"And we will," Quenami said.
"I've already said it, you put far little trust in our resilience," Acamapichtli said. "We have always endured. We will this time, too."
Quenami said, smoothly, "But your investigation is important too, Acatl."
Another way of saying he had no intention of helping. "Quenami."
"Acatl." Quenami's voice was firm. "We have reached a decision."
"You have," I said.
"No, we," Quenami said. "Do you forget? We are the high priests. We make the decisions as a group."
Only when it suited him. But I couldn't say that. Teomitl might have, in my stead, but I was just a peasant ascended into the priesthood, with no influence or powerful relatives to shelter me. With Tizoc-tzin and Acamapichtli against me, I could not afford to gainsay Quenami. I clenched my hands. "Fine," I said. "Now if you will excuse me, I have a body to prepare for a funeral."
They could not contradict me on this, and let me walk away without another word.
One man with too much confidence in his wards, and another who kept insisting that the Fifth World would resist anything, as if he still wanted to find out how to break it once and for all. That was what we had, for high priests, Duality curse me.
Should another star-demon come down, they would be useless.
I, on the other hand, was determined not to be.
EIGHT
On Mictlan's Threshold
I entered the Imperial Chambers with more reluctance than the last time, remembering the unpleasantness of my previous visit.
I passed them with a deep bow, and divested myself of my sandals in the antechamber. Everything was silent; not the hostile, pregnant atmosphere everywhere else in the palace, but a final silence I knew all too well, one that could not be appealed against or dissipated.
My six priests had withdrawn against the wall as I entered. Palli bowed to me, the blood on his pierced earlobes glistening in the dim light. "It is done, Acatl-tzin."
The body of the Revered Speaker lay on the reed mat, dressed in multi-coloured garb, the knees folded up until they touched the chin. A golden mask with a protruding tongue, symbolising Tonatiuh the Fifth Sun, covered his face, and his body had been painted red, the colour of the setting sun. A jade bead pierced his lips. When I touched it, it pulsed with magic.
As befitted that part of the rites, they had brought a cage containing a yellow dog. It lay curled on the ground, its short-cropped fur completely still save for the slight rise of its breathing, its large head nestled between its paws in a strange pose of resignation.
A faint odour of rot wafted from the body, sour and sickly – nothing I couldn't handle. I knelt in preparation for the ritual, and was about to open the cage, when I saw the traces. There had been other rituals before mine, spots of black and grey peppered the ground, along with scratches like the traces of a knife blade. Whatever it was, it had been cleaned, but not well enough. I drew one of my obsidian blades from its sheath, and scratched at it in turn. It was hard, not like congealed blood or sloughed-off flesh, but more like solidified stone, and it wouldn't yield. I managed to take only a small scrap of it, which lay cold and inert in my hand. Tar? Why would anyone want to use tar?
"Palli?" I asked.
He and the other priests had been quietly leaving the room, for this was a moment for the High Priest alone. When I spoke, he turned around. "Do you know what this is?" I asked.
He walked back, carefully navigating around the accumulated traces of magic in the room. "Tar?" he said.
"That's what I think, but–"
"We didn't use tar," Palli said. "It must have been here before. But it's odd."
Decidedly odd. Tar was an uncommon ingredient to use in a ritual, save for very specific gods; and why use it in the imperial chambers themselves?
"Do you want me to look into it?" Palli asked.
"Yes," I said. "Later, though." Whatever ritual had been accomplished, it was old. I couldn't detect any traces of magic, and the spots of tar didn't look as though they would interfere with the spell I was about to cast. "Now isn't the time."
I waited until Palli had left the room to open the cage. I held the dog by the neck and, with the ease of practise, brought the blade up to slice its throat. It gave a little sigh, like a spent hiss, as it died. Blood ran down my hands, warm and beating with power, staining the blade and the stones of the floor.
