Master of the House of Darts (21 page)

"Ten Rabbit. He could have a nahual totem; but he's never been strong enough to materialise one. And none of the other affected men had nahuals – Eptli was born on a Five Knife, his prisoner was a Two House insofar as we could check, and Coatl is quite definitely a Ten Rain. So it can't be that, either."

The words came fast, one atop the other – almost without pause. "Mihmatini. Slow down. It's not going to change anything."

"You don't know that," she said, angrily, but she didn't protest further.

"What about the
tonalli
?" I asked. The spirit in the head, the vital force that sustained us – many spells cast by sorcerers were "frights", which caused the
tonalli
to vanish like a burst bubble, and the victim to enter a slow decline towards death.

"It's weak," Mihmatini said. "But that could just be because the body is weak. Which leaves the last explanation." Her finger rested on the paper, near the head of Tlaloc the Storm Lord. "It's some kind of influence."

I thought of the shadows – this far into the Duality House, under the influence of so many protection spells, they had all but gone – but they had been real enough. "Given what I've seen of the sickness, I think it's some kind of influence. But I don't think the influence would hold here."

"If he has it within his body, he's sheltering it from our wards," Mihmatini said. "That was my idea: to make him expel it." She stopped; looking at me – for guidance, I saw with a start.

"You're old enough not to need me anymore," I said, though I was secretly pleased to see she still looked up to me.

She rolled her eyes upwards. "Of course I do need you. I can dispel the influence once it's out of his body, but I can't draw it out."

"You need a physician."

"No, I don't. I can't say I've been impressed by the performance of the priests of Patecatl so far," Mihmatini said. "I need someone more competent than that."

You, her gaze seemed to say. "I can't," I said, the words burning in my throat. "I'm no healer. I serve Lord Death – I can sever the soul from the body or call it back, but nothing finer than that. If I cast a spell, it will expel his own life-force from his chest."

She fell silent – Southern Hummingbird blind me, I should have been able to give her another answer. I took the folded paper from her, and stared at it. Teomitl had been born on the day Ten Rabbit in the week One Rain. This put him under the tutelage of Tlaloc the Storm Lord – and given what was happening all over Tenochtitlan, we couldn't possibly hope to call on Him.

Unless…

"Quetzalcoatl," I said aloud, my hand trailing on His image – the Feathered Serpent, Lord of Wisdom and Knowledge.

"I don't see…"

"It was His blood that brought humanity back to life, in the beginning of the Fifth Age. His breath that runs through us." Quetzalcoatl-Ehecatl, the breath of all creation, the wind that no walls, no mountains would ever stop for long.

"It might work," Mihmatini said. "But I'm not sure the priests of Quetzalcoatl have escaped the widespread arrests."

I folded the paper, carefully – back into the shape Yaotl had given it at the start. The arrests – yes, we would need to talk about those, to see if anything could be done…

Focus. One thing at a time. Save Teomitl first – if we could. Tlaloc's Lightning strike me, we had to succeed – I wouldn't lose him as I'd lost Ceyaxochitl. I couldn't.

"It needn't be a priest of Quetzalcoatl," I said, slowly. "I've got just the right person in mind."

I wrote a message with shaking hands – the glyphs drawn askew, the red and black ink running, staining my fingers. A disgrace, my teachers would have said; but we were long past that. Yaotl carried it to the palace, while Mihmatini dispatched other messengers – slaves and priests both – to Chipahua's house, in order to collect the bodies.

The Duality House, as usual, seemed to have become our bulwark against the storm, and my sister was at the heart of it, managing everything with the proficiency of someone born to it.

Ceyaxochitl had once told me she was gifted; and I could still remember my answer.
Gifted, yes – more than
you or I – but not, I think, destined for Guardianhood or for
the priesthood.

I'd forgotten how often Tezcatlipoca the Smoking Mirror delighted in twisting fate – sending us down unswept paths, into unexplored wildernesses.

Mihmatini remained in the room, but at length a priest came to her with an urgent question, and with a last, agonised glance at Teomitl, she had to step out.

