by Sean Wallace
“I cannot be blamed for whatever happened to Ralil,” she said.
“The man is dead. And you are a suspect in his murder.”
“If Ralil is dead, good riddance.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No,” she said. She looked me with burning hatred. “Go away, Uzume. I told you, I have no need to make your city fall.”
Pochtli despised us. Ahuatl had shown her mercy, and yet she dared to scorn us. She truly hated Ahuatl, she was happy that Ralil was dead, and she seemed quite capable of killing him. She had gone to the temple often enough to know its layout. She had access to obsidian blades in the nearby market. The knife-makers wouldn’t remember her.
I left, determined to bring her to justice.
From Pochtli’s house, I stopped to barter a maize cake from a shop, and ate it on the way back to the temple. In the sacred precincts, I interrogated every man, woman and child I could find – the servants, the priests, the maidens. They all knew that the War-God’s vessel was dead, and they were frightened.
But none of them had seen Pochtli enter the precincts the day before.
Frustrated, I sat alone in a deserted courtyard to listen to the priests sing. They were teaching the sacred hymns, and the slow, measured rhythm of their verses lulled me into a trance.
I needed a witness to the crime, but the only witness I had was the War-God Himself. The thought frightened me; one did not summon a god with impunity, and our supreme god least of all. I was not keen on reminding the War-God of my existence, and my failure as a warrior.
Once, I had worn an elaborately embroidered cotton tunic, and a warrior’s feather-headdress. At the Festival of Warriors, I garbed myself in jaguar skins, and went to the Great Plaza to join my regiment.
A maiden of the temple stepped forward to join me, wearing a ceremonial skirt with a pattern of reeds, and together we moved to the rhythm of the Dance of Serpents.
Now I wore a loincloth of cactus fibers, and I was alone.
I gripped the pendant Mixtal had given me so hard it bit into my skin, and my eyes filled with tears.
With difficulty, I composed myself, and the drone of the prayers washed over me.
“Lord, whose blood, freely given in sacrifice, renews our covenant, I call you. I have something that belongs to you.” I lifted Mixtal’s gold pendant so that it caught the light of the sun.
Only priests are allowed to summon the War-God, and so I dedicated my prayer to the God of Skirmishes. Mixtal.
The prayers of the priests receded, and silence flowed over me. I heard the faint cries of warriors launching themselves into battle, the low moans of enemies dying. The air smelled of freshly spilled blood. Mixtal was coming.
The God of Skirmishes coalesced and stood in the courtyard as if he had always been there, standing above me, watching me weep. He was tall, with bronzed skin, and he shone with a radiance that hurt my eyes and set my heart aflame. I wanted so much to be in his place.
“Uzume,” he said. In his voice were the horns of battle.
I stood and bowed low. “Lord.”
“Why have you called me?” he asked.
“I must request a favor, Lord.”
The God of Skirmishes laughed. “You are not worthy.”
His contempt nearly overpowered me; I fought the urge to abase myself before him, to beg for mercy, though I knew he had none to give. “Sacrilege has been committed in the sacred precincts. A man was murdered, and the War-God sent back to the heavens before his time.”
“Indeed,” said Mixtal. His eyes were filled with anger; he toyed with an obsidian knife as if I were the murderer to be brought to justice.
“I need to speak with Him.”
“The War God has no time for you.” The eyes of the God of Skirmishes were remote, expressionless. Mixtal remembered me, but I no longer meant anything to him. It should not have hurt me so much, to be unloved by the gods, but Pochtli’s voice rang in my head: a god who cares too little for his people, and too much for conquered land.
I shook it off. I did not need the gods to love me; I needed them to be strong for Ahuatl. “If the War-God will not heed my words, then Ahuatl will fall,” I said. “Whoever killed Him can kill again, and again. If this murderer is not stopped, the War-God could be kept from Ahuatl for centuries, until we have forgotten His very name.”
The god did not move. At length he bowed his head a fraction. “I will speak to Him.” And with that, he vanished.
I waited. The absence of the god was a welcome relief. I had not understood how overpowering he would be, how the mere sound of his voice would make me want to weep.
