Servant of the Underworld

by Aliette de Bodard

  I had been keeping a watch, but had relaxed it on the last leg of our journey. "How would they come here?" I asked.

  "So you're not sure."

  He had some nerve asking me this, after seemingly not caring about staying in his besieged house. "No," I snapped.

  "Can you see?" Neutemoc asked again.

  I was tired, and the last thing I wanted was to draw more of my blood to fuel a spell. But it was clear Neutemoc was going to work at me until I gave in.

  I turned to Ezamahual, Palli, and Neutemoc's slave Tepalotl, who had been watching this in silence. "Can you do a spell of true sight?"

  Palli shrugged. "Not a problem. What are we looking for?"

  "Anything suspicious," I said. I described the creatures as best as I could.

  In the waning light, Ezamahual's face became pale, leached of colours. "They don't sound very friendly," he said.

  Palli was already rummaging in Ezamahual's pack, withdrawing a caged owl and a purse of what looked like dayflower. "Come on," he said. "Let's go."

  Neutemoc said, "Take Tepalotl if you're going far away from the camp. You'll need some kind of protection while you cast those spells." His lips were pursed: clearly he didn't believe in their fighting abilities.

  Neutemoc's slave Tepalotl followed my two priests in silence, leaving both of us at our improvised campsite. Neutemoc and I unpacked the maize flatbreads and the flasks of water, preparing the small meal we would eat. Kneeling in the mud, we looked at each other for a while, the same thought on our minds: could we start a fire here?

  Neutemoc was the first to shake his head. "Too damp," he said. "Unless you have a spell."

  "You don't summon gods for trifles," I said.

  Neutemoc smiled, briefly. "Then we'll just be damp, won't we?"

  Palli, Ezamahual and the slave Tepalotl were walking back towards us. Ezamahual was carrying the limp body of the owl in his hands, and looking puzzled.

  "Nothing," Palli said, curtly, when they reached the camp. "Not a trace of anything magical."

  "Good," Neutemoc said. He inclined his head a fraction. "Thank you."

  I couldn't help feeling relieved. It was one thing to have Ceyaxochitl's assurances that all would be well once we left Tenochtitlan, and another to actually see it happen.

  Palli, Ezamahual and Tepalotl took their share of food, and drew back from us: my two priests at the edge of the camp, talking quietly among themselves, and Neutemoc's slave a bit further, standing guard in the darkness.

  Neutemoc didn't speak for a while. He reached for one of the maize flatbreads, and cradled it in the palm of his hands, staring at the darkening skies.

  "It brings one back," he said at last. "All of this."

  I swallowed a bite of my flatbread. If he was in a talkative mood, I'd be a fool not to draw him out, to understand why someone was threatening him. Although I feared it was going to cost me. So far, I hadn't seen much to explain why he'd behaved in such a spectacularly foolish fashion. "It must have changed in sixteen years."

  "Not that much," Neutemoc said. "Places don't change. People – that's another story." His voice was bitter.

  "Eleuia?" I asked.

  Neutemoc didn't answer for a while. "Let's not bring her up, shall we? We'll disagree. And I wasn't thinking about her."

  He was in a melancholy mood tonight. "About whom, then?" I asked.

  He smiled, a flash of white teeth in the growing darkness. "There was a time when all I wanted was the certainty that I would live until the morrow."

  "War is that way." I felt like an impostor. I'd never been to war, after all.

  Two days ago, Neutemoc would have risen to the bait, taunting me with what I'd failed to accomplish with my life. "Life was simpler, back then," he said.

  "Yes." I thought of my small temple in Coyoacan, of comforting the bereaved, tracking down underworld monsters. Simple things. But life, it seemed, was no longer that simple, either for Neutemoc or for me.

  Neutemoc finished the last of his flatbread, and wiped his hands clean. "Things change. You grow stale, complacent. Sometimes, you deserve your own fall."

  Stale? Yes, stale. His growing indifference to Huei had certainly done little to close the growing breach between them. As for his attempted adultery with Eleuia…

  He went on, "When I first came here with the army, I used to go for walks at night, to think on the following day's battle. One night, I met an old peasant carrying a basket of maize kernels. He asked what I wanted to do with my life. I told him of my dreams – to earn fame and fortune on the battlefield; to have a grand house, and a loving wife, and to move through the Imperial circles."

  The story's familiarity pulled me from my angry thoughts. "And?" I asked, though I suspected where the story was going.

  "He just smiled. 'You will have all of this and more, young warrior. But remember: I always hold the dice.' And he was gone as though he'd never been."

  I nodded. "Tezcatlipoca." The Smoking Mirror, God of War and Fate: He who controlled the destinies of men.

  "Whoever he was, he was right." Neutemoc sighed. "Life is just another, vaster patolli board on which the gods move us at Their whim. The things you have, you can lose so easily. They're just not worth holding."

  "You're a warrior," I said, finally. "You're not supposed to wallow in your own misery."

  Neutemoc's eyes flashed in anger, but he didn't answer. "We need someone to stand guard," he said, rising. He walked to where Palli and Ezamahual sat, and said something to them in a low voice. They nodded.