While I waited for her to come back, I held Teomitl's hand; it was the least I could do. The priest of Patecatl would have frowned, and raised up the spectre of contagion, but what did it matter?

From where I crouched, the sounds of the House – the conch-shells, the hymns and the chants, the wet sound of bloodied grass balls slapped onto altar-stones – all receded away, and I was left alone with Teomitl. He had been moaning and muttering beforehand; I'd assumed it was nonsense, but as time went by, I caught words, a few at first, and then, as moments trickled by like drops of water, I picked up more – bright beads amongst threads – and the pattern itself, coalescing out of darkness, an endless litany of delirious failures.

"Fool, fool, fool, what did you think? Going in as if you were invulnerable – of course you never were, of course you never will be. She'll watch you from the World Below, she always does, what do you think you can prove?"

He could only be referring to his mother, who had died after a long struggle to bear him into the world – leaving him forever unable to prove himself as brave as she had been. "Teomitl," I said. "She'd be proud of you."

But he couldn't hear me – he just went on repeating the same things over and over, the same delirium.

A tinkle of bells announced the entrance of Mihmatini, accompanied by Nezahual-tzin – in regalia at least as fine as the one Teomitl had worn, from the red feather-suit to the finely wrought helmet in the shape of a coyote's head.

"I received your message," Nezahual-tzin said. "Most interesting. It was, ah, lacking a certain amount of flourish, shall we say?"

Mihmatini, I couldn't help but notice, was already glowering at him. What had he said to her, in the few moments in which they had walked through the House?

"You'll have to excuse me. My health isn't what it was at the moment."

Nezahual-tzin nodded, gravely. "Nevertheless… there was a most interesting pattern in your glyphs."

"We're not talking about interesting," she snapped. "We want your help. Are you going to give it, or stand here making cryptic pronouncements?"

Nezahual-tzin removed his feather headdress with slow, deliberate gestures before laying it to the ground. Then he unclasped his blue-green cloak and let it fall onto the floor. He had us all staring at him – and he no doubt knew it.

"Your brother will no doubt tell you that making cryptic pronouncements is a pastime of mine." Nezahual-tzin's voice was slow and stately, as if making a formal speech – every word delivered with the proper stresses, in the accent of Texcoco, the purest dialect of Nahuatl in the whole Anahuac Valley. He moved in a fluid, easy gesture, and before I knew it he was crouching by my side, watching Teomitl.

He smelled of herbs, the same bitter smell as the physician – had he just come from the sweatbaths? He liked going there to restore his strength and increase his power tenfold.

"The
tonalli
life-force is weak, but the
teyolia
soul is still in the body."

"We already knew that," Mihmatini pointed out.

I intervened before the conversation degenerated further. "He has something within his body, and we need you to draw it out."

"And then?" Nezahual-tzin raised an eyebrow.

Mihmatini crouched on the other side of Teomitl's body – straight ahead of Nezahual-tzin. She brought her hands together and twisted them together, as if wringing a rabbit's neck. "Then I'll destroy it. But I can't do anything so long as he protects it with his flesh and with his blood."

Nezahual-tzin nodded. He was still watching Teomitl – listening to the delirium as if he could find some sense within. I wondered how he felt – those two had never liked each other, Nezahual-tzin's detached, almost sarcastic attitude and focus on philosophy and knowledge at utter odds with Teomitl's desire to live in the present and prove his valour on the battlefield.

"So?" I asked. "Can you do something?"

"I can always do something," Nezahual-tzin said. "What's the thing inside him?"

"We're not sure," Mihmatini said – her voice making it all too clear she was losing patience.

Nezahual flashed her his most dazzling smile – a pity it would never work on her. "We'll have to improvise, then. Can you bring me butterflies?"

Mihmatini sent to the Wind Tower, the temple of Quetzalcoatl, for what Nezahual-tzin needed. While the priests of the Duality were gathering cages and drawing blood-patterns on the floor, I retreated towards the entrance-curtain. My presence here, as representative of Mictlantecuhtli Lord Death, was likely to do more harm than good.

