The cracks weren't just superficial: they crisscrossed the whole of the land, went in deep. The ground wasn't cracked, it was broken.
"It has been broken for a long time," Itzpapalotl said, beside me.
She stood at my side, looking much as She had in the Great Temple. We were the only two living beings in this place. I couldn't see either of the other two priests, or even Teomitl. "What is this place?" I asked.
"The first sacrifice." She smiled. "The greatest."
"The Fifth Sun…"
A low growl came up. Startled, I realised it was coming from the earth itself.
"Oh, priest." She shook her head. "For all your knowledge, you're still such a fool. In the beginning of time, the Feathered Serpent and the Smoking Mirror fought the Earth Monster, and broke Her body into four hundred pieces. To appease Her, the gods promised Her blood and human hearts, enough to sate any of Her appetites. Do you not hear Her, at night, endlessly crying for the meal She was promised?"
Grandmother Earth. But She had never been… She was remorseless and pitiless, but She wasn't a monster. She wasn't against the gods. "I didn't know–"
"You mortals are very clever at rewriting what was," Itzpapalotl said. "And the Southern Hummingbird even more so."
A chill ran though me. "You don't serve Him–"
"I am His slave." She smiled again, like a caged beast, waiting for its time to strike. "But even that will end, someday. Enough talk. It's time for your sacrifice, priest."
"I don't understand–" In my hands lay my obsidian knives, and my amulet – and there was something else, a sense of absence, as if a part of me were missing.
Her voice was almost gentle. "This was what you brought, to fight your way to the god. Set it aside."
"But I can't –"
"Then you won't pass."
"What about the others?" I asked.
"They all made a sacrifice, according to their natures and their beings. Now it is your turn, priest."
Without them, I would be naked in the heartland, worse than that, a dead man walking with no protection that would keep the magic of the Southern Hummingbird from destroying me. It would be like the imperial jails, only a thousand times worse.
Without this…
I thought of Acamapichtli, of what he had said about risks and acceptable sacrifices. The Duality curse the man, he was right, and admitting it cost me.
"Take them," I said.
Her hands became a round ball of grass, into which my obsidian knives slid, one by one. The amulet went last, hissing as it went in. The grass turned a dull red, the colour of fresh blood, and something ached within me, more subtle than the pain of slashed earlobes or pierced tongue: a sense that I was no longer whole, no longer surrounded by protection.
She parted Her hands again and they seemed different than they had been before, more sharply defined, the obsidian a ittle less hungry. "Pass, priest," She said.
There was a gate, by Her side, a half-circle of painfully bright light, as if a piece of the sun had descended into this strange world. It flickered, and grew dimmer, until I could stare into its depths, and catch a glimpse of lakes, and verdant knolls dotted by houses of adobe.
I walked up to it. My body shook, and I couldn't command it properly. My whole sense of equilibrium seemed to have been skewed, my perception of myself no longer accurate.
What had She taken from me?
The light grew bright again as I crossed, searing me to the bone. Before I had time to cry out, it was over, leaving me with nothing more than a slightly painful tingle all over. I was kneeling in a circle traced on grass, the blood that had been filling it slowly draining away, sinking back into the mud. Then the circle was gone, and I stood in the middle of grass and reeds, under a sky so blue it was almost painful, with a gentle breeze caressing my skin.
"Acatl?"
It was Quenami, but I hardly recognised him. His hair was dishevelled, his face stained by mud, his finery all gone, replaced by the torn loincloth of a peasant, his gilded sandals faded and broken. There was nothing left of the authority he'd effortlessly commanded.
"Where is–" I started, but then saw Acamapichtli lying at his feet in a widening pool of blood. I hobbled closer. The feeling of something missing receding as I breathed in the air of the heartland. It was warm and pleasant, though I wasn't fooled. It would gradually wear me down, as it had done in the imperial jails.
