Obsidian & Blood

FOURTEEN

Two Knights

Ceyaxochitl and Yaotl left soon after that, claiming pressing business at the palace. Neutemoc remained where he was, staring at the corpse, in what seemed to be a particularly bleak mood.

I stopped Ceyaxochitl at the door. "I don't suppose you could summon someone from Tlalocan?"

Her eyes held me, expressionless. "From the Blessed Land of the Drowned? You want to summon Eleuia?" Finally, she sighed. "No. The Duality is the source and arbiter of all the gods, but They have no power over where the dead go. And you…"

I could summon the dead, but only those who belonged to my god, Mictlantecuhtli. Eleuia, who had drowned, belonged to Tlaloc, and I couldn't summon her without the Storm Lord's blessing. But there was another way. "If she won't come to my call, I could go to her."

Ceyaxochitl raised her eyebrows. "Risky."

In a god's world, I would be an exile, my magic diluted, my body weak. And there was a risk, no matter how insignificant, that I would meet Father's soul: a small thing compared to the stakes, but not something I was looking forward to, by any means.

"I know," I said. But Eleuia would know why she had died, and who had abducted her. It was the most direct way to find out the truth.

"I really have to be at the palace," Ceyaxochitl said. "But if you're not back in three hours, I'll know what happened."

I nodded. By trying to enter Tlalocan, I would subject myself to Tlaloc's whims. If I hadn't come back in three hours, there wouldn't be much Ceyaxochitl could do, except perhaps succeed where I had failed.

After Ceyaxochitl and Yaotl had left, I went back into the room. Neutemoc was still staring at Eleuia's body, with a naked hunger that made me sick. He obviously hadn't been listening to a word we'd said, and what he was thinking of was quite obvious. It rankled. Here I was, endangering my life, and all he could think of was Eleuia? Not even Huei, or his children, or his family?

I asked, angrily, "This is what you'd have destroyed your marriage for? This flesh?" I made a sweeping gesture towards the altar, encompassing Eleuia's small, reduced body: the whitened flesh, the wrinkled fingertips… the missing eyes.

"It wasn't about carnal lust," Neutemoc snapped.

I walked to face him, words I couldn't hold any more welling up in me. "Wasn't it? You had everything, Neutemoc. It's not my fault if you tried to throw it all away."

"You can't understand."

"No," I said. "You're right. I can't even start to fathom it." I knelt on the ground, and gently traced the outline of the glyph for "water" on the stone: the mouth of a jug, out of which issued the serpentine shape of waves.

"What are you doing?" Neutemoc asked.

I shrugged. "You'll see." I retrieved the owl's cage from the altar, set it in the centre of the room, and withdrew the cloth that was covering it. A deafening, angry screech came from the bird in the cage.

"You're going to do magic here?" Neutemoc said.

I didn't answer.

"Acatl!" he said.

I raised my eyes briefly. "Yes," I said. "And I'm going to need you here, watching out."

"What for?"

I went back to the altar, and picked the jade plate and the spider carving. "I'm going to enter the World Beyond. To speak to Eleuia."

"Can't I come?" Neutemoc asked.

Gods, could the man think of nothing else but his would-be mistress?

"No," I said, curtly. That would be risking two lives instead of one. "You stay here."

I withdrew the owl from its cage and slit its chest. Blood spurted out in a rush of quiescent magic, its pungent animal smell mingling with the bittersweet odour of decomposition from Eleuia's body. I retrieved the owl's heart, and set it on the jade plate, above the First Level.

"Every year Your banners are unfolded in every direction

Every year you turn again to the place of abundant blood

Coming forth from the place of clouds

From the verdant house, from the water's edge…"

Magic blazed, closing the water-glyph pattern. It was if a veil had been thrown over the room, hiding Neutemoc and the altar, and the stone walls. The ground under my feet shifted, started to become mud.

"Coming forth from the beautiful place

From the misty house, from the verdant house

From the bliss of Tlalocan…"

Beyond the water-glyph, meadows were coalescing into existence, covered with the whiteness of maize flowers, lit by the warm afternoon sun. Somewhere, children were laughing, with such careless innocence that my heart ached.

