Servant of the Underworld

by Aliette de Bodard

  Nothing further had happened. Everyone, High Priest Acamapichtli included, had gone to sleep. Lucky men. Fatigue was making my head light, and I had some trouble focusing on the objects Teomitl and I had spread on the ground: three spears with shell-grips, a batch of arrows still in their quiver, and two macuahitl swords, wooden clubs studded with razor-sharp obsidian shards. Everything shone, faintly, with the hues of underworld magic: a sickly light that seemed to diminish all it touched.

  "I have a sword," Teomitl said, faintly annoyed. "A good one." His sword was well-made, but it would not be enough against the supernatural.

  "You'll need one of those," I said, pointing to the swords on the ground. "To fight the beast. What do you know about beasts of shadow?"

  A quick, fluid shrug. "Not much. They live on the eighth level of Mictlan. You need a jade bead to placate them."

  I nodded. "They're made of shadows, of the darkness that lay over the world in the very first days. Jade will slow them down but not stop them. And they feast on human hearts."

  Teomitl nodded. "Many things do."

  "Indeed." The gods, the Celestial Women. Nothing was as precious as blood; and the most precious thing of all was the heart, which gathered all the blood and distributed it around the body.

  "The beasts hate light," I said, curtly, picking up one of the sturdiest swords and hefting it. A faint touch of Mictlan's magic spread to my arm, stilling the blood in my veins, and numbing my skin. "Starlight won't bother them much, but moonlight or sunlight will weaken them. Sunrise might even destroy them."

  "How do you kill them?" Teomitl asked.

  "This sword has magical obsidian: Lord Death's gift to us. Stab their chest, and they'll die like any animal." I handed it to him. What I didn't say was that they were fierce fighters, more than a match for both of us.

  "Hmm," Teomitl said. He was tense again, impatient to move on.

  We repaired to one of the furthest rooms, after warning Ichtaca not to disturb us. The room was a simple, subdued affair, its only furniture a handful of wicker chests, its walls blank save for a spider-and-owl frieze running at head height. A small, discreet limestone altar was at the back, Mictlantecuhtli's skull symbol carved in its centre.

  I knelt on the floor, feeling the coldness of the beaten earth through my bare knees. Before me, a wicker cage held a rabbit and a barn owl: a small bird with the sharp eyes of a hunter, blinking in the torchlight. On my left was a jade replica of a human heart, in exquisite detail. On my right was a jade plate, representing the journey of the soul through Mictlan, from the crossing of the River of Souls on the first level, to the ninth and final level, the Throne of Mictlantecuhtli, God of the Dead.

  I slit the throat of the rabbit with one of my obsidian knives, and carefully drew a quincunx on the floor: the four-armed cross with its fifth central point.

  "Whatever happens, don't move," I said to Teomitl. He stood outside that quincunx, outside the underworld's zone of influence. "And don't step over the line."

  He shrugged arrogantly. Who are you taking me for? he seemed to say.

  Already, I regretted my decision to bring him with me. But I wasn't about to go back on my word.

  "In darkness they dwell

  In darkness they feast

  They eat, they consume their preys…"

  I reached for the owl and swiftly opened up its chest in a shower of blood. I retrieved its heart, and laid it on the jade plate: between the seventh and eighth level of the underworld, over a crude drawing of a shadowy beast. Blood seeped onto the plate, spread outwards like a scarlet flower opening its petals.

  "In darkness they feast

  They eat, they consume their preys

  All save one…"

  Shadows gathered around the room, pooled to fill the quincunx, until I knelt in absolute darkness. A wet, heavy breath blew down my neck: the breath of a huge animal, waiting for its food.

  I didn't falter. I knew all too well the cost of failure. Death, if I was lucky; utter oblivion if I wasn't.

  "All save one One is lost

  One runs under the light

  Under the light of stars and moons

  One is lost…"

  I laid the tip of my obsidian knife against the jade heart, so that the remains of the owl's blood seeped into the stone. The jade grew darker, but it pulsed now, pulsed like a living heart.

  "A jade heart to find the eater of hearts

  Who feasts on the living

  Under the light of stars and moons

  He comes to Mictlan, the Place of Fear, the Place of Death A jade heart to find the eater of hearts."

  The jade heart went completely black. I reached out to enfold it in my hands, ignoring the searing pain that spread from the stone into my skin, and felt it beat under my fingers: a slow, regular rhythm that started in the rightmost ventricle and moved upwards, into my arm.

  Slowly, carefully, I rose, keeping the heart in the same position. The beat didn't falter.

  The shadows were gradually dispelled by torchlight; I could see Teomitl's shocked face, trying to reassemble itself into its usual haughty mask – and the body of the owl, blood pooling under it, the red flower blossoming on the jade plate.

  Still standing within my quincunx, I turned to face each direction in turn. When I turned north, east or west, the beat of the jade heart went completely still. But when I faced south, towards the Itzapalapan causeway, the heart sprang to life under my fingers.