Acamapichtli looked as if he had been mauled. Streaks of red ran down his arms and his back, lying parallel to each other, like the wheals of a whip, or the claws of some huge feline. His clothes were tatters, heavy with the blood he was losing. Mud had seeped into his feet, as if he had been running barefoot in a swamp.
I looked up at Quenami, but saw nothing over me but the face of a frightened peasant. "The Duality take you!" I snapped. "We need cloth. Is there anything out there that can help us?"
"We're alone, Acatl." Quenami's voice quavered, but he finally controlled it, coming back to some of his usual smoothness. "No villages or any habitation I can see."
Stifling a curse, I took off my cloak and tore it to make bandages. With the help of Quenami, we managed to bind the worst wounds. If only we'd had maguey sap, or dayflower to cleanse them with. A pity Teomitl–
Teomitl? I looked around me, and saw, as Quenami said, nothing but the blades of grass around us, and a hill rising above us. "Where is Teomitl?"
"I don't know." Quenami finished binding the last of Acamapichtli's wounds, his distaste for such a menial task evident on his face. "I was the first here, and then you came one after the other. But since then–"
Since then, nothing. I could hear Itzpapalotl's laughter in my mind as she took my knives and my amulet, all the things I'd been counting on to fight my way to the god.
And I'd been counting on Teomitl's magic, too. That was what I'd been missing since the start.
"He won't come," I said. I didn't know if it was part of my sacrifice, or if it was the thing She'd asked of him in exchange for our safe passage. But he wasn't there, and that was what mattered. I hoped he was safe. I hoped She had not taken his life, or even a small part of him, as a price in Her games. But I couldn't be sure, and there was no point in regrets or fear; not now, not here. It was too late for that, the game was set, and we would have to play it to the end.
I knelt and lifted Acamapichtli. He was heavier than I thought, his limbs unresponsive, continually sliding out of my grasp. Carefully I slung him over my back, and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. It was the best I could do, on my own.
Quenami had been watching me all the while. "He's not coming? But–"
"I know," I said. And, without looking back, I set out towards the top of the hill – unprotected and unwarded, alone with a wounded man and a coward – knowing that each moment that passed brought me closer to unconsciousness.
I could have spared a prayer, had I believed any gods but the Southern Hummingbird were listening.
TWENTY-THREE
The Heartland
It was, as far as the lands of the gods went, a pleasant land. I had been in Tlalocan, the paradise of the Blessed Drowned, only briefly, but this seemed very much like it. Verdant vegetation covering the land, flocks of white birds disturbed by our approach, and the small ponds we passed teemed with fish and newts.
Acamapichtli grew heavier as time passed, his arms bearing down on my shoulders, his legs dangling closer and closer to the ground until it felt as though I were dragging mud.
The sky, too, changed, the only thing that seemed to change at all in this endless succession of hills and lakes. Clouds slowly moved to cover it, and its blue darkened, the air turning as crisp and as heavy as that before a storm.
The sun, though, never stopped shining.
One step, and then the next; mud and grass and water, everything merging and blurring together. I felt Acamapichtli's touch, burning into my skin like the jaguar fang he'd once given me, but it was far away, an inconvenience in some other world. What mattered was walking – one hill after another, one pond after another, feeling the air grow cooler, seeing the light grow darker.
My throat was parched, and soon everything seemed to burn. Was there no end to this land, nothing to bring us closer to the Southern Hummingbird and the souls He had stolen?
Was there–
"Acatl!" Quenami called, from some place faraway.
I came to with a start, almost throwing off Acamapichtli. The right side of my face was wet. Saliva had run down my face, staining what little was left of the cloak, and my mouth was completely dry. I felt like a sick man waking up from a long illness – weak and dazzled, and unable to align two thoughts together. "What is it?" I asked.
He pointed. The landscape had opened up ahead of us, a larger lake lay ahead with a single island at the centre; and, on the island, a larger hill with a stone structure at the top. It seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it for a while.