"Coming forth from the water's edge

From the verdant house, from the bliss…"

Something pushed at me: two cold, dripping hands laid upon my shoulders. Startled, I lost my balance within the water-glyph and set one hand outside of the line of blood.

The meadows wavered, and were lost. The children's laughter slowly faded into insignificance. The golden light lost its warmth and colour, turning instead into a harsh, white radiance that out lined the bones under my skin. No. No. There was nothing left now; nothing of innocence, nothing of comfort. I could have wept.

The veil across the water-glyph hadn't returned either. Puzzled, I looked around me. I'd expected to return to the temple if my spell failed; but this was clearly no Fifth World place. Under my feet, the earth was black, and utterly dry. In fact, it wasn't earth. It was dust.

"Acatl," a voice said, behind me. "What a surprise."

Trying hard to contain the frantic beat of my heart, I rose and turned.

The harsh, white radiance came from a dais made of bones: skulls, arms and legs, ribcages poking out at odd angles. And on the dais… Mictlantecuhtli, Lord Death, and His wife, Mictecacihuatl, watching me as one might watch an unworthy insect.

I wasn't in the Fifth World at all. Somehow, I'd found my way into the deepest level of Mictlan.

Because there was nothing else I could do, I bowed. "My lord. My lady. I wasn't expecting to be here either."

Lord Death smiled: an eerie expression, stretching across His sunken cheeks. "Understandable. But one place leads to another."

"Tlalocan?" I asked.

Mictlantecuhtli crossed both arms over His skeletal ribcage. "The dead all take the same path. It's only the end of it that differs."

"That still doesn't explain why someone pushed me out of Tlalocan."

He smiled again. "You seem to have lost the Storm Lord's favour, if you ever had it."

There was an obvious reason. "I annoyed His High Priest recently," I said.

Mictlantecuhtli shook His head. "By the look of it, I would say it's an older offence."

"I don't see which one," I said, finally. But it was a lie. I knew why. I knew the only vigil I hadn't undertaken; I still remembered Father's drowned body, lying in the emptiness of the temple for the Dead – and of how I'd run away, unable to face the reproach still etched in every one of his features. Some things I just could not find the courage for.

Lord Death said nothing. He wasn't a god who judged, after all. He just received all the dead no other god had claimed. He wasn't fussy.

"There is no way in, then?" I asked.

"Not into Tlaloc's dominions," Mictlantecuhtli said. "If you've lost His favour, it's likely you've also lost Chalchiutlicue's."

I'd never been a worshipper of the Goddess of Lakes and Streams, and She wouldn't forgive my unfulfilled vigil. Father, after all, also belonged to Her.

"I was trying to find a priestess. Eleuia," I said, finally. Mictlantecuhtli, after all, was my patron. He would perhaps be inclined to offer hints. "Something is going on."

"In the Fifth World?" He asked. "Something is always going on. But it doesn't concern Us."

"It concerns the other gods."

"The Old Ones?" Mictlantecuhtli said. "And the newer ones – the upstart?"

"Huitzilpochtli."

Mictlantecuhtli ran His bone-thin fingers on the fibulae and femurs that made His throne. "Yes. The Imperial upstart and Tonatiuh, His incarnation as the Sun-God." He sighed, an uncannily human sound, although not a feature of His death-head's face moved. "My dominion is here. My power is here. Why should I look elsewhere? Let the others squabble over the Fifth World. I see no need to."

"So you don't know?"

"No," Mictlantecuhtli said. "I don't know what Eleuia would have known, or why she died. I presume that's what you want."

"Yes," I said. "But–"

He smiled again. "All I can offer is My knives, and some advice. Be careful of what you meddle in, Acatl. Cornered animals have a way of turning on you."

"I don't see what this has to do with anything," I said slowly, not daring to question him further, not in His dominion.

Lord Death shook His head. "Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. I think you can find your own way back, Acatl."

I'd never been this deep into the underworld, though I had caught glimpses of Mictlantecuhtli Himself before. I knew, theoretically, the path I would have to follow: back through the City of the Dead, the Plain of the Shadow Beasts, and through every level, until I could cross the River again and go back into the Fifth World.

"I–" I started.