  It had worked, then; and the beast we sought was somewhere in that direction.

  Teomitl insisted on bringing a purse filled with medicinal herbs, as well as his new sword. He kept rubbing the weapon, as if its touch were subtly wrong. I couldn't blame him: the obsidian shards embedded in the wood were charged with enough magic to send anyone into oblivion. The veil hanging around him seemed to be weaker around the sword, as if the magics were fighting one another, but it did not appear to be serious – for which I was eternally grateful.

  As we exited the temple and headed southwest towards the district of Moyotlan, I asked, "You do know about the magic?"

  He looked puzzled. "Which magic?"

  "Around you?"

  The way Teomitl attempted to look at his arms and legs convinced me he hadn't known. But he didn't look happy about it: his face darkened, a change of mood that was visible even in the wavering light of his torch.

  "A protective spell some fool laid on me without my consent," he muttered, darkly. "Nothing worth worrying about."

  I did wonder, though: it was powerful magic, and I wasn't entirely sure how it would withstand the assaults of a beast of shadows – some spells just shattered, crippling the people on whom they'd been laid. "You'd better stay back," I said.

  Teomitl shook his head and didn't answer.

  Under my fingers, the heart beat at its steady rhythm as we ran through the deserted streets. The grand houses became smaller, turning from adobe to mud, the flat roofs replaced by high, tapered ones painted with abstract patterns; finally turning into the humble mud dwellings of peasants, ringed by fields of maize. We were almost at the lake shore.

  Teomitl's hands held the torch steady as we ran out of the city altogether, and found ourselves in the midst of dried maize husks, crunching under our feet.

  I turned the heart right and left; and it beat again, in the direction of a group of small, squat islands on the edge of the lake.

  Teomitl saw the way I faced, and groaned. "Oh no. Not the Floating Gardens."

  The chinamitls, or Floating Gardens, were artificial islands reclaimed from the lake. A mass of stones and clay, dumped at the bottom of the lake, served as a support for muddy, fertile earth. Over the years, the Floating Gardens had grown more numerous as well as closer to each other, and now formed a district of their own: a grid of fields separated by small canals, another city on the water.

  "We need a boat," Teomitl was saying, his torch wavering left and right. "There." He all but ran to a small reed boat, moored to the b
ank ahead of us. "Let's take this one."

  "It's not ours," I said, shocked. "At least ask for permission."

  His eyes were wide in the torchlight. "Why?" he asked. "We'll bring it back."

  "Before dawn?" I asked. "I can't guarantee that, and neither can you." A boat like that would be a family's sole means of transport, the only way to gather fish from the lake, to carry merchandise to the marketplace. To wake up in the morning, and discover it lost, to think it stolen… that would truly be disastrous. I scanned the banks: close by was the dark shape of a hut, its coloured thatch roof reflecting the torchlight. "Let's warn them."

  "Acatl-tzin." Teomitl's voice shook on the verge of exasperation. "A life is at stake, and you worry about peasants?"

  My own parents had been peasants. I had grown up in fields much like those we were walking in; and the weak were so easily overlooked in the scheme of things. Teomitl's attitude, while not unexpected, disappointed me. I'd hoped for more – intelligence? Compassion? "That boat is a family's living," I said, more sharply than I'd intended to. "I won't trample lives to save just one."

  "But," Teomitl said, shaking his head, "you said you were looking for Priestess Eleuia…"

  I was already walking towards the hut. With all the noise we were making, they would no doubt be awake.

  A man dressed in a simple loincloth stood on the threshold of the dwelling, holding a trembling torch in his hand.

  "We need to borrow your boat," I said.

  His eyes focused on me, on my grey cloak, its colour uncertain in starlight, on the streaks of makeup that marked my face. I could have been anyone to him. But he saw that I was armed.

  "Take what you need," he said. "But don't…" A sweeping gesture with his hands, encompassing the hut and those sleeping within.

  "Oh, for the Duality's sake," Teomitl said. He threw something in the air. It glittered as it fell, and landed with the harsh sound of metal striking metal. "Buy a new boat with that, if we damage it. Come on, Acatltzin. Let's go."

  The man bent down to pick up Teomitl's offering: quills of gold, tied together at the end, enough to ensure two months' living, if not more. Tossed casually into the mud, as if they were worth nothing at all: the quintessential warrior gesture. Some student. Obedience, like humility, was a foreign notion to him.

  "Teomitl," I said as he untied the boat: an interesting feat, since he had one hand taken by his torch. "I thought I'd made things clear. You follow my lead."

  He raised his gaze, briefly, to the sky. "You'd have stayed for hours arguing with the man."

  "No," I said, stung. I knew how to handle such situations. "I would merely have eased things a little."

  "Money eases things wonderfully," Teomitl said. He gestured for me to climb aboard.

  The boat rocked as I stepped into it. My body, remembering gestures from more than twenty years ago, adjusted itself to the motion.

  "Money won't buy him a better life," I said.