  Neutemoc came back, and lay down on the ground, ready to sleep. "They'll take turns," he said.

  I nodded, not feeling inclined to talk further with him.

  "We'll reach Amecameca tomorrow at noon," Neutemoc said. "There's a hill where Eleuia buried the body of her child. You'll see for yourself that he's dead."

  I shrugged. "Maybe." Even if my instincts were wrong, and the child had nothing to do with this, something had happened in the Chalca Wars: something that Eleuia had wanted to hide so badly she'd been ready to kill for it.

  I woke up at dawn, my clothes soaked by the mud and the morning dew. Neutemoc was already up. He was going through some exercises with his macuahitl sword, hacking and slashing at cacti as if they'd personally offended him.

  Palli, Ezamahual and I withdrew from the camp, making our offerings of blood to Lord Death. The sky was cloudy, and the sun nowhere to be seen: a gloomy, wet pall stretched over the marshes, clinging to everything it touched. I hoped it wouldn't rain today. There were few more unpleasant things than finding oneself without shelter on marshy ground.

  We ate one of the flatbreads, waiting for Neutemoc to finish killing innocent plants.

  "Feeling frustrated?" I asked.

  He didn't even rise to my jibe. "Let's get this over with, shall we?"

  We walked the rest of the way to Amecameca, with the snow-capped heights of Popocatepetl's and Ixtaccihuatl's volcanoes looming ever larger over us.

  The land became drier, the lakes forgotten behind us, and the ground deepening into valleys and hills, with grass and conifers gradually replacing the sparse marsh vegetation.

  Neutemoc didn't speak much. From time to time, he'd point out a place, and say things such as, "This is where we fought the first Chalca regiments." But he was again sunk into that melancholy mood he'd shown in Chalco, reliving the past and the carefree days of his youth.

  Towards mid-afternoon, we reached Amecameca, a small town nestled at the foot of a hill. Neutemoc pointed to the heights above us. "That's the place," he said. "The hill of Our Mother."

  I craned my neck. At the top of the hill was a small, ornate adobe building with red flags: a shrine to Teteoinan, Mother of the Gods.

  "We took it sixteen years ago," Neutemoc was saying. "A hard-fought battle."

  "That's where Eleuia buried her child?" I asked.

  "You'll see," Neutemoc said.

  It was a small hill, dwarfed by the much larger volcanoes
behind it. The ascent wasn't long. A steady flow of pilgrims came from Amecameca to make their offerings at the shrine: peasants, with their hands full of maize and feathers, and a procession of merchants leading a woman slave in a white cotton tunic, who would be sacrificed to the goddess.

  Neutemoc stopped halfway up the hill, on a grassy knoll. Not knowing what else to do, we stopped as well.

  "Let's see," he said. He closed his eyes for a moment, and a fleeting expression of nostalgia crossed his face. "That way," he said.

  He walked to a place in the middle of the knoll, and stopped. "Here."

  "You're sure?" I asked. Not that I disbelieved him. But still, it had been sixteen years.

  Neutemoc pointed to a handful of rocks, arranged in a circular pattern. "I remember those." He knelt, rummaged within the grass, and gave a small grunt of triumph. "Her marker's still here."

  Eleuia's marker was a small rock, engraved with two fragmentary glyphs: one for "water", and one that might have been "blessing" or "luck". They looked much like the ones she'd tried to draw in the Floating Gardens – while she was held captive by the beast of shadows, waiting for those who would torture her and push her into the lake. Odd. It wasn't any spell I recognised; and no magic that I could see hung over the tomb.

  I turned to Palli. "Can I see the contents of that pack?"

  The young offering priest smiled. "Of course, Acatltzin."

  He'd brought many things: obsidian blades, herbs to heal wounds, to curse a man; a variety of containers for blood, their shapes ranging from eagles with an open beak to chac-mools, small men holding a bloodstained bowl in their outstretched hands. Among them, I finally found what I was looking for: a small, pointed shovel, which I withdrew from the pack. "Thank you."

  "Do you need help, Acatl-tzin?" Ezamahual asked.

  I shook my head. "There's only one shovel, and it's not a large grave. I'll work faster if I do it alone." I whispered a brief prayer to Mictlantecuhtli and to the Duality for what I was about to do – disturb the rest of an innocent child – and hoped They'd understand, if not forgive.

  I hoped my instincts didn't turn out wrong about this.

  It was harder than I'd thought: the ground was mostly rocks, mixed with a little soil. I had to go carefully in order not to break the bones, which would be small and fragile. Neutemoc had stepped away with a stern, disapproving face, and didn't offer any help.

  At last, I overturned something that was neither earth nor rocks: a cloth with faded colours, sewn closed at both ends. I withdrew it from the hole, and brushed the earth from its folds, gently. Then, using one of my obsidian knives, I sliced through the threads.

  Small, yellowed things spilled into my hands: the pathetic, familiar remnants of someone who hadn't had a chance at life.

  "Bones," Palli whispered, by my side.

  Yes, bones. But they felt wrong. Deeply, fundamentally wrong. They were the right shape, they had the right touch. But my skin was crawling, and the longer I held them the more ill at ease I felt.

