The offering priest – Palli, the burly nobleman's son who usually guarded the storehouse – returned as Teomitl and I were in the armoury of the temple, lifting throwing spears and arrows to find those tipped with magical obsidian.
Nothing further had happened. Everyone, High Priest Acamapichtli included, had gone to sleep. Lucky men. Fatigue was making my head light, and I had some trouble focusing on the objects Teomitl and I had spread on the ground: three spears with shell-grips, a batch of arrows still in their quiver, and two macuahitl swords, wooden clubs studded with razor-sharp obsidian shards. Everything shone, faintly, with the hues of underworld magic: a sickly light that seemed to diminish all it touched.
'I have a sword,' Teomitl said, faintly annoyed. 'A good one.' His sword was well-made, but it would not be enough against the supernatural.
'You'll need one of those,' I said, pointing to the swords on the ground. 'To fight the beast. What do you know about beasts of shadow?'
A quick, fluid shrug. 'Not much. They live on the eighth level of Mictlan. You need a jade bead to placate them.'
I nodded. 'They're made of shadows, of the darkness that lay over the world in the very first days. Jade will slow them down but not stop them. And they feast on human hearts.'
Teomitl nodded. 'Many things do.'
'Indeed.' The gods, the Celestial Women. Nothing was as precious as blood; and the most precious thing of all was the heart, which gathered all the blood and distributed it around the body.
'The beasts hate light,' I said, curtly, picking up one of the sturdiest swords and hefting it. A faint touch of Mictlan's magic spread to my arm, stilling the blood in my veins, and numbing my skin. 'Starlight won't bother them much, but moonlight or sunlight will weaken them. Sunrise might even destroy them.'
'How do you kill them?' Teomitl asked.
'This sword has magical obsidian: Lord Death's gift to us. Stab their chest, and they'll die like any animal.' I handed it to him. What I didn't say was that they were fierce fighters, more than a match for both of us.
'Hmm,' Teomitl said. He was tense again, impatient to move on.
We repaired to one of the furthest rooms, after warning Ichtaca not to disturb us. The room was a simple, subdued affair, its only furniture a handful of wicker chests, its walls blank save for a spider-and-owl frieze running at head height. A small, discreet limestone altar was at the back, Mictlantecuhtli's skull symbol carved in its centre.
I knelt on the floor, feeling the coldness of the beaten earth through my bare knees. Before me, a wicker cage held a rabbit and a barn owl: a small bird with the sharp eyes of a hunter, blinking in the torchlight. On my left was a jade replica of a human heart, in exquisite detail. On my right was a jade plate, representing the journey of the soul through Mictlan, from the crossing of the River of Souls on the first level, to the ninth and final level, the Throne of Mictlantecuhtli, God of the Dead.
I slit the throat of the rabbit with one of my obsidian knives, and carefully drew a quincunx on the floor: the four-armed cross with its fifth central point.
'Whatever happens, don't move,' I said to Teomitl. He stood outside that quincunx, outside the underworld's zone of influence. 'And don't step over the line.'
He shrugged arrogantly. Who are you taking me for? he seemed to say.
Already, I regretted my decision to bring him with me. But I wasn't about to go back on my word.
I reached for the owl and swiftly opened up its chest in a shower of blood. I retrieved its heart, and laid it on the jade plate: between the seventh and eighth level of the underworld, over a crude drawing of a shadowy beast. Blood seeped onto the plate, spread outwards like a scarlet flower opening its petals.
Shadows gathered around the room, pooled to fill the quincunx, until I knelt in absolute darkness. A wet, heavy breath blew down my neck: the breath of a huge animal, waiting for its food.
I didn't falter. I knew all too well the cost of failure. Death, if I was lucky; utter oblivion if I wasn't.
I laid the tip of my obsidian knife against the jade heart, so that the remains of the owl's blood seeped into the stone. The jade grew darker, but it pulsed now, pulsed like a living heart.