I could feel Their amusement. "The gate is that way," Lady Death said, Her bony face stretched in a rictus grin. She gestured, and a cold wind blew around us, raising the dust at Her feet. Underneath was stone: cold, unyielding. And as the dust lifted, it revealed the carved pattern of a quincunx, pulsing with magic.

I stepped towards it but Mictecacihuatl caught my arm in a grip as unyielding as the embrace of death. Her bony hands probed my flesh, cold, unresponsive. I tried not to wince as Her pointed fingers slid into my wounds.

"You've bled much," She said. "Mostly in Our service."

I didn't speak. I was trying not to let Her see my pain.

Mictecacihuatl smiled: a grin that revealed yellowed teeth, as clean as animal-picked bones. "I suppose that after going all the way down here, you deserve something for your pain."

Light blazed around Her, sinking under my skin. Something tightened, impossibly compressing my bones, pressing my flesh against my rib cage – stretching me thin, as if on a funeral altar. The smell of rot grew strong, and then faded into the dryness of crumbling bones, of the dust at my feet. My wounds were closing one by one, not so much healing as being drained of pus, of blood, and each wound closing hurt worse than it had opening. I struggled not to scream.

When She released me, I crouched, panting, by the side of Her quincunx. I was unmarked again, even though my skin tingled, as if blood were returning to every vein in my body at the same time.

Lady Death was smiling again. "A fitting gift, I should think."

Standing where I was, in the deepest level of Mictlan, there was nothing I could answer to this; nothing beyond a croaked "Thank you, My Lady", which rang insincere. It had been a healing, but I almost wished it had not taken place.

"My pleasure," Mictecacihuatl said. "Go, now."

I did not need to be told twice. I stepped into the quincunx; and I welcomed the blurring of the world with relief.

When everything coalesced again, I was in the examination room, my wounds still tingling: an unpleasant reminder of what I had just undergone. Neutemoc, who had been kneeling by the altar, jumped up with a start.

"I thought you'd never come back," he said.

"How long has it been?" I asked.

"Two hours or more."

It had felt much shorter, but the time of the gods wasn't our own.

"Did you see her?" Neutemoc asked.

I shook my head. "I couldn't enter." I was too ashamed of myself to go into details.

"But–"

"It all depended on the Storm Lord's goodwill. And He wasn't very co-operative, to say the least."

"So you couldn't find her." Neutemoc sounded disappointed. I wanted to scream at him to stop being obsessed by her; to do something about his own wife, his own family. But all I would achieve was to set him further against me.

The smell of blood was strong, sickeningly so. My water-glyph had all but vanished, absorbed in the aborted passage to Tlalocan, but the smell had insinuated itself everywhere. "No, nothing learnt. I'll go and see if I can get something to clean the room," I said.

Neutemoc was watching Eleuia's body again, and didn't answer me.

When I came back with a reed broom, I found Teomitl in the courtyard, obviously waiting for me. His crutch was gone; his wounds were healed, far too quickly to be natural. I presumed his family – clearly noblemen, judging from his attire – would have had access to spells to facilitate his recovery. Teomitl himself was still as lean and as sharp as a jaguar on the prowl, still bursting with that boundless energy.

He bowed when he saw me: the sketchy gesture of one unused to obeisance. "Acatl-tzin," he said. "How are you?"

How was I? Angry – at Neutemoc for being such a fool; at Huei for being so easily manipulated; at myself for being blinded by my old illusions. And frustrated at being unable to enter Tlalocan. Although I didn't know what I would have done, had I met Father there. "I've been better," I said, curtly.

"You freed your brother," Teomitl pointed out.

"Hmm." I didn't feel inclined to talk about Neutemoc in front of Teomitl. Searching for another subject of conversation, I remembered that he had been one of those besotted by Eleuia. "We found Eleuia's body."

Teomitl's face froze, minutely: disappointment, carefully masked. "Can I see her?"

Inside the room, Teomitl knelt by Eleuia. He noted, I was sure, the bruises and the missing eyes and fingernails, but giving no hint of any expression whatsoever. He whispered something to her, but I couldn't hear his words. Something he likely didn't want me to hear.

