"You have seen the rain," I said softly. "There is a child in Tenochtitlan: a child who is no more a child, but the living embodiment of Tlaloc's will. He seeks to remake the Fifth World in His image."
Once I had started, the words came easily, jostling each other for release – and if I saw the faces of the priests, I wasn't focusing on their expressions any more.
"He has creatures with him. You cannot see them without Quetzalcoatl's True Sight. The knives of Mictlan will slow them down but not kill them. They feed on magic, and whittle down wards to nothing. But somehow, we have to get past them. We have to kill the child and put an end to this madness.
"I tell you all this because… because I need your help."
When I finished, there was silence again. Then a growing whisper, as some of the priests turned to discuss with their neighbours. I couldn't read their faces; I couldn't hear what they were saying.
Someone – Palli, I realised – detached himself from the crowd. "Are you ordering us?"
I shook my head. "I can't take up a command I haven't earned. I'm asking you. I'm asking you to go into danger."
"For the sake of the Fifth World." That was Ezamahual.
"Yes," Ichtaca said, to my left. "Doing what we have always done."
"We didn't pledge ourselves to suicide," one of the offering priests said: a thin, coyote-like face I vaguely remembered from vigils. "We say the funeral rites. We call up the Dead to comfort the living. Even if the world were in danger, that wouldn't be our responsibility."
"Is that what you think?" Ichtaca asked, softly. "That this is a sinecure, an easy path to the circles of power? Then you can leave right now, Chimalli. Being a priest is laying your life in the hands of our god, even more so than the ordinary people."
Chimalli fell silent. But I could see that he had his following: a group of three young novice priests with embroidered cotton cloaks, probably sons of nobles – enjoying the riches of their fathers, without feats of arms to their names. Teomitl would have had no end of harsh words for them.
In the silence, someone spoke again. Palli. "I've seen you work, Acatl-tzin. Where you go, I'll follow." He stepped further away from the crowd, almost close enough to touch Ichtaca. Chimalli's friends sneered.
I said, my eyes on Chimalli, "If you don't want to come, you can stay where it's dry. You can stay safe. No man can fight if they don't believe in what they're doing."
There was silence. Then Ezamahual spoke. "We're not cowards," he said, with a pointed look at Chimalli. "We may not be warriors, but we won't stay safe while the world breaks apart."
Chimalli snorted. But when he didn't move, the other priests did. One at first, slowly; and then they came by groups of twos and threes, gathering around Palli and Ezamahual.
On the other side of that invisible line were Chimalli, his clique – and the two calmecac students, looking frightened out of their wits.
"We're not cowards," Ezamahual repeated. "Tell us what we have to do."
Beside me, Ichtaca's face was grim, but I could guess that he hadn't expected me to have this much success.
But then, neither had I.
"We haven't much time left," I started.
Because the true sight hampered one's ability to see the Fifth World, I decided to lay it only on half of the priests, trusting that they would see enough to warn the others. I included myself in this half. I also sent word for Ixtli and his men to join us at the temple docks.
I had just finished laying on the true sight on myself when Palli came back.
"We have rabbits, and owls, and a handful of hummingbirds," he said. In the gloom of the Feathered Serpent's sight, Palli shone like the moon: cold, harsh, the veins of his arms and legs contracting and expanding to the rhythm of his heart. He carried two magical knives in his leather belt, one for each hand.
I finished my spell, and carefully brushed my hands clean, praying that Neutemoc and Teomitl would have had the good sense to wait before launching an attack.
I said to Palli, "Whatever you've found will have to do. I'm not sure we'll have time for real blood-magic." Sacrificing an animal and doing a full ritual required preparation. In the midst of a battle, I didn't think we'd have time for this.
Palli said, "Ichtaca is sending messengers to the palace, to request the Guardian's help at the Heart of the Lake."
"He sent Chimalli?"
Palli shook his head. "No," he said, grimly amused. "The two calmecac students, the ones that were frightened by the whole prospect."
"You're not frightened?" I asked, remembering how he'd preferred storehouse duty because of how quiet it was.
