Obsidian & Blood (138 page)

 

Ceyaxochitl lived in the district of Teopan – the Place of the Gods. Her house stood only a few paces from the Great Temple. Every day she must have seen the great pyramid rising to the heavens with the shrine to the Sun at the summit, heard the cries of sacrifices as their blood flowed on the altar. But I doubted she had ever worshipped the gods in their heavens. A Guardian acknowledged the gods' existence, but served none of them.
  The gods do not maintain order. To us humans falls the task of averting the end of the world. By our constant offerings of blood, we maintain the sun in the sky, and by their constant watch over the world the Guardians know when the gods falter.
  Ceyaxochitl's slaves were courteous but cold; I could sense I was not welcome. I sat down in the courtyard, under a pine tree, and calmly waited.
  At length a slave took me to the audience chamber. The walls of the room bore frescoes depicting Tonatiuh, the Fifth Sun, rising from the flames of His pyre into the sky, the world blossoming under His warmth. Tezcatlipoca watched from behind, His hands already reaching out as if to end the Age before it had begun.
  Ceyaxochitl was older than I remembered: time had sprinkled white into her black hair, and some wrinkles had crept onto her face. But she sat very straight on her dais, and her eyes saw everything.
  Behind her was a low table, on which lay the materials for some ritual unknown to me: three obsidian knives, and the fleshy leaves of a maguey cactus.
  “Acatl,” she said. “What a surprise.”
  She did not sound surprised. I waited until I was seated next to her before speaking. “You know why I came here.”
  Her eyebrow rose. “How could I know?”
  “I need information about a sect,” I said.
  “I give nothing without a good reason,” Ceyaxochitl said.
  “I will give you a reason. Three men have died. Huitxic, Itlani, Pochta. Do the names mean anything to you?”
  “Calm yourself,” Ceyaxochitl said. “Yes, I know those names. What does it change?”
  “They died with obsidian shards in their hearts.”
  Ceyaxochitl sighed. “I know nothing of it.” But her voice quavered perhaps more than it ought to have.
  “You do.”
  “Are you accusing me?” she asked, her hands tightening on the cloth of her skirt.
  “It would not be the first time you killed the members of a sect without reason.”
  Her eyes flared with anger so cold I regretted having taunted her. “It was many years ago. And they would have been a danger to us, in time.”
  “So you said. And the city believed you.”
  “Why not?” she asked, scathing. “I am not the only one to have dead bodies on her conscience. Your student–”
  “You will not speak of Payaxin here.”
  “You think you can control me, Acatl? In my own house? Your student couldn't even close his circle of protection. You should have taught him better.”
  “You–” I said, fighting an urge to strike at her. I remembered finding Payaxin's body, thrown backwards with such force his neck had broken. He had died instantly, of course: the obsidian shard embedded in his heart had seen to that. I had knelt, collected the scattered materials for the ritual he would never complete, said the prayers for his soul. I had not wept. Tears would have been useless. But I had not forgiven the Wind of Knives.
  Ceyaxochitl's eyes focused on me, and they sparkled with something like amusement.
  “You will not use that against me,” I said, softly.
  “Why not?” she said, and paused. “But you are right. Let us put petty quarrels behind us. I did know those men, but I did not kill them.”
  Liar. Her hands still trembled.
  “Then who were they?” I asked.
  “The Brotherhood of the Four Ages? Fools, like so many over Colhuacan and the rest of the Empire. Fools who think they can stop the sun in the sky, or summon monsters from the underworld to cause that final earthquake to sweep us away. Sometimes they try to call on Tezcatlipoca Himself, as if it were easy to summon the God of the Smoking Mirror. Fools who think Tezcatlipoca will reward them for their acts when He rules over the Sixth Age as the new Sun.”
  “Then they were a danger,” I said, quietly.
  “They? They had no idea what they were dealing with. Between them, they didn't have enough magical talent to fill a copper bowl. They couldn't have summoned a minor monster without making a mess of the ritual.”
  “Tell me why they died, then.”
  “I have no idea,” Ceyaxochitl said, more calmly. “But this is the truth, Acatl. They could not have summoned anything.”
  That last sounded sincere, but it did not exonerate her.
  “I see,” I lied. “They had jade emblems?”
  Ceyaxochitl shrugged. “The past Ages of the World. Four pendants, one for each of them. Itlani was their leader: he bore the sign for Four Jaguar, for that is the age in which Tezcatlipoca first reigned.”
  “He was also the first to die.”
  She did not answer. She clearly did not want to give me more. I rose, slowly, shaking the stiffness from my legs and back. “Thank you.”
  Ceyaxochitl did not rise at once, which allowed me to take a good look at the three knives spread out on the table by her side. They had a good edge, and all shone with a peculiar colour. Not green like the shard I had, but an aquamarine hue that was similar.
  I laid one hand on the leftmost blade, before she could stop me, and felt the power pulse deep within. The same power as the shard that had killed Huitxic.
  Liar.
  “You have overstayed your welcome,” Ceyaxochitl said, coldly.
  I withdrew my hand from the knife.
  “What are these knives?” I asked.
  “God-touched.” Ceyaxochitl would not meet my eyes. “That's all you need to know, Acatl. Now get out of my house.”
  I left. There would have been no point in talking further with her.

