authority he'd effortlessly commanded.
'Where is–' I started, but then saw Acamapichtli lying at his feet in a widening pool of blood. I hobbled closer. The feeling of something missing receding as I breathed in the air of the heartland. It was warm and pleasant, though I wasn't fooled. It would gradually wear me down, as it had done in the imperial jails.
Acamapichtli looked as if he had been mauled. Streaks of red ran down his arms and his back, lying parallel to each other, like the wheals of a whip, or the claws of some huge feline. His clothes were tatters, heavy with the blood he was losing. Mud had seeped into his feet, as if he had been running barefoot in a swamp.
I looked up at Quenami, but saw nothing over me but the face of a frightened peasant. 'The Duality take you!' I snapped. 'We need cloth. Is there anything out there that can help us?'
'We're alone, Acatl.' Quenami's voice quavered, but he finally controlled it, coming back to some of his usual smoothness. 'No villages or any habitation I can see.'
Stifling a curse, I took off my cloak and tore it to make bandages. With the help of Quenami, we managed to bind the worst wounds. If only we'd had maguey sap, or dayflower to cleanse them with. A pity Teomitl–
Teomitl? I looked around me, and saw, as Quenami said, nothing but the blades of grass around us, and a hill rising above us. 'Where is Teomitl?'
'I don't know.' Quenami finished binding the last of Acamapichtli's wounds, his distaste for such a menial task evident on his face. 'I was the first here, and then you came one after the other. But since then–'
Since then, nothing. I could hear Itzpapalotl's laughter in my mind as she took my knives and my amulet, all the things I'd been counting on to fight my way to the god.
And I'd been counting on Teomitl's magic, too. That was what I'd been missing since the start.
'He won't come,' I said. I didn't know if it was part of my sacrifice, or if it was the thing She'd asked of him in exchange for our safe passage. But he wasn't there, and that was what mattered. I hoped he was safe. I hoped She had not taken his life, or even a small part of him, as a price in Her games. But I couldn't be sure, and there was no point in regrets or fear; not now, not here. It was too late for that, the game was set, and we would have to play it to the end.
I knelt and lifted Acamapichtli. He was heavier than I thought, his limbs unresponsive, continually sliding out of my grasp. Carefully I slung him over my back, and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. It was the best I could do, on my own.
Quenami had been watching me all the while. 'He's not coming? But–'
'I know,' I said. And, without looking back, I set out towards the top of the hill – unprotected and unwarded, alone with a wounded man and a coward – knowing that each moment that passed brought me closer to unconsciousness.
I could have spared a prayer, had I believed any gods but the Southern Hummingbird were listening.
TWENTY-THREE
It was, as far as the lands of the gods went, a pleasant land. I had been in Tlalocan, the paradise of the Blessed Drowned, only briefly, but this seemed very much like it. Verdant vegetation covering the land, flocks of white birds disturbed by our approach, and the small ponds we passed teemed with fish and newts.
Acamapichtli grew heavier as time passed, his arms bearing down on my shoulders, his legs dangling closer and closer to the ground until it felt as though I were dragging mud.
The sky, too, changed, the only thing that seemed to change at all in this endless succession of hills and lakes. Clouds slowly moved to cover it, and its blue darkened, the air turning as crisp and as heavy as that before a storm.
The sun, though, never stopped shining.
One step, and then the next; mud and grass and water, everything merging and blurring together. I felt Acamapichtli's touch, burning into my skin like the jaguar fang he'd once given me, but it was far away, an inconvenience in some other world. What mattered was walking – one hill after another, one pond after another, feeling the air grow cooler, seeing the light grow darker.
My throat was parched, and soon everything seemed to burn. Was there no end to this land, nothing to bring us closer to the Southern Hummingbird and the souls He had stolen?
Was there–
'Acatl!' Quenami called, from some place faraway.
I came to with a start, almost throwing off Acamapichtli. The right side of my face was wet. Saliva had run down my face, staining what little was left of the cloak, and my mouth was completely dry. I felt like a sick man waking up from a long illness – weak and dazzled, and unable to align two thoughts together. 'What is it?' I asked.
He pointed. The landscape had opened up ahead of us, a larger lake lay ahead with a single island at the centre; and, on the island, a larger hill with a stone structure at the top. It seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it for a while.
'A smaller version of the Great Temple,' Quenami said. His voice was lower, almost subdued: the loss of his regalia must have cut deep. That said... his arrogance and effortless dignity had been his only edge, just as Acamapichtli's strength had lain in his raw power, and mine in the mastery of Lord Death's magic, and in Teomitl's assistance. The sacrifices Itzpapalotl had asked from us were far from trivial.
By the lakeside was a small village, huts of adobe, clustered together. We descended towards them. By then it was all I could do to hold Acamapichtli and keep my thoughts from fragmenting. Something was going to have to yield, and I wasn't altogether sure my mind wouldn't go first. It had, after all, already done so once in this land, back when Quenami had imprisoned me.
The lake grew larger, reflecting the sky above which had darkened to the grey of a storm with the sun at its centre like a malevolent eye. Its depths would be cool, away from the burning sensation that seemed to have filled me up from the inside – fire in my lungs, in my belly, in my manhood…
'Acatl!'