"When I stop to think about it. But then, it doesn't change anything, does it?"
He looked and sounded disturbingly like Teomitl: like a warrior, uncaring of his own life. I finished erasing my quincunx, and rose in turn. "No," I said. "It doesn't change anything. Come on. Let's get to the boats."
The boats were the flotilla of the temple, moored on the boundary between the southwest district of Moyotlan and the northwest one of Cuepopan, beyond the Serpent Walls. We had a dozen sturdy reed boats, which the priests took on their errands throughout Tenochtitlan.
Ichtaca was already in the second largest of those, with a novice priest holding the oars, and two clustering at the back. He pointed, wordlessly, to the largest craft, the one reserved for the High Priest. It bore the spider-and-owl design of Mictlantecuhtli, and shone with the wards accumulated on it.
Ixtli and his Duality warriors had their own boats: long, thin vessels holding nine warriors in a single line, with two rowers, one at the back and one at the prow. Ixtli raised his hand to me in a salute; I nodded to him, and climbed aboard my own boat. Palli took the oars; and Ezamahual positioned himself at the prow.
Every temple boat, including ours, was full of covered cages. It wasn't so much the cages I saw with the true sight though, but the light cast by the animals they contained: the rabbits huddled against each other, and the hummingbirds flitting against the covers in a whirr of wings.
Palli pushed the boat away from the shore in a splash of oars, and gently directed us south.
The docks were on the western edge of Tenochtitlan; the tree of the Great Vigil on the eastern side of the city. Even though the town was crisscrossed by canals, the fastest way to go east wasn't through Tenochtitlan, but around it, passing south under the Itzapalapan causeway and swinging back in a north-easterly direction.
The rain fell steadily around us, but there was something different about it. Something distinctly hostile. In the semi-darkness of the true sight, I could see nothing, but the sense of disquiet increased. The oars splashed in the water, on the left side, then on the right – and back on the left, like a slower heartbeat.
I turned around, briefly, and saw the city, a mass of huddled houses enclosed by the rain. Light spilled from the Sacred Precinct, beacons in the growing darkness: the temples of Mictlantecuhtli; of Mixcoatl, God of the Hunt; of Tezcatlipoca, God of War and Fate. And towering over it all, the blazing radiance of the Great Temple.
Something about the last light was wrong. I watched it for a while, as Palli's rowing got us clear of the causeway. Something about the light, which kept flickering.
The light wasn't strong any more, but tinged with the green of algae. With every passing moment, the green grew stronger. And, crowding around the twin shrines atop the pyramid, were the halfdistinct shapes of Tlaloc's creatures, swimming through the air like some sick imitation of fishes, sinking into the stone of the stairs like transparent blood.
"It's fallen," I said, aloud.
"What's fallen?" Palli asked.
Ichtaca, whose forehead also bore the mark of the true sight, was watching the same direction. "Not yet," he said. "Huitzilpochtli is stronger than you give Him credit for."
"He's weak," I said, watching as the light flickered.
"So is Tlaloc's child, for now," Ichtaca replied. And, to his oarsman: "Faster."
Palli's gestures quickened, as if he'd been the one given the order.
Faster, faster, I thought, listening to the splashes of water on either side of me. In the darkness, all I could see were the beacons of the temples – and the creatures, slithering in and out of the Great Temple. Faster…
The Itzapalapan causeway faded behind the veil of rain; the creatures, too, until the whole world seemed to have turned to water. Around us was the vast expanse of Lake Texcoco, the shores so far we couldn't make them out in this stormy weather; above us, the rain-clouds unleashing their fury on us. Thunder rolled overhead, and lightning flashes tore the heavens: the Storm Lord's full anger, finally unleashed.
And ahead…
It should have been an artificial island isolated in the middle of the lake, with an altar where the Revered Speaker would sacrifice to Tlaloc.
But it wasn't, not any more. Or rather: the island was still there, surrounded by a group of boats I couldn't identify from this distance. But at its side was something that drew one's gaze.
