Clash of Star-Kings (10 page)

And when he reflected on that cult and all that it implied, his flesh turned cold and began to tremble.

His captors removed their clothes and dressed again in loincloths and mantles and headdresses of antique design. They drew water in a vessel of Aztec pattern and sprinkled it about the courtyard, chanting things in a form of High Nahuatl which he did not fully understand. Next they poured libations of pulque, then they built and kindled a fire, then they danced about it, singing, and in the course of this they drew embers from the fire into an incense burner and cast beads of odorous copal-gum upon it. Back and forth, around and around, in a pattern which grew increasingly more intricate, the three men danced, their voices growing louder and louder.

The three dancing men lifted up their heads, threw back their heads, howling like beasts, gashing their tongues and their earlobes till the blood ran. They threw themselves upon their knees and struck their heads upon the smooth paving stones. From within the temple a horn of some sort sounded and blared. Luis, with staring eyes and trembling breath, saw a movement at the temple door. And then the great and terrible gods of the Aztecs appeared and then he screamed and screamed and screamed.

• • •

“All is prepared,” the inhuman voice of Huitzilopochtli declared. “All, or almost all. The mirror is polished, the way has been swept, the weapons are prepared, the faithful await the summons, the cords are knotted and the knife is sharpened and the fire is prepared. The only thing which lacks is the Great Heart — ”

The other gods brayed and groaned and clamored and stamped their feet and brandished their war clubs and their incense burners. Their eyes burned in the grotesque masks of their faces, their plumes waved, their tusks clashed.

“ — the Great Heart of Tlaloc-Tlamacazqui: Only this is lacking!”

The three men rose to their feet and resumed their dance and their chant.

But Huitzilopochtli and his fellows seemingly did not delight in this invocation; they advanced with menacing cries and gestures. The dancing and chanting stopped, the three worshippers crouched contritely, placing their palms upon the ground and raising them to their lips and kissing them. The ground round about them was stained with their blood.

“Have you not heard? Have you not understood? It is vain to invoke Our Brother Tlaloc! He is not here and he will not be here until that which we call his Great Heart is found and secured. It is in this region, Slaves of Tezcatlipoca! It is in this area, Servants of Quetzalcoatl! It is not far from here, Warriors of Huitzilopochtli! Sons of Holy Mother Tonantzin and Sacred Sister Tlaculteotl; we tell you that the mirror reveals that it is at no great distance, and we tell you that it must be found!”

The three men sat with their arms around their knees, their eyes cast down. And when Dragon-Headed Huitzilopochtli had finished and his distorted voice was silent, the heavy one said, “O Drinker of the Rivers of Blood, when it is found, this Puissant Object, then will all proceed as planned?”

“All! All!”

The thin one asked, “Slayer of Enemies, when it is found, then shall the Tenocha rule over all of Anahuac, all of the Valley of Mexico, as before?”

“All! All!”

He sighed his same blissful, yearning sigh. And Ordinario, in turn: “Dragon-Head, Great Hummingbird, when it is found, then will the gods be pleased to accept all of our sacrifices and grant us all their benefits as before?”

And for the third and final time, the great beaked muzzle of the Huitzilopochtli parted and the utterly alien voice declared, “All! All!”

“Why, then, do you tarry?” it brayed.

They leaped to their feet. “The Great Heart of Tlaloc, we will find it! And in the meanwhile, O our father’s gods, be pleased to accept the finest fruit of the first of our offerings!” Two of them turned and seized hold of Luis and tore his clothes from him; while he screamed and struggled, the third mounted the pyramid. Luis was borne, kicking and twisting, up the stone steps and thrown and held upon the altar, his pleas and shrieks never ceasing. A stone with a convex surface was under him, so that his chest was thrust up. The thin Tenocha, his face transformed, leaned over and lightly stroked the sweating skin as though to mark the place, then lifted the knife with its blade of curved black obsidian.

“Stay! Hold!”

The Huitzilopochtli itself mounted the steps. Something gleamed in its paw. It seemed simultaneously vexed and puzzled. “We had anticipated the joy and pleasure of tasting heart and of being strengthened by the fluid of life,” it said. “But — see — ” It was the golden
ocelotl
, just now fallen from Luis’s suddenly spastic fingers. “This is a sigil of the so-called Great Old Ones and it is in some way connected and in communion with them. And even though we have often defeated them and driven them away from this and other worlds, and even though it is true that they are indescribably far from this world at present….”He brooded, emitting small squawking sounds from time to time; then the great grotesque head bobbed abruptly, nodded.

“Release him; do not choose him again. Where he obtained a sigil, how many fives of centuries old it may be, I do not know. But inasmuch as our total plans embrace the ultimate and absolute defeat of those Great Old Ones, it is far from our desire that they be made aware of our presence for now. So. Go!” It flung out its hand and stalked stiffly away.

The three men gazed at each other, blinking. They seemed to have awakened from a dream. Then the one with the knife severed Luis’s bonds. Another helped him to his feet, and the third restrung the cord with its gleaming symbol about his neck. “The gods have exempted you from sacrifice,” they said to him, softly, awed, without resentment. “How you have been honored!” And after a ceremonial leave-taking, they helped him rearrange his tattered clothing and conducted him respectfully back out of the hidden valley, down the gorge, and far, far down the escarpments of Ixtaccihuatl, until at last their feet touched a much-trodden trail.

“Con permiso,”
he said, irony upheld by belatedly returned courage.

They looked at him with sober eyes, sarcasm having totally passed them by.
“Pase Vd.,”
they said. And they watched him go, faces only faintly regretful, and totally drained of anger.