And then the War-God came. The courtyard was flooded with light, and a great shadow took shape at the heart of the radiance. I fell to my knees and bowed until my head touched the ground. I could not look at Him.
“Rise, my child,” said the God of War. His voice was kind, unlike Mixtal’s, yet it was heavy with the shout of warriors, the clash of swords on the battlefield, the cries of sacrifices on the altar as their blood spilled forth. It was more than I could bear.
With difficulty, I rose to my knees, averting my eyes. “My Lord, supreme above gods,” I gasped.
“Behold Me,” He said.
I raised my eyes. The War-God had both hands extended, as if in a blessing. He had the face of all His incarnations, of all the people we had conquered for Him. He wore a quetzal-feather headdress, and a tunic of imperial turquoise.
“Lord,” I said. “Who works to bring the city down?”
“No one threatens Ahuatl,” the War-God said.
“But someone killed your vessel,” I said, confused. The god’s voice echoed endlessly in my mind.
“It is of no consequence,” said the War-God. “Always, I fall down to earth; always, I spill my blood to renew Our covenant. I cannot die. Do you doubt Me, Uzume?” His eyes, brimming with compassion, saw through my piety.
I shrivelled, as every petty thought in my head was exposed; from the moment I had accepted Chamatl’s directive, I had been thinking not of Ahuatl’s glory, but of my own ascension to godhood. It was not for the city I wanted to solve this crime, but for myself. A true warrior would have thought nothing of reward. I had again disgraced myself.
“No,” I whispered, knowing I could not be forgiven for my failures. “I do not doubt You, my Lord.”
He extended a hand over my head. “Go with my blessing, Uzume.” The War-God gave me a look of pity, a look that absolved me of all guilt and shame, and then He vanished.
I sat paralyzed by disbelief, a peculiar feeling rising through me, suffusing me with warmth.
Though I had done nothing to deserve it, I had been forgiven, and it filled me with joy. A joy that should not have been. Mixtal, a lesser god, had treated me with contempt, as was his nature, yet the very God of War had shown pity. I knew, then, that something had gone terribly wrong with the protector of Ahuatl. He had become human.
After a long search of the sacred precincts, I found what I was looking for secreted deep in a midden not far from where Ralil had been killed. Filthy, it lay in my hand in seven pieces: bones that told their own story.
Chamatl was at his worship, piercing his earlobes with thorns. By the time he had finished offering blood to the War-God, I had recovered sufficiently from my interview with the two gods to present a blank face to him. But inwardly, I still shook, remembering the War-God’s parting gaze.
Chamatl’s eyebrows rose. “Uzume? I had not expected you so soon.”
His face was painted the black of dried blood. It was unsettling. “I know who killed Ralil,” I said.
“Indeed?” Chamatl’s face was a careful blank.
I held out the fragments of the sacrificial flute, stained with dirt and Ralil’s blood. “You hid them well, but not well enough.”
Chamatl played it well; his tone was quiet, reasonable. “What are you talking about, Uzume?”
“Everything was done according to ritual,” I said,
my voice shaking. “You missed nothing.”
“I did nothing.”
“You did more than enough, Chamatl. Ralil played the flute in honor of the gods, you said the prayers, and then you cut him open. And Ralil ascended. Half-man, half-god.”
“What makes you think I did this?”
“The tune,” I said. “Only the high priest and the vessel of the War-God know the sacred song. Only you have the skill to make the sacrifice.”
Chamatl would not meet my gaze.
I pressed him. “I will take this before the Emperor. I will tell him of your sacrilege.”
At last, Chamatl said, “It’s not easy to open a man’s chest when there are no priests to hold him down. Even drugged, he struggled, and the cuts were not as clean as I could have wished.” He spoke of this as he would have spoken about the weather.
“I saw the War-God,” I said. “He pitied me. The War-God pitied me for wasting my life. You have tainted Him with Ralil’s humanity.” I had not dared believe that I could be right, that a high priest would commit sacrilege, but the determined look on Chamatl’s face made me furious. “What have you done to us, Chamatl?”