I used the knife to draw the shape of a quincunx around us: the five-point cross, the shape that symbolised the structure of the world from the Heavens down to Mictlan.
I sang as I did so, the beginning of a litany for the Dead.
"We leave this earth, we leave this world
Into the darkness we must descend
Leaving behind the precious jade, the precious feathers,
The marigolds and the cedar trees…"
The familiar green light of the underworld seeped into the room, hanging over the stone floor like fog. Shadows moved within, singing a wordless lament that twisted in my guts like a knife-stab.
"Past the river, the waters of life
Past the mountains that crush, the mountains that bind
Past the breath of the wind, the breath of His knives…"
The frescoes and the limestone receded, to become the walls of a deep cenote, at the bottom of which shimmered the dark waters of a lake that had never seen, and would never see, the light of day. Small figures moved over the water, growing fainter and fainter the further they went – first they had faces and features that looked almost human, and then they were mere silhouettes, and finally they seemed as small and insignificant as insects, vanishing into the darkness at the far end.
Cold crept up my spine, like the fingers of a corpse or a skeleton. The air became saturated with a dry, musty smell, like old codices left for too long, or the cool ashes of a funeral pyre.
And, abruptly, I was no longer alone.
It was a faint feeling at first, that of eyes on the nape of my neck, and then it grew layer by layer, until, turning, I saw the faint silhouette of a man by my side, shimmering in the darkness like a mirage. Though I could barely see his face, I could guess the outline of a quetzal-feather headdress, spread in a circle around his head and hear the swish of fine cotton cloth as he moved.
"Priest?" he whispered. His voice seemed spent, as if it had crossed whole countries to reach me.
I bowed, as low as I could. "Revered Speaker."
"I feel so cold," Axayacatl-tzin whispered. "Cold…"
I reached with my hands, spreading a little of the blood on him. He rippled, as if I'd drawn the flat of my palm across a reflection in the water. "Priest…"
I started chanting again, the words that he needed to make his way across.
"Past the beasts that live in darkness, that consume hearts,
Into the city of the streets on the left, the city where walk the Dead
We must go, we must find the way into oblivion…"
The scene shifted as I spoke. We were in the middle of the lake, on a boat that held its steady course, and he was by my side, darkness sweeping over his face. The headdress vanished, as did the cotton clothes.
"The region of mystery, the place of the fleshless
Where the strength of jaguars, the strength of eagles
Is broken and ground into dust…"
Then we stood on the other shore of the lake, dwarfed by a huge mass of rock. Ahead of us was darkness, and the faint suggestion of a gate. The Dead passed us by, shambling on, unaware of our presence.
I lowered my hands, and let the blood drip onto the ground. Each drop fell upon the other and stuck, so that little by little a darker mass detached itself from the ground, the faint shape of a dog, shining yellow in the darkness, like a pale memory of sunlight or of corn.
"I give you the precious life, the precious water
The Fifth Sun's nourishment, Grandmother Earth's sustenance,
All of this, I give you as your own
To guide you, to take you down into darkness."
When I finished chanting, the dog sprang to life, running around the shadow like an excited puppy, its tinny barks the only sign of life around us. Its paws struck up dust where it passed.
"It's time," I whispered to Axayacatl-tzin.
"I see," the former Revered Speaker said, and his voice was clearer, stronger than on the other shore. He was among his own kind now, in the only place where his existence still had meaning. He turned towards me, a featureless shadow among featureless shadows."Thank you, priest."
I couldn't help a slight recoil of surprise. The Dead tended to be tremendously self-focused – for such was the nature of death, which severed all bonds of the Fifth World – and I had never had any spirit turn back and thank me before setting on.
"I am Revered Speaker, Huitzilpochtli's own agent." There was a hint of self-deprecating humour in Axayacatl-tzin's voice. "I have known propriety all my life, in death I will not forget."
Though I'd only seen him from afar when he was alive, already I liked him, more than any of those who would claim his ruler's mat. "I am honoured," I said, bowing. "But I was only doing my work."
