Read Shadow of the Lords Online
Authors: Simon Levack
Shadow of the Lords (25 page)
My head started to spin. I forced myself to concentrate, thinking I had to stay awake, I had to get up and get away before the woman came back, but the pain and the sick feeling were too strong for me, and I blacked out.
I
woke to an angry buzzing. It came from one side of my head and then the other, as though its source were moving in circles around my head, and it was only when it settled on my nose and made me sneeze that I realized that I was being inspected by a fly.
woke to an angry buzzing. It came from one side of my head and then the other, as though its source were moving in circles around my head, and it was only when it settled on my nose and made me sneeze that I realized that I was being inspected by a fly.
My eyes snapped open.
It took me a moment to recall where I was. My head was still full of the sights and sounds of the night, and the strange, disjointed dreams that had come upon me while I slept. I shook my head briskly, dislodging the fly and creating a spasm of pain at the back of my skull.
What had happened to me, and what had I seen? Vague images of the god Quetzalcoatl and a beautiful woman filled my head.
I remembered a tale of Topilztin, the infinitely wise and good last king of the Toltecs. He shared the attributes of Quetzalcoatl, the god whose high priest he was and whose name he bore. He had fallen prey to the malice of Tezcatlipoca, his divine patron's enemy. Tezcatlipoca had visited him in the guise of an old woman, a healer, and urged sacred wine upon him, saying it was for the good of his soul. Try just a drop on the tip of your tongue, the old woman had wheedled. He had refused; he knew that the taste would lead to a drink, and a drink to another, and so on until his soul was drowned in the stuff and lost for good.
At last he had assented to having a drop of it placed on his forehead, and from that moment he was lost.
Gourd after gourd he had downed, and then he had called his sister to him and had her taste the stuff too, and then, in a drunken frenzy, they had lain together.
Afterwards, consumed with remorse, he had left the city of Tollan, fleeing to exile in the East, never to be seen again.
Did this, I wondered, give meaning to the vision I had seen? Until that day, Quetzalcoatl had been celibate as well as temperate. Had the god, tempted by what had brought the man down, chosen to run away rather than risk the same fate?
I had come looking for the raiment of Quetzalcoatl, convinced I would find it in this room. Instead, I had seen the god himself. Or had I seen a man dressed as the god? Had I seen Idle's killer?
I began to understand Stammerer's fear and anger when he had described what he had seen from the top of the pyramid in Amantlan. Perhaps I had seen a man wearing a costume, but there was a power invested in the raiment of a god that belonged to the god himself and must not be misused, and I had felt it.
Daylight fell as a bright oblong across the floor and bathed the rest of the room in twilight. Still, it was not easy to see. My vision was blurred and it took a conscious effort to get my eyes to focus. With some difficulty I managed to lift my head off the floor. It came away with a sticky, tearing noise and an instant of blinding agony I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain and slapped my palms against the floor to brace myself and stop myself falling back. I took several deep breaths until the throbbing and nausea had diminished and I felt able to move again.
âGot to get out, Yaotl.'
I got to my knees and then, gingerly, to my feet, watching
in puzzlement as several lengths of severed rope fell about me. Swaying a little, I looked down, noting the rope, the large patch of freshly dried blood where my head had been, and the fact that I was naked.
in puzzlement as several lengths of severed rope fell about me. Swaying a little, I looked down, noting the rope, the large patch of freshly dried blood where my head had been, and the fact that I was naked.
âWhere are my clothes?'
Fortunately I did not have to look far: my breechcloth and cloak had been discarded next to where I had lain. Something on top of them glittered. Ignoring the renewed dizziness that it caused, I bent towards it and recognized a small copper knife.
That explained how the ropes had been cut, I thought, as I tied the breechcloth. Once I had wrapped myself in the cloak and knotted it over my right shoulder I felt able to look around me and make some effort to piece together the things I could see and the vague, disjointed memories that they stirred up.
