“Scouting, of course,” Ataquixt answered.
“You left before the march. You left before you knew where we would be going.”
“South, of course,” Ataquixt replied. “We knew the one great—”
“And had we gone north, to sweep this region called the Mantis Arm? Or had Scathmizzane turned us again to the fortress in the northwest, the place the humans call Saint-Mere-Abelle? Where would my trusted second be in that event?”
Ataquixt assumed a pose that seemed rather uncharacteristic, and rather defiant, Tuolonatl thought.
“I was watching the force,” he answered evenly. “I would be there by your side, wherever the next battle might be.”
“What do you know?”
“I have come to tell you,” he said. “High Priest Pixquicauh remains in Otontotomi.”
“Yes.”
“And Scathmizzane has headed back, through mirrors and astride Kithkukulikhan.”
“Yes. This you would have known had you remained.”
“You must go back there,” Ataquixt insisted, surprising her. “Now.”
“I must?”
“Yes, my commander, my friend. You need to go back to Otontotomi now, with all haste. I will come with you, of course, but we’ve little time to waste.”
Tuolonatl’s face spoke volumes then, screwed up in surprise.
“You have heard that our enemies have entered the pyramid flash-steps?” Ataquixt asked.
“Yes, but so have mundunugu, stepping beyond them, securing the mirrors. How did you hear of this?”
“Our enemies will get there, to the city,” Ataquixt replied. “The mundunugu will not catch them. This will be decisive, and Tuolonatl must be there to make sure that it is properly decided.”
Tuolonatl eyed him suspiciously. “How do you know this?”
“Because I know the web of the pyramids. I know where each was built and all the connections between them. If those who came forth from the human fortress and did battle with our soldiers kept moving when they entered the lights between the golden mirrors, they would not have been caught by those who sought to flank them and arrive before them.”
“You do not know that this happened.”
“I know that Pixquicauh has not returned. I know that Scathmizzane and Kithkukulikhan are fast returning to Otontotomi.”
“That could mean many things.”
“The humans are going there,” Ataquixt said with open confidence. “Need I remind you of the rainbow and its unseen origin? My commander, my friend, the humans are not stupid. They, too, understand the source of Scathmizzane’s true destructive power. Remember that we found refugees from Tzatzini far to the east, even in the city of Ursal, and we heard of more who continued to the west, reportedly to that very besieged fortress from where came the attackers seeking the web of pyramids.”
Tuolonatl rested back in the saddle, Pocheoya nickering softly and swaying left and right. She was fairly certain that at least some of the refugees from Tzatzini had arrived in the fortress of St.-Mere-Abelle. Some insisted that the woman who had led the humans to the spear implanted on the wall, and had led the chanting and magic to foil the bombardment, was the same woman who had flown down the mountain and out over the lake during the initial attack, and though it had not been confirmed, Tuolonatl could not dismiss the possibility.
“We can arrive at a pyramid by nightfall and step within the limits of Otontotomi before the sun rises,” Ataquixt said.
“Scathmizzane did not summon me.”
“Scathmizzane gives you the freedom of your wisdom,” Ataquixt said. “He need not summon you, nor would he question your arrival in the city, or back on the field outside of Saint-Mere-Abelle, or anywhere else you chose to be.”
“We have one last great battle before us.”
“Days from now. You can get to Otontotomi and back here in short order, long before the fight with the last large human city. You can even instruct the mundunugu and the augurs to create more pyramids to facilitate your return. I beg of you, my commander, my friend, to trust me now on this. Tuolonatl needs to be there, at Tzatzini. For the good of all. This I know.”
The woman sat astride her horse, staring down at the surprising mundunugu on his collared lizard, who sat much lower to the ground. She had known Ataquixt for a long time, which made this exchange all the more surprising, for he had never asked much of anything from her. He had ever been the consummate mundunugu, following his orders perfectly, showing always the proper respect for those ranked as his betters.
He had never made such a request of her—for anything. All of this struck the cochcal as out of sorts.
But Tuolonatl would never question Ataquixt’s loyalty to her.
“I beg of you, my commander, my friend,” Ataquixt repeated. “This may be the moment that decides the war and determines the future, and woe to us all if wise Tuolonatl is not present at that event.”
* * *
Using the cat’s eye gem set in the turquoise ear cuff, and the wedstone on her hip, Aoleyn conferred the remarkable ability to see clearly in the nighttime darkness to all five of her companions as they made their way up the mountain.
Darkness was their ally now, and not limiting.
Aoleyn and Connebragh soon came to trails they knew well, and soon after that, they heard the singing of their sister Usgar witches. Over the next ridge, they saw those witches dancing in the light of the glowing God Crystal.
“They are beyond their mortal bodies now,” Connebragh answered. “I hear them all the time. They dance and sing—I do not know that they even eat or sleep anymore, all these seasons since the coming of the sidhe.”
“In service to the god of the xoconai,” Aoleyn added, and Connebragh nodded her agreement.
“They are not even aware of the world about them,” Connebragh said, and then Aoleyn was nodding.