There were many things in the mind of Luis as he picked his way down the path. Not smallest of the wonders was the difference between these men as he had known them in their outer appearances, boors and buffoons, dwellers in a despised quarter; and as he saw them now in their innerness, heritors of an antique trust and an ancient, unbounded faith.

But the improvement was one which he felt that he and his fellow countrymen could well afford to do without.

Tata Santiago Tue, his nephew Domingo Deuh, and others of the council of the pueblo of San Juan Bautista Moxtomi, sat at the feet of the Great Old Ones. The vast and benign countenances of the latter gazed upon the calm and trusting faces of the Indians.

“It was not by our own wish,” explained the Elder Old One, first among equals in their own councils, “that we should leave you. True, that we were pleased to return to our home in the most distant stars, my sons. But we traveled, even then, between here and there with little more difficulty than any of you might travel between Chalco and Cuautla. Often we went, often we returned. We knew the Olmec, we knew the Toltec and the Mixtec and the Maya, as well as the Moxtomí and others. We loved them as our children, they loved us as their fathers; we taught them, they were apt, and learned. And so the maize grew and was harvested, and so the ages passed.”

“When the Tenocha, whom some call the Azteca, came down from the north, what were they?”

Tuc answered, his seamed face split by a bitter and contemptuous smile. “A handful of savages, lizard-eaters, knowing nothing of agriculture or of any other of the arts of civilized men. War was all that they knew — only war!”

But as the Aztecs were descending from the north, fighting and butchering as they went; at about this same time the Huitzili were descending on the land from their own home-world among the distant, distant Evil Stars. Few were their own numbers and, at first, small their own resources. But with the cleverness of the wicked they had recognized that the Aztec were a people designed, as it were, by nature to be their tools and the means of their own advancement.

Far, far different was their appearance from the appearance of men, unlike the appearance of the Great Old Ones whose form was like that of giant, exalted men. But the Huitzili were grotesque, horrid, ungainly, distorted … Made and suited to impress the rude minds and coarse fantasies of the Aztecs, who at once elevated the Huitzili to the status of gods —

And then, under their guidance and with their aid, proceeded to conquer as they came, until all the lovely land of Anahuac was theirs, and then the adjacent lands, even unto the sea.

The price was, of course, great, for the Huitzili loved the hearts and blood of man-flesh, and literally rivers of it flowed upon their altars. War, which had first been made to gain land and then to get tribute, continued after both land and tribute was guaranteed
… had
to continue, for only from the multitudes of prisoners could come the requisite number of human sacrifices. And thus, as the power of the Aztecs increased, so did the power of their gods, their allies, the Huitzili.

“War was not our own talent,” said the Elder Old One. “And after each encounter we continued in our previous ways, expecting each time that life would be as it was before, that now at last the Huitzili would menace no more. But, by the time we had realized that the Huitzili would always menace because it was a structural part of their nature to do so, events in and around our own world prevented us from full-scale resistance here on this world. But we did what we could….

“We lured them away….

“To assure our children here of at least some continued benefits, we hid that goodly thing which has been called the Great Heart of Tlaloc, we set an appointed guardian and watcher over it — ”

Domingo Deuh said in a low and breathy voice, “
El
Heremito Sagrado….”

“The Guardian was in the shape of an ordinary man, the humble custodian of a humble Indian shrine located over and above the cavern where the Tlaloc-which-contained-the-Great-Heart-of-Tla-loc was located. The presumption was that none would look for it in so obvious a place, and this presumption had proved correct. The Great Old Ones fled, luring the Huitzili with them. For long ages chase, pursuit, encounter, fight, between the two forces continued. Meanwhile, here in Anahuac, the unforeseen had happened. The Azteca-Tenocha did not — deprived of Huitzili guidance — crumble and fall apart. Their momentum carried them on to further conquests; unable to offer human blood and human hearts to their actual and present gods, they continued nonetheless to offer them up before the idols and the images. And the butchery and bloodbath continued….

“Then came the Spaniards, who, with the aid of many of the subject tribes and nations of Mexico, destroyed the Aztec power forever. True, they introduced a new bondage, but it had not the same stench of rotten blood about it as the old one had. And the Guardian appraised this new situation and he met it well; he himself embraced the new faith and under his influence most of the other local Indians embraced it as well. As a result, be was able to remain where he had been; eventually he ‘died.’ … But, as he had foreseen, even in his ‘death’ he was able to continue on guard. The legends which grew up around him, of course, helped in his task. If he rose from his bier in the night to inspect the cavern where the object was concealed, the whisper went around that he had miraculously been transported to Rome to serve the Pope at mass….

“But one group of local Indians had never trusted him, never accepted him, loved nor venerated him; and these were the descendants of the local Aztec priests of the bloody sacrifices, who — decayed and downtrodden, sullen and suspicious — still lived in the
Barrio Occidental
.”

Old Santiago Tuc nodded his head. “
Si, Viejo Poderoso
… it is true. That is why they would try to capture his catafalque during the procession each year. They believed that this would help them to find where the Great Heart was hidden. And then they would have the key to open and to close the rain and then they would make all of Anahuac do their bidding.” He sighed and groaned. “It is known and revealed how we Moxtomí have suffered since the Spaniards came. Generation after generation we have lost some of our communal lands — confiscation, sequestration, rectification of boundaries, taxation — what names haven’t they used! They have eaten our lands like a child eats
gomitas
. The King, the Viceroy, the First Republic, the First Emperor, then Santa Anna, then our good Juarez, the Second Emperor, again Juarez, Diaz, revolution, revolution…. Now and then we regained a little
milpita
here or there, but mostly it has been loss….