  "No, but it will make the next months easier." Teomitl held out his torch to me, and I took it in my free hand, without thinking. "I'll row."

  I watched him manoeuvre the boat into the canal, shifting my weight from leg to leg to compensate for the rocking. He had this natural authority, I guessed: something that made him hard to ignore when he gave you a command.

  He also, quite obviously, had never rowed in his life. The boat spun to and fro in a haphazard fashion, and the jade heart in my right hand shifted from beating to still to beating again, as he directed us towards the nearest Floating Garden.

  "Which one?" he asked.

  "I have no idea," I said, annoyed, more because of the natural, insidious way he'd taken charge than because of his rowing. "If you kept us on course, I'd have an easier time."

  "Not my fault," Teomitl snapped. "The thing won't stay still."

  "It's a boat. They rarely stay still, The Duality curse you! Where were you raised? In the mountains?" Tenochtitlan was built on an island; every street doubled as a canal, and it was almost impossible for a boy to grow up without ever seeing a boat.

  In the unsteady light, I felt his exasperation more than I saw it. "I'm doing my best, Tlaloc blind you! I'm just not used to this contraption."

  The least that could be said. I sighed; and instead of holding the jade heart steadily in front of me, attempted to keep it on an even orientation. Not obvious, with only the starlight to go by. It kept becoming motionless without warning; but slowly, step by step, I managed to direct Teomitl to one of the furthest islands.

  The boat ran aground in a spectacular fashion, scattering dried, slashing pieces of reeds over my legs. Teomitl leapt on the shore and snatched the torch from me. He stared at me, once more daring me to mock him.

  I wasn't in a mood to reproach him, for the heartbeat under my fingers was faster than it had been on shore. "It's close," I whispered.

  "Where?" Teomitl asked.

  "On this island." I suddenly wondered why we were whispering. A beast of shadows would have hearing much keener than that of any jaguar on the prowl, and a sense of smell to match. It would sense me, a priest for the Dead, as it would sense the heart I carried in my hands. "Come."

  This Floating Garden was, like most of them, a huge maize field. Dry husks crackled under my sandals, no

  matter how hard I strove to be silent.

  The torchlight illuminated the small maize plants, poking out of the ground: it was the end of the dry season, and the maize had barely been replanted. In the night, the field seemed eerily desolate: every insect song echoed as if in the Great Temple, and every maize sapling rustle made me startle, and wonder if the beast wasn't going to leap at us.

  The heartbeat grew faster still as we approached the hut at the end of the Floating Garden.

  "In there?" Teomitl asked. "Can't we draw it out?"

  I wished we could. "It's too canny for that. We'd just be wasting our time."

  "I see," Teomitl said. "What an adventure." He didn't sound keen. I didn't feel so enthusiastic either. Inside the hut, we would have neither starlight nor moonlight, and fighting by torchlight was messy and ineffective. I looked up at the sky. The moon would rise soon, but we would be inside while it climbed into the sky. I didn't like that, but there wasn't much of a choice.

  The heart went wild as I crossed the threshold. My hand dropped to the largest of my obsidian knives, and drew it from its sheath.

  Nothing. No beast, leaping from the darkness to swipe at my chest. I released my hold on the knife; the hollow feeling in my stomach receded.

  Teomitl stood on the threshold, his torch briefly illuminating the contents of the hut: walls of wattle-and-daub, embers dying on the hearth. And three bodies, face down on the ground, the sickening smell of rot and spilled entrails underlying that of churned mud.

  The beat of the jade heart was frantic now, as if it didn't know where to start pointing.

  I knelt by one of the bodies, lifted it to the wavering light: a man, his chest slashed open, and the heart missing. Of course. The beast of shadows had feasted on its preferred meal.

  The other corpses were much the same, save that one of them was a woman. She could have been Eleuia. But I soon disabused myself: this woman was older than thirty-five, and wearing a rough cactusfibre blouse and skirts, nothing like the clothes a priestess of high rank would have chosen.

  "Acatl-tzin," Teomitl said, sharply. "There's something outside."

  The heart was still madly beating, but it was useless at such close quarters. The beast could be anywhere. I rose from my crouch, drawing one of my three obsidian knives from its sheath.

  "Stay where you are," I said.

  A shadow passed across the threshold, knocking Teomitl off-balance. The torch fell: a brief, fiery arc before it was utterly extinguished. And in the interval before I gained my night vision, something huge bore me to the ground. Claws scrabbled at the clasp of my cloak – moving downwards, aiming for my heart.

  NINE

  Shadows and Summoner
s

  I tried to roll aside, but the beast was too heavy. It breathed into my face the nauseous smell of rotting bodies, of pus and bleeding wounds. I wanted to retch. But I couldn't. I was pinned to the ground, my lungs all but crushed by the weight on my chest.

  I'd dropped the jade heart, but my hand was still clenched around the obsidian knife. I tried to raise it, but the beast was blocking me. Its claws had shredded my cloak and were now digging into my chest, where the jade pendant was obviously giving it some trouble.