 

By the time I came back to my temple, I was exhausted. I sent a message to Macihuin, and then spent the rest of the evening making my own offerings of blood to the gods. I could not keep my thoughts from returning to Ceyaxochitl. Three dead warriors: Itlani, Pochta, and then Huitxic, with that obsidian shard in his heart. Obsidian that did not belong to the Wind of Knives, but throbbed like Ceyaxochitl's knives. Three members of a sect worshipping Tezcatlipoca and hoping He would end the world. And the fourth still alive, watched over by Macihuin.
  They had been incompetent. I did not think Ceyaxochitl was lying on that point. But it changed nothing. As Guardian, she still might have taken it upon herself to remove them.
  My sleep was dark and dreamless, and I woke up to an angry cry.
  “Acatl!”
  Macihuin's face hovered over me. In the blink of an eye, I was awake and sitting upright on my reed mat.
  “What is it?” I asked. Outside, it was still night; I could hear owls hooting to one another. The air smelled of steam-baths and cooked maize.
  “He's dead,” Macihuin said.

 

Nayatlan, the last member of the sect, had found the same ending as his brethren; he lay on his back on his reed mat, in the bedroom. He had the same mark as Huitxic on his torso.
  I opened up the chest in three swift cuts, and retrieved the obsidian shard in the heart: a shard similar to the one that had killed Huitxic.
  Macihuin stood to the side of the mat, his face dark. I held out the bloody shard to him, and he nodded. From the next room came weeping sounds: Nayatlan's wife.
  “Four Rain,” I said, lifting the jade pendant. The Third Age, which had ended when the gods sent down fire that consumed the earth.
  “As if we didn't know.” Macihuin sighed, and knelt to look at the body. “It was foreseeable, but still…”
  “You had a watch on him.”
  “From the outside of his house. Did you think I could place guards within the house of a respected warrior without raising an outcry?”
  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “But this is serious.”
  Macihuin did not speak.
  “Did you get a chance to interview him?”
  “I did,” Macihuin said. “Not a very productive talk: he denied everything.”
  I laughed, without joy. “Of course. So did Ceyaxochitl.”
  “The Guardian? I had your message, but…”
  “She's involved,” I said.
  “That's a serious accusation, Acatl. Do you have anything to support it?”
  “No. But I hope to find something here.”
  We searched every corner of the house; the dead man's widow helped us by showing us the chests where her husband had kept his most precious possessions. We found nothing.
  The last wickerwork chest we examined, though, was not as deep as it ought to have been. I raised my eyes to Macihuin, who was kneeling by my side, his hands full of clothes; together we tipped the chest's contents onto the ground.
  It turned out to possess a false bottom, full of sketches and papers. Nayatlan's widow swore in a voice still shaking with grief that she had never seen them. The glyphs on them were so faded they were almost illegible.
  “I need some time to study these,” I said.
  Macihuin was silent for a while. “I may have to refer this to the palace courts,” he said at last. “This is going beyond me.”
  “Don't. I need you.”
  “Why?”
  “They're all dead,” I said. “She's done her work. The longer we wait, the more proof disappears.”
  “And what do you think I should do?”
  My eyes rested on the first of the papers: it showed Tezcatlipoca, God of the Smoking Mirror, presiding over the first race of men in the age Four Jaguar. “Have Ceyaxochitl's house watched, as best as you can.”
  We did have a brief talk with Nayatlan's widow, but she did not even know her husband had been part of the sect. It was going nowhere.