I busied myself with the broom and some cold water, and energetically scrubbed the ground clean. When I finished, both Neutemoc and Teomitl were still watching Eleuia's body, with the same hunger in their eyes.

The Duality curse them both. What had they seen in her?

After Teomitl was done, he walked out again and stood in the courtyard, watching the sunlight play on motes of dust. He was silent, uncannily so, seemingly hunched in the shadow of the frescoed walls. He breathed slowly, evenly, his eyes unfocused.

"I should have known," he said. "They always die."

"Who?" I asked.

He shook his head. "They're always the same, haven't you noticed? They walk as if the world had no hold on them. But the gods catch them, sooner or later."

I was beginning to suspect that he wasn't talking about Eleuia, and that I had misjudged him. He hadn't been infatuated with her, but with someone else. "Teomitl–"

He straightened up as if I'd struck him. "I came with news, Acatltzin. You were looking for Mahuizoh of the Coatlan calpulli."

"Yes," I said, tearing myself from my questions about Teomitl with some difficulty. Mahuizoh. I still needed to interview him: I still needed to find out who had tried to kill Neutemoc.

"He has come back into Tenochtitlan," Teomitl said.

"How do you know?"

Teomitl shrugged. "Rumours make their way, even into the calmecac."

Was he still sweeping the courtyard of the girls' calmecac? His manners, at any rate, had not improved. He still had the same unthinking arrogance that chafed at me: a glimpse of what I might have become, if I had chosen the path of war at the calmecac. But that was irrelevant.

"Do you know why he left the city?" I asked. It sounded far too convenient.

Teomitl shook his head.

I sighed. "Come. Let's go see him."

We extracted Neutemoc from his moody vigil over Eleuia's body. While we strode to Mahuizoh's house, I told him what he needed to know.

"Her lover?" he asked, plainly crestfallen.

Sometimes, my brother could be such a child. "Yes," I said, stifling another sigh. We were talking about a man who had a good motive for wanting Neutemoc dead, and all he could think of was that he'd had a rival.

Teomitl walked by our side, not saying anything. In the afternoon sunlight, his skin shone. Seeing him side by side with Neutemoc, it was easy to know what Teomitl's protection spell was: a much stronger version of the one Mihmatini had cast on my brother. Huitzilpochtli's protection, a fitting spell for a warrior. Teomitl's eyes went from Neutemoc to me; but clearly he was still thinking on Eleuia. Not, not on Eleuia – on whomever he'd really been infatuated with.

At the entrance to Mahuizoh's house, no slave tried to stop us. When I'd come with the Duality warriors, they'd been fearful. But to receive a Jaguar Knight in full regalia was an honour, judging by the way they bowed to Neutemoc.

"The master is at home," the slave said. "He'll be delighted to see you."

Mahuizoh received us in the reception room, sitting on the same dais as old Cocochi. He was dressed, not in his Jaguar Knight uniform, but in a simple loincloth, with a cape of white cotton falling down his shoulders. For a man in his mid-thirties, he was still going strong: the flesh of his arms firm, his face almost as smooth as that of a young man.

"I gather some of you attempted to visit me earlier," he said, after I'd introduced everyone. His gaze was curious, not hostile: the hostility was reserved for Neutemoc, who was blithely unaware of it. But I wasn't fooled. Mahuizoh was a clever man. He had to be, to balance both his affair with Eleuia and his belonging to the Jaguar Knights – two utterly incompatible things.

"We were looking for you," I said. "To ask some questions."

"Indeed?" His gaze still didn't reveal anything. And yet he had to know the reason we were here. "If you must."

The only way I'd get something out of this man was by shattering his composure. "We found a body this morning, near Chapultepec. It belonged to Priestess Eleuia."

He stared at me, for a while. Blinked, slowly, very slowly. "I see," he said, finally. And then, more softly, "I see." He was shaking.

"It was suggested that you slept with her," I added.

Mahuizoh looked at Neutemoc, the hatred on his face unmistakable. "I wasn't the only one, was I?"

Near me, Teomitl shifted. "The Imperial Courts cleared Neutemoc of wrongdoing."

Mahuizoh smiled. "I see you're not even brave enough to defend yourself," he said to Neutemoc. "You send pups to sing your praises."

