guilty man's neck. But there hadn't been so many of them – and they were dead, they had been dead for years and years, enough time for their souls to have moved on, found their true rest…

  I'd been wrong, then. This was a plague passed on by the dead, by all the ghosts flittering through the diminished boundaries. It couldn't have existed without what we had done, Quenami, Acamapichtli and I.

  Focus. Focus. Breathe, slowly, calmly – every step I took seemed to be through mud or tar; the faces swam in and out of focus, all crying out for revenge.

  I wasn't a warrior, or a devotee of Huitzilpochtli the Southern Hummingbird. But, in the end, it didn't matter. The god had chosen us, and favoured us, and we had grown and grown, taking over our neighbours. It was sheer survival: everything that lived had to grow, or ossify and die. Nevertheless… I could understand their anger at what had been done to them.

  I could have told them this, but they wouldn't have listened, or understood.

  I walked on. The dust thickened, and every step seemed to cost me. The dead wailed and screamed and pleaded, demanding to be acknowledged – but I closed my ears to their pleas, and went on.

  Ahead, the circle shimmered – broken still. I couldn't see Palli, but the three darker silhouettes shimmering with magic were presumably Mihmatini, Moquihuix-tzin and Nezahual-tzin. I passed them by – a hair's breadth away, and I thought they would turn, or feel me, but they were too engrossed in flinging magic at each other.

  I trudged on – only walking mattered, step after tottering step, ignoring the dead and their twisted faces, ignoring the memory of Matlaelel's blood-filled eyes. When my feet finally met the edge of the circle, it felt like a miracle, like a god's blessing descended to me, who had least deserved it.

  I knelt in the dirt, and rubbed open the previous slash across my palm – there was a slight stinging pain, such as when I made an offering to the gods, and then blood flowed again.

  The faces in the dust hovered closer – it shouldn't have been possible, but they were pressing against me, their mouths opening as if to taste my blood. If they did so – I didn't even want to think about it. Blood was many things, among which an entry point into the body – and the illness, carried through my veins, would surely kill me as it had killed Matlaelel.

  There was no time for finesse – I rubbed at the wound again, feeling it open further, the blood greedily pouring out – and tottered across the circle, trying to seal it shut before the plague faces could touch me – I could feel their foul breath on my skin, smell the dry, musty smell of their approach, like fire-crinkled mummies suddenly springing to life…

  Step after step after step – the circle grew wider and wider, and it was almost complete…

  The woman with the cut-up face was a finger's width away from my bleeding hand. I could see her body now, pulling itself out of the morass of faces, her arms and legs covered in similar wounds, her breasts hacked away and a pulsing mass of blood between her legs….

  Almost there… The words of the hymn welled up as irrepressibly as the blood, spilling out into the Fifth World as the woman's teeth brushed my skin.

  "Above us, below us,

  The heavens, the place of heat,

  Above us, below us,

  The region of the fleshless, the land of mystery…"

  I felt the plague, coursing within my body – the pressure in my veins and arteries, travelling to my heart and liver – my vision blurred and became red, and my body shook, and I was on my knees, struggling to remain standing…

  "The path out of the Fifth World, into the city of the Dead

  The city where the streets are on the left, where the houses have no windows…"

  Dark green light washed across the pattern – starting at the circle and rising like an unstoppable tide as the sounds of battle receded and became a lament for the Dead, and the stretched emptiness of Mictlan expanded, shrivelling my heart a fraction of a moment before the rising tide of blood caused it to burst.

  And then everything went blessedly dark.

  There was dust in my eyes and a gritty taste in my mouth, but the air smelled wrong – too wet and scorching to be that of the underworld. I lay on something hard and unyielding, feeling the Dead passing through me – hearing, like a distant mumble, their endless prayer to Lord Death:

  "Not forever on Earth, but for a little while,

  Even jade crumbles, even gold is crushed,

  Not forever on Earth, but for a little while…"

  Hands held me down – stroking me like a mother stroked her child – there was something wrong with them, but I couldn't remember what…

  Everywhere they touched, fire blazed – not the conflagration of war, but rather that of a funeral pyre, tightening and drying flesh, shrivelling bones. Something impossibly heavy was tightening around my chest, squeezing my lungs until it hurt to breathe – and before the flames, the last touch of the fever on my mind receded, crushed into utter insignificance; there was nothing left but a familiar, stretched emptiness in my bones and sinews.

  I opened eyes gummed with secretions, struggling to form anything from the blurred darkness around me. But I knew, or suspected, what I would be seeing.

  "My Lady. My Lord."

  The hand on my arm had the sharpness of finger bones, and a skeletal face swam in and out of focus – Mictecacihuatl, Lady Death, Her grin the wide one of skulls – and behind Her, looming out of the darkness, Her husband Mictlantecuhtli, fingering the bloody eyes of his necklace.

  "Acatl. What a surprise."

  My vision was returning, little by little – I stood on the dais of bones that marked Their seat of power; below me was a sea of pallid souls, ghostly hands lifting up the offerings that had been buried with them, from sewing tools to toys, from macuahitl swords to fragments of weaving looms. A cold wind blew through them all and lifted up the faint, translucent shapes of bodies to face the gaze of the gods, under which they seemed to shrivel and vanish.

  Mictlan. The deepest level of the underworld – no, wait. If I focused enough, I could hear the sounds of battle, the cries of ahuizotls, and Acamapichtli's sarcastic laughter. "I stand on the boundaries," I whispered.

  The underworld wavered, in and out of focus; the bare outline of the courtyard began to appear again, with the shadowy shapes of ahuizotls leaping onto the beaten earth. I banished it with an effort, to focus on the scene before me – my gods required no less than my full attention.

  "Of course you stand on the boundaries. You always have," Mictecacihuatl said, shaking Her head.

  "I – " Everywhere I turned, I saw only the Dead – an innumerable crowd flowing from the shadows of ruined buildings – the furthest ones mingling together like the waters of some great rivers, their faces receding into featurelessness – they whispered and sang, and prayed to Lord and Lady Death to grant them oblivion, at the very last. "I came with some people–"

  Mihmatini. Nezahual-tzin. Where were they?

  A sound, from Lord Death's throne, echoing amongst the skulls and femurs that made up His chair: laughter, coming from His vestigial lungs, lifting up his prominent rib-cage. "You come here for Our favour?"

  Amongst the massed dead, a space was clearing up – silhouettes flickering in and out of focus, moving like shadows in the background of a fresco. Coatl – no, not Coatl anymore, but a tall, stately man with a feather headdress, and a cloak of turquoise,
who wielded not only a sword, but a flint cutting axe, its blade shimmering with all the colours of oil on water.

  Moquihuix-tzin.

  The scene was, for a single moment, mercilessly clear – it wasn't Nezahual-tzin that Moquihuix-tzin was facing, for the Revered Speaker of Texcoco lay unconscious at the feet of the combatants.

  It was my sister.

  She moved slowly and a touch awkwardly, but somehow she always managed to be there when he struck. She didn't have a sword, but both her hands held daggers – mismatched ones, the one in her left hand small and mundane, looking more like an everyday knife for cutting maize and tomatoes than a real weapon; the other was a longer knife, and a translucent snake curled up from the hilt to the point of the blade, shimmering with the radiance of the Feathered Serpent's magic – she must have picked it up from Nezahual-tzin's body.