  "Neutemoc?" I asked.

  My brother turned, saw what I was holding. "You've found what you wanted," he said, flatly.

  No. I hadn't. They were wrong, subtly wrong, but I couldn't see why.

  "You were with her when she buried them?" I asked.

  "Yes," Neutemoc said. His gaze said, "I told you it was a waste of time."

  "Did she do anything particular?" The bones were still in my hand, and everything in me wanted to throw them down.

  "Particular?" Neutemoc looked at me as if I were mad. "No," he said. "She sewed them in that cloth, buried them, and carved the marker."

  "That's all?" I asked. What was wrong with those bones?

  Neutemoc said nothing for a while. "She went into a cave to say a prayer to the Duality," he said. "The same one where she gave birth."

  "A cave?" I laid the bones down in the clothes. The uneasy feeling on my skin abated, but didn't cease. Nausea welled up in me, sharp, demanding – I struggled to focus through it.

  A cave was a good shelter to give birth in with impunity, especially in this arid country. And praying to the Duality for a child wasn't extraordinary, since They watched over the souls of babies. But the Duality was worshipped in the open air, or on pyramid temples. I'd never heard of such a temple in a cave.

  I took the baby's bones and wrapped them back into their cloth. "Can you take us to the cave?" I asked.

  It was further away than Neutemoc remembered: we had to go down the hill to another one. Shelves of rock rose around us as we trudged on the steep path. The air was cold, crisp with a bitter tang that insinuated itself into my bones.

  The cave had a small entrance, half-obscured by a fall of debris. Faded paint stretched on both sides, and traces that might have been bloody handprints, weathered away by the rain. A wet, pungent odour like that of a wild animal rose as I ducked under the stone ceiling.

  Inside was only darkness, the sound of our own breathing – and, in the distance, the steady sound of dripping water. "Is anybody here?" I called.

  No answer.

  "Some place," Palli said behind me.

  I paused for a moment to light a torch with some flint and dry kindling from Palli's ever-useful bag. The flame shone over moist rock walls, reflected in a thousand shards of light.

  "It must have been abandoned some time ago," Neutemoc said, defiantly.

  "If it ever drew large crowds," Ezamahual said. He sounded sceptical. "Everything looks faded here."

  "I know," I said. I shone the torch towards the back: the cave narrowed into a rock corridor. Having no choice, I headed straight ahead.

  My footsteps echoed under the stone ceiling: a deep, faraway sound, as if the place had been twice as deep. And as I made my way deeper into the cave, a sense of wrongness slowly crept up my spine. It was the same thing I'd felt when holding the baby's bones, but much, much stronger: a growing disquiet, an impression that the world around me wasn't as it seemed – a sense of a cold power coiling around me like the rings of a snake.

  "Neutemoc," I whispered, but there was only silence, and the feeling of something immense, barely contained within the walls. Something that hadn't yet seen any of us; but that might, at any moment, turn its eyes our way.

  "Acatl-tzin," Palli whispered, and I heard the same fear in his voice.

  I reached towards the knife at my belt, with agonising slowness – and closed my hand on the hilt. The dreary, familiar emptiness of Mictlan rose: a welcome shield against whatever lay in the cave. It wasn't strong, and it waned with every passing moment. But it would have to do.

  "Use your knives," I whispered to the two priests behind me. "Mictlan's magic will ward us."

  Neither of the priests answered. I pushed ahead, stubbornly, and heard their footsteps behind me, more hesitant. They were falling behind.

  The corridor ended in a circular place, filled with the sound of water dripping onto the rock. There was a pool at the centre, with barely enough water to reflect the light of my torch; and small tokens, scattered around the rim: dolls of brightly-coloured rags, fragments of chipped stones and seashells.

  Offerings. This was – had been – a shrine, till not so long ago.

  I shone my torch around the room: the paint had run, but frescoes still adorned the walls. The sense of disquiet, of wrongness, was rising, slowly drowning out Mictlan's rudimentary protection. I had no intention of remaining in that cave any longer than I had to. Close by, the frescoes were hard to identify. Characters in tones of ochre moved across a narration in smudged glyphs: fighting each other, or perhaps handing something to each other?

  "What is this place?"

  I started. I hadn't heard Neutemoc for so long that I'd almost forgotten that he was there. He stood by the pool, looking ill at ease. Neither his slave, Tepalotl, nor my two priests were anywhere to be seen.

  "You should know," I said, more angrily than I'd intended to. "You took Eleuia here."

  "No," Neutemoc said. He sounde
d angry as well. "I waited outside. I've never set foot in here."

  "Well," I said sombrely, "the one thing we can be sure is that this isn't a shrine to the Duality." I held my torch up to the frescoes again, hoping for a clue, for anything that would allow us to get out of here and leave behind that great, sickening presence. But the glyphs were too smudged by the incessant fall of water, and the details of the frescoes similarly erased.

  I walked away from the pool, fighting an urge to scratch myself to the blood.

  The frescoes on the furthest wall were also badly damaged, but some details had survived better. One character appeared constantly in the vignettes: a being with dark skin, brandishing various objects: a fisherman's net, a rattle, and several bowls holding offerings.