Teomitl went still, one hand on his macuahitl sword, tightening around the hilt. "You call me a pup?" he asked.

"An unbloodied pup," Mahuizoh said. His teeth were as white and as sharp as the fangs of a jaguar. "Anyone can see that."

"I took a prisoner," Teomitl said.

"What a feat," Mahuizoh said, his voice mocking. "One man against… how many of you untrained youths? Four, five?"

It was a deliberate insult, for Teomitl wouldn't have been a Leading Youth unless he had captured a prisoner by himself. His face paled: he couldn't tolerate such an blow to his pride.

"Leave him alone," Neutemoc said, stepping between them with both arms extended, as if to fend off an enemy. "We both know I'm the one you want."

Mahuizoh laughed, bitterly. "Do I?" he asked. I finally realised what he was doing: his anger was all that kept his grief at bay.

"She loved both of us," Neutemoc said. Given Eleuia's propensity to take lovers, that was a singularly foolish thing to say. Mahuizoh didn't fail to rise to it.

"No," he said. "You're wrong."

"Because you had her longer?" Neutemoc asked, his voice shaking in anger.

Mahuizoh smiled. "No," he said. "Because she only loved one person in her life."

"You?" Neutemoc asked, stepping closer – just as I said, "Herself."

Mahuizoh's gaze moved from Neutemoc to me. "You're perceptive, for a priest," he said, surprised.

The "priest" carried the slight tone of contempt warriors always put on it. I said, slowly, not about to be outdone by a proud Jaguar Knight, "But you, on the other hand, loved her."

Mahuizoh was silent for a while. He stared at me; and, when he spoke again, his voice shook. "Yes," he said. "She was the only one who made me feel alive."

"She could be like that." Teomitl still had his hand on his sword. He was still glowering at Mahuizoh.

"You met her," Mahuizoh said. "Whenever you met her, you'd remember. Because there was so much anguish in her, so much desire to live."

I remembered the Quetzal Flower's description of Eleuia: a woman who would do anything rather than know hunger again. I began to believe that Mahuizoh had indeed loved her. He had known her, better than Neutemoc or Teomitl.

"And you couldn't bear the thought of sharing her," I said.

Mahuizoh laughed, a sickening sound. "Sharing?" he asked. "Let me tell you something," he said, turning to Neutemoc. "If she flirted with you, it's because you had something she wanted."

A house of her own. Rooms filled with riches, and a status that would make most men and women envious. All she had to do was take Huei's place, or convince Neutemoc to take her as a second wife.

On the other hand… Mahuizoh himself had all of that. Why hadn't she asked him for that?

"You never married her?" I asked.

Mahuizoh shook his head. "I asked. She didn't want to. She had ambitions, you see."

"Higher than being the wife of a Jaguar Knight?" Teomitl asked.

Mahuizoh smiled. "She wanted her own power, not something that was dependent on a husband."

Hence the drive to become consort of the god Xochipilli. It explained Eleuia's life, but still not why someone was trying to do away with my brother. And not, either, why mysterious men would abduct and torture her. Eleuia's ambition had been unsuitable for a woman; but surely that offence warranted no such punishment.

"Do you know why someone would want to kill her?" I asked.

Mahuizoh shook his head.

"She had a child," I said.

His eyes flicked. "Possibly."

"And you were the father."

He looked genuinely surprised this time. "No," he said. "Wherever did you get that idea?"

"From a reliable source," I said, wondering exactly how much I could trust the Quetzal Flower. No more, I guessed, than I could trust Mahuizoh.

"I didn't father any child with her," Mahuizoh said, curtly. "Whoever told you this was mistaken."

"And you didn't attempt to kill Neutemoc?"

Mahuizoh looked at Neutemoc. My brother wasn't even paying attention, absorbed in thoughts. Mahuizoh's face, for a bare moment, twisted into a mask of hatred so frightening that I recoiled. "No," Mahuizoh said. "I didn't make attempts on his life."

But he had taken far too long to answer. And his jealousy of Neutemoc, in spite of everything he had said, was obvious.

"Why did you leave the city?" I asked.

He blinked, slowly. "Am I forbidden to go where I wish?"

"No," I said. "But with an investigation going on–"

"An investigation," Mahuizoh said arrogantly, "that I have nothing to do with."