 

I studied the manuscripts as best as I could, between the wake and the sacrifices for a dead man – for I still had my own work. The spells written in the manuscripts were old ones, so powerful they would have been beyond the grasp of an untrained sect.
  One of the spells was annotated as if in preparation, but half the glyphs were missing, which made it hard to decipher. A summoning, probably of some monster. Thank the gods they had not succeeded. I almost was grateful to Ceyaxochitl, until I remembered her arrogance. She had killed innocents.
  The rest of it was dull: all of it was praise to Tezcatlipoca, to His magic that could bring both life and death.
God of the Smoking Mirror,
the faded hymns said,
you who hold the destiny of the world in your hands, you who will rule over the Empire
. There, too, Nayatlan had written things, and I could piece together enough. He had had a son, I understood, who had drowned in the marshes while still very young. The fool had hoped Tezcatlipoca would bring him back in the Sixth Age.
  Fool. But still not enough to justify his death.

 

I got messages from Macihuin, all attesting to the same lack of progress: Ceyaxochitl did not go out of her house on the following day; nor on the next one. He had had the houses of the other three dead men searched, to no avail.
  Macihuin himself finally came to tell me the investigation was being withdrawn from him. The last victim had been not only a warrior, but a member of the Eagle Regiment, and his exalted status demanded more than a minor magistrate. Macihuin had to withdraw his guards while a more competent magistrate was found.
  I took the watch myself on the second night. Nothing happened. I sat all night on a neighbour's roof, watching the inner patios of Ceyaxochitl's house, and my clothes were wet by the time I finally came back to my temple.
  I had laid on the altar the three shards of obsidian: the two that came from the murders, and the last for Payaxin. Each time I came back to my temple I was reminded innocents had died.
  On the second night of my watch, I saw Ceyaxochitl going into her courtyard with an owl cage. I saw her lay down the jade, the spider carving and the obsidian blade. I saw her kill the bird and trace the square in blood.
  I saw her summon the Wind of Knives. He came to her call, and moved to stand near her, the hundred of obsidian knives glinting under the light of the moon. She whispered something to Him.
  No. I rose from my precarious hiding place, and almost fell from the roof. But still I could not hear the words any of them spoke. Ceyaxochitl dismissed the Wind of Knives, and He faded away from the courtyard, taking with Him the coldness and the sense of despair.
  Not possible. The Wind had not sounded so much of a liar.
  Had He? What did I know of underworld creatures, after all? I only knew how to read men. Supernatural creatures remained beyond me to encompass.
  I came back to my temple at dawn, shaking from the cold, and sent a messenger to Macihuin, begging him to come. I waited and waited, but there was no answer. At last, a bedraggled boy brought me a crumpled piece of paper from Macihuin.
I cannot help you, not now. Tonight, when I have finished my work.
  Something was afoot. Why had Ceyaxochitl summoned the Wind of Knives once more? Did she think to kill more men, more foolish sects who spoke of things they would never dare accomplish? Did she…
  My heart missed a beat. Did she think to kill both Macihuin and I?
  I sent my answer, telling to Macihuin to take care, and I waited.
  On the altar, the shards of obsidian glinted with sunlight: two of them green, the last without any colour at all.
  The sun seemed to take an eternity to move; I watched the shadows of the obsidian shards expand and then shrink again. The light turned from golden to white to golden again.
  The shards…
  I picked the two which shone with green reflections, one in each hand, and looked at them carefully. They did not look like the one in Payaxin's body; in fact… I put both of them in my right hand. They fitted together along part of their length, to form a narrow piece almost twice as long. Pieces of the same shattered blade?
  It did not look like a blade, no matter which way I turned the assembled pieces. Still, there was something odd about them…
  The sun was still high in the sky. I wrapped the three shards in a cotton cloth, and went into the district of artisans.