“In service?” said the young uamhas, Asba. “Then we should kill them at once. And it will please me greatly.” He hoisted his spear and started forward but only got a couple of steps before Aydrian grabbed him and yanked him back.
“What do we do?” Connebragh asked, aiming the question mostly at Aoleyn.
“They are in thrall,” Aoleyn replied. “You know of my battles with Mairen, Connebragh. You know that I have fought with her before, and seriously. If I believed that she was in league with Scathmizzane and the xoconai willingly, then I would help in killing her, in killing them all.”
She paused and looked toward the sacred lea. The witches were turning in small circles within the larger circular perimeter that they walked around the central crystal.
“But no, they are blameless here,” she decided. “They are in thrall.”
Connebragh started to respond, but Aoleyn held up her hand to stop the woman. Thaddius, too, began to speak, but the young witch hushed him as well.
She needed to think, to sort it all out. It occurred to her then that the Coven, particularly Mairen, was doing more here than exciting the magic of the God Crystal. Mairen was Scathmizzane’s conduit to the crystal and to the enormous magical power below the crystal, below the lea, in the caverns of gemstones and the life energy of the newly dead.
“Before we take any action against them, let me try something,” she told the others. “If there remains any part of Mairen within her, let me find it.”
She took out the pale green chrysoberyl that Father Abbot Braumin had given to her and then put her other hand on the wedstone on her hip.
Aydrian grabbed her arm. “Aoleyn,” he whispered, “we are at the source of godly power.”
“Mairen is the link to that power.”
“Then she is mightier than you can imagine.”
“No, perhaps not, because Mairen does not know that she is the link.”
“If I sense you losing yourself within the magic of the God Crystal, I will strike hard at Mairen and the others,” Aydrian told her.
She considered that for a moment, then nodded her agre
ement and fell into the gemstones again, freeing her spirit—her chrysoberyl-protected spirit—from her physical body.
* * *
All was beauty and light. She had never known such a sense of harmony, of oneness. She was aware that she was less now and, at the same time, so very much more. She had no needs, none at all—not food or drink or rest or sleep.
All was music and movement, intertwined, in concert, in the sunlight, in the starlight, in light rain and thunderstorm, in flakes of snow melting as they tickled her in that other realm, the realm of the corporeal, the lesser realm.
She was here alone, a bit of a larger and singular universal beauty that engulfed her and so many others.
And here she would remain, content, blissful, forevermore.
There was no conversation here, no dialogue, save the occasional demands of Glorious Gold. There need be none, for the music was all.
But then Mairen heard a whisper, and it was not a feeling, like those godly commands, no. It was a voice, a human voice, calling to her by a name she had long abandoned, but one she still somewhat recognized.
“Mairen.”
Who was Mairen?
“Mairen.”
She was Mairen, or had been.
“Mairen.”
The beauty closed in around her, trying to silence the voice, she somehow knew. But the light seemed … thin, somehow, and the images translucent, and behind those images, Mairen saw darkness, and behind the music she heard the wails of ultimate doom.
“Mairen … Mairen, come to me, come back to Mairen.”
The woman could not ignore the compulsion. She blinked open her eyes—her real eyes, her corporeal eyes. It took her a long while to realize her surroundings, to recognize the God Crystal, to recognize her sisters, dancing still.
She knew the dance. She still felt the connection between it and the power beside her.
The lea was only dimly lit, the sun rising behind Fireach Speuer but not yet high enough for the rays of dawn to land directly upon her.
She put her hand upon the God Crystal, felt the vibrations and heard the song—but she heard it differently now, not as a part of it but as a witness to it.
And now, only now, she understood it.
Mairen trembled. Tears leaped from her eyes, dropped down her cheeks, and fell to the ground as she turned her gaze downward, trying to digest, trying to come to terms with the ultimate violation, which she now could not expel.
Anger welled within her, a primal rage beyond anything she had ever felt or known before.
She heard a twig snap under a footfall and looked up to see a small group of people coming onto the lea, over to her left.
Her breath came in gasps.
She noted a fellow witch, Connebragh. Connebragh!
And another, former, disgraced … her hated enemy, Aoleyn. Aoleyn!
“No!” she growled, and she tapped the God Crystal and brought forth from it an aimed wind, such a gust—as Aoleyn had done to her on their last meeting.
The group fell back, compelled by the wind, blown back into the suddenly shaking trees.
“Mairen, no!” she heard distantly, a voice thinned by the godly wind.
And then another, another woman’s voice, shouting, “A dragon!”
A roar before her demanded Mairen’s full attention. It was the roar of a giant being, a godlike being. She saw him then, and recognized him surely: Scathmizzane, astride the gigantic snakelike dragon swimming in the air, coming for her, for the God Crystal.
Scathmizzane, huge, giant-sized … but shrinking, she thought.
* * *
The high priest awakened to the sound of scrambling augurs, rushing footsteps all about his small chamber in the great pyramid of the Temple of Otontotomi. He came out of that room, pulling on his robes, and entered the immense main chamber of the building. The slanting walls of the pyramid climbed to the apex, all about him.
“What is this?” he yelled to a nearby augur, who was running fast for the open eastern door of the structure.