A patent lie. "So you deny you had a part in this?"

"Abducting her? Torturing her? Yes."

"How do you know she was tortured?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I heard the rumours."

A convenient reason. Too convenient, maybe? It had only been half a day since we'd found Eleuia's body. How could he have known about its state?

"Who told you?"

Mahuizoh smiled. "It was all over the Jaguar House. Probably the Eagle House as well."

"I see," I said. Though I was suspicious, I couldn't think of anything more to ask him. I turned to Neutemoc to see if he had any more ideas; but my brother was still deep in thought.

With a sigh, I took my leave from Mahuizoh.

Neutemoc was still thinking as we walked back to the Sacred Precinct. "He's right, you know," he said.

"He's a liar," Teomitl snorted. "A liar and an honourless man, who thinks nothing of insulting his peers."

"Yes," Neutemoc said. "But still…" He spoke to no one in particular. He refused to look at me, or even to walk near me. "She was cold when she first saw me. I had to remind her of the Chalca Wars before she'd pay attention to me."

"And?" I asked, unable to resist a small jab. "She'd been through so many men she didn't remember you."

"She remembered my name," Neutemoc said. "But it wasn't until we talked together…" He shook his head. "I wonder if he was right, and I had something she wanted." It appeared to bother him immensely. And no wonder, since it showed Eleuia in a wholly different light.

"She wanted power over you," Teomitl said.

"What did you talk about?" I asked.

Neutemoc shrugged. "I don't remember exactly. Mostly about bygone times – the thrill of the battlefield, and how you'd wager every bit of your future, going into combat." The nostalgia in his voice was palpable: a raw hurt. Was this what he'd tried to regain with his affair: the sense that everything could be won or lost?

We walked the rest of the way in silence. In the temple courtyard, Neutemoc asked, "What now?"

I glanced at the sky. It was late afternoon, high time for lunch. "Let's get something to eat," I said. "And then I need to visit your home." I wanted to know if Mihmatini's wards still held, if the creatures had come back and tried to attack the house while Neutemoc was still protected by the Southern Hummingbird.

Neutemoc's eyes blazed. "I told you–"

"Never to darken your doorstep again. Yes, I know that. But do you really want yourself or Mihmatini to be attacked again?" I asked.

Neutemoc shuddered. "No," he said. He wouldn't look at me. "You can look at the wards. But–"

"I know. I won't stay more than I have to."

Teomitl had obviously been fidgeting the whole time we'd been talking. Now he said, "Well, if you're in this for a while, I'll go back to the calmecac."

"Won't they worry about your absence?" I asked. For a calmecac student, he was leading a remarkably careless life, never noticing the strictures the school was meant to impose on one's days and nights.

Teomitl shrugged. "I'll get another penance," he said, with a smile. "Good day, Acatl-tzin."

And, as he turned to go away, the golden light of the sun hit him full on the face – highlighting the hawkish profile, the high cheekbones, until the features that I had seen many times turned into something else. Tizoc-tzin's face.

"Teomitl!" I called.

Halfway through the temple gates, he turned, and there was no doubt. The resemblance with Tizoc-tzin was so marked it was hard to believe I'd missed it before.

Imperial blood. That explained the unthinking arrogance, as well as the spell hanging around him. As a young member of the Imperial Family, of course he'd be under Huitzilpochtli's protection. Who was he to Tizoc-tzin, to Revered Speaker Axayacatl-tzin? A nephew, a distant cousin?

Teomitl was watching me, his head cocked, impatient to move on.

"Who are you?" I called, because I couldn't help it.

Teomitl looked at me with incomprehension. "A warrior."

"No," I said. I couldn't stop the shiver that ran through me. Who had I taken into a hunt for a beast of shadows? Who had nearly been killed by my carelessness? "Who are you? Tizoc-tzin's cousin?"

Neutemoc's head jerked up. He stared at Teomitl with widening eyes.

Teomitl's gaze moved from Neutemoc to me. His face was expressionless.

"I'm his brother," he said. And, turning on his heel, he walked away into the crowd of the Sacred Precinct.

Neither I nor Neutemoc had the courage to stop him.