"And you do it well." If the Dead could look amused, he would have. "I'll leave things in your capable hands."
I could not help a slight grimace, and he was shrewd enough to see it. "Do you not think yourself capable?" His head moved, slightly. His eyes shone yellow, the same colour as the dog at his feet, a memory of the sunlight that had once been poured into him. His features had been completely washed away, so that he seemed to have become the mask they had put onto him. "Ah, I see. It's others you don't trust."
Tizoc-tzin had been his choice and he would have approved the nomination of the other two high priests – not to mention of Xahuia, favoured enough to bear him a son. "I apologise–" I started.
"No need to." He sounded amused again. "I'd always known there would be a rift when I died. But only for a time. I've made sure it will close itself."
"How?"
His head cocked towards me, a fluid movement like a bird's. "Let that be a surprise, priest."
"Someone poisoned the Guardian," I said, the words torn out of me before I could think. "A devotee of She of the Silver Bells."
"The Silver Bells? Her worship should be dead." His eyes blazed, touched for a bare moment with all the might of Huitzilpochtli.
"So you don't know who it could be?" I was pushing my luck. One did not interview the Revered Speaker – even less so the soul of the dead Revered Speaker – as if he were a witness in a courthouse.
He was silent for a while. At length, he hunkered down on the dry, dusty earth as if he were still sitting in judgment. "I didn't know in life, and so wouldn't know in death. But…" he paused, as if admitting something painful. "The She-Snake has always had unorthodox worship practises. Not surprising. His father used religion as a tool, and made the worship of Huitzilpochtli into a political act."
"You think he's reacting against that?" I asked. A touch of Mictlan's cold went down my back. If the She-Snake was worshipping She of the Silver Bells, things had just escalated. His men were all over the palace, keeping watch over all the key areas – not only of the palace, but also of the Sacred Precinct and of the city itself. All the temples, and all the Houses of Darts, the arsenals where we stored weapons.
"I don't know," Axayacatl-tzin said. "But I can tell you this, priest – beware of him. He can act with the best of them, and you'll only know he's lied to you after he's twisted the knife in your chest and taken out your heart for his own purposes."
I nodded. That would teach me to trust a pleasant face. I hesitated; but there was too much at stake. "Your wife Xahuia–"
"I remember Xahuia." His eyes softened.
"Do you remember her sorcerer?" I asked. "Nettoni?"
"Dedicated to Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror? Yes," Axayacatltzin said. "An ambitious man to serve an ambitious woman. His ally, for as long as their goals overlap." He rose, turned back towards the waiting darkness. "But I don't think–" He paused. A thread of cold light wrapped itself around his waist; climbed, snake-like, to his ears, as if to whisper words I couldn't hear. "Ah, yes. A reminder, worthy to be heeded, priest. It's the star-demons who will end us, coming down from the sky to devour us, swarming over Tonatiuh until His light is extinguished and the age of the Fifth Sun comes to an end."
"And?" I asked, but I had remembered, too. I knew what Lord Death had told him, nothing more, nothing less than what I had already known.
If Axayacatl-tzin still had a mouth, he would have smiled. "The Smoking Mirror is the Sixth Sun. It is His destiny to climb into the sky and take His place as supreme god of the new age."
And His desire, perhaps, to see the Fifth Age, the age of the Fifth Sun Tonatiuh and the Southern Hummingbird Huitzilpochtli, end much sooner than it should.
"I see," I said. The cold was in my bones and in my heart. "I see. Thank you, Axayacatl-tzin."
When I opened my eyes, I was back in the Fifth World within my blood-quincunx, the potency of which was slowly leeching away. Axayacatl-tzin's corpse still sat facing me, but something seemed to have gone out of him, some bright, subtle light that even death had not extinguished. His soul – his heart, the divine fire which animates us all – had passed into Mictlan, never to return.