"A smaller version of the Great Temple," Quenami said. His voice was lower, almost subdued: the loss of his regalia must have cut deep. That said... his arrogance and effortless dignity had been his only edge, just as Acamapichtli's strength had lain in his raw power, and mine in the mastery of Lord Death's magic, and in Teomitl's assistance. The sacrifices Itzpapalotl had asked from us were far from trivial.
By the lakeside was a small village, huts of adobe, clustered together. We descended towards them. By then it was all I could do to hold Acamapichtli and keep my thoughts from fragmenting. Something was going to have to yield, and I wasn't altogether sure my mind wouldn't go first. It had, after all, already done so once in this land, back when Quenami had imprisoned me.
The lake grew larger, reflecting the sky above which had darkened to the grey of a storm with the sun at its centre like a malevolent eye. Its depths would be cool, away from the burning sensation that seemed to have filled me up from the inside – fire in my lungs, in my belly, in my manhood…
"Acatl!"
Quenami was coming back from the huts, and I could not remember having seen him depart. "You have to see this."
The huts were little more than awnings of wattle-and-daub over beaten earth – a shelter against sunlight, and nothing more. There were seven of them, arrayed in a circle around a focal point, and, where the centre should have been, a group of men sat, engrossed in an animated conversation.
"The flowers come from the heart of heaven…"
"That is accessory. What good are they, if they wilt and perish…"
"All the more reason to enjoy the vast earth…"
"They are–" Quenami whispered.
Carefully I set Acamapichtli on the ground, wincing as the weight left me. I stretched, ignoring the fiery pain that flared up my body again, and hobbled to the circle.
They were familiar faces: Manatzpa, Echichilli, all the members of the council I'd interviewed. One gave me pause, it was Pezotic. The last time I had seen him had been in Teotihuacan, under the guard of Nezahual-tzin's warriors. It seemed that the last inrush of star-demons into the world, which had taken both the council and Tizoc-tzin, hadn't spared him.
They all sat as if nothing were wrong, discussing minor points of philosophy like matters of life and death. But their faces were different, their skins stretched over the pale shape of their skulls, their eyes sunk deep into their orbits.
And Tizoc-tzin wasn't among them.
"Excuse me," I said, pitching my voice to carry. "We're looking for Tizoc-tzin."
"The Revered Speaker," Quenami interjected.
Manatzpa's face rose towards us for a brief moment, but then he turned back to his neighbour. "As Nezahualcoyotl said, we are nothing more than feathers and jade…"
"I should think we're more than that…"
"Echichilli!" Quenami said. "We need your help. Surely you know what's happening." He grasped the old councilman by the shoulders, and forced him to look his way. "Surely–" He stared into Echichilli's eyes for a while, transfixed, before releasing him, horror slowly stealing across his features. "Let's go, Acatl. It's not here we'll find the answers."
"I–" I said, and then I caught Manatzpa's gaze. A film seemed to have covered his eyes. His pupils were dull, like those of a fish dead for days, and nothing remained of the fiery, driven man he had been in life, the one who had killed Ceyaxochitl, the one who had almost killed me. Husks, that was all they were, what was left after the corn had been harvested – nothing of value, nothing that was real.
Shivering, I hoisted Acamapichtli on my shoulders again, and followed Quenami down to the lake.
He was pushing a reed boat into the water; when I arrived he looked up at me, all arrogance and impatience. "Well? Help me."
"You're something," I said. "I've been carrying Acamapichtli all the while, and you're the one complaining." I didn't mention the fact that every moment we spent there weakened me, because he'd find a way to use it against me.
Quenami snorted. "You could have left him behind."
"And I could have left
you
behind." I wasn't quite sure why I'd been carrying Acamapichtli along all the while. We might have needed him at the end; even unconscious and wounded, he might have had some use. But–
The Duality take me, I'd had a debt to him, and never mind that it was being repaid to more than its value.
"Help me with the boat, will you?" Quenami insisted. Not for the first time, I fought the urge to shake some sense into him.
"Ask politely, and perhaps I'll consider it." I put Acamapichtli into the craft, and moved to push with Quenami.