 

I had trouble finding a knife-maker who would receive me; they had work to do, more important work than accommodating a priest for the Dead.
  At length a very old man shuffled out of a workshop. “You need a knife-maker? I have time.”
  He must have seen my grimace in spite of his rheumy eyes. “I am not so old, boy.”
  I sighed, and handed him the cloth. “Can you tell me where those knife shards came from?”
  He laughed as he moved back into the shadows of his house. I followed him.
  “From which quarry, you mean? That's hard. Perhaps, if the pieces are big enough…” He unwrapped the cloth, bent over them.
  His finished knives lay on a low table, each of them a testimony to his skill, the blades sharp, the handles carefully crafted. Obsidian flakes lay everywhere.
  At length the old man raised his eyes. “Those are not knife shards.”
  My heart went cold. “What do you mean?”
  He moved, picked one of his own knives, and showed me the edge of the blade. “A knife blade is… peculiar. We make it by shaving off flakes from the rock, and it shows: you can still see the places where we removed the slivers.” His hand hovered over Payaxin's shard. “This is a knife shard. This was made to cut. You can see the indentations on the edge.”
  “And those?” I asked.
  “Those were polished,” he said.
  “But they're sharp.”
  He shook his head. “They're sharp because they were broken. Broken obsidian always cuts.”
  I asked my next question carefully, unsure of where his answer would take me. “Then where do those come from?”
  “I only make knives. But…” He laid his knife back on the table, and looked me in the eye. “It's a mirror, an obsidian one such as a woman would have in her house.”
  A mirror.
  I thanked him, picked up the shards, and went home. All the while my mind was running on unfamiliar paths, desperately trying to fit the pieces together. Tezcatlipoca, God of the Smoking Mirror. The mirror of obsidian that gave life and death.
  Shards of a mirror that throbbed with power under my hand, speaking of death. Not the underworld. Never the underworld. Deaths, because Tezcatlipoca was also the God of War and Fate.
  Despite everything that Ceyaxochitl had told me, despite everything Macihuin and I had found out, the sect had indeed summoned something. But not something from the underworld. The Wind would have killed them then. No, they had set their sights higher.
  They had summoned Tezcatlipoca Himself, so He could end this Fifth Age. And Tezcatlipoca, who was god of destruction as well as of rebirth, had killed them one by one.
  Only one person in Colhuacan had the knowledge and power to fight Him; only one person stood between the god and the end of this Age.
  Ceyaxochitl.
  I had been wrong. She had not summoned the Wind of Knives to kill the sect. She had summoned it to protect her. But the Wind could do nothing against a god.
  There was no time. I sent Macihuin yet another message, knowing inwardly that I was alone, that he would not find me before it was too late.
  Within my temple, I girded myself for battle. I had only pathetic things: I, who had not been even able to protect Payaxin from the underworld. Three obsidian knives went into my belt, and around my neck I hung a jade pendant in the shape of a serpent – Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent God: Tezcatlipoca's eternal enemy.
  And then I ran back to Ceyaxochitl's house.