I noted the pile of rubbish by the back wall. I could see now that it had not grown out of a year's worth of detritus thrown casually into a corner. Some effort had been made to sweep it all together. I stepped over to it and began sifting it experimentally.
As before, I was surprised by the number of feathers, and much else connected with the featherworkers' craft: knives, needles, glue spreaders, and so on. As I stirred the rubbish with my fingers the air around me suddenly filled with feathers and I had to hold my breath to stop myself sneezing.
Something fell off the top of the pile as I disturbed it, a round, lightweight object that struck the floor with a hollow ringing noise and rolled a little way across it until it reached the opposite wall. When I picked it up I saw that it was a bowl. I put a finger inside it and found that its surface was moist, and a few hard little grains still adhered to its sides. By putting the finger cautiously to my tongue, I could tell that someone had been drinking an infusion of Morning Glory seeds.
I threw the bowl back on the heap and spat on the rubbish to get rid of the taste. I knew it from my time as a priest. We had drunk a little of it, on occasion, to induce visions, but we knew that if anyone had too much, the demons he saw would take both his soul and his life. I wondered how much I had had, and how many of the fantastic things I had seen and heard in the night had come out of that little bowl.
I surveyed the heap of rubbish again. This had been Idle's and Marigold's room, according to Butterfly, but it looked as if she and Skinny had taken advantage of their disappearance to dump all the debris from his workshop in here. It did not take me long to satisfy myself that there was nothing underneath the pile. If the costume had ever been hidden there, it was long gone.
There was little else to be seen in the room except a cheap, frayed sleeping-mat and an old cloak or blanket on the floor beside it. However, as I stood over them, I noticed something I could not see.
I sniffed the air and frowned.
By far the strongest smell in the room was the smoky, resinous odour of a pine torch that had been left to burn itself out. There were others that it did not quite mask.
Clinging to the air over the sleeping-mat were faint hints of musk and sweat and stale perfume. A woman had lain there most of the night. I gathered the discarded blanket up in my arms and buried my nose in it. Then I threw it away violently, because there was something familiar in the complex of smells that it bore, something horrifying, a reminder of things I did not want to think about. I thought of snakes, hissing and writhing and threatening me with their stifling coils.
Shuddering, I turned to go. Then I caught another smell.
This one was fainter than the others, but once I noticed it I could not avoid it. It was the smell I had noticed when I had
first come into the room, before I was knocked out, but now I remembered what it reminded me of all the things I instinctively shied away from, the smell of my worst nightmares â a mixture of putrefaction, decay, filth, piss and blood.
first come into the room, before I was knocked out, but now I remembered what it reminded me of all the things I instinctively shied away from, the smell of my worst nightmares â a mixture of putrefaction, decay, filth, piss and blood.
It was the stench of the Emperor's prison, and for a moment my nose was filled with all the things that had assailed it in my time there, in my tiny, cramped, unlit cage, squatting, because there was no room to stand or lie down, and listening to the hoarse, rattling breaths of my neighbours while I waited for my turn to come.
I stumbled towards the doorway, gagging.
Something snagged my foot and sent me sprawling.
I scraped my knee painfully on the floor as I fell. The shock helped, reminding me that I was not in prison but free to blunder about and fall over things. I lay still for a moment while I repeated this to myself a few times, and then I turned to look at what had tripped me.
I realized it must be the same thing that I had stubbed my toe against in the night. It was a carved stone, one of a pair, because another, identical in style, lay next to it. When I picked them up I could see that they were two halves of the same piece. It had split, perhaps when someone had dropped it.
I rubbed my knee and then stood up, holding the broken sculpture. I could feel that when the pieces were fitted together there was a jagged surface left, where they must both have been joined to something else.
That gave me an idea. After a quick glance out of the doorway to make sure it was empty, I took the pieces out into the courtyard and carried them over to the broken plinth.
They fitted.
Holding the broken idol in place on its mounting, I was able to see it properly for the first time.