The tree offered at the Great Vigil, sixteen months ago, had indeed rotted to nothing. But something had taken its place: an aftershadow of a trunk, a silhouette outlined by the lightning flashes, with half-transparent branches reaching up to join the black rainclouds with the surface of the lake. Magic pulsed from the roots and the branches, joining in the middle to form a tight knot of light.
Around the tree were more of the creatures, attached to the trunk like leeches, gorging on Tlaloc's bounty, growing fat with every passing moment.
I couldn't repress the shudder that ran through me, or the rising nausea that always came when I saw so many of those creatures.
Behind me, someone – Ichtaca? – let out a string of curses. A more sensible answer than mine, I guessed.
As we got closer, the situation became clearer: in the group of boats were two dozen priests dressed in the blue-and-black garb of the Storm Lord, their blackened faces filled with the light of magic. They watched us come without a word.
At the centre of the island, the altar to Tlaloc was overwhelmed with creatures. They passed through the stone as though through water, their clawed hands moving to and fro. They looked like brothers to the ahuizotls, with the malevolence but not the intelligence of Chalchiutlicue's beasts. They seemed to be guarding something. A young child, I suddenly realised. I caught a glimpse of a childhood lock, sweeping over a face the colour of cacao beans, and of wide eyes, as green as algae.
Mazatl. The god-child. And, by his side, lying in the mud, were two adult bodies. My heart sank. They had to be Mazatl's foster parents.
Below the altar were more of the creatures, gathering around two silhouettes, one of which stood knee-deep in the water, magic streaming out of him. Teomitl – and the ahuizotls, gathering around him, snapping at the creatures with their jaws, reaching out with their claws. And beside Teomitl…
Neutemoc, the wards of Huitzilpochtli shining weakly in the dim light of the true sight, hacking and slashing at the creatures, even though it seemed to make no difference.
Trust my brother to get into the heart of trouble. Although I couldn't see what else he could have done. I'd misjudged. Given the configuration of the place, there was no way to approach discreetly. I glanced again at the priests of Tlaloc. They had made no move, trusting the creatures to dispatch both Neutemoc and Teomitl. But now that we were approaching, they detached themselves from the island, aiming towards us with the sureness of cast spears.
"Faster," I whispered to Palli – and, to the boats behind me: "Prepare yourselves!"
Ixtli's boats swung around us, blocking the path between us and the priests of Tlaloc: an unequal fight, on an element belonging to the god Himself. Teomitl had His wife's protection, but no one else did.
There was no choice.
I laid my hand on the smallest of my obsidian knives, and felt the emptiness of Mictlan fill me, so strong I could have gagged. Chalchiutlicue's touch had definitely changed those knives, although I wasn't sure it was for the better.
Teomitl went down on one knee; and two more of the creatures leapt past him, towards Neutemoc.
Faster…
TWENTY-TWO
The God's Child
Palli grounded the boat ashore. At the moment the dried reeds came into contact with the mud of the island, a sense of growing unease crystallised into me, almost strong enough to fill Mictlan's emptiness.
I had felt this before: in the Jaguar House, and in Tlaloc's shrine in Amecameca. There was no cure for it.
I leapt from the boat onto the shore, fighting a rising wave of nausea. Beside me, several of the priests were on their knees on the ground, retching and retching, although no bile came up.
No. You have to fight it. You have to… Ichtaca's face was a mask of disgust; but he at least didn't double over. And then the creatures were upon us. Within the true sight, they shone, their squat bodies exuding algae-tinged light, their clawed hands reaching for us. I threw myself aside, and a claw-swipe narrowly missed my forearm.
"Huitzilpochtli cut me down," Palli whispered, beside me. "How do you fight them?"
I wish I knew. Beside me, one of the novice priests was down on one knee, bleeding from a wound, his face already going slack, in an expression sickeningly like Quechomitl's.
Another creature launched itself at me. The Duality curse us, the things had grown more powerful, capable of ignoring Mihmatini's wards. Without conscious thought, I threw myself aside, but too late: the claws were going straight for my chest…