shapes of Chalchiuhtlicue's Meadows: deserted Floating Gardens with maize growing in wide clumps, and canals over which hung mist and, in the distance, the silvery shape of a lake, where the
There was someone pooling a raft in the canals, well ahead of me. I'd have recognised that haphazard way of rowing anywhere: Teomitl.
I wanted to call out to him, but darkness sucked me in again, and no matter how I called out I couldn't find him again.
Instead, I stood alone in the dark, and gradually became aware that I was not alone. As my eyes became accustomed to what little light there was, I caught a glimpse of polished bone – of a soft light, as yellow as newborn maize, glinting through hollow eye-sockets.
'Acatl,' said a voice – one I knew as well as my own.
Mictlantecuhtli. Lord Death, ruler of the house of the fleshless, lord of mysteries and withered songs.
I did not bow, or make obeisance, for this He would not accept. 'My Lord,' I said. And, more slowly, more carefully, 'This is a dream.'
'Of course.' Mictlantecuhtli said. He sounded amused – not maliciously, like Xochiquetzal or Tlaloc might have –merely like a man taking in a good joke. 'We're not there yet.'
Not there? 'I don't understand,' I said, slowly.
'The time of the jaguars, the time of the eagles – when gods will walk the Fifth World once more.'
Its very end, and the birth of the Sixth Sun. 'When is that?'
'Do you think I would tell you?' Amusement, again.
I knew He wouldn't. He did not gloat, or put Himself or His knowledge forward: what use, since everything came back to Him in the end? 'I don't owe You any favours,' I said, slowly.
'You never ask for any favours,' Lord Death said, and He sounded almost sad. 'I'll give you one nevertheless.' Before I could say anything, He'd reached out, with fingers of tapered bone, and touched me on the shoulder. Cold spread from the point of contact, not slowly, but in a swift wave of intense pain that seemed to seize every muscle at once, sending me writhing to the ground.
As I lay on the cold, packed earth, breathing dust with every spasmodic struggle to breathe, with darkness barely held at bay, I heard His footsteps: He was standing right by my side, watching. 'A gift, keeper of the boundaries,' and His voice grew and grew until it became the whole world, and I knew nothing more.
I woke up gasping, in daylight, in a room which smelled of cold ashes and stale copal incense. My eyesight seemed to have returned, at least to some extent. I could see the adobe walls, and the frescoes, but everything was still slightly blurred. I couldn't remember if that had always been the case, or if some of the eye damage had persisted even beyond the events of the night.
My shoulder ached, and I felt… odd, stretched, as if the protection spell had returned, and I lay cocooned in Lord Death's magic. But no, it wasn't quite that.
Something was wrong. I reached out, wincing at the pain, willing all of it to Mictlantecuhtli Lord Death, an offering as suitable as blood, and rubbed the place where He had touched me in the dream.
There were three thin raised welts on my shoulder, almost like the marks of a whip – save that nothing had bled and they did not ache. They were cold to my touch, with the familiar feeling of underworld magic, and they did not seem to have had any effect on me.
Which was, to say the least, unlikely. If this hadn't been an ordinary dream – if Lord Death had been there with me, in this space out of the Fifth World – then He had given me something. A favour, a gift to His High Priest – dangerous, like all divine favours. It would be small, because things made in dreams couldn't endure for long in the Fifth World, but it wouldn't be innocuous.
I dragged myself up once again and went out in the courtyard.
Everything was deserted. The courtyard smelled of dried earth and packed ashes. Overhead, the Fifth Sun was descending towards the horizon, staining the sky with a deep scarlet colour like heart's blood. Using the cane, I made my slow way through the courtyard, and then through to another, and yet another, and they were all equally deserted – no, not quite, for there was the familiar, faint scent of death in the air; of corpses which had just started to cool. Through one entrance-curtain I caught sight of shapes stretched on a reed-mat, moaning and thrashing as if in the grip of a dream.
The sick. The dying. The dead. And I among them, all but blind. What a great combination.
Tlaloc had been afraid. Why – unless this was no ordinary sickness, but one that touched the very fabric of the Fifth World? I didn't like that. Gods were cruel and capricious, but not afraid. Never afraid – unless it was of something or someone more powerful than Them.
Something…
As I walked, fumbling my way through pillared porticoes, through empty courtyards – through the dry smell of dust and the moans of the sick – I slowly became aware that I was not alone. There were voices in my ears – faint at first, but growing in intensity until they seemed to fill the world. There was a smell like dry, stretched skin; and a wind that grew colder and colder; and ghostly shapes, walking by my side, as if exhaled by the underworld. They crowded around me, groping with cold hands, their faces obscured, their arms and legs translucent, like layers of water.
Was this Mictlantecuhtli's gift – to make me see the souls of the slain? But no, I had spells which could do that. Why waste His time giving me something I could attain for myself?
The ghosts didn't go away as I walked, but neither did they grow more solid. The voices wove in and out of my ears, and there was a hollow in my stomach, steadily growing and growing, even as the world wove in and out of focus – perhaps it was my eyes, but everything seemed to be spinning…
With some difficulty, I reached the next courtyard – the last one – crossing over a ghostly river, and found myself face to face with two of the She-Snake's guards, whose spears barred my way out of the wing.
'Look,' I said, struggling, for behind the black-painted faces were ghosts, too – singing a wordless lament, whispering words of grief. 'I need to get out. I am the High Priest for the Dead, keeper of the boundaries–'
The feeling in my stomach was worse; I wanted to curl up, to close my eyes until it was all over. I–
The boundaries.
I remembered lying on a cold stone floor, with everything spinning in and out of focus, feeling the hollow in my stomach grow and grow until it seemed to swallow me whole. It had been in the instants after the designated Revered Speaker Tizoc-tzin had died – when everything had hung in the balance, and the Fifth World itself had been close to tearing itself apart.