“I did what needed to be done,” said Chamatl. “I made Him human. There is a part of Ralil in Him now that will never go away.”
“And Ahuatl will fall,” I spat. “That was why Ralil was so glad to be sacrificed: he would make our gods weaker.”
“You are wrong about Ralil,” Chamatl said. “Before he was taken by the God, he spent five years serving Ahuatl. He came to appreciate the unity we have brought to the squabbling tribes of the world. He believed in an Ahuatlan empire. An empire of equals. He wanted to change things.”
“Are you happy, Chamatl, now that things have changed?”
“War cannot hold an empire together,” he said. “It is time for the War-God to become something else.”
“He is a God of War,” I snapped, reminded of Pochtli’s words. “We need a strong, merciless god who can guide us into battle.”
“Do we?” Chamatl said. “In other lands they have gods who do not endlessly demand blood, who encourage their people to live in peace.”
“Your books have poisoned you,” I said. “You are a priest of the War-God. Don’t you see what you have taken from us?”
“Things had to change,” Chamatl said. “We built Ahuatl on hatred, but nothing can last on those foundations. The age of conquest is gone, and merciful wisdom will serve us better now. We need a society of equals. If we have to spill more blood to mark our covenant, let it be the blood of the priests in their daily devotions, and the voluntary ascension of the sacred vessels.”
I looked at him, at his eyes that shone with a cold certainty, and felt only anger. “Love? Caring? You lie to yourself, Chamatl. You feel nothing. Ralil existed only because he did your bidding. Pochtli is an inconvenience that must be removed.”
“Do you care for her?” Chamatl asked.
That made me pause. I remembered Pochtli, her endless, sterile hatred of what we were. “No,” I said at last, remembering how bitterness had filled her until it overwhelmed everything else. “But I pity her. She is blind.”
“So are you,” Chamatl said sadly.
“I would rather be blind than set myself up as the champion of compassion, and yet have none. I, at least, act according to my beliefs.”
Chamatl’s eyes shone with anger. “And tell me, Uzume, what is it that you believe?”
I said slowly, “That a warrior must lay down his life for the city if need be. That we must not think of sacrifices or rewards, but serve Ahuatl as best as we can.”
“But you,” Chamatl said, “have not fought battles for a long time.”
“No,” I said.
“Tell me.” Chamatl spoke softly. “What have you achieved all those years, hating yourself ?”
Strong words were on the tip of my tongue, begging to be flung in his face. And then I remembered Pochtli’s hatred. I remembered Mixtal’s distant eyes, the way they had wounded me like a knife stab. I remembered the War-God’s gaze, how it had filled me with warmth, and I held back my outburst. “No,” I said. “No.”
I had achieved nothing with my life. On the maize fields, I had done nothing but dream of what I could not have. Like Pochtli, I had let myself become consumed with bitterness. Hatred achieves nothing.
“Ahuatl will not fall,” I cried. “We are strong.”
Chamatl did not answer. He was watching me, his face a mask, but I thought I could see, far underneath, the glimmer of compassion – the compassion he’d given to his god.
I hid my face in my hands, and let the memory of battles wash over me, but all I could see was the War-God’s last gaze, the pity that had seared me to the core.
Chamatl said softly, “Let them lay this at Pochtli’s door, Uzume. You will have your godhood, your ascension into the heavens. Only I can ensure this. The Emperor will not condone the sacrifice of a failed warrior unless I convince him otherwise.” For the first time, there was despair in his voice. “Don’t you see, Uzume? If we do not change, we will fall.”
Gods take me, I saw it all too well. We were as strong as I had been, closed around a core of hatred. We were strong until the day something came to shatter our beliefs, and nothing was left to sustain us. “I will not help you do this,” I said.
“You have no choice.”
He was lying. The damage could yet be undone. The priests, if apprised of Chamatl’s actions, could find a way to return the inhumanity of the War-God.
Did I wish for such a return?
I thought of Mixtal’s remote gaze, which had showed no friendship, no pity. I thought of Ahuatl and the empire. Chamatl offered us a chance to build something truly great, and who was I to stand in the way?