“Glorious Gold is come!” the man yelled from behind his vulture-like condoral, hardly slowing as he continued on his way. “Something is wrong!”
Pixquicauh mouthed that last sentence a couple of times, then, after a quick glance at his battered, tortured prisoner, Egard, he ran as fast as his legs could carry him. At last he came out onto the grand entrance pavilion outside the pyramid, some fifty feet up from the ground level of the city. Following the gazes of the other augurs on the balcony, he squinted and shielded his eyes from the sun, just then peeking over the mountain Tzatzini before him.
There flew Scathmizzane, Glorious Gold, upon the massive Kithkukulikhan. The dragon swam through the sky, rushing for the mountain, toward the God Crystal, it seemed.
Pixquicauh held his breath, his legs nearly buckling, as his gaze lingered on Scathmizzane—and then he realized that Glorious Gold was shrinking up there on the dragon’s back.
His instinct screamed at him that his god’s power was diminishing.
He heard in his mind the running augur’s warning.
“Something is wrong.”
* * *
Mairen saw him flying toward her, and in her mind she again heard the beautiful song, the call to oneness with Glorious Gold.
“Mairen!”
It wasn’t a whisper this time. It was a shout, and she knew the person calling to her.
“Mairen!”
She felt the pull from the song of Glorious Gold, the path back to harmony and oneness …
But she knew who she was now. She recognized her personal being and heard the repeated call of her name, the reminder that Scathmizzane’s compulsion was no more than an attempt to enslave her.
She shook her head. She saw Aoleyn and the others, back on the lea, not far away. Her hand went to the God Crystal again, reaching for the power.
But not for a wind. Not this time.
Instead, a ray of brilliant light, a beam like the one that had sundered the mountains, like the one that had sent the rainbow flying out beyond sight to the east, shot forth, guided by Mairen in an emphatic scream of protest and denial.
It struck Kithkukulikhan midflight, and how the dragon screamed—and dropped, straight down.
The whole of Fireach Speuer, of Tzatzini, shuddered under the weight of the impact as the dragon and Glorious Gold fell, splintering trees, cracking stones.
“Mairen, no!” Aoleyn yelled.
“No?” Connebragh cried, turning upon Aoleyn with apparent disbelief.
“The crystal consumes the souls of the dead!” Aoleyn shouted, rushing forward.
Mairen hardly heard her. She was focused on the God Crystal again, releasing its powerful beam of destruction once more, this time down the mountainside, over the rim of Otontotomi’s chasm, and to the golden mirror set atop the great temple. It was instantly reduced to a molten puddle.
On Mairen’s call, the beam lowered, lowered, working down the stone pyramid, cracking the stone, soon making the whole of the structure glow.
“Mairen, no! It devours souls, obliterates them to nothingness!” Aoleyn yelled.
* * *
Augurs cried out in fear and horror and ran all about, some going down the large steps of the temple, others running frantically about the pavilion in ridiculous circles, waving their arms and crying out in fear.
And others, Pixquicauh included, ran back into the structure. The high priest rushed for the alcove near his private quarters, to the personal mirror he used to communicate with Scathmizzane. He paused only briefly to look at Egard hanging there, turning … and smiling.
“Glorious Gold,” Pixquicauh said repeatedly, as he scrambled across the large, open floor.
“This is the end,” said Egard.
“Hold faith in Glorious Gold!” Pixquicauh yelled at the many augurs rushing for the exits, even as he cast a glare at the tortured human. “Believe, you fools!”
A large plop of molten stone spun the high pries
t on his heel. He looked up and saw the glow, and only then felt the heat rising all around him, throughout the walls of the great temple.
The stones were melting.
The huge building shuddered.
Egard laughed.
And then he died.
And Pixquicauh saw the block crush the hanging man, and it was the last thing Pixquicauh ever saw.
* * *
It glowed the color of blood in the midst of the golden city. It collapsed in on itself with a tremendous roar and a rising cloud of dust.
The mountain shuddered again.
The witches stopped dancing, all looking to Mairen, who stood beside the God Crystal, face down, shaking her head, muttering “No,” over and over again.
A gust of wind hit Mairen, forcing her to stumble back from the God Crystal, and when she looked up at her assailant, Aoleyn used the wedstone to assail her with a blast of mind-scrambling energy that stunned her and left her reeling.
The other witches did nothing. All of them were standing and looking about in blank confusion. More than one fell to her knees, overwrought and sobbing.
A cry from behind turned Aoleyn’s gaze, and she saw her friends all staring toward the plateau outside. Just a bit down from the lea, a huge serpentine head rose above the northern ledge. The dragon Kithkukulikhan was slithering up the mountainside, its face and side scarred, dripping ichor and dragon blood. The beast was seemingly unable to fly, but it was still very much alive.
Aydrian drew his sword and rushed to meet the dragon, with Brother Thaddius close behind.
Aoleyn wanted to go and help them face this titanic monster. She even thought of leaping to the God Crystal, or calling Mairen back to it, to strike the dragon again.
But no, she could not do that, she knew. She could never do that, no matter the cost.
25
THE EPIPHANY OF SCATHMIZZANE
Song of the Risen God Page 41