seemed to open up like cruel flowers, and swallowed him whole. There was a brief splatter of blood, and then he was gone without so much as a whimper.
Somehow, that made it worse.
Itzpapalotl turned to us, considering. 'From him, I have taken my price. Now…' She'd have looked like a peasant's wife at the marketplace, considering whether to buy tomatoes or squashes if she hadn't been so large, Her features too angular and too huge to be human, Her eyes deep pits into which we all endlessly fell.
She lunged towards Acamapichtli before any of us could move. Teomitl, the faster among us, was only half- rising from his kneeling stance, but Acamapichtli was taken and gone before we could stop Her.
And then there were only the two of us remaining. The goddess stared between us, for a moment that seemed to stretch on forever, and then….
I had a vague impression of speed, of something huge pulling at my body – not strongly, but with a dogged persistence that would never stop come fire or blood. The itch flared up, engulfed me in flames, and there was the face of the goddess, looming up amidst a headdress that wasn't feathers or gold, but hundreds, thousands of obsidian knives, her eyes yellow stars that opened up to fill the whole sky.
I landed with a thud on something hard. The pain and the itches were gone. When I pulled myself up shaking I saw a land that seemed to stretch on forever, scorched and blasted. Overhead hung two huge globes of fire – I couldn't stare at them long, for my eyes burnt as if someone had thrown chilli powder in them – and the ground under my feet was dry and cracked, an old woman's skin. No–
The cracks weren't just superficial: they crisscrossed the whole of the land, went in deep. The ground wasn't cracked, it was broken.
'It has been broken for a long time,' Itzpapalotl said, beside me.
She stood at my side, looking much as She had in the Great Temple. We were the only two living beings in this place. I couldn't see either of the other two priests, or even Teomitl. 'What is this place?' I asked.
'The first sacrifice.' She smiled. 'The greatest.'
'The Fifth Sun…'
A low growl came up. Startled, I realised it was coming from the earth itself.
'Oh, priest.' She shook her head. 'For all your knowledge, you're still such a fool. In the beginning of time, the Feathered Serpent and the Smoking Mirror fought the Earth Monster, and broke Her body into four hundred pieces. To appease Her, the gods promised Her blood and human hearts, enough to sate any of Her appetites. Do you not hear Her, at night, endlessly crying for the meal She was promised?'
Grandmother Earth. But She had never been… She was remorseless and pitiless, but She wasn't a monster. She wasn't against the gods. 'I didn't know–'
'You mortals are very clever at rewriting what was,' Itzpapalotl said. 'And the Southern Hummingbird even more so.'
A chill ran though me. 'You don't serve Him–'
'I am His slave.' She smiled again, like a caged beast, waiting for its time to strike. 'But even that will end, someday. Enough talk. It's time for your sacrifice, priest.'
'I don't understand–' In my hands lay my obsidian knives, and my amulet – and there was something else, a sense of absence, as if a part of me were missing.
Her voice was almost gentle. 'This was what you brought, to fight your way to the god. Set it aside.'
'But I can't –'
'Then you won't pass.'
'What about the others?' I asked.
'They all made a sacrifice, according to their natures and their beings. Now it is your turn, priest.'
Without them, I would be naked in the heartland, worse than that, a dead man walking with no protection that would keep the magic of the Southern Hummingbird from destroying me. It would be like the imperial jails, only a thousand times worse.
Without this…
I thought of Acamapichtli, of what he had said about risks and acceptable sacrifices. The Duality curse the man, he was right, and admitting it cost me.
'Take them,' I said.
Her hands became a round ball of grass, into which my obsidian knives slid, one by one. The amulet went last, hissing as it went in. The grass turned a dull red, the colour of fresh blood, and something ached within me, more subtle than the pain of slashed earlobes or pierced tongue: a sense that I was no longer whole, no longer surrounded by protection.
She parted Her hands again and they seemed different than they had been before, more sharply defined, the obsidian a ittle less hungry. 'Pass, priest,' She said.
There was a gate, by Her side, a half-circle of painfully bright light, as if a piece of the sun had descended into this strange world. It flickered, and grew dimmer, until I could stare into its depths, and catch a glimpse of lakes, and verdant knolls dotted by houses of adobe.
I walked up to it. My body shook, and I couldn't command it properly. My whole sense of equilibrium seemed to have been skewed, my perception of myself no longer accurate.
What had She taken from me?
The light grew bright again as I crossed, searing me to the bone. Before I had time to cry out, it was over, leaving me with nothing more than a slightly painful tingle all over. I was kneeling in a circle traced on grass, the blood that had been filling it slowly draining away, sinking back into the mud. Then the circle was gone, and I stood in the middle of grass and reeds, under a sky so blue it was almost painful, with a gentle breeze caressing my skin.
'Acatl?'
It was Quenami, but I hardly recognised him. His hair was dishevelled, his face stained by mud, his finery all gone, replaced by the torn loincloth of a peasant, his gilded sandals faded and broken. There was nothing left of the