I knew it at once. It had a dog's face, wrinkled and furrowed with age. Its ears were misshapen rags, covered with sores, and its hands and feet were shrivelled and bent, so that had it been an animated, breathing creature, it could have done nothing but lie in the dust, howling for release from its agony. It was Xolotl, who represented disease, deformity and those feared and ill-omened beings, twins, whose presence could bring disaster on a household by draining the life out of the fire in the hearth.
I put the idol's two pieces on the floor carefully, so as not to make a sound. I wondered why it had been here: whether someone had been ill, or whether Marigold had acquired it because she felt she needed Xolotl to complete her collection. I wondered, too, why it had been desecrated so. Perhaps the god had been placated to get rid of an illness that had, in spite of everything, proved fatal. The smell in the room I had just left came to mind.
Or had Xolotl been venerated here for some other reason? It suddenly crossed my mind to wonder whether Skinny and his brother might have been twins, and what it might mean if they were. But if so, I thought, then why had the idol been broken?
I would have to think about that later. Now I had more pressing problems. The first was how to get out of the courtyard without having to go through the room leading to the street, where I might run into Butterfly or Skinny or both. Then I had to find a way of avoiding the Otomies. I tried not to think about what came after that. Kindly's property and my son were still as elusive as ever.
I thought the best thing I could do would be to clamber up one of the walls and leave the way I had come in. A stout climbing plant, like a mature gourd vine, would do, just something to give my hands and feet some purchase.
I had a quick look at the walls at the back and sides of the courtyard but found nothing. I turned to the front, but could not see anything there either, because there was someone standing in the way.
He was tall. My eyes were on a level with his chest. As they travelled upward, I tried very hard not to believe what they were telling me. Unfortunately there was no mistaking the short, plain, functional cloak tied at the throat, the grim mouth with its lips pressed firmly together, and the hooded eyes, the piled-up hair and the sword whose handle projected over one shoulder, ready to be seized and brought into use in an instant.
I took a step back. âUp ⦠Upright?' I spluttered. âThis ⦠this isn't your parish. What are you doing here?'
âNo. But it is theirs.' The policeman jerked his head once across his shoulder to indicate the men behind them. At the same time all three of them stepped forward. One was his own deputy, Shield. The others, judging by their thickset forms and harsh faces, were policemen too: at a guess, the parish police of Atecocolecan.
âI ⦠I was just leaving,' I said.
âQuite right, you were.'
In one fluid movement Upright reached behind him, plucked his sword from its harness and had it poised over my head. Quick glances to the left and right told me his companions had done the same, and moreover that the two local men had stepped forward so that I was effectively surrounded.
âNow, Yaotl, we can do this the easy way where you come with us on your feet, or we can do it the hard way â¦'
âWhere you have to carry me because I can't walk with both legs broken. Right.' I sighed. âLook, you don't understand ⦠No, wait, what did you call me?'
âWe don't need to understand,' growled the bear on my
right. âLook, Upright, we're here, it looks like you've got your man, why not just bash him over the head and get going? We've got work to do.'
right. âLook, Upright, we're here, it looks like you've got your man, why not just bash him over the head and get going? We've got work to do.'
âBut my name isn't â¦'
âWe know perfectly well what your name is, you murdering little bastard! The woman went and reported you to the local lads here.' Shield suddenly jabbed me with the blunt end of his sword, not hard enough to hurt but with enough force to make me stagger. âAnd this time there's no wealthy widow to back your lies up with her own. You didn't think my boss was joking, did you?'
âNo,' I cried hastily, as the sunlight flashed off four sets of cruelly sharp obsidian blades. âNo, but you said ⦠you called me a murderer â I had nothing to do with Idle, I tell you. I swear it, I will eat earth â¦'
âIdle?' To my amazement Upright laughed. âYou don't think we still care about Idle, do you?'
âYou mean there's someone else?'
âOh, this is pathetic!'
The end of the sword hit me just below the rib cage, knocking the breath out of me so that I could not cry in pain but only collapse, doubled over and gasping vainly for air.
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