I clung to the only thing that still made sense to me. “I know one thing,” I said. “Whatever else happens, I will not let you sacrifice Pochtli for your vision. She is innocent.”
“Innocent?” he said. “She would topple us all, given the chance.”
“As would many others. You would kill her because she voices her opinion? Is that the foundation for your empire of equals?”
“You are not worthy to judge me,” Chamatl snapped.
“You asked me to investigate,” I said, thrusting the bloody fragments of the flute into his hands. “You asked me to choose. Let the War-God choose what is best for us. Let Him guide us, as He has always done. I will not stand in your way. But neither will I lie for you.”
“What will you tell the Emperor?”
“I will admit failure, and go back to my maize fields,” I said.
“You would disgrace yourself a second time?”
“Sometimes,” I said, “the hardest thing is to know your own worth. I am not worthy of ascending amongst the gods.”
Chamatl smiled bitterly. “A true warrior, Uzume. Proud and unbending to the end.”
“No,” I said, but I was still glad that he would call me a warrior. What a fool I was.
Chamatl shook his head sadly. “Your kind was always—”
“My kind.” I sighed. “My kind is dead. The War-God’s word is law among us, and you have made Him human. If He will no longer lead us into war, Ahuatl will not need warriors. In twenty years, hardly anyone will remember us.”
“It needed to be done.”
“Perhaps,” I said.
I left Chamatl standing with the pieces of the broken flute in his hands, and as I exited the sacred precincts, I thought of our great battles, fading to meaningless murals within hidden temples. I thought of the new age that I had just helped usher in.
The sun was setting behind the platform of the pyramid, and the whole city of Ahuatl was wreathed in red light, from the stone temples to the tall adobe homes of the warriors, from the outer markets to the maize fields on the outskirts of the city. And it seemed to me, looking at the red orb sinking below the horizon, that it was like a great eye closing – but only to open in the morning, on a da
y more glorious than before.
A SIEGE OF CRANES
Benjamin Rosenbaum
The land around Marish was full of the green stalks of sunflowers: tall as men, with bold yellow faces. Their broad leaves were stained black with blood.
The rustling came again, and Marish squatted down on aching legs to watch. A hedgehog pushed its nose through the stalks. It sniffed in both directions.
Hunger dug at Marish’s stomach like the point of a stick. He hadn’t eaten for three days, not since returning to the crushed and blackened ruins of his house.
The hedgehog bustled through the stalks on to the trail, across the ash, across the trampled corpses of flowers. Marish waited until it was well clear of the stalks before he jumped. He landed with one foot before its nose and one foot behind its tail. The hedgehog, as hedgehogs will, rolled itself into a ball, spines out.
His house: crushed like an egg, smoking, the straw floor soaked with blood. He’d stood there with a trapped rabbit in his hand, alone in the awful silence. Forced himself to call for his wife Temur and his daughter Asza, his voice too loud and too flat. He’d dropped the rabbit somewhere in his haste, running to follow the blackened trail of devastation.
Running for three days, drinking from puddles, sleeping in the sunflowers when he couldn’t stay awake.
Marish held his knifepoint above the hedgehog. They gave wishes, sometimes, in tales. “Speak, if you can,” he said, “and bid me don’t kill you. Grant me a wish! Elsewise, I’ll have you for a dinner.”
Nothing from the hedgehog, or perhaps a twitch.
Marish drove his knife through it and it thrashed, spraying more blood on the bloodstained flowers.
Too tired to light a fire, he ate it raw.
On that trail of tortured earth, wide enough for twenty horses, among the burnt and flattened flowers, Marish found a little doll of rags, the size of a child’s hand.
It was one of the ones Maghd the mad girl made, and offered up, begging for stew meat, or wheedling for old bread behind Lezur’s bakery. He’d given her a coin for one, once.
“Wherecome you’re giving that sow our good coins?” Temur had cried, her bright eyes flashing, her soft lips pulled into a sneer. None in Ilmak Dale would let a mad girl come near a hearth, and some spit when they passed her. “Bag-Maghd’s good for holding one thing only,” Fazt would call out and they’d laugh their way into the alehouse. Marish laughing too, stopping only when he looked back at her.