Outside, the Fifth Sun beat down on the cracked earth – as if nothing were wrong, as if Teomitl's life didn't hang in the balance by a thread. I struggled to find peace or acceptance; it had been easier the year before, when my own life had been in danger, but this… this was different. He was my student, my brother by alliance, and my responsibility through and through – and yet I had failed him on every level.

Whoever was propagating this illness, they would pay – they would face the curved obsidian blade of justice, and be pierced by darts, and choked by mud until they had paid full price for their offence.

From within came chanting – Nezahual's grave voice, measured and pure, intoning a hymn, as if each word were a flower slowly blooming.

"Down into the darkness You go,

In the place where the bones are broken,

When the flutes and the drums are silent…"

There was a sound like a flag unfurling: thousands of beating wings, sending the entrance-curtain billowing in the damp breeze – and the butterflies flew out of the room, a widening stream of iridescent colours missing me by a hair's breadth, like a continuation of the cotton cloth, their touch on my skin soft and delicate, a reminder of the god who was always there, watching over us, as He had ever done since the moment He'd brought humanity's bones back from the underworld.

"I pierce myself, I make myself bleed, aya!

Burn down the paper stained with my blood,

Return the gift that was given,

I pierce him, I make him bleed, aya!

Burn down the paper stained with his blood,

Wash away the touch of the evil one,

The breath of the sorcerer…"

I heard another sound – a moan that started low, and grew – only to break into a dry, shuddering cough. Mihmatini cried out; I clenched my fingers, my nails digging into the palms of my hands. If I went inside, I would be of no use. I had to remember that – had to–

A duller sound – something large and wet hitting the ground, and Mihmatini's voice, raised in anger.

Then silence. The last of the butterflies lingered in the courtyard, its wings catching the light of the Fifth Sun and breaking it down into four hundred breathtaking colours. I did not move – not even when the entrance-curtain was lifted, and Mihmatini walked into the courtyard, carrying a crushed black thing which looked for all the world like the remnants of a caterpillar.

"This is it? Should you be touching it?" I asked.

"It's nothing," Mihmatini said. Her face was glowing – her cheekbones lit from within with a light like that of the moon, save stronger. Instead of washing away her features, it seemed to make everything sharper, better defined, underlying her gesture with a solemnity that made her seem far, far older than her twenty years. "It's the sorcerer's influence, given body and pulled out of him. By itself, it has no power."

Nezahual-tzin's face was pale. "But it's not the whole of the influence. There is something else inside him, but I can't get it out. You should have asked someone else."

"We asked you." Mihmatini's voice was low and intense. "Acatl trusted you."

"I haven't said I was giving up." Nezahual-tzin's face was set in a determined, most uncharacteristic grimace. "In the meantime… this is for you, Acatl. No doubt you'll find it entertaining." His voice was mocking again.

"Come," he said to Mihmatini – for a moment, he looked as though he was going to offer her his arm, like a man to his wife, but in the face of Mihmatini's glower, he opted instead for a simple, nonchalant wave of his hand.

I knelt, and peered at the black thing. It stank – not the rank, deep smell of the altar of sacrifices, but something closer to a bloated corpse left in the sun for too long. It looked like a lizard – save that it seemed to have little to no tail.

I'd expected magic, but when I extended my priestsenses towards it, I felt – almost nothing. A faint, residual beat perhaps, but one that would take true sight to be prised apart. It looked like–

Southern Hummingbird strike me, I'd seen this before – not the blackness or the stench, but this vague curledup shape, almost small and pathetic.

A symbol, that was what it was. It wouldn't give sickness: it was just the shadows which had been given a physical body, a physical reality Mihmatini and Nezahual could expel from Teomitl's body.

Carefully, using the tip of one of my obsidian blades, I prised the thing apart – it had vestigial limbs, which I carefully disengaged from the body, and what I'd taken to be a tail were in fact two legs, all but fused together by the violence of Mihmatini's spell. I had